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Maeve was silent and the preacher was standing next to her.

“I can’t take advantage of her,” Noah said to the reverend, feeling guilty now that Maeve had stopped being angry with him. “And that’s what I would be doing. She deserves a better marriage and she’ll find it if she takes some time.”

“I won’t be changing my mind,” Maeve said.

“You can get married any day you want if that’s what you decide to do,” the preacher announced calmly. “Things might look different in the morning. Better to put it off until you are both happy about the decision. Your men will make good chaperones. I’ll speak to them.”

Noah noticed that Maeve was watching him.

“Sounds sensible to me,” Noah said, ignoring that spark within him. He had begun to wonder what it would be like to forget about fairness and marry the woman. He had little doubt, though, that Maeve would find a better husband than him if she took some time to look around. The new banker was a widower. He was a few years older than Noah, but he seemed nice enough. And he played the violin. Women liked things like that.

“As long as I get paid for the cooking I do,” Maeve said, her voice wavering a little as though someone had taken advantage of her in the past.

She suddenly looked even younger than her twenty-five years, and he felt his hands curl into fists. He would not mind having a word or two with the man who had given Maeve a hard time. But he couldn’t say anything.

So he nodded instead. “We better start heading home, then. Jimmy should have our wagon sitting out back.”

It didn’t take long to say farewell to the preacher and the two women. They all promised to come back to the church in the next few days if that was what he and Maeve wanted. Noah could tell they were disappointed. He came to hear the sermons when the weather was nice enough to get into town, and he knew the women had been praying for him to find a wife. He hadn’t asked them to do that, but he suspected his ranch hands were behind that, too.

The winds didn’t let up when Noah helped Maeve and the girl into the wagon. He brought forward a couple of old blankets and a buffalo hide he kept in the back for when the weather was like this. He wrapped a blanket around their heads and tucked the others around their legs. He put the hide over all.

“That’ll keep you warm,” Noah said as he picked up the reins. When he’d gotten out the blankets, he’d checked to see that the teapot was in the back, hidden behind the cases of canned peaches.

Noah set the horses to their course and they pulled the wagon along the road.

When he drove the team over the rise that led down to his ranch, his face was raw from the force of the blowing snow and the sun was beginning to set behind the storm clouds. If it had been a nicer day, he would have taken pleasure in showing Maeve and the little one the view from the top of the rise. His land stretched out in all directions as far as the eye could see. At this time of year, only the tumbleweeds broke the whiteness on the ground, but in the spring tufts of green grass would dot the landscape.

His two-story house was nestled in a dip after the rise, making it close to the creek that ran through his property. Noah thought sometimes the land he’d chosen for his home was curved until it looked as if God was holding the house in His hands. Noah never mentioned his fanciful thinking to anyone, but he liked to walk up to the rise when he prayed in the mornings. He knew he had many blessings even if the love of a wife wasn’t one of them. Some distance from the house was a tall red barn with a long, squat bunkhouse built against its side. The ranch hands never had cause to complain about their quarters. Their long room was snug and homey with a fireplace at each end and chairs scattered around for sitting on a winter evening. Beds lined the walls.

The house itself was the jewel on his property. Windows faced in every direction, each one of them gleaming despite the frost curling around the edges of the glass. He’d had to send back East for the beveled windows in the main door. A wide porch wrapped around the front part of the house and, in the summer, bright red geranium plants were scattered around in clay pots.

Suddenly, Noah frowned. What looked like a sheet was blowing from one of the upstairs windows. Then he noticed that the door to the bunkhouse had opened and a stream of ranch hands was spilling out. They stood a moment, watching the wagon as Noah guided it down the road. Dakota was in the lead, waving his hat as the men started to walk closer.

Noah didn’t know whether to warn Maeve that they were being welcomed or try to figure out a hand signal that would convince the ranch hands to go back inside and pretend they hadn’t noticed them coming home.

Finally, it was too late to do either.

Maeve had lifted her head out of the blankets and was looking straight ahead.

“Is someone doing the wash?” she asked, puzzled. “Isn’t it too cold for anything to dry?”

“It’s not laundry,” he said and hesitated a few seconds before adding. “It’s hung there to celebrate our wedding.”

“But we didn’t get married,” she protested, looking over at him in surprise. “Oh, of course, your men don’t know that, do they?”

He shrugged as he looked into her green eyes. The shadows made them dark, but he noticed they had some sparks to them that they hadn’t before. The woman was not hiding her feelings from him as much as she had earlier.

“They mean well,” he said, smiling at her. “And, if I’m not mistaken, they’ve already told everyone from miles around that we were getting married today. They’ve been waiting since I got your letter. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll explain it to them and they’ll spread the word that it didn’t happen.”

Maeve looked away from him then and his throat tightened. She was upset that they had not gone through with their vows. If he didn’t believe she’d feel differently in a couple of days, he would have turned the wagon around and headed back to the church.

But he couldn’t live with a woman who felt trapped in a marriage to him. His wife’s unhappiness had left them both miserable.

Just then, his men came up close to the wagon. They were all noisy, grinning and carrying their rifles. No doubt they intended to fire off a volley in honor of the occasion. Noah stopped the horses and held up his arm. He wouldn’t be surprised if Dakota had organized all of this; that man was determined to give up his cooking duties.

The crew looked at Noah expectantly.

“We’re not married yet,” he explained as he surveyed the ranch hands. “I felt it was only right to give her a chance to see what she’s in for before she goes through with it. In the meantime, I know you’ll honor Maeve as if she were my wife.”

“Maeve?” one of the men in front of him asked as he tilted his head. “Isn’t that Irish?”

“You can call her Mrs. Flanagan for the time being,” Noah replied. Some of the men had hard feelings against the Irish after a brawl with some soldiers from nearby Fort Keogh. “She and her daughter, Violet, are my guests. Now let me get this wagon up by the porch. You can help carry everything inside before the storm gets any worse.”

He started the horses forward.

“Is she going to cook for us in the morning?” Dakota called after them. “I mean, since she didn’t marry you?”

Noah reined in the horses and looked over at Maeve. She had pushed more of the blankets back so she could see what was happening. Her green eyes were sleepy. Her hair tousled. He didn’t need to ask to know she was exhausted.

“Dakota can fry eggs in the morning,” Noah said. “Same as usual.”

That was enough to make all of the men turn to stare at him.

“But he burnt them last time,” one of his men reminded Noah, although he didn’t do it loudly. “I almost couldn’t eat mine. And you know me. I eat anything.”

“I was looking forward to a biscuit,” a younger cowboy complained, as well. “How hard can that be to make?”

Dakota bristled at this and turned to the younger man. “I’d like to see you try to make some.”

They hadn’t had bread of any kind for months. The last batch of biscuits Dakota had made had been hard as stones. No one could eat them. Noah had finally ordered the man to stop even trying so they wouldn’t keep wasting flour. He wasn’t sure if Dakota was relieved or still held a grudge over the incident.

“The woman deserves a rest,” Noah said. And he intended to see that she had one.

He wasn’t sure what decision he and Maeve were going to make about the marriage, but he did believe she was a decent woman who had been overcome by trouble. Whether she wanted to marry him or not, he meant to see that she got a new start in life.

“I’ll get up early anyway,” Maeve said with a yawn and then sat up straighter on the wagon bench. “I always do.”

Noah didn’t answer as he pulled the horses to a halt in front of the house. For however long Maeve and her daughter were with him, he wanted them to be welcome.

“You’re entitled to stay in bed in the morning,” he said firmly. “You’ve had a long trip here. And treat my place like your home. Don’t let the ranch hands convince you to get up and cook for them.”

Maeve looked at him, speechless, and then smiled before turning to wake up her daughter.

“I can carry her in,” Noah said as he started to climb down off his wagon. “I’ll come around.”

His men had walked up to the back of the wagon and were starting to unload the supplies.

Noah hurried to the other side of the wagon and held out his arms for the girl. He had moved most of his clothes out of the bedroom yesterday and put them in the room at the end of the bunkhouse. The woman and her child would be comfortable in the house. His room shared a wall with the parlor fireplace so it was the warmest place in his house, except for the kitchen.

He could hear Violet murmuring as her mother gathered her up. The girl was likely still half-asleep. Noah’s hat was knocked off by the wind and it fell into the back of the wagon. He left it there since the woman was ready to set the girl in his arms. For a moment, he let her weight settle. He was surprised at the contentment he felt holding her. He’d never had a child on his ranch before, not one he could lay claim to as his own. His neighbors, the Hargroves, brought their girls over once in a while when they visited, but there was no one else.

Noah had hoped his wife would have his children, but, even if she had stayed, she had made it clear she didn’t intend to be a mother. She had muttered something about little ones having sticky fingers and colic.

The girl shifted suddenly in his arms, and then stiffened as she opened her eyes. A shriek of pure terror split the early night as she screamed.

“What’s wrong?” Noah looked up at Maeve in alarm. The girl was rigid in his arms.

“She’s frightened.” Maeve slid to the end of the wagon bench and opened her arms to take her daughter back. “She was startled when she saw you. I should have known. She hadn’t fully woken up yet. I wasn’t thinking.”

Noah gave the now-shivering girl back to her mother. Maeve was apologizing, but Noah didn’t think she was surprised. The child had been terrified.

Dakota had opened the door to the house and two other ranch hands were moving the trunk inside. They set down the burden and ran back to the wagon at the sound of the scream.

“What’s wrong?” Dakota asked breathlessly. The other ranch hands crowded around.

Maeve was rubbing her daughter’s back and Violet’s whimpering was slowing down.

“We’ll be fine,” Noah answered. The girl’s eyes had opened wider at the sight of the other men. She might be silent now, but she wasn’t at ease.

“Give her some room to breathe,” Noah advised the other men.

The men were used to animals that panicked and nodded.

“Anything she needs,” Dakota whispered as the men turned their backs.

They all walked away quietly and picked up the trunk again.

Noah waited a few minutes for the girl to start breathing normally.

“Let me help you down,” he finally said as he lifted his arms up to help the burdened Maeve down. He pulled her toward him and then let her slide to the ground. Carefully, he avoided touching her daughter cradled in her embrace. Something in his heart shifted as he watched Maeve protect the girl. Not all women were so fierce in defending their young. His wife never would have been.

When Maeve stood squarely on the ground, he put his arm around her and escorted her to his house. He could feel her trembling, but he didn’t say anything. He sensed she was too proud to admit to being shaken up, though he found he liked having her lean on him.

He wondered how they were going to live with each other, even for the duration of the storm. He had always said that his heart had been torn out by its roots when his wife left. Now he suspected there might have been a seed left behind. He doubted it was enough for him to love someone again, but it might be enough to remind him keenly of all that he was missing. He liked being able to protect the woman and her child. He knew that when they were gone from him he’d worry.

With those despairing thoughts, he reached down and turned the knob so he could open the door to his home. He looked down and saw red strands of hair sticking out around where the blanket was wrapped. Maeve moved farther toward him. He was relieved that it was the situation and not him that made her hesitate.

“It’s a good house,” he said, pausing with his hand on the doorknob. “Safe and warm. Live in it as your own while you’re here.”

As he swung the door wide-open so they could all enter, he wondered how long the blizzard would last.

“Your daughter will feel better once she’s been here for a while,” he said, adding the last bit of comfort he could, wondering what had happened to Maeve and Violet to make the girl so afraid.

Chapter Three

Darkness continued to fall as Maeve let Noah guide her through the main door of the house, down a short hallway and into a large square room that smelled faintly of coffee. She figured he sat here sometimes and drank his morning beverage. The windows were bare and must provide a good view of his ranch as he emptied his cup. Tonight, however, the gray sky outside didn’t let in much light. Despite the picture she’d painted in her mind about the man and his coffee, Maeve sensed the room was seldom used and had seen much sadness.

Or maybe it was her, she thought.

“Your home’s lovely,” she forced herself to say politely, clutching Violet close to her as though she needed to protect the girl. By now, she could see brocade-covered chairs in the shadows so she knew she wasn’t in the kitchen. It was the parlor, maybe. She still didn’t look up as she felt drops of melting snow fall from her tumble of hair, landing on the plank floor beneath her.

“I’ll wipe up the spots,” she said. “We’re dripping everywhere.”

Noah grunted, but didn’t say anything.

She didn’t blame him. If only Violet had been able to hide her fears, he might have come to see her daughter’s delightful side. As it was, he likely thought he’d be living in a house full of screams if he married Maeve. What made her particularly unhappy was that Noah would never know that Violet sang Sunday school songs in a sweet voice and tried to catch birds because she thought they were hungry and she wanted to feed them bread crumbs.

Maeve heard Noah’s footsteps as he walked across the room, sounding increasingly distant.

She felt as if her chance for a new life was slipping away.

“It was her father,” Maeve blurted out without thinking. She had never meant to tell anyone this part. “He was killed in a brawl at a bar.”

Noah turned around, but didn’t say anything.

“On the waterfront,” she added since he seemed to expect more details. “Violet was sitting in the corner and saw it all.”

Noah raised an eyebrow. “Did she follow him there? To the bar?”

Maeve shook her head. This was why she hadn’t wanted to tell him. “My husband was taking care of her and he took her there because he had an—ah—an appointment.”

“And the bar owners let her stay?”

“They let people do anything. It wasn’t the kind of place most people would go.”

“And I remind her of that?”

She shrugged. “I understand many of the men in the brawl had beards. In the dark, that’s probably all she saw of their faces.”

“She must have been terrified.” Noah’s voice was tense.

Maeve was silent even though he seemed to be waiting for her to say more. She couldn’t confess the rest of it. She didn’t want anyone to know the shame of her husband betraying her like he had. It still made her feel ugly.

Finally, Noah walked to the fireplace.

Maeve let the blanket slip down from her head so she could look around. Four large paned windows, two on each outside wall, faced out to the night and she could see the silhouette of trees swaying as the wind blew beside the house.

She hadn’t noticed earlier, but now that she searched the shadows, she saw the room was lined with exquisite furniture. Polished Georgian-style settees with rose brocade upholstery and mahogany legs carved in graceful arches. A pair of Louis XVI chairs. Matching side tables with crystal-cut lanterns on them and small silver bowls that she knew were waiting for calling cards and fresh flowers. She’d never expected to find a room like this out here in the territories.

“You must have sent back East for everything.” She couldn’t gesture because she still held Violet in her arms, but she nodded her head toward the furniture. Lined up straight against the walls, it rivaled what she had seen in the homes that she had cleaned in Boston.

“Steamboat to Fort Benton,” Noah said as turned back from his position by the fireplace. “Then mule-drawn wagon to here.”

Maeve was so surprised by everything along the walls that her eyes hadn’t made their way to the half circle of furniture near where Noah stood.

“You can lie your daughter down here,” Noah said with a gesture toward a wooden bench. “If she’s quiet enough that she doesn’t still need you to hold her.”

Maeve blinked, not sure she was seeing things clearly. The more intimate grouping of furniture in front of the fireplace was crudely made. She thought her eyesight was deceiving her until Noah bent over to light a kerosene lantern and the chairs were completely visible.

She had been right. The furniture was what a frontier house would contain—various pieces of unmatched wood, forced together to make a chair or a table, with no thought to beauty or grace. The pieces were not smooth or built to last. Even the lantern looked modest when compared to the crystal globes sitting on the edges of the room.

If it wasn’t obvious that the inner circle of chairs was what the man used regularly, Maeve would have been insulted to be led toward such a humble bench in the presence of the outer line of magnificence. She sat down slowly. Violet was heavy in her arms and Maeve hoped she would doze off to sleep.

There would be more time to explore this unusual house in the morning. She wondered if the other parts of the house had this same look of being held back like the occupant was waiting for something to happen before anything was used. She pondered the puzzle of it all for a moment until a realization came to her—of course, the furniture had been for his wife. He’d said she left, but maybe he was hoping she’d come back. Most people, Maeve knew, would sell such fine pieces of furniture if they weren’t going to use them.

She looked up to see Noah closing the ivory lace curtains on the room and putting enough wood on the fire to make a small blaze. He then excused himself to go help the men unload the wagon. He gave Violet a sympathetic look before he left the room, but he didn’t ask any questions.

The flames from the fire began to slowly warm the air, but Maeve kept the blankets wrapped around her daughter. It had been a tiring day for everyone. More questions had been asked than answered.

She wondered how she and her children were going to be able to live here with a man who had been so in love with his wife that he couldn’t marry another woman. In fact, he couldn’t even sit on the chairs he’d bought for that woman and likely wouldn’t ever sell them since he was hoping she’d come back.

Of course, Maeve thought with a rueful smile to herself, those were only his problems.

She had troubles of her own. A dozen booted men were going back and forth to where she assumed the kitchen was. All of them had beards of some length. A few of them had scars. She expected they all carried knives and some had pistols. Violet might start screaming every time one of these ranch hands crossed her path. The sheer number of men they would be around had not been something Maeve had considered.

She reminded herself that she’d had no other option but to come here. It was this or begging for bread on the streets of Boston. No one ever found enough to survive for long that way. And Violet would likely end up in an orphanage and Maeve in the poorhouse with the baby.

So, she told herself, it was pointless to berate herself for not making a better choice. She’d taken the only path she could.

She bent her head in exhaustion just thinking about the days she had before her, though.

Lord, give me strength, she managed to pray. She could not go further. Her feelings for God had suffered when it had seemed everything had lined up against her in Boston. Some people reported sensing God’s care for them in hard times, but all she had felt was an overwhelming silence. It was as if God had been as disappointed in her as her husband must have been to do the things he’d done.

When she’d heard from Noah, she’d begun to think God had decided to be in her life again. And now that future was uncertain.

She had given up any hope of love, but she had believed she would find respect in a new marriage. With God’s help, that would be enough for a good life.

She blushed wondering what the ranch hands must think about her now. Noah had said it all very politely, but it was clear that he had called off the wedding, hoping she would grow weary and say she no longer wanted to marry him.

She could only bless the men’s hearts for their clear disappointment. They, at least, wanted her to stay. Noah might, too, she assured herself, once he saw how useful she could be.

She heard footsteps and knew Noah was coming back through the hallway. His steps were different from those of the other men. They sounded more confident. Maybe a little quicker. Heavier.

“How long have you had it like this?” Maeve asked when Noah reached the open doorway.

When he didn’t answer, she continued, “The wood on these chairs needs to be polished or it will crack and ruin.”

“I don’t have time to be polishing the furniture.”

“I can do it,” Maeve offered. After her years working in Boston, there wasn’t much she didn’t know about caring for expensive furniture. “You want to keep it nice for—”

Her voice trailed off. She wasn’t exactly sure she wanted to say the words indicating he was saving the furniture for when his wife returned, but she had no other theory to offer.

Maeve looked down. Her daughter was lying on the bench, with her head in Maeve’s lap.

She could feel the man looking at her so she glanced up.

“You must like European furniture,” she finished. “It’s beautiful.”

“Neither,” Noah said with a smile. “I bought it to show myself I could.”

Maeve wondered how much money the man had.

A dozen men had marched back and forth to the kitchen carrying things past the doorway. Most of the supplies were still coming, but she saw a couple of big bags carried to the back of the house. From the sounds of the steps, two men carried her trunk to the end of the hall. She suspected they had taken it to the bedroom, but the warmth from the fire was making her toes tingle and she didn’t want to walk down the hall to see.