Hearts Awakening (10 page)

Despite the fact that she had much to do before Jackson and Daniel returned home, she continued holding and rocking little Ethan.When he finally began to stir, she patted his back and smiled. “Would you like to help me gather up everything that spilled on the floor now?”

As if hearing her voice reminded him that the comfort he had received had come not from his mother, he wrenched free and clambered off her lap.

His rejection cut deep as she studied his little face and form, and Ellie could not recall seeing a more forlorn little waif. His deep-set blue eyes and plump little cheeks were swollen and red from crying, his nose was running, and his oversized clothes were more disheveled than ever. Using a handkerchief from her pocket, she wiped his nose and dried his face. “There. That’s better, isn’t it?”

His bottom lip quivered.

Determined to distract him before he got even more distressed, which was bound to make Jackson question her ability to keep a three-year-old happy, she slipped to the floor and dropped down on all fours, despite the fact she was kneeling on a thick layer of dust. In an exaggerated move, she looked around the floor, saw most of her things had survived intact, lifted up the side of the quilt, and peered under the bed. “Oh, dear! However did my hairbrush end up all the way there under the middle of the bed, right next to one of those blocks you and your brother like to play with?”

When he continued staring at her warily, she lay flat on the floor. She tried to slide forward, but stopped, even though the bed was high enough off the floor that she would have fit beneath it. “Mercy! I’m too big! I don’t fit. And I so wanted to use my hairbrush,” she whined.

He sniffed but continued to stare at her.

She worked her way into a sitting position and sighed. “I suppose I’ll just have to wait for Daniel to come home and ask him to crawl under this bed to get my hairbrush for me, as well as that wooden block.”

Finally!

Ethan crawled under the bed, snatched her hairbrush, and carried it back to her before the echo of her words had died, along with the tiny block and a good bit of dust.

She clapped her hands and grinned. “Ethan! What a dear boy you are. Thank you!” she exclaimed and put the brush into her pocket. After he stuck the block into his own pocket, he stood still while she brushed off the dust on his clothes and in his hair, tugged his shirt back into place, and tucked it back into his overalls. “Let’s see who can pick up the most of my other things,” she suggested.

When he did not seem interested, she decided to make a game out of it and crawled around the floor on all fours—no easy task considering her skirts kept getting tangled between her legs. She had to stop more than once to sneeze and decided the first order of business tomorrow was to give this room a thorough cleaning.

As she had hoped, he dropped down onto all fours, charged ahead of her, and snatched her change purse. He shook it and frowned when he heard the barest jingle of coins, then quickly reached for the pair of handkerchiefs lying within his grasp.

She grabbed for her comb before he noticed it, but froze when she saw him pick up the square of faded canvas she had tied shut with a bit of green ribbon. Trying not to panic, she kept her movements slow and her voice soft as she approached him. “I think you were able to pick up much more than I did,” she noted gently and sat down beside him.

Ethan ignored her, intent on untying the ribbon.

“Would you like me to help you?” she asked, fearful he might inadvertently damage the one possession she treasured more than any of the others.

To her surprise, he handed the canvas packet to her, albeit reluctantly. After she untied the ribbon, she carefully unfolded the canvas to reveal a miniature pair of silhouettes of her parents, which had been cut from black cloth on their wedding day and laid atop a light paper background.

“This is a silhouette of my mother,” she whispered. As she traced the outline of her mother’s image with the tip of her finger, memories of the years she had spent caring for her invalid mother unfolded, along with many loving memories of the man whose silhouette image lay next to her mother’s.

Ethan’s gaze locked on the image of her mother, and she did not stop him when he traced the outline of the silhouette, exactly as she had done. Satisfied he was being gentle with her treasure, she left him for a moment and laid her comb and brush on top of the chest of drawers next to her father’s silhouette and the canvas wrapper.

She had to tug hard to get the top drawer open. After she stored her coin purse and handkerchiefs inside, he walked over and reluctantly handed her the silhouette of her mother without being asked. “Thank you,” she murmured and rewrapped both silhouettes back in the canvas wrapper. She placed it into the drawer under her handkerchiefs and closed it before taking Ethan’s hand again. “I’m really hungry. Are you?”

He nodded so hard his cowlick danced.

Laughing, she crossed the room with him and shut the door behind them. She had just sat him down at the worktable while she made a snack for them when she thought she heard footsteps on the porch.

Startled, Ellie looked up to see Jackson and his oldest son coming into the kitchen. “Did you forget something?” she asked as Ethan charged across the room and ran straight to his father.

Jackson hoisted up his youngest son as soon as he was within reach and frowned. “I was hoping to find supper ready when we returned.”

“Supper?” she said as she scrambled to her feet. “Already? But you just left with Daniel not—”

“Two hours ago,” he said. “And we’ve both worked up an appetite, haven’t we, Daniel?”

The five-year-old nodded and rubbed his tummy. “I think Ethan’s hungry, too.”

Embarrassed, Ellie apologized. “I-I’m sorry. Ethan was helping me unpack, and I suppose I just lost all sense of time,” she explained. No wonder she and Ethan were so hungry. “It won’t take me long to reheat the soup I made yesterday and set the table. I . . . I apologize for not having supper ready. I won’t let it happen again.” She hurried over to get a fire started in the cookstove.

Daniel followed right behind her. “Supper was never late when my mother was here, and she never forgot to keep a fire in the stove, neither.”

Ellie forced herself to give the boy a smile. Apparently he had not forgotten any of her mistakes, and she wondered if she would ever do anything right where this child was concerned. She looked over at Jackson, hoping he might defend her.

He merely shrugged without bothering to ease the frown he still wore, but she could not tell if he was frowning because she expected him to defend her or because it was the
second
time in nearly as many days that his supper was going to be late.

Ellie squared her shoulders. She had gotten herself into this situation in the first place.

Nine

By Sunday morning, the gentle rain that had arrived late Friday night had strengthened into a torrential downpour.

Lying abed, Jackson could hear the rain hammering at the roof, and he could see the blades of rain slashing at his bedroom window, but the thunder and lightning during the night had finally quieted. He knew without even getting out of bed that it was too dangerous to cross the river to attend Sunday services today. He did not have to worry that Ellie would argue the matter with him, either, because he had made it very clear to her before they had gotten married that he would not take the family to church in bad weather.

Relieved he would not have to attend services, he shivered in the damp cold that permeated the room, rolled over in bed, and yanked the quilt tighter around his body. Adding wood to the stove was pointless now because he had to get up soon and go downstairs anyway. He burrowed deeper under the quilt for a bit more sleep, since he had spent half the night comforting his two sons when the storm woke them up. Waves of resentment still hounded him since Rebecca had died, leaving him to raise their sons alone. Alone to face the scandal she had left behind.

Jackson lay still, silently studying the ceiling beams overhead until his bitter memories receded. When a gust of wind forced a branch to bang against the window for several long seconds, he groaned. He had learned to leave to fate what any storm might do to his orchards, but he had no desire to start his day by repairing a broken window in the midst of a storm.

When his stomach growled, he groaned again. He doubted his new wife would likely ever prepare an entire day’s meals worth eating. He closed his eyes, but tempting visions of a good hot breakfast that was neither burned nor undercooked made his stomach growl even louder. If he got up and went downstairs now, he could get a good fire started in the great room and the cookstove, too, which would chase the chill from the rooms before anyone else rose for the day. Grumbling under his breath, he climbed out of bed. Shivering with cold, he wrapped the quilt around him and managed to shave before dressing, all the while trying to be as quiet as he could for fear of waking Ellie, who was sleeping in the room directly below his, and the boys, who were sleeping in their room just across the hall.

He crossed the room on tiptoe, eased his door open, and shut it again. When he turned and cautiously opened the door to the room Daniel and Ethan shared, he frowned. Even in the dim light he could see the blankets on both beds were a tangled mess. The quilts were on the floor, but the beds themselves were empty.

“Rascals,” he muttered, checking under the beds where he had found them hiding more than once before. He sneezed twice. Other than a heavy blanket of dust, there was nothing under the beds.

Half afraid the boys had slipped downstairs to get into some sort of mischief, he made a mental note to start locking the door at the bottom of the staircase when he went to bed at night. He also checked the last bedroom, where Rebecca used to keep all her “pretties,” a term she used to describe all her frilly, frothy clothing and accessories that were now stored away in attic trunks.

Satisfied the boys were not there, either, he went directly down the stairs to the great room and shut the staircase door. He was relieved to see the door to Ellie’s room was still closed, which meant the boys had not disturbed her. When he turned, without catching as much as a glimpse of the kitchen, luscious smells made his stomach growl loud enough to startle him.

He was surprised to see a good fire already blazing in the fireplace, but it was the table directly across the room from him that gave him pause to stare. He recognized the blue-striped tablecloth resting beneath the serving dishes, plates, and utensils that had been set out for a meal, but he had not seen picture-perfect biscuits piled high on a platter near the center of the table since he had fired Widow Hill some weeks back.

Lured to the table, his mouth started to water and his stomach began to growl, despite his best efforts to stop it. Bowls filled with corn relish and pickled beets he recognized as ones Alice Grant had sent over last week sat on either side of the large plate of buttered biscuits. As unusual as this meal would be for breakfast, he was not going to utter a word of complaint.

Not a single one.

Squeals coming from the kitchen, however, reminded him of his real mission, and he set off to investigate, but not before he snatched one of those heavenly buttered biscuits and devoured it in a single bite. He reached the kitchen in a matter of steps and rocked back on his heels. The heat in the room was almost stifling, and his brain was a bit slow catching up with what he saw.

To his relief, Daniel and Ethan were straight ahead. To his amazement, they were sitting together in the brass tub, so busy splashing and playing with each other they didn’t even notice he had entered the room.

“Don’t get too close, unless you’re prepared to duck.”

His gaze followed the sound of Ellie’s warning. She was standing at the cookstove fiddling with a knob with one hand and stirring a pot of something that smelled like lamb stew with the other.

“Pappy! Look!” Daniel cried, pulling Jackson’s attention away from her and back to his sons.

Grinning from ear to ear, Daniel scooped up a cup of water and poured it over Ethan’s head.

Sputtering and batting his eyes, the three-year-old squealed and wiped his face with the back of his hands. With a grin, he returned the favor and drenched his older brother, spilling half his cup of water on the floor.

Jackson’s heart raced with emotion. He had not seen his boys this happy for months, especially at bath time, and he had not heard much of a sound from Ethan for a while, either. “I must be dreaming,” he managed and walked over to the tub.

The soapy water Daniel splashed onto Jackson’s sleeve convinced him this was definitely not a dream, and he stepped back. He narrowly averted the water Ethan sent in his direction, but almost lost his footing on the slippery floor. “Keep the water inside the tub,” he cautioned and kept his expression stern until the boys let their cups sink.

He thought he heard Ellie giggle. When he looked at her out of the corner of his eye, he caught just a glimpse of her blush before she turned away. For a moment the image of Dorothea flashed in his mind’s eye, and his heart slammed against the wall of his chest. Whenever she blushed, which was often, she became more than beautiful, but she never looked more beautiful than when she blushed after he stole a kiss from her. Amazed that a glimpse of Ellie’s mottled blush and plain looks had inspired a memory of his lost love, he turned his attention back to his sons. “I’m surprised to find you two rascals taking a bath before breakfast,” he teased.