Rose Read online

  Now he seemed more like the intimidating man who had forced Dottie to wait on her and Jeb and Charlie to clean up the mess.

  Still, she had seen another side to him. She knew another man lived inside that shell. She knew the other man came out once in a while. Maybe away from Austin he would come out more often.

  “I guess you’re wondering why I wanted to talk to you in private,” she said as they settled into chairs at one of the tables.

  He smiled. “I assumed it was a natural reluctance to discuss your affairs in front of the whole town.”

  Rose relaxed a little. He didn’t seem so forbidding now. “I just needed to ask a few questions about the position.”

  “There’s not much to understand.”

  “Maybe not for you, but it’s a little different for a woman.”

  George didn’t respond.

  “You want a housekeeper, someone to cook the meals, keep the house clean, and wash all the clothes.”

  “Yes, but how do I know you can handle the job? Serving food in a restaurant isn’t the same as keeping house.”

  Rose sighed wearily. “I’ve been doing those things my whole life. After my mother died, I lived with a family named Robinson. Mrs. Robinson was always having babies, so the housework settled on me. I didn’t have to, Daddy paid her to keep me, but she was very kind. Besides, she taught me to cook. She was wonderful at it. There was nobody in Austin any better. I used to cook when I started at the Bon Ton, but Dottie moved me out front hoping I would bring in a few extra customers.”

  She wouldn’t tell him of the humiliation of having to act as a draw for people like Luke. She also wouldn’t tell him that Dottie was the only person in Austin who would give her a job.

  “That sounds sufficient to me,” George said.

  “I have a few requirements,” Rose said tentatively. “Nothing I expect you’ll object to,” she qualified when she saw him stiffen up. “Naturally I require a room of my own. I want to be paid each month in gold. I want to be able to come to town at least three times a year. I also expect you to bring me back to Austin when the contract is ended.”

  “I don’t see anything unreasonable in that,” George said. He started to rise.

  “I’m not through yet.”

  “What more do you want?”

  “I rather imagined you wanted an explanation of Sulphur Tom’s remark.”

  “It’s not necessary.”

  Rose stood. “Then you’ve already decided against me.”

  George opened his mouth to deny her accusation, but the words wouldn’t come out.

  “I know you fought in the war,” Rose said, her lower lip trembling, “but I didn’t think you would condemn me without at least hearing what I have to say.”

  “My brother, Jeff, and I both fought in the war, but neither of us would condemn anyone without a hearing.” George sat back down. “Tell me.”

  Rose seated herself again.

  “My father was a career army officer,” she said proudly, “a graduate of West Point.”

  Rose noticed the rigidity in George’s face, and her heart sank. Okay, she didn’t have a chance, but she would tell him her story anyway. At least he would know the truth before he rejected her.

  “He was sent to Texas during the war with Mexico. He liked it so much better than New Hampshire he settled here. But when the war broke out, he fought for the Union. He distinguished himself in the battle for Vicksburg. He also died there.”

  “Then you are alone.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you want to leave Austin?”

  An ironic look filled her eyes.

  “Ever since my father died, I have been like a pariah in this town. No respectable woman will speak to me, much less invite me into her home. No man will treat me any differently from the way Luke treated me this morning. No one in this town would lift a finger to keep me from starving.”

  “But you don’t have to worry about that, not as long as you have a job.”

  Rose hadn’t intended to tell George everything—she had wanted to keep this shame to herself—but she could tell he was determined to reject her. She could also tell he was attracted to her. She could feel it.

  “Dottie fired me this morning. She said she couldn’t afford any more fights because of me.”

  George swore softly but with considerable vigor. “You mean she fired you because of me?”

  Rose nodded hesitantly. Dottie hadn’t meant it that way, but it worked out to the same thing. She hated to use George’s better instincts against him, but they seemed her only weapon.

  “She said she couldn’t afford to have people breaking up her place.”

  After another string of curses, George sat back to think. He found himself on the horns of an unusual dilemma. Duty told him to do exactly what his desire told him to do: hire Rose.

  But the common sense that had helped him survive four years of bloody combat screamed at him to take Peaches McCloud, the Widow Hanks, even Berthilda Huber. Choose Rose and he would be tossed into an emotional maelstrom without so much as an oar.

  “Is there anything else I ought to know?”

  He meant it as a rhetorical question, something to take up time while he tried to force himself to remember all the reasons why he should choose Peaches.

  She looked a little embarrassed. “I want you to put what we’ve said in writing.”

  Rose seemed to cringe, as though she feared he would get up and walk out. He had a strong impulse to do just that. Why did he continue to waste time on this woman?

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “Yes, I do,” Rose said, a little surprised to realize she really did.

  “But you would still want a written contract?”

  “Yes.”

  Why did she insist? If he had made up his mind to choose someone else, it wouldn’t matter. If he decided to ignore her contract, she probably wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Still, she wanted something on paper, something written out that she could see. When she handed him a pen and some paper she found in Dottie’s kitchen, he accepted it without demur.

  “Let’s see. I, George Washington Randolph—yes, I was named after a president—agree to hire Rose…”

  “Thornton. Rose Elizabeth Thornton.”

  “…Elizabeth Thornton on the fifteenth of June…”

  “Make it tomorrow.”

  “…sixteenth of June, eighteen hundred sixty-six, to keep house for the Randolph men. She will be expected to cook, clean, wash, and generally see that the house runs smoothly.” George paused, but Rose had no changes to make. “In exchange she will have a room of her own, be paid each month in gold, be taken to Austin once a quarter, and returned to town if the contract is broken.” George turned the paper around so Rose could read what he had written.

  “Now you need to put down my part,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I can’t expect you to make a promise if I’m not prepared to do the same.”

  “You’d better write it,” George said, pushing the paper toward Rose.

  “I, Rose Elizabeth Thornton, agree to cook, clean, wash, and generally provide for the needs of George Washington Randolph, and his six brothers.” Rose signed her name and date. “There,” she said, showing the paper to George.

  “I think that covers everything.”

  “There’s something else,” Rose said.

  “What now?” Impatience and annoyance scraped in his voice. Only the look in her eyes kept him from tearing the paper into tiny pieces.

  Rose felt humiliated, but she also felt desperate.

  “I owe some money.”

  “To whom?”

  “The undertaker.”

  There seemed no end to this woman’s requests.

  “How much?”

  “Fifty dollars?”

  “How could you run up such a sum?”

  “I wanted Daddy buried next to Mother. The army wouldn’t pay for it.”

  Damn those big eyes! Why did every explanation make him feel like a bigger heel than before?

  “If I hire you, I’ll settle your debts,” he said, getting to his feet and handing her the written agreement, this time being careful not to look into her eyes.

  He had dismissed her. Rose could feel it. He waited for her to leave the restaurant ahead of him, but she might as well not have been there at all. She wanted to run away, to do anything rather than go back and suffer the humiliation of seeing him choose Berthilde or Peaches over her.

  But pride made her walk at his side. Pride enabled her to hold up her head. Pride put steel in her nerves for the announcement she knew would destroy her last hope.

  “You sure took a long time,” Peaches said when they reached the sheriff’s office.

  “She didn’t tell you any lies about us, did she?” inquired the Widow Hanks.

  “Ya,” agreed Berthilde Huber.

  “Miss Thornton merely had some questions she wished to ask without the whole town as an audience. And I had a few questions to ask her.”

  “I bet we got a few boys in town who could give you the answers,” Sulphur Tom quipped.

  George couldn’t say what made him react so sharply to the old man’s ribbing. But whatever part of his mind Sulphur Tom prodded into action, he got more of a response than either of them anticipated.

  “I have a natural respect for anyone who’s reached your advanced age,” George said, directing a chilling stare at the irreverent Tom, “despite the obvious ill-treatment you’ve given your body”—howls of appreciative laughter came from the bystanders, including Sulphur Tom himself—“but your longevity will be severely jeopardized if you insult Miss Thornton again. Now if you will hand me your agreement,” he said turning to Rose, “I’ll sign it before all these witnesses.”

  Rose handed him the agreement, her surprise lost in the furious response of the people gathered around, most especially Miss Peaches McCloud.

  But no one was more shocked than George himself.

  Rose couldn’t remember when she had been more miserable. Every part of her body ached. After staying overnight in Austin, George had insisted upon leaving at dawn in order to make the return trip in one day. He had given her the choice of traveling on horseback with him or following in a wagon. Her response had been automatic. She would ride with him. Now she wondered if she hadn’t made the wrong decision, on more than one count.

  In addition to being certain that she wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week, she hadn’t been able to carry on much of a conversation. It had been a monotonous trip. George seemed moody, cold, uncommunicative. He had answered all her questions, but he hadn’t tried to pretend he wouldn’t have preferred to ride in silence. At times his answers had verged on rudeness. Clearly he had another side, one not nearly so pleasant as the face he showed in Austin.

  And he had demons, too. She could tell he had been wrestling with something for the last two hours. At first she thought he might tell her about it, but now she knew he wouldn’t. George was not the kind of person to confide in others. He rode with his eyes straight ahead, oblivious to his surroundings.

  And to her.

  Rose had heard about the brush country, but she’d never seen it. Now she wondered how anything, man or beast, could live in such a place. They seemed to be traveling between impenetrable thickets that extended as far as the eye could see. Sometimes miles went by before they came to an opening, a small savannah in this tangle of mesquite, chaparral, prickly pear, wild currant, cat’s claw, and a dozen other varieties of low-growing trees, bushes, and vines, all bearing sweet-scented flowers and succulent berries, and nearly all armed with vicious thorns. Rose didn’t know how cows and deer, even pigs and turkeys, could hide in such a briar patch. She couldn’t conceive of how a man and horse could ride into that tangle and come out alive.

  After living in a town all her life, she was unnerved by the isolation of the brush. She hadn’t seen a house all day. It was as though they were the only people on the face of the earth. She didn’t know if she could survive this far from people. Not with George acting as though he were made of wood.

  A widening path drew her attention from the brush. Rose could make out a building in the distance. She felt her pulse quicken.

  “It’s not much of a house,” George warned her. “We had hardly moved here when the war broke out. With Pa and the two oldest boys gone, Ma was lucky to hold things together.”

  Rose realized, a little surprised, that he had never mentioned his parents before. “I thought…you never said…you led me to believe…”

  “Ma died three years ago. The house will be entirely your responsibility.” They might as well be discussing some military maneuver for all the feeling she could sense in his voice. He didn’t even look at her.

  “Your father?”

  The hesitation was barely perceptible. “We think he was killed in Georgia, not too long after the battle for Atlanta.”

  Rose didn’t know how to respond. The tone of George’s voice exhibited such a mixture of emotions—cold observation and throbbing anger—she thought it better to ask no questions.

  The ranch did nothing to support her flagging spirits. It consisted of a house, which at a distance appeared to be made up of two very large rooms with a dog trot in between, and two corrals. A blooded bull occupied one.

  George followed her gaze. “A family in Alabama gave us the bull for helping them out. Jeff and I kept him between us all the way to make sure nobody would steal him. At night we slept in shifts. The steers we can breed from him can make us rich.”

  As they drew closer, the house looked even more pitiful. Bedraggled chickens scratching about for a meager existence didn’t improve the landscape. A milk cow grazed a hundred yards from the house. Her sorry condition made her fit right in with the setting. A person could starve and die out here and no one would ever know.

  “I’m afraid things have been let go since Ma died. The twins have been too busy with the herd, and the young ones never mind a mess.”

  “Young ones? You said seven men.”

  “We’re only six just now. No one’s heard from Madison.” His voice faltered, but only for a moment. “The twins are seventeen, Tyler’s thirteen, and Zac is almost seven.”

  “He’s practically a baby,” Rose exclaimed, her sympathy aroused for any child forced to grow up in this barren wilderness.

  “Don’t tell him that,” George cautioned, the first smile Rose had seen in hours fracturing his solemn expression. “He thinks he’s as grown as the rest of us.”

  “There’s still one more.”

  “Jeff.”

  He said the name as if he deserved an entire chapter to himself, as if all rules no longer applied.

  “Jeff lost his arm at Gettysburg. A minié ball shattered his elbow.”

  Why did each word feel like an accusation hurled at her? He hadn’t looked at her, she could hear no condemnation in his voice, but she felt it nonetheless.

  “He spent the rest of the war in a prison camp.”

  Rose couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “He pretends to have accepted it, but he hasn’t. Don’t refer to your father’s being a hero in the Union Army.”

  “You mean to keep it a secret?”

  “I don’t see how mentioning it would cause anything but trouble.”

  Rose had to agree, but she hated lies, even lies she hadn’t told. “Tell me about the others.”

  “I hardly know them. Zac was a baby when I left, Tyler only eight.”

  “And the twins?”

  “They’ve grown into young men I hardly understand.”

  No one came from the house to greet them. The silence of the midafternoon grew oppressive. The enervating heat of summer was still a month away, but Rose felt as if she had stepped into a still life. Nothing moved. Nothing made any sound.

  George dismounted, but she couldn’t move her lower body. She couldn’t even feel her legs.

  Like a gentleman, he helped her down. He went through all the motions, said all the words, but there was no warmth in his touch. She leaned on him at first, then decided she preferred her horse. He might kick her, but at least it would be a sign of emotion.

  “We sleep on this side,” George said, pointing to the left half of the house as she worked some kinks out of her muscles. “This is the kitchen.”

  She could tell that from the chimney. The yard, if the area around the house could have been dignified by such a name, hadn’t been swept in weeks. Rose privately wondered if it had ever been swept. In addition to being the place where they kept their saddles and harnesses, the dog trot seemed to be the place where they threw everything that had lost its use. The windows contained real glass, but Rose doubted she would be able to distinguish much more than daylight and dark until they were cleaned.

  Then George opened the door to the kitchen.

  Rose’s knees nearly buckled under her. The room was in such a state it was scarcely recognizable as a kitchen. A huge iron stove stood piled high with every pot in the house, each covered with remnants of food. Dirty plates and glasses covered the table. On closer inspection Rose discovered that most were chipped and cheap, with a few extremely fine china and crystal pieces. Around the rough board table stood eight ladder-back chairs, slats cracked, rungs worn from use, and cane seats coming loose.

  Thrown together, cheek by jowl, were wooden buckets, a crusted Rochester brass hanging lamp, a battered coffeepot, a crude worktable, and a pile of discarded tin cans. The curtains were gray with grease and dust. The woodbox contained little besides splinters.

  The strong smell of old grease pervaded the room.

  “Tyler has been doing the cooking, but he doesn’t know much about food. I’m afraid none of us is very strong on cleaning up.”

  “Where’s my room?” Rose asked. If she didn’t lie down soon, she would collapse right here.

  “Up there.” George pointed to a ladder leading to the loft. Rose’s spirits sank to rock bottom. Gone were her visions of a sunny room with chintz curtains and a soft bed with plenty of sunshine and fresh air.