Hearts Awakening (11 page)

Daniel grinned again. “Me and Ethan had breakfast, and then we helped Miss Ellie, and then we had a snack, and then we took our bath.”

Confused, Jackson narrowed his gaze. “You had breakfast and a snack? Already?”

“Yup.”

Ethan nodded in agreement.

“It’s almost noon,” Ellie offered.

Jackson swung around so fast, he slipped and had to grab on to the nearby table when he started to lose his footing again. “Noon? It can’t be noon. I’ve never slept that late in my entire life. Never, ever,” he insisted, even though the evidence set out on the table in the other room added credence to her words, as well as Daniel’s.

He cast a long, hard look at the windows, but they were so steamed up from the heat in the room he could not see anything other than a dark gloom outside.

Ellie left the stove, grabbed a couple of towels, and carried them with her as she joined him. “There’s no harm done. You wouldn’t have stayed abed for so long if you didn’t need the sleep, but I was hoping you’d be up soon. I could really use help getting the boys dried and dressed. The stew is nearly ready for dinner, and I’m afraid to leave the stove for too long, although I think I’ve got the heat well under control now,” she said, setting the towels down on the table.

Closer to her now, he noted the dark circles under her red-streaked eyes. “You didn’t sleep well?” he asked.

She shook her head, lifted Ethan out of the tub, wrapped him in a towel, and handed him over to his father. “I don’t care for storms,” she murmured.

He saw her hands tremble before she buried them in her skirts, and he felt guilty for being relieved that it was the storm that had upset her and not second thoughts about marrying him so hastily.

He started to towel Ethan dry while she reached out for Daniel, but the boy braced both hands on the side of the tub and shook his head. “Pappy’s here now,” he insisted, his mood shifting like quicksilver.

He watched her swallow hard before she managed a smile. “While you’re waiting for your turn, would you hand me the cups you and Ethan were playing with? I need to rinse them and store them back on the shelf again for next time.”

Daniel shoved one hand under the water, brought up both cups at the same time, and handed them to her.

“Thank you,” she said and set the cups onto the table near the water pump.

“I’m sorry I slept so late. I’m afraid I stole one of your biscuits, too,” Jackson admitted as he dried Ethan’s hair. “It was delicious. As a matter of fact, that stew smells awfully good,” he said, catching a whiff of something familiar and sweet. He looked around the room but could not find the source. “Is that apple pie I smell?”

She laughed nervously and pointed to the highest shelf above the tableware. “Yes, it is, along with a few other goodies.”

When he raised his gaze and saw the shelf was filled from end to end with a cake, two pies, and half a dozen loaves of perfectly baked bread, he nearly choked. “What did you do?

Spend the entire night in the kitchen?”

She shrugged. “Almost. Like I said, I don’t like storms. I tried to occupy myself so I wouldn’t spend all my time worrying. Since I wasn’t trying to cook and bake at the same time on the cookstove, I managed not to burn too much of anything,” she said proudly and moved closer with Ethan’s clothes.

Jackson urged his youngest son to let Ellie help him get dressed before he lifted Daniel out of the tub and started to towel him dry.

The five-year-old tugged at the towel to get his father’s attention. “Miss Ellie burned her hands, but she didn’t cry like Ethan did that time when he burned hisself. I told her that Mama didn’t burn her fingers when she cooked.”

Jackson frowned. “You burned your hands?”

She shrugged. “There are bound to be casualties in battle, but this war I have with that cookstove of yours is one I intend to win. Hopefully soon,” she added.

“May I see?”

She paused and held her right hand out for a moment before quickly pulling it back. “It’s nothing serious,” she insisted and tugged Ethan’s shirt over his head. When she started to ease him into his overalls, she winced and caught her lower lip with her teeth.

“What about your other hand?”

“Just a few blisters. They’ll heal soon enough.” She buttoned the straps a bit awkwardly and gently patted Ethan’s shoulder. “There,” she said proudly. “Show your father how nice you look.”

Ethan hooked his thumbs behind the straps on his overalls, tugged on them, and smiled.

Jackson shrugged. Ethan appeared to be wearing the same shirt and overalls he usually wore, which were exactly like the clothes Daniel was struggling to get into.

“I found a sewing basket on one of the kitchen shelves and took in Ethan’s clothes a bit so they fit him better now,” she whispered when Jackson looked to her for help.

“And I look nice, too,” Daniel announced and took his brother’s hand.

“You’re right. You both look nice, and you both look very clean, thanks to Miss Ellie. Try to stay that way,” he cautioned.

Before either one of the boys could respond, Ellie charged past the three of them and headed directly for the cookstove. He followed her with his gaze, caught the now-familiar scent of a burnt meal, and let out a sigh.

“Mercy!” she cried, grabbing the end of her apron with each hand and lifting the pot off the burners on the middle step of the stove. Almost immediately, she let go of the pot, which dropped to the floor, splattering stew in every direction.

With her cheeks flaming and bits of stew clinging to her apron and the hem of her skirts, her eyes filled with tears. She paused for less than a heartbeat before she charged past him to get to the sink and frantically pumped water over one of her hands.

Concerned, he stood up and walked over to her, with both boys right on his heels. “Are you all right?”

She blinked back more tears and waved them all away. “I’ll be fine, which is more than I can say for your dinner. I’m afraid I burned it, again, which really doesn’t matter now that it’s nothing more than a mess all over the kitchen floor.”

A sudden, heavy pounding at the back door made it pointless to offer her a single reassuring word, but he murmured it anyway before he turned and walked over to the door to see who might be calling.

Ten

The last thing Ellie needed or wanted right now was a house full of visitors, expected or otherwise.

The moment Jackson opened the door and not one, but four, people barged inside, bringing a burst of cold, wet air in with them, whatever pride or self-respect she had left completely disintegrated. Unfortunately, with the mess of dinner and soapy water on the floor and the brass tub taking up a lot of room, they had to stand shoulder to shoulder.

The gaiety that erupted spontaneously in front of her did little to soften the disappointment of her most recent disaster in the kitchen. She was too sleep-deprived and too bothered by the blisters on her left hand to join in or to even care that her apron was badly stained or that some of the stew was stuck to the hem of her skirts.

As each of the visitors handed their wet outer garments to Jackson, he introduced them to her. “You know Michael Grant, of course. This is his wife, Alice,” he said, taking a rain slicker from a very round, cherry-cheeked woman, who appeared to be nearing sixty.

“Just call me Alice. I hope you don’t mind our invasion, but I didn’t want to wait another day to meet Jackson’s new wife,” she offered after removing her bonnet.

Ellie mustered a small smile. “I don’t mind at all, though I’m surprised anyone would venture out in a storm like this.”

When Alice laughed, her belly shook. “We’ve had worse storms. Besides, that new covered wagon your husband bought to keep his precious apples out of the weather when they’re headed to market kept all of us fairly dry, except for Michael,” she teased, leaning forward to wipe away the water dripping from her husband’s brow.

“I had a feeling you’d find good use for the wagon, too,” Jackson quipped, then turned his attention to the young woman struggling to hold Ethan on her hip while Daniel clutched at her skirts.

The girl appeared to be young, not yet twenty. The spectacles she wore, however, were very thick and magnified her deep-set hazel eyes, making her appear older.

Jackson smiled at her. “This is Grizel, their daughter, who might just have to convince the boys to let her remove her cape before they—”

“I’m fine, and my cape is nearly dry,” she argued and offered Ellie a smile. “It’s good to meet you, Mrs. Smith. If you wouldn’t mind, I’ll just hang up my things in the other room and keep the boys occupied there with something or other,” she said, then disappeared with them into the great room.

“Grizel’s spent a lot of time helping with the boys for the past few years,” her mother explained.

Envious of the close relationship Grizel seemed to have with both Daniel and Ethan, Ellie had little time to wonder about the other smaller girl who still had her back to her.

Jackson handed Michael the outer garments he had been holding and helped their final visitor remove her bonnet and cape. “And this is a very, very special neighbor I’d like you to meet, Ellie,” he murmured before he pressed a kiss to the girl’s forehead.

Moving slowly, the girl turned around to face Ellie.

Much to Ellie’s surprise, she was not a girl at all. She was a very small, but very, very old woman. Pale, parchment-thin skin dotted with dark brown spots fell in heavy creases over her cheeks. Wisps of short white hair, like bleached strands of corn silk, hung limply to the tips of her ears, but her clouded eyes still carried a bit of a twinkle.

“This is Michael’s grandmother, Widow Polly Palmer,” Jackson offered with affection. “Gram, this is my wife, Ellie.”

The aged woman shuffled over to Ellie and looked up at her. “You can call me Gram like everyone else. I’m a hundred and two. Now that Nellie Burke has passed, I’m the oldest woman in Dauphin County, but I still make the best apple butter on either side of the Susquehanna and I have the blue ribbons to prove it. How old are you?”

“Th-thirty-one,” Ellie stammered.

“I’ve outlived three husbands, four children, and a fair number of grandchildren. You ever married before?”

“N-no, but—”

“No children, then.”

Ellie gasped. “No!” she blurted, as shocked by the woman’s blunt questions as she was to learn the woman was over a century old. Gram might be the oldest woman Ellie had ever met, but there was nothing frail about her spirit or her authority, which permeated the entire room.

Widow Palmer edged very close to stare at Ellie.

Instinctively, Ellie pulled back, but she held the woman’s gaze for many heart-pounding moments. Finally, the older woman smiled and snatched hold of Ellie’s hands. “I think you’ll do,” she pronounced and squeezed hard.

The pressure on Ellie’s burned hands unleashed a jolt of pain that bolted up each of her arms, and she winced. Battling tears, she tried to ease her hands free, but the aged woman held them firmly and turned them over, giving them both a full view of the damage Ellie had done to them over the course of the night, as well as this morning.

Gram’s eyes opened wide, but instead of making a comment, she waved the others away. “Go on. Go about your business. Michael, you and Jackson ought to unload the foodstuffs in that wagon. Alice, you can clean up that soapy water on the floor next to that tub and that spill over there by the cookstove later. You probably should go with Michael and Jackson to make sure they put things where they belong in the root cellar instead of just dumping it all inside the door. Me and Ellie here have some gettin’ acquainted to do.”

Ellie was not surprised when everyone did the woman’s bidding and slipped away without a single word of argument. Once they were finally alone, Gram pulled out one of the two chairs at the worktable, which was quite removed from the tub as well as the cookstove, and pointed. “Sit yourself down right here.”

When Ellie sat down and laid her hands palm up on her lap, she was nearly eye level with her companion.

“Looks to me like you’ve been havin’ more than a fair bit of trouble with that newfangled cookstove Rebecca just had to have.”

Ellie nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

“I’ll fix somethin’ up for those poor red hands of yours.”

Ellie stared at her hands and shook her head. “The burns aren’t all that bad. I was just pumping water over them when you arrived. They actually feel much better now,” she insisted, making a mental note to get to work on that overgrown herb garden, if only to keep some healing herbs handy.

“You’ve got some good blisters and more comin’,” Gram quipped and edged past Ellie to sort through a basket Ellie had not noticed before that was stored close to the window on the lowest shelf. “I’m afraid I didn’t help matters much by squeezin’ those hands of yours like I did, which means I should make amends.”

“There’s no need. Truly,” Ellie argued.

“Every wrong should be made right, and no right should be forgotten. And no woman should have to cook on a pile of iron plates, which is why I won’t let Michael put one of those contraptions in that kitchen of his for Alice,” Gram countered with a crooked grin.