A Touch of Frost

by Jo Goodman

  She’d been angry, but she never lost control of a scene.

  Fiona put on the slippers, found her robe draped over the oak chest at the foot of the bed, and shrugged into it. Without looking in the mirror, she gathered her thick auburn hair in one fist, expertly twisted it into a knot at the back of her head, and stabbed it with two ivory picks to keep it in place.

  The front room of the house was deserted, as was the kitchen, Thad’s study, the dining room, and the formal parlor where they were meant to receive guests but rarely had occasion to do so. Fiona did not open the doors to any of the other bedrooms. Instead, she stood beside the great iron stove in the kitchen, close enough to the housekeeper’s quarters to be heard without projecting her voice beyond what would have been the first eight rows in the theater.

  “Ellie! Wake up! I need to speak to you.” Fiona listened for sounds that Ellie Madison was stirring, and when she heard movement on the other side of the door, she lit a lamp and set it on the kitchen table. She folded her arms and rested one hip against the cold stove. She waited.

  When Ellie Madison appeared, Fiona took note that it was unlikely that the housekeeper had been deeply asleep. She was a trifle too clear-eyed and alert to suit Fiona. It occurred to her that Ellie had been keeping vigil while Fiona herself had gone to bed.

  She watched Ellie pat down wayward wisps of dark red hair as she stepped into the kitchen. A heavy plait hung over her right shoulder and she brushed it back. Her robe was haphazardly tied and she repaired that now, cinching it tightly around her waist.

  Fiona was not impressed. Every gesture was calculated to support the façade that she had been sleeping, but Fiona did not confront Ellie with her suspicions. The housekeeper would never admit it, and it was of too little consequence to haggle over now. And, Fiona thought, there were practical reasons not to antagonize Ellie Madison. She would never get a cup of coffee if she did not sheathe her claws.

  “They’re not back,” said Fiona.

  Ellie nodded. “Seems so. The house is quiet. There’s a light in the bunkhouse that I can see from my room. Could be some of the hands are still up waiting for them.”

  “Should I ask someone to ride into town? Ralph Neighbors? Scooter Banks?”

  “Late for that now. The train’s known to be delayed from time to time.”

  “It was supposed to arrive around nightfall. Midnight’s come and gone. Thad told me that delays mostly happen during the winter months.”

  “That’s true, but . . .” She glanced at the coffeepot on the stove. “How about I make us a pot of coffee, and we’ll wait them out right here?”

  Fiona appreciated the other woman’s predictability. She nodded. “Would you? I’d like that. Truth be told, the company more than the coffee.” She continued quickly when Ellie hesitated on her way to the stove. “Oh, but I’d appreciate the coffee as well.”

  “Hmm.”

  Fiona thought Ellie added something under her breath, sly boots that she was, but the need for coffee overwhelmed her need to know what she’d said. “The stove’s gone cold.” She offered this information almost apologetically, although they both knew it was not her job to start a fire or keep one going.

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  Fiona felt her hackles rise at the housekeeper’s cheerful response. No one could be that pleased about breathing life into the iron behemoth, no one, that is, unless the motive was to prove it could be done to the woman who had never been able to do it. Fiona wanted to spit, but her eyes fell on the coffeepot as Ellie pumped water into it, and she swallowed instead.

  She watched Ellie as much for her movement as to take her measure. Fiona had never been able to help herself in that regard. If making comparisons had not been in her nature, it would have come to her eventually. Survival in the theater depended upon it, and she was, above all else, a survivor. When she competed for a role she wanted, she got it, and competition for a man was no different.

  There was no denying that Ellie Madison was a handsome woman, a description generally approved for a female maturing gracefully through her forties, and Fiona allowed that perhaps in her youth Ellie had been quite pretty. Her hair had possibly once been a vibrant shade of red, but the years had faded it. Still, although Fiona looked for gray threads that were an inevitability of aging, she never found one. In Fiona’s mind, the answer was simple: Ellie plucked them out.

  Fiona had known of the existence of the housekeeper before she ever left New York, indeed, before she agreed to marry Thaddeus. It was a comfort, though someone—Phoebe—might call it a condition, to know that she would not be responsible for preparing meals or beating rugs or doing laundry. Meeting Ellie Madison, though, had been, if not a revelation, then an eye-opener. Here, then, preparing coffee in the kitchen, laying kindling in the stove, setting out exquisitely painted china cups, was her husband’s mistress of the last twenty-plus years.

  Thaddeus had failed to mention that when he proposed, nor did it come up in conversation as they traveled more than half the length of the country, and at no time since she had arrived at Twin Star had there been a single reference to the long affair. She did not expect to hear the truth from Ellie, but her husband’s silence was insulting. Did he truly believe she didn’t know?

  Fiona understood why Thaddeus had chosen her over Ellie Madison. Serving as a man’s de facto wife as Ellie had these many long years made the housekeeper as intriguing and desirable as the furniture she dusted. She was attractive, like the cabriolet chair at the head of the dining room table; she was familiar, like the oil painting that hung above the mantel in the formal parlor; and she was comfortable, like the brushed velvet sofa in the front room with its slightly worn arms and a depression in one corner of the long cushion that perfectly fit Thaddeus’s trim ass.

  Fiona was realistic about her own attributes. Ellie Madison could cinch the belt of her robe until she couldn’t breathe and Fiona was confident that the housekeeper still would not be able to achieve her classic hourglass silhouette. It was also unfortunate that Ellie spent as much time as she did out of doors without benefit of a parasol or a decent bonnet. Fiona’s complexion was fashionably pale. The kindest thing she could say about Ellie’s was that it was not.

  Fiona was tall but not statuesque or overblown. She commanded attention with a gesture; she could turn her wrist and be certain that eyes would follow its graceful arc. Ellie was short, but not squat. Fiona allowed that a fair description would be that she was petite, and if Ellie garnered a man’s attention now, it was because she teased him with a plate of steak and eggs or an apple fritter.

  Fiona inhaled deeply as Ellie poured coffee into her cup. “You certainly have my attention,” she said on a whisper of sound.

  Ellie poured a cup for herself and returned the pot to the stove before she sat. “How’s that again?”

  “Nothing important. Just finishing a conversation I was having in my head.” She raised the cup, holding it in her palms instead of by the delicate stem, and regarded Ellie over the rim. “This is nice. Thank you.”

  “It is nice,” Ellie murmured. “Not much occasion to take a moment.”

  Fiona said nothing. Ellie’s observation was true for her, but Fiona had plenty of occasions to take a moment. Lots of moments. Ellie knew it, too. Her comment was meant to get under Fiona’s skin, and it did, but not so that the housekeeper would ever know. Fiona had not been the toast of the New York stage because of her face and figure, although they certainly helped. No, she had been celebrated by critics and audiences because she could act.

  Ellie sipped her coffee. “Your sister might have missed a connection somewhere. It’s possible she had to take a later train. That would explain why Ben and Mr. Frost haven’t returned. I bet they’re still waiting for her.”

  It grated on Fiona’s nerves every time Ellie called Thaddeus “Mr. Frost,” just as if she had never shared his bed. Fiona h
ad asked Thaddeus about it once, thinking they might have an honest dialogue about that relationship, but he had only said that it was Ellie’s way, and as many times as he’d told her to call him “Thad” or “Thaddeus,” she never had. There was no discussion after that, no room to maneuver the conversation in the direction she wanted to take it.

  “Phoebe doesn’t miss anything,” said Fiona. “That includes trains, I expect.” She raised her cup to her lips, drank. It was not so hot that it burned her mouth, but more than warm enough to feel it sliding down her throat. Only a few drops of whiskey would have improved it. Then she would have felt it in the pit of her empty stomach.

  “Do you want I should fix you something?” asked Ellie. “I can scramble some eggs. Warm the heel of bread left in the box over there.”

  Fiona shook her head, chuckled humorlessly. Her eyes, the color of amethysts, slid sideways toward the drinks cabinet in the dining room. “Hair of the dog maybe.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do, but I am going to resist. I know when I’ve had too much to drink. Afterward anyway. Not when I’m drinking.”

  “Mm.”

  Fiona looked sharply at the housekeeper. “There’s something you want to say? Some judgment you want to pass?”

  “No and no. I’m familiar, is all.”

  “Who? You?”

  “No. My husband. He had a taste for it.”

  “Well, that’s where we’re different. I don’t have a taste for it. I don’t even like the taste of it, it’s only that sometimes . . .” She stopped, not because she didn’t know what she wanted to say, but because when she heard the words in her mind, she knew she did not want Ellie Madison to hear them, too. Ellie, though, was nodding faintly, as if she’d heard them anyway, and that made Fiona want to throw something, if not at the oh, so sympathetic housekeeper pretending to be her friend, then at the wall. Contrary to her instincts, she didn’t. She carefully set her cup in its saucer and folded her hands in her lap, where Ellie could not see how tightly they gripped the folds of her robe.

  “I’m out of sorts,” she said. Her tone captured the nuances of both embarrassment and regret. “I worry about Phoebe. I think it was a mistake for her to accept Thad’s invitation. I miss her. Of course I miss her, but I could have gone east, was planning to, in fact, and then Thaddeus informs he’s asked her to come here. Can you imagine? Without consulting me, he just extended an invitation.”

  “Mr. Frost has been making decisions on his own for a lot of years.”

  “Is that an excuse?”

  “No. An explanation.”

  Fiona did not like having her husband’s behavior explained to her, but then she’d opened this particular can of worms.

  “If I may speak plainly, Mrs. Frost?”

  Fiona could not imagine what she could say that would stop Ellie, so she nodded.

  “If you want to be included, then you will have to remind him how to do it. Mary was his partner as much as she was his wife. I know because she was my friend, and she would not have stood for a man who wanted to run this ranch like a renegade. Do you take my meaning?”

  Fiona was not sure that she did, but she nodded anyway. “I should have gone with Thaddeus to the station. He wanted me to.”

  “I know.”

  In her lap, Fiona’s fingers uncurled. She smoothed her robe, lifted her hands, and raised her cup to her lips again. “I was still so . . . so annoyed with him that I let him go off on his own. Oh, I know Ben’s with him, but it’s not the same. I should be with both of them, welcoming her. Thaddeus barely made her acquaintance in New York and Ben doesn’t know her at all. They might not even recognize her.”

  “I believe Mr. Frost has a photograph of Miss Apple. Or at least he did.”

  “A photograph?”

  “Mm-hmm. He showed it to me. She’s a lovely young woman, is your sister.”

  Fiona wondered how she did not know about the photograph. And if she did not know that, how much more was there that she didn’t know. Rather than being comforted by the knowledge that her husband could easily identify Phoebe, the realization disturbed her.

  She stood, took the pot off the stove, and added coffee to her cup. She offered the same to Ellie, who shook her head. Shrugging, Fiona returned to her seat.

  “I still can’t imagine why Phoebe agreed to come. There’s nothing for her here.”

  Ellie’s eyebrows rose in mild surprise, not disapproval. “You’re here.”

  Fiona was a long time answering. “I am, aren’t I?” Her gaze fell on her reflection in the coffee. “Yes, I certainly am.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Where’s Fiona?” asked Thaddeus when Ellie stepped out to greet them on the long front porch.

  “Shh. Lower your voice. She’s sleeping. Finally. Was up most of the night waiting for you. Drank more coffee than any ten cowpokes sitting around a campfire, and I just tucked her in, thank you very much.”

  Remington dismounted, took the three steps to the porch in a single leap, and enveloped Ellie Madison in a fierce hug. “Seems like someone else drank their fair share of coffee. You’ve got the jitters.” He looked over his shoulder at Ellie’s son. Ben was still sitting beside Phoebe in the buggy they’d used to bring her to Twin Star. “Your ma’s got the jitters, Ben!”

  “I don’t think those are the jitters,” Ben said mildly. “Better put her down. I’m not sure she can breathe.”

  Remington set Ellie on her feet. She promptly slugged him in the shoulder with the heel of her hand. “Idiot child. My Ben was always smarter than you.”

  “No denying it.” He swooped, kissed her cheek, and stepped aside so she could stop ducking and weaving in order to look around him.

  Ellie extended her arms in a welcoming gesture. “Come here, young lady, and let us get you inside. Ben, help her down from the buggy. Oh, but what a journey you must have had. Remington, you and Mr. Frost take her bags. Do you have a trunk, dear? Yes? Remington will get that in a moment.”

  Phoebe took the hand Ben held out, grateful for the support when her legs wobbled once her feet were on the ground. After Thaddeus formally introduced her to the housekeeper, she was hustled inside while Ellie directed the men around with the authority of a stage manager. Phoebe felt completely at home.

  “We’ve spruced up Ben’s room for you,” said Ellie. “You’re not putting him out. He likes the bunkhouse fine, and come warmer nights, he’ll be just as content to sleep out of doors.”

  “I won’t,” said Ben in an aside to Phoebe. “But she’s right about the bunkhouse.”

  Ellie cuffed her son on the side of his head. “I heard that. Go on with you; show her to the room. And quietly. Mrs. Frost is sensibly asleep as all of you should be.” She herded Phoebe and her escorts down the hall then shooed the men out of the room after they dropped the bags and the trunk.

  Phoebe stood beside the bed, hands folded in front of her, waiting for Ellie to shut the door. When she did, the housekeeper was on what Phoebe considered to be the wrong side of it. “You don’t have to stay,” Phoebe said. “I can manage.”

  “Of course you can, but that doesn’t mean you should. Go on. Sit down before you drop. I’m going to unpack a few things for you, find your nightgown and slippers. Do you have a robe?”

  Phoebe nodded dumbly.

  “Good. I’ll set that out for you as well. There’s fresh water in the pitcher. The washstand’s in the corner. Soap is beside the basin. Towels and washcloths in the cupboard underneath. Up to you if want to clean up before you crawl under the covers. Piss pot’s under the bed. First thing, though, is to get you out of Remington’s coat. You must have been chilled to the bone if he gave you that.”

  There was no resisting her, Phoebe realized, and there was no shame in surrendering to a superior force. In every way it was exactly what she needed to do, and in
short order her bags were unpacked with every item disappearing into the wardrobe or the chest of drawers. When directed, she closed her eyes and raised her face for a gentle washing, and with no protest at all, she stripped down to her shift and then allowed a perfect stranger to exchange it for her nightgown.

  She was asleep before her head touched the pillow or she would have known Ellie tucked her in.

  • • •

  “Snug as a bug,” Ellie said when she entered the kitchen. Thaddeus was slathering sweet cream butter on bread she had baked that morning while Remington was using a knife to get the last bit of strawberry preserves out of a jar. She laid Remington’s long coat over the back of his chair. “A spoon would serve you better, Remington. Where’s Ben?”

  Remington did not stop his excavation work. “Took the horses and the buggy to the barn, then he was going to turn in.”

  Ellie pulled out a chair and sat. “It wouldn’t hurt you to do the same.” She looked pointedly at Thaddeus. “You, too, Mr. Frost. I don’t know that I’ve seen you so tired after a week of riding the property and sleeping on the ground. What happened? Because surely this late arrival cannot be because Miss Apple missed a connection somewhere. I cast that line to Mrs. Frost but she wasn’t having any of it.”

  Thaddeus looked up. “No, she wouldn’t.” He took a bite of bread and washed it down with a gulp of coffee. “I don’t think I’m the one that ought to explain. Remington can do it. I have to tell Fiona.”

  Ellie and Remington exchanged surreptitious glances but neither of them spoke.

  Thaddeus looked out the window above the sink. A faint orange glow was just becoming visible on the horizon. “Hardly seems worth going to bed,” he said, lifting his chin in that direction. “Day’s breaking. Time to get to work.”

  In the event that his father was serious, Remington quickly finished spreading preserves on his heel of bread and took a bite. He slowed down so he could taste what he put in his mouth when he heard Thaddeus snicker. “Funny,” he said, cheeking the bread.