Lost and Found

Chapter Ten

Lillian's thoughts were a jumbled mess. Their pasts were so different in so many ways. What would he think of her after she told him any of it?

He'd loved and been loved; while she had been tolerated when the occasion called for and forgotten when it wasn't. She'd felt invisible and had long ago accepted that her life would never be filled with anything more.

Convulsively swallowing, she stared into the fire. "He-his name was Richard," she closed her eyes against the ache in her stomach that immediately set in at the mention of his name. "He was ten years my senior and the only son of a friend of my father. When my parents died from fever, Richard offered to marry me... to take care of me."

She shook her head and clucked her tongue. There was no point in lying about it, so she took a calming breath and said, "In truth, I was grief-stricken, standing at my parents' fresh graves, and completely vulnerable to Richard and his unpredictable moods."

Sawyer frowned, but remained silent, worried if he interrupted her, she'd stop talking.

Lillian chewed on the inside of her cheek as she deliberated over how much more she should tell him. "After he declared we were getting married by the end of the month, I didn't know what to say or do to get out of the situation I'd suddenly found myself in."

She gave him an apologetic glance over her shoulder and turned back to the fire, afraid of what she'd see in his eyes if she looked too closely. "I'd been raised to be an obedient and dutiful daughter, to meekly accept what was placed before me and ignore my desires or dreams."

"What did he look like?" Sawyer asked, wondering if he had a doughy weak face to match what she'd revealed. "Paint his picture for me," he watched her as she stood with her eyes closed in front of the fire. "Let me see him the way you saw him."

She gripped her bandaged arm. "He was my height, wiry and pale, even though he spent a good deal of time outdoors. Delicate, I suppose you could say. I remember worrying, in the beginning, after we were first married, that I'd crush him to death while sleeping."

It had been a ridiculous fear. He'd never shared her bed for the remainder of the night after demanding his husbandly rights.

Lillian pushed those nauseating memories aside and continued, "His hair was sandy brown... the color soil turns after a light rain." Her stomach churned in anxiety. She should have tried harder to paint him with kind words, words that would make Sawyer believe she had loved her husband.

She took a deep breath and allowed the words to come without any thought of guarding what she said. "We were married for six years. I suppose it was a tolerable marriage, compared to some, but it wasn't what I had hoped for. If my parents hadn't died, I never would have married him."

The truth startled her for a moment, setting something free within her, and she continued, "We weren't able to have children. He had other things that he believed were a better use of his time than—doing what would be necessary to... produce children." She grimaced and pressed her right hand to her flushed cheeks. Why had she said that? Sawyer didn't need to know such intimate details.

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Sawyer straighten in his chair at the news and decided she needed to divert his attention to less embarrassing topic. "Richard had hemophilia." Yes, that was much better. She cleared her throat and continued, "There was an accident. He should have taken a different mount, one of the farmhands warned him against taking his new mare, but he'd just bought her and rarely listened to anyone other than himself. The mare was extremely temperamental and took exception to his handling of her."

Sawyer grunted, thoroughly unimpressed with what he'd learned of her dead husband so far.

She turned and faced him. "He was thrown and broke his leg when the mare ran over him in her dash through town. The bone broke through the skin—the doctor told me it was a death sentence itself even if he hadn't had his blood disease."