Duncan's Bride Read online

“Every rancher absorbs a lot of medical knowledge just in the ordinary workday. I’ve set broken bones, sewn up cuts, given injections. It’s a rough life, sweetheart.” His face darkened as he said it. It had almost been too rough for her. He could so easily have crushed her ribs.

  He pulled on the dry underwear and jeans she had put out for him, watching as she brushed her hair and swung it back over her shoulder with a practiced toss of her head, every movement as graceful as a ballet. How could she still look elegant after what she’d been through? How could she be so casual about it? He was still shaking.

  When she started past him on the way downstairs, he caught her and wrapped his arms around her, holding her to him for a long minute with his cheek resting on top of her pale hair. Madelyn circled his waist with her arms and let herself revel in his closeness; he was home, and he was all right. Nothing was said, because nothing needed saying. It was enough just to hold each other.

  Reese paced the house that day like a restless cougar, periodically looking out the window to monitor the weather. He tried a radio station, but nothing came through the static. Around dusk the electricity went off, and he built a roaring fire in the fireplace, then put one of the kerosene heaters in the kitchen. Madelyn lit candles and lamps, and thanked the stars that the water heater and stove were gas-operated.

  They ate soup and sandwiches by candlelight, then brought down quilts and blankets and pillows to sleep in front of the fireplace. They sat on their bed of quilts with their backs resting against the front of the couch and their legs stretched toward the fire. Madelyn’s head was on his shoulder. He could almost hear her mind working as she stared at the fire, and he decided he might as well get it started before she did. “A flag with a swallow-tail end is called a burgee.”

  She gave him a quick look of delight. “The small flag carried in front or to the right of marchers to guide them is called a guidon.”

  “You want to do flags? Okay, we’ll do flags. The study of flags is called vexillology.”

  “The United States flag has seven red stripes and six white.”

  “That one’s so easy it’s cheating.”

  “A fact is a fact. Carry on.”

  “Bamboo is the fastest growing plant in the world.”

  “Cleopatra was Macedonian, not Egyptian.”

  They played the game for several more minutes, laughing at the more ridiculous items they pulled out. Then they got a deck of cards and played strip poker, which wasn’t much of a challenge, since she was wearing only his shirt and a pair of socks, and he was wearing only jeans. Once she had him naked, she lost interest in playing cards and moved on to a more rewarding occupation. With flame-burnished skin they moved together and for a long while forgot about the swirling white storm that enveloped them.

  The blizzard conditions had subsided by the next morning, though deep drifts had been piled up by the wind. The electricity came back on, and the weather report predicted slowly moderating temperatures. Reese checked on the herd and found that the cattle had withstood the storm in good condition; he lost only one calf, which had gotten lost from its mother. He found the little animal lying in a snowbank, while its mother bawled mournfully, calling it.

  They had been lucky this time. He looked up at the gray sky, where patches of blue were just starting to show through. All he needed was a mild winter, or at least one where the bad spells didn’t last long enough to endanger the herd.

  He was pulling his way out of the morass of debt, but one year of profit was a long way from being home free. He needed the mortgage paid off, he needed an expanded herd and the money to hire cowhands to work that herd. When he could expand his capital into other areas so he wasn’t entirely dependent on the weather and the market for beef, then he would feel more secure about their future.

  The next few years wouldn’t be easy. Madelyn wasn’t pregnant yet, but as soon as she was they would have medical bills to consider, as well as the cost of providing for a growing baby. Maybe he should take Robert’s offer despite his disinclination to allow anyone else any authority over the ranch. It would give him a financial cushion, the means of putting his plans into operation sooner, as well as taking care of Madelyn and their child, or children.

  But he had been through too much, fought too hard and too long, to change his mind now. The ranch was his, as much a part of him as bone and blood.

  He could easier lose his own life than the ranch. He loved every foot of it with the same fierce, independent possessiveness that had kept his ancestors there despite Indian attacks, weather and disease. Reese had grown up with the sun on his face and the scent of cattle in his nostrils, as much a part of this land as the purple-tinged mountains and enormous sky.

  “I’ll make it yet,” he said aloud to the white, silent land. It wasn’t in him to give up, but the land had required men like him from the beginning. It had broken weaker men, and the ones who had survived were tougher and stronger than most. The land had needed strong women, too, and if Madelyn wasn’t quite what he’d planned on, he was too satisfied to care.

  CHAPTER NINE

  AT THE END of January another big weather system began moving in from the Arctic, and this one looked bad. They had a couple of days’ warning, and they worked together to do everything they could to safeguard the herd. The cold front moved in during the night, and they woke the next morning to steady snow and a temperature that was ten below zero, but at least the wind wasn’t as bad as it had been before.

  Reese made a couple of forays out to break the ice in the troughs and stock ponds so the cattle could drink, and Madelyn was terrified every time he went out. This kind of cold was the killing kind, and the weather reports said it would get worse.

  It did. The temperature dropped all that day, and by nightfall it was twenty-three below zero.

  When morning came it was forty-one degrees below zero, and the wind was blowing.

  If Reese had been restless before, he was like a caged animal now. They wore layers of clothing even in the house, and he kept a fire in the fireplace even though the electricity was still on. They constantly drank hot coffee or chocolate to keep their temperatures up, and they moved down to the living room to sleep before the fire.

  The third day he just sat, his eyes black with inner rage. His cattle were dying out there, and he was helpless to do a damn thing about it; the blowing snow kept him from getting to them. The killing temperatures would kill him even faster than they would the cattle. The wind chill was seventy below zero.

  Lying before the fire that night, Madelyn put her hand on his chest and felt the tautness of his body. His eyes were open, and he was staring at the ceiling. She rose up on her elbow. “No matter what happens,” she said quietly, “we’ll make it.”

  His voice was harsh. “We can’t make it without the cattle.”

  “Then you’re just giving up?”

  The look he gave her was violent. He didn’t know how to give up; the words were obscene to him.

  “We’ll work harder,” she said. “Last spring you didn’t have me here to help you. We’ll be able to do more.”

  His face softened, and he lifted her hand in his, holding it up in the firelight and studying it, slim and femininely graceful. She was willing to turn her hands to any job, no matter how rough or dirty, so he didn’t have the heart to tell her that whenever she was with him, he was so concerned for her safety that he spent most of his time watching after her. She wouldn’t understand it; they had been married for seven months, and she hadn’t backed down from anything that had been thrown at her. She certainly hadn’t backed down from him. Remembering some of their fights made him smile, and remembering others made him get hard. It hadn’t been a dull seven months.

  “You’re right,” he said, holding her hand to his face. “We’ll just work harder.”

  It was the fourth day before they could get out. The wind had died, and the sky was a clear blue bowl, making a mockery of the bitter cold. They had to wrap their faces to eve