Frontier Woman (19 page)

Creed could feel Cricket trembling in his arms like a wild thing caught in a trap. His
brava
would never make a docile wife. But she could learn to control her unbridled impulses, and to more closely fit the feminine mold.

He was counting on it.

Chapter 13

WITH CRICKET AND CREED AT LOGGERHEADS, the next evening might have become a disaster had it not been for Seth. When Cricket arrived downstairs for dinner, clothed in Amy’s rose-bordered muslin dress, she found her arms filled immediately with the wriggling two-year-old boy.

“I don’t know how to hold a baby,” Cricket protested.

“There’s nothing to it,” Amy replied. “Just hang on to whatever’s convenient.”

At first Cricket felt awkward, and the more Seth wiggled the more fearful she became that she’d drop him. Finally, she managed to wrap one arm around Seth’s waist and slip the other under his bottom. She pulled him snug against her, as she had her wolf pups, so he wouldn’t fall.

To her surprise, as soon as Seth was close enough, his legs gripped her around the waist, and he settled his rump comfortably on her hip. He leaned his head on her shoulder and gazed up trustingly at her from under long, golden lashes with eyes the clear blue of a summer sky. His thumb found its way to his mouth, and he sucked contentedly, unaware of the impact he was having on the young woman who held him. Cricket looked down at Seth and promptly lost her heart.

“Men can’t do that, you know,” Amy confided.

“Do what?”

“Set a child on their hips. They don’t
have
hips,” Amy continued with a friendly laugh as she crossed to Tom. “Whenever Tom tries it, Seth just slides on down.” She let her hands skim from Tom’s ribs to his hips to make her point.

“Goes to show why women have charge of the kids.” Tom grabbed Amy and pulled her close, linking his arms around her waist. Amy put her hands on either side of Tom’s face and held him still while she kissed him quickly on the lips.

Cricket was distracted from the playful scene between Tom and Amy by the softness of the child settled against her. She admired the perfect little being she held in her arms. She took Seth’s hefty weight in her left arm while the right came up to brush his blond hair away from his brow.

Seth had Amy’s blue eyes and blond hair, but his chin jutted like Tom’s, and he’d inherited the Creed men’s high, angled cheekbones, although his were well camouflaged in baby fat. His nose and mouth were fairly well hidden by his fist and thumb, but she imagined a blade of nose like Tom’s, and a lush, full mouth like Amy’s.

For the first time in her life, Cricket wondered what it would be like to have a child of her own. It was not so far-fetched an idea. She’d dismissed Creed’s suggestion she might be carrying his babe, but she wouldn’t know for sure for at least two more weeks. What if she were pregnant with Creed’s child right now?

Startled by the thought, Cricket’s eyes sought out Creed, only to find him staring back at her. What would a baby of theirs look like? It would have black hair, of course, but would it have gold eyes, or gray? Would the Creed family nose and angled cheekbones breed true? How would those features look on a daughter, rather than a son?

“Seth’s a beautiful child,” she said to Amy and Tom. “And so . . . cuddly.”

“Just like his mother,” Tom said as he turned Amy in his arms. His hands slipped down to cover his wife’s abdomen, and Amy put her hands over his. They looked comfortable and happy standing together like that. Cricket remembered the morning in Rip’s office when Creed’s hands had been on her the same way and felt a fluttering in her belly.

“Seth’s been a wonderful child,” Amy agreed, “and now he’s going to have a brother or sister in the fall.”

Creed grinned and crossed the parlor to his brother and sister-in-law. “That’s great!” He gave Amy a quick kiss on the cheek and slapped Tom on the back. “I’m going to be an uncle again.”

“Maybe you’ll have one of your own soon,” Amy said.

“Maybe,” Creed replied as his eyes met Cricket’s.

Cricket was surprised when the same spiraling sensation occurred which she’d felt in Creed’s arms. Only this time, he was nowhere near her. She didn’t realize until Amy spoke that she was staring at Creed.

“Let me take Seth to Belle, and we can go in to dinner.”

Creed crooked an elbow and offered his arm to Cricket. Uncomfortable, uncertain of how she should act, Cricket walked over and rested her hand on his sleeve. As awkward as that moment was for her, it merely provided a hint of the barrage of etiquette that would assail her in the days that followed.

Amy set numerous pieces of silverware at each place, so Cricket spent most of each meal trying to find the right one to use. Then there was the custom of seating ladies—and helping them from their chairs when the meal was finished. It did no good to protest she wasn’t a cripple. She had to stay seated until Creed came to stand behind her and help her rise.

When Cricket had reached between her legs at that first dinner and grabbed the back of her skirt, pulling it up and tucking it in at the ribboned waist in front, effectively making trousers out of it, she’d thought Amy was going to faint. But how else was she supposed to straddle her chair? Otherwise the blamed skirt scattered everywhere when she tried to sit down.

Amy had been appalled to learn Cricket could neither cook nor sew and hadn’t been impressed by her argument that she’d done very well without either of those skills and “never starved or gone naked as a result.” Amy had begun her campaign to teach Cricket to cook by rousting her one morning to help make the biscuits for breakfast.

Cricket and the kitchen got dusted with flour, but her biscuits weren’t fluffy and soft like Amy’s. They had a decidedly more chewy texture. The recipe had called for “a dop of lard” and, not knowing the proper measure, Cricket had dopped in a little more lard than she needed. She’d bristled when Creed laughed, but had to admit they were bad. Even Rogue wouldn’t eat them.

Then Amy taught her how to salt butter using salt and loaf sugar so it would last for ten years and taste as good as butter newly made. Of course she’d proudly served some to Creed for supper, not realizing the mixture took a full month to cure before it was edible.

The only reason Cricket agreed to try making soap was because Amy’s recipe was so simple there was no way she could make a mistake. But after she’d boiled the concoction for a while, it began to thicken much more than Amy said was usual. That was when Cricket realized she’d added
ten
pounds of pulverized resin and
two
pounds of potash dissolved in twenty-eight gallons of water to the twenty-five pounds of grease, instead of the other way around.

Cricket was decidedly leery when Amy suggested she learn to make a linament for sprains and spavins, and the only reason she gave in was because she thought she might be able to use it on Valor someday. After they’d added the concoction of oil of oraganum, oil of savis, oil of cloves, and tincture of opium to a quart of alcohol, and Amy assured her it was made correctly, nothing would do but Cricket had to try it on herself. She rubbed it on her arms. She rubbed it on her legs. She rubbed it on her stomach. She even had Amy rub some on her back. And it worked! Cricket spent the rest of the day in bed, too relaxed to move.

Cricket balked when Amy suggested she try sewing. But Amy was persistent, and Cricket felt guilty because Amy was taking so much time to teach her things she couldn’t seem to master, and
surely
she could learn how to do such a simple thing as running a needle back and forth through a piece of cloth. She was wrong. Because of the calluses on her fingertips, she couldn’t feel the needle until it stuck her. By the time Cricket had finished trying to embroider a quilt square, she’d gotten it so bloody from the needle pricks in her finger that it had to be thrown away. Amy discreetly gave up on sewing.

Amy wasn’t content teaching Cricket cooking and soap-making and household remedies. She also included the rules of etiquette on her daily agenda. Every time Cricket made a faux pas, Amy gently pointed it out to her and patiently showed her the correct behavior. What frustrated Cricket was the fact that she couldn’t seem to recognize when her actions were inappropriate. For instance, how was she supposed to know a lady never accepted a cigar with her brandy after dinner?

As the days flew by, Cricket failed at one feminine occupation after another. Creed’s gentle laughter when Amy lovingly recounted the day’s disastrous events sent her temper flaring. It was awful to fail and fail and fail, when her whole life had been a series of one success after another. Creed had said he was sure she could learn to do anything, but after two weeks of trying, Cricket was discouraged by her consistent inability to master even the most simple of wifely tasks.

It never occurred to Cricket that her disinterest caused her attention to stray when Amy was explaining the proper way to do things. She only knew that whatever she attempted invariably ended in ruin and calamity.

The only wifely chore she did with any confidence was holding Seth, playing with him, and dressing him, and she had to fight Belle for those opportunities.

However, Creed was not so easily discouraged. He could see positive changes in Cricket after only two weeks spent in the feminine role. She’d learned to consider her skirt when sitting and walking, no mean feat when he considered how she’d hiked it up to sit down to dinner that first evening. She’d almost mastered the intricacies of the silverware at the table, although her manners hadn’t been as godawful to start with as he’d feared they might be. And though her biscuits still weren’t as tasty as Amy’s, they were edible now. It was seeing Cricket with Seth that convinced him there were more facets to her than she was willing to let anyone see.

Cricket had proved with Seth that she was capable of giving as much love and doting adoration as any man could ever want. She was gentle. She was enchanting. She was funny. Creed found himself wishing she’d give him some of the same attention she gave Seth.

But coax as he might, Cricket couldn’t—or wouldn’t— transfer that openness with the boy to openness with him. He told himself he had to be patient, he had to be understanding, but he was only human. So, when he came home from a particularly tiring day spent with Tom at the cotton gin to find Cricket playing with Seth and ignoring him again, it set his teeth on edge.

“Isn’t it time for Seth to go upstairs now?” he asked.

Amy, who was more cognizant of Creed’s frustration than Cricket, quickly agreed. “Yes, it is. I’ll call Belle.”

Cricket relinquished her hold on Seth reluctantly when Belle came to take the small boy upstairs with her.

Creed wanted Cricket to touch him with the same freedom with which she touched the boy. But she never came near him unless she had to for appearance’s sake. And although she’d performed every task set for her by Amy over the past two weeks, she’d stubbornly slept on the floor, eschewing the comforts of the feather bed—and contact with him. He knew the floor wasn’t comfortable because each morning she awoke crankier than the last. He was fast running out of patience. So, when he crooked his arm and offered to escort Cricket to supper, and she rejected his help, his temper exploded.

“Take my arm, Cricket. That’s the way a gentleman escorts a lady to the table.”

“I’m no lady!” she snapped, and swished her skirt past him as she entered the dining room alone.

Cricket was also at the end of her patience. She was used to being capable and doing things right. She’d spent two weeks doing her best and being wrong. It had been an exercise in perseverance to take all Amy’s helpful hints in stride. The skirt was a hindrance. She hated the sight of biscuits. She’d pick cactus bare-handed before she’d try sewing again. And if she had to spend another night on the floor she wouldn’t be responsible for her actions. She was stewing for a fight, and it looked like Creed was going to give her one.

Tom and Amy were sensitive to the tensions at the table. Tom was especially tactful when Cricket picked up the wrong spoon for the soup. He held up the proper implement and remarked, “I’ve never understood how they expect a lady to eat soup from a spoon as large as this.”

Cricket remedied her mistake but simmered under his censure.

“Tom and I have decided we’d like to have a party for you and Jarrett,” Amy said, introducing a topic which she hoped would clear the air and improve temperaments. “A sort of reception to introduce you to our friends and neighbors. What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Cricket replied. “I’m not very comfortable at parties.” Which probably had something to do with the fact she hadn’t been to one since she was eight years old.

“It’ll be fun. And it’ll give you a chance to practice all that you’ve learned,” Amy said with an encouraging smile.

Cricket turned to Creed, who merely shrugged and said, “It sounds like it would be a fine idea.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Amy said enthusiastically. “Would you be willing to help me plan it, Cricket?”

Just then Cricket reached for a bowl of peas halfway across the table, and Amy gently rebuffed, “Tom will get those for you, Cricket, dear. You don’t have to bother yourself.”

Cricket watched the bowl make its ponderous way around the table to her. It would have been quicker to get it herself. The simmer became a boil. As the meal progressed, she was constantly corrected on subtle points. The more careful Tom and Amy and Creed were to be solicitous of her feelings, the angrier Cricket got. The angrier she got, the fewer attempts she made to observe what table etiquette she knew.