AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He said, “So you’re the lady who has my wife wanting to pitch shoes.”
“Yes.”
“She’s getting pretty good at it.”
Lucretia beamed in response to the praise.
Matt added, “Livy and I are introducing Anna to Snowbird.”
Regan walked closer and ran a hand over the animal’s back. “Pretty name for a pretty pony.”
Matt said, “She is a beauty, isn’t she? Anna doesn’t want to get too close, but I told her it’s fine to watch from here.”
Anna’s eyes were riveted on her friend as she worked.
“Snow and I love each other, don’t we, girl?” Livy said, giving her pet a hug. “Anna, if you had a pony we could ride together.”
Whether Anna found the idea enticing or not was difficult to tell, but she didn’t appear afraid and Regan found that encouraging.
After a few more minutes of chatting with Lucretia and her husband, Regan and Anna were accompanied back to the wagon.
Livy said, “I’ll see you at school tomorrow, Anna.”
“Okay.”
Regan offered her thanks to the Watsons and turned the team back the way they’d come.
The clock on the wall of Colt’s study showed that Regan and Anna had been gone over two hours and he noted how hollow and empty the house felt. Before Regan came into their lives, he doubted he would have been attuned to it, but now it was noticeable. Her presence gave his home life. There was conversation, not only at the table during meals, but throughout the day. Anna’s voice and her laughs and giggles had become almost commonplace. None of that had been normal during Ben’s residence.
Thoughts of his grandfather surfaced but he didn’t let them linger. His mind was focused on Regan Carmichael Lee. Even a man as plumb dumb as he could be at times was smart enough to know she was still upset about last night. The veiled digs she’d directed his way during breakfast had pierced his hide like darts on a board, and the one about her bath cut deepest. Her talk of the warm water, her scented soap, and how good she’d felt when she left the tub painted a mental picture of her wet and nude that made him shift in his seat to accommodate the rise in his anatomy. That she’d done it deliberately, knowing the effect, made him want to retaliate by pulling her onto his lap and kissing that sassy mouth until she was breathless. To Anna’s innocent ears the conversation had been about soap and a bath, but he and Regan knew better. Did he wish he’d handled last night’s conversation differently so that she hadn’t been hurt? Yes. Had he done so, seeing her in the tub would’ve been real and not something he had to imagine. He deserved the darts she’d thrown at him, and when she forgave him, he planned to enjoy every lavender-scented inch of her satin skin. But he had to be forgiven first, something he had no control over; forthcoming apology or not.
Hearing heavy footfalls in the house, he rose and found himself face-to-face with his grandfather. “I came to get the rest of my belongings,” Ben said gruffly.
“You don’t have to leave. Just respect my choices.”
“I can’t.”
“But you don’t even know Regan.”
“No, I don’t, but she’s a woman and you can’t trust them.”
Colt saw anger in the old man’s eyes, but there was also a veiled ache that seemed so out of character words failed him. Finally, finding his voice, he said, “How about we sit and you explain what you mean.”
They sat and Ben began, “When I first met your grandmother, she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”
Colt froze. Ben had never talked to him about Spring Rain.
“Her tribe lived near the trading post Odell and I built, and every time I saw her, the more I wanted her as my wife. Her parents and the elders were opposed, but I’d traded with them, hunted buffalo and elk with them. They knew me to be respectful of their ways, so she and I became man and wife.” Ben quieted then as if thinking back and Colt wondered what he was seeing.
After a few more moments of silence, he continued, “She didn’t know English but I knew her language, so we had no problems talking. I built the cabin and we moved in. In those days, I made my living trapping and guiding new settlers into the Territory so I was away for weeks, sometimes months at a time. At first, she didn’t complain, but when her people pulled up stakes ahead of the new White settlements, she was isolated and alone.” Ben looked his way. “I’d thought I’d done her a favor taking her away from the tribe and making her a civilized wife...” His voice trailed off.
“So, what happened?”
“When I found out she was carrying your father, I figured that would help her loneliness, but she still talked about missing the Shoshone—the songs, the stories, the seasonal rituals, the open sky over her head. She hated the slurs people threw at her when she went into town. She wanted to return to her people, but I refused to let her go.”
Colt heard anger but also what might have been regret.
“After Lewis’s birth, the complaints stopped, but on the morning of his first birthday, I woke up to find him in bed next to me and her gone. I was frantic. I found a wet nurse, left your father there, and went to look for her. There were rumors that she’d gone west to find her tribe, an old trapper I knew said he’d seen her walking north towards Canada. I searched on and off for the next two years, then gave up. I was angry, bitter, and left with an infant I didn’t know how to raise, and frankly didn’t want to because that’s women’s work.”
