“And I truly am happy to make your acquaintance. Would you like to see Ma now?”
Before Catherine could answer, Drew stepped forward, gaze all for his sister, his brows drawn down heavily over his deep-set eyes. “How is she?”
Beth’s light dimmed, and she seemed to shrink in on herself. “Still the same. I’m not sure she knows me.”
Catherine felt as if her spine had lengthened, her shoulders strengthened. Her father had always said it was a powerful thing to have a purpose. She felt it now, wiping away her weariness and soothing her frustrations. Thank You, Lord. Help me do what You fitted me to do.
“Take me to her,” she ordered them.
Beth clasped her hands in obvious relief. Drew merely motioned Catherine to where a set of open stairs, half logs driven into the wall, rose to the second story.
Upstairs were two more rooms, divided by the fireplace and the walls that supported it. One room held several straw ticks on the floor, but only one seemed to be in use; the others were piled with rumpled clothing, tools and chunks of wood. The other room contained two wooden beds—a smaller one in the corner with a carved chest beside it and a larger bedstead in the center with a side table holding a brass lamp. Both beds were covered with multicolored quilts that brightened the room.
A woman lay on the wider bed. She had hair that was more red than gold, plastered to her oval face. She’d been handsome once, but now pain had drawn lines about her eyes, nose and mouth. By the way the collar of her flannel nightgown bagged, Catherine guessed she’d lost some weight, as well. Her skin looked like parchment in the candlelight.
Catherine sat in the high-backed chair that had been placed next to the bed and reached for Mrs. Wallin’s hand. Setting her fingers to the woman’s wrist, she counted the heartbeats as her father had taught her. She could feel Drew and his sister watching her. She’d been watched by family members before, some doubting her, some worried. This time felt different somehow. Her shoulders tensed, and she forced them to relax.
“Her pulse is good,” she reported, keeping her voice calm and her face composed. She had to remain objective. It was so much easier to do her job when she viewed the person before her as a patient in need of healing rather than someone’s mother or wife. She leaned closer, listening to the shallow, panting breaths.
“Mrs. Wallin,” she said, “can you hear me?”
The woman’s eyelids fluttered. Drew and Beth leaned closer as well, crowding around Catherine. Their mother’s eyes opened, as clear as her eldest son’s but greener. She blinked as if surprised to find herself in bed, then focused on Catherine.
“Mary?” she asked.
Beth sucked in a breath, drawing back and hugging herself. Drew didn’t move, but Catherine felt as if he also had distanced himself. Who was this Mary his mother had been expecting? Did Drew Wallin have a wife he’d neglected to mention?
* * *
Drew watched as Catherine tended to his mother. Ma had changed so much in the past two weeks that he hardly knew her. As Beth had said, he wasn’t sure she knew them, either. It was as if the fire that had warmed them all their lives was growing dim.
He had feared Catherine might confirm the fact, tell them in her cool manner to prepare for the worst. Instead, she was all confidence. She opened the window beside the bed and ordered the one opposite it opened as well, drawing in the cool evening air and the scent of the Sound. She directed Drew to smother the fire and helped Beth pull off some of the covers they had piled on their mother in an attempt to sweat the fever from her. She even removed Ma’s favorite feather pillow and requested a straw one. It was testimony to how ill their mother was that she protested none of this.
“Do you have a milk cow?” Catherine asked Drew as Beth dug through the chest their father had carved for Ma to find the clean nightgown Catherine had suggested.
Drew shook his head. “Four goats. But they produce enough milk for our purposes.”
Catherine accepted the flannel gown from Beth with a nod of thanks. “What about lemons?”
“Simon brought some back from town last week,” Beth said, tucking her hair behind her ear and hugging herself with her free hand. “I used some for lemonade.”
“Fetch the lemonade,” Catherine advised. “We’ll start with that and see if she can tolerate it. Later, I’ll show you how to make lemon whey. Mrs. Child recommends it for high fevers.”
“Mrs. Child?” Drew asked, but his sister nodded eagerly.
“I know Mrs. Child! Ma has her book on being a good housewife. She’s very clever.”
Beth might have gone on as she often did, but Catherine directed her toward the stairs, then turned to Drew. “I’ll need warm water, as well.”
Drew frowned. “To drink?”
Pink crept across her cheekbones, as delicate as the porcelain cups his mother had safeguarded over the Rockies on their way West. “No,” she said, gaze darting away from his. “To bathe your mother. Can you see that it’s warmed properly? Not too hot.”
“Coming right up,” Drew promised, and left to find some help.
He managed to locate the rest of his family at Simon’s cabin, which was a little ways into the woods. His brothers were cleaning up before dinner, but they all stopped what they were doing to listen to his explanation of what had happened in town. He thought at least one of them might agree with him that Levi’s actions were rash. But to a man they were too concerned about Ma to consider how Catherine Stanway must feel.
“So this nurse,” Simon said, draping the cloth he’d been using to dry his freshly shaven face over the porcelain basin in a corner of his cabin. “What do we know about her? What are her credentials?”
Figure on Simon, his next closest brother in age at about two years behind Drew’s twenty-nine, to ask. He was the only one tall enough to look him in the eye, for all they rarely saw eye to eye. With his pale blond hair and angled features, Simon was too cool. Even looked different from Drew. Every movement of his lean body, word from his lips and look from his light green eyes seemed calculated.
The middle brother, James, leaned back where he sat near the fire, effortlessly balancing the stool on one of its three legs. “Does it really matter, Simon? She’s here, and she’s helping. Be grateful.” He turned to Drew. His long face was a close match for Simon’s in its seriousness, his short blond hair a shade darker, but there was a twinkle in his dark blue eyes. “Now, I have a more pressing question. Is she pretty?”
“That’s not important,” Drew started, but his second-youngest brother, John, slapped his hands down on his knees where he sat at a bench by the table.
“She must be! He’s blushing!” He shook his head, red-gold hair straighter than his mother’s like a flame in the light.
Drew took a deep breath to hold back a retort. Of all his brothers, John was the most sensible, the most studious. If he’d seen a change in Drew, it must be there.
But he wasn’t about to admit it.
He started for the door. “Pretty or not, she has work for us to do. She wants lots of water
