The Bartered Bride (The Brides Book 3) (24 page)

THIRTY-ONE

O
ne cloudy Monday afternoon a few days later, Jem entered the ranch house to the sound of a guitar playing. He followed the sound to the parlor and nearly tripped over the rocking chair. All the furniture had been pushed back against the walls. Annie was dancing around the cleared floor with a boy of about fifteen or sixteen whom Jem didn’t recognize. The youth had an expression of concentration on his face that was so comical he had to be learning his first steps. Mae and Sugar were there as well, frolicking about to the sound of the music.

Ben stood in the corner with a well-built young man in an expensive-looking summer weight suit. A city fellow, by the looks of it. Neatly trimmed hair. Clean-shaven. His expression was friendly and intelligent. He was strumming a guitar and talking in a low voice with Ben.

Jem joined them, curious.

Ben barely acknowledged his presence.

“Adam Booker.” The man with the guitar nodded politely, without breaking his rhythm. “From Denver. Went to school with Ben for a while. Here for Tom’s wedding.”

“Pleased to meet you, Adam. Jem Wheeler.” Jem was about to stick out his hand, then thought better of it, realizing the other man couldn’t shake it unless he stopped playing. “I thought the wedding wasn’t for another month?”

“He’s family,” Ben said, as if his meaning was obvious.

Jem looked at Adam, at a loss.

“Tom’s cousin. I’m playing a song in the wedding...Tom asked me down to practice.” Adam kept up his strumming as he spoke, talking in a singsong manner along with the rhythm of the music. “Ben’s told me a lot about you. And your new wife.”

What did that mean?
And your new wife?

“Oh?” Jem asked as dispassionately as possible, trying not to leap to conclusions about what Ben had said, and what this young man believed.

“I wondered... I hope you don’t find this impertinent, but does your wife sign?” Adam asked, his expression openly curious but not critical. He truly had an amazing ability to speak and play guitar at the same time. Annie and the youth she was dancing with didn’t seem to notice Jem’s arrival yet, so focused were they on their steps. And there was no hesitation in Adam’s playing to alert them.

“It’s Annie,” Jem said. “Her name is Annie. And no, nothing so formal as ‘signs.’ I’ve been thinking about schools though. Do you know of any in Denver?” he asked suddenly, recalling Adam had said he was from there. Perhaps he’d know. He seemed knowledgeable and interested in the subject already.

“But...you do know there’s a school for the deaf and mute here in Colorado Springs?” Adam said, glancing at Ben.

“There is?” He glanced at Ben too, but his brother-in-law’s face was inscrutable. Had Ben known there was a school for the deaf and mute in Colorado Springs? And if so, why hadn’t he said anything? Although, Ray hadn’t been aware of it, so perhaps Ben hadn’t known either.

“For children,” Adam was saying, “but I don’t see why anyone couldn’t go. My cousin’s youngest attends. He can’t hear.”

“Annie can hear just fine.”

“But she can’t speak?”

“That’s right,” Jem said, feeling the need to defend her, though Adam’s expression seemed neutral.

“It’s not easy being different,” Adam said, his gaze resting thoughtfully on the boy who was practicing his dance steps with Annie. Jem wondered who the boy was—perhaps Adam’s younger brother? Although, the two didn’t look anything alike. Where Adam had neatly trimmed brown hair, the youth dancing had brown hair too, but it was curly and sort of wild looking. One fair, one deeply sun-tanned. One dressed for the city, one dressed for ranch life in denims and a chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. They seemed to share no common features at all.

“What do you know about being different?” Ben demanded good-naturedly. Despite his teasing tone, there was a tension between the two friends that Jem couldn’t put his finger on. It seemed they’d been close at school. Had they been rivals too?

“Sometimes different is physical,” Adam said. “Sometimes it’s deeper.”

“So now you’re different and you’re deeper?”

“Something like that. I mean, sometimes being different isn’t so obvious. It’s under the surface, so to speak.” Adam smiled tightly, obviously wanting to change the subject.

“What do you mean by that?” Ben pressed, not unkindly.

“I never wanted to be a banker.”

“You?” Ben asked, brows raised. “You always had your nose in a book. You always got the best scores on arithmetic.”

“You could say expectations ran high in my family.”

Ben nodded thoughtfully, his past impressions clearly challenged. “Well, what else would you want to do?”

“Best summer I ever had was at my Uncle Joe’s ranch in Cross Creek.”

“Cross Creek?” Jem tried to place the unfamiliar name but failed. “Never heard of it.”

“It’s smaller than small,” Ben said.

“It’s not that bad,” Adam protested, laughing a bit. “They’ve got a train stop. And a general store. A church too. Not much more than that though. I’d like to go back. I’ve dreamed of it for years and my uncle’s been after me to come visit.”

“So, you want to be a rancher? Like me?” Ben demanded, shaking his head as if trying to get the concept to settle in his mind.

“There are worse things a man could do.”

“So you say.”

Annie spun around the floor again, passing close by. Her eyes met Jem’s, then skittered away. He couldn’t help noticing how flushed her cheeks were, or how her hair was loosening from its topknot. She was wearing it different today, in a way that showed off the curve of her neck. She looked more elegant somehow than she did every other day. She looked alive. Glowing, if he was pressed to pick a single word.

She smiled, seemingly pleased with all the attention she was getting, and yet her color was unnaturally high as if she wasn’t accustomed to it. There was something refreshing about the combination.

Though he suspected these young bucks in the room had kept her occupied with their dance lessons for who knew how long, she didn’t appear tired in the least. Based on the fact that Mae was attempting to teach the steps to Sugar—Jem would have to say it had long enough.

Mae looked up then and ran over to him. “Do you see me? I’m dancing.”

“Wonderful dancing.”

Gracing him with a wide smile, she climbed up into his arms with a little assistance. After kissing his cheek and tugging playfully on his beard, she scrambled to be let down again. Almost immediately she went back to “dancing” with Sugar around the room. Jem ran an assessing eye over Sugar, wondering if he should ask Mae to stop running around with the dog. But Sugar wasn’t favoring her back leg at all, and she seemed, if anything, full of pent-up energy. That was a relief.

Annie and her dance partner came to a stop before Jem. They were both breathing harder than normal from their exertions—or rather, from staring down at their feet, trying to dance. He knew firsthand that watching your feet and trying to learn how to dance was hard work. Annie’s face was flushed and pretty. And she seemed to be avoiding Jem’s eyes. Why, he didn’t know. Was she afraid he’d ask her to dance too?

“Here, Gabe, watch me,” Ben said, without bothering to introduce Jem to the young man. He took Annie in a loose embrace and spun her around the floor, forming what appeared to be all the patterns in an imaginary four-couple set.

Jem held back a sigh, disappointed at Ben’s rudeness. He also didn’t much like the sight of his young brother-in-law’s hand resting at Annie’s waist. It was, admittedly, a perfectly acceptable dance hold, but something about it still didn’t sit right with Jem.

Ben’s young friend—“Gabe”—took a step back from the cleared floor and watched Ben and Annie in an obedient fashion. He only seemed half focused on them though, for he kept glancing over at Jem.

“Jem Wheeler,” Jem said finally, thrusting out his hand. “Annie’s...husband.”

“Gabe. Gabe Cr-Creed,” the young man said, giving him a good solid handshake.

“Creed? Major Elias Creed’s son?”

The boy nodded and immediately looked down and away.

From what Jem had heard from Ray, he gathered this was Creed’s youngest, the one Ray had called “mostly grown.” Gabe seemed entirely different from his father. Friendly, but perhaps a bit cowed, as if he hadn’t fully grown into his confidence yet. Not unusual for a boy his age, maybe fifteen.

“I remember you,” Gabe glanced over after a while. “You and Lorelei.”

Jem struggled to bring up a memory of a curly-haired boy, but he couldn’t. He didn’t remember the Creed family at all. And he was certain he would have remembered a man like Major Creed if he’d met him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought your family moved here after Lorelei and I moved to Iowa...”

“We did. B-but I remember you. You came for Christmas one year. Here at the house.”

Jem nodded, more out of politeness than memory. He’d spent a couple of Christmases at Castle Ranch, but they’d never had neighbors over. The holidays had always been a quiet family affair, with one larger dinner celebration on Christmas Eve that had included all the ranch hands.

“You probably w-wouldn’t remember. We had a yearling went missing in the snow.”

Jem’s confusion cleared. He did remember the incident, vaguely. It had been late one afternoon between Christmas and New Year’s, a frigid day following a week of snowfall. Not uncommon for Colorado Springs. And he hadn’t met Gabe’s father, the major, then. A gangly boy of about eleven had come over—alone—to ask if they’d seen his missing horse on their property. Ben must’ve been—what—sixteen? The two of them had saddled up to go help the lad search, prepared to brave the waist-high snowdrifts. Before they could head out, one of the older brothers had ridden in to collect the boy, telling him they’d found the horse. It wasn’t much as memories went. He was surprised Gabe would remember him at all.

“I remember you,” Gabe said, as if reading Jem’s thoughts, “because of the way you l-looked at...at Lorelei.” He blushed, as if he’d revealed something embarrassing.

Jem
had
been pretty moon-eyed back then, newly married. Perhaps Gabe had caught him giving Lorelei a particularly love-struck look. It was entirely possible.

“Ah, one of
those
looks. A boy your age, you must’ve thought I was quite the fool,” he joked, not in the least embarrassed. There was something to be said for living long enough to get past those awkward teen years Gabe was in the middle of.

“N-no,” Gabe said, his expression earnest. “I th-thought it was nice. Real nice.”

Jem noticed then that Gabe’s nose was slightly crooked, way up high on the bridge of his nose.

“How’d you break that?” he asked, for the sake of being conversational, nothing more. Most young men enjoyed telling tales of breaking in horses and getting tossed off. Jem had broken his arm once doing the same thing, not long after he’d discovered his love of horses. In his early days living with the Jessups. It was Becky who had encouraged his love of animals, encouraged him to go to university in Iowa. She was also the one who’d told him Isaac wanted to pay his tuition, and then spent the next few weeks convincing him Isaac would be offended if he didn’t accept.

“Oh,” Gabe answered, visibly swallowing. “That was n-nothing.” He looked away, studiously focused on Ben and Annie’s dance, but yet not. As if he’d gotten lost in bad memories. He absently touched his nose, then caught himself and curled his hand around his opposite shoulder. A protective gesture. The kind someone did when they were hiding something shameful.

Warning bells sounded in Jem’s ears. He knew that look. He knew that embarrassment. The mortification. The deep shame. Where you thought you “weren’t worth nothing.” Because you’d heard it often enough. Looking closer at Gabe’s profile, Jem thought he caught the outline of a fading bruise on the boy’s cheekbone.

He thought of Creed. How he’d treated the puppy that day, jerking it around on its chain. His angry words. His cold expression.

Rage. That’s what Jem had seen in Creed. Rage brewing under the surface.

What
had
his intentions been toward Annie?

Nothing good, that was for sure. He was an impatient man. Unkind. Rude.