In Want of a Wife

by Jo Goodman

  “Did you invite your men to breakfast?”

  “No.”

  “There will be plenty.”

  “I wasn’t sure you would be able to fire up the dragon.”

  “The dragon? Oh, you mean the cookstove. I was able.”

  “I see.”

  Jane paused before she began to pour batter onto the greased griddle. “So? Are you going to invite them? I know from experience that the batter’s best when it’s freshly made.”

  “That might be true, but they won’t know and won’t care. It seems to me that you and I should have our breakfast first. Together. Alone.”

  Jane’s nerves jangled unexpectedly. It was his tone that did it. When he spoke in certain ways, low and husky with that slight rasp that put her in mind of callused fingers sifting silk, it was as if those same fingers were walking up her spine.

  “All right,” she said, keeping her back to him. “These won’t take long.” And they didn’t. She made a stack of six, put four on a plate for him and gave two to herself. He had syrup, butter, and utensils on the table when she handed him his plate, but he waited for her to sit down before he tucked into his meal. Jane owned there was a certain amount of pleasure watching him eat because his pleasure was that obvious. She liked that he had unguarded moments. Genuine moments. She drew her coffee cup closer and took it in both hands. She lifted it, sipped, and smiled over the rim of the cup. “This would not be a satisfying beverage if it were not for the aroma.”

  “Can’t you say the same about all foods?”

  “Probably, but I think it is most true of coffee.” She set the cup down and picked up her fork. “I heard you coming in this morning, but I never heard you leave. I thought you were sleeping when I got up.”

  “You were sleeping when I left.”

  “I was?”

  “I left last night. If you didn’t hear me go, I think we can assume you were asleep.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course, but why did you leave? Where did you go?”

  “I left because I couldn’t sleep. And where I went was out.”

  The area between Jane’s dark eyebrows puckered as she frowned, but she did not ask another question. She cut out a bite of the hotcakes, stabbed it, and put it in her mouth.

  “How did you sleep?” he asked.

  “Well enough.”

  Morgan took another bite. His gaze slid to the cookstove. “How did you conquer the dragon?”

  Jane shrugged.

  “Jake says she breathes fire.”

  “She probably does when her dampers aren’t regulated.”

  “All right,” he said. “I am going to ask. How do you know how to do it?”

  “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I know how to do it?”

  “You lived on Fifth Avenue. Even strangers to Manhattan know that address. Home to brownstone mansions and gilded parlors. Some things you wrote led me to believe that you come from money.”

  “I lived with it,” she said. “I did not come from it.”

  “So you lived with it. The Ewings had help. You told me that. There were things I expected I would have to teach you, so now I’m wondering how you learned to slay the dragon in a home where servants would have done it for you.”

  Jane cocked her head to one side and regarded Morgan with a faintly mocking smile. “You have misapprehended an important point,” she said. “And it would be a disappointment for both of us, I think, if you married me for love of money. I have no claim to the Ewing fortune. None. In every way that was important, Morgan, I was a servant to Cousin Frances. There were appearances to be kept, and this was done. I accompanied the family to any event that Cousin Frances deemed appropriate and always had a place at the table. I had a foot in both worlds, but I was only truly welcome in one. So, yes, I can slay the dragon. Yours is smaller, newer, and less bad-tempered than the one I am used to. Mrs. Shreve, the cook, was easy with a compliment, and she told me that I had the right touch, the right temperament, and knew all the right words when the situation called for them.”

  “The right words?”

  “Curse words.”

  One of his eyebrows lifted. “Oh?”

  She thought he seemed a little too interested and perhaps too impressed. “You probably know more. I do not take the name of the Lord in vain, even when provoked by the beast.”

  “The dragon.”

  “In Mrs. Shreve’s kitchen, we called her the beast.” Jane warmed her coffee by adding some from the pot. “I find that I am still curious about your offer of marriage. You seemed to have imagined that I came from privilege. I don’t know why that would influence you to propose. If it were true, I would be hopelessly ill prepared for Morning Star.”

  “You still are.”

  “I won’t argue that point. It supports mine. I don’t understand why you did not continue corresponding with women whom you must have thought were better suited to this life.”

  “You mean someone who did not hail from Fifth Avenue, New York City.”

  “Yes. I understand it was not Rebecca’s photograph that persuaded you because we had not yet exchanged pictures, but you told me that you wrote back to the other respondents with the express purpose of ending the exchange. It seems to me that you cut them off rather precipitously.”

  Morgan set his forearms on the table on either side of his plate. He leaned forward a fraction, never once taking his eyes from Jane. “That’s why,” he said.

  She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “You write like you talk, or maybe it’s that you talk like you write. I figured you for an educated female, and I liked the idea of it right off. What I know I mostly learned on my own, and I have no objection to learning more. It’s possible that someday you’ll hear me say ‘precipitously’ like it belongs in my mouth same as it belongs in yours.”

  Jane opened her mouth to speak and all her fine words failed her. When that happened, she simply shook her head.

  Morgan finished off another bite and drank more coffee. “Do you ride?”

  Jane watched him set down his fork. He rubbed the ginger stubble on his jaw with his knuckles. She guessed that it had been almost forty-eight hours since he shaved. He was looking faintly disreputable, a little dangerous, and he was sitting at the table with a napkin on his lap and politely inquiring if she rode.

  “A bicycle,” she said. “But I don’t think that’s what you meant.”

  “No, but tell me about it. I’ve only ever seen bicycles in pictures. Are they hard to learn to ride?”

  “Balance is really the only thing to master. Steering, pedaling, braking. All of that is not so difficult if one remains upright.”

  “Huh.”

  “It is a pleasant pursuit for women,” said Jane. “The park was a favorite place to go.”

  “But you didn’t learn to ride a horse?”

  “No. Rebecca is the accomplished rider. Our educations diverged in a number of ways, and that was one of them. The difference in our ages accounts for some of it. Cousin Franny’s expectations account for the rest.” Jane put her fork down and scooted back from the table. “Will you teach me to ride?”

  “Have to. It’s not a choice here. Same as seeing that you’re comfortable with a gun.”

  “When will we begin?”

  “Not this morning. We’ll see about this afternoon.”

  Nodding, Jane stood. She picked up her empty cup, plate, and utensils, and carried them to the sink. She would have returned for Morgan’s dish, but when she stepped back, he was there just as he had been the night before. She did not dare turn around. Her chest would have been flush to his.

  “How do you do that?” she asked.

  “Do what?” Reaching around Jane, Morgan dropped his things in the sink on top of hers.

  “Move around without making a sound.”

  “Why does it have to be something I do? Maybe you have old women’s ears.”

  “There is nothing at all wrong with my hearing.” He was so close
that Jane could feel his shrug. “I hear perfectly well.”

  “If you say so.”

  Jane was aware when Morgan straightened, but what he did next she did not anticipate. He nudged aside the dark braid at her back with a fingertip and laid his mouth against the curve of her neck. In contrast to the warmth of her skin, his lips felt cool. The kiss, if it could be correctly called that, lasted only a moment, just long enough for her to know that something was different, that something had changed.

  “Thank you,” he said, stepping away. “I’ll let the others know you have breakfast for them before I wash up and head out.”

  Jane stayed where she was, hands curled around the rim of the sink as much for balance as support. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Morgan open the door and step onto the porch. She saw him again, this time through the window as he took down the brass bell hanging on one of the posts and gave it a good swing. And that, she supposed, was letting the others know that breakfast was ready. By the time Morgan reentered the house, Jane was greasing the griddle for the next round of hotcakes. She waved him on without looking up, but in her mind’s eye she imagined his wily smile was firmly in place.

  • • •

  Jane had no difficulty filling her time between breakfast and the preparations for dinner in the afternoon. She had it from Jem Davis first and then from Max Salter that they would be riding out with Morgan and checking on the cattle in the Blue Valley, but there was no reason they shouldn’t be back in time for dinner. This last was said with considerable hopefulness, and Jem also managed to mention fritters.

  Jane suspected that on any other morning they might all have ridden out, but on this particular morning Jessop and Jake were being left behind to do chores that would keep them close to the house. Over breakfast, Jane had listened to them fuss as brothers were apt to do about how they would split the work, and while she had the sense that their tasks were genuine, she occasionally intercepted darting looks in her direction that made her think she was also one of their responsibilities.

  She doubted Morgan thought she intended to run off when his back was turned, especially since she couldn’t ride and did not know the first thing about harnessing an animal to the buckboard, so she supposed he was thinking of her safety or perhaps that she might not want to be alone. He never said as much to her, and she did not ask, preferring to believe he meant well and leave it at that.

  While Jessop and Jake attended to their outside chores, Jane took a second tour of the house and began a list of things in need of doing, some of them sooner than others. The hardwood floors and furniture deserved more care than they had been given. She noted to check for linseed oil and turpentine so she could make her own furniture polish. The floors would benefit from a paste of beeswax and turpentine. She lifted the lid on the piano and ran her fingertips over the keys. In addition to needing tuning, the keys were in want of a good cleaning with alcohol. She regarded the smoked ceilings with some consternation until she remembered that a small piece of washing soda dissolved in water would remove the stains. The curtains at the windows required washing, and they did not slide easily on the rods. Hard soap applied to the rods would take care of that. It was also the remedy she would use on her creaking bedroom door and two of the drawers in the dish cupboard. The carpets needed a thorough sweeping, but the brooms she found were not in a condition that she deemed good enough for the task. The linens were clean, neatly folded, and stored properly, and the huckaback towels were perfectly serviceable if in need of bleaching.

  Jane hesitated when she came to the wardrobe where Morgan still had most of his clothes. Would he see her examination as an intrusion or understand it as merely one of her duties? Last night, when she was adding her clothes to this wardrobe, she had given his belongings only a cursory glance, primarily to judge what she could move out of the way.

  Putting aside her misgivings, Jane opened the doors wide. She removed Morgan’s shirts one at a time and looked them over for stains, tears, and general wear. She found two that needed mending, one at the elbow, and the other on the tail. A third shirt had a loose button. There was a blue chambray shirt that was so thin at the elbows that it would require patching if it were one of Morgan’s favorites. If he could bear to part with it, she was going to shred it for cleaning cloths. Grass stains in his trousers could be removed with alcohol; grease would require Ivory soap and cold water. She made another note to herself to look for the soap.

  As Jane went through the house, she looked for the ladder that would allow her to reach the loft. She never found it, but she did find Jessop Davis hammering on the henhouse roof and asked him about it. He was happy to stop what he was doing and fetch it from the barn for her. When he reappeared, so did his brother. They carried the ladder into the house together and set it up so she could access the loft. Neither of them was comfortable letting her make the climb alone, so Jake went up first to lend her a hand when she reached the top. Jessop remained vigilant below, anticipating a fall.

  The loft was more spacious than she anticipated when she had regarded it from below. It covered the same area as both of the bedrooms beneath it. There were two iron rail beds, a pair of matching dressers, and the clothes cupboard that Morgan had mentioned to her. She looked it over inside and out and agreed with his assessment that it would fit beside the window in their bedroom. How to lower it over the side of the loft was the problem.

  Jake and Jessop shared none of her trepidation. Jake removed the two drawers at the bottom of the cupboard and carried them down while Jessop went back to the barn for block and tackle. One brother made a show of lassoing the cupboard while the other tied it off. Jane estimated it took them all of ten minutes to complete the task. They transported the cupboard to her bedroom, put it precisely where she wanted, and managed to do this without scratching the wood. Jane thought they had accomplished a marvel of engineering and told them so. She also promised them fritters. Her praise elicited identically lopsided, if slightly embarrassed, grins, and they kept their heads down as they shuffled out to get back to their chores. Jane believed they could not have cleared the porch before she heard one of them whoop and the other one laugh.

  Smiling, shaking her head, Jane applied herself to moving Morgan’s clothes to the cupboard.

  • • •

  Morgan dismounted when he reached the summit of Mechling Hill. Jem and Max followed suit. They all stood beside their horses for a time, looking out over Blue Valley. One by one, they took up their canteens and drank.

  “Looks like the grazing will be good this winter,” said Jem. “You were right about grubbing the land. Grass is more plentiful here than before. Came back thicker.” He sloshed water side-to-side in his mouth, and then he spit before he took another drink. “Never could tolerate the taste of the first swig from a canteen.”

  “That’s because you’ve never been thirsty,” said Morgan.

  Jem looked over at him. “Sure felt like that’s what I was.”

  Morgan did not reply. He fixed his gaze on the fast-running stream that cut through the valley. On a clear summer day when the sun was starting to lower, the water reflected all of the sky. It put him in mind of a curling blue ribbon, the kind that a pretty woman might use to tie back her dark, bittersweet chocolate hair. This morning the stream had a silver cast. The white water sparkled as it rushed over stones.

  The white-faced Herefords ignored the stream; most of them favored the pool of water in the basin. Here the water was more or less like the cattle it served—tranquil, wide, and shallow. Come winter, it would freeze. When that happened it would be up to him and his men to chop holes in the ice. If it froze solid, then they would drive the herd to water somewhere else.

  Max Salter put his canteen away first. “I’m going to ride over to the next ridge and look around. I figure there’re about six, maybe seven strays. I’ll bring ’em back.”

  Morgan nodded. “You’ve got a good eye, Max.”

  Max swung his wiry frame into the sad
dle and pulled his horse around. He clicked his tongue, and then he was moving on.

  Jem watched him go. “Probably started to feel crowded what with the two of us standing beside him. He’s not one for company.”

  “Ever think it was the company?”

  “Me? It’s not me.”

  Morgan shot him a pointed look.

  “All right,” Jem said. “I suppose it could be me.”

  “Damn straight. You haven’t shut up since we left the barn. Maybe you should say what’s on your mind instead of talking all around it. Or just talking.”

  Jem shrugged.

  Morgan blew out a long breath. “No parlor games, Jem. I’m not one for animal, vegetable, mineral. Out with it.”

  “It’s animal,” said Jem. Before Morgan clubbed him with his canteen, he added quickly, “It’s about Jane.”

  “You mean Mrs. Longstreet.”

  “She give us leave at breakfast to call her Jane.” In response to Morgan’s arched eyebrow, he said, “But Mrs. Longstreet suits just fine.”

  “Good. What about my wife?”

  “Well, I guess I’ve been wondering what it’s like being married.”

  “You guess? Have you been wondering or not?”

  “Okay. I’ve been wondering. I reckon you know I’ve been fixin’ to marry Renee. I’ve had the thought rattlin’ around in my head for about ten years now, since I was fourteen and she was twelve, but early on mostly what I thought about was just kissin’ her. Haven’t changed my mind about that, and since she lets me have the chance now and again, I think we suit. For sure, we fit.”

  Morgan used his index finger to tip back the brim of his hat and regard Jem dead on. “Wind it down, Jem.”

  Jem shifted his weight. “It’s like this. I’ve known Renee pretty much all my life, been in love with her near to half of it, but sometimes when I actually think about being married to her, I just sorta freeze up inside. Maybe she knows it. Maybe that’s why she ain’t marched down the aisle to meet me yet. How’d you know you’d be a good enough husband?”

  “Jesus, Jem. What the hell kind of question is that?”