WESTERN CHRISTMAS PROPOSALS Read online

  She hung on to the seat and pushed hard against the footboard as Ned guided his team into the river. She looked around, pleased with the bright yellow leaves that seemed to shiver as they passed. She thought of winter to come, and suppressed an involuntary shiver of her own.

  “You need a warmer coat. Didn’t anyone ever look after you?”

  “No.” She winced inside at how bleak and bald the word sounded, and she wondered just when she had gotten used to mostly nothing.

  They topped a small rise, then Ned coaxed his horse down into a lovely valley. October winds may have been blowing cold, but she liked what she saw, except for what had to be Ned Avery’s home. She pointed.

  “Yep. It’s a real sow’s ear. I guess we just got used to it,” he said, and she heard all the apology in his voice.

  A body gets used to a lot of things, she thought, and wondered just when she had given up. Another thought struck her. For the first time since she couldn’t remember, someone was looking after her. It was a pleasant thought. She doubted Mr. Avery saw it that way, since he had made a business deal with her, but she felt herself relax, somewhere inside her body, or maybe it was her mind. She waited for the feeling to leave, but it seemed to settle in, like a cat on a hearth.

  In a short time, she stood in the middle of a little kitchen, being introduced to a woman who looked as capable as Ned. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Higgins,” she said as they shook hands after Ned’s introduction.

  A few whispered words to Ned, and Mrs. Higgins waved a cheery goodbye. In a few minutes, Kate heard hoofbeats.

  “She watched Pa for me. This is Peter,” Ned said, and pulled a younger man closer, one with the same blond hair and build, but vacant blue eyes, with the same dark rim around lighter blue, but none of the intensity. “He does the best he can, most days.”

  “Hi, Pete,” Katie said, and got a vague smile in return.

  The rancher indicated the next room. “This is the sitting room.” He held his hands out, as if measuring the space. “I can build you a room right here. There won’t be a window—that would make it too cold.”

  She followed him through the next connecting room. This room had a bed, and crates stacked on top of each other for clothing. “Pete and I sleep here. Wait. I’ll see how Pa is.”

  She stood there, Peter beside her. He cleared his throat.

  “Ned was looking for a chore girl.”

  “He found one.”

  “You can cook?”

  “Pretty much anything you want to eat, Peter,” she told him. “You do like to eat, don’t you?”

  Pete nodded, and then looked away, as if that was too much conversation.

  She looked through the connecting arch to the next room, where Ned stood looking down. She went closer and saw Daniel Avery.

  He was so thin, and probably not as old as he looked. She had already observed that the men out here had lots of wrinkles on their faces, sort of like sea captains from back home.

  “Pa, this is our chore girl, Katie Peck,” Ned was saying. “She’ll be looking after you, after all of us, I guess.”

  The older man looked at her, then carefully turned himself toward the wall. Kate sighed, wondering what it must feel like to be strong one day, then brought low by a heart ailment another day.

  “Never mind, Mr. Avery,” she said. She touched his arm, then pulled the blanket a little higher. “I am here to help and that is all.”

  “Don’t need...” the old man began, then stopped. His shoulders started to shake. “...help.”

  Kate quietly left the room. Ned followed her, his expression more troubled than she wanted to see.

  “I was afraid he might do that,” he said in apology. “He knows we need you, but his dignity...”

  “Doesn’t matter,” she assured him. “You hired a chore girl and I will do my job.”

  She said it quietly, as she said most things, as she had lived her own hard life that bore no signs of getting easier. She looked down at her hands, surprised to see that she still carried the doorknob and hinges. She knew other people must have epiphanies now and then—the minister said so—but she never expected one of her own. Here it came, filling her with peace. She handed the hardware to Ned Avery.

  “I can do this,” she told him. “Just watch me.”

  Chapter Five

  Kate began her work in the morning, after a surprisingly comfortable night in the bed usually belonging to Pete and Ned Avery. Ned had insisted on changing the sheets the night before and she was glad of it, considering how dingy they seemed.

  His eyes wide with surprise, Pete watched his brother make the bed. “He never tucked in anything before,” he told Katie.

  Ned had turned around with a smile. “I can’t even trust a brother to watch my back,” he said. “Pete, you’re toast.”

  Pete laughed out loud. Something in Ned’s eyes told Kate that no one had laughed in the Avery household in recent memory.

  “No respect whatsoever,” Ned said with a shake of his head. He gathered up the nearly gray sheets, put his hand on Pete’s neck and pulled him from the room, but gently.

  There wasn’t any privacy, not with the rooms connecting the way they did. As Ned tended to his father’s needs, she winced to hear Mr. Avery insisting that no chore girl would ever touch him.

  “I don’t know how long it will take, but he’ll come around,” Ned had told her as he put on his coat. Katie heard the doubt in his voice. “Come on, Pete.”

  I have many things to prove to Mr. Avery, Kate thought. She began in the kitchen, laying a fire in the range, a black monstrosity that, like everything in the house, needed a woman’s touch. She knew there would be Arbuckle’s and a grinder; soon the aroma of coffee spread through the house. She made a pot of oatmeal. By the time the brothers opened the door, ushering in frigid air with them, toast was out of the oven and buttered, and the oatmeal in bowls.

  She stood by the table, her hands behind her back, pleased with herself, even though the meal was many degrees below ordinary.

  “Don’t stand on ceremony,” Ned said as he sat down. He dumped the milk from a bucket into a deep pan and covered it, after taking out a cup of milk. “Join us.”

  “I can wait until you are done,” she said.

  “Maybe you could if you were the czar of Russia’s chore girl. I mean it. Get a bowl and join us.”

  She did as he said. He pushed out the empty chair with his foot.

  “Barn’s getting cold and Pete isn’t much fun to cuddle,” he said, as he took a sip of the coffee, nodded and raised the cup to her in salute. “Damn fine, Katie Peck. I’m going to build you a room today.”

  And he did, after instructing her to move what little furniture the sitting room possessed to the other side of the doorway arch that cut the room into roughly two-thirds and a third. She did as he directed, coughing from the dust she raised.

  “The only problem I have noticed with housework is that five or six months later, you have to do it all over again,” he commented, gesturing for Pete to pick up the other end of a settee.

  Once the furniture was moved and the floor swept, Ned worked quickly, measuring and marking boards he had dragged from the barn with Pete’s help. When he gave her no assignment, Katie decided to tackle the stove, which hadn’t seen a good cleaning in years.

  She found a metal pancake turner in the depths of a drawer of junk and scraped away on the range top until her shoulders hurt. All the time, Ned and Pete walked back and forth, bringing in more boards. After the fifth or so trip, Ned stopped to watch.

  “Funny how this stuff built up and I continued to ignore it,” he told her, sounding more matter-of-fact than penitent, which scarcely surprised her. She was coming to know Ned Avery.

  “A little attention every day—not much, really—keeps t
he carbon away,” she said, and surprised herself by thinking, Kind of like people.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “We’ll surprise you. No peeking, now.”

  She stopped long enough at noon to fix everyone jelly sandwiches and canned peaches, then continued into the afternoon until the stove was clean. The hammering continued, punctuated with laughter, which soothed her heart in strange ways.

  With his own shy smile, Pete borrowed the kitchen broom.

  “How does my new room in there look?” she asked, pretty certain that Pete would spill the beans, because his mind was too simple to keep a secret all the way from breakfast to supper.

  Pete surprised her. “Not gonna tell. You have to wait.”

  Impressed, Kate built a fire in the stove, determined to cook something better than sandwiches. Ned had already pointed out the smokehouse next door. She sliced off several steaks as her mouth watered. Even in her more enlightened place of employment in Massachusetts, meat was a rare treat administered only on holidays. Soon steaks and sliced potatoes sizzled. She opened another can of peaches and poured them into a bowl this time. She had found some pretty dishes that only needed a rinse.

  She was about to call the brothers to the table when they came into the kitchen. Ned held out a key to her, just an ordinary skeleton key for a simple lock that anyone could pick, but which meant more to her than Ned Avery would ever know.

  “Take a look.” He gestured her into the sitting room, or what remained of it.

  She stared in surprise. “I... I thought you were going to carve a tiny space out of this side of the doorway,” she said, delighted. “Where will you sit in the evenings?”

  “I already told you we use the kitchen for everything,” he reminded her, his eyes on her face.

  Ned had turned the larger side of the sitting room into her bedroom, leaving only a small area on the other side of the open archway for a chair, settee and a table, the kind for books or magazines. She stared at the new wall and door, then opened the door and sighed with the pleasure of it all.

  The bed was just a cot, perhaps an army cot scavenged from somewhere. Because her boss had given her the lion’s share of the former sitting room, it included the potbellied stove. He and Pete had dragged in one of the stuffed chairs and a footstool.

  “I have another washbasin somewhere, and I can put up some pegs for your clothes. Sorry I don’t have a bureau.”

  What could she say to such kindness? She barely knew this man, and he had given her something priceless—a room of her own, a safe one.

  “Thank ye,” she managed, hoping tears wouldn’t well in her eyes. No employer wanted to hire a crybaby.

  “Try it out,” her boss said.

  She walked inside her room, her own room. She sat down in the chair and put her feet upon the footstool. I can sit here and reread my Ladies’ Home Journal, she thought. This might be the best winter of my life.

  Chapter Six

  Kate spent a peaceful night in her room, sitting for a while in the chair and reading, as she suspected wealthy people did. Her new bed was narrow and the mattress thin, but she had no complaint.

  She debated whether to lock the door. Key in hand, she had the power, but the urgency was gone. She closed the door, and that was enough.

  In the morning, she woke to angry voices in the back bedroom. Kate opened her door slightly and listened as Ned and his father argued about leaving him alone to the mercies of “a dratted female I can barely understand” while his sons rode fence today.

  “Try a little harder, Dad,” Ned said.

  “What for?” his father shot back. “You know I’m dying, I know I’m dying, and that...female with the damn fool accent knows I’m dying!”

  “I guess because it’s the civilized thing to do,” Ned replied, and he sounded so weary.

  “You don’t need me,” Daniel Avery argued. “You can run this ranch.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that we love you?” Ned asked, sounding more exasperated than weary now, and driven to a final admission, maybe one hard for a man not used to frills, if love was a frill.

  Katie dressed quickly, pleased to see that Ned or Pete—likely Ned—had laid a fire in the cookstove. While the argument about her merits and demerits continued in the back room at a lower decibel, she deftly shredded potatoes and put them in a cast-iron skillet to fry.

  She silently ordered the argument down the hall to roll off her back. She was the chore girl and she was getting through a winter doing something she hadn’t planned on, because Saul Coffin, drat his hide, had a temper. Sticks and stones, she thought. That’s all it is.

  Breakfast on the table brought a smile to Ned Avery’s set expression. He asked for the ketchup, then ate silently before finally setting down his fork.

  “I’m sorry you had to hear that,” he told her.

  “I’ll set his food on that little table by his bed and just leave him alone with it,” she said, getting out another plate.

  “I can take it to him. Maybe I had better,” Ned said, starting to rise.

  “Eat your breakfast,” she said, as she started down the hall with Daniel Avery’s steak and hash browns on a tray.

  Mr. Avery was staring at the ceiling, which she noticed for the first time was covered with newspapers. Just standing there, she stared up, too.

  “‘Archduke Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian crown, is found dead with his mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera in Mayerling.’ Oh, my,” she said, then sat the tray of food on the table where he could reach it and left the room. She thought she heard him laugh.

  She sat down in the kitchen to oatmeal, which she preferred to steak in the morning, and was just spooning on the sugar when she heard, “Ned!” from the back of the house.

  “You should have let Ned take Dad his breakfast,” Pete told her.

  “That’s enough, Pete,” Ned snapped, as he got up from the table. “Maybe I appreciate a little initiative.”

  From the vacant look on the younger brother’s face, Kate could see he did not know the word, and felt surprisingly sorry for him.

  Ned came back and took the ketchup off the table. “He wants this.”

  “Stubborn man,” Kate said.

  “I’m just pleased not to see the whole thing on the floor,” her boss said, and he sounded more cheerful. “He wants some of your coffee, too.”

  “I’ll take him both,” Kate said. “Sit down and finish your breakfast.”

  He did as she said. “Are you as stubborn as he is?”

  “Ayuh,” she said, which made him laugh.

  She took ketchup and coffee down the hall, pausing inside the last bedroom to read something else from the ceiling that looked a little newer than Crown Prince Rudolf’s misfortune. “Mr. Avery, it appears that Christine Hardt has patented the first brassiere. If you need anything else, just ask. I intend to earn my thirty dollars a month.”

  She returned to the kitchen and finished her breakfast as Ned poured himself another cup of coffee, gave her an inquiring look, and poured her one, as well.

  As she ate, he filled her in on the day’s task, which included the mysterious “riding fence” he had mentioned earlier. She had spent a lifetime cultivating an expressionless face, the kind that mostly encouraged people like her stepfather to forget she was even in the room. Ned Avery seemed to see right through it.

  “I can tell you have no idea what I’m talking about,” he said, elbows on the table.

  “I am curious,” she admitted. “I don’t think anyone rides fence in Maine.”

  “Probably not. I’ve seen Maine on a map and it looks pretty squished together. We’ll just be riding down the fence line to make sure the bob wire is tight and all the strands are in place.”

  “If not?”

 
“We’ll fix them. I’ll have a roll of wire and staples with me, and the straightener. Up you get, Pete.”

  Pete shook his head. “Don’t like to ride.”

  “I need your help.”

  Ned gave his brother a push out the door. Ned looked back. “Can you fix us some sandwiches from the leftover steak, and stick some apples in that bag?”

  Kate wiped her hands on her apron, ready to begin.

  “I’d do it myself,” Ned said, sounding apologetic, “but I’ve noticed something about sandwiches.”

  “Which is...”

  “They always taste a little better when someone else makes them. Back in a minute,” he said.

  Pleased with her boss, Kate made sandwiches, adding pickles from an earthenware crock to the thick slabs of beef between bread. She found waxed paper in a drawer and made two sandwiches apiece. Four apples went in the bag on the bottom. She put the rest of the coffee in a canteen she noticed by the canvas bag and handed the whole thing to Ned when he returned to the kitchen, bringing in more cold weather with him.

  “Pete’s pouting in the barn,” he announced.

  “He really doesn’t like to ride?” she asked.

  “Afraid of horses.” Ned leaned against the table. He shrugged. “I still need his help.”

  “Maybe I could help,” she offered.

  “Can you ride?”

  “I can learn,” she replied.

  “I believe you would try,” he told her. “Just keep an eye on my father. I set his, well, his, well you know, close to his bed.”

  She nodded. “I’ll remove his breakfast dishes later. Maybe I’ll read to him.”

  “I doubt he’ll let you.”

  “I can try.”

  He gave her an appraising look, one part speculation, two parts evaluation, and another part she didn’t recognize. He slung the bag over his shoulder and startled whistling before he shut the door.

  Poor Pete, she thought, wondering what the slow brother would really rather do, given the opportunity.

  She thought about the Averys as she set a sponge for bread. She glanced down the length of the cabin through the arches, wondering if she dared risk the wrath. Why not? she asked herself.