Page 11 of Always to Remember
“I’ll have Lucian help you mount,” he said after several long moments.
Nodding, she turned and tromped to the mare, not nearly as confident with this plan as she had been earlier. Perhaps everything had seemed to fall into place at dawn because she wasn’t completely awake.
She glanced over her shoulder. Lucian was walking toward her while Clay stood in the middle of the field, his back to her, his hat clutched in one hand, his dark head bowed.
Sitting at the table, Clay worked diligently to capture the statue on paper. He wanted Meg to see the monument as he saw it.
Meg.
His hands stilled as thoughts of her filled his mind. Dear Lord, but he’d forgotten how pretty her eyes were. How pretty any woman’s eyes were. It had been so long since he’d looked closely into a woman’s eyes. He wondered what made a woman’s eyes seem so much prettier than a man’s when they were the same color.
Meg Warner’s eyes were a cornflower blue corridor that led to her tortured soul. Had he ever seen so much suffering in anyone’s eyes? He had, but none of the suffering he had seen in the army hospital touched him as hers had today.
How many years younger was she—two or three? He couldn’t remember. Not that it mattered. Her youth had died on the battlefield with her husband. She’d buried her smiles and her laughter with Kirk. That was one of the greater tragedies of war that he hadn’t recognized until he returned home.
Thenot knowingexperienced by those who sat by the home fires was worse than anything the soldiers felt. Soldiers knew if they were alive or dead, but those away from the battle could do little more than worry, and it took a toll on them.
He didn’t think the memorial would give Meg back her youth, but he hoped it would help put the war behind her. She was too young and beautiful to spend her life in mourning. She needed to loosen the tight bun that held her hair captive so her glorious ebony strands could blow freely in the wind. He imagined a woman’s hair felt softer than a man’s. He couldn’t remember ever touching his mother’s hair, but he remembered nights when she came to tuck him and his brothers into bed, and her hair wasn’t braided. On those nights, his father stood in their bedroom doorway waiting for her. As a boy, he hadn’t thought much about it. As a man, he thought about it a great deal, wondering how it would feel to wait for a woman, seeing her hair flowing around her and knowing she sought to please him.
Just before he’d gone to fetch Lucian, the breeze had touched Meg, then moved on to touch him, bringing her scent with it.
Honeysuckle. She smelled of honeysuckle.
He thought about her pert little nose. He’d wanted to smile every time she tilted it to demonstrate her disdain toward him. If her obvious hatred for him hadn’t been so great, hadn’t hurt so badly, he might have smiled.
The lantern on the table cast a yellow glow over his work. The house was quiet except for an occasional board creaking as it settled and an infrequent hiss of the lantern.
He didn’t mind the quiet. What he found difficult was hearing people talk and knowing that none of the words would be directed his way. This afternoon, having someone talk to him had been pure heaven. The anger in her voice, the curtness of her tone hadn’t bothered him nearly as much as it would have if he hadn’t been starved for conversation.
Tomorrow he’d receive a little more conversation when she returned. To prolong her stay, maybe he could explain the sketches. He never drew sketches as finely as his father had. Clay saw the images in his mind, and his hands could carve what his mind saw, but they were too big and clumsy to draw what he saw.
He studied the drawing as he envisioned the statue from the front. The lines gave him all the information he needed, and he hoped Meg would understand what the monument would reflect when he was finished. He moved the top sheet of paper aside and bent over the unmarred white paper that remained. Two sides of the memorial would be equally important. He set to work sketching what he was certain would be his favorite portion of the monument.
Hearing the door to his brothers’ bedroom open, he lifted his gaze. Scratching his backside, Lucian stood in the doorway as naked as the day he was born.
“You still up?” Lucian asked through an open-mouthed yawn. “It’s gotta be after midnight.”
“I wanted to finish these sketches.”
Lucian shook his head. “You think she’s bestowing upon you some honor?” He snorted. “God, you’re so damn gullible. She was tempting you today. She’s not gonna have you make a monument. Why would she ask the town’s coward to make a tribute to its fallen heroes?”
Clay slipped his fingers between the buttons on his shirt and rubbed his chest. “I don’t know why she asked. I haven’t figured it out yet. I’m not even sure I care. I’ll be carving again, and this time, I’ll create something that’s not going into a graveyard.”
Lucian ambled to the sideboard, dunked the dipper into the bucket of water, lifted it, and poured the water over his dark head. The water fell to his shoulders, then slid down his body to create a small pool on the puncheon floor. “It’s so damned hot tonight I don’t know how you can sit there with all your clothes on.”
He sauntered to the bedroom door, halted, and glanced over his shoulder. “You’re wasting your time. She won’t come tomorrow.”
She didn’t come.
With his fingers wrapped around the paper that he’d rolled into a scroll, Clay sat on the porch. The sun had long since disappeared over the horizon. The stars dotted the blackened sky like minuscule diamonds thrown haphazardly onto velvet. The heat of day faded into the warmth of night.
She wasn’t going to come.
He unfolded his body and tapped the paper against his thigh. He inhaled deeply, wanting to smell honeysuckle. He listened to the crickets, wishing their cadence resembled a woman’s voice.
He walked into the silent house. His brothers had gone to bed earlier, leaving a lone lantern on the table beside the meal Clay hadn’t eaten. He picked up the lantern and went to the room that had once belonged to his parents, the room where Lucian had slept until Clay returned.
Closing the door, he tossed the scroll onto the bed, then knelt before the oak dresser and set the lantern on the floor. He pulled out the bottom drawer. The scent of gunpowder from long ago wafted out through the opening. He removed a worn and frayed canvas knapsack and carried it to the bed.
