Smoke River Bride
“Yes,” Leah murmured. “We are.”
Thad cleared his throat. “But I don’t really feel married, so maybe I should still sleep in the loft.”
Leah met his steady gaze and her stomach flipped. He had offered marriage to give her a respectable way of escaping what was inevitable in San Francisco. He could never know how desperately she needed the safe haven he offered. If she had stayed in the city, Madam Tang would have quickly auctioned off her virginity to the highest bidder.
This was Thad’s house. Thad’s bedroom. She could not usurp it.
“I think perhaps we could share your bedroom.”
He said nothing, just swept up the pieces of china and dumped them into the trash box next to the stove. Then he straightened to face her, and swallowed hard.
“You go on to bed, Leah. I’ll be along in a while, after I have a talk with my son.”
She lifted the broom out of his grasp. “Please do not. Have a talk, I mean. It will make him feel even more resentful. I will handle Teddy in my own way.”
At that, Thad propped both hands on his hips and stared at her. “I keep being surprised by you, Leah. You’re turning out to be some woman!”
“What does that mean, ‘some woman’?”
To her astonishment, Thad’s cheeks turned pink. “It means you are unusual. Not like other women.”
She hesitated. “Is it…is it because I am Chinese?”
“Oh, hell no, Leah. That doesn’t much matter to me.” He reached out and gently squeezed her narrow shoulders while she stood before him, the broom still clutched in her fingers. Moisture burned at the back of her eyes.
“It will be all right, I swear.” He lifted the broom out of her hands, turned her toward the bedroom and gave her a little nudge. “Go along to bed now.”
She moved away quickly so he would not see her tears.
For more than an hour she lay in the big double bed and, despite the flutter in her stomach, her eyelids kept drifting closed. Thad did not come. The moon rose, sending a cold silvery light through the single bedroom window, and still Thad did not come.
Had he changed his mind and climbed up into the loft to sleep with his son? Or perhaps he was sleeping in the barn? Why did he not come to his own bed? Was it because she was there?
At last she heard the front door open, then close, and suddenly there he was at the foot of the bed. Bathed in moonlight, he looked to be coated in shiny armor. Like Ivanhoe, as she had imagined him when she was growing up. It had been her favorite book.
“You still awake?”
“Yes,” Leah murmured. “I thought it polite to wait for you. I kept myself from falling asleep by thinking about…Ivanhoe.”
A laugh burst from the tall shadow by the bed. “Ivanhoe!”
Thad began to unbutton his shirt. He fumbled with the buttonholes halfway down his broad chest, stalled, swore a Gaelic curse and abruptly yanked the garment off over his head. His wool undershirt followed.
“Ivanhoe wouldn’t have to cope with buttons,” he muttered.
“Ivanhoe,” she heard herself say, “would have a squire to unbuckle his armor.”
Thad’s hands at that moment rested on the leather belt at his waist. He stopped and sent her a challenging look. “You want to be my squire?” he joked.
“Oh, no,” she cried. “I could never—”
He laughed softly. “Leah, you’re gonna wash my clothes. You’re gonna get so used to my trouser buttons you could undo them in your sleep.”
She pulled the sheet up over her head. The next thing she knew the bed sagged under his weight and a long, very cold body stretched out next to her.
“Oh! You are frozen! Where have you been?”
He chuckled aloud. “I’ve been out talking to my wheat field. Do it every night, mostly to reassure myself it’s still there.”
“Your wheat field? Why would it not be there? Is it growing?”
“Oh, aye. Little by little. But it’s like waitin’ for a kettle of water to boil.”
Leah rose up on one elbow. “Do all American farmers talk to their crops?”
“Nope.”
There was a long silence, and she wished she had not spoken out in such a bold manner.
“Dunno why I talk to the wheat, really. Well, that’s not true—I do know. That crop means a lot to me for two reasons. One, it’s a challenge. A gamble, really, but I like a challenge. Always have. And the other reason is this—when I was real young, about Teddy’s age, back in Scotland, my da had a farm. One year there was an awful storm that killed all our crops except for the red winter wheat Da had sown. We lived on that wheat, and goat’s milk, for a whole year. Nothing else survived. Neither would we have, if not for that crop of wheat. Saved our lives, it did.”
“That happens in China, too. If the rice crop fails, many people starve to death.”
Thad grunted. “Guess that wheat field makes me feel, well, like no matter what happens, my boy and I will survive.”
Leah gazed out the window. “Can you see your field from here?”
“Nope. Good thing, I guess,” he said with a chuckle. “Otherwise I’d be mooning out the window half the time instead of milking the cow and feedin’ the horses.”
Silence.
“Leah, you’re the only person I’ve told all this to. Townfolk think I’m a little crazy. Nobody grows wheat in Oregon. They’re all getting a good laugh over my experiment, I guess. I’m in debt up to my ears for what’s growing on those three acres, but I believe in a few years this whole territory will be growing wheat.”
“Mr. MacAllister…Thad…?”
“Go to sleep, Leah. It’s been a long day.”
Go to sleep? “Are you not going to—?”
“Nope,” he said. “We’re married, but we don’t hardly know each other. Let’s give it some time.”
Leah rolled onto her back and lay staring up at the ceiling. Thad MacAllister was a most unusual man.
Or perhaps he does not like me.
But then he laid his arm across her waist and gently nudged her closer. Her silk-clad shoulder and hip brushed against his skin and his warmth enveloped her like a fine wool robe.
“You sure feel warm,” he murmured. “I’ve been kinda cold for a while.”
Leah smiled into the dark. It was a good beginning.
Chapter Seven
Before dawn, Leah awoke and snuggled into the space where Thad had lain until a few moments ago. It was still warm and it smelled like him, a mixture of pine trees and sweat. She liked it. She liked him.
She thanked the gods of good fortune for finding this man, for allowing her to take this step—safe and protected—into a new life.
She glanced at the bedroom window where faint gray light was beginning to filter in. He must have left before dawn—to do what? She knew farm chores waited, scattering feed for the chickens and gathering eggs, feeding and watering the horses, milking the black-splotched cow she’d glimpsed in the pasture yesterday. It was the same in China, except that her mother had milked a nanny goat. What would Thad expect her to do?
Fix his breakfast! She scooted out of bed, hung the pink silk night robe on one of the hooks that marched across the wall beside the bedroom door, and pulled on the jeans and red shirt she had worn yesterday. The stiff denim fabric scratched her inner thighs and the pointy shirt collar jabbed her neck whenever She turned her head.
How uncomfortable these American garments were! She longed for the silky feel of her Chinese-style tunic against her skin and the soft folds of the loose trousers.
The kitchen was as spotless as she had left it and, to her surprise, a fire already crackled in the stove; Thad must have uncovered the banked coals and added more wood. He had even set the large tin teakettle on the back burner. That must be a hint that he expected coffee with his breakfast.
But what to cook? The few American breakfasts she had seen on board the ship from China consisted of charred meat and a pan of something messy—eggs, she guessed—mixed up into a dreadful-looking yellow pile. She had eaten eggs in China, but they were boiled in the shell and shiny as a full moon.
In the small pantry just off the kitchen, she found the bag of coffee beans and a basket of fresh eggs. On a shelf sat a pretty red-painted box with an iron handle and a tiny drawer that pulled out. That box had not been there yesterday.
Oh! For the coffee beans! You were supposed to grind them up before…
Hurriedly she gathered up four fresh eggs, covered them with water pumped from the sink and set the pot on the stove next to the teakettle.
“Aint’cha gonna make biscuits?” The querulous voice came from the loft, where Teddy balanced on the ladder, one elbow hooked around the railing.
“Biscuits?”
“You know, like little muffins, only they’re not sweet.” He surveyed her with disgust. “You don’t know anything, do ya?”
Leah straightened. “I know a great many things, Teddy. However, I grew up in China and I did not learn to cook in the American way.”
“Ya want me to mix up some biscuits? I know how ’cuz Marshal Johnson showed me once, but Pa won’t let me do it.” He clattered to the bottom rung of the ladder.
Leah grabbed a crockery mixing bowl and shoved it toward the boy. “Yes, please. Show me how it is done.”
Teddy puffed out his chest, took the bowl and disappeared into the pantry. “This here’s flour,” he announced when he emerged. “And then ya add a pinch of saler’tus. Now you dump in a spoonful of bacon grease and a bit of milk, and then you squish it all together, like this.” He plunged both hands into the bowl.
Leah nodded, committing the ingredients to memory while Teddy scooped up the mixture, dropped large lumps onto a tin baking sheet and shoved it into the oven.
“Don’t tell Pa I made ’em, okay?”
“Okay. Do not tell your father that I did not know how.” A conspiratorial look passed between them. Merciful heaven, perhaps the boy would grow to not hate her.
The back door thumped open and Thad tramped in, a milk pail in one hand and a basket of eggs in the other. He clunked both pail and basket in the pantry and strode into the kitchen.
“Mornin’, Pa.”
Thad ignored the boy. “Breakfast about ready?” His breath puffed white from the cold air outside. Carefully he avoided eye contact with Leah.
“Almost, yes.” She opened her mouth to comment on his brusque manner toward his son, then changed her mind. Not in front of Teddy, she resolved. Any differences between her and her husband would not be aired within his son’s hearing.
“I’ll go wash up at the pump outside.”
“Do you not wish to bathe in warm water? I can heat—”
“Bathe! I take a bath once a week, on Saturday.”
“Me, too,” Teddy added. “Pa, she’s so dumb she doesn’t even know how to make coffee.”
Leah flinched. She’d been right the first time—Teddy did hate her. But Thad wasn’t listening, and besides, this morning she had puzzled out the mysteries of the American brew and used the coffee grinder.
The back door slammed. Teddy fled up to his loft, leaving Leah, her teeth gritted, to set the table and check the biscuits.
Thad clunked back into the kitchen, his heavy boots slathered with mud, and plopped himself into one of the ladder-back chairs. Teddy slid onto the other, but Thad motioned him away. “That’s for Leah.”
Then he looked down at his breakfast. Two shiny white whole eggs stared up at him.
“What’s this?”
“Eggs,” Leah said quickly.
“And biscuits,” Teddy piped. Leah set a napkin-covered bowl on the table.
“Try a biscuit, Pa.”
“Soon as I figure out this egg thing on my plate.” He sent a questioning look to Leah, who settled herself at the table and picked up her boiled egg. “In China, we do it like this.” She lifted a spoon and gently tapped around the middle until a crack appeared, then adroitly split the egg into two parts and scooped out the inside with her spoon.
Teddy scowled down at his plate. “People in China are stupid.”
“Eating an egg with a spoon like this is not stupid,” Leah countered in a quiet voice. “It is merely different.”
“And it’s dumb, too,” the boy retorted.
“Teddy,” Thad warned. He noticed suddenly that his son’s hair was uncombed and that Leah wore the jeans and shirt from the mercantile. Her feet were encased in the same satin slippers she’d worn yesterday. She’d need a pair of boots, too.
Absently he reached for a hot biscuit. “What size boot do you wear, son?”
Teddy kept his eyes fixed on Thad’s hand breaking open the biscuit. “Dunno.”
“We have any butter?”
“Not yet,” Leah answered. “I have not collected enough cream to churn.”
“How about jam? Some in the pantry, I think. Blackberry. Get it for her, would ya, Teddy?”
Teddy bolted from the table and, before Thad could draw breath, returned with a half-empty jar of last year’s jam. “Here, Pa. Bet she doesn’t know anything about makin’ jam.”
Thad bit into his biscuit. “Good,” he pronounced. “Even without jam.”
The boy’s face lit up. “Have another one, Pa.”
Thad moved his gaze from his son to Leah, who was studying the two intact eggs that still lay on his plate. He picked up his knife and whacked one in two, then attacked the other. The soft yolk spilled over his fingers, but it tasted okay, just like an egg. Sure was an odd way to serve them, though.
He glanced around the warm kitchen and felt something inside him catch. This was like it used to be when Hattie was alive—eating breakfast around the kitchen table. But it wasn’t Hattie sitting across from him; it was a woman he scarcely knew.
Lord in Heaven, what had he done?
He’d changed his life, changed his son’s life, in a way that could not be altered. Part of him didn’t like it one bit. Another part of him, a part he kept hidden even from himself, did like it. It was like spring after a long, bleak winter.
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