Chasing the Sunset(35)

Maggie scooted off to the kitchen and started on the noonday meal, her mind in an uproar. Lord, she was so jealous she could just . . . just claw the face off that woman down there in the library! She wanted to smack her and knock that pretty hairdo all awry, and then she wanted to scratch Nick’s eyes out for him, for even daring to look at another woman. Maggie groaned, and bent her head down to lay it on the counter.

“What is wrong?” Kathleen asked behind her, and Maggie kept her eyes closed for a moment as she straightened up.

“Nothing,” she said calmly. “I felt dizzy for a moment, that is all. It is past now.”

“Lie to somebody else,” Kathleen said, snitching a piece of cheese from the half wheel on the counter top and popping it into her mouth. She leaned against the cabinets and crossed her arms. “Do not lie to me. I thought your eyes were going to pop from your head when Martha asked for Nick in that sicky-sweet voice of hers. Is Nicky heah?” she mimicked savagely. “I have been dying to slap that woman since we were children and she told my mother I had gone skinny-dipping with Nick and a couple of other boys. I got the whipping of my life, and I did not get to come here for months after that. She conveniently forgot to mention that she was the one who dared me to do it, and then she got Nick to herself for a while after that, the jealous little cat. She always was a sneak, twisting things around to suit herself.”

“Well, evidently she is the kind of woman that Nick is most comfortable with,” Maggie said, tying on a clean, white apron. “I cannot do anything about that.” She whirled around suddenly, her eyes blazing. “Is . . . is she his lover?”

Kathleen avoided her eyes and mumbled something.

“Is she?” Maggie insisted. “Tell me, Kathleen.”

“She used to be,” said Kathleen reluctantly. “If they are not now, it is Nick’s idea and not hers. She has always wanted him. He has not been seeing her lately,” she added quickly, seeing the stricken look on Maggie’s suddenly white face, and then she made the mistake of adding: "She has been staying with her cousins in New York for almost a year."

Maggie bustled around the kitchen slicing bread, ham, and cheese, and warming vegetables for the noon meal. The muscles in her shoulders tensed as musical laughter floated to their ears. Her mouth tightened and she slammed a bowl down on the table, making Kathleen jump.

“I am going for a walk,” she said shortly, flinging the apron over the back of a chair. “Lunch is ready, the table is set, and all you have to do is serve it. I need to get out of here for a while.”

Maggie flounced out the door, letting it slam behind her. She was tempted to open it and slam it once again for good measure, but she resisted the temptation and stomped across a pasture into the forest, then took off at a run.

She ran for what seemed like forever, paying no attention to the scenery flashing by her, ran until her breath grated harshly in her lungs, until her legs cramped, ran until she was so tired that she had to stop or fall down. Maggie leaned against the rough trunk of a maple tree, gasping for breath, her leg muscles trembling from the exertion. She hung her head and wrapped her arms around her knees, and the sobs that took her unaware suddenly wracked her whole body. She lay down in a pile of leaves and wept miserably. After a while, after she had cried out all her anguish and tumultuous emotion, the crying bout eased, and she sniffled and wiped her face on the tail of the gray dress. Maggie uncurled her body to lie flat on her back and stare up at the sky.

The trees around her all wore a mantle of brightly colored leaves, the blaze of gold, bronze, orange, and red making them look for all the world like women dressed in evening finery. The brilliant hues framed a clear sky, and Maggie stared up into the heavens, enthralled. The sky was so endless; it made her feel so peaceful to watch a lonely streak of cloud drift slowly across it. Her problems seemed somehow less significant after she had stared up at the sky for a while. Maggie let herself be lulled into a dreamy state, neither awake nor asleep. She lay there in a trance state, her brain dormant for a while. She lost track of the time as her muscles relaxed and her brain shut down.

The colorful leaves fluttered in the wind, and Maggie shivered. She had not thought to grab a cloak, and now that she was cooling off from her hard run and the hard work of laundry day, it was cold out here. She sat up slowly, her muscles protesting, noting the position of the sun in the sky. She had stayed out here a lot longer than she had intended, she thought, a frown marring her face as she checked the position of the sun in the sky. It would be dark in about an hour. She had left Kathleen to do the rest of the day’s work, just ran off and never came back, with the wash still flapping on the line.

Maggie had been walking for about ten minutes when she suddenly realized that she did not know where she was. She had come so far, so fast, and she had not been paying any attention to where she was going. She had just been running, wanting to somehow leave her problems behind, and she had wandered onto land she had never seen before. Nothing here seemed familiar.

She found an overgrown path that seemed as if it led in the general direction of the house and took it, but it meandered around and took her deeper into the forest, and then the path just stopped. This part of the forest seemed darker somehow, the vegetation thicker and lusher even though it was mid-October, and Maggie doubted if anyone had come this way in years.

She was sincerely cold by now, and starting to get frightened. She had forgotten that she was in the middle of the wild; having been raised in St. Louis, she was not used to being cautious. But there were wild animals out here, and perhaps wild people, too. Nick had warned her more than once about staying close to the house. How could she have been so stupid? She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. The best thing to do, she thought, was to find someplace where she could warm herself up and stay put. When she did not come home, someone would be sure to come looking for her . . . after a while. Something rustled the bushes behind her, from the sounds of it a big something, and Maggie looked around uneasily and took off walking. She did not want to be around if that something decided it wanted her for dinner.

Ten minutes later, she had found a small clearing and was leaning against a tree there. This was as good a place to wait as any, and it was nearly pitch black now. In a few minutes she would not be able to walk around without stumbling over something. She made an enormous mound of dried grasses and leaves and pulled them around her. They helped cut a great deal of that cold wind that was beginning to whistle around, and she actually felt warm and secure for the moment. A screech owl called right above her head, and Maggie started, and then realized what that terrible, scary sound was. She put her hand on her heart and puffed out a laughing breath, trying to relax.

The mournful howl of coyotes drifted to her on the wind, and Maggie looked around

nervously. Coyotes did not bother people . . . did they? Uneasy, she tried to remember any stories she had heard about coyotes, but she had grown up in St. Louis, and the only thing that came to mind were horror stories that she had heard about hungry wolves, and those did not ease her fears. To top it all off, it was beginning to rain, drops falling only lightly, but Maggie suspected gloomily that this light rainfall was just the beginning. The sky that had been so clear earlier was now filled with clouds that diffused the little light from the moon that there was and obscured the stars from view.

Leaves crackled as something moved across them, and Maggie’s heart about jumped out of her chest. She was chilled to the bone now, and soaking wet to boot, and the colder she got, the more frightened she became, it seemed. A twig snapped, and Maggie sank down farther into her bed of leaves and grasses, dry-mouthed with fear. The unmistakable snort of a horse had her sitting back up again.

“Hello?’ she said tremulously, despite thoughts of wild men and outlaws... “Is anyone there?”

“Maggie!” said an unmistakable, angry voice, and she closed her eyes in vexation. Oh, this was perfect.

Why did Nick have to be the one to find her?

The rain was coming down in earnest now, and Maggie called out to him.

“Over here,” she croaked, and the next thing that she knew, Nick was standing over her with a scowl on his much too handsome face, delivering a blistering lecture as he wrapped her in a blissfully warm blanket.

“I did not get lost on purpose,” she finally snapped after he had boosted her up on Jet and climbed on behind her, still scolding. She had been determined to say nothing in the face of his recriminations, but he went much too far with his reprimands. The last straw was when he referred to her as ‘an idiotic, scatter-brained female who did not care if she made others sick with worry.’

“I went for a walk, that is all, and lost my way. I am sure that has never happened to you–you being such a paragon of all the virtues, that is,” Maggie said nastily, driven to the edge not only by his words, but by the feel of his hard body behind hers on the saddle. “But I occasionally make mistakes.”

Nick made a growling reply under his breath, and Maggie was sure that she did not want to know what he had just said. He hauled back on the reins, and Jet stopped obediently. The rain was a thick, cold curtain around them now, and the previously warm blanket wrapped around Maggie was now soggy and cold. The only part of her that was warm rested against Nick, and his heat seemed to burn her through the thick wool.