Deborah Camp by Primrose Page A

imagination that morning. There had been no doubt that everyone—man, woman, and child—was staring at her and Grandville Adams. They must have made quite a picture, she thought now as she rocked on the front porch where she’d settled after they’d returned from church services.
    She in her dove-gray dress—her first public departure from her widow’s black since Fayne’s death—and he in his city-slicker vested suit had turned every head as they’d made their way down the center aisle to the third pew from the front. Perkins and the boys had saved them two spaces at the end of the polished pine bench, and they’d had to sit shoulder-to-shoulder and hip-to-hip to fit. Grandy had held his hat, Zanna her Bible, as Preacher Timmons sermonized on the sin of harboring outlaws. Texas was getting a reputation for such practices, he’d shouted from the pulpit, and his eyes had fastened on Grandville when he’d spoken of the “debris blowing onto our beautiful land and trying to pass itself off as something other than common, ordinary trash.”
    She’d felt Grandville grow tense beside her, but hisexpression had remained taciturn, which had pleased her immensely. She liked a man who could control his base emotions.
    Then the singing had started—her favorite part of every church service—and Zanna had stood tall and released her fine soprano. She’d sung a full stanza before she’d noticed the new voice in the crowd, a powerful, tuneful bass, providing a much needed bottom register for the congregation’s choir. It was Grandy, of course, singing without modesty or self-consciousness. Singing grandly!
    Recalling the pride and pleasure she’d felt, Zanna smiled now and closed her eyes against the gray day. He was inside the house, having taken off his fancy clothes before climbing into bed for a nap.
    Guilt shook its finger and Zanna winced. Had she expected too much of him? Had she driven him too hard? Yes, yes. Of course she had. In her quest to keep him busy—too busy to run away or interfere with her—she’d impaired his recovery. Doc Pepperidge had told her so.
    “Let him rest a day or two, dear,” he’d said yesterday while Grandy was still in the other room. “He’s tough, but he’s not made of barbwire and rusty nails.”
    Zanna reached into the pocket of her apron for the handkerchief she always kept there. She twisted it absentmindedly as she always did when she worried with a problem. Grandville Adams was a riddle, but one she was certain she could solve—at least temporarily. She’d told him he’d earned a measure of trust from her, and that was true to a point, but she couldn’t completely trust him because of who he was and what he’d done and where she’d found him. She didn’t like to think of him as “debris,” but he wasn’t an heirloom either. How did a woman handle a man like Grandville? With kid gloves or an iron fist? Which would make the bigger impression on him?
    She’d let him rest today and perhaps tomorrow before she sent him out to the other field waiting for cotton seeds. He was a good farmer, whether he admitted it or not.Secretly, she loved to listen to him speak to the mules and to watch them respond so faithfully, so trustingly. He had a pleasant voice, deep and raspy, holding a boyish lift that did curious things to her heart.
    But she could sense a change in him as surely as she could sense a coming rain or an early freeze. He was healing inside faster than outside. She’d felt his inner strength of character returning. It was reflected in his eyes, no longer a cloudy green but showing more gold around the irises. When his physical strength returned, he would be a handful. She’d need every bit of courage and tenacity to keep him in line and on her land. She might even need to enlist help. Perkins or Sheriff Warwick. Someone. Someone bigger and meaner than she was.
    She saw the buggy and the wagon bobbing along the road, then turning off onto the lane leading