Instant Frontier Family

by Regina Scott

  So Sylvie took those children in, raised them as her own, scrubbed floors and sewed to make ends meet and accepted charity from all who offered. When Michael had first spotted the O’Rourke children, she’d had six others besides.

  “What’s their story?” he’d asked as he’d helped his aunt clear up after a meager dinner of cabbage soup and crackers.

  Sylvie’s ocean-blue eyes had turned down as she glanced at Ciara and Aiden huddled by the hearth. “Poor mites,” she’d murmured with a shake of her head that had loosened her flyaway graying blond hair. “Lost their mum and da in that terrible fire a few months ago. Their older sister had the raising of them, but she struggled so. Now she has a chance to go with Mercer’s Belles to Washington Territory. Sure-n but she’d be a fool not to take it.”

  He’d read the story in the papers that eventually ended up blowing down the streets of Five Points before someone used them to fill the holes in the walls or burned them for fuel. Some fellow from the wilderness claimed men in Seattle needed teachers and seamstresses. The editors seemed to think the women were more likely to be forced into marriage or worse.

  “So she’ll marry and go on with her life,” he’d surmised. “She’ll have what she needs, and she won’t think of them again.”

  His aunt had set a sudsy hand on his arm. “Miss Katie O’Doul might have had her heart fixed on a crown, but Miss O’Rourke is another sort entirely.”

  That night, he’d been willing to give Maddie O’Rourke the benefit of the doubt. But a reporter had sailed with Mercer’s Belles, and as his stories returned to be printed, Michael had struggled to find charity with Ciara and Aiden’s sister.

  Roger Conant, a good Irishman his aunt insisted, told of flirtations galore with the ship’s officers, among the other passengers and at every port of call. How could Maddie O’Rourke be immune? He’d been the most surprised when the telegraph had arrived stating that passage had been paid for Ciara and Aiden and a lady to escort them.

  “She must have found a rich husband,” he’d told his aunt when she’d shared it with him after the excited children had gone to bed.

  “She signs the cable Maddie O’Rourke,” Sylvie had pointed out, showing him the closely worded note. “She’s made her fortune, just as she’d hoped, and a great deal faster than anyone expected. And now the dear girl hopes to share it with her family.”

  She was trying to share it, all right. Michael didn’t like thinking what such quarters must have cost her to build and furnish. She clearly wanted her brother and sister beside her, yet something told him she wasn’t sure what to do with them now.

  Leaving the children to put away their belongings, he followed her downstairs, locating her in the kitchen. The whitewashed walls enclosed a thick worktable with space below for bowls and rolling pins. Bright copper pots and dark iron pans hung from hooks over a squat wooden box with a lid. Its purpose defied him. One wall was built of red brick, with a small iron door at the bottom to cover the firebox and a wider door opening higher up for the oven.

  Which just might have been big enough to fit a certain longshoreman.

  Maddie was at a door in the wall to his right, digging through the supplies stored there. Casks and sacks crowded the floor; the shelves at the back were filled with tins of butter, cones of sugar in bright blue wrappers, jars of preserves, and bottles and vials of things he wasn’t sure he could name.

  She glanced at him as he came to a stop beside her, and he thought he saw something glistening on her cheek before she returned to her perusal of the supplies.

  “It wasn’t my place to settle that,” he said. “Forgive me.”

  She reached out and pulled down a fat ham, molasses thick on its sides. “You had to settle it,” she said, carrying the ham to the table. “I couldn’t. They’ve changed. Once I was the world to them both, and when I told them what they should be doing, they did it.”

  As she pulled a knife from a drawer in the worktable, he ventured closer. She sliced through the meat with brisk efficiency, but her face remained tight.

  “Ciara is growing up,” he allowed. “Though don’t tell her I said so. She’ll take it as leave to make further demands.”

  Instead of smiling as he’d hoped, Maddie grimaced. “She’s been like that since she was born. Da used to be teasing her like you did, calling her royalty.” She rested the knife on the table. “She never was treating me that way. I’m thinking she blames me for leaving her behind.”

  She ducked her head, but Michael heard her sniff.

  “It’s hard to understand when someone you love leaves,” he murmured, her pain like a wound inside him. “When my parents died, I remember feeling like I was the last person in the whole world.”

  She paused, slanting a glance up at him. “Who had the raising of you?”

  He smiled. “Sylvie. She’s sister to my mother. I don’t know what I would have done without her.”

  Her hands started moving again. “But you didn’t rail at her, tell her you had no use for her.”

  “I wasn’t eleven,” he pointed out with a shrug. “Or I might have. As it was, I was the first of her borrowed children, as she likes to call them. And she gave me many brothers and sisters over the years.”

  She took the remaining ham back to the larder. “Did you never mind having to share her?”

  Had Maddie minded? Sylvie had said Ciara and Aiden’s mother had been Maddie’s stepmother. Maddie had to have been nearly grown when they came along.

  “I never saw it as sharing,” he told her. “Sylvie made you feel like the most important person in her world, like the two of you were partners. Her children were my family.”

  “Small wonder you’re so good with Ciara and Aiden,” she said, bending to gather some potatoes from a sack. “I just wanted to give them a home, a family again. I never thought they’d fight against me on that.”

  “Give them time,” Michael advised as she carried the potatoes to the table. “You’ve had more than five months to accustom yourself to the place. For them, life changed when they boarded the ship, and it changed again when they left it.”

  She nodded. “I’ve just missed them so. All I wanted was for them to be happy.” She glanced up at him. A drop of molasses darkened the tear on her cheek.

  Unthinking, he reached out and wiped the smudge away with his thumb. Her skin was as silky and warm as it looked, and all at once he smelled cinnamon again, as if she were the sweet treat he was meant to savor. Embarrassed by the thought, he stepped back as her face turned pink.

  “You’ve given them every reason to be happy,” he said. “A good home, a warm welcome. And what child wouldn’t want to live over a bakery?”

  She smiled then, brightening the room, lifting his heart. “Sure-n they say that the way to a man’s heart is down his throat. That must be twice as true for children.”

  She gathered the food and a jar of preserves and headed for the door before Michael could stir himself to help. He thought she was right about Ciara and Aiden—good cooking and kind words would go a long way toward healing their hurts, helping them see the love their sister was trying to offer.

  A shame it would take more than a bakery to make him ready to take a chance on love again.

  Chapter Four

  Maddie sat at the table, watching Michael, Ciara and Aiden tuck into the ham steaks, fricasseed potatoes and biscuits she’d prepared. She’d wanted to do more, but she’d barely finished her work in the bakery before changing to go meet them. Still, by the pace they lifted their forks, they were running a race and expected the loser to face a firing squad.

  “Were they so stingy with the meals aboard ship?” she asked, fingers toying with a biscuit.

  Aiden wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “It was terrible! They only let us eat twice a day, and nothing but biscuits, biscuits, bi
scuits.” He made a face and dived back into his potatoes.

  Ciara wrinkled her nose. “Hard biscuits too. Nothing like these.” She lifted the remaining half of her biscuit daintily, rubbed it in the blackberry preserves Catherine had helped Maddie put up and stuffed it into her mouth.

  Maddie tried not to cringe. She’d have to work on their manners, if they’d allow her to teach them anything.

  Michael had been silent much of the meal, though he’d eaten plenty, as Maddie had expected. Now he sighed almost longingly as he laid down his fork. “I’ve dined at a few restaurants in New York. None of them ever served biscuits as good as these.”

  Maddie’s face warmed. “It does my heart good to hear my work appreciated.” She winked at Aiden. “Now, let’s just hope the fine citizens of Seattle agree with you.”

  “If they don’t agree, they’re stupid,” Aiden said, shoving back his empty plate. He glanced up at Maddie. “When do we get sweets?”

  Michael gazed at the wall, but he wasn’t fooling her. She’d seen the light in those blue eyes when her brother mentioned sweets. Like the loggers and miners around Seattle, he must have a craving for sugary things. That also boded well for business.

  She rose and went to the sideboard for the tin she’d filled earlier that day. “I’ll have cinnamon rolls ready when you wake tomorrow,” she promised Aiden. “For now, you’ll have to make do with gingersnaps.”

  She brought a dozen to the table, and Aiden grabbed a handful before slipping from his chair.

  “I’ll just take these to my room for safekeeping,” he said.

  Ciara shook her head as he scurried from the table. “The rats will get them before you do, silly.”

  “There will be no rats in my establishment,” Maddie called after him, “and I’ll be thanking the Lord for that.” She fought a shudder at the memory of the beady eyes and pointy snouts she’d seen on occasion in New York.

  Ciara reached down and brushed her fingers against a gray tail that was peeking out from under the table. “Amelia Batterby would not stand for it,” she said with great surety.

  Maddie met Michael’s gaze across the table and caught him smiling.

  Ciara climbed from her seat. “I’m going to my room. You may call me when breakfast is ready tomorrow.”

  There went Her Highness again. Michael must not have liked the stance any better, for he spoke up, with a look at Maddie. “What about school? Don’t Ciara and Aiden need to attend?”

  Ciara turned to stare at him, and Aiden shot out of his room.

  “They have a school here?” he asked, wide-eyed.

  “Indeed we do,” Maddie told them, feeling a tug of pride at her adopted city. “In the Territorial University no less.”

  She waited for Ciara to protest the unorthodox arrangement, but her sister seemed to fold in on herself. “I don’t want to go to a university.”

  “I do,” Aiden announced, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “I’ll get to play with bigger boys.”

  “It’s not like that,” Maddie explained. “There aren’t enough students of an age to be studying at the university, so the president opened a grammar school.” She was only glad the president was no longer Asa Mercer, for she hadn’t been impressed with him and his grasping ways when he’d brought her and her traveling companions out to Seattle earlier that year. She rose to gather up the dishes.

  “Let me,” Michael said, rising as well. He took the dishes and carried them to the sideboard. It was a gentlemanly gesture, but she thought he was merely trying to keep himself too busy to jump into the middle of the conversation.

  “I still don’t want to go,” Ciara insisted. “They’re probably mean. Isn’t there an Irish school?”

  So that was the problem. Back home, because of the violence, many of the Irish children had learned at their parents’ knees or in groups in a crowded flat.

  “No Irish school,” Maddie told her. “No German school either. Here everyone learns together.”

  Ciara’s scowl said she didn’t much like that idea.

  “It’s a new world we’ve come to,” Michael said. He opened his mouth as if to say more, than clamped it shut again and resolutely turned his face toward the sideboard.

  “Indeed it is,” Maddie said. She moved to his side, pointing to the bucket of water waiting for the dishes and then the kettle steaming on the stove. With a nod, he set to work.

  Now there was a rare man. Maddie couldn’t help the thought as she returned to her seat and gestured her siblings toward the chairs on each side of her. Da had been good about helping with the children, but her stepmother had been the one to labor over the stove, the dishes and the laundry, even though she worked cleaning houses for the wealthy folks uptown during the day.

  Now Ciara returned to the table reluctantly, Aiden with unabashed curiosity.

  “Perhaps we should be deciding on some rules,” Maddie said as they took their seats. “We already agreed there’d be no playing on the skid road.”

  “You said that,” Ciara grumbled.

  Maddie ignored her. Impossible to ignore was the way Michael looked to Maddie with a nod as if encouraging her to continue, or the sight of his muscles as he took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves for the washing.

  “I expect you to attend school, do your best,” she told Ciara and Aiden, trying not to think about the man standing behind her with his arms up to the elbows in water. “The quarter started in September, but I’ve made arrangements for you to join the class on Monday.”

  Both her siblings paled at that. Maddie pushed on.

  “I expect you to be helping around here as well. Aiden, I’ll show you how to pump the water and bring it in. I want a filled bucket in the kitchen and up here. I’ve friends who keep the woodpile stocked, but you’ll need to bring the logs and kindling up here for the stove.”

  Aiden grinned. “I can do that.”

  Maddie only hoped her sister would be as accepting. “Ciara, your job will be to make the beds in the morning, sweep the floor, watch your brother and help me with the cooking.”

  Ciara humphed and crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s servant work. Servants should be paid.”

  “You aren’t servants,” Maddie said, meeting their gazes in turn. “You’re members of this household. We all work together and we all share the rewards.”

  Aiden perked up. “Like cakes.”

  Maddie nodded. “Like cakes and the other goods from the bakery. But we cannot be eating all our wares or we’ll have nothing to sell and no money to buy what we need.”

  They both sobered at that, nodding their agreement. Like Maddie, they must remember the times when Da and their mum had been out of work, and food had been hard to come by.

  “I expect you to be kind to each other and me,” Maddie finished. “And under no circumstances will you allow Amelia Batterby out of doors. She’ll run off or be eaten by one of the fearsome creatures in the woods, bears and cougars and wolves. Neither of you is to go into the forest alone. Take an adult who knows the area with you.”

  She couldn’t help glancing at Michael. He had stopped washing at some point and was listening to her, his head cocked so that a lock of black hair fell over his forehead. Why did her fingers itch to tuck it back?

  Now he nodded agreement but did not offer commentary. She’d asked him to stay out of her business, but his silence somehow felt worse than his interference.

  She turned back to her siblings. Aiden was already fidgeting in his chair, gaze toward his bedroom door, where Amelia Batterby was giving herself a bath. Ciara was watching Maddie with a smug smile, as if she knew Maddie was having trouble keeping a dark-haired Irishman out of her thoughts.

  “Off to bed with you, then,” Maddie told them. “I’ll come hear your prayers shortly.”

  They
seemed to accept that, for they rose and left her for their rooms. She turned to Michael. “Well, Mr. Haggerty? Have you nothing to say about the matter?”

  He shrugged, hands splashing in the water. “Not my place to say, as you pointed out. But if you want my opinion, I think you handled that well.”

  She wasn’t sure why that warmed her so. She didn’t need his approval. She didn’t need his help. She certainly didn’t need his distracting presence.

  “Thank you,” she said, determined to be no more than polite. She eyed him a moment. He’d rubbed soap on her dishrag, and the bubbles were dripping from his fingers. Long, strong fingers they were also meant for far more than washing her dishes or eating her biscuits.

  Maddie drew in a breath, preparing herself to take up the next difficult subject. “And then, Mr. Haggerty,” she said, “there’s the matter of what I’m supposed to do with you.”

  * * *

  So she’d come to a decision. Michael could tell by the way she raised her chin. Though he stood taller in response, he couldn’t match her for seriousness.

  “I’m a bit old to go to school like Ciara and Aiden,” he offered, trying not to smile.

  “You’re never too old to learn,” she countered. “And I imagine the university president would be over the moon to have a second student old enough to graduate. But going to school won’t be paying your debt, which is what you said you wanted.”

  More than anything. But to pay his debt to her, he needed work, either at her bakery or at some other business in Seattle.

  “So what, then?” he asked.

  She nodded toward the floor. “You can sleep near the stove, and I’ll provide you food until you can provide for yourself. I haven’t a blanket to spare right now with the children arriving. Did you bring bedclothes with you?”

  “Sylvie sent a blanket with me for the boat,” he said. “I can use that.”