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Chapter Three

Darkness continued to fall as Maeve let Noah guide her through the main door of the house, down a short hallway and into a large square room that smelled faintly of coffee. She figured he sat here sometimes and drank his morning beverage. The windows were bare and must provide a good view of his ranch as he emptied his cup. Tonight, however, the gray sky outside didn’t let in much light. Despite the picture she’d painted in her mind about the man and his coffee, Maeve sensed the room was seldom used and had seen much sadness.

Or maybe it was her, she thought.

“Your home’s lovely,” she forced herself to say politely, clutching Violet close to her as though she needed to protect the girl. By now, she could see brocade-covered chairs in the shadows so she knew she wasn’t in the kitchen. It was the parlor, maybe. She still didn’t look up as she felt drops of melting snow fall from her tumble of hair, landing on the plank floor beneath her.

“I’ll wipe up the spots,” she said. “We’re dripping everywhere.”

Noah grunted, but didn’t say anything.

She didn’t blame him. If only Violet had been able to hide her fears, he might have come to see her daughter’s delightful side. As it was, he likely thought he’d be living in a house full of screams if he married Maeve. What made her particularly unhappy was that Noah would never know that Violet sang Sunday school songs in a sweet voice and tried to catch birds because she thought they were hungry and she wanted to feed them bread crumbs.

Maeve heard Noah’s footsteps as he walked across the room, sounding increasingly distant.

She felt as if her chance for a new life was slipping away.

“It was her father,” Maeve blurted out without thinking. She had never meant to tell anyone this part. “He was killed in a brawl at a bar.”

Noah turned around, but didn’t say anything.

“On the waterfront,” she added since he seemed to expect more details. “Violet was sitting in the corner and saw it all.”

Noah raised an eyebrow. “Did she follow him there? To the bar?”

Maeve shook her head. This was why she hadn’t wanted to tell him. “My husband was taking care of her and he took her there because he had an—ah—an appointment.”

“And the bar owners let her stay?”

“They let people do anything. It wasn’t the kind of place most people would go.”

“And I remind her of that?”

She shrugged. “I understand many of the men in the brawl had beards. In the dark, that’s probably all she saw of their faces.”

“She must have been terrified.” Noah’s voice was tense.

Maeve was silent even though he seemed to be waiting for her to say more. She couldn’t confess the rest of it. She didn’t want anyone to know the shame of her husband betraying her like he had. It still made her feel ugly.

Finally, Noah walked to the fireplace.

Maeve let the blanket slip down from her head so she could look around. Four large paned windows, two on each outside wall, faced out to the night and she could see the silhouette of trees swaying as the wind blew beside the house.

She hadn’t noticed earlier, but now that she searched the shadows, she saw the room was lined with exquisite furniture. Polished Georgian-style settees with rose brocade upholstery and mahogany legs carved in graceful arches. A pair of Louis XVI chairs. Matching side tables with crystal-cut lanterns on them and small silver bowls that she knew were waiting for calling cards and fresh flowers. She’d never expected to find a room like this out here in the territories.

“You must have sent back East for everything.” She couldn’t gesture because she still held Violet in her arms, but she nodded her head toward the furniture. Lined up straight against the walls, it rivaled what she had seen in the homes that she had cleaned in Boston.

“Steamboat to Fort Benton,” Noah said as turned back from his position by the fireplace. “Then mule-drawn wagon to here.”

Maeve was so surprised by everything along the walls that her eyes hadn’t made their way to the half circle of furniture near where Noah stood.

“You can lie your daughter down here,” Noah said with a gesture toward a wooden bench. “If she’s quiet enough that she doesn’t still need you to hold her.”

Maeve blinked, not sure she was seeing things clearly. The more intimate grouping of furniture in front of the fireplace was crudely made. She thought her eyesight was deceiving her until Noah bent over to light a kerosene lantern and the chairs were completely visible.

She had been right. The furniture was what a frontier house would contain—various pieces of unmatched wood, forced together to make a chair or a table, with no thought to beauty or grace. The pieces were not smooth or built to last. Even the lantern looked modest when compared to the crystal globes sitting on the edges of the room.

If it wasn’t obvious that the inner circle of chairs was what the man used regularly, Maeve would have been insulted to be led toward such a humble bench in the presence of the outer line of magnificence. She sat down slowly. Violet was heavy in her arms and Maeve hoped she would doze off to sleep.

There would be more time to explore this unusual house in the morning. She wondered if the other parts of the house had this same look of being held back like the occupant was waiting for something to happen before anything was used. She pondered the puzzle of it all for a moment until a realization came to her—of course, the furniture had been for his wife. He’d said she left, but maybe he was hoping she’d come back. Most people, Maeve knew, would sell such fine pieces of furniture if they weren’t going to use them.

She looked up to see Noah closing the ivory lace curtains on the room and putting enough wood on the fire to make a small blaze. He then excused himself to go help the men unload the wagon. He gave Violet a sympathetic look before he left the room, but he didn’t ask any questions.

The flames from the fire began to slowly warm the air, but Maeve kept the blankets wrapped around her daughter. It had been a tiring day for everyone. More questions had been asked than answered.

She wondered how she and her children were going to be able to live here with a man who had been so in love with his wife that he couldn’t marry another woman. In fact, he couldn’t even sit on the chairs he’d bought for that woman and likely wouldn’t ever sell them since he was hoping she’d come back.

Of course, Maeve thought with a rueful smile to herself, those were only his problems.

She had troubles of her own. A dozen booted men were going back and forth to where she assumed the kitchen was. All of them had beards of some length. A few of them had scars. She expected they all carried knives and some had pistols. Violet might start screaming every time one of these ranch hands crossed her path. The sheer number of men they would be around had not been something Maeve had considered.

She reminded herself that she’d had no other option but to come here. It was this or begging for bread on the streets of Boston. No one ever found enough to survive for long that way. And Violet would likely end up in an orphanage and Maeve in the poorhouse with the baby.

So, she told herself, it was pointless to berate herself for not making a better choice. She’d taken the only path she could.

She bent her head in exhaustion just thinking about the days she had before her, though.

Lord, give me strength, she managed to pray. She could not go further. Her feelings for God had suffered when it had seemed everything had lined up against her in Boston. Some people reported sensing God’s care for them in hard times, but all she had felt was an overwhelming silence. It was as if God had been as disappointed in her as her husband must have been to do the things he’d done.

When she’d heard from Noah, she’d begun to think God had decided to be in her life again. And now that future was uncertain.

She had given up any hope of love, but she had believed she would find respect in a new marriage. With God’s help, that would be enough for a good life.

She blushed wondering what the ranch hands must think about her now. Noah had said it all very politely, but it was clear that he had called off the wedding, hoping she would grow weary and say she no longer wanted to marry him.

She could only bless the men’s hearts for their clear disappointment. They, at least, wanted her to stay. Noah might, too, she assured herself, once he saw how useful she could be.

She heard footsteps and knew Noah was coming back through the hallway. His steps were different from those of the other men. They sounded more confident. Maybe a little quicker. Heavier.

“How long have you had it like this?” Maeve asked when Noah reached the open doorway.

When he didn’t answer, she continued, “The wood on these chairs needs to be polished or it will crack and ruin.”

“I don’t have time to be polishing the furniture.”

“I can do it,” Maeve offered. After her years working in Boston, there wasn’t much she didn’t know about caring for expensive furniture. “You want to keep it nice for—”

Her voice trailed off. She wasn’t exactly sure she wanted to say the words indicating he was saving the furniture for when his wife returned, but she had no other theory to offer.

Maeve looked down. Her daughter was lying on the bench, with her head in Maeve’s lap.

She could feel the man looking at her so she glanced up.

“You must like European furniture,” she finished. “It’s beautiful.”

“Neither,” Noah said with a smile. “I bought it to show myself I could.”

Maeve wondered how much money the man had.

A dozen men had marched back and forth to the kitchen carrying things past the doorway. Most of the supplies were still coming, but she saw a couple of big bags carried to the back of the house. From the sounds of the steps, two men carried her trunk to the end of the hall. She suspected they had taken it to the bedroom, but the warmth from the fire was making her toes tingle and she didn’t want to walk down the hall to see.

She looked around. Back East, she’d rented the smallest room she could find. It had had a bed, two chairs and a stove for heating. She’d barely been able to afford that. This parlor alone was three times the size of her room. She’d brought some of her doilies with her, the ones she’d crocheted for her first wedding. They’d faded over the years and she would be ashamed to even put them out in this house.

She watched as Noah walked out of the room.

He turned and said, “The downstairs bedroom is at the end of the hall. The men are finished unpacking. They’ll be leaving in a minute. Don’t worry about waking up early. Dakota will be cooking for the men.”

Maeve said nothing, but she vowed to be up early enough to make breakfast. She didn’t have much time to show Noah how useful she could be and she planned to make the ranch hands the best food they’d ever eaten.

He might not want another wife, she told herself, but he had never wavered on wanting a cook for his men.

* * *

The night was black as Noah braced himself against the growing wind and walked as fast as the storm permitted toward the light in the bunkhouse window, thinking about Maeve. She had pursed her lips when he even looked at her inquisitively. She had secrets she still hadn’t told him, but he didn’t want to press her. He didn’t like going to bed with these kinds of mysteries on his mind, though. If he didn’t know the problem, he couldn’t fix it.

All of the buildings on his ranch were built firm. He’d used milled wood. The planks were measured and cut to fit. That’s why there was no dip in the roof of the bunkhouse and there were no gaps in the corners of the side room he’d added to the bunkhouse.

He turned a knob and the door opened. He could see the fire burning in the rock fireplace on the far wall. He stepped inside and stomped the snow off his boots. The group of men sitting by the fire turned in unison to look at him.

He nodded in greeting, wondering how to tell them Reverend Olson might be asking them about him and his sleeping habits.

But the men looked as if they had something on their minds, too.

“Yes?” he asked.

They were silent for a minute and then, Bobby, the youngest ranch hand, let loose.

“We worked hard to get a new cook. And here you are, sending her back. She came for us, too, you know. We wrote the ad.”

“Ah,” Noah said as he took off his coat and rubbed the snow off the back of his neck. “But it’s me she came to marry.”

“Well, she says she’s willing,” Bobby said in frustration. “The rest is up to you.”

Noah walked over to the straight-back chairs gathered around a table and pulled one of them closer to where the men sat. “It doesn’t matter whether she’s my wife or my cook,” Noah said as he settled himself into the chair. “I won’t have a woman go back on her agreement with me again. So I want her to be sure she wants to stay here.”

The men sat in silence as they considered this.

“You’re thinking about that divorce, aren’t you?” Dakota finally said from where he sat by the window. “We all know that wasn’t your fault. You did everything you could for Allison.”

“Did I?” Noah asked them. “Sometimes I wonder. I brought her out here to the ranch and then I left her alone too much. Everyone within a hundred miles of here knew she was unhappy and I didn’t take her to town more than once every few months.”

“You were busy,” Bobby said.

“That’s no excuse.” Noah gave him a smile. “Someday, when you’re married, you’ll understand. Marriage is a commitment that isn’t always easy.”

“Have you been talking to Mrs. Barker?” Dakota asked as he walked over to Noah and peered at him as if he was trying to determine the state of his soul.

Noah squirmed. The older woman was the biggest gossip in the area. “She was at the church this morning, but that’s all. Why?”

The men looked at Dakota and he looked back at them.

Finally, the other man shrugged. “She told me her husband saw your Allison down in Denver last week when he was there on railroad business. She goes by Alice now, but it was her all right. Mr. Barker told her you were getting yourself a new bride. Mrs. Barker said it didn’t sound like Allison—or Alice, I guess — was too happy about that.”

“I’m sure she was only making some polite response. You know how Mrs. Barker likes to add to the truth to make the telling of something more dramatic.”

“I don’t know,” Dakota muttered. “I can still hear Allison complaining. The table was too rough. The sun was too hot. No one came to visit. The cows had flies. The flowers didn’t grow.”

“She hoped for more out of life than me,” Noah said ruefully. “She knew how much land I owned and she pictured herself entertaining governors and other important people. The only one who ever came out to see us was Mrs. Barker and I am grateful to her for that.”

“Ranch women know what to expect,” Dakota said firmly.

Noah nodded. “That’s just it. Maeve lived in Boston for most of her life, except for a few years in Ireland when she was young. She hasn’t even had a chance to think of what life here would be like.”

It was quiet again as the men considered that.

“I’d sure hate to lose her,” Bobby said.

“We don’t even know for sure that she can cook,” another ranch hand said philosophically.

“With hair like that, I’m not worried,” a different cowboy said. “Irish women are born cooking.”

“I know she can do better than Dakota,” Bobby said with a look at Dakota.

“I’d like to see you make a flapjack worth eating,” the older ranch hand retorted with no rancor in his voice.

Noah knew a lot of bickering went on in the bunkhouse and he usually turned a deaf ear to it. He’d had a long day himself and was looking forward to slipping into bed and sleeping.

“The Reverend Olson might be talking to some of you.” Noah didn’t have to look around to know he’d caught their full attention. The reverend was respected around here. “He says you’re to be my chaperones. Make sure I sleep in the room off the bunkhouse and don’t go to the house at night.”

Bobby grinned. “So the preacher is worried you might want to be more married than you think.”

Noah felt the tension shoot through his jaw. “He’s not meaning me particularly. He just knows the value of a woman’s reputation in these parts. For that matter, I should make sure none of you leave the bunkhouse for long periods of time at night, either.”