Charles took her softly by the shoulders. “Caroline?”
Her eyes flickered away from his face. What might he ask that she could answer? If it were all right for him to leave them without door or walls? If she were frightened? True or false, she could not answer him. She could barely smooth the trembling from her lips. There were tears gathering uninvited, tears she could not press back alone. Before she shamed herself Caroline looped her arms under Charles’s, laying her palms over his shoulder blades, and pulled herself into his chest.
His hands slid down her sides. Those broad firm hands that had once spanned her waist. Could they feel the laces at the base of her maternity corset now? As if his touch melted through the knots, her body gave a great shiver, then slackened. Caroline pulled in a breath. Nothing hampered its way. Her chest felt spongy as though from crying, but the trembling had gone.
Not a word passed between them as she stood with the crown of her head notched under his chin. Only breath. Her chest rode his inhales, then carried back his exhales.
Charles moved one hand up her back, to the nape of her neck. Caroline felt his heartbeat deepen as his knuckles brushed her chignon.
“Charles,” she whispered. She tilted her head to meet his gaze and the whole coil of her hair tipped into his palm. He kissed her then, chastely, in the space between her brows. The warm print lingered after his lips had left her skin, a seal against whatever fears might reach for her in the night.
Caroline brought her palms to his chest and gently eased herself from him. “Good night,” she said.
She lifted the blanket flap and went in. Mary and Laura lay at her feet with the quilt’s red binding pulled up over their noses. She knelt to kiss each of them as Charles had kissed her, then undressed, said her prayers, and lay down beside them.
The rifle shot woke her. By the time Charles came over the rise with a white bird dangling from his belt, she had smoothed her hair and put the coffee pot on.
“Snow goose,” Charles said. “Must be a straggler, it’s so late in the season. Or maybe it got caught in the storm. Should I fetch the tin kitchen from the wagon?”
“No thank you, Charles. I’ll fry it in the spider for breakfast.”
It was better still than the hot bacon the day before, rich and fresh and running with juice. A hint of salt and pepper made the savory flavor bloom in her mouth.
Laura lifted her drumstick to nibble the last shreds from the bone and said, “Look, Pa.”
Caroline looked up as well, ready to address Laura’s manners. Little though she was, Laura never would have flaunted her table scraps that way at home. But Charles and Laura’s attention was not where Caroline expected to find it. She looked beyond the bone in Laura’s fist and saw a man on a black pony emerging from the trees. Charles rose, plate in hand, as the rider approached.
Caroline sat still as a rabbit poised to run, watching. The stranger was strung together like a ladder—perfectly straight up one side and down the other. His horse was lightly built, slender through the back and face. “That your wagon down there in the dale?” the man asked.
“Certainly is,” Charles said. He handed Caroline his plate and propped his fists at his hips. “This your land?”
“Nearly.”
Caroline blanched at the two plates in her hands. Not only had they set up camp on another man’s stake, but their mouths were half-full of his game. Quietly she stacked the dishes onto her lap and swallowed.
“We’re only passing through,” Charles said. “Be on our way just as soon as I can dig out and ford that creek.”
The man swiped a hand through the air. “You’re welcome to camp as long as you need. I heard a shot this morning and thought I ought to make sure there wasn’t any trouble. The name’s Jacobs,” he said to Charles, then “ma’am,” with a nod to Caroline and a glance that traveled down to her lap.
Caroline could not tell whether it was the plates of purloined goose or her own form that drew his attention; she was rounded enough at the navel now that anyone who chanced to look might notice. Either way, his eyes did not linger.
Charles extended his hand to Jacobs. Caroline folded her fingers inside her palms to hide the lines of grime under her nails. “Ingalls,” Charles said. “Headed down into Montgomery County.”
“Looks like you’ve come a distance already.”
Caroline would have liked to whisk a sheet over the camp at that. Anyone would think them vagabonds, with their hacked-limb shelter and soggy wraps slumped over the tarpaulin ropes. This man had a silky black beard trimmed so short and neat it lay flat as horsehair. For the first time she noticed how Charles’s hair had grown. The back of her own neck itched to see how far it had strayed into his collar.
“Left Pepin County, Wisconsin, nearly five weeks ago.”
“That so?” Jacobs asked, but his attention was on Ben and Beth. Caroline marked the way he studied them. If he had looked at her so intently, she would not have thought him a gentleman. “Fine, strong team you’ve got there,” the man said.
“That they are.”
Jacobs ventured further. “Fact is, I’ve been on the lookout for a good pair of draft horses. Got three and a half years in on a claim the next section east of here, and a preemption filed on this one. It’s a railroad section, $5.50 an acre.”
Charles gave a low whistle at the price—better than four times what they hoped to pay.
Jacobs nodded. “Don’t I know it. One fine crop would put me within arm’s reach of paying it off—that is, if I can clear enough acreage to sow in time. I wonder if you’d consider a trade?”
Charles glanced at Caroline. She said nothing. “That would depend on your offer.”
Jacobs looked down at his horse, then back to Charles, weighing him in a different way than he had measured Ben and Beth. If he looked much longer, Caroline thought, she would be compelled to rise and stand beside her husband. “I’ll offer my matched pair of mustangs,” Jacobs said at last. “This one and her twin sister.”
Caroline considered the pony. Where Ben’s and Beth’s muscles bowed outward, this creature was small and sleek. Not much more than fourteen hands high, but with a spry stance that belied her stature. And a coat so bright and black, just looking at her gave Caroline pleasure.
“The other mare’s set to foal this summer, so there’s a mule colt in the bargain,” Jacobs went on. “I’ve had a look over your wagon, and there’s nothing in there the pair of them can’t pull as far as the Territory.”
Had he inspected the wagon with the same intensity that he scrutinized everything else? Caroline did not like to think so.
“Guess there’s no harm in going for a look,” Charles said.