Читать книгу Would-Be Wilderness Wife - Regina Scott - Страница 11

Chapter Three

Twilight wrapped around the forest by the time Catherine’s host guided the team into a grassy clearing crossed by moss-crusted split-rail fences. A large cabin and a barn made from logs and planed timber hugged the edges, with trees standing guard behind them as if honoring their fallen brothers and sisters. Another light through the trees told her at least one more cabin was nearby. The glow through the windows of the closest cabin beckoned to her.

“Where’s the lake?” she asked as Drew hopped down and came around the wagon.

He nodded toward the cabin, a two-story affair with a pitched roof and a porch at one end. It was encircled by a walk of planed boards.

“Through the trees there,” he said. “We’re on a bench fifty feet or so above the waterline. Keeps us out of any flooding in the spring.”

His father had obviously planned ahead. She wouldn’t have thought about spring flooding when choosing a plot for a house. Of course, she’d never had to choose a homesite in the wilderness!

She turned to climb down, and once again Drew reached out and lifted her from the wagon to set her on her feet. For a moment it was as if she stood in his embrace. His eyes were a smoky blue in the dim light. She couldn’t seem to remember why she was here, what she was supposed to do next.

The sound of Levi scrambling out of the wagon bed woke her, and she pulled away. As the youth started past, his brother put out an arm to stop him.

“See to the horses and bring in the supplies. I’ll take our guest inside.”

Levi’s face tightened, but then he glanced at Catherine. As if he finally realized it was his fault she was here, he shrugged and went to do as he had been bid.

“This way,” Drew said with another nod toward the cabin.

The Wallin home might have been made from peeled logs, but it appeared the family had taken pains to make the place attractive as well as functional. Stained glass panels decorated the top of each window on the two floors. Boxes filled with plants underpinned the two larger downstairs windows; she recognized several kinds of flowering herbs. Someone had plaited a wreath from fir branches and hung it from the thick front door. The resinous smell greeted Catherine as she approached.

Drew reached for the latch, but the panel swung open without his aid. Catherine only had time to register blond hair darker and a good foot lower than hers before a young lady launched herself into her arms.

“Thank you, oh, thank you!” The girl drew back to grin at Catherine. “I know this was a terrible long way to come, but we need a nurse badly. Simon and James and John will be so glad to see you! They’ll be by later, my brothers, all of them. They thought you or Doc or whoever was coming should have some time to yourself before they came stampeding in, but I couldn’t wait to get to know you better.”

“Beth,” Drew rumbled beside Catherine.

The girl didn’t even pause for breath as she seized Catherine’s hand and pulled her across the colorful braided rag rug into the wide, warm room, which was lit by a glowing fire. “I’ll make an apron for you to wear. Godey’s Lady’s Book says they’re all the rage for the fashionable lady of industry.”

“Beth,” Drew said a little more firmly as he followed them.

“I have stew ready for dinner,” his sister continued, and Catherine could smell the tangy scent drifting through the cabin as Beth tugged her past a long table with ladder-back chairs at each end and benches along the sides. Similar chairs rested against the walls, cane seats partially covered by small quilts, and a bentwood rocker stood near the rounded stone fireplace. Through the openings on either side of the hearth she caught sight of a step stove with kettles simmering. A massive iron tub leaned against the outside wall.

“I know it’s not much,” Beth said, “but I wasn’t sure when you’d get here and I was afraid I’d dry out the venison if I kept it on the stove too long. Do you like stew?”

“Yes,” Catherine assured her, pulling herself to a stop in the middle of the room, “but...”

Beth didn’t wait for more. “Oh, good! This time of year we only have early carrots, of course, but I still had potatoes and turnips left from the fall. We have our own garden behind the house. Drew cleared the land. In a few weeks, we’ll have peas and beans and cabbage and...”

“Beth!”

Drew’s thundering voice made Catherine cringe, but it finally stopped his sister, in word and in action. She turned to frown at him, firelight rippling across her straight golden hair. “What?”

“Doc Maynard couldn’t come,” he said without a hint of apology in his voice. “This is Miss Stanway. She’s a nurse, but she’ll only be staying the night with us. I’ll return her to Seattle tomorrow.”

“Oh.” The single word seemed to echo in the room. She dropped her gaze and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Now that she was still, Catherine could see that she had a heart-shaped face like her brother, wide-spaced eyes and the beginnings of a figure. Her cheeks were turning as pink as the narrow-skirted gingham gown she wore.

“It was a natural mistake,” Catherine assured her with a smile. “And I’ll be happy to help your mother while I’m here.”

Beth glanced up and brightened. Her eyes were darker than her older brother’s, closer to the midnight blue of Levi’s. Catherine had a feeling that one day a large number of suitors would be calling.

“Thank you,” Beth said, good humor apparently restored. “And I truly am happy to make your acquaintance. Would you like to see Ma now?”

Before Catherine could answer, Drew stepped forward, gaze all for his sister, his brows drawn down heavily over his deep-set eyes. “How is she?”

Beth’s light dimmed, and she seemed to shrink in on herself. “Still the same. I’m not sure she knows me.”

Catherine felt as if her spine had lengthened, her shoulders strengthened. Her father had always said it was a powerful thing to have a purpose. She felt it now, wiping away her weariness and soothing her frustrations. Thank You, Lord. Help me do what You fitted me to do.

“Take me to her,” she ordered them.

Beth clasped her hands in obvious relief. Drew merely motioned Catherine to where a set of open stairs, half logs driven into the wall, rose to the second story.

Upstairs were two more rooms, divided by the fireplace and the walls that supported it. One room held several straw ticks on the floor, but only one seemed to be in use; the others were piled with rumpled clothing, tools and chunks of wood. The other room contained two wooden beds—a smaller one in the corner with a carved chest beside it and a larger bedstead in the center with a side table holding a brass lamp. Both beds were covered with multicolored quilts that brightened the room.

A woman lay on the wider bed. She had hair that was more red than gold, plastered to her oval face. She’d been handsome once, but now pain had drawn lines about her eyes, nose and mouth. By the way the collar of her flannel nightgown bagged, Catherine guessed she’d lost some weight, as well. Her skin looked like parchment in the candlelight.

Catherine sat in the high-backed chair that had been placed next to the bed and reached for Mrs. Wallin’s hand. Setting her fingers to the woman’s wrist, she counted the heartbeats as her father had taught her. She could feel Drew and his sister watching her. She’d been watched by family members before, some doubting her, some worried. This time felt different somehow. Her shoulders tensed, and she forced them to relax.

“Her pulse is good,” she reported, keeping her voice calm and her face composed. She had to remain objective. It was so much easier to do her job when she viewed the person before her as a patient in need of healing rather than someone’s mother or wife. She leaned closer, listening to the shallow, panting breaths.

“Mrs. Wallin,” she said, “can you hear me?”

The woman’s eyelids fluttered. Drew and Beth leaned closer as well, crowding around Catherine. Their mother’s eyes opened, as clear as her eldest son’s but greener. She blinked as if surprised to find herself in bed, then focused on Catherine.

“Mary?” she asked.

Beth sucked in a breath, drawing back and hugging herself. Drew didn’t move, but Catherine felt as if he also had distanced himself. Who was this Mary his mother had been expecting? Did Drew Wallin have a wife he’d neglected to mention?

* * *

Drew watched as Catherine tended to his mother. Ma had changed so much in the past two weeks that he hardly knew her. As Beth had said, he wasn’t sure she knew them, either. It was as if the fire that had warmed them all their lives was growing dim.

He had feared Catherine might confirm the fact, tell them in her cool manner to prepare for the worst. Instead, she was all confidence. She opened the window beside the bed and ordered the one opposite it opened as well, drawing in the cool evening air and the scent of the Sound. She directed Drew to smother the fire and helped Beth pull off some of the covers they had piled on their mother in an attempt to sweat the fever from her. She even removed Ma’s favorite feather pillow and requested a straw one. It was testimony to how ill their mother was that she protested none of this.

“Do you have a milk cow?” Catherine asked Drew as Beth dug through the chest their father had carved for Ma to find the clean nightgown Catherine had suggested.

Drew shook his head. “Four goats. But they produce enough milk for our purposes.”

Catherine accepted the flannel gown from Beth with a nod of thanks. “What about lemons?”

“Simon brought some back from town last week,” Beth said, tucking her hair behind her ear and hugging herself with her free hand. “I used some for lemonade.”

“Fetch the lemonade,” Catherine advised. “We’ll start with that and see if she can tolerate it. Later, I’ll show you how to make lemon whey. Mrs. Child recommends it for high fevers.”

“Mrs. Child?” Drew asked, but his sister nodded eagerly.

“I know Mrs. Child! Ma has her book on being a good housewife. She’s very clever.”

Beth might have gone on as she often did, but Catherine directed her toward the stairs, then turned to Drew. “I’ll need warm water, as well.”

Drew frowned. “To drink?”

Pink crept across her cheekbones, as delicate as the porcelain cups his mother had safeguarded over the Rockies on their way West. “No,” she said, gaze darting away from his. “To bathe your mother. Can you see that it’s warmed properly? Not too hot.”

“Coming right up,” Drew promised, and left to find some help.

He managed to locate the rest of his family at Simon’s cabin, which was a little ways into the woods. His brothers were cleaning up before dinner, but they all stopped what they were doing to listen to his explanation of what had happened in town. He thought at least one of them might agree with him that Levi’s actions were rash. But to a man they were too concerned about Ma to consider how Catherine Stanway must feel.

“So this nurse,” Simon said, draping the cloth he’d been using to dry his freshly shaven face over the porcelain basin in a corner of his cabin. “What do we know about her? What are her credentials?”

Figure on Simon, his next closest brother in age at about two years behind Drew’s twenty-nine, to ask. He was the only one tall enough to look him in the eye, for all they rarely saw eye to eye. With his pale blond hair and angled features, Simon was too cool. Even looked different from Drew. Every movement of his lean body, word from his lips and look from his light green eyes seemed calculated.

The middle brother, James, leaned back where he sat near the fire, effortlessly balancing the stool on one of its three legs. “Does it really matter, Simon? She’s here, and she’s helping. Be grateful.” He turned to Drew. His long face was a close match for Simon’s in its seriousness, his short blond hair a shade darker, but there was a twinkle in his dark blue eyes. “Now, I have a more pressing question. Is she pretty?”

“That’s not important,” Drew started, but his second-youngest brother, John, slapped his hands down on his knees where he sat at a bench by the table.

“She must be! He’s blushing!” He shook his head, red-gold hair straighter than his mother’s like a flame in the light.

Drew took a deep breath to hold back a retort. Of all his brothers, John was the most sensible, the most studious. If he’d seen a change in Drew, it must be there.

But he wasn’t about to admit it.

He started for the door. “Pretty or not, she has work for us to do. She wants lots of water warmed. You bring it in. I’ll heat it up.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “And John, find Levi. He should have finished in the barn by now. I don’t want him wandering off.”

“Where would he go?” James teased, letting the stool clatter back to the floor as he climbed to his feet. “It’s not as if he has tickets to the theatre.”

“Or one to attend within a hundred miles,” John agreed, but he headed for the barn as Drew had requested.

For the next couple of hours everyone was too busy to joke. His brothers took turns bringing in the water to Drew, who heated it in his mother’s largest pot on the step stove. Then they formed a line up the stairs and passed the warm water in buckets up to Beth and Miss Stanway.

“She washed Ma with a soft cloth, then rubbed her down with another,” Beth marveled to Drew at the head of the stairs when he ventured up to check on them after he and his brothers had eaten. “And she changed the sheets on the bed without even making Ma get up. She’s amazing!”

Drew had to agree, for when Catherine beckoned him closer, he found his mother much improved. No longer did she look like a wax figure on the bed, and she smiled at each of her sons as they clustered around to speak with her.

“I think it’s time to rest,” Catherine said to them all after a while. “I’ll come talk to you after I’ve settled her.”

Drew herded everyone down the stairs. They all found seats in the front room, Simon and James on opposite ends of the table, John on a bench alongside, Beth in Ma’s rocking chair and Levi sprawled on the braided rug with Drew standing behind him leaning against the stairs. He caught himself counting heads, even though he knew everyone was present. Habit. He’d been watching over them for the past ten years, ever since the day his father had died.

It had been a widow-maker that had claimed their father. Drew had been eighteen then, and only Simon at sixteen and James at fourteen had been old enough and strong enough to help clear the timber for their family’s original claim. None of them had seen the broken limb high on the massive fir before it came crashing down.

“Take care of them,” his father had said when his brothers had pulled the limb off him and Drew had cradled him in his arms. Already his father’s voice had started wheezing from punctured lungs, and blood had tinged his lips. “Take care of them all, Andrew. This family is your responsibility.”

He had never forgotten. He hadn’t lost another member of the family, though his brothers had made the job challenging. They’d broken arms and legs, cut themselves on saws and knives, fought off diseases he was afraid to name. Even sweet Beth had given him a scare a few months ago when she’d nearly succumbed to a fever much like their mother’s.

He’d kept them safe, nursed them through any illness or injury. His had been the shoulders they’d cried on, the arms that had held them through the night. He’d been the one to ride for medicine, to cut cloths into bandages. He’d been the one to sit up with them night after night. Having someone help felt odd, as if he’d put on the wrong pair of boots.

That odd feeling didn’t ease as Catherine came down the stairs to join them. As if she were a schoolmarm prepared to instruct, she took up her place by the fire. The crackling flames set her figure in silhouette.

“I thought you would all want to hear what I believe about your mother’s condition,” she said, and Drew knew he wasn’t the only Wallin leaning forward to catch every word.

“Two culprits cause this type of fever,” she continued, gaze moving from one brother to another until it met Drew’s. “Typhus and typhoid fever.”

Neither sounded good, and his stomach knotted.

“Aren’t they the same thing?” John asked.

She shook her head. “Many people think so, and some doctors treat them the same, but they are very different beasts. With typhus, the fever never leaves, and the patient simply burns up.”

Beth shivered and rubbed a hand up her arm.

“Typhoid fever, on the other hand,” Catherine said as if she hadn’t noticed, “is generally worse for the first two or three weeks and then starts to subside. Given how long you said she’s suffered, I’m leaning toward typhoid fever, but we should know for sure within the week.”

Simon seized on the word. “A week. Then, you’ll stay with us for that long.” It was a statement, not a question.

“I promised to return Miss Stanway to Seattle tomorrow,” Drew said.

Simon scowled at him.

“We need her more than Seattle does,” Levi complained.

His other brothers murmured their agreement.

“That isn’t our decision to make,” Drew argued.

“No,” Catherine put in. “It’s mine.”

That silenced them. She clasped her hands in front of her blue gown. “Doctors take an oath to care for their patients. My father believed that nurses should take one, as well. It is my duty to care for your mother and for you, should you sicken.”

A duty she took seriously, he could see. Her color was high, her face set with determination as she glanced around at them all. “I will stay until your mother is out of danger.”

Simon stood. “It’s settled, then. Drew, clear out your cabin and let her have it. You can bunk with me. I snore less than Levi or James.”

John rolled his eyes. “That’s what you think.”

“Oh, I couldn’t take anyone’s cabin,” Catherine started.

Drew held up his hand. “No, Simon’s right. Not about his snoring. He’s louder than Yesler’s sawmill.” As his other brothers laughed and Simon shook his head, Drew continued, “You need a place of your own. I’ll clear out my cabin tonight so you can sleep when you finish with Ma.”

“I intend to stay up with her tonight,” Catherine warned him.

“Then the cabin will be waiting for you in the morning,” Drew assured her.

She smiled at them. “Well, then, gentlemen, I will leave you for the night. I understand the youngest Mr. Wallin sleeps upstairs. I’ll send him if we need anything.”

Again Levi looked as if he were going to protest, but one glance at Drew and he shrugged and settled back on the rug. Drew watched her climb the stairs, Beth right behind her.

“That’s quite a woman,” Simon mused, stretching his feet over Levi’s prone form toward the fire.

“Never met one so determined,” James mused.

“You never met one with that kind of education, either,” John reminded him. “I like the fact that she isn’t afraid to speak her mind.”

“Bit on the bossy side,” Levi said with a yawn. “But she’ll do.”

“That she will,” Simon agreed. “The only question is, which one of us is going to marry her?”

Just what he’d feared. Drew stiffened. “No one said anything about marriage.”

Simon glanced around at his brothers. “I believe I just did.”

John nodded, brightening. “Inspired. She’s smart, and she has a skill we sorely need.”

“And she’s not bad to look at,” James added.

“You could do a lot worse, Drew,” Levi agreed.

Drew shook his head. “You’re mad, the lot of you. I’m not getting married.”

“Suit yourself.” Simon rose and went to the fireplace to scoop up a handful of kindling. “We’ll draw straws. Short straw proposes.”

Drew stared as his other brothers, except Levi, rose to their feet. “Don’t be ridiculous. She wouldn’t have any of you.”

James shrugged. “Doesn’t hurt to try.”

Simon squared up the sticks and hid all but the tops in his hand, then held them out to his brothers. “Who wants to go first?”

Drew strode into their group. “Enough, I said. No one is proposing to Miss Stanway, and that’s final.”

His brothers exchanged glances. Simon lowered the sticks. “Very well, Drew. For now. But you have to marry someday if you want kin to inherit your land. You’ll never build that town for Pa unless you do. I think you better ask yourself why you’re so dead set against her.”

“And why you’re even more set against us courting her,” John added.