Texas Bride: A Bitter Creek Novel

by Joan Johnston

  Nick looked up at him. “Do you mean it?”

  Jake felt his mouth turning down cynically. What kind of reward was the boy going to want? He didn’t have much he could give him. “Sure,” Jake said. “What do you want?”

  “Would you teach me how to ride? Miranda learned before the fire, but I was too young. I want to learn to ride horseback. That way I can help you herd cattle.”

  Jake felt an ache in his chest. He wasn’t used to these Wentworths, with their generous hearts. “I’ll give you a lesson as soon as the snow melts.”

  “Did you hear that, Miranda? I’m gonna learn to ride!” He whooped and leaped around in circles.

  “He’s going to change his mind if you knock something off the counter and break it,” Miranda chided. “Go keep an eye on Harry and Anna Mae. I don’t like to leave them alone for too long.”

  He was gone without another word.

  Miranda busied herself cleaning up the pie plates the boys had used, as though she’d lived there all her life.

  “This has been a strange first day of marriage,” he said.

  She turned and leaned back against the counter, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Full of adventure, you mean?”

  “And close calls.”

  She smiled. “Isn’t all of life like that? I’d call any day so full of averted disasters a good one.”

  He found himself chuckling. When had he last done that? His new wife had led a terrible life in that orphanage, yet it hadn’t bent or bowed her. He was very lucky in his choice of bride. He felt a different kind of ache in his chest. An ache of longing.

  He wanted to thank her with kisses for the life of his daughter. He wanted to hold her in his arms and cherish her. But he knew where that would lead. The more he liked her, the more important it was to keep his distance. Because the biggest disaster of all would be if he got her pregnant.

  Thank goodness they would be sleeping on different floors of the house for the next couple of weeks.

  Then she said, “I think it would be best if I join you downstairs tonight and let the boys sleep in our bed.”

  “How did you sleep?”

  Miranda blushed as she entered the kitchen to greet her husband on the second day of their marriage. “Very well, actually.”

  Jake was sitting at the kitchen table with a steaming cup of coffee in front of him. She’d spent the night alone upstairs at his insistence, while he’d slept in front of the fire in the parlor. Her brothers had spent the night in Anna Mae’s room.

  “I’m ashamed to admit I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow,” she said. “I can’t believe I slept so late!”

  He smiled. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re the only two souls awake in this house.”

  She smiled back. “It is awfully quiet.” She helped herself to a cup of coffee and looked out the window where the sun was just coming up, amazed to see the snow had almost melted away. “What happened to the snow?”

  Jake shrugged. “It warmed up overnight. With any luck, the rest of it will melt today, for which I have to be grateful. I would have had a hell of a time in the snow with this bum ankle.” He took another sip of coffee and said, “I see you’re wearing trousers again today.”

  “Only because I haven’t had a chance to alter one of Priscilla’s dresses,” she explained.

  “I don’t mind.” His eyes surveyed her body from top to toe so carefully that she flushed with embarrassment.

  “You look cute in my jeans,” he said at last.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Cute?” she said as she sat down at the table across from him.

  He pushed himself up on his arms, leaned across the table and kissed her nose. “Definitely cute. What are your plans today?”

  She leaned toward him, so excited that she set her elbows right on the table and said, “I’m itching to sort through all the stuff scattered around the house and put everything away in its proper place. I also have to go up in the attic to see if I can find you some crutches.

  “If it warms up this afternoon, I’d like to clean the upstairs windows and do some weeding in the front yard. Then I want to see if you can help me repair the rails on the balcony upstairs, so the kids can play out there when the weather is nice and I’m upstairs working.”

  She stopped talking, as she became aware of the grin on Jake’s face. “What’s so funny?”

  “I’ve never seen anyone so excited about cleaning house and washing windows and pulling weeds and making repairs on a bunch of rotten railings.”

  “Don’t make fun of me, Jake. I’m serious.”

  “I know you are, Miranda. I just hope I can keep up with you.”

  “All you have to do today is be there to tell me where things go in the house,” she said. “I’ll put everything away. I know the boys will want to help, too. If the weather’s nice, you could sit outside and keep an eye on the little ones while I work. I’d like them to get some sunshine and fresh air.”

  “Have you always been a managing female?”

  Miranda sobered. “Not always. Not at all. Not until after the fire.”

  Harry came padding into the kitchen, barefoot and wearing one of Jake’s wool shirts that was serving as a nightshirt, and announced, “I’m hungry.”

  “Me, too,” Anna Mae said, tagging along behind him hauling a doll made of corn husks.

  “Where’s Nick?” Miranda asked, leaning over to see past Harry.

  “I don’t know,” Harry said. “He wasn’t in bed when I woke up.”

  Miranda shot a look at Jake, then leaped from her chair and ran down the hall calling frantically, “Nick? Where are you?”

  She was halfway up the stairs when she heard Jake yell, “Miranda, he just came inside. He was out in the barn.”

  Miranda turned and ran back to the kitchen. Nick’s nose was red from the cold and his cowlick was standing straight up. He was already dressed for the day. “What were you doing sneaking out of the house without telling me where you were going?” she demanded, leftover fear making her voice harsh.

  “You were asleep,” Nick mumbled. He glanced at Jake and said, “Everyone was asleep.” He set an almost full bucket of milk beside the kitchen sink and said, “I thought I’d help out by milking the cow.”

  Miranda’s shoulders slumped as though she were a balloon, and someone had just let out all the air. She felt horrible. “Oh, Nick. And here I am yelling at you.”

  She crossed to give him a hug, which he ducked. “I didn’t know you knew how to milk a cow,” she said.

  “I watched Jake yesterday and sort of figured it out for myself.”

  “Thanks, Nick,” Jake said.

  “I didn’t do it for you,” Nick retorted. “I did it so Harry and Anna Mae would have milk for breakfast.”

  “The important thing is that you did it,” Jake said. “The cow would have been in a lot of pain if you hadn’t milked her early like you did.”

  Nick unbent enough to say, “She would?”

  “Her udders get full and they need to be emptied at the same time every day. Now that you know how, milking can be your job.”

  “I don’t take orders from you,” Nick said stubbornly.

  “It’s up to you whether you milk the cow,” Jake said. “But I won’t be doing it anymore.”

  Miranda could see that Jake had put Nick in a tight spot. If he defied Jake, he was going to cause pain for the cow.

  “Fine, you win,” Nick said. “But I’m doing it for the cow. I’m not doing it for you.”

  “Suit yourself,” Jake said.

  Slim rolled himself into the kitchen doorway and said, “What’s all the ruckus?”

  “Nick milked the cow,” Harry announced. “And I’m hungry.”

  “Get on up to the table, then,” Slim said. “I’ll have some eggs cookin’ in no time.”

  “Do we have any eggs left?” Miranda asked.

  Nick reached for a basket on the floor near the stove and held it out to Slim. “I ga
thered the eggs before I milked the cow.”

  This time Miranda didn’t let Nick duck her hug. She grabbed him and held him tight and whispered in his ear, “You are the very best brother a girl ever had!”

  By the time she released him, Nick’s ears had turned red. He glanced at Jake and said, “Don’t say it!”

  “I didn’t say a word.” Jake held up his hands, palms out.

  Nick turned to Harry and said, “How would you like to gather eggs in the morning while I milk the cow?”

  “Sure,” Harry said. “Can Anna Mae help?”

  Miranda beamed, like a mother whose child has just performed a task perfectly for the very first time. It was only the second day they’d been living under Jake’s roof, and her brothers were already proving how helpful they were going to be.

  Miranda felt happy. She wondered how long the feeling would last.

  Nick was the one who located the crutches in the attic, but while Miranda was up there, she found several cans of white paint. She carried each one carefully down the short attic ladder and set them on the second-floor landing.

  “We might have enough to repaint the front of the house,” she told Jake. “And there’s surely enough to paint the new railings on the upstairs balcony.”

  Jake wasn’t nearly so enthused. “Who’s going to do all this painting, Miranda? Once I can stand on two feet, I’ve got to get back out on the range. And after he’s learned to ride, I’m going to want Nick out there with me.”

  “I can do the painting, Jake. Slim and Harry can help.”

  “You already have plenty of work to do, just managing the house. There’s soap and candles to make and clothes to wash. I don’t want you to wear yourself out.”

  “I won’t, Jake,” she promised him. “You’ll see. We’ll get it all done.”

  Slim wheeled himself onto the front porch to watch the work Miranda and the boys were doing in the yard, but he couldn’t get off the porch to help them.

  “I usually carry Slim down and then bring down the chair,” Jake said. “But I can’t do it with my ankle like this.”

  “Why don’t you make a ramp down the stairs, so he can just wheel himself down?” Miranda suggested.

  “What?” Jake said.

  “You know, a ramp.”

  Jake turned to look at Slim and said, “Why didn’t we think of that?”

  “Been too sunk in the sullens, I ’spect,” Slim said. “ ’Sides, didn’t need a ramp till you got yourself stove up. I gotta admit, I like the idea of being able to get myself outside during the day, when you’re not around.”

  The old man angled his chair toward Jake and said, “What do you think? Can you do it?”

  “I don’t see why not.” Jake turned to Nick and said, “I need your help, son.”

  “I’m not your—”

  Nick hadn’t finished his angry retort before Jake said, “I know, boy.” Then he set the crutches under his arms and headed toward the barn.

  Nick shot Miranda a beseeching, pain-filled glance.

  Her heart went out to her brother. Here was a man offering to call Nick “son.” Allowing it meant admitting, once and for all, that their own father was gone forever. Miranda understood his agony.

  She met his gaze and said softly, “It’s all right, Nick. Go help.”

  Soon they were back, Nick carrying the wood Jake would need to build the ramp. The two of them spent the rest of the afternoon working on it.

  That is, until Miranda decided it was time to wash windows.

  “What do you want to do that for?” Jake asked. “They’re just going to get dirty again.”

  “I can’t see out,” she said. “I found some rosebushes under all that brush, Jake. I plan to water them and take care of them and I want to be able to see them out the front window when they bloom.”

  “All right. That makes sense. But why do you have to wash the upstairs windows?”

  “So I can look out and see you coming home at night.”

  He made a face, but he went with Nick to get the ladder from the barn.

  She rinsed the downstairs windows with buckets of water, then put Harry and Anna Mae to work drying them off with newspaper.

  When Jake and Nick finally had the ladder against the wall of the house, Miranda started climbing. When she was halfway up, she made the mistake of looking down. She felt dizzy when she realized how high she was. Miranda had never suspected she was afraid of heights, but it seemed she was. Try as she might, she couldn’t take a step either up or down. She was frozen as solid as if she’d been a block of ice.

  “Jake?” she called down to him.

  “What?” he said, standing below her, braced on his crutches.

  “I want to come down.”

  “I don’t blame you. It’s been a hell of a day. Come on down, then.”

  “I can’t,” she wailed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I can’t. I’m too scared to move.”

  Jake put a hand across his brow to shade his eyes and looked up at her. “Just reach down with your foot and feel the rung below you, then step down one rung at a time.”

  Miranda looked down and felt the world swirling around her. She felt herself falling and grabbed at the ladder, barely catching it before she fell off. “I’m falling!” she screamed.

  The next thing she knew, Jake was standing on the ladder behind her, his body shielding her, his arms around her.

  “What are you doing climbing a ladder when you’re afraid of heights?” he demanded.

  She could feel him trembling and wondered which of the two of them was more afraid at the moment. “I didn’t know I was scared of heights.”

  “Didn’t you ever climb a tree as a kid?”

  “No.”

  “Who the hell doesn’t climb trees?”

  “Girls who grow up in the city, that’s who!”

  “I don’t want to see you up this ladder again, Miranda. Do you hear me?”

  “You’re angry,” she said, pointing out the obvious.

  “Damned right, I’m angry. You could have broken your pretty little neck.”

  “Oh, your poor ankle!” she said, realizing he would have needed to put his weight on both legs to get up the ladder. “Does it hurt?”

  “Like hell,” he snapped. “Come on, Miranda, let’s get you down from here.”

  Jake took one slow step at a time down the ladder, with Miranda protected by his arms the whole way down. When they reached the ground, Miranda took one look at Jake’s pasty white face and swooned.

  “Oh, Jake, your poor ankle!”

  Jake caught her and eased her down on the porch. “Put your head between your knees, Miranda. Do it now.”

  Miranda suspected she would hear Jake using that voice of authority often over the coming years. He limped back to retrieve his crutches, while she put her head down to hide her mortified face.

  “Put that ladder back in the barn,” she heard him tell Nick.

  “What if I don’t feel like it?” Nick said.

  “Suit yourself.”

  “You mean it?” Nick asked suspiciously

  “Don’t suppose we’ll ever need a ladder again,” Jake said. “Might as well leave this one out here in the weather to rot.”

  Miranda peered at Nick from where her head lay in her lap and saw the look of consternation on his face, then watched as he crossed to where the ladder stood against the side of the house. A moment later she saw him hauling it toward the barn.

  Jake joined her, and she felt his hand on her nape, keeping her head down when she would have lifted it up. “Stay there for another minute,” he said. “All the blood rushed out of your head. That’s why you felt faint.”

  “I have more work to do,” she mumbled against her knees.

  “You’ve done enough for today.”

  She tried to lift her head again, and this time he let her sit up. “I feel fine now, Jake.”

  “Good. But you’re done for the day.
I mean it, Miranda.”

  “I didn’t get all the windows washed.”

  “We have the rest of our lives for you to wash windows.”

  “Oh.” Jake’s comment took a moment to sink in. Miranda had worked hard all day, but she’d hardly made a dent in what she wanted to accomplish. It didn’t matter. She had plenty of time to get everything done. There was nowhere she had to go tomorrow or the next day or the day after that.

  She was finally home.

  After that first night, Miranda hadn’t allowed Jake to banish her upstairs to sleep, but it hadn’t made any difference. When they’d moved back upstairs ten days later, their marriage remained unconsummated. And at the end of her first month as a married woman, she was still a virgin.

  Miranda had tried everything she could imagine to entice Jake to make love to her, once they’d moved back into the privacy of their own bedroom. Brushing against him by day. Standing in the light of the lamp so he would see her figure through her gown at night. Looking at him from beneath lowered lashes before she joined him in bed. Waking up curled against him in the morning. Three long weeks she’d tempted him.

  Nothing had worked.

  Tonight was the night. Miranda was determined to seduce her husband. Maybe if her friend at the orphanage had painted a different picture of lovemaking, she could have let things go on as they had. But on the first night of her marriage, when her husband had kissed her shoulder, she’d had the briefest taste of what might be in store. She’d tingled all over, and her body had felt tight and full and … unfulfilled. She wanted that lovely feeling again.

  Miranda was determined to become a real wife, not just a housemaid and laundress and babysitter. And wives had relations with their husbands. She was not going to let Jake shirk his duty. Tonight she would confront him and … Miranda wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do. But she knew how she wanted the night to end.

  However, she had an entire anxious day to get through first. Fortunately, they’d established a routine in the mornings, so she got up and got busy as though it was another ordinary day.

  Everyone gathered in the kitchen for breakfast after a series of chores that included getting Harry and Anna Mae dressed, milking the cow, feeding the pigs, chickens, and saddle stock, and gathering eggs.