Prairie Wife (2 page)

Jesse swallowed back a crashing tide of love and regret and need,
greedy feelings that would get the best of him if he didn't go slowly and earn
Amy's confidence again. It had been a long, long time.

Cupping her jaw in his palm, he turned her head, touched his nose
to hers and kissed the corners of her mouth.
I
love you, Amy. Amy,
where are you?

There had been a time when he'd believed his heart spoke to hers,
when he'd listened in the darkness and heard her soul-deep replies to his
unspoken feelings, when her caresses had answered his every emotional, sensual
wish and satisfied so much more than merely his body.
Amy, my love, can you
hear me?

Jesse shifted his length over her, felt the dizzying sensation of
skin against skin and shuddered with repressed desire.

He kissed her again, hoping against hope for the responses that
would tell him she wanted him, too. She kissed him, but there was no flame,
merely submission. He pressed himself against her, urged her thighs apart.

Opening his eyes to gauge her expression in the moonlight, he saw
the tears that glistened on her cheeks. Fearful at first that he'd hurt or
frightened her, he looked hard into her eyes. There were no tears in the
haunted gaze she returned.

It was then he realized the tears were not Amy's, but his own.

Before his grief and loss became a wail he couldn't control, he
pushed away from her to sit on the bed's edge and collect himself. He had to
get away from here. Away from
her.
Groping, he found his trousers and
pulled them on.

"Jesse?" she said softly, the bedclothes tucked against
her breasts.

He stopped in the motion of shrugging into his shirt.
"What?" It came out more harshly than he'd intended.

She didn't reply immediately, and he almost thought she'd never
spoken in the first place. But then she said in a ragged whisper, "I'm
sorry."

He tucked in his shirttail and grabbed his socks and boots.
"I'm sorry too, Amy," he said. "I'm sorry, too."

And he left.

***

Jesse hadn't returned the night before. Amy wrapped a towel around
the handle of the coffeepot and removed it from the heat. Deftly, she turned
bacon, then cracked eggs into a sizzling skillet. There was a bonafide
restaurant across the road, but Shelby Station took an ample portion of the
stage passengers' business. All the drivers knew the tasty food was reasonably
priced and the beds were clean, so they advised travelers thusly.

Jesse could have slept at the stable, or even in an unoccupied
room in the building next door. During their five years of marriage, only trips
to trade or sell horses had kept him from their bed—those and the night he'd
built the coffin.

She didn't blame him for staying away. Nor did she blame him for
the way things between them had deteriorated. She just didn't have the energy
to worry about it.

Her father greeted her with a peck on the cheek, poured himself
coffee and took a seat.

A well-dressed couple traveling through from Salt Lake City to
Washington arrived, introducing themselves as the Buckinghams and taking seats.
Amy greeted them. Her kitchen helper, Mrs. Elthea Barnes, poured milk and
coffee.

Pearly Higgs, a stage driver with an accomplished reputation,
entered the kitchen and doffed his hat. "Mornin', Miz Shelby. Smells
mighty fine. I told the Buckinghams here, yours was the best vittles between
Atchison and Denver City."

"Why thank you, Pearly. I'll have to take that corn bread out
of the oven now, so you can test it."

The slim-as-a-whip driver rubbed his hands together and grinned,
overlapped front teeth showing beneath his gray-streaked mustache. "Yes,
ma'am!"

Jesse entered the kitchen just as she placed the steaming
cast-iron pan of golden corn bread on the table. She nodded, but he hung his
hat and the holster that held his Colt on a peg inside the door and took a seat
without acknowledgment. His hair was damp and neatly combed, his cuffs spotted
from his recent wash at the pump. He wasn't the handsomest man she'd ever laid
eyes on—his face was a little too chiseled—but his elemental masculinity gave
him an appeal beyond comeliness. He was plainspoken, candid, earthy. She had
loved him from the first time she'd seen his smile.

"We need more cooks like your missus on the Overland
Trail," Pearly said to Jesse, accepting the generous chunk of corn bread
Amy cut for him.

"Mrs. Shelby's a fine cook," Jesse agreed, referring to
her the way he always did in front of guests.

"As good a cook as her mama was," her father agreed.

Mrs. Buckingham nibbled at the food on her plate, but mostly
pushed it around with her fork. Her husband ate heartily, even asking her if
she was finished and then polishing off her share.

"My wife is feeling poorly," he explained. "I have
a business in Salt Lake City, but we're going home for a year so she can see
her doctor and rest."

The woman blushed, and her husband patted her hand.

Amy immediately knew the woman was expecting a child, a subject
too delicate for a gentleman such as Mr. Buckingham to mention in mixed
company. Amy turned away from the table and dished eggs onto a serving platter
beside the bacon.

"Do you and Mrs. Shelby have children?" Mrs. Buckingham
asked sweetly.

Amy gripped the platter. With concerted effort, she relaxed her
fingers and placed the food on the table. Jesse had looked up at her, but she
kept her gaze on the checkered tablecloth.

"No," he said in reply. "We don't."

Simple. Honest. No hint at the cost of that statement or the pain
behind it. No explanation. No words could convey the unfathomable truth.

Pearly ate his meal oblivious to the tense undercurrent in the
room, though he had been traveling through this Nebraska station for enough
years to have remembered the cherubic infant who had once sat in a wooden chair
at this table—the toddler who had followed his father's every step whenever
permitted.

Sam gave his daughter a look that conveyed sympathy.

"Pony up with Shelby, here, for your meals and room,"
Pearly said to Mr. Buckingham, finishing his coffee and pushing back his chair.
"We're gonna pull foot so we make Omaha by breakfast tomorrow."

The man took a leather pouch from inside his jacket and paid Jesse
in gold coins.

The men grabbed their hats and exited.

"Thank you, Mrs. Shelby," the woman said softly.

"Wait a moment." Amy quickly prepared sandwiches, added
apples from the bushel Sam had brought that morning and wrapped the meal in
newspaper. "You'll need to eat before Omaha," she said.

The woman accepted the offering gratefully. "You're very
kind. Thank you."

Amy followed her through the door, stood on the wooden walkway
that led to the stable and lifted a hand to shade her eyes from the sun. Three
men who'd eaten breakfast earlier were waiting at the corner of the building.
Shelby Station was the only one along the Overland Trail with sleeping
accommodations, and many travelers had told her that by far, she served the
best food. Most stations were at least half a day's ride apart, and those stops
were usually only forty minutes to change horses and drivers. Passengers had to
sleep sitting up, being jostled about in the coach, so the bunks her father had
built with foresight and a head for business were as good as gold in the bank.

Jesse checked harnesses on the team of matching grays hitched to a
Concord coach. He had trained those horses well for the task, and they stood
attentively. He was the stock man. He had brought the horses and know-how into
the partnership. Amy's mother, until she died, had helped Amy cook and feed
travelers.

Hermie Jackson, Jesse's right-hand man, had finished loading
trunks into the boot and fastened the straps over the lid. The two stood back
as Mr. Buckingham helped his wife into the coach and the men who'd been waiting
boarded and closed the door.

After climbing to his seat and picking up the reins, Pearly
bellowed a "H-yah" and snapped the reins. The team pulled the coach
forward. Hermie strode back to the stable.

Jesse turned and spotted Amy where she stood in the sunlight.

They stared at one another for a long moment, a year of silence
cloaking anything they might have wanted to do or say, a lifetime of regret and
guilt closing the door on what should have been. His partnership with her
father had been her introduction to the man she would love and marry. The man
who would give her a child.

Jesse adjusted his hat.

Amy flattened her hand against her waist.

He turned and strode toward the corral.

She found her feet and returned to the kitchen.

***

Though he stood in the shade of the open stable doors, sweat
poured from his forehead and upper body as Jesse held the foot of a gelded
black between his knees and deftly cleaned the hoof. An intolerable ache
throbbed behind his eyes, and he resisted the impulse to go dull it with a
hefty swig of liquor. Problem was, he knew he'd feel better if he did, so
resisting was a monumental battle.

A soft footfall alerted him to someone's presence and he looked up
to see Amy. She appeared fresh and cool in a calico dress sprigged with a tiny
green leaf pattern. Her hair was hidden beneath a straw bonnet, green ribbons
laced beneath her chin.

He straightened and, still holding the iron pick, wiped his
forehead.

"I'm going to place an order at the mercantile. Will you have
time to pick it up after Mr. Liscom has filled it?"

He nodded. "Shouldn't be a stage until suppertime. This is
the last horse to get ready."

Her gaze flicked over the black gelding. "Anything you
need?"

A moment passed and her cheeks turned pink. She waited for a reply
without meeting his eyes. Most of their conversations were conducted like this,
it seemed.

"You might ask John if the linseed oil has arrived."

"I'll do that." She turned and headed toward the
mercantile.

It was a ten-minute walk, but if she'd wanted a horse, she'd have
asked, he thought.

Jesse finished with the hoof he was cleaning and spoke to the
black, wearily rubbed his forehead and neck. Then he rinsed at the pump and
pulled on his shirt before returning to the house.

He entered the kitchen, where Mrs. Barnes glanced up from peeling
potatoes. She was a handsome woman, with dark hair turning gray at the temples.
Giving her a polite nod, he passed on to the front of the house and stood at
the bottom of the stairs, one foot on the first step. This time of day the
house was unnaturally quiet. The scent of lemon oil told him someone had been
polishing wood.

Silence closed in on him. There should have been a child's voice
echoing through these rooms, footsteps on the wooden floors, toys scattered and
a small pair of boots standing beside the door. Tim should be here. His
precious Tim.

Jesse's chest tightened with a familiar, lonely ache.

A man should be able to share these feelings with his wife, the
only other person in the world who knew the same grief.

Jesse glanced up the stairs. There should have been other
children, too. Another son. A daughter, perhaps. Not to replace Tim, of course,
but to fill this house and their lives.

He couldn't stay here anymore. Couldn't see Amy every night, lie
beside her and grieve for the life they'd once had and the things that should
have been. He couldn't think clearly when he was here, and he needed to sort
things out in his head. Jesse pushed himself into motion.

In their bedroom, he gathered his clothing, comb and brush, and
extra boots and placed them in the center of a blanket, which he bundled up and
carried quickly down the stairs and across the space between buildings to the
plain quarters where travelers slept.

Most rooms held at least six bunks, but he chose one of the two
downstairs rooms with only two bunks and deposited his belongings on the bed he
had slept on the night before. He could hear someone moving in a room above as
he stacked his clothing in a drawer.

Footsteps sounded behind him, and he turned.

Adele McConough, the young woman who changed linens and did
laundry, started at finding him. She clutched a stack of sheets to her chest.

"Didn't mean to scare you," he said apologetically.

"That's okay. I didn't expect anyone to be in here during the
day." She gave him a bashful smile.

He hadn't wanted to explain, but of course the hired girls would
know if he used this room. "I'll be sleeping here. You don't need to
change the sheets every day. Once a week will be fine."

"Y-yes, certainly, Mr. Shelby," she said, obviously
puzzled.

"And please," he added, "don't mention the fact
that I'm bunking here to anyone." Amy didn't need the added embarrassment
of gossip.

"I won't," she said, turning to go.