Jael turned with a smile. “Because I slept for at least four hours while you sat in here and allowed Susanna to lecture you every time she awakened.”
Keara pressed her hand against Susanna’s flushed face. “The fever hasn’t gone down yet. How long have I been asleep?”
“Only a couple of hours, since Susanna grew quieter.”
Even as Jael spoke, the subject of their conversation opened her eyes. “Am I still running a fever?” She sounded weaker than before.
“I’m afraid so.” Keara pulled the warmed towel from Susanna’s face and placed it in the bowl beside the bed. “I think we’ll need to bathe you more thoroughly if the fever continues to rise.”
“Exactly what I would do,” Susanna said.
“I have more willow bark tea I want you to drink for me.”
Susanna made a face. “Is my shoulder seeping?”
“No, and I’ve placed a poultice on it.”
“I guess it couldn’t hurt then. I don’t think it’s helping except for the additional fluid. You could at least sweeten it with honey this time.”
Keara smiled. “I will.”
“But first I want to talk to Elam, and I want to be clothed when I see him. You can do your worst afterward.”
Keara looked at Jael. Though Susanna sounded weaker, she was still more lucid than when they’d found her last night.
“I’ll get Elam while you get your weed tea,” Jael said with a teasing light in her eyes.
Keara nodded then followed her to the door. But after Jael left, Keara hesitated. She turned to look back at Susanna, lying nearly helpless in Britte’s bed. The woman was beautiful despite her illness, with long hair the color of a stormy night, eyes the color of the noonday sky, face flushed with fever.
Since last night, Keara had begun to feel an uncomfortable gnawing in her belly she’d never felt before, and she hated how it affected her thoughts, made her question each action she took to help Susanna heal.
Gloria would have wanted her sister to be treated with kindness, and Keara despised herself for wishing Susanna had never come here. The children would see a lot of their mother’s traits in Susanna.
Even Elam saw Gloria in Susanna’s face and form. How could he not? Susanna was as near a reincarnation of her sister as they would see this side of heaven.
Susanna looked up at her. She was so helpless, unable to care for herself in even the most basic functions, and Keara was here to care for her. She was as sure of that as she was sure she’d been meant to care for her own mother, her brothers, this family. That was what God had called her to do, and it was what she would do.
A gentle hand touched Keara’s arm and she looked up into Elam’s tired, troubled eyes. She’d seen the sadness recover its hold over the strong lines of his face throughout the past night.
She nodded to him and left him to talk to Susanna, closing the door behind her so he could have privacy while she went to fetch and carry for their visitor.
Jael was standing at the foot of the stairs with a cup in her hands. She gave it to Keara. “I’ve chilled it and sweetened it with honey. She should probably swallow some as soon as possible, and as you told me earlier this morning, the more she drinks, the better the prognosis. I’ll take it up to her while you take a much-needed break.”
Keara hugged Jael impulsively, taking the mug from Jael as she did so. “You slept little more than I did last night. You’re a blessing to me, but one doesn’t want to wear out her blessings.” With a tired smile at her sister-in-law, she retraced her steps up to Britte’s room.
When she reached the door, it stood half open. No matter how often she told Elam that in order to lower a temperature one must keep the patient cool, Elam tended to want warmth in every room. He must have opened the door to allow the heat inside from the downstairs stoves.
Keara reached for the door to step inside, but Susanna’s voice stilled her movements.
“You cannot imagine my shock when I found out last night that you’d just come from your wedding. Yours and Keara’s.” The voice was soft but fortified with steel.
“That’s right,” Elam said. “Keara is my wife now, but you are still family, and she will treat you like a sister.”
“Have you forgotten my sister so quickly?”
For a moment he didn’t speak, and Keara knew she should step in and interrupt.
“Gloria is always in my heart.” Elam’s voice grew tender and wavered, as it often did when he spoke of his lost wife. “I see her every time I look at Britte, and now, as I look at you. But she would not have forgiven me for turning my back on her best friend and leaving her homeless.”
Keara winced and closed her eyes. Why was she surprised by his words? Of course she knew he still loved Gloria. He had never stopped. It was why she loved him. Of course it was, so why should she expect to hear different from him this morning?
Why did his words feel like a stab in her heart?
The kiss.
“Homeless?” Susanna asked. “I don’t understand.”
“There are a lot of things you don’t understand.” Elam had a hint of steel in his own voice now. “We will care for you here like family, and we will keep the secret of your presence here as well as we can, but most of your care will come from Keara. My wife. I would ask that you treat her with the respect she deserves.”
Keara gave the door a brisk knock and stepped through. “Time for your nasty tea, Susanna. I believe we may want to bathe you again to bring the fever back down if the tea doesn’t work for us.”
As Elam turned to leave, he caught Keara’s gaze, and in his eyes once again she could see his sorrow and longing resurge for the loss they’d endured. It was perfectly natural.
Tears stung her eyes as she watched him leave, and she blinked them away to turn and face Susanna.
“You love him.” Gone was the steel in Susanna’s voice. A strange combination of pity and accusation replaced it.
“Right now, we have a fever to fight,” Keara said. “And I’m too tired to fight both the fever and you. You choose what you want from me, because it appears you believe I’m here at your command, mistress.”
Susanna’s eyes narrowed and she watched thoughtfully while Keara placed the tea on the table next to the bed and then gently helped her sit up enough to sip from the cup. She didn’t say another word about the marriage, which was a relief. Last night, Keara had hoped Susanna would rouse enough to become angry. Well, it had happened. If only she would now keep her thoughts to herself.
As Keara listened to Susanna’s instructions and worked to battle whatever infection had entered the woman’s body, she chastised herself for being so transparent. She would be more careful in the future.
How could she have been so silly as to think one kiss could have changed Elam’s heart? Just because she’d imagined more than friendship in his eyes yesterday—just because he’d told her she was beautiful—didn’t mean anything had changed for her. For them. As he’d told Susanna, he was giving Keara a roof over her head.
That one kiss was the end of it, and the sooner she accepted that fact, the easier it would be for all of them.
Ten
Barely an hour after the sun rose on Wednesday, Elam sat in the wooden rocker on the front porch and held his burping son up to take a look at the orchard beside the house. Cash loved colors. As the morning sunlight dazzled the blooms of the trees and flowers Keara had planted along the rock wall, Cash gazed at the beauty with wonder.
A nicker reached them from the corral, where Duchess and Freda Mae stood with heads over the fence, waiting for Elam to come feed them. Later in the afternoon, the two new friends would probably stand head-to-backside, swatting flies from one another’s faces with their tails, as they had done yesterday.
It was a good thing for Freda Mae that flies weren’t as bad now as they would be when summer came; Duchess’s tail had been trimmed with almost as much aggressiveness as her mane, and Elam had begun to suspect that she a
lso had feathering along her fetlocks, which had been intentionally cut. This was definitely an unfamiliar breed.
He’d been glad of the short hair when he had to clean the caked mud from her legs and withers, but why anyone would cut away the additional beauty of the midnight dark horse was a mystery to him. Susanna, however, was still much of a mystery.
Cash burped again, and a door slammed in the house. Elam heard Keara in the kitchen, muttering under her breath.
With a sigh, he stood up and reached for the screen door as Cash gurgled with joy at the sound of his stepmother’s voice, unhappy as it sounded to Elam.
“Weeds, my foot,” Keara murmured. “I’m having a talk with Jael next time I see her.” With a sniff and a quick glance at Cash, Keara grimaced at Elam, reached for a nappy, and tossed it to him.
He caught it, confused, then looked down at his son. How could she know about a soiled nappie when Elam hadn’t even noticed it right next to him? Until he sniffed.
He placed Cash on the changing table. “Jael doesn’t mean anything by the things she says about your teas.” He unfastened the dirty napkin and was glad for his strong constitution. Pen and David had six children with another on the way. They were similarly strong.
“I know Jael doesn’t,” Keara said, “but now she seems to have Susanna convinced I’m a crazy witch doctor trying to poison her with my brews.”
“My sister said that?”
“No, but Susanna thinks I’ve got everyone fooled around these parts. She hates me.”
“She told you that?”
Keara lit a burner and heaved a huge kettle of water over the flames. “She didn’t have to. I can see how she looks at me and how she sniffs at the tea every time I take her a cup, like she mistrusts me.”
“But she’s drinking it.”
Keara stirred her small pot of willow bark tea as the steam began to rise then added honey and tasted it with a spoon. “So far.”
“I think in time she’ll come around. She’ll see in you what everyone else sees.”
Keara worried her lower lip with her tongue. “If she lives through this. Her temperature keeps going back up, no matter what I give her, in spite of the poultices I apply.”
“Keara, look at me.” He waited until she raised her gaze to his and read the message in his eyes—gentleness…affection. He hoped. “Your teas and poultices and loving care have worked many times in the past, and it’s not even been two full days since her injuries. You’ve battled these things before. Stop doubting yourself.”
She put the spoon down and stepped around the counter to help with Cash.
Since Susanna’s arrival, the only time Elam had seen Keara smile—or even a light fill her eyes—was when she settled her gaze on Cash. Elam stepped back with the dirty nappy and allowed Keara to complete the task, not because he didn’t want to do it, but because he knew Cash had a way of setting Keara’s mind at ease.
Something Keara said Monday night rang true. She seemed created to care for children…for people. It was when she took care of others—even horses in the field—that the color of her eyes seemed to lighten and glow golden with satisfaction. Her whole attitude changed.
“I’m going to bring Britte and Rolfe home this afternoon.” Elam spoke the decision aloud without meaning to.
It wasn’t until Keara glanced up at him, eyes widened, that he realized he probably should have consulted her. More children would mean even more work for her.
“It’s obviously going to take longer than a few days for Susanna to heal,” he said. “We can’t keep the children away for weeks on end.”
“You think she’ll be here that long?”
Elam didn’t mention that his first thought was for her. “She needs your help, Keara.” And Keara needed Britte and Rolfe. Something in her had changed and darkened since Monday, and he didn’t know if it was the wedding or Susanna’s arrival, but he did know that before Susanna had arrived on the front porch steps, he’d seen no darkness in his new wife. Change, maybe, but it had not been a dark change. It had been a hopeful change. For both of them.
“Children don’t keep secrets well.” Keara cleaned and wrapped Cash expertly. “Susanna hasn’t told us anything about the shooting yet.”
“Britte and Rolfe won’t be going anywhere for a while now that they’ve had a nice long visit with their cousins, so we won’t need to worry about word spreading. Don’t worry, it will work out.”
“But if they see her—”
“I’ll warn them about what to expect.”
Keara finished dressing Cash and tucked him onto her hip. She looked up at Elam, started to speak, but the sound of a horse coming toward the house at a fast trot drew her attention to the front window.
Elam saw the change in her expression as her eyes narrowed, her blond brows drew together, and Cash began to fuss.
“Whoa, Lass!” came a bold, deep voice outside as the dust flew and a red roan whinnied at the front gate.
Elam joined Keara at the window as a robust, black-haired man with full beard and well-worn work clothes slid from his mount with a growl.
“Hello the house!” Brute McBride called, his guttural roar typical of past visits.
“Pa,” Keara whispered.
“Elam Jensen,” Brute called from beyond the front gate. “My friend, are you here?”
At the sight of Keara’s darkening expression, Elam reached for Cash just as the baby began to howl, as if Keara’s mood had traveled through her skin and into his.
“Keara,” Elam warned quietly, “he’s your father.”
The daggers she shot Elam nearly ripped a hole in him, and he stepped back.
“That’s right, he’s my father.”
“But he’s my father-in-law, and I will offer him hospitality in my home.”
“Then I will talk to him outside of your home.”
As she stepped to the front door and wrenched it open, Elam stood gaping after her like a landed trout, wishing he could recall his words. He’d invited Keara to make this her home. How must that have sounded to her? His home.
Cash wriggled in his arms as Keara stepped out the door. Elam had to trust poor Brute to the tender care of his angry, misused daughter.
At Keara’s first step onto the wooden porch, her father’s head came around the side of his mare. His eyes widened at the sight of her.
“So it’s true?” he asked. “You’re here with Elam Jensen?”
She clenched her hands at her sides and glared into his eyes as she stepped from the porch. “What would you have had me do, Pa? Join you in jail, maybe? Beg on the streets of Eureka Springs? Not a lot of money flowing there right now, with so many leaving with the extension of the railroad.”
She heard the anger in her voice and knew he could hear it too. Brute McBride had always had a gentle spot for his wife and his only daughter, and he didn’t bristle as he would have with anyone else. Instead, he looked abashed.
“Why are you out of jail?” Her words sounded more like an accusation than a question, though she didn’t honestly intend to be so mean.
He took his old felt hat from his head and dusted it against the denim stretched tight across his thigh. He suddenly couldn’t meet her gaze. “I was acquitted.”
She remained on the bottom step of the porch, making no move toward him, though part of her wanted to run to him and jump into his arms. Her father’s arms. She’d been so worried…
Once, those arms had been a safe place from the harshness of the world when life became too filled with burdens and cares. Now all she allowed herself to see was the man who had left her helpless and homeless because he’d thought only of himself when he drank himself into a sodden mess. He’d willingly thrown away her life as well as his own.
“How were you acquitted?” she asked, warning with her voice and her eyes that he was not to come closer.
“I plain didn’t do it, Keara. I don’t go around killing people. That man jumped me when he lost a game. He pulled a k
nife. I told you all this when you visited last. It’s been over a week since I saw you.”
She clenched her fists at the reproach in his voice. “How did you prove your innocence?”
“A fella and his son saw it happen. Thomas and Timothy Skerit, from down by Clifty. They could see I was only defending myself. Problem was, they didn’t know I was arrested, and they’ve been out tending their crops. They came in Monday and heard the news.”
She felt relief but refused to let him see it. Her pa was innocent. In her heart she’d known it, but hurt and anger had clouded her thinking. She took only a single step toward him. “Sheriff believed them?”
“Judge did too. Sheriff Nolan wired him. Honest truth, Keara. I’m a free man.” There was jubilation in his voice as he stepped forward, arms coming out as they so often did.
She felt a burning in her eyes and she gritted her teeth. She stepped back, anger and relief warring in her belly. The anger won. “And did the sheriff also believe you were innocent of gambling the farm away?”
The words halted him midstep. A heavy sadness drew down the dark, still-handsome features of his face. “Keara.”
She wanted to cry, but she’d done too much crying these past days, too much fretting and tending to a woman who had set up a haunting in the house, who haunted Elam with memories of his dead Gloria.
“Did you think of me when you went into that bar in the first place?” Keara asked Pa then winced inwardly as he winced outwardly. “Did you think of me when you went to that card game and gambled everything away, leaving us all without a home? The boys won’t have a farm to come to if they ever do return here.”
Pa leaned against the stone post of the gateway. Lines of weariness attested to the way he’d abused his body over the past two years of grieving. “Keara, child, I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I’ve put you through since your mother…since she was taken. All a fella has to do in that jail most of the time is think.”
“It would have been nice if you’d thought long enough to warn me that I was going to be kicked from the only home I ever knew, that I’d be dependent on the kindness of neighbors to take me in.” She felt her chest swell with a bout of tears that had grown familiar to her—which she’d seldom given vent to until the horrors of the past days. How could he have done this to her?
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