Claiming Their Mail-Order Bride: A Cowboy Ménage Romance (Montana Ménage Book 2)

by Lily Reynard

  If they realized that she was not, in fact, Elizabeth Hunter, who knew what would happen to her, isolated on this frontier ranch?

  * * *

  Saturday, May 15

  Larkin woke up just after dawn to the sound of rain, and cursed roundly at the prospect of having to do the morning chores in the wet and cold.

  At least he had a roof over his head and dry blankets. Walt, sleeping in his tent at the mining camp, wasn't going to be so lucky.

  That thought cheered Larkin as he rose, dressed, and then stoked the fire in the big kitchen stove to boil water for coffee before donning his heavy oilskin coat and going out to the barn to muck out the stables and feed the horses.

  He had just finished scattering feed for the chickens when he heard the back door open.

  Miss Hunter emerged, dressed in a plain shirtwaist and skirt, but carrying a fancy umbrella that matched the equally fancy clothes she'd been wearing when she arrived.

  "Good morning, Mr. Williams," she greeted him, looking as pretty as a picture with her purple hair coiled up in a smooth bun at her nape.

  "Thought you were gonna call me Larkin," he reminded her.

  The wariness returned to her expression. She studied him for a long moment, then nodded. "Larkin."

  He liked the way his name sounded when she said it.

  "And you may address me as Sarah, if you like," she said, sounding the way he imagined a princess or queen might speak.

  She headed his way. The sight of her picking her way fastidiously around puddles amused him. For a Missouri farm girl, she sure seemed awful particular about getting dirty.

  As she drew closer, he noted dark circles under her eyes and wondered if his attempt to charm his way into her bed last night had robbed her of the ability to sleep easy under his roof.

  Does she think I'm the kind of lowlife who'd force her? The thought stung. He was no angel, but he was no brute either. And he’d never been interested in bedding a woman who wasn't willing and enthusiastic.

  "Is there anything I can do to help?" she asked.

  Okay, maybe she isn't holding last night against me.

  Against his will, he found himself intrigued by her. He tried to tell himself not to care, because she was only staying until the next train arrived, but he couldn't help admiring her generous curves and pretty face.

  She’s beautiful and helpful and she can cook. Three qualities I’d want if I ever want to get hitched. Which I don’t. But if I did, then I'd sure want someone like Miss Hunter.

  "I thank you kindly for the offer, Sarah," he told her. "But I can take care of the chores if you're willing to fix breakfast. You're a damned fine cook."

  He saw her wince at his language before brightening. "Of course. I'd be happy to."

  The prospect of another good meal that he wouldn't have to cook himself made him feel downright cheery.

  He jerked his chin in the direction of the chicken coop. "The hens have been laying pretty regular this week. I'm sure you'll find plenty of eggs."

  Her eyes widened, and he saw a flash of panic in her eyes before her expression smoothed out again. Then she gave him what looked like a forced smile.

  "Oh, of course," she said.

  He wondered what he'd said wrong, then shrugged and turned to head to the barn.

  "Call me when breakfast is ready," he called over his shoulder. "I always work up one heck of an appetite in the mornings."

  Chapter Nine

  The way Larkin looked at her made her wonder exactly what kind of appetite he was talking about.

  She shivered, remembering him looming in the attic door last night.

  He might be prickly, but she couldn't deny that he was also very handsome, with his smoldering saturnine looks. It was a shame that he seemed so staunchly opposed to Walt's marriage scheme.

  As he strode away, she confronted the thorny problem he'd left her with: gathering eggs for breakfast.

  In theory, she knew that one obtained eggs from hens, and hens lived in chicken coops, but the actual process was a mystery. Some of the poorer families in Boston kept chickens, but Father had been a man of means until very recently, and victuals like meat, eggs, milk, and vegetables had always been delivered to the house.

  Before today, she had only ever seen chickens or other farm animals in the distance, usually while traveling to the family’s seaside cottage in the days before Father had been forced to sell it to pay his gambling debts.

  She folded her umbrella and cautiously approached the coop.

  Clucking, a dozen chickens all rushed towards her and gathered around the hems of her skirts. She spotted a rooster running towards her from the other side of the wire-enclosed run.

  "Shoo!" she told the hopeful hens. "I saw Larkin feed you, you greedy things."

  They continued to behave as if they'd been starved for a week, so she flapped her apron at them, to little effect. Opening and closing her umbrella finally did the trick, sending them fluttering away in squawking panic.

  Sarah entered the shed-like wooden coop, ducking under perches and wrinkling her nose as the pungent reek of chicken manure hit her. It reminded her of smelling salts, only worse.

  Rows of open-faced boxes were stacked against the coop's wall. She spotted two or three eggs nestled in the straw inside nearly every box and breathed a sigh of relief.

  Only one of the nest boxes was occupied. A big, reddish-brown hen sat there, glaring at Sarah and making irritated noises.

  This is going to be a lot easier than I feared, she thought, reaching for the first warm brown egg and placing it carefully into the wide pocket stretching across the front of her apron.

  She worked her way down the assemblage of nesting boxes. She gathered up nearly a dozen eggs, their shells ranging from creamy white to medium brown.

  At last, she arrived at the final nest box, the one occupied by the mean-looking hen.

  Sarah debated just leaving the hen undisturbed. But she didn't know whether wasting eggs would upset Larkin.

  She steeled herself and stretched for the hen, intending to slip her hand underneath the bird and feel for any eggs. She promptly received a sharp peck on her fingers for her pains.

  "Ow!"

  The hen glared at her and clucked triumphantly.

  Sarah glared back. "Shoo!"

  It hadn't worked on the hens outside, and it didn't work on this one either. And with her apron pocket now filled to the brim with eggs, she didn't dare flap it at the hen.

  Tentatively, she reached out again, and only barely escaped being pecked this time.

  "Fine," she told it, and turned to get her folded umbrella, which she had leaned against the outside wall of the coop.

  When she unfurled it halfway, the hen exploded out of the nest box, hurtling straight at Sarah's face. Sarah yelped and ducked, and the hen flew over her head and escaped out the door of the coop, leaving behind three pinkish-brown eggs in the next box.

  "I'm going to make an omelet out of these, and enjoy every bite," she said out loud, and gathered them up.

  She returned to the kitchen and had just begun preparing the promised omelet when Larkin came in, his face flushed with exertion and beaded with sweat.

  Animal magnetism radiated from him, and Sarah caught herself starting at him.

  "You haven't started cooking anything yet?" he asked.

  She shook her head. Am I working too slowly?

  She opened her mouth with the intention of apologizing.

  But before she could speak, he said, "Good. The horses are being particularly ornery this morning, and I'd sure appreciate it if you could milk Rosa. That's our dairy cow," he added.

  Oh no, she thought in dismay.

  She had no earthly idea how to milk a cow, but she suspected that it wouldn't be as easy as gathering eggs.

  And she didn't dare refuse or ask him to show her how to do it.

  Liza had grown up on a farm and presumably knew how to perform these sorts of tasks. If Larkin discovered
that Sarah had never milked a cow, then he might get suspicious of her.

  I have to try. Farmers and dairymaids do it all the time. How difficult can it be?

  "Of course. I'd be happy to," she lied.

  He rewarded her with one of those smiles that made her knees go weak. "Thanks. I'll go fetch Rosa and tie her in the stall. Milking pail is on a shelf just outside the stall, next to the curry brushes and pegs for the tack."

  He left. Sarah paused to take the skillet off the burner so that the butter currently melting in preparation for the omelet wouldn't burn in her absence, then untied her apron and made her way to the barn.

  The illustrations she had seen in books and magazines allowed her to guess at the purpose of the low wooden stool placed just outside the stall. She located the metal milking pail and carried it and the stool over to where the cow—the extremely large, black-and-white, rather smelly cow—stood in one of the narrow stalls. Sarah placed the stool next to cow's rear legs, within easy reach of the swollen udders, and seated herself as she had seen in illustrations of dairymaids.

  So far, so good, she thought. But what do I do next?

  The cow shifted, turned her head to examine Sarah with a large, long-lashed eye, and lowed. Then she stamped her rear foot. Sarah couldn't help flinching.

  She examined the swollen bag and four udders hanging beneath the cow's hindquarters and tried to figure out what to do next. A timid tug on an udder produced no results. When she pulled it again, harder this time, the cow took offense at her ineptitude, and began bawling loudly and stamping her feet.

  "Shh!" Sarah said, desperately. "Hush."

  The cow ignored her and continued mooing loudly.

  A few moments later, Larkin appeared.

  "What's going on?" he demanded. "What's taking so long? Is there something wrong with her?"

  "I—I don't know!" Sarah confessed. "I pulled on one of those—" she pointed at the udder closest to her, "but nothing happened! Maybe she doesn't have any milk today."

  "What the hell?" asked Larkin. He stomped over to where Sarah sat, then bent to peer at the cow's rear end. "No, she's so full of milk right now, she's fit to explode."

  "Oh," Sarah said in a small voice.

  Larkin shook his head, and Sarah felt a stab of panic at his disgusted expression. "I thought Walt said you were a farm girl."

  "I am. But milking the cows was my brother's chore, not mine," she blurted. "I, ah, only know cooking and housekeeping. And how to do the household accounts," she added, in hopes of mitigating her ignorance.

  "You've never milked a cow?" Larkin stared at her. "Honest?"

  She nodded. "But I'm quite good at arithmetic." She had been good at French and playing the piano, too, but those didn't seem like useful skills to mention at the moment.

  Instead of exploding, Larkin just sighed. "You want me to teach you?"

  "Yes, please," she said eagerly. "I want to help, really I do!"

  "All righty." He looked around the stall as if searching for something. "First step in milking a cow is to wash her bag and teats with a rag and warm water, and to check for any redness or cracking. I'll be back in two shakes of a lamb's tail."

  He left the stable, and Sarah breathed a sigh of relief. She had been certain that this was the moment when she would be exposed as an utter fraud and sent packing.

  Larkin returned shortly, carrying a steaming bowl of warm water and a clean rag.

  "You want to make sure you wipe off all the cow shit—begging your pardon, the cow flop—before you start milking," he instructed as he gently and carefully cleansed the cow's udders and bag.

  Rosa, apparently recognizing a familiar and experienced touch, made a plaintive sound and calmed.

  When Larkin had finished with the bowl and rag, he set it aside. "Now we wait for a few seconds, to make sure that she doesn't want to take a piss after her sponge bath." He grinned. "You don't want to get catch any of that in the milking bucket."

  Sarah eyed the cow's hindquarters, which were entirely too close to her for comfort, and nervously tucked her skirts out of range. Larkin chuckled.

  "Okay," he said, after a minute or two passed without the threatened stream of unpleasantness. "I think we're good to go. Hand me that milking pail."

  She did so, and he placed it on the ground beneath the cow's bag.

  "Now, go head and grab one of her teats between your thumb and forefinger," he instructed.

  She reached out timidly and took the nearest udder with the gentlest grip she could, and cast a nervous glance at the cow's rear leg. If Rosa decided to kick, Sarah would be an easy target.

  "No, higher," Larkin said. "Move your hand up, right where the teat joins the bag."

  He knelt in the straw next to Sarah, and reached out to put his big, warm hand over hers. "Now, squeeze—no, tighter than that. She ain't made of glass." His fingers closed around hers, guiding her grip on the udder, and she felt a pleasant shock of contact run up her arm. "Okay, try squeezing again, and pull down, just a little. Pretend that your hand is a hungry little calf, sucking on Mama for all it's worth. Yeah, that's good," he encouraged her.

  A thin jet of milk spurted from the udder beneath her fingers and hit the bucket with a hollow resonance.

  "Oh!" Taken by surprise, Sarah jumped, her fingers still clamped around the udder, and the jet of milk hit her squarely in the face.

  Larkin chuckled and she turned her head to look at him. She realized that their lips were close enough to kiss, and a thrill ran through her.

  She licked drops of milk from her lips, and saw how his gray eyes dilated as his gaze fastened on her mouth.

  I wonder what it would be like to kiss him?

  His patient tutoring, instead of the disappointment or reprimand that she'd been bracing for, had come as a relief. As did the fact that he didn't seem to resent her for refusing him and closing the attic door in his face last night.

  Her cheeks heating, she looked away.

  Even if he's nicer today than he was yesterday, he doesn't really want me here, she reminded herself. I wish Walt hadn't left me all alone with him.

  "That's a good start. Now, grab the other front udder with your other hand, like this—" he took her left hand and guided it to the correct place, "and squeeze and tug. Switch off between them. First this one, then the other one."

  As she managed to produce a steady rhythm of milk streams hitting the bucket, she tried to ignore how nice it felt to have him holding her hands in his, and how their shoulders and upper arms were pressed tightly together, so that the heat of skin seeped through the layers of clothing separating them.

  All too soon, he released her and pulled away.

  "Yeah, you've got the hang of it now," he pronounced. "I still need to feed the pig, so I'll just leave you to it."

  "Wait," she said, as he rose to his feet, brushing straw from his trousers. "How will I know when to stop?"

  She knew it was a stupid question, especially for someone who had supposedly grown up on a farm, like Liza.

  Once again, Larkin surprised her by being patient and kind.

  "When the milk stops coming," he said. "Which reminds me, don't milk the back two udders. We leave the milk in those for her calf. Oh, and don't forget to wipe her down with that rag when you're done. And if you wouldn't mind applying some of that balm to her udders—" he pointed at a colorful tin sitting on the shelf used to store the milking buckets and the brushes for the horses.

  "Of course," she assured him. "Thank you for the lesson, Mr. Williams."

  To her surprise, he flushed. "It was no trouble, especially if you're willing to do this from now on. Twice a day, mornings and evenings."

  "I'd be happy to," she said, eager to prove herself.

  "Much obliged." He touched his fingers to his hat, then winked at her. "And I thought you were gonna call me Larkin? I'll see you back at the house for breakfast, Sarah."

  And with that, he turned on his heel and left the stable.

 
; Sarah turned her attention back to Rosa, who had put her head down into a bucket of feed once the milking began, and was calmly eating.

  As she resumed her task, the sensation of pressure and warmth from Larkin's touch lingered against her bare hands.

  * * *

  I could get used to this, thought Larkin a short while later. Freshly washed and shaved, he settled himself at the kitchen table, where Sarah had dished up a hearty breakfast of omelets filled with diced ham and onions, served with hot golden-brown biscuits topped with milk gravy.