Sweet Boundless by Kristen Heitzmann Page B

before Quillan ordered him down. She watched Quillan circle back, then felt the wagon sag as he climbed up beside her with the dog between them.
    He turned briefly. “It’s just good business.”
    Bene. She knew good business. When she had her own, she would shop wherever she wished.

FIVE
    My will is stubborn as leather before the tanner. Bend it, Lord, to your ways . . . in spite of me.
    —Carina
    QUILLAN TOOK UP THE REINS. They were damp and frosty from the fog. He pulled the leather gloves from his pocket and worked them on. He realized now that Carina had none, but she could keep her hands in her pockets. Or wrap in the blanket if it was really cold at the summit.
    He slapped the reins and whistled to his team. The wagon lurched forward. With a nearly empty bed this portion of the journey would be swift. But not so swift Carina wouldn’t know some discomfort. He didn’t find that thought as gratifying as he’d expected.
    A sidelong glance ascertained her settled against the short back, straight and determined. She was fine. But then, he surmised that even if she weren’t, she would pretend to be. “If you get cold, there’s a blanket under the tarp.”
    She nodded.
    “You sure you want to do this?”
    She turned. “Was the man a Sicilian?”
    “What man?”
    “At the market.”
    “How should I know?”
    She crooked an eyebrow. “Then I should do this.”
    He hated her insinuations. His work was not something he wanted scrutinized by a prima donna with an inflated notion of herself and her skills. They rode in silence as they left Crystal with fairly little difficulty. The fog had cleared the road of most traffic. Quillan was confident he could handle whatever came, but others were not so inclined to risk it.
    For a long while only the rumble of the bed, the clop of hooves, and the creak of wheels and harness broke the silence. Quillan settled into the rhythm of it, anticipating the long hours of solitude. No, not solitude, not this time. At least it didn’t seem that she would chatter.
    Another sideways glance showed her gazing through the fog with a slightly pensive expression. Good. She could content herself with her thoughts as he would his. He toyed with several lines from Byron’s Prisoner of Chillon , then remembered he had promised to lend it to Carina when he’d finished with it. He had never done so.
    He’d taken it with him to Leadville, and it was there in his tent even now. Unless the tent had been raided by someone literate enough to appreciate his collection. Oh, well, she had her own books. He’d helped haul them up the mountainside, where he’d put them over with her wagon. What if that chance encounter had never happened?
    He returned his thoughts to Byron and left them there, wandering the lines and phrases he’d already committed to memory. It was something he’d trained himself to do since he was young and many of his favorite books had been confiscated. He pictured Mrs. Shepard’s face, white with fury whenever she discovered his disobedience. Then the books would be taken, but she couldn’t remove them from his mind.
    So he’d learned to memorize as he read. Then when the books were found and destroyed, he felt a grim satisfaction rather than the previous devastation. He’d learned the books of the Bible he was ordered to learn, but they never suspected he carried the others in his mind as well.
    After a steady two hours, Quillan looked ahead and saw the fog tearing apart as the road climbed. He dared to hope. It could go either way. Sometimes the cloud sat in a gulch and just above it the skies were clear. With any luck it would be that way now. Carina, too, seemed to have noticed the change. She leaned slightly forward, staring ahead.
    The road wound upward and the sky brightened. Quillan’s chest relaxed when he saw ragged swaths of blue in the sky just ahead. When they reached the section of road that passed Wasson Lake, the sun jumped out and ignited the white needles