Only the Heart Knows (The Brides Series)

  Only the Heart Knows

  Lena Goldfinch

  Indigo Road Publishing

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Letters

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Also By Lena Goldfinch

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Smashwords Edition

  Only the Heart Knows © 2016 Lena Goldfinch

  * * *

  Excerpt from The Bartered Bride © 2015 Lena Goldfinch

  * * *

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  Cover images: ©MaxGag (Mountain Lake) |

  ©Callipso88 (Horse)

  * * *

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  * * *

  INDIGO ROAD PUBLISHING

  P.O. Box 144

  Littleton, MA 01460

  For Libby.

  This one’s for you, Mom.

  Chapter 1

  Cross Creek, Colorado, July 1885

  Mandy MacKenna sat at her little desk under her window, scratching her pen nib across the paper, her bottom lip tucked neatly between her teeth. Two more replies to go. Scritch-scratch. Flourish. And blow to dry the ink.

  One done. One to go.

  Dear Ask Mack, began the next letter. She scanned the page. A new rancher was asking for advice, this one needing help drying out damp hay.

  Now that was a problem. They’d had quite a lot of rain the past few weeks.

  As she started in on her answer, the summer breeze crept in through her open window, blowing the sheer white curtains apart. Her loose papers fluttered and would’ve gone off the edge of her desk, but she’d secured them with a heavy paperweight earlier. It paid to be prepared.

  The breeze brought the smell of damp earth. The smell of the earth recovering after all that summer rain. She breathed in, appreciating the healthy smell. Rain meant life.

  The ink had started to bleed into her paper, so she lifted the fountain pen slightly and stretched her back. All the little stiff places in her body complained as she moved. Sitting so long was one of the painful side effects of writing at a desk. She’d go for a ride as soon as she could, she promised herself. Get outside in the fresh air...

  Mandy peered out her bedroom window. The Colorado sky was a deep summer blue this morning and the rolling foothills beyond the cluster of ranch outbuildings seemed especially green after the rains. Even the mountains surrounding their valley seemed a deeper shade of slate gray, as if nature was showing off. She paused from her writing a moment longer to savor the feeling of home the view brought.

  Was there any prettier place than Cross Creek, Colorado?

  And was the sun really so high already? She blinked to clear her vision, feeling as if she’d just come awake. It was indeed. Much higher than she’d expected. How had the morning flown by so quickly?

  She scanned the paddocks out back until she spotted her cousin, Darby, leading his horse out through the open barn doors and into the stable yard. He paused to tuck something into his saddlebag. Mandy had heard Mama asking him if he could pick up a fabric order in town today. Good, she hadn’t missed him.

  Mandy scratched out the last few words of her reply, folded her papers, and sealed the packet with twine. She gathered them up and fled down the stairs, turning on the half landing at a near run. She flew through the foyer into the kitchen, her skirts held nearly to her knees.

  The scent of baking bread enveloped her in a warm delicious cloud as she entered, but she didn’t pause to appreciate it, though the temptation was strong.

  “Amanda Grace MacKenna!” her mother called after her, just as the screen door slammed shut behind her.

  “Sorry, Mama,” Mandy yelled back. As soon as she jumped off the back porch—ignoring the two steps—she dropped her skirts and slowed to a more respectable level. Darby was already mounted, and his horse was ambling down the dirt-packed driveway. She raced after him.

  “Darby!” Mandy grabbed her cousin’s boot in the stirrup, stopping him just as he was about to prod his horse into a faster walk.

  “Well, if it ain’t Little Mack.” Darby raised the brim of his dark brown Stetson. One corner of his mouth tipped up in a half smile.

  Mandy sucked in a breath and pressed her hand to her side. In the early days after they moved here from Massachusetts, she’d gotten winded like this. But she’d adjusted soon enough. When she was younger, she’d enjoyed racing down the dirt road that led into Cross Creek proper, skirting past the silvery blue lake and creek that the town was named for. So it wasn’t that she couldn’t run for a good hour or more—it was more that she’d been sitting too long. Her little sprint to catch up with Darby had given her a stitch.

  His horse, a big lazy chestnut gelding, swung his head around to butt her in the shoulder, a greeting. Mandy stroked his nose.

  “Hello, Jingle,” she said. “Aren’t you a handsome boy?” Jingle bobbed his head, apparently pleased she’d noticed.

  To Darby, she said, “Don’t call me Mack. I already told you that about a thousand times.”

  “But you’ve always been Mack. Always will be.”

  “Well...” Mandy shifted uncomfortably under Darby’s gaze. She kneaded her side surreptitiously through the layers of her shirtwaist, linen shift, and working corset. Whenever her cousin looked at her lately it seemed he knew too much—or at least suspected something. Right now, his nut-brown eyes reminded her uncomfortably of her father. She couldn’t afford for Darby to start asking questions. She’d grown up with him—he could always tell when she was hiding something.

  “I’m not exactly little anymore am I?” she joked, hoping to distract him.

  “Nope, can’t say you are.” His eyes flashed with humor. He liked teasing her, liked to share a laugh at her expense—or even his own. And she could see where he’d think it was funny, her being the tallest woman in Colorado. Most likely. As it was, she could see eye to eye with most men on the ranch and a lot of them were quite a bit shorter than she was. Darby was on the tall side though, like most of t
he MacKenna men. He practically loomed over Mandy by a good five or six inches—on foot, that is. Mandy had always found it easier to talk to him because of that. That and the fact that he never really looked at her as a woman. She wasn’t too tall. She wasn’t too strong. She wasn’t too “manly” looking with her long arms and legs, her strong shoulders. She was simply “Mack,” his cousin and friend. He was as close to her as a brother. Closer actually. Her own sisters didn’t know her half as well as Darby did.

  “Can you bring this to town?” Mandy held up her packet of papers for him to take.

  His fingers closed over it, and he eased it from her grasp, never once taking his eyes off of her.

  “For Mr. Proctor again?” Darby asked, raising his brows.

  “That’s right.” She avoided the unspoken questions in his eyes. “Could you drop it by his office?”

  “What’s this all about, Mack?” he persisted. He’d been dropping her mail in town for months now. She’d dodged all his questions before this—and he always had some—but this time he had an expression on his face that reminded her of Daisy, their best old hunting hound, tracking the scent of a cottontail through the tall grasses.

  “Oh, just a few recipes for the—uh—homemaking section,” she said, making breezy little circles in the air with her hand.

  “There’s a homemaking section?”

  To tell the truth, Mandy wasn’t entirely sure if The Cross Creek Gazette had a homemaking section or not, but she nodded. Then pressed her lips shut in case she felt the urge to blurt out anything else. Best to keep it simple.

  Darby tapped the folded papers against the knee of his leather chaps.

  “Well, are you going to bring them or not?” Mandy asked. For a second, she was afraid he’d say no. He had a certain glint in his eye. He always looked like that right before he did something to make her life difficult.

  She supposed she could saddle her mare and follow him into town, but she didn’t like to raise her family’s suspicions. Well, Mama’s. If she went into town too frequently her mother was sure to start asking questions. Besides, though Mandy was dressed comfortably enough for a ride in her summer-weight split riding skirt and her sturdiest boots, she hadn’t planned on riding into town today.

  “You sweet on this fella?” Darby demanded so suddenly she jumped. He fingered the twine on her packet in a way she didn’t like at all.

  “Nooooo,” she said warily. She wished now she’d never asked him to deliver her precious column to the local paper, but who else could she have asked? No one, that’s who. “Now, why would you think that?”

  “Well, Gus ain’t a rancher, but he’s likely got some appeal for a lady...” he said leadingly.

  “Gus?” Mandy pulled a face. “Gus Proctor? And me?”

  “Why’d you say it like that? Like he’s not good enough for you.” Darby fiddled with her papers, which, to her distress, were still in his hand and not safely tucked in his saddlebag.

  “I didn’t say that,” she protested, genuinely stricken. Gus was a real nice man. He was a pleasant enough fellow to look at too. She certainly didn’t think she was too good for him, but anyone with eyes could see she was a good head taller than he was. But that was neither here nor there. Gus wasn’t interested in her, and she wasn’t interested in him either, not in that way. The only thing Mandy was interested in was the fact that he was her editor. That was all. “Don’t go putting words in my mouth.”

  “Well, then, you won’t mind if I have a looksee at these ‘recipes’ of yours, will you?” Darby pulled sharply at the end of her twine and pulled it free.

  “Don’t!” Mandy grabbed for her papers, but he held them up high, grinning like he was twelve and not twenty.

  “Don’t what?” he asked. “Don’t read your little love note?”

  “Please don’t.”

  “Please don’t,” he echoed in a girly, high-pitched voice—as if she talked like that, which she didn’t—and then it was too late. He’d already started to read.

  Mandy balled her hands into fists, feeling herself begin to shrivel up inside. Now he’d know. He’d know her secret, and then everyone else would know. Unless she could get him to keep quiet. Was there any way she could convince him?

  Darby’s smile slipped. He frowned, and his frown grew deeper as he continued to read. He flipped each page over, scanning her neat rows of script, not missing a single word, or so it seemed.

  “Darby—” she grappled for words that wouldn’t come.

  “You’re Mack? You’re the Mack? You’re ‘Ask Mack,’ the advice column for men?”

  “Well, it’s not like that,” Mandy protested, feeling her face heat. She glanced back at the house, hoping her mother was too far away to hear. The kitchen windows were open, and voices had a way of carrying down here in the valley. She lowered her voice in a meaningful way, hoping he’d take the hint. “Ask Mack isn’t about men’s issues—not about private matters, anyway—or how to court a lady or anything like that. It’s mostly about finances, you know, how to run a ranch better. When’s best to order grain. How to dry out wet hay. That sort of thing.”

  “I’ve read it, Mack. I know what it’s about.” He slowed a beat as he said his old nickname for her. “You’re Mack. You’re ‘Ask Mack’.” He shook his head, as if truly stunned.

  “Would you hush?” she hissed. “It’s not like I’m doing anything improper or—or illegal.” Mandy reached up and yanked her papers out of Darby’s hand. He didn’t even try to stop her this time.

  She picked up the bit of twine that had fallen to the ground and brushed the dirt off. Why, she was practically trembling, she realized. She couldn’t tell if it was because she was so angry—or because she’d gotten caught. She slowly tied up her papers again and just stood there, running her fingertip over the creased edges and pointy corners.

  “You can’t tell anyone.” Mandy ducked her chin, not daring to look up at him. “You need to promise.”

  “What?” he bleated, like his purpose in life was to tell. Like he wanted everyone to hear the news from him first. The rascal. Knowing Darby, he’d relish every moment too. He loved a good joke—and a joke was, of course, only better if it was at her expense. Not in any unkind way, not really. That wasn’t Darby’s way. And, besides, she was no wilting flower. She could give as good as she got. Normally. But this wasn’t normal. This was—well, it felt like life or death.

  “Please don’t tell,” Mandy whispered, looking him right in the eye. He had to know she was serious. He had to know how much this meant to her. He just had to. If the truth came out, she’d be done as a columnist. The whole town would laugh at her. Worse, it would embarrass her parents, and she’d never intended to do that. That was why she’d been so careful this past year to keep it a secret. And now the secret was too big. ‘Ask Mack’ had become something of a local sensation and rumors had run wild as to his identity. People talked about it at the general store. They talked about it after church. They talked about it in church. It would just be too mortifying if people knew the truth. They’d start looking at her funny, like she was different.

  As if she weren’t already different enough.

  “Don’t tell Mama. Or my father,” Mandy pleaded. “They can’t ever know. Especially Mama.”

  Darby slid out of the saddle and stood beside her. For a moment, he didn’t say anything. He glanced down at the papers in her hand. “You never said anything—not even to me?”

  Oh, good gracious, now he sounded hurt.

  Like she’d betrayed him.

  “I couldn’t, Darby. I couldn’t tell anyone. How could I?” She turned her attention to his horse. She scratched lightly inside the edges of Jingle’s ears, and he leaned into it. His expression of pure bliss was so comical she smiled.

  “All this time I thought—” Darby pulled off his Stetson and shoved a hand through his dark wavy hair.

  “You thought what? That I was in love with Gus Proctor?”

  “Well...yes. I
was hoping you’d finally found someone.”

  “Finally?” Mandy stiffened.

  He squirmed under her stare. Good, let him squirm.

  “It’s just that... I just hoped that after all these years you’d found a man.”

  All these years...

  As if she were eighty and not just a few weeks over twenty-one.

  “Oh, you know how to dig yourself into a hole, don’t you, Darby MacKenna?” Mandy narrowed her eyes, hoping to give him a good glimpse of the trouble he was in with her.

  “But you’re twenty-one now,” he protested, evidently oblivious to her pointed glare.

  “So that makes me an old maid? Is that what you’re saying? Well, I know that. Do you think I don’t know that?”

  “Mack—I mean—Mandy—”

  “I’m one year older than you—one—and that’s all.”

  “But it’s different for a man.”

  She sighed. It wasn’t like she’d had much choice in the matter. It wasn’t like any of the men in town looked at her like that. She knew they didn’t. Even Mama knew they didn’t. Well, she was reasonably certain Mama knew that. They’d never truly talked about it. At any rate, not a single eligible man had offered her so much as a ride in his buckboard. And it didn’t look like anyone was fixing to pay her any visits any time soon.

  “I’m not looking for a man.” Mandy leveled her most severe gaze yet on Darby. Perhaps if she looked serious enough he wouldn’t know she was lying, just ever so slightly. “All I want is to help my father with the running of the ranch.”

  Darby blinked. “You know he’s never going to let you do that.”

  “He might.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Let you stay unmarried and tend to his ledgers and—and oil tack for the rest of your life?”

  Well, when he said it like that it did seem unlikely, especially knowing her father and how he felt about marriage, and how Mama wanted lots of grandbabies.