Читать книгу Instant Frontier Family - Regina Scott - Страница 11

Chapter Three

The nerve of the man! How dare he question her decisions? She’d thought long and hard before taking out a loan to purchase the shop, and furnish it with the tools and supplies she’d need to establish herself as a baker. She was confident she could pay the money back in good time, so long as she proved herself at the wedding.

She forced herself to focus on Ciara and Aiden, who were glancing eagerly around the shop.

“This is where I’ll be selling my goods,” she told them, nodding to the long display counter where light glistened on specks of icing left over from the cinnamon rolls she’d sold that morning. “The high shelves behind it are for the confections and spices I hope to offer one day. And through that curtain is a fine kitchen with a brick oven big enough to cook all manner of sweets.”

“Like in ‘Hansel and Gretel,’” Aiden said, cocking his head to peer through a crack in the curtain. “Only that lady cooked children.” He glanced back at the skeptical-looking Michael, frown forming.

Michael must have interpreted the look, for he came to put a hand to Aiden’s back. “Your sister doesn’t cook children,” he assured the boy. He bent to put his mouth even with her brother’s ear and lowered his voice. “But I’m not so sure about a longshoreman like me.”

“No, silly,” Aiden said. “You’d never fit in her oven.”

“You haven’t seen my oven,” Maddie muttered to herself.

Just then the curtain gave a twitch, as if something waited on the other side. Maddie made herself smile. “Now, there’s one other resident of my bakery you should be meeting. She’s short and round-faced, with gray hair.”

Ciara and Aiden looked at her, gazes quizzical.

“I thought you wanted Sylvie to send you a lady to help,” Ciara said. “Why did you need Michael if you already had one?”

Why indeed? She couldn’t help glancing his way, only to find him regarding her as if she were a piece to a puzzle that just didn’t fit.

“You’ll see in a moment,” Maddie promised her brother and sister. She was merely glad Amelia Batterby hadn’t made herself scarce when strangers arrived. Maddie ventured to the curtain and tugged it aside. A short-haired, gray cat peered up at her, amber eyes wide.

“You have a cat!” Aiden cried, lunging toward her.

Amelia Batterby disappeared like a puff of smoke.

“She’s a bit skittish still,” Maddie explained as Aiden’s face fell. “She came to Seattle as a ship’s cat, and a mighty explorer she was, escaping every time they made port and causing the captain all manner of concern. He was persuaded to leave her in my care, and she now earns her keep as a mouser. Just know that you mustn’t let her outside, or she’ll escape again.”

Ciara angled her head to see through the curtain. “What’s her name?”

“The captain called her Her Ladyship on account of her proper ways, but I think she looked more like old Amelia Batterby.”

Michael chuckled. “The lady who lived next to Sylvie. I remember her. She was always finding something to concern her.”

Aiden shivered. “She scolded us whenever we even peeked out the door.”

“But she always brought presents for Easter and Christmas,” Michael reminded him.

“What presents does this Amelia Batterby bring?” Aiden asked Maddie.

“Mice and squirrels,” Maddie told him. “And any other vermin that creep into the bakery.”

Ciara winced.

“Maybe she’ll catch you one night,” Michael teased Aiden.

How easily he joked with her siblings, as if he were their brother and her the stranger come to live with them. She shouldn’t be annoyed with him for such a gift, but she was.

“I’m too big for a cat to catch me,” Aiden said. “But I like her. Can she sleep in the bed with us?”

“Very likely she does her best work at night,” Michael told him. “But if she finds her way to the bed, I wouldn’t be protesting.”

And who was he to be deciding that? Although she agreed with him in this instance, she was the one who should have made the decision. And Michael should know that.

Drawing in a breath, she nodded to the far wall. “Did you notice that door to the side, Aiden? That leads to our home.”

Aiden hurried to open the door, and he and Ciara clambered up the wooden stairs. Maddie stepped in front of Michael, preventing him from following.

“We need to come to an understanding, Mr. Haggerty,” she said. “You did your job bringing my brother and sister here. Now they’re my responsibility. Leave any concerns about their upbringing to me.” Satisfied she’d made her point, she turned for the stairs. A firm hand on her arm spun her back around.

All at once she wasn’t looking at a penniless vagabond but a warrior prince ready to defend his country. There was steel in those blue eyes, determination written on every feature.

“I’ll make you a deal, Miss O’Rourke,” he said. “You prove to me you have what it takes to raise Ciara and Aiden, and I’ll stop being concerned. But not one second sooner.”

Heat licked up her. She’d had to fight with herself over the decision to raise her siblings. She had plenty of frustration left to fight him too. “I’ll not be having you speak to me in such a tone, Michael Haggerty. I’m their bone and blood.”

“And I’m the man who’s listened to them cry themselves to sleep at night for the last three months,” he countered. “I don’t understand why you left them behind, and neither do they. I owe you a debt for paying my passage, but if you want my respect and theirs, you’ll have to earn it.”

* * *

There, he’d said it aloud. Aunt Sylvie had always claimed his tendency to stand up for the rights of others would get him into trouble. It had made him a pariah in New York. Likely it had just cost him room and board here. Maddie would be within her rights to toss him out on his ear for such a challenge. If she did, he’d have no recourse but to throw himself on the mercy of the church, if they even had a church yet in Seattle. He waited for her stinging rejoinder.

She took a step back from him and snapped a nod. “Done. And thank you for telling me about the crying. I’ll be sure to watch for that. Bring up their things now, then we’ll find someplace for you to sleep.” She swept past him, lifting her skirts to climb the narrow staircase.

Bemused, Michael could only follow.

Upstairs, the space over the shop had been divided into four rooms—three smaller ones across the back and one larger one facing the street. The larger room held a fat-bellied stove and a tall sideboard along one wall, with a wooden table and chairs in the center. The red-and-white chintz curtains on the window and the red checkered cloth on the table brightened the space.

“Look, Michael,” Aiden cried, gesturing toward the table. “Maddie got chairs enough for us all.”

Maddie’s cheeks turned a pleasing shade of pink. “Sure-n but I was expecting a lady to be coming with you. I thought she’d need somewhere to sit.”

And she wasn’t exactly sure she wanted him to take the lady’s place at the table. Michael set the children’s bag down on the floor. “And what might those rooms be, do you think?” he asked Aiden, nodding toward the three rooms across the back.

With two of the doors open, Michael could see that each of the smaller rooms held a bed on a wooden frame and pegs along the walls for hanging clothes. Ciara and Aiden threaded their way from one room to the next, exclaiming over the colorful quilts on the beds, the framed etching of a lady in a fancy dress that graced one wall.

Maddie stood watching, one arm hugging her waist. A moment ago, she’d been all fire; now she was as soft as smoke. She bit her lower lip as if waiting for Ciara and Aiden to find fault. He couldn’t ignore the urge to assure her.

“You’ve done a fine job of making this a home,” he murmured to her.

She drew in another breath as if she’d needed that affirmation, then reached up and removed the little hat to set it on the table. “So I was hoping,” she told him. “I suppose it will depend on what they think.”

Aiden darted out of the last room. “Who else boards here?” he asked.

“No one,” Maddie said with a smile. “One of the rooms is for you, and the other is for Ciara. The last is mine.”

Aiden stared at her a moment, then let out a whoop and dived into the nearest room. “This one’s mine!”

“That one has a pink-and-white quilt,” Ciara told him, following at a more stately pace. “It’s clearly my room.”

Aiden drew himself up. Michael readied himself to settle the squabble, but Maddie stepped between them. “Sure-n but they’re all the same size. We can change the quilts and move the picture to another room, if you like.”

Aiden made a face, backing away. “Nah. She can have her girlie room. I’ll take the other.” He dashed out the door.

Ciara perched on the bed and gave it a halfhearted bounce. She glanced up at Maddie. “Is this really to be mine?”

“All yours, me darling girl,” Maddie assured her with a smile.

Ciara rose. “Good. Then you can leave.”

Maddie blinked. “What?”

Ciara stood with her eyes narrowed. “You said it was mine. I can do with it as I please. I want to be alone. Now.”

There went Her Highness, Queen Ciara again. For once, even her sister seemed at a loss for words. Michael knew he should allow Maddie to deal with the situation as she’d just demanded. But Ciara couldn’t know how her attitude affected her sister, and he didn’t like seeing either of them hurt.

So he dropped his bag outside the doors to the children’s rooms and sketched a bow. “At once, Your Royal Highness. Just as soon as you remember your lowly servants here.”

Though she raised her little chin, Ciara’s cheeks were turning pink. “I never said you were servants.”

Michael raised his brows. “Oh, didn’t you? You seem to have forgotten that your sister paid for you to come here and gave you all this. There’s such a thing as being grateful.”

Ciara wrinkled her nose, which was nearly as pert as her sister’s. “Why should I be grateful for having to come all this way, leaving all my friends behind? She ought to be grateful I’ll even have anything to do with her.”

Maddie sucked in a breath as if her sister’s words had stung. Michael took a step back, waved at the door.

“Well, then, perhaps you should be the one to leave, you being such a put-upon lass. The captain said he was heading back to New York. Perhaps you can work your way home by clearing slops out of the kitchen and hosing out the head.”

Ciara turned green. “You wouldn’t do that.”

Michael shrugged. “I don’t see why not. I’m here to work off my passage. You don’t seem to want to.”

“You’re not my father. You don’t get to tell me what to do.” She turned to Maddie. “You won’t make me leave, will you, Maddie?”

Maddie glanced at Michael through the corners of her eyes. “I won’t make you leave, me darling girl, but I can’t be liking how you’re treating me. This is to be your new home.”

Ciara’s mouth worked as if she was chewing on the idea. “All right,” she said. “You can come in. But you have to knock first.” She raised her voice. “And that goes for you too, Aiden O’Rourke.”

From the other side of the wall came a rude noise. “Like I’d want to go in your stupid room.”

Michael gestured to the bag outside their doors. “You’ll each need to come and get your clothes and put them away. No dinner until it’s done right.”

“Fine.” Ciara sashayed out of her room and bent over the bag. Aiden peered out his door, but wisely kept his distance until she had found her things.

“I best be getting food from the larder for dinner,” Maddie murmured before hurrying down the stairs.

Michael sighed. He’d slipped back into his role as guardian even after telling Maddie he expected her to take up the task. But it wasn’t easy handing her the role he’d played for as long as he could remember, first with Sylvie’s other children, and then with Ciara and Aiden.

He hadn’t been surprised to find two more faces at his aunt’s table a few days after Christmas last year. Aunt Sylvie never could resist a call for help. In the crowded tenements that surrounded Five Points, someone was always dying of disease or disability, leaving children alone and frightened. Whenever possible, aunts and uncles and cousins distant and close stepped in, but sometimes no family or friends could be found.

So Sylvie took those children in, raised them as her own, scrubbed floors and sewed to make ends meet and accepted charity from all who offered. When Michael had first spotted the O’Rourke children, she’d had six others besides.

“What’s their story?” he’d asked as he’d helped his aunt clear up after a meager dinner of cabbage soup and crackers.

Sylvie’s ocean-blue eyes had turned down as she glanced at Ciara and Aiden huddled by the hearth. “Poor mites,” she’d murmured with a shake of her head that had loosened her flyaway graying blond hair. “Lost their mum and da in that terrible fire a few months ago. Their older sister had the raising of them, but she struggled so. Now she has a chance to go with Mercer’s Belles to Washington Territory. Sure-n but she’d be a fool not to take it.”

He’d read the story in the papers that eventually ended up blowing down the streets of Five Points before someone used them to fill the holes in the walls or burned them for fuel. Some fellow from the wilderness claimed men in Seattle needed teachers and seamstresses. The editors seemed to think the women were more likely to be forced into marriage or worse.

“So she’ll marry and go on with her life,” he’d surmised. “She’ll have what she needs, and she won’t think of them again.”

His aunt had set a sudsy hand on his arm. “Miss Katie O’Doul might have had her heart fixed on a crown, but Miss O’Rourke is another sort entirely.”

That night, he’d been willing to give Maddie O’Rourke the benefit of the doubt. But a reporter had sailed with Mercer’s Belles, and as his stories returned to be printed, Michael had struggled to find charity with Ciara and Aiden’s sister.

Roger Conant, a good Irishman his aunt insisted, told of flirtations galore with the ship’s officers, among the other passengers and at every port of call. How could Maddie O’Rourke be immune? He’d been the most surprised when the telegraph had arrived stating that passage had been paid for Ciara and Aiden and a lady to escort them.

“She must have found a rich husband,” he’d told his aunt when she’d shared it with him after the excited children had gone to bed.

“She signs the cable Maddie O’Rourke,” Sylvie had pointed out, showing him the closely worded note. “She’s made her fortune, just as she’d hoped, and a great deal faster than anyone expected. And now the dear girl hopes to share it with her family.”

She was trying to share it, all right. Michael didn’t like thinking what such quarters must have cost her to build and furnish. She clearly wanted her brother and sister beside her, yet something told him she wasn’t sure what to do with them now.

Leaving the children to put away their belongings, he followed her downstairs, locating her in the kitchen. The whitewashed walls enclosed a thick worktable with space below for bowls and rolling pins. Bright copper pots and dark iron pans hung from hooks over a squat wooden box with a lid. Its purpose defied him. One wall was built of red brick, with a small iron door at the bottom to cover the firebox and a wider door opening higher up for the oven.

Which just might have been big enough to fit a certain longshoreman.

Maddie was at a door in the wall to his right, digging through the supplies stored there. Casks and sacks crowded the floor; the shelves at the back were filled with tins of butter, cones of sugar in bright blue wrappers, jars of preserves, and bottles and vials of things he wasn’t sure he could name.

She glanced at him as he came to a stop beside her, and he thought he saw something glistening on her cheek before she returned to her perusal of the supplies.

“It wasn’t my place to settle that,” he said. “Forgive me.”

She reached out and pulled down a fat ham, molasses thick on its sides. “You had to settle it,” she said, carrying the ham to the table. “I couldn’t. They’ve changed. Once I was the world to them both, and when I told them what they should be doing, they did it.”

As she pulled a knife from a drawer in the worktable, he ventured closer. She sliced through the meat with brisk efficiency, but her face remained tight.

“Ciara is growing up,” he allowed. “Though don’t tell her I said so. She’ll take it as leave to make further demands.”

Instead of smiling as he’d hoped, Maddie grimaced. “She’s been like that since she was born. Da used to be teasing her like you did, calling her royalty.” She rested the knife on the table. “She never was treating me that way. I’m thinking she blames me for leaving her behind.”

She ducked her head, but Michael heard her sniff.

“It’s hard to understand when someone you love leaves,” he murmured, her pain like a wound inside him. “When my parents died, I remember feeling like I was the last person in the whole world.”

She paused, slanting a glance up at him. “Who had the raising of you?”

He smiled. “Sylvie. She’s sister to my mother. I don’t know what I would have done without her.”

Her hands started moving again. “But you didn’t rail at her, tell her you had no use for her.”

“I wasn’t eleven,” he pointed out with a shrug. “Or I might have. As it was, I was the first of her borrowed children, as she likes to call them. And she gave me many brothers and sisters over the years.”

She took the remaining ham back to the larder. “Did you never mind having to share her?”

Had Maddie minded? Sylvie had said Ciara and Aiden’s mother had been Maddie’s stepmother. Maddie had to have been nearly grown when they came along.

“I never saw it as sharing,” he told her. “Sylvie made you feel like the most important person in her world, like the two of you were partners. Her children were my family.”

“Small wonder you’re so good with Ciara and Aiden,” she said, bending to gather some potatoes from a sack. “I just wanted to give them a home, a family again. I never thought they’d fight against me on that.”

“Give them time,” Michael advised as she carried the potatoes to the table. “You’ve had more than five months to accustom yourself to the place. For them, life changed when they boarded the ship, and it changed again when they left it.”

She nodded. “I’ve just missed them so. All I wanted was for them to be happy.” She glanced up at him. A drop of molasses darkened the tear on her cheek.

Unthinking, he reached out and wiped the smudge away with his thumb. Her skin was as silky and warm as it looked, and all at once he smelled cinnamon again, as if she were the sweet treat he was meant to savor. Embarrassed by the thought, he stepped back as her face turned pink.

“You’ve given them every reason to be happy,” he said. “A good home, a warm welcome. And what child wouldn’t want to live over a bakery?”

She smiled then, brightening the room, lifting his heart. “Sure-n they say that the way to a man’s heart is down his throat. That must be twice as true for children.”

She gathered the food and a jar of preserves and headed for the door before Michael could stir himself to help. He thought she was right about Ciara and Aiden—good cooking and kind words would go a long way toward healing their hurts, helping them see the love their sister was trying to offer.

A shame it would take more than a bakery to make him ready to take a chance on love again.