Loner's Lady

Downstairs, dishes clattered. The hand pump squeaked and water trickled into the sink. The back door opened, shut, then opened again. Later a rhythmic thonk-thonk carried on the still air, like an ax biting into a tree. She let the noises wash over her.

When she woke the sky was a milky lavender. Almost twilight. The curtains had been pushed back and the sash raised to catch the breeze. The soft squawks of her chickens drifted up from the yard. Bullfrogs croaked down by the creek, and the still, warm air smelled of dust.

She loved this place with its earthy smells, the warm, peaceful evenings and the mornings alive with inquisitive finches chattering in her apple trees. Her life moved forward in an ordered sequence of events, guided by the rising and setting of the sun. It was predictable. Safe.

It didn’t matter that chores filled every hour between dawn and dark. The cow needed to be milked, the horse fed and the stall mucked out. The vegetables weeded, apples picked and cooked into applesauce… Oh, Lord, the drudgery never ended. Sometimes she felt as if she were suffocating.

But it would be worth it in the end. Dan would be so pleased when he returned, so proud of her. Something unforeseen must have happened to him that day he left for town. An accident, perhaps. Whatever it was, when he came home he’d find the farm prospering and his wife waiting with welcoming arms.

With a wrench she turned her mind away from Dan. She wouldn’t allow herself to brood. She’d think about how peaceful it was just lying here in her bed, listening to the quiet noises she never had time to stop and enjoy—twittering finches in the pepper tree, Florence lowing across the meadow.

No sound came from downstairs. Maybe Mr. Flint had absconded with her horse and her cow, after all?

Don’t be an idiot. If that rambling man had wanted either, he would have taken them this morning and not returned. True, he did take the horse, but he’d brought him back. Even so, it was hard to trust him. Even if he could set a broken leg.

By late afternoon Jess still tramped the perimeter of Ellen’s farm. His shadow lengthened, but he had to learn the lay of the land. Stopping under the same spreading oak he’d climbed earlier, he knelt, unfolded a rumpled sheet of brown grocer’s paper and wrestled a pencil stub out of his jeans pocket.

“Here, and here,” he muttered. He marked the points with an X on the makeshift map, then sketched in the barn, the house, the creek and the pasture beyond it, the apple trees at the back of the property, even the tree under which he sat. Chewing the tip of the pencil, he studied the layout, then bent to draw a grid over the landmarks. Each square represented maybe five long strides. He’d start at the upper left boundary and methodically work his way across and then down. He’d cover every goddam inch of this ground before husband Dan came home.

By suppertime, Jess had milked Florence and locked the hens in their shelter. For the evening meal he boiled up an armload of sweet corn he’d picked, and heated a can of beans from her pantry. He dished up two plates, piling his own high with ears of corn, and clumped upstairs to Ellen’s bedside.

He also carried with him the oak limb he’d cut and shaped this afternoon. By God, he was more nervous about what she’d think of that bit of wood than about his cooking.

Ellen heard him coming up the stairs, a clump and a pause, clump and pause. Balancing two steaming plates in his hands, he walked to the chiffonier and set them down next to the water basin.

“Got something for you,” he said in a gravelly voice.

“Supper, so I see. That is good of you, Mr. Flint.”

“Something besides supper.” He unhooked an odd-shaped length of tree limb from his forearm and presented it for her inspection. “It’s a crutch. I made it this afternoon.”

Ellen stared at it. The wood had been cleverly shaped using the natural curve of the limb to fashion an underarm prop, padded with one of her clean dish towels. Her throat tightened.

She appreciated his gesture more than she could say.

She tried to smile, but her lips were trembly. “How very kind of you, Mr. Flint.”

“It’s a necessity, the way I see it. You need a way to get around, even if it’s only as far as your wardrobe and the commode. Which, I assume, is under the bed?”

Her face flushed with heat. “It is.” Surely they should not speak of such an intimate matter as her commode? It made her feel uneasy, as if he knew things about her she wished he didn’t.

He laid the crutch at the foot of the bed and turned to the plates on the chiffonier. “You can try it out after supper.”

He settled two pillows under her shoulders and laid another across her lap, pulled two forks out of his shirt pocket and handed her one. Her plate he settled on the lap pillow. Two ears of corn swam in a puddle of melted butter, and suddenly she was ravenous.

“I cannot imagine why I should be so hungry! All I’ve done is lie in bed all day.” She lifted the corn and sank her teeth into the tender, sweet kernels, watching Mr. Flint settle into the rocker and begin to eat as well.

“Healing uses energy, just as much as baling hay. That’s why you’re hungry.”

Ellen tipped her head to look at him. “You really are a doctor, aren’t you?”

“Was one once, yes, as I told you. Sounds like you didn’t believe me. I served four years, until—” He stopped abruptly.

“Until?”

“Until I stopped believing I could save anyone.”

“Sometimes I don’t know what I believe,” Ellen heard herself say. She gnawed another two rows of kernels to hide her embarrassment. Butter dribbled down her chin but she didn’t care. Corn on the cob had never tasted so good.

He sent her a penetrating look. “Why is that, Miz O’Brian?”

“It was clear once. Before Dan left. I believed in him. I believed in the farm, the land. In myself. I knew what my duty was as a wife.”

She shouldn’t be telling him this! But she’d kept the fight between her duty and her feelings inside for so long she would burst if she didn’t let out just a little bit of it. “Now, I…well, of course I still believe in the land.”

Jess stopped rocking. “But not in yourself?”

She shook her head, then started on the second ear of corn on her plate. “Not so much anymore. Sometimes I have to ask myself…” She stopped, surprised at her need to talk about it. Surprised by the feelings she had kept locked up inside her.

He tipped the rocking chair forward. “You ever ask yourself what you will do if Dan doesn’t come back? Why a woman like you is wasting her life waiting for a man who’s been gone all these years?”

Her eyes widened. “Well, yes. I keep thinking one of these days he’ll just walk in the gate, but it’s been almost three years. I don’t know how to stop waiting for him.”

Jess nodded. “I wondered the same thing about my own life once. Nobody walked through my gate, so one day I got the bit in my teeth and walked through it myself. Left the army and came north.”

With Callie. That’s where everything started to go sour.

“I expect I am talking too much,” Ellen said. Her cheeks grew pink as she forked up her beans. “I always talk to myself when I’m frightened or worried about something.”

“Long conversations?” He didn’t have the vaguest idea why he asked that, other than he was taken with the idea of her talking to herself. What did an almost-dried-up farm wife say to herself?

“Oh, not always. Sometimes I talk to Florence while I’m milking her. And the chickens, although they are terrible listeners.”

Jess choked back a snort of laughter. Chickens. And Florence.

“Sometimes I even talk to my carrots and tomatoes. I tell them how proud I am that they grow so nicely.”

Jess fastened his gaze on the plate of food in his lap. Her guileless confession was like a sharp stick poking at his heart.

“I’d say you’re lonely, Miz O’Brian.”

She said nothing for a long while. Finally she pushed her empty plate to one side of the lap pillow and laid her fork down alongside the two well-cleaned corncobs. “Mr. Flint, could I trouble you for a glass of water?”

Jess grinned. She sure could. He’d thought about his surprise most of the day. That is, when he wasn’t busy mapping the property. Tipping the two corncobs from her plate onto his, he went downstairs, returning in a few moments with two glasses of cold liquid.

“Lemonade!” she exclaimed at the first taste. “Where did you—?”

“At the mercantile in town.” The look of wonder and delight on her face pricked his chest in a way he hadn’t expected.

She took two big swallows, sighed with pleasure and then skewered him with those eyes of hers. “You didn’t steal the lemons, did you?”

“On the contrary. You paid for them.” He waited for her to object, but she said not one word, just wrapped her hands around the cool glass and smiled.

“You don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve tasted lemonade.”

He could guess. About as long as it had been since she’d cranked up a batch of ice cream or had a new dress or danced at a social.

Or made love with a man.

Where had that come from? Ah, hell, it was obvious. She didn’t have the look of a woman who ran loose; she tied up her hair at her neck and made do with chickens and a broken-down horse for company.

And then there was his own hunger, Jess admitted. The human male was simpleminded in some very basic ways. But he couldn’t let that get in his way.

“You ready to try out the crutch?”

She drank the last of the lemonade and set the glass on the night table. “I guess I’m ready.”

Jess studied her splinted right leg. “You’ll have to sit up and swing your legs to the edge of the bed. Let your right one stick straight out, and don’t try to bend it.”

He settled his hands on her shoulders and pulled her up off the pile of pillows, then gently pivoted her body and eased her legs into position. He tried to shut out his awareness of her as a woman, how warm her skin felt, how good she smelled. Might be easier if she had more covering her than just her camisole and her drawers, especially with one leg split up to her thigh.

“Does it hurt?”

“Some. Not sharp and awful like it was before you set it. Just a steady ache.”

“You cannot put any weight on that leg, Ellen. When you stand up, the crutch and your left leg will have to support you. You understand?”

She nodded. He positioned the crutch pad under her right armpit. Keeping his hands at her waist, he tugged her toward him until she stood upright. She swayed forward, but he tightened his grip to steady her.

“Take a step.”

“I will if I can,” she said. Her voice shook slightly, and he realized she was frightened. “Don’t let go of me.”

She plunked the crutch tip onto the floor and lurched toward him. Again he steadied her, but this time she was closer. So close he could smell her hair, a fragrance like roses and something spicy and clean. He loosened his grip at her waist, but kept his hands in place so she wouldn’t fall.

She stumbled into him, then righted herself, breathing heavily. His own breathing was none too steady, he noted. The brief touch of her forehead against his chin, the smoky-sweet scent rising from her skin slammed into his gut like a 50-caliber bullet.

Instantly he lifted his hands from her body, but too late. He wanted to smell her, all of her. Taste her.

And more. His groin tightened.

Jess let out an uneven breath. What the hell was he thinking? There was something he had to do here, and the woman didn’t matter. She damn well couldn’t matter.

Chapter Five

I t took Ellen a quarter of an hour to maneuver herself down the stairs using the crutch Mr. Flint had contrived for her. Settling one leg on the lower step and swinging the curved oak staff down to meet it, stair by stair, she managed a noisy descent, terrified that at any second she would land off balance and tumble to the bottom. But not even the ache in her injured leg dampened her determination. She had chickens to feed. She had herself to feed as well.

Moving around on only one good leg made her heart pound with exertion. By the time she reached the landing, her breath was heaving in and out in hoarse gasps. Now she knew why old Jeremiah Dowd, who had lost a leg during the War of the Rebellion, spent so many afternoons sitting under the leafy oak tree in the town square.

The first thing she saw when she stumped into the kitchen was her blue speckleware coffeepot on the still-warm stove. She lifted the lid and peeked in to find an almost full pot of rich-smelling brew. Four fresh eggs nestled in a china bowl, and the frying pan waited beside it. Thoughtful of the man. Either he was more civilized than she’d thought or he was after something.

But what? What would make a man like Mr. Flint take interest in the tiny farm she was working so hard to hold on to?

She broke the eggs into the bowl, whipped them into a froth with a fork and had just poured them into the butter-coated pan when she glanced out the window. Her hand froze on the spatula.

Mr. Flint stood in her yard, stirring something in her washtub, which sat over a fire pit he’d dug. With his shirt off he looked younger than she had supposed, his chest well developed, his back lean and tanned. She gazed at his smooth, bronzy skin and the V of fine dark hair that disappeared beneath his belt buckle until she felt her cheeks flush. With every movement of the peeled branch he used to stir the tub contents, sinewy muscles rippled in his shoulders.

Ellen slid the frying pan off the heat and clumped out onto the back porch. The hole in the screen door had been patched with a scrap of wire mesh. She didn’t need reminding that there were zillions of such chores waiting to be addressed. Annoyed, she pushed the screen open with a slap. “What do you think you’re doing?”

He poled the sudsy mass of pale-colored garments around the tub without looking up. “Washing clothes.”

Steam rose into the hot morning air, making Ellen more acutely aware of the heat in the pit of her stomach. Heat she hadn’t felt since Dan left.

“I usually do that in the shade. Yonder, by the pepper tree.” She flinched at the accusatory tone in her voice. What was the matter with her? The man was doing her a favor, taking on work she couldn’t manage at present.

He looked at her, shading his eyes with one hand. “Wasn’t any sun when I started. Real pretty sunrise, though.”

He’d started washing clothes at dawn? Ellen moved closer and peered down into the tub. She recognized the blue shirt he’d worn the day before, then the petticoat she’d muddied in the creek and the underdrawers he’d cut off her when he’d set her leg. Then another pair of what looked like men’s drawers. No, two pairs.

His mouth quirked in a lazy, off-center smile. “Been awhile since my duds have seen hot water. I’m washing everything I own except the pants I’m wearing.”

Heavens, did that mean under his tight-fitting jeans he wore no…no underwear? She stared at his crotch for an instant, then flicked her gaze to his mouth. Unlike his eyes, which revealed nothing, his mouth was extraordinarily expressive. She could practically read his mind from the position of his lips. At this moment, he was not thinking of his tub of washing; he was thinking of her!

Ellen swallowed hard. “Save the water. The creek’s getting low, and my tomatoes are drying up.”

“Got lye soap in it. You still want—”

“The tomatoes are over there, trained up on the chicken wire.” Again, the words came out harsher than she intended.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“The rinse water,” she snapped. “Not the soapy. Pour the soapy water on my honeysuckle vine next to the chicken house.”

He studied her a moment longer than necessary, then shrugged his shoulders and resumed stirring the tub contents. The flush of heat in Ellen’s face traveled down her neck and into her chest, as if a rush of hot, wet wind had curled about her.

She pivoted so fast the crutch under her armpit wobbled. “Excuse me, Mr. Flint. I have quite forgotten something.”

Jess chuckled as she stumped away across the yard. “Call me Jess, why don’t you?” he said to her back.

She kept moving. “Why should I?”

“Because it looks like I’ll be here for a while.” He chuckled again as the screen door snapped shut. He could tell she didn’t like the idea much.

That was fine with him. In a funny way he didn’t much like the idea, either, even though it was what he’d planned. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy her company, because he did. She had a crispness about her, a strength he found intriguing. She worked hard. The vegetable garden flourished, the cow was healthy, the horse well cared for. She even had a well-scrubbed kitchen floor. It could not have been easy for her alone all this time, but it sure was plain she wasn’t a quitter. She had courage and she had grit. He wondered if husband Dan knew what he’d thrown away when he rode off.

Ellen O’Brian had two other things Jess would give his right arm for—the respect of the townspeople and the ability to laugh at herself. Rare qualities for a woman in these circumstances. Downright admirable. He wished he didn’t have to hurt her to get what he wanted.

For a moment he considered stripping and tossing his jeans into the tub, then discarded the idea. It might spook her so bad she’d run him off, and no matter how dirt-encrusted or sweat-sticky his trousers, he couldn’t take the risk.

He watched the soapy water bubble around his underdrawers and her petticoat. Entwined together in a sudsy knot, the garments writhed in a sinuously suggestive dance, and suddenly he remembered the satiny skin of her thigh when he’d cut her lace-trimmed drawers away. His fingers tightened on the stirring pole. Better keep his mind on her tomatoes.

And on his most important task of the day—searching another small area of O’Brian land.

When the clothes looked reasonably clean, he dragged the tub of water off the fire and over to the chicken house, tipping it out where the honeysuckle vine wound up the wall and spilled over the roof. A honeysuckle vine on a chicken house, of all things. On the privy, too, he noted. He’d save a gallon or so of water for that one as well.

Rinsing was easier. And cooler. He pumped fresh water into the tub, and after he’d kicked dirt over his coals and wrung out all the rinsed garments, he scouted for a clothesline hook. On his circuit around the yard he glimpsed a blur of blue through the kitchen window.

She wore another one of her husband’s shirts, a plain blue chambray. Most women would look dowdy in such a getup, but even though the shoulder seams drooped off her slim form and she’d rolled the sleeves up to her elbows, the oversize garment made her look female as hell. He’d bet she didn’t know that. Or maybe she didn’t care what she looked like.

Jess halted. He’d never met a woman who didn’t care about her appearance. Was saving this farm for her scoundrel of a husband more important to her than how she felt as a woman?

The thought nagged at the back of his brain until he found the clothesline loop at the side of the house and ran a rope to the pepper tree some yards away. He lugged over the tub of clean, wet clothes and began to drape the garments over the line.

First her lace-trimmed underdrawers. Carefully he shook the wrinkles from the garment and then, unable to suppress the urge, he stood looking at it. The warm breeze caught the underside and belled the drawers out. The leg he’d had to slit flapped in the current of air; maybe she could mend it on the treadle sewing machine he’d seen in her parlor.

He ran one finger down the seam. It was all that lacy edging that fascinated him. She sure as hell cared what she wore underneath her sturdy work skirt and Dan’s old shirt. On impulse, he brought the soft white fabric to his nose and inhaled. Beneath the clean smell of laundry soap floated a faint flowery scent. He breathed in again, deeper, and almost choked at the sound of her voice.

“Clothespins,” she said. She thrust a striped denim drawstring sack at him and shook it once so it rattled. The sound reminded him of the collection of chicken wishbones he’d treasured as a boy. Funny thing to treasure, maybe, but knowing he had a chance for even one of his wishes to come true had kept him going. Jess wished he had one of those wishbones now, just for luck.

With an effort he jerked his thoughts back to the laundry. “Thanks.”

She stood looking at him, dropped her gaze to the underdrawers in his hand and then perused the line he’d rigged.

“I should be thanking you, Mr. Flint. I don’t believe I could manage hanging out clothes balancing on my crutch.”

“Don’t even try,” he ordered. “If you fall, I’ll have another load of washing to do.”

A glimmer of a smile touched her mouth. “I try never to take on more than I can manage.”

“Seems to me running this farm might be more than you can manage. And don’t ‘Mr. Flint’ me. Name’s Jess. Short for Jason.”

Her eyes widened and he could have bit his tongue off. Hell, she must have heard of Jason Flint. Half the sheriffs west of the Mississippi had his picture plastered all over their walls.

“Very well, then. Jess.” She looked at him curiously and Jess’s gut tightened. If she did recognize him, she could go for the sheriff.

But she couldn’t ride. She couldn’t even walk very far. Besides, maybe she hadn’t flinched because of his name; might be something else that made those unnerving, clear blue eyes look so big. Maybe his photograph wasn’t on the sheriff’s wall in Willow Flat.

“You going to wave my smalls around until they’re dry?” she inquired, a bite in her tone.

“Uh…guess not, ma’am.”

“Then stop staring at them and hang ’em up. There are other chores to do.”

Jess obeyed, pinning the lace-edged garment to the line, then shaking out her wet petticoat.

“Hang that upside down,” she instructed. “Stretch the hem out so it’ll dry faster.”

Without a word, he did as she asked. While he secured seven clothespins along the bottom of edge of her petticoat, she leaned on her crutch and fidgeted. When he turned back to the tub of wet clothes, he caught her looking at him. Goddam if her eyes seemed to get more penetrating every time they met his.

Jess swallowed. “What other work do you need done today?”

“Tiny needs fresh hay in his stall, and that means shoveling out the manure.”

“Easy enough. Then what?”

“You won’t like it.” She said it with a half smile on her lips.

“Okay, I won’t like it.” He watched her eyes turn sparkly as she studied him.

“You hired me, Miz O’Brian. I do what you say, even if I don’t like it.” When she opened her mouth, he braced himself.

“There’s a town social on Sunday. I want you to help me bake a cake.”

He’d forgotten he’d promised Svensen he’d remind her of the social. Ah, hell, what difference did it make if it had slipped his mind? It hadn’t slipped hers.

“A cake,” he said, his voice flat.

“A spice cake, flavored with anise. I’ve made it for the social every year since I was tall enough to reach the oven door.” Every year since Mama had died.

“What’s so difficult about it that you need help?”

She sent him such a withering look he felt his throat go dry. “I can’t beat cake batter five hundred strokes and hold on to this crutch at the same time.”

She inspected the last garment remaining in the washtub—his blue shirt—and raised her eyes as far as the clothesline. “Let’s muck out the barn first while your shirt dries. I am not sure I want a half-naked man in my kitchen.”

Her cheeks, he noted, were tinged a soft rosy pink. “Who’s going to know?” he retorted. “Seems to me what you do in the privacy of your own house is…private.”

Ellen pursed her lips and tipped her head to one side. “I will know.”

Jess grinned. “Some folks are proper only when other folks are looking. Then there are some, maybe like you, with a moral code they carry on the inside.”