Rose(99)

Having come upon a homestead here and there, George found himself agreeing with the twins. He saw no signs of farming, of domestic livestock, of people determined to build up a homestead which could support them and their family. He saw untended, weed-filled gardens, an old cow, maybe a bony mule, and run-down cabins. Yet no one looked hungry.

It wasn’t hard to guess why.

“They’re all part of Frank McClendon’s clan,” Hen told him. “Mean as snakes and lazy as hogs. One of them got himself a job with the Reconstruction, and now they act like they can do anything they want.”

“Well, they’re through living off our beef,” George said.

George had expected trouble—he rarely passed a day without seeing someone watching, either on horseback or on foot—but none came. The McClendons lived to the east of the ranch. That was the area George worked first. After three weeks they had cleared everything they could move out of the breaks and tangles. Nothing remained but about fifty rogue steers.

And he gave those to the vaqueros to shoot for their meat and hides.





“Do you have any family left?” George asked Rose.

She could feel him slipping away and there was nothing she could do about it. She might have had a chance if she had been able to see him for more than a couple of hours each day, if she had a chance to talk with him alone, if she hadn’t started her cycle.

As it was, they met only at the table. Breakfast was a quick scramble to eat and get on with the work. Supper was no better. Everyone came in exhausted, covered with dust, sweat, thorns, and innumerable cuts, burns, and abrasions. By the time they had washed, tended their wounds, and eaten dinner, it was time to go to bed.

“Only my uncle’s wife and children,” she answered. “They don’t seem like family. I’ve never even met them.”

George shared her bed, but he was too exhausted to do more than give her a hasty kiss and a quick good night. She understood that it must be difficult for him to touch her and then go to sleep with nothing more than a chaste kiss, but she longed for the little intimate touches, the brushing of fingertips, a small hug, an arm slipped around her waist.

Nothing.

She had tried to talk to him. He listened, but after a day of giving orders, he had no desire to talk. And neither did she, not really. She couldn’t talk about the things that touched her most deeply. They had already made a deal. She was the one trying to change the rules after they had been agreed upon.

“Shouldn’t you let them know you’re married?”

Once in a while she would catch him looking at her in the strangest way. It was almost as if he were looking at a stranger, studying her, trying to figure out who she was, what she was. Other times he looked right through her. That was when she knew he was thinking about his brothers.

She started to wonder if she had made a mistake in thinking George could come to love her. It was pretty hard to fall in love with a woman you barely had time to think about.

“They wouldn’t care, not since my uncle was killed. They think everyone who lives in Texas lives on a plantation and owned hundreds of slaves.”

Rose told herself this was a bad time. Things would be better after the cows were rounded up and sold. But she knew that every passing day made it harder for George to change. He had been at his most vulnerable in Austin. He had moved away from her ever since.

She considered asking him to take her to Austin, anything to get away from the family, but she couldn’t expect him to stop the roundup when she had everything she needed for the next several months.

Except his love.

“Surely there’s somebody else. How about your father’s family?”

Every time she saw him stare at Jeff’s empty chair, she knew that his feelings for his brothers were stronger than for her. She knew it every time he looked at Tyler with that crease between his eyes. She knew it when she saw him make a point of spending a few minutes with Zac every evening.

Even when he didn’t have time to spend with her.

“They wanted him to become a minister. They disowned him when he went to West Point.”

And his brothers’ behavior had done nothing to allay his fears about the bad blood in his family. Jeff was sharp-tongued and cruel. He seemed to look for ways to make the twins furious. Monty and Hen were in savage moods most of the time. They were merely beastly the rest of the time. Tyler hardly recognized anybody’s existence. Only George and Zac seemed to have any emotional equilibrium. Maybe George was right. Maybe they were all crazy.

“Then you really are alone in the world.”

They might be, but George wasn’t, and it was George she loved.

She couldn’t go forward and she couldn’t go backward. She would go crazy if something didn’t happen soon.