Steel Heart (Historical Western Romance) (Longren Family series #2, Chloe and Matthew's story) by Amelia Rose

already been traveled by wagons and coaches and riders on horseback as the workday began, the snow muddied in places and barren ground showing through.  In places, snow had melted and formed again as ice, dragging down fronds of sage, creating miniature cathedrals that sparkled in the sunlight and seemed composed of flying buttresses and impossible architectures.  Black and white magpies swooped through the frosty air, searching for prey that wisely wasn't budging from its warrens, possibly until summer came back to the desert.  Crows flew higher overhead, finding the warmest currents of air so they could spread their wings and soar.  Once, we saw a winter white cotton tail rabbit shoot across the snow and about midway on our journey, we heard coyotes.
                  Maggie and Hutch rode behind us on a buckboard, their voices a soft murmur like a creek in late summer, except those times Maggie would point something out to Hutch and her laugh would ring across the muffled silence.  Matthew drove the wagon, uncharacteristically silent, enough that I knew he was concerned about my father's reaction and once, as we came around one of the last foothills before the town, he leaned closer to me and said quietly, "I would have your father's blessing on our union but if that's not to be?"
                  I turned so my lips brushed his ear as I responded.  "I will marry you anyway, Matthew Longren.  You'd best know; now you've asked me, you're contracted."  My tone was light.  The closer we came to home, the more he worried and the lighter I felt, the events of the last day melting away.
                  "You'll hold me to it, then?"  He matched my tone.  His eyes still looked worried.
                  Father's not an ogre , I wanted to say, but where his daughter was concerned, that wasn't true.  "I will seek you in any country where you care to hide, sir," I said.
                  I expected him to laugh or to return some challenging essay, but Matthew swallowed and took my hand in his, and said nothing more until we reached my home.
     
                  My father was outside when we reached the house, saddling his horse, one of our neighbors with him, an officious man with a gingery mustache and a tendency to mind everyone's business as well as his own.  They stopped in their preparations when the four of us rode into the dooryard, their faces expressing surprise and concern mixed with relief, my father's white eyebrows, bushy and severely lowered over pale eyes.  Before anyone said anything, the door opened and my mother hurried out, wiping floury hands on a dish cloth.
                  "Chloe Virginia Anders," she said, her tone mixed relief, concern and fury.
                  "You have forgotten which of the parents to truly fear, sir," I said in a low voice to Matthew, but he simply blanched and jumped from the wagon, helping me down instantly as Maggie and Hutch brought their wagon up beside us.
                  My mother reached me about the time my feet hit the snow.  She looked uncertain whether to shake me or embrace me, and settled for a bit of both—a brief shake that turned into an embrace.
                  "Chloe Virginia Anders," she said again, holding me at arm's length and appraising.
                  Chloe Virginia Anders Longren , I thought.  "Mother, I'm sorry, everything is fine.  Matthew took me to lunch," I started.
                  "That was yesterday," my father said.  He and Mr. Flannigan had tied off the horses and come over to us.  Maggie and Hutch, I noted, were hanging back, sort of shuffling around their buckboard as if something needed their attention.
                  Such cowardly behavior.  I'd pay them back somehow.
                  "There needs to be a good explanation where you were since yesterday," my father said.