The Brides of Chance Collection (8 page)

“Now you just hold it right there!”

Miriam stared at him. “Your younger brothers were imbibing devil’s brew within the tainted walls of a house of ill repute when I arrived. Don’t for one minute expect me to entrust the impressionable hearts and souls of my sister’s daughters to men who have no morals or manners. I won’t. I can’t.”

“No one asked your opinion.”

“Mr. Chance, I’m afraid you simply don’t understand.” She looked at him and shook her head. “Girls need tutelage and tenderness. They need social graces and spiritual guidance.”

“Every last one of us can read and cipher just fine. Those girls won’t lack book learning. As for tenderness, every last one of us loves both of them to distraction, so you needn’t fret over that.”

“But their manners and morals?”

The muscles in his cheek started to twitch. “Lady, you’ve got a heap of gall, barging in here and judging us.”

“I didn’t barge. I was invited.”

“Yeah, but Hannah did the inviting, and she isn’t—” His voice came to an abrupt halt.

Miriam sucked in a sharp breath and let it out very slowly. “Here anymore,” she finished. Her voice carried a taste of the woe she felt. She paused for a moment, then said, “And that is precisely why I must stay. In honor of her memory and as a tribute to the very principles she held inviolate, it falls upon me to make sure her daughters are reared in an appropriate and decent manner.”

“You can’t stay.”

“You’ve already said as much, but I’m afraid you’ll simply have to reconsider.”

“Daniel—”

“Is grieving. I understand that. I’ve already promised not to wear any of my sister’s clothing.”

“It’s not just the clothing.”

She nodded. “I know Hannah and I look—” She caught herself, gulped a big breath, then forged ahead.
“Looked
quite similar. Seeing me must have been a terrible shock for him. I’ll wear my hair differently, and that should help.”

“Only a woman would come up with a silly plan like that.” He waved his hand in a gesture of disgust. “Applying that boneheaded logic, as if slapping a different saddle on my mare would make her—”

“You’re not,” she interrupted, “comparing me to a horse, are you, Mr. Chance?”

“Now don’t go pitching a hissy fit.”

“I’m not given to having fits, sir. You’re addressing that comment to the wrong person. Daniel is the one who has let his emotions sway behavior beyond reason. Nevertheless, I understand grief is to blame, and I’ll manage to deal with it. By and by, he’ll become accustomed to my presence.”

Gideon cast a quick glance at the closed bedroom door. Miriam understood why. The last thing either of them wanted was for this to turn into a shouting match. His brothers didn’t need to overhear this conversation at all. His voice lowered to a growl. “This is his home. You make him…uncomfortable.”

Miriam stopped and looked at him. For a moment, their gazes held. “Mr. Gideon Chance, this isn’t about what makes your brother comfortable. We’re all bound to be uncomfortable for some time. I’m scarcely accustomed to any of this myself, but this is not about adults’ feelings—it is about children’s needs.”

“Polly and Ginny Mae have all they need!”

She shook her head sadly. “I’m afraid that simply proves my point. They are warm and fed, but the same can be said of your horses and hounds. Why, when I took the laundry down from the line last evening, Polly claimed the smallest man’s shirts as her own dresses!”

Gideon’s neck and ears went ruddy.

“At first, I could scarcely credit it, but then I took stock of the clothing, and I realized my niece was wearing the only dress she owns! Pardon me if I’m drawing the wrong conclusion, but as far as I can tell, you men let that little girl run about in a man’s shirt. How could you allow such a travesty?”

“Travesty? It’s no travesty. Bryce and Logan outgrew those shirts. It’s shameful to waste.”

“Shameful! Why, you cannot mean—”

“They serve Polly just fine.” He glowered at her. “Besides, who’s going to see her but us, anyhow?”

His assertions left her spluttering. The matter was far from closed in her opinion. He wasn’t about to have her dictate his family’s ways; she refused to leave her sweet little nieces alone with a band of barely civilized men. He folded his arms akimbo.

“Best you forget these opinions and wild notions about staying, Miss Miriam. For the next few days, you’d do well to rest. You’re looking peaked, and that won’t make for a very good voyage.”

“Voyage?”

“Home,” he asserted. His head nodded, as if to paint an exclamation mark in the air to punctuate his feelings. “We’ll just trade in your return ticket for an earlier departure.”

“What return ticket?”

Chapter 8

W
hat return ticket?” Gideon echoed for the dozenth time as he went out to work with the horses. He smacked his gloves against the fence post and tamped down the urge to bellow in outrage. He wanted to shake the teeth right out of Miriam’s pretty head. How could she have come halfway around the world and planned to stay? Her father must be daft, sending her to Hannah. Hannah was only a tad bit older, so expecting her to shield Miriam from the real world and shelter her from harm was utter nonsense. In essence, they expected Daniel to shoulder that burden—but Daniel was in no shape to do so, and Gideon wasn’t at all eager to fill those shoes.

“How much does a trip to the islands cost?” he wondered aloud. He moaned. Money was tight. Real tight. They had enough for provisions but not enough for frills. He yanked on his right glove. Faced with being strapped for another year or getting saddled with a prissy missionary’s daughter, he’d go for the lesser of the two evils. Miriam would have to go—and soon.

Real soon.

Moments after his brothers had gotten up, they started grumbling. Paul finally stuck his head around the bedroom door. “Where the…uh, Titus and I can’t find our shirts, and Bryce’s britches up and disappeared.”

“I’m responsible for the missing garments,” Miriam confessed. Her tone was so conciliatory, Gideon knew he’d underestimated the scope of the problem. This woman had her heart set on staying, and she’d give in, make sacrifices, and bend over backward to convince his brothers that she belonged here. A shy smile flitted across her face as she continued. “When I took the laundry off the line last evening, I kept out the articles of clothing that require mending. Could you possibly make do with what you have? I’ll be sure to catch up on the mending today.”

After Paul managed to shut his gaping mouth, he stammered, “That’s right kind of you, ma’am. I mean, miss. We’d all be obliged. Much obliged. Truly. None of us is any good with a needle.”

At breakfast, she set stuff on the table the likes of which Gideon and his brothers hadn’t tasted in years. His brothers were voluble in their appreciation and approval. Mama loved to cook like this; Hannah had made fair meals but never much pushed herself past doing plain fare.

Miriam hadn’t just scrambled eggs and made biscuits. She hadn’t gone the extra step and whipped up a pan of white gravy. Oh, no. Miss I’m-Here-to-Stay pulled out all the stops. She’d chopped up bits of ham, onions, and tomatoes into the eggs. As if that wasn’t enough to make all of their taste buds take notice, she opened the door of the oven and pulled out a pan of coffee cake. The aroma steaming off it had Gideon reaching for a piece as soon as she put it on the table.

An hour later, trying to forget about breakfast and concentrate on work, Gideon remembered the way she’d fleetingly rested her hand on his shoulder so she could refill Logan’s and his coffee cups. Her touch had been innocent and brief as could be, but when she moved on toward Paul and Titus, he’d wanted to yank her back and check to see if he’d been imagining the sweet smell of flowers clinging to her.

Disgusted at himself, Gideon pulled on his left glove and muttered under his breath, “Half-wits. My own brothers are a bunch of no-good, belly-rubbin’ half-wits. If she thinks she’s gonna buy her way into this family on our just-mended shirtsleeves or through our stomachs, she’s got another thing a-comin’!”

Dinner reinforced her good standing with his brothers. She’d made corn bread and fancied up the beans she’d been soaking with hunks of side meat. She’d picked cabbage from the garden, sliced it into thin shreds, and mixed all sorts of stuff with it. The stuff could coax every last apostle out of heaven for want of a taste.

She didn’t eat with them, either. She and Polly had held a tea party a short while earlier. While the men ate, Miriam lifted Polly up on a chair. The puzzling woman pulled a measuring tape from the sewing bag she’d brought in her trunk. Tan his sorry hide, Logan had unearthed a stack of feed and flour sacks, and Miriam went so far as to promise Polly she could choose whichever she fancied for her new dress. While she and Polly chattered like magpies about a pretty new frock, Daniel’s eyes shot sparks that could ignite a forest fire. All of the other brothers lapped up the food like a pack of starving wolves.

Gideon knew he had to do something—quickly.

Gideon stepped into the cabin for supper, unsure whether to anticipate or dread what was to come. Miss Miriam had missed her calling in life. The woman could plot until she had a man twisting in circles. Had she been born a man, she’d certainly have attended West Point and become a military strategist.
And that means she wouldn’t be sashaying around here, wearing that flowery scent and ugly dress and driving me half daft
.

“What have you been doing today?” Logan asked their little niece as he tugged on the ribbon tying off one of her freshly washed, neatly plaited pigtails.

“Auntie Miri-Em fixed all of the shirts. She putted lotsa buttons on ’em. And she hided all of the holes so they all gone.” She paused for effect, then hiked up the hem of the dress she was wearing to show off layers of white ruffles underneath. “Looky! Auntie Miri-Em maded me panty-lettes.”

Logan let out a hearty laugh.

Gideon cast a glance over at Miriam. She’d turned back to the stove, but he could see the curve of her cheek. A rosy hue that hadn’t been there moments before tinted it now.

Thoroughly entertained, Bryce let out a wolf whistle and waggled his brows. “Aren’t you just the prettiest little fashion plate?”

“I not a plate,” Polly huffed in obvious dismay. She patiently pointed at the table. “Plates is on the table. Panty-lettes is on me.”

The way she hiked up her hem to display her fancy little girl drawers to illustrate the second part of her assertion was downright funny. Gideon chuckled under his breath.

Miriam cleared her throat and said in a slightly croaky tone, “Polly, you may come be my best helper now. Put the bread on the table.”

“Goody!” Polly stopped making a show of her unmentionables and galloped over to her aunt. White ruffles stuck out from beneath her hem, making what had been a too-short-to-be-decent dress look acceptable. Gideon wouldn’t admit he thought it looked utterly charming—even if it was kind of girly. He also didn’t want to admit that once Polly was out of diapers, they hadn’t bothered to put her into any undergarments. White’s Mercantile sold men’s long johns, but they didn’t have a thing for kids. Asking Reba White to special order something for Polly was one of those awkward things that somehow managed to slip the Chance brothers’ minds when they went to town.

Polly wound her arms around Miriam’s skirts for a quick hug, then looked up expectantly. Miriam stooped and gave Polly a basket full of sliced bread. She murmured something softly to the girl, then asked, “Understand?”

“No,” Polly retorted in her clear, high voice that carried well. She frowned at Miriam and tilted her head to the side. “How come a lady is ’posed to wear her panty-lettes, but she can’t talk ’bout them? My panty-lettes is so pretty!”

That did it. Gideon succumbed to the temptation. He threw back his head and roared. Miriam looked so disconcerted, he couldn’t help it.

Daniel sat off in the corner, glowering. Gideon wasn’t sure whether his levity or Miriam’s prissy ways caused his brother to look like he’d been sucking on lemons. Paying attention to his surly ways wouldn’t change them.
It’s a temporary situation
, Gideon told himself as he stopped laughing.
Miriam will be gone in no time at all
.

As if she knew what he was thinking, Miriam used all the strategy of a general and the wiles of a woman. She put supper on the table. Everything was done at the same time, and she managed to coordinate her moves so efficiently, she didn’t get in a dither while juggling platters, bowls, and the like. In a matter of moments, rich, thick, my mouth-died-and-went-to-heaven chicken stew and her light-as-clouds bread graced the supper table. A colorful dish with whacked-up tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and bits of herbs looked like something a fancy chef would serve at an expensive San Francisco restaurant. How she managed to knock around in their kitchen and garden and concoct such mouthwatering meals was a total mystery. No matter who cooked, none of the Chance men ever managed to create anything half as appealing.

“Supper is ready, gentlemen,” she announced.