Silver Heart (Historical Western Romance) (Longren Family series #1) by Amelia Rose Page B

his shirt front, dragging him to his feet.
                  I stifled the instinct to cry out.  Matthew had been hurt; Hutch needed to –
                  be careful?  Let go?  Nothing I could say to that effect could possibly improve the situation.  I tried to step forward, tripped over something in the garden, still reaching for Hutch's arm, when his fist flashed forward and caught Matthew on the jaw, knocking him back to the ground.
                  He turned then without looking at me, said in a hard voice, without turning back, "I want you out of here before sundown.  When you are healed, return to the mines.  Don't come back here."
                  "Hutch, wait," I said, and tried to run after him.  His long stride took him through the front gate and out to his horse before I could cover half the distance.  I called to him, tripped again, swore, and finally stopped, standing stupidly with one hand out, tears threatening behind my eyes, hair loose and blowing in an afternoon wind.
                  "Let him go, Maggie," Matthew said from behind me and I whirled on him, furious, only to find his expression as miserable as I felt.  He stood, although awkwardly, keeping the weight off his injured right leg, and he didn't approach me or hold his arms out, only shook his head.  "You can't make anything better right now.  I'll go.  He'll blame me."
                  "That's not fair," I said, and I meant all of it, everything, from meeting Matthew at the wrong time to falling in love with Hutch without telling him, to confusion and the newness of everything and being afraid and in a strange place.  I meant Hutch leaving and having come back when he had and Matthew being shot.
                  "He's my brother," Matthew said, which didn't explain anything.  "It will be all right."  He moved through the corn and stopped beside me, a respectful distance away.  "For what it's worth, there would have been nothing else.  Ever again."
                  It wasn't worth anything.  I didn't say anything, just watched him as he limped to the house to collect his few belongings, and find a way back to his boarding house.
                  Only when the kitchen door closed behind him did I allow myself to whisper, "I know," and let the tears begin to fall. 
     
                  He didn't talk.  Hutch went, as far as I knew, back to the mines that afternoon, leaving me standing in the dusty garden.  The corn rustled in the hot afternoon breeze, reminding me of the sounds it had made when Matthew and I had fallen into the neat, orderly rows.
                  I didn't cry for long.  So much had happened in the last six months, some sort of black cloud had hovered over me.  As the year turned to 1880, my mother had died and my father gone silent.  He'd taken to drinking more than working and an accountant whose numbers don't add up any better than his clients' do soon loses those clients.  With no sons and only one of his five daughters married, he started looking for solutions.  Long before my mother had died, there'd been talk of me marrying Hutch Longren.  It seemed a good match.  He was looking for someone to share his life, someone to help around his house and to keep his accounts.  Maybe to start a family with.  News from the West was slow.  Though we knew the silver market was down as the War ended, we didn't know the silver itself was running out.  My father, he wasn't cruel, he was simply mourning and unable to care for our family as he once had, didn't know he was sending me from frying pan to fire.
                  Six months later, I'd come to rest somewhere I could have been happy.  Somewhere I could have built a life.  Instead, I'd jumped directly into a fire.
                  I cried for shame.  I cried because I was afraid of Hutch's anger.  I cried for