Callum could only shake his head. “If Charlotte ever discovered that something like this was connected with us, she would never agree to marry me.”
“You don’t intend to tell her about our past?” Morgan asked.
Callum looked downright appalled. “Hell, no,” he ground out, shaking his head again.
“You saw what happened when MacBain told Mary Sutter. The woman ran away and got herself killed.”
“Grace knows,” Morgan reminded him. “And she still married Grey anyway.”
“Grace is a scientist,” Callum said, getting defensive. “And scientists are used to discovering wonders. They understand that there is something driving the forces of nature that can never be explained. Tell me, are you intending to tell Sadie about your past?” Callum asked quietly, turning the question back on Morgan.
“I do not like deception,” Morgan said. He sighed and kneaded the muscles in his neck again. “I don’t know,” he said more calmly. He grinned. “I thought about getting her pregnant first,” he admitted.
Callum looked appalled again. “And you don’t think that’s deceptive?”
“It might be a good plan. I’ve already claimed her. A babe would only bind us together more tightly.” Morgan broadened his grin. “Are you saying you haven’t thought that maybe a bairn would hurry your courtship along?”
Callum actually looked sick. “I could never do that to Charlotte,” he whispered. “She had to get married at sixteen when she became pregnant with Sadie. I could not force her into another marriage that way.”
Morgan didn’t have the heart to tell Callum that it was too late, that Charlotte already carried his child. Besides, that was Charlotte’s duty.
“I could use your help,” Morgan said, changing the subject. Telling their women they were eight hundred years old was a personal decision that each of them eventually would have to make. But not today. “I need to get that moose taken care of,” Morgan continued. “And it seems I have to notify the authorities that I killed it. If you could help me do that, I would be grateful. I have no wish to leave Mercedes unguarded right now.
Not with the news you’ve brought us.”
“You killed the moose with your sword?” Callum asked, knowing full well that Morgan rarely carried a gun. “Tell me, what does Sadie think of your weapon?”
Morgan shrugged. “She seems to be getting used to it.”
“I swear I’d give all my teeth to have my sword back,” Callum said. “I’ve felt naked for six years.” He suddenly grinned. “Although there is something to be said for a good rifle. You needn’t get close to an enemy to dispatch him.”
Morgan let his gaze scan the landscape again. “That works both ways,” he said, looking back at Callum. “Neither does your enemy need to be close.” He rubbed his neck again, the tension having suddenly doubled. “Hell. Someone could be watching us right now, with his gun trained on Mercedes.”
“Do you honestly believe there is that kind of danger?”
“Thedrùidh warned me there was a presence roaming this valley. Something dark,”
Morgan carefully explained without coming right out and telling Callum about the vision he had seen. “Mercedes might be in danger. This is why I’m with her now. I want that damn gold found, and then I want to settle this park thing between us.”
“In a way that won’t expose your gorge?” Callum surmised.
Morgan nodded. “She’s going to have to be content with just owning the land and not opening it up to people.”
Callum gave Morgan a staggering pat on the shoulder. “For an ancient man, you can be foolishly young sometimes, cousin. Living with a woman who’s had her dream taken away does not bode well for a peaceful union. Hell, it can be downright dangerous.”
“Yeah, well,” Morgan said, pivoting on his heel and heading back to Charlotte and Sadie. He hoped Charlotte was a better cook than her daughter. There had to be breakfast fixings someplace in all that gear she’d brought. “You’d better start putting some of your own long-lived wisdom to work,” Morgan said quietly over his shoulder as he walked off. “You’ve got your own female problems to deal with, and I’m thinking they might turn out to be just as troubling as mine.”
Chapter Eighteen
There was another advantage to havinga husband, Sadie decided later that morning. He carried the bulk of their gear.
Sadie slid her unusually light backpack off her shoulders, absently letting it drop to the ground as she studied the old logging camp that lay before her like a slumbering beast forgotten by time. This was it. Camp number three.
The last place Jedediah Plum had been seen alive.
Sadie could easily make out the remains of what must be the cookhouse. The roof was gone except for the rafters, the door and several of the windows were broken, and good-sized poplar trees were growing inside, spilling the last of their leaves like yellow flakes of unmelted snow. Rotting into the forest floor just to the right of the cookhouse, not twenty feet away, were two bunkhouses running perpendicular to the cookhouse.
Both were long and narrow and set low to the ground with the rusted remains of a stove pipe jutting crookedly against the middle rafter of one of them. Several of the giant logs that made up the walls had come free of their moorings, the ravages of time and nature working them into peat dust to litter the ground around the cabins. Young spruce grew in the acrid peat, reaching for the sunlight filtering through the few towering trees that had escaped the woodcutter’s blades.
The building that housed the saw was far off to the left, set away from the living and eating area. Probably so that one group of men would be able to sleep in relative peace while another group worked.
Sadie knew from her years of studying journals and history books that the sawmill usually ran around the clock in ten-hour shifts. Maintenance was done during two-hour breaks; the saws were changed and sharpened, the machinery oiled, and the bark and debris from the previous shift cleared away to make room for the next round of sawing.
Sometimes the trees were sawn on sight and the lumber hauled to town over the frozen ground, and sometimes the whole logs were simply driven downriver in the spring.
This site, apparently, had been a portable mill. Which meant it would have been a small, self-sufficient town unto itself.
Sadie slowly turned in a circle, studying the site, unable to believe what she was seeing, shaking her head in wonder.
“I bet my daddy’s mill processed some of this timber,” Sadie said, finally looking at Morgan. “Only it would have been Grampy Quill who ran it then.”
Morgan was shaking her head. “It was more likely your great-grandfather,” he corrected with a smile. “This site is at least eighty years old.”
Sadie looked around again. “I can’t believe this has been sitting here like a ghost town all these years, its location never documented.”
Morgan shrugged. “Why would anyone bother? They moved in, harvested the trees, then got out. There was nothing here to lure people to settle, other than the timber. And once that disappeared, so did the camps.”
He turned her to face him. “You can properly thank me now, wife, for finding this camp for you,” he said, an arrogant smile lighting his eyes.
Not one to deny a person his due, Sadie leaned up on her toes and kissed Morgan the way she had wanted to since morning. His tongue swept inside her mouth, his body hardened against her, and that shivering tingle returned to her chest as Sadie melted against him.
Yeah, husbands definitely had their advantages.
She was trembling like a poplar leaf when she finally pulled back, still making sure that she stayed within his embrace. Her heart was threatening to fly out of her chest, and she was quite pleased to see that Morgan was equally affected.