A Promise for Spring (14 page)

He pushed his shirt sleeves above his elbows and plunged his arms into the water, the shock of the icy liquid on his hot skin making him shudder. Within minutes, his tiredness lifted, and he felt refreshed despite the day’s hard labor. He glanced toward the house, where a thin line of smoke rose from the stovepipe—silent proof that Emmaline had supper cooking.

Had she burned tonight’s meal? In the two weeks that he and his men had eaten Emmaline’s cooking, all of them had dropped a few pounds. He hated to be critical, but wasting food created concern beyond indigestion. They would need every precious morsel when winter arrived.

Tildy’s assistance had brought an improvement, for which Geoffrey was grateful, and he harbored hope that Emmaline could indeed gain the required skills for surviving as a rancher’s wife. However, he would need to speak to her about cooking something besides roasts for the evening meal. The meat in the cellar would need to carry them until the next butchering, which was still months away. He rolled his sleeves back into place, reminding himself to suggest she ask Tildy to share more recipes with her.

He turned toward the house and then stopped, his thoughts freezing his feet. When had his thoughts of Emmaline become limited to recipes? What had happened to the other images that once filled his mind—stepping behind her at the stove and kissing her neck, holding her hand at the table while he prayed, chatting together on the porch while they watched the blazing sunset before retiring to bed?

With a groan, he ran his hand through his still-damp hair.
Lord,
this is not what I wanted when I brought Emmaline here! But how can I
have anything more while she is not my wedded bride?
No, as difficult as it was, he must maintain his role as employer to employee. He must continue to advise and direct her, keeping his emotions firmly in check. Then, when she had adequately acquired the necessary skills, his attention could turn to wooing her. But everything in due time.

He drew in a deep breath of hot air and strode purposefully to the kitchen door. It stood open, but as had become his custom, he rapped his knuckles on the doorjamb to alert Emmaline of his presence. “Emmaline?”

She bustled through the sitting room doorway. Her hands overflowed with a huge cluster of wild flowers trailing dirty stems. “Oh! Is it dinnertime already? I’ll have it on the table shortly.” She scurried to the sink and placed the flowers in the basin. Giving the pump handle a vigorous downward yank, she said, “I want to get these flowers into water before they wilt. It is so hot in the sun! I nearly wilted myself.”

He stepped next to the sink, scowling down at the assortment of flowers. “Where did you find these?”

“All over the place. I had no idea so many different flowers grew here! Look.” She lifted one thick stem holding a dome of small bluish-purple flowers. “Does this not resemble a lilac’s bloom? It is quite fragrant, too.” She shoved the flower beneath Geoffrey’s nose.

He sneezed and pushed it aside.

She giggled. “I’m sorry.” She went back to washing stems.

“Emmaline, I asked where you found these flowers. I do not recall them growing on the property.”

“Oh, they don’t.” She set aside a few long stems bearing tiny white flowers. “I had to climb over a fence and walk the prairie to find them. But aren’t they lovely?”

She had climbed a fence and trekked across the prairie? He caught her arm, stilling her busy hands. “Emmaline, I thought I told you not to leave the area around the ranch house.”

She looked up at him. “But I didn’t run off. I only wished to make our dinner table more festive.”

“Our dinner table will be festive enough when you learn to cook meals that please the palate!”

Jerking her arm loose from his grasp, she took several backward steps. Tears filled her eyes, but she blinked rapidly and the moisture disappeared. She opened her mouth, but then without speaking a word, she spun and stormed out of the room. The front door slammed, and he pounded after her. He yanked the door open, expecting to see her fleeing across the yard. But instead she stood on the edge of the porch. She pressed her hand to one stacked stone pillar, her gaze aimed across the rolling prairie.

The breeze ruffled the hem of her black dress. If she yearned for something festive, she could dress in something other than the black frock she insisted on wearing every day. “Emmaline?”

Her fingers contracted against the pale stone of pillar.

“I’m sorry I got upset with you. But the flowers . . .” He gritted his teeth. “Collecting them was a foolhardy activity. I need you to promise me you will stay near the ranch for your own safety.”

Emmaline stood still for long moments, staring straight ahead. Geoffrey was on the verge of marching forward and turning her to face him when finally she shifted. But she only turned partway, giving him a view of her profile. Her chin quivered when she spoke. “I shall put your supper on the table.” She pushed past him and entered the house.

Clamping his jaw, Geoffrey strode to the same pillar where Emmaline had stood. The worry her admission about wandering the prairie had created rose again, making his pulse pound in his temple. He had worry enough in caring for the sheep; Emmaline would be expected to make better choices.

When Geoffrey went back inside, the kitchen was empty, the table neatly set for three. Three, not four. A beautifully baked pie waited in the center of the table. A sniff told him the pie was sweet potato with lots of cinnamon.

Pounding footsteps warned him of the approach of the hands before Chris and Jim stepped through the open kitchen door. Chris crossed directly to the table, leaned over the pie, and inhaled deeply.

“Mmmmm. Looks like Tildy brought us a treat.”

Geoffrey nodded but didn’t reply.

Jim held out a bedraggled mess of wilting flowers. “These were scattered all over the ground outside the door.”

Geoffrey heaved a sigh. “Would you put them in a jar of water, please, and place them on the table? I must fetch Emmaline, and then we shall eat.”

He crossed through the sitting room and spare bedroom into Emmaline’s parlor. He looked at the wide, smoothly sanded plank floor, imagining the wedding gift he had purchased spread out across the white wood. Right now, the rug of cabbage roses, which he had ordered from the East, stretched across the rafters in his half of the bunkhouse, still wrapped in its paper tube. He had chosen it because it reminded him of the rose garden in the narrow side yard of Emmaline’s home in England. Would he ever get a chance to give it to her?

A slight shuffling sound came from the bedroom. He moved to the closed door and tapped lightly. “Emmaline, do you intend to eat?” He waited, his ear pressed to the wooden door.

Finally her voice came, pinched and somber. “I am not hungry. Go ahead and eat. I shall clean up after you have returned to the bunkhouse.”

Geoffrey’s chest constricted as he battled frustration. Why must she be so childish? “Would you not care to sit on the porch and visit this evening?”

“I know what chores await me tomorrow, and Tildy has already offered adequate instruction. You needn’t worry about my incompetence for the tasks.”

“Emmaline, I—”

“Go and eat, Geoffrey, before the dinner grows cold.”

Geoffrey stomped back to the kitchen. Chris and Jim sat at the table, silent but watchful. “Go ahead and eat,” he barked. Then he stormed out the back door.

He intended to go to his room at the bunkhouse, but at the last minute he swerved and headed, instead, behind the barn. His feet stirred dust and flattened the dry grass. He should have Jim trim the weeds close to the house lest a snake creep up unnoticed. Snakes were one of the many dangers that existed on the prairie. Why could Emmaline not see the peril she put herself in when she wandered away from the land near the house?

Rounding the barn, where the sheep were settled down for the evening, he approached the tiny plot that served as the ranch’s cemetery. Only two wooden crosses stood in the square of earth— one large and one small. He passed the small one, the marker for a stray pup Jim had taken in during their second year on the ranch. The boy had insisted on a decent burial when the dog had chased a wagon and gotten caught beneath the wheels. Geoffrey had thought it foolish to give a dog a burial, but now he was glad there was some company for Ben on this lonely spot of ground.

He stood before the larger cross and read the carved name: BEN MACKEY. Although more than a year had passed since Ben’s death, pain still stabbed Geoffrey’s heart. Ben had been a good man—a good friend. The day he died was permanently etched in Geoffrey’s memory: Ben heading out to the north range, his back straight in the saddle. Lunchtime coming and going with no sign of Ben. Geoffrey saddling a horse to go look for him. Finding Ben’s horse first, then the man himself lying in the midst of the confused sheep, unconscious.

Not until he’d brought Ben back to the ranch had he seen the puncture marks on his leg. He’d died without ever regaining consciousness. After Ben’s death, people from town had told Geoffrey story after story of other ways the prairie had claimed lives—falls into ravines, flash floods, attacks from rabid animals, heatstroke, broken bones.

Suddenly, in place of Ben’s cross, Geoffrey envisioned Emmaline lying crumpled on the ground, puncture marks on her leg. He shook his head to send the image away. He could not bear it if something happened to Emmaline. Somehow he must make her understand the hazards of wandering across the plains.

Then her father’s voice filled his memory: “She is a fragile girl, Geoffrey. We must use discernment in sharing information with her or she shall wither in fear.”

Geoffrey had allowed Jonathan Bradford to determine what Emmaline should be told and what should be kept from her when he sent letters outlining his experiences in Kansas. What advice might Jonathan give now to keep his daughter from harm? The truth might frighten her, but it could also save her life.

Geoffrey turned from the grave and headed to his room in the bunkhouse. Somehow she must be made to understand. . . .

FIFTEEN

F
ROM THE BEDROOM window, Emmaline watched Geoffrey stomp across the backyard. She cringed with every dust puff that rose from the firm tromp of his foot against the ground. When he moved out of sight, she turned from the window and sat on the edge of the bed. She tried to hang on to her anger, but it melted away, leaving behind a deep hurt.

Collecting that bouquet of flowers had given her more joy than anything else since she’d arrived in this country. For the first time, she had felt truly at one with the land. Holding those graceful stems had filled her mind with pleasant remembrances. She had returned to the house with a light heart and eager step. But Geoffrey had taken one look at the flowers and seen nothing but an act of disobedience. Had his time in Kansas wiped away all vestiges of their shared moments in England?

She could not please Geoffrey any more than she had been able to please her father. But at least her father had never made any pretense of loving her. He had little use for a daughter except to groom her into a desirable wife for some young man who would offer the family an improved situation.

The union between herself and Geoffrey benefited her father—he received a dependable source of wool to keep his mill running. His son was his business partner, and his daughter was his pawn. Even as a child Emmaline had recognized her inferiority in her father’s eyes. Her attempts to earn his approval had ended when she left her girlhood behind, but the silent compliance that had carried her through childhood remained a part of her character until this last act of obedience: coming to Geoffrey.

Yes, she had come. Across an ocean and over mountains, rivers, and plains—all the way to Kansas. A good portion of the journey she traveled alone after Uncle Hedrick had died. And she could make the journey alone again. She
would
do it again.

If Geoffrey held no memories of their time in England, then she wanted nothing from him now. She would leave. And this time, she would make it all the way back to England. Father would be shocked to see her on the doorstep, and she smiled a little, imagining it. It would be worth the tirade he would deliver to see the look on his face when he realized that she—a mere woman—had managed to devise and survive such a lengthy trip.

She pushed off the bed and headed to the kitchen to clean up whatever Jim and Chris had left behind after the evening meal. As she crossed through the sitting room, she heard someone whistling.

Pausing, she tilted her head. She had never heard Geoffrey whistle, so it must be one of the Cotler brothers. She entered the room and found Jim at the wash basin.

She hurried to his side. “Oh, Jim, I should be the one washing the dishes.”

Jim gave her a lopsided grin. “I don’t mind. It doesn’t take long. Especially when only two of us ate. Weren’t you hungry?”

Smells from supper lingered in the room, and Emmaline’s stomach clenched with hunger, but she said, “Not particularly. You have your own chores. I shall do mine.”

Jim shrugged and moved away from the sink. He dried his hands slowly, watching her push her sleeves to her elbows and plunge her hands into the water. He hung the length of toweling on its hook but then loitered beside the counter.

Emmaline glanced at him. “Do you not have evening chores?”

“None that can’t keep.” He crossed his arms and leaned his hip against the counter, settling in. “Is Miss Tildy coming again tomorrow?”

Emmaline couldn’t define why she didn’t send him away. She only knew having someone to talk to was preferable to being alone. Geoffrey would be upset, but Jim was only a harmless boy. “She and I have plans to bake bread.” It occurred to Emmaline that when she left, Tildy would arrive to bake bread and find the house empty.

Jim nodded eagerly. “Oh, good. The pie she baked was very good.” He patted his stomach.

Pride filled Emmaline as she told him, “I baked the pie.”

Jim jolted straight up, his eyes wide. “You did? Will you bake another one tomorrow?”