by Regina Scott
Nora met Simon’s gaze, and there wasn’t an ounce of judgment on her round face. “I am content Simon and I will get along.”
Just looking at her made it easier to breathe.
“But marriage shouldn’t be about just getting along,” Beth protested. “It’s love and romance.” She glanced among her brothers. “You all know that. You’ve read Pa’s books.”
Around the table Drew and James and even Levi were nodding. Simon squared his shoulders. “The only people to comment on a marriage should be those who entered into it.”
They all started talking then. Simon let the noise wash over him. His only concern was the woman sitting at his side, the woman whose gray eyes were starting to look suspiciously bright, as if she was holding back tears.
“Wait, wait!” Beth cried, scrambling up from her seat. “I know what we should do, Simon. If you’re not going to be really married to Nora, John can stay in your house and she can move in here with me. I’ve always wanted a sister. What do you say?”
Chapter Six
Nora could feel Simon tensing beside her at his sister’s suggestion. She’d never seen a family in which the members felt so free to state their opinions. In her family, her father and later Charles spoke, and everyone else just complied.
She had a feeling Simon would have preferred that kind of order. He didn’t seem to like anyone questioning his plans. But Beth had offered an excellent alternative. If Nora stayed in the main house, she wouldn’t disturb Simon’s peace, and he wouldn’t have to pretend he cared.
“It’s all right,” she told him. “I’ll do whatever you and your family think is best.”
“As if Simon would ever agree with the rest of us,” James warned.
Simon’s gaze was on Nora, studying her as she might have examined a bolt of fabric to put it to best use. What did he see? A plain, sturdy woman who had offered an outrageous bargain because she couldn’t muster the courage to tell off her own brother? A burden he hadn’t planned on carrying? She had foisted herself on him. She really couldn’t blame him if he wanted to take the easy way out now.
He turned to his sister. “Nora and I agreed to our arrangement. We know what we’re doing. Thank you for your offer, Beth, but Nora stays with me.”
Something warm sizzled up inside her. Her parents had seemed a little embarrassed by her, born so late in their years when proper couples were doting grandparents. Charles and Meredith considered her a chore. No one had ever chosen to have her alongside.
His sister was not so easily swayed. “I think Nora should have a say in the matter,” Beth said, crossing her arms over her chest.
Everyone was looking to Nora now. How very surprising. She managed a smile for their sakes. She knew how she’d answer, but it was tremendously gratifying to find them hanging on her words.
Beside her, she felt Simon go still. Did he doubt her answer? She wasn’t going to argue with him. Until she’d reached Wallin Landing, she’d thought no one would ever argue with a fine, upstanding, logical fellow like Simon.
“I’ll stay with Simon,” she told Beth.
She heard Simon exhale, as if he’d been holding his breath. “Good. It’s settled. Are you ready to retire, Nora?”
A few moments ago she would have liked nothing better than to stay by the cozy fire and plan costumes with Beth, but it might be best to retire, give everyone a chance to calm down. Simon had had enough trouble with his family tonight. She didn’t want to cause more.
“Yes, of course, Simon,” she said.
Beth’s face fell. “But I was hoping you could stay for some entertainment.”
“I think we’ve supplied enough of that tonight,” Simon said, turning for the door.
James pointed a finger at the ceiling. “That’s it! The end of the world has come upon us. Simon made a joke.”
“Enough with you, James,” his mother scolded. She turned to Simon and Nora. “Good night, my dears. I hope to see you in the morning.”
Nora nodded. “Certainly. Thank you for dinner and the kind welcome. If I can help in any way, please let me know.” She hurried to go fetch her cloak and Simon’s coat, then followed him out the door, passing John on his way back in. His arms laden with belongings, Simon’s brother raised his reddish brows in question, but Nora could only offer him a smile.
Simon did not look at her as he stalked into the woods. The moon had broken through the clouds, and just enough light flittered past the firs to show a wide path leading north.
“I’m sorry,” she said, handing him his coat.
“You have no reason to apologize.” He gripped the coat so tightly in one fist she thought the material might whimper in protest.
“Neither do you,” she pointed out, lifting her skirts to keep up with him. “But wouldn’t you feel better if you did?” She nodded her head back toward the family home.
He stopped and ran a hand through his hair, which gleamed silver in the moonlight. “Very likely, but I don’t know how to talk to them. What I find logical, they resist, and what they find logical is often ridiculous. I don’t understand how I could have been raised in the same family and have turned out so different.”
He spoke with his usual clipped tone, yet she could feel the pain in his voice. She hurt for him. She’d grown up with no love and expected none in return. He’d grown up surrounded by love and didn’t know how to return it.
“You’re not so different,” she assured him. “You value family, or you wouldn’t have claimed the extra acreage. And your brothers seem to value family. They all stayed here at the farm when they might have staked a claim anywhere in the Territory.”
“That’s because of Pa,” Simon said, starting to walk again. Nora fell in beside him.
“He had a dream of starting his own town out here,” Simon explained. “He and Ma set their markers on the first claims, running parallel from Lake Union up over the hill toward Puget Sound. Drew and I claimed land on either side, and James’s claim is beyond Drew’s.”
“See?” Nora said. “You do think alike.”
“We agree on honoring Pa’s memory,” Simon allowed. “We differ on everything else.”
Ahead, a log cabin loomed out of the darkness. Two stories tall at the peak, it had a cedar shake roof that dropped to a deep overhang on either side and sheltered a front porch enclosed by a rail. Windows, glittering in the darkness, flanked the plank door.
Simon went in first. John must have started a fire in the hearth when he’d come for his things, for warmth and light met Nora as she stepped through the door.
Her first impression was that Simon’s cabin was nothing like his mother’s. For one thing, it was much smaller, as he’d warned her, with the main room only four long strides across in either direction, and a ladder leading up into a loft over the back half of the room. It also lacked any decoration. Four chairs carved from logs squatted around a narrow plank table, with no rug or cushion to soften them. The hearth, made from smooth stones, was the only patch of color in the room, and even that was muted.
Simon nodded toward the ladder. “That leads up to the loft. Ma and Beth washed the bedding before the cold set in, so it should be fairly clean. There’s a pitcher and basin upstairs as well. I’ll fill the bucket down here before I leave in the morning so you’ll have fresh water when you wake. The privy is around back.”
So, this would be home. Nora wandered into the room, footsteps echoing on the bare floor. At least there was a crane in the fireplace for heating kettles and such. The black iron didn’t look as if it had been used much. In fact, the floor was fairly clean, and she caught no sign of cobwebs along the rafters. The copper pots and tin plates piled on the sideboard were neat and orderly, any sign of his brothers’ residency hidden away. Someone was a good housekeeper.
She nodded to the glass-chimneyed l
amp on the table. “I’ll need more light when I’m sewing. Have you plenty of oil?”
“It’s stored in the root cellar to the east of the barn,” he answered. “If you run low while I’m out, ask Ma or Beth to fetch it for you.”
“Fine, then.” There didn’t seem to be anything else to discuss at the moment. He had said he rose early in the morning. She should get out of his way so he could go to sleep.
“I’ll just head up to bed,” she said, moving toward the ladder. It was fairly steep, the log rungs polished from frequent use. She gathered her skirts as best she could and set foot on the lowest rung. Then there was the question of pushing higher when she could use only one hand and her bunched skirts already made her lean back. She managed the second rung, feeling a bit ungainly, but her boot, damp from the ground, slipped on the third, and suddenly she was tumbling backward.
Right into Simon’s arms.
* * *
Simon caught Nora as she fell, taking a step back to better hold her weight. Her head was tilted so that she looked up into his face, and he saw her gray eyes widen with obvious surprise and her rosy lips open in an O. For a moment, they merely gazed at each other.
“You’re going to have to do something about the way you dress,” Simon said. “Your gowns are apparently quite fashionable in some quarters, but they’re impractical out here.”
“Yes, of course, Simon,” she said, lowering her gaze. “I’ll work on that tomorrow.”
He ought to put her down, show her a better way to climb the steep rungs. But she felt surprisingly good in his arms, as if the strength he’d built logging had finally been put to its best use.
Her thick black lashes fluttered. “Simon?”
“What?”
“Perhaps you should put me down.”
He must have been more tired than he’d thought. It wasn’t like him to stand about woolgathering. He lowered her until her feet brushed the floor, then straightened her until she could stand freely.
“Maybe I should sleep downstairs and you up,” she suggested, eyeing the ladder with obvious misgivings.
He may not have been married before, but he didn’t think a husband should allow his wife to sleep on the floor while he took the bed.
“I’ll go behind you as you climb the ladder,” he said. “You won’t fall again.”
She seemed to accept that, for she approached the ladder and set her foot on the bottom rung.
Simon nodded his encouragement, giving her a little lead before sandwiching her between him and the ladder. She froze for a moment, as if accustoming herself to the feel of him right behind her, then took another step upward.
“Sorry for the trouble,” she murmured, her face toward the ladder.
“No trouble,” he said. “I had to do the same thing for Beth the first time she went up to change the bedding.”
But he had to admit holding Beth to the ladder was nothing like holding Nora. With Nora’s curves nestled against him, he felt warm and strong and needed.
What was he thinking? Of course he was needed. His family needed him to point out problems, offer solutions. They needed him to think clearly when their thoughts were muddled by emotions. That was his role.
She reached the top and scrambled onto the floor of the loft, turning to face him as he cleared the next rung. Her nose brushed his, soft as a caress.
“Thank you,” she said, sounding breathless as she scuttled back. Perhaps being so sedentary in her profession made climbing ladders a strain.
He had no doubt she’d get used to it in time.
“You’re welcome.” He nodded to the space. “Hand me that shirt, will you? I’ll need it in the morning.”
The roof was so steeply pitched that he could stand upright only in the center of the loft. Being shorter, Nora had more room. She rose and fetched him the plaid flannel he had draped over the chest his father had carved for him. The carving showed a stag rearing up among trees, majestic, determined.
Alone.
“I forgot my bag,” she said as she knelt in front of him again.
“I’ll get it,” Simon offered. “James must have left it at Ma’s.”
He slid down the ladder and jumped the last rungs. He could see her peering over the edge of the loft, watching him. For some reason, he thought about doing a handstand.
What was wrong with him?
He didn’t need to impress Nora. They weren’t courting. They had made a bargain, one she had had to change, but one he would honor nonetheless. He merely had to adjust to sharing his cabin with her. He didn’t have to share his heart.
He was turning for the door, when someone rapped on the panel. Simon went and pulled on the latch.
In the moonlight, John smiled at him. “I thought Nora might need this.” He held out the case.
Simon took it with a nod. “Thanks.”
“Everything all right?” John asked, peering around him as if he expected to see Nora in a sobbing heap by the fire, regretting their wedding.
“Fine,” Simon said. “Good night, John.”
John’s hand flew out to catch the door before Simon could close it.
“Wait.” He drew in a breath, then spoke low, his gaze meeting Simon’s. “I heard them all talking. They’re worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” Simon snapped. “You know why I married Nora. Nothing’s changed.”
John nodded toward the loft. “Tell that to the woman sleeping in your cabin.”
Simon glanced back in time to see Nora duck deeper into the shadows. He set down the bag, stepped outside and closed the door behind him.
“Neither of us planned to live together,” he admitted to his brother. “But Nora’s reasonable. We can come to terms.”
“Do you hear yourself?” John shook his head, his red hair showing gray in the moonlight, as if he was wiser than his years. “I have only Drew’s and James’s marriages to go by, but I can’t see Catherine or Rina coming to terms with them.”
“Nora isn’t Catherine or Rina.” If she had been as strong-willed as either of his sisters-in-law, she would have found a way to stand up to her family without resorting to buying courage, as she had called it.
“No,” John said, his face solemn. “She seems a great deal more fragile.”
Simon pictured Nora’s sturdy frame, the generous curves outlined by her dresses. He remembered the wildcat who had told him what she expected of him. No, he could not see Nora as fragile.
“She’s stronger than you think,” he told his brother.
“Maybe,” John allowed. “And maybe all this will work out. But Ma and Beth are concerned you gave up your chance at love to make sure they were fed.”
Love? What chance had he had for that? His mother and sister might be worried for him, but they were among the first to argue with him. Of his brothers, he only got along well with John, but so did everyone else. No matter how he tried, he caused friction, dissention. Love wasn’t for him.
“I’m fine, John,” he repeated. “Tell Ma and Beth not to worry. I know what I’m doing.”
John nodded. “You usually do. Good night, Simon. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Simon watched as his brother strode away through the trees. John was easy to convince, accepting things as they were presented. His other brothers and their wives would come around in time. Ma and Beth would eventually appreciate his decision, once they grew to know Nora. Like John, Simon’s wife was affable, willing to listen to reason.
So why did he have the feeling that his life was about to change?
Chapter Seven
Simon was gone the next morning when Nora woke. She’d slept surprisingly well in the strange surroundings. The quilt she’d snuggled under on the bed’s thick straw mattress was well stitched and done in the c
olors of the forest—spruce and bark and sky—that somehow reminded her of Simon. The thick cedar roof shut off all sound from outside, and heat from the chimney rising at the back of the loft kept the space comfortable.
She was glad she’d packed one of her narrower dresses, the sort she used to wear when she’d cared for her parents and Charles and Meredith. This one was of soft gray wool, because Meredith had thought the color and plain lines more seemly for a spinster. Nora had spent a week embroidering crimson roses along the hem, cuffs and simple white collar. Meredith had not been amused.
Now Nora put only one flannel petticoat under the dress so that it was easier to navigate the ladder. After all, there was no Simon waiting at the bottom to catch her if she fell this time.
The memory of his arms on either side of her, his strong body just behind, made her blush as she stepped down the rungs, clinging to the rails. Simon Wallin was a fine figure of a man, no question. And he must be terribly smart too, to see the difficulty inherent in any situation. She was fortunate to have married such a man.
She made a face as she went to poke up the fire. Really, what did she know about the institution of marriage? After seeing how her traveling companions interacted with their beaus and husbands, she had come to realize she couldn’t use her parents or Charles and Meredith as good examples. And she and Simon weren’t really married for all they’d had a wedding. They merely had an agreement.
He’d certainly kept his end of it. He’d left her a bucket of fresh water, as promised, and a box full of wood for the fire. She found two thick slices of apple bread sitting on a tin plate on the table.
How considerate.
It didn’t take long to heat the main room and tidy up after breakfast. There was a mirror hanging on one wall, and she used it to repin her hair, straighten her collar. If she had been in Seattle, she’d have hurried to her little corner of the Kellogg brothers’ shop, with fabrics and notions piled around her like a rainbow, to work on her commissions. Mrs. Horton had burned a hole in a favorite gown, and Nora was remaking the skirt to hide the mark. Two of the sawmill operators needed new pants hemmed. And then there was that waistcoat for Brother James, a tailored affair of silver-shot satin. She tried to imagine practical Simon wearing one and smiled.
