Page 5 of The Love Knot

“All this belongs to you?” A uniformed porter raised a brow at Pieter when he began separating and stacking his trunks and crates into a neat pile to the left of the rest of the luggage.

Pieter nodded. “Ja.” A man making a new life for himself needed to be prepared. One crate held his grandmother’s wooden cheese molds, which his moeder had brought over from Holland. Another held churns, paddle spoons, bowls, and a set of decorative butter molds.

Texans might prefer beef cattle, but Pieter had come from generations of Dutch dairymen and had apprenticed with a cheese maker in Rochester. He had a plan, and after five years of working and scrimping, he had the money and skill to make it a reality. Yet the victory would be hollow without Claire by his side.

He glanced back toward the bench where she sat, her head bent close to Liam’s, her smile soft and sweet. Longing speared Pieter through the chest. He had a steep climb before him. Yet standing at the base of a cliff and wishing to be at the top wouldn’t get him there. He needed to dig in his toes, grab a handhold, and start the ascent.

He faced the porter. “Is there somewhere I can store these for a time?” He gestured to the crates and his trunk of personal belongings. The smaller steamer trunk Polly had sent would go to Claire.

“We have a storage room in the depot, sir. We can put your things there, if you like. I’d be happy to cart them for you.” The porter’s eyes brightened, no doubt anticipating a healthy tip.

But Pieter had been scrimping too long to start tossing money around now. He hefted the first crate up to his shoulder. “I’ll see to them.”

Once the luggage was settled, Pieter collected his small satchel of personal items, slung the strap over his head to lie across his body, then grabbed Polly’s steamer trunk. The poor thing had been battered when his journey began, but after a few days in a baggage car, it barely held together. As much as Pieter appreciated the thrift in continuing to use such an item, if it failed to hold its contents, it wasn’t serving the purpose for which it was intended. He’d have to get Claire a new one.

If she chose to join him in Snyder. Pieter frowned a bit as he walked back to the bench. He probably shouldn’t get ahead of himself.

“Oh good, ye’re back. I think Liam needs a change of his napkin.” Claire ceased digging in the bag he’d left with her and eyed the trunk he carried. She pushed to her feet in expectation and shifted the babe to lie on her shoulder.

Pieter set the trunk on the bench beside her, but he knew she wouldn’t find what she was looking for. “It only holds linens and trinkets. No diapers. I checked at the last stop.”

Claire lifted her hand from the trunk lid and turned to look at him, her blue eyes luminous. His heart thumped. Heavens, but he loved her eyes. So bright. So full of life. Open and honest. And at the moment, flummoxed.

“What d’ye mean, there’s no diapers in the trunk? There be none in the bag, neither. I know me sister can be a bit irresponsible, but surely she did not send ye all this way without a change of underthings for the baby.”

“Nee. She sent just enough. I put the last one on him this morning.” And seeing as how before this trip he’d never diapered a babe on his own, he thought he’d done a pretty fair job of it.

Claire stared at him, and not in the way he would have wished. “So where be the soiled ones?”

“I disposed of them.” The foul-smelling cloths had made him gag. He hadn’t wanted to subject the other passengers to such a vile odor. Especially not in the stuffy, enclosed space of a railcar.

Her eyebrows arched upward. “Ye disposed of them.”

Why did she make it sound like a crime?

“And here I always thought ye the thrifty sort. Should’ve known all that hobnobbin’ you’ve been doin’ with the fancy folk over in Rochester would change that about ye, too.”

“What fancy folk? I worked at a dairy, Claire. Shoveling manure and making cheese.” And learning every inch of the business so he could duplicate Mr. Ellmore’s success when he started his own enterprise. What did she think he’d been doing the past three years? Wining and dining with the social elite? That was his brother’s angle, not his.

Well, except for that one time.

That one disastrous time that drove Claire out of his life. To another man, a stranger. How Pieter had died inside when he learned that she’d left New York to become a mail-order bride to some shopkeeper in Texas. She’d chosen a complete stranger over him. A man who didn’t love her, who didn’t even know her. It was only when Polly explained that Claire hadn’t gone through with the marriage and instead had been living in a women’s colony, apprenticing as a healer, that Pieter’s hopes had revived and his plans had begun in earnest. Plans he was determined to carry out no matter how much the lady in question glared at him and muttered under her breath about daft men and their tiny brains.

“He shovels manure but can’t be bothered to rinse out a soiled napkin?” she grumbled. “Does he think diapers grow on trees, that he can just pluck another whenever the need arises?” She dug through the trunk herself, tossing quilts and baby clothes to and fro in search of the cloths he’d already told her were not inside. She pulled out what looked like a pillowcase with an embroidered hem and froze. Pink rose to her cheeks before she stuffed the bed linen deep into the trunk.

He had no time to wonder over that odd behavior before she slammed the lid shut, picked up Polly’s bag, and started marching down the street. “I’ll need to purchase some diaper cloth before I can be on my way. Why don’t you stay with the trunk? I’ll be back shortly.”

Her words insisted he keep his distance, but the trepidation lining her face as she gazed down the street fired his protective instincts. Something was wrong.

“Wait.” Pieter grabbed the trunk and hefted it up to his shoulder. “I’ll store this at the depot and join you.”

“No!” She pivoted so fast, her skirts whipped around her legs. “There’s . . . there’s no need.”

What was going on? Claire had always been independent and capable. Stubborn, even. But it wasn’t any of those qualities he saw reflected in her eyes as she backed away from him. It was something secretive. And fearful.

Pieter’s jaw tightened. He’d come here to end the secrets between them, to get everything out in the open and reestablish a foundation of trust—one they could build a future on. There was no room for new misunderstandings or suspicions, not if he hoped to regain what he’d lost. However, as she lifted her chin and marched down the street without him, it wasn’t a need to expose her secrets that made him follow. It was the apprehension lingering in her eyes.

Claire Nevin might be a feisty, hotheaded Irishwoman and the backbone of her family since her youth, but she was still only eighteen. Young, vulnerable, and with a babe to hinder her should trouble erupt. Pieter would hang back, give her the freedom to handle things on her own, but there was no way under God’s blue sky that he would let the woman he loved walk into a situation that frightened her without his support.