A Bride for Donnigan (2 page)

The day did not go well. Kathleen had been a few minutes late in spite of her extra effort to get there on time. The old man who ran the bakery had been terribly upset with her. He scolded and swore and threatened to cut her pay. She knew and he knew that if he did, she’d never hear the end of it from Madam.

Madam! Kathleen inwardly hated the title, though she had never allowed herself the pleasure of hating the person. She was, after all, the only mum she had. She was, after all, the woman whom her father had married two years after the death of her own mother. Kathleen, who had been a child of three when her mother died, had few memories of her own mother, but what she had she cherished.

Madam was the woman who had taken over the home and the man who was Kathleen’s father. The woman who had presented him with a daughter and two sons. Three children that Kathleen herself had tended more than their mother had. Three children who were more than a little spoiled and difficult. But regardless of their faults, three children that Kathleen had quickly learned to love.

The years had not been kind to Kathleen. At seven she had lost the grandmother who had tried in her own limited way to shield and protect her. Also at a very early age she was expected to take on a mammoth portion of the household duties in spite of her thin frame and the limp that had been there since she learned to walk.

“She needs to learn the care of a house,” defended the woman who insisted that Kathleen address her as Madam because of her French heritage.

Kathleen’s father had nodded slowly. He did not interfere with “matters of the household,” but Kathleen thought she read concern in his eyes many times.

So Kathleen had learned to do all the housekeeping chores by the time she was ten. She had also been nursemaid to the little ones, which included getting up in the night, changing their nappies, and taking them to Madam for the nighttime feedings. The limp that had begun as slight became more and more pronounced as she carted heavy babies and full laundry baskets on her tiny hip.

“She’ll never marry,” Madam complained to Kathleen’s father, fretting about the limp.

“Nonsense.” Kathleen was surprised to hear him dare to argue. “Look at her pretty face.”

“But a pretty face won’t be enough. It might turn heads—but they’ll quickly turn away when they see her take a step.”

“I won’t hear such drivel,” Kathleen was surprised to hear her father state, his voice firm with command. Apparently he
did
still feel he was master in his own home. “Kathleen is intelligent and pretty. One is not—not brushed aside and discredited for—for one small flaw. Such—such drivel. Sure now—I will hear nothing of it again.”

As far as Kathleen knew, Madam never spoke to her father about the limp again, but she did speak to the girl. Over and over, when the two were alone and Kathleen hurried as best she could about the house scrubbing laundry, preparing supper, or tending babies, the woman clicked and pratted over the girl’s “unfortunate condition.” Kathleen burned with the humiliation and unfairness of it.

And then had come the most difficult event of her young life. Her father became sick and, in just two months’ time, had been taken from them. Madam ranted and raved. The man had left her, alone, with five mouths to feed. Kathleen was no longer asked to stay at home and care for the household—though most of those same tasks were still awaiting her when she returned home at nights, tired from a long day in the streets. It was not easy to find the job that Madam sent her off to secure. She was thirteen and frail and basically unskilled except in household chores. She could read and do sums—her father had seen to that.

As Madam had warned again and again, her limp figured into her success in finding employment. Most shopkeepers did not want her as an apprentice. They feared the customers would be unnerved as she moved about to serve them. Nor was she to be accepted as a governess. Only the old man at the bakery had seen her limp as a possible asset. People, bless their souls, often responded to a handicap. With her small, sensitive, and pretty face, combined with the pathetic limp that wasn’t even a carefully practiced put-on, Kathleen might prove to be a good source of income selling his penny rolls and tuppence meat pies.

He had been right. Kathleen sold more wares than any of his other hawkers—though he had never revealed that fact to her. Daily he lived in fear that Kathleen might find a job elsewhere or meet some young man who would wish to make her his wife. So when she arrived a few minutes late after stopping to read the posting, the man was beside himself with worry. What if he lost her? A good share of his daily profits would be lost as well.

When she did appear, he scolded and raged and piled her basket with a larger than usual load of his baked goods.

“And mind ya get right on with it,” he fumed. “Ye’ve already lost half the mornin’ crowd.”

Kathleen struggled under the weight of the load. Silently she went back out into the cold to peddle the breads and pastries.

As she called out to passersby and collected the pennies for the sale, her mind went back again and again to the words in the notice. “Well-secured. Prosperous. Wedded partners.” Would a man from the American frontier be willing to accept a wife with a limp? No, it was unthinkable. But the words still stayed in her mind to haunt her throughout the entire day. She wished—she
almost
wished—that she were one of the other girls. Like Peg, tall and straight with broad shoulders and a strong back. Or the shorter one named Erma. She had such kind eyes. Such a soft voice. The girl was plump and solid, not scrawny and slight. She would have no trouble pleasing a frontier husband, with her robustness and friendly demeanor.

Then Peg’s words returned to her thinking. “You have a pretty face. They’d be right glad to have you sign up.”

But Peg had not known of her limp.

Just as quickly, the words of Madam came to mind. “But a pretty face won’t be enough. They’ll turn away when they see her take the first step.”

It was true—even a frontier man would never accept the likes of her as a “wedded partner.”

At the end of the long, difficult day, Kathleen made her way home through the gray streets, the gray buildings now enshrouded with gray fog. The gray gutters were almost hidden by the deeper gray shadows. Her shoulders drooped with weariness. Her steps dragged, accenting her limp.

Undoubtedly the week’s washing was still to be rubbed out on the scrubboard. There was supper to prepare. She did hope that young Bridget had been sent to the shops for meat and vegetables. When the days were damp and chill with fog, the younger girl often refused to go.

Kathleen loved Bridget in spite of her willfulness. There was no way that she could have withheld her love. The girl looked like their father. Kathleen, he had told her over and over before his untimely death, was the picture of her mother. So Kathleen mothered Bridget, even as Madam spoiled her. Kathleen did so want the young girl to grow up to be a credit to their father. To that end, she pleaded and scolded and fussed at her young half sister, teaching her manners, letters, and sums. For the most part the girls got along well—unless Madam interfered and chided Kathleen for “demanding” too much of one “so young and delicate.”

Kathleen reached the small cottage and pushed open the heavy iron gate with her shoulder. The gate growled and whined on its rusty hinges.

“And if Father were here, he would use some oil,” Kathleen said to herself. “It won’t be long until it’ll refuse to budge.”

A deep sigh escaped her as she moved toward the crumbling concrete step. She dreaded to enter the room and deposit her few small coins on the kitchen table. The house, always dark with gloom since her father had died, represented so much work to be done. She wished that she could just—What? She didn’t really know. All she knew was that she wished she didn’t have to lift the latch and cross the threshold into the dank kitchen chamber, the gloom, and Madam. But enter she must.

She put her hand on the door latch and dragged her reluctant foot up to the last step.

With a flurry that was totally unexpected, the door jerked inward out of her grasp. There stood Bridget, hair tossed, cheeks flushed, hands clapping to her breast. “Kathleen!” she shrieked. “You’ll never guess what has just happened! Mama is marrying again!”

Chapter Two

Donnigan

“Whoa.”

The man shifted slightly to draw back on the reins he held firmly in a large, calloused hand. The big black he was riding immediately responded to the command, though he tossed his head and champed on the bit. The man smiled and reached out his other hand to stroke the wind-swept mane. The horse’s neck was warm and damp with sweat beneath his touch. They had both enjoyed the run.

He swung one long leg over the horse’s back and stepped down from the saddle. As he moved away, the horse followed, still working on the bit and tossing his head.

“Don’t be so impatient,” the man said, but the tone was gentle and his voice was low and deep, touched softly with the drawl of the south.

His eyes swept the fields before him. It was his first crop—and the grain he had planted already stood tall on sturdy stocks. He couldn’t hide the sparkle in his eyes, but the big stallion who rubbed his nose impatiently on his master’s shirt sleeve did not seem to notice.

“Look at it, Black,” he said to the horse, for he had to speak to someone. “Best crop I’ve ever seen.”

The black just snorted.

He stood for several more minutes surveying his fields, then turned back to the horse. “Don’t know why you’re always in such a hurry,” he scolded. “We’ve got all day.”

But the black blew and lifted his head. As he felt the reins being gathered once again, he tossed his head at this signal that they were about to resume their journey.

The horse was big, but the man was in direct proportion. He was tall, being six foot two, his shoulders broad, his arms tight with muscles built by hard work on the land. Thick blond hair above a ruddy complexion and a pleasant expression completed the picture.

He swung up into the saddle easily and lifted the reins. The black jerked around eagerly and sprang to a gallop back across the ridge the moment he felt the touch of heel to his side.

When they reached the fork in the trail, the man turned the horse eastward instead of toward the building site, and the stallion did not hesitate. He knew every trail of the farm almost as well as his master, and this direction took them to the pastures where cattle and horses fed lazily on plentiful prairie grass.

They had to stop to open a gate. The horse stomped and snorted his impatience, but the man was slow and deliberate in each movement. “Easy, Black. Easy,” he drawled softly as the large animal tugged on the reins.

They entered the pastures together, and the man turned back to lift into position the wooden post that supported the gate wires, slipping the loop of wire over the top to fasten it securely. Then he remounted and they were off again.

By now the sides of the black were shiny with sweat, but the man still had to hold the horse in check.

The man’s closest neighbor, Wallis Tremont, had once observed, “I think thet horse’d run ’til he dropped.” His voice had conveyed his admiration as he looked at the animal.

Donnigan smiled now at the thought and had to admit that Wallis likely was right. The black sure did love to run.

Man and horse crossed a small creek, wound their way up a hill, and topped the crest to look out over a sweeping valley. There beneath them grazed fifty-odd head of prime stock. The sparkle returned to Donnigan’s eyes, and a slow smile turned up the corners of his mouth and crinkled the tanned skin around his eyes.

“Spring calves sure do look good,” he told the horse.

The black pawed the ground.

“I know, I know,” he said with a chuckle. “You want to see the horses.”

But he did not give the horse permission to move on. Not just yet. He loved to look out at the herd as it grazed peacefully in the valley. He had long dreamed of just such a scene before him. His. Yet even now he could scarcely believe that the dream had actually come true.

Oh, not all of it. He still had a ways to go. Still had fences to build and buildings to raise. And there were the payments to make. His crops were still in the fields. His herds were not the size he hoped to make them. But the crops looked good. The herds would take care of their own growth. He had good stock. That was what counted. And time would take care of the line of annual payments that stretched out before him. He felt good. Blessed. Happy. He was right where he wanted to be—and still young enough to enjoy many years of being there.

Donnigan’s body shifted as the big black beneath him pawed the ground again and snorted his annoyance at being kept in check.

“All right. All right,” said the man, for the first time just a hint of impatience in his voice.

He lifted the reins and urged the horse forward. “So where do you think they’ll be feeding?”

The black did not wait for a second invitation. With a toss of his head he headed south, taking the rise in long, powerful strides, the foam on his broad chest flecking the man who sat in the saddle.