Chapter 6 - Rowan Creed’s Forgotten Promise
They left before dawn.
Rowan did not take the main trail.
He saddled Bishop and a smaller mare named June, packed food for several days, and guided them north through timber so thick the branches scraped their coats.
Eliza rode June.
Every step hurt.
She refused to say so.
Rowan knew anyway.
“You need to rest.”
“We've ridden twenty minutes.”
“Twenty-seven.”
“That improves your argument?”
“No.”
“Then keep riding.”
A faint smile touched his beard.
They continued.
Neither mentioned Maeve.
Not yet.
Eliza feared what Caleb's note meant.
Had he hurt the widow?
Taken her?
Simply discovered her identity?
Rowan seemed equally worried, though he hid it beneath relentless attention to the trail.
At midmorning they stopped beside a stream.
Rowan helped Eliza dismount.
This time she did not flinch when he touched her waist.
The realization startled both of them.
Rowan stepped away quickly.
Eliza drank.
“Where are we going?”
“Old line cabin.”
“Yours?”
“Used to belong to a survey company.”
“Anyone know about it?”
“Very few.”
“Does Caleb?”
“I doubt it.”
Eliza studied him.
“You're not certain.”
“No place is certain.”
Again, the truth.
She had begun to depend on that.
They followed the stream west.
By afternoon clouds gathered over the mountains.
Rowan looked repeatedly toward the sky.
“Storm?”
“Tonight.”
“It's September.”
“Mountains don't read calendars.”
They reached the abandoned cabin an hour before sunset.
It was smaller than Rowan's home.
One room.
Stone chimney.
Half the roof had been repaired recently.
Eliza noticed.
“You use this place.”
“Sometimes.”
“For what?”
“Being somewhere else.”
She smiled.
“You're already somewhere else.”
“Sometimes I need somewhere else from somewhere else.”
“That may be the most mountain-man thing you've said.”
Rowan almost laughed.
The sound surprised her.
It surprised him too.
Inside, they lit a small fire.
Eliza sat beneath a blanket while Rowan prepared beans.
Her gaze found a mark carved into the table.
R.C.
And beneath it another set of initials.
J.M.
“Who's J.M.?”
Rowan's hand stopped.
Eliza immediately regretted asking.
“You don't have to—”
“My brother.”
“Oh.”
“He died.”
“I'm sorry.”
Rowan stirred the pot.
“He was nineteen.”
Silence.
“How?”
“Me.”
Eliza stared.
Rowan did not look up.
“What do you mean?”
“I was supposed to be watching him.”
The story emerged slowly.
Rowan and his younger brother Jonah had worked freight routes.
One winter, Rowan had ignored storm warnings because the company offered extra pay to complete a delivery.
The wagon overturned.
Jonah was pinned.
Rowan survived.
His brother did not.
“I spent years telling myself the weather killed him.”
Rowan looked into the fire.
“Truth was, I made the choice.”
Eliza understood then.
His obsession with choices.
With permission.
With never claiming safety he could not guarantee.
“You were young.”
“Old enough.”
“Did blaming yourself bring him back?”
“No.”
“Then why keep doing it?”
Rowan looked at her.
She realized she had repeated his lesson.
You don't get to make another person's actions into your failure.
He smiled sadly.
“Fair point.”
Eliza pulled the blanket closer.
“Is that why you live alone?”
“One reason.”
“And my father?”
“Another.”
“How?”
Rowan poured beans into two bowls.
“After Jonah, I stopped taking unnecessary risks.”
“That sounds sensible.”
“It wasn't.”
He gave her a bowl.
“I stopped taking necessary ones too.”
Eliza waited.
“When I found Thomas, he was still alive.”
Her grip tightened.
“He asked me to take him to Fairplay.”
“You didn't?”
“There was a blizzard.”
“You took him somewhere else.”
“My cabin.”
“He died there?”
“Yes.”
Eliza looked down.
“I thought I was saving him.”
“You probably were.”
“He believed evidence in Fairplay needed to reach someone immediately.”
“Who?”
“A lawyer named Nathaniel Price.”
“Did you take it?”
“No.”
Rowan's voice hardened with self-disgust.
“I waited until the storm passed.”
“How long?”
“Two days.”
“And?”
“Price disappeared.”
Eliza stared.
“Disappeared?”
“His office had been emptied.”
“Because someone knew Father intended to contact him.”
“Probably.”
“How would they know?”
Rowan looked toward the door.
“Someone followed Thomas.”
“Caleb.”
“I saw tracks the morning after your father died. Two riders had come within a mile of the cabin.”
Eliza's pulse quickened.
“Why didn't they come closer?”
“Storm covered our trail.”
“Then how did Caleb know you had Father's medallion?”
Rowan was silent.
Eliza understood.
“You saw him afterward.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“A week later.”
“Where?”
“Fairplay.”
“What happened?”
“I asked whether he'd seen Thomas.”
“And?”
“He lied.”
“How did you know?”
“He said he hadn't seen Thomas in a month.”
Rowan's eyes hardened.
“But Thomas had told me Caleb had been riding with him two days earlier.”
“Did you confront him?”
“Yes.”
“What did Caleb do?”
“Smiled.”
That sounded like him.
“He said injured men become confused.”
Eliza's stomach turned.
The same language Caleb now used about her.
Confused.
Unreliable.
Unwell.
A pattern older than their marriage.
“What happened next?”
“Caleb noticed Thomas's medallion around my neck.”
“You wore it?”
“Thomas asked me to.”
“Why?”
“He said Margaret would recognize it.”
“And Caleb?”
“He tried to buy it.”
Eliza whispered, “Of course.”
“When I refused, he warned me some dead men's belongings were dangerous.”
Rowan met her gaze.
“I left Fairplay that night.”
“And found Mother.”
“Yes.”
“What did she tell you?”
“Very little.”
“But she knew Caleb.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Rowan hesitated.
“She called him the devil Thomas invited into their home.”
Eliza closed her eyes.
Six years married to him.
Sleeping beside him.
Trusting him with family accounts.
Letting him console her when nightmares about her father's death woke her.
Her stomach twisted.
“He knew exactly who I was when he met me.”
“I think so.”
“When did we meet?”
“Four years after Thomas died?”
“Two.”
Rowan frowned.
“Two?”
“Yes.”
Something changed in his expression.
“What?”
“Margaret died two years after Thomas.”
“Yes.”
“And you met Caleb around then.”
“Three months after Mother's funeral.”
Rowan stood.
“What?”
“Your mother didn't die from pneumonia.”
The words came too quickly.
Eliza stared.
“What are you saying?”
“I visited her six weeks before she died.”
“She was already ill.”
“No.”
Rowan's face had gone pale.
“She was healthy.”
Eliza rose despite the pain.
“People become sick.”
“Yes.”
“Six weeks is enough.”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you looking at me that way?”
Rowan reached into his coat.
He removed a folded letter.
Old.
Yellowed.
“I've carried this for eight years.”
Eliza took it.
Margaret Mercer's handwriting covered the page.
Mr. Creed,
If anything happens to me before Eliza returns from St. Louis, you must assume Thomas's enemies have discovered that I still possess part of the records.
Do not come to the house.
Do not trust the sheriff.
And above all, keep Caleb Rourke away from my daughter.
Eliza read the final line again.
Her vision blurred.
Caleb had entered her life three months after Margaret died.
Not by chance.
He had been searching.
For the ledger.
For the cedar box.
Maybe for Eliza herself.
Outside, thunder rolled across the mountains.
Rowan moved toward the window.
Lightning flashed.
For a moment the forest became white.
Then Eliza saw something between the trees.
A horse.
No rider.
Dark saddle.
Silver trim.
She stepped closer.
Her blood chilled.
It belonged to Maeve Calder.
May you like
And across the saddle horn someone had tied Maeve's blue shawl.
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