Many men stared at Esther, some agape at her startling beauty, some boldly or suggestively. Others avoided her eyes while taking inventory of the rest of her assets. But this man looked directly into her eyes . . . deeply, almost intimately. Esther felt a pull she had not experienced in a long time.
“Would you care to join us in the parlor?” Esther smiled again and hooked her arm through his to show him the way. “Please call me Esther. Would you care for a glass of wine? Something stronger?”
“You’re a lovely woman, Esther,” the man replied, placing his hand lightly on hers.
Heat shot down Esther’s spine. She looked from his hand resting on hers into his eyes again. I could get lost in those eyes, she thought. It was uncharacteristic of her to be moved by a client but . . .
He squeezed her hand gently. “My name is Cal. Cal Judd. What a pleasant establishment you have.”
~~**~~
Chapter 8
The group that gathered in front of the house studied it with wide eyes. Rose Brownlee Thoresen, however, was studying them, the courageous band (crazy or misguided, some might insist!) as they sized up the job ahead.
They all wore old and worn clothing, appropriate for embarking on an arduous task. They were ready to unpack a wagon load of bedding, cleaning supplies, cookware and kitchen utensils, and yard and carpentry tools. But the sight before them gave them pause.
A tall iron fence surrounded the property. Between the wrought iron gate and the front door lay an obstacle course of downed branches, dense shrubs, and tangled weeds and bushes. Tree roots lifted the stone walkway here and there; out-of-control vines covered windows and twined upon the porch.
“Eh!” was Breona’s first remark.
Rose smiled, looked for, and found the gleam in the tough young woman’s eye. “Breona, you are in charge of the cleaning of this house; you are our official housekeeper! The men will begin by clearing a path to the door and making a list of essential repairs and then getting to them. We ladies, however, are at your disposal.” Rose handed her a key.
Breona smiled broadly, her black eyes flashing. “Well then!”
The women of the group—Rose, Joy, Breona, Marit, Mei-Xing, Gretl, Sarah, Corrine, Maria, Nancy, Flora, and Tabitha—chuckled. The men—Mr. Wheatley, Billy, and Grant—smiled. No one in their band underestimated the determination of Breona Byrne once she set her mind to a task.
Breona pushed through the gate, jumped handily over several branches lying on the walk, dodged the thorny arms of a few bushes, and trotted victoriously up the wisteria-clogged steps to the front door. On the enormous covered porch she turned and held up the key triumphantly.
“Fer God an’ ’is glory!” she called loudly to them.
“Hear, hear!” Grant shouted back.
“For God and his glory!” Rose and Joy echoed, catching her excitement.
The women grinned and forged ahead. As Rose had directed, the men stayed behind to clear a wide path from the street to the house.
Inside, the women’s excitement and banter tapered off to silence. The interior of the house was dim and dank. Although it was June, the skies over Denver were overcast this early morning, providing little natural light for them to work by. They gathered in the house’s great room and stared about them in awe and something else, what Rose could only characterize as trepidation.
Wallpaper hung in faded tatters from the walls. Heavy drapes sagged under the weight of thick dust. Fragments of carpets littered the floors.
Breona asked Marit and Corrine to pull back the draperies from the windows. “Hev a care,” she warned, but the sound of rending fabric interrupted her.
“Rotten,” Marit stated flatly.
Breona nodded and gestured at the remaining window hangings. “We mus’ be takin’ th’m doon.”
The women covered their hair with kerchiefs and then removed tattered drapes from three windows and piled them in the center of the room. They coughed and choked as dust filled the air.
“We can’t clean all of this,” Flora blurted. Her words were tinged with panic. No one responded.
Breona ignored her and pursed her lips. “Aye then. Miss Joy, will ye please t’ be foindin’ us a burnin’ pit in th’ back?”
Joy nodded. She and Sarah wandered down the dark halls in search of a door to the back of the house.
Throughout the morning the women removed and burned dozens of rotted drapes, mildewed curtains, and ragged carpets. Breona set Marit and Gretl to clean the kitchen and its pantries and assigned Joy and Rose to the great room and dining room.
Corrine and Nancy tackled the parlor, library, and the butler’s pantry and office. The rest of the women she assigned to the first three bedrooms on the second floor.
“’Tis here we’ll be a-sleepin’ t’night,” Breona decided before they began. Shudders ran down several spines as they viewed the condition of the rooms and the work before them.
Marit and Gretl found two stoves in the massive kitchen, one wood-burning, the other gas fueled. Grant had firmly instructed all of them not to attempt to light any gas appliance until the gas company had inspected the house’s gas lines and approved each fixture.
After asking the men to supply them with some fire wood, the two women bent their efforts on cleaning the wood-burning stove and its pipe so they could get a fire going. An hour later they announced that they had hot water for cleaning.
Rose and Joy set about their task by sweeping dust and cobwebs from the ceilings, walls, floors, windows, and two fireplaces. After repeated passes, they still had full dustpans to empty. The tall ceilings were hardest—Joy stood on a sturdy box and swept the ceiling in sections, the dust falling on her kerchiefed head and into her eyes. After two full passes, her arms and shoulders burned and ached.
“We cannot even think to wash the windows until this dust is tamed,” Rose lamented.
“Perhaps we should wash them and the walls and floors regardless,” Joy suggested. “It is the only way to tame this dust. No doubt we’ll have to do so at least twice or three times.” And again tomorrow, she thought with dogged determination.
“You are right. We may as well wash the windows even if they run with grime,” Rose replied. “We need the light to work by.” She studied the walls, frowning. “This wallpaper will dissolve when we wash it.”
Joy nodded, her mouth set in a grim line. “I will ask the men to empty our rubbish bin into the burning pit and keep the fire going.”
The men were not without their challenges. Billy and Grant chopped and sawed their way through wildly overgrown climber roses and pyracantha until their arms bled from the thorny branches.
“Marit will not be pleased with the tears in my shirt,” Billy remarked with a reckless grin. Grant, not having considered Joy’s reaction to a torn shirt, looked askance when he realized his shirt was shredded beyond repair.
Mr. Wheatley pulled up his suspenders and went to work hacking Virginia creeper from the porch posts and wild trumpet vines from the window casings. His hair stood wildly on end, but he worked with a determined set to his jaw. What the others cut up and discarded, he doggedly loaded onto a cart and hauled to the burning pit.
Breona called a break at half past noon. Hot, grimy, and bedraggled, they washed in the kitchen and then gathered in what had been the dining room. Gretl and Marit passed out sandwiches, apple slices, and cups of water. They sat upon blankets and ate in weary silence.
At the end of 30 minutes, Breona took charge again. “Aye, ’tis a mote o’ work we’ve doon this morn, boot we’re nae doon this day.” She glanced at Rose. “Kin we b’ doin’ a wee bit o’ dreamin’ afore we begin agin, Miss Rose, Miss Joy?”
At first Rose didn’t understand what she meant, but Joy thought she did. “You mean . . . shall we walk through the house with eyes of faith, Breona? Imagining what it will be when we are done?
“Aye, tha’s th’ ticket!” Breona exclaimed, her eyes alight.
Groaning and rubbing sore muscles
, the party arose from the floor. Joy clapped her hands then opened her arms grandly and walked about the room. “Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please! I give you our dining room.”
“I would like our dining table to be large enough to seat our entire family here. On special occasions we will lay a lace cloth, indulge in dozens of candles, and use our best china.” She giggled. “We don’t have a table or china yet, but I’m using my eyes of faith!” Joy curtsied prettily and several of the girls giggled.
“This way, please!” Rose ushered them toward the great room. As they traipsed into it, Joy and Rose were rewarded by appreciative murmurs of “It is so different!” and “Wonderful!” and “Oh, look at the windows and all the light they allow in!”
Rose curtsied also and gestured graciously toward the fireplaces, one at each end of the room. “Ladies and gentlemen, kindly envision many soft, deep chairs with pillows and footstools for all. Here we will sit of an evening, warm and cozy by a fire, sipping our tea, and telling of all our day’s adventures.”
“Oh,” asked Maria softly. “Will someone read wonderful books to us here?”
“Of course,” Rose replied. She wrapped an arm about Maria’s waist. “It would be my pleasure to do so. For hours, if you like.”
“What color wallpaper will we have?” Flora asked, utterly caught up. “Please say it will be pink and cream, with rosebuds and ivy!”
The empty room echoed with laughter and chatter. “Not pink,” someone objected. Flora flushed and started to retort, but Joy laid a calming hand on her arm.
“Flora, I love the sound of pink rosebuds and ivy. Perhaps we can find them in the perfect paper for your bedroom.”
Flora brightened at that and the group trooped across the entry into the parlor to admire the progress there and to speculate on how the room would look when repainted and papered. The library, however, was a different story.
Nancy, her strawberry hair and translucent skin covered in fine dust, gestured toward the book shelves—two walls of them, floor to ceiling. “Breona, all these books are ruined.”
She then pointed to the several stacks of books sitting on the floor, their edges furred in fine mold. The stench of mildew permeated the room. Where the carpets had been pulled, the wood floors bore evidence to water damage.
Missing window panes were boarded over, but the damage was evident. The group grew serious at the prospect of burning so many books—books that would cost a small fortune to ever replace!
“Sunlight, strong sunlight moight be th’ savin’ o’ th’m,” Breona muttered. But to all of them, the reek of mold was overpowering and the likelihood of saving the hundreds—perhaps a thousand!—volumes seemed remote.
“What should we do?” Nancy asked. Rose was pleased that she looked to Breona for her guidance.
“I’ll be askin’ Billy t’ open t’ room t’ th’ air an’ then fittin’ new glass,” Breona replied, a little distracted by the enormity of the problem.
Next they toured the butler’s pantry with its wine case and walls of empty shelves, slots, drawers. Adjacent was a modest room with a single, high window, the former butler’s quarters. The room was snug and dry, and Nancy and Corrine had cleaned it thoroughly.
“Why, this is a perfect bedroom for our Mr. Wheatley, is it not?” Joy asked. They unanimously echoed Joy’s sentiments. Mr. Wheatley, with a happy air of possession, examined the built-in drawers and small wardrobe.
Up the wide staircase they trudged. They explored the second floor, counting the bedrooms, bathrooms, linen closets, staircases, and passages. They admired rounded rooms, odd angled rooms, and projecting windows with wide views of the grounds. They did so while studiously ignoring water stains, mold, crumbling plaster, and mouse droppings.
Up the next flight of stairs they wandered onto the third floor where they discovered three unique turret rooms, each with high ceilings and three other rooms more regular in size. Through a passage to the back of the house they encountered a row of small servant quarters.
The tiny rooms were built into the angled pitch of one of the house’s roofs. Their dormer windows protruded from the roof, each window with its own peaked roof.
Finally they discovered a quaint set of wooden steps, only six of them, leading to a locked door.
“This must lead to the attic,” Grant suggested. “Odd that the door is locked. I will see about finding a key.”
They spent an hour touring the house and “dreaming” as Breona had put it. Rose and Joy agreed that it had been well worth the time as the happy possibilities they envisioned grew larger—at least for a few minutes—than the tasks ahead of them.
At the bottom of the wide staircase, Joy hugged Breona tightly. The men were already heading outside and the women returning to their chores. “You are brilliant, my dear friend,” she said sincerely.
“Nay,” she replied softly. “Did no’ th’ Lord say t’ Abraham, ‘lift up yer eyes an’ look’? An’ what e’re Abraham was seein’, th’ Lord was givin’ t’ him.”
She cast an eye up the staircase to the floors above. “These bairns mus’ b’ lookin’ t’ what th’ Lord will be givin’ th’m, I’m thinkin’.”
At half past five the mingled scents of baking bread and beef simmering in thick gravy began to waft through the house. At six the household gathered in the dining room again.
Grant and Billy brought in a pair of sawhorses and placed three long planks across them. Then they carried in several benches Billy and Mr. Wheatley had knocked together from scraps they found in the carriage house.
Tabitha and Nancy washed down the planks and laid clean sheets upon them. Marit placed two kerosene lamps on their makeshift dining table as they gathered gratefully for a hot meal.
They ate voraciously, but made little conversation. No one had the energy. Rose found herself nodding off over her plate and jerked awake in chagrin, but no one had noticed. They were, all of them, exhausted beyond measure.
Breona set them to cleaning up and arranging bedrolls soon after. The girls followed Breona’s instructions mechanically; no one objected when she suggested they turn in as soon as the beds were ready.
Breona split the girls between three bedrooms and Rose joined them, their few blankets poor padding against the hardwood floors. Mr. Wheatley chose the butler’s quarters, Grant and Joy the parlor, and Billy and Marit bedded down in the great room.
The night was difficult for most of them, and the next morning was brutal. Aching, short on sleep, and cranky, many tempers were short, and the day began badly.
Rose could scarcely lead devotions nor did anyone at the breakfast table seem to care. She asked Grant to read to them while they ate and slowly woke up. He managed a chapter in Matthew and then, with no objections, closed the Bible she’d handed him and yawned. Breona, herself looking worn, finally got them moving for the day.
Mid morning, Rose passed by the staircase and heard voices from the hallway above.
“But washing floors and windows is ruining my hands,” Rose heard a girl whine. “Miss Cleary always demanded that we keep our hands soft and smooth! She never allowed us to put them in hot water.”
Breona’s no-nonsense lilt echoed down the stairwell. “Ach! Ye poor bairn! And where ist precious Miss Cleary a-settin’ at this ver’ minute? D’ ye think her hands will be stayin’ soft and smooth in th’ jailhouse? Eh? Loikley ’tis scrubbin’ th’ toilets and washin’ th’ laundry she is this minute!”
Rose heard an unintelligible reply from the girl, Flora, she believed, followed again by the final word from Breona. “Th’ winders all doon th’ hall air yers t’ be cleanin’. I giv ye 60 minutes, lass.”
Rose could plainly visualize Breona’s thin hands, red and rough from years of cleaning, although she was not yet 20 years of age. One more sentence sounded faintly down the stairs. “An’ ’tis no more excuses from ye, little miss.”
Dear Lord, we need your grace! Rose pleaded as she hurried away,
~~**~~
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Chapter 9
(Journal Entry, July 13, 1909)
Moving day is upon us. We are all, without exception, weary. Breona, with the wisdom of Solomon, called a holiday yesterday, although we have more than enough work to keep us employed for months. She assigned us to two groups and we set out to walk the neighborhood and picnic at the river.
I admit we are hardening to this work. I have slept well several nights now although I believe I have grown a permanent callous upon each hip.
I noticed, too, that we seemed to have energy to play and enjoy ourselves yesterday. Everyone, excepting perhaps, myself and our Mr. Wheatley. He and I were content to sit upon a blanket in the cool shade, nodding off with our backs against a tree, much of the morning.
The dear man has overextended himself, I fear. Grant took him aside and begged him not to try to keep up with him and Billy. If this approach fails, we will fall back on a stronger force, and have Breona speak with him. We simply cannot do without this sweet, gentle man.
In his own quiet way, he seems to impart a stability to our new home that our youthful, unruly, and sometimes wild girls crave. They will listen, spellbound, as he tells of his experiences in the war, although I am sure he frequently embellishes his tales. I only say so as I have heard at least three differing renderings of a certain Southern Army incursion against whom his company defended a vital armory.
Every evening he begins a game of checkers with whomever he can cajole into playing. The girls are quickly learning his moves and are making his wins a bit more hard-bought. He can also be a great tease with the girls, which they now receive with laughter and giggles.
It is something to behold, his charming, doting ways with them, for they know, quite intuitively, that he is a safe and sheltering harbor in a world where the men they have known have been only selfish and cruel.
—
The long, arduous process of making the house livable enough for them to move into was over. They had painted and papered the dining room, great room, parlor, and three bedrooms. The remaining repairs and refurbishments would be done a room at a time, shifting furniture from room to room as they went.
The Captive Within (A Prairie Heritage, Book 4) Page 6