He poured a cold glass of buttermilk from the pitcher in the icebox and drank it on the back stairs. The cat Flynn had mentioned meowed and curled his back along the bottom step. Caleb sat and tipped the glass so the feline could lick the last ounce of milk from a puddle on the wood.
Caleb had barely fallen asleep when Ellie’s scream had awakened him. He’d realized immediately that she’d been dreaming and had tried to wake her with a gentle touch on her shoulder.
Her panic and fear at that innocent touch had startled him, and he’d had all he could do to keep her from clawing his eyes out.
Ben’s attack on top of that had come out of nowhere.
Caleb set the glass down and lowered his forehead to his palms, his elbows on his knees. He could pick ’em, couldn’t he?
The screen creaked behind him and he raised his head to see Ellie drift through the back porch and out into the night in her white nightgown. “Are you all right?”
He moved his gaze to the cat, now licking its paws. “Yeah.”
She seated herself on the top step, well away from him, but close enough that he caught the scent of her hair. “I am so terribly sorry,” she said softly.
“Who was it, Ellie?” he asked into the darkness. “Who was it that hurt you so badly?”
Chapter Ten
“H-hurt me?” She didn’t know where she found the air to speak.
“You. And Ben. Someone hurt you both, made you afraid of people.”
Caleb was a compassionate man, and a smart man. It hadn’t taken him long to see something very wrong with his new wife and her brothers. Did he already regret making her his wife?
In the kitchen window behind them the sultry breeze sucked the curtains against the screen and released them, a rhythmic rasping.
“Was it your father?” Perfectly logical, a perfect assumption. “Did your father beat you?”
Assuming one had a father and assuming that a father could scar a child, it sounded as good an answer as any. One he would definitely see as dreadful and yet not entirely shameful. “Yes,” she replied.
“And Flynn,” he said. “You protected him.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.” That part was true.
“I can’t pretend to know what that was like for you both.”
Of course he couldn’t. He had doting, well-to-do parents. He’d never had to wonder who his father was. Or where his next meal was coming from.
“Is that what the dream is about? About him hitting you?”
Lies came easier after the first couple hundred. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry, Ellie.”
“Nothing for you to be sorry for,” she replied.
His hand found hers in her lap and he threaded his fingers with hers. She looked at his fingers twined with hers in the moonlight, so much larger, so much stronger. He’d wrestled Ben to the floor and held him fast. Her heart skipped a twittery beat.
“Nobody’s going to hurt you again,” he said, much as she’d promised her brothers and sounding every bit as sincere. “I understand now why you made me promise not to hit them. I wouldn’t have, even if I hadn’t promised. You know that, don’t you?”
Somewhere inside the reasoning part of her mind she knew that. But who knew what anyone was capable of if they really got mad? Or drunk? People acted entirely different when they were drunk. Promises meant nothing.
He tugged her hand across the space to his trouser-clad knee. “Don’t you, Ellie?”
“I—I think so.”
He swatted a mosquito on his shoulder, the movement jerking their joined hands and reminding her that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. She didn’t turn her head.
He used his other hand to stroke her fingers and the sensation made her stomach flutter. Once while waiting tables at the Arcade, she’d seen a man and woman holding hands beneath the linen tablecloth. The intimacy had embarrassed her and she’d looked away.
Now, with Caleb holding her hand, his hard palm feeling so right against hers, she realized it could be something quite pleasant. Something so gentle and fine it made her heart swell and the corners of her lips tremble.
She allowed herself to glance over at his illuminated profile, the rest of his face cast into dark shadows. He was looking at their clasped hands.
He ran his index finger over the knuckle of her thumb, up to her wrist. With the pad of that finger, he found the sensitive skin on the inside of her wrist and drew lazy circles around that pulse point with his thumb.
Though the night was sultry and her skin damp, shivers ran up Ellie’s bare arm. A night owl hooted in the distance.
“You sure smell good,” he said, catching her off guard.
“Just castile soap,” she said hoarsely.
“I can smell your hair all the way over here.”
“You can?”
“Um-hmm.”
“I washed it last night.”
“Bet it’s soft, too.”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just hair.”
He looked over at her then. “Mind if I smell it up close?”
“I—” She swallowed. “I guess I don’t mind.”
He leaned toward her, his bare chest rubbing her shoulder because she wore her batiste nightgown without sleeves. Tilting his head, he buried his face in the hair at her neck and inhaled.
Of course that breath had to come out and when it did, the moist warmth fluttered against Ellie’s ear and her neck and shoulder. Goose bumps broke out on her flesh. “Yes,” he whispered, a soul-deep sound.
Ellie had turned her upper body toward him without thinking. He touched his nose to the skin beneath her ear and she stopped breathing.
He released her hand and brought both palms up to grasp her shoulders gently. The touch of his hands on her skin sent a frisson of alarm through her body, and immediately, she recoiled, bringing her forearms up and forcing his hands away.
“Ellie,” he said.
She shook her head and sat stiffly, folding her good arm over the one with the cast and protectively holding them both to her midriff.
“Ellie, there are ways to prevent having a baby. We can take precautions so you wouldn’t become pregnant.”
Shocked at his train of thought, she scrambled to her feet.
He stood and faced her. “I respect that you don’t want children,” he said. “Truly I do.”
She stared at him. Was that what this tenderness had been about? A plan to get her to his bed? “Then respect that I want no part of sleeping with you, either. We made a deal.”
“I thought it was because of the children you didn’t want.”
“It was. It is. But not completely. You gave your word.”
“You refuse to allow me in your bed even if I can promise you won’t have a child because of it?”
“That’s right. You understood that. I thought I made it clear from the first.”
He raised a hand and dropped it. “It’s clear.”
She let her arms lower and straightened. It was the middle of the night. They’d best get back to their beds. She hurried into the house and up the stairs, noting the listing door and the chair that Caleb had smashed from beneath the knob. A good lot of protection that had been.
She was at his mercy, she realized now. Neither a closed door nor a lock could prevent him from entering this room and taking what he wished from her. Only his word prevented that—only his promise.
Ellie had never placed so much hope in a promise.
He was taking a few days off, Caleb told Ellie the following morning as she stirred oatmeal at the stove. “Is everything all right?” she asked.
He placed Nate in his high chair. “I just think it would be good for us. As a family.”
Ellie’s throat got tight at the word.
“Where are the boys?”
“I think they’re out back.”
Caleb stepped onto the back porch and called through the screen. “You fellas comin’ in to eat?”
Benjamin carried in a buc
ket. He didn’t meet Caleb’s eyes. “I milked the goat. I’ll clean out his lean-to a little later.”
“Thank you.” Caleb took the bucket as though last night had never happened. “I guess that would be a good chore for you, lookin’ after Nate’s nanny.” He glanced at the boys. “That was a joke. The goat provides Nate’s milk and a nanny is a goat as well as someone who takes care of babies.”
“Oh.” Flynn stood awkwardly just inside the kitchen door behind his brother.
“Where do you want them to eat?” Ellie asked.
“Pick a chair and start in,” Caleb replied.
The boys moved to the table and seated themselves, casting Caleb cautious looks.
Ellie spooned oatmeal into bowls and placed one in front of each of them.
Flynn immediately picked up his spoon and dug in, barely taking time to blow on the hot cereal.
Caleb got up and brought a small pitcher of cream from the icebox. He poured some on his cereal and then got the sugar bowl from the cupboard and liberally sprinkled sugar on top.
The boys watched in fascination.
They’d never had cream or sugar as children. “Should I have put that in the oatmeal as I made it?” She sat.
He gave her a quizzical glance. “No. I like it this way, don’t you?”
She nodded.
Caleb’s spoon stopped on the way to his mouth and he looked from one sibling to the other. “Something wrong?”
They looked back at their bowls.
“Not a thing,” Ellie said, picking up the pitcher, dousing her oatmeal with cream and passing it to Ben with a strong look.
Ben did the same and passed it to Flynn.
The sugar made the rounds next, and then the three of them stirred and tasted. A smile lit Flynn’s face. Benjamin promptly cleaned his bowl and sat back.
Caleb finished eating and wiped his lips with his napkin.
All three of them did exactly the same.
He looked from one to the other oddly. Slowly, he stood. “I’m going to get a picnic lunch from the cook at the Side Track Saloon and we’re going to go fishing.”
“Hot-diggity!” Flynn said, jumping up so fast, he knocked his chair backward with a clatter. He looked at Caleb with alarm and set the chair aright.
Nobody said anything for a minute.
“Wear comfortable clothes that you don’t mind getting dirty,” Caleb continued, and Flynn released a pent-up breath. “I’ll be back shortly. Be ready.” He nodded at Benjamin. “You can take care of the lean-to when we get back.”
He exited into the hallway, and they could hear the front door open and close. Nate blinked at Ellie and she fed him the last of his breakfast.
Flynn scurried up the stairs to change.
“What did he say about last night?” Benjamin asked.
“He knows Heath beat you boys. He wanted to know if our pa hit you, too, so I just said yes.”
“If we’d had a pa he’d have hit us,” he agreed with a nod, obviously understanding her unwillingness to admit it had been their mother and any number of her callers who had struck and starved them.
“He can’t find out, Ben,” she said in earnest. “We have a home here as long as he doesn’t know where we came from.”
“I ain’t gonna tell him.”
“And Flynn?”
“I’ll talk to him,” Ben answered. “He won’t say nothin’. He likes it here.”
Ellie placed her hand over her brother’s. “I like it here, too.”
His blue eyes revealed his confusion. He would never admit to liking anything for fear it would be snatched away from him, but he had to see that this was by far the best situation any of them had ever been within sniffing distance of. He would never spoil it purposely.
Caleb returned as promised, his handsome team pulling a rented wagon, which provided more room for the delicious-smelling covered basket he’d purchased, as well as Nate’s basket, Caleb’s medical bag and three fishing poles.
The spring wagon still had two seats, so the boys perched on the high rear seat and Ellie sat beside Caleb, Nate on her lap.
Caleb took them in a southwesterly direction along a road that followed the train tracks for a time, then wound along a stream and sloped down to a flat, shady area.
The boys leaped down and Flynn ran off to discover what lay along the banks of the stream. Caleb shook out a couple of Hudson’s Bay blankets and spread them on the ground. He pulled a short-handled shovel from beneath a seat just as Flynn returned.
“I’ll get the worms.” Flynn took the shovel importantly and headed for a shady patch of weeds.
Ellie rested on the blanket and observed them from a distance. Flynn was right there beside Caleb, talking to him, turning his face up and listening. They put their lines in the water and Flynn hunkered down next to him.
Benjamin, on the other hand, situated himself a bit downstream, which in itself wasn’t unusual. He probably didn’t want his exuberant brother scaring the fish away. But in conjunction with everything else, his isolation—no matter how self-imposed—disturbed Ellie.
In the distance a train clacked by, reminding her she didn’t have to ride a railcar to visit her brothers any longer. She vowed she would never take this good fortune for granted. She watched them and relaxed.
Caleb rested his forearms on his knees and answered Flynn’s questions. Some of them, like how did the fish get in there in the first place, and where did they sleep, and did they close their eyes when they slept, he either made up answers for or engaged the lad in a game of supposition. He laughed at Flynn’s imaginative ideas and, at the boy’s urging, removed his shoes and socks.
“Ain’t never had nobody but Ben to fish with before,” Flynn said, sliding his rear end down the bank until his toes dangled in the water. “An’ he makes me be quiet. Don’t my yappin’ make ya tired?”
“No, but I’ll let you know if I need a little quiet one of these times.”
“Awright. Ain’t never been to a picnic before either. Me an’ Ben ate outside a whole lot at the Heaths’, but we didn’t know it was a picnic.”
It probably hadn’t been, Caleb thought. “It must have been hard for you when your mother died and you got sent there.”
Flynn shrugged his shoulders noncommittally.
“Did they die at the same time?” He’d never learned what their parents had died of. “A sickness of some sort?”
“Same time as what? Who?”
“Same time as each other. Your mother and father.”
The boy bobbed his pole over the water. “She just died. Didn’t have no father.”
“Everyone has a father,” Caleb disagreed. “You probably just don’t remember him if he died a long time ago.”
“Everyone?”
Caleb nodded. “That’s where babies come from, a mother and a father.”
“I think it just only takes a ma sometimes,” he said quite seriously to the Harvard Medical School graduate who sat beside him.
Caleb considered the wisdom of pursuing the subject and decided there was nothing wrong with innocence. He glanced farther downstream, to where Benjamin sat with his pole, and wondered why Flynn couldn’t remember his father. Ellie had admittedly protected him from the same abuse she and Ben had received, but he didn’t remember the man? Perhaps he chose not to.
“Look at that!” Flynn cried, jumping up and pointing to the crested bird, bluish in color and flapping its wings in irregular bursts, that dived into the water headfirst and emerged with a fish in its long beak. It flew toward the stand of trees farther upstream, giving them a glimpse of its white-ringed neck and white-feathered belly.
“That was a kingfisher,” Caleb told him. “A female by the looks of that reddish brown along her sides.”
“Do you think she has a nest with some baby birds up there?”
“Kind of late in the year,” he replied. “If she had babies, they’re probably grown.”
Benjamin was the only one besides the
kingfisher who caught any fish. He strung four catfish and left them staked in the shallow water while they ate.
Caleb had purchased fried chicken and cabbage slaw, pickled beets and pickles along with four jars of buttermilk.
Flynn polished off his third chicken leg and rubbed his rounded belly. “’Member that chicken Ben stoled from ol’ man Higgins that one time, Ellie? You said that chicken was so old and tough that—”
“Ben bought that chicken, Flynn,” his sister said.
“No, he didn’t, we—”
“Yes, he did. He bought that chicken.” She gave him a deliberate glare.
Flynn glanced at Caleb and back to Ellie, then picked at the bones on his plate. “Yeah. He bought that chicken. I guess I forgot.”
A silence fell over their small group. Ellie packed up the dishes and remaining food.
A horse and rider caught their attention a few minutes later. J. J. Jenkins rode up on a gray with two white stockings. He wore a hat pulled low over his forehead. “Doc!” he cried, jumping from the animal’s back and running toward them.
Caleb walked barefoot to meet him.
“Saw the note on your door and rode out to find ya. The Douglases’ daughter is havin’ a baby an’ Mrs. Douglas don’t want Doc Thornton. Her and Tyrone sent me to fetch ya. She said to tell ya that Tyrone took so long to give in that their ain’t much time left and her daughter’s in a bad way.”
“Let’s go,” Caleb said, grabbing the poles and the string of fish.
Ellie placed their belongings in the wagon and gathered Nate and her brothers. J.J. rode alongside for a short time, then galloped ahead to tell the Douglases that Caleb was on his way.
“This woman isn’t one of your patients?”
“No.” Caleb handed her the reins while he pulled on his socks and shoes. “Her husband ran off and left her a while back and I’d heard she’d gone back to live with her folks. They have a ranch this side of my parents’. Tyrone’s been pretty vocal with his opinion of doctors who got their education in a lecture hall rather than on a battlefield or as an apprentice.” He finished tying his shoe and took back the reins. “His wife and daughter must have really done something to convince him to let me attend her.”
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