Chapter 63
“You put that in the ranch book?” he asked.
“It concerns ranch history.”
“It concerns my marriage.”
“At Broken Spur, the two appear difficult to separate.”
He came around the table.
Henrietta raised a finger. “Do not smudge the figures.”
“I have been told I am dangerous around numbers.”
“You are.”
He bent and kissed her temple.
She allowed it.
A month later, three cattlemen rode into the yard beneath a sky so blue it made the distant mountains look close enough to touch.
Henrietta sat on the porch with the ledger open across her lap, checking feed costs against the spring herd count. Her cane rested beside the chair, though she needed it less on warm afternoons. Wind lifted a strand of hair across her cheek.
Calvin came from the barn with the visitors behind him.
His limp remained, but it no longer seemed to anger him.
He stopped at the porch.
Henrietta looked up.
For one instant she remembered another day: a magistrate, an ivory dress, a man turning away before he had even tried to know her.
Calvin met her eyes.
There was no shame in his face now.
No calculation.
No bargain.
He turned to the cattlemen.
“This is my wife, Henrietta Brooks.”
Nothing more.
No explanation of her father.
No mention of five thousand dollars.
No joke about bookkeeping.
No possessive claim sharpened against another man.
Just her name.
Henrietta closed the ledger.
Calvin climbed the porch steps and held out his hand.
He did not take hers.
He waited.
Henrietta looked at that weathered hand, at the scar across his knuckles from striking Silas months ago, at the fingers that had once signed a marriage agreement as though affection could be kept outside its borders. She thought of a ravine beneath a white sky, a rope cutting into her waist, a burning office, torn paper falling into a cold stove.
Then she looked at her husband.
And gave him her hand freely.