by Lily Reynard
He noticed that she'd picked some tulips from the garden and stuck them in an old bottle. Between the makeshift vase on the table and the fact that the rain had finally stopped and the first beams of sunlight were breaking through the clouds, the kitchen looked downright cheery.
Maybe I should see about digging up one of Mrs. Edwards' fancy vases, he thought, remembering with a pang that Walt's Ma had always kept her vases filled with fresh flowers between spring and autumn before switching to arrangements of evergreen twigs, dried grasses, and stalks with clusters of orange and red bittersweet berries. It had been one of the many small touches that had made this house feel like a real home, and something that had been missing since she died.
Then he reminded himself that Sarah was most likely headed out on the next train. Which was a shame, because between her cooking and her looks, not to mention her cheerful personality, he was taking quite a shine to her.
"Thank you," he said as she filled his cup with what looked like good, strong coffee.
She looked surprised by his thanks, and offered him cream.
"Nah, I like my java barefooted," he told her, and saw an adorable expression of confusion cross her face.
"Hot and black, with nothing added—no milk or sugar," he clarified.
With conscious courtesy, he waited for her to seat herself and say grace.
He wasn't any kind of Bible-thumper himself, but after Reverend Kottinger had arrived in town, Walt's Ma had insisted that everyone in the household go to Sunday services at the new church in town. Larkin hadn't minded, because being included in these outings was one of the ways that the Edwards had made sure that he felt like a member of the family.
Plus, they always ate lunch at the Hotel Bede afterwards, which had been a treat all around, especially for Mrs. Edwards, who enjoyed having someone else cook for her one day a week.
As soon as Sarah said, "Amen," he dug right in.
Just as it had been yesterday, Sarah's food was delicious. The omelets were moist and fluffy, the biscuits perfectly baked, and the seasoning on the milk gravy just right.
Conversation was the last thing on his mind as he concentrated on enjoying the meal. Truth was, he and Walt weren't terrible cooks—they didn't actually ruin many meals—but they sure as hell couldn't make food taste like this.
He sopped up every last smear of gravy with the last of the biscuits, then sat back with a sigh of contentment to enjoy his second cup of coffee. Sarah was still eating in that dainty way of hers, but he could tell that she'd worked up an appetite helping him with morning chores. The memory of her reaction to shooting milk onto her face made him want to chuckle. She'd proved a quick learner, but who'd ‘a thought that a farm girl would be afraid of chickens or ignorant of something as basic as milking a cow?
Spurred by his curiosity, he asked, "So, I've been wondering why someone like you was willing to come out here and marry Walt and me, sight unseen. Were things really that bad, where you came from?"
She looked nervous as she finished chewing and took a sip of her own coffee before replying.
"Not bad, not exactly," she said, sounding as cautious as if she were tiptoeing barefoot through a patch of jagged rocks. "Until my mother passed, I suppose that it was just an ordinary life on our family farm. But things changed after Mama died. I took over running the household, of course, but then I discovered that my father and brothers were dead-set against me getting married and leaving them to start a family of my own." She shook her head. "My brothers told me that I owed it to them to stay and take care of Father in his old age, and they drove away all of my suitors." She shrugged. "Becoming a mail-order bride seemed like my only option, especially if I could find a decent man who would be willing to wed me even though I didn't have any money or any prospects." Her mouth twisted. "Father already informed me that our family farm is going to be divided between my two brothers. I was supposed to receive a marriage portion, but after Mother died…" She shrugged, and looked away.
So, her kin were using her as an unpaid servant and keeping her in poverty? Larkin felt a surge of anger on her behalf. No wonder she was willing to hop on a train and agree to marry two strangers!
"Then Walt responded to my advertisement in a magazine for mail-order spouses, and I found him to be a most interesting and thoughtful correspondent. Meeting him in person only confirmed that he seems like he would make a good husband," Sarah continued. She looked unhappy now. "I didn't realize that my arrival here would cause so many problems."
That made Larkin feel bad. It wasn't her fault that Walt had cooked up a crazy marriage scheme and invited her to come all the way out here.
"So, what about you? Have you always lived in Twin Forks?" She looked around the kitchen. "This house, your barn—they all look much nicer and more permanent than most of the other dwellings I saw in town."
Larkin wasn't much in the habit of talking about his family, but he figured that fair was fair, since he'd asked Sarah about her family.
"My folks and Walt's folks both met on the wagon train that took us here to the Montana Territory. They decided to homestead here around the same time that gold was discovered at Alder Gulch. That would have been around May of 1863."
"Oh, so you were just a boy when you came here!" She forked up the last bite of her omelet before asking, "Do your parents still live around here?"
He shook his head. "Nope. My Mam died of a fever when I was ten. My Da—" His mouth twisted in distaste. "Well, Da hung on until last spring, when he succumbed to the big cholera epidemic. It killed a lot of people in Twin Forks, including Walt's parents."
"Oh, I'm so very sorry for your loss," Sarah said, and the sympathy in her voice and eyes warmed him. "I miss my mother terribly. She fell ill and passed away in the summer after my sixteenth birthday. Father, well, he changed after that, and not for the better."
Larkin nodded. He understood exactly what she meant. Without intending to spill his guts to her, he found himself doing exactly that. "I can't honestly say that I mourned my Da very much. He was a hard man with a terrible temper, and he just got worse after Ma died. But Walt's folks—" His throat tightened and he took a deep swallow of coffee to hide his reaction. "Well, they were good people, loving people. Did Walt write you about how I came to live here?"
Sarah's blue-green eyes fastened on him. "No."
"So, after my parents and Walt's parents decided to homestead neighboring properties, me and Walt had already become best friends. So things were good…well, mostly good, for a while. Anyhow, after Mam died, my Da, well, he changed for the worse. Like yours."
Sarah nodded, and he continued speaking.
"So anyway, a few months later, Walt's dad came around uninvited to our cabin, right when my Da happened to be in one of his moods and was thrashing the living daylights out of me with a stick."
And it hadn't been the first time Larkin had been beaten like that, either. It had only gotten worse after Mam died, leaving Larkin all alone with his Da, and the only target for the old man's bouts of rage.
He continued, "Walt's dad, well that was the only time I ever saw him get real mad. He ordered Da to stop in this really scary quiet voice…and Da did. Then Mr. Edwards told Da that he was taking me home with him. When Da protested, Mr. Edwards pulled his gun and threatened to put a bullet between his eyes if he ever hit me again. That's how I came to live with Walt's Ma and Dad. They took me in and made me feel like part of their family. When they died of the cholera last year, it felt like losing my Mam all over again."
"So, Walt truly is your brother in all but blood," Sarah commented softly.
She reached out and her quick, light touch against the back of his hand felt like a burning brand.
"Yeah. I trust him with my life, and I know he trusts me with his. And neither of us will ever let anything—or anyone—come between us."
She nodded and sat back. "I understand." She took a deep breath. "Thank you for confiding in me, Larkin."
He liked the w
ay his name sounded when she said it.
Then she rose and began briskly clearing the table.
He helped her, then stood beside her at the kitchen sink, drying dishes while she washed. He couldn't stop thinking about kissing her. He debated whether he should just go for it and see if that spark of contact he felt every time they touched might ignite into something more.
But Walt's dad had advised Walt and Larkin to never kiss a woman unless they were sure she wanted to be kissed, so Larkin held back.
But next time she looks at me like she's starving and I'm a steak, I'm not going to hold back.
"So, what will you be doing today?" she asked, as she busily scrubbed the big cast-iron skillet with a handful of coarse salt and wiped it with a wet washcloth before setting it on the stovetop, where the heat from the still-hot stove would dry it. "Is there anything I can help you with?"
"Not unless you want to dig holes for fence posts," he answered with a grin.
He looked at her hands and noticed that they were awfully pale and soft for a someone raised on a farm. They'd be blistered and bleeding in no time if he handed her a shovel and put her to work. And I'm sure Walt would string me up from the rafters as soon as he got home.
He continued, "Walt and I decided that we need to divide our pasture into a bulls' side and a cows' side, so that we can control which bull breeds our cows each year. We have four bulls, and right now, it's awful hard to keep track of which one sired the current crop of calves."
"Ah," she said, looking disappointed.
"Will you call me when it's time for dinner?" he asked, as he dried the last dish and put it away in the cupboard.
"Of course. Do you like stew? I saw that you have plenty of potatoes, turnips, and carrots in the cellar, and there's the deer meat."
"Anything you want to cook is fine by me, Sarah," he said sincerely. "But if you're fixing stew, I'd sure love it if you baked more of those biscuits to go with."
That earned him a smile, punctuated with dimples. "I'm so glad you liked the biscuits. I'll gladly make another batch."
While he set to work on setting up fence posts, he found himself mulling over the strange contradictions in his guest. She wasn't like any farm girl he'd ever met.
She was a damned fine cook and a hard worker, but her soft hands and pampered skin indicated that she clearly hadn't spent much time outdoors. And then there was the fact that this morning, she'd acted like someone who'd never had any truck with chickens or cows before.
She’s an odd one, that’s for sure.
Larkin liked her, and not just because she was beautiful, with a body that made him long to undress her and explore every one of her curves, but he had a lot of questions.
He wondered if Walt had kept any of the letters that Sarah had sent him before she arrived. Probably. Walt's a regular pack-rat when it comes to keeping bits and bobs.
Larkin decided to look for the letters later. He guessed that they might be in that secret compartment that he and Walt had built into the back of the dresser in their bedroom, where they stored the occasional gold nugget they found on the ranch. He and Walt had spent a lot of time debating what to do with the gold. It wasn't doing either of them any good where it was, but if they brought those nuggets to any of the assay offices in town, then they risked a flood of gold miners trespassing onto their ranch. They might lose their land because they couldn't defend it.
Copper was safe. It didn't spark feverish greed the way that news of a new gold discovery would. And copper was also profitable and likely to stay that way, thanks to the need for copper telegraph wires and the wiring for those newfangled electric lights in big cities on both coasts.
Yeah, he'd definitely find and read those letters tonight.
Why am I so interested in her, anyway? he asked himself, as he put a fence post into the deep hole he'd just dug, and tamped dirt firmly around the post's base to keep it anchored in place.
Maybe it’s because I haven't been with a woman in a while. They're all starting to look the same back in town. But Sarah was new and interesting and very obviously innocent, if her reactions to him were anything to go by. And she was right here, at his table and under his roof. Yeah, that's it. I'm just hard up and looking to get laid.
Larkin laughed, which alarmed the cow grazing closest to him. "I wonder if sweet little Sarah would up and faint on me if I told her the truth about what I want to do with her?"
Chapter Ten
After Larkin left the house, Sarah spent the next hour or so preparing the stew, which would need to simmer for several hours.
She peeled and diced potatoes, carrots, onions, and turnips, chopped venison, and more of the bacon carved from the large flitch hanging in the cool cellar, seasoned everything, then put it all in the big Dutch oven and fed a few more sticks of wood into the stove. The trick was to heat the stew enough so that it would bubble gently along, cooking everything until the potatoes were fork-tender, but without requiring constant attention or boiling over.
When she had finished that and washed the knives and cutting boards, she found a broom in the pantry and swept the kitchen floor clean of crumbs and dirt. Then, not sure what she could do next, she swept the entire downstairs, shook out all the rugs on the porch, and dusted. For a house occupied by two bachelors, it was fairly clean if somewhat dusty.
As the scent of simmering stew began to fill the rooms, Sarah found a sewing basket tucked away behind the armchair in one corner of the living room, and a small pile of shirts needing buttons and a couple of work trousers whose thick denim sported holes and rips.
She leaped on the opportunity to make herself useful by mending Walt and Larkin's clothes. Even if they ended up sending her away, she felt that she owed them for the food and lodging they were providing her until the next train came.
As she patched and mended the garments, she thought about how Larkin had patiently showed her how to milk the cow. And their unexpectedly pleasant breakfast together.
Her first impression of him had been of a glowering bully, but after a day and a night spent in his company, she was beginning to sense that he might have a good heart and gentlemanly impulses beneath the prickly exterior.
For a moment this morning, she had been convinced that he was going to kiss her, especially after he so boldly tried to invite himself into her bed last night. But he hadn’t…and her reaction hadn't been relief. It had been disappointment.
Does that mean I want Larkin to kiss me?
She frowned over her stitches.
Despite his improper suggestions, he hadn’t done anything to indicate that he would try to force her to do anything she didn't want to, so she had gradually begun to feel comfortable in his presence.
And over breakfast, she had sensed a certain rapport developing between them when she realized that they had both lost their mothers. Then there was the matter of Walt's poor parents, who had also perished, though more recently.
Given what Larkin had told her over breakfast, when the Edwards perished, it must have felt like losing his parents a second time. She had known, intellectually, that moving out west would be dangerous, but the things she had seen and learned since arriving in Twin Forks had driven home the truth of that danger.
With pauses to check on the progress of her stew, she finished the mending around noon.
Larkin had asked her to call him in when it was time to eat the midday meal, but now she realized that she wasn't certain where the pasture in question was located.
Sarah ventured out on the porch and looked around. It had turned into a mild, sunny day, with the remnants of this morning's rain clouds scudding across a deep blue sky and sending silvery waves rippling through the lush green grass that blanketed every open space. The ranch's landscape was certainly beautiful, with rolling hills and wide pastures framed by stony, snowcapped peaks.
To her relief, she quickly spotted a figure in a woven straw cowboy hat hard at work about a quarter of a mile away.
She
tried shouting and waving to get his attention, but he didn't react. So she went back inside the house and fetched one of the metal pots and big metal spoons from the kitchen.
Banging the spoon against the pot raised an awful ruckus that sent a murder of crows shooting skyward from a nearby thicket, filling the air with loud caws of protest. That finally caught Larkin's attention.
She saw him straighten up and look around, then return her wave.
When he entered the house a short while later, he stopped short when he spotted the pile of mended clothes she had placed in front of his bedroom door.
"Thank you, Sarah," he said, coming to lean against the kitchen doorway as she began using a pair of knives to chop cold butter into a bowl of flour sifted with a bit of salt and some baking powder, which was an essential step in mixing up dough for flaky biscuits.
