proving that…well, there was no way to prove it absolutely. Folks believed what they wanted to, and it was easier to see him as a rapist and a violent felon than to find a seemingly perfect lady guilty of perjury. A daughter of a judge didn’t lie.
He’d wanted to save his mother endless heartache. She’d had a happy life and she should not risk it. He’d done the right thing in telling her to leave and to never look back. To return to her house and her husband and tend her garden and raise her horses and live her days in happiness. To forget she had a son. For he’d been all but as good as dead.
After the first day laboring in the brutal winter cold, he’d realized that he’d told his mother the truth. The young man he’d been, the boy she’d raised, was dead. Only a man as hard and fierce as a Montana blizzard could survive. Only a man without heart or soul would last long in endless labor and brutal conditions. He was no longer Duncan Hennessey, Standing Tall, son of Summer Rose, grandson of Gray Wolf.
He stepped out from under the shelter. But as he lifted his face to the rain and let the soothing coolness wash the day’s grime from his skin, Duncan felt alive. He shucked off the government-issue trousers and button-up shirt, scratchy and rough with cheap starch, and the creek water rushed over his toes. The rain washed over him. And he dared to hope that maybe a part of that young man he used to be had survived.
Lightning burned through the angry clouds. He let thunder crash through him. The years of despair and defeat sluiced away and he lifted his arms to the sky, welcoming the deluge as it pounded over him. Hope winged up within him.
He was Duncan Hennessey, a free man, and he was going home. After what was behind him, what lay ahead could only be better. He had family waiting for him. A life to return to. A future to build. Joy lifted him up like the steam from the warm and wet earth.
Joy, he marveled at the emotion. From this moment on, what despair could there be for a man who had his life, his family and his hope returned to him?
He could not know that what lay ahead would be worse than the cruel years in prison.
Far worse.
Chapter One
Bluebonnet County, 1884
The ancient evergreens grew tall and thick, their wide limbs stretching overhead to block out the deep beautiful blue of the Montana sky.
Betsy Hunter, huddled on her buggy’s comfortable springed seat, pulled the Winchester rifle closer, so it was snug against her thigh. As many times as she’d traveled across the high prairie from her hometown of Bluebonnet to the rugged edges of the great Rocky Mountains, not one frightening thing had happened.
Still, she was jumpy. The wind moaned through the trees and those thick, dark branches swung like monstrous arms and thumped and scraped the buggy top as if those trees had come alive and were trying to get at her. Of course, it was only her fanciful thoughts getting away with her. They were trees rooted into the ground and not menacing predators with sharp claws and big teeth and an appetite for town ladies.
She was perfectly safe from the army of innocent pines and cedars and firs. Not that it made driving along this forgotten road any easier. There was always something about this part of the mountain that felt menacing.
Perhaps, it was because she knew he was close—Mr. Hennessey. A loner, a mountain man and the most rude human being she’d ever met, and since she was an optimist who believed there was something good to like in everyone, that was saying a lot.
Mr. Duncan Hennessey was the most cynical, caustic and bitter human being in existence, if he was human at all. He avoided her as if she brought an epidemic of small pox and the plague, so she didn’t see him often on her weekly trips to deliver and fetch his washing. Her first impression of the man was that he seemed more like a great black bear, although shaven and wearing a man’s clothes, snarling and growling at her from his front step.
“This is the way I want it.” He’d commanded as he’d handed her payment up front, plus additional delivery charges for driving out so far from town. “I’ll leave the bag of clothes here on the step. You come, get it, put the clean bag in its place and leave. Don’t knock on the door. Don’t try to talk to me. Just get in that frilly buggy of yours and go back where you came from.”
“But what if you need special services, like a repaired button?”
He’d seemed to rear up even taller at her perfectly necessary question, although he hadn’t actually moved a muscle. His face, his eyes and his entire mood had turned as dark as a moonless night when a storm was building.
“Just repair the damn thing and leave a note in the bag when you return the clean clothes. I’ll pay you next time around. Never—” he’d lifted his upper lip like a bear ready to attack “—never get anywhere near me, you hear?”
What a perfectly disagreeable man—no, beast. That’s what he was. Really. As if she would want to get anywhere near him! “There’s no need to shout. There is nothing wrong with my hearing,” she’d told him as sweetly as she could manage. “I’ll do as you ask, of course.”
She needed his business.
“See that you do!” His dark eyes had narrowed with a fierce threat before he’d turned and slammed the door to his log cabin shut with the force of thunder.
It was his mood that was tainting the forest, she was sure of it. Every time she drove the rutted and barely visible road, for it was always in danger of growing over, she was probably the only vehicle that used it, she could feel the hate like a dark cloud that emanated from him. It was a far-reaching cloud.
It was not only her imagination, for Morris, her faithful chestnut gelding was uneasy in his traces. He swiveled his ears and lifted his nose, scenting the wind. Alert for danger—alert for any sign of him. Morris didn’t like Mr. Hennessey, either. It was hard to imagine that anyone—or anything—could.
Oh, Lord, she’d reached the end of the road. The trees broke apart to make a sudden clearing. There was the small yard, the stable and paddock, and beyond that the little log cabin on a rise. Halfway between the stable and the house there was a bright honey pile of logs. And a man with an ax.
It was him. He had his back to her as he worked. Sunlight streamed from a hazy sky to shine on the finest pair of men’s shoulders she’d ever seen. Muscles bunched and played in smooth motion beneath skin as stunning as polished bronze. Mr. Curmudgeon himself, shirtless, his dark hair tamed at his nape with a leather thong, was splitting wood like an ordinary man, but there was nothing ordinary about her least favorite customer.
As sunlight worshiped his magnificent shape, he drew back the ax and sent it hurling toward the split log. A great rending sound echoed through the clearing as the blade of steel cracked the wood and two pieces tumbled apart.
The hairs stood up on Betsy’s nape as he set down his ax. He hadn’t looked around, but he’d sensed her presence, for he became larger and taller, if that were possible, so that he looked more than his impressive six-plus feet. His shoulders braced, his arms bowed, his big hands curled into fists. Even from her buggy seat, she saw his jaw clamp tightly and the tendons in his neck bunch.
She was early, she knew it. Judging from the grimace on Mr. Curmudgeon’s face, he was not only surprised, but also angry to see her. Well, that was too bad. He didn’t have to talk to her. She didn’t plan on saying a single word. She had his bag of clean and ironed laundry to deliver, neatly folded as always.
