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Gratitude warmed her more than the coffee had. When she was down, he’d pulled through for her.
He took a bite of biscuit and chewed, reaching for the loan papers. More creases dug into her brow as he scanned the pages. His granite jaw stilled.
As the clock ticked the seconds away, Rayna watched Daniel’s reaction as he appeared to read. The tension cording in his throat. The grim set of his brows drawing together as he leafed through the pages.
Like the hand of destiny laying down the final step in her path, the silence stretched between the ticks of the clock. Unbearable silence. She saw, as Daniel bowed his head and covered his face with his hands, that it was worse than she’d figured. And that meant—
No, she couldn’t face what that meant. With great control, she rose from the table and pulled two plates from the cupboards. Each scrape of the spatula as she began to fill the plates with the rest of the fried eggs, diced potatoes and salt pork gave her something to concentrate on so she could keep the truth from settling in.
If she couldn’t sell the land, with the hopes of keeping the house, then she would have no place to go. No way to make a living.
A chair scraped against the wooden floor and Daniel’s sure gait tapped on the floor. “I’ll talk to the bank. See what I can do. But I don’t know how it will turn out.”
His silence sounded oddly helpless. “I would truly appreciate any help, Mr. Lindsay.”
“Daniel.” He seemed to fill the room, his presence was that powerful. As was the shadow that fell across the floor, big hands fisting. “I wish there was more I could do.”
“You’ve done so much already. I can’t remember if I’ve thanked you.”
“It’s been a difficult time, I know.” Daniel swallowed hard, but the tangle in his chest seemed to sharpen and cut like knives at the insides of his ribs. He hated this feeling. Knew, that if he struck a deal to take over the mortgage, that he’d be taking everything from Kol’s widow and children. That wasn’t what he wanted.
“I have a good relationship with Wright at the bank. I’ll see what I can do for you.”
She layered salt pork on the two plates she was making, breakfast to be kept warm in the oven for when her children woke, no doubt. What fortunate boys they were, to have a mother like her.
It took only one look around to see the home she’d made for them, clean and comfortable and caring. The sharp feelings sliced into his chest and he turned away to grab his hat. To get as far away from this woman as he could before he remembered too much of his childhood. Or the boy that had never had a kindly woman worrying if he was hungry. Making sure he had a heaping plate of good food to start the day with.
He couldn’t spare Rayna Ludgrin one more look as he strode out the door and into the cool morning that warned of a hard winter to come.
It didn’t feel as if it were only the weather.
Daniel yanked the ends of the reins loose from the hitching post in the front yard and swung up onto his gelding’s back. With the odd feeling that Rayna Ludgrin was watching him go, he rode east and into the rising sun.
Chapter Five
R ayna leaned the four envelopes, ready to post, against her reticule on the stand by the door. She felt brittle and as wrung out as a washrag on cleaning day, but that was one hard chore done and over with.
She’d written to Kol’s brother, sister and cousin and asked to move in with her boys. Please God, may one of them have room for us. She refused to think what would happen if no one did.
The parlor clock chimed the hour. Nine o’clock. The boys were still asleep. Poor Kirk had worked himself into sheer exhaustion and she hated to wake him, but she would have to if he didn’t roust in the next half hour. She had to get those letters on today’s train. She dared not risk waiting until tomorrow.
Daniel would be back from the bank with bad news. There was no way it could be anything but. As long as I can get enough cash to get us settled somewhere else… Then she would have a roof over her sons’ heads.
And as for a job—she wasn’t too proud to clean houses or to wash strangers’ clothes, as her friend Betsy did for a living. From where she stood on the threshold of so much change, the future looked horribly uncertain.
Somehow, the Good Lord willing, she’d make do. She needed a little tiny bit of providence to come her way. Just a little. And she wasn’t asking for herself, but for her boys.
The muffled clop-clop of a team of horses coming up her drive had her opening the door before she realized it couldn’t have been Daniel. He’d ridden a dappled mustang rather than driven a vehicle to town. The jangle of the harness drew her gaze to the black buggy bouncing through the mud puddles in the road.
The matching bays, so sleek and fine, pranced to a halt at the post, and there was Betsy, her ringlets springing around her face from beneath the brim of her wide-rimmed sunbonnet.
Dressed for work, in a light calico and matching apron, she hopped to the ground, careful of the puddles that had yet to evaporate, and, arms outstretched, said nothing as she rushed up the steps.
Rayna’s vision blurred and suddenly she was enveloped in her friend’s arms. Held tight in comfort and friendship. She and Betsy had been best friends since the first day of school when they were both six. They’d shared desks, books, laughter, hard times and grief.
Rayna held on while she could, fighting tears that were nothing but a weakness. When she pulled away, she was glad the tears remained buried deep in her chest where they belonged.
“It’s a workday. You shouldn’t have taken the time to stop by,” she scolded even as she took Betsy’s hand, drawing her into the shade of the parlor. “It is good to see you.”
“I’ve thought of you nearly every minute and I had to stop by. Look at you, you haven’t been sleeping.”
“No. I can’t get used to being in the bed alone.”
“It’s been five years and still I wake up in the middle of the night reaching for Charlie. The bond between a man and wife goes deep. Oh, Rayna, you look as though you haven’t been eating. And the storm. I saw the fields when I drove up.”
Bless Betsy for her liveliness. She could chase the shadows from the room with a single word. Rayna squeezed her friend’s hand tightly as they made their way to the kitchen. Daniel’s plate was still on the table, as was hers. She hadn’t gotten to the dishes yet, or the morning housework. The floor needed sweeping, the curtains were wet from the night’s rain. Bits of bark and cedar needles were scattered around the wood box.
“Good, there’s still coffee and it’s good and strong. Just what both of us need.” Betsy helped herself to the cups from the shelf and poured two steaming mugs full. “Sit here. Sip this until you feel a bit better. No, don’t argue. I seem to remember a certain bossy someone doing the same after my Charlie passed on.”
Yeah, she was grateful for her life and the people in it. For the steaming coffee that had grown bitter on the stove, bitter enough to make her mouth pucker and her eyes smart. For her to remember how this was the way Kol liked it best, when he’d sneak in after taking the boys to school and share one last cup with her.
Her life was gone just like that. It was Tuesday, she realized dully. By rights, the boys ought to be in school, Kol at work in the field and, with the turn of the weather, she would be getting the last of the vegetables up. One more cold night and she would lose every last remaining tomato.
“Mariah told me she’d be over. I’ll leave a basket on the counter. I’ll just run out and get it. Sit tight.” Betsy tapped from the room, taking the warmth and sunshine with her.
In the shadows, Rayna drained the hot coffee in one long pull. Tongue scorched, throat burning, she set the cup aside and stood. She was ready. For whatever she had to do. Whatever she had to face.
She wrung the dampness from the lace curtains and, after slipping them from the rod, laid them out on the chair backs to dry. That done, she swept tangled rose leaves and sodden petals from the sill and closed the window securely. Then she found the broom and had the floor swept clean by the time Betsy returned with a heavy bundle in each arm.
“What are you doing with my bed sheets?”
“I wrapped up the laundry I could find in them. Changed the bed, didn’t disturb the boys, of course. I’ll get these to you by the end of the week at the latest. And no, you have enough on your hands right now, so no arguing. I’ll be back on my route home this afternoon to check on you.”
“You’ve done more than enough. You are my friend, Betsy, and that is gift enough.”
“We are friends, no matter what.” Her eyes shone with emotion. “But we are women, and there is nothing we can’t do with a little help from one another.”
Yes, she was still so blessed. Even with half her heart gone and her land, too, with the failure of the crop, she had so much to be grateful for. She swallowed past the grief, for it was, after all, only grief.
She was not alone, not really, and even if she was welcomed at Kol’s brother’s farm in Ohio, she knew distance could not break their friendship.
She had her sons and she had her friends, come what may.
Daniel took one look at Dayton’s polished buggy with the fine-stepping Tennessee Walkers parked in the quiet alley behind the bank, safely away from the mud splatter from the main street. Appropriate, where the man parked. And predictable. Daniel would have bet every last acre of his homestead that Dayton had beaten him to the punch at the chance to buy the Ludgrin land.
Mr. Wright had turned down his offer with true sincerity. There was too much debt, more than the land, the buildings and the livestock were worth, and with a failed crop. All of which totaled more than the value of the property. No, they could not accept a deal for such a grave loss to the bank. They would need collateral. Wright was more than eager to say they’d accept Daniel’s homestead to secure the amount on the Ludgrin land.
Daniel could not afford to buy land that cost more than it was worth. It was that simple. But something stuck in his craw as he bought bushel bags for the few loads of wheat he’d managed to get in before the storm.
Maybe what was important was what the banker had failed to say. Maybe they had another buyer who was willing to use his land as collateral to assume the debt. Daniel had no doubt as to whom. There was only one man prosperous enough in these parts. Dayton.
Damn it. Daniel stared at the buggy and drowsing horses and saw red. Boiling hot rage blinded him and he wanted to turn heel and march into that bank and say the land wasn’t foreclosed yet. It was good, fertile land, the best wheat land in the county, and to own it was more than a humble man could hope to do in an honest lifetime. Why not see if he could make a better deal with the bank?
No, that would be a poor decision. He couldn’t go off half cocked and make a bigger mess of things. He had his land free and clear, good, productive land, horses, his own secondhand thresher and, best of all, no debt.
Debt was a foolish man’s solution, and could turn into quicksand fast enough. Dragging down a man until there was no hope left. He’d seen too many farmers lose everything because they’d rather borrow than do without.
No, he wouldn’t lose his independence. He refused to risk everything he’d sweated blood for. Lucky for him, he had time. The bank had yet to foreclose. That would take time, and he’d have the chance to think this all through. Take a look at his options.
“Hey, Lindsay.” That caustic sneer could belong to only Dayton.
Stomach tight, muscles bunched, Daniel spotted the man he’d come to dislike, breaking through the tangle of a half dozen women gazing at the front window of some dress shop. Typical, how Dayton expected folks to make way for him without so much as a courteous, “Excuse me.” Dayton was the kind of man who got Daniel’s hackles up.
The kind of man he’d come to despise in his life and with good reason. He’d worked for too many men just like him growing up.
Be civil. As hard as that was going to be, he might as well try jumping to the moon. “Dayton. Tough storm.”
“Yep. Wheat’s a total loss, but I got investments to fall back on.” Dayton hitched up his shoulders, the gesture of a man pleased with his high self-opinion.
An opinion Daniel didn’t share. With a low word, he reassured his gelding as he came up to him and loosened his reins from the post.
“Noticed you sniffin’ around the Widow Ludgrin’s skirts.” Dayton sent a stream of tobacco juice into the mud. “She’s one fine-looking woman.”
“It’s not my habit to covet another man’s wife.”
“She’s a widow now, my boy, and you know what that means. A woman without a man to protect her. Or satisfy her. Too bad all that wheat land of hers is mortgaged. Not worth the paper owed on it. Guess you know that.”
“Didn’t know that was any of your concern.”
Dayton didn’t have the grace ethic to be ashamed. A cat’s grin twisted his features. “I’m just lookin’ out for the widow’s well fare.”
Yeah, he could see what was on the man’s greedy mind. Daniel swung into the saddle. “I’m not a betting man, but I’d stake my horse on Mrs. Ludgrin. She strikes me as the type of woman who can take care of herself.”
“Rayna? Nah, she’s a pampered little thing. She’ll be on the lookout for a man to take care of her. And mind you, boy, she won’t be wanting to spend her attentions on a Confederate mutt. She’s used to being spoilt, and she’ll go with the man who can give her what she wants.”
Was Dayton talking about himself? He was a married man. Daniel watched in disgust as the older man shot a final stream of brown juice into the street. With a self-righteous wink that looked suspiciously like a leer, Dayton glanced down the boardwalk at something catching his attention—a young and pretty woman.
Yeah, there’s another reason I don’t trust you. Daniel reined his horse around, anger boiling inside him. What was it the old man had said about Rayna? That she was a woman without a man to protect her. Or satisfy her.
What was Dayton thinking—that the new widow would award her affections to the first man to come along and help her keep her house? Rage blew through him like steam through a whistle, and he sent his gelding into the busy street.
Sure, he didn’t really know much about Rayna Ludgrin, but the time spent lately in her presence told him one thing. With the way she’d tried to harvest her crop with a hand scythe, she was a woman not prone to taking the easiest path. She had character and fortitude.
As if his thoughts had conjured her, there she was on the boardwalk in front of the mercantile. Was it his imagination, or did she stand out among the other women hurrying on their errands?
Her wool coat was a plain tan color and finely tailored to show the dainty curves and tiny waist and the flare of her skirts. The pointed toes of her polished brown shoes peeked out from beneath the ruffled hem of a fine black dress. Maybe it was the way she walked, even in mourning, that spoke of dignity.
His heart clutched in his chest with sorrow for her losses, that’s what this emotion was. He’d been alone all his life, and he wasn’t a man of Dayton’s ilk that lusted after a woman, so it couldn’t be a desire for her that he was feeling. She was newly widowed and vulnerable. He wasn’t about to let his thoughts go there.
But he did recognize something in her that he struggled with every day—the feeling of being alone in the world, alone to shoulder responsibilities. He knew something about that. In fact, it was all he knew.
But it had to be a new experience for her.
Did he go to her? See if she needed something? Tell her what he’d learned at the bank? Or would that be too forward, here in town, where rumors might spread? It was the way of some people, he thought, remembering how Dayton had suggested any widow’s morals were easily compromised.
Speaking of the old devil—there he was. Ambling down the boardwalk as if he owned it. Dressed in his Sunday finest, he raked his fingers through his thinning hair, donned his hat and squared his thin shoulders in what he must have thought was a dashing gesture.
Maybe some folks would be fooled and take him for a moneyed gentleman, but not Daniel. He could taste the dislike souring his tongue as he watched Dayton spot Rayna Ludgrin as she chatted with another woman on the boardwalk. She was obviously receiving condolences from an acquaintance. Her face when she spotted Dayton striding toward her changed from sad to wary.
At least she wasn’t fooled by the older man’s spit and polish. Daniel leaned back on the reins, nosing his mount out of the way so he could keep an eye on things. He couldn’t help feeling protective toward the widow. It was too bad the clatter of wagons and the drum of hooves on the busy street made too much noise for him to hear what Dayton said to Rayna. But there was no missing how tight she set her jaw as she nodded curtly to Dayton and slipped into the nearest store.
Dayton knuckled back his hat, emitted a look of great satisfaction and headed off toward the alley.
What had that lowlife said to her? A bad feeling settled like a lead ball in his gut. He dismounted, wrapped one of the reins around the closest post and hopped onto the boardwalk.
There she was—he could see her through the wide front windows at the postal counter window. Looking composed, she counted out change from her reticule, exchanged a polite nod to the postmaster and headed for the door.
One thing she couldn’t hide were the circles beneath her eyes. They were so bruised, she looked as if she’d been hit. The strain showed on her face and in the curled ball of her fists.
She saw him through the glass door, the bell jangling as she walked through it. Frowning at him as he held the door, she said, “Mr. Lindsay. I’d hoped to see you next. Seeing you here saves me a ride out to your place.”
“I noticed you on the boardwalk.” This was business, nothing more, but that didn’t explain the return of the emotions aching like arthritis beneath his ribs. “I spoke to Wright at the bank. What I have to say isn’t easy. Maybe you’d want a more private place—”
“The bank is my next stop. It’s best to say what’s on your mind.” Along the side wall of the mercantile she spotted an empty bench washed in the wan sunlight that speared through the gray streaks of the clouds above. “Shall we sit?”
“Sure.”
Good. It was a start. She released a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. Oh, she was overset with all this worry. She was depending so much on his ability to purchase the ranch. The mountain of debt was staggering.
If he could buy the place, it would be the best solution. He’d certainly earned the right, he would be good to the land and she couldn’t think of a more deserving rancher. Anticipating Mr. Lindsay’s answer, she settled on the rough wooden bench.
All she had to do was to glance up into his face. His honest face. But he wasn’t smiling, and surely that was a poor sign indeed. His dark eyes were troubled, and she knew. While he didn’t say a word, the last smidgen of hope died along with the last of the sunlight.
“The banker would not accept my offer.”
“I see.” A cold gust of wind left her catching her breath. “That’s too bad. I think Kol would have approved of you farming the land. He’d always thought well of you.”
“And I of him.” Towering over her, a long, lean man in a black overcoat, he seemed as bleak as the rain that began to fall. As severe as the days ahead to come. “You haven’t heard what I have to say.”
“I already know. There are notes on everything. The house, the land, the livestock. The buggy. There is no chance of coming out with cash in hand. It’s obvious, but somehow I had been hoping—”
“I was hopeful, too. There is too much debt on the land. I cannot buy it for the total of what is owed. It would be beyond what cash I could fork over.”
“Of course, it would be a poor investment for you. What will happen when the bank takes it?”
“Likely there will be an auction. The land will go to the highest bidder.”
“You’d do better to try then.”
