by Lisa Norato
“Coffee and a bath. Preferably both hot.”
With a chuckle, Rose patted her hand and left to make arrangements. Before long, Shelby was seated in a large tin tub of heated water sprinkled with Rose’s bath salts. As she soaked, she tweezed her brows in a hand-held mirror. She washed her hair with her eucalyptus complexion soap and shaved her legs—very gingerly with a straight razor—until she felt her feminine sensibilities returning and her adventure of riding with the roundup crew fading to memory.
That evening, the entire family was present for supper. The boys had returned, having finished branding the spring calves. They gathered around the big plank table and swapped stories of the stampede.
The punchers had run with the cattle for over two miles before Holden and a couple of others, after gaining a position alongside the lead runners, began to turn them. The remaining cattle followed. The men, using their voices, firing their guns and slapping their slickers in the animal’s faces, forced the stampede into a circle, then continued to close in, gathering the herd into a tight mill, until they finally stopped from exhaustion.
The guys expressed their concern for Shelby and made their apologies. Then, as was typical of brothers, they proceeded to pass blame amongst themselves.
Shorty gave a snort. “This was Hugh’s fault for asking Miss McCoy to join the roundup in the first place.”
“Me? Why me, when all I did was propose the idea to her? Seeing as you boys were too scared to speak up for yourselves. I wasn’t even there. It was Wylie who put her on Buck, then left her to fend for herself.”
Wylie took offense and turned to Shelby, eyes wide with regret. “I was only doing what Holden told me to do, Miss McCoy.”
“That’s right,” Holden announced in an authoritative voice that drew everyone’s attention. “It was my idea to have Miss McCoy along as chuck wagon cook. If anyone’s responsible for shouldering the blame, that’d be me. I served you up a raw deal, Miss McCoy, and I am deeply sorry for the hardship I caused.”
“Oh, it wasn’t so bad . . . really,” Shelby admitted, then immediately ducked her chin to hide a smile. She shot a glance across the table at Ruckert.
He couldn’t seem to hold her gaze and keep a straight face. He turned away, and as Shelby listened to him describe how he’d taken her to a line camp for shelter, she wondered if anyone else could see past his guilty stutter to the romantic details he was discreetly omitting.
Afterwards, Rose excused Shelby from the men’s presence, claiming she had a surprise waiting upstairs. She brought Shelby to her own room and unfurled an armload of sky blue dress flannel. It revealed itself to be a two-piece Victorian walking suit and consisted of a simple, floor-length skirt with a hem of knife plaid and its matching, high-necked bodice, buttoning down the back.
Shelby donned a petticoat and bustle pad of Rose’s, then slipped into the ensemble for a fitting. The jacket fell to her hip, with tailored seams that enhanced her bust line and narrowed at the waist. There was a ruffled edge of black lace around the three-quarter length sleeves and an overlay of the same lace across the yoke.
White threads ran through the blue flannel, lending it a slightly heathered appearance. Shelby pressed her palms down its simple, tight weave. The chambray brought out her blue eyes. Made them pop. It seemed to tone down the pink in her skin tone and made her complexion glow. Sans cosmetics.
And, as she stood there admiring herself before a floor-length mirror, while Rose tucked and pinned making adjustments, Shelby began to experience a Cinderella-getting-dressed-for-the-ball feeling. The old-maid schoolmarm was about to be transformed into a delicate western bloom, and she couldn’t resist thinking, Wait till Ruckert sees me.
Her heart fluttered with excitement at the very thought of him. What would her friends back home, her colleagues at school, think of her hooking up with a much younger man? The old Shelby would worry they’d find her foolish. Shame they’d never get to meet him. She bet they’d feel envious. They’d definitely be shocked.
But for once in her life, Shelby didn’t care what anyone thought. She was happy.
She woke the next morning in the mood to celebrate and dug out Aunt Agnes’s potato doughnut recipe. As her thoughts turned to menus, a stroke of culinary genius hit.
She enlisted help. She asked Rose to prepare a fresh batch of bread dough. She sent Shorty mushrooming into the woods. She persuaded Ruckert to part with some canned tomatoes from his private stash by accompanying him to the barn, where they shared a kiss or two in the tack room before Shelby emerged to gather what other ingredients she needed from the ranch’s stores.
That evening, family members and hands alike gathered at the cookhouse for a pizza party. Charley even brought out his guitar, accompanied on harmonica by Ham Sanders.
Shelby started them off with a plain cheese. They were wowed. They wondered among themselves, what sort of spell had this red-haired calico cast that she could make bread and cheese taste good to a motley bunch of carnivorous cow punchers?
Next she served a round of steak and mushroom pizzas.
They couldn’t stop singing her praises. They were simple men, used to simple food, but all these flavors—thinly sliced steak, sautéed wild mushrooms, melted cheese, herbs and sourdough—exploding inside their ordinary palates with each mouthful—well, it was an experience they’d plumb never forget.
Until Shelby blew them away with the highlight of the evening’s menu—a bacon, onion and sardine pizza.
Later, as dessert was served, and the cowboys were sipping coffee and licking the doughnut grease from their fingers, it was declared that if any man had his doubts, he now understood why Nana Tinkler had sent her granddaughter Shelby McCoy to the Flying Eagle. She was the best darn ranch cook of the New World.
Rudy Hirsig said it best, “Quick, somebody write Cookie and tell him don’t bother coming back!”
On that note, Shelby left the men with the dishes and retired with Rose back to the house. Rose continued on up to bed, but Shelby decided she’d sit at the piano for a few minutes.
She was tired, though not the hollow weariness of the day before. This was more of a contented, laid-back feeling. As she lifted the lid, a gas lamp on top of the upright spilled soft, buttery light onto the keys.
She played “Clair de lune,” Debussy’s beloved portrait of the moon. Jorge dozed at her feet, lulled by the vibration of the music.
From there, she segued into “Moon River,” then continued her moon recital with the piece she suspected she’d been yearning to play all along.
“Moonlight Sonata” stirred her soul with its agonizing, lamenting beauty. She was well into the second movement, settling into D-flat, when she sensed a quiver in the air. It drew her out of the music into an eerie awareness of the dark, empty room behind. Her spine tingled.
Shelby stilled her fingers to glance down at her dog.
Jorge was gone.
Her gaze swept the floor for him, only to halt on the landing at the entry to the parlor.
Ruckert stood holding her Pomeranian against the soft, worn cotton of his burgundy, pinstriped shirt, Jorge’s black plume of a tail curled over his forearm.
Shelby grinned as she drank in the sight. “I was hoping you’d come.” They hadn’t enjoyed privacy since their brief rendezvous in the barn, nothing more than longing looks and passing smiles.
“Don’t qu-qu-qu-quit playing on account of m-me.”
“How did you manage to get in here without me noticing?”
“I came through the kitchen.”
“I didn’t hear a thing. Not even your spurs.”
He stepped down into the room and lowered Jorge to the floor.
Shelby searched his expression in the lamplight, but his eyes remained in shadow beneath the black hat brim.
“I’m not s-surprised,” he said. “You were playing that piano as beautiful as I’ve ever heard one pp-p-played.”
She warmed at the appreciative timbre of his bass voice. “S
o how long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough to listen while I thought hard on a few things. There’s something about me I b-believe you might c-c-care to kn-know.”
In reality, there wasn’t anything about him Shelby didn’t care to know, but he’d surprised her with the gravity of his tone.
“Oh, what’s that?” she inquired.
Ruckert halted beside her piano stool. Glancing up at him, Shelby absorbed his quiet, powerful energy. Her heart swelled with a sweet, joyous ache. She’d noticed herself missing him even though, for the most part, he’d been around all day.
He tipped his hat back on his forehead. Shelby smiled for him to begin, but he didn’t say a word, simply gestured for her to get off the stool.
“Oooh, mysterious.” She stood and stepped aside, then watched as Ruckert took the seat and positioned his hands on the keys.
His brow furrowed in concentration as he hit a few familiar notes, missed the next with a grunt of frustration, then began again to play the first movement of “Moonlight Sonata.”
Oh. My. Gosh. He can play, she realized, only half believing, despite the fact she was actually seeing those rough cowboy hands strike the keys with the quiet touch required of Beethoven’s composition. Those hands, those large, workingman’s hands, had transformed with long-fingered grace into musically-artistic vessels, and the effect was the sexiest thing she had ever witnessed.
She stood quietly, bursting inside, reluctant to make a sound for fear it would disturb his playing.
And with each note, her appreciation of him grew.
He stopped after the first movement, having made his point, and removed his hands to his lap.
Shelby gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Okay, first of all, that was awesome! Especially since that sonata is not the easiest piece to perform. So, how? How did you learn to play so well? And with such talent, why would you ever stop?”
A range of emotion flittered across his face as Shelby fired her questions. They changed from slight embarrassment, to humble acceptance of her praise, to thoughtful melancholy.
Ruckert took a breath. “This piano b-belonged to my grandmother, M-M-Mary St. Cloud. That’s her.” With a nod, he indicated the tintype of the elderly woman with her grandsons displayed on the upright’s shelf.
“She watched me day after day as I t-tried one remedy after the next to cure my st-st-stuttering. This one afternoon, I was headed out with my ssss-s-saddlebags packed full of st-stones. I had begun the practice of slinging them around my neck and running uphill so as to strengthen my lungs. Grandma called me over to her piano and told me she thought she might have found a b-better way.”
Glancing down at the piano keys, Ruckert smoothed his mustache, though behind his hand, Shelby could swear she spied a grin. She wondered that he found the memory amusing, when at the time the matter must have been gravely serious to him.
And as he lifted his gaze to hers, Shelby realized he was trying to make light of just how serious.
He shrugged. “I was willing tttt-to try anything.”
“Of course.” She smiled in understanding and nodded for him to continue, all ears.
“Grandma asked me to describe for her what it felt like to st-st-st-stutter.”
“And what did you tell her?”
Behind the cool sage of Ruckert’s eyes, Shelby glimpsed the briefest flicker of hesitation. A muscle twitched at his temple and his Adam’s apple seemed to strain as though any explanation had suddenly lodged in his throat.
And yet he answered with ease. “I told her at times it feels as though my voice is st-stuck, and I c-c-cannot get on with what it is I want to say. When it’s bad, I can feel my stomach tighten in a kn-knot. Then presently, I find myself unable to get my lips and tongue and b-b-b-breathing all w-working together at the same time.
“The whole time I spoke, Grandma played piano,” he reflected, giving the photograph a nostalgic glance, before refocusing his attention on Shelby. “I’ll confess I did not think well of such treatment, wondering why she wouldn’t sit quiet and listen. She could see I was bothered and asked me in her sweet way to speak in an easy rhythm with her piano tune. And so I slowed down my speech to flow in time with her m-m-music. It did make a difference. From then on, every afternoon, we’d sit here at the piano and I’d tell her a-bbb-bout my day while she played.”
Shelby gasped in a flash of understanding. As a trained musician, she knew exactly the sort of speech therapy shrewd Mary St. Cloud had been using.
“Sorry for interrupting,” she apologized. “I’ll explain later. Go on.”
With no interest in cattle ranching, Ruckert told how he’d taken on the responsibility of the farm chores instead, making sure the animals got fed and cared for. He planted and tended his mother’s garden. He learned a blacksmith’s trade and kept the horses shoed, the machinery and hay-mowing machine in good repair, its sickles sharp. But his first priority was always the horses. And when he wasn’t working or communing with them, he could be found here, sitting at this piano with his grandmother. In time, she’d taught him to play.
Listening, Shelby couldn’t help but reflect how Ruckert was so much more than outward appearances. She felt her connection to him burn deeper, stronger with each new facet of himself he revealed.
The fingers of his right hand hovered over the keys as though itching to play. He struck a few wistful notes, then explained, “My speech did improve, and I had a hope I was on the high road to mending this bbbb-busted talk b-box. And if not, well, I did enjoy those afternoons with one fine, sweet woman. She proved to be the staunchest of friends, eager to lend an ear and plumb full of patience. When she p-p-p-passed suddenly, it struck me hard. I st-st-stuttered worse than before. It pained me even to look at the p-piano, and so I closed the lid on these keys, never to touch them again. Then, little more than a week ago, here I come into the house and find you playing that very same music my grandmother once played for m-me.”
Goose bumps traveled up Shelby’s arms, then shivered down her spine. “I can understand why that freaked you out.”
“If you mean I was surprised, that’s just the half of it.” Taking her hand in his, Ruckert smiled into her eyes. “You have perplexed me at every turn. Next, you tell me you hail from a future time. I don’t hardly know how to savvy such a thing, though it hasn’t slowed down my falling all the way in love with you. No, not one bit. Maybe it’s your sassy manner or your talent for anything from piano playing to ranch cooking, but a more beautiful or mysterious woman has never happened down my path. I doubt another ever will. And why such an angel would choose me, when any man would count himself blessed to receive just a moment of your attention, confounds me. How do you figure it? I have no explanation but to wonder if maybe you are a dream and not real. Well, so be it. If you are a dream, then I ask you not to wake me.”
Shelby got teary with the emotion rising inside her. That had been her sentiment exactly. “For a man who claims to have a difficult time expressing himself, I’ve never had anyone speak such beautiful words to me.”
She lowered herself into Ruckert’s lap and curled her fingers around the strong sinew of his neck. As she gazed into his mellow green eyes, she smiled, and Ruckert returned the smile with a heated stare. Closing her eyes, Shelby pressed her lips to his and Ruckert took it from there.
When they drew apart and Shelby saw the adoring look on his face, she counted herself the blessed one.
She glanced again at the photograph of Mary St. Cloud. Ruckert followed her gaze, and although his expression gave nothing away, Shelby sensed a lingering nostalgia, as if he were still sobered by his memories.
“Maybe she’s trying to send a message she wants you to start playing again,” she ventured. “You obviously haven’t forgotten.”
“Could be, I suppose. Maybe she sent you, Angel.”
“Stranger things have happened.” Her own personal situation, for instance. “Could be Grandma Mary is in cahoots with Nana Tinkler.�
�� She smiled. “Seriously, maybe I could pick up where your grandmother left off.”
He waited for her to elaborate with an intrigued stare.
“Your grandmother was actually using a technique designed to teach singers to control their voices. Singing—in your case, speaking in rhythm—requires a smoother and easier voice than normal speaking. Words are more prolonged, which makes them easier to say.
“For example.” She jumped from his lap and waved him off the stool. Taking the seat Ruckert vacated, she put her fingers to the keys and played a short phrase in four-four time, singing the word, “Vvv-voice.”
F-G-A-G-F, one beat per note, ending on two beats.
“Care to give it a try? Just sound out the ‘V’ normally, keeping your teeth loosely on your . . . bottom . . . lip.”
Trailing off, she found Ruckert gazing at the keyboard, his expression contemplative. She’d pushed, dang it, and she hadn’t yet gotten into the benefits of diaphragmatic breathing.
“No pressure,” she quickly compensated. “Another time. Or not. It’s totally up to you.”
He nodded, noncommittal, looking more amused than wounded. So why this twinge of guilt? Because the last time she’d spontaneously lent assistance, she’d performed a Heimlich on him. She couldn’t let another blunder come between them now that Ruckert was opening his heart to her, sharing himself as he’d never done before.
And he seemed to have no intention of saying anything whatsoever to save her from rambling.
“I just hope I haven’t offended you,” she said. “Actually, I’m less confident about my abilities as a speech therapist as I am simply lending support. Or, you know what? We could just talk. Like we did tonight. This was great. Maybe you’ll play for me again?”
He had only to smile and Shelby had her answer. His eyes told her he’d do almost anything she asked of him. Ruckert didn’t need words. Not with his amazing ability to communicate with expression. Merely smiling into her eyes with his gentle, understanding smile, his deep, sage gaze, sparkling with respect and appreciation, he’d acknowledged her good intentions. In his contemplative way, his expression was telling her he’d taken in all she’d told him, and Shelby believed he would mull over her offer. No harm done.