Читать книгу Western Christmas Proposals: Christmas Dance with the Rancher / Christmas in Salvation Falls / The Sheriff's Christmas Proposal - Carla Kelly - Страница 16
ОглавлениеKate spent a peaceful night in her room, sitting for a while in the chair and reading, as she suspected wealthy people did. Her new bed was narrow and the mattress thin, but she had no complaint.
She debated whether to lock the door. Key in hand, she had the power, but the urgency was gone. She closed the door, and that was enough.
In the morning, she woke to angry voices in the back bedroom. Kate opened her door slightly and listened as Ned and his father argued about leaving him alone to the mercies of “a dratted female I can barely understand” while his sons rode fence today.
“Try a little harder, Dad,” Ned said.
“What for?” his father shot back. “You know I’m dying, I know I’m dying, and that...female with the damn fool accent knows I’m dying!”
“I guess because it’s the civilized thing to do,” Ned replied, and he sounded so weary.
“You don’t need me,” Daniel Avery argued. “You can run this ranch.”
“Did it ever occur to you that we love you?” Ned asked, sounding more exasperated than weary now, and driven to a final admission, maybe one hard for a man not used to frills, if love was a frill.
Katie dressed quickly, pleased to see that Ned or Pete—likely Ned—had laid a fire in the cookstove. While the argument about her merits and demerits continued in the back room at a lower decibel, she deftly shredded potatoes and put them in a cast-iron skillet to fry.
She silently ordered the argument down the hall to roll off her back. She was the chore girl and she was getting through a winter doing something she hadn’t planned on, because Saul Coffin, drat his hide, had a temper. Sticks and stones, she thought. That’s all it is.
Breakfast on the table brought a smile to Ned Avery’s set expression. He asked for the ketchup, then ate silently before finally setting down his fork.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” he told her.
“I’ll set his food on that little table by his bed and just leave him alone with it,” she said, getting out another plate.
“I can take it to him. Maybe I had better,” Ned said, starting to rise.
“Eat your breakfast,” she said, as she started down the hall with Daniel Avery’s steak and hash browns on a tray.
Mr. Avery was staring at the ceiling, which she noticed for the first time was covered with newspapers. Just standing there, she stared up, too.
“‘Archduke Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian crown, is found dead with his mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera in Mayerling.’ Oh, my,” she said, then sat the tray of food on the table where he could reach it and left the room. She thought she heard him laugh.
She sat down in the kitchen to oatmeal, which she preferred to steak in the morning, and was just spooning on the sugar when she heard, “Ned!” from the back of the house.
“You should have let Ned take Dad his breakfast,” Pete told her.
“That’s enough, Pete,” Ned snapped, as he got up from the table. “Maybe I appreciate a little initiative.”
From the vacant look on the younger brother’s face, Kate could see he did not know the word, and felt surprisingly sorry for him.
Ned came back and took the ketchup off the table. “He wants this.”
“Stubborn man,” Kate said.
“I’m just pleased not to see the whole thing on the floor,” her boss said, and he sounded more cheerful. “He wants some of your coffee, too.”
“I’ll take him both,” Kate said. “Sit down and finish your breakfast.”
He did as she said. “Are you as stubborn as he is?”
“Ayuh,” she said, which made him laugh.
She took ketchup and coffee down the hall, pausing inside the last bedroom to read something else from the ceiling that looked a little newer than Crown Prince Rudolf’s misfortune. “Mr. Avery, it appears that Christine Hardt has patented the first brassiere. If you need anything else, just ask. I intend to earn my thirty dollars a month.”
She returned to the kitchen and finished her breakfast as Ned poured himself another cup of coffee, gave her an inquiring look, and poured her one, as well.
As she ate, he filled her in on the day’s task, which included the mysterious “riding fence” he had mentioned earlier. She had spent a lifetime cultivating an expressionless face, the kind that mostly encouraged people like her stepfather to forget she was even in the room. Ned Avery seemed to see right through it.
“I can tell you have no idea what I’m talking about,” he said, elbows on the table.
“I am curious,” she admitted. “I don’t think anyone rides fence in Maine.”
“Probably not. I’ve seen Maine on a map and it looks pretty squished together. We’ll just be riding down the fence line to make sure the bob wire is tight and all the strands are in place.”
“If not?”
“We’ll fix them. I’ll have a roll of wire and staples with me, and the straightener. Up you get, Pete.”
Pete shook his head. “Don’t like to ride.”
“I need your help.”
Ned gave his brother a push out the door. Ned looked back. “Can you fix us some sandwiches from the leftover steak, and stick some apples in that bag?”
Kate wiped her hands on her apron, ready to begin.
“I’d do it myself,” Ned said, sounding apologetic, “but I’ve noticed something about sandwiches.”
“Which is...”
“They always taste a little better when someone else makes them. Back in a minute,” he said.
Pleased with her boss, Kate made sandwiches, adding pickles from an earthenware crock to the thick slabs of beef between bread. She found waxed paper in a drawer and made two sandwiches apiece. Four apples went in the bag on the bottom. She put the rest of the coffee in a canteen she noticed by the canvas bag and handed the whole thing to Ned when he returned to the kitchen, bringing in more cold weather with him.
“Pete’s pouting in the barn,” he announced.
“He really doesn’t like to ride?” she asked.
“Afraid of horses.” Ned leaned against the table. He shrugged. “I still need his help.”
“Maybe I could help,” she offered.
“Can you ride?”
“I can learn,” she replied.
“I believe you would try,” he told her. “Just keep an eye on my father. I set his, well, his, well you know, close to his bed.”
She nodded. “I’ll remove his breakfast dishes later. Maybe I’ll read to him.”
“I doubt he’ll let you.”
“I can try.”
He gave her an appraising look, one part speculation, two parts evaluation, and another part she didn’t recognize. He slung the bag over his shoulder and startled whistling before he shut the door.
Poor Pete, she thought, wondering what the slow brother would really rather do, given the opportunity.
She thought about the Averys as she set a sponge for bread. She glanced down the length of the cabin through the arches, wondering if she dared risk the wrath. Why not? she asked herself.
Mr. Avery pretended to sleep as she gathered up the empty dishes, and tucked the ketchup bottle under her arm. Back in the kitchen she busied herself with the bread dough, then cleaned through layers of debris and ranch clutter while the loaves rose to impressive height. What was the use of ropes she could not have guessed, but there were enough partly used liniment bottles stuck here and there to make her wonder just how troublesome the cow business could be.
The fragrance of baked bread filled the little ranch house. When it came from the oven still hot and not entirely set, she cut off a generous slice, lathered it with butter, put it on a plate and carried it down to the last bedroom, where Mr. Avery immediately pretended he slept. She left the bread on the table and washed her hands of that much stubbornness.
She slathered her own slice and propped her feet up on another of the kitchen chairs to enjoy it. The wind blew and beat against the one small kitchen window. She eyed the window, and wondered where she could find material for curtains.
Sitting there in the kitchen, wind roaring outside, she felt herself relax. The whine and clank of the industrial looms that had been her salvation from mistreatment, but the author of headaches, had never seemed farther away. No matter what she decided in the spring, she never had to go back.
If only Daniel Avery, rail-thin and suffering, would agree to a truce. She glanced at the calendar, the one with a naked woman peeking around a for sale sign—where did Ned get these calendars?—and resolved to find better calendars, and while she was at it, a better job for Pete and comfort for Mr. Avery. What she would do for Ned escaped her, but she had time.
