Patch saw the flash of panic that shifted across Leah"s face despite the girl"s confident, "Ma"ll be fine. Just a little upset stomach she can"t seem to shake."
When Patch stepped through the bedroom door and saw the older woman"s sickly pallor, she knew Leah"s mother was every bit as ill as the girl feared. The delicate-looking, white-haired woman lay in the center of a maple four-poster bed. She was dressed in a plain chambray nightgown that was tied primly at the neck. Her skin was stretched thin across high cheekbones, and her silvery gray eyes looked sunken in their sockets.
Despite the chaos in the rest of the house, here everything was clean and neat. The lace curtains had been drawn aside and sunlight streamed across the patterned quilt that was pulled up under the older lady"s arms.
Patch crossed to stand beside the bed. "How do you do, Mrs. Hawk. I"m Patricia Kendrick. My friends call me Patch. I hope you will, too."
"Call me Nell, please," the old woman said. "Sit down, Patch, and let me look at you."
Patch sat in the only chair available, a well-used rocker beside the bed. It wasn"t the kind of seat a lady normally chose. She forced herself to sit forward and put her feet flat on the floor. Patch wished she were dressed like a lady, but since she wasn"t, she settled for putting the steel rod down her spine, tipping her chin up, and squaring her shoulders. Once her fingers were laced together and settled on her lap, she faced Nell, ready to endure the older woman"s scrutiny.
Patch quickly began to fret under Nell"s regard. She would have resented the thoroughness of the examination if it had been anyone else. But she wanted Ethan"s mother to like her. After all, she planned to become the woman"s daughter-in-law. She resisted the urge to reach back and scratch as a devilish drop of perspiration trickled down her spine.
"You look like your mother," Nell said at last.
Patch froze. Her mother had died when she was three, and her father had rarely spoken about her. "You knew my mother?"
"Why sure, girl. Your pa"s place wasn"t far from here. Annarose and I crossed paths in town now and then. Your mother had beautiful bluebonnet eyes and silky blond hair-just like you. Your father adored her. Your grandfather could show you a picture of her if you go visit him."
Patch lurched to her feet. "My grandfather?"
"He lives in town now. You mean to say your father never told you about him?"
"No." Patch was still stunned. "Never."
"I suppose I should have guessed. Your grandfather was pretty hard on your pa when Annarose died. He blamed your father for your mother"s death. Corwin Marshall never was a forgiving man. I"m sorry if I"ve upset you."
Patch"s head was whirling. She had come to Texas with a precise plan: locate Ethan and get married. She hadn"t expected to find Ethan accused of rape. She hadn"t expected him to have a family he obviously supported. She hadn"t expected to find a grandfather. She sank back down into the rocker. What other surprises were in store for her?
"Did Ethan ever tell you anything about me?" Patch asked.
Nell smiled. "I"m not likely to forget the Kendrick name. My son told me how your father hid him from Jefferson Trahern seventeen years ago, how he tended the wound in Ethan"s leg until he was well enough to ride again. Ethan mentioned Seth had a little girl, only three years old. He called her Patch, because she was always leaving wet spots ..."
Nell chuckled. "Oh, well, I suppose that isn"t the sort of story a lovely young lady wants to hear about herself. But my, how the time flies. You"re certainly all grown up now."
"Yes, ma"am." Patch was mortified that Ethan"s mother knew how she had gotten her nickname. She was downright concerned that Nell apparently knew nothing about the time Ethan had spent at her father"s ranch in Montana. "Did Ethan say anything about meeting me again, years later?"
"Later?"
Patch cleared her throat. "When I was twelve, Ethan came to Montana to visit us. He stayed for six months and worked with my father in Fort Benton, breaking horses for the army. The law was closing in on him, so he had to leave. He promised he would come back." To marry me. "But he never did."
Nell"s fingertips worried a loose diamond shape on the quilt. Her voice was bitter when she spoke. "I never had a chance to speak at any length with Ethan after he was finally caught by that detective Trahern hired to hunt him down. And he never wrote to me from prison."
"Ethan hasn"t mentioned me at all during the month he"s been home?" Patch asked in a voice that surprised her by its breathlessness.
Nell looked at Patch curiously. "I"m afraid not, dear. Is there something I should know?"
"Uh ... no ... that is ... No." Patch felt the blush at her throat work its way up to stain her cheeks.
"What, exactly, brought you all the way to Texas to see my scapegrace son?" Nell asked.
Did she dare reveal to Nell what she was doing here in Oakville? Patch"s stomach clenched. What if Nell forced her to leave the house before she saw Ethan? But she didn"t dare tell Ethan"s mother why she was here before she had told him! There had to be something she could say that would convince Nell to let her stay around until Ethan returned.
Patch felt the presence of Ethan"s sister behind her, like a cat waiting to pounce. "I ... uh ..."
"Don"t trust her, Ma." Leah slid past Patch and seated herself cross-legged at the foot of her mother"s bed, the rifle braced across her knees. "She has a shifty look to her."
Patch watched Nell shake her head at the sight of Leah"s dirty boots on her quilt, but it was a sign of just how ill she was that she didn"t chastise her daughter. "Let"s hear what Patch has to say before we condemn her, Leah."
"Ethan wrote to me that you weren"t well, and I volunteered to come and help keep house until you"re on your feet again," Patch blurted.
"The heck he did!" Leah retorted as she clambered off the bed. "I do the housekeeping around here." Leah pointed the Winchester at Patch and gestured toward the door. "You can take yourself back wherever you came from, lady. We don"t want you here!"
Patch hurried to speak before Leah forced her from the room. "I don"t know how long it"s been since you"ve left your bed, Nell, but I can tell you the rest of the house looks nothing like this room."
Nell appeared genuinely surprised. "It doesn"t? But Leah has been taking care of everything."
Patch shook her head in denial. "Everything is a shambles. There are dishes and clothes that need to be washed and floors that need to be swept and mopped. Ethan wrote me that he"s been too busy with the work outside to be able to handle things in the house, too."
"Leah? Is what Patch says true?" Nell asked.
Leah shot a mutinous look at Patch. "Dirty stinking tattletale!"
"Leah! Apologize to Miss Kendrick."
"I won"t!" Leah shouted. "It ain"t as bad as she says, Ma."
"Leah, perhaps-"
Leah interrupted her mother. "I ain"t hanging around to listen to more of her tall tales." Leah shoved her way past Patch and broke into a run. Her boots could be heard on the wooden-planked floors, followed by the slam of the door at the back of the house.
"I"m sorry, Patch," Nell said.
Patch smiled ruefully. "She reminds me a lot of myself at the same age."
"I knew I was asking too much of her, but ..." Nell shrugged helplessly. "There was no one else."
"I"m here now." Patch crossed to Nell and fluffed the pillow up behind her. "You just rest and don"t worry about a thing. Cleaning up this place will be as easy as throwing a two-day calf."
Patch saw the visible relief in Nell"s eyes, the way her body relaxed back into the feather mattress. "Thank you, Patch."
"Thank Ethan," Patch countered with a smile. "He"s the one who contacted me."
Patch hadn"t told a whopper like that one in a long time, and she was surprised at how guilty she felt. "Get some rest, Nell." She closed the door behind her as she left so Nell could sleep.
The house felt empty, forsaken, and neglected. Actually, the whole ranch gave Patch an eerie feeling. Something was terribly wrong here. She wanted Ethan home, so he could explain just what disaster had befallen him.
Patch heard the racc.o.o.n shoving the cup around on the floor in the kitchen. The tiny, sightless kittens were mewing for the calico cat, which had momentarily abandoned them. She looked around at the mess and heaved a giant sigh. Since she had told Nell she was the new housekeeper, she had better do a little housekeeping. She shoved up her sleeves and set to work.
"First things first," Patch muttered as she headed for the kitchen. She had once had a pet racc.o.o.n herself, so she wasn"t the least bit afraid of the animal. It was simple to grab the racc.o.o.n by the scruff of its neck. To her chagrin, the kitchen door that Leah had slammed was stuck closed. She shoved it open with her shoulder and dropped the racc.o.o.n on the back porch. No sooner had she pulled the door shut again than the racc.o.o.n was back inside.
"Durn it! How"d you do that?" Patch grimaced when she realized what she had said. Over time, that fancy finishing school in Boston had soaped all the garns and dangs and durns right out of her. It was amazing how they came back to haunt her in moments of stress. She had worked hard to become a lady. She didn"t want to have a lapse now, when it was important to impress Ethan with what a good wife she would make.
She stooped down to examine the place where the racc.o.o.n had snuck back in and discovered that a section of the floor board had rotted away, leaving a hole that led under the house. Obviously both the cat and the racc.o.o.n used the convenient opening as a way in and out.
Patch picked up several of the split logs from beside the stove and stacked them over the hole to block the entrance. No animal was coming through there anytime soon. "That ought to keep you out from now on, you little bandit," she murmured to herself.
Patch was unused to the heat of a Texas spring, and found herself already wet under the arms. The window above the pump was open, and she walked over to it, placed her palms on either side of the frame, and let the steady breeze cool her. It felt wonderful.
But standing in the kitchen like a scarecrow in the field wasn"t getting the house cleaned up. She turned to survey the mess and saw the racc.o.o.n had climbed up on the table and was eating sc.r.a.ps.
"Come on, Bandit," she crooned to the masked animal. "It"s back outside for you."
This time the racc.o.o.n wasn"t as easy to catch. The animal antic.i.p.ated her attempts to snare him and evaded her. He hopped off the table and ran behind the stove. At last she had him cornered under the trestle table. He stood up on his hind legs and chattered at her.
"All right, you little bandit, let"s-go-now!" She lunged and grabbed the racc.o.o.n by one paw, which she used to reel it in. However, she sat up too quickly and banged her head against the bottom of the table.
"Garn!"
"Serves you right!"
That was the first inkling Patch had that Leah was back in the house.
Patch scooted out from under the table, wishing she could rub her head where she had b.u.mped it, but needing both hands to hold the wriggling racc.o.o.n.
"I thought you left," Patch said.
Leah eyed her suspiciously. "I came back."
"To help?"
"To make sure you don"t steal the silverware!" Leah retorted. "After all, we only have your word that you"re who you say you are. The minute Ethan gets home, I"m going to ask him if what you said is true."
"That"s fine with me." Patch worked hard to keep the dismay she felt from showing on her face. She was going to have to find a way to head off Ethan and speak to him before Leah revealed her lie. "I don"t suppose I could talk you into taking this little bandit outside."
"Give him to me." Leah was halfway to the door when she turned and asked, "How did you know his name is Bandit?"
Patch laughed.
"What"s so funny?"
"I had a pet racc.o.o.n named Bandit when I was your age."
"But you"re a lady!" Leah protested.
"Thank you, Leah. That"s the first nice thing you"ve said to me."
Leah bristled. "Yeah, well, don"t get used to it."
Patch was standing by the door to close it after Leah came back in minus the racc.o.o.n.
The belligerent child leaned against the kitchen wall and crossed both arms and ankles. "Now what?" she demanded.
"Now we clean."
Patch set Leah to work putting away anything that had a place. Meanwhile, Patch took the time to stable her horse. Then she used Leah"s room as a place to change into a calico skirt and starched white shirtwaist that were among the clothes she had brought with her in her saddlebags. She wasn"t taking any chances that Ethan might turn up and find her looking like anything less than the perfect lady she had worked so hard to become.
Patch checked to make sure her bun was neat and covered her golden hair with a kerchief. Then she confiscated one of Nell"s ap.r.o.ns to save wear and tear on her clothes and carefully transferred her mouse, Max, from the pocket of her shirt to the deep pocket on one side of the ap.r.o.n. "I"m afraid there"s one too many calico cats around here to let you go yet," she murmured as she patted the mouse.
Patch couldn"t remember the last time she had worked so hard. From the time she was twelve and her stepmother had moved in, the Kendrick home had been a model of order and cleanliness. Patch unconsciously mimicked all the things she had learned over the years from Molly Gallagher Kendrick.
Instead of sweeping the dust from the floor into the corner, she swept it out the door. Instead of stacking the dirty clothes into a neat heap on the chair, she carted them out back and laid them over the washtub for later attention.
Leah grumbled.
Patch praised.
Leah griped.
Patch placated.
Leah groaned.
Patch played deaf and dumb.
When the parlor finally sparkled, Leah slumped down on the horsehair sofa. "I thought we"d never get this place clean enough to please you. Who you expecting to come visit, President Grant?"
"I"m only doing what your mother would do if she were able," Patch said in a quiet voice.
Leah"s face scrunched up, and her chin trembled. For a moment Patch thought the girl was going to cry. Patch was learning that Leah felt much more than she wanted anyone to know. The young girl was much more aware-and afraid-that her mother was seriously ill, maybe even dying, than she let on. As quickly as the instant of vulnerability appeared, it was gone. "Yeah, well, we"ll see what Ethan has to say about all this cleaning when he comes home."
Which reminded Patch she had dang well better catch Ethan before Leah got to him.
"No rest for the weary," Patch said. "We"d better clear a path in the kitchen if we hope to have supper ready when Ethan gets here."
"Aw, Ethan won"t expect-"
"Whether he expects it or not," Patch said firmly, "supper will be ready and waiting when he gets home."
Leah eyed the huge stack of dirty dishes askance. "How you gonna clean up that mess?" "One dish at a time."
Patch washed, while Leah dried and put the dishes away.
"I used to do this with Ma," Leah said wistfully as she stuffed a towel down into a cup and swished it around.
"How long has your mother been sick?"
"Since about a month before Ethan got out of prison."