Page 8 of A Forgotten Heart (Wind River Mail-Order Brides #5)

W hatever you do, don’t let him get up and walk around. The doctor’s warning rang in Elsie’s head like an unrelenting school bell. Keep him peaceful and calm.

What about Elsie? Keeping Nick calm meant listening to him spout absolute nonsense every time she checked on him throughout the night. Nonsense that was like vinegar on her gaping wounds and broke her heart all over again.

He thought she was his wife? It couldn’t be right to let him believe it.

Now this morning, she scrubbed the floor of a second exam room harder, the abrasion of the sponge against the wood matching the rhythm pulsing through her veins.

If he thinks you’re on friendly terms, you should be on friendly terms .

Friendly terms were one thing, but this hurt too much.

She must follow the doctor’s orders. If something happened to Nick because of shock, it would be her fault.

A sudden realization squeezed her heart, and her scrubbing came to a stop.

Would she have prevented this pain if she’d refused when the doctor demanded she stay?

She touched her pocket, the letter’s crinkle a reminder of her parents’ expectations. What would happen if she stopped writing to Arnold? Told her parents she only wanted to teach.

Darcy had broken free of Mother and Father’s expectations. And Mother hadn’t spoken to her for nearly a year. Elsie’s stomach pinched. She owed Mother and Father, didn’t she?

She shivered. She needed to add another log to the stove. She’d been trying to ration the firewood, but cold was creeping inside.

Wrapping her arms around her torso, she rose to move toward the back room. She stilled when she reached the timber box.

Nearly empty.

“El?” Nick’s voice called from the other room.

She added another log to the stove, then slipped into the exam room, bracing herself to see him looking at her tenderly.

Nick was propped on his uninjured arm. “I was about to come find you.”

“You’d better not. I can’t pick you up if you get dizzy and fall.”

He watched her for a long moment—long enough that she grew uncomfortable and glanced down, only to see goosebumps on the bare skin of his arm.

“I just added another log.” But it was chilly in here too. “I’ll find more blankets.”

She was grateful for the excuse to get out from under his intense gaze, but only found four blankets.

When she returned, Nick was outright shivering. With no wood, he couldn’t stay in here. She had to do something.

Before she changed her mind, she rushed to the back room to create a pallet close to the stove, then hurried back to the exam room.

She peeled off Nick’s blankets. “We have to move closer to the stove. There isn’t much wood left.”

Nick propped himself on his elbow. Each muscle quivered as he struggled up.

Her stomach sank. He couldn’t move on his own.

She swallowed hard, then slipped her arm around his torso. The feel of him sent a thrill through her muscles.

He teetered slightly as he stood. “I’m a little dizzy.” He leaned his muscled side into her and wrapped his arm so that his hand rested on her shoulder.

Strong. Yet tender. The way he’d always been.

She’d not forgotten how it felt to be in his arms. Except, now he was no longer the lean boy on the cusp of manhood. He’d filled out. Grown into his body.

Her heart pounded as they staggered down the hallway. She couldn’t reach Nick’s pallet quickly enough.

“Tell me about your students this year. Any troublemakers?” he asked, his voice strained.

She needed to say something to take her mind off his nearness. “I have a girl pulling pranks behind my back. Like sneaking inside during recess and removing the lesson plans from my planner. When I confront her, she acts sugary sweet, saying she would never do such a thing.”

“Have you contacted her parents?”

She’d forgotten what it was like to have Nick on her side. The Nick who believed in her when no one else did. “Her father is on the school board, and he told me that picking on the students will not help me retain my position.”

Nick tensed. “Why didn’t you set him straight?”

“I need this teaching post.”

Nick inhaled to speak, so Elsie hurried on before he could. “Then I have another student who isn’t grasping geometry. I gave him a triangle equation on his slate and asked him to find x . He actually circled the letter x .”

Nick laughed, quickly followed by a grimace. “Don’t make me laugh. It hurts.”

Elsie smiled. She couldn’t help it, even if seeing pieces of the old Nick made her want to cry.

“You’re a fantastic teacher, El. He’ll get it.”

Her ribcage squeezed tight. She’d missed this. Missed him.

They’d reached the pallet she’d made in the back room. She tried to lower him down instead of dropping him like he’d burned her.

The lines around his mouth deepened as he leaned back, his complexion gray.

She started to pull away, but he grappled until he caught her arm. “Stay with me.”

An ache swelled deep within her as she pulled away. “I need to get the rest of the blankets.”

Once in the exam room, she leaned against the wall, waiting for her breath to stabilize. Only after she could be near him again without falling apart did she return, blankets in hand.

She tried to keep her distance as she spread the blankets over him.

“Thank you,” he said. “For taking care of me.”

She may be taking care of him, but not with her heart fully intact.

“She is well to look to, thrifty beyond her age . Remember?” His lips tilted in a lopsided smile.

Oh, she knew the reference. Tennyson. But she couldn’t let her heart return there. She focused on tucking the corners of the blankets around him. “Not now, Nick.”

He shifted restlessly. “What else is there to do?”

Nothing. They were trapped here. But she couldn’t play their game, invented when she’d been worried over midterm grades. Couldn’t pretend everything between them was good.

“El, you’re shivering.”

Was she?

He lifted the corner of the blanket, as if he expected her to curl into his warmth. “Come here.”

Panic shot through her. “I don’t think so.”

“Then take one of these blankets. What good is it if you freeze?”

Her breath came in gasps. “I’m not going to take your blankets. You’re the injured one.”

“Then here.” He lifted the corner of the blanket higher.

When she still refused, he said, “If you don’t come and lie down next to me or take one of these blankets, I’m going to cast them aside and freeze along with you.”

Her eyes widened. He wouldn’t do that.

But his raised eyebrows said that maybe he would.

Unsure, she plodded over to his pallet and slowly lay down next to him. He folded the blankets around her, tucking her close to his side. Awareness of his body instantly heated her cheeks. This was so inappropriate. He would be furious with her when his senses returned.

She startled when his arm fell around her shoulders. She should push him away. She should sit up and put as much space between them as possible. But the warmth of his embrace chased away the chill with such force that a tear ran down her cheek.

Outside, sleet pinged against the walls.

“ Sweet Lady, never since I first drew breath have I beheld a lily like yourself. ”

The poem’s words wrapped around her chest and squeezed.

“I take your silence as you don’t know. I win.”

It took a moment for her voice to steady enough to speak. “I don’t want to play.”

A beat of silence. “Fine. I win.”

She could almost believe they sat at their tree, the starry sky stretched over them. “Geraint and Enid. Of course.”

“Now your turn.”

She heard the smile in his voice.

The past was gone. She could never go back. Except for maybe just a few minutes to chase away the chill trembling her bones. “ The past will always win. A glory from its being far. ”

“In Memoriam,” he whispered. His head tipped so that his bandaged temple rested against the top of her head. “ I love thee, tho’ I know thee not. For fair thou art and pure .”

“Delleus and Ettarae,” she returned.

He didn’t love her. He didn’t. She had to keep telling herself. This wasn’t real.

“Your turn,” he urged.

Her heart quaked beneath her ribs. “ I am half sick of shadows .”

There was a beat before he spoke this time. “Are you living in shadows, El?”

Sometimes she felt like a shadow of the woman she wanted to be. The only time she had ever felt free to be herself had been five years ago. When she’d been with Nick.

The months of correspondence with Arnold could never compare.

She was in a no-win situation.

However it ended, this was going to hurt.

Darkness surrounded him from every angle, until it dissolved into snow. Snow so thick he couldn’t see, pressing in from all sides.

He started to run, but the storm trapped him with no way to escape.

He spun in a circle, but his surroundings remained veiled within the white curtain.

The hair on his arms stood on end.

Something was wrong. What?

Silence deepened.

Then the crack of a rifle pierced the air.

Nick gasped and woke to a jolt of pain coursing down his shoulder. His head pulsed as he caught his breath.

A log popped, echoing against the metal encasement of the potbelly stove. The bang resembled a distant gunshot, and his heart thumped.

Beside him, the evenness of Elsie’s breath calmed the erratic pace of his heart. She was safe, tucked into his side. So why this sense of urgency?

His heart squeezed as he watched her. Gently enough not to wake her, he lifted the fallen tendril across her forehead and smoothed it away. Love overcame him.

Someone had shot at him. If he was in danger, so was Elsie. The realization brushed something ghostlike against his skin.

In his dream, the shooter had remained hidden behind shadows, yet the shooter had been familiar. The feeling that he was missing something important tumbled in his gut.

He tucked his arm close to his body and shoved away the covers tangled around his feet. Once he’d freed them, he sat straight, but his head spun. The drab colors of the room took on hues he hadn’t known existed.

Warmth pressed against his back, soothing the erratic rhythm of his heart.