Summer Moon (3 page)

3

Lone Star Ranch, Texas.

Alone at the crossroads where the Butterfield Line intersected the road to the Lone Star ranch house, Kate tightened her grip on the handle of her dilapidated carpetbag and turned away from the dust that swirled in the wake of the stagecoach as it rumbled away.

Dear Katherine,

I cannot wait for you to see Benton House. It is a tribute to the South (where my mother was born), as well as to the West. Like Texas, it is a combination of both. Two stories, with wide verandas around both floors, the house is made of wood and brick, both elements brought here at great expense.

Some may wonder why my father chose to build in such an isolated area away from the working head-quarters of the ranch, away from stock pens and bunk-houses. The truth is, Katherine, he always said that even though cattle made him a rich man, he did not want to smell them, so Benton House sits alone on a rise, except for a corral for horses, a horse barn, and a small place out back for the head wrangler. We are framed by endless miles of golden prairie that sweep out in every direction for as far as the eye can see.

In one of his letters, Reed Benton had described his house in great detail, and yet as Kate stood on Texas soil seeing it for the first time, she was still overwhelmed.

Benton House was nowhere near as monstrous as the old brick orphanage, but was certainly a far grander place than she had ever set foot in, more spectacular than anything she ever could have imagined. She anticipated how lovely the house must be inside, then reminded herself that she had not come because of its grandeur, but because of what she hoped to find inside—love, family, and a place to call her own.

Canopied overhead, the bluebonnet sky went on and on forever. Her only reference was Applesby, confined to narrow streets lined with shops and stores, steep hills, wooded lanes, and narrow rutted roads. There was no tangy scent of salt on the air. No damp sea breeze. She found this raw, open land staggering, even violent, in its emptiness.

Out here, there was nowhere to hide.

She looked down at her wrinkled, beige traveling gown, adjusted her short, matching jacket, and tried to salvage her tired attire by shaking the dust off the hem of her gown. The outfit was hopelessly worn, but it was the best of the lot she owned. She set aside a scrap of lingering doubt that she was not good enough for Reed Benton and tried to assure herself that she deserved a chance at a new life.

She was not about to put on any airs or play him false by pretending to be something she was not. She could not live with herself if she did. She had been honest to a fault in her very first letter.

She had given all the details of her past, spared nothing as she told the truth about her mother, of how she had been raised at the orphanage and her years of teaching. His prompt response had brought tears to her eyes.

I care nothing for your life before now, Katherine. I, too, will be truthful. I am a widower. I have lost a son. I desire a wife, not a saint. My paternal grandmother was from the Northeast, which is why I placed advertisements in papers so far away. I am hoping to find a good, honest woman who values family, loyalty, and honesty above all—a woman who will stand by her husband no matter where he goes or what challenges he may face, the way my own grandmother always did. I can already tell by your letter that you are both honest and sincere. And surely brave to have written in the first place.

So that there would be no surprises before they met, she had spent a precious portion of her savings having a photograph made to send to him. Reed had returned a small portrait of himself in a later letter. Kate had kept it near and memorized every detail.

The prairie wind whipped a lock of her hair out of the tightly wound knot at her nape. She reached up, drew it away from her lashes, and struggled one-handed to tuck it into the prim coil as she started up the dusty lane.

Kate shifted the weight of the heavy satchel, wishing there had been an opportunity to freshen up before she met this stranger, her husband-by-proxy that she knew only through correspondence.

She soon reached the columned veranda that fronted the imposing house and realized her heart was not racing from the walk up the drive but from excitement and more than a bit of trepidation.

Her future waited on the other side of the massive front door. Gathered lace curtains obscured the view through the long sidelight windows that flanked the heavy door—curtains with patterns as pretty as snowflakes. Smiling at the long-forgotten memory, she raised her hand and knocked, softly at first and then, when there was no immediate response, with more purpose.

There was no warning, no sound of footsteps or movement until the door suddenly opened, and Kate found herself face-to-face with a stately woman dressed in black silk. Tall, on the slender side, her coal-black hair was shot through with a few dramatic strands of silver and pulled severely away from her face in a style that emphasized her high cheekbones and the hollow-eyed sadness reflected in her stunning dark eyes.

Sofia.

Sofia is both housekeeper and cook. She is from Santa
Fe and has been employed at Lone Star for over fifteen
years.

He had failed to mention how incredibly striking, how very regal she was for a woman in her early fifties.

“I’m—” Kate started to introduce herself, but before she could finish, the housekeeper reached out, grabbed both her hands with a familiarity Kate was not used to, and held them tight. Shaking her head, the woman began crying without a sound; then she let go of Kate’s hands to wipe her eyes.

“You are Señora Whittington Benton.
Lo siento.
I am sorry. So sorry.” The woman whispered the words over and over, met Kate’s eyes, and then quickly looked away.

Despite the warm dry air, Kate shivered, not knowing what to make of the forlorn, apologetic welcome.

Finally, the woman in black seemed to realize they could not stand there forever.

“Come in, señora. Come in.” She picked up Kate’s carpetbag and led her into a spacious, airy entry hall between two larger, open doorways. “I am Sofia Mendoza, Señor Benton’s housekeeper. We . . . were not certain when to expect you.”

“Reed mentioned you in his letters,” Kate said, glancing down at her old carpetbag now sitting just inside the door. It looked lumpy and threadbare and out of place, the most worn and faded thing in such a grand entry. She struggled to hide her embarrassment as she looked at Sofia again.

Still shaken by Sofia’s emotional greeting, Kate tried to pull herself together and hide her nervousness by weaving her fingers together. She pressed her hands tight against her waist.

“There was no way to let him know exactly when I would arrive. Is Reed here?” She glanced over at the staircase across the foyer.

“No.” Sofia appeared to be fighting for words, her throat working to swallow, her eyes bright with tears.

Sinking into sharp-edged disappointment, Kate made a feeble attempt to smile.

“Will he be back soon?”

Sofia closed her eyes, as if speech was too painful.

Uncomfortable, Kate looked away. Her gaze drifted over the room beyond the foyer: a parlor with fine furnishings upholstered in rich, shining brocade fabrics and warm wood surfaces gleaming with polish; a bookcase filled with gilded, leather-bound volumes; long windows; a massive fireplace of river rock. The room had an air of disuse about it, as if perfected and then abandoned. Each piece appeared to have been carefully chosen for both comfort and style and then ignored.

Suddenly, her breath caught. There, in a bay window at the far end of the room, a wooden coffin rested on two sawhorses. When her knees nearly buckled, she reached for a circular hall table in the center of the foyer for support and then miraculously, somehow found her legs. She rushed into the sitting room.

“Wait, señora!”

Without responding, Kate ran across the endless parlor until she reached the coffin.

In death, Reed Benton appeared to be far older than he had led her to believe, but he was still as handsome as in the photograph.

His hair was thick, dark brown, with silver at the temples. His jaw line was still firm, but his cheeks were hollow and his neck thin. He had been a man of stature, well over six feet, with shoulders so wide he cramped his final resting place.

Before she knew she had even moved, Kate touched his neatly combed and oiled hair, gently ran her fingers over it just above his brow, careful not to touch his skin. She remained surprisingly calm in the face of death’s cold finality until she realized she felt nothing simply because she was numb.

In his letters Reed had told of his father’s immigration to Texas from Georgia nearly thirty-five years ago. How Reed had married young, buried his first wife, and lost a son to the Indian wars. Kate knew the milestones of his life, but now she would forever be deprived of learning the little things, things a wife should know about a husband—how he liked his coffee, what he liked to read, his favorite foods, what made him smile.

No single word of love, no mention of it had passed between them in their letters, and yet she had fallen in love with him, or at the very least, the
idea
of him, and of sharing his life.

His letters had been insistent, full of a quiet desperation as well as a determination of purpose that matched her own. After months of sincere, heartfelt correspondence full of both intelligence and tenderness, she had agreed to marry him by proxy before she traveled to Texas.

Dear Katherine,

I want this done so that you will already be irrevocably mine when you come to me.

Had he known he was dying?

The floorboards creaked behind her. Kate turned around. Sofia rushed into the room.

“Señora, we must talk. Please . . .”

At the same time, a man outside shouted something unintelligible.

“Our wrangler,” Sofia said by way of quick explanation. She was becoming increasingly agitated. “People will be arriving for the burial soon.”

Kate jumped when the front door banged opened. Sofia hurried back to the entry hall. Uncertain of her place in the scheme of things now, Kate waited beside the coffin and listened to Sofia’s brief exchange with a man, heard the housekeeper’s lilting, slightly accented words.

“Last night . . . sent word . . . no time.”

Heavy footfalls rang out. Boot heels and spurs struck high polished wood. A man reeled into the parlor, his footsteps uneven and heavy—as if he was forcing himself to walk.

He was only a few strides into the parlor when Kate grabbed hold of the edge of the coffin for support.

Across the room, just inside the double-width doorway, stood a younger version of the late Reed Benton. He was as tall or taller than the corpse beside her, wide shouldered, with the same dark hair and features. He wore dark pants, a buckskin jacket, and two pistols at his waist. A growth of stubble covered the lower half of his face.

Above it, his haunted, bright blue eyes were glassy, almost feverish. His full mouth was set in a harsh, firm line. He stared right past her, and she saw plainly in his eyes that if he felt anything for the man in the coffin, it was certainly not sorrow at his passing.

Relief washed over Kate and the numbness began to fade as she stared at this man, so vibrant and alive, with such an undeniably commanding presence. He was the living likeness of the picture she had held against her heart all those cold and lonely nights in Maine. He was the man who had opened his heart to her in such touching, heartfelt letters.

I was named for my father, Reed Benton Senior.

He had always written of Reed Senior in the past tense and so she had assumed that his father had already passed on.

Her head swam with giddiness as the shock of the last few moments began to fade. She held out her hand and started to speak when he stepped farther into the room. Briefly he glanced at her, then looked through her, as if she were nothing more than a caller come to pay her respects.

Her hand went to her hair, then to her skirt. Of course, she was travel-weary, tired, dusty, and disheveled—and still shaken by what she had mistakenly assumed. But surely he must recognize her from her photograph. He had been expecting her to arrive any day now.

He started forward, then staggered as if his feet had suddenly grown too heavy to lift. His hand went out as he reached for the back of the settee. Then, without warning, he toppled like a fallen oak and hit the floor face-first.

“Señor Reed!” Sofia cried. Both she and Kate ran toward him at the same time.

The housekeeper helped Kate roll him onto his back. Blood poured from his nose. His upper lip immediately started to swell. Feverish heat radiated from him. The buckskin jacket he wore fell open to reveal a blood-stained, ragged tear in the shoulder of his shirt.

“Ay, Dios!”
Sofia cried upon seeing the bloody shirtfront. “He has been shot!”

“He has a raging fever,” Kate added, all the time thinking, . . .
but he is alive.
She eased the jacket back off his shoulder, carefully opened the shirt near the jagged hole to reveal a bandage soaked in blood.

“I will get someone to carry him upstairs.” Sofia had already started toward the door.

Alone with Reed Benton, Kate pressed her palm over the oozing wound in his shoulder and closed her eyes. Fate had not taken her dream, as she had thought, but had flung it in her face with a challenge.

She whispered a litany of frantic, silent prayers.
Saint
Perpetua, please help him.

Their life together was just beginning. She wasn’t about to lose him now.

4

Kate was afraid to leave him, even for a moment. Afraid to look away from the big man stretched out on the crisp white sheets.

Her face had burned hot with the shy embarrassment of a silly spinster when Sofia stripped Reed of his boots and clothes and removed the useless, soiled bandage someone had wrapped around his shoulder.

The housekeeper worked with skilled and competent hands, never flinching, doing what had to be done to make Reed more comfortable. If she noticed Kate’s discomfort, she made no comment as they worked side by side.

“How could this happen? Who would do such a thing to him? Why?” Kate cried as she held a wet towel to Reed’s bleeding nose and then to his swollen lip.

“For five years, he has been a Texas Ranger, fighting to keep the frontier safe. Ever since his wife and child were taken from him.”

Kate felt betrayed. Reed had led her to believe he was only a rancher. Why would he fail to tell her that he was also a Texas Ranger?

At last he had been dosed with laudanum, washed, and bandaged. There was nothing more they could do for him but wait for the fever to break.

When Sofia sat back and sighed, Kate admired her strength. The woman must have endured much over the last few hours, and yet she still appeared calm and collected, not a hair out of place. Her silk gown was crisp and for the most part clean, whereas Kate’s drab beige outfit was smeared with Reed’s blood.

She closed her eyes, thought of those frantic moments downstairs when she had pressed her hand over his wound, trying to will the blood to stop, terrified of its heat as it oozed from his shoulder beneath her palm.

Finally, Sofia stepped away from the bed.

“The minister should be here soon. Perhaps the doctor will come—but with him, one never knows.” Sofia shrugged, and then her voice faltered. “People will gather from all over the ranch. We will . . . bury Reed Senior before sundown.”

Kate saw something in Sofia’s eyes: Here was a woman mourning much more than the loss of her employer, much more. “You loved him, didn’t you?” Kate asked softly.

Sofia’s eyes instantly flooded with tears. She made no attempt to blink them away.

“I have loved the señor since the day I first came to this ranch. I will love him until the day that I die. He was a great man. A man of pride and courage.” She looked at the open window beside the bed where delicate lace curtains stirred with the shifting breeze, looked out toward the wide, endless rolling grasslands and beyond. “He was a man who would do anything,
anything
to see that this place he built from nothing survives. I did what I had to do to make the señor happy in his final days. I hope you can understand that, señora.”

Kate offered, “You go and see to the mourners, and I will stay here.” She wanted nothing more than to pull a chair up to Reed’s bedside and watch him sleep. Her emotions were still in turmoil. To sit quietly beside him would surely be a gift.

Sofia acquiesced. “Stay if you wish, but I assure you, he will sleep for hours. You can use the room across the hall for now. Perhaps you wish to change and freshen up? The señor had a room built just for bathing. It is at the end of the hall.”

Kate glanced down at Reed, who was still unconscious. She crossed the room and stepped into the hallway with the housekeeper; then she lowered her voice.

“Sofia, you
do
know that Reed and I are married, don’t you? That we were married by proxy two weeks ago?”

Sofia looked down at her folded hands. “Yes. Yes, I know.”

“Did his father know? Did he approve?”

The housekeeper’s hands trembled. She took a deep breath. “Yes. He approved very much. Is there anything else?”

Kate nodded. Better to speak up than to let worry and doubt eat away at her. “Reed never told me that he was a Texas Ranger.” What else might her husband have failed to disclose?

“Perhaps . . . perhaps he was afraid that you would worry about him. That if you knew, you would fear something like this happening. Perhaps . . . he was afraid you would stop writing to him.” Sofia was growing more and more uncomfortable.

Just then, the hall echoed with sound as one of the men who had carried Reed upstairs appeared in the doorway. At least six feet and heavy-set, the older cowhand was sunbaked a nut brown. The hands that held his battered, stained hat were gnarled and scarred. His legs were bowed, his boots creased and dusty. He looked to be in his sixties. What was left of the grizzled hair at his temples stuck out in every direction.

His eyes were full of concern. Kate had watched this rough man and a younger cowhand lift and cradle Reed in their arms and carry him upstairs as gently as if he were a babe.

Now the man worried the hat in his hands, bobbed his head at Kate, and addressed Sofia.

“The preacher’s here, ma’am. I tol’ him to wait in the parlor with the rest of them that’s gathered. Folks been pullin’ in since you came up. Near t’ ever’body who could get here on such short notice is come to bid Reed Senior good-bye.”

“
Gracias,
Scrappy.” Sofia turned to Kate. “Señora, this is Scrappy Parks, the wrangler. He has been here for years.” Sofia paused as if making a decision, and then she said, “Scrappy, this is . . . Katherine Whittington . . . Benton. Reed Junior’s wife.”

Kate expected a polite nod of acknowledgment, perhaps an offer of a handshake, but not wide-eyed, slack-jawed astonishment.

Travel-weary, feeling out of place, and growing more uncertain by the moment, Kate forced a smile. She nodded at the old cowhand and murmured a polite greeting.

“You go on ahead. I will be right down,” Sofia said, dismissing him.

But Scrappy Parks made no move to leave. “There’s one more thing, ma’am. When Reed Junior rode in, he didn’t come alone.” His gaze flicked over to Kate, then back to Sofia. “He left a youngin’ tied to the hitchin’ post out front.”

Sofia’s hand went to her heart.
“Qué?”

Kate thought surely she had misunderstood. “A child? Tied up outside?”

Scrappy bobbed his head. “Comanch’. Damn near tried to bite my hand off when I put him in a stall in the horse barn.”

Kate glanced over her shoulder. Reed had not stirred.

She recognized the word
Comanch’
, a shortened version of Comanche. She had heard it often enough during the stagecoach ride to Lone Star.

“You hear about the latest Comanch’ attack?”

“Worse than before the war.”

“You’d think the government would help.”

“Who needs them? Hell, this is Texas. We take care of
our own.”

She watched Sofia struggle in silent debate. Her eyes were shadowed, her rich, olive complexion pale. The woman was torn, but her first responsibility was to the mourners gathering downstairs, to see the man she had loved and served so long laid to rest.

Kate knew little of men, but she did know children, and she knew them well. How different could an Indian child be? As much as she hated to leave Reed now, Sofia had assured her that he would sleep for hours. Her decision was a simple one after all.

“You are needed downstairs, Sofia. If you think Reed will be all right alone, I’ll go and see to the boy,” she offered.

Scrappy shook his head. “Ma’am, excuse me, but I don’t think—”

“I was a teacher at a girls’ orphanage for eleven years, Mr. Parks. I think I can manage one little boy.”

Scrappy waited for Sophia to respond.

She appeared distracted, and rightly so. “I think Miss . . . Katherine should see if there is anything she can do for the boy.” Once he left them, Sofia turned to Kate. “Reed Junior will sleep until the laudanum wears off. After you tend to the child, please join us in the parlor.” Then she seemed to draw on some inner strength, as if she had just come to terms with something that had been plaguing her. “As Reed Junior’s wife, you should be at the burial, but I am not certain this is the time to announce to everyone that you are married. A marriage is an occasion for a grand celebration. This is a day to mourn. May I simply introduce you as a guest of the family from the East?”

The simple reaffirmation of her marital status helped ease Kate’s mind. Sofia was right. This was a day to mourn Reed Senior. With her husband wounded, given all the turmoil, why not wait to announce the marriage?

She quickly agreed. After Sofia started downstairs, she gently closed the door to Reed’s room and went to find Scrappy in the barn.

Pain ripped through Reed’s shoulder like a white-hot poker, ate at his flesh and his nerves, hot and hard, cutting through the cobwebs in his mind. His pulse pounded in his ears.

He heard voices, smooth and warm. Women’s voices. Not what he was used to in his world of men and war. Blood and guns.

There had been tenderness and caring in the hands that touched and ministered to him. The kind of touch he barely remembered.

There had been so little gentility in his life for so very long now that he had forgotten the feel of it, but certainly not all the pain that memories of it would bring.

Remembrance came to him in swift flashes of light, sound and fury. A bullet had torn through the fleshy part of his shoulder, barely missing bone. Another grazed his temple.

Horses had screamed as they went down around him. Women and children cried as they ran, terrified, seeking shelter where there was none.

There was nowhere to hide on the open plain. Nowhere to run to escape death. It rode over them. Trampled them down.

Pain splintered through him again. He tried to cry out, to move and relieve the stabbing ache, but those gentle women had done something to him, something that failed to obliterate the pain but numbed his mind, kept him from thinking clearly, from moving. Even from crying out.

Mercifully it made him oblivious to the deeper wound he had received in that last battle. A wound not of the flesh but of the soul.

His blissfully befuddled, drugged mind would not let him contemplate that at all.