Free Waltzing In Ragtime by Eileen Charbonneau Page A

—”
    “Don’t.” Her fingers danced nervously against his mouth. “I’m so happy. You don’t have to love me back. But don’t say you regret it.”
    The goose honked madly as Matthew Hart lifted her off her perch and kissed her as if he were hungry for more than the warm eggs in her skirts.
    He carried her to a pile of fresh hay, found their coffee, and joined her. They drank, she sipping, he in his long, gulps as they watched a swallow’s flight among the rafters. Olana leaned back. The silence between them was still charged, but now with a kind of peace that allowed her to enjoy the soft weave of his sleeve
brushing her cheek, of the way the thin lines of steam from their coffee found each other, mingled.
    She felt his chin nudge the hair off her forehead. The simple gesture was making her breasts tingle. Did he know? The chin was suddenly gone, as was his arm from her shoulder. Even his scent of coffee and pine and leather seemed to be drifting away, though he hadn’t moved from her side. She couldn’t bear it. Olana took up his hands. She turned them over, traced along the long, powerful fingers, calloused, but gentle, warm, and now — quivering?
    “Matthew, the other women, before me. Which taught you how to be … so loving?”
    His eyes shot back to the barn swallow. “Don’t ask me that.”
    “Why not?”
    “Ain’t … proper.”
    She laughed. “I thought I was too concerned with propriety!”
    He shrugged.
    “However did you know all those places …” She touched between her breasts where he’d settled his feathery kisses the night before. “How to make me feel so —”
    “It’s not me,” he insisted. “I can’t make you feel anything. It’s you do the feeling.”
    She touched his chin, trying to discover the outline of his face. “You don’t have to tell me everything. I don’t think I could bear everything. One. A teacher. A name.”
    “Lottie,” he surrendered.
    “Lottie.”
    “I dreamed of her,” he ventured further. “The day of the storm. She sent me out to get you.”
    “Matthew.”
    He put his head back in the straw, winced. “Listen to what I’m telling you. And I ain’t even drunk.”
    “I think it’s wonderful.”
    “So do I,” he admitted.
    “When did you know her?”
    “Years back. In the Klondike.”
    “But, there weren’t any women in the Klondike, at least none except — Olana’s mind raced, searching for explanations besides the blatant one. She found none. “Matthew, you didn’t consort with a —”
    “She ain’t a whore now, she’s dead. You satisfied?”
    He stood, yanked a pail through a bin of oats, brought it to the horses. Olana followed him.
    “You loved her?” she whispered.
    “What if I did?” he demanded.
    “If you did, I would understand better. Oh, Matthew, do be patient with me!”
    He turned, stood over her. “Come,” he said quietly. He took her hand and led her behind the grain bins. The small area was scattered with sawdust and shavings. He uncovered a length of tarpaulin from a sleigh. She stared. This is what the weeks of banging had been about. The sleigh was a curious, mixed design — long, like the husky-pulled ones she’d seen in lithographs of the Alaska gold rush. It had room for only her, with a running board across the back for him to stand on. But it was set higher to take on the Sierra drifts. She touched the curved side to steady her hands and thought it graceful in its own way.
    “It’s finished,” he said behind her. “I can bring you back.”
    “When?”
    “Today. We can start out today.”
    “But — the snow.”
    “This will get us through.”
    “Those men.”
    “They’ll be busy tending their feet for a few days. I want you safe before they take any notion to come back.”
    “What about you?”
    “Me?”
    “What’s going to keep you safe if they return?”
    “I have another rifle. And the Colt. And Cal Carson’s Bowie knife besides.”
    “What about your back? You can’t reach