by Tess LeSue
“You’re Philip’s mother,” one of the little girls said as she bent low over her bowl and began shoveling beans in.
“Yes,” Georgiana said absently.
The brute was suffering graciously under Mrs. Tilly’s motherly attentions, but he clearly wanted to be left alone to eat. He was eyeing the way the little girl was shoveling beans with no small amount of envy.
“I hope you’re getting a haircut first thing in the morning,” Mrs. Tilly was saying. “It’s a disgrace.” She patted his arm. “Eat. We’ve finished already.”
“I only just got in from the trail.” His voice was a pleasant surprise, low and smooth. He didn’t sound half as rough as he looked. Somehow that was reassuring. Georgiana might be looking for a frontiersman, but she didn’t exactly want a ruffian. She watched as he fell to his food in relief, finishing one of the bowls in three huge spoonfuls. He mopped it out methodically with a hunk of corn bread. His manners weren’t too terrible. Nothing she couldn’t live with.
“There’s always time for a haircut,” Mrs. Tilly disagreed. “And a shave.” She paused. “And a bath.”
“Mrs. Bulfinch doesn’t have baths. Not for the likes of me, she says.”
He was staying in her hotel! Georgiana squeaked.
They both looked over at her. Oh. Oh. Oh my. He had the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen. They were the warmest, most hypnotic golden-brown. They had flecks of light that put Georgiana in mind of dust motes floating in sunshine . . .
“Is that true, Mrs. Smith?” Mrs. Tilly asked. “Matthew, this is Mrs. Smith. She’s from New York.”
He gave her a polite nod. Georgiana tore her gaze from his. It took some effort.
“I would have thought a fine hotel would furnish a bath,” Mrs. Tilly said, frowning. “She certainly charges exorbitant prices.”
“We have a bath,” Georgiana said, struggling to think straight.
He was in her hotel. That was marvelous. It would give her time to examine his suitability. It was a relief to think that there was at least one possibility for a husband, if the rest of her interviews came to nothing. “Our suite has a washroom.”
“We don’t have a bath in our room,” LeFoy interrupted, leaning over Becky to try and join the conversation. “But we can get a tub sent up when we want to bathe.”
The brute didn’t look surprised. He gave an imperceptible shrug and went back to his food.
“She honestly refused you a bath?” Mrs. Tilly sounded outraged on his behalf.
“I can go to a bathhouse tomorrow. I was lucky to get a room, I guess, looking like this. Sam said everywhere is full.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Tilly sighed, “it gets busier every year.”
“I can’t complain,” the brute said, stacking the second empty bowl inside the first and dragging the third one toward him. “It’s good for business.”
“Well, I must say you’re leaving it very late this year. The captains have been out in the town square for weeks already, signing people up. If you’re not careful, you’ll be left with the dregs. Did you know Slumpback Joe’s group is already at more than 150 parties? Can you imagine?”
The brute grunted. “The trains have been getting bigger every year. Last year Andy Sawyer had close to three thousand people in his party. It was chaos. You could see ’em on the horizon, just a big cloud of dust, like a storm coming.”
“What’s this?” LeFoy was still struggling to join the conversation. “What’s this you’re saying about wagon trains? Did I hear someone say Slumpback Joe? We were thinking about employing him. Should we not?”
“I thought you said you might stay here,” Becky said, sounding hurt.
LeFoy smiled nervously. “We might.” He cleared his throat. “But we might not.”
“Papa says there’s a market for theater out west,” one of the girls told Becky.
“Does he now?” Becky didn’t sound too happy about it.
“And we can perform along the way.”
“Matt here’s the best wagon train pilot in the country,” Mrs. Tilly said proudly. “Better even than his brother.”
“That wouldn’t be hard,” the brute said dryly. “Luke gave it up before the trail even got busy.”
“We’re heading for California,” LeFoy said. “If you can take us on, I’d be glad to hear your price.”
“We haven’t signed up for a train yet either,” Georgiana said quickly.
“Best wait to see what the new husband wants to do,” Mrs. Tilly advised, giving her hand a pat, “whoever he might be.”
Georgiana had to bite her tongue. She had no intention of letting her husband decide anything on her behalf. She’d do the deciding about her life, thank you very much. She’d had quite enough of being at the mercy of a husband’s whims.
“I don’t go to California,” the brute said, swiping out his final bowl with the corn bread.
Georgiana’s heart sank.
“But it’s the same trail till we get to Fort Hall. I often join up with Josiah Sampson and then we split at Fort Hall: he goes to California; I go on to Oregon. If you find Josiah in the square, tell him I sent you. He’s the one I’d recommend. He’s sensible. Not like some of them others. Slumpback Joe’s liable to get you lost before you even find Courthouse Rock.”
Oh. Well, that was disappointing.
Georgiana wondered how firm he was about not going to California. If she decided he was suitable husband material, she wondered if he and this Josiah fellow could swap trails . . .
“Do you have a wife in Oregon?” she asked. One might as well be blunt. That was the big question, wasn’t it? There was no point in thinking about him further if he was already married.
“Nope.” He finished his final mouthful and pushed his tray away. And then, to Georgiana’s dismay, he got to his feet.
“You come by tomorrow,” Mrs. Tilly told him, “and I’ll feed you up. But you get a bath and a haircut first, mind, or I won’t let you in the door.”
“I ain’t going yet,” he said, picking up his tray. “I’m just getting more food.”
“Lord, but that man can eat,” Mrs. Tilly said as they watched him walk away. “Becky, we’d best do some extra baking in the morning.”
“How long have you known him?” Georgiana asked, as she admired the way his shoulders stretched out the buckskin of his shirt.
“Oh, years and years. Ever since his brother gave up the trail. Matt came out a year or two after that to pick up his business. He’s a sweet boy.”
Georgiana could think of many ways to describe the brute, but “sweet boy” wasn’t one of them.
4
GEORGIANA WILTED AT the disastrous sight of her offspring. She was already out of sorts, as the brute had left the cookhouse without so much as a backward glance, and this was all she needed to round off the day. The children were playing by the water pump out the back of the cookhouse with a mob of other wildlings, including Mr. LeFoy’s girls, and they were coated in mud.
“Oh, for the love of . . . !” Mr. LeFoy sounded as frustrated as she felt. “Ginger! Flower! Honey! Get here this minute!” His refined accent had slipped a little, Georgiana noticed. There was a bit of southern twang in there.
“You’ll be glad of that bathtub tonight,” Mrs. Tilly said dryly once they’d rounded all the children up.
“I would understand if you don’t want to mind the children tomorrow,” Georgiana said regretfully, “after the performance they’ve put on today.”
“Oh, don’t be silly. I love children.” She laughed and took a step back as Wilby drifted too close. “But I’d prefer them cleaned up.”
Georgiana could see a long night stretching ahead of her. She found herself longing for the luxurious bathroom in the New York house, and the armies of servants she’d grown up with.
“Come on, Becky,” Mrs. Til
ly said, “we’ll leave them to their scrubbing.”
“Oh, I could come and help . . .”
“No, you couldn’t,” Mrs. Tilly said firmly, taking her arm. “We’ve got to be up early to do the baking. Now, say good night and we’ll be on our way.”
Becky turned a dewy gaze on LeFoy, who was too distracted by his children to do more than wish her a brief good night. She looked crestfallen as Mrs. Tilly led her away, and she shot a resentful glare at Georgiana, who got to walk home with him.
By the time they all got back to the hotel, the mud had started to dry and the children were looking like clay sculptures. Thankfully, there was no one out on the porch to see them.
“I suppose we should go in the back door,” Georgiana sighed, grabbing Wilby’s pudgy hand as he lunged toward the porch. “I dread to think what Mrs. Bulfinch will charge us if the children get mud in her foyer. Boys!” she called after the twins as they tore off around the back of the house. “Don’t you go in the house until I get there!” Then she realized she had no hope of them obeying her and darted after them, hauling Wilby with her. He squealed with joy. “Susannah, you come too!”
“Horsey ride!” Wilby yelled.
“Stop right there!” Georgiana ordered as she rounded the corner in time to see the twins belting up the back step. She felt a stab of panic at the thought of the twins ruining Mrs. Bulfinch’s carpets. Her cash reserves were getting low, and she couldn’t afford any more cleaning charges.
To her surprise, the twins heeded her. She was tired and her temper was frayed, and she guessed they could tell. She let Wilby go and advanced on them. “You are not stepping so much as a toe on that woman’s floor until you get some of that mud off you.”
The twins looked down at their filthy bodies.
“How do you suppose we do that?” Phin (Philip? Lord, would she ever be able to tell them apart?) asked.
“Start by scraping your shoes on the mat,” Georgiana suggested.
Philip snorted as he looked down at the rush mat. His twin gave the soles of his feet an exploratory rub against the rough surface. The other one shrugged in quick defeat and reached for the door handle. “We’ll have a bath upstairs,” he said.
“Don’t you dare go in the house!”
Vaguely, she heard Wilby squealing with delight, but she couldn’t look away from the twins. She knew the minute she did they’d bolt inside. It was like staring down a pair of wild dogs. Show no fear.
Then she heard a splash.
“Wilby!”
The toddler had found the horse trough.
“Wilbeeeeee.” Georgiana dashed over to haul him out of the water.
He was fine. More than fine, he was grinning from ear to ear. The filth on his skin had become a sludgy slime, and he slipped through her fingers, landing with a slosh that splattered on her skirts. It went nicely with the glue stains. She shot LeFoy a helpless look as he rounded the back of the house with Susannah and his girls.
“Brilliant!” Phin punched the air.
“Good work, Wilby!” The twins tumbled down the back step and over to the trough.
“What are you talking about? Look at him!” Georgiana was at her wit’s end. It had been such a long day. All she wanted was to curl up in bed, alone, with a book. But that seemed a very distant possibility as she took in her filthy, irrepressible little monsters.
Why did everything have to be so hard?
“Bath!” Wilby yelled, throwing his hands in the air and splashing the twins.
Before Georgiana could draw breath to protest, the twins had joined him in the “bath.” Then, with a shower of giggles, two of the LeFoy girls had leapt into the horse trough too.
“C’mon, Sooky, get in!” Phin stripped off his sodden shirt and whirled it around his head, sending it flying in the direction of his sister.
Susannah was speckled with mud, like a freckled egg, but was nowhere near as filthy as her brothers. She was holding her skirts primly in her bunched fists and jumped backward, squealing, as Phin’s shirt slopped at her feet. The older LeFoy girl looked similarly offended. LeFoy himself didn’t seem to know whether to laugh or to join the fray.
Georgiana pressed a hand to her head. Her children were in a horse trough, slick with mud, their clothes a ruin, splashing one another and cackling. Where was Mrs. Wyndham when you needed her?
“That’s full of horse spit,” Susannah yelled at her brothers. “You’re bathing in horse spit!”
Oh my, she was right! They’d all catch some horrid equine disease, and then Georgiana would be worse than the worst mother of all time. “Out!” she shrieked. “Get out of there before you catch your deaths!”
LeFoy cleared his throat. “Flower! Honey! You heed Mrs. Smith and get out.” He gave Georgiana a sympathetic look. “Why don’t I have Mrs. Bulfinch set up a couple of tubs in the laundry room?” He gestured to the lean-to at the back of the hotel.
Georgiana could have kissed him. Or wept. Or both. “Oh yes, please, Mr. LeFoy. Would you mind?”
“Not at all.” He disappeared into the house.
“I told you to get out!” Georgiana snapped at the twins. She no longer cared a fig that her dress was getting ruined; she reached over and plucked Wilby’s writhing, slimy body from the trough.
“Don’t pop an eyeball,” Philip scoffed. “A little horse spit never hurt anyone, and we’re much cleaner than we were.” He held out a bare arm for her to inspect.
“Except that you’ll drip horse spit all over Mrs. Bulfinch’s floor!” Susannah shrieked. “It’s disgusting.”
“You’re not to go back in the water,” Georgiana told Wilby as she dropped him to the ground. “Now, get out!” she told the twins.
“If we get out, Flower and Honey have to get out too,” Phin said obstinately.
The girls had already started climbing out.
“Dog!” Wilby shrieked with joy and pointed at the mouth of the stable.
Georgiana groaned as he plunged off toward the stable. There was a dog tied up at the entrance, watching them closely. It was a smudgy gray and black color and had piercing predatory eyes. It looked too much like a wolf for Georgiana to be comfortable. She scooped Wilby up before he reached it. The wolf-dog looked like it might eat Wilby if she let him get close enough.
“I think it’s wrong to keep dogs tied up,” one of the dripping-wet LeFoy girls complained. “Especially a dog like that. You should untie it.”
Over her dead body. “Everyone stay away from it,” Georgiana instructed. “One doesn’t go about untying strange dogs. For all you know, it might bite you.”
“I think it looks sad.”
“Everyone in the laundry room,” she snapped, sounding more like Mrs. Wyndham by the minute. “Now!”
* * *
• • •
LEFOY TOOK THE boys to one tub and left Georgiana with the four girls. If Georgiana thought the girls would be easier to wash than the boys, she was mistaken. Susannah and Ginger went first, as they were marginally cleaner, and they were no trouble at all. But Flower and Honey could have given the twins a run for their money in terms of boisterousness. Mrs. Bulfinch had strung up a sheet between the two tubs, “For the sake of decency,” she said primly, and Georgiana could hear Mr. LeFoy fighting to keep the twins under control, but she still envied him. Flower and Honey made the twins seem like saints.
By the time everyone was clean and dressed in their nightclothes, Georgiana was soaking wet. She sat by the stove while she combed out the girls’ knots and braided their hair, and soon her dress was steaming. By that time, the boys were long dressed and Wilby had fallen asleep, curled up like a puppy in one of the wicker laundry baskets.
Mrs. Bulfinch had taken to hovering in the doorway, watching them disapprovingly. As soon as the boys were clean, she made LeFoy get in the tub behind the makeshift curtain and get
himself clean too.
“You’re not going anywhere looking like that!” she had snapped at him, eyeing his muddy, wet clothes with distaste. The boys had soaked him through with their splashing.
She had Ginger go and fetch him some fresh clothes. And then once he was bathed, she supervised him emptying the filthy water from the tubs, all the time clanging in her loud voice about the role of discipline in children’s lives.
“You’ll be needing to bathe too,” Mrs. Bulfinch told Georgiana sternly once the final braid was tied, taking in her stained and sodden clothes and the mud splatters on her face and neck.
Georgiana sighed. A bath sounded like a nice idea. She could shut herself away in the small bathing closet upstairs, and maybe she could read and take a nip of sherry as she relaxed. She was only afraid she might fall asleep. “Thank you, Mrs. Bulfinch, if you could have the water sent up, I would love a bath.”
“Oh, there’s no one to be fetching water at this time of night. You’ll have to take your bath down here.”
Georgiana was scandalized. The laundry room didn’t even have a door!
“I’m not prepared to discuss it,” Mrs. Bulfinch said when Georgiana opened her mouth to protest. “You’ll certainly not be tracking muck through my hotel. Look at the state of you. You’re drenched through. I’ll put your young ’uns to bed for you and bring you down some fresh clothes.”
The children looked horrified by the idea.
“But anyone could walk in!” Georgiana protested. Was she insane? The laundry was open to the yard! There was only a wooden screen across the entrance.
“Not in here.” Mrs. Bulfinch looked at her like she was a half-wit. “You can bathe in the scullery; the door has a latch. No one uses the kitchen this time of night anyway, and you can use the back stairs to get up to your room, so you don’t run into anyone afterward.”
Georgiana wished she could just click her fingers and be clean and tucked up in bed. This didn’t sound relaxing at all.
