by Jillian Hart
He swallowed hard, set the kettle on a trivet and debated trying to talk Willa out of possession of that spatula. For a wee bit of a thing, she looked determined to hold her ground and he remembered her words last night, how doing the dishes had been important to her to prove her worth to him.
Darlin’, you don’t need to prove a thing, he thought, a ribbon of tenderness wrapping around his heart. Just being here was enough. He left her at the stove to unwrap the loaf of bread Evelyn had baked for them. As he sliced, bread knife in hand, he had to admit it was fine sharing the morning with Willa. Her presence changed everything. There would be no more empty mornings spent alone in his cabin. When he came home from work tonight, she would be here to greet him. His long span of lonesomeness had come to an end.
“Evelyn said to make sure you had toast in the morning.” He moved to her side to open the oven door. He liked the sound of her petticoats swishing as he knelt to place the slices of bread on the rack. “She also brought ginger tea to help settle your stomach.”
“That was mighty thoughtful of her.” When Willa spoke, her dulcet alto held him like no other voice ever had. “And thoughtful of you. I can smell it steeping.”
“Here, let me hold the plates for you.” He closed the door and stood, intending to whisk around her but something stopped him. The sight of the ridge of bones along her back. Through the thin cotton of her dress he could count her vertebrae, the poke of her shoulder blades and the faint hint of her ribs.
She wasn’t merely too thin, as he’d thought when he’d gotten a good look at her in the church. She hadn’t been only homeless living out of a barn, but she’d been hungry, too. Very hungry. His hands fumbled with the plates, nearly dropping one. He swallowed hard, hating the circumstances Willa had endured.
But no longer, he vowed, as he watched her load one plate with the bulk of the fluffy scrambled eggs. He would move mountains to provide for her. No wonder her big blue eyes shone somberly. Everything he learned about her broke his heart.
“Is that enough for you?” Her gaze found his, and the look on her face asked a deeper question, one he understood somehow without words.
“Just fine,” he said. “Fact is, I hate eating my own cooking. You could be the worst cook in all the world and I would still be grateful for you in my kitchen.”
“If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have taken such care not to burn the eggs.” A hint of humor played along the edges of her lush mouth, just a hint, before a flush of embarrassment crept across her cheeks.
“I highly appreciate that you didn’t.” He winked at her, hoping to make her bashful, hesitant smile bloom into something more.
She lowered her eyes, as if self-conscious, and concentrated overly hard on adding the small remaining portion of eggs onto the second plate. The promise of her smile faded and she seemed to retreat into herself. He tried not to be disappointed. He remembered how hard she shook last night, fearing his touch. The last thing he wanted was to think about what had been done to her by another man, one who’d married her and failed to cherish her.
“Oh. No.” She set the spatula down in the pan with a thunk, covered her mouth with both hands and her eyes widened. She looked a little green around the edges as she spun, racing toward the bedroom. Her skirts swished, her patched shoes beat against the floorboards and the door slammed shut behind her.
He was alone again.
Chapter Five
The house echoed around her as she dragged herself through the kitchen. The tea—lukewarm by the time she’d been able to take a first sip—had calmed her stomach enough for her to finish drying and putting away the breakfast dishes. New ironware dishes and she took the time to appreciate them, running her fingertips around the dark blue rim. She took extra care wiping the counters and the table. There was so little she could do to repay Austin’s kindness. Regardless of how weak she felt, she wanted to be a good wife.
A knock rapped on the front door, a cheery rat-rat-rat that echoed through the silence. Willa turned, the soapy dishcloth fisted in one hand, and spotted a woman waving through the small window next to the door. Her red hair tumbled in ringlet curls from a bright blue wool hood and her button face was round and merry. When she smiled, it was Austin’s smile. Austin’s sister had come to pay a call.
Midmorning. Willa wilted, realizing the house wasn’t swept nor had she washed away the dried smudges on the floor from last night’s falling snow. What a poor impression she would make, but there was nothing to do but to open the door.
“Willa.” Evelyn burst in, hands out to grip Willa’s in a firm welcoming squeeze. The fullness of her skirts tried to hide the small round bump of a growing babe. “Let me look at you. Not at all what I expected. Heavens, you are just breathtaking, but how old are you, dear?”
“I turned eighteen in January.” She watched as the bubbly woman looked her up and down, perhaps taking in the patched shoes and the faded, wash-worn fabric of her calico dress.
“More than a few years separate us, so you must think of me as your older sister. Just think. We’re going through our pregnancies together. I suppose Austin told you I snooped and discovered that information all by myself?” Evelyn closed the door, shrugged out of her coat and hood and gave her red ringlets a toss. She didn’t pause for an answer as she draped her wraps and her reticule on the nearest peg, quite at home.
“I know the hour is early, but you’re here all alone, you don’t know a soul and there’s so much to be done setting up your home. Are you queasy, dear? You look a little pale.”
Overwhelmed might be a word. But she’d never had a sister before and nobody could seem friendlier or easier to like. “I’m okay. Let me pour you some tea.”
“No, no, don’t fuss over me.” Merrily, Evelyn tapped into the front room and didn’t seem to notice the unswept floor. “Do you feel up to a trip to town?”
“I was planning on cleaning the house.” She wanted to make everything shiny and nice for Austin when he came home.
“That can wait. My dear brother asked me to take you to the mercantile. We might be a small town, but we have a fine selection of fabric.”
The curtains. Brightness filtered through her as she thought of the charge account Austin had set up for her. “You’re taking me shopping?”
“What are sisters for?” Evelyn’s laughter was contagious and confident. She looked as if she didn’t expect to take no for an answer.
“But what would Austin say?”
“He stopped by on his way to town this morning and asked me to look after you. He’s concerned because you were so sick.”
“It’s passing now. It always begins to fade by midmorning and it’s hardly much through the rest of the day.”
“My morning sickness plagued me constantly. It troubles me some in the evenings still.” A soft glow flushed Evelyn’s oval face as she brushed a gentle hand across the bowl of her stomach. “Other than that, the fourth month has been wonderful. I’m feeling like myself again. Soon, that will be true for you.”
“I hope so.” Encouraged, she managed to push aside her shyness. “I haven’t had anyone to talk with about this.”
“You have us now. Delia and Berry are busy with their little ones this morning. Berry’s youngest has a fever and Delia’s babe is teething, so we thought it best not to expose you to that circus, at least not on your first day.” Evelyn’s cheer filled the room as she made herself at home in the kitchen. The oven door opened. “Go on, pull on your wraps and we’ll get going. It’s a cold one out there. Here we thought spring had come, but no. We had to have one more snowstorm.”
“You shouldn’t go to the trouble of banking the fire.” Willa gripped the fireplace shovel and knelt before the hearth, refusing to let her sister-in-law do all the work. “It’s my job, Evelyn.”
“One thing you’ve got to learn about me right o
ff, Willa, is I’m pushy.” Clatters rang from the kitchen. “Always have been, always will be. You’ll get used to it. Everyone else has.”
“Even your husband?” She couldn’t quite imagine that as she shoveled gray ashes from the fringes of the hearth onto the red-hot coals. Flames sizzled and smoked, the burning wood crumbled and she kept shoveling, wondering what Evelyn might say to that.
“Charlie, most of all. That man knew what he was getting into before he married me, so I don’t feel sorry for him in the least. Not one bit. He has no one to blame but himself for proposing to me.” After one final clank, Evelyn strolled into sight. Something deeper shone in her blue eyes, a light of happiness and caring that was something Willa had never known.
“Charlie was sweet on me since we were young.” Evelyn marched ahead to unhook Willa’s coat from the wall peg by the door and held it out for her. “He and I walked to and from school together every day from the time we were six until we were eighteen.”
“You must know him so well.” Willa thought of all the children she’d watched when she’d been able to attend school, how they laughed and played together, how they developed bonds of friendship and sometimes, more. “I can picture it. How you walked together side by side, talking the whole time.”
“Our siblings were there too, but we were largely able to ignore them. For whenever Charlie spoke, I had to listen. It was an unstoppable force in me. I always had been taken with him.” She handed over the garment and reached for her own much finer, beautifully made coat. “That force turned out to be love and so I married him.”
“A love match?” She didn’t believe it. She’d read of them as a girl, building the idea up like a fairy tale. The lonely child she’d been had ached for such a match, with the hopes that perhaps someday in the future she would be finally loved and have a family of her own, a husband who cherished her.
Evelyn seemed so happy. How could she actually like being married? Willa slipped her arms into her coat. Maybe Evelyn was just a very optimistic sort, making the best out of a difficult situation.
I’ve done the same, too. Willa finished her last button and pulled up her hood. She watched as Evelyn looked her up and down again, sympathy on her face.
“I’m glad Austin found you, Willa, dear.” Evelyn held out her gloved hand. “I have a hunch that no one could deserve him more.”
“He’s been very kind to me.” She laid her hand in Evelyn’s and no longer felt alone. When her baby came, it would have cousins to play with. Friends. A normal childhood because it would not be born out of wedlock. Her baby would have the kind of life she never knew.
Oh, how she owed Austin for that. With a smile, she let her sister-in-law pull her out the door and into the lightly falling snow.
* * *
“How’s it feel to be a married man?” Wallace Pole asked as he gave his big Clydesdale a pat, framed by the open double doors of the livery barn. Behind him, snow drifted down like pieces of heaven onto the frosty street. The mercantile owner tugged out his pocket watch to check the hour. Probably worried about getting his deliveries out on time.
No problem there. Austin buckled the last harness. The horses were ready to go. “Not much different,” he admitted. “It hasn’t been twenty-four hours yet. Ask me after I get home for supper. That will be a nice change.”
“There’s nothing like a woman’s cookin’ after you’ve been making do for yourself. And as for the other kind of comforts a wife can give a man.” Wallace winked. “No need to say more, my boy. I’m not so old I can’t remember what it was like to be a newlywed.”
Heat inched across Austin’s face as he handed over the reins. He thought of Willa and how charming she’d looked in the morning’s light. The memory of her lush, rosebud lips sent shivers of heat into his blood. He desired her, no doubt about that, but he couldn’t forget how hard she’d trembled last night in their bed, afraid in the one place she should always be safe.
“There she is.” Wallace took the reins, nodding over his shoulder in the direction of the store across the street. For an instant in the gleam of the wide front windows he caught sight of Willa’s dark hair in the lamplight, shimmering like ebony silk.
The warmth in his blood spread from simply watching her. Slim and willowy in her faded dress. Her hair swept across her back as she shook her head, no. His sister marched into view, displeasure twisting her mouth into a frown. Evelyn’s eagle eyes caught sight of him across the street; she stalked toward the window and crooked her finger in an unmistakable “come here” gesture.
“Uh-oh.” Wallace climbed up into his sled and plopped onto his cushioned seat. “That sister of yours don’t look happy.”
“No, and I’m afraid she’s about to take it out on me.” He grabbed his hat from the peg by the door and waited until Mr. Pole’s delivery sled lumbered out of the straw and into the snow.
What on earth could be wrong? Austin glanced over his shoulder, checking to make sure all the stall gates were secure before he crossed the street. Not many were out in this weather, where the wind blew like the arctic north through the trees and barreled straight down Main with a mean howl. If Willa hadn’t been in such need, he wouldn’t have wanted her out in this, either.
Willa. He caught sight of her through the glass in the door. With her head bent to study the bolts of fabric in a display, she didn’t see him coming. Her profile might be the prettiest he’d ever seen, a finely sculpted work of art with a sloping dainty nose, those soft lips and a dear little chin.
His very own wife. Tenderness took over as he made his way into the store. He hardly noticed the ring of the bell overhead or Mrs. Pole’s cheerful greeting. All he saw was Willa. He could barely breathe drinking her in. How he’d gotten so lucky, he didn’t know.
“Your bride is not cooperating.” A sharp hammer-strike of a heel sounded near his elbow. Evelyn paraded into his view, her hands on her hips. “I don’t know what to do with her. She’s stubborn.”
“Is that so?” Amusement tripped through him as he watched Willa lift her gaze, turning her attention to him. Once she spotted him, tension crept in. A line of worry furrowed across her porcelain forehead and quirked the corners of her kissable mouth.
How he wanted to kiss that mouth. “What exactly isn’t Willa doing?”
“She’s not picking out a single dress or a scrap of fabric to make one. For that matter, not even yarn for a pair of gloves.” Evelyn looked perplexed. “She doesn’t want to spend your money.”
“I see the problem. A frugal wife. It’s a travesty, all right.” He understood Evelyn’s upset. Anyone taking a good look at Willa would see she needed new clothes two years ago, something her first husband had failed to provide for her.
But not this one. His boots rang hollowly on the wood floor as he circled around the pickle barrel and toward his bride. Anxiety carved lines into her face and she bit her bottom lip, her teeth white against the pink. A question resonated in her expressive eyes. Are you upset with me? she asked without a word.
He shook his head. No. If nothing, her reluctance to charge anything she wanted made him like her more.
“That’s pretty.” He nodded toward the butter-yellow fabric she’d been fingering when he’d walked into the store. It was dotted with brighter yellow flowers and blue blossoms. “It would make something nice for you.”
“It’s for the curtains.”
“Nice. It’s just what the house needs. I hope you get plenty of material so you can make them up real nice, the way you want. I’d like that. Do you know what else I’d like?”
“No. Is there something you need?”
“Yes. I need you to come here.” He laid a hand on her shoulder, ignoring the hard ridge of bone beneath his palm. “These ready-made dresses are nice and I want you to choose three.”
“Three?” She could not be hearing him
correctly. She looked into his eyes, somber and kind, and saw he meant what he said. Three new dresses. She couldn’t believe it. “I don’t need anything.”
“A coat, too. Mrs. Pole, get her the warmest gloves you have in this store. And the fabric she wants for the curtains.”
“Will do,” the shopkeeper’s wife promised, bustling around the counter to fetch and measure the material. “You might want to get your bride new shoes. Honestly, Austin, you’re a businessman in this town. What will folks think?”
“New shoes it is.” Austin’s hand remained on her shoulder, a reassuring pressure that seared through fabric and skin to the bone beneath.
Was he embarrassed by her? She bit her bottom lip, gazing down at her dress. The patches were neat. The dress had been a hand-me-down her mother had found for her years ago, and though worn, it was serviceable. But he didn’t seem to think so. This was another sign that Austin may have hoped for more in his mail-order bride. A businessman like him might have wished for someone fancier and not so plain.
“I want you to have what you need, Willa.”
I’m not in need, she wanted to argue but Austin’s hand skimmed down her arm, leaving a warm trail on flesh and bone. She shivered, not at all sure why his touch affected her like this, as if fire burned on her skin. That fire scattered her thoughts, making it impossible to think. She stared down at the toes of her patched shoes, remembering the day her mother had brought them home.
“They were left behind at the hotel.” Ma had slapped the pair of shoes down with the look of disdain she always had for her daughter. “They ain’t much, but they’re about your size. Not that you deserve ’em. Patch the hole in the toe and wear ’em, girl, cuz that’s all you’ll be gettin’ from me.”
The vestiges of the past whirled around her, threatening to drain the light from the cheerful store. Willa blinked, bringing the present back into focus and fighting down the memories and the shame that still clung to her, the shame of being the ruination of her mother’s life. She did not want Austin to be ashamed of her, too. His fingers curved around hers to lift her hand, and he drew the pad of his thumb across the golden sheen of her wedding band.