The Circle Eight: Nicholas by Lang Emma

Author:Lang, Emma [Lang, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw
Publisher: Beth Williamson
Published: 2014-02-18T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Nicholas was worried. He wasn’t one to worry about things. He complained and groused, muddled about and carried on. Damn sure didn’t waste his time worrying.

Yet he worried now. About Winnie.

This whole situation with her daughter had turned her into a ghost of who she was when he’d first met her. Fierce, bossy and passionate, Winnie Watson had turned him on his ear until he didn’t know which way was up.

Now because he had pushed her into finding the daughter she gave up, she had become a person he didn’t recognize. Shaking, pale and lifeless. As they rode through Houston to her boardinghouse, he kept prompting her to verify they were headed in the right direction. He didn’t know this complicated mass of streets. Yet she appeared to be almost slumbering on her horse.

There was a point in the yard of that big house, the largest he’d ever seen and certainly the fanciest, that he thought she would have the vapors. Hell, she did have the vapors, and nearly puked. What they heard was rough news and it hit her with a force of a mule kick.

And he worried. About Winnie.

They reached the boardinghouse in less than an hour but it seemed ten times that long. A ride pervaded by awkward silence and a nothingness that bothered him immensely.

He helped her dismount and then took the horses to the barn. They deserved some care after a long day of riding all over creation. He took his time currying them, checking their hooves and providing them with feed and water. The quiet of the barn helped him think about what had happened that day.

A lot. More than he expected and it would take time to get it all straight in his mind. Winnie blamed herself for all that had happened to the girl, but it simply wasn’t true. At sixteen, Winnie was still a child herself, and had a monster for a father who controlled her for another five years after her daughter’s birth. Nothing was Winnie’s fault. Not a damn thing.

Now the trick was going to be to make her believe it because if he wasn’t mistaken, her heart was hurting and she needed kindness and love. Two things he wasn’t very good at.

It seemed his relationship with Winnie was more complicated with each day that passed. He had been by her side, whether or not he helped was still an unanswered question. Damn sure she wouldn’t have made it back home after speaking with Bertha if he hadn’t been there. She’d been shaking and pale as milk. Finding out her child had lived in an orphanage for years because she was crippled had been difficult to hear.

Tomorrow they would go to the feed store and possibly find the child. The one piece of information that had hit Nick was the name given to Grace when she’d been left at Fuller’s Home—Martha. What were the odds she would be named after his sister-in-law’s grandmother, adopted by the Grahams who had passed away several months earlier.

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