have gotten from Senora Morales without wasting precious coin,” his mother grumbled. “But I warn you, Jonas, the time will come, and soon, when that poor overworked woman will refuse to do all the cooking and cleaning and tending of your old mother, and then she’ll quit altogether. Then where will you be? It’s not as if you could do all of that extra work and still tend your ranch, could you? You didn’t speak to a single lass about hiring on here?”
An image of Maude Harkey’s riot of red curls and eyes the hue of spring bluebonnets swam into his head. “Aye, I did speak to one, but she didn’t want the job,” he said, and hoped his mother would leave it at that.
“Just one? You’d said you’d be able to speak to several,” Coira MacLaren snapped.
His mother’s health wasn’t robust, but there was nothing wrong with her memory, unfortunately. Her mind was sharp as a dirk and her tongue just as cutting. He’d learned to cope by pretending nothing she said affected him, or sometimes, when his temper was truly frayed, by responding in kind, but it didn’t make him feel better to do so.
“There were, but I thought the one I spoke to was the best candidate.” He couldn’t say why he thought so, other than the air of competence Maude Harkey wore like a shield—and the firmness of her resolve that made him believe she might be a match for even his mother’s cantankerousness. It certainly wasn’t that he was attracted to her for his own sake. No, he was done with all that.
“Did you think to be a miser and offer her less than the thirty dollars a month we agreed upon?” his mother asked, suspicion threaded through her voice like the tightest-woven wool tartan.
It was ironic that she accused him of miserliness—normally it was his mother who took Scottish frugality to the extreme.
“No.” He hadn’t even gotten to the subject of wages, as he recalled. As soon as Maude Harkey learned what he was asking, she’d refused to consider his proposition outright. Now he wished he had gone ahead and taken the time to meet some of the other young ladies at the barbecue. He shouldn’t have let the redheaded Miss Harkey blind him to the possible suitability of the others. As he’d said, it wasn’t as if he was seeking a wife.
“Well, you’d best be searching for some way to convince a woman to come out here,” his mother continued. “I’ve no time for your nonsense or your dillydallying.”
Jonas gritted his teeth and forced himself not to respond. After all, his mother wasn’t entirely wrong. He did need to find her a companion as soon as possible. He resolved that he would make another trip into town, as soon as he could find the time to get away from the ranch.
And this time, he wouldn’t leave until he’d found a woman who’d say yes.
After their middle-of-the-night ordeal, Maude slept right through Sunday breakfast. When she finally awoke, she felt a pleasant sense of accomplishment. Despite April Mae’s sudden and entirely unexpected appearance on their doorstep, they had helped her deliver a beautiful, healthy baby. Maude’s father would have been proud.
She couldn’t help grinning. There was a baby in the boardinghouse, a pink innocent creature all fresh and new, with that incomparable baby smell. Soon they’d have to do what they could to track down tiny Hannah’s errant father and insist he do right by April Mae and their child, but for now, Maude could enjoy the presence of an infant in her dreary life for her to care for.
Excited about the prospect of holding tiny Hannah, Maude dressed, washed her hands with water from the ewer, dried them on a towel and left her room. She’d go to church, then on to Ella’s café and help her friend there for awhile, but she couldn’t resist taking a few minutes to cuddle the baby first and see if the new mother was resting all right.
She found Mrs. Meyer had beaten her to it. The old woman was sitting in the rocking chair in April Mae’s room, humming, little Hannah in her arms. An old wooden cradle sat on the floor between the bed and the rocking chair. Mrs. Meyer must have brought it down from the attic, Maude thought. Had it been from that long-ago time when the proprietress had been a young mother? How nice that it was getting used again.
April Mae’s eyes were closed, but she opened them at the creaking of the opening door. Her gaze darted first to the infant, then, satisfied, to Maude.
“How are you feeling?”
“Tired. Sore...but ain’t she purty?” April Mae said, smiling at her child, her eyes bright with pride.
Mrs. Meyer rose and handed Maude the baby. “I’d better go start workin’ on dinner—noon’ll be here before we know it,” she said, and left.
“She’s perfect,” Maude agreed, even as she took note of the purple shadows under April Mae’s eyes. Her face was slightly swollen from the exertion she’d gone through the night before, but Maude told herself not to jump to conclusions that anything was amiss. All women looked like that after delivering a baby, more or less. “Is she nursing all right?”
“She’s getting the hang of it,” April Mae said, still smiling, but her eyelids flickered drowsily.
“It’s all right to go back to sleep,” Maude assured her. “You need to rest up after the wonderful job you did last night, bringing Hannah into the world. I’ll just sit and hold her for a few minutes, then put her in the cradle when I have to leave. Will you be able to get her if she wakes?”
“Mmm-hmm...”
Within seconds, her soft snores told Maude the girl slept. Now she had time to think about how April Mae and the baby’s coming was likely to change life here at the boardinghouse—and how that was likely to affect her.
But the image of Jonas MacLaren and his job offer, delivered in that delicious accent, kept intruding on her mind.
* * *
Reining in his horse on the knoll overlooking the flock, Jonas MacLaren doffed his wide-brimmed hat and took a moment to rub both temples with his thumb and fingers.
“What’s wrong, patrón?” Hector asked, bringing his mount alongside Jonas’s. “You got dolor de cabeza? A headache?”
Jonas gave his segundo a sideways glance. “I’m all right.”
“With respect, senor, you do not look it,” his Tejano foreman said in his forthright manner. “I think you are hungry. Why not go back to the big house and have something to eat? You been out with me since dawn, and I’m thinking you did not break your fast before you left the house, sí? The flocks will still be here when you return.”
Jonas stared down at the peacefully grazing cluster of merinos that dotted the slope below like so many little clouds of creamy white, though some of the “clouds” had long, curling horns. They were but a small portion of his flock, which numbered about two thousand. Scattered among these were Angora goats, similarly colored, that produced prized mohair.
“Maybe I’ll see what’s in the pot in the bunkhouse,” Jonas muttered. “It’s not real peaceful in the big house at the moment.”
Hector’s dark eyes took on a gleam of understanding. “Ah. Senora MacLaren, she is on the warpath again?”
Jonas
