The Brides of Chance Collection (4 page)

A big trestle table flanked by benches filled the middle portion of the house. As she got closer, Miriam quelled a shriek as a mouse skittered by. The table hadn’t been scrubbed in months. A sputtering candle sat in the center of it. Any number of items littered the floor, too. A harness, work gloves, a whetstone, and two saddles all blocked her transit. The windows were dingy beyond belief, and no curtain hung there for the sake of modesty or privacy.

Worst of all, the kitchen would make any woman’s heart fail. A big Acme stove promised sizable meals, but a fleeting touch confirmed it to be stone cold and in desperate need of scraping and scouring. She peered into the water reservoir and almost screamed when she found two trout there. Crates nailed to the walls held provender. The Chance men might not clean at all, but from the looks of the supplies they kept, they certainly ate. Dirty dishes lay on every available surface.

Miriam cringed, then used the edge of a dubious-looking dishcloth to wipe a tiny circle on the windowpane until she could see. It was still dark outside. She couldn’t determine the time. Regardless, she couldn’t go back to sleep.

She used the candle to light a kerosene lamp and set to work. It was hard to determine where to begin. A quick touch of the broom handle, and she drew back in disgust. Sticky. She wiped it clean, then brandished the business end against the cobwebs in the corners. The overhead beams and walls soon were whisked clean, too. Next, she filled a bucket with water from the pump and relocated the fish into it.

It made no sense to try to suds down the stove until she scraped off the worst of the grime with the blade of a hoe she found on a bench. Though it wasn’t exactly the usual application for the tool, the inside of a house wasn’t a normal storage place for it, either. The hoe also helped her shovel the mountain of ashes from the stove. She set the buckets of ashes off to the side. They might be needed to make soap.

A bottle of ammonia allowed her to scrub the top of the range and the bottom panes of the windows. She couldn’t reach the higher ones until she dragged over a bench, but with all of the rubbish in the way, she simply couldn’t. Miriam pretended not to notice how the bowl stuck to the tabletop as she mixed flour, salt, baking powder, water, and eggs together in it. She’d started a small fire in the stove and would make some drop biscuits as soon as she heard the men begin to stir.

The coffeepot looked battered, but that indicated these men liked the bitter brew, so she refilled it with fresh water and measured out the grounds. Miriam put the coffee on the stove, and as she turned around, she bit back a cry. A pot holder she’d quilted for her sister hung on a rusty nail. Memories flooded her. All of the grief she’d tried to hold at bay with her frantic cleaning overwhelmed her. She hugged the pot holder to her bosom, sat at the sticky table, and wept.

Chapter 4

G
ideon had gone out to the stable to sleep. He woke to answer the call of nature, and on the way back to the stable from the outhouse, he noted the light from the house. That struck him as odd. The lights normally didn’t show much at all. His brothers must be up trying to comfort little Miriam for the place to be ablaze like this. It was a solid half hour before they normally got up, and all of them prized their sleep. Things must be bad if they sacrificed their time in the sack. He strode over to assess the situation.

As he drew closer, Gideon realized he could see the light through the windows more clearly than usual. He opened the door and groaned. Miriam sat on a bench, her elbows propped on the table, her face buried in a pot holder, of all things. Her shoulders shuddered with her nearly silent weeping.

He went and sat beside her, his back against the table and his hip alongside her bed gown. As soon as he reached for her, she tumbled sideways into his chest. She cried brokenheartedly—just the way Mama had when Pa died. Gideon remembered it well. He felt just as helpless now as he had then. Wrapping his arms securely about Miriam and holding fast were all he could do—precious little to guard her tender heart from such terrible news.

When she finally wound down, he gave her time to let his presence sink in. Hopefully she’d find consolation in knowing she’d not be left alone in her first moments of grief. She mopped her tear-ravaged face with the pot holder, and he tenderly stroked her brow. “You’re tuckered out. I want you to sleep the whole day away. We’ll talk things over this evening.”

He stood and thought about letting her walk back into the bedroom. Her movements as she stood and stepped around the edge of the bench were stilted, and her features looked bleakly wooden. If her appearance alone wasn’t reason enough, the obstacles in her path convinced him she’d never make it. Gideon swept her into his arms. She sagged against him and whispered in a shaky voice, “What about Hannah’s babies?”

“They’re right as rain. God never made cuter dumplin’s. You’ll meet them after you’ve rested up. Young as they are, they’ll run you ragged if you don’t store up a bit of energy.”

As he spoke, he plowed through everything cluttering the floor and into the room where his brothers all sat, fully dressed and waiting for a chance to escape from a woman’s weeping. He didn’t bother to introduce them. He simply passed by all of them and tucked her into his bed while they hastily exited the room.

He suffered an awkward moment, realizing she’d not want to shed her robe in his presence. She’d fallen fast asleep earlier; she probably didn’t comprehend he’d already seen her in her bed gown.

Miriam shivered.

Relief flooded him. He considered the room much too warm from having his brothers sleeping in it all night. Obviously Miriam thought otherwise. “That one blanket won’t be enough to keep you warm, Miss Miriam. You’d best keep on your robe for a bit of extra bundling.” He settled her onto his mattress. The mattress smelled a mite stale. How long had it been since he replaced the cornhusks and hay inside the ticking? He couldn’t rightly remember. No use fretting over anything that minor. He pulled up the cover and tucked it around her narrow shoulders. “Sweet dreams.”

“I apologize for being such a bother.”

“You’re not a bother. Now hush and sleep.” He turned, paced out of the room, and shut the door to give her privacy.

All five men sat at the breakfast table, drank Miriam’s restaurant-perfect coffee, and ate her melt-in-your-mouth biscuits. Titus looked around. “This place is a pigsty.”

Gideon nodded. “I don’t want her waking up and coming out to this. Hannah was always finicky about cleanliness; I don’t imagine Miss Miriam will be any less so. Bryce, you get all of the stuff up off the floor and carry it back out to the stable. Titus, you wash the dishes. I don’t reckon we have a clean one left in the whole house.”

Gideon knew his brothers didn’t welcome those orders. Because they all worked from can-see-to-can’t, seven days a week, those chores normally went undone. They’d shed the burden of domestic frills as soon as there wasn’t a woman around to protest. The problem was, a woman occupied the house again.

He continued, “Logan, you’re going to have to use sand to scrub the junk off the floor. Everyone needs to get back in the habit of scraping off their boots before they come in. For a few days here, we’re gonna have to act civilized.”

Bryce scowled at him. “You’re mighty good at makin’ us do the dirty work. What’re you putting your hand to?”

Gideon wrinkled his nose. “I’m going to wash the stuff from her clothes.”

Logan nodded. “I got it on mine, too. I’ll toss them in the pot.”

Gideon muttered as all of them volunteered him to do their laundry. He’d rather do just about anything but laundry. Since he was the eldest, he usually managed to order someone else to do the chore. The only reason he’d been ready to do it was because he didn’t cotton to the notion of his brothers touching prim little Miriam’s unmentionables. Frankly, he didn’t want to deal with them, either. It went against all decency, but he’d left her trunks in town, and the woman needed something to wear.
Stuck between a rattler and a brushfire
. Gideon let out a gusty sigh. “Let’s get to work.”

Everyone set to his chores. Titus left most of the dishes to soak in three big tubs. He took the pots down to the creek for a sand scouring. Bryce hauled an armful of junk out to the stable, then milked the cow before he came back. He set down the milk pail, hauled out the harness, and came back with the eggs he’d gathered.

Logan took out the swill to slop the hogs, came back, scowled at the floor, and grumbled, “Don’t know why I have to scrub it. It’ll be dirty again, soon as anyone walks across it. Can’t see wasting my time.” His brothers all gave him nasty looks, so he grabbed the broom.

After shaving half a cake of soap into the wash kettle, Gideon set it over a fire in the yard and filled it with water. As it started to heat, he paced back into the cabin. Quietly as he could, he eased the bedroom door open and tiptoed in. He stood still for a moment, but he didn’t hear a thing. Every step he took sounded clumsily loud as he walked across the planks to gather shirts and britches off the pegs and floor. Finally, he reached the far side of the room and paused outside the blanket partition.

“Miss Miriam, I aim to fetch the laundry if you don’t mind.”

She failed to answer, so he peered in to be sure she was okay. He strained to listen and heard soft breaths in a slow, deep cadence.
Good. She’s sleeping
. Moving away, he snagged his shirts off the pegs, used the toe of his boot to hook out the blanket stacked with her soiled clothing, and finally went to the other end. He reached under the bed to get his grime-encrusted britches.

In morning light, she looked more delicate, more ethereal. The way her braid unraveled across the pillow invited a man to test each rippling, golden wave.

Hannah’s kid sister—the one he’d heard her mention and somehow pictured as a schoolgirl in pigtails—was an eyeful of femininity. Gideon tamped down that line of thought and beat a hasty retreat. He left the clothes by the boiling laundry pot and headed toward Daniel’s tiny cottage.

The Chance men never stood on formalities. Gideon walked in without knocking and scooped Polly from the floor. Over at the table, Daniel tried to get Virginia to take one more sip of apple cider. The two of them seemed to be wearing more of the contents of the glass than drinking it.

“I’m doing laundry,” Gideon announced as he started to toss clothes into a crate.

“Great!”

After he filled the crate, he turned and looked at his brother. Daniel showed remarkable patience with his two little ones. Three-year-old Polly chattered twenty to the dozen, and Virginia had hit the walking stage a few days earlier.

After Hannah died, Daniel had advertised for a housekeeper, but the only one who responded made it clear she held far more interest in matrimony than in mending. After a short time, it became clear that for the sake of Daniel’s sanity, the Chance brothers were going to have to handle matters on their own. They devised a simple solution: Each man took a day every week to watch the girls. Daniel took both Wednesday and Sunday since the girls were his, and he minded them from sundown to sunup all of the time.

“Dan, we’ve got a visitor.”

“Oh?” Daniel wiped Ginny Mae’s face. “Who?”

Gideon watched his brother intently. “Miriam Hancock came into town last night.”

“Miriam?” Dan looked dazed. “What is she doing here?”

“It seems Hannah wrote her and mentioned she didn’t feel well. Miriam came to help her out.”

“Why’d she do a foolish thing like that? Letters take up to eight months to get there!”

“Don’t ask me to figure out the mind of a woman. Fact remains, Miriam is here. I figured I’d best tell you before you ran into her in the yard. I’m sure she’ll want to see her nieces today.”

“How long is she planning to stay?”

“I didn’t ask.”

As it was Saturday, it was Gideon’s day to have the girls. He popped both of them into the fenced-off play area Daniel had made to contain the girls while his brothers did yard chores. Some of the clothes were so badly soiled, Gideon couldn’t even put them in the wash kettle. He toted them down to the creek, knelt, and swished the worst of the grime from them. Beating them on a rock worked, but he had neither the time nor the patience to do much of that. Instead, he hauled them all back to the fire.

Steam rose from the huge, cast-iron cauldron. The soap bubbled a bit on the surface. Yeah, that looked just like it did when Mama used to have laundry day. Satisfied with the wash water, he dumped in Miriam’s white clothes and stirred them with a paddle. After he made sure they’d come clean, he double rinsed them so the lye residue wouldn’t irritate her delicate skin or rot the thin cotton fabric, then wrung out each snowy garment and hung it on the clothesline. It seemed mighty strange to see a woman’s things there.

He washed the baby’s white things next, then did the rest of the laundry. It was a hot, miserable job, and he didn’t feel guilty in the least for how he kept leaving things in the pot to boil a bit while he went off to tickle Polly or play peekaboo with Ginny Mae.

Once all the clothes fluttered in the wind, he hitched each of the girls under his arms and hiked over to the garden. They played in the dirt and mud while he staked up the tomatoes and watered the melons and beans. Polly was giggling, and Ginny Mae just about put a worm in her mouth when Gideon looked up to see Miriam standing there. He snatched the worm from Ginny Mae and stammered, “They’re dirty right now, but they’re good girls.”

A tender smile lit her face. “They’re beautiful, and they’ll clean up. Little girls deserve to make mud pies.” She self-consciously tugged at her robe, then stooped down. Instead of grabbing, she simply opened her arms. Polly went right to her. “Hello, poppet. You’re my Polly-girl, and you are every bit as precious as your mama said.”

Polly rubbed her hand up and down the soft fabric of her aunt’s green dressing gown. “Pretty.”

A becoming blush stained her cheeks. “Yes, well, Auntie Miriam needs her clothes.”