Maynard's Bride (Western Lawmen Brides Book 5) by Margaret Tanner

Author:Margaret Tanner [Tanner, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Maynard picked up the axe which was stuck in a log at the end of the back porch, and headed over to the wood pile he had seen earlier on. What he told Laura was the truth. This could be a nice little ranch with money spent on it and a man to perform the heavy labor it needed.

He had noticed her work roughened hands and the ground down weariness of her. It must be a terrible responsibility living out here alone with a small child. It took a lot of courage, and one thing he remembered about her, she always did have courage. So, why? Why would she betray everything she had held dear, honesty, integrity and her friends? He could understand her resentment of him after what he had done.

Any woman other than her would have screamed and carried on at his and Emily’s wedding, and she had remained stoic, even if he only had to look into her eyes to know he had broken her heart. “You married the wrong sister,” the little voice inside his head screamed at him.

I didn’t. Emily was beautiful. I loved her in a way I couldn’t love any other woman. “You were obsessed with her. She bewitched you,” the voice inside his head made itself heard once more.

Strangely enough, it had become easier to think of Laurena as Laura now. Maybe it helped to distance himself from their history and expunge his guilt for what he had already done and planned to do to her in the very near future.

Raising the axe above his head, he slammed it into the log he had placed on the chopping block. By the third log, he started to sweat so he took his shirt off. With the sun beating down on his bare back and the frenzied way he attacked the logs, he was soon covered in perspiration. It poured down his face and neck until it lodged in the hair on his chest.

“You will kill yourself if you continue chopping like this,” he muttered. He had always been a deep thinker but not like this. Turning things over in his mind, arguing with himself, trying to recall what had happened all those years ago in Richmond.

“I’ve given you a reward and made your last night a happy one,” Emily had said as she waved goodbye to him at the door of her father’s house before he slipped into the darkness. Last night? If what Laura said was true, Emily had not meant their last night together until the war ended as he had thought, but his last night on God’s earth. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. She was his wife. She loved him.

Cursing, he threw the axe down when he realized he’d swung and missed the log he was cutting and almost hit his leg. Slumping on the ground, he held his head in his hands. There was no way he could prove or disprove what Laura had said about anything, unless she had some paperwork and she would have mentioned it.

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