Unspoken Promises by Bonnie Hamre

Author:Bonnie Hamre
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ellora's Cave Publishing Inc.
Published: 2014-02-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

It was the wrong thing to say. He was the one thinking of his wedding night, only he wasn’t doing too much thinking. He ached. That kiss had been meant as a simple thing, to let her get used to him, the way he’d gentle an animal to his scent and touch but it had turned into something more.

Much more. He hungered. There wasn’t much material in those flimsy bits of cloth. Scandalous scarlet. He’d gotten only a glimpse but he wanted to see more, wanted to see her in them, her flesh a pale contrast to the red lace. More than that, he wanted to see her out of them.

He ached to bury himself in her soft flesh.

Forcing his mind to focus on something other than her body, Ford rolled over on his side and back again, too restless to find a comfortable position. Dawn was only hours away. If Mollie was right, they had no time to waste. It unsettled him to think of how much more she might not be telling him. She knew more than she’d said but he intended to find out. A wife shouldn’t have secrets from her husband.

But then, they were hardly the usual married couple. Although she was trying, he’d seen her far away looks as if she could see over the horizon to the California she knew. What things did she see that he could not? For that matter, how much more did she know that she hadn’t told him? Her outlandish tale about the Donner party couldn’t be true but she’d seemed so sure, so concerned.

Had she been as protective of her husband and child? Where were their graves? It grieved him to leave Letty behind in an unmarked grave, to have the wagons roll over the spot to obliterate any traces of it to save her from wild animals or savages. In her time, Mollie would have the comfort of visiting her husband and child’s graves but now what would she do?

It was beyond him to explain how she’d suddenly appeared, and how would he explain her disappearance if she went back to her time.

What did she miss from her life? She’d said she had no family left. The people in those photographs were dead. Their images remained in bright colors, and their faces revealed their joy in each other but the man and the child had no further claim to Mollie’s love. He frowned as he tried to pin down what exactly she’d said about her first husband. It wasn’t her words, he realized but the way she spoke about him. There was sadness there, and anger. That was to be expected. He’d experienced it himself.

* * * * *

Mollie heard Ford talking to the oxen as he checked their coats for raw spots and their hooves for tenderness. She glanced up from the dishes to see him examine the ones he’d had yoked that day and did the same for the others. Next, he rubbed down his three horses, spending a little extra time on his favorite, the one he’d called a dun gelding.

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