by Jillian Hart
“I’ll take a look when I finish in here, Mr. Harrison. Sometime before supper.”
It was a dismissal, pure and simple, and Lucas heeded it promptly. He waved a hand as he clapped his hat back on his head and took his leave. “Be back in an hour or so—give the boys a chance to wash up and help with setting the table.”
She watched him go, noting the lean figure of a man who worked hard and had formed the muscular build of a farmer. His hands were big, his feet the same, and he was broad shouldered and slim in the hips. All of that was noted in one sweeping glance up and down his form. He was several inches over six feet in height, and his sons promised to be similarly formed, for they were both tall and sturdy, and good-looking boys to boot.
Elizabeth left the kitchen to take a look at the bedroom she’d been directed to. It was up the stairs, and since the doors all stood open, it wasn’t hard to find, for the first two rooms she passed were obviously those of his sons. Books and clothing were strewn over the floors, the beds were unmade and the usual collection of dirt and sand was mingled on the wooden floors.
The third room, across the hall from the other two, was larger, the bed wider, the windows more numerous; there were three of them open to the breeze—uncurtained, but screened.
There was indeed a dresser, a mammoth piece of furniture, hand hewn from what appeared to be walnut under the dust that weighed it down. Six drawers opened readily, three of them full of stockings and drawers and undershirts. One of them held neatly folded shirts and another contained three pair of trousers—two denim, one of wool.
She opened the three empty drawers, apparently left for her use, and turned to her baggage. She had but a small number of items to store, for she counted herself fortunate to have four changes of clothing to her name. Homemade underwear went into one drawer, along with two pairs of stockings. Her nightgown lay on the bed, a voluminous bit of apparel, made from heavy cotton. Her two dresses were hung on nails on the wall, where hopefully the wrinkles from being stuffed in a valise would hang out and she’d be spared the task of ironing them before she wore them again.
Her heavy boots she put behind the curtain he’d mentioned and her house slippers she put beneath the edge of the bed. The sheets looked to be fairly clean, but she doubted if they’d seen a washtub in pretty near a week. Tomorrow would be time enough to strip the bedding from all the beds in the house and find a length of clothesline to stretch across the yard.
She opened the box of books she’d brought with her, the heaviest of her pieces of luggage, and looked at them. No shelf offered a home for them, no drawer was available, so she closed the box, resolving to carry it to the parlor and perhaps find a shelf for them to be displayed.
She owned three aprons, and she donned one now, aware that it was too late for her dress to be saved from the dirt of the kitchen she’d cleaned, but at least it was a bit of tidiness she could hide behind. Her bosom was too large for a fashionable woman to possess and her body was shaped somewhat like an apple, with hips that demanded a gathered skirt to allow for their width.
It was all right. The man had married her, had made the decision sight unseen, and now she was a wife—well, a bride, anyway. The wife part would come later. Marriage to Amos Rogers would have meant climbing into bed with a man she’d known for years, a friend since childhood. But he’d taken one look at her sister, fresh from a three-year stay with her grandparents, and turned his back on Elizabeth.
Remembering Sissy’s remarks about the marriage bed, Elizabeth shuddered. For painful and messy were but two of the words she’d heard from Sissy’s lips when she’d spoken of her marriage and the demands Amos made on her. But surely not all men were so uncaring. Certainly her own mother had not experienced such things. Or else marriage and the acts that occurred between husband and wife were simply not spoken of by decent women.
But Sissy had chosen her route to travel in life when she’d betrayed Elizabeth and fallen for Amos and his glib promises. Now she was his wife and the mother of his children, instead of the woman he’d courted for the better part of a year. But Elizabeth found she no longer felt a twinge of envy for her smaller, prettier sister.
Amos and Elizabeth had grown up together and she knew there were no surprises to be found in a marriage with a woman who was tall, heavy and a good friend.
Her father had treated her almost as a son, teaching her how to ride a horse, milk a cow and clean stalls like a hired hand. She could help with almost anything that took place on a farm, and when they’d moved to Boston—her father choosing a banking job that perhaps appealed to a man who’d been a farmer all his life and was weary of the backbreaking work—Elizabeth was totally out of place.
A city was not her first choice as a place to live, yet she’d soon found the school she attended to be challenging to her intelligence, for the teachers loved a student who questioned everything and learned all they had to offer. Elizabeth Collins was such a student, and she thrived in the atmosphere of learning.
She found friends there. Laura was her sole support some days, when the teasing of other girls became more than Elizabeth could stand. For she was not only taller and heavier than the slim, pretty little girls in her classes, she was smarter. And it galled her classmates enough to allow them to tease her about all her inadequacies.
And then there was the boy who had shared her love of learning, Amos Rogers, who studied with her at the kitchen table, who learned the finer points of math from her tutoring. He admired her, apparently more her mind than her body, she’d decided after he turned his back on her to marry her sister.
But she’d gotten the best of the bargain, she decided with a smile, for Lucas Harrison was all that Amos Rogers was not. A big, brawny man with property and a house, and apparently a good reputation in the town, where he knew and was known. And for that she was thankful, only wishing for a greedy moment that Sissy could see her now. See her with her handsome new husband.
The man she would be welcoming into her arms in just a few hours.
Chapter Two
Supper was a rousing success, the two boys eating as if they hadn’t seen such a meal in years. And perhaps they hadn’t, for their father was as pleased as his sons at the food Elizabeth had prepared for them. The potatoes were mashed and creamy, the gravy hot and fragrant with the scent of bay leaf and onion, and the meat tender and brown, as a roast should be. They exclaimed over the green beans, cooked to a frazzle on the back of the stove, and wanted to know, all three of them, what she planned for breakfast. If she had any doubts about their acceptance of her, she put them to the back of her mind, for both boys were open and friendly, as if they welcomed all she’d done to enhance their lives thus far.
Elizabeth was flushed with pleasure at their adulation. Never had she been so pleased with a piece of work, for Lucas drank the coffee she made and proclaimed it the best cup he’d had in years. She offered them a rice pudding for dessert, having found the bag of rice in the pantry and a crock of eggs on the kitchen dresser. Milk from this morning’s milking had easily been carried into the house, and she’d taken off the cream to churn another day.
In all she did she found pleasure, for these male occupants of her new home seemed to have accepted her, and even enjoyed her company. Never had she thought it would be so simple to win over her new husband and sons.
After the boys left the table Lucas pushed his chair back and shot her a glance of admiration. “You’re a better cook than I expected, Elizabeth. You weren’t spinning me a story when you wrote and said you could cook and clean with the best of them. I’m a believer already, just from sitting in this tidy kitchen and eating the food you’ve prepared.”
“Thank you, sir. I try to live up to my promises.”
He cut her a glance that sought out her opinion. “Did you mind the love, honor and obey bit this afternoon, Elizabeth?”
“I don’t love you, Lucas, but it may come in time. I’ll honor you for being a good father to your sons and thus far a man t
o be respected by your wife. The obey part will probably be a sticking point with us, for I’m used to doing things my own way, and obligating myself to a man will be a tough row to hoe for a woman like me.”
He laughed and leaned back in his chair. “I figured as much. But you might as well just relax and pick your battles. For I’m sure there will be times you want to take the shotgun to me, and times I’ll be ready to throttle you. But we’ll make it so long as we both do our share of getting along and making a go of it.”
“Are you planning on telling me how to run the house?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Naw, the house is yours to do with as you like. If you want things to fancy it up a bit, curtains or oilcloth for the table or whatever, make a list of things you need and we’ll pick them up at Harvey’s store when we go to town. I don’t go for ruffles and such, but I know the bedrooms need curtains. Just haven’t cared enough to do something about it. The last few years have been rough on the boys, and not too easy on me, for that matter. I’ve let things go pretty badly, but I’m willing to go along with what you want to do in here.”
He looked at the kitchen window, glistening from the vinegar she’d used to wash the panes before dinner. It hadn’t shone so brightly in months. Hell, it had been a couple of years since he’d washed a window in the house. And then only because he knew that Doris would have wanted her kitchen window relieved of the sheen of dead flies and grease that covered it.
But Doris was relegated to the background now, he found. She’d been his wife, but the past couple of years had proved to him that his sorrow at her death was not because she’d been the love of his life, but more a sadness for his sons. No longer having a mother had been difficult for them to handle. Now, with Elizabeth here, a fresh breeze seemed to have blown through the house, wiping out all memory of the past. She was all that a woman should be, Lucas decided. Sturdy and capable, willing to win over his boys, and perhaps even himself. He’d find that out later.
It seemed Elizabeth was ready to tackle the matter of the house, for she pondered but a moment and then her clear voice gave chapter and verse of changes she was hoping to make. “You’re right about one thing, Lucas. I’ll want an oilcloth for the table. It’ll save the surface of the wood, for scrubbing it makes it age fast. An oilcloth will look cheerful in here, and curtains on the window will help a lot. I like a cheerful place, not to mention a clean kitchen, to work in.”
He nodded thoughtfully. All of that seemed reasonable to him. But he suspected there was more. She was willing to negotiate.
“I’ll gather eggs for you if you like, work in the garden and try to salvage some of the stuff you planted. I don’t milk cows, not with three men on the place, but I know how to churn butter and bake bread. I suppose what I’m saying is that I’ll pull my share of the load.”
That suited him just fine. “I suspect you will, Elizabeth. Is that the name they called you back home? Or did they shorten it?”
“My friend Laura called me Lizzie. The man I was pledged to marry, Amos Rogers, said that Lizzie sounded like a tramp and he refused to shorten my name. Of course, he didn’t ever give me his, so I don’t think his opinion really matters to me. It seemed he was partial to dainty women with golden hair, and I certainly didn’t qualify in that department. But I’m better off without him, I’ve decided, for my lot is more to my liking here than what Sissy is putting up with back in Boston.”
Lucas laughed aloud. “I think I kinda like Lizzie, no matter what your suitor in Boston thought. It suits you, for it’s forthright and honest, and believe me, it doesn’t make you sound like a tramp, whatever he meant by that. It sounds like a woman, a name that’s kinda comfortable and one that might not be spoke out in public, but saved for private times inside the home.”
“And do your friends call you Lucas all the time? Or have any of them shortened it to Luc?”
“My wife used to call me Lucas. She said it was a solid name and she didn’t go for nicknames or such.”
Elizabeth moved her hands on the table, gripping them together as if she disliked opening a can of worms, which was where she was heading. “How long has she been dead, Lucas?”
“Three years, since Toby was a little tad. He’s seven now and Josh is nine. They’re fine boys, but they need a woman’s hand. I’m hoping you’ll take to them, Elizabeth. They’ve been a long time without a mother.”
“I won’t try to smother them with a load of mothering right off, Lucas. They won’t take to that. I know children enough to recognize that there are barriers up between us. Give me some time to win them over. I’ve known a pile of young’uns in my days back home. We’ll get along just fine. And if we don’t, if there are problems to be faced, we’ll work them out. I’ve dealt with young boys back at the orphanage, and I found that they respond well to honesty and plain speaking. And a kind word now and then. Not to mention cookies and such.”
“I suspect you could charm the birds out of the trees, given good reason, ma’am. You’ve got a good way about you, a kind heart, I think, and one that’ll hold two boys in its depths. They’ve looked forward to you being here. I don’t see them giving you a hassle about anything.”
She looked at him in surprise. Never had she heard a man express himself in such a way. “I’m honored by your words, Lucas. I only hope I can live up to your expectations.”
He looked at her with a smile. “Well, what’s the order of business for tomorrow, ma’am? I’m sure you must have a whole list of things you’re planning on doing.”
“Washing, for one thing. The sheets need to be stripped off the beds early on so I can get them scrubbed and hung out to dry. It looks to be a nice day tomorrow, so that shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll tackle as much of your wash as I can. There’s not much of mine to do, but I’m certain the boys can find a bushel of clothes on their bedroom floors, should they be so inclined. And if there’s a goodly amount of cream on the milking tonight and in the morning, I’ll churn tomorrow afternoon. I think you’re about out of butter.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll find time to do any baking tomorrow, will you?”
She pursed her lips at his broad hint. “What did you have in mind?”
“Oh, maybe a pie. There’s dried apples in the cellar. They’re not much for eating, but they bake up pretty good. Or maybe cookies. The boys are real fond of sugar cookies. So am I, for that matter. We’ll eat most anything sweet, in fact.”
“Where’s that pork barrel you spoke of in town, Lucas?”
“In the back of the pantry, with a cover on it and a stone holding it down. My pa set one up for my mother when I was a boy and we always had fresh pork all winter long. I’ve got a side of pork in that one.” He pointed to the pantry. “It’s all cut up into chops and roasts. You’ll have to dig for what you want, but the lard keeps it fresh for months.”
“I’m familiar with a pork barrel. We had one when I was just a little girl, before we moved to Boston and away from the farm. My father was offered a job in the city and it looked better to him than slaving away on a farm for the rest of his life.”
Lucas shook his head. “You couldn’t drag me to the city for the best job in the world. I think I’ve got an ideal spot right here, Elizabeth. All I needed to make it complete was a wife, and now I’ve got her and good reason to work hard and make a living for her to share. I know we’re still strangers, so to speak, but getting comfortable with each other will come with time.”
She felt a flush climb her cheeks as she heard his words. Apparently the man wasn’t concerned about her size or shape or the fact that she wasn’t a raving beauty. He was more concerned with her ability to do her job as a wife and mother. And that she could handle.
Well, maybe the wife part was somewhat beyond her, but she’d thrive on the mother bit, given a chance.
She rose from the table and cleared off the bowls they’d eaten their pudding in. Lucas sat and watched her and she felt as though she were on display, for his gaze did not
leave her as she worked.
“Don’t you have something you need to be doing out of doors?” she asked after fifteen minutes or so, when she’d washed and dried the dishes and cleaned up the table and sink thoroughly.
“I’m enjoying watching my wife,” he said, astonishing her with the soft tone of his words as he all but named her as Mrs. Harrison.
“Surely you’ve seen a woman working in a kitchen before,” she said sharply.
“Not in three years or so, I haven’t. Not since Doris died. I’m enjoying watching you and the neat way you have of accomplishing so much with so little to do it with.”
“I’ve got all I need to do things with, Lucas. You’re a bit short on vinegar, for I used a good bit of it on the kitchen window, and there are several others that could use a good washing. I’ll go to the cellar to see what’s down there in the morning. And yes, I can bake pies or cookies or whatever you think the boys will enjoy eating. I’ll plan on baked pork chops for dinner tomorrow at noontime when I suspect you’ll be hungriest, and then something like soup for supper. Tonight I cooked a larger meal because we were in town for so long.”
He grinned at her, his eyes crinkling as if he was enjoying their banter. “Elizabeth, could you stop fluttering around and sit down here and talk to me for a minute?”
She hung her dish towel over the front of the sink board and went to where he sat at the table, pulling out her chair and depositing herself on the seat. “Will this do?”
“I keep thinking you’re worried about going to bed with me tonight. Am I right?”
“Absolutely right. I’ve never done such a thing in my life before. It opens up brand-new territory for me. I’m not at all sure I’ll be a success at the bed part of marriage. I haven’t heard a whole lot of good things about it, to tell the truth. I want to please you, Lucas, but I fear I’ll not be what you want or need.”