Frontier cinderella, p.8
Frontier Cinderella, page 8
Zeke bristled, and Katie Jo set the coffee pot down on the table with a thud. Still, she kept her smile in place, conscious of her audience.
“Zeke’s a little hard of hearing,” she explained to Ciara and Harry. “You just have to make sure he can see your lips, and he’ll know what you’re saying.”
“If you’re lucky,” her uncle scoffed. He looked to Harry. “I see you already found another gal to court. Coming to let her gloat?”
Ciara colored.
“I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” Harry said smoothly as he stood from the table. “This is Mrs. Weatherly, who runs the Wooden Rose Inn at Wallin Landing. She wanted to talk to Katie Jo about her work. I was available to escort her.” He grinned at Katie Jo. “And I’d take any excuse to come calling.”
The room brightened, and birds sang outside, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if the chickens had joined in.
“Are you having a problem with the girl?” her uncle asked Ciara. “She usually gives me a good day’s work, more than most men I could name.”
Ciara’s face tightened. “Katie Jo is only a blessing. I’ve never seen anyone work so hard and so well. I heard she might be reconsidering working for me, so I thought I would come speak to her directly.”
Katie Jo watched her uncle. Those green eyes flickered, as if thoughts ran like a river, fast and deep, behind them. He wiggled his lips a moment, setting his beard to wiggling too.
“She might be available,” he mused, “for a price.”
Chapter Nine
Oh, no. Katie Jo was not about to let her uncle swindle her friends.
“Never mind him,” she told Ciara. “You pay me plenty.”
“You never did know your own worth, girl,” her uncle said with a shake of his head. “Let me negotiate for you.”
She wasn’t the only one who questioned her worth, but in this, she would not be gainsaid.
“I’m of age,” she said, raising her chin, “and it’s my job. I can negotiate if it suits me.”
Zeke grabbed her hand and gave it a tug, gaze pleading. He knew who would get the licking if she protested overly much.
“No need to negotiate,” Harry put in. His smile was still in place too, but there was a tension in him now, like a bowstring drawn taut. “Mrs. Weatherly will be glad to pay whatever you feel is warranted.”
Ciara shot him a frown, but said nothing.
“Dollar a day,” her uncle said. “In silver.”
“She only pays me two bits a day!” Katie Jo protested. “You’re asking her to double my salary, for nothing.”
“Done,” Harry said. “We’ll expect you Friday afternoon, Katie Jo.” He nodded to her. “Ma’am. Zeke. Mr. McAllister.”
Ciara looked like she was ready to mutiny, eyes snapping fire and mouth a thin line, but she rose from the rocker and gave Katie Jo’s uncle a curt nod before glancing at her. “I’ll see you on Friday, Katie Jo. And Zeke, you’re welcome too.”
“That will be another dollar a day,” Uncle Cole said.
Ciara puffed up like a hen prepared to battle a snake who was out to steal her eggs. Harry took her hand and escorted her out.
As soon as the door had shut behind them, Uncle Cole rounded on Katie Jo. “Don’t you ever contradict me in front of others again, girl.”
“Then don’t you go ordering my life,” she snapped back. “Those are my friends.”
“Some friends, who wrangle over pay. Be glad I got you a raise.” He started for the washtub.
Katie Jo tailed him. “I didn’t ask for a raise because I didn’t need one. She pays me fine.”
He stopped and scowled at her. “Fine? Did you see how she was dressed? She has a whole inn, while we barely make ends meet. Folks like us have to stand up to those who try to take advantage of us.”
“Seems I do,” Katie Jo said.
He missed the sarcasm. “That’s why I’m here. You and Zeke need me. It’s my job to protect you. Now, come out to the crick. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
She didn’t want to go anywhere with him, but he’d likely take any further protests out on Zeke, so she nodded.
“Be careful,” Zeke murmured as she followed her uncle out the rear door.
Across the creek from the cabin, a man waited. Like some who lived in the woods, he was dressed in buckskin trousers and a gingham shirt. His grizzled hair hung down in limp locks on either side of a face as tanned as leather. Sharp gray eyes regarded her as she approached the bank.
“This your niece?” he asked in a gravelly voice.
“Katie Jo,” her uncle said, “meet Martin Delany.”
Katie Jo nodded. “Mr. Delany.”
He looked her up and down again, then spit tobacco into the creek. “I’m looking for a gal, but I heard you was set to marry.”
Heat flushed up her. “No, sir. I don’t reckon too many fellows would cotton to me.”
He ran his gaze over her again. “Maybe. Maybe more than you think.”
She felt as if he’d spit the tobacco on her instead of into the water. “Well, it makes no never mind. I didn’t figure on marrying.”
“Until recently,” her uncle put in. “Fellow down from Wallin Landing way has been sniffing around. He was in the house just now. I scared him off.”
That’s what he thought. He’d never seen Harry courting. Like a dog to a bone that one.
“Harry Yeager doesn’t scare so easily,” Katie Jo told him.
Her uncle chuckled. “Oh, you might be surprised. I should check on your brother. Fool’s like as not to burn himself in the fire if you don’t watch him every minute. You just have a nice conversation with Marty.” He nodded to his friend and headed for the house.
“You like salmon?” Marty asked.
She frowned at him. “Sure. Most folks like salmon.”
He nodded. “I’ll bring you some. You sew?”
“Well enough to put a button back on and mend a tear,” she allowed. “Not the fancy stuff like Mrs. Wallin down at the Landing.”
He nodded again. “What about cooking?”
Was he interviewing her for a job? Ciara hadn’t asked half so many questions! “I can skin a rabbit and turn it into a nice stew. I can dress a deer and dry venison.”
He edged closer to his side of the creek, sucking a tooth. “And baking? Can you do that?”
She was learning from Ciara. “Some. I can make anise cookies and spotted pup.”
“What’s spotted pup?” he asked with a frown.
“Rice pudding with raisins and cinnamon.”
His smile turned up. “That sounds good.” He glanced at the house. “Not too picky on where you sleep either, I bet.”
“Picky enough,” Katie Jo said, heat rising with her temper. “Now, I should get back to my chores. I’m sure you and my uncle have plenty to talk about. I’ll leave you to it.”
She backed toward the house and didn’t take her eyes off him until she’d slipped through the rear doorway, where she found her uncle watching.
“He has possibilities,” he said.
At least he’d tried to play chaperone. Zeke might have served, but he’d crawled back into bed and pulled the covers up over his ears, his way of screening out the world.
“What kind of possibilities?” Katie Jo asked, going to wash her hands in the basin, anything to remove the feeling that she’d plunged them in chicken droppings. “You already insisted on a raise for me. I don’t want to work for him too.”
He barked a laugh. “Marty isn’t here about a job, girl. He’s thinking about courting.”
She shook the water from her hands. “Not with me, he isn’t.”
Her uncle shrugged. “I know you have your heart set on that Yeager fellow. All I’m doing is seeing if there’s other interest out there.” He moved closer and met her gaze. “It never hurts to have choices. You’ll see.”
***
“That,” Ciara said as Harry turned with her onto the path south along the lake, “was uncalled for.”
Harry couldn’t argue. The way Katie Jo’s uncle talked to her and Zeke made him boil faster than a pot over a hot fire. So what if the boy was hard of hearing? That didn’t mean anything else was difficult for him. And Cole McAllister ought to be encouraging Katie Jo, not implying she was helpless without him.
“You had no right to agree to a raise,” Ciara continued, brushing aside a branch that snapped back and struck him mid-chest. “It’s my restaurant, and anything Katie Jo has to say, she can say to me.”
“I know,” Harry said, edging around her to help her up over a tree that had fallen onto the path. “And she was trying to say it. Her uncle just didn’t want to listen.”
“Well,” Ciara huffed, “you got that right.”
“With all the folks coming to eat you can’t afford a dollar a day?” he asked as the waters of the lake winked at them through the firs.
“Not yet,” Ciara said. “Between the cost of the food and the supplies needed to fix the upstairs, we’re barely keeping solvent. As it is, I may have to hire a carpenter if Drew keeps needing Kit so long each day.”
“I’ll help with the upstairs,” Harry offered.
She slanted him a glance. “I thought you were busy working on your cabin.”
“I am,” he said. “But the cabin doesn’t matter if the lady who’ll be occupying it is living at the other end of Lake Union.”
She shook her head. “So you are courting Katie Jo.”
“I’m getting a little tired of folks doubting that,” Harry said, shoving back a fern that waved too close. “Yes, I’m courting her. She’s not making it easy.”
“Good,” Ciara said primly. Then she grinned at him. “Easily won is little valued. You remember that, Harry.” Her smile faded. “Now I just have to find the money.”
“Do what you can,” Harry said. “I’ll pay the difference.”
“Oh, Harry, no!” Ciara cried. “That’s too much.”
“Not from where I stand,” he said. “A dollar a day is an investment in my future. And she’s worth it.”
Her smile softened. “You really are a romantic.”
Harry jerked to a stop and stared at her as she picked her way past on the muddy trail, skirts held high with one hand. “A romantic!”
“Yes,” Ciara said over her shoulder. “A man who appreciates the romance in life, even if he refuses to admit it!”
If that wasn’t enough to set a fellow back, he didn’t know what was. Him, a romantic. He’d always thought himself a realist, knowing the dark that backed the light. He appreciated the joys of life and dealt with the unpleasant matters as they came. He wasn’t looking for a wife for the romance so much as a partner, a family. Any romantic notions, or actions, were only to get the gal’s attention.
He was still mulling over the matter when they came into the Landing to find a crowd gathered in front of the inn.
“Oh, now what?” Ciara asked.
They hurried forward. At least a dozen men were clustered around, jostling each other as if trying to get a look at something in the middle. He recognized the blacksmith at the edge.
Jesse’s head stuck up above the others. He had his arms high, ready to help a woman down from what was likely the buckboard. She had hair thick, dark, and curling down behind her, and fine features, like a countess he’d seen once in a painting at one of the fancy Seattle hotels. He couldn’t see much of her figure or her dress except from her shoulders to her waist, but everything appeared dainty and fragile.
“I’ll carry your bag for you, ma’am,” one of the prospectors offered.
“I’ll carry your trunk,” one of the other loggers in the area insisted.
“Let me open the door for you,” a young farmer begged, going so far as to jump onto the porch of the inn.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” she said in a soft voice that reminded Harry of the notes of a flute. She paused before allowing Jesse to hand her down. “Everyone has been so kind. But I believe there are accommodations at the school for me. At least, that was what I was promised.”
It seemed the new schoolmarm had arrived in Wallin Landing at last.
***
In the end, Uncle Cole allowed Katie Jo to bring Zeke with her when she went in to the Landing on Friday. It took some talking. But her arguments that she needed to fetch the mail and Zeke would be out of his hair for two days seemed to have done the trick. Still, she felt him watching them all the way through the cedars.
“He ain’t never going to let us go,” Zeke said as they trudged toward the lake. His steps didn’t falter, and she liked to think he had a little more color than when she’d first come home from the wedding.
“He will,” Katie Jo said, hitching up her pack on her shoulder. “And you remember what Mrs. Wallin taught us at the school years ago. Ain’t ain’t a word. You have to talk better than that at the Landing if you want folks to respect you.”
He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t recall them respecting us much before.”
She raised her chin. “We were children then. Now, we’re grown.”
He stuck his thumbs in his suspenders. “I like that. I’m a man grown. Just you remember that too.”
“Let’s not get carried away,” she said with a wink.
Zeke laughed.
Her heart flipped in her chest. This was what her brother needed—encouragement, a chance to get away from the house and the claim. An opportunity to try new things.
Still, she couldn’t help worrying a little as they turned south along the lake and onto the longer leg of the trip. Was this going to be too much for him? He didn’t seem to be limping. Indeed, his gaze darted here, there, everywhere, as if he wanted to hug everything close. She knew the feeling. It seemed the whole world opened up once they left the claim.
“We could stay at the inn, if it isn’t finished yet,” she told her brother as they clambered over a fallen log. “But if they finished sooner than expected, we might have to make other arrangements.”
“I don’t mind,” he said, slipping down the other side. “So long as it don’t… doesn’t rain.”
She glanced up at the clouds, speared on the tips of the firs. “Sky’s mighty low. But I don’t think they’ll put us outside. I hear there’s a room off the school, for the teacher. Mrs. Wallin doesn’t need it, so we might be able to stay there.”
He cast her another glance. “You’re not taking me back to school.”
The other children hadn’t been particularly kind to her brother. Rina Wallin had been good about standing where he could read her lips and helping him quietly, so as not to single him out. But some of the younger boys had called him names and made faces at him when they were in the yard in front of the school.
“You’re too old for school now,” Katie Jo said. “Still, it never hurts to keep learning. I wouldn’t have this job if I hadn’t been willing to learn how to help Ciara, Mrs. Weatherly.”
“I’d like to learn a trade,” he mused, ducking under a low-hanging branch on his side of the path. “Blacksmith, maybe, or logger, like Harry.”
She looked at her brother’s spindly arms and didn’t have the heart to tell him he’d never be able to wield a hammer or an axe to do either job. “I always liked helping Mr. Wallin at the mercantile. You never know what sorts of goods or people might show up.”
Her brother nodded, as if giving the matter thought, and she let it go at that.
But her mind kept tumbling the matter over, like pebbles in the waves. What was to become of her brother? Even if she convinced Uncle Cole to let them move into Wallin Landing permanently, someone would have to look out for him. She couldn’t leave him alone for hours while she worked, and she doubted even Ciara would want him underfoot every day.
“Almost there!” he sang out as they passed the first cabin, the one Harry and Jesse were sharing now. The steeply roofed log structure had been Simon Wallin’s, then Beth’s, then Ciara’s. Maybe it would be empty when Jesse finished his cabin, and she and her brother could stay there.
“Come on,” Zeke urged, moving faster. “I want to see the inn.”
So did she, but for another reason entirely. It was getting late in the afternoon, and sometimes Drew Wallin let his crew off early on Friday. Maybe Harry would be waiting.
The trees parted, and there was the village center. Already, men were lined up on the porch of the inn, waiting for Ciara to turn the sign to Open and signal that dinner was ready. In the far field, Lancelot and Percival were cropping the grass, with the milk cow, which had been a present from the Wallin family to Ciara and Kit for their wedding, shuffling about nearby. Their chicken run near the barn was neat and tidy, the hens pecking contently. And children were playing on the big swings hanging from the cedars near the school, their voices sharp in the fall air.
“Don’t remember those,” Zeke mused beside her. He was walking a little closer now, as if hugging her warmth.
“Kit Weatherly built them,” she offered, trying to keep her gaze from darting around like her brother’s. It wouldn’t do her any good to have Harry know how much she’d missed him. “You could try one. They’re big enough to hold your weight.”
He snorted. “Men don’t sit on swings.” Still, his gaze lingered.
Hers had stopped on the door to the school. A lady she didn’t recognize had come out to wish the last children farewell for the day. Her hair was as shiny as a jet bead, and everything from her fine-boned face to her figure was dainty.
“Is that the new schoolmarm?” Zeke whispered, as if afraid she might fly off the stoop and capture him if he spoke louder.
“Must be,” Katie Jo said, aware of the same lowering of her spirits she’d felt when she’d first seen herself in a dress without the corset.
Miss Dennison stepped to one side and spoke to someone still in the school. A moment later, and Harry climbed down onto the ground. She put a hand on his shoulder and smiled sweetly at him. The look twisted like a branch stuck in Katie Jo’s chest.
“I should have known,” she murmured.
