Chapter Three #3
Wade, looking at his teacup, said evenly, “Agreed.”
Zoe drew a careful breath.
“Thank you, Wade.”
The wind in the cottonwoods outside the window rose and fell. He gave her a small nod, eyes still on the teacup.
“Third condition,” she continued. “If, at any time during the month, you find me unsuitable, you tell me yourself. I have just come from a house where a great deal of unkind business was done behind my back. I will ride that road no more.”
Wade lifted his eyes.
“Agreed. And the same rule applies to me. If you find me unsuitable, you tell me yourself.”
“Agreed.”
He held out his hand across the round table, broad and weathered. She set her smaller hand in his and let him close his fingers briefly around hers. The press was firm. The release was slower than was strictly necessary, and she felt it in the bones of her hand after he had let go.
“First light tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll come for you in the wagon. We’ll be at the ranch by mid-morning. Sadie will be at her lessons. George will be out in the south pasture.”
“George?”
“My brother. He works the ranch with me. He is twenty-eight, easier company than I am, and better at meeting strangers. You’ll like him. Most people do.”
“And does he know I am coming?”
“Yes, he knows. He’s been making the bunkhouse fit for himself for a week, since he intends to move out of the main house and give you the room next to Sadie’s. He insists on it. I’ve stopped arguing.”
“That was thoughtful of him.”
“It was,” Wade replied evenly.
He set his hat on his head and stood. The chair he had been sitting in seemed grateful for the loss of him. He crossed to the parlor door in three strides.
From the hall, Inga’s voice carried in cheerfully, having recovered her good temper along with her wooden spoon.
“You’ll sup with us before you go, Wade?”
“I will not. I have a brother who will have set fire to the kitchen by now.”
“Then you will be back at first light for Zoe, and not a minute later.”
“At first light. For Zoe.”
He glanced back at her once from the threshold. His pale blue eyes touched hers and went away again.
“Until tomorrow, Zoe.”
“Until tomorrow, Wade.”
The front door closed behind him. The wagon bench creaked. The wheels rolled away down the cottonwood track.
Zoe sat alone in the green-striped chair and looked into her teacup. Inga put her head around the door.
“Tea is finished, then?” she asked gently.
“It is. The discussing too.”
“And?”
“One month. As governess to his niece.”
Inga came into the parlor and sat down in the green-striped chair Wade had vacated. Her warm, broad hand reached across the table and rested on top of Zoe’s.
“Well done, child,” she said softly. “You held your own. You drove a fair bargain.”
Zoe’s eyes filled.
“He told me about Sadie,” she said. “But the way he said it, I think he’s afraid I won’t love her.”
“He is afraid of that,” Inga replied evenly.
“He should be. It is the only sensible thing to be afraid of in this entire business. Sadie Conrad has yellow hair, blue eyes, knees full of bruises, and a mouth her uncle has yet to learn to read. She is small and she is angry and she is grieving, and she has been waiting for someone to walk into her house and look at her with eyes other than worry.”
“I cannot say if I am that someone.”
“No,” Inga replied gently. “You won’t know that until you’ve walked in.
But I will tell you something I have said to no one else, and you may carry it in your apron until you find use for it.
Mary, Wade’s mother, was a dear friend of mine.
Six years gone, now. She prayed for Wade when he was still a small boy in short pants.
She asked the Lord for a kind woman to come into his house when he needed her.
That was thirty years ago, child. I have remembered it.
I think the Lord has remembered it just as long. ”
Zoe stood. Her knees still ached from the travel. “Inga,” Zoe said quietly, “I would like very much to wash my face.”
“Hot water in a quarter of an hour. I’ll bring it up. Your room is the small one at the front. Mountains in the window. Sampler on the wall. You’ll like it. You like what the Lord likes, child. I can tell already.”
“Thank you.”
She walked, with the grey cat reluctantly relinquishing her boots, out of the parlor and up the narrow wooden staircase to the small front room with the mountains in its window.
She sat on the edge of the patchwork bed and put her face in her hands.
She held the weeping back. She sat, and she breathed, and she felt, somewhere deep in the small warm place near her breastbone, a small and precise stitch settle into the linen of her life.
Stitch by stitch, Zoe Marie.
The sun, far away above the Bridger range, was beginning to turn the high white peaks to rose.
Tomorrow, at first light, she would meet a girl with yellow hair and bruised knees and a mouth no one had yet learned to read.
Zoe lifted her face out of her hands.
“All right, Sadie Conrad,” she said softly to the empty room. “Whoever you are. Hold still. Auntie Zoe is coming.”