by Ginny Aiken
Disappointment dimmed Robby’s excitement. “But, Papa, what about when we’re done?”
The boy did have a point. No matter how much it bothered Peter, since he felt it encouraged his son’s lack of focus on the things that really mattered, he couldn’t just say no without any rhyme or reason to his refusal.
He nodded slowly. “But only after all the chores—and lessons—are done. I can’t have anyone not doing their part. I can’t be taking up any more slack, or cleaning up any more messes made by others. Rosie and Sunnybelle are about to birth their lambs, maybe even tonight, and I have to check on them regularly.”
“Can Lady Emma and I check on the sheep?”
Robby loved the animals, but more as pets and playmates than for the profit they would provide. The boy knew nothing about lambing. Neither, of course, did the indomitable Miss Emma. But it wouldn’t do to squelch the boy’s interest in the animals, not when Peter wanted to foster Robby’s focus on ranching matters.
“Well, we’ll have to see how things go with the chores and the lessons.”
Robby’s eyes lit up again. “Really? When we’re done?”
“Only after you and Miss Emma finish your work. And only after you and she finish making supper, and have it ready to serve. And don’t go asking Miss Emma about all that book nonsense, I don’t want her filling your head with any more of it.”
“It’s not nonsense, Papa. Lady Emma says it’s lit-rat-chewer.”
Inspired by the boy’s pronunciation, it was all Peter could do not to make a disparaging comment about Miss Emma’s opinion, but he didn’t think it would help.
Robby scampered off, his high spirits in graphic contrast to his earlier unwillingness to work in the barn. Every day they had the same conversation. Peter knew he had to find a way to change his son’s attitude. Only problem was, he didn’t know how. And now, not only did he have to battle Robby’s natural tendencies, but he also had to battle the influence of his highfalutin’ educated guest.
For the first time since they’d met, he acknowledged what he’d tried to avoid. Miss Emma was not only beautiful, but she was also glamorous and very, very appealing. To males of all ages.
Including him.
Perhaps most especially him.
As contrary as she was—or perhaps because she was—she had an unexpected appeal that shocked him.
And, to a certain extent, horrified him as well.
Heaven help him.
Emma was sorely tired of a solid diet of bacon, beans, and biscuits; she had been from the start of her nightmare. She supposed she wasn’t suited for a life on the edge of Nowhere, America, and yet she knew a lean-to full of a respectable variety of foodstuffs was just around the corner. She intended to make good use of its contents.
Shortly after Colley, the men, and Robby left, she slipped on her ruined boots and hurried to the storage shed. There, as she surveyed the contents, images of dishes she might want to eat flew through her thoughts. A particular favorite, as well as her dear aunt’s face, crystallized in her memories.
It wasn’t an elaborate delicacy Aunt Sophia had set out at one of her feasts that made Emma think of her table. Instead, the simple chicken croquettes served many times while she’d visited her aunt’s home struck her as near to ambrosia at the moment. The light cream sauce the cook would place alongside made more delectable, and a salad had always been a perfect accompaniment. Her mouth watered.
Emma remembered seeing a cream sauce mentioned in Mrs. Beeton, but she had yet to find any fresh vegetables anywhere in the lean-to. It was, of course, spring and gardens hadn’t yielded anything yet, but that didn’t diminish her longing.
To make matters worse, and although she’d eaten well at breakfast, her stomach grumbled at the thought of the familiar, pleasant fare. She shook off the homesickness, since she could do nothing about it. With shoulders squared, she snagged a pair of jars of chicken meat off the shelf then headed back inside. She set them on the table and went to fetch Mrs. Beeton’s book. Surely the extensive tome held the secret to the perfect croquette. She laughed.
“Not necessarily the perfect croquette,” she murmured, “but at least directions on how to make an edible one.”
She flipped through pages of hints and instructions, and soon she located the section she wanted. “Hm… shallots? No. Didn’t find any of those out there. Butter, flour, salt, and pepper—those I have. But… pounded mace? What is that?”
The only kind of mace she knew was the kind King Arthur Pendragon had used to scare Merlin the first time they met. But one used that mace to do the pounding, it wasn’t anything one pounded. It didn’t strike Emma as something one would use to make chicken croquettes. Would she need to beat—pound—pieces of chicken to a pulp to concoct croquettes?
No, when she reread the list, she saw the chicken itself wasn’t to be pounded, but instead the mace was described as pounded. A pounded… weapon? That didn’t make any sense, but she didn’t have a clue what the recipe might mean.
Perhaps it wouldn’t matter if she ignored that pesky detail. She would, though, ask Colley about mace once the ranch manager came back after working the sheep.
“What else…?” Oh, yes. Sugar, roast fowls—well, cooked, jarred chicken—eggs, bread crumbs—bread crumbs? Biscuit crumbs would be more like it. And then white sauce, too. “White sauce…”
Since she hadn’t seen anything labeled as such in the shed, and since Mrs. Beeton hadn’t seen fit to provide a recipe in her substantial tome, Emma would have to rely on milk. There was some left from breakfast. Even though milk wasn’t lush and thick as the white sauce she knew, she figured, one way or another, she’d make it do.
With an unexpected sensation of industriousness settled upon her, she tied on the rough white apron Colley had given her and began to hum the chorus to “Over the Waves,” her favorite waltz. She set to chopping chicken with a wicked-sharp knife—Mrs. Beeton said to mince it, but Emma wasn’t sure she’d know what minced versus chopped chicken might look like.
On the other hand, since she did know her vocabulary, she guessed that running the chicken through the flour would be dredging it, as the cookery book said to do. As she covered the pieces with the fine flour, she grimaced. She didn’t think Mrs. Beeton had intended for her to also raise a floury cloud, but so far, it couldn’t be helped, and so she continued to follow the recipe.
Emma melted butter; didn’t fry shallots she didn’t have; dumped a cloudy mound of floured chicken into the buttery spider pan; stirred the lumps that immediately formed; added salt, pepper, and skipped that pounded mace; stirred in sugar—not pounded, as Mrs. Beeton also requested—and trickled in a thin stream of rich milk.
She stirred the odd-looking concoction, her arm straining against the thick stuff in the pan at the edge of the open hearth. She had to be careful not to let a spark catch her skirt.
Stir… stir… stir. “Oh, dear…”
The mixture in the spider only got worse—and harder to stir. In moments, it became a large, lumpy blob with rivulets of unincorporated milk around it. How she was supposed to add beaten eggs, and then turn it all into rolls to cover in bread crumbs and fry? Those lumps swimming in drips? She couldn’t see it.
“Lady Emma!” Robby ran in and came to a complete halt at her side. “Whatcha doing, Lady Emma? Can I help you? Can you be a lady and I be a knight now? Can we read, too? Can we? Please?”
She glanced from the iron spider with the bland-looking blobs to the boy’s excited expression, and she didn’t know how her mortification let her force herself to stand beside her latest failure of a meal. “Well, Robby—”
“Miss Emma!” Ned slammed the door, and ran to her side, an expression not unlike Robby’s on his somewhat older features. “I reckoned you’d be needin’ some strong arms to help you out right ’bout now. ’M I right, ma’am?”
Emma hated to admit it, but leaning over the spider while trying to stir the sorry-looking start—and perhaps end, too—of the
croquettes had proved harder than she would have expected. She was quite petite, and her arm didn’t stretch out long enough to afford her a reasonable distance from which to maneuver the ingredients in the pan without her skirt getting too close to the coals. It didn’t take her long to consider her response, but Ned was quicker than she.
“Here, Miss Emma,” he said. “Let me do that for ya. You can… can… well, you can do whatever a lady like you likes to be doin’ this time of day.”
Emma wiped her heated, damp forehead with the apron hem then faced Robby. “I do believe your papa said something about lessons, right?”
“Aw… do we—”
“Hafta?” she asked, imitating his enunciation and tone. “It’s have to, and yes, Lord Robby, we do have to do our lessons.”
As she retrieved his mother’s Bible, Emma heard Ned clear his throat. “Er… Miss Emma?”
She paused. “Yes?”
“I did heered from Missus Colley—um… Colley, that you’re from that there place, English, an’ that you’re like to do some strange things, an’ this here… ah… food might could be from English, too, but… what am I s’posed to do with it to help you? What’re you fixin’ to make us for supper tonight?”
Emma blushed up to her hairline. She stared down at the contents of the spider, and had to agree they looked anything but appetizing. They didn’t even look edible, if she were honest. Puddles of milk bubbled here and there, and in the middle of the pan, the mound of flour-dredged chicken had consolidated into what resembled plaster at the best, and perhaps looked more like one of the mountains among which Mr. Lowery had located his camp.
“Well, Ned,” she began, opting to soften the truth as much as possible, “I suppose Colley also told you I don’t have much experience in the kitchen. What you see there is further evidence of my inexperience.”
Ned looked puzzled, but didn’t speak.
She drew a deep breath and continued. “I tried to follow the recipe, but…”
His eyes widened. “A recipe?”
“Yes. I have a book with directions for different dishes. Recipes.”
He shook his head. “A recipe made that?”
Robby approached the spider then looked at Emma. “Is that supper?”
She cringed at the worry in his voice. “I’m sure it’ll look much better once I’m—ah… it’s done.”
Robby gave her a doubtful look then walked toward the trunk in the corner. Emma thought she heard him say, “I hope so.”
“Sure thing, ma’am,” Ned said, drawing her attention back from the boy to the food in the spider. “But… what’s that you’re fixin’ to feed us? Sure, I don’t rightly know much ’bout cookery, but I do know me some.”
Emma dreaded answering. The contents of the spider looked like nothing she’d ever eaten. “Croquettes,” she said in her most subdued voice, then followed Robby to the trunk.
“I see.” The skepticism in Ned’s voice made Emma blush hotter. “Don’t reckon I ever had me none of ’em.”
“Oh, Ned. They’re supposed to be lovely fried rolls of bits of chicken, but I’m afraid I made a mistake”—surely more than one—“while following the directions.”
Ned doffed his hat and scratched his head. “Cain’t be fryin’ that up, Miss Emma. Is that milk?”
She nodded, biting her bottom lip to keep it from quivering.
“You go dropping that milky stuff into hot lard, and whoo-eee! Hot fat’ll go spittin’ out everywhere, and you’ll likely be burnt. Dunno what you’ll be doing with this stuff, but I sure can stir it right up for ya. After that, ma’am, you’ll have to figger the rest all out.”
Oh, dear. Even Ned was ready to abandon her. He’d go so far, but only so far.
A half-hour later, Emma finished putting Robby through an exercise of Scripture reading, and then spelling words she chose from among the verses. She then curled up with the boy and his favorite book in the bunk and launched into another of Sir Thomas Malory’s intriguing tales of adventure. Ned nudged the spider away from the coals to the outside edge of the hearth, pulled up a chair close to the bunk, and sat to listen. The longer she read from Le Morte D’Arthur, the more enthralled he grew.
After a while, however, an uncomfortable niggle started up in a corner of Emma’s mind. The men and Colley would soon be back. They would rightly be hungry, and would expect a substantial meal. What did Emma have for them?
She glanced at the spider and shuddered. The congealed contents looked dreadful.
Ned’s efforts had incorporated the puddles of milk into the mountain of floured chicken, so they were no longer a concern, but by now it all had flattened into a gray-beige plateau. Emma didn’t think she could break off chunks to form into the regular shape of a croquette, much less dunk them into beaten egg and roll them in biscuit crumbs. The chicken plateau looked firm—no, not merely firm. It looked solid.
As she debated her options for the fast-approaching meal, she heard movement behind her. Before she could turn around, she heard Robby yell.
“En garde!”
CRASH!
Emma spun to find Ned sprawled out on the floor, sputtering, blinking, and blushing a bright red.
She had learned the boy kept a steady supply of tree branch “epées” squirreled away around the cabin. Unlike his father, she saw no harm in his play, even though the occasional shout did catch her off-guard. Apparently, it had startled Ned even more.
“What in the name of tarnation was that there hollerin’ all ’bout, Robby?” the erstwhile rustler asked. “And what-fer you wearin’ a lady’s wrap for?”
“I,” the boy said in a haughty, serious voice, “am Lord Robert, Sir Ned. A knight of the realm.”
“How c’n a boy be a night? Night’s comin’ on right quick now, but…”
As Robby launched into his child-styled description of knights, ladies, and Arthurian Britain, Emma tried to squash a smile. Ned, however, looked fascinated. The loveable child stole deeper into her heart. Before long, Robby asked her to help him teach Ned to fence.
“Please, Lady Emma,” the boy asked. “Sir Ned must know how to fence. How else is he gonna ’fend a lady’s honor?”
Ned shook his head. “Never did hear just one stick called a fence, nor sticking ’nother person with one of them sticks, neither.”
Robby ran across the open space of the cabin, dragged the trunk away from the wall, rummaged behind it, and came up with another twig epée in hand. He held it out, and she grasped it.
“Really, now…” For a moment, she contemplated refusing his invitation to play, since she needed to turn the chicken into supper, a feat she doubted even Merlin could accomplish. But the prospect seemed so dreadful that she set aside any thought of responsible behavior. She surrendered and joined the boy.
She took what to her mind must surely be some sort of fencing stance, held up the branch, and made her expression grim. Robby followed her lead, bracing himself before her, his weapon raised at the ready.
“En garde!” he bellowed again, then lunged at her, “sword” extended.
Emma leaped back to avoid being stabbed by the twig, spun, felt her skirts swirl around her, and then returned the attack. “Aha! Take that, you knave!”
They whirled and jabbed and yelled and laughed. Before long, Ned reached out for Emma’s sword. “Please, Miss Emma. A lady like you oughta do… um… lady things. This looks to me like men’s work. I’ll fence Lord Robby for ya. For yer honer, Lady Emma.”
“Prepare to die!” Robby cried as Emma passed her weapon to Ned.
And that’s how Mr. Lowery found them.
Chapter 11
As if they’d been the three blind mice of old ditty fame, Emma, Robby, and Ned scurried apart when Mr. Lowery walked in.
“What is going on here?” he asked, his words terse, brusque, deadly quiet.
Robby’s wide-open eyes and pale face revealed his distress.
Ned looked around, perhaps seeking escape. None was to be foun
d, since Peter stood in the doorway, and none of the cabin’s windows was large enough for him to fit through.
Even the usually calm and docile Pippa reacted. She darted around, trotted from the hearth to the bunk, bounced up on the pillow, glared at the newcomer, all the while yapping and barking without pause.
“Pippa, hush!” Emma cried as she sped to the hearth. Her heart galloped in her chest, blood pounded in her temples, breath caught in her chest.
A quick glance revealed the chicken dinner as glutinous, rocklike, and inedible as ever. Her time had run out. She had nothing to feed the men. Or Colley.
Worse yet, she had nothing to feed Robby.
Dear God. Help! What should I do…?
She felt she should offer Peter an explanation, to tell her unwilling host how she’d begun to prepare a dish, how she’d taught Robby a list of vocabulary words, how she’d read to the boy and Ned—
Oh, dear. Perhaps mentioning the reading material she and Robby enjoyed wasn’t the wisest thing to do. Emma decided to keep her peace and picked up the spoon Ned had set down. With great reluctance, she stabbed at the chicken mixture. To her horror, the spoon bounced back from the rubbery surface.
Through the rushing in her ears, she heard Mr. Lowery send Robby and Ned outside to fetch Colley. When the door closed behind them, she set the spoon back down and very, very slowly inched around to face her fate.
“Is that our supper, Miss Crowell?”
She swallowed hard. “That was my intention.”
His brows crashed together over the bridge of his nose. “Was? Your intention?” He shook his head. “What is your intention now?”
Emma felt as though she were living in one of her history studies books, as though she were facing a fate not unlike Marie Antoinette’s when she looked at the rioting mob. She had no suspicion a decent man like Peter would ever consider the notion of murder, but she knew her host viewed her in the same light as the French had their ill-fated queen.