A Hasty Betrothal

by Jessica Nelson

  She was standing there waggling those fine eyebrows expectantly, and he bit back a chuckle. “Yes, ma’am. That’ll be fine.”

  “Good.”

  Good? Maybe so, maybe not. Edmund wasn’t so sure. Sitting down with a large family when he was used to eating in peace and quiet...and alone...might prove to be more of a challenge than teaching young boys about ranching.

  Mrs. Barlow sent the other children off to do chores while she went to help Jacob get ready. Alone in this spotless kitchen with all of its tempting smells, Edmund felt both pleased and a bit frustrated by her behavior. Women! Who could understand them? He’d stick with what he did know, running a cattle ranch. He’d worked with cowboys all of his adult life, so he felt confident he could wrangle the young boys in his charge. In a way, it would be payback to kindly Old Gad, the cowboy who’d mentored him both in his job and in his spiritual life. When he’d tried to repay Old Gad for his kindness, he’d told him just to pass it on. That’s what he was trying to do now, what he always tried to do.

  And in the back of his mind, he felt the Lord’s nudge challenging him to figure out ways to help his pretty, stubborn little neighbor take care of her ranch...without her knowing it, o’course.

  * * *

  Once Lula May and Jacob were back in the kitchen, she tied a clean red kerchief around the neck of her oldest birth child. She made a final inspection of his fresh tan shirt and brown trousers and his well-brushed, hand-me-down boots. Nobody could say she didn’t take care of her children or, as they grew up, that she didn’t teach them to take care of themselves. “There. All ready to go.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Jacob’s bright blue eyes sparkled with excitement, the most joy she’d seen on his face since his pa died last January. She and the children had all grieved Frank’s passing, still grieved it, but for some reason she’d yet to figure out, Jacob seemed to take his pa’s death the hardest.

  “Go on, then.” She waved a hand toward the kitchen door where Mr. McKay stood waiting, hat in hand. “Get your horse.”

  The man gave her a quick nod and an almost-grin. She’d never known what to make of her quiet, somewhat aloof neighbor. Frank had called him a good person, and she’d always respected her husband’s judgment, but now she was on her own deciding whom to trust. Besides, being a good person didn’t mean this man would teach her son properly.

  “Let’s go, cowboy.” Mr. McKay clapped a hand on Jacob’s shoulder, and the two of them exited the house through the narrow mudroom off the kitchen. On the way out, Jacob grabbed his well-worn hat from a peg by the door.

  Doubt darted through Lula May. Exactly what would Mr. McKay teach Jacob? She should have asked. She hurried out the door behind them, passing the man’s horse ground-tied a few yards from the house. Nibbling at a clump of grass, the stallion stayed in place, a good sign, because she kept her broodmares in a nearby field. The stallion not taking off in that direction meant he was well trained not to move once his reins hit the ground.

  “I’ll help you saddle up,” the man said. “Which one’s your horse?” He looked across the corral where a dozen or so of Lula May’s quarter horses awaited their morning feeding.

  “It’s in the barn,” she called out. “And he can saddle his own horse.”

  Mr. McKay turned, surprise registering on his face. Or was it annoyance? Never mind. If he was going to teach her son anything, she had a right to know about his methods.

  “Go on, Jacob. Get Buster.”

  Her son hurried obediently into the barn while Lula May joined Mr. McKay at the corral fence.

  With one boot on the lowest rail and his arms resting on the top one, the rancher appeared to be studying her stock. Was he interested in buying? She could use a sale right now to pay for that barbed wire when it came in. Raising cow ponies wasn’t as lucrative as cattle ranching, but it was a business she and the children could manage without having to hire cowboys.

  “You need a horse?” She followed his gaze, which seemed to have settled on the paint gelding Calvin had raised to sell.

  “No, ma’am.” Still studying her horses, Mr. McKay left it at that.

  Lula May felt a scratch of irritation at his brief answer. “I don’t know what you’re planning to teach my son, but don’t you baby him. He learns quick. You’ll see when he brings Buster out of that barn all saddled and ready to go.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Was that all he had to say? Wouldn’t he tell her about his plans?

  “Well?”

  “Ma’am?” He stared down at her from his considerable height, his face crinkled with confusion.

  Being tall for a woman, she usually didn’t have to crane her neck this way to look up at a man. An odd, giddy feeling tickled her insides. Shame on her. Frank hadn’t even been gone a year, and here she was reacting to this man like a schoolgirl.

  “Just exactly what are you going to teach the boys?” Her words came out harsher than she intended. Mr. McKay didn’t deserve rudeness. “I mean, well, what will they be doing? Does Jacob need to bring a dinner pail?”

  “No, ma’am. My bunkhouse cook’ll fix vittles for them.” He brushed away a horsefly trying to light on his clean-shaven cheek, and the mild scent of leather and soap wafted toward Lula May. “This morning, I’ll test ’em, find out what they know. Go from there.”

  The way he clamped his mouth shut told Lula May that was all she’d get from him on the subject. At least she didn’t have to worry about Jacob getting hungry while he worked. She tried to think of something to chat about while they waited for her son, but this man just about defined what it meant to be taciturn.

  His unexpected visit this morning had miffed her more than a little, but now that she understood he hadn’t come to complain about the weak fencing between their two properties, she could relax a little.

  Not that she could ever truly relax. Her children and her ranch were her whole life, and she had to be vigilant every moment to be sure everything went well. When Frank fell ill three years ago, he’d urged her to hire a cowhand to help out, but that would have meant turning control over to someone else, some man who might take advantage of the situation. Instead she’d taken up the reins of running the place and kept his illness quiet right up until a week or so before he’d gone to Glory.

  She hadn’t needed help then, and she didn’t need it now. What she hadn’t learned about the care and training of horses in childhood from her uncle’s groom, Tobias, she’d learned from Frank. She’d learned all she needed to know about cooking from Tobias’s wife, Annie. Along with her five children, Lula May raised exceptional cow ponies and worked toward the day when the High Bar Ranch became a respected quarter horse supplier that drew cattle ranchers from all over Texas and beyond.

  She looked up at Mr. McKay again. He was one of the most competent cattle ranchers in the county, if his success was any indication. That hat looked fairly new, and his boots, too. She hadn’t been able to afford new boots for some time, but at least she managed new garb for the older boys, and they handed things down to the younger ones. No shame in that. Even more prosperous folks with half a brain passed clothes down to save money.

  “Ma’am?” Mr. McKay gave her a quizzical look, and she realized she’d been staring at him. Those green eyes briefly widened before shuttering down. Here was a man who didn’t let people into his life, a practice she knew all too well.

  Before she could respond, a fat mouse darted from a crack in the barn wall, with one of the barn cats in pursuit, straight toward Lula May. She raised a boot to stomp the mouse, and it must have seen the danger of its course, because it hopped about a foot into the air and turned its frantic flight toward the corral. The yellow tabby didn’t miss a beat but scrambled under the fencing, chasing his quarry in a haphazard path among the milling horses and out the other side and disappearing around the corner of the barn.
How both critters avoided those hooves, Lula May couldn’t guess.

  “Good mouser.” Mr. McKay chuckled, a pleasant resonant sound low in his chest.

  An unexpected ache touched something deep inside of Lula May’s own chest. She missed the sound of a man’s laugh, a man’s conversation. In truth, she missed the sound of any adult conversation. If not for the ladies’ weekly quilting bee and church on Sundays, she’d be hard-pressed to remember how to talk to other grown-ups.

  She offered a small laugh of her own. “We have a few dozen cats. You need one? Or two?”

  “Thanks.” He shook his head. “Got a passel of ’em myself.” He went silent again.

  Lula May withheld a huff of frustration. Jacob would be in the barn a few more minutes, and it felt so awkward to just stand here.

  “Mr. McKay—”

  “Edmund.” He gave her a shy, crooked smile.

  Why, he was shy. And probably not used to talking to women. Bless his heart. Maybe she could bring him out a bit. She gave him a bright smile.

  “All right, then. And I’m Lula May.”

  He nodded and touched the brim of his hat. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You have any favorite foods I can cook up for you?”

  He stared off for a moment. “No, ma’am.” When he looked back at her, his broad face was creased thoughtfully, his head tilted to the side in a charming way, which he probably had no idea was charming. “Maybe no beans.”

  She ached to laugh at his confession, delivered in such an honest, boyish manner, like one of her own boys might say it. But she knew better than to laugh at any man or boy. “I’m assuming you mean pinto beans. I got string beans ready to pick.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of her kitchen garden near the house. “Is that all right?”

  He grinned, a real, true grin. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Also grinning from ear to ear, Jacob emerged from the barn leading Buster. “I’m ready to go, Mr. McKay.”

  Mr. McKay...Edmund...gave a low whistle, and his stallion lifted his head. “Come, Zephyr.” The tall bay animal, equal parts Thoroughbred and quarter horse, and easily sixteen hands high, walked purposefully toward his master, with his reins dragging between his forelegs. Arriving at his destination, he lowered his head and accepted a carrot Edmund had pulled from his back pocket. “Good boy.” Edmund scratched the animal’s forehead and ran a hand down his neck. Zephyr leaned into Edmund as a child would to his father, a bonding gesture Lula May knew well from her own favorite mare, Lady.

  “Wow.” Jacob watched wide-eyed as the stallion munched his reward.

  Lula May knew just how he felt. If Edmund could train this magnificent animal with such obvious gentleness, she could set aside her worries. He wouldn’t teach Jacob to break a horse, a practice most cowboys employed.

  With some difficulty, she squelched the urge to hug Jacob goodbye. He’d started resisting hugs some time back, just as Calvin and Samuel had at this age. She wouldn’t embarrass a single one of them by forcing such attentions on them just to satisfy her maternal impulses. At least Pauline and Daniel still needed her hugs.

  “Go on, now. And you listen to Mr. McKay.” She couldn’t resist saying that, even though Jacob always listened well.

  Jacob and Edmund mounted up, said their goodbyes and rode off. For several minutes, Lula May stood and watched until all she could see was the dust stirred up by their galloping horses. Even as her heart filled with gratitude toward Edmund, it ached for her son.

  Dear, sweet Jacob, firstborn of her three birth children. She sincerely loved Calvin and Samuel. Yet Jacob’s birth had truly opened her heart to what motherhood was all about. Still, Jacob had lived his entire ten years in the shadow of his two older half brothers. They weren’t unkind to him, but they did treat him more as a pesky puppy. Even eight-year-old Pauline, a “little mother” to all four of her brothers, bossed Jacob around more than she did the others.

  At first, when Edmund invited Jacob to join his Young Ranchers’ Club, Lula May had been insulted, even more than when he pointed out that her fence needed mending. But as she’d prayed to control her temper, Edmund had mentioned Adam, and the Lord whispered in her mind that maybe this was just the thing to help Jacob come into his own. Since his only pal would be there, and Adam treated Jacob as an equal, she gave in, even though it was hard.

  As she walked back toward the house, she thought of Frank. What would he say to her letting another man teach his son? As if to answer her question, sixteen-year-old Calvin met her at the back door.

  “You did right, Ma.” He chewed on a biscuit covered with butter and strawberry jam. “It’ll be good for him.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He polished off the biscuit and swiped his hands across his trousers. “I’m headed out to feed the stock.”

  “All right.” Satisfaction warmed her heart. As with Jacob, she resisted the urge to hug her very capable eldest stepson. Calvin always knew just what to do around here. Although she’d never confess it to anyone outside of the family, without him and Samuel, she never could have managed the ranch this far.

  She’d pretty much reared Calvin and Samuel since they were six and four, and they’d always called her Ma. Yet she couldn’t help wondering whether they wished, like their father always seemed to, that their birth mother hadn’t died. Her own mother and father died of a fever when Lula May was twelve, and at twenty-nine, she still missed their loving ways.

  “Ma, Daniel won’t make his bed.” Eight-year-old Pauline awaited Lula May in the kitchen, her fists firmly at her waist in imitation of Lula May’s customary scolding pose.

  Six-year-old Daniel peered around his sister, pulled his thumb from his mouth, and grinned.

  Lula May had a hard time giving her youngest child a stern look, but she somehow managed. He sure was full of vinegar. “Daniel, mind your sister and make your bed.”

  “See there.” Pauline shot her brother a triumphant look.

  Unlike Jacob, who withered under the mildest scolding, Daniel giggled and scampered off to obey. Pauline huffed out her impatience as she set about washing breakfast dishes. Oh, how Daniel liked to get his sister’s goat. Lula May tried not to laugh. It wasn’t wise to set one child against another. They all needed to work together from before dawn till late into the night.

  “Here’s the firewood, Ma.” Samuel came in the back door and dumped a large armload of fuel into the wood box. “One more trip, and it should carry you through fixing supper. Then I’ll muck out the barn.”

  “That’s fine, Sammy.” She watched her fourteen-year-old stepson hurry back outside. As with all of her children, she felt a surge of affection as she watched him working so responsibly.

  Maybe she wasn’t being fair to her stepsons in thinking they missed their mother. And she shouldn’t compare their lives to her own because their upbringing had been so different from hers. After Emily’s death, they’d been able to stay with their own gentle father in the home they were born in. When Lula May’s parents died, she’d been sent away from all she’d ever known and to her uncle in Alabama, a cruel man who’d made it clear he resented her being there. Made it clear he found her incapable of doing or being anything important. He was forever comparing her to the “delicate, well-mannered Southern belles” in their church. She ran away from his controlling ways at eighteen and came to Texas to marry a kind widower with two sweet little boys.

  She never regretted it for a minute. Frank had been a good husband, if a bit distracted most of the time. One thing that always hurt, although Lula May had never told him, was that he’d never put away the wedding picture of Emily and him that hung over the parlor mantelpiece and one of Emily on their bedroom wall. Nor had he ever asked Lula May to sit for a photographic portrait. Being a young bride, she’d lacked the self-confidence to suggest storing
Emily’s pictures, or at least moving them to the boys’ room. And now she couldn’t make a change for fear of hurting Calvin and Samuel.

  To be honest about her own feelings, while she’d been deeply fond of Frank, she’d never felt for him the kind of love her parents had shared. Still, she and Frank had had a good marriage, and she was sorry he was gone. One of the last things he’d said to her was what a good wife she was and he knew she’d manage the ranch just fine. Even though she’d already been managing it by herself for three years, she appreciated his faith in her. She loved the ranch and everything about running a horse breeding business. Not that it wasn’t sometimes complicated, even frustrating. But the rewards outweighed the complications, and if trouble didn’t come visiting, she’d have a legacy to hand down to the children.

  Problem was, she did have one big worry. Not that she’d tell the children unless something came of it, but last week, she received her first letter ever from Uncle. “I hear you married an old widower and he up and died on you. I would imagine you need some help with that farm he left you, being that you never amounted to much when you lived with me.” That was just like him to send an insult. She could almost hear his condemning tone as she read the words. “I am concerned for you, girlie, so it is my responsibility to see what I can do for you.” That was nothing short of a threat that he intended to impose himself back into her life. Well, she wasn’t having any of it. She’d run away from him at eighteen to avoid being forced into marriage to one of his wealthy friends, a disgusting, hard-drinking, cigar-smoking old carpetbagger. So she wasn’t about to have anybody in her life who’d try to control her.

  My, my. What on earth had set her off thinking about these things? She needed to quit cogitating on bad memories. She’d deal with Uncle if and when he came around bothering her. For now, she must plan a special meal for Mr. Edmund McKay. Feeding him supper was a good idea. It was the least she could do for him for taking Jacob under his wing.

  Why on earth had she been so rude to Edmund? That wasn’t her way. But if he was anything like Frank, a hearty meal would be the best apology she could serve up.