wind-driven snow, gone forever. She’d tried to cover it, but a faint bruise darkened her left eye. What purple coloring remained could be mistaken for the shadows of sheer exhaustion.
He knew better.
Her small, gloved hands curled around his big one, and she shook casually as she’d probably done with everyone else. But he felt the squeeze of emotion that came with the contact.
“Mr. Gable?” Her voice was as delicate as spring wildflowers and out of place on this harsh winter day. “I’m so glad you came. Thank you.”
In her dark eyes shone a glint of genuine gratitude. She wasn’t thanking him for attending the burial but for carrying her to her bed while Ham lay bleeding after their fight. Behind him yawned the cruel wound of a grave with the gleaming walnut casket within, becoming lost beneath the accumulating snow, making him remember how furious he’d been that night.
He fought to swallow past a throat dust-dry and past the lump of emotion lodged beneath his Adam’s apple. “It was no trouble.”
He was not speaking of attending the funeral. But of protecting her from her husband. He hadn’t done enough, his conscience scolded him.
The bruise beneath her left eye was not the only mark on her face. No one would notice it if they did not know to look, but she’d arranged her chestnut tresses so that a wedge of hair, twisted down to hide most of her jaw and cheekbone, was pinned carefully to her cloak and collar. Hiding the bruise Hamilton had obviously given her that night.
The clutches of memory gripped him. Faint, dark images of that brutal night crept up like a wraith and took hold. Images of lightning streaking through a merciless sky and of snow falling like rain threatened to take him back in time.
He’d had more than enough of his own problems, but he’d gotten involved. And, in truth, he’d wanted revenge. When he’d returned from carrying her to the house, Ham was gone, leaving a bloody trail. He’d been forced to fetch the doctor for the woman instead of tracking Ham. And if he had, then he and Haskins wouldn’t have returned to find Ham dead behind the barn with a second bullet in his chest. Not the one Joshua had given him.
Guilt choked him. Don’t think about it.
But the woman before him did not deserve the consequences. It was not grief, he suspected, but fear and deep worry that pushed fine lines into her soft oval face. She hadn’t asked for this to happen. She deserved nothing but his kindness.
Maybe even his pity. Life with Ham could not have been easy. Had she been able to sleep at all? he wondered. Her eyes looked puffy and not from crying, he would wager. The thought of her lying awake throughout the night, aching with anxiety and fear, tore at him.
If only he could do something, say something, anything to comfort her. But whatever he tried, he knew he could not make things right.
I’m sorry, Claire. He willed the words into her. Did she sense them?
Tears filled her eyes, the first of the service that he’d been able to notice. It gave him hope.
As if too overcome to speak, she only nodded her thanks.
He released her hand and moved on, and anyone watching would think she was nothing more than a grieving widow. And, in truth, she was too tenderhearted not to be sad. Love, he knew, was a complicated matter. Once spoken, wedding vows were powerful bonds.
He let Granny step forward to offer her terse condolences—she wasn’t one to soften blows. “He was the only family you really had, that’s a shame. What? Speak up, girl!”
Joshua kept Claire in his peripheral vision—those tears on her soft white cheeks could have been liquid drops of silver—when he felt a blow strike the middle of his chest and knock him back a step—and perilously close to the edge of the grave.
What the devil? Before he could recover, Ham’s mother struck him again with all her might. She was a substantial woman, and when the flat of her palm beat against his breastbone, he swore she had the strength to break ribs.
“You!” Her eyes had gone stone-cold. Cold and black and dense with hatred. “You did this! The doc says it was a broken neck, but I saw the gunshot! I saw it with my own eyes.”
Panic licked through him like the frigid wind. The doc had sworn he’d keep the woman away from Ham’s body. Haskins was a good man, a man of his word, so what had happened—
“The deputy saw, too! And I told him what I know. How you’ve been threatening to shoot him in the back one night!” The woman was like a rabid dog, frothing and lost from reason.
He had to stop her. “Calm yourself, Mrs. Hamilton. I have threatened him a dozen times before this, as he threatened me in return.”
The truth of his confession boomed like thunder and the chatter surrounding him silenced. Joshua felt time stretch between one heartbeat and the next.
“I saw the hole in his chest!”
“You’re overwrought, Mrs. Hamilton,” he said gently, because she had the right to her grief. He was surprised he felt so much pity for her, in spite of the fact she was reminding everyone of the fact that he and Ham had come to blows before over the grazing lands. And the sheep. A fact he didn’t want to remind the deputy of.
“Doc!” Before he could cast around through the crowd for sight of the only doctor in the entire county, Haskins was there, capable and calm, with medical bag in hand.
Without exchanging so much as a look, Joshua knew the sawbones was on his side. On Claire’s side. With his quiet courtesy, the doctor took the older Mrs. Hamilton by the elbow and made calming noises.
Just keep her calm, Doc. Joshua knew they would talk later, but for now, there was nothing more to do.
“Excuse me.” Joshua touched his hat brim while the woman fell to her knees. He’d help, but he knew it would only aggravate the woman, and that was the last thing he needed or she deserved.
It wasn’t her fault that her sons had turned out the way they did. There came a time when a man—or woman—had to own up to their shortcomings or hardships in life and take on the responsibility of them. It wasn’t Claire’s fault, either. She could not have forced her husband to walk a straighter path, for in the end, Ham’s actions were his own choice.
And choices brought consequences.
All too aware of Claire’s crumpled face, Joshua turned away from her. He could not offer aid, for the deputy was watching closely. Granny was tending to the young widow, whose knees were giving out, and had ordered someone to fetch a chair from inside the church.
Snow pummeled the world as Joshua looked down at the mantled coffin. It was snowing hard enough, as if heaven were in a hurry to bury Ham’s remains.
Goodbye, Ham. I’m sorry, but I think you’ll finally get what you deserve.
The sound of thunder crashed through his head as he remembered the gunshot booming in the dark, the lash of Ham’s whip and Claire huddling on the ground at her husband’s feet. Joshua tipped his cap to the man dead at his feet and felt justice had been served—a rare thing in this world.
He could leave and draw no one’s suspicions
