frowned at the brothers, his dark eyes narrowing. “Claude wouldn’t just fall in for no reason.”
“That’s my concern.”
Joseph turned to her. “What concern?”
She pressed her lips together, sorry she’d been so quick to speak her mind. “Only that he could have been pushed.”
Joseph’s thick, black eyebrows rose. “You can’t think Buster or Gray could have pushed him.”
“Of course not, Joseph. Give me credit for a little common sense. Believe it or not, those boys are the least of our troubles if my suspicions are correct.” She shivered and glanced around them through the shadows of the forest once again.
“Victoria?”
There wasn’t time to get into that conversation at the moment. Soon, though. “Please disregard my chatter. I’m simply overwhelmed at the moment. Those boys were supposed to be helping gather wood for a fire to dry things out, and instead they’re doing what you told them not to. They need a firmer hand, Joseph, or they need to return to their father.”
Joseph crossed his sun-browned arms over his chest and shook his head. “All of us were supposed to pitch in, Doctor, and I’m not their nanny.”
She took umbrage at his defensive posture. “Not their nanny, but certainly their captain, and from what I understand, their father convinced you to bring them along. I thought you had nearly ten years of experience with captaining a wagon train.”
She pressed her lips shut at the brusqueness of her own voice and glanced toward the rescuers, who were having success in getting everyone out of the water. She needed to check on her patients soon and let go of this petty little ten-year resentment that had been doomed to cause friction between the two of them.
“I’m sorry, Victoria.” Joseph sighed, and the familiar deep voice that once whispered words of love in her ear held a note of sadness.
“Sorry?” Eyebrows raised, she turned back to him and was captured by the depth of those dark brown eyes, as she always had been. But she’d learned the hard way to look past a man’s words and mesmerizing eyes to the character beneath. His behavior had taught her to beware of other men, though that lesson had come too late for her to avoid his impact on her life.
“We seem to be at odds on this trip when we’re not avoiding one another,” he said. “It wasn’t what I’d hoped for.” Gone was the typical display of golden sunlight in eyes that were often touched with humor. She missed that.
She also missed the man she’d once thought Joseph to be. “Don’t lecture me about avoidance. I wasn’t the one who stayed away for ten years like a sulking child. You knew where Matthew and I were anytime you came to St. Louis.”
“That’s right.” He said the words with an emphasis that implied he’d explained it all, when in truth he hadn’t explained a thing.
“Don’t doubt my gratefulness, I do appreciate your arrival at the perfect time for me to escape an ugly situation, but I don’t understand why you asked me to join you on this trip.”
“I wanted you out of St. Louis. I worried about you all winter after word reached me about Matthew’s death.”
“Then where were you all winter?” She’d wondered that several times over the long, hard winter months, when neighbors became unfriendly and the sheriff tried more than once to convince himself that she had been the culprit in Matthew’s death.
“I was in Kansas Territory,” Joseph said, “bound in by snow.”
“Of course. My apologies. I heard the snows hit the Territory hard this past winter.” She couldn’t miss the fact that Joseph was studying her every expression with deep interest.
“I had hoped we could put old disagreements behind us,” he said, his voice softening. “I know you’re angry with me for some reason. You’re brooding.”
She wouldn’t try to deny that. “I apologize for making you uncomfortable.” She couldn’t tell him the truth—that guilt combined with old resentments made her awkward around him. While she grieved for her husband, the truth was Matthew had always known she didn’t love him the way a woman should love her man. Not the way he loved her. Not the way she’d loved Joseph....
“Matthew made me a top priority in his life,” she said. “You did not.” That was, indeed, a great deal of her problem, but it certainly didn’t explain why she’d been unable to dismiss Joseph the way he’d obviously dismissed her. “Indeed, you became engaged to another woman.” That, above all other things, still angered her when she allowed herself to think about it, and this was not the time to allow her temper to flare.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what made you think that, but—”
“Perhaps we could save this discussion for another time,” she said. “I have patients to see.” Without waiting for a reply, she strode away from him toward the crowd of wet and upset travelers. Why had she come on this trip? Now Joseph must think she would always be willing to simply drop everything and do whatever he wished.
How on earth could this situation get worse?
Chapter Two
Joseph stood staring after Victoria’s enchanting, black-clad figure, and considered, as he had dozens of times in these past weeks, that this journey could be his chance to correct past blunders. Yes, she had misunderstood his actions at the worst possible times, believed some wild tales about him that were completely untrue, and yet if he was picking up on the right signals, her heart was trapped in the same position as his. After all these years. It amazed and humbled him.
In spite of all the past tensions between the two of them, his father’s machinations to marry him off to another woman and whatever Matthew had convinced Victoria to believe, Joseph suspected, with growing excitement, that something within her wanted to block out all the efforts made by others to keep them apart.
Not that he would want his old friend—and perhaps foe, at least in romance—to die in order for Victoria to see the truth about their enduring love. Joseph was no romantic. Most folks married for the sake of necessity, and they had good, strong marriages. But for Joseph, there had always only been Victoria.
It mystified him still. Some people were meant to be together; he and Victoria were two of those people. He’d known it since their first kiss, his first desire to marry her and take her out of St. Louis and carry her home to meet his family.
If anyone should feel slighted about that time, it should be him. He’d merely wanted to introduce his soon-to-be fiancée to his family and friends at home, take her with him as he cared for family, being the oldest son.
Yet Victoria would have nothing to do with that; she detested slavery, and his father owned slaves in Georgia. Yet would she be gracious and allow him to prove his convictions to her? No. She merely rejected him. He had determined on his way back to St. Louis from Kansas Territory that he wouldn’t be so easily kowtowed this time.
Ahead of him, the woman who occupied his thoughts nearly slid to the ground. He caught up with her and reclaimed her arm, because if she fell again she could end up as a patient instead of the much-needed doctor. He resisted the impulse to remark on what she’d just said. She
