This Side of Heaven (10 page)

This time whatever it was that was causing the bang slammed into the outside of Caroline’s door. She jumped, her head emerging from beneath the pillow as she glowered at the still-closed door. Maybe, if she ignored him, the sadistic beast would give up and go away.

“Up, Madam Slugabed!” The shout reverbated through the door. “The Royalist fashion of lying abed till all hours will not do around here! ’Tis breakfast time!”

Caroline considered yelling back the suggestion that he journey to a far warmer region than could be found on this earth, then thought better of it. After all, Matt had been kind enough to give up his bed to her the night before (although he’d stipulated that he would sleep with Daniel only until other arrangements for Caroline’s accommodations could be made), and generous enough to offer her a home in the first place (self-interested though the offer might have been). But those considerations were only a small part of what prompted her to hold her tongue. The real silencer was her conviction that if she shouted back at him, he would be through that door in a trice to personally tip her out of bed.

The object crashed into her door again.

“I’m up, I’m up!” she cried.

“And about time too!”

His footsteps retreated to the accompaniment of more out-of-tune verses and earsplitting bangs. Caroline sighed and rolled out of bed.

A quarter of an hour later she was semidressed and in the kitchen preparing porridge. Her hair she had twisted up any which way, and wayward strands had already worked free to straggle around her ears and down her back. In her haste in doing up the back of her gown she had misfastened a pair of hooks, so that the bodice was twisted in an awkward fashion beneath her breasts. Her too-long skirts kept tripping her, and she longed for a moment to pin them up. But a moment was what she didn’t have. The household was abustle, and Matt had informed her that she had somewhere in the neighborhood of half an hour to get breakfast prepared and the boys off to school.

Inside the house it was still as dark as night. A pair of sputtering candles provided most of the illumination for her cooking. Daniel had been dispatched to the spring for butter and milk, and the children were outside at the pump. Matt, Thomas, and Robert vied with one another for glimpses into the one small mirror as they tried, all at the same time, to shave, Steaming water now rose from the battered wash tin that Matt had used to effect the unvocal portion of his morning concert, and it was this water that the men used for shaving. The kettle, Caroline discovered when it turned up missing, had been emptied and abandoned by the wash tin. As she fetched it, trying not to look at or touch the half-clad men—which was quite a feat, because the keeping room was both tiny and crowded
—she felt a pair of eyes lingering on her averted cheek. Glancing up instinctively, she was surprised to meet Matt’s intent gaze. For a single unwary moment before he lowered his lids, deliberately breaking contact, she could read purely masculine appreciation for a desirable female in the cobalt depths. The spell that held her motionless shattered, and she turned away. She felt shaky, and her heart pounded as she refilled the kettle and restored it to its crane over the fire. It took some few minutes before she was able to calm down. Not even to herself would she admit how that brief exchange of glances had affected her. Spine ramrod stiff with silent rejection, Caroline resolutely kept her back to the adjoining room. However, it was impossible to remain totally oblivious to so much naked male flesh. All three of them were bare to the waist and seemed completely unconcerned about the close proximity of a strange female. But then excessive modesty, as she had already learned, was not a male affliction.

“You might bring us a meal out in the field at noon. We’ll be too busy to take the time to come back to the house.” Matt, clean-shaven now and seemingly oblivious to the undercurrents that only a brief time ago had quivered between them, walked into the kitchen, wiping soap from his face with a linen towel. Caroline tried not to see the black whorls of hair that covered his chest, nor the bronzed rippling muscles of his shoulders and arms as he reached for his shirt, which hung over the back of a chair, and shrugged into it. Despite the man’s many shortcomings, she had to admit that physically he was glorious-looking. At an earlier time and under different circumstances, the sight
of him without his shirt might have dazzled her. As it was, she afforded him no more than a single leery glance as she began to dish up the porridge, and tried, by ignoring it, to quell the discomfort that his half-dressed presence caused her.

“Whatever it is, it smells good.” This admission, made in an almost grudging tone, came from Thomas. She had already learned that he was a dedicated trencherman, and as he donned his shirt she glanced at him. His torso was lean and muscular, nearly hairless as might be expected with his fair coloring, but it had not the same effect on her as had Matt’s more massive build. Nor, as he too emerged from the keeping room, did Robert, whose chest was sprinkled with auburn hair. They were attractive, these Mathieson males, she had to admit, but only Matt had the looks to stop a woman’s breath.

If she were the kind of woman, that is, to have her breath stopped by such things. Which, Caroline assured herself as she stirred the porridge with more force than was necessary, she emphatically was not!

“I’m hungry.” This announcement came from David, who entered along with John. Both boys stopped just inside the door to watch Caroline uncertainly. From the way they, and Thomas and Robert as well, behaved in her presence, Caroline felt herself to be some kind of alien creature. Had they had so little experience of women that they actually considered females dangerous? Matt and Daniel, who were older, were far less wary of her, although neither of them could be termed effusive in their welcome.

“The meal’s ready as soon as your uncle gets back
with the milk.” She tried a tentative smile on the boys. Really, it was a shame for their father and uncles to raise them in an atmosphere so distrustful of women. Although surely they must retain some soft memories of their mother.

“I want to eat
now
!”

“Be patient, Davey. And polite,” Matt said, frowning his son into silence.

“Will she leave today?” It was a whine.

“I told you that your Aunt Caroline will be staying here.”

“I don’t want her to! I want her to go!”

“Silence!” His patience at an end, Matt roared the order. David was quelled, although his lower lip jutted ominously.

Heaping porridge into bowls, Caroline sighed inwardly. It would take some time to win David’s friendship, it was clear.

“Have you learned your lesson for the day?” Matt, his tone gentled, asked his younger son. Davey, still mutinous, nodded.

“Let’s hear it.” Matt sat down at the table, his eyes on his son.

“In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.” There was more, but Caroline was too preoccupied to hear it. Watching the little boy reciting to the father of whom he was a near miniature, she felt a pang somewhere in the region of her heart. Whether they wanted her or not, these children were her nephews, the last blood kin she had left in the world. She would do her best by them.

Today each wore a badly wrinkled shirt of blue-and-white speckled homespun with what appeared, from
rips and stains that seemed identical, to be the same breeches they’d worn the previous day. David’s stockings had been torn and most inexpertly mended; John’s had not been mended at all, so that a glimpse of skinny shin was evident whenever he moved. Both boys had wet hair that had been slicked with a comb, and both had clean faces. Other than that, they looked sorely in need of care. Since the task was now hers, she meant to do her utmost to remedy the lack. The first item on her day’s agenda would be the washing and mending of their clothes.

Daniel entered with the milk and butter, Caroline set bowls of steaming porridge on the table, and the menfolk fell to with a will. Five minutes later they were done and the boys were on their way out the door.

“What’s this?” Caroline had started to clear the table when she found on it a small wooden slab with a piece of precious paper attached. The surface of the contraption was covered with a sheet of transparent horn. The alphabet was inscribed on the top of the slab, with the Lord’s Prayer on the bottom.

“Davey, you forgot your hornbook!” shouted Robert. He snatched the thing from Caroline and then was out the door after his nephews, waving the wooden slab by its stout handle. The door stood open behind him; the rising sun touched the keeping room and the kitchen beyond it with a warm light.

“We’ll be in the south field,” Matt said to Caroline, as he, Daniel, and Thomas prepared to depart. “ ’Tis not so far that you need fear to come alone. Walk along the stream and you can’t miss us. If you encounter
a problem, shout and we’ll hear you. Cold meat, bread, a few apples, and some ale will do us till dinner.”

“Yes, master,” Caroline responded tartly, her hands loaded down with emptied bowls that she was removing from the table. Her head full of the improvements she would make to the boys’ wardrobes, she had completely forgotten the other seemingly endless tasks that awaited her. Matt’s bland assumption that she had nothing better to do than interrupt her work in the middle of the day to carry a meal to him and his brothers was maddening. Besides the time she needed to put order into the boys’ garments, there were windows to wash, bedrooms to be turned out, furniture and floors to scrub and polish, other clothes to wash, press, and mend, and countless additional jobs to be done. Today she would be on her own, and there was so much work waiting that she was tired already from just thinking about it. But Matt acted as if his request was perfectly reasonable. Which, Caroline supposed, to one who had nothing to do with the meal’s preparation, delivery, and cleanup, it was.

“If you have some objection, pray state it baldly. I’ve no time or patience to waste on female megrims.”

“Megrims!” Caroline dropped the bowls into the bucket with a clatter and turned to face him, fists on hips. “I’ll have you know that I suffer from no megrims, sir! ’Tis your lack of consideration that pricks my temper!”

“Oh, I see. It’s too much to expect you to carry a cold meal out to us in the middle of the day, is it? In that case, we’ll return to the house for something hot.”

They locked eyes. Annoyed, Caroline had to admit that he had her there. Carrying a meal out to them would be a deal of trouble, but the alternative would involve even more work. She had longed for a home and family with an intensity that had been almost physical for at least the last four years. Now that she had what she had wished for, she should be thankful, not cross. But Matt’s attitude made her want to heave something at his head.

“No, I’ll bring the meal out,” she said through her teeth.

Matt shrugged. “As you will.”

Then without so much as a victorious glimmer he followed Robert and Thomas out the door, leaving Caroline alone to sizzle. For a moment after they left she was tempted to kick the table leg to vent her spleen, but the realization that the only likely outcome of that would be to hurt her toes dissuaded her. Really, the Mathieson males were aggravating, and Matt was the most aggravating one of all!

With no one to be affected by her anger, nursing it was useless. So Caroline gave it up, scraped the pot clean to find enough porridge for herself, poured Millicent a saucer of milk, and sat down at the cleared table to make her own meal. Taking care of a houseful of men and boys was going to be a daunting task. It was clear that it would require working her fingers to the bone from dawn to midnight, day after day, with scant reward. But still—’twas good to have a home. Not since her mother died had she known such stability, and the lack made it all the sweeter now that she had found it again. To know with certainty that there
would be food on the table for each meal, that she would lay her head in the same spot for countless nights to come, that there was no one or nothing to menace her, brought with it a relief so profound that she could only savor it. Accustoming herself to the vagaries of so many males might require some effort, but it could be done. She would just have to give both herself and her graceless new relatives time to adjust to the situation. The trick would be to hang on to her temper in the meantime.

Several hours later she was wrapping fresh-baked bread in a cloth and placing it in the bucket atop the sliced remains of an end of cured ham she had found in the smokehouse. Four grown men would eat a considerable amount, and she had already had an unhappy experience with this group’s appetite. Frowning thoughtfully, she wrapped another loaf of bread and put it into the bucket, then added several apples and a good supply of green onions. To feed them adequately, it was plain that she would be forever cooking. Caroline rolled her eyes as she looked at the two loaves of bread that remained on the table. Four loaves baked that morning, and already, with one meal, half were gone. Well, she would just have to set more dough to rise when she returned.

Hefting the bucket in one hand and the jug of ale in the other, Caroline started out the door. The air was cold, the sunlight bright as it had been the previous day. Ordinarily she would have put on a bonnet to protect her skin from the sun, but she did not feel like going back upstairs to unearth one from her trunks. She had finally found time to brush her hair, and she
wore it as she usually did, in a simple knob at her nape. Her dress already bore a number of spots from the scrubbing she had done, but at least it was now fastened correctly. It was the plainest gown she possessed, but it was still far too fine for such menial labor as she had been doing. The fitted bodice of heavy pink cotton was edged with swaths of white muslin around its wide oval neckline, and the white muslin sleeves of her chemise were visible to the elbow. The overskirt, which was fashionably looped up in back, was of the same pink cotton as the bodice, while the linen underskirt was maroon and white-striped. It had once been an elegant dress, commissioned at the same time as the rest of her wardrobe. All her gowns had been designed to attract attention as well as play up her unusual beauty. Her father had taken a great deal of pleasure in escorting her about whatever town they had happened to find themselves in, making sure that she was well seen by day in order to lure opponents to his table at night. But her weight loss had rendered it too large, and it showed signs of wear about the hem. The high-heeled shoes that went with it she had left off in favor of more practical flat ones of light brown leather. As a result, the hem trailed even more than it might have; fortunately she had at last had a chance to get at her pins and had fastened up the underskirt just enough to free her feet. Certainly no one could take exception to the small amount of ankle that her makeshift remedy displayed. Besides, who would there be to see?