The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,65

she did.

“Let’s give it one more day,” she said. “There’s a freight wagon due in tomorrow. We’ll talk to the driver. If he ain’t seen the man, then I vote with Charity to go back.”

Beau stared into the fire until his eyes began to burn. His hands fisted as he looked up, straight into Charity’s face. His voice was quiet—too quiet.

“I’ll see you ladies back to the ranch and then I’ll be movin’ on.”

Charity’s face crumpled. It was just as she had feared. Whatever Beau had done for them, he’d done out of a sense of duty, not because he cared for her in any special way. She jumped up from the fire and disappeared into the darkness.

“What the hell?” he muttered, and turned to Mehitable for understanding.

She shook her head. This was why she’d never bothered with marrying. It was the getting to it that was so damned much trouble.

“Ain’t you goin’ after her?” Beau asked.

Mehitable snorted. “It ain’t me that she’s runnin’ from. It’s you. I reckon she thinks you’re quittin’ because you’re disgusted by her.”

He turned pale in the firelight. It was then that Mehitable knew his true feelings.

Beau’s guts were in knots. That he’d hurt Charity, however innocently, was more than he could bear.

“Miss Hetty, you know that ain’t so. Go get her. You have to tell her she’s wrong.”

But Mehitable didn’t budge. “Nope. You’re the one who needs to do the talkin’. She already knows how I feel about her. It’s you she’s mixed up about.”

Beau didn’t know what to say. His feelings for Charity were mixed up with an urge to kill the man who’d wronged her. And then there was the fact that she was the boss’s sister. He gave Hetty a cautious look.

She frowned. “Don’t look at me. I ain’t the one in a swoon.”

He swallowed nervously. “Uh… yes, ma’am. Then I reckon I’d better go bring her back. It ain’t safe for her out there in the dark.”

Mehitable stifled a grin. “I reckon you’d better at that.”

Moments later, he was gone. Hetty tossed another stick onto the fire, hoping that the smoke would be enough to keep off the mosquitoes and then leaned back in her bedroll and closed her eyes. No sense waiting for the pair to come back. The way that cowboy stuttered and stammered, it might take him all night to get said what was in his heart.

The water spilling down the creek made soft rippling noises against the half-submerged rocks. Overhead, a three-quarter moon painted the ground with a luminous glow. An owl hooted from a nearby tree and out on the prairie, a coyote yipped, followed by an answering chorus from the rest of the pack. Charity Doone stood at the creek bank, too hurt to cry.

During the trauma of the last few days, she had learned something about herself. She wasn’t shallow. Things did matter to her. And while she hated herself for being so blind and weak, and Randall Howe for taking advantage of her innocence, something good had come out of this that she would never have believed. She’d found out what she was made of. She’d endured the rigors of the daily hard rides, and survived a prairie fire. But the best of it was, she had learned exactly how much Hetty loved her.

For years she’d believed herself to be nothing more than a burden in her sister’s life. But now she knew that was false. In a way, Randall Howe had almost done her a favor. She and Hetty might have gone through life, skirting the issues of being sisters without knowing each other’s true heart.

And then there was Beau James—her reluctant champion. A strong man. A good man. A man who’d rescued her twice in her hours of need. Over the past few days she’d even let herself pretend that if things had been different—if she hadn’t shamed herself before God and man—then he might have cared for her.

She looked down at the water. Moonlight reflected there, like liquid threads of pure silver, but she didn’t see the beauty, only the shadows of the night in between.

She pressed the flat of her hands to her belly and moaned. It was the truth of it all that hurt the worst. He felt duty-bound to get them home, and then he was leaving. She didn’t know why—she should have been expecting it—but the news had shocked her. Once having learned the truth about her fall from grace, no self-respecting man would want