Rose (5 page)

Rose didn’t understand that being a son of William Henry Randolph was an excuse for almost anything.

George closed the door behind him.

“The boys are ready when you are,” he said to Rose.

She took her eyes off the pots on the stove long enough to check the bread in the oven.

“It’ll be just a few more minutes. The biscuits aren’t done yet.”

“They’re not happy about it.”

Rose looked up. “I doubt they’re any more unhappy than I was.”

“I shouldn’t have let them come in alone.”

“They’re big enough to know how to behave without you being here to tell them.”

“I know, but they’ve been left to themselves too long.”

“That’s no excuse.”

George knew it wasn’t, but he was irritated at Rose for saying it.

He wondered what had gone through her mind as she prepared dinner for the second time that evening. She had said very little while the boys were in the room. She said nothing after they left.

“Anything I can do?” he asked. He hated doing nothing. Not even four years in the army had taught him to wait patiently.

“Sit down. You’re paying me to fix your dinner.”

So she was still angry.

“This is different. I hired you to prepare only one dinner a day.”

She ladled the gravy over a second roast before setting it on the table in front of George’s place. “You can pour the milk. Zac says everybody likes something different.”

He began filling the glasses from different pitchers and setting them beside the appropriate places. “The boys really aren’t so bad,” he said. “Boys their ages never take well to discipline under the best of circumstances.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Rose replied, taking the biscuits from the oven. She placed them in a bowl and covered them with a towel. “The Robinson boys were a lot younger.”

“Then I imagine our family will take some getting used to.”

“I’m willing to try if they are.”

She wasn’t backing down. She was braced for trouble, and he couldn’t blame her.

Rose set the butter on the table, shooed away a fly showing an interest in the roast, stood up, straightened her dress, and pulled an errant lock of hair behind her ears.

“Everything’s ready. You can let them in.”

They walked in like condemned men.

They had washed and changed, but Rose noticed their shirts were neither clean nor new. They moved to their places and stood waiting for her to be seated, but they either looked at her with anger in their eyes or didn’t look at her at all. George held her chair. Rose sat down, but a second look at their faces changed her mind. She stood up, her chair scraping angrily on the still damp floor.

“I think it would be better if I ate later.”

“No, you don’t,” Monty exploded, all rigidity vanished. “You made this fuss about us washing and dressing up. If we have to be miserable, you do, too.”

“It wasn’t my intention to make anyone miserable,” Rose tried to explain. “A certain standard of behavior is expected of gentlemen when they come to the table. If you continue eating as you did before, no one will ever believe you’ve been properly reared.”

“Have you ever spent the night out in the brush?” Monty demanded. “Have you seen Cortina’s men when they come? Have you watched your friends fall dead from the saddle, their bodies trampled beyond recognition?” His shouted words didn’t lessen the earnestness of his questions.

“No.”

“Gentlemen don’t live like that. Only animals. It’s not easy to change just because you walk through a door.”

Yet George had changed. He must have seen even more terrifying, brutalizing sights during the war. Still, he managed to put it aside when he came to the table. But Rose couldn’t say that to a boy who had been fighting brutal, vicious men since he was twelve.

“I’m sure Miss Thornton doesn’t need a graphic description of what it means to live in south Texas,” George said, “but it is possible for men to put aside their battle manners when they come home. They’ve been doing it for centuries.”

“If you weren’t so anxious to murder those poor farmers, you—” Jeff began.

“You self-righteous ass!” Monty exploded. “If you’d had to crawl on your belly through the brush, or swim through a cottonmouth-infested stream to keep one of those
poor farmers
from killing you, you’d sing a different tune.”

“That’s enough,” George said.

“You can’t mean to listen to his bleating.”

“No, but I don’t imagine Miss Thornton wants to listen to you either.”

“She’d better. Our guns is the only thing that’ll keep her safe in her bed.”

“Are,” Jeff said.

Monty threw his milk across the table. He aimed for Jeff’s head, but his brother dodged, and the glass shattered against the far wall. Fragments fell into the woodbox and scattered under the stove.

“If you don’t keep that bastard’s mouth shut, I’ll shut it for him.”

“Jeff, I’ve told you not to correct the boys.”

“I can’t stand to hear them sound like untutored fools.”

“Then don’t listen. If Pa didn’t think their education was important enough for him to see to, then you leave it alone. How do you think they feel knowing we got special tutors while they got nothing?” George cast a meaningful glance in Rose’s direction. She knew he was telling Jeff not to air the family’s dirty linen in front of her.

“Monty, apologize to Miss Thornton.”

Rose’s startled, protesting gaze flew to George’s face. She didn’t want to be made part of this confrontation.

“I’ll be damned if I will,” Monty swore. “Let Jeff do it.”

“Apologize, or leave the table. We’ve already ruined her first dinner. It’s inexcusable to ruin a second.”

“Go to hell!” Monty shouted and left the room.

Hen half rose in his chair, his coldly furious gaze fixed on Jeff.

George motioned him back in his seat. “Jeff, if you can’t leave Monty alone during dinner, you’ll have to eat some other time. You don’t have to like the way the twins looked after Ma or this place, but you have no right to complain. You weren’t here.”

“Of course I wasn’t doing anything important, only defending my country and losing my arm,” Jeff stated, furious.

Rose didn’t know who to sympathize with more. It must be awful for the twins to suffer from a perpetual feeling of inferiority, but that was nothing compared to Jeff’s loss of his arm.

“Clean up the milk,” George said to Jeff. “It’s your fault it’s spilt.”

It’s also your fault Monty has to go without dinner,
Rose thought.

They finished the meal in silence.

Tyler was the first to get to his feet.

“If you’re finished, ask Miss Thornton if you may be excused,” George said.

“Why should I ask her?” Tyler demanded, looking at George like he’d lost his mind. “She’s nothing but the cook.”

“She’s as much somebody as you are,” George replied. “If you enjoyed dinner, say so. Then ask her permission to be excused.”

“You may go if you’re finished,” Rose said, not waiting for the mutinous boy to ask. She wasn’t sure he would, and she didn’t think she could stand another confrontation tonight.

“Everything tasted mighty good,” Hen said as Tyler made a hasty exit. “Mind if I go?”

“Not at all,” Rose said.

“Me, too,” Zac said, jumping up. “Don’t mind Tyler,” he whispered
in Rose’s ear. “He’s just mad you took away his job. Now he has to chase after cows, and he hates cows more than anything.”

“Don’t forget to fill the woodbox,” Rose reminded Zac before he could make good his escape. “I’ll need more wood if I’m to cook breakfast in the morning.”

Zac looked like he wanted to argue, but one glance at George’s stern expression, his thick eyebrows virtually drawn together, caused him to change his mind.

“I’d better be going, too,” Jeff said. “The food was excellent. George did well when he hired you.”

Just like I’d been a cow or a horse.
Jeff was more of a snob than all his brothers put together. She’d never be more than the hired help to him.

“I hope you don’t mind if I don’t go right away,” George said.

“Stay as long as you like.” Rose hoped she didn’t sound as breathless as she felt. That she could feel anything beyond relief that such a horrendous evening was over was a mystery to her.

What was it about this man that appealed to her so much that she could virtually forget the most miserable meal of her life? He hadn’t done anything romantic since they left the Bon Ton. Neither had he gotten excited nor allowed his emotions to run away with him. He had supported her, but she was sure he had done it for practical reasons rather than any liking for her.

Yet she still felt drawn to him.

He made her feel safe. He was fair even when he didn’t want to be. And after her years in Austin, she knew just how important these qualities were.

Fine. Campaign for him if he ever runs for governor, but you’re thinking about feelings, not qualifications.

“Would you like some coffee?” she asked.

“No, thank you. But I’d like a little more milk.” He smiled at her surprise. “I’m afraid I’ll never make a true Texan. I don’t like coffee. I couldn’t drink it strong and black to save my life.”

“I don’t suppose it’s required.”

“I apologize for the way the boys behaved. I’m afraid it’s been an unpleasant evening.”

“Tempers are bound to fly at the end of a hard day. Then I came along and upset everything.”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

“I doubt I could explain it to you. You’d have to be part of the family to understand.”

“Try.” She wasn’t going to be shut out that easily. She didn’t know if her knowing what bothered them would change anything, but she wanted to understand why they kept snapping at each other, if only to keep from unwittingly starting a fight.

“We moved to Texas six months before the war broke out,” George began. “Pa sent Jeff and me off to fight. We never knew he meant to leave right behind us. That left seventeen-year-old Madison to take care of four younger brothers and a ranch he hated. Mother’s health was too poor to allow her to help him.”

“What happened to your mother?”

“She died within the year. Madison left as soon as they buried her. That meant Hen and Monty had to take over. They never forgave Pa for leaving Ma. I don’t think they forgave Madison, either.”

“Where did he go?”

“Nobody’s ever heard from him.”

Rose could imagine how that must hurt George, especially when coupled with the fear that Madison might have died in the war.

“The rustling got pretty bad at times,” George continued. “I’ll never know most of what the twins had to do. Certainly things no fourteen-year-old boys should have to go through. They fought for their lives as much as for this place. Naturally they resented it when I came back and started telling them what to do.

“I know Jeff shouldn’t antagonize them, but he’s bitter over the loss of his arm. He thinks that no matter what the twins went through, it doesn’t compare to his years in a prison camp.”

Rose thought of her own miserable years in Austin. They would probably seem like nothing compared to the dangers of a war or rustlers, yet they were very real to her. Would Jeff feel she had nothing to complain of? Probably, but she knew that in some ways she would rather have lived in fear of her life than have to face the hatred and anger of the citizens of Austin.

“None of us is capable of judging the suffering of another human being,” she said. “What’s easy for one person might be impossible for another.”

“I don’t think Jeff will understand that until he starts to accept the loss of his arm.”

“I hope it won’t be too late. It won’t do him a lot of good to come to terms with his loss if there’s nobody left to care.”

“Maybe I should let you talk with him.”

“I’ll do the dishes,” Rose said, rising. “I have a feeling it’ll be the easier task.”

“I’m not my brother’s keeper.”

“Yes, you are. Whether you know it or not, you’re the only one with any real desire to bind the six of you into a family once more.”

“Seven.”

Rose reminded herself to be careful to talk of Madison like he was still one of them. Regardless of her own private certainty that he was dead or would never come back, George obviously expected him to return.

She wished there were something she could do to lift the burden of worry from his shoulders. There was so much she didn’t know, so much she didn’t dare ask about.

One thing she did know. There was something inside George that he was afraid of. He was too busy with his family to deal with it just yet, but it lurked there just the same. She didn’t
know what it was, but it was the something that made him keep his distance from her.

The responsibility for his brothers hung over George like a pall. There were times when he was tempted to throw it all over and head for the nearest fort and a commission he knew would be his for the asking. It was there just for the taking, the rank, the command, the career he had always wanted, doubly bad after his father’s last scandal had cost him his appointment to West Point.

The war had given him a second chance. If he joined now, he’d have his choice of commands. If he waited until the boys were settled and Zac old enough to get about on his own, he would probably be too old to work his way up through the ranks.

But he couldn’t leave. The only people he really cared about were here.

Did that include Rose?

He hadn’t meant to say so much to her. More than that, he hadn’t expected so much understanding. He had been able to control his attraction to her only by cutting himself off from her.

But one evening had changed that.

He wished he’d been in the room when she turned the table over. He could just see his brothers’ faces. Jeff was used to weak women who never stood up to a man. Why shouldn’t he be? Their mother never stood up to their father. Monty expected people to listen to him, but he respected anyone who fought back. George didn’t know what Hen thought. He never had.

It would take them a while to get used to Rose’s willingness to stand up for herself.

He remembered her profile as she moved to put away the dishes. He felt a familiar warmth begin to stir in his groin. Odd she should set him off so easily. He had met hundreds of women before and during the war, some of them very beautiful,
some of them ready to do just about anything for the son of tall, handsome, infamous William Henry Randolph, and he’d been able to ignore them all.

But he couldn’t ignore Rose.

He remembered the endless trip from Austin, the hours he spent trying to concentrate on the ranch, the numberless times his eyes had sought her out, the struggle to keep the heat flaring inside him out of his voice, his actions, his every thought.

It was like that now. Everything faded until he could see nothing but Rose, think of nothing but Rose, want nothing but Rose. It was like she had bewitched him, made him do things he didn’t want to do.

It would be so easy to reach out and touch her.

And so stupid!

“Does George know you’re out here?”

“I told him.”

“What did he say?”

“I didn’t ask.”

Monty chuckled. “You don’t mind getting into the middle of any kind of fight, do you?”

“I don’t like fights,” Rose answered, surprised he would say such a thing.

Monty laughed again. “You throw a whole dinner on the floor because you don’t like our manners. Then you bring me dinner after George and Jeff have exiled me, and you say you don’t like fights.”

“George didn’t exile you.”

“Yes he did—he and that sanctimonious prig.”

“You must try to be patient with Jeff.”

Monty made a rude noise.

“Losing an arm must be a terribly difficult thing to accept. As for George, he was only trying to see that you treated me properly. He didn’t enjoy sending you from the table.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“You should. He’s the one who told me where to find you.”

“Why would he? He doesn’t care whether I go to bed hungry or not.”

“You’re wrong. He also told me I’d better bring your dinner in a bucket or the dogs would get it before I got halfway here.”

Rose was exhausted, but she couldn’t sleep. She had twisted and turned in her bed until the sheets were in a knot and the thin blanket had fallen to the floor. She listened for any sound, but silence had settled over the house more than an hour ago. She doubted she would have heard the men even if they’d been talking loud. The house didn’t look like much, but it had been very well built.