Plum Creek Bride

Chapter Two

With grudging admiration, Jonathan watched as Erika bent over the wicker cradle. She wasn’t the first serving girl to be subjected to Adeline Benbow’s assessing eye and pointed questions, but she was the first to stay more than five minutes after the experience.

How long Miss Scharf would last under his housekeeper’s exacting rule was another matter entirely, but at the moment the prospect solved the problem of what to do with the young woman. Since Mrs. Benbow expressed a preference for the girl’s help, however temporary, he couldn’t simply turn her out.

He’d lay odds she’d last less than a week. Mrs. Benbow could be a stem taskmaster, and now that she was too old to climb the stairs more than once a day, she bore an extra grudge against life in general and young women in particular. If Miss Scharf lasted more than the week, he’d try to find her another position. But she would need the hide of a rhinoceros to survive even one day under Mrs. Benbow.

He watched Erika gently lift the folds of the cambric sacque away from the baby’s body with capable, graceful hands. The look on her face when she touched his daughter told him she had a sentimental nature. And sentiment meant vulnerability. If he knew anything about women, Miss Scharf had a soft heart, and because of it, she would suffer. In spite of himself, he felt a twinge of sympathy for the eager, rosy-cheeked woman.

Erika smoothed out the diaper and draped it over the edge of the wicker cradle. Moving very deliberately, she unsnapped the safety pins holding the wet garment in place. As she did so, she studied the arrangement of folds in the material, the position of the fasteners, how they were attached. With care, she lifted away the wet diaper.

The housekeeper watched her every move, then tossed the tea towel she’d been fanning herself with into the cradle. Erika’s toes curled. What was she supposed to do with that?

“Cornstarch is in the candy dish,” the older woman offered in a dry tone. She pointed to a fluted glass bowl on a side table.

Cornstarch? Why would she need cornstarch?

As if in answer to her unspoken question, Dr. Callender spoke in a low, controlled voice. “It is much superior to nursery powder.”

Powder! Of course. With an inward sigh of relief, she rolled the wet diaper into a wad and deposited it on an empty corner of the doctor’s desk. She heard Mrs. Benbow’s snort of disapproval and the physician’s quick intake of breath, but she was too distracted to care. Cornstarch must be for the baby’s moist skin. She eyed the huck tea towel.

That was it! She must dry the infant’s tender skin, then dust on the fine white powder. Oh, thank you, God, for showing me how to proceed

She snatched up the wrinkled towel and just as quickly discarded it. “Is soiled,” she said as calmly as she could. “May I have clean one?”

The housekeeper rose and drew herself up with an air of superiority. The stiff bombazine dress rustled in the quiet room, and Erika had a quick vision of a peacock displaying its feathers.

“Certainly,” the woman snapped. The door clicked shut behind her.

Left alone with the doctor, Erika experienced a moment of panic. Would he notice her inexperience?

She kept her back to him as she folded the dry material into what she judged to be a diaper-shaped rectangle. The door opened and in swept Mrs. Benbow, a clean towel in her hand. Erika accepted it, then reached for the dish of cornstarch. She patted the baby’s damp skin with the towel, then dusted on the powder with the cotton ball in the dish cover.

As she lifted the folded diaper she managed a surreptitious glance behind her. Both Dr. Callender and his housekeeper had their attention riveted on her. She could block out one person’s view with her body, but not both. One of them would just have to witness her first fumbling attempt at changing an infant’s diaper. Which one should it be?

She chose the housekeeper. The physician would dismiss her at once if he suspected how inexperienced she was. Mrs. Benbow might disapprove, but she would not complain, since she obviously regarded caring for the infant herself with some distaste.

Keeping her back toward. Dr. Callender, Erika lifted the baby’s tiny legs and slid the material beneath her rump. She wished her hands would stop shaking! Slowly she brought the material up between the kicking limbs. Praying she would not stab the infant with the pin, she forced the point through thicknesses of cotton material and, using her finger as a guide, snapped the device securely in place. When the second pin closed, Erika breathed in relief. She’d done it!

“Humph!” Mrs. Benbow sniffed behind her. “Now I s’pose you’ll need that milk heated up. I’ll have to go poke up my stove.” With a sour look on her face, the woman yanked open the study door.

“Please,” Erika was amazed to hear herself say. “Pour out old milk. Use fresh.”

The housekeeper stiffened, and Erika held her breath.

“Miss Scharf is right,” the doctor said in a low, even voice. “In this hot weather, milk clabbers readily.”

“Harrumph!” The housekeeper huf—fed and swished away, an angry set to her thin, hunched shoulders.

Milk, Erika thought desperately. Babies needed milk, of course, but how much? How warm? And if not from a mother’s breast, how was it to be drunk?

“Boil the nursing flask, too, Mrs. Benbow,” the physician called through the open door.

Ah, that was it-a bottle of some sort! Erika covered her relief by lifting the infant into her arms. Except for a single blanket over the mattress, no other bedding softened the bare wicker.

She stared down at the starkly appointed cradle, then pivoted toward the doctor. “Where is kept baby’s clothes and…bed makings?”

“Tess…” A momentary flash of anguish twisted the physician’s regular features. He swallowed, then continued. “My wife stored the baby’s things in the nursery.”

“Nursery? Where is nursery?”

“Upstairs. Mrs. Benbow cannot manage the stairs, so she moved the cradle into my study until.for the time being.”

“I move back to nursery,” Erika announced. “I can go up and down stairs. I t’ink is why missus send for me.”

Jonathan said nothing. He strode to the laceshrouded window, drew the panel to one side and stared out. He would be glad to have the child ensconced out of earshot in the special room Tess had insisted on when she had finally confessed her pregnancy. Every sound the baby made reminded him of his wife’s untimely death. Even so, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be left alone with himself in the sanctuary of his study.

But life could not stop because Tess was gone. It was time for him to see patients again. He had to resume his practice, or that quack Chilcoate would kill off half the town.

“Yes, move the babe upstairs,” he said, clipping his words short. And as for you, Erika Scharf, stay out of my sight.

To be honest, he wanted nothing to do with Tess’s child, or the young woman she had engaged without telling him. Women, he had learned, were devious and dishonest. Never again, he resolved, would he allow himself to love one. No woman would ever again enchain his heart.

And no child, either.

Erika frowned as she inspected the nursery. The small, stifling room next to her own chamber smelled of dust and dried lavender and obviously had never been used. A stack of clean diapers filled the laceruffled bassinet; on top of the broad, waist-high chest on the opposite wall lay a folded blue knit shawl. A cobweb looped from the garment to one drawer pull.

A rocking chair stood next to the single window. Erika noticed the layer of dust between the dark walnut slats. It looked as if no one had ever sat in it.

She lifted the diapers off the striped ticking mattress and set them on top of the chest. God in heaven, the infant’s bed had not even been made up!

Erika cocked her head to one side. The untouched state of the room answered her questions about the odd situation she’d stepped into. From birth, the child had evidently been cared for by the housekeeperfed and tended to in the wicker cradle downstairs in the doctor’s study. Considering Mrs. Benbow’s spare, bent frame, her inability to climb the stairs and her obvious reticence about picking up the baby even when it wailed, Erika surmised the child had received attention only out of duty. Even the papa, Dr. Callender, seemed uninterested. Remote.

Had he delivered the infant and immediately relegated her to the care of his dour housekeeper as his wife lay dying? Poor man.

And the poor Liebchen! What a sad beginning for a child. No one to hold or comfort her, no warm mama’s body to nestle against, no breast to suckle. Erika knew instinctively what the child needed. Love.

And that silent, enigmatic man whose house this was planned to send his own child to Scotland? Erika would die first. The instant those tiny, perfect pink fingers had curled around her thumb, Erika’s heart had contracted. Now the child lay downstairs, looked after but not loved. It was not good enough.

She plucked the handerchief from her apron pocket and whisked it over the dusty chair and bureau top, shook out the shawl and folded the mound of diapers and laid them in an empty drawer. In the middle drawer she found a set of infant-sized sheets and a tiny pillowcase with embroidered pink and gold flowers twining around the edge. She made up the bassinet, laid a rose-edged crocheted baby blanket over the top sheet and opened the window to air the room. A warm, sweet-scented breeze washed over her perspiring face.

Erika pressed her forefinger against the smooth rocker back, setting it in motion. Forgive me if I not know everything, Mrs. Callender, but I learn quick. I will take good care of your beautiful baby girl.

She watched the chair tip slowly forward and then back on its long, curved runners, as if nodding in silent agreement.

Chapter Three

Erika slipped the cambric sacque over the baby’s head and cradled the tiny form in the crook of her arm. In the single day since her arrival in Plum Creek, she had mastered not only changing diapers but dressing and feeding Marian Elizabeth Callender. Now, alone in the kitchen on Sunday morning while Mrs. Benbow attended church, Erika planned to bathe the child for the first time.

Grateful not to have the housekeeper’s sharp eyes assessing her every motion, she moved about the spotless, meticulously arranged pantry searching for a vessel to serve as the baby’s bathtub. The teakettle on the stove hissed as she scanned the cabinets and long, painted shelves for a basin of the appropriate size.

Skillets, cooking pots of various sizes, three sets of china. What riches! She gazed about her in awe. So many beautiful things! The blue-flowered plates she recognized from last night’s dinner, eaten in haste on the small kitchen table while Mrs. Benbow grudgingly rocked the baby in the wicker cradle.

Aside from her own bedroom upstairs, the wellkept kitchen with its ornate, nickel-trimmed iron stove and the wealth of utensils and china and glassware was her favorite room.

Ah, there! On the top shelf! Her gaze fell upon a large white china bowl with a matching cover. Just the right shape for a baby to sit in, and the cover so clever—to keep the water warm until bath time! Shifting the infant to her other arm, Erika reached over her head to retrieve the basin.

Zu hoch. Too high up, she amended in English. She must remember to speak the language of America! She would never become a citizen of this great country if she could not.

Undaunted, she settled the infant on a folded towel in the oblong porcelained iron sink and dragged a stool over to the shelf. She climbed onto the stool and with care lifted down the curious dish, cover and all. At the same instant the tall figure of Dr. Callender filled the doorway.

His white shirt was rumpled, his eyes red rimmed, as if he had not slept. The tumble of unruly coalblack curls over his forehead gave him an almost jaunty, boyish look. But his pale, strained face told her otherwise.

“Good day, Miss Scharf. I thought I would brew myself a cup of tea before Mrs. Benbow.” He turned somber gray eyes up at her, perched on the stool, and his brows rose. “.returns from her weekly religious indulgence,” he finished after a moment’s hesitation.

“Water is hot,” Erika said as she stepped off the stool. She set the china basin on the sideboard.

His gaze followed her, the expression on his face changing as he spied the infant. “What, may I ask, is the baby doing in the sink?”

“Oh, I bath baby now.” Erika gestured at the covered dish. “I find, how you say, bath-ing tub, on shelf. You use first hot water in kettle to make tea, then I wash baby.”

The eloquent, dark brows drew together. “You’re going to bathe my daughter in that?”

“Is what Mrs. Benbow uses, ja?”

“Certainly not. This, young woman—” he tapped a deliberate forefinger on the dish cover “—is a soup tureen. A wedding gift from my wife’s uncle in Savannah.”

“Ah. I see.”

Jonathan saw a sheepish smile curve the corners of her mouth.

“I make mistake.”

He watched her hand dive into her apron pocket and withdraw a small notebook and a chewed pencil stub.

“How you spell, please?”

He spelled out the words slowly as she scribbled on the pad. “Toor-een,” she pronounced. “For Suppe, ja?”

“For soup, yes. Not for bathing.”

“Ah.” The blue eyes sparkled with the joy of comprehension. “What for baby, then?”

Jonathan opened his mouth to reply, then snapped his jaw shut. He hadn’t the faintest idea. To his surprise, it annoyed him, not knowing. He liked to have answers—remedies—for the problems that came his way. His lack of a ready solution in this area made him uneasy, as if a part of his life were drifting out of his control. What would one use to bathe the infant?

When he’d delivered newborns in other households, particularly those far from town, he’d used a bucket or a small washtub, whatever was handy and reasonably clean. He realized suddenly that after Tess’s death he hadn’t been interested enough in the child to wonder about her care.

The child’s birth had cost him his wife. He had wanted nothing to do with Tess’s child. He knew he should feel ashamed of such antipathy toward his own flesh and blood, but what he felt was not shame but rage. His soul was dead. His heart was fired not by love but by fury.

What a reprehensible man he must be underneath the veneer of good manners and education! He wasn’t fit to lick the boots of the poorest, most illiterate farmer in Jackson County.

He wondered about himself, about his sanity. Because of Erika Scharf’s question, because of her very presence in his kitchen at this moment, he felt himself jolted into a different awareness, as if he’d been sleeping and she had shaken him awake. Their roles were reversed. She belonged; he did not.

Great Scott, he was a stranger in his own house!

Erika pointed to the top shelf of a glass-fronted cabinet. “That one,” she said, satisfaction tingeing her voice. “Reach for me, please?”

Jonathan eyed the stack of china plates and bowls. Extending one arm above her head, he opened the cabinet door and lifted down the indicated bowl. Tess’s best Haviland vegetable dish. With suppressed amusement he handed the dish to the young woman who waited, arms outstretched.

He watched Erika run her fingers over the dish and bit back a chuckle. Mrs. Benbow prepared dinner each Sunday evening; tonight’s meal might prove more interesting than usual. What would his housekeeper say when she discovered Erika’s use for her favorite serving dish?

* * *

Erika smoothed her hands over the material of her best skirt, a simple gored blue percale that had seen many washings. It was her only other garment besides a serviceable denim work skirt and her black travel ensemble. She’d ironed out the creases earlier that afternoon, after the baby’s bath and afternoon feeding, heating up the sadiron on the kitchen stove while she washed and dried the flowered china bowl she’d used for the baby’s bath.

Now, with the infant sleeping soundly in the next room, she tucked the stray wisps of hair into the crown of braids she’d wound on top of her head, keeping one ear attuned to the nursery. She had purposely left the door ajar to hear if the child cried.

Her hand stilled. She had actually been invited to join the doctor and Mrs. Benbow in the dining room—not as a servant, but as if she were a member of the family. Once each week, the housekeeper had instructed, on the Lord’s Day, Dr. Callender and his wife insisted the housekeeper join them at the formal Sunday meal. Now that his wife had “passed over,” as the older woman put it, Dr. Callender wished to carry on the tradition. Erika would join them at the table.

She peeked into the nursery to satisfy herself that the baby still slept. At the sight of the delicate, perfect fingers curled outside the rose coverlet, her heart lifted in her chest like a balloon. At any moment she expected to float up off the floor. A baby was a miracle from another world, so small and beautifully formed. She shook her head in wonder.

Downstairs, an ivory damask cloth covered the walnut table, which was laden with sparkling crystal and gleaming plates and bowls. Erika quailed at the sight. All those shiny forks and spoons, and glasses and plates on top of plates. How would she ever know which to use?

At the head of the table Dr. Callender sat, tapping a well-manicured forefinger against his crystal wineglass. Instead of the rumpled white shirt, the physician wore dark trousers and a black jacket, a silvergray silk cravat loosely knotted under his chin. He looked every inch a prince, or even a king. And he was not smiling.

At his right, Mrs. Benbow perched stiffly in the high-backed chair like a black sparrow with sharp, unblinking eyes.

Erika’s throat constricted. She hadn’t the slightest notion what to say to the doctor, or to the formidable woman who stared at her with obvious disapproval.

“Miss Scharf.” The doctor’s low, unemotional voice sent a butterfly skittering into her stomach.

“In this house, meals are attended with unfailing punctuality.”

Erika shifted her gaze from the housekeeper to the dark-haired man at the head of the table. “What means that, unfailing punc—punctu.?”

“You’re late,” snapped the housekeeper. “That’s what it means. My mashed potatoes will be stonecold.” She gestured at the mounded bowl on which a chunk of butter the size of a hen’s egg melted.

“So sorry,” Erika murmured as she slipped into the empty chair across from the stern-faced woman. “Baby cry and cry after the milk I give her. I could not sooner come.”

“Quieting a crying child is a labor of Sisyphus,” the doctor observed. “It never stops.”

“I stop it,” Erika said softly. “I rock her until crying stops, and she falls asleep. Cannot be very good mama if not have—how you say?—waiting. No, patience—that is the word! Patience.”

The flicker of a smile twitched across the doctor’s finely proportioned lips. “Patience,” he echoed. He pushed back his chair and rose. “Cow’s milk often does not agree with infants. Goat’s milk might be better. Mrs. Benbow, help yourself to the vegetables while I carve.”

Goat’s milk! Where in the world would she find a goat? Erika opened her mouth to ask, but Dr. Callender lifted the cover off the serving platter and busied himself with a wickedly sharp-looking knife.

A tingle of apprehension danced up Erika’s spine as she watched the physician’s long, capable fingers expertly pare thin slices of roast chicken into a neat fan-shaped pile on the china platter. His quick, purposeful movements made her breath catch. He made cutting up the fowl look so simple, even graceful, as if he enjoyed slicing into the succulent flesh of a once-living creature.

Her heartbeat hiccuped. Of course, she reminded herself. He was Dr. Callender. Maybe he was also a surgeon, used to cutting into.things.

She shuddered and cast a look at the housekeeper. Mrs. Benbow’s gaze followed every motion the physician made, an approving gleam in her eyes. No doubt she considered it her chicken, Erika thought, which she had prepared and offered up as a sort of sacrifice to her employer.

“White meat or dark?” the doctor inquired.

Erika blinked. “What?”

He studied her with quizzical gray eyes, the knife in one hand, a two-pronged silver fork in the other. “Breast or thigh?”

She couldn’t utter a word. She hadn’t the faintest idea. In all her twenty-four years she had never been asked such a question. It was either food or no food, never what kind of food; his question was beyond her understanding. She had so much to learn in America!

One thing she did know, however, was that speaking the word breast out loud in this man’s presence was an impossibility. Already she felt her cheeks flame at the thought of such an intimacy. Thigh was just as bad.

“White,” she choked out at last.

“Breast, then,” he said. His voice was unemotional, but deep in his eyes a light flickered, as if he were secretly amused. “Mrs. Benbow?”

He lifted a generous piece of chicken onto Erika’s plate as he waited for the housekeeper’s reply.

“Chest, thank-ee.”

The doctor chuckled. He served the housekeeper, then himself, taking both thigh and drumstick and a double spoonful of the fluffy whipped potatoes.

Erika mentally inscribed the word chest in her study notebook. She had thought it meant a piece of furniture with drawers, but in English, she was learning, one word could have two meanings. Repeating the word over and over in her head, she watched Mrs. Benbow dip the serving spoon into the oversize vegetable dish.

When it came her turn, she dug in the silver spoon and hesitated. The bowl looked familiar. She plopped the potatoes onto her plate, continuing to study the container.

It was the baby’s bathtub! Erika froze in horror. Not two hours ago, she had used the same bowl to bathe the infant! What would Mrs. Benbow say if she knew?

But she didn’t know, Erika assured herself. The sour-faced woman was totally absorbed in cutting her chicken “chest” into tiny square pieces. The housekeeper would only know about Erika’s earlier use of the bowl if—

Her breath squeezed off. If Dr. Callender told her! Oh, dear God. Would he? Was her employment in America to last just these two magical days before she’d be turned out of this house to fend for herself?

Her heart in her throat, she sneaked a look at the black-haired, elegantly attired gentleman at the head of the table. Calmly he glanced at the vegetable dish and lifted a morsel of chicken past his lips. He chewed for what seemed an eternity, swallowed, then opened his mouth to speak.

Erika flinched as his gaze met hers. Now. He would tell Mrs. Benbow now what she had done with the vegetable bowl.

“Mrs. Benbow?”

The housekeeper bobbed her gray head. “Yes, sir?”

Erika shut her eyes. She didn’t want to see the look on Mrs. Benbow’s face when he told her.

“My compliments. This chicken is excellent.”

“Why, thank you, sir!”

Erika’s lids snapped open. Across the table a pair of gray eyes surveyed her with a keen look. One dark brow rose in a sardonic arch. “Is something wrong, Miss Scharf?” he inquired, his voice bland.

“No,” Erika managed. She stabbed her fork into the potatoes on her plate, nervously moving them into a circle. She kept her eyes glued to the crisscross marks her fork tines made. “Nothing is wrong.”

When at last she raised her head, she found he was still looking at her. A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth, but his eyes were the same—calm, distant, except for that sudden odd light in their depths.