‘‘I’m not getting hitched,’’ Jamie added.
‘‘I’m no matchmaker,’’ Winter grumbled. He’d had a hard enough time getting married himself. ‘‘Let your brother find his own wife.’’
Kora faced Winter squarely now, and he saw the determination in her stance. ‘‘First, you’ve already promised and we’ve shaken hands on the bargain, and second, Jamie is my little sister, not my brother. She’ll be twenty this spring and near past the marrying age. By summer I want her to at least have been asked.’’ Then at least Jamie would have been asked and could make her own decision to go to California or marry.
If Winter had thought the knife surprised him, Kora’s words cut through the air sharp as a blade. He glanced over at the dirty, half-wild kid in buckskins. She was small, like her sister, but no child. Her eyes were the hard chilling blue of a full-grown woman who’d battled through her share of sorrow and pain.
He folded his arms over his chest. ‘‘You’re right, I have already agreed.’’ He’d find the wildcat a husband if he had to beat, bribe, and bind one to get him to the altar. Once he gave his word, Winter never broke it.
Kora moved around him, lightly touching his arm as if getting used to the fact that he was now a part of her life. ‘‘Then it’s settled. I’ll marry you.’’
As Kora moved away, Jamie leaned across the table toward Winter. ‘‘You’re wasting your breath, ’cause I’m never going to marry no matter how bad Kora wants me to. She thinks she has to settle me down. She thinks her bad luck won’t follow me if I marry, but I’m dead set against it. No one, including my sister, is saddling me with a husband. Have you got that?’’
‘‘Yes, you are,’’ Winter whispered back, wondering how two women so different could be from the same bloodline. ‘‘I’ve given my word. I’ll find you a husband. Have you got that?’’
‘‘Like hell, cowboy! This is one promise you ain’t keeping to her. But if you break another, I’ll quarter you and cook you for stew. I know she’s just marrying you ’cause she ain’t got any other out. I’ll be coming along to make sure you treat her right till she decides it’s time to pack up and leave.’’ Jamie pulled a knife from her boot and played with the point. ‘‘And she will leave you, cowboy, ’cause we ain’t settled in one place long enough to watch the seasons change since I can remember.’’
In silence, Winter watched her toy with her knife. He thought briefly of having the girl kidnapped and dumped into the nearest coyote den before she became his sister-in-law. But he decided he could never do that to the coyotes.
As Kora climbed up the ladder to the loft and Jamie glared at Win, a thin man stood from a chair almost hidden in the corner of the room. Before Winter could speak, the man walked past them as though he didn’t see anyone and went out the door. Win heard him coughing as he stepped out into the night air.
‘‘Who was that?’’ Winter looked at Jamie.
‘‘That’s our brother, Dan,’’ she answered, as if daring Win to say anything against him. ‘‘He fought in the war, but not all of him came home.’’
‘‘What’s he do?’’
‘‘Nothing,’’ Jamie answered, ‘‘except every morning and night, he walks. And sometimes he screams. We think the ghosts in his mind are coming to get him.’’
Kora stepped down the ladder. ‘‘He comes with me,’’ she said with granite determination. ‘‘Ghosts or no ghosts.’’
‘‘Another promise?’’ Win asked.
‘‘No, a fact,’’ she answered. ‘‘He’s my responsibility.’’
Win smiled slowly. He’d take the brother and help get the sister married off as long as Kora would say yes. For suddenly she was the woman he wanted for a wife. She was a woman who kept her word, and that was quite a dowry to bring to a marriage.
THREE
KORA WALKED INTO WHAT WAS TO BE HER NEW HOME trying not to stare as she and Winter passed through the foyer to the foot of a wide staircase. The place must have once been grand, judging from the thick rugs, heavy velvet draperies, and hand-carved molding. Now a layer of dust, topsoil-thick, covered everything in aging neglect. Lacy cobwebs hung from corners as if each web were an antique doily caught in midair. The smell of stale disregard dampened the room.
‘‘This is your home?’’ she whispered to Winter, wanting to be closer to the living in this dead place. The lean cowboy beside her didn’t fit in these surroundings. Only the layer of dust he wore seemed to match.
‘‘No.’’ He put a firm palm on the small of her back and directed her down the hallway, stopping only briefly to toss his hat on one corner of the stairs’ railing. ‘‘This is your home. Or it will be as soon as we’re married.’’
He paused just outside closed double doors made from a solid oak piece so that the very grain of the wood seemed to bar the entrance. ‘‘I live in here and run the ranch from this office when I’m not on horseback. But I want it clearly understood that you’re the mistress of this place and free to do whatever you like. I want no part of it except to know my wife is here.’’
He looked around the rooms behind them as if for the first time in a long while. ‘‘When I was a boy I used to visit this place every Sunday. It was something to see back then. The captain might have managed the ranch, but everyone knew Miss Allie ran the house. I’d like the same rules to apply now. I’d appreciate a meal now and then that isn’t served from the bunkhouse kitchen or a chuck wagon, and a bed other than my bedroll.’’
Kora didn’t meet his gaze as she realized he meant her bed. ‘‘I’ll try to be considerate.’’ His request didn’t seem so outrageous; husbands usually slept with their wives. But the thought that she might very soon be sleeping with him made her add, ‘‘And patient.’’ If he were patient, she’d be gone before he assumed his husbandly rights.
‘‘So will I,’’ Winter answered honestly. This marriage was more than he’d hoped for. If she was willing to wed after only knowing him an hour, he would wait until she invited him into her bed. Except for asking him to find her wild sister a husband, Kora Adams seemed agreeable enough. And when she wasn’t curling into that shawl, she looked prettier than most women. ‘‘I’ve more important things to think about than sleeping arrangements.’’
‘‘I see.’’ Kora stared at the floor, remembering how her mother always said she had more important things to worry about than raising girls. She’d add like a chorus, ‘‘Boys are a mother’s blessing, girls are a mother’s hands.’’
Kora raised her gaze to him. If all he wanted was a hard working pair of hands, she’d offer him that in exchange for a roof and food. When Dan was stronger, she’d trade this house for tickets to where the sun always shown. Six months, she almost whispered aloud.
‘‘There’s extra bedrooms upstairs for Jamie and Dan.’’ He bit back his lie, knowing he had to make the offer. ‘‘She’s welcome to stay until she marries. And Dan can stay as long as you like.’’
Silently he hoped Jamie would be leaving soon. She’d threatened him while they hitched Kora’s one horse to the wagon and loaded Dan’s ladderback chair, along with an old chest and a few bundles of clothes. Then the girl had continued to rant as she helped Dan into the back of the wagon without a word to her brother about where they were going. She hadn’t stopped talking while Winter rode beside the wagon through the darkness. The only reason his ears were getting a rest now was that Jamie seemed more interested in his horses than seeing the house or watching her sister’s wedding.
He’d gladly left Jamie with one of the hands. When he’d looked back, Dan was still sitting in the back of the wagon looking completely uninterested in his surroundings and Jamie was picking out a mount.