Page 24 of A Steadfast Heart (Wind River Mail-Order Brides #2)

CHAPTER 1

June, 1893

He’d made a mistake.

Squeak.

There it was again.

Somehow, he must’ve missed catching a warped board. Now the spot squeaked when he stepped on it. That wouldn’t do. Not for a would-be carpenter like him.

He paused just outside the door, glancing over his shoulder. The view of the radiant sunrise glinting across the Laramie Mountains made a man want to share it with someone, but Ed had zero prospects. And finding a wife was the last thing he had time for.

He needed to hurry if he was going to finish detailing the wooden cradle waiting for him inside his cabin-turned-workshop. Morning chores were finished, but his older brother Drew would have a list of work that needed doin’ today the length of Ed’s arm when Ed joined the family down at the main house for breakfast. Drew had kept the four McGraw brothers together after they’d lost both parents within two years, taking on the mantle of family patriarch, but there was always too much work to be done on the McGraw homestead.

Hoofbeats sounded. Too late to finish his project now.

“Uncle Ed!”

Ed lifted his head to acknowledge his fourteen-year-old nephew, riding past Ed’s cabin on a pony.

With the awkward frame of a boy growing too tall too fast, David was the spitting image of Drew at that age.

David took a slight detour and reined in yards away from Ed’s porch. “Pa wants me to check the water level in the little pond in the east pasture. And see if Uncle Isaac is up there.”

If David was already riding out, that meant Ed had missed breakfast. His stomach growled a protest. He needed another hour or two’s work on the wooden cradle before it’d be ready for delivery. Didn’t seem like he was getting that hour today.

“Be careful,” Ed warned his nephew. “Isaac’s been tracking wolves around the high pasture.”

Too much like his pa at that age, David lit up instead of appearing worried. “I’ll look for tracks!”

And he was gone.

Ed cracked open the door long enough for a glance at the unstained wooden cradle sitting along the wall before he closed the door with a soft snick.

A sigh slipped from Ed’s lips. Would his family ever understand? He loved the feeling of a piece—chair, bed frame, shelf, anything—coming to life in his hands. He wasn’t so fanciful as to think wood spoke to him, but when he sketched out a new item to build with pencil and paper, he felt as if some hidden part of him came to life. One at a time, his arms slipped through the suspenders hanging at his side as he started toward the worn path between his cabin and the main house. His fingers riffled through his hair, sending a fine layer of sawdust tumbling through the orange-tipped rays of sunlight.

The main house had been built by Ed’s pa. After Isaac had joined the family, Pa had built onto the house, adding a second story and another bedroom downstairs. Ed had grown up running and riding all over this land, along with his older brothers Drew and Isaac and their youngest brother Nick. The McGraw spread was their legacy, a hard-fought family heritage.

Only, he wasn’t sure he wanted it any longer.

The kitchen window was open, and once he got close enough, girlish voices floated from inside. Drew’s daughters, at eleven and six, couldn’t have been more different. Jo was a tried-and-true tomboy, wearing trousers more often than anything else. Tillie, never without a ribbon in her hair, loved playing family with her dolls.

Ed would do anything for them, but when he opened the door and stepped inside, his first urge was to turn back around.

“Don’t pull!” Tillie whined. She sat in one of the straight-backed chairs, her face all screwed up.

Standing behind her younger sister, Jo scowled at the top of her head. “It’s a braid. They’re gonna hurt some.”

Drew’s wife Kaitlyn swiveled from gathering the dishes at the table, where Drew and Nick were still seated, to admonish her stepdaughters. “Stop arguing. The quicker you finish, the quicker you can head outside to the barn.” That was directed at Jo. And the pointed words hit home. Jo focused on Tillie’s braid, her tongue peeping out of the corner of her mouth.

Kaitlyn had only married into the family a few months ago, but she was whip-smart, and the children had taken to her. Now she glanced up and caught sight of Ed. He watched a minuscule grimace flit over her expression.

“I’m sorry. I forgot you were coming. I don’t know how much breakfast is left.”

Before he could say anything, she was already moving to the kitchen, bringing the dirty dishes with her. Ed scanned the table as Nick nodded to him. A strip of bacon remained. It’d go great with the last biscuit. No longer warm to the touch, but it was something. If he’d ignore the projects he kept hidden at his house, he might secure himself a big hot breakfast.

“Need a plate?” Kaitlyn returned from the kitchen. Evidence of her fancy upbringing slipped out again as she handed him a china plate and enough silverware for a four-course meal. She expected a level of societal propriety the brothers hadn’t been used to abiding by before she’d shown up from St. Louis. She also brought more smiles to Drew’s face than Ed had seen in a long time, so he guessed he could forgive her.

“I’m fine.” No need for her to wash another plate for a piece of bacon stuffed in a biscuit. A cold biscuit. He tore off a bite as he pulled out a chair with his free hand to sit at the table, despite the wrinkle in Kaitlyn’s brow.

His brothers eyed him while Drew kept talking. “Isaac needs to be here. He can’t sulk alone forever.”

Isaac had been with the U.S. Marshals for years before he’d come home a year ago, subdued and quiet—not the brother Ed had grown up with. And now they were having a discussion of how to draw his older brother in from the old cabin at the far end of the McGraw property. Why hadn’t anyone bothered to wait for him to have this conversation?

“He’ll come around.” Nick leaned back in his chair, seemingly unaffected by their brother’s absence. Always a peacemaker, he also possessed an uncanny understanding of Isaac.

“I’m not so sure.” Kaitlyn put in her two bits from behind them. “The last time he came down for supplies, he seemed…lonely. As if he carried a burden and had no one to share it with.”

Lonely? How did Kaitlyn figure that? More like Isaac went around as if he had lemon stuck in his teeth. Had ever since he’d hung up his hat as a marshal, coming home only to spend his time repairing the old cabin or moving the cattle from pasture to pasture. It would’ve been nice to have him show up for the planting, but that would’ve meant socializing with other people. Like his brothers. Like Ed.

With only a year between them, Isaac being the older, they’d been close as boys until Isaac had started beating Ed at everything. And now Isaac had shut them all out. If he was lonely, it was his own doing.

Ed took another bite of biscuit. One with bacon in it this time. His eyes darted between Nick and Drew.

“Isaac will show his face when he wants to. When he’s ready.” Nick barely raised his voice.

“What if he had a wife?” Kaitlyn leaned in to grip the back of Drew’s chair. “Someone to care for him, to come home to.”

A gleam danced in Drew’s eye. “Who do you suggest? Widow Mayberry?”

Ed chuckled before shoving another bite in. Even Nick grinned. Heart-breaking, tough-guy Isaac married to Widow Mayberry. She had to be twenty years older, and she talked nonstop. At least hard-nosed Drew’s recent marriage to Kaitlyn had drawn out a bit of a sense of humor in him.

“Not funny.” Kaitlyn pretended to bristle, then another spark lit her face. “What about Rebekah Edwards? She isn’t married. Didn’t you say she was sweet on Isaac?”

The biscuit lodged in Ed’s throat. He choked back a cough. Not Rebekah. A quick wit and all those fiery red curls wrapped up in an annoying, although what some called “pretty,” package. Ed would take anyone but Rebekah for a sister-in-law. It was bad enough he had to put up with her as a neighbor. The nagging crumbs in his throat threatened to break him into a full-blown coughing fit. He went for Nick’s coffee. One swig and he set the cup down.

Nick gave him a sideways scowl.

“Rebekah’s too busy working at the paper.” Another sip of coffee gave Ed time to pull his thoughts together. “Speaking of the newspaper, they’re doing a special section for those mail-order bride ads now. You know, like the one you ran.”

“An ad?” Drew raised a brow in question. While he had run an ad, it’d been a rough road and a twist of fate that’d landed Kaitlyn here as his mail-order bride. “Sounds good.”

Drew sounded as if Ed had suggested a perfect idea when he’d only meant to divert the conversation.

“You’d post a matrimonial ad for Isaac?” Ed followed up. After all they’d been through with Drew’s ad, he wanted to try this again? “Our Isaac?”

His brother obviously wasn’t thinking straight. There had to be a better way to find Isaac a wife, if he even wanted one.

Nick shifted in his chair. “He doesn’t need us poking our noses where they don’t belong. Give him time to come around.” Nick had always been close to Isaac. It wasn’t a wonder that he was protective now.

“And if he doesn’t come around? If he hides out the rest of his life up in that sorry excuse for a cabin? Or worse?” Drew fixed his eyes on Nick as he jabbed his finger at the table. “I can’t even get him to tell me why he came back.”

“Wouldn’t be too bad to have his help around here either.” Ed dusted the crumbs from his hands. All eyes fixed on him as if he were interrupting. “Might do him good to be around family more. That’s all.”

“A wife will do the trick.” A dreaminess filled Kaitlyn’s words. “Someone to love the rough edges away.”

“He’ll never go for it.” Wise words from Nick. Surely no one imagined Isaac would agree to their plan. It might even drive him further away. But Drew wasn’t used to being questioned.

“We don’t have to tell him.” Ed finished the last of Nick’s coffee. He rose to refill the cup from the pot Kaitlyn had placed at the other end of the table. Steam rose from the liquid. Even if breakfast hadn’t warmed his belly, the coffee had.

“Good point.” Drew ran a hand along his chin. “We don’t tell him at first. We run an ad, evaluate the replies, then pick a woman or two that might fit him. We turn it over to Isaac from there.”

Nick shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“He’ll go for it when a pretty lady shows up,” Kaitlyn said. She shared another glance with Drew. Obviously, the honeymoon phase hadn’t passed yet.

Ed cleared his throat. Now was as good a time as any to tell them he’d be at his place working for a couple of hours. If he finished the cradle, he might have time to get it to town today.

“That’s decided, then.” Drew rose from the table before Ed got a word out. “Nick, are you ready to go see about that mare? Ed, I promised one of us would take the Boutwells to town. I need you to take care of that. Put in that ad while you’re there.”

What had led his brother to think he’d be available? Drew lived and breathed this homestead, thinking he needed to command them all like an army regiment. What if Ed refused? What if he dared to want more?

“I’ve got things to do here.” Helping the Boutwells wasn’t so bad, but more than likely, he’d end up with Rebekah wanting to join them. She hadn’t changed one bit from their school days, back when there’d been a little school on the edge of Heath Quade’s property that all the neighbors had attended. Before Quade’s wife had passed and he’d sent his younger girls off to boarding school, closing the local schoolhouse down. But that’d been after all the McGraws and Rebekah had graduated. Time with Rebekah still rubbed him wrong, like a sand burr stuck inside his boot.

Drew halted for the briefest second, then waved off Ed’s faint complaint.

Ed swallowed back another protest. Wouldn’t do him any good. The cradle would have to wait. He glanced at Nick. “You want to write the ad? You’re the one with all the book smarts.”

Nick rose to follow Drew without a look back. “I’ll leave the ad to you two.”

“Do the ad next trip. Time’s a-wasting to get the neighbors to their train.” Drew waved it off. Which meant Ed would get saddled with writing the ad too.

The sooner he got this over with, the better.

“I can always count on you, Ed.” Drew’s words settled heavy in Ed’s chest as Ed stepped past his brothers on the way to the door.

One more thing added to the endless list of jobs everyone counted on him to do. All he wanted was a chance to prove his woodworking could be a means to bring in money. A reason for him to have the time to work on it. But how would he do that if he never caught a break to even finish this one project?

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