Chapter Three #2
“I had thought I would marry whoever Mrs. Keller sent. I had made my peace with it. My ranch is large enough to support a family. My brother is a good man. We make a place where a woman can live decently, even if her husband is short of words. I had told myself I would treat her well, and that what we did not have between us could be built over time, the same as any partnership.”
“And then you saw me,” Zoe said, and set her teacup carefully on the saucer to keep her hand from doing anything more revealing.
“And then I saw you.”
He looked at his teacup.
“Zoe Preston,” he said. “I am going to be plain with you. You stepped off that stage and looked at the mountains and spoke easy with the Almighty in front of many strangers, and I watched you do it, and I understood that you are the sort of woman who has been waiting for a man to walk across a street and tell her he intends to love her. I am not that man. I don’t have it in me.
I have not had it in me for three years, and I have no expectation that I am about to get it back this autumn. ”
He set the cup down with care. The cup made a small sound against the saucer.
“You crossed the country to be wanted, Miss Preston. I am asking you to come to a ranch and be a governess to a child who is grieving her dead mother. Those are not the same thing. If you stay, you stay knowing the difference. If you go, you go with my honest blessing. But I will not sit in this parlor and let you arrive at my door under a misunderstanding I had a hand in making.”
He drew a slow breath.
“A month,” he said. “One month. You stay at the ranch. You meet Sadie. You decide if you can love her enough to make a home for her, and if you can endure me long enough. At the end of the month, if you say yes, we go before a judge and marry. If you say no, I pay your passage to wherever you wish to go, and I will write to Mrs. Keller and tell her the fault was mine. That is the trial.”
The parlor was very quiet.
Zoe set her teacup down on the saucer with the precise care of a woman who would have preferred to throw it.
“You have known me for an hour and a quarter, give or take. In that hour and a quarter you have rerouted my marriage, my address, and the next month of my life. You have also informed me that I am the sort of woman who needs a man to walk across a street and tell her he intends to love her, and that you are not that man.”
She kept her hands folded in her lap and her voice level. “You don’t know me. You watched me speak to the Almighty on a public street, and you decided that you understood the shape of what I want out of my life. You are mistaken.”
Wade held very still.
“I came West for a marriage. I will not lie about it. I will also not sit in this parlor and let you tell me what kind of woman I am. I have been told what kind of woman I am, recently, by people who lived with me for years and were still wrong. I am very tired of the practice.”
The wooden spoon, somewhere down the hall, ticked against the side of a stew pot.
“What I want, Mr. Collins, is mine to know. I will work out what it is and I will tell you when I have. Until then, please do me the courtesy of presenting the offer and standing out of the way of my answer.”
Wade was quiet for a long beat.
“All right,” he said.
Lord, she thought, I would appreciate guidance going forward. I am tired and I have nowhere to sleep tomorrow night besides this man’s ranch, and You and I both know it.
She drew a careful breath.
“One month,” she said, lifting her chin a quarter of an inch. “On three conditions, Mr. Collins.”
“Name them,” he replied.
“First, I am to be paid a fair governess’s wage. If I work in your house, I work for hire. I will not earn my room by the day and pretend it was anything else.”
“Agreed,” Wade replied.
“Second, Sadie is to know my name. I am Zoe. I am no prospect, no woman Uncle Wade brought home for trial. She is to know me as Zoe, and she is to know why I have come.”
Wade went very still.
“No.”
Zoe set her teacup down carefully. The saucer made a small protesting sound.
“I beg your pardon?”
“She is eight years old, Miss Preston. She has lost her mother and her father. I will not introduce a stranger into her house and tell her, on the same afternoon, that the stranger is on trial and may be paid off and sent home in a month.”
“Then wait three days or wait a week. But I will not lie to a grieving child, Mr. Collins, and I will not let her grow attached to me without knowing what she is attaching herself to. I will not be the second woman who walks into her house and disappears out of it without explanation, and I will not have you make me into that woman by silence.”
The wooden spoon down the hall, which had been ticking steadily against the stew pot, stopped. Wade and Zoe were both, suddenly, aware of the silence.
Inga appeared in the parlor doorway with flour on her forearms and the expression of a woman who has heard quite enough.
“The Lord and I, as I mentioned, prefer the door open. The door has been open. I have heard every word. Zoe is correct.”
“Inga—”
“Wade. You won’t lie to that child. You have been lying to that child by telling her grief lives somewhere it is convenient for you not to look at.
You and I have spoken of this before, and I have held my tongue out of love and out of patience and because I am not her mother.
Zoe is offering to do what I have been waiting for someone in your family to do for several years. You are going to let her.”
Wade looked at his teacup. His jaw worked once.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
Inga softened. She crossed to him, set her flour-dusted hand briefly on his shoulder, and looked at Zoe.
“I apologize for interrupting, child. I don’t usually. Wade doesn’t usually require it. Go on, both of you. I will return to my stew. The door, however, will remain open.”
She went. Her skirts swept back down the hall, and the wooden spoon resumed its rhythm against the stew pot.