Hearts Awakening (2 page)

Relief, rather than contempt, flashed through Jackson Smith’s gaze, and he stepped back to allow her to enter. “Please come in.”

Nearly weak with relief herself, Ellie swallowed hard and gratefully entered the dimly lit kitchen, which turned out to be little more than a workroom. The light of early morning barely managed to filter through the two grimy kitchen windows closed tight against the fresh air outside. She could not even see the woods that separated the house from the vast acres of orchards on the island.

The warmth in the room, however, felt good after walking in the chill of early morning for over two hours, but she would not have complained if the room had been ice-cold. Now that she had been invited into the house, she was determined to convince him to let her stay. When her footsteps crunched over dirt and grime that littered the wide-plank floor, she knew without even looking down that it needed a good sweeping, if not a solid scrubbing.

Jackson cringed as his boots crunched over the floor, too. “As you must have noticed already, we’ve managed to track in a good amount of dirt. I hope Reverend Shore and your cousin Mark told you how incredibly grateful I am that you’ve volunteered to help out here with the housekeeping and such. I’m afraid the house needs a good scrubbing,” he added meekly.

“That’s easy enough to do,” Ellie said as she glanced around the kitchen.

“May I take your cape?”

She swallowed hard again, slipped out of her cape, and handed it to him, all too aware of the badly stained skirts on her gown, which were now in full view. When his hand brushed hers for the briefest of moments, she felt a warm blush steal across her cheeks, then grow even warmer when he studied her stained garments.

Embarrassed by her appearance, she offered him a weak smile. When her thoughts focused on how handsome he was instead of how desperately she needed to assure him of her housekeeping skills, she quickly explained her mishap in hopes of convincing him she was not usually so unkempt.

“I’m not hurt,” she insisted as she concluded her tale. “My cape and gown actually took the brunt of my fall. I didn’t have time to return to the city to change, and I really must apologize for arriving here looking so unkempt, but—”

“I’m far more worried that you might have been hurt than I am about the state of your apparel,” he quipped before turning and hanging her cape on a wooden peg by the door. “Are you certain you feel up to working here today?” he asked as he approached her again. “Perhaps I should speak to your cousin about postponing your start here and—”

“No, please. I’m fine,” she insisted, fearful that her cousin would use this as the very excuse he needed to get rid of her for good.

He shook his head. “I’m afraid there could be any number of critters scurrying about on the island at this hour. They’re quite harmless, but I’d rather not take the risk that you might be frightened and fall again. I’ll speak to Michael Grant. Instead of letting you walk here alone from the landing after ferrying you across the river, he can walk with you.”

“That won’t be necessary. I’ll just keep an eye out for critters, now that I know they’re out and about,” she insisted before opening the door to a subject that was much more important to her. “I’m afraid I haven’t any references to give you, but—”

“References?” He shook his head and smiled. “I admit that I don’t know your cousin all that well, but anyone Reverend Shore recommends doesn’t need any references. His assurances that you’re a competent housekeeper are enough for me, although I daresay the good reverend would be far more pleased if I brought my sons to Sunday services on a regular basis than he’d be with my expression of faith in his judgment.”

Ellie swallowed hard, reluctant, if not unwilling, to tell him that she had yet to meet Reverend Shore. Or that she had not seen her cousin in more than ten years until yesterday. Considering all that, she felt she was in no position to give him her opinion about his church attendance.

“I’m certain I can get your house back to rights,” she offered, anxious to prove her mettle and twice as anxious not to give him any cause to complain to her cousin about having to provide her with an escort.

Turning away, she glanced around the room. To her dismay, neglect was everywhere. The hodge-podge of jugs, cookware, tableware, and supplies on the shelves lining the outer wall on either side of the cookstove were either dusty with misuse or splattered with remnants of recent meals. The modern Step Top cooking stove itself was shrouded with grease and gunk. Lingering cooking smells, intensified by the heat in the kitchen, left no room for the heady scent of apples that had lined her way here.

The worktable in the center of the small room, as well as the drying table next to the indoor water pump, was littered with dirty dishes. Indeed, the only clear space in the entire room was on one of the window seats.

Disappointed not to have an old-fashioned hearth to use to prepare meals, Ellie sucked in her breath. Why women would give up cooking on an open hearth for an iron contraption that demanded constant cleaning and attention made no sense to her at all. Granted, she could easily scrub the cookstove clean, but actually using it to prepare meals for the next two weeks would be altogether a greater challenge for her—a challenge she had no choice but to meet.

Convinced her open-hearth cooking skills were probably as outdated as she was on the marriage market, she took a tenuous step closer to the cookstove to get a better look at the controls.

“I never did get around to setting the cookstove out on the side porch for the summer,” he offered a bit sheepishly.

“Then the unusually cool weather today is a blessing,” she managed, overwhelmed by the prospect of using this cookstove, as well as the work this kitchen demanded. If the rest of the house fared as poorly, she had no doubt she would need far more than the two weeks she promised to work here to set it to rights. Ellie wondered what her cousin would have to say about that.

Curious to see more of the house, she glanced through the doorway into the great room, where she saw his two motherless little boys sitting patiently at the dining table, only steps away, waiting for someone to make their breakfast. Just beyond them, a maze of wooden blocks they must have been playing with just before she arrived littered the floor between the fireplace in the center of the room and the front window.

The two boys were dressed identically in dark blue linen overalls and beige flannel shirts, just like their father’s. The younger boy’s clothing hung on his small frame, and she suspected he was wearing some of his brother’s hand-offs well before he should have given up his baby clothes. Their faces had been scrubbed clean, but their hair needed a good brushing, and she imagined there was more than a speck of dirt under their fingernails.

But it was the needy look on those two precious little faces that reached straight into her heart and tugged hard enough to prick her conscience. Hard enough to remind her that she was a woman of compassion. And definitely hard enough to suggest to her that God must have sent her here not for one, but two very good reasons, who were staring right back at her.

Jackson walked around her to enter the great room and stand protectively behind his sons. “This is Daniel. He’s five,” he said, squeezing the older boy’s shoulder first. “And this is Ethan.”

Ellie laid the cloth down on the worktable and joined the man and his sons in the great room.

“Boys, Spinster Kilmer came to help us for a few weeks. I’ll expect you to do as she tells you while she’s here,” he added sternly.

“You can call me Miss Ellie,” she offered, noting the look of distrust in both the boys’ gazes.

Daniel straightened his shoulders. With fawn brown hair and dark blue eyes, he looked at her with the same fierce gaze as his father and pointed to his younger brother. “Ethan’s only three. He likes griddle cakes for breakfast. A lot. Can you cook griddle cakes? We’re hungry.”

Ethan’s eyes widened with expectation, but he did not say a word. Apparently, he was much shyer than his older brother. He had his brother’s coloring, but he had a slimmer build and a slick of hair on the back of his head that stuck up like a sapling that had taken root in a bed of low grass.

“Don’t be so impatient, Daniel. The poor woman just got here. She has not even seen the rest of the house,” his father cautioned.

“I can do that later. Right now I’m feeling hungry, too,” Ellie insisted, particularly since she had not eaten anything before setting out today. Grateful that the cookstove had already been heated up, she smiled. “How about I make a good stack of griddle cakes for all of us? I’ll need some help, though, since I’m not accustomed to your kitchen,” she said.

Daniel scrambled off his chair, helped his younger brother down, and held his hand to keep him next to him. “I can reach the jug of maple syrup,” he explained, holding tight to his brother’s hand, although Ethan did not seem anxious to help.

“See if you can find the crock of butter, too,” she suggested.

“Ethan can get that,” Daniel offered but looked up at his father. After getting a nod of approval, he led his brother into the kitchen.

Despite her misgivings about making breakfast using that cookstove, Ellie kept her smile on her face and followed the boys into the kitchen, with Jackson close behind her. She spied a tired, dingy apron hanging from a peg on the wall next to the side door and quickly put it on.

“I should think it’s been very difficult to fend for yourself and the boys, especially at mealtime,” she said as she moved behind the table and started to clear a place to work.

Standing just inside the doorway, the man reached out and put a hand on each of his son’s shoulders as they attempted to race past him to take the maple syrup and crock of butter to the table. “Slow down or you’ll drop those,” he warned before releasing them and looking back at her again. “You met Michael Grant when he ferried you over here. His wife, Alice, and their daughter have been kind enough to help out here and there when they could. They’ve made extra at mealtimes some days and sent it over, but it’s been . . . difficult otherwise, since my last housekeeper left some weeks ago.”

She moistened a rag at the pump, wiped off the cleared space on the table, and swallowed the lump in her throat. The man was young, healthy, and attractive to boot. The only reason she could fathom that he had not remarried, instead of relying on hired help, had to be that he was still grieving for the woman he had loved and lost scarcely six months ago. “Is there a bake oven outside?” she asked hopefully.

He shrugged. “That hasn’t been used for years. The entrance to the root cellar is outside, though, and there’s fresh milk in the jug over there on the shelves, along with a basket of eggs. Daniel can show you where everything else is you might need today, but Ethan . . .”

He paused and lowered his voice. “Ethan hasn’t really spoken since his mother passed.”

Surprised that her cousin had not bothered to tell her about little Ethan’s difficulties, Ellie nodded. “I’m sure Daniel will let me know if his brother needs anything.”

“He will indeed. I really do need to head out to the orchards, where Michael and the men he hired for the day are waiting for me by now. Unless . . . unless you think you might need my help getting started here,” he added, shifting his gaze nervously from her to his sons.

“What about breakfast for yourself?”

He shook his head. “Unless I want to lose the best of this early crop of Maiden Blush apples, I’ve got to get them off the trees, boxed up, and shipped east. Otherwise, I’ll be hard pressed to hold on to my customers there when the later apples are ready to harvest. I wouldn’t object if you sent Daniel out with something for me in a bit, though. He knows where I’ll be. Otherwise, I’ll be back for dinner around one,” he added before turning to his sons. “Be good, boys.”

Walking past her, he grabbed a straw hat off the peg by the back door and slipped outside, leaving Ellie alone with one mess of a kitchen, a newfangled cookstove she barely knew how to use, and two very hungry little boys charging back to help her.

Three

Later that afternoon, Ellie was counting the minutes until Jackson Smith returned home for supper, even though she feared he might tell her not to come back again when he did.

Standing at the water pump, she rinsed out the cleaning rag again, bent down, and washed the last of the mud from the floor she had just scrubbed clean for the third time that day.

While she did, two very remorseful, very silent, boys sat side by side on one of the wide window seats. They were not the main reason she needed to escape, although taking care of Daniel and Ethan had consumed more energy than she had anticipated. Her dismal failures in the kitchen today, which chipped away at her pride as a good cook, were solely responsible for her dour thoughts.

Even though she had opened up both windows and propped open the side door until it got too cold in the room and she had to close them, her failures today stretched limp and heavy across the entire kitchen, like bedsheets hung up to dry on a windless day. The acrid smell of burnt griddle cakes from breakfast, along with the bread she had baked and burned and the pungent odor of undercooked, greasy sausage from dinner, still permeated the room.