Free Mary Connealy by Montana Marriages Trilogy Page A

us
again
we don’t have to get married, Ma? ‘Cuz I got chores.” Emma pulled her gloves free and started tugging them on.
    “I’m done for now.” Belle wasn’t really. She didn’t think she’d said enough. “I just…Today, hearing about that young girl passed around like she was a box of groceries, it just hit me hard.”
    She looked from Lindsay to Emma and back. “I want to save you from husbands if I possibly can.”
    The three of them looked at Anthony. The way he sat, his head leaned back, he looked like he was catching a nap. Resting up for bedtime, no doubt. It didn’t matter if he was rested or not, he had his own bed. Belle slept with her cast-iron skillet these days.
    “We hear you, Ma.” Emma headed for the hog pen.
    “Loud and clear.” Lindsay went to saddle her horse.
    Belle watched them walk away. Her pride in them…well, she was back to holding on to her temper to keep the tears away. She laid her hand on her baby, due in early spring.
    Be a girl. God, let her be a girl.
    She went in to have the same heart-to-heart talk with Sarah. Even at eight, the child wasn’t too young to learn her lesson. Belle ignored the pain of Anthony’s betrayal. It was an old pain. Instead, she nursed her fury over the fate of that poor, sweet, helpless Cassie Griffin Dawson.

    It was, quite possibly, the sweetest moment of Cassie’s life, at least the sweetest in the years since her mother had died. Cassie stood, stunned at Red’s kind speech about Griff and her baby and keeping his distance.
    For the first time, Cassie realized that Red was very young. He carried himself with such ease, and he was treated with deference by a lot of men and as an equal by the others. For some reason she’d been thinking he was Griff’s age. But the twisted hat and the stuttered speech made her think differently. Now she wondered if he wasn’t about
her
age. He had to be twenty-one to file a homestead. But if he’d been here two years like Griff and her, Red could be twenty-three, a barely grown boy striking out on his own in the West. She wished she had the nerve to ask him his age. That wouldn’t be too forward a question for a wife to ask. Or would it? She wished Griff was here to tell her.
    She explored the cave she now lived in, and somehow the combination of realizing her husband was hardly more than a boy and finding out she lived in a cave made her feel young and adventurous. She’d gotten to thinking of herself as the same generation as Griff, but she was only eighteen.
    The bedroom was large and very dark. There was a good-sized bed. Only one. Not two smaller ones like Griff said was appropriate for a married couple. In fact, at Griff’s house she’d had her own room. She felt heat rush into her face as she realized what she’d been offering when she told Red he could join her in the bedroom. If he suggested staying in the front room again, she’d agree.
    She found the little notch in the back of the room. The passage winding away into the heart of the mountain caught her imagination and she was sorely tempted to explore. She stepped away from it. She had to ask Red first. She didn’t want to start her marriage by being disobedient.
    She left the bedroom and went into the cooler. She was amazed at the drop in temperature. She followed the pleasant trickle of water, careful not to trip over anything. She was clumsy and she’d gotten worse with the baby on the way. Griff had rebuked her for it many times.
    She found a brisk little spate of water pouring out of a crack in the rock. It landed in an overflowing pail on the floor and disappeared into the ground. She touched the water and shivered from the frigid temperature. Cold water. What if it stayed cold in summer? What a luxury that would be.
    Her eyes had adjusted to the dim light and she saw food piled everywhere. Hams hanging over her head. Eggs! Cassie hadn’t eaten an egg since she came west. It was all she could do not to grab one and take it