Silver Heart (Historical Western Romance) (Longren Family series #1) by Amelia Rose Read Free Book Online Page B

and that I wouldn't stop him, and at the same time, I never wanted it to end.
                  He let go of me abruptly.  From the sitting room had come a harsh cry.  Matthew was awake, had moved, perhaps in his sleep, his injury forgotten until the stab of pain woke him.  He didn't make another sound but Hutch Longren pulled away from me until only our hands remained linked.  Hands and eyes. 
                  But he was clearly thinking now, worrying about his brother, and I collected myself enough to nod in that direction.  "Make sure he's all right," I said and tried to reclaim my hand.
                  He smiled, and drew my hand to his lips before he released it.  "Sleep well," he said, and was gone before I could think of anything to say.
                  Heart pounding, I stepped into the room he had prepared for me and shut the door.

Chapter 5
     
                  I did not sleep well.
                  Coyotes called at all hours of the night.  In the East, we thought the coyotes a fiction of the wild legendary West and further, that they bayed at the full moon.  Whether the moon was full or not, I didn't know. I hadn't paid any attention but somehow doubted that it was.  The coyotes were simply alive within the night, and their lonesome cries sometimes sounded like laughter, and always at my expense.
                  At first, I fell into bed, anxious and awake and in a tumult of confusion when first Mr. Longren left me and then, the moment my head hit the pillows, I discovered I was drained.  I couldn't read any of my Bible, couldn't read any of the novel I had brought, and ignored all the way across the country as Great Aunt Agnes talked and many newly formed states rolled by.  I couldn't keep my eyes open and I blew out the lamp, laying back in the intense darkness, which gradually dissolved to starlight outside the bedroom window.
                  When I slept, I dreamed. Of Jason Seth, stalking about like a monster, coming after not Matthew Longren but his brother, looking to take the mine, the house, and any monies that returned and, maybe, to the victor go the spoils – me.
                  I dreamed of Joseph Gibbons, interchangeable with Jason Seth because I had heard their names together and knew neither man.  Both of them became the doctor, wagging a warning finger at me, letting me know that this was his territory, these men were his to treat – or to lose, if an accident at another mine kept him too long from the gunshot wound.
                  And then, at last, naturally, I dreamed my confusion and fear and feelings, seeing first Hutch and then Matthew, the two of them changing places, each of them walking with me through gardens that couldn't bloom in this arid land and kissing me, as wonderfully and fully as my husband-to-be had kissed me the night before.
                  I woke tangled in the sheets at dawn, exhausted and cross and half wishing I was back in Boston.  But the land smelled fresh and wet at that hour, and the moon was just setting, I could see the glow to the west.  The coyotes had retired for the night and half a dozen rabbits ran across the garden when I stood and moved to the window.  They seemed not in the least intimidated by the scarecrow someone had hung out there.
                  My room was in a wing built out from the house, probably directly under Mr. Longren's, as I'd heard his boots the night before.  My room looked out into the garden to the west as another window looked to the north.  If I stood to the edge of that window, I could almost see into the kitchen.  Instead, I stood looking at the garden, at the tops of corn I'd seen the day before, and the small orchard beyond that, a collection of fruit trees.  Someone had been caring for the garden and I doubted it was Mr. Longren.  That duty would fall to me, I