A Restless Wind (15 page)

     Damn Silas, Jesse thought.  He’d killed he kittens and then left them purposely there for Jesse to find.  Silas had had a driving need to take everything good away from them.  There was no need to have put them through all he’d done all those years.

     He thought of all the changes here in the past few days.  The rooms were full of sunshine now and the laughter of women and children.  He enjoyed the easy camaraderie of Pierce and John.  Everyone working together.  The utter absence of anger and
vindictiveness.  No contention.  No animosity.  No waiting for the other shoe to drop.

     It was what he’d always imagined a family ought to be like.  He felt comfortable here for the first time.  Almost like he belonged.  Except it wasn’t the reason he’d come here, he reminded himself.  There was a danger in getting too close, too comfortable.  His focus needed to be somewhere else.

     His head came up suddenly.  Hetty had come outside.  Wearing a dress of lavender calico, she balanced a basket of laundry on one hip.  The sun filtering down through the trees above her shone on hair that had the vibrancy of sun-lit honey.

     He watched her set the basket down.  She tilted her head back and stared up at the old oak tree.  The shadows from the leaves flickered over her face, her throat and the bodice of her dress.

     He knew it had gotten bad.  He was at the point where he waited for her early morning appearances.  Like him, it seemed she enjoyed quiet mornings alone.  Even at her uncle’s ranch, he’d seen her out alone at the first light of dawn.

     He watched her pick up a small shirt from the basket and hang it on the hemp line he’d put up for her yesterday.  Will came out of the house and after hanging onto the vine-covered gate for a few moments, he walked over to Hetty.  Though Jesse couldn’t hear what the boy was saying, he was talking a mile a minute.  Like he always did.

     Hetty was patient with the boy, smiling and answering his questions while she fastened the laundry on the line.  She even stopped her work to kneel down and look at something Will was holding out in his hand.  Hetty laughed as she got to her feet and ran her hand over the curls on Will’s head while he looked up at her and smiled.

     Something about the scene caused emotion to stir deep inside him.  He suddenly scowled, rubbing the palm of his hand against his cleanly-shaven chin.  He was dead serious about not getting any more deeply involved with Hetty.  He absolutely wasn’t going to do it.  They might have shared a kiss.  And maybe he found himself wanting to kiss her again at times.  But that didn’t mean he had to give in to unreasonable urges.

     His frown deepened.  It didn’t mean he had to take the time to shave early every morning either.  But he’d found himself doing it all the same.

     His gaze strayed to Will now playing on the back porch.  The child might easily have been hers.  For a moment he wondered what it would be like to have a family.  The kind of family that  . . .

      He stopped himself cold before that thought went any further.  There was a soft mewling sound behind him.  It was one of the kittens.  There had been three of them.  The mother cat had hidden them in the straw in the end stall.  They were not very old, just big enough to begin to explore on wobbly legs.

     “Anxious to see the world, eh?”  Jesse said softly.

     This particular kitten, a ball of smoky gray fur with blue eyes, was always wandering and trying to follow him around.  Jesse scratched his jaw as he contemplated the mewing kitten between his boots.  With a sigh he leaned over and picked up the tiny kitten.

     “You’re as inquisitive as hell, you know that?  But I’m not your mother.”  And then with mock sternness, he said,  “Didn’t you ever hear about cats and curiosity?”

     He gave a reluctant, one-sided grin to the bundle of fur in his arms.  “There won’t be anybody drowning you,”  he said to the kitten purring contentedly in his arms.

     Hetty picked up the last shirt from the basket and shook it out before hanging it on the line.  Earlier, Will had gotten hold of some of the clothes pegs and planted them in the dirt, believing that they would grow into carrots.  It was a good thing that Pierce couldn’t get his hands on any carrots, she thought. 

     Hetty suggested that the clothes pegs would make better soldiers than carrots, so at the moment Will was contentedly lining them up on the porch, making battle noises and pretending that they were Union soldiers.   

     After she finished with the laundry, Hetty went into the kitchen and peeled potatoes while Rachel kneaded and then divided dough into three large loaves of bread.  She put the dough into greased baking pans, covered them with a clean cloth and set them on a warm shelf behind the stove to rise while Hetty went upstairs to straighten the bedrooms.

     She pushed the door open to Jesse’s room at the end of the hall.  It was the first time she had entered Jesse’s room.  The morning sun filtered through the dark curtains at the window, sending narrow bars of light across the bed.

     She made up the bed, wondering if she should actually be here.  But there was no sense in cleaning all the other rooms and leaving just this one.  After she swept the room and dusted it, she picked up a shirt hanging on one of the bedposts.  She held the shirt close for a moment, breathing in the familiar male scent of Jesse.  Wondering what had prompted the impulsive action, she turned abruptly and hung the shirt in the armoire.  Then she crossed the room and stood at the window, peering through a parting in the curtains to look down into the yard.

     Jesse was down below.  Will was with him, following him around like an adoring puppy and asking a million questions.  At least Will wasn’t asking
her
any more questions, she thought.  The questions Will had asked her earlier had flustered her and she was glad Will had asked those questions while they were alone and no one could see her reaction or her blushes.

     Jesse had worked incessantly since they had arrived.  Yesterday he had gathered his stepfather’s things, piled them in a corner of the yard and then he had set the whole pile on fire.  His mother’s things had been put into trunks that were hauled up to the attic.

     Emma was talking to Jesse now.  He nodded and the children followed him across the yard.  He got down on his knees while the children kneeled down on either side of him.  Hetty leaned forward to get a better view of the yard directly below the window.

     She watched Jesse carefully part the branches of a bush growing beside the porch.  She could see a  black and white speckled hen that had been concealed by the leaves.  Tiny chicks peeked out from beneath their mother’s wings.

     Hetty had found two of her chickens setting on a clutch of eggs.  She had given the hens and the eggs to the children to hatch and raise.  Eventually they would provide a good supply of both eggs and chickens.  The Forbes had lost all their chickens when their barn had burned down.

     Jesse was good with the children.  He seemed to genuinely enjoy their company.  She shook her head, wondering as he talked with Emma and Will, how a man who was called a savage could be so patient with children.

     Will had his hands closed into small fists that were resting on his hips.  “Emmy gets her way more than I do,”  Will said.  “She is older than me.  But it isn’t fair, you know.  I ought to have my way sometimes, too, I think.”

     Will didn’t think it was fair that Emma had sole charge of taking care of the chickens.

     “You’ll catc
h up in responsibility, Will,”  Jesse assured the boy.

     “Mama says I’ll probably be bigger than Emma ‘cause boys usually grow taller than girls.”  Will drew himself up as tall as he could and still his head reached
just a little over Jesse’s waist.  Jesse sat down and Will immediately sat down beside him on the back step.

     “Are you going to have children someday, Jesse?”

     Jesse’s hands stilled on the bridle he was working on.  The kid, always asking questions, had been asking some pretty personal questions this morning.

     “You need to have a wife to have kids,”  he informed Jesse very seriously.

    Jesse glanced at Will briefly before returning his attention to the bridle.

     “Why don’t you marry Hetty?”  Will asked.  “You like her well enough, don’t you?  And she’s pretty, too.  Do you think she’s pretty, Jesse?”

     “Yes, Will, she’s pretty.”

     “I asked her if she thought you were handsome,”  Will said, intently watching what Jesse’s hands were doing with the bridle.  “And she said ‘yes, very’.”  Will leaned closer to peer at the bridle now lying still in Jesse’s hands.  “And then I asked her if
she
would like to marry
you
.”

     Several seconds passed before Jesse remembered to close his mouth.  He blinked.  “You what?”

     “I asked if she would like to marry you,”  Will repeated, distracted for a moment by a brightly-colored butterfly hovering close by.

     “And what did she have to say then?”  Jesse asked in a low voice.

     “She told me to stop jumping on the bed and go downstairs,”  Will said, hopping down from the step as he chased the butterfly into the yard.

     It was late afternoon when Jesse finally finished cleaning up the yard.  He walked past the dry laundry on the line and past the clothes pegs lined up in rows where Will had been playing.  He opened the back door to the smell of food cooking.  Damned good-smelling food to a hungry man.

     He stood in the doorway and took off his hat, scanning the kitchen slowly.  Since the women had arrived, they had made some remarkable changes.  The clutter was gone.  Everything was clean and orderly.  The absence of Silas and all his possessions had made a hell of a difference.

     He smiled a greeting at Rachel who was setting two loaves of bread on the table.  “Smells good,”  he said.  “I’m starved.”

     Rachel smiled back at him over her shoulder.  “Good.  We’re about ready to eat.”

     Jesse still stood in the doorway, holding one arm behind him.  It was plain that he was hiding something he did not want the children to see.  He called them and as they came into the kitchen, he said to Emma.  “Your mother told me it was your birthday.  I’ll give you three guesses.  What have I got in my hand?”

      “A fishing pole,”  Will called out.  “I think a fishing pole would be a fine birthday present.”

     Jesse hid a smile and shook his head.  “No, it’s not quite so large as that.  Guess again.”

     “Not so large?”  Will asked.  “Then is it a small thing?”

     “Pretty small,”  Jesse said.

     
Mew
.

     There was no sense trying to hide the noisy thing now.  Emma gave a little gasp as Jesse held a kitten out to her.

     “Oh, what a precious little thing,”  Emma said as she hugged the kitten in her arms.  Jesse drew another present from his pocket.

     “They’re for your hair,”  Jesse said as Emma smiled over the brightly-colored lengths of ribbon.  She gave Jesse an impulsive hug and went back to nestling the kitten.

     “You like the kitten?”  Jesse asked, watching her kiss the kitten’s nose.

     “Yes.  Thank you.  I like both presents very much.”

     Hetty had been staring at Jesse.  She saw, or thought she saw, when his gaze met hers, something change in his eyes.  She quickly glanced away.

     They all turned to look at Lieta who was being carried down the stairs by Pierce.  It had taken a day for the soreness to set in.  Right now Lieta was so stiff from riding that she couldn’t have crawled down the stairs if her life depended on it.

     “Look, Lieta,”  Emma said to the woman as she was seated at the table.  “See what Jesse gave me?”  She held out the ribbons and then the kitten.  “Isn’t she the sweetest thing?”  Hugging the kitten in her arms, she said,  “I’m going to name you Princess.”

     “I think that’s a very fine name,”  Lieta told Emma.

     After everyone was seated at the table and the blessing was said, Will turned to Jesse as the food was being passed around.  “I saw a frog this big in the pond today.”  Will held his arms out wide.

     “That big, huh?”  Jesse remarked soberly.  “If we could rope him, we could ride him.”

     “Oh, Jesse.  You can’t ride a frog.”

     “Will,”  Rachel said to her son.  “Please pass the bread around.”

     “Yes, Mother.”  Will put a thick slice of bread on his plate.  “I found that other missing hen.  You know, the white one with all the chicks.”

     Jesse looked at the boy, surprised.  “Did you?  Where?”

     “Down the creek a ways.  There’s a little cave in a rock.  The hen has all her chicks there.  Thirteen.  I counted them.”

     “I know where that cave is,”  Jesse said as he took the plate of bread and passed it to Emma.  “We’ll have to get her and the chicks or something will eat them.”

     “She’s a good mother hen, though, isn’t she, Jesse?  She likes having her babies close to her.  Who do you think her husband is?”

     Jesse’s fork hesitated halfway between his plate and his mouth.  Lord, he thought, panicking for a moment.  Please don’t let him start talking about marriage and families again.

     And Will did seem about to say something else.  But Rachel reminded her son to eat and Jesse let out a sigh of relief as Will devoted himself to his slice of bread.

Chapter 15

     It had rained off and on all day.  It was raining now in the warm darkness.  Jesse stared out at the night sky, lit briefly now and then by fitful stabs of lightning.  He welcomed the rain.  It had kept the women confined to the house.  More importantly, it had kept one woman in particular confined there.

     Inside the dark barn, rain drummed with a heavy resonance upon the roof.  Thunder rumbled softly in the distance.  He was feeling restless tonight.  A good long ride, some distance, those things would go a long way in relieving some of his restless energy.  There was no sense, however, even thinking about going for a ride until this downpour let up.

     He was tired.  He’d put in long hours of work today cleaning out and repairing the barn.  He had tried to keep busy to keep from thinking about Hetty.  But once again, he found himself thinking about the look in her eyes when she had watched him give the kitten to Emma.  More than once, he’d found himself recalling the powerful, and completely unreasonable, reaction he’d had to the accidental brush of her hand against his later when they’d both reached to pet the cat at the same time.

     He couldn’t seem to think clearly when he was near her so he’d done all he could to avoid her.  He’d rearranged his schedule.  He’d skipped meals at the house.  In fact, he’d stayed away from the house entirely.  Out of sight, out of mind.  Right?

     Not true, apparently, when it came to Hetty.  He might be helpless to stop his attraction to her, but he’d damned well keep her from knowing about it, he’d decided.

     He released his breath in a deep sigh as he watched the light in the kitchen window.  The rest of the house was dark.  He should be gone by now.  He was running out of excuses for staying.  John was able to get out of bed now and do light work, and Pierce was here to help.  He’d already made up his mind that tomorrow was his last day here.  It was that plain and simple.

     But he couldn’t seem to summon up plain and simple at the moment.  He laid his hand on his horse’s sleek neck, idly caressing the animal, and wondered why he was hoping Hetty was the one who was awake.