Texas Angel, 2-in-1 (27 page)
Liz smiled her approval. “That will be perfect.”
But Isabel was not finished. She must have watched her mother perform her daily toilet carefully, because she knew exactly what other items would be needed. She took out a pair of cotton drawers, a chemise and a corset, along with stockings and a pair of shoes. The shoes were rather nice, obviously Rebekah’s Sunday shoes, and Liz almost refused them until she moved and felt the squish of water in her own worn boots.
Thanking Isabel, Liz took the things over to the hearth where it was warm and began dressing, laying her own wet things close to the fire to dry. They were quite dirty, in need of a good washing and some mending, but still were serviceable. Before dressing in the new clothes, Liz took a damp cloth and tried to clean the spattered mud and filth of her journey from her body. She also scrubbed her face of any rouge and eye paint that the rain had not washed off. If she had any hope of obtaining sympathy from the reverend, she’d have a far better chance if she looked as little as possible like the wanton woman he thought her to be.
Leah crawled over to Liz and began pulling at the clothes as quickly as Liz could lay them out. Squealing with mischievous glee, the baby started making a game of it, deliberately taking something that had been laid out or replaced. Not wanting to scold the child, Liz played along, though with a little frustration.
Finally Isabel interceded. “No, Leah!” Her small voice took on an incongruous motherly authority.
Leah yelled back. “Ga! Da!”
Isabel took a wet stocking from her sister. Leah screamed in protest. Then the newborn, who had been sleeping in his cradle, woke and began crying.
“Isabel, would you button me up so I can get the baby?” Liz knelt down to the girl’s level. The buttoning done, Liz scooped the baby up from the cradle and sat once more on the bed. “Isabel, bring Leah over here, and I will tell you both a story.”
Leah struggled and protested being picked up by Isabel, who staggered under the weight of the eleven-month-old child. But in a few moments they were all settled on the bed, and Liz had taken up Hannah in one arm while holding the newborn with the other. Leah was struggling to get off the bed, and Liz had to think quickly in order to capture her attention. Looking down at her feet, the fine shoes reminded her of a story her old nurse had told her and which she sometimes told Hannah.
“Do you know the story about the little girl who was given a fine pair of shoes?” Liz’s voice arrested Leah’s escape attempts, and Liz took advantage of the child’s interest by freeing her arm from Hannah momentarily so as to draw Leah close to her side. “This child—her name was Goody, by the way—was so very, very poor that she had never had a
pair
of shoes, ones that actually matched, and sometimes she didn’t have any shoes at all. So when she received the new shoes, she was simply ecstatic with delight. She went around telling everyone she saw about her
pair
of shoes. Everyone began calling her Goody Two-Shoes."
Liz couldn’t remember all of the original story, so she made it up as she went along, describing Goody’s encounters as she walked about in her new shoes. The children snuggled around Liz and quieted. Even the newborn responded to the soft drone of Liz’s voice. When Liz paused a moment to think up a new encounter for Goody, she noted the silence. It was certainly the first time since she had come to the Sinclair cabin that such quiet had filled the room. She almost didn’t want to disturb it by starting the story again, but then, it was the story in the first place that had encouraged it.
“Little Goody had a brother named Tommy—” Liz began but was cut off suddenly when the cabin door burst open.
L
OOKING SLIGHTLY WILD-EYED
, Benjamin Sinclair stumbled inside, his gaze sweeping the room as if he expected to find mayhem. Noting the peaceful scene on the bed, his panicked expression turned quickly to bewilderment.
“I . . . thought . . . didn’t know what to think,” he stammered. “It was so quiet.”
The sudden noise of his entry had startled the newborn, and he started to cry again.
Liz smiled weakly. “I was telling them a story.”
“A story?” Benjamin gaped incredulously, as if the idea were some fabulous new invention.
“Goody Two-Shoes. Do you know it?”
“I don’t know many stories.” He was still staring at her.
She wondered if it was disturbing to him seeing her in his wife’s clothes. Did it make him cringe to think someone like her was wearing precious Rebekah’s fine dress? She could hardly blame him. If she thought about it, it disgusted her also, as if a devil were tramping on holy ground, desecrating not only a dress but the woman’s children as well. Suddenly she felt uncomfortable holding Rebekah’s child, and she held him out to the father.
Making no move to take the child, a new look of panic crossed Benjamin’s face.
Then the cacophony of children’s noise began again. “Ga! Da! Ga!” insisted Leah, tugging at Liz’s sleeve.
“Finish the story,” Isabel put in. “Please.”
Even Hannah found the strength to join in. “Mama!”
Wanly, Liz looked imploringly at Benjamin.
“I’ve upset the apple cart,” he finally said rather pathetically.
“They wouldn’t have stayed quiet for long.” She couldn’t believe
she
was attempting to bolster
him
. She slipped from the bed and stood, adjusting the newborn up against her shoulder. “Sometimes they just want a change of position.” The baby quieted a bit, and she smiled, relieved. She walked around the cabin, remembering that Hannah had liked movement at that age. “Reverend Sinclair,” she said conversationally, “I have figured out the names of all your children except the littlest one.”
He was busy getting hold of Leah who, while still yelling for attention, had wiggled off the bed and was crawling toward the hearth. Catching her and lifting her in his arms, he shook his head, a hint of apology in his eyes.
“There hasn’t been time . . . to think of a name.”
Watching him jiggle Leah up and down to distract her from yelling in his ear, Liz could certainly see that he had nothing to be apologetic about. Naming a child was a small matter indeed, taking into account the demands of four motherless children.
“Mama wanted to name him after Uncle Haden,” offered Isabel.
That brought a look as opposite to apology as possible to Rev. Sinclairfs face. For an instant he looked more like the imperious, self-righteous man she had met previously. Then the look melted into something like—could it be irony?
“I don’t think that will do,” he spoke with restraint through a clenched jaw.
“Neither did Uncle Haden,” said Isabel.
A smile invaded his face, in no way touched by humor but by far the most pleasant expression he had displayed yet.
“I guess I’ll have to think of one for him. But I have to do something about supper first.”
For the first time Liz saw that light no longer came through the cracks in the rawhide-shuttered windows. She also became aware of her own hunger. The thought of staying for supper brought to mind a more delicate situation. Where would she spend the night? Certainly a minister with no wife present in the home would have serious reservations about inviting a fallen woman to bide the night in his home—especially
this
particular minister. Shoving uncertainties about her own future from her mind, she tried to focus on the present. Whatever happened in an hour would happen. After several days in the outdoors, most of which was in the pouring rain, another did not seem so daunting.
“Why don’t you mind the children,” he said suddenly to Liz, “while I get supper.” It wasn’t as if he had been reading her mind, but it was an answer at least to her most immediate problem.
She had no easy task in quieting down the brood now that supper had been mentioned, but Liz managed to keep them fairly distracted. Still holding the newborn, she got Isabel to help her tend Hannah’s fever. While she laid Hannah before the hearth, she had the girl dampen with cool water a large cloth Rev. Sinclair provided. This she wrapped around Hannah’s naked body, covering it with a dry blanket. Though Liz did not want to think of where she would spend this night, she did pray for Hannah’s sake that it would be in the warm cabin.
Before long the meal was ready. Sinclair had managed it with no cooking, save the preparation of coffee. It consisted of dried smoked turkey and dry corn biscuits, which very likely could have been baked when Rebekah was alive, for they looked too hard to chew. However, dipped in coffee or milk they would be palatable.
Micah was called in for the meal, then everyone squeezed around the table. No formal invitation was offered to Liz, but a place was made for her. Except for the various noises of the young children, all who could talk were silent. Liz noted that Micah, especially, was silent and sullen.
There was a moment, unsettling even to Liz, of uncomfortable silence before Rev. Sinclair took a biscuit from a dish, signaling for the meal to begin. Liz herself was not accustomed to saying grace before meals, but she’d assumed a religious family such as the Sinclairs would do this by ingrained habit. She knew the omission of this was the cause of the momentary lapse.
When Rev. Sinclair spoke midway during the meal, his voice was awkward amid the chortles of babies. “I have given thought to naming the new baby.” His voice was strained and formal. “When we, that is, your mother and I, named each of you, there was always some special meaning to your names. Micah, you know your name is that of a biblical prophet I had been studying at the time of your birth. The name means ‘like unto the Lord.’ Isabel was the name of your mother’s favorite aunt. Leah means ‘weary,’ and though it is not the most joyous of names, Leah was one of the great matriarchs of the Bible.” He paused, glancing at his youngest daughter who chose that moment to grab her spoon and pound it noisily on the table, obviously aware that she was being spoken of. Benjamin’s lips quirked at the child’s antics but did not quite make it all the way to a smile. “That brings me to the new baby,” he continued with a brief glance at the cradle where the child in question had waked from a brief nap and was crying for his supper. “I have decided to call him Oliver. The name is Latin for olive tree, which is the traditional symbol for peace. I hope some day he will live up to his name.” Sinclair paused, then added wryly, “I hope it is sooner rather than later.”
Liz thought to chuckle at what she perceived to be a rare bit of humor from the dour preacher, but when no one else at the table responded, not even Sinclair himself, Liz remained silent. And there was no further fan-fare to the momentous occasion of naming the child. The meal continued silently, at least as silent as it was likely to get with five children present.
Micah was the first to bolt from the table without so much as a “by your leave.” Rev. Sinclair looked as if he might protest the boy’s rudeness but instead clamped his mouth shut in disgruntled silence. When Isabel asked to be excused, Sinclair only nodded. He then caught hold of the very active Leah as she began clamoring to be let down.
“It’s time for you children to get ready for bed,” Rev. Sinclair announced.
General mayhem followed while nightclothes were found and trips to the outhouse were made. Liz made herself useful by preparing a bottle for Oliver and feeding him. The bedtime routine, if the ordeal could be called that, went on for half an hour, with each of the children finding excuses to remain awake, even Leah managing to do so without the ability to talk.
Finally Rev. Sinclair, who appeared to be rising steadily to a boiling point, exploded.
“Silence! This instant!” There was more desperation in his tone than authority, but seemingly the children sensed they had pushed him to his limit because there was indeed instant acquiescence to his order. “I am turning down the lamp. The first one who makes a sound after that will be spanked!”
He went to the table and turned down the lamp until there was just shadowy light in the cabin. Only then, as he lifted his head, did he become aware once more of Liz’s presence. She had been sitting so quietly feeding the baby, he must have forgotten about her—at least he must have wanted to forget about her.
They exchanged looks filled with questions both were afraid to ask.
But of course they must eventually be asked, and as Sinclair knew, the task fell to him as host.
“I’ll go to the barn,” he said simply.
“I appreciate your not turning me out.”
“Did you truly think I would do such a thing?” He seemed both incredulous and hurt at this.
“I . . . didn’t know what to think with Mrs. Sinclair gone.”
He sighed. “I suppose our previous encounters might not have led you to believe otherwise, but I assure you, Liz, I am not the kind of man to put a helpless woman out in the cold.”
“People might talk if I stay.”
Then he did smile, but it was too cynical of a gesture to do him any good. He even chuckled, but the sound was as dry as a dead branch. “They already are talking.”
“Oh.” She had nothing to say to that cryptic statement and thought silence was the best approach anyway.
“In any case, I’ll sleep in the barn. If tongues wish to waggle over that, then so be it. I hardly care.” He quickly grabbed a couple of blankets, then headed to the door where he paused. “Your bed comes not without a price.” His gaze swept the room. “You will be at the mercy of the menagerie here.”
He swiftly exited, as if fearing she might choose the cold night instead. No such thought had entered Liz’s mind. Rev. Sinclair could not begin to imagine the kind of quarters she had escaped from. A night with five children, even if they kept her awake all night, would be absolutely heavenly by comparison.
B
ENJAMIN THOUGHT IT WAS FITTING
that even in the respite of the quiet barn he found no peace. By the time the first light of dawn penetrated the cracks in the log walls, he’d only found a few hours of fitful sleep. Wide awake now, he knew he should return to the cabin and feed Oliver. But the thought of facing his unhappy children once again nearly paralyzed him. If only Liz knew how grateful he was for her in those moments.