Reluctant Brides Collection

by Cathy Marie Hake

  They walked through the house toward the kitchen.

  “I suppose some of them have,” Percy said. “One or two of them are trying to muster the courage to speak a flattering word to me. I see it in their eyes.”

  Lacey laughed aloud.

  “Can I help you in the kitchen?” Percy asked. “I’m very good at mashing potatoes.”

  “Yes, but you do it for fifty people. There will only be six of us tonight.”

  Six, thought Percy. Lacey, Travis, their two sons, and herself would make five. So Josh would be there, after all.

  “Besides,” Lacey continued, “I invited you here to give you a break from the kitchen. The food is almost ready. I’m just waiting for Travis and Josh to come through the door.”

  As if on cue, the front door opened again, and the two men entered. Joshua set his black medical bag on the floor next to the door in a way that seemed habitual. “Miss Morgan, what a delightful surprise,” he said. His eyes caught hers with sincerity.

  “Your sister invited me to dinner when we met in the street this morning,” Percy answered. She liked his eyes. An ordinary shade of brown, they nevertheless had a shining quality that caught her by surprise each time she saw them.

  “I’m so glad she did.”

  “Travis,” Lacey said, “if you can help the boys wash up, we’ll be ready to eat.”

  “On my way,” Travis said, and headed for the stairs.

  “Why don’t you two go on into the dining room,” Lacey said. “I’ll just see to the food.”

  Josh put his hand lightly on Percy’s elbow and steered her toward the dining room.

  “I see you had your medical bag with you,” Percy said. “Was there an emergency today?”

  Josh shook his head as he pulled out Percy’s chair. He had learned his city habits well. She seated herself as gracefully as she could.

  “No emergency. I make rounds a couple of times a month in some of the other places on the peninsula where people are beginning to settle. I was gone overnight, actually. It’s a rather long circuit to cover in one day.”

  “Then you must be exhausted.”

  “I’m ready for a good hot meal, that’s certain.” Josh took his place beside Percy as Travis and the boys made their noisy entrance. Travis settled them smoothly, and the boys sat with their hands in their laps waiting for food. Lacey came in with a platter of sliced ham and the potatoes, and a promise to return with the peas and biscuits.

  The boys sat across from Percy and Josh, and Lacey and Travis sat at the ends of the table. Suddenly, Percy was caught with her eyes open as everyone else closed theirs and lowered their heads. Awkwardly, she did the same.

  “Father God,” Travis said smoothly, “we’re grateful for the gifts that You bring us every day, and tonight we’re especially grateful for the gift of having Miss Morgan with us. Thank You for bringing her to our community, and bless the time that we have visiting with her tonight. Amen.”

  Percy felt the blush rising in her cheeks. No one had ever thanked God for her presence before.

  “You like that word ‘community,’ don’t you?” Josh said to Travis as he passed the mashed potatoes to Percy.

  “Don’t you?” Travis retorted.

  “It’s a fine word,” Josh agreed, “especially for a place like this.”

  “What do you mean?” Percy asked. “A place like this?”

  “Every year we look less and less like a lumber camp, but we’re not really a town. ‘Community’ is a good in-between word.”

  Percy served herself some peas and shrugged. “I hear the men in the mess hall talking about this sometimes. But I don’t see what all the fuss is about.”

  Josh raised an eyebrow.

  “What I mean is,” Percy continued, “if the camp…the community…is meant to become a town, it will. There won’t be any way to stop it.”

  “So you believe in God’s will, one way or the other?” asked Travis.

  “I don’t know very much about God’s will,” Percy was quick to say. “I don’t know very much about God at all. I just believe that some things are out of our control. No matter how much we try to control a situation, things happen. There’s no stopping it.”

  Lacey put a spoonful of peas on Caleb’s plate, despite his protest. Then she turned to Percy. “Let me ask you another question. Do you think that you can make something happen if you want to badly enough?”

  Percy was quiet. “No, I don’t think so,” she finally said softly. “What happens, happens.”

  “Can God make something happen?” Josh asked.

  Percy shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose He could if He cares. But God is…I don’t know if God cares.” She regretted the words as soon as she spoke them.

  “I want more mashed potatoes, please,” Adam said as politely as he could manage. “Please pass them to me. I can serve myself.”

  Travis set the bowl in front of Adam, who plopped an enormous mound of potatoes on his plate. Then he added a tiny bit more…and just a little more.

  “There. That’s enough,” he announced.

  Everyone laughed.

  Percy was glad for the change in subject. She had not meant to express her doubts about God aloud in a roomful of strangers.

  “How are you liking your work, Miss Morgan?” Josh asked.

  “I’m slowly getting squared away,” she answered, relieved that he did not pursue her earlier remarks.

  “The men are raving about your cooking,” Travis reported, “behind your back, of course.”

  “Of course,” Percy echoed, smiling. “To tell me to my face would be almost like being glad I came.”

  “You have a good attitude. I appreciate that.”

  “I have a lot of ideas for how we could give the men a better diet,” Percy said. “I would like to plant a vegetable garden, but it would have to be rather large to feed fifty men. We could plant herbs, too, so everything would not taste so bland. And if I had a second pair of hands in the kitchen at mealtime, I could offer more variety.”

  “Didn’t the cook used to have an assistant?” Lacey asked.

  Travis nodded. “No one seems to want the job right now.”

  “Those silly men don’t want to be told what to do by a woman,” Lacey said irritably.

  Travis’s eyes twinkled. “They’ll never manage marriage if they don’t get over that.”

  “What about one of the new brides?” Josh suggested. “Maybe both of them.”

  Lacey shook her head. “What they need is friendship, not more work. Keeping house in those lean-tos is no picnic, and they both hope to begin building soon.”

  “Well, perhaps I’ll ask around among the men again,” Travis said. “Percy should have help.”

  “That was easier than I thought,” Percy said pleasantly.

  “Getting Travis to agree with you is not the hard part,” Josh reminded her. “We still have to find someone who would like the job.”

  “Until we do, I’ll press on by myself. I’m going to mark off a garden plot tomorrow.”

  Percy looked across at Adam and burst out laughing. He had energetically attacked his mound of potatoes and had eaten a good portion of it. But a V-shaped clump hung from his chin like a white beard. “Perhaps when this community becomes a town, you’ll find a good barber for your son.”

  Chapter 10

  Not a scoop of mashed potatoes remained in the bowl, and the bread basket was empty, but there were some peas left. Everyone had eaten their fill and the boys had wandered into the living room to play.

  “This is a beautiful home,” Percy remarked to her hostess. “And you’ve decorated it wonderfully. You have a flair for the artistic.”

  “Thank you,” Lacey said, “but most of the credit belongs to my husband and my friend Abby’s husband. They built it and they wouldn’t settle for anything less than the best in craftsmanship.”

  “I can see that they are skilled. We had a carved crown molding like this in the house I grew up in,
and my father always told people it had come from Europe.”

  “Ah, your secret is out,” Travis said, smiling. “You’re a civilized city girl, after all. Do you miss all the finery?”

  “I’m quite content to be here,” Percy said sincerely, without further explanation about what had brought her to the camp.

  “Do your parents still live in that home?” Lacey asked.

  Percy hesitated a split second. “No,” she finally said, “they’ve moved on.” She lifted her eyes to the large dining room windows dressed with a rich burgundy tapestry. “Did you make these draperies yourself?”

  “Yes, she did,” Travis answered proudly for his wife. “My mother-in-law, before she passed away, made sure Lacey could do just about anything.”

  “She just thought of it as doing what was necessary,” Lacey said.

  Percy was relieved that her question about the draperies had successfully shifted the focus of conversation. What had possessed her to bring up her childhood home in the first place? Danger lurked in places where she began to feel comfortable. She would have to be more careful.

  “What else did she teach you?” Percy asked, trying to make sure the conversation did not circle back to her family.

  “Cooking, gardening, wood chopping. She did it all.”

  “Did she grow up on a farm?”

  “No, actually she was a city girl, too, like you. My father wooed her up here to the end of the world. Thirty years ago, there was very little this far north except the lighthouse. We had to be even more self-sufficient than we are now.”

  “Who taught her how to get along so well?”

  “Experience,” Lacey answered quickly. “Especially after she started having children, she had to learn very quickly.”

  “Don’t forget that your mother is also the one who made a teacher out of you,” Travis said. He turned to Percy. “Mary Wells taught all five of her children, and they are five of the most well-rounded people I know.”

  “I think Lacey deserves the credit for Micah’s education,” Joshua said. “She helped a lot when Micah was small and then picked up where Mama had left off when she died. But Mama probably would have insisted on teaching me a medical course if she had not become ill and died before I was ready for medical school.”

  Percy turned to Josh and smiled. “She sounds like a wonderful mother.” Images of her own mother floated through her mind, a mother who knew very little about what the private tutors might be teaching her daughters and who was as isolated from realities of the world as if she had lived in a lighthouse.

  “Mama was very strict,” Josh was saying. “We did not always appreciate that as we were growing up, but I can see now that it gave us the determination that we needed to do what we’re doing now.”

  “And what exactly are you doing now?” Percy teased.

  “Building a town,” Josh declared emphatically.

  “Or at the very least a community,” Travis added. “Right now, I would like a community with a softer chair.” He pushed back from the table.

  “Go on into the living room,” Lacey said, as she stood and began stacking plates. “Get comfortable, and I’ll bring coffee.”

  “I’ll help you,” Percy offered. She picked up the empty mashed potatoes bowl. “I guess we don’t have to worry much about the leftovers.”

  Lacey laughed. “Adam’s favorite food. He won’t be pleased when he finds out that there are enough peas left to have them again tomorrow.”

  “Are these from your garden?” Percy asked as they walked with their loads toward the kitchen.

  “I canned them last year,” Lacey explained. “I can’t wait for this year’s crop to be ready. There’s nothing like sugar snap peas, fresh from the pod.”

  “Perhaps you’ll help me plant my garden,” Percy said hopefully. “I’ve never actually had a vegetable garden before.”

  Lacey burst out laughing. She set her armful of plates beside the sink. “You sounded like such an expert when you asked Travis about putting in a garden.”

  Percy shook her head. “No expert, just being sensible. I have to have more than an occasional ear of corn if I’m going to cook properly, and a vegetable and herb garden seems like the most economical way to improve the diet for the men in the long run.”

  “You’re right about that. We can get a lot of food in cans now, but fresh is always so nice. Travis should be impressed that you are thinking ahead and trying to keep costs down at the same time.”

  “So you’ll help me?”

  “Yes, I’ll be delighted to help, and I’ll tell Abby that she’s got to help, too.”

  “Can you mark it off with me in the morning?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Good. Then I just need to find someone willing to work with me to look after it.”

  Lacey took the serving dishes from Percy’s hand. “Go on into the living room.”

  “But I’ll be happy to help you clean up,” Percy said.

  “No thanks. Not now, at least. I’ll make coffee and join you in a few minutes.”

  Percy could see that Lacey was not one to be argued with. She turned to go into the living room. She stood under the hand-carved crown molding and soaked up the scene before her eyes.

  Travis sat in a chair that was obviously his favorite, his feet up on an ottoman, with a book in his lap. But he was not reading it. He was watching Joshua and the boys. Josh sat cross-legged on one side of a checkerboard, while Adam squirmed around on the other side.

  “You’ve got me now,” Josh said dramatically. “I don’t know how I’ll ever get myself out of this predicament.”

  Adam howled with pleasure.

  “My turn, my turn,” Caleb insisted.

  “You’re not playing,” Adam said emphatically.

  “Of course he is,” Josh said, grabbing Caleb and pulling him into his lap. “If I ever needed someone on my team, it’s now.”

  Caleb gave his brother a smug, satisfied look.

  “What shall we do, Caleb?” Josh asked. “Should we move this one or that one?”

  The three-year-old boy put a pudgy finger on a red checker. “This one.”

  “This one? Are you sure?”

  Caleb nodded.

  “All right, we’ll move this one.” Josh slid the checker diagonally one space.

  Adam whooped and he swept down his hands to double jump his uncle and come in for a king.

  Caleb turned around and patted his uncle’s head. “It’s okay, Uncle Josh. Next time.”

  “That’s right. We’ll get him next time.”

  The lump in Percy’s throat was so big she could barely swallow. What a wonderful picture of a man with his children—only these were not Joshua’s sons, but his nephews. She could not imagine he could be any better with them if they were his own. Travis looked on with a smile, much more interested in his sons than his book.

  The house she had grown up in may have had hand-carved European crown moldings and expensive arrangements of fine furniture, but it did not have what she saw before her eyes right now. She herself had learned to play checkers by reading a book and deciphering the rules and illustrations on her own. She had practiced against herself until she could predict all possibilities. But her father would never have come home from the bank and then spend his evening playing checkers with young children, much less seek obviously futile advice from a three-year-old boy. He rarely even stayed in the same room with his daughters after the somber, formal evening meal, preferring instead to withdraw to his study until long after Percy and her sister had been sent upstairs to bed. Percy had learned at a very young age not to disturb her father when he went into his study. But that was then, and this was now. What did it matter, anyway? she asked herself.

  “Can we play again?” Adam asked. He looked at his uncle with the same hopeful brown eyes that Josh had.

  “Sure, we can play again,” Josh answered. “This time, Caleb gets to make the first move. Maybe we’ll be luckier.”

&nb
sp; They started setting up the game and Percy took a step forward. “Who taught you how to play checkers?” she asked Josh teasingly.

  “My father,” he answered. “But it looks like I could use a few more lessons.”

  Adam did not want to stop playing, so he set up one game after another. Percy could not help but be drawn into the competition and, by the time they were finished with dessert and coffee, Percy was sitting in for Josh, having proved herself to be a worthy opponent for Adam.

  As Percy played, though, she kept one ear cocked to the adult conversation. Travis was mulling over whom he might ask to work in the kitchen with Percy. Josh was pressing to move forward with some new construction, following Peter’s latest drawings. So far the people responsible for the lumbering business were responsible for the growing community, Josh remarked. But soon the community would need its own mayor. The people who lived in the town should have some say in how it developed.

  Percy had no plans to leave any time soon, but, at the same time, she had not thought about the future of the camp. She wondered if she would ever be personally interested in how it developed.

  The time came when Percy faced Josh over the checkerboard, with everyone else cheering over their competition. With most of the pieces removed from the board, she knew she had him cornered before any one figured out the strategy. She could make a subtle move and lose the game graciously in another three or four moves or she could easily win it within three moves. As she contemplated her choice, Percy glanced at Josh’s gentle face and comfortable smile. He was a good, kind man who deserved to win. But she had earned this win; she had not practiced by herself all those years for nothing! So she made the move that would bring her victory, but Josh did not immediately realize the impending defeat. When it came, though, he groaned but accepted it graciously, catching her eye with the twinkle in his.

  Percy lingered in the warmth of the Gates home as long as she dared without being impolite. The butterflies in her stomach had long ago disappeared. Even as she moved her feet down the porch steps and across the street, she felt the reluctance of her body to leave the congenial, welcome atmosphere of that simple living room. At the back of the mess hall, she sighed and then opened the narrow door to her little room. She thought of Lacey’s rich burgundy draperies. Perhaps after the garden was in, she would ask Lacey to teach her to sew. If she could learn to cook as well as she did out of necessity, she might also conquer sewing.