Only later, lying in bed with Abigail enjoying the profound sleep of the innocent beside her, would Evangeline’s mind return to June-bug’s statements. She had been thinking of Scully Wainwright throughout the evening, wondering if he was bitter toward Northerners for all the South had suffered during the long and horrendous war. Wondering where he’d been raised, and in what sort of circumstances, and whether there had ever been a special woman in his life.

That she should have been pondering Big John Keating, who would be her husband in a few months, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, ’til death did them part, went without saying. All the same, she found herself far more interested in Scully Wainwright, the polite, quiet and wholly enigmatic man who had come to take her home.

CHAPTER

2

THE LITTLE GIRL, swathed in bear hides and breathing steam, seemed utterly content to be just where she was, tucked securely into the back of Jacob’s makeshift sleigh. Her mother—well now, that was another matter. All the while Scully was checking the four borrowed mules to make sure they were ready for the trek over ten miles of ice and snow, Evangeline sat there stiff as a ramrod, scanning the surrounding countryside for wolves, outlaws and Indians.

Scully smiled to himself as he lifted a mule’s foreleg for a look at the pad of its hoof. The critter had been mildly skittish since being led from the barn, and Scully couldn’t afford for it to come up lame out in the middle of nowhere, where he and his female charges might just freeze to death.

The mule butted him hard in the shoulder, as if to lodge a protest.

“Settle down,” he said, but the command was a quiet one. After all, a jackass is a jackass; no point in expecting the animal to act like anything else. It was the human variety Scully took exception with.

“Is everything all right, Mr. Wainwright?” Evangeline called, from somewhere inside the hood of her heavy woolen cloak.

He sighed inwardly, silently reminding himself that the woman was a tenderfoot, and a Yankee into the bargain. The West was new to her, and frightening, which only went to show, he supposed, that she had good sense. He wondered if she’d be scared right back into the station if he asked her to call him by his first name. When folks addressed him as “Mr. Wainwright,” it always took him a few seconds to realize they were talking to him and not some old codger standing close at hand.

“Everything’s fine, ma’am,” he said.

Jacob and June-bug stood shivering in the doorway of the way station, waving a cheerful farewell. “You all take care now!” June-bug called.

Scully lifted a hand before scrambling into the sleigh beside Mrs. Keating and taking the reins. The lady called out a spindly thank-you and set her eyes toward the waiting wilderness. The trail, such as it was, had completely vanished, but there was a hard crust on the snow itself, and the sun was shining, setting the brittle landscape alight.