He raised his hands, as if to grasp her shoulders, then dropped them to his sides again. “Evangeline,” he said, and she saw his heart in his eyes then, his sturdy, honorable heart, “I love you. I won’t deny that, to you or even to Big John, if he should ask. It seems to me that you might return my feelings, at least in a small way. I’d like nothing better than for us to marry up and raise a whole flock of babies together, and I’d be proud to have Abigail as my daughter, too. But you know it’s impossible, don’t you?”

She nodded, making no effort to hide the fact that she was weeping, for happiness and for sorrow. For finding love, and for losing it again, all in the space of a single season.

He dared to touch her then, ever so gently cupping her face in his hands and smoothing away her tears with the calloused pads of his thumbs. “Oh, Eve,” he pleaded, “don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”

She couldn’t help it. She let her head fall against his shoulder and sobbed soundlessly in her despair, her shoulders shaking. Scully put his arms around her and held her close and when at last she looked up into his face, she saw that his own eyes were suspiciously bright.

“I love you, Scully,” she said.

He brushed her lips lightly with his own, accomplishing nothing but to shatter the last remaining pieces of her heart and leave her wanting what she could never, ever have. “It’s enough, darlin’,” he said. “Me knowing you care for me, and you knowing I love you. It’s got to be enough.”

She nodded again, and turned back to the stove. The eggs were scorched, but it didn’t matter. Scully had slipped out the door, and Evangeline had lost her appetite completely.

* * *

Things were awkward between them from then on, and even though Evangeline treasured Scully’s declaration, made in front of the kitchen stove that winter morning, she often wished he hadn’t made it. Knowing for certain how he felt only made matters worse, for the most part. It seemed like small comfort, most of the time, being loved by a man who was bound to leave one day soon.

Abigail progressed from the bed to sitting before the fire, wrapped in a quilt, and lived for the times when Evangeline would bundle her up and carry her outside, to stand at the corral fence and watch Scully breaking his wild horses. He used no whips, and if he cursed the creatures, he did it in an undertone that didn’t reach either her ears or Abigail’s.

By the twenty-fourth of December, he had his eight horses, six of them saddle-broken, but he’d decided to give up on the stallion until springtime. He spent the morning searching the surrounding countryside for game, and returned in time for the midday meal, a bulging burlap bag tied on behind his saddle, dragging a good-sized blue spruce behind the Appaloosa. The tree’s lush branches left a broad, feathery pattern in the snow.