by Lola White
Chapter Seven
Though it was a nearly impossible feat, Hyacinth tried to find her optimism as she hauled heavy buckets of ash and lye toward the outhouse. Her arms ached and shook with the strain, but that was no different than how the rest of her body felt after working so hard all week. Gagging, she threw open the door and poured both buckets straight down the hole—all while trying not to breathe in the stench.
“It doesn’t seem to bother the men, but I can’t take it anymore,” she muttered over her shoulder as she snatched a breath from the slightly less noxious air beyond the outhouse. She looked at the pack of dogs that were her only real companionship over the past week. They sat in a line staring up at her with cocked heads, used to being her sounding boards at the otherwise silent homestead.
“I asked Offer several times to scrub this thing down, but he hasn’t, so I guess it’s up to me.” She glared at the dogs. “Unless one of you would like to volunteer?”
The dogs whined in unison and retreated a few steps. Hyacinth blew out a breath that stirred the disheveled curls falling from her topknot. With a lifted lip and the thick aroma of waste clogging her throat, she took a deep breath, held it and attacked the outhouse with all the pent-up rage that had been brewing inside her. By the time she finished, her throat felt raw, she was dizzy with lack of oxygen and her hands had cramped around the wide scrub brush she’d used to scour every inch of the building’s interior.
The week since she’d arrived at the Double O saw Hyacinth sunk in despair. She’d scrubbed every dirty surface in both the main house and the bunkhouse until her hands had bled, only to have all the dust reappear within hours of her hard work. She’d made curtains from one of her petticoats, and was humiliated by the way the fabric seemed to blaze yellow in the sun, highlighting exactly how old her clothing was. She’d made enough biscuits to feed an army, but still hadn’t mastered anything more complex for the men to eat.
They could only live off bread for so long, after all.
“And to top it all off,” she told the dogs as she stumbled across the yard with the pack on her heels, “Offer has been in a foul mood for the past three days. On the few occasions he says anything to me at all, he won’t tell me what’s wrong, and I am tired of tip-toeing around as if his bad attitude were some beast even meaner than you mutts.”
She felt a cold nose against her fingers and absently stroked a silky head without bothering to see which dog was demanding her attention. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to cast aspersions on your characters. Truth be told, you dogs have become my greatest joy.”
She stopped and turned to face the pack. “Or, rather, my second greatest joy, just behind the pleasure Offer gives me in the middle of the night.”
Her cheeks grew warm at the boldness of saying the words out loud, even if she was only speaking to the dogs. Though the man was growing extremely hard to deal with during the day—for the handful of moments she saw him, considering all the time he spent with his cattle—at night he was still attentive to her body in a way that kept her breathless till dawn.
But the dogs were her only company for the long, grueling hours where she worked her hands to the bone. They were the only living things she could speak to while she waited for the men to return from the pasture. Hyacinth was no stranger to loneliness, especially after the past year, but the isolation was killing her.
She’d thrown herself into her chores as a distraction from her own misery, but the chores only made her more miserable. She wasn’t used to doing them, and had barely even understood where to start, so when her efforts proved both futile and unappreciated by the men, the dry, sunny days on the Double O darkened into the deepest gloom Hyacinth had ever known.
She stumbled back to the main house and collapsed onto the porch, eyeing the large tub of boiling laundry with unrivaled hostility. She’d never washed clothes before and had put it off as long as she could, but she was out of drawers, after seven days at the ranch.
“I vaguely remember pots of boiling water and my laundress pushing the clothes around with a large paddle,” she told the dogs as they settled at her feet. “I do wish I’d paid more attention, but how was I to know there would be a need?”
She’d thrown her clothes into the pot and let them cook while she saw to the rest of her chores, but there were still some stains that hadn’t come out yet. Hyacinth assumed that meant she’d have to scrub them against the metal washboard Offer had provided for her that morning.
As she perched on the edge of the porch, Hyacinth’s spine dissolved. She curled over her own lap and stared at her rough, chapped hands. They were red and raw, her nails cracked and missing, her fingers curled like claws and pulsing with pain. The harsh lye had irritated her skin to the point she felt it would be better to have it boiled off her bones, and yet lye was the only soap Offer had available. She had to scrub her clothes with the awful stuff, then the men’s, as they needed fresh laundry as well.
It was how badly her hands hurt that tipped Hyacinth over the edge of her depression.
“It’s too hard!” Her cry rang out over the yard.
The new queen of the dog pack untangled herself from the others lying at Hyacinth’s feet and silently pressed to her side as Hyacinth’s tears welled up and trickled down. When the cold, wet nose burrowed against her throat, the floodgates opened, and there was no stopping the deluge. Before she had a chance to try, Hyacinth was sobbing into the dog’s fur, clutching at the skinny neck as violent shudders ripped through her body.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, woman! What the hell’s wrong with you?” Offer’s voice was as panicked as his grip as he pried Hyacinth away from the dog. “Is it Ernest Horsham? That bastard.”
“No,” Hyacinth blubbered. “Why would you think—?”
“What happened? Are you hurt?”
Hyacinth cried harder. The dogs started growling, the new queen growing distraught enough to snap at Offer as he lifted Hyacinth off the porch.
Offer pointed at the dog. “Back off, bitch. Remember who feeds you.”
“I feed her!” Hyacinth wailed as she balled up her fist and whacked Offer’s shoulder. “I do everything around here. Nobody else is home long enough to do anything. Not that anyone seems to care!”
Offer reared back. “I have to work, Hyacinth. You’d like to keep on eating, wouldn’t you?”
“What does that have to do with working me into my grave?” She nearly screeched in frustration. “Is it too much for any of you to clean up after yourselves?”
Offer scowled. “I work a hundred times harder than you, just to make sure we won’t starve this winter. I’ve got the sorriest herd in a hundred mile radius, but they’re still mine to care for. In order to grow this ranch, I’ve got to make certain they’re doing well, which means I can’t be here with you all day, holding your hand and making you feel better.”
“I didn’t ask you to! But a little bit of niceness—”
“Fine!” Offer made a mocking attempt to pat Hyacinth’s back and soothe her with wordless noises. She pushed away from him with a racking sob and raked him with eyes burning under the heat of her misery. The dogs prowled the dirt just behind her, growing more agitated by the second.
“I can’t do this.” Hyacinth twisted her hands together and tried to firm up her wobbling voice. “I can’t stay here and do all this. I don’t know how.”
“It’s only been a week, woman.”
“The worst week of my entire life, Offer!”
His eyebrows soared skyward. “I hardly believe that, considering how many times you’d been rejected before I took you in. You don’t want to be here anymore? Go on, then. Maybe some other man will take you on as his whore.”
Her mouth dropped. Hyacinth rushed at Offer, beating his chest and slapping at his face. “How dare you!”
“You ain’t a prisoner, darlin’.” Offer caught her flailing wrists in a brutal hold. “You’re free to go any time.”
“I don’t want to go.”
Hyacinth twisted away and swiped at her tears. “I don’t have anywhere to go. I just need help and nobody around here wants to give it!”
Offer threw up his hands. “I’ve got a lot on my plate, Hyacinth.”
“I have noticed!” she screamed. “Trust me. I have not missed your boorish attitude. You are irritating me, sir, and I am sick of it.”
“You’re sick of it?” Offer’s face folded into harsh lines of astonishment. “Believe me, darlin’, I’m more than sick of it. I’m sick of eating biscuits. I’m sick of listening to you drone on about cleaning the outhouse every night when I’ve been busting my ass since before sunup every day. I’m sick of scratching by with a sickly herd of cattle and Raines breathing down my neck for money I don’t have. I’m sick—”
“I’m sick of being treated like I’m worthless!” Hyacinth interrupted at a volume that made Offer flinch and the dogs scatter. “I’m sick of being alone all day, with no one to talk to until dinnertime, and even then nobody says a word to me. But what I’m most sick about is the way you speak to me when and if you finally deign to communicate!”
Offer’s eyebrows shot up around his hairline again. His lips pulled into a crooked line and he pressed his fists to his hips. Hyacinth narrowed her gaze on his face, and her misery cleared just enough to allow her to see the dark circles beneath his eyes, the lines of stress stretching out around his mouth. Her anger evaporated, leaving her beyond exhausted—at least as tired as Offer looked in his ragged clothes and dusty boots.
She rubbed her forehead. “I am more than a hole to fill at night, Offer. Talk to me.”
For a long, tense moment, she didn’t think he would. She thought he would turn on his heel and leave her alone again—or worse, order her off his land. But then Offer’s exhale ruffled the out-of-control curls at her temple.
“The man who owns the ranch to the north wants more money than I have for the water rights I need to keep the herd alive. I need to get the cattle fat enough to survive the drive to market so I can get a little money off them and fix this damn place up. I worry about Bill’s bones and the way he’s getting stiffer by the hour in his saddle. I don’t know how to feed all of us, and I’m constantly distracted by the thought of you here by yourself all day.”
Hyacinth pressed a hand to her stomach. “Why didn’t you tell me all this?”
“What’s the point? You’re all my responsibility, but there’s only so much I can do when I run up against one man’s pride, another man’s greed and Mother Nature herself.” Offer took his hat off and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m tired, Hyacinth. I feel like I’ve been tired for months now, so when I don’t spend hours conversing with you, it’s because I’m thinking things over or my brain has just shut down after a long day.”
“I’m sorry.” She took a tentative step closer to him.
He tucked a loose curl behind her ear. “What do you need help with, Hyacinth?”
She bit her lip, debating whether or not she should tell him. His confession had heaped guilt on top of her misery, knowing that he was carrying such burdens around and knowing that she was only adding to them. But she also knew her limits, and she’d passed far beyond them while cleaning the outhouse.
She blinked hard, but tears welled up anew. “I’m just in over my head, Offer. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I can’t cook. I can’t clean, and when I do, it’s never enough. I scrubbed the outhouse and now my hands hurt.” She held them up and added in a miserable warble, “And I still have to do laundry, but I don’t know how.”
Offer took her hands in his, frowning down at them as he turned them over to examine every inch of the chapped skin. He closed his eyes. “Maybe I can take care of a few things at once, darlin’. Maybe I can get Bill off his damned horse by telling him how badly you need some company. I’ll help you with the laundry today, but I can’t stay here with you all the time.”
“You’ll stay and help me?” Hyacinth peeked up at him through her wet lashes.
“Might as well.” Offer shrugged and flicked a mean look at the path toward the road as if it had caused some offense only he knew. “Jack told me he saw Ernest Horsham on his way out here. When I saw you crying so hard, I thought he’d done something to you.”
Anxiety trailed cold fingers down her spine. Hyacinth gripped Offer’s shirt between her aching fingers. “Why would he come here?”
Chapter Eight
Hyacinth was hanging the first of her newly laundered petticoats on the line when Ernest Horsham rode into the yard accompanied by the less-than-musical baying of the Double O dogs. Offer straightened from his crouch over the washboard and wiped his wet hands against his dusty pants, but Ernest trotted right past him without a word.
Hyacinth lifted her chin and folded her hands at her waist as Ernest slid off his horse in front of her. Standing at his full height, he was only an inch or so taller than her, but he was a good-looking man with an easy smile the other townsfolk seemed to appreciate. He looked trustworthy, like a church-going man any woman would be proud to bring home to her parents, but Hyacinth had seen Ernest’s smile turn to an ugly snarl and had been on the receiving end of his sharp words. She’d have rather not been forced to see him again, especially after a hard morning’s work that had left her more untidy than she cared to appear.
Assuming it was up to her to greet the unwanted visitor, she took a deep breath, but didn’t go so far as to smile at the man. “Mr. Horsham, how do you do?”
He took a moment to draw out her agony and loosely wrap his reins around the porch post before turning to face her directly. He remained silent for another minute, letting his eyes track over her body and his lips pinch in consideration. Hyacinth flicked a glance over Ernest’s shoulder at Offer, who took a step in their direction.
His eyes trained on the unwanted visitor, Offer asked, “What do you want, Horsham?”
Ernest answered bluntly. “Two hundred dollars.”
“What? I’m sorry,” Hyacinth said. “I don’t think I heard you properly.”
The man’s lips twisted in a new direction and his eyes flicked back and forth between hers. “I paid for your transportation out here. I did that in good faith, believing you to be a decent, upstanding woman.”
“Excuse me?” Hyacinth’s cheeks warmed.
“Well, you can’t be decent, shacking up with a man who is not your husband. Clearly you have no morals, which I knew right away, considering the lies you told to get me to pay your way to Creek Bend. I didn’t realize you were a loose woman, but I suppose that goes along with the sinfulness your eyes would suggest.”
“I suggest,” Offer growled, “that you get to your point without disparaging the lady.”
Ernest’s gaze came to rest on Hyacinth’s brown eye. “I believe you misled me, Ms. Woodley, and feel you owe me restitution.”
Hyacinth was flabbergasted. Her cheeks grew much too hot as she stared at Ernest in complete surprise. “I beg your pardon?”
“Let me make it plain for you, miss. I want my money back.”
The anger she’d felt at her situation less than a half hour ago surged anew, filling Hyacinth’s spine with cold, tempered steel. She straightened her shoulders and stuck her nose in the air. “You reneged on the agreement, sir. I don’t owe you anything.”
The dogs snarled when Ernest raised his voice. “I paid for your transportation! Second class on the train and the best stage coach I could hire.”
“But I covered the cost of my food and lodgings myself, only to be denounced, rejected and abused upon my arrival.”
The memory would be etched into her soul until the day she died. Never had Hyacinth been so humiliated, not even after Jonathan had let it be known back home what they’d done together. The way Ernest’s face fell as he looked her over outside the stage depot, his sneer as he called her an ugly, old witch. The veiled threats he’d spread around the unruly group that had gathered to witness her rejection and the way every man but Offer had left her to her own
devices, without even a kind word.
Hyacinth gripped her skirts and fought for control of her emotions. “I spent the last of my money covering the costs you didn’t, and gained nothing to show for it. You were the one who said no, sir.”
Ernest’s eyes narrowed. “I agreed to marry you under false pretenses.”
“You most certainly did not.” Hyacinth jolted forward, nearly tripping over the dogs.
“Whoa!” Offer held up a hand, stopping Hyacinth in her tracks. “Horsham, the lady was willing to marry you, but you threw her away. The fault is yours.”
Ernest shook his head. “Are going to pay for her, O’Neal?”
“No.”
“Isn’t she your woman, now?” Ernest threw a look over his shoulder at Offer that conveyed his disgust more than his words ever could. “You were willing to take in a deformed hag to be your whore, so maybe I should figure on you footing the bill.”
Offer crossed his arms over his chest and rocked back on his heels. “You left her in the middle of town, Horsham. You had a choice, and the one you made cost you money. That’s your mistake, and I suggest you be a man about it.”
“Two hundred dollars is too much to let go of, O’Neal. I aim to get my money from one of you.”
“Go home,” Offer ordered. “Get off my property. This turnip don’t bleed.”
Ernest’s gaze jerked back to Hyacinth. She lifted her shoulders and strove to look bored. “I don’t have any money. I spent it all to get here, where you abandoned me to fend for myself after causing such a scene that no one would offer me any assistance.”
“He took you in.” Ernest jerked a thumb in Offer’s direction. “You weren’t as helpless as you make it seem.”
Offer worked his jaw. “You didn’t leave her any choice. Neither one of us is giving you a dime.”
