Prairie Rose (5 page)

“Accepting,” she finished. Spotting Sheena admiring a bolt of calico, she set off toward the counter.

As Seth chewed on a slab of salt pork as tough as old leather, he studied Rosie Mills from under the brim of his hat. He didn’t like her. Didn’t trust her. She was too cheerful, too perky. Worse, she was defiant. In opposition to his direct orders, she had continued her charming, winsome ways with the children. With her songs and games, she had easily won them over. Look at them.

Under the shade of a big black willow tree, Rosie had arranged everybody in a circle and was marching around tapping them one by one as she chanted:

“Heater, beater, Peter mine,

Hey Betty Martin, tiptoe fine.

Higgledy-piggledy, up the spout,

Tip him, turn him ’round about.

One, two, three,

Out goes he!”

In a moment, the whole pack of children was racing around like a bunch of prairie dogs with rabies. Rosie ran among them, her bonnet ribbons flying and her skirts dancing at her ankles. How could anyone who had nothing—no home, no family, not even a blanket or a spare petticoat—be as happy as that?

No, Seth thought, it just didn’t make sense. In fact, it was downright suspicious. What was she after, this Rosie Mills? What was she planning to get out of this little adventure of hers? What scheme did she have up her sleeve?

Even worse than her unsettling cheeriness was the way Chipper responded to Rosie. Ever since Seth had reclaimed the boy, Chipper had spoken barely six words to him—and not one of them was charitable. Seth could hardly blame him. After all, until three days ago, they were complete strangers, and with little explanation he had scooped up the boy, toted him to his wagon, and driven off with him.

Sure, Chipper understood that Seth was his father. Thanks to his grandparents, the boy had been well versed in the story of the Yankee “scalawag” who had sired him. Chipper didn’t like his father, didn’t trust him, wanted nothing to do with him. But the child clearly adored Rosie Mills.

“Oh, Chipper!” she exclaimed as he tackled her, and she tumbled to the ground in a heap. “You caught me, you little rascal!”

“You’re it, you’re it!” Barefooted, he danced around her. “Rosie’s it!”

“I can’t!” She threw back her head, stretched out her long legs, and gave a breathless laugh. “You’ve worn me out, all of you.”

“Let’s go down to the stream again before Papa calls us to the wagon,” Will suggested. “We’ll catch a frog and take it to Bluestem Creek. Come on, Rosie! Come with us!”

“You go ahead. I need to catch my breath.”

“Please come,” Chipper begged, pulling on her hand in an attempt to make her stand.

“Really, sweetheart, I can’t. Go with Will. He’ll show you how to catch a frog.”

Seth watched as the children traipsed over the hill and down the slope toward the creek. The moment they were gone, Rosie pulled off her bonnet and crumpled it in her lap. A pained expression darkening her eyes, she gingerly touched the back of her head. Then she began to take out her hairpins one by one. She loosed the thick ropes of her brown tresses. Her hair slid to her shoulders, then tumbled down her back to the ground in a puddle of shiny silk.

Seth stared. He’d never seen such hair. Long hair—masses of it—draped around the woman like a brown cape. Even more amazing was the great pile of it that sat in the grass around her hips. Rosie Mills had enough hair for three women. Maybe four. Unaware of Seth’s staring, she bent over her knees and probed her head.

“Sheena,” she called softly. “Sheena?”

Seth frowned. Sheena was inside the station buying pickles. Jimmy was with her, trading one of his famous knives for a cast-iron skillet. Rosie touched her head again and looked at her fingers.

“Sheena!”

“She’s inside,” Seth called. He set his plate of salt pork in the wagon bed and started toward her. “Something wrong?”

“My head. It hurts where I hit it the other day. I’m afraid … am I bleeding again?”

Seth didn’t like the notion of getting too near the woman. His new employee had an unsettling way of looking into his eyes as though she could read his thoughts. And she smelled good. He had noticed that when he helped her down from the wagon. She smelled clean and fresh—like starch mingled with lavender. Most of all, he didn’t want to touch that silky sheet of her hair.

“I shouldn’t have been running,” she was saying, “but I thought if the children played hard, they might sleep in the wagon this afternoon. It would shorten the trip for them. Would you mind taking a look at my bump, Mr. Hunter? If I’m bleeding, I think I should put some ice on it. Maybe the stationmaster would spare … Mr. Hunter? Would you mind?”

She turned those big chocolate eyes on him, and Seth walked over to her like a puppet on a string. Before he could stop himself, he was kneeling beside her and drinking in that sweet lavender scent. She sifted through her hair with long fingers.

“It’s just there,” she whispered. “Can you see anything?”

He touched the warm brown strands. “You’ve got a swollen lump—”

“Ouch!”

“Sorry. I don’t think it’s bleeding again. I could buy you a chunk of ice.”

“No, I’ll be all right.” She threaded her fingers through her hair. “I would hate to spend good money on something that’s going to melt. I just don’t want to stain my bonnet, you understand. This is the only one I have, and it’s very precious to me. Priscilla gave it to me two years ago, before she left the Home.”

“Priscilla?”

“My best friend. When she married the vegetable seller’s oldest son, he bought her three new bonnets—not to mention a green twill skirt, a pair of new stockings, and a wool shawl. Wool. Pure, white wool. So, seeing as she didn’t need it, she gave this bonnet to me for Christmas.”

Seth blinked. He’d never heard anyone rattle on the way Rosie Mills could. Despite the bump on her head, she jumped from one subject to the next like a rabbit in a spring garden. As much as he wanted to ignore her, Seth couldn’t quite suppress his intrigue.

“Cilla lived at the Home three years,” Rosie went on, oblivious to her employer’s bemusement. “She came to stay with us after her parents died in a terrible fire. All her relatives lived in England, and they couldn’t afford boat passage for her even though she ached to go to them.”

“I’m sure she did,” Seth managed, searching for an adequate response to the woeful tale. “Poor Cilla.”

“It was very sad. But I wouldn’t feel too sorry for her, if I were you. Cilla wasn’t a foundling, you know. She came from a respected family, and she was very pretty. Blonde. Curls everywhere. Anyway, the vegetable seller’s son decided she would make a good wife. So they married, and now she has a baby girl and another on the way.”

“Not to mention three new bonnets, a skirt, and a pair of stockings.”

The corners of Rosie’s mouth turned up. “Don’t forget the wool shawl.”

“Lucky girl to win the heart of the vegetable seller’s oldest son. Must have been true love.”

“I don’t know about that.” She shrugged and began to twine her hair into a long rope. “What matters is Cilla’s settled, and I miss her. I won’t have this bonnet ruined.”

Seth studied the wad of thin calico. The bonnet was a pathetic scrap, patched and frayed. Cheap cotton, it might once have been navy, but it had faded in the sun to a pale shade of cornflower blue sprinkled with small white rosebuds.

“Is that what
you’re
after, Miss Mills?” Seth asked. “Bonnets and stockings and wool shawls?”

“Good heavens, no! Those are earthly treasures. The Bible tells us not to store them up. They won’t last. I’m after something much more important.”

“I figured as much.”

She lifted her focus to the tips of the arching willow branches. “Faith,” she murmured. “I want to grow in faith. Hope. The hope of heaven. And love. To share the love of my Father with people who’ve never known it.”

“Lofty dreams.” He gave a grunt of impatience. “Look, Miss Mills, you left everything familiar to risk traveling to the prairie with a stranger. You must be thinking you’ll get something practical out of it.”

Her brown eyes searched his face. “Yes,” she said softly. She leaned toward him. “This is a secret, so please don’t tell anyone. I’ve made up my mind. I want to get married, Mr. Hunter.”

“What?” His heart jumped into his throat and froze solid. “Married?”

“Not to you! Don’t draw back like a snake just bit you.” She laughed for a moment as though the idea of anyone wanting to marry him was a great joke. “Of course not you. Someone else. Almost anyone will do. While I’m living on your homestead the next few months, I’m going to search for a husband. If I can find someone fair-minded and strong, a kind man and a hard worker, I’ll ask him to marry me.”

“
You’ll
ask
him
?”

“Why not? I don’t have a thing to offer but a pair of good hands and a strong back. Who would ask me?” She leaned back and giggled again as though this were the funniest notion she’d heard in weeks. “Oh, laughing makes my bump hurt.”

Seth watched as she twirled the rope of her hair onto her head in a big glossy mound of loops and swirls. Still chuckling, she deftly slipped hairpins here and there. She gave her creation a quick pat to assure herself it was secure; then she swept her bonnet over it and tied the ribbons into a loose bow under her chin.

“Keep your eyes peeled for me, Mr. Hunter,” she confided. “I don’t much care what the man looks like or how old he is. It makes no difference how many children he’s got. As long as he’s good and kind.”

“And hardworking.”

“Yes.” She studied him. “Why are you smirking at me, Mr. Hunter?”

“It just seems a little strange that you’ve made up your mind to go out husband hunting like a trapper after a prized beaver.”

“And why not? The Bible tells us it’s good for a man and woman to marry. I don’t know why I should be obliged to spend the rest of my life working at the Christian Home for Orphans and Foundlings when there might be a lonely man somewhere who could use a good wife.”

“I guess you never considered that it might be nice if the fellow loved you. And you him.”

“Love? Please, Mr. Hunter. Have you been reading novels?”

Seth studied the woman’s brown eyes. He didn’t know what had made him kneel under the willow tree and talk to this creature in the first place. She jabbered like a blue jay. She giggled like a schoolgirl. He didn’t trust her around his son. No telling what ideas she might put into the boy’s head. Any woman who would walk away from a secure position to go to work for a stranger … any woman who would set out on her own in search of a husband … any woman who would ask a man to marry her … any woman like that was too downright bold. Too forward. Too impetuous. It just wasn’t proper.

Rosie Mills didn’t seem to have the least idea what love was all about. She would marry a man the way a store owner would take on a hired hand. No feeling. No emotion. No passion behind it.

That wasn’t how he and Mary Cornwall had felt about each other. He had been half-crazy over that girl. The way she swayed when she walked had set his heart beating like a brass band. The way she batted her eyelashes at him turned his stomach into a hundred butterflies. And when she had stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek that afternoon in the barn … well …

Seth hadn’t known Mary very long when he asked her to marry him. But the way she made him feel was love. True love. No doubt about it.

“I don’t know a thing about love except what the Bible says,” Rosie announced, cutting into his pleasant memories. “Love is patient, kind, forgiving. Never jealous or proud. Love is never demanding or critical. I imagine I could love just about anybody, Mr. Hunter. Couldn’t you?”

“Nope.” He stood and swatted the dust from his knees with his hat. “I hate Jack Cornwall’s guts, and if he tries to take my son again, I’ll kill him.”

“Kill him?”

“Besides that, I’d never marry some bold, insolent woman who thought she could do the asking. If I ever marry again, I’ll have more in it than patience, kindness, and forgiveness. You don’t know the half of what it takes to make a marriage.”

Rosie got to her feet. “Maybe I do know the half. I may never have had a family to grow up with or a man turning somersaults over me, but I watched the family who lived across the street from the Christian Home. I climbed up in the white oak tree every morning to say my prayers, and I studied that family. I saw how they lived, working together day and night. I watched the children grow. I saw funerals and weddings and birthday parties.”

“Working together day and night is not all there is to marriage,” Seth said, growing hot around the collar.