Christmas Mail Order Bride - A Historical Mail Order Bride Novel (Western Mail Order Brides: Book 1) (12 page)

“Oh, Anders!”
Matilda sighed. “Can’t you leave some of the joy in the holiday at all?”

“And you!” he frothed at his mother. “You probably set her up for this, didn’t you? It was probably your idea all along, wasn’t it? I know how you work! Oh, I see it all now! You’ve all been working against me from the very first moment! First, you bring in that
woman
…” he narrowed his eyelids at his wife. “…to undermine me at every turn, and now this! It’s more than any sane man could reasonably support! I have half a mind to turn you all out!”

“Now, Anders, calm down,” George soothed his son.

“I will not calm down!” Anders bawled, banging his fists on the table again. “If you can’t obey my orders, then I won’t have any choice but to exercise my authority! You had better learn to hold your tongue and mind your P’s and Q’s around here, or you’ll find yourself in serious trouble.”

“You can’t do that, Anders,” Penelope interjected. “These are your own parents. You can’t turn them out.”

“You don’t think so?” he spat. “You don’t think I’m in charge here? I’ll show you that I’m the master of this house, and that I can do as I please with anyone who crosses me, and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it!” He spun around and glowered at Janet. “You! I’ve had it with you! Pack up and get out of here, and don’t let me lay my eyes on you again. Go on, get out of here! You’re fired!”

Janet stared at him in astonishment for a fraction of a second. Then, with supreme calm, she took off her apron and left the room. Penelope’s mouth hung open in shock as she watched the portly frame of the thick-set woman turn the corner into the scullery and disappear from view. In a frantic hope of some intercession, Penelope glanced at Matilda for some sign of assertion, but she saw the older woman gazing after Janet with tears brimming in her eyes and knew the mother had no intention of challenging her son. George, too, stood immobile in the kitchen doorway, utterly deflated before his son’s mandate. Impotently, both parents turned slowly around and slunk out of the kitchen without another word of opposition to Anders, leaving Penelope alone to face her husband. In the absence of all support, Penelope too wilted before Anders’ defiant glare, and she sloped off, out of the kitchen, to an abandoned bedroom at the top corner of the house.

She sat by the window on a chair covered with a sheet to keep off the dust, tracing with her eye the outline of the black tree limbs against the grey sky and pondering her next move. Anders’s irrational and vindictive behavior confounded her sense of prudence. All her usual strategies of appealing to a person’s mores of justice and reason failed with Anders, though she told herself she didn’t know why. Her mind balked at acknowledging the plain facts of his excessive alcohol consumption, and she labored to assign other reasons to his actions. She still persisted in blaming herself for failing to press him to greater virtue, and she racked her brain in vain to formulate a plan to communicate more effectively with him. At that moment, a spicy smell drifting up to her nose from the lower level of the house reminded her of the stollen, and she realized that, with Janet gone, no one would take it out of the oven. She imagined Matilda hadn’t thought to take it out, and George would certainly never set foot in the kitchen, no matter what the circumstances. She considered going down herself, but she dreaded meeting Anders on the way. Then the distant hollow sensation in the pit of her stomach reminded her of the approaching lunchtime. What would they eat? Despite Matilda’s assertion that she once cooked for George and his men before they gained their current wealth, Penelope realized that, if they were to eat at all, the chore of getting their meals organized and delivered to the table must devolve to her alone. Yet she still held back from leaving the room. The prospect of confronting Anders posed too onerous a burden for her to move from the chair.

As she gazed out the window, a horse crossed her field of vision from the barn and receded down the drive toward the road as Anders traveled toward town again. She also saw the ranch hands returning from the fields. The majority trended toward the bunkhouse, but Penelope’s heart skipped a beat when she saw a long figure, lean and lank, head into the barn by
himself and slide the door closed after him. Without a moment’s hesitation, she jumped up and hurried down to the kitchen, where she retrieved the stollen from the oven just in time. Then she turned her attention to the question of lunch. She fetched the loaf of bread from the bread box and some cheese from the pantry and laid them out on the table. She found a suitable knife in a drawer and proceeded to slice both bread and cheese into manageable pieces, when she heard a scuffling noise in the scullery. Poking her head through the door, she spied Janet tying a section of cloth into a bundle. She wore a heavy coat, and Penelope noticed the trim black shoes she usually wore around the house replaced by thick rawhide boots covering her feet.

“Oh, Janet, you’re here!” Penelope breathed. “I’m so glad you haven’t left! I was just wondering what to do about lunch. Come on, you can help me get it finished.”

“No, ma’am,” Janet cast her eyes down at her bundle, and Penelope saw a lone tear streak down her cheek and fall onto her sleeve. “I can’t. Mr. Anders gave me my walking papers, and that’s the end of it. I only came into the scullery to collect a few of my own personal things. Then I’ll be leaving. I can’t stay here against Mr. Anders’ orders. He could send the law after me, if I did.”

“But we can’t do without you!” Penelope insisted. “Surely he must realize that! I mean, how will we eat? George and Matilda can’t take care of themselves. I’ll have to do everything!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Janet reiterated. “I know it’s terrible hard on you. But Mr. Anders gives the orders around here, and that’s that. If Mr. or Mrs. West or you could do anything to keep me on, you would have done it when he gave me the sack. But you didn’t, because you can’t. What’s done is done, and I’ll be going now.”

“Oh, Janet, don’t go!” Penelope begged. “I can’t bear to see you turned out so cruelly.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Janet repeated. “I have to. I wish you all well.”

She cradled her bundle in her arms and traipsed out the kitchen door into the barn yard, where Penelope lost sight of her around a corner of the building. After her cubicle frame vanished, Penelope pressed her hands to her face and sobbed pitilessly at the thought of her own impotence to prevent this monstrous injustice. She dared not petition for mercy to the only court of appeal, and the knowledge that such a callous judge was her own husband galled her to the quick.

After her tears subsided, she composed herself by wiping her face on a towel. Then she finished collecting the lunch fare. She carved some cold ham from the scullery and brought a pot of mustard from the pantry, and she assembled them, along with her sliced bread and cheese on a serving tray and carried them to the dining room, where George and Matilda sat in their places, insensible in their dejection to everything around them, even to the incongruity of their daughter-in-law waiting on them in place of a servant. The meal passed without conversation from anyone, and Penelope noted that neither George nor Matilda even raised their eyes from their plates. They conducted their food to their mouths with the perfunctory mechanism of automatons, chewing slowly and automatically, neither tasting nor appreciating their food. They both left the table without acknowledging each other or Penelope, and they retreated to their separate sanctuaries, Matilda to the parlor fire and George to his study.

Penelope collected the dishes and took them to the kitchen. She immediately began considering what she would do about supper, but she dared not turn her hand to washing the dishes. She stacked the plates in the tub and turned her back on them. Then she scuttled out to the barn, praying she would find Caleb there alone. She slid the heavy door back and squeezed through the aperture, then replaced the door against the cold. The barn looked different with the light of day peeking through the windows in the upper eaves of the roof. The streaks of light highlighting the billowing dust of the barn gave the building a warmer atmosphere, and Penelope once again inhaled the earthy aroma of horse and hay. She picked her way along the aisle of stalls toward the bench where she first conversed with Caleb.

Suddenly, three men tumbled out of a little enclosure at the far end of the building—the room they called the Tack Room, where they stored their saddles, bridles, halters, and other equestrian equipment. A babble of voices and laughter rang out through the barn, and the three men presented themselves in a line across the center aisle of the barn in front of her before they noticed Penelope’s presence. She immediately recognized Caleb and Bill Olsen. She didn’t know the other man, although he examined her as if he did know her. Caleb kept silent, and Bill Olsen addressed her on behalf of all three. “Ma’am? Can I do anything for you?”

Penelope blushed scarlet in confusion. “Oh! I just came to see…I mean, I wasn’t sure…I mean, how did you all make out? I mean, now that Janet’s gone, did you…I mean, have you all eaten? I mean, what did you do about lunch?”

“What did we do about it?” Bill parroted. “Why, we didn’t do anything, of course! The boys are in open revolt out in the bunkhouse, I can tell you that! I sent Charlie here up to the kitchen to get our lunch from Janet, which she always fixes for us, but she told us Anders gave her the sack, and she was leaving immediately, so she couldn’t get lunch for us. So we’ve had nothing. Is that what you want to know? What’s George going to do about it? That’s what I want to know! You can’t go around sacking people right and left for no good reason, not when the rest of us are depending on her to feed us three meals a day. What are you going to do about supper? That’s what I want to know. I mean, not what are
you
gonna do about it, ma’am. I know it ain’t your job to feed us. But George. What’s he gonna do about it? If someone doesn’t stand up to Anders soon, the rest of us will leave, too, and this place will fall to rack and ruin. Anders couldn’t run this place by himself, even if he had a mind to, which he don’t. Someone’s gotta speak to him about it, and make him see reason.”

“Oh, I quite agree with you, Mr. Olsen,” Penelope rejoined. “I agree with you entirely. And I am at present shouldering the responsibility of fetching and serving meals to George and Matilda up at the house. If I didn’t, they would sit at the table and stare at the empty place settings and do nothing and starve to death, I would think. But I quite see your point. You and the other men can’t go without your meals. I will speak to George about it when I go back up to the house, and perhaps he can arrange for another housekeeper to come out from town to take over Janet’s place. But I will be honest with you. I dare not speak to Anders about it. He’s already threatened his own parents for standing up to him. How much less does he think of me! He sacked Janet to teach me, George, and Matilda a lesson. If we hadn’t stood up to him, he wouldn’t have sacked her at all. We all should have bowed our heads and kept our mouths shut.”

“That’s just ridiculous, ma’am, if you’ll excuse my saying so,” Bill returned. “I’ve stood up to Anders at every turn, and I’ve told him straight to his face exactly what I thought, and he’s never dared lift a finger against me. He wouldn’t dare to sack me for it. He can puff himself up and threaten all he likes, but it’s just hot air. If we all stood up to him the same way, he would soon pull his head in. He would have no choice. You can’t go around bowing your head and sayin’, “Yes, sir” to a man like that, otherwise he gets the idea that he owns you and can do as he likes. Then after a while, he
does
own you and
can
do as he likes with you, and that just wouldn’t do, you see?”

“I understand you perfectly, Mr. Olsen,” Penelope sighed. “I just don’t have the mental fortitude you have to stand up to him continually. For one thing, he could physically overpower me in an instant, and he’s threatened to do just that for much smaller infractions. At any rate, I will speak to George about getting another housekeeper, and I will tell him that you men have gone without lunch today because there was no one to fix it, and I will tell him that you are upset and concerned about the same thing happening for supper. In the meantime, I will do my best to arrange something for you myself, so you won’t have to go hungry. Perhaps you could send Caleb or Charlie up to the kitchen door to collect it, when the time comes.”

“I appreciate your efforts, ma’am,” Bill nodded at her. “I will do that. And I plan to speak to Anders myself when he comes back. This kind of behavior of his is absolutely intolerable, and if something doesn’t change soon, this ranch will be looking for another foreman.”

“I don’t blame you at all,” Penelope remarked. “I would be thinking of leaving myself, if I could. Please let me know if there is anything further I can do for you.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he nodded again, and muttered to the other two men, “Come on, boys. Let’s go.”

The three men moved single file to the door of the barn. Caleb brought up the rear, his eyes flashing at Penelope, and when the other two ducked through the door, he paused to let them cross the yard ahead of him before he turned back to face her. “I told you not to come out here
lookin’ for me,” he chided her softly.

“I couldn’t resist seeing you again,” she whispered. “Not after what happened to Janet.”

He shrugged. “We all have that ax hanging over our heads. It’s only a matter of time.”

“It’s positively beastly!” she sobbed, touching the edges of her eyes with her sleeve. “I just can’t bear it
any more!”