Smoke River Bride (8 page)

He’d never feared much of anything except hunger since he was a kid in knee pants, and now he was feeling uneasy over two uncontrollable things that had presented themselves in the last few days: a field of struggling wheat seedlings and an intriguing woman. It was enough to make a man wonder about himself.

He heard the bedroom door shut, and when he turned he saw that she’d left her wet skirt and a white ruffled petticoat draped over a chair close to the crackling fire. He couldn’t stop staring at that petticoat. What else was she wearing underneath? Ruffled drawers? A camisole with a pink satin ribbon at the neck?

He grabbed the boiling coffeepot off the stove and splashed a mug full to the brim. It was too hot to drink, but he gulped a scalding mouthful down anyway and tried not to think about sleeping next to her tonight.

T
had mopped the cold raindrops off his face using a huck dish towel, but even the roaring fire in the fireplace couldn’t shake the cold that ate at his vitals with sharp, clawlike teeth. It was more than the chill he’d taken tramping up and down the rows of tiny seedlings without his jacket. It was fear, and it cut bone deep.

He tried not to watch Leah’s unconsciously arresting movements as she flitted about the kitchen, alternately dumping sugar and butter into a bowl and mashing up boiled potatoes in another. Suddenly he was so damn randy he felt like a fourteen-year-old.

Leah paused, flour sifter in hand, to peer at him. “Do you like cinnamon?”

“What? Oh, sure. Whatever you say.”

She frowned thoughtfully. He hadn’t heard a word she had said.

When the first batch of cookies was browned, she loaded some onto a plate and took them up to Teddy in the loft. The boy lay curled up on his bed, and she set the cookies next to him. He reached out a hand to poke one. “Eww! What are these things?”

“They are cookies, of course. Molasses crisps. I made them according to my new recipe book.” Hesitantly she touched his shoulder, but the boy edged away.

“Teddy, what is wrong? You do not like cookies? Are you sick?”

“Naw, ain’t sick or nuthin’.” He rolled onto his side and listlessly poked the cookie once more. “It’s Pa, I guess. He’s hardly even looked at me all day. How come these molasses things look so funny?”

Leah studied her cookies. They did look funny. She had tried to pat each piece of dough into the shape of a horse, but during baking her horses had swelled into elephants.

“What’s wrong with Pa?” the boy asked, his mouth full. “Did I do somethin’ bad?”

Leah scooched down beside him on the
bed. “You have done nothing bad, Teddy. Your father is distracted. And worried.”

“How come?” Surreptitiously Teddy folded a cookie into his hand. Leah picked up one, as well, and nibbled off the horse’s thick legs as she pondered how to answer Thad’s son.

“With all this heavy rain, your father is concerned about his wheat field.”

“Pa’s never planted wheat before. Nobody around here’s ever planted wheat. All the other ranchers say he’s crazy.” The boy bit off the head of his horse cookie. “Is Pa crazy?”

“No, your father is not crazy. He is…well, he is preoccupied.”

“What’s ‘procupied’ mean?” Teddy swallowed his morsel of cinnamon-dusted cookie. “Pa doesn’t hardly talk to me. Maybe he’s mad at me? Or maybe he doesn’t like me anymore.”

Leah’s teeth clenched. “Teddy, your father is not mad at you.”

The boy said nothing.

Leah patted his bony shoulder. “Your father loves you very much,” she said quietly. “But he is a man, and right now a man would be thinking about…He would have a lot on his mind.”

“Like what? What’s so important?”

“Well, Teddy, I wish I knew, exactly. But it does feel as if he is ignoring us, does it not?”

“Sure does. Feels awful.” Teddy polished off the horse’s hindquarters.

Leah’s heart gave a little lurch. Yes, it did feel awful. It felt as if Thad didn’t care about either his son or her. He was treating them both as if they did not matter. It made her feel hollow inside. Unwanted. It must feel even worse for Teddy.

She shook off an insistent thought, but it popped right back into her brain anyway. In one way, family life in America was much like life in China; fathers worried about food and shelter and ignored their children. And their wives. Perhaps men the world over were like that. Missionaries in China struggled to survive, just like their flocks. She was beginning to understand some of her mother’s sadness when Father was worried.

“I bet Ivanhoe’d never forget about
his
son!”

Leah found her throat so tight she could not speak for a moment. “Would you…would you like me to read more about Ivanhoe?”

“Yeah, I guess so. You read pretty good, even if you are—” The boy grabbed the last cookie to hide his embarrassment.

She climbed down the ladder and found Thad sitting motionless in the armchair by the fire, staring into the flames, both hands curled around a mug of coffee. Deliberately she walked in front of him on her way to the kitchen, but he did not even look up.

A black finger of despair scratched at the edges of Leah’s mind. Whatever he was struggling with, his actions were distancing himself from Teddy. And from her. If his unreachable moods continued, his son’s feeling of well-being, and her own, would shrivel and die.

“Told ya you was loony to plant wheat, Thad.” Carl Ness leaned over the mercantile counter and spit the words in Thad’s face.

“What would you know about it, Carl? You’ve never farmed so much as a patch of mint.”

The older man grunted. “I hear the talk around town. Seems like you’ve bit off something you can’t chew.” Carl’s thin lips pulled back into what passed for a grin. “Two somethings, as a matter of fact.”

“Yeah?” He’d had about enough of Carl Ness this morning. Something festering inside
him felt as if it was going to explode any second.

The storekeeper took one look at Thad’s face and checked whether the area behind where he stood was empty. He sure didn’t need six feet of Thad MacAllister charging over the counter at him.

“Yeah,” Carl blustered.

Thad took one step closer. “What’s the second something, Carl?”

He edged backward. “That wife of yours. That Celestial. Ain’t never gonna work out.”

That did it. It was one thing to ride a man for his choice of crop to plant; it was another to insult a man’s choice of a wife. Thad’s hands tightened into fists.

“Why in hell are you so sure it isn’t going to work out?”

The mercantile owner dropped his gaze and studied the smooth wood counter. “Well, just look at her. She don’t fit in with Smoke River folks. Never will. The ladies are already declaring war on her.”

“War?” Thad exploded. “Not on
my
wife, they’re not. What’s got into this town, anyway?”

Carl snorted. “One Celestial woman, that’s what.”

“Shut your mouth, Carl. Give me a bushel of apples and some coffee beans. And don’t say another word.”

The proprietor sneered. “Coffee, huh? I thought all them Celestials drank tea.”

“Or whiskey,” someone said from the back of the store.

“Whooee, I’d sure like to see that little Chinese gal three sheets to the wind, wouldn’t you, boys?” This last gibe came from Whitey Poletti, the barber, who now lounged at Thad’s elbow.

Without a word Thad spun toward the man and laid him out flat with a single punch. The next thing he knew someone had pinned his arms from behind and a voice was speaking in his ear.

“Don’t do this, Thad. It’ll only hurt your wife when she has to bail you out of jail.”

Thad shook himself to clear the red haze from his vision. Marshal Matt Johnson released him, slapped him on the back and thrust the bushel basket of apples against his chest. Then he swung the ten-pound bag of coffee beans onto his own shoulder and steered Thad out the mercantile door.

At the hitching rail in front of the store, Matt lifted the apples out of Thad’s grasp,
waited until he’d mounted his horse and dropped the sack of coffee beans across his lap.

Thad eyed the marshal. “Thanks, Matt.”

He grinned up at him as he grasped the horse’s bridle. “Sure thing. And Thad, if it comes up again, remember Poletti has a mean left hook.” He slapped the horse’s rump. “Give my regards to Leah.”

That evening at supper Thad appeared deaf to Leah’s quiet inquiries about his trip to town, and he was again ignoring Teddy’s chatter about his school day.

“And then Manette—she’s only six, and she’s French like her momma, an’ she knows lots of foreign words—anyway Manette pushes old Harvey offa me an’ calls him a name and kicks him in his privates. An’ then…Pa? Pa! Are you listening?”

Leah’s quick glance at Thad’s face confirmed Teddy’s fear; his father was not listening. Instead he was staring down at his boots, apparently focused on something inside himself.

A dart of anger bit into her chest. This could not continue. Not only was Teddy hurting, but she herself was wrestling with fury at Thad’s indifference. Tonight, when they
were alone in the bedroom, she would speak to him.

She studied her husband’s drawn face. Something had happened in town today; a purple-blue blotch spread across the knuckles of his right hand, but he had refused to say a word about it.

Or about anything else—not the savory stew she’d labored over using bacon and potatoes; not the new ruffled apron she wore, which she had whipped up on the sewing machine that afternoon. Not even the pile of clean work shirts she had ironed today.

“Thad?”

“Mmm?”

“Do you not like stew?”

“What? No, no, it’s fine. Just not hungry, I guess.”

She didn’t believe him for one second. Ever since he’d returned from town he’d worked hard shoring up the makeshift dam he’d constructed to keep his wheat field from flooding. Even if his mind was somewhere else, surely his belly must be clamoring for food?

“Shall I read more of
Ivanhoe
after supper? Teddy wants to know what happens to Isaac the Jew.”

“Yeah, Pa,” Teddy exclaimed. “I wanna see if they torture old Isaac.”

“Thad?”

“What? Oh, sure. Sure.”

Leah bit back a groan. Enough was enough. She could hardly wait until they were alone.

She lifted the book down from the shelf, seated herself in the chair by the fireplace, opened the volume and began to read.

“‘Strip the Jew, slaves,’ said Front-de-Boeuf. ‘And chain him down upon the bars.’”

Teddy sucked in a breath. “How come they’re so mean to Isaac? is it because he’s a Jew?”

“Not exactly,” Leah said. “It is because Isaac is—” she almost choked on the word “—
different
. In those days people persecuted what was different. Many hated the Jews. Those people were prejudiced.”

And, she acknowledged with a ripple of unease, it was much the same today.

“But not Ivanhoe, huh! An’ nobody in Smoke River’s prej’dist, huh?”

Leah made an involuntary sound. Over Teddy’s head, her eyes locked with Thad’s.

“Sure they are, son,” Thad growled.

Leah marked her place in the leather-bound book with her forefinger. “Remember the
mean things the students at school said about me that first morning? That I looked funny?”

“Sure, but you’re not a Jew.”

“No,” Leah said with a sigh. “But here in America I am different because I am half Chinese.”

“I bet Ivanhoe wouldn’t care if you was Chinese.”

Leah had to laugh. “Ivanhoe had never seen a Chinese person. Or talked to one or—”

Thad sent her a look that melted her insides. “Slept with one,” he interjected. Immediately he looked away, unfolded his long legs and stood up. When he stepped around Teddy he absentmindedly ruffled the boy’s unruly brown hair. “Time for bed, son.”

Leah glanced up at her husband, but once again his eyes were distant. Deliberately she closed the volume on her lap. She must speak to him. Now. Tonight.

Teddy scampered up the ladder to his loft. Leah sat still for a moment, staring into the dying fire, then roused herself and headed for the bedroom. She undressed quickly, sponged off in the basin of warm water she had heated earlier on the stove, and drew on her silk sleeping robe. It was one of her Chinese garments, but she liked it because it absorbed
the heat of Thad’s body when she lay next to him.

She liked sleeping with Thad. She liked being close to him, listening to his voice rumble near her ear, feeling his soft breathing fan the back of her neck.

Thad paced back and forth on the front porch, his hands jammed into his jean pockets. He hated winter. When he thought about the months between now and spring, his mind went cold and his thoughts became brutally clear. He could do nothing about his wheat seedlings except pray the winter storms would leave them undamaged. Right now, he knew he had to think about other things. His son, for one.

Maybe it was about time for Teddy to have a pony. Matt Johnson had a colt about old enough to ride; maybe by Christmas…

Hell’s bells, he didn’t want to think about Christmas. He’d hated it ever since Hattie died. He didn’t want to think about Leah, either. Sure would be easier if they didn’t sleep in the same bed.

It was getting harder to crawl in bed and lie next to her. Something about being close to her made him sweat, and when he tried to
nail it down, whatever it was choked him with fear. It grew worse each night.

He walked twice more around the barn, then tramped back into the house, to find a light still glowing under the bedroom door. Quietly he twisted the brass knob and pushed it open. A kerosene lamp burned low on the bureau.

He kicked off his boots, dropped his trousers and shirt onto the rocking chair under the window and puffed out the lamp. He hesitated, then lifted the quilted coverlet and slid into bed.

She didn’t move.

“Leah?”

“Thad, we need to talk about something.”

Oh, damn, here it came. She was unhappy. She wanted more from him, and he wasn’t ready. He hoped that the ache gnawing at his heart would fade in time, that he’d get over Hattie’s death, but…

But what if he never healed? What if he kept backing away from Leah, protecting himself by not caring about her? Hell, if he kept avoiding her, he’d lose her, too. Either way he was damned. Maybe she wasn’t tough enough for life out here on the frontier and she’d leave him, go back to the city.

He didn’t want to talk about this. It hurt even to think about it. But Leah was his wife now, for better or worse, and she deserved honesty.

“What’s on your mind, Leah?”

“Teddy.”

Teddy!
Thad closed his eyes in relief. “What about Teddy? Something wrong at school? Are the kids still riding him about his new moth—”

“Nothing is wrong at school,” she said in a quiet voice. “Something is wrong at home.”

He thought that over while he tried to get his heartbeat back to normal. Had he and Teddy argued about something? Nothing came to mind. In fact, he could not remember having much of any conversation with his son all week long. Oh, Lord, that was it. Had to be.