Mail-Order Christmas Brides Boxed Set

by Jillian Hart

  “That’ll be Dakota,” Noah said to her and then turned to the ranch hand. “What do you think? Does Violet need another child around to play with?”

  The cowboy stood still in the darkened doorway.

  “I know more about calves and any kind of animal than I do a little girl,” Dakota finally spoke. “But most young’uns like to have another young’un to race around the corral with.”

  Noah shook his head. “I can’t see Violet racing around the barn so I think she’s fine being just one child.”

  Maeve wished she’d never asked.

  “I can handle breakfast by myself,” Maeve told the older man. She wanted to show Noah she could do the job. Her friend, the cook in the house in Boston, had shown her how to make some elegant dishes just in case Maeve ever landed a better position in another house. If they had the ingredients, she could make eggs Benedict, a recipe from Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City.

  “He’s not here to cook breakfast,” Noah said as he gestured for the ranch hand to come closer to them. “He’s taking water back to the bunkhouse. They can’t boil it fast enough over there.”

  Maeve adjusted her assumptions about how clean the cowboys were. Maybe they were taking baths.

  “Isn’t it awfully cold?” she asked.

  “The blizzard ran itself out in the middle of the night,” Dakota said as he walked up to where Maeve and Noah were standing. “I think today is going to be nice enough. Might even get the supplies delivered if the mercantile can spare Jimmy.”

  Dakota’s face was easy to see, too, when he was close enough to the fire. The years had taken their toll on him. She wondered if Noah had assigned him to be the cook to give him some relief from the harder work outside. He was spry enough, though. The cowboy wore suspenders as he stood there. They were loose and hung down to his sides instead of being tight upon his shoulders. She noticed he had a bar of soap in one hand.

  Just then Maeve heard Violet calling her.

  “Mommy,” the girl repeated herself with more volume. She sounded afraid.

  “I have to go,” Maeve said as she started toward the door. “She was asleep last night when I put her to bed and she’ll wonder where she is.”

  “Might as well get some more sleep yourself,” Noah called after her. “Breakfast will be late this morning.”

  Maeve stepped into the bedroom and rushed to her daughter.

  “It’s all right,” she assured the child as she bent down to hug her. “We’re safe here. And I’ve got you.”

  Maeve took off her dress and apron, draping them over the nearby chair. Then she lay down on the bed and cuddled Violet close to her. She could feel the beat of the girl’s heart slow as she relaxed. Noah was right. It wouldn’t hurt to lie here for a few more minutes. The sight of him standing there by the stove had her flustered anyway. It was likely the darkness that added the feeling of intimacy, but it was disconcerting anyway.

  She listened to the sounds of Noah and Dakota talking as she watched Violet fall back to sleep. Maeve couldn’t hear what the two men were saying, but the sound of their voices quickly lulled her to sleep, as well.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, Noah almost burned his fingers on the handle of the latest kettle. He drew his hand back with a soft hiss and shook it before reaching for a kitchen towel.

  “It’s going to blister,” he said to Dakota, who was pouring water from the bucket into another pan.

  Noah held out the towel to the ranch hand. “Put some cold on this.”

  “You got to pay attention when you deal with hot water,” the cowboy said as he did as asked.

  Noah took the wet towel and wrapped it around his finger to stop the throbbing.

  “Got to pay attention about other things, too,” Dakota added.

  Noah looked up at him. “What other things?”

  The ranch hand jerked his head toward the hallway that led to the main bedroom. “Reverend Olson is going to be asking us if you’re keeping to your word and staying in the bunkhouse.”

  “I don’t think the reverend meant I couldn’t come into my own kitchen to boil some water,” Noah protested. “Besides, I thought she would still be asleep. It’s chilly being up this early in the morning and I know she had a hard day yesterday.” Noah realized he was talking too much, but he couldn’t seem to stop. “I had no reason to think she’d be anywhere but asleep.”

  Dakota shrugged. “All I’m saying is that a man can start out innocent enough and land into trouble.”

  “Not me,” Noah said emphatically. “I know better than to lose my head.”

  This time the ranch hand turned to look at him. “Is that right?”

  The question hung in the air, but Noah didn’t argue any further. All he said was, “Allison is long gone from here.”

  “I wasn’t talking about Allison,” Dakota said as he set the empty bucket back on the cupboard by the door.

  Noah figured as much. He wasn’t sure what he felt about Maeve, but his men probably saw the confusion on his face.

  “We’re running a ranch here,” Noah finally said. “We have enough to worry about.”

  Dakota grunted, but he didn’t say anything more as he picked up a boiling kettle of water and walked toward the door.

  Just before the other man left the kitchen, he said, “If all we were worrying about was the cattle, we wouldn’t be scraping our faces this morning. They don’t care about our beards.”

  With that, the ranch hand stepped outside.

  Noah was left alone in the kitchen. He hadn’t paid any attention to this room for months and now he saw that it had grown a little shabby. Dakota had used the towels to grab too many skillets off the stove when the eggs or biscuits were burning. Scorch marks stained every one of the five towels he could see. By his recollection, another three had burst into flames at one time or the other.

  He’d taken the curtains off the windows last winter when some of the hems had come out and they’d started to sag. As he recalled, Allison had liked to keep jars filled with wildflowers on the table. Those jars now held bullet casings on the bottom shelf in the supply room. The ranch hands almost always milked two or three cows, but no one had bothered to make butter in a long time and there was dust on the churn that sat in the corner by the broom.

  He walked over to that corner and decided the broom needed replacing, as well.

  He felt the lather stiffening in his beard, but he sat down anyway. He did not know when he had let his house fall into disarray. He had been upset when Allison left him, and his pride had stung even worse when she’d divorced him. But long before that he had known she had married him with false impressions in her mind. Little of her heart had made her decision to marry him or leave him. He was a plan that hadn’t worked out for her.

  On his part, he had been ignorant, he supposed. Allison was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen and it had seemed wrong to question his good fortune when she’d hinted she would marry him if he asked. Like he had told Dakota and Maeve, he had been an only child. His parents had both died in a carriage accident when he was eight years old. He had been passed back and forth between two elderly great aunts until he had been judged old enough to make his own way at sixteen.

  Neither of the aunts had spoken with him much. Fortunately, they’d each had a gardener who had taken him under their wings. From the one, he’d learned about growing plants. From the other, he’d learned how to take care of goats and then the milk cows.

  He had not known what a family felt like, though, so he had been glad to marry Allison.

  Now he wondered if he hadn’t missed too much growing up to ever be a good husband or father. Allison had certainly found him lacking. His ranch hands had taught him something about loyalty and the contentment that comes from caring about others, but there was more to family than that. He knew Mrs. Barker had advised him once to share what was in his heart—his fears and dreams—with Allison in hopes of improving their marriage. That hadn’t worked wel
l, though.

  Chapter Five

  Maeve stretched her legs while her eyes were still closed. The bed was warm and Violet was still sleeping. There were no sounds from the kitchen so Maeve guessed Dakota had not started breakfast for the men yet—which was the way she wanted it to be.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw that the sun had risen.

  She rolled over to the edge of the bed and sat up.

  This was the first time she’d seen the bedroom in full light and she was delighted with the golden hue of the logs that made up the outside walls. A bearskin hung near the doorway to the hall. A dozen books were sitting on a shelf next to the bed. One of them was a Bible. Another the works of Charles Dickens.

  Maeve reached over and pulled her dress and apron to her so she could put them on again. Within a few minutes, she had her shoes on, too, and was ready to go to the kitchen. She wanted to be there before Dakota came so she could find out where the supplies were kept.

  Sunlight was streaming into the kitchen when she walked through the door. The air was steamy, but there were no more kettles boiling on the stove. The fire was going though so it would be easy to fry up some bacon before she started on the eggs.

  She went into the side room that served as a pantry. There was a large bag of flour and a smaller one of sugar. A jar of honey, like the one on the table, stood in the corner of a shelf. What looked like twenty tins of oysters and a big jar of pickles were next to it. Empty bags were lying on the other shelves.

  Deciding that there must be another place for food that needed to be kept cold, Maeve pushed against the door that led to the outside. As she suspected, there was a small room with yet another door that gave final exit to the outdoors. Between the two doors was a little room where a cabinet hugged one wall and a bench the other. A tall shelf over the bench had an assortment of hats on it.

  When she opened the cabinet door she saw it was lined with tin. She could feel the air inside was cooler than in the kitchen. Vents were cut to let in the outside air. A side of bacon sat on one shelf, a ham was hanging from a hook in an open area and several large jars of milk, a thick layer of cream on top each, were on another shelf with pieces of cheesecloth draped over them. A washbasin filled with a mound of eggs, both brown and white, was by the milk. She figured there were easily four dozen eggs and five gallons of milk.

  On the train, Mercy had assured her that a rancher like Noah would have an abundance of food and she was right. Maeve reached up carefully and started putting eggs in the pocket of her apron. She couldn’t wait to give Violet a cup of that milk. Her daughter hadn’t tasted any since Maeve lost her job. Instead, they had made do with watery bean soup and the foodstuffs her friend had given them.

  Before long, Maeve had found a sharp knife and sliced up enough bacon to fill three cast-iron skillets. She put the pans on the cookstove and was lining up thirty eggs to crack when she felt the first tremble of unease in her stomach. She told herself it was nothing.

  The bacon started to sizzle so she opened a drawer looking for a fork to turn the meat when it was browned on one side. She figured if she ignored her queasiness, it would go away.

  While the bacon fried, she went in search of a pot to make coffee. She found two of them on a high shelf in the pantry. They looked clean, but she took them to the basin to wash anyway. A small bag of coffee was in the cupboard by the basin.

  Before long, the smell of the bacon mixed with that of the coffee. She walked over to the stove and used a long fork to put the cooked bacon slices on a platter. She slipped that plate into the small warming oven on top of the stove. She poured most of the bacon grease out of the skillets before cracking eggs and dropping them into the hot pans.

  She had managed to ignore the nausea that plagued her until she had all the eggs cooking. Then, looking down at the thirty yolks, a wave of it rolled over her and made her clutch her stomach. She knew she had to sit down.

  Just then, the back door swung open and Dakota stepped inside.

  She had her eyes on the closest chair in the side area where the table was and she began walking over there. She couldn’t even think about greeting the ranch hand until she sat down and took a deep breath. She’d be fine if she just closed her eyes for a few minutes.

  She barely had herself settled on the chair when she saw Dakota looming over her.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked as he leaned down.

  “Nothing,” she managed to whisper and then wondered if something was wrong with her eyes.

  The ranch hand had lost his beard. At least she thought he’d had one. Maybe in the dark last night she’d been confused. But it had seemed as if all the men wore beards, some scruffy and some trimmed, but all distinctly there. And then she saw the nicks on his face like the ones her husband used to get when he went to the barber around the corner who didn’t have much experience.

  “You shaved!” she said.

  Dakota didn’t even respond. He was looking at her as if he was trying to figure something out. He was frowning for a full minute, examining her, when his face cleared and he smiled.

  “You’re pregnant,” he said with a grin.

  His pronouncement was enough to make Maeve sit up straighter in the chair. “How’d you know?”

  “I was married once, a long time ago. I’d know that color of green on your face anywhere.”

  “You can’t tell anyone!”

  “We’re going to have a baby!” Dakota kept grinning. “Right here on the ranch.”

  Then his face fell. “Noah doesn’t know, does he?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think he even wants a baby. You heard him this morning. He was an only child and he thinks that’s fine.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t take his words to heart,” Dakota said as he reached up to rub the beard that wasn’t there and then put his hand back down. “Noah is a good man. He’ll do what’s right.”

  Maeve just shook her head. It was hard to imagine anything drearier than someone doing his duty for her, especially when Noah didn’t owe her any duty. She wasn’t quite sure how these mail-order-bride agreements worked, but she understood from others that no one was obligated to go through with the wedding.

  “You can’t tell him,” she repeated.

  Just then Maeve smelled something burning.

  “The eggs!” she exclaimed as she started to stand.

  “You just sit there,” Dakota said as he straightened up. “I’ll get them.”

  “No, I need to make breakfast,” she told the ranch hand, feeling panicked. “Noah needs a cook. I want him to see that I’m useful.”

  “You’re in no condition to—” Dakota started and then stopped to listen.

  Maeve heard the back door to the kitchen open then and the sound of boots as the men stomped the snow off of them. She took a deep breath and forced herself to stand. She walked over to the stove while the men were still in the entry room.

  Dakota slipped something into her hands as they started coming into the kitchen. No one saw him.

  Maeve smiled and waved the spoon he’d given her around. If anyone was thinking, they would realize that no one used a spoon to fry eggs, but she was counting on the men all being sleepy still. It was seldom anyone thought about the cook, and especially what utensils she used to make the food.

  By now, Dakota had turned over all of the eggs. The edges were burned black and the middles a hard yellow. Maeve wasn’t sure anyone could eat them.

  The men shuffled their feet as they stood in the middle of the floor. The last man to come into the kitchen was Noah. Seeing his face without his beard suddenly made her realize.

  “You shaved your beards,” she exclaimed, her gaze going from man to man. “Every one of you.”

  They all suddenly took an interest in the floor and looked sheepish. Or maybe it was that they seemed younger with their skin so white where their whiskers had been and so dark on the rest of their faces.

  “We can get by without them,” Bobby finally sa
id. “They’re only whiskers.”

  Maeve turned to Noah. She knew he had been the one to ask the men to shave off their facial hair to make it easier for Violet.

  “Thank you,” she whispered as she took a step toward him, blinking a little so no one would see her eyes were damp.

  Noah nodded back, but didn’t say anything.

  They looked at each other and Maeve thought she might break down and really cry. No man had ever done something so kind for her. And his eyes were steady, as though he understood.

  Finally, when it seemed they would go on gazing at each other forever, Noah took a step toward her and bent down slightly to give her a kiss on her cheek.

  Maeve put her hand up to the place his lips had touched. She knew it couldn’t be, but it felt warmer there than the rest of her face.

  By then the ranch hands had moved through the kitchen and she heard them sitting down at the table. Almost at the same time, Bobby was taking the plates from the shelf and passing them down the line until everyone had one. Then he did the same thing with a jar that held the forks and another that held knives.

  So far the ranch hands had not noticed that she and Noah were standing together. Maeve stepped back a little, certain they had not seen the kiss. She liked that it had been private, something just between her and Noah.

  “We’ll probably want spoons, too,” Maeve suggested as she took another step toward the table. She wished she had more to offer the men for breakfast.

  She looked back at Noah and he smiled at her. Then she turned to the young man in front of her. “The spoons are right here.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Bobby said shyly.

  In a few minutes, most of the men were sitting down in their chairs. They had left two places empty in the corner closest to the kitchen and another across the table from them.

  “This one’s for you, Dakota,” one of the men pointed to the lone seat.

  That left Noah and Maeve standing.

  Smiling even wider, Noah walked over and pulled out one of the remaining chairs for her.

  Maeve nodded her thanks as she sat in it. Maybe the men had seen the kiss, after all.