Smoke River Bride (5 page)

Thad grunted. “Guess that wheat field makes me feel, well, like no matter what happens, my boy and I will survive.”

Leah gazed out the window. “Can you see your field from here?”

“Nope. Good thing, I guess,” he said with a chuckle. “Otherwise I’d be mooning out the window half the time instead of milking the cow and feedin’ the horses.”

Silence.

“Leah, you’re the only person I’ve told all this to. Townfolk think I’m a little crazy. Nobody grows wheat in Oregon. They’re all getting a good laugh over my experiment, I guess. I’m in debt up to my ears for what’s growing on those three acres, but I believe in
a few years this whole territory will be growing wheat.”

“Mr. MacAllister…Thad…?”

“Go to sleep, Leah. It’s been a long day.”

Go to sleep?
“Are you not going to—?”

“Nope,” he said. “We’re married, but we don’t hardly know each other. Let’s give it some time.”

Leah rolled onto her back and lay staring up at the ceiling. Thad MacAllister was a most unusual man.

Or perhaps he does not like me
.

But then he laid his arm across her waist and gently nudged her closer. Her silk-clad shoulder and hip brushed against his skin and his warmth enveloped her like a fine wool robe.

“You sure feel warm,” he murmured. “I’ve been kinda cold for a while.”

Leah smiled into the dark. It was a good beginning.

B
efore dawn, Leah awoke and snuggled into the space where Thad had lain until a few moments ago. It was still warm and it smelled like him, a mixture of pine trees and sweat. She liked it. She liked
him
.

She thanked the gods of good fortune for finding this man, for allowing her to take this step—safe and protected—into a new life.

She glanced at the bedroom window where faint gray light was beginning to filter in. He must have left before dawn—to do what? She knew farm chores waited, scattering feed for the chickens and gathering eggs, feeding and watering the horses, milking the black-splotched cow she’d glimpsed in the pasture yesterday. It was the same in China, except
that her mother had milked a nanny goat. What would Thad expect her to do?

Fix his breakfast! She scooted out of bed, hung the pink silk night robe on one of the hooks that marched across the wall beside the bedroom door, and pulled on the jeans and red shirt she had worn yesterday. The stiff denim fabric scratched her inner thighs and the pointy shirt collar jabbed her neck whenever She turned her head.

How uncomfortable these American garments were! She longed for the silky feel of her Chinese-style tunic against her skin and the soft folds of the loose trousers.

The kitchen was as spotless as she had left it and, to her surprise, a fire already crackled in the stove; Thad must have uncovered the banked coals and added more wood. He had even set the large tin teakettle on the back burner. That must be a hint that he expected coffee with his breakfast.

But what to cook? The few American breakfasts she had seen on board the ship from China consisted of charred meat and a pan of something messy—eggs, she guessed—mixed up into a dreadful-looking yellow pile. She had eaten eggs in China, but
they were boiled in the shell and shiny as a full moon.

In the small pantry just off the kitchen, she found the bag of coffee beans and a basket of fresh eggs. On a shelf sat a pretty red-painted box with an iron handle and a tiny drawer that pulled out. That box had not been there yesterday.

Oh! For the coffee beans! You were supposed to grind them up before…

Hurriedly she gathered up four fresh eggs, covered them with water pumped from the sink and set the pot on the stove next to the teakettle.

“Aint’cha gonna make biscuits?” The querulous voice came from the loft, where Teddy balanced on the ladder, one elbow hooked around the railing.

“Biscuits?”

“You know, like little muffins, only they’re not sweet.” He surveyed her with disgust. “You don’t know anything, do ya?”

Leah straightened. “I know a great many things, Teddy. However, I grew up in China and I did not learn to cook in the American way.”

“Ya want me to mix up some biscuits? I know how ’cuz Marshal Johnson showed me
once, but Pa won’t let me do it.” He clattered to the bottom rung of the ladder.

Leah grabbed a crockery mixing bowl and shoved it toward the boy. “Yes, please. Show me how it is done.”

Teddy puffed out his chest, took the bowl and disappeared into the pantry. “This here’s flour,” he announced when he emerged. “And then ya add a pinch of saler’tus. Now you dump in a spoonful of bacon grease and a bit of milk, and then you squish it all together, like this.” He plunged both hands into the bowl.

Leah nodded, committing the ingredients to memory while Teddy scooped up the mixture, dropped large lumps onto a tin baking sheet and shoved it into the oven.

“Don’t tell Pa I made ’em, okay?”

“Okay. Do not tell your father that I did not know how.” A conspiratorial look passed between them. Merciful heaven, perhaps the boy would grow to not hate her.

The back door thumped open and Thad tramped in, a milk pail in one hand and a basket of eggs in the other. He clunked both pail and basket in the pantry and strode into the kitchen.

“Mornin’, Pa.”

Thad ignored the boy. “Breakfast about ready?” His breath puffed white from the cold air outside. Carefully he avoided eye contact with Leah.

“Almost, yes.” She opened her mouth to comment on his brusque manner toward his son, then changed her mind. Not in front of Teddy, she resolved. Any differences between her and her husband would not be aired within his son’s hearing.

“I’ll go wash up at the pump outside.”

“Do you not wish to bathe in warm water? I can heat—”

“Bathe! I take a bath once a week, on Saturday.”

“Me, too,” Teddy added. “Pa, she’s so dumb she doesn’t even know how to make coffee.”

Leah flinched. She’d been right the first time—Teddy did hate her. But Thad wasn’t listening, and besides, this morning she had puzzled out the mysteries of the American brew and used the coffee grinder.

The back door slammed. Teddy fled up to his loft, leaving Leah, her teeth gritted, to set the table and check the biscuits.

Thad clunked back into the kitchen, his heavy boots slathered with mud, and plopped himself into one of the ladder-back chairs.
Teddy slid onto the other, but Thad motioned him away. “That’s for Leah.”

Then he looked down at his breakfast. Two shiny white whole eggs stared up at him.

“What’s this?”

“Eggs,” Leah said quickly.

“And biscuits,” Teddy piped. Leah set a napkin-covered bowl on the table.

“Try a biscuit, Pa.”

“Soon as I figure out this egg thing on my plate.” He sent a questioning look to Leah, who settled herself at the table and picked up her boiled egg. “In China, we do it like this.” She lifted a spoon and gently tapped around the middle until a crack appeared, then adroitly split the egg into two parts and scooped out the inside with her spoon.

Teddy scowled down at his plate. “People in China are stupid.”

“Eating an egg with a spoon like this is not stupid,” Leah countered in a quiet voice. “It is merely
different.”

“And it’s dumb, too,” the boy retorted.

“Teddy,” Thad warned. He noticed suddenly that his son’s hair was uncombed and that Leah wore the jeans and shirt from the mercantile. Her feet were encased in the same
satin slippers she’d worn yesterday. She’d need a pair of boots, too.

Absently he reached for a hot biscuit. “What size boot do you wear, son?”

Teddy kept his eyes fixed on Thad’s hand breaking open the biscuit. “Dunno.”

“We have any butter?”

“Not yet,” Leah answered. “I have not collected enough cream to churn.”

“How about jam? Some in the pantry, I think. Blackberry. Get it for her, would ya, Teddy?”

Teddy bolted from the table and, before Thad could draw breath, returned with a half-empty jar of last year’s jam. “Here, Pa. Bet she doesn’t know anything about makin’ jam.”

Thad bit into his biscuit. “Good,” he pronounced. “Even without jam.”

The boy’s face lit up. “Have another one, Pa.”

Thad moved his gaze from his son to Leah, who was studying the two intact eggs that still lay on his plate. He picked up his knife and whacked one in two, then attacked the other. The soft yolk spilled over his fingers, but it tasted okay, just like an egg. Sure was an odd way to serve them, though.

He glanced around the warm kitchen and felt something inside him catch. This was like it used to be when Hattie was alive—eating breakfast around the kitchen table. But it wasn’t Hattie sitting across from him; it was a woman he scarcely knew.

Lord in Heaven, what had he done?

He’d changed his life, changed his son’s life, in a way that could not be altered. Part of him didn’t like it one bit. Another part of him, a part he kept hidden even from himself, did like it. It was like spring after a long, bleak winter.

He glanced at Teddy. He saw so much of Hattie in his son’s eyes and cheekbones that it hurt every time he looked at him, as if a sharp stick was poking his heart. He knew he didn’t give the boy as much attention as he should; it was just that he reminded him so much of her.

“You goin’ to school today, son?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Leah swallowed her last bite of egg. “I would like to go with you this morning, Teddy.”

“What for? Miz Johnson don’t teach any Chinese.”

“Of course not,” she said quietly. “As I said, I would like to meet your teacher.”

“How come? You ain’t my momma.”

“No, I am not. But I am still interested in your education.”

Leah shot a look at Thad, then grabbed his coffee mug and rose swiftly. She returned it brimming with a dark liquid that—he sniffed it—smelled like coffee! He slurped up a mouthful and swallowed.

“Better,” he pronounced. Funny he’d not noticed before how beautiful her gray-green eyes were when she smiled.

After breakfast, Leah and Teddy started off for the schoolhouse. Frost sparkled on the grass and weeds along the road, and the air was so cold it burned Leah’s nostrils when she drew breath. She wore her gray wool coat, buttoned up to her neck, and her only hat, a Chinese-style bonnet that did not cover her ears. Her feet, clad only in her satin slippers, were growing numb. Teddy had on a sheepskin jacket like his father’s and a hand-knitted woolen cap that covered his ears; he did not seem to mind the biting air.

At first they walked side by side in silence, but when they reached the Thompson place,
Teddy suddenly sped up. “I dowanna walk with you.”

Leah kept pace with him, and he increased his stride. Again she kept up with him. When he realized he could not outwalk her, he broke into a run.

Leah laughed aloud. Teddy did not know how fast she could run. In their village in China, no one had been able to outrun Ming Sa’s daughter; she won every race the merchants sponsored. She shrugged off her wool coat and started running.

By the time they passed Thompson’s last fence post, she had caught up with him, and even though her hat flew off, she pushed on a dozen yards past him. When she looked back she had to laugh again.

Teddy stood in the middle of the road, his hands jammed into his jacket pockets, glowering at her. She retrieved her coat and silk hat and returned to his side. The boy was still panting; Leah was not even breathing heavily.

“How come you can run so fast?” he demanded.

“Because my legs are longer than yours.” She did not tell him how many times she had been chased by the village bullies. They’d hated her because she was half White Devil.
In their eyes, being half Chinese did not erase the shame of birth with a white man as her father.

She bent closer to Thad’s son. “And a friend at my school taught me how to breathe properly and pace myself.”

Teddy stuck out his lower lip. “That’s not fair.”

“Why not?”

“’Cuz you’re older. And bigger.”

Leah smiled at him. “That’s only half of it, Teddy. Would you like me to teach you the other half?”

He kicked at a stone. “Naw. That’s kid stuff.”

Leah said nothing for fifty paces, then couldn’t stand it any longer. “It is not ‘kid stuff.’ Listen to me, Teddy. Do you know how much money I won when I was your age and the candle merchant bet money on me? Seventy thousand yen!”

The boy’s blue eyes widened. “Really? You mean you won money from gambling?”

“Well,
I
didn’t gamble, exactly, but the merchants in our village did. Chinese people like to bet on things. They called me ‘the White Devil’s daughter,’ but I won lots of yen for those shopkeepers.”

Teddy frowned and pointed ahead to a small wood structure in a clearing, surrounded by maple trees. Gray smoke puffed out the chimney.

“There’s the schoolhouse.”

Inside the chinked log walls a dozen stonefaced children stared at her. They ranged in age from about six years to a gangly boy of perhaps fourteen. The schoolteacher, Mrs. Johnson, stepped from behind her desk and smiled.

“Good morning, Teddy. Is this your new—” the woman caught herself just in time “—your father’s wife?”

“Yah. She’s new, all right. She don’t know nothin’.” The boy fled to a seat in the back row, folded His arm on the desktop and buried his face in the crook of his elbow.

“I don’t like her.” His mumbled words drew a gasp from the students.

“She dresses funny,” someone said. “She’s wearing boy’s clothes.”

“She’s a foreigner,” another chimed. “She’s a—”

“Children!” Mrs. Johnson silenced her pupils and moved toward Leah with both hands extended. “Welcome, Mrs. MacAllister.”

Leah’s heart jumped. “Th-thank you, Mrs.—”

“Oh, call me Ellie, please. I hope we will be friends. I think you may need one here in Smoke River.”

Leah knew she was staring, but she couldn’t seem to stop looking at the tall woman. She had the bluest eyes she had ever seen, a darker blue than even Father’s. And a smile so genuine it made Leah’s eye sting.

“My name is Leah. C-could I speak to you in private?”

“Of course. Mary Lou, take over the class, please. Start with the spelling lesson.” Then Mrs. Johnson—Ellie—opened the door and motioned Leah outside.

“I—” Leah’s voice choked off. Ellie peered at her.

“Why, my dear, you’re crying! Whatever is wrong?” She lifted Leah’s cold hands in her warm ones. “Tell me.”

“I—Oh, everything is wrong. I want to fit in, but I don’t know how to do anything in the American way. Teddy hates me. And his father ignores both of us.”

“Thad MacAllister ignores everyone these days. Ever since his wife died, Thad has been withdrawn.”

“He is more than withdrawn. He…” No, she could not tell the schoolteacher the rest, about his lying next to her in bed but not touching her.

Ellie sent her a wry smile. “I know what it is like to be an outsider in this town. The women, especially, can be unkind.” She stepped back and looked Leah up and down. “I am sure it will work out. You are quite pretty, even in boy’s clothes.”

“I do not know how to cook the American way, or what to wear, or what to say to Teddy. That is what I wanted to ask you about.”

“Teddy has been lonely and lost for over a year now, but I think eventually he might come to appreciate your company.”

“Do you…” Leah hesitated. “Do you think I should wear a dress, like the other women in town?”

“I think it might help,” the schoolteacher said gently. “Thad will certainly notice you are a woman.”