Lacy Williams (9 page)

* * *

The next morning, Sarah woke before the rooster. Or maybe she hadn’t ever really fallen asleep. She’d spent all night recalling Oscar’s words and serious expression just before he’d left the schoolhouse yesterday.

He’d seemed completely sincere. And she’d been glad when he’d left because his intensity had frightened her.

She could see herself falling for him, given the chance.

She lay in bed, unsure what the future held and what she should do—if she spent any more time with the horseman, would she continue wanting something she shouldn’t? A man that she knew couldn’t be good for her? One with a dangerous vocation?

A distant whistle made her sit up, clutching the bedclothes to her. The chill in the room made her hesitate before putting her feet on the cold floor, but she couldn’t resist a peek out the window to see if it was him.

She gasped at the feel of the cool planks against her feet, and quickly glanced to Barbara to make sure she hadn’t woken the girl. With only a tousle of blond hair above the quilt, the girl didn’t even stir.

The window fogged when Sarah pressed her nose against it.

She’d been right. It was the horseman, working the colt in the near corral. What was he doing out so early? Had he really finished repairing the schoolroom window?

Sarah laid her palm against the freezing windowpane as she watched him exercise the animal in circles around the pen.

With both arms extended, one with the line and the other with a long-handled whip, even from this distance she could see the muscles in his shoulders beneath the coat he wore.

He released the horse from its exercise and stretched.

Why would someone like him, someone virile and handsome, be interested in her?

Movement outside the corral caught her gaze. Two men rode up—young men—and dismounted in a hurry, hopping off their horses before the animals had even come to a complete stop.

Oscar slid between the panels of the corral fence and embraced one of the young men. Who were they? Some relations?

As if he sensed her perusal, Oscar turned toward the ranch house. She ducked to the side of the window, half hiding behind the curtain. She hadn’t even donned a wrapper, only wore her long-sleeved flannel nightgown—but surely he couldn’t see her, not inside and from this distance.

She needed to gain control of her emotions. Needed some distance from the man. But wasn’t likely to get it, now that he’d agreed to help her with the pageant backdrops.

And she needed to do something about the materials to make the girls’ dresses. Oscar had said he could manage with a needle and thread, but after what had happened in the schoolhouse the day before, Sarah didn’t want to give the children any reason to pick on Cecilia or Susie. Perhaps she would have to raid her savings to have some dresses made. She would talk to the horseman about it and see what he thought.

Surely Sarah could guard her heart from one cowboy?

* * *

“What are you doing here?” Oscar embraced his younger brother, Davy, slapping him on the back through the younger man’s duster.

The eighteen-year-old no longer had the build of a lanky teen—his shoulders and chest had broadened even in the couple of months since Oscar had made it home to see the family.

“Ma got your telegraph and sent me and Seb. She sent some things the kids had outgrown—shoes and such.”

Relief and family pride soared through Oscar. He’d hoped his ma and pa would come through for the Caldwell girls, and they had. Now the material that had been donated by a mysterious benefactor could be used for a fancier dress for the girls for the pageant. Sarah should be happy about that.

Davy stepped back and Seb rushed in for an exuberant thirteen-year-old’s hug. “And Ma wanted us to nag you for not making it home for Thanksgiving. She figures you got a gal or something or you woulda been back.”

Oscar’s thoughts immediately went to Sarah, and his checks heated even as a sense of guilt ate at his stomach. He turned back and gripped the corral’s top railing with one hand while pointing to Allen’s colt. “This is the reason why I didn’t make it home—this guy is learning fast but needs a firm hand. My last job.”

He hadn’t made the effort to go home for Thanksgiving—because he hadn’t really thought he’d be missed. Jonas and Penny were busy caring for the young tots, Maxwell was gone, and the other boys were getting older. It was only natural that Oscar move on.

It just hurt more than he thought it would. Made him think back to his childhood when his uncle had all but abandoned him. And he would rather keep busy working toward his dream than thinking about the past and things he couldn’t change.

“Yeah, I think he’s keeping something back from us, Davy,” Seb teased. “Look at that blush on his face.”

“Whoohee! Who is it? A local shopkeepers’ daughter? Rancher’s daughter? Who?” Davy asked with a laugh.

“It’s no one.” Sarah had made it immensely clear that she wasn’t interested in him. Even if he did find her attractive, she was still bossy and determined. Set in her ways. But lovely. “There’s nothing for you to tell Ma.”

“Uh-huh.” From Davy’s tone, it was clear he didn’t believe his older brother.

Oscar’s throat closed off unexpectedly. He’d missed their teasing, the sense of camaraderie that he’d always felt with his brothers.

When he went back home, he’d be just across the valley from his pa’s place. He could go to Sunday supper and poke fun at his brothers and sister.

But the sense of loneliness didn’t lift. Maybe more time with his brothers would help. He could sure use their help getting the Caldwell spread in shape.

“I’m glad you boys are here.” Oscar slung one arm over each brother’s shoulder. “I’ve got a project I can use your help to tackle.”

Chapter Nine

“A
nd then Johnny put the frog in Lizzie’s lunch pail—”

“No, it was Jeremy,” Cecilia interrupted her sister’s tale.

Sarah kept painting the large canvas backdrop Oscar and his two younger brothers had constructed for her. Even though the Saturday morning was chilly, it was blessedly dry and there was no wind on this side of the barn where the three brothers had set up the small carpentry area. They worked on building the other set pieces per the specifications Sarah had described to Oscar on the buggy ride over that morning.

“And it jumped out—” Susie continued as if her sister hadn’t spoken. “And scared her so bad she threw her lunch all over the floor. And then he had to give her his lunch since he’d ruined hers.”

“You know, one time before she was my ma, Penny put a dead snake in my bed, right under my pillow,” the older of Oscar’s two brothers, Davy, said.

“Ew!” both girls chorused.

“That was so funny! At first, you thought Ricky and Matty did it, and got so mad at them—” Seb, the younger brother, chimed in. He wasn’t much older than Cecilia, but seemed more comfortable in his own skin than the girl. Were all of Oscar’s brothers so confident in themselves?

Sarah stepped back, propping one hand on her hip, to examine the paint she’d already spread across the canvas. She listened to the noise going on all around her, somewhat aware of Oscar’s two horses, sequestered in the corral not far behind the barn. If they jumped the fence...but it was tall, and Oscar was nearby, hammering a frame for one of the pieces.

The chatter from girls and young men flowed all around her, but did not include her. She tried not to let it pinch her feelings. She sensed that the girls were still sore at her for embarrassing them earlier in the week.

She couldn’t really blame them. She was sorry she hadn’t paid better attention to the presence of the other children and sorry that Susie and Cecilia had been humiliated. They looked pretty in the new-to-them dresses that Oscar had told her his adoptive mother, Penny, had sent. And shoes! Slightly worn but perfectly serviceable shoes that fit for all three. Somehow he’d gotten the girls to accept the dresses and shoes, and some small-size shawls as a gift without hurting their feelings—something Sarah had failed at doing.

And she couldn’t begin to guess what Oscar had told his brothers about her, but both had greeted her with a perfunctory hat-tip and had barely spoken to her since, although they interacted with the girls as if they had been born siblings.

Oscar had kept busy building the other props she’d asked for. He hadn’t made any effort to engage her since they’d arrived in the buggy.

She was surprised to find she could still feel left out. The same way she had seven years ago in Bear Creek, when she and her sisters had been different from the other children in that they had had to take care of themselves.

She was a grown woman now. Hurt feelings didn’t have any place in her life, not when she had things to do, students to care for. But it didn’t make it any easier to be the one on the fringes of the others’ merriment.

“Miles picked on us yesterday. He called us ‘charity cases,’” Susie confided to Davy in a low voice. They stood close enough for Sarah to overhear.

Velma toddled to Sarah and stretched her hands upward to be picked up.

“Hello, sweetie.” She put down her paintbrush and scooped up the toddler. Well, at least one person here seemed to be happy for Sarah’s presence.

Velma cooed and giggled.

Davy glanced up at Sarah from where he knelt on the ground, fiddling with the back of a piece of wood he’d hammered to another one. “Seems like I remember some big hullabaloo when our big brother called your schoolteacher here a shrew in front of our whole class.”

Sarah’s face heated. Susie’s eyes went wide and Cecilia went silent, too, watching from her perch on an overturned crate between Seb and Oscar, who didn’t look up.

“I don’t remember that,” said Seb, only half paying attention as he measured and marked on another piece of wood.

“You were little,” came Oscar’s voice, though he kept his head down. “And I was a stupid kid.” Now he glanced up briefly, apologizing silently with his eyes.

Sarah realized she didn’t know that boy anymore. She only knew the man he’d become—and she couldn’t imagine him doing something like that now. Not when they were working toward a common goal.

“Miss Sarah, the horseman really picked on you when you were in school?” Cecilia asked, breaking the tenuous, invisible connection between the two.

“Well, he wasn’t the horseman back then. We were just kids, like you are now. And sometimes kids say things that aren’t very nice.”

“Sometimes grown-ups do, too,” said Susie matter-of-factly, bending over Seb at work. “I heard the shopkeeper say we should just leave town ’cause no one wants us here.”

Sarah felt a flash of annoyance. From this distance, she saw Oscar’s jaw tighten and their eyes met in shared frustration.

“Susie!” Cecilia hissed. She looked around at the teen boys and grudgingly at Sarah. “We don’t need no pity. Our stepfather says Oscar’s trading us some labor for some of the spring wheat, but we don’t need no one to feel sorry for us.”

Sarah knew the words had to be directed at her. She wanted to explain, but Oscar’s brothers were still chuckling over the past.

“So what’d you do when my brother called you names, Miss Schoolteacher?” Seb asked, eyes dancing. “Didja wallop him?”

She turned her best schoolteacher look on the teen. “Violence is not an appropriate response in the classroom—or anywhere else,” she said firmly.

Instead of looking abashed, the young man grinned at her.

Davy chuckled. And Oscar ducked his head. Was he laughing at her, as well?

Heat flushed into her cheeks and Sarah set the toddler down. “Go get your sissy,” she prompted the tot, and the chubby legs took off toward Susie. Sarah picked up her paintbrush from where she’d left it on an upended crate.

“She reminds me of Ma,” the younger man murmured, loud enough that Sarah heard it.

Now Oscar made a choking noise. The heat in Sarah’s cheeks boiled even hotter. She’d
thought
he was past all immature acts, but now with his brothers here, the man was cutting up with them.

She hated being laughed at. And she had no idea why the young men thought her comment was so funny.

“It’s no wonder...” Davy added, still chuckling.

A hasty glance up from the canvas revealed the girls looking wide-eyed between the brothers, a mite confused, just as Sarah felt.

“‘It’s no wonder,’ what?” she demanded, moving to one side of the canvas and propping her hand on her hip.

The three brothers dissolved into laughter, although Oscar’s was a tad reluctant.

“Why don’t you share the joke with the rest of us?” she demanded, shaking the paintbrush in their direction so hard that paint droplets scattered on the grass at her feet.

The two younger brothers hooted, but Oscar stood tall, attempting to pull a straight face, even as his neck reddened. He fanned his face and neck with his Stetson as if he couldn’t cool off.

“He—he—he
can’t!
” Davy cried, tears now falling from his face as he was nearly doubled over with laughter.

Sarah threw down her paintbrush and stalked off several paces, then turned back with arms crossed over her chest. “Your poor mother must have the patience of a saint. I can’t imagine having the lot of you causing trouble in my school. And I expected better of you,” she finished, pointing at Oscar, whose lower lip trembled and then broke into that familiar grin she’d begun to appreciate. Until now.

Then the expression of his face changed and he started toward her with one hand outstretched. “Sarah—”

Without warning, a blast of hot, grassy air hit her in the side of the face, as a horse blew loudly in Sarah’s ear.

Sarah shrieked and backed away, feet tangling in her skirt in her hurry and she went tumbling down onto her backside.

The horse—the mare—took a step away from the corral fence where she’d had her neck outstretched. Its head bobbed and it whinnied once.

“She’s laughing, too!” “The horse was teasing Miss Sarah, too!” Susie and Cecilia’s voices rang out as if from a far distance. Laughter still resounded from the brothers, but Sarah could barely catch her breath. The horse had been close enough to nip her, or even knock her down with a jerk of its head....

But it hadn’t.

The girls were right. The mare had...almost played a joke on her.

“Sarah! Are you all right?” A breathless Oscar knelt at her side, one warm palm pressing against her shoulder blades and the other curled around her near hand.

She took stock of herself. Her backside felt a little bruised, as was her pride, and she had a glop of blue paint on her open palm that she hadn’t noticed until now. Probably got it on herself when she’d been railing at the boys.

She was fine, if a little rumpled. And she wanted to make sure Oscar got what he deserved for letting his brothers laugh at her.

“I’m...I’m...”

She pretended that she couldn’t catch her breath, and he leaned closer. Just where she wanted him.

“Sarah—”

She smoothed her palm across his shaven cheek, spreading the blob of blue paint across his strong jaw.

“I’m fine,” she said.

He looked stunned. So she reached out and knocked his hat off. It fell to the ground behind him.

The rest of the group went completely silent.

Sarah pushed herself up off the ground and offered a hand to the man, who stared at her with one of those half grins. Instead of taking her extended hand, he shoved off the ground with a roar and chased after her.

Sarah dodged, knowing she wouldn’t get far with only a one-step head start on him.

The girls shrieked and she spared a glance to see that Davy and Seb had gone running after Susie and Cecilia, as well.

“Don’t get paint—” she called out.

“—on their dresses!” Oscar yelled to his brothers, finishing her thought, just before he grabbed her around the waist and tumbled her into a soft patch of long grass.

The two teens chased the girls into the field and Velma toddled after, shrieking in glee.

“Are you really all right?” Oscar raised himself on one elbow, his head throwing a shadow and blocking the morning sunlight from her eyes. Behind him the sky spread out like a vista of possibilities.

“Yes. I can’t believe your horse did that.”

His eyes crinkled. “I’m thinking maybe she wasn’t meant to be my horse. She thinks she belongs to you, Miss Schoolteacher.”

“No—”

Before she could form the full protest, the girls and teen boys dropped beside them in a pile in the scratchy fall grasses, laughing.

* * *

Later that afternoon, Oscar and his brothers loaded up the finished and mostly dried props and backdrop in the Caldwells’ old wagon. Sarah said goodbye to the girls, who had seemed to warm to her with their play, but still seemed unsure about the schoolteacher.

“It was lovely to meet you,” he heard her say as she extended her hand for Davy and Seb to shake.

“Manners like Ma’s,” whispered Davy, with a poke in Oscar’s back as Seb helped Sarah into the wagon seat.

Oscar gave his brother a friendly shove and Davy chuckled as Oscar hopped into the wagon and settled next to Sarah. Oscar knew he’d be hearing more about the surprising schoolteacher later. He still couldn’t believe she’d painted the side of his face earlier, or that she hadn’t been more scared about the horse’s trick on her. She would fit right in with his family.

He shook off thoughts of what his pa would say about Sarah and snapped the reins to set the horses off. He was getting distracted from his true purpose here and he couldn’t afford to.

He needed to finish the job with Paul Allen’s colt and get back to his snug little cabin. Start building his herd, the life he’d been dreaming of. Alone, but close enough to see his family.

“This afternoon was fun.” Sarah folded her hands in her lap.

“Mmm-hmm,” he agreed.

When the wagon jostled over a bump and Sarah’s shoulder brushed his, his concentration slipped.

He couldn’t forget the sparkle in her eyes when she’d painted the side of his face. If his brothers and those little girls hadn’t been watching, he might’ve followed his instincts and stolen a kiss.

“What was the meaning of that?”

Sarah’s question jarred him out of his distracting thoughts. “What?”

“The joke between you and your brothers. What did it mean?”

He cleared his throat. There was no way he was going to admit what his brothers had been teasing him about. Even if they had been right—as the day had progressed, several of Sarah’s admonitions and mannerisms had reminded Oscar of Penny.

“It’s a private matter.”

“Hmm.”

He slanted a look at her and changed the subject. “When I saw the mare stretching her neck over that fence, I didn’t know what she was going to do, but I thought you’d be frightened.”

“I was.” She fidgeted with her skirt. “For a few moments, I wasn’t sure what happened and I was scared. Then I heard the girls talking and I realized they were right—the horse hadn’t tried to hurt me. It was...playing with me. Is that silly? I don’t suppose horses really play, do they?”

“It’s not silly at all. Horses have personalities, the same as people do. I’ve met some crotchety old fellas and some playful ones. But this was the first time that mare has shown any personality at all.” He paused. “I was proud of you.”

She brushed a hank of hair out of her eyes, her elbow bumping his. Her cheeks pinked. “Maybe next time I’ll get up the courage to touch her. She needs a name.”

He smiled to himself.

“What about the girls’ dresses?” she reminded him. “If we both pitch in a bit of money, I can have the dressmaker in town sew them. Perhaps the girls would accept the gift better if it came from you. They didn’t seem to have any trouble accepting the other dresses and shoes from your mother.”

She still sounded a little miffed at the girls’ easy acceptance of him and his brothers. He wanted to put her mind at ease. “I told Susie and Cecilia about my brothers and how we were all adopted. They seemed to feel a sense of solidarity because we share a lost parent. Maybe if you shared a little bit about your past, they’d open up to you more. They might understand why you care, instead of just thinking you’re interfering in their business.”