Love Inspired Historical November 2015

by Linda Ford

“The same reason you went traipsing off to town and got yourself a wife. She didn’t expect to die. A man can’t raise children alone around these parts. You tried. Everyone knows you did. No one blames you.”

  “For the last time, I do not traipse. You make it sound like I was skipping down Main Street with a basket of daisies.” Turning the topic helped Shane catch his breath. He’d never had a conversation longer than a sentence or two with Milt, and here they were, dissecting his life like a gaggle of women at a quilting bee. “You’ve been reading Wheeler’s penny dreadfuls again, haven’t you? Those books will rot your brain.”

  “Those are good books. Exciting. And don’t change the subject. I might not know what you were thinking bringing home another wife, but I do know this—Tessa is different. You can’t go expecting she’ll be like Abby, because she’s not. Things are going to change around here. I can smell it as surely as I can smell a change in the weather.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Milt guffawed. “You know what your problem is? You think change is a bad thing.”

  “I thought my problem was trying to fix everything,” Shane began, then stopped himself. There was no use arguing. “Never mind. We’ll move the smaller herd to the south pasture today. If this thaw keeps up, we’ll be knee-deep in mud soon enough. Let’s keep the cattle closer to the ranch. I want to keep an eye on things.”

  He’d leave her alone. Give her space for the next few weeks. Let her settle in and learn the routine. Things would change, certainly, but not that much.

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  Milt took the abrupt change of conversation in stride, though his words haunted Shane in the following weeks.

  *

  Tessa was going crazy.

  She was going absolutely, stark raving mad. There was absolutely no reason this should be happening. Everything was going wonderfully. Swimmingly. Perfectly. She and Shane had developed a perfectly wonderful, easy routine. He’d done exactly what she’d asked of him.

  And yet she wanted to strangle him.

  Everything he did annoyed her. She couldn’t explain it. She had nothing to complain about—nothing.

  She punched down the bread dough, then stuck out her lower lip, blowing a breath and ruffling the hair plastered against her forehead. She wasn’t feeling generous toward Shane or Bartleby at that moment. She flipped the bread dough and sent up a cloud of flour. Coughing, she waved her hand before her face. Neither man understood what it was like being a woman. Bartleby clearly thought menial labor was for servants. Which was all well and good if one actually had servants.

  Shane breezed in each evening and played with the children. Never mind if there were dishes in the sink or laundry hanging from the eaves. Why should he be concerned? He’d clearly had a hard day of work. He clearly needed a relaxing evening.

  She punched the dough again. What about her? Did it ever occur to Shane that she might have had a difficult day? That she might need some time alone? Oh no. Never. Shane rolled around on the floor like her third child, whooping it up with the twins.

  Flipping the dough aside, she nicked the edge of the flour tin and sent the whole thing tumbling off the counter. A plume of flour rose from the floor like a white explosion.

  “Drat.”

  Owen toddled over. “Drat.”

  “Don’t say that word, dear. That’s a grown-up word.”

  “Drat,” he repeated.

  Tessa wiped the damp hair from her forehead with the back of her hand and reached for the broom. Already she was a day behind in her chores. Alyce had torn down the clothesline the previous day and she’d had to begin the washing all over again.

  As she swept up the mess, Owen toddled over. With her hands full, she lifted her foot and carefully nudged him back with a toe against his shoulder. “No, no. Let Tessa clean up the mess.”

  He appeared mutinous before turning away. With a huff she reached for the dustpan, sweeping up the flour as best she could. It seeped into the floorboards and mixed with the water she’d spilled from the dishes earlier, turning into a thick paste.

  “Of all the stupid messes,” she muttered. “Never mind. I will finish this later.”

  She rounded the tall kitchen worktable and gaped. Owen and Alyce had snatched her rising bread from the counter and were tugging it apart.

  “No!”

  Her teeth gritted, Tessa engaged in a brief tug-of-war, managing to wrest more than half of the dough away. She set the mounds onto the worktable once more and inspected the damage. Bits of dirt and dust adhered to the sticky surface.

  “Ruined!” she exclaimed. “It’s all ruined.”

  “Drat,” Owen declared.

  Her heart pounded against her chest and she had an inexplicable urge to scream. She was going batty and she had no one with whom she could share her frustrations. She’d assured Shane she was fit for ranch life.

  He’d explained everything clearly. He’d told her all about the isolation and the hard work. He’d been perfectly honest about the trials she’d be facing. She’d been confident that she was prepared.

  She’d been wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

  She was lonely. She was bored. No, that wasn’t right. She had plenty to do. She wasn’t so much bored as stagnant. She was heartily sick of doing the laundry on Thursday and baking the bread on Friday. Or was it the other way around? She didn’t even know which day it was anymore. She was used to being surrounded by scores of people. She was used to being around Emmett. Emmett was a person who liked to talk. Emmett actually carried on a conversation.

  She wasn’t used to being in the same house day after day after day conversing with two tiny little people who had only a twenty-five word vocabulary between them. Not that she didn’t love the children. She absolutely loved them. Feeling lonely around them felt like a betrayal, which only made her feel worse.

  Closing her eyes, she sucked in a few breaths, letting her chest rise and fall. She thought about the brilliant sunset they’d had the previous evening and the time her mother had taken her to see Lake Michigan and she’d thought it was the ocean.

  Yes. That was better.

  She opened her eyes and formed a plan. “Let’s build a fort!”

  While the children watched, she arranged the chairs in a square and gathered several blankets from the bedroom, then draped them over the backs.

  “There,” she declared. “Isn’t that lovely? Now you can play in the fort.”

  A crash sounded.

  She whipped around. Alyce had tipped over the pan of beans she’d been soaking for supper. They’d landed on the floor in a splatter, the water mixing with the flour and the bread dough the children had smeared around earlier.

  The pressure in her head throbbed. She couldn’t do this. She was a failure. Twice in her life she’d set out to do something difficult, and twice in her life she’d fallen flat on her face.

  With a sob, she turned and crawled beneath the blanketed fort.

  Chapter Eleven

  Shane sensed something was not quite right as soon as he neared the house. No enticing aroma of dinner wafted from the kitchen; no little people toddled outside to greet him. He cautiously pushed open the door and discovered Owen without his trousers sitting in a mess of water and beans, while Alyce wore Owen’s pants and perched on a mound of flour.

  Anxiety danced along his spine.

  “Tessa,” he called softly.

  Upon seeing him, Alyce and Owen greeted him with their usual unabashed delight, then quickly returned to their mess. The children reveled in the unsupervised disorder, drawing pictures in the dust and arranging the beans into piles. The kitchen chairs were arranged in a square and draped with a blanket.

  “Tessa,” he called again. “Are you here?”

  He heard it then. A quiet noise. A soft sniffle sounded from beneath the makeshift fort.

  Anticipating trouble, he brought Alyce and Owen a cup of milk as added insurance against a few more minutes of peace.<
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  Shane crouched and peered beneath the blanket. Tessa was sitting with her legs crossed, her fist against her mouth while tears glistened on her eyelashes.

  He cleared his throat. “How was your day?”

  “Fine.” She sniffled. “How was yours?”

  He scooted into the fort she’d arranged and let the blanket fall back into place, plunging them into darkness.

  “You sure you’re fine?” he asked.

  “No.” Tessa’s voice broke in a sob. “Owen won’t wear pants, and Alyce will only wear Owen’s pants. They knocked over the beans and the flour, and then they started playing in the mess. Oh, and they ruined the bread dough. It’s all covered in dirt. Don’t worry. They’re not eating the beans. They both tasted one, though, and spit them out. They didn’t take a nap this afternoon, which meant I didn’t get the washing done, and Bartleby says the washing should be done on Tuesday. I shouldn’t have even been doing the wash except Alyce tore down the clothesline yesterday.”

  “Can you switch the days around?”

  “No. Wednesday is the day I make bread. There’s the kneading and the rising and then the baking. It’s exhausting. Have you ever made bread?”

  “Can’t say that I have. Biscuits sometimes.”

  “Bread is much more difficult than biscuits.” He felt rather than saw her scowl. “You don’t understand.”

  “We could have biscuits next week instead of bread,” he prompted.

  “Why would we do that?”

  “Because biscuits are easier and you said all the bread dough got ruined.”

  Her hiccup turned into another sob. “You’re not helping. You don’t understand.”

  “Then help me understand.”

  His eyes had adjusted to the dark, and he made out her disheveled appearance.

  She swiped at her nose with the back of her sleeve. Reaching into his back pocket, he retrieved his handkerchief and handed it over.

  With a hiccup, she fisted her hand over the square. “I lied to you. I can’t do this. It’s too much.”

  Why hadn’t he seen the signs sooner? Everyone had their breaking point. Tessa had gone through a lot. She’d come to a strange place and married someone she hardly knew, assuming the care of two rambunctious children. She’d tried to make everything perfect. Too perfect. She’d set an impossible standard for herself.

  He should have noticed that she was growing overwhelmed sooner. “Sure you can. This is one bad day. Everyone has bad days. You’ve had lots of good ones, too, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.” She took a few uneven breaths. “I hate Bartleby.”

  “Then I’ll burn his book. I’ll have the boys start a bonfire right now.”

  “No.” She hiccuped. “I like his recipe for potted chicken.”

  Clearly she didn’t want her problems solved, which was too bad, because he excelled at fixing things. Instead, he tried another tack. “How about this? First, I’ll clean up the kitchen. Then I’ll take Owen and Alyce to visit Scout. You can have some time alone to catch up on things. If you’re feeling better later, we can all go sledding together.”

  “That is the worst idea I’ve ever heard.” She huffed. “That’s the whole problem. Don’t you see?”

  He frowned. “I don’t.”

  “Except for the cleanup part. That part wasn’t a bad idea. You can clean up all you want. Whenever you want. The sledding is a terrible idea.”

  “Why?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t help you unless you talk to me.”

  “If you must know, I don’t want to go sledding.” She crossed her arms rebelliously over her chest. “I’ll have to bundle the children and that will take hours because Owen will undress while I’m putting on Alyce’s coat and Alyce will undress while I’m putting on my coat and nothing will ever get done.”

  “We’ll bundle them as a team. That way, no one can undress.”

  “All right.” A loud sniffle. “Only if you help clean up and bundle the children.”

  He would have offered more help earlier, except she’d never asked and everything had seemed fine. If she’d let him know sooner she was growing overwhelmed, things might not have spiraled out of control.

  She brushed the tangled hair from her forehead. This didn’t seem to be the time to point that out.

  The agreement was struck and he emerged from beneath the blanket. He spent the next hour and a half cleaning the house, though he left Tessa and the fort undisturbed. He bundled the children, which took just as long as Tessa had complained about, and led them outside. They visited Scout, feeding the horse a winter dried carrot, then dug the sled out of the loft.

  After an hour alone Tessa joined them outside, as cheerful as ever. Her eyes were dried and she looked as bright as the morning sun. He didn’t even mention the blob of bread dough in her hair, figuring she’d discover it soon enough.

  Following that memorable evening, he’d made a point of ensuring Tessa had time alone each day. Sometimes she’d finish her tasks and join them in sledding or building a snowman or a snow fort; sometimes she simply stayed in the cabin and brewed a cup of tea. While his daily intervention didn’t solve all the problems that cropped up, it seemed to provide Tessa with the endurance to handle whatever the children threw her way.

  They were friends of a sort. He’d asked for companionship, and he’d got companionship. Except he feared with Tessa, he wanted something more. Only he’d made a promise, and he was honor bound to keep that promise. Since those first hesitant days together, she’d given no hint that she wanted anything more from him. Nothing. Not even the slightest indication.

  Whatever tender feelings she may have harbored in the beginning, those feelings obviously hadn’t survived time and proximity. Tessa had kept her end of the bargain. She was a good mother to the children. She’d kept her promise to him, too. She was a good wife in all the tasks he’d set before her. He didn’t have the heart, or the courage, to ask for more.

  Only one problem nagged him. She was holding something back, and until she trusted him with her secret, a wall remained between them. If he pushed her to trust him, he’d only push her away. He’d been through this with Abby and lost, and he feared he was losing again.

  For the second time in his life, he was the wrong man.

  *

  Shane was holding something back, and yet Tessa couldn’t quite put her finger on the problem. Following her slight hiccup with the beans and the flour and the all-around mess, they’d fallen into a much easier routine. Some of the ice had thawed between them. They didn’t exactly share the easy camaraderie of old friends, but at least they’d developed a level of comfort around one another.

  Despite this newfound partnership, there was still something missing. She told herself he was mourning his first wife, that he was exhausted, that he just needed more time. No matter what she told herself, she’d begun to suspect the problem wasn’t with Shane. She’d started to wonder if she simply wasn’t the sort of person who inspired affection in others.

  Despite her misgiving, one evening after the children had gone to bed, she blocked his exit. There was no time like the present.

  “Shane,” she began haltingly. “I was wondering if you’d help me with something.”

  “Sure. What?”

  She reached for Bartleby’s Book of Household Management. Also following her slight mishap with the beans and the flour and the all-around mess, she and Bartleby had come to an agreement as well. She stuck to the recipes and mostly ignored his other advice. She’d do the washing when she was good and ready, and not adhere to an arbitrary schedule created by some crazy Englishman for the torture of frontier wives.

  She set the book on the table with a thump. “Do you know fractions?”

  “Sure.” He scratched his temple. “Some. Nothing real complicated.”

  “Hopefully this won’t be too complicated.” She indicated a list of ingredients. “Some of the recipes make too much, and some of them make too little, but I don
’t know how to calculate the adjustments.”

  He grinned and her eyes were drawn to his mouth. Memories of the way his lips felt against hers flooded her senses. Too bad she didn’t inspire affection in others, because she sure experienced it herself.

  “That’s easy,” he said. “I can show you how to do that.”

  She felt a little breathless. “Right now?”

  “Absolutely.” He glanced right and left. “I thought we had a slate board around here. That’s probably the easiest way to start.”

  After retrieving the twins’ slate board and chalk, she indicated the recipe again. “This made seventy-two biscuits, which is too many. I’d like to cut the recipe in half.”

  “Let’s see here. Knowing how to do something and explaining how to do something are two entirely different things.”

  Shane prowled around the kitchen. He gathered the measuring cups along with the tin of flour and set them on the table.

  She gazed at his eyes, recalling how she’d thought they were the green of a tender new leaf. They reminded her of spring, when everything was fresh and new again. She liked the way he moved. There was an unconscious grace about him, an economy of motion.

  As he arranged the flour and measuring cups, her apprehension grew. “I don’t need to actually make the biscuits. I just need to know how to change the recipe.”

  “We’re not making anything. I’m showing you how this works in practice.”

  She lowered herself onto a chair and planted her chin in her cupped hands. “I can’t wait to see what you have up your sleeve.”

  And she definitely liked looking at his arms. His rippling muscles were undeniably masculine and unconsciously enticing.

  “I suppose we should start out with something easy. Like a cup.”

  She studied his shaggy hair, the way it curled over his ears. He really needed a haircut. She’d clipped Emmett’s hair before. Maybe he’d let her give him a trim. “That one is easy, silly. Half of a cup is a half a cup.”

  “Fair enough. Then let’s take this next measurement.”

  Scooping the flour, he filled two measuring cups, then reached for a third. She liked his hands. The dusting of dark hair across the knuckles, the scars from the nicks and cuts he’d suffered over the years, the callouses on his fingers. Most of the men she’d encountered growing up had worked in saloons or storefronts. They’d had soft hands with neatly clipped nails. Shane’s were jagged. His thumbnail even had a dip in the center, as though he’d crushed it once and it had never healed. She’d never considered someone’s hands in detail before, but she found Shane’s fascinating.