McKettricks 04 - McKettrick's Choice by Linda Lael Miller

Author:Linda Lael Miller
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-07-11T08:54:07+00:00

AN HOUR LATER, Lorelei lay under the wagon, cosseted in her bedroll. Tillie was sound asleep beside her, the little boy cuddled in her arms, and Melina rested on the other side of them, curled into a little ball and making a soft sniffling sound. The rest of the camp was quiet; except for the men keeping the first watch, everyone had apparently gone to sleep.

“Melina?” Lorelei whispered. “Are you all right?”

“I can still feel them on me,” Melina answered.

“Me, too,” Lorelei admitted. “Does it make you want to go back?”

“Go back where?” Melina murmured despairingly. “I don’t have a judge for a father, or a big house in San Antonio.”

Lorelei swallowed. “I don’t, either,” she said.

Melina sat up, taking care not to bump her head on the bottom of the wagon. “I’m sorry,” she told Lorelei, wiping her eyes. “I shouldn’t have said that. I was just feeling sorry for myself, that’s all.”

Lorelei was in a forgiving mood, except when it came to Holt. Sure, he’d helped her with the leeches, but he’d been insufferable about it. If it hadn’t been for Rafe, he would have joshed her all the way back to camp.

“It was like acting in a play,” she reflected. “Living in my father’s house, I mean.”

Melina frowned, looking puzzled, and reached out absently to pat the sleeping baby when he stirred against Tillie’s chest. “I don’t reckon I understand what you mean,” she said.

“My dresses were really costumes,” Lorelei went on. “I played the judge’s spinster daughter. He wrote the lines, and I said them right on cue—most of the time anyway. But none of it was real.”

“A play,” Melina muttered thoughtfully, working her way through the metaphor. She was bright and found her way quickly. “I’m not so sure I’d choose Indian raids and dusty trails and leeches over a nice clean life like that, though.”

Lorelei sighed. “It was easy enough, I guess. There was a bathtub, and plenty of hot water. We never ate beans, or slept on the ground or had to worry about leeches. But I never really felt anything. It was as though I was walking in my sleep.”

Melina shook her head, smiling a little in the diffused moonlight, which fell through the floorboards of the wagon bed in silvery streaks. “You are an odd woman, Lorelei Fellows,” she said. “I never knew anybody who took to hardship the way you do. It’s as if you like trouble.”

“I don’t,” Lorelei said quietly. “But I do like feeling alive.”

“You must like fighting with Holt, too, because you sure do a lot of it.”

Lorelei considered that. Creighton had largely ignored her, underscoring the sense of invisibility that had plagued her from childhood. Michael, sweet, affable Michael, had always agreed with her, as though he thought she’d shatter if he didn’t. Holt, on the other hand, seemed to relish a challenge as much as she did. And every time he pushed her, she grew a little, just by taking her own part.

“He is the most obnoxious man I have ever met,” she said.

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