In Honor's Defense (Hanger's Horsemen Book #3)

Karen Witemeyer

• Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780764232091
• eBook ISBN: 9781493437207

He's Faced Countless Perils on the Battlefield, but Nothing so Dangerous as Falling in Love.

Luke Davenport has been fighting all his life--for respect, for country, and for those unable to fight for themselves. But now that his Horsemen brothers are domesticated, he's left alone to battle the wildness within. When an opportunity arises to take a job on his own, tracking down a group of rustlers, he jumps at the chance.

Damaris Baxter has mastered the art of invisibility. Plain and quiet, she hides in books and needlework, content to be overlooked. Until her brother dies suddenly, leaving her custody of her nephew. She moves to Texas to care for Nathaniel, determined to create the family for herself that she never thought she'd have and to give him the family he desperately needs.

When Nate finds himself knee-deep in trouble, Luke's attempt to protect him leaves Damaris feeling indebted to the Horseman. But suspicions grow regarding the mysterious death of Damaris's brother. And the more questions they ask, the more danger appears, threatening the family Luke may be unable to live without.

"Karen Witemeyer's use of descriptive narrative, character-revealing dialogue, and historically accurate elements and details draw the reader in from the first sentence."--Women Writing the West

CHAPTER
ONE

MADISONVILLE, TEXAS
SIX WEEKS LATER

Nathaniel? Is that you?” Damaris looked up from the misshapen loaf of bread she’d just turned out from the pan.

Running footsteps thundered down the hall, but no voice rang in answer to her question. Not that she expected a response. Her nephew preferred pretending she didn’t exist to engaging in any form of verbal communication. Sullen looks, exaggerated eye rolls, and stomping frustration were more his style. After she’d arrived in Texas, it had taken less than a day for her beautiful delusions of mothering a sweet, heartbroken boy out of his grief to wither and die in the face of reality.

At fourteen, Nathaniel was more man than boy, at least in stature and stubbornness. He matched her in height and surpassed her in cunning, constantly finding new ways to torture her. She’d been awakened by a chicken pecking at the quilt threads atop her midsection, a snake slithering down the back of her nightgown, and a pair of frogs dropped on her face. It had taken more fortitude than she’d realized she possessed not to run screaming back to Aunt Bertha.

Yet underneath all the pranks, sarcasm, and anger lived the little boy she remembered. A boy who’d lost the linchpin that held his life together—his father. Was it any wonder he was spiraling out of control? He had no one to tether himself to. No one except her, an aunt he barely knew and trusted even less.

After crying herself to sleep for the first week, mourning not only her brother but her starry-eyed dreams of home and belonging, Damaris resolved to meet her nephew’s challenge. Self-pity never accomplished anything. If she wanted a real relationship with her nephew, she’d have to fight for it. Stubborn for stubborn. No matter how hard he pushed, she’d prove herself reliable, winning him over with constancy and care. If he lashed out in anger, she’d respond with patience. If he avoided her, she’d seek him out. If he ignored her, she’d persist with one-sided conversations.

“How was school?” she called, lifting her voice to carry down the hall to his bedroom. “Do you have much homework? I can help you with it after dinner if you like.”

Miss Tatum had stopped by last week to let Damaris know that Nathaniel’s grades had dropped significantly over the last month. He only attended class half the time, and when he did show up, he failed to engage in his lessons. Worst of all, he’d started getting into fights during recess.

He needs you, Lord, but I get the feeling he’s pushing you away as much as he’s pushing me. Show me how to help him.

Heaven knew she’d need divine intervention to get through to the boy. While she believed in her ability to dose him with a constant flow of affection, she had absolutely no confidence in her ability to discipline him. She’d tried scoldings and reprimands, but they only brought out more rebellion and pranks, so she’d been terribly lax of late. She knew he needed boundaries, but those proved difficult to establish when he didn’t recognize her authority.

“We’re having sausage gravy on toast tonight.” One of the few dishes she made of which he willingly ate a second helping.

Her cooking skills seemed more suited to stove than oven. She could fry, sauté, stew, and boil to some degree of success, but disaster struck whenever she attempted roasting or baking. On the stove, she could move from a too-hot spot to a cooler one or vice versa, but the delicate mathematics of balancing the variables of wood, heat, and dampers never failed to give her the wrong answer when it came to the oven. Hence the lopsided bread in front of her. She flipped the outturned loaf right side up and placed it on a cooling rack. At least it wasn’t burnt. Just slightly caved in on one side.

Not everything could be beautiful. A truth Damaris had come to terms with long ago when her own appearance failed to mature into anything other than plain. Yet a thing’s outward beauty should not determine its value. Bread’s value lay in its ability to fill an empty belly, not in how well it delighted the eye. She wouldn’t scorn her misshapen loaf just because it wasn’t as pretty as the ones in the baker’s window.

“Can we have some of them fried apples you made last week for dessert?”

Damaris squeaked and spun around. “Nathaniel! You startled me.”

Her nephew leaned against the doorjamb, his arms crossed defensively over his chest, and his too-long brown hair hanging across his eyes. The prickly pose and droopy mane couldn’t hide the satisfaction gleaming in his eyes, however. He was proud of making her jump. For someone who had tromped through the house with all the delicacy of a drunken buffalo five minutes earlier, he certainly could move with stealth when he wanted.

“So, can we? Have the apples?”

Damaris smiled, her aggravation melting away as her heart softened. Nathaniel so rarely asked her for anything. “Of course.”

There was a half-bushel of tart green apples in the root cellar. Maybe she could even make a brown betty with some bread cubes and extra cinnamon and sugar.

“Thanks, Aunt Maris.”

Warning bells rang in the back of Damaris’s mind. He never thanked her. Just ate whatever food she placed in front of him and disappeared either outside or into his room.

Nathaniel pushed away from the wall. “I’ll be back before suppertime.”

Shaking off her cynicism and suspicion before he could sense them, Damaris brightened her smile. “Be careful.”

He shrugged as if to dislodge her concern before it could settle on his shoulders, then disappeared down the hall. The front door slammed a moment later.

Damaris sighed. Someday he would accept her affection. Return it, even. After all, love was the strongest force on earth. Because it wasn’t of earth. It was divine. God’s very nature. It would win the day eventually, if she held true to her course. She must focus on the outcome, not on memories of salt in her tea or frogs on her face.

An involuntary recollection surfaced of slimy amphibian bellies against her lips and sticky feet massaging her chin. One frog had even fallen inside her mouth when she woke and gasped in fright. Damaris shuddered. She’d used half a packet of tooth powder that morning, trying to erase the taste and feel of the creature. Thank heaven Nathaniel had yet to repeat the same prank twice. She didn’t think she could survive a second amphibious encounter.

Never mind all that, though. She had apples to fetch. She wasn’t about to turn down her nephew’s first request, not when it was so easily granted.

Leaving her bread to finish cooling, Damaris marched over to the root cellar door built into the kitchen’s floorboards. She bent down and hefted it open. Then, sweeping her skirt aside so she could watch where she placed her feet on the ladder rungs, she climbed down into the cool, damp cellar and walked over to the bushel basket of apples in the far corner near the shelves of canned goods. Taking an apple in hand, she squeezed it gently, checking for bruises. She wanted to use the very best. Finding a soft spot on that one, she placed the apple back in the basket and reached for a second. As her fingers closed around the fruit, a shadow fell across the room.

Bang! The cellar door slammed closed. Everything went black.

“Nathaniel!” Damaris dropped the apple and ran toward the ladder.

Surely he wouldn’t trap her down here. He was mischievous, but he wasn’t mean. Unless . . . could this be retaliation for his window?

He’d been sneaking out at night despite her urgings that he stop. He gave no heed to her insistence that being out after dark wasn’t safe. Arguing him into her way of thinking hadn’t worked, yet she couldn’t call herself a responsible guardian without doing something to stop him. So yesterday she’d nailed his window shut from the outside, hoping that the hindrance would at least make him stop and think before running off into the night. He hadn’t said anything about it this morning at breakfast, just rushed off to school like normal. She’d thought he hadn’t discovered what she’d done.

Obviously, she’d been wrong.

“All right, Nathaniel. You’ve made your point,” she called as she felt her way through the pitch black, seeking the ladder. “You can let me out now.”

Something scraped above her. Something that sounded like table legs on floorboards. Then a thud. Directly above her head.

“I’ll make ya a deal, Aunt Maris.” Nathaniel’s voice echoed through the floor. Tight. Ominous. “You get yourself outta the cellar before suppertime, and I’ll stop using my window as a door. But if you’re still trapped when I get home for supper, you let me go wherever I want, whenever I want from now on without trying to stop me.”

She shook her head. “I can’t make that deal. It’s my job to protect you.”

“No, it ain’t. It’s my pa’s job, but he ain’t here no more, so now I take care of myself!”

Footsteps pounded, then faded away.

“Nathaniel!”

A door slammed.

He’d left her here. Trapped. In the dark.

The old, timid Damaris would have sat on the dirt floor and wept. Texas Damaris, however, had more grit. Weeping wouldn’t get her out of this cellar. Effort and ingenuity would.

Using the pinpricks of light that outlined the square of the trap door as her guide, Damaris centered herself beneath it and waved her arms until she knocked into the ladder. Grabbing hold of the sides, she fit her foot to the bottom rung and climbed. A few steps up, she reached for the door handle and pushed. It didn’t budge. She climbed higher, bending her head forward and hunching her shoulders until her upper back pressed against the door.

Please, Lord, let this work.

Gritting her teeth, she pushed with her legs as hard as she could. The door moved. Not much, but it moved. She tried again, her grunt of effort nearly becoming a scream.

To no avail. The door moved an inch. Maybe less. The table he’d positioned on top was too heavy.

All right, so effort and ingenuity based on brute strength didn’t work when one happened to be a woman with muscles accustomed more to needle pushing than table lifting. She’d have to make do with Option Two. Patience.

Her real battle wasn’t against wood and hinges. Her opponent was a stubborn, angry, heartbroken boy, and she couldn’t afford to lose. Not when Nathaniel’s well-being lay in the balance. She might be helpless to get out of this hole, but she could control how her nephew found her when next they met. His aunt Maris would not be weeping and distraught. Nor would she be defeated and hurt. She wouldn’t even be bristling with anger and indignation.

No, Nathaniel would find her calm, smiling, and ready to make him the best fried apples he’d ever tasted.

The strategy of turning the other cheek. The Lord endorsed it, so it must work.

All she had to do was not go crazy in the meantime, imagining the various creepy-crawly things that dwelled in cellars. Things that came out of their holes when the lights went out.

Sitting on the bottom rung, Damaris wrapped her skirt tightly around her legs and hugged her arms across her chest. It would only be for an hour or two. She could manage.

A creak echoed from the corner. Her gaze darted that way, but her vision couldn’t penetrate the darkness.

Tiny tapping sounds clicked behind her. She drew her legs closer to her body and began to hum.

She could do this. They were just noises. Magnified by the dark.

Something itched the top of her hair. She shook her head and fluttered a hand over her bun, encountering nothing but hair and pins.

She could do this.

Something tickled her nape. She jumped up from the ladder and wiggled from head to toe.

Perhaps patience wasn’t a viable option after all. As she slapped at the itchy spot on the back of her neck, Damaris fervently began praying for an Option Three.

CHAPTER
TWO

Luke Davenport rode up to the ranch house on the Triple G spread, holding Titan to a walk so he could scan his surroundings as he approached. He’d noticed a neighbor to the west, a couple of farms to the north, closer to Madisonville, but nothing developed to the south. The rustlers probably came and went from that direction.

His horse’s ears pricked, and Luke leaned forward slightly to pat the big fella’s neck. “Yep,” he murmured. “I see him.”

A man stood in the shadows of the porch, rifle in hand.

Luke signaled Titan to halt. The big sorrel immediately obeyed, seeming to sense his master’s desire even before Luke tugged the reins.

Titan was one of the first horses at Gringolet that Luke had broken to saddle after his former captain took over running the respected breeding farm. When Matt Hanger married and declared Hanger’s Horsemen officially retired, he’d given all of the Horsemen jobs at the farm, training horses for the army and other local buyers.

Luke liked the work well enough, especially since Matt assigned him the wildest animals to saddle break. The wilder the better, as far as he was concerned. He loved pitting himself against a worthy opponent and giving his own wildness an outlet. Something he’d missed since leaving the cavalry. Riding with the Horsemen had scratched the itch. Chasing bandits, dodging bullets, and infiltrating outlaw gangs kept a man sharp. On top of his game....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Other Books by the Author
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Epigraph
• Prologue
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 22
• Chapter 23
• Chapter 24
• Chapter 25
• Chapter 26
• Chapter 27
• Chapter 28
• Chapter 29
• Chapter 30
• Chapter 31
• Chapter 32
• Chapter 33
• Chapter 34
• Chapter 35
• Chapter 36
• Chapter 37
• Chapter 38
• Chapter 39
• Chapter 40
• Epilogue
• About the Author
• Back Ads
• Back Cover