Free Gingham Bride by Jillian Hart

street.”
    “Aye, and to see my grandfather’s horses run, why, that was pure joy.” He ignored the bite of emptiness in his chest, longing for what was forever lost. Failure twisted deep within him, and he couldn’t speak of it anymore. “So as you can see, tending two horses and a cow was no trouble at all.”
    “It hurts you to talk of what is past.”
    “Aye. Just as it is painful for you to talk about what is to come.” He wished he were a different man, one who knew the right thing to do. Leaving could not be right, but staying could be no solution. Fiona wasn’t his concern, although he’d spent his life hearing of the pretty flower of a girl he was expected to marry. Perhaps that was bond enough. He cleared his throat. “It was hard when we lost the last of our land. We sold off parcels one at a time, but we could not stave off losing all of it. The hardest part was letting go of the good memories that happened in the house where I was raised. Where my ma would bake cookies for me before she passed away and my grandmother would play the piano in the afternoons. When I was working with my grandfather in the corrals, the music would drift over to us on the wind.”
    “You are a rich man, Ian McPherson, although I do not think you know it. To have had a family who loved you and memories to hold close like that has to be the greatest wealth there is.”
    “I’ve never thought of it that way before.” Material wealth had always been a great source of pride in his family, and the loss of it was a great humiliation that had taken the fight out of Grandfather and weakened Nana’s heart. He had been fighting so hard to restore his family’s wealth, he had not taken the time to consider anything more. But seeing what Fiona had here and how loveless her life was, he saw his childhood with a new perspective. His nana’s kindness, his safe and secure upbringing in spite of his father’s excesses and tempers and a long apprenticeship with his grandfather, who had taught him more than a profession but a way to face life, as well.
    What would you do, Grandfather? He asked, knowing there was no way to be heard, that heaven was not that close. But he thought of the man who had taught him the difference between right and wrong and who had understood his failures, in the end. Failures he felt as powerfully as the bite of pain in his bad leg. He had spent a good part of the night drawing her face and trying to capture her spirit on the page, and those hours stuck with him. When he ought to leave, his feet did not move and a farewell remained unspoken, lodged somewhere near to his heart.
    “How is your hand after all that work?”
    Not a single word rose up to rescue him as she breezed closer through the gray shadows. With no lantern to light her way, she came like dawn after the night. Sweetly she gathered his hand in hers. Lord help him, because he could not move. As if paralyzed, he stood helpless, captive to her featherlight touch and compassion.
    “It doesn’t look as if you broke it open.” She bent close, scattering dark curls and diamond flecks of melting snow. “Let me change the bandage.”
    He shook his head, his only protest, and struggled to clear his throat. She affected him, there was no doubt about that, when he didn’t want to be. He knew her by memory, those big, wide-set eyes framed by lush black lashes, the slope of her nose speckled with a light scattering of freckles, the curve of her cheek, the shine of her smile and her gentleness that touched him now as she prodded at his wound. A line of concern creased her porcelain brow.
    “It will only take a minute and then you can be on your way back home. Come, sit on the grain bags and I’ll get started.”
    The thought of sitting close to her, breathing in her rose-and-snow scent and fighting emotions he didn’t want to feel choked him. Panic sped up his uneven pulse. “No need to go to the trouble.”
    “What makes you think it would be any