Bret closed his eyes for a moment. Not only was Gabe right, things were even worse than he’d predicted. “I can’t believe the bank would approve a loan to buy horses.”
His father waved that concern away. “Charlie knows I’m good for it, and it’s a mortgage. Any banker would be happy to hold a mortgage on this property.”
No, they wouldn’t. Too many land owners had been unable to meet their obligations since the war. No bank would want to foreclose on one more farm. If his father and Charles Inman, President of the Oak Hills Bank, hadn’t been close friends for decades, a loan would be a tough proposition.
Bret glanced at Will. Why the hell had he gone along with a gamble like this? Will sat studying his fingernails as if the discussion didn’t concern him. Even in the room’s dim lamplight, bruising and swelling showed on the left side of his face. Good. If he mouthed off like that again, Bret would remember to hit with his left and give Will a balanced look.
“How are you planning on making payments on this mortgage if the farm income barely supports you?” Bret asked. “You can’t think half a dozen foals from those mares will bring in enough, and they won’t be ready to sell until fall.”
“Of course not. We won’t sell anything for another year. What you send will make the payments.”
A twist of anger chased some of Bret’s fatigue at the casual assumption he would be the one paying off a mortgage he hadn’t consented to and hadn’t even heard about until now. The desire to get out of this room, use a bath to warm up, and get back to Hassie almost lifted him out of the chair, but he needed to make his father face reality.
Bracing himself with another swallow of whiskey, Bret said, “I promised to help out until the farm was a going concern again.”
“Of course,” his father said, “and once the horses....”
“No.”
“No?”
“The horses are a pipe dream and a luxury, and you know it. Sell them, pay off the loan, and start living off what the farm brings in.”
“Sell them! I’m not selling a one of them, and you can’t expect your mother and sister to live the way they did during the war!”
Bret gestured around the room with his glass. “This isn’t a barn you’re living in. No one’s dressed in rags or eating corn meal mush three times a day.”
His father’s face flushed red. “We need what you send, and you’ve led us to count on it.”
“You don’t need it. You’re living high off the hog on it. I have another five hundred for you, but that’s the last of it.”
“Five hun.... That will barely get us through the winter.”
“What would you have done if I died? Look at me. Do you see me chasing down killers and thieves in another three, four months?”
“You need to see the doctor here. No sawbones in some whistle stop town in Colorado can be worth his salt.”
“MacGregor practiced on thousands of bullet wounds and worse during the war. He managed to save the leg and that was no mean feat.”
His father slumped back in his chair. “I can put the bank off for a while, but you can’t quit yet. By mid-summer....”
“No,” Bret said. “You’re not listening. I did what I could. I was glad to help, but I’m not supporting race horses.” Or any other wildly lavish spending, but Bret left that unsaid. “I told you last year I’d had enough, and I have a wife now. It’s time to settle down, find our own place.”
“This is still your home. You don’t need your own place.”
His father had to know how Will’s bruised countenance had come about, and he probably knew why, or at least Will’s version of why. “You know that’s not a good idea. A few months every year is about as much of each other as we can tolerate.”
“It’s high time the two of you stopped brawling like boys.”
Bret said nothing. He and Will no longer brawled like boys. Somewhere in the last years brotherly jousting between the two of them had turned into real dislike. The damaged clinches on his horse’s shoes this spring had forced Bret to face that Will had gone beyond dislike and wanted to do harm.
The three of them sipped whiskey in silence.
“Charlie told me about the private account you have at the bank, you know,” his father said at last. “You haven’t got enough to buy a place of your own.”
“Isn’t a bank president supposed to keep information like that confidential?” Bret said, kicking himself for being so careless. He should have anticipated Inman wouldn’t see anything wrong with telling his father about the account, or the balance in it to the penny. He should have set up that account elsewhere, and Hassie’s account.... Bret tensed, waiting for his father to mention Hassie’s relative wealth, but it didn’t happen.
“If you think holding out will make me change the will, you’re wrong. What you did was a disgrace my grandchildren will have to live down.”
Bret wrapped his hand around the cane, ready to end this by leaving the room. Nothing he’d ever said made any difference once his father started down this well worn path. Long ago, Bret had discovered the simple solution of walking away.
“However, I have thought of a solution that would benefit us all.”
“Why do I have a feeling it won’t benefit me in the slightest?” Will said.
“Because you’ve yet to accept that anything that benefits the farm, benefits you,” their father said.
Bret waited, intrigued by the unexpected turn of conversation.
“We’ve never really integrated the land across the road,” his father said. “It’s good land, produces well, but it’s always an afterthought. Suppose I sell you that for what you’ve put aside. The government won’t sell you land any cheaper, and nothing as good. You can live here until you get a house built, and that will be better than some dirt house on a homestead, which is all you’d get on your own.”
A year ago, Bret would have jumped on the offer. Now he had Hassie’s attitude to consider, and her resistance to even staying here for a while made him cautious. The barely suppressed rage on Will’s face advised a different kind of caution.
“I appreciate the offer,” Bret said, getting to his feet. “Maybe you’re right it would benefit us all, but I need to talk to Hassie. I don’t think she wants to live here.”
“Talk to.... That woman has nothing to do with this family or this farm.”
“Marrying me made her my family and part of this family,” Bret said.
“I suppose it did,” his father conceded, “and I’m glad you finally married, even if I don’t understand the attraction, but if you want to get your marriage off on the right foot, you make the decisions and then you tell her.”
Bret laughed at the idea, enjoying the startled look on his father’s and brother’s faces. “Two months ago five killers caught me flatfooted in Colorado, and I told Hassie to run and hide. When they started shooting, she ignored me, blew the head off one with a shotgun, and tied the others to trees. Then I told her to leave me and get help. She ignored that too, got me on a horse and to the nearest town and a doctor. If she’d done what I told her either time, I’d be dead. If she doesn’t want to live here, we won’t. I’ll talk to her, and I’ll let you know what we decide.”
Bret left the study feeling surprisingly cheerful. Even if the offer of the land was only an attempt to clean out his bank account, it was a generous offer, worth considering. Better yet, throwing off the self-imposed obligation to support his family had diminished every one of his various aches and pains. Or maybe the combination of willow bark tea and whiskey was more potent than he imagined.
Voices sounded in the small parlor down the hall. The way his mother and Mary stopped their low-voiced conversation and regarded him warily when he appeared in the doorway meant he was the subject of that conversation. Or maybe Hassie. Or the two of them.
He stared at Mary and for the first time really saw not the girl he’d once loved but a woman he barely knew. “I thought Hassie might be with you.”
“She’s upstairs with Caroline,” his mother said. “As I understand it, as soon as Hassie’s hair dries, Caroline intends to arrange it in a more appropriate way. In the meantime, she is bedeviling your bride with questions.”
“Good, because I want to talk to you. I need a favor.”
His mother and Mary exchanged a look he couldn’t interpret. “Of course,” his mother said. “Do you need someone to show you the new bathing room and how the hot water supply works?”
“No, I can find it and figure it out myself. What I need is for you to beg, borrow, buy, or make Christmas presents.”
“Christmas presents? We have gifts for the children, of course.”
“For everyone. Except no scarves for ladies and no handkerchiefs for menfolk.”
Both women frowned at him.
“You’ll be going to town again before Christmas, won’t you? Or if not, you can send someone and tell them what to buy. I’d do it, but if I disappeared to town she’d figure it out. You see, Hassie has Christmas presents for everyone, and I don’t want her to feel awkward.”
“Excuse me,” Mary said. “I need to be sure the children are cleaned up for their dinner.” She brushed by him, a trace of the scent of roses lingering after she hurried away.
“Mother?”
“We are not awash in pin money for presents, Breton.”
Bret pulled a few bills from his pocket and laid them on the table beside her. “Is that enough?”
“I suppose you told you father you’re quitting.”
“Yes, and unlike you, he’s surprised.”
“The very look of you told me you minimized your wounds in your letter. You almost died, didn’t you?”
Bret acknowledged the truth with a slight nod.
“And your father has been very foolish with the horses, hasn’t he?”
“I think so, but he can sell some of them and get by. Why did Will go along with it?”
“To put further pressure on you I expect.” She studied him, her eyes resting on the cane and his leg before lifting to meet his. “And a year ago it would have worked in spite of your injuries.”
Bret wanted to tell her she was wrong but wasn’t sure she was. He tipped his head toward the bills on the table and asked again. “Is it enough?”
“It’s enough,” she said, and swept the money from the table into her pocket.
H
ASSIE WALKED ALONG
the farm lane, her breath huffing white in the cold air, one gloved hand warm in Bret’s.
“I’m holding you to a snail’s pace,” he said.
Smiling up at him, she shook her head a little, unwilling to bare her hands to sign. On her own she could move faster, maybe even run a little, but now that the past days’ anger had dissolved and they were at peace again, she preferred strolling at Bret’s gimpy pace to striding out alone.
Gunner burst through a clump of bushes at the side of the lane, tail waving, a wide doggy grin on his face. Hassie skipped a little, understanding his exuberance. How could anyone spend every hour of even a gray winter day like this one inside the house?
At the end of the lane, Bret kept going, crossed the road, and led the way alongside fields plowed and waiting for spring. He stopped near an old stone foundation, more evidence of a building that had not survived the war.
Sweeping the cane in a wide arc, he said, “This land wasn’t part of the farm originally. A family named Abbott lived here. They were older, their children grown and starting to take over the farm, so I never knew any of them the way I did Belle and Gabe, but they were good neighbors.”
Hassie tipped her head, waiting. He’d brought her here for a reason.
“Their house burned one night. I guess old Mr. Abbott used to smoke a last cigar in bed at night. He and his wife didn’t make it out of the house, and none of the rest of them wanted to rebuild and stay. They sold the land to my father, packed up, and left. California, I think.”
So it wasn’t the war but one family’s tragedy. Hassie shivered.
“Last night my father offered to sell us this land for what I’ve got put aside. I told him I’d talk to you and let him know what we decide.”
Hassie froze for long seconds before pulling her hand free from his, yanking off her gloves, and shoving them in a pocket. “He knows about our money?”
“No. He knows about
my
money. His good friend who happens to be president of the bank told him I’ve been saving a little for myself and how much. No one said a word about your account so at a guess Charlie Inman doesn’t realize Hassie Petty is now my wife. Next time we’re in town, we’re going to close both accounts and move that money to a bank my father never heard of.
Hassie focused on the bigger problem. “You want to do this, give your father the money and live here.”
Bret looked out over the land as if assessing then turned back to her. “I guess you know I had trouble with the way you reacted to coming here.”
She gave a stiff nod, ready to argue, but he went on before she could pull her hands back out of her pockets.
“Last night, after you fell asleep, I spent some time thinking about it. I tried to imagine how I’d feel in your place, how I’d feel if you wanted me to live somewhere with an old beau of yours, even if he was married to someone else now and there was nothing between you.”
“I do not have an old b-e-a-u.”
“I know that, so I made one up.”
“How could you make a man up?”
“I started with that Kulp fellow.”
Once she remembered who he was talking about, a wave of indignation flooded through Hassie. Ehren Kulp was not exactly a male equivalent of beautiful Mary Lytton Sterling.
Bret ignored her expression and continued. “The trouble with that was just thinking about him made me want to get up and head for Kansas and smack him around a little, make sure he knows if he ever sees you again, he’d better keep those grabby hands to himself.”
Good. Never seeing the man again would be better. “Who else did you think of?”
“No one. I conjured someone up from scratch. He’s a little short on hair and chin and some other things a woman might care about and a little long on teeth, nose, and ears.”
“Does he have a name?”
“Percival.”
She was not going to let him charm her out of justified anger. She was not. Hassie pressed her lips together to keep from smiling, lost the fight, and laughed.