The Ruby Brooch (The Celtic Brooch Trilogy) by Katherine Logan

direction. Her face flushed again, but she didn’t drop her gaze.
    The resemblance to her ghost was uncanny. She half expected him to reach out his hand to her. He didn’t, but he did check the time on his pocket watch. Then, before he returned the timepiece to his pocket, he rubbed the case cover with his thumb in the exacting manner she’d witnessed dozens of times.
    She felt like a player in one of Shakespeare’s play and hoped to hell it wasn’t a tragedy.
     
     
    WITH A FEW HOURS to herself while she waited her turn to cross over on the ferry, Kit sat by the water with her journal. The memory of Cullen throwing the rock continued to play in her mind. He moved with the grace of a dancer and the power of an athlete. Keeping her eyes off him, her mind clear of him, and her fantasies free of him were damn near impossible.
    Tate trotted over and laid his head on her lap, ears relaxed. She rubbed his neck. “Well, look who’s here. So you want to spend time with me now, huh? Where’s Elizabeth?” He lifted his head and looked back toward the wagon. “Surely you’re not hiding from her. Has she worn you out?” He nudged Kit’s hand with his muzzle, dog speak for, rub me again. And she did. “I need both hands to draw. If you want to sit with me, be still.”
    He rolled over and went to sleep.
    “Bless your dirty paws, Tate.”
    During her teen years, her dad had nurtured her passion for painting. He had been a dynamic artist who painted abstract shapes with vivid shades of red, green, and yellow, while she preferred muted colors and comforting landscapes. He had encouraged her to be more expressive and passionate.
    “Close your eyes, stretch, capture the world through other senses,” he had said. “Paint what you taste and smell and hear not only what you see.”
    “You paint your way. I’ll paint mine,” she had told him. But she could no longer paint her way, nor could she paint landscapes in muted color tones. Not anymore. Not since the crash.
    Her eyes closed, and she chewed on the end of her pencil. Stretch and capture the world through sight and sound and smell.
    She opened her eyes and watched the activity on the river. On the opposite bank, an army officer and his command waited for their turn to cross. On her side, the south side, prospectors and pioneers heading west lined up their rigs and waited. What was she not seeing?
    She closed her eyes again. The faces of the men flashed one by one in her mind. John, the boys, Henry, Cullen. They all held the same subtle fear. While tension reflected across their taut faces, the fear they tried to hide from themselves and each other clouded their eyes.
    She looked down at her journal. In the top corner of the page, she drew an eyeball. Then she concentrated on blocking out the hype and hooey and catch-me-if-you-can laughter. Underneath the discordant surface sounds, she discovered the fragile, melodious song of a wren.
    Kit sketched a bird next to the eyeball then focused on the overpowering smells in the air—coffee cooking in fire-blackened pots and bacon frying in cast iron skillets. She sniffed again for the elusive smell she knew had to be there. Breathing deeply through her nose, she caught a whiff, a faint whiff of sweet-scented verbena.
    The sights, the sounds, the smells all simmered together in her mind, and then as if her graphite drawing pencil had a mind of its own, it slid across the textured paper, pulling timbre and melodic details from her imagination. Her hand glided with the fluidity of a symphony conductor’s baton.
    After an hour of drawing and blending and sculpting shapes out of light and shadow, she set the pencils and erasers aside. Tears streamed down her face as she gaped at the finished drawing. Although the sketch included only shades of gray, there was a level of realism and depth she had never mastered.
    From one side of the page to the other a rope bridge dangled inches above a river flaunting white-capped waves. One-half