Twenty-Two
Elam built just the right size stack of logs for a good draft in the stove then closed the door and adjusted the damper. That would be enough to heat the water in the cauldron and he would bring more wood upstairs after he talked to Brute.
He was dusting his hands, stepping from the hot water room, when he heard the feminine sound of a throat clearing behind him. He turned to see Susanna leaning against the opposite hallway wall, her hair mussed, her dress twisted awkwardly because of her shoulder.
He heard the sounds of Cash’s squealing, Rolfe’s laughter, and Britte’s mother-hen voice downstairs.
“They’re playing in the bathroom,” Susanna told him. “I have to say, those little ones are three of the happiest children I’ve set eyes on. How did you get them through this mourning period with their gift of laughter still intact?”
He smiled as the sound of their voices continued up the stairwell. “Much prayer and help from friends and family.”
“Especially Keara, I don’t doubt.”
“She risked her reputation so she could spend time with us over the winter months. She has a kind nature.”
“And so do you. I think two kind people will be marvelous parents for a houseful of children.”
Elam met Susanna’s direct gaze and tried to read behind it. Was she being sarcastic or giving him her approval?
“You heard me,” she said. “I arrived on your front step on your wedding night injured and defiant, and Keara and the rest of this family has nursed me and cared for me. I see nothing but goodness in that woman.”
Those words eased a tightness inside him. It wasn’t as if he needed her approval, but she was and always would be his children’s aunt. “Then you see her as I do.”
“I hope not.”
He blinked at her.
“I realize you’re still in mourning over Gloria, and that this was a rushed wedding, to say the least. Keara has told me a great deal now that I’m lucid and on the mend. I realize you’re getting things backward, but I do hope you intend to court her as a suitor would court a young lady.”
“Court?”
“As you courted Gloria on your business trips back East.”
“But Keara and I are married.”
Susanna straightened from the wall. “Elam, I know you’ve been out of the romance game for ten years, but would you please try to remember how gently you treated Gloria after you two first met? How you eased her into gentle friendship, made those first tentative steps toward romance, and then toward lasting love?”
“That was young love.”
“And you don’t think Keara deserves the same kind of love? Oh, sure, I realize she’s a different woman, but she’s not a second-rate woman. Please don’t make her feel you settled for her as a consolation prize.”
“Susanna, there’s been no time—”
“A woman like her is worth the time. I see the way the two of you look at each other when each thinks the other isn’t looking. Don’t forget I was trained to be a keen observer of people. It’s often how I make my diagnoses.”
He took a step backward. “Fancy yourself a bit of a matchmaker, do you?”
“Oh no. The match has already been made. My intention is to assure that my niece and nephews continue to live in a happy environment filled with love. In order to do that, their father must truly love their stepmother. She is a woman worth that love.”
Elam suppressed a smile. “I met your aunt June a few times on my trips to Pennsylvania. She was a lady who spoke her mind. I can’t help believing she rubbed off on you.”
“I count that as a compliment, but she was my mother’s sister, and Gloria tended to have nearly as much invincibility. Keara has the strength of will to stand up to even that kind of outspokenness, and to thrive on a friendship with another strong-willed woman. I count her as a true friend.” Susanna reached for his arm. “Help me get down the stairs without falling, and I’ll keep quiet about your need to be told how to romance your new bride.”
He walked with her, taking care to move slowly. “I’m not sure Keara would appreciate any attempts at courting.”
“Why is that?”
“She was the one who insisted on a platonic partnership.”
“And you agreed to such an arrangement?”
“At the time I thought it best.”
“Have you, then, changed your mind since?”
He hesitated.
“That’s what I thought,” she said as they reached the bottom of the stairs. “If you can’t trust your own instincts—and I’ve found many a man who cannot do such a thing—why won’t you trust mine? I don’t think your new bride would be unreceptive to your charms.”
“You think I should court her.”
“Gently. As you were doing this morning out by the woodpile. I know you must remember a few things about it. I could see that she was charmed. Try it again, and again, until you get it right.”
“I’ll think about what you’re saying.” He glanced out the front window, where Keara and her pa stood in deep conversation. “Until I’m sure, I need to meet with a man about a plot to kill the Cherokee.”
Susanna reached up and firmly pinched his chin between thumb and forefinger. “Consider me Keara’s doting older sister. I have a great interest in her happiness. Don’t disappoint me.”
“Yes ma’am.” He scooted away before she could read even more deeply into his thoughts. The woman was disconcerting, to say the least.
And yet…he couldn’t help dwelling on her words as he stepped onto the porch to greet Brute.
Keara worked Susanna’s long hair into a lather with bars of the scented soaps Jael and Pen had given her as a wedding gift. In an attempt to keep Susanna’s wounded shoulder out of the water, she had Susanna lean her head over the rounded back edge of the tub and poured water from the tub over her hair and into a pan.
Keara had brewed a pot of strong tea and added whiskey to a cup to stave off Susanna’s pain. It was a good thing Susanna didn’t have a taste for alcohol, because if she did, she could become dependent on it in a hurry.
“I still hate that stuff,” Susanna said. “But it works almost as well as laudanum.”
“I’m glad.”
“Once you get me out of here, it’s your turn for a nice bath.”
“I had one yesterday.”
“Another one wouldn’t hurt, as long as the fire’s already going. Don’t waste all this sweet scent on me. I’m sure Elam will love it.”
Keara poured a pitcher of water over the soapy hair and watched the suds splash into the pan below. “I’ve told you, that isn’t…the way it is with us.”
“You’re a twenty-six-year-old woman, and you can’t see what’s right in front of your eyes?”
“I can see you’re going to talk until the water gets cold.”
“There’s still more heating up above our heads. Elam filled the stove full.”
Frustrated, Keara finished rinsing Susanna’s hair and reached for a towel. “I’ll leave you in peace to soak for a while,” she said as she wrapped the towel around Susanna’s head and tucked the end of it so it wouldn’t unfurl.
“I had a private conversation with your husband awhile ago,” Susanna said as Keara reached for the door.
That stopped Keara short. She turned back to see Susanna grinning at her over the side of the tub.
“You undersell yourself so much, my friend,” Susanna said.
“I don’t undersell anything, I just know what I am and what I’m not.”
“What are you?”
“I’m…well…I’m good with horses and children, I know how to care for the sick and tend a garden, milk cows, and goats.”
“That’s it? Then tell me what you aren’t good at.”
“This is silly. You need to finish your bath and I need to see to Cash.”
“I asked you a question.” Susanna’s authoritative tone rose through the scented bathroom.
Keara took a breath, let it out, turned to peer through the gauzy curtain over the window. “We’ve already discussed this. I’m not a…I’m not Gloria. Nothing like her. You’re her sister. You’re like her in so many ways, you could have given the children a touch of sophistication had you been their new mother instead of me.”
There, she’d said what she’d been thinking since Monday night, and she certainly didn’t have to turn around and look at Susanna to imagine the surprise on her face in the silence that followed her words.
“I could raise her children the way she would have raised them and been a second Gloria to Elam Jensen?” Susanna asked.
Keara hesitated, nodded.
“Why would I want to be my sister’s stand-in? I have no wish to remarry after ten years of marriage to Nathaniel.” Susanna’s voice began to rise. “Why, his brother Sikes looks a lot like Nathaniel. Do you think I would wish to be bound to that self-righteous clod simply because he resembles Nathaniel?”
“Of course not, but—”
“Then why do you believe Elam would wish to marry me? You’re the friend who has seen his family through the winter. You’re the woman he knows and loves, despite what you choose to believe.”
“I was merely being practical.”
“You were practical when you accepted Elam’s proposal?”
Keara sighed. “He didn’t propose. I did. I had to beg him to marry me.” Why, oh why, was she spilling all this information?
“And he saw the good sense you made,” Susanna said without hesitation. “Why are you now second-guessing yourself?”
“I didn’t stop to think about the realities of marriage.”
“You mean the intimacies?” Susanna grinned. “Nothing has changed since you proposed, but you are definitely lacking when it comes to romance.”
Keara caught her breath and turned to glare at Susanna. “Do you have to be so cruel?”
“Honesty is important. You’re the one who’s being cruel. How can you think your husband would be such a cad as to look at another woman when he’s married to you? Especially since he so obviously cares for you. Keara, you need to set things in order with that husband of yours before you both get off on the wrong foot and never get together again in this dance of love and marriage.”
Keara frowned. Those words, the “dance of love and marriage,” sounded so familiar. It was something her best friend would have said if she hadn’t died last year.
Keara stared down at her work-worn hands, realizing why she’d confided so much to Susanna.
She was Gloria’s sister. “I miss Gloria so much.”
There was a long silence between them as the sound of the children laughing and playing in the garden outside drifted past the gauzy curtain.
“I’ve missed her ever since we were separated in childhood,” Susanna said. Her voice was soft. “I know she must have been a wonderful friend to you, but I’m not Gloria. No one else will ever take her place in your heart, in mine, in Elam’s, or the children’s, but there is room in all our hearts for new friendships. New love.”
“I know.”
“If Gloria were still alive, you wouldn’t be married to her husband.”
“If she were alive, I’d have had a place to stay without worrying that the whole community would condemn me as an immoral woman.”
“But she isn’t alive,” Susanna said sadly. “And it does no good to think about such things. Now you’re married to Elam, and Gloria is no longer here. You have a new life to take hold of with both hands.” She closed her eyes. “When I arrived here on Monday I would never have believed that on Thursday I would be saying such things to the wife of my sister’s widower.”
“I understood why you resented me at first.”
“Well, I don’t resent you now. You and Elam have a whole future and plenty of room in this house. Your new sisters-in-law saw that. It’s why they kept the children out of the way so you would have a good wedding night—which I’m sorry I ruined for you.”
“You ruined nothing. There wasn’t anything to be ruined.”
Susanna fixed her with a look. “I’m getting tired of this, Keara Jensen. Look at that mirror on the wall, and don’t tell me you’re too blind to see the beauty in your reflection.”
“I can remember what Gloria looked like, how she behaved. It was nothing like me.”
“Two beautiful women can be very different in appearance, personality, and abilities, but down deep, the character of truly beautiful women is similar. Faithfulness, caring hearts, the ability to love. I have eyes to see, and I know what love looks like. What it feels like.”
Those words and the loss that echoed through them struck Keara with compassion. Here was Dr. Susanna Luther discussing romance with her, advising her, when Susanna lost her beloved husband a month ago.
“A good marriage to a solid, dependable man can be one of life’s greatest pleasures and strengths,” Susanna said more softly. “Elam is one of those good men. You’re a good woman.”
Keara felt a new sense of longing. How would it feel to be as loved by Elam as he was loved by her? And yet she had believed for so long that it wasn’t to be.
She stepped over to the mirror and stared at her reflection. Mirror-gazing had never been a habit of hers. The house where she’d grown up had no mirrors. In fact, these past months, coming to the house every day to see to the children and help Elam, she’d seen her reflection in this mirror more times than ever before in her life, and it disappointed her—hair so pale, when Gloria’s was so rich and black, eyes filled with shadows, when Gloria’s matched the sunlit sky. Dimples that made her look like an immature child instead of a well-developed woman.
She’d decided that the mirror let her know when her hair was a mess or her face was dirty. Otherwise, it wasn’t good for much.
“What’s on your mind, Keara Jensen?” Susanna asked.
“The past.”
“What about it?”
Keara picked up the pan of soapy water and poured it into the sink to drain. “Isn’t it always the past that affects our future? Once, before I was forced to quit school to attend to family needs, I had a crush on Johnny Stark, who lived in the village of Beaver. He had dark brown hair and broad shoulders. Half the girls in our school-house adored him. But when I admitted to a friend that I liked Johnny, she laughed. ‘You?’ she said. ‘What boy would be interested in you?’ ”
“Then she was no friend.”
“Soon, word spread through the school that silly ol’ tomboy Keara McBride, who couldn’t keep up with her classmates because she had chores at home—and who didn’t know how to dress or behave like a girl—thought she was in love with Johnny Stark.”
“How unkind,” Susanna said. “That is the opposite of ladylike behavior.”
“I know that now, of course, but I vowed to myself then that I would never share my heart like that again. I wasn’t the kind of girl to mingle or beguile a man. I was created to care for others, and that’s what I’m doing now. It’s God’s calling for me.”
“Oh, it may very well be. But I don’t believe that’s all you’re meant to be,” Susanna said. “It wouldn’t hurt, would it, to buy material that best matches your coloring, to sew a pretty dress or two like the one you’re wearing, or that lovely red dress you managed not to stain with blood on Monday night, and show Elam that you believe he deserves a beautiful wife? You do know how to sew, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“In that case, I need you to ride to town for me today.”
Keara’s gaze met Susanna’s in the mirror’s reflection. “I can’t leave here with things the way they are now.”
“The marshal isn’t after you, he’s after me, and if Elam’s here, I’ll be safe. I just want you to visit the mercantile and purchase material, some sewing supplies and lace. I can show you a few tricks of seaming that will help you show off your womanly curves to your adoring husband. You need new clothes anyway. I’ve inspected your wardrobe when you weren’t looking, and it’s definitely lacking.”
Keara caught her breath and swung around. “You rifled through my clothing?”
“Oh, my! Did I say that? Must be the whiskey talking.” Susanna didn’t look the least bit repentant, and when Keara stalked from the bathroom and shut the door firmly behind her, she heard Susanna’s laughter following her.