It was the fifteenth of December, by the improvised calendar Evangeline had drawn from memory, when another chinook wind blew through that part of the territory, bringing sunshine and higher temperatures along with it. There was a soft breeze, too; she’d felt it when she went out to gather the eggs.

Scully looked resolute, standing there in the open doorway, gazing outward and assessing the new day. “Get the child into her clothes, Eve,” he said without turning around, his hands resting easily on his hips, “and bundle her up real warm. I’m taking her out for a ride on the Appaloosa.”

Evangeline’s mouth fell open. Was the man insane? Had the isolation and the cold finally driven him over the edge? Abigail was recovering from pneumonia, for heaven’s sake. She was too weak to stand, let alone sit a horse. Besides, despite this deceptive weather, they were still firmly in the grasp of a truly brutal winter. “Absolutely not,” she said, quite intentionally conveying her shock in her tone of voice.

Abigail looked up at her from the pillows. She was almost as white as the linens behind her head and back. “Please, Mama?” she said. “Please?”

Evangeline’s heart melted like the crusted snow. “Sweetheart, it’s still wintertime, and you’ve been very sick—”

“Please,” Abigail said again, more desperately. It was all there, in her eyes, the yearning to be her old self once more, running and playing and getting into mischief. The fear that secrets were being kept, that she would never be better.

“I’ll keep her safe, Evangeline,” Scully said softly, from the doorway. “You know that. Loosen your grip a little.”

Evangeline let out her breath. She hadn’t realized, until then, that she was holding it. “All right,” she said, looking at Scully. Warning him with her eyes. “All right. But I want her back in this house within half an hour.”

Abigail was struggling to sit up and throw off the covers. “Can I wear my Sunday School dress?” she asked, with an eagerness that decided everything.

CHAPTER

12

WHEN SCULLY had saddled the Appaloosa, he rode it back toward the house, and Evangeline, watching him from the doorway, was reminded of that unseasonably cold and snowy day, only weeks before, when she’d first seen him, riding toward the Springwater station. She’d thought he was Big John Keating, come to fetch her and Abigail home. It filled her with a fierce, sweet sadness, remembering that.

Now, the gelding dancing beneath him, eager for exercise, Scully sat easy in the saddle, looking down at her with an expression she couldn’t read because of the shadow cast by the brim of his hat.

She turned, without speaking, and crossed the room to get Abigail, who was wearing two of everything and bundled into Evangeline’s own cloak on top of it all. The child was light as a hatchling, but when the sun touched her face, she smiled. Evangeline carried her daughter over the bare ground and handed her up to Scully, who leaned down to take a firm hold. He was, she knew, almost a part of that horse, probably as much at home in the saddle as on his own feet.