A Restless Wind

by Brandt, Siara

Emma was talking to Jesse now. He nodded and the children followed him across the yard. He got down on his knees while the children kneeled down on either side of him. Hetty leaned forward to get a better view of the yard directly below the window.

  She watched Jesse carefully part the branches of a bush growing beside the porch. She could see a black and white speckled hen that had been concealed by the leaves. Tiny chicks peeked out from beneath their mother’s wings.

  Hetty had found two of her chickens setting on a clutch of eggs. She had given the hens and the eggs to the children to hatch and raise. Eventually they would provide a good supply of both eggs and chickens. The Forbes had lost all their chickens when their barn had burned down.

  Jesse was good with the children. He seemed to genuinely enjoy their company. She shook her head, wondering as he talked with Emma and Will, how a man who was called a savage could be so patient with children.

  Will had his hands closed into small fists that were resting on his hips. “Emmy gets her way more than I do,” Will said. “She is older than me. But it isn’t fair, you know. I ought to have my way sometimes, too, I think.”

  Will didn’t think it was fair that Emma had sole charge of taking care of the chickens.

  “You’ll catch up in responsibility, Will,” Jesse assured the boy.

  “Mama says I’ll probably be bigger than Emma ‘cause boys usually grow taller than girls.” Will drew himself up as tall as he could and still his head reached just a little over Jesse’s waist. Jesse sat down and Will immediately sat down beside him on the back step.

  “Are you going to have children someday, Jesse?”

  Jesse’s hands stilled on the bridle he was working on. The kid, always asking questions, had been asking some pretty personal questions this morning.

  “You need to have a wife to have kids,” he informed Jesse very seriously.

  Jesse glanced at Will briefly before returning his attention to the bridle.

  “Why don’t you marry Hetty?” Will asked. “You like her well enough, don’t you? And she’s pretty, too. Do you think she’s pretty, Jesse?”

  “Yes, Will, she’s pretty.”

  “I asked her if she thought you were handsome,” Will said, intently watching what Jesse’s hands were doing with the bridle. “And she said ‘yes, very’.” Will leaned closer to peer at the bridle now lying still in Jesse’s hands. “And then I asked her if she would like to marry you.”

  Several seconds passed before Jesse remembered to close his mouth. He blinked. “You what?”

  “I asked if she would like to marry you,” Will repeated, distracted for a moment by a brightly-colored butterfly hovering close by.

  “And what did she have to say then?” Jesse asked in a low voice.

  “She told me to stop jumping on the bed and go downstairs,” Will said, hopping down from the step as he chased the butterfly into the yard.

  It was late afternoon when Jesse finally finished cleaning up the yard. He walked past the dry laundry on the line and past the clothes pegs lined up in rows where Will had been playing. He opened the back door to the smell of food cooking. Damned good-smelling food to a hungry man.

  He stood in the doorway and took off his hat, scanning the kitchen slowly. Since the women had arrived, they had made some remarkable changes. The clutter was gone. Everything was clean and orderly. The absence of Silas and all his possessions had made a hell of a difference.

  He smiled a greeting at Rachel who was setting two loaves of bread on the table. “Smells good,” he said. “I’m starved.”

  Rachel smiled back at him over her shoulder. “Good. We’re about ready to eat.”

  Jesse still stood in the doorway, holding one arm behind him. It was plain that he was hiding something he did not want the children to see. He called them and as they came into the kitchen, he said to Emma. “Your mother told me it was your birthday. I’ll give you three guesses. What have I got in my hand?”

  “A fishing pole,” Will called out. “I think a fishing pole would be a fine birthday present.”

  Jesse hid a smile and shook his head. “No, it’s not quite so large as that. Guess again.”

  “Not so large?” Will asked. “Then is it a small thing?”

  “Pretty small,” Jesse said.

  Mew.

  There was no sense trying to hide the noisy thing now. Emma gave a little gasp as Jesse held a kitten out to her.

  “Oh, what a precious little thing,” Emma said as she hugged the kitten in her arms. Jesse drew another present from his pocket.

  “They’re for your hair,” Jesse said as Emma smiled over the brightly-colored lengths of ribbon. She gave Jesse an impulsive hug and went back to nestling the kitten.

  “You like the kitten?” Jesse asked, watching her kiss the kitten’s nose.

  “Yes. Thank you. I like both presents very much.”

  Hetty had been staring at Jesse. She saw, or thought she saw, when his gaze met hers, something change in his eyes. She quickly glanced away.

  They all turned to look at Lieta who was being carried down the stairs by Pierce. It had taken a day for the soreness to set in. Right now Lieta was so stiff from riding that she couldn’t have crawled down the stairs if her life depended on it.

  “Look, Lieta,” Emma said to the woman as she was seated at the table. “See what Jesse gave me?” She held out the ribbons and then the kitten. “Isn’t she the sweetest thing?” Hugging the kitten in her arms, she said, “I’m going to name you Princess.”

  “I think that’s a very fine name,” Lieta told Emma.

  After everyone was seated at the table and the blessing was said, Will turned to Jesse as the food was being passed around. “I saw a frog this big in the pond today.” Will held his arms out wide.

  “That big, huh?” Jesse remarked soberly. “If we could rope him, we could ride him.”

  “Oh, Jesse. You can’t ride a frog.”

  “Will,” Rachel said to her son. “Please pass the bread around.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Will put a thick slice of bread on his plate. “I found that other missing hen. You know, the white one with all the chicks.”

  Jesse looked at the boy, surprised. “Did you? Where?”

  “Down the creek a ways. There’s a little cave in a rock. The hen has all her chicks there. Thirteen. I counted them.”

  “I know where that cave is,” Jesse said as he took the plate of bread and passed it to Emma. “We’ll have to get her and the chicks or something will eat them.”

  “She’s a good mother hen, though, isn’t she, Jesse? She likes having her babies close to her. Who do you think her husband is?”

  Jesse’s fork hesitated halfway between his plate and his mouth. Lord, he thought, panicking for a moment. Please don’t let him start talking about marriage and families again.

  And Will did seem about to say something else. But Rachel reminded her son to eat and Jesse let out a sigh of relief as Will devoted himself to his slice of bread.

  Chapter 15

  It had rained off and on all day. It was raining now in the warm darkness. Jesse stared out at the night sky, lit briefly now and then by fitful stabs of lightning. He welcomed the rain. It had kept the women confined to the house. More importantly, it had kept one woman in particular confined there.

  Inside the dark barn, rain drummed with a heavy resonance upon the roof. Thunder rumbled softly in the distance. He was feeling restless tonight. A good long ride, some distance, those things would go a long way in relieving some of his restless energy. There was no sense, however, even thinking about going for a ride until this downpour let up.

  He was tired. He’d put in long hours of work today cleaning out and repairing the barn. He had tried to keep busy to keep from thinking about Hetty. But once again, he found himself thinking about the look in her eyes when she had watched him give the kitten to Emma. More than once, he’d found himself recalling the powerful, and completely unreasonable, reaction he’d had t
o the accidental brush of her hand against his later when they’d both reached to pet the cat at the same time.

  He couldn’t seem to think clearly when he was near her so he’d done all he could to avoid her. He’d rearranged his schedule. He’d skipped meals at the house. In fact, he’d stayed away from the house entirely. Out of sight, out of mind. Right?

  Not true, apparently, when it came to Hetty. He might be helpless to stop his attraction to her, but he’d damned well keep her from knowing about it, he’d decided.

  He released his breath in a deep sigh as he watched the light in the kitchen window. The rest of the house was dark. He should be gone by now. He was running out of excuses for staying. John was able to get out of bed now and do light work, and Pierce was here to help. He’d already made up his mind that tomorrow was his last day here. It was that plain and simple.

  But he couldn’t seem to summon up plain and simple at the moment. He laid his hand on his horse’s sleek neck, idly caressing the animal, and wondered why he was hoping Hetty was the one who was awake.

  At the squeak of the back door, Hetty looked up from the book she was reading. She stared at the man framed in the doorway. There was a hard look to Jesse tonight. A hard, hungry look. His hair and clothes were damp from the rain. The dark beard shadow accentuated the strong masculine lines of his jaw.

  He hesitated in the doorway then pulled his hat off slowly. After hanging the hat on an empty peg on the wall, he walked into the kitchen.

  “You missed supper tonight,” she said softly. And breakfast and lunch, she thought. “Would you like something to eat?”

  “No. Rachel brought me something to eat earlier.”

  Hetty nodded, closing the book she’d been reading.

  This was not one of his better ideas. Quite possibly it was one of the worst. The last thing he needed was to spend time alone with her. And yet here he was, sitting down at the table across from her.

  She had on some kind of soft-looking, pale blue dress. Her hair was loosely tied with a ribbon, the shimmering, waist-length tumble of curls falling over one shoulder. A dangerous combination no matter how much he tried to ignore it.

  “I didn’t mean to disturb you.” A lie. He’d seen the light. He knew damned well he’d been hoping she’d be awake.

  “You’re not disturbing me. I was too restless to fall asleep right away. I thought reading might make me sleepy. I found this book in the parlor. I hope you don’t mind me reading it.”

  He picked up the small black book. Hetty watched his fingers trace the intricate leather design. He opened the book and turned over the first few pages.

  “Is it good reading?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’m enjoying it. Very much.”

  “It belonged to my mother. She liked to read poetry. She liked to write it, too, when she could.”

  A change came over his face as he leafed through the book. He came to the daguerreotype that he didn’t know Hetty had been looking at earlier. It was a picture of Jesse taken some years ago.

  Suddenly he closed the cover. Just like the book, his face closed and became unreadable once more. He slid the book back across the table.

  “Reading and writing were important to my mother. She wanted them to be important to me, too. She was a patient woman,” he said, a faint smile curving one corner of his mouth. “But she definitely had her hands full teaching me to read. I didn’t always make things easy for her.”

  Hetty longed to ask questions about his past, but she bit her lip, not wanting to pry. She could imagine Jesse as a boy, wild and rebellious and reckless. Those were words she had heard to describe him years ago. Even now she could sense a kind of restless energy in him just beneath the surface.

  Jesse’s gaze swept across the table to hers, seeing the interest in her eyes.

  “I expect she wrote in part,” he said quietly. “Because she never had another woman to talk to. Women need that.”

  “It must have been lonely for her,” Hetty said softly. “It can be lonely for women out here.”

  Leaning back in his chair with one hand resting on the table, he said, “I reckon she was lonely.”

  Hetty wondered if it had been lonely for the son, too. She knew what it was like to be an only child. There had been times when Hetty had yearned for a sibling, a brother or sister to play with. But then Pierce had come along and he had become like a brother to her.

  “Where was your mother originally from?”

  “Virginia,” Jesse replied. “Her family was well off. My mother fell in love with a man that they didn’t approve of. My father. They felt that he didn’t have the means to take care of her in the way that she was accustomed to living. But she was young and . . . ” His voice trailed off as he left the rest unspoken.

  “That sounds very sad. Very romantic, but sad.”

  “She never regretted her decision,” he went on. “Hard as it was for her. My father died shortly after I was born. I don’t think she ever really got over it. That’s why she insisted I have the daguerreotype taken. She never had a picture of my father. She always said I looked like him.”

  Jesse was surprised to find himself talking about his mother with Hetty. He had never spoken to another living soul about her or about his past.

  “What about your stepfather?”

  “Silas? I reckon he cried from the moment he came into the world and that he kept on crying and complaining till he breathed his last.”

  Hetty stared at him for a moment before she said, “There are some freshly-baked pies on the back porch. Would you like some?”

  “As a matter of fact, yeah, I’d like some pie.”

  It wasn’t the only thing he’d like to be tasting, he thought as his gaze dropped to her mouth

  “But you don’t have to wait on me,” he said as she got up from her chair.

  “I don’t mind,” she said over her shoulder before she disappeared on the back porch.

  He stood up and got two plates from the cupboard, one for himself and one for her. They had been his mother’s rose-patterned plates. When Hetty returned with the pie, he watched her covertly as she moved around the room. She set silverware before him and cut a generous wedge out of the pie for him. She cut a smaller piece for herself and then, with a faint drift of perfume and a soft rustle of clothing, she sat down across from him again.

  At that moment the rain poured down with a renewed fury on the roof. Thunder rumbled softly.

  “I like when it storms at night,” she commented with a sigh.

  Yeah, he did, too. But at the moment the rain held too many memories. Like taking shelter in old barns and kissing young ladies who happened to take shelter there, too. He looked at her face, his gaze roaming to her hand where it toyed with the curls falling over her shoulder.

  “The house looks good,” he said because he needed to say something to distract himself from thinking how she looked even more beautiful by candlelight. “Everyone settling in all right?”

  He stilled as she licked a sticky remnant of pie from her fingertip. He stared at her mouth, thinking that she’d be a passionate lover. Yeah, he decided, she definitely would. The compelling notion forming in his mind despite his efforts to shake it. He’d had a taste of that passion before.

  “Yes,” she replied as he tried to remember what he’d just asked her.

  “Did you make the pie?” he asked, concentrating on the question this time.

  “I did.”

  “It’s very good.”

  “Thank you,” she said softly, warming to the complement in a way that surprised her.

  When he was finished with the pie, he got up and took both dishes to the sink. “I’m getting spoiled with all this home cooking,” he said as he settled back in his chair, chiding himself for not walking out then and there.

  “Eminence must seem pretty tame after Boston,” he asked. He was curious about her life there.

  “Tame?” she echoed. “With cattle rustlers and outlaws and shootings? I’d
hardly call it tame.”

  He smiled. “I guess when you put it that way, it doesn’t seem all that tame.” He ran his hand across the rough whiskers on his chin. “Will isn’t sleeping with that snake, is he?”

  “Well, yes, he is,” she replied, her gaze caught for a moment by the movement of his hand.

  A lazy smile curved Jesse’s mouth. “When I was about Will’s age, I kept a bullfrog in my room. Hid it under my bed. I had to put it out, though, when it got to croaking.”

  She smiled, unaware of what her smiles could do to him. He caught himself staring and looked away.

  “There should be time to get a late garden in when It dries out from this rain,” he said. “Maybe a flower garden, too. I don’t know what kind of flowers Rachel might like, but I thought I’d find some seeds for her and Emma.” All right. So now he had committed himself to finding some flower seeds.

  “Sara Cade liked flowers, too,” Hetty said.

  “She did.”

  Hetty hesitated before she spoke again. “I have been wondering if you know anything about what happened to her and her daughter.”

  “No, I don’t,” he said with a sigh. “I wish I did, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions.”

  “I had hoped Sara left something behind that would explain what happened. I confess I have been curious about that envelope, but I haven’t wanted to pry.”

  “You’re not prying.”

  “The letter had me hoping,” she said.

  “It had me hoping, too.”

  “Do you think outlaws were responsible?” she asked.

  He frowned. “It’s not one that I want to believe, but I’d say it’s a likely explanation.”

  “It’s hard to imagine that men could be capable of such things.” She shook her head. “I can’t help but wonder what causes some men to become so evil.”

  “Bad influence, maybe.”

  “But there is always a choice to do good or evil,” she said. “A man can choose decency. Everyone comes to a point in their life when they make choices and those choices can be honorable ones.”