“Oh, lands!” she whispered under her breath. “Why my glasses? Why not an arm or leg? I could better do without either.”
Returning her ruined spectacles to her pocket, she advanced determinedly on the recipe box, her chin raised high. It took some searching, but she finally located the bread recipe. Peering intently at every ingredient until she could bring the letters and amounts into focus, she managed to mix a triple batch of yeast bread. After letting the three bowls of dough rise once on the cookstove, which still held banked coals from the supper fire the boys had built last night, she punched it down and shaped six loaves. As she recalled, Mrs. Radcliff had always rubbed her loaves with melted lard, covered them with a towel, and left them on the slightly warm stove to double in size. After finding three clean linen towels—no easy feat—Rachel followed the housekeeper’s example. When she could finally step back to admire the fruits of her labor, she felt as proud as if she’d given birth to six babies.
Returning to the recipe box, she applied herself to the task of finding something to fix for supper. Since she hated to eat meat, knowing that the practice caused some poor animal to suffer, she settled on venison stew—minus the venison, of course. Oh, yes. This was going to work famously, she assured herself as she began peeling vegetables. Delicious hot bread and stew for supper would make a good first impression on all the Rafferty men, young or old.
“Jesus Christ!”
Clint couldn’t quite believe his eyes when he entered the kitchen. His cookstove had been transformed into a huge, misshapen mushroom! At least, that was how it looked at first glance. At second glance, she saw that the mushroomy cap was actually some sort of dough. Mountains of the stuff oozed over the sides of the stove and dripped in gooey rivers toward the floor. Useless, the family’s scruffy, mixed-breed excuse for a cattle dog, was pulling off strips of the stuff and eating it.
“Rachel?”
Clint glanced around the kitchen, which had undergone a more favorable transformation than the stove, thank goodness. Even the window over the dry sink now sparkled. Sitting almost regally in the center of the otherwise bare table was a pot of peeled and quartered vegetables covered with water. The makings for a stew or soup, up guessed, and saw that he was right when he spotted the open recipe box. The uppermost recipe was for his ma’s venison stew.
Following the sound of voices, Clint went in search of his bride. He found her in the loft with his brothers. The only one of the Raffertys missing, Clint realized, was Mathew, who was still in town, more than likely nursing a hangover. Rachel sat in the center of Zach’s bed, her slender back to the log wall, her skirts tucked modestly around her criss-crossed legs. The six boys—no matter how old some of his brothers grew, Clint still thought of them all as boys—were gathered around her, four sitting Indian-style on the bed, two kneeling on the floor with their elbows on the mattress. At the center of their circle was an array of playing cards.
“Here they come, folks, down and dirty,” Cole said.
“Down and what?” Rachel asked with a giggle. To Jeremiah she queried, “Are you sure there’s such a thing as beginner’s luck? I’ll never manage to pay all this back to you fellows.”
The mess downstairs momentarily forgotten, Clint leaned a shoulder against the partition, one of two half walls that divided the loft into three proportional sleeping areas for his brothers. For a moment, he allowed his gaze to linger warmly on Rachel, then he glanced around at the boys. Apparently they were teaching her how to play poker and were fleecing her in the process. Normally he might have scolded, but it had been so long since he’d seen the six of them interacting this way and having a good time that he didn’t have the heart. Even though he didn’t hold much with gambling, Clint was a firm believer in having fun, and all of them seemed to be doing that.
“Pair of deuces showin’,” Cole said as he dealt a last, face-up card to Zach. “Holy Moly, look at that king. Possible straight!” he cried as he doled out cards to Cody. “And the lady draws a lady! Look at that pair of queens showin’,” he yelled as he slapped down Rachel’s last card. “Did I hear you askin’ if there’s such a thing as beginner’s luck? Darlin’, just look at that. Unless somebody’s got somethin’ really impressive hidin’ in the hole, you’re our biggest winner so far.”
Rachel touched a hand to her bodice, her big-eyed innocence too genuine to be feigned. “Truly?” She leaned forward to squint at a pile of rocks that lay on the bed. “How much will I win?”
Cody bounced forward to take a quick count. “Fifty dollars!” he said breathlessly. “Wow! If only it was real money, you’d be rich.”
Clint relaxed slightly. At least they weren’t gambling for actual money. He should be thankful for small blessings, he guessed. At just that moment, Rachel caught sight of him. “Clint? Is that you?”
He chuckled. “Damn, girl, are you stone blind? Of course it’s me.”
A faint flush touched her hollowed cheeks. “Your hat was shadowing your face,” she explained. “I couldn’t see you clearly. Besides”—she waved a hand at all his brothers—“just look at all of you. I’ve never seen so many people look so much alike.”
Thus reminded of his manners, Clint swept his hat from his head. “I hate to interrupt the game, but we have a hell of a mess downstairs. What is that stuff that’s all over the top of the stove?”
Her eyes went even wider, if that was possible. Tossing down her cards, she scrambled off the bed, elbowing boys out of the way en route. “My bread!”
“Bread? That’s bread?” Clint guffawed. “How much yeast did you use?”
Rachel raced by him. Clint caught her arm before she reached the ladder. “Whoa, there. Just slow it down. No point in takin’ a tumble.”
Setting her back a step, he went down the ladder first so he could ensure her safe descent. “Careful,” he cautioned, his gaze fixed anxiously on her small feet. “The rungs are tricky until you get used to them.”
After gaining the kitchen, she stood in frozen silence, staring at the stove. “Oh no! My beautiful babies! What on earth happened to them?”
Useless, whose hunger was apparently satisfied for the first time in his misbegotten life, licked his mottled chops, plopped down beside the stove, and whined. It suddenly occurred to Clint that perhaps he shouldn’t have allowed the dog to continue eating the dough.
“Christ,” he said under his breath, eyeing Useless’s belly, “I hope he doesn’t get sick.”
Rachel huffed indignantly. “Are you saying my bread may make him sick?”
“I was thinking of the yeast, that maybe it isn’t good for dogs.” Clint dragged his gaze from the canine. “It looks to me like maybe you put too much in.”
“Only what the recipe called for, one cup per batch.”
“A cup?” Clint whistled. “No wonder you have dough everywhere, honey. You must have misread the ingredients. My ma’s recipe calls for one quarter cup yeast per batch.”
At that moment, all the boys came spilling down the ladder. When they saw the mess on the stove, their eyes widened in amazement. “Wow!” Cody cried. “Will we cook all of it?”
“No, Cody, I don’t think it’ll be edible once we get it scraped up,” Clint replied. “Useless is the only one who gets bread tonight.”
“Oh, darn!” Cody said. “I’ve had my mouth set for hot bread all day.”
Rachel looked so upset that Clint hastened to say, “It’s not that bad, Rachel. We can have biscuits tonight, and you can make bread tomorrow.”
With that, he rolled back his shirt sleeves and set himself to the task of cleaning up the mess. Ten minutes later he had revised his earlier opinion that it wasn’t that bad. He’d never seen so much bread dough. Worse, damn near all of it had stuck to the warm cast iron, creating a mess that was nearly impossible to clean. In the end, he resorted to scraping the goo up with his knife.
“Are you sure you only put in a cup of yeast per batch?” he asked Rachel. “I gotta tell you, I’ve never seen fifte
en cups of flour go so far in my life.”
“Nine,” she corrected. “The recipe called for three cups of flour per batch, nine if it was tripled.”
Clint paused in his scraping to regard her thoughtfully. “No, honey, the recipe calls for five cups of flour per batch, so a tripled amount would be fifteen. You misread more than just the amount of yeast, evidently. Do you have poor eyesight or something?”
At the suggestion, her cheeks flushed a pretty pink and her eyes took on a shimmer of indignation. “Lands, no, I don’t have poor eyesight!”
Judging by her expression, Clint could see that he’d made a mistake asking. Females were sensitive about things like that, he guessed. Thinking quickly, he endeavored to mend his fences, making mental note not to call her eyesight into question again. “You’re right. It was silly of me to suggest such a thing. No small wonder you misread the writing. Threes and fives look a lot alike, and I’ve used that recipe so many times, I’ve probably smeared ingredients all over the numbers, making them hard to see.”
Looking relieved to be let of the hook, she nodded decisively. “Yes, I’m sure that’s it. The recipe did have lots of smears on it.” She wrung out the rag she was using. “I’m so sorry about the mess, Clint. Truly, I am. You really don’t have to help me clean up. I can do it by myself.”
She looked so adorable standing there that Clint wouldn’t have left her to finish by herself for anything in the world. He would have to go out to the barn to do the milking later, but otherwise he was staying inside for the remainder of the day. There was no reason he could think of that he should be separated from his bride. The way he saw it, they had little enough time left before nightfall to get to know one another. If he hoped to make love to the girl before their marriage saw its first sunrise, he had his work cut out for him.
When Clint sat down to supper that night, he nearly broke a tooth on one of Rachel’s biscuits, and then he almost went blind looking for the meat in her stew. After taking several bites of the concoction, which was way too salty for his taste, he decided there must not be any meat in it. Regarding his wife the length of the long table, he smiled slightly. She was eating away, clearly oblivious to the fact that there was anything missing.
“Rachel, from now on when you need some meat, just ask the boys and one of them will go fetch you some. We have beef and venison aplenty in the smokehouse.”
“Meat?” She fastened startled eyes on him, her spoon suspended partway to her lips. “Whatever would I need meat for?”
Clint deepened his smile. “To cook?”
She returned her spoon to her bowl. “Oh, no, I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t what?”
“Cook meat.”
Her response effectively brought to a halt every spoon at the table. Clint glanced around to see that all his brothers—excluding Matthew, who’d not yet come home—were staring at his bride, their expressions curiously blank. Not that he blamed them. He wasn’t sure he’d heard her right himself.
“Did I understand you to say you can’t cook meat?” he asked, hoping to clarify matters.
She daintily wiped each corner of her mouth with a fingertip, clearly at a loss without a proper napkin. “That’s right. I don’t eat meat.”
Clint barely managed to suppress a hoot of laughter. “Why ever not?”
Her already wide eyes seemed to grow even larger. “Well, because! It’s so cruel!” She looked around at his brothers. “I can’t believe a single one of you would be so mean as to actually go out into the woods and shoot an innocent deer just so you could have venison in your stew.” She smiled brilliantly. “Not when it tastes perfectly fine without it.”
Clint was convinced she was teasing. “Rachel, honey, everyone eats meat.”
“Not everyone. I certainly don’t. And if I’m to be the cook in this house, none of you shall, either.”
Stunned silence. Clint gave each of his brothers a meaningful look. Clearing his throat, he said, “Maybe we should discuss this later.”
“There’s nothing to discuss,” she said sweetly. “Unless, of course, someone else is volunteering to cook.” She looked around the table. “You all don’t mind, do you? Eating meatless meals, I mean?”
Clint could scarcely believe his eyes and ears when every last one of his brothers shook their heads and said, “No, we don’t mind!” almost simultaneously. He scowled his displeasure at each of them. “All of you know very well that you like meat. How can you sit there and say you won’t mind doing without it?”
Josh said, “Well, maybe a couple of times a week, one of us can cook, and on those nights, we can have meat.”
“Do we get to eat eggs?” Cody asked glumly.
“Yes, of course,” Rachel assured him. “And there’s no meat in cake or cookies.”
Cody brightened at that news. “We don’t gotta have meat, Clint. Not if it makes Rachel sad to cook it.”
Jeremiah looked as if he were about to bust with laughter. “We wouldn’t want to be cruel to animals. I guess eating them qualifies.”
Clint didn’t see the humor. “Might I remind you that we’re operating a cattle ranch here? We raise and sell beef.”
Rachel looked appalled. “Oh, my, I never thought about it like that. I suppose the cows are killed once they’re sold, aren’t they?”
“That’s how folks who live in town get their hands on steak, Rachel. They buy cows raised on cattle ranches and butcher them.” Clint set his teeth at the distress he read in her expression. Then, before he could stop himself, he added, “A lot of cows aren’t butchered, though.” He groped for another lie, anything to make her feel better about what he did for a living. “Dairies, for instance. Lots and lots of cows are sold to dairies.”
“And a bunch are sold for breeding purposes!” Cole inserted.
“That’s right,” Daniel agreed. “Without plenty of bulls and cows left to reproduce, we’d nave no newborn calves each spring.”
Cody beamed a smile. “And they’re used to make shoes and boots, too! So, see, Rachel? Not all of ’em get sold for steak.”
Rachel touched a hand to her throat. “Oh, my…You know, I never stopped to think about it, but my opera pumps and high-button shoes are made out of leather.”
Afraid she might try to convince them they should all go barefoot next, Clint broke in with, “This really is good stew, Rachel. What’s that spice I taste?”
“Salt,” Jeremiah supplied.
Clint reached for his glass of water to wash down the taste. “Mmm-mmm.”
8
Shortly after the supper dishes were washed, Clint hustled the boys off to bed and maneuvered Rachel into the downstairs bedroom, which adjoined the parlor. With no lamp lit and only a few feeble moonbeams streaming through the double-hung window, he figured it was dark enough to undress without embarrassing her.
Rachel said nothing when he took off his shirt. But as he removed his gun belt and reached for his belt buckle, she let out a shrill squeak. “What’re you doing?”
Clint froze. “Undressing?”
“Why?”
He circled that carefully, not at all sure he knew how to reply. “Well…” He sent a loaded look at the bed. “I usually do before I go to sleep.” Not that he had any intention of sleeping. “Don’t you?”
“But where is your nightshirt?”
“My what?”
“Your nightshirt. Surely you don’t—” She broke off and swallowed. Even in the dimness, he saw her throat convulse. “Surely you don’t sleep in your altogether.”
Clint rubbed a hand over his face. It didn’t take a genius to realize she was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rockers. He abandoned his intention to undress and stepped slowly across the room to her, taking care not to make any sudden moves. Judging by her pallor, which made her look sort of luminous in the moonlight, she was already scared half to death.
“I don’t have a nightshirt,” he informed her cautiously.
She lo
oked scandalized to hear that. “You don’t? Well…until you can purchase one, I suppose you’ll have to sleep in your…in your unmentionables.”
“My what?”
“Your”—she lowered her voice—“your underwear.”
In the summer, Clint wore knee-length cotton underdrawers. Somehow he didn’t think that was what she had in mind. “Rachel, honey, I’m not going to hurt you.” He smoothed a tendril of dark hair away from her cheek. “In fact, I’m hopin’ to make you feel real nice.”
Her gaze skittered from his. “That’s fine. I mean—well, I know about—well, you know.” She airily waved one hand and then leaned slightly toward him, gave a little laugh, and whispered conspiratorially, “It’s just that I’d rather not do it naked.”
An ache of tenderness swelled in Clint’s chest. He traced the hollow of her jaw with his thumb. “How are we going to manage, then?”
“With a minimum of fuss?”
He nearly chuckled. But gazing into her eyes, he read her fear and realized it wasn’t all that funny. With a minimum of fuss? He had a feeling the slower he went and the fussier he was, the better it would be for her. Of course, she didn’t know that.
She toyed nervously with the top button of her shirtwaist. “I also absolutely must insist that you buy a nightshirt, posthaste.”
Clint imagined how his brothers would tease him if they saw him wearing one.
“We’ll see. For now…” He caught her chin on the edge of his hand and tipped her face up for his kiss, confident that he could stir her to passion if only she would relax. Instead, she went as stiff as a twice-starched collar.
“Rachel,” he scolded huskily, “don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not.” She whispered the denial against his lips.
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