she admitted. “I am sorry for flowers, but goat give good milk. I feed baby and not one crying. So is good,” she announced. She raised her chin in defiance.
Jonathan didn’t know whether to laugh or swear. Rage and amusement battled his brain to a standstill. Part of him wanted to strangle the young woman who stood before him.
She twisted her blue work skirt in both hands, then suddenly straightened her spine and drew herself up to her full height. The top of her head just reached his chin.
“Milk more important than flowers,” she said in a determined voice. She tipped her head up and gave him a level look. “As papa, you want good for baby. As doctor, you say not cow’s milk but goat milk good for her, so I get goat. I want good for baby, too!”
“Then keep the damn thing tied up!”
“Ja, I will,” she said quietly. “Will also fix flowers.”
“Everything has been topsy-turvy since you set foot in the door,” Jonathan grumbled. “I ought to send you back to New York or Hamburg or wherever it is you came from.”
Erika lifted her chin and surveyed him with steady blue eyes. “I stay in America. I stay here in Plum Creek, America, to help. I stay for baby. And,” she finished, her voice trembling, “for me.”
Try as he might, Jonathan could think of nothing to say. God in heaven, he was cursed. Tess was dead, leaving an infant he couldn’t bear to touch or even look at because it reminded him so much of her. Mayor Brumbaugh was stumbling blindly toward disaster, and now Cyrus Peck would descend on him with another tirade about his “bad leg.” This time he’d give the crotchety old farmer some fifty-dollar advice: Work an hour a day and mind his own business!
On top of this, he had Miss Erika Scharf to contend with. A more determined, maddening young woman he had never encountered. What god had he offended that such furies pursued him?
More to the point, what should he do about them?
About her.
He contemplated the crown of honey-colored braids wound on top of her head. He would be civil, he decided. He would swallow his anger and accept the goat. It was a good-hearted deed, after all. And she was right about the milk.
He would overlook the incident this time. Let her stay. But one more disaster—just one more unsettling event in his already unraveling world—and that would be that.
Baby or no baby, he would send Erika Scharf on her way.
Erika watched the doctor tramp onto the back porch and stalk through the kitchen door. The screened panel swung shut behind him with a resounding thwap.
She knew she had overstepped. She had “taken too much upon herself,” Mrs. Benbow had warned when Erika appeared with the goat. Worse than disturbing the housekeeper, she had angered Dr. Callender, made him so furious his eyes burned like smoldering coals when he spoke to her.
Surely he knew she meant no harm to him, or to his flowers? His wife’s flowers, she amended. Why could he not see that zinnias were not as important as milk for his child?
Unless. Erika paused at the top porch step. Unless the child did not matter to him. Thoughtful, she moved into the kitchen and approached the ramrodstraight figure of Adeline Benbow, swishing an oversize iron spoon back and forth in the stockpot.
“Excuse, please, Mrs. Benbow.”
“Overstepped, ye did, traipsing out to bargain on your own,” the housekeeper snapped. “Told you so this morning. Got no more sense than a butterfly.” She banged the spoon against the side of the pot for emphasis.
“Ja,” Erika said in a low voice.
“Use English, girl! You will never learn, otherwise.”
“Yes,” Erika repeated. “You are correct.”
“And just who’s going to milk that animal, I ask you?” the housekeeper demanded.
“I will. And feed it, too. Papa had a goat back in old country.”
“Hmmph. It’s just too much for the doctor after all that’s happened,” the housekeeper huffed. “Losing Miss Tess when they’d just begun their life together. well, it knocked him plumb sideways. Days he’d spend just staring at the bed where she had lain during her torment. Nights, too, staring and staring and seeing nothing. I’m surprised he drove the buggy to town today. Hasn’t set foot outside these walls since the funeral three weeks ago.”
“Maybe he visit the grave?” Erika ventured.
Mrs. Benbow shot her an odd look. “Maybe.” The corners of her thin mouth turned down, and her stirring arm slowed to a stop. An unfocused look came into her eyes.
Erika seized her chance. “What was lady like?”
“Miss Tess?” The stirring resumed, rhythmic figure eights accompanying her words. “Miss Tess was. Her people were from Savannah. Well-to-do they were, before the war. Miss Tess, she had most everything she ever wanted, and that included the doctor. One day he came to call on her father, Colonel Rowell, and the next day he and Miss Tess were engaged.”
“Why did doctor go to that place, Savannah?”
“Colonel Rowell was a surgeon during the war. He found a new way to set broken bones, and—”
“And doctor want to learn?” Erika finished for her.
“Saints, no! Doctor knows all about such things from his training in Scotland, you see. He went to Savannah to thank Colonel Rowell for saving his own father’s life after the battle of Shiloh.”
“And he meet Miss Tess and marry her? She was very beautiful?”
“Oh my, yes,” the housekeeper murmured. “Hair like black silk, she had. And eyes so green they looked like emeralds.”
“And?” Erika prompted. An insatiable curiosity about the woman who had been mistress of this fine house, and the doctor’s affection for her, gnawed at her insides. She wanted to know all about the woman Dr. Callender had loved so much his child—even his own life—seemed unimportant now that she was gone.
“Well,” the housekeeper continued, “Miss Tess was cultured in the Southern way. She had a lovely voice, and she accompanied herself on the harp. She had fine taste in gowns, too—always wore the latest styles from Paris.”
Erika glanced down at her plain blue denim work skirt and the toes of her sensible shoes peeking from beneath the hem. She could never be a lady because her feet were too big and her tastes too simple. She was a working girl through and through, a poor shoemaker’s daughter with rough English speech and untutored manners. Such things could be learned, she supposed. But even if one had a quick mind, it required generations of breeding and practice in manners to make a real lady.
The housekeeper sighed and slid the lid onto the simmering soup kettle.
