Instant Prairie Family (Love Inspired Historical)

by Navarro, Bonnie

  To take care of her basic needs would only be the Christian thing to do, especially since she had worked herself to exhaustion caring for his family. It was easy to see why the boys were taken with her. He had seen her when she read to them at night, cuddling Tommy on her lap and wrapping an arm around Willy’s shoulders. She had won them over with her kind words and affection. It was only right that they take care of her as if she were part of the family, too—even if it were only for the summer.

  That excuse seemed to fit. He clung to it and squared his shoulders, ready to do battle with the feisty, crying lady. She was going to get some sleep, even if he had to force her to.

  She hadn’t responded to what he had said, just kept going through the motions of putting breakfast together. She set the water on the stove. Picking up the bread from yesterday, she started to slice it.

  “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll cut it up for you?” He stood right beside her and reached out for the knife. She released it with a weariness resembling surrender.

  “I’m sorry. I was going to do this. I usually have more energy than this. I know you need to get out to the fields and I don’t want to slow your progress down. I wanted to—”

  “I’ve done more this week than I did in three last year. You’ve already more than earned your keep.” Suddenly it made sense, the way she was wearing herself down, refusing to stop working—she was worried he would send her back East without a referral because she had not been able to keep up with her chores. “You could’a told me they weren’t letting you get any rest. I would have come in from the fields earlier so you could have taken a nap, or I could have had them sleep out in the barn with me.”

  “That’s just what I want!” she almost shouted back, clearly frazzled. “I come here to take care of your boys and your home and end up forcing everyone else to sleep out in the barn. I could sleep out in the barn, Mr. Hopkins. Then everyone else could have their own rooms back.”

  Abby stood looking out the window, her fingers clutching fistfuls of skirt at her thighs. Her tears had stopped but were threatening to spill over the long blond eyelashes framing her expressive eyes.

  Standing close, studying her profile, he saw the light glint off the specks of blue and green in her eyes, changing from green to blue and back again with every word she spoke.

  “That’s not going to happen here, miss. You won’t be sleeping out in the barn when there’s a perfectly good house here that’d be more comfortable and safer. Now, why don’t you just go to bed and get some sleep!” He was too exasperated by the girl to keep his voice down.

  She didn’t look at him but spun away and fled to her room. He could hear her muffled sobs a few minutes later when he went as far as the hallway to check on her. He couldn’t bring himself to knock on the door. Ma had once said that a woman just needed a good cry every once in a while. He hoped that was all she needed.

  When Tommy appeared in the kitchen a while later, Will motioned his son to be quiet. He was amazed Tommy didn’t question him until he was seated at the table.

  “Pa, where is Auntie Abby? She wasn’t in my room when I woke up. I like it when she’s there ’cuz she gives me kisses on my head and then helps me get my shirt all buttoned up right.”

  Inspecting Tommy’s shirt, Will realized that Abby’s help had been missed. “Here, son, let me help you.” He rebuttoned his son quickly as he explained, “Auntie Abby was really tired today because of all the hard work she’s been doing around here for us. I told her to go get some sleep so she could play with you boys later. We’re gonna be real quiet this morning so she can rest, okay?”

  “Yeah, we can be real quiet like we have to be when she’s rocking me and Willy is asleep.” Tommy’s sweet voice added to Will’s guilt. His boys had been up in the nights, miserable and grumpy, and he hadn’t been there for them. At least Abby had been.

  “Pa, we gonna wait for Auntie Abby to make us breakfast?”

  “No, I’ve got it all fixed already,” Will answered, ignoring his son’s groan.

  “But, Pa, I like the way Auntie Abby makes breakfast. She doesn’t make it start on fire.”

  “Hey, that was only once. I was doing better lately. I fried some eggs and put them on bread with butter.” Lifting the platter from the back of the stove, he set it on the table and sat down in his spot.

  “I like butter. Why didn’t we have it before?”

  “Because no one took time to churn the butter. We were always too busy with—”

  “Pa, can we make Auntie Abby my new ma?” Tommy’s question stopped Will’s lungs midbreath. Neither boy had ever mentioned having another mother.

  “No. She came to be the housekeeper, and she’s not here to stay. She’s going to go back,” he stated as calmly as he could still gasping for breath. He should have thought about how attached the boys would get to her. After all, she was the first woman who had ever shown them any real affection.

  “But I don’t want her to go back. I want her to stay here with me, forever and ever. She says ‘I love you’ and kisses us when she puts us to bed. I want her to do that all the time. I want—”

  “There are lots of things that we want in life, Tommy. Most of them we never get,” Will retorted sharply.

  “But she’s really pretty and she sews really good, too. She made a shirt for Willy and is almost done with mine. She said she’s gonna have something for us men to wear by the time we go to meetin’.”

  “Tommy, she’s a really nice lady, but she’s only here for a short time so that she can take care of you and Willy and teach you some book learning this summer. She deserves to go find some nice place to live in a town somewhere not in the middle of the prairie. Then she can get married and have kids of her own.”

  “You could marry her, Pa. Jenny said her Ma was telling Mrs. Scotts it was high time you got us boys a new ma. I think Auntie Abby is a good one. She even smells good. Jenny said if you married a new ma, she wouldn’t be my ma but my stepmother, and she said that stepmothers beat on their stepchildren. But I don’t think Auntie Abby would. Only if I were really bad.”

  “Well, I have no plan on getting you a new ma,” Will stated with enough volume that Tommy sat staring at him for a minute in silence.

  Jake chose that moment to come in through the back door, looking around for the new housekeeper. When Will explained that she was resting and that no one was to disturb her, Jake’s smile fell and the boy slumped into a chair and waited for his breakfast with a glum expression. Willy finally came down and they all managed to eat the sparse breakfast Will put on the table. Even with the boys still itchy, they all went out to the barn to finish chores.

  By dinnertime, Abby made a full meal and had bathed the boys again. She smiled at everyone around the table and thanked them for letting her rest all morning. They all seemed to agree if it meant she was going to go to so much trouble with dinner, including raisin tarts for dessert, they would be willing to let her sleep in more often.

  Will had sent the boys up to ready for bed when he turned and noticed Abby’s grimace as she stuck her hands in the dishwater. “Did you burn your hands?” he asked, curious more than worried.

  “No, I’m fine,” she denied through gritted teeth, a fine line of perspiration dotting her forehead and upper lip.

  “Let me see.” He stepped closer and almost said a few choice words. Each hand looked like a pincushion with ten splinters or more, and her palms had blisters the size of peas. “What happened?” he demanded, clasping her wrists between the thumb and forefinger of each of his hands to keep them in view.

  “Nothing. I’ll be fine,” she denied again, tugging her arms back without success.

  “If it were nothing, you wouldn’t have blisters and splinters. Did this happen last night?”

  She stood still, not even speaking. He was intently looking at her hands
when he noticed her trembling. He looked up to find her eyes on the floor, but her fear was almost palpable. He led her to a chair and pulled it out.

  “Have a seat. I’m going to pull these splinters out before they get infected. Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

  Even as he asked, he gently pushed her into the seat. He really didn’t expect her to answer. He had benefited from all her hard work and yet he hadn’t paid attention to her; just one more reminder why he failed in his marriage. Not that he was looking for another marriage—with Abby or anyone else—but that didn’t change his responsibility to her as someone in his care. He was not going to let her get close to him, but he should at least let her know she was safe.

  Living on the frontier, he always carried a sharp knife sheathed on his belt. Holding it to the flame in the oven for a moment, he wiped it on a clean cloth and sat down in the chair facing Abby.

  “Put your hand out like this.” He indicated how he wanted her hand over the clean cloth on the table, and then he started to use the tip of his knife to tease the splinters out. He could tell that she wasn’t happy with the arrangement, but she didn’t make a noise. Brave woman.

  “I remember the first time I tried to help my pa with the boxes in the back of the store.” He wasn’t sure why he started to ramble, but she relaxed slightly, so he continued. “I must have been about Tommy’s age. Pa told me to leave them alone, but I wanted to help. I tried to take them apart with my bare hands and got more splinters than I thought possible, but I broke up each and every box. Too bad my pa planned to use the boxes for produce out front.” He shook his head self-deprecatingly and chuckled. “After he pulled the splinters out with his pocketknife, he gave me my first pair of work gloves and then we remade the crates.”

  Will glanced up from his work and noticed that she looked less frightened. In fact, she was smiling a little. “What?” he asked, a little more gruffly than he had intended. Having shared his childhood memories with her made him feel just slightly vulnerable.

  “Nothing.” She tensed.

  “You were thinking something that made you smile. What was it?” he probed, this time keeping his voice soft and his eyes on her hand.

  “I was just wondering if you were more like Willy or Tommy when you were a boy.” Her voice was so soft he strained to hear it. When he glanced up again, her gaze turned away.

  “I think my parents would say that I was as ornery as Willy and as impulsive as Tommy. I know they were always at wits’ end to try and do something with me.” He grinned at the thought and went back to prying tiny pieces of wood out of her palm.

  “This might hurt a little,” he warned before he used the tip to slit her skin open just a bit more and then nab the splinter. Her sharp inhale confirmed the sting, but she didn’t flinch.

  “That was the last one on this hand,” he announced, not yet letting go of her wrist. It was soft and small inside his palm and he was reminded how slender she was. It had been a long time since he’d held a woman’s hand in his. Before he could dwell on those thoughts, he let her right hand go and set to work on the left.

  “So, you have an older sister and...?” He left the sentence hanging as he forced another sliver out.

  “It was just the two of us. She was married by the time our father died of the fever and then, a few weeks later, our mother...” The catch in her breath softened his heart a little.

  “How old her were you then?”

  “Twelve, turning thirteen. Emma and Palmer took me in. It was their obligation and they never let me forget it. I was an obligation.” She bit her bottom lip and he wondered what it must have felt like to grow up not being wanted. “So I did as much as I could not to be a bother. I helped with the children. They are really darling.”

  At the mention of her nieces and nephews, she smiled until he pulled another sliver out and she winced. “At first they had a housekeeper, but after Palmer offended her, she left and they had me do the majority of the work. I didn’t mind. It gave me a purpose and I could see to the children, but Emma was never satisfied with what I did.”

  “I’m sorry your sister didn’t appreciate your work. I certainly do. You’ve made this place much more like a home than it was before. I don’t think I’ve looked forward to breakfast since MaryAnn died. My brother’s wife was a good cook. I miss her—and him.”

  “I’m sorry. How long ago did they die?” Her compassion brought his focus from her hands to her eyes. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud. Only Colin, his pastor and close friend, and Jake knew how hard Matt’s death had been for him.

  “It’s been almost seven years. They headed to town in a sled a few weeks before Christmas to buy gifts and something happened to spook the horses, I guess. They ended up flipping into the river. By the time I went to find them, there was nothing we could do.” Will cleared his throat, pushing aside the memories of the mangled sleigh and his brother and sister-in-law still trapped under it in the cold, rushing water.

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice made the memories recede into the past were they belonged. He cleared his throat once more and returned his focus to her hand that still lay limp in his. He knew she was watching his face, but he didn’t dare look up and see pity in her eyes. He had seen enough pity in the eyes of the neighbors at the funerals. “It must get lonely out here with all the responsibilities of the farm now on your shoulders.”

  Her understanding soothed like a balm. A comfortable silence filled the room. Finally every splinter was out.

  “You’ll need to wash these and then I think I have some salve in the barn that’ll help with the sting. I’ll go get it.”

  “Thank you.” She stood and he pumped the water so that she could let it run over her hands.

  When he returned, she had almost finished the dishes and he forced himself to breathe deeply and take firm command of his temper before he spoke. Why did she insist on doing things that could hurt her?

  “You shouldn’t be washing those dirty dishes with your hands all cut up like that. I’ll finish up.” He was proud he’d kept his voice low.

  “I...” She looked as if she was about to explain but dropped her shoulders and turned back to the sink.

  “Wash them off and we’ll get them all bound up for tonight.”

  Not waiting for her to answer, he started to pump the water again and let her gingerly wash her hands under the cold spray. Holding out a clean towel, he wrapped her hands in the cloth and patted them dry. He used the salve on the cuts and blisters, some of which had opened while she was washing dishes, and then wrapped her hands in strips of clean cloth.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, without looking up. “I’m sorry to have troubled you. Is there something else I can do for you tonight?”

  “No, you were no trouble. I want you to get some rest and take care of those hands. It won’t do for one of those cuts to get infected.” He wondered if she thought he saw her as an obligation, as well.

  Nothing could be further from the truth. She was worth her slight weight in gold. The house was cleaner than it had ever been since he’d built it. The boys were getting better now and he would never have had any idea how to nurse them through the chicken pox. But he wasn’t foolish enough to think that she would stay for too much longer. Sooner or later she would be demanding he pay her way back to civilization. He didn’t dare dwell on why that thought bothered him tonight. Must be that he’d been missing another adult to talk with.

  She shifted on the chair she was sitting on and he realized it was getting late. His cows didn’t like him making them wait come morning, so he’d best be getting off to bed, especially since he was starting to feel a friendship stirring between him and his housekeeper. He’d have to be careful not to get too attached.

  But maybe a friendship, knowing she was only going to be there for a short time, wasn’t such a bad idea. She neede
d someone to talk with, as well. Maybe he could make a habit of talking with her after dinner in the evenings—just to see how things were going with the boys and their studies—that type of thing.

  “I’m gonna head on out now, unless there’s something else you need,” he offered, reluctantly standing when she shook her head. “Good night.”

  “Good night,” Abby said softly as he strode out into the night. He shut the door behind him and made sure it was secure.

  Chapter Six

  Sunday dawned bright and breezy. Abby quickly made breakfast and left a chicken baking with lots of onions, carrots and potatoes floating in the water that half filled the pot. Cooking was so easy now that she had the kitchen set up precisely the way she wanted it. It felt as if she had lived there all her life even though the calendar indicated only three weeks had passed. After breakfast, she made the boys put on their new shirts. They looked very handsome in their dark blue matching shirts and she regretted not having found time to make pants for them yet. Mr. Hopkins and Jake had also cleaned up nicely. They both sported white shirts under gray vests she had mended, washed, starched and ironed.

  Abby had managed to coax Jake into letting her cut his hair the night before, and he looked dashing. Cutting Jake’s hair had reminded her of the times she had done the same for her nephews. She wondered how they were doing and when, if ever, she would get to hear news from them.

  The men all sat in the wagon, waiting for her as she stepped out of the kitchen door. Mr. Hopkins drove right up to the steps and disembarked long enough to pick her up by the waist and set her on the wagon seat. They headed to the meeting house before she had time to worry about how she looked herself.

  Having chosen to wear her favorite dress of light pink with plum roses printed on the fabric, she hoped the other women at the church would overlook the fact the fabric was slightly worn in places. She prayed her bonnet would hold her curls in place in spite of the teasing prairie breeze. The last thing she wanted to do was to embarrass Mr. Hopkins by arriving at the Sunday meeting with her hair in disarray and her dress less than acceptable.