Hill Country Courtship (Brides of Simpson Creek Book 8)

by Laurie Kingery

  “Ah, niña, I wasn’t going to be gone for long,” Juana said, returning and reaching out to get the infant. “Would you like to come, too?”

  “I can hold her, Juana,” Maude assured her, and held out her hands but Hannah refused to accept a substitute, crying disconsolately until Juana retraced her steps for her.

  “See, I told you—spoiled rotten, already,” sniffed Coira MacLaren as she relinquished the fretful baby. “Scottish babies are not so cosseted, I promise ye. They spend hours outside in the fresh air, no matter the weather and with no heed paid to their whims, so they grow up tough, not always expecting a woman to be comforting them.”

  Maude was careful to keep her face expressionless, but she couldn’t help but wonder, Was that what had caused that hardness within Jonas MacLaren? Had this woman never given him the assurance that he could count on her love and care, through thick and thin? And yet he’d said she had killed to protect him...

  Juana returned before Maude managed to dismiss that thought, and reported that supper was indeed ready, according to the housekeeper. She seemed amused by something, but she didn’t let on what it was.

  “Why didn’t you help with the cooking?” Maude whispered as they arose from their seats and headed for the dining room. “If it was because I was gone, I’m sorry.”

  The secret smile faded from her friend’s lovely features as she whispered back, “I tried, but nothing I did suited her! She threw me out of the kitchen! She’s impossible, that one! And the food is, too—you’ll see!”

  When they got to the dining room, the first dish that was passed to her was stewed mutton—hence the reason for Juana’s expression during the earlier conversation in the parlor, for Maude had told her of her dislike of mutton. But she had no idea what the next dish was. It had a savory aroma, but she’d never seen anything like it. She looked up to find Mrs. MacLaren watching her with great anticipation.

  “Wondering what that is, are ye?” she asked. Now it was she who wore a secretive smile. “’Tis a very traditional Scottish dish, known as haggis. ’Tis the minced-up lungs, liver and heart of a sheep, mixed with oats and seasoned with onions and spices, and cooked in the sheep’s stomach.”

  For a moment, Maude could only stare at the woman in horror. Surely she was teasing her and would admit she was joking in a moment.

  Mrs. MacLaren grinned openly at her discomfiture. “I’m sorry ye shan’t have the proper experience for yer first time trying it, ’tis supposed to be piped in—brought in to the music of bagpipes—but we’re short of a piper, here in Texas,” she said.

  She stared across the table, first at Juana, who mouthed the word loco, and then to Jonas, who to her surprise, actually looked sympathetic.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “’tis a rite of passage, I suppose you might call it, that Mother enjoys putting non-Scottish guests through. ’Twill be all right if you’d rather just eat the mutton and the soup—that’s called ‘cock-a-leekie,’ but ’tis just chicken broth and onions, there being no proper leeks to be had here,” he said, his golden eyes reassuring, but also retaining a glint of amusement.

  It had been a long day, full of new experiences and the exertion of riding, and Maude was tired of being the MacLarens’ source of enjoyment. “No, I’m sure if it’s good enough for a Scot, it’s good enough for a Texan,” she said, and helped herself, a little defiantly, to the unimaginable concoction.

  “That’s the spirit,” Jonas approved, even as Juana said she’d just have the soup.

  Maude glanced over in time to see a look of admiration on Coira’s face, too, and was surprised. So serving her haggis had been a test?

  Maude found the strange concoction not too bad, once she got past the idea of its ingredients. She supposed Texans ate some strange things, too—she’d consumed fried rattlesnake, as well as candy made of cactus and the so-called “prairie oysters” obtained when young bull calves were made into steers.

  At least dessert was pleasant and easily enjoyed—freshly made buttery shortbread cookies. Afterward, everyone retired to the parlor, and Mrs. MacLaren picked up a thick leather-bound volume and handed it to Maude.

  “Have you read aught by our national bard, Robbie Burns?” Mrs. MacLaren asked.

  Maude had to admit she had not, but looking over poems titled “To a Mouse” and “Scots Wha Hae,” she found some of the Gaelic spellings of words incomprehensible.

  “Perhaps Mr. MacLaren should read it to give it the proper flavor?” she asked, offering him the volume, then realized she didn’t even know if he could read.

  Evidently he’d had some schooling, though, for he accepted the book and she found she understood the stirring lines quite easily when he read them.

  At one point, though, he laughed as he looked over at Juana, who was holding Hannah.

  “Looks like Robbie Burns and I have bored the wee lass into slumber,” he said, smiling as he gazed at the sleeping baby.

  “I’ll put Hannah to bed,” Juana announced, “and return in just a bit.”

  Maude was torn, wishing she could be the one to put her baby to bed, for there was nothing sweeter than the way Hannah clung to her before surrendering to sleep. But this time, at least, it was probably better that she stay with Jonas and his mother.

  “Do ye like our national bard, then?” Mrs. MacLaren said as Juana took the baby away.

  “I do,” Maude agreed, “very much.” Burns was an excellent poet, but if she was honest, she had enjoyed Jonas’s musical voice even more than the words themselves. It had been a good decision to hand him the book.

  “What about Sir Walter Scott, then? Have you read anything by him?”

  Maude thought Violet, Raleigh Masterson’s English bride, had brought a book of his or two with her, but she had to admit she hadn’t read them as yet. Her life at the boardinghouse helping Mrs. Meyer, as well as assisting Ella with cooking and service at her café, hadn’t left her much time for reading. She shook her head.

  “Are you willing to read aloud for a while?” Mrs. MacLaren asked with surprising eagerness. She handed Maude another leather-bound volume, and Maude read the title, Ivanhoe, in gilt lettering across the front.

  “Certainly, if you don’t think my Texas drawl will mangle Mr. Scott’s prose,” she said.

  “It might make an interesting mix,” the older woman said with one of her all-too-rare smiles.

  Maude began reading, and was soon caught up in the stirring medieval tale. But it was apparent by the end of the first chapter that Mrs. MacLaren was drowsy. Maude laid the book down and offered to help Mrs. MacLaren get ready for bed.

  “It’s been a pleasant evening,” Coira MacLaren murmured as she allowed Maude to lead her away. She sounded almost surprised. “A taste of home, between the haggis and the Burns and Sir Walter. You’ve been good to put up with it all, Maude, hasn’t she, Jonas?”

  Maude had thought Jonas’s mind far away, but he nodded his agreement. “Here in Texas, they’d say she has sand, aye?” he said with a wink.

  “Why, thank you, Mr. MacLaren. Mrs. MacLaren, would you like me to comb out your hair?”

  “That would be very nice. Senora Morales doesn’t offer to do that very often. I suppose that Juana has gone on to bed?”

  Maude knew how easy it was to grow drowsy, as one rocked and soothed a tired baby who wasn’t quite ready to surrender to sleep. “I think she must have. Will you mind if I help you, this once?”

  “No, that would be fine,” Coira MacLaren said with surprising flexibility. “Any lass who can down haggis with as little missishness as you did is welcome to help me.”

  Jonas carried his mother up the stairs with the apparent ease of long practice.

  Coira’s room was as austere as her heart, plainly though comfortably furnished. But she was surprised to notice a little anteroom leading out of the bedr
oom, and while Jonas assisted his mother to bed, Maude went into it and found a small room lined with large windows and filled with a multitude of potted plants of all varieties, including several types of cactus and some which would have flowers in the warmer seasons. There were herbs of all kinds and aloe with big fleshy leaves.

  “I see you’ve found Mother’s greenhouse,” Jonas said, coming up behind her. “She has quite the green thumb, my mother does. Always ask her before you water something—she kens which ones need it and which do better with less, aye?”

  Maude nodded her understanding.

  “I’ll leave you to your duties, then,” he said.

  After he left, Maude found there was something soothing about combing out and replaiting the older woman’s faded ginger hair. Mrs. MacLaren seemed to think so, too, for she was quiet and looked content as Maude worked her way through the task.

  “You’re a good girl, Maude Harkey,” Jonas’s mother said a few minutes later, once Maude had helped her into a nightgown and into her bed. “You’ve made a good start today. Jonas did well to bring you here, I think.”

  Blinking at the unexpected praise, Maude decided she had made quite a bit of progress toward acceptance by her new employers during her first full day at Five Mile Hill Ranch, especially since the day had begun with shattered crockery thrown in a fit of temper, yet was ending so tranquilly.

  “But tell that Juana she is to bring my tea on time and in the proper cup in the morning,” Coira ordered, just when Maude was feeling very satisfied with herself. A perfect illustration of pride going before a fall, Maude thought ruefully. Clearly it would take more than one day to soften the imperiousness out of Coira MacLaren.

  When Maude left the old woman’s room, she wondered what to do next—return to the parlor or seek her own bed? The idea of being with Jonas MacLaren, alone, in front of the fire, was a puzzling contradiction for the way it made her feel. On the one hand she was drawn to him and wondered if more time alone with him would incline him to provide more pieces of the puzzle about himself.

  On the other hand, the idea of being alone with him made her nervous. He looked at her too closely, and saw things other men had never bothered to see. She had no experience with handling such intense attention, and she wasn’t certain she entirely liked the flustered way it made her feel.

  No, she would not rejoin the bewildering Mr. MacLaren tonight. Instead, she headed to the bedroom she shared with Juana.

  Her friend had indeed fallen asleep next to baby Hannah and was snoring softly. Maude lifted Hannah into her cradle, then spent a few moments staring down at the child. She had taken this position for the child’s sake, and she did not regret the decision. Hannah would grow up healthy and happy here, she was sure. But when she had agreed to take the post, she had spent so much time considering what life on the ranch would be like for Hannah that she had devoted little time to what it would be like for herself. It was...not quite as she had anticipated. Maude kissed the baby’s tiny forehead, then knelt by her bed to say her prayers.

  Climbing into bed, she closed her eyes and ended her day wondering what she and Jonas might have talked about if she had returned to the parlor instead.

  Chapter Eight

  The next two days passed so peacefully that Jonas kept looking around to see if he had somehow wandered into the wrong house. Coira’s explosions of temper, such as the one that had marked the morning of the ladies’ first day at the ranch, had decreased to one or two a day, and seemed more a matter of fretful habit than anything else. The housekeeper had stopped threatening to leave. Jonas even caught her humming.

  Not that his mother’s character had been transformed overnight. She still wanted what she wanted, when she wanted it, and quickly, too, but both Maude and the little Tejana widow had lost no time in learning how to please her new mistress. His mother had become quite besotted over the “wee bairn in the house,” almost as if little Hannah were her granddaughter, and was not content unless the baby was present, either awake or sleeping, near her. She loved having Maude read to her, which the girl willingly did, apparently without tiring, for hours.

  Saturday morning continued mild, warm and sunny as it had been, and immediately after breakfast Hector appeared and invited Juana to take the same tour of the ranch that Maude had enjoyed two days before. He was quite willing to take baby Hannah with them, but at the suggestion of it, Coira MacLaren jumped up, eyes flashing and asked if everyone had gone quite mad to even consider it. She was not about to trust the wee little bairn to the vagaries of a horse’s temperament, even if he was, for “weren’t the daft beasts always spooking and bucking at the least little thing?”

  Jonas suspected his mother’s real reason was that she didn’t want the baby away from her for so much of the day—but he held his peace. It would harm little for his mother to get her way in this, and anyway, she had a point about the ride not being fully safe for a child so small.

  The plan was soon amended so that Juana and Hector would go on their tour, but would take care not to be gone that long. Hannah would remain in the ranch house with Maude. Juana promised to return before the time Hannah was usually waking from her afternoon nap and needing to be nursed.

  Jonas was amused to see that Hector, heeding Juana’s insistence that she was not the horsewoman that Maude was, had brought the tamest, most docile mare in the barn for the nursemaid to ride, and helped her mount as gallantly as a knight of old. Oh-ho! So that’s the way the wind blows! Unless he was very, very mistaken, his foreman was already rather smitten with the young widow. Jonas wasn’t averse to the idea of romance developing between the two, but he hoped his segundo would keep in mind how recently the young woman had lost her husband. Juana did not seem quite as smitten as Hector, but he reminded himself she had lost her husband recently. She accepted Hector’s courtly attention with a gracious smile, leading Jonas to believe that she might warm to Hector in time, if the man was patient.

  Juana Benavides was indeed a pretty woman, and he knew his foreman had been lonely since the death of his wife. Perhaps, when the time was right, Hector would take another bride.

  He could hardly fault his foreman for being quickly attracted to the slim, dark Juana, since his own eyes searched the room for Maude whenever he entered the house. Maude, with her dark red hair and flashing blue eyes, seemed to glow in the dim interior of the thick-walled ranch house. Despite his earlier scornful words on the subject of romance, he still had trouble believing what fools these Texas men were for not plucking Maude from the vine long ago.

  Yet perhaps he had no right to condemn them, for he would not be courting her, either. Much as he enjoyed the sight of Maude in his home, he was resolved to keep his distance and guard his emotions. He still had no intention of trusting his heart to another female.

  But even if he would not let himself love her, he could still appreciate her. He had done a good thing in bringing Maude here. The peace that he had hoped for had seemingly settled on the ranch house at long last. His mother had something new to focus on besides her own aches and ailments, thank the good Lord above.

  “Mr. MacLaren, may I ask you something?”

  Jonas had just settled down to a noontime bowl of soup in the dining room, and here was Maude with her own bowlful of the same.

  “Of course,” he said, hoping she couldn’t see how glad he was of her presence. “Sit down, Miss Maude. Is the wee one napping, then?”

  “Yes, and here’s hoping she’ll sleep till Juana returns. Your mother sang her to sleep and is dozing by the sunny window in her chair with Hannah in her lap.”

  “You and Mrs. Benavides have accomplished quite a lot in a short time,” he said as she settled herself across the table from him. “I thank you for the calm and quiet, which was all too rare here before your coming. What was your question?”

  He liked the way her blue eyes shone at the complime
nt. It was a peculiarity he had noticed in the lady over the past few days. Praise for being clever, capable or practical were accepted with pleasure. Compliments to her beauty or charm threw her into confusion, as if no one had ever said such things to her before. Yet how could that be?

  “Thank you,” she said. “This being Saturday, my question was whether anyone would be riding into Simpson Creek for church services on the morrow. The good weather seems to be continuing.”

  She paled a little as she asked him the question, and he became aware that she’d been apprehensive about asking it. But she looked him right in the eye as she did so, without ducking her head. Aye, she had sand, all right. But he’d have to quash her notion, unfortunately.

  “No, no one will be going into town for church tomorrow,” he told her. “I’m afraid you might say we’re not exactly devout, God-fearing folk, my mother and I...and even if we were, ’tis just too far to be practical. You’d have to rise before dawn and ride hard to make it there in time for the service, and by the time all the pious folk quit yammering prayers, it’d be nightfall before you returned. ’Tis not for me or my mother. And if you were to go alone, who’s to do your job while you’re gone? Nay, I’m afraid you’re needed too much here to go gallivanting off to chapel.”

  He hated to dim the bright hope in those blue eyes—hated it even more than he hated the feeling of bitter resentment that he always felt when the subject of church was broached. He was bound and determined never to darken the doorstep of a church again...and yet for all that, he was sorry to disappoint Maude’s hopes of being able to attend.

  “Does no one ever go to church from Five Mile Hill Ranch?” she asked, wistfulness clouding over the hope that had bloomed on her face.

  “No. We’d have to stand the expense of a hotel room and go in on Saturday, and the MacLarens’ purse strings have never extended to such things.”

  “Did you ever think of building a Sunday house, as some of the ranchers have in Simpson Creek?” Maude found herself asking. “A little cottage, just for staying in on Saturday nights to make attending worship easier? Some of the ranchers in these parts have constructed such places—they learned it from the German settlers around Fredericksburg, I’m told. There are several such cottages down the road from the boardinghouse.”