Blessing Page 16

  “Of all the things you had to be,” he said quietly, daring finally to ask the question that had plagued him for many nights as he lay awake thinking of her, “have you always been…Uley? Is Uley your given name? Or is it something you and your pa came up with to complete the charade in Tin Cup?”

  She smiled then, tears sparkling in her eyes like stars, and shook her head at him. “No. Uley isn’t my given name. That came from a book. Pa and I were crossing Nebraska with a book about mining in hand. In it was a story about Uley Jacob, an old miner who’d come to Colorado and hit pay dirt even before he pitched his tent. Pa thought it would bring us good luck if he called me Uley, too. And it was such a funny name, something I thought you’d only call a dog or a mule. We laughed about it all the way across eastern Colorado. By the time we arrived here and it was time to introduce myself, it was funny and familiar. So I used it.”

  He was gazing down at her, a strange expression on his face. “Every time I turn around, I see something new in you. First it was all that beautiful taffy-colored hair. I look at you and think of it all jammed up inside that funny little hat and I can scarcely bear not touching it. Then it’s the way I feel whenever our hands meet…as if it’s forbidden…as if I’m giving secrets away because of what’s happening inside me. Now I find I don’t even know what your name is. Uley, I feel like I’m walking on a log, tottering, about to fall off. I don’t know what to do about you.”

  “There’s nothing to do about me,” she whispered. “It isn’t…”

  He still clasped her hand between his own, and he could feel them trembling.

  “Tell me.”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  A week, only a week, remained before the trial resumed. The hours and their passing would stay with Aaron now. The ticking watch in his pocket would add constantly to the weight he carried within him.

  Aaron took Uley’s second hand in his own and held both of them against his chest so that she, too, could feel the moments slipping away between them. “I want to know your name,” he said desperately. “I don’t want to die next Friday and not know who you are, Uley. You, the person who trusts me.”

  The tears that had been glistening in her eyes now welled up and spilled over. Aaron’s first inclination was to release her and wipe them away. He didn’t. He stood before her, hanging on to her as best he could, letting them fall unhindered.

  “I—” But she couldn’t speak just yet. Her emotion ran too deep. She felt as if Aaron had broken down a wall within the very core of her. Just by caring, he’d released portions of the little girl she’d been, portions that had been buried deep within her since the day the black Ohio loam had landed in shovelfuls atop Sarah’s makeshift coffin.

  “It’s okay,” he told her, over and over. “It’s okay, Uley. It’s okay. I shouldn’t have pushed.”

  But she shook her head. “No, I—” And then she laughed. It was a light little chirp that sounded like the warble of a bird. “I want to tell you. I haven’t thought of it in so long. And, somehow, it didn’t seem important to me anymore. But it is, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  She pulled her hands away, and this time, he let her go.

  “My name, do you want to know my real name?”

  When he realized she was going to say it, he felt his heart shove halfway up into his throat.

  “My name is Julia. Julia Kirkland.” Then she smiled up at him. “You like it? That’s who I really am.”

  “Julia,” he said, trying it on for size. “Julia.”

  “Ma always called me Jubilee when I was little.”

  “I like that,” he said. “It fits you.”

  “Another reason I picked Uley. It sounded somewhat the same.”

  Old Croppy waited nearby, his nose lowered to the ground, his yellow teeth ripping at the dandelions and clumps of butterwort that grew among the trees up here. The pines towered above them, their lofty trunks reaching toward the heavens with nary a bend nor a twist, their limbs bearing bundles of pungent, fleshy green needles. As the wind picked up, the trees creaked overhead like old rocking chairs.

  Somewhere in the wood, a nuthatch began to hammer away with its beak, the sound echoing throughout the thicket. Rat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat-tat. Rat-tat.

  Uley and Aaron stood facing one another, facing what the world had done to them, what the future would probably bring.

  It was Uley who moved first. With a choked sob, she flew into Aaron’s arms. Aaron caught her against him, gripping her with such fierceness that he knocked the breath out of her.

  That didn’t matter.

  Nothing mattered.

  “Oh, Julia,” he whispered. The sound of her name seemed to reverberate against the tree trunks that surrounded them. “Julia…”

  “Don’t stop holding me. Please, Aaron.”

  “I don’t ever want to.”

  He savored her closeness, saved it in his mind so that he’d have it to draw upon forever.

  However long his forever was going to be.

  “Uley…Julia. Jubilee Kirkland.” His voice was suddenly full of purpose. He knew what he was going to do. He let her go just long enough to trace one tentative finger across her cheek. “What would you say if I kissed you?”

  Her green eyes glittered up at him like peridots. Ought she to let him kiss her? This was all so new that the thought made her joyous but it also made her struggle. What if she said “no”? What if he died, and they never had the chance again?

  “Yes,” she told him. “I would like that.”

  He cupped her face in his hands, and then slowly, with out asking permission, removed her funny little cap. “If I kiss you, I’m gonna take this silly thing off.”

  She didn’t stop him. She stood still and tall, only a breath away, waiting for him, anticipating it all.

  He removed the hat and hung it on a nearby branch.

  He turned to look at her. She stood before him, the essence of femininity, with all the burnished hair escaping from her bun waving in unruly wisps around her face.

  She raised her hands to the back of her head.

  “You want to see the rest of it?”

  He swallowed. “Yes.”

  “Very well, then.”

  As he stood mesmerized, she completed the task for him, carefully pulling hairpins out of the smooth knot twisted against her neck.

  “Here,” he whispered breathily, not daring to move. Good grief, how he had dreamed of this moment. “I’ll help you.”

  “You won’t…know…where they are,” she said, her heart ramming crazily against her ribs. “I’ll do the pins. You just…watch…”

  What she gave him today symbolized everything she wanted to give him in their future, a future that might never come. She’d never set her hair free before a man before. Since she’d stopped wearing pigtails, in Ohio, she’d only let it down in darkness, once to brush it and braid it at night, once to remove the braid and twist it back into a chignon before the sun first came up over the eastern mountains.

  Aaron counted pins to keep himself sane, scarcely daring to breathe as he waited for the inevitable to happen.

  Two pins. Three.

  She held them between her teeth and smiled beguilingly at him.

  Four pins.

  “I can’t lose these pins,” she said with them still in her teeth. He was scared to death she would swallow one. Then they’d both be found out. “I’ll have to put it back up before I get to the Gold Cup.”

  “I have a pocket. I can keep them safe for you here.” He laid one hand over his breast, suddenly realizing that, when he’d indicated his pocket, he’d also rested his hand precisely over his heart.

  I can keep them safe for you here.

  Five. Six pins.

  She took them from her teeth and laid them in his palm. They were still wet from her mouth. He jingled them once in his hand, then pocketed them.

  Seven pins.

  The seventh pin did it.

  A tumult of
hair escaped in a disorderly tumble, cascading down past her shoulders to lay against her breasts, the curls riotous as they encircled her forearms.

  Aaron had never seen such hair.

  Uley had never felt so beautiful, so cherished, so much a woman.

  His eyes were dark now…almost the hue she’d often imagined the ocean would be during a storm.

  Aaron reached for her hair, grasping it where it lay against her shoulders, combing his fingers through it.

  “You like it?”

  His voice was as coarse as gravel. “I do.”

  She held her breath.

  “I dream about this hair, you know. I suppose it will be my last thought before I give way to the hangman’s noose.”

  Don’t talk that way, she wanted to say. Don’t think of such things. But it was something they both needed to think of, something that—as the days passed by—became more and more of a threat.

  Aaron gripped her forearms, pulling her toward him. She met his fixed gaze at close range. His eyes, which from a distance appeared a solid crystal blue, now bore faint speckles of navy and lines of rich silver, as he gazed down at her.

  She stepped against him and lifted her face to his.

  He brushed his mouth across her lips just once, as lightly as the flicker of a butterfly’s wing beating against the breeze.

  She felt the breath catch. Her eyes met his again, wide and mezmerizingly green.

  Aaron’s heart almost stopped as she followed his bidding without stopping to question him. Their lips met again, coming together delicately, slipping to a position where they fit together and then fit even closer.

  “Aaron,” she whispered against his mouth. “I don’t know how to do this.”

  “You are doing just fine.”

  Her lips parted further, and she stilled, waiting for Aaron to teach her.

  Her tongue tasted faintly of horehound candy as he encouraged her.

  Here, in Aaron’s arms, she felt as if she were viewing her life from some wonderful, pivoting angle. She wanted to wrap her arms around Aaron’s neck and hang on to him forever. Yet, as reality came, she knew she couldn’t. No matter what the outcome of the trial was. No matter what they felt for one another. She knew nothing of being a man’s woman. She knew nothing of daily tasks in a home. No man wanted to marry a girl whose greatest talent was shearing off timbers and shoring up a mine.

  Aaron had said so himself only an hour earlier.

  A refined lady can be a prize for any man, whether she is his sister or his love.

  He deserved a woman like Beth, a delicate woman with social graces and soft hands and irreproachable ways. Uley could never be such a woman. She couldn’t even pretend to be. And she was desperately, desperately tired of pretending.

  She knew Aaron felt her sudden uncertainty. He backed off a bit and touched her nose, cocking his face at her and giving her a quirky little grin. “What is it, little one?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

  Uley took one step away from his arms. “Oh, Aaron. So many things, I don’t know where to start.”

  “Don’t you like this? Don’t you like me kissing you?”

  “Yes,” she said, as she felt unwanted tears rising in her eyes again. “I like you kissing me. That’s why I’m fearful of all this.”

  As she backed away a little more, he could have kicked himself. He’d gone and done what he’d promised he wouldn’t do. He’d gone and reached out to her, showing her his feelings, when he had no right to do so. He had no right to make her care for him now. “Uley. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it.”

  She touched his arm briefly, reassuringly. “I’m glad you did. Aaron, I wanted you to. Don’t be sorry for it…please. Without this, I might never have known how it would feel. Thank you.”

  He looked at her in disbelief. “You’re thanking me?”

  She said, “Yes. Even though I’m telling you it mustn’t happen again.”

  He said, “I know that, too.”

  Already she was struggling with her hair. “I’d best be gettin’ back up to the Gold Cup. They’ll think I’ve taken Old Croppy and left town.” With one hand, she bunched her shiny dark red hair at her neck and began to twist it around to contain it.

  Aaron watched, noting that she had hair that couldn’t be easily contained. “I have a comb.” He pulled it from his vest pocket and handed it to her. “I always keep one handy.”

  “Thank you again, Aaron Talephas Brown,” she said, smiling. She took the tortoiseshell comb from his hand and began to run it through her hair’s richly colored strands. The comb’s teeth separated them into tiny, fine runnels. As she worked her way through her hair, it fell against her shoulders in a sleek spray, the curls combed into submissive ripples. She finished both sides, then continued around to the back of it, struggling with a tangle she couldn’t reach.

  “You want me to do that?” he asked, his voice coarse.

  “Would you?” she asked. “I can’t get at it. I’ll never make it all go into the bun if I don’t work through that tangle.”

  He reached for the comb.

  She hiked up the knees of her breeches and settled on a stump. “There you go. How’s that? Can you reach me?”

  “Yes. I can.”

  He stood feet apart, brandishing the comb, looking down at the back of her head. Now, how did a man do something like this? Where did he begin? He was terrified he would hurt her. He passed the comb once through her luxuriant hair. It gleamed in the sun like burnished copper. It felt like fine satin beneath his fingers.

  “Ouch,” she said. “Aaron, you mustn’t tug so.”

  He gulped, holding the comb up as if he were a butcher trying to decide at which angle to begin slicing beef. “I don’t know how to do this.”

  “Then we’ll both have learned something today,” she said, chuckling again. “When you get to the tangle, make the comb go sideways. Pull out the larger strands first, until the remainder of it begins to fall free.”

  “Okay. Here I go.” He lowered the comb. He stopped, swallowed, raised it again.

  “Come on,” she said. Then she laughed. “I promise not to say ‘ouch’ again. I’ve frightened you, I can see.”

  “Yes, you did. I didn’t want to hurt you.” How he meant those words—in a great many ways that had nothing to do with the fact that her hair was tangled.

  He brandished the comb once more and returned to his chore.

  She sat silently before him on the stump, her sleek, rippling hair lying like a fan against her shoulders.

  Silence surrounded them.

  Chore, Aaron decided, was the wrong word to use. This was no chore. As he combed her hair, he thought of a million different nights he’d like to share with her, a lifetime of them, a couple sitting in a home, the husband combing out tangles for the wife, as the fire flickered a dance of light and shadow on the wall beside them.

  Her hair, as it moved between his fingers, took on a thousand evanescent colors. As he worked the shimmering strands through his fingers, Aaron had the feeling that her hair was magic, that it was never the same color twice.

  The silence around them faded as the forest filled with sound. The trees creaked in the wind. A lazuli bunting called from its song perch. Sweet-weet-chew…chew-seet-chew… Aaron combing was almost more familiar and intimate than the kiss had been. The comb crackled through her hair, and he followed it with his hand, separating the strands and pressing them down to smoothness.

  At last, at long last, she caught his hand with hers to stop him. “That should be fine,” she whispered.

  “I suppose it is.”

  “I should go.”

  “Yes, you should.” Reluctantly he pocketed the comb.

  She gathered her hair at the nape of her neck and began to twist it up again. He watched as it went up, twisting into a knot the same shape as a plump biscuit pretzel.

  She stopped and turned, cupping the bun in one hand and extending the other to him. “My pins, Aaron. I need my
pins.”

  “Oh, yes.” He touched a hand to his breast pocket and felt them there. “Here.” He poked his fingers into his pocket and pulled out three of the pins.

  “I’ll need them one at a time,” she said.

  He dumped two of them back in and handed her the first. He winced as she jabbed it almost straight into her head.

  “Another, please.”

  He fished out another.

  And so they went through seven pins, Aaron extending them, Uley jabbing them in with gusto. Then she placed the cap firmly atop the bun and wiggled it into place. “There we go,” she said, satisfied. She stood and wrestled the cuffs of her knickers down around the tops of her socks.

  He waited. How could anybody—anybody—mistake her for a member of the male gender? Aaron wondered. She was the most mysterious, intriguing, feminine woman he’d ever known. Not feminine in the way of lace gloves and a parasol and bustles billowing out yards and yards behind her. She was a woman in an earthy fashion, unaffected, and sensible in a way that would serve a man well. Aaron wanted to take her into his arms again so desperately that he could scarcely bear it.

  “I’d best be going,” she said. “Old Croppy’s eaten enough butterwort to give him stomach problems for a week. They’ll never forgive me up at the mine.”

  “Yes,” he said. “You’d best get Old Croppy out of here. I’m sure they’ll have missed you by now.”

  Still she stood before him. “You gonna wait for the next supply wagon when it comes in?”

  “Don’t know. There isn’t much use for it. I don’t think I can bear the suspense of waiting while that thing jangles up the road toward me. I’ll probably just stay at Aunt Kate’s next time. If Dawson Hayes makes it into town, he’ll be able to find me.” He clapped his hands once in front of him, then swung them nonchalantly back and forth.

  “I feel the same way,” she said softly. “I’m afraid to watch for it, too. I figure if I don’t go down there and wait, Dawson Hayes will come in. That’s how it works, isn’t it? The water never boils while you watch it?”