Page 37 of Texas Glory
“Is anyone around here married?” “Dallas is married, but then I reckon you knew that.”
He smiled as though they were sharing a private joke.
“Yes, I knew that.” She waved her hand before her. “I was just going to walk out there and pick some flowers. Do you think it’s safe?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. Just watch out for prairie dog holes. Wouldn’t want you to turn your ankle.”
“Thank you for the warning.”
She walked through the tall prairie grasses, enjoying the feel of the sun warming her face.
Before her accident, her mother had tended a flower garden, the only time she had seemed truly at peace. Years had passed since Cordelia had thought about her mother’s garden, the sweet lilt of her mother’s voice as she had hummed while she tended the flowers, the sharp fragrance of freshly turned soil on her mother’s hands, and the beautiful blossoms that had always adorned each room.
Cordelia bent and plucked a wildflower. She wondered if Dallas would mind if she planted flowers near the veranda. Surely not, if he didn’t mind if she walked beyond the house.
She glanced over her shoulder. The house wasn’t so far away that she couldn’t see it. She could still hear the steady pounding of the blacksmith as he worked.
As though she were a child, she sat on the ground, tilting her head back, and closed her eyes. She had spent long hours reading books to her mother. They had taken Cordelia everywhere that she wasn’t allowed to go while taking her mother to places where she could no longer go.
After her mother had died, Cordelia had continued to retreat into her books. It had been easier than trying to step beyond the boundaries her father had established over the years.
Until she had married Dallas, she had been content with a life that revolved more around fiction than reality. But now she wondered what she may have missed, what did lie beyond her small world.
She only knew that she had no skills when it came to talking to a husband. Each time she looked into his dark brown eyes, her heart sped up, her palms grew damp, and her breath would slowly dwindle away to nothing.
If only he didn’t always seem so angry.
“Well, now, what are you doing?”
She opened her eyes and was greeted with Austin’s smiling face as he hunkered down beside her. He had the most beautiful blue eyes she’d ever seen, eyes the shade of the hottest flames that writhed within a fire.
She held up her solitary flower. “I was picking flowers.”
“There are prettier ones farther out.” He stood and held his hand toward her. “Come on.”
She slipped her hand into his, and he pulled her to her feet. As they began to walk, her hand remained nestled within his. She wished she could feel this comfortable around her husband.
Cordelia heard a small bark. She glanced around, but couldn’t see any sign of a dog. The bark came again, a tiny yip.
Austin released her hand and withdrew his gun from its holster.
“What is it?” she asked.
“A prairie dog,” he said as he picked up his pace. “You stay here.”
She had never disobeyed a man’s order before, and she didn’t know what possessed her to disobey now … perhaps it was the pitiful cry that sounded so much like a hurt child or the fact that Austin reminded her of Cameron and she had yet to think of him as a man.
She saw the small brown animal before Austin did, whimpering as its tongue darted out beneath its long snout to lick its paw.
“Oh, no,” she whispered as she rushed forward, knelt beside the small creature, and studied the iron trap that had captured its paw. “Who would do such a thing?”
Austin crouched beside her. “Head on back to the house. I’ll put it out of its misery.”
She snapped her head around. “I don’t think her leg is broken. Her bone isn’t sticking out like Boyd’s did when Dallas broke his arm.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Austin asked.
Cordelia furrowed her brow. “If you can pull the metal sides apart, I could remove her paw from the trap. Then I could take her to the house and tend her wound.”
