Chapter Fifteen
Joseph could sense the tension as he drove his buggy down the Irish Road. No one in Hope Springs was unaware of the chaos reigning on both sides of town. The morning before, all the Irish had woken to find their animals missing. That morning, every single horse on the Red Road had mysteriously lost their shoes overnight. The Red Road, instead of leaving to take their grain to the depot, had spent hours lined up at the blacksmith shop, having their horses shod.
Seamus Kelly, to his credit, hadn’t raised his prices—he’d done that in the past during crises—but he’d certainly made a pretty penny off the suspicious circumstances.
The Irish had spent the day catching up on the work they’d missed doing the day before while chasing down their livestock. The two groups would be leaving the same day after all. Years ago they’d decided to take different routes to different depots in order to avoid open warfare on the trail. He hoped everyone would keep to that agreement.
The renewed hostilities had left him with a dilemma. He’d intended to leave the girls with Mrs. O’Connor while he was gone, but doing so would likely be seen as taking sides with the Irish. Leaving the girls with the Kesters would look like siding with the Reds. He absolutely could not leave them on their own, and he couldn’t take them with him.
His only hope was Katie. She lived among the Irish, but worked, once more, off the Irish Road. She was as close to a neutral choice as he was likely to find. And he trusted her without reservation.
Why, then, he wondered, standing at Mrs. Claire’s front door, shifting his hat nervously around in his hands, was he so afraid she would say no? He’d brought the girls with him as an added bit of convincing. They had Katie wrapped around their adorable little fingers, whether or not she realized it.
Mrs. Claire peeked through her window. She had a smile for Joseph and a wave of invitation to come inside.
“Now, mind your manners,” he reminded the girls.
He turned the knob and opened the door. The smell of fresh bread hovered in the air. He had missed that smell. Was there anything that he didn’t now associate with Katie? The smell of bread and coffee. Music. The quiet stillness just before dawn when she used to talk to him in the kitchen.
“Is Katie here?” he asked Mrs. Claire, trying to keep himself focused.
“Standing right over there, or aren’t your eyes working today?” Mrs. Claire seemed to be laughing at him.
Katie spotted them in the next instant. “Why, girls, have you come to see me at last?”
Emma and Ivy rushed across the small room and threw themselves at Katie, wrapping their arms about her legs. She stroked the top of their heads, smiling down at them.
“What brings you by?”
“Pompah bringed us.”
Katie looked up at Joseph.
He pressed ahead. “I’ve come to talk to you about something.”
All the lightness left her eyes. She looked instantly wary. “Have you, now?” Katie turned to address the girls. “I’ve a plate of fresh rolls on the table just over there. You can each have one if your father agrees.”
Joseph gave a quick nod. The girls scampered off.
“What is it you’ve come to talk to me about? Have I done something wrong?”
He shook his head. “No, nothing like that.”
“Truly?” She was clearly unconvinced.
“Do I generally come by to criticize you?”
“Our Katie’s had a great many visitors today,” Mrs. Claire said from her chair by the window.
Obviously their conversation wasn’t as private as Joseph might have liked. “A lot of visitors?” He pieced that together in the next moment. “And they have come with criticisms.”
Katie pushed out a puff of breath. “‘Katie Macauley, you have to march in to town with banners flying or you’re no countrywoman of ours.’ Or ‘Katie Macauley, if you don’t act as a spy at the mercantile, you’ve betrayed us all.’ And the Reds come into the mercantile all the day long and help Mr. Johnson point out everything they could possibly say I’ve done wrong, and he threatens to toss me out. I must apologize at least twenty times every single morning.”
Joseph didn’t want to add to her burdens. Would she agree to watch the girls out of a sense of obligation? Perhaps if he talked to her more privately, gave her the opportunity to say no if she really needed to without an audience.
“Would you take a little walk with me?” He hadn’t been this nervous the first time he’d asked his late wife to ride out with him. Perhaps because he’d known she would agree. Nothing was ever that certain with Katie.
She nodded, but without enthusiasm.
“Off with the both of you.” Mrs. Claire shooed them away with a wave of her hand. “The girls and I will get on famous without you.”
He held the door for Katie. She passed through without a word. Silence was the theme of their walk as the minutes dragged on.
Katie was hurting. He couldn’t ask another favor of her.
After a time, she sighed. “Things have grown difficult, Joseph.”
“Tell me.”
She picked a long blade of wild grass, using it to swipe at the grass growing around her. “I couldn’t help the Irish gather up their missing animals because I had to work. The Irish were disappointed in me for that. And Mr. Johnson is mean as a cat that’s had its tail stepped on.”
He could easily believe that.
“I am growing terribly weary of being called a half-wit simply because I don’t know all the fancy words he uses. I am convinced within myself he does that in order to confuse me. He likes having reason to make me feel stupid.”
“You know that you aren’t, don’t you?”
She rubbed her arms through her shawl and gave a half shrug. “He makes me feel . . . small.”
He pulled off his jacket and set it around her shoulders. She pulled it tight around her. They walked on for a while. Joseph didn’t know quite what to say. He wouldn’t tell her she had no reason to feel the way she did; Johnson was trying to make her feel stupid and unimportant. That was one of Katie’s particularly tender topics, so arguing that she was one of the sharper people he knew would likely seem to her like empty flattery.
“I should start dropping in Gaelic words once in a while when I talk to him. Then he would be the one who didn’t know the words being said to him.”
There was the resilient Katie he knew.
“You make a very good point, Katie. He can say all he wants about your intelligence, but he can’t argue with the fact that you speak two languages while he knows only the one.”
“Hmm.” Her steps slowed a bit. After a moment she looked at him again. Her lips turned up a little until she fully smiled. “Now, isn’t that a fine discovery. I know something he doesn’t.”
“Not just something. An entire language.”
She laughed. “Maybe that is why he doesn’t want me to use any Irish words, because it makes him feel stupid.”
Katie slipped her arms into the jacket sleeves. She looked adorable, so undersized for his coat. And she was smiling again. He’d longed to see that smile every day since she’d left.
She set her fingers in his, though they only just poked out of the jacket sleeve. She had reached for his hand. He adjusted their hands enough to hold hers properly. She didn’t pull back, didn’t object.
He’d been wondering for some time if he ought to try to win her affection. He had debated with himself, arguing that she had chosen Tavish, counterarguing that letting his feelings be known wouldn’t be a bad thing. But that moment, walking alone with her, hand in hand, he knew he couldn’t simply walk away.
“I wish you would come visit more often, Joseph Archer.”
He intended to. But right then, he had particular business to attend to.
“I’ve come for more than a visit,” he confessed. “I’ve come to ask a favor.”
“What is it?”
“I need someone to look after the girls while I’m taking my crop to market. The girls love you and have missed you a great deal since you left. I know they would jump at the opportunity to spend a few days with you again.”
“I’m not qualified to look after children, Joseph. You know what happened to my sister, and you know it was my fault.”
“Katie.” He gave her a stern look. “What I know is that it wasn’t your fault, only that you blame yourself for it. And I further know that you can be trusted despite your misgivings. And I do trust you, enough to have no qualms about leaving the two most precious things in my life to your care—if you are willing to look after them. I have full faith in you, Katie.”
He watched her take a deep breath. She gave a quick nod. “Well, I do speak two languages, you know.”
Joseph squeezed her fingers, smiling at her humor. Her history haunted her, and it pained him to see her still hurting. That she was trying to keep her optimism through it all was commendable. “You plan to end every sentence with that from now on, don’t you? ‘Why, yes, I do make very good sweet rolls, and I speak two languages as well.’”
Katie laughed, swinging their arms between them. “I’ll need to ask Granny Claire if she can keep an eye on the girls while I’m working at the mercantile.”
That difficulty had occurred to him, but true to form, Katie had tackled the problem head-on.
“Emma will be in school many of those days,” Joseph pointed out. “That should relieve some of the burden.”
“Oh, the girls are never burdensome. The children in the first house I worked in were positively demons compared to Ivy and Emma. Demons, Joseph.”
He smiled at her forceful tone. “I am relieved my angels have proven themselves better than their predecessors.”
“Vastly better.”
They turned back in the direction of Mrs. Claire’s house.
“Now are you certain,” she asked, “the Red Road won’t take exception to your girls staying down this road while you’re gone?”
“They will a bit,” he admitted. “But oddly enough, the fact that you work at the mercantile seems to make the Reds find you less threatening.”
Katie looked equal parts annoyed and frustrated. “Probably because they have seen for themselves how firmly I am under Mr. Johnson’s thumb while I’m there. A caged enemy is hardly a dangerous one.”
“I don’t know about that, Katie. Cage any creature long enough and it will fight back.”
Katie shook her head. “Either fight back or curl up and die.”
“Don’t you dare curl up and die.”
His vehemence clearly surprised her. Indeed, it surprised him. He tried to cover his outburst with a shrug and a half smile. But there was no explaining away the thread of panic woven into his words at the thought of Katie and all her fire and determination dying under the weight of Hope Springs’ hatred.
“I don’t intend to give up, Joseph Archer. Complain a great deal, certainly—especially when you’re so willing to listen—but I’ll not give my troubles the satisfaction of beating me.”
That’s my Katie.
By the growing look of surprise on Katie’s face, he’d said the words out loud. Her surprise turned to a blush. That was encouraging.
The visit was a quick one. Katie returned Joseph’s jacket, kissed the girls good-bye, and with a smile acknowledged she would see them all in the morning. He would have Katie’s company twice in only a few hours. Joseph could easily grow accustomed to that.
Ivy was still half asleep, but Joseph needed to be on his way and couldn’t wait for a later hour. So he’d arrived at Katie’s door before sunrise, with Ivy heavy in his arms and Emma only slightly more awake beside him.
Katie let them in with her usual command of any task, despite the early hour.
“I’ll just lay this sweet one down on my bed.” She took Ivy out of his arms.
“Thank you.” Though he wanted to bid his tiny girl farewell before he left, he knew Ivy would be impossible the rest of the day if she didn’t get the sleep she needed.
Emma clung to his hand, looking about uncertainly. “Why can’t we sleep in our own house, Papa?”
“Because that would inconvenience Katie. She needs to keep close to Mrs. Claire. And all her baking things are here.”
Emma nodded in understanding, though her brows still turned down with worry.
“You’ll enjoy being with Katie again,” he reminded her. “I would guess she’ll play her violin for you—I know how much you’ve missed that.” They all had.
“Why can’t I go with you, Papa?” Emma looked up at him, a threat of tears in her eyes. “I could help. I am a very hard worker.”
Joseph pulled her up against his side. “You are a very hard worker, dear. But you need to be in school.” That argument would likely sting less than a reminder that she was far too small for a trip to the grain markets. “And Katie will need your help with Ivy.”
“I don’t want to be left behind.” That had been Emma’s constant worry for too many years. She wanted to go everywhere he did, needed reassurance that when they were apart, he would return.
“I’ll come back in a little more than a week,” he reminded her. “Sooner, if things go really well. And I’ll bring you back something as I always do. Plus I’ll have our new housekeeper with me, so you won’t be eating burnt toast and runny eggs in a messy kitchen every single day any longer.”
That earned him the tiniest, most fleeting of smiles. “Will she be nice, Papa?”
“The new housekeeper?”
Emma nodded.
“I am sure she will be.” She had better be.
Katie emerged from the hallway, her arms now empty. The house was quiet with both Ivy and Mrs. Claire sleeping and night not yet entirely fled outside.
Emma’s grip on his hand tightened. “You promise you will come back?”
“I give you my solemn word.” He tried to convey with a look just how sincere he was, but she still looked worried.
Joseph tried very hard not to think ill of his late wife, but at this time each year he found himself cursing her in frustration. She had planted these fears in Emma. She had cruelly taught Emma to expect abandonment.
“I always come back, Emma.” He always had.
“But you always leave too. You always leave me here.”
Katie came and stood beside him, standing so close he could smell the flowery scent that had once filled his home while she lived there. He’d missed that about her as well. He’d missed everything.
She motioned him over to the side. Emma stayed where she was, a look of forlorn grief on her face. What was he going to do? He couldn’t break the girl’s heart again.
“Why is she so upset?” Katie asked. “Other than missing you, of course. It seems more than that.”
“She doesn’t want to be left behind.”
“Because she’ll miss you? Or she’ll worry about you?”
He shook his head. “Because her mother left her behind.”
Katie laid her hand gently on his arm. “When she died?”
If only it were that. “No.” He dropped his voice to the smallest of whispers. “Not long after Ivy was born, Vivian decided she’d had enough of Hope Springs and Wyoming and farming, and she ran off with a cowhand from one of the ranches here in the valley.”
“Merciful heavens.”
“It wasn’t a ‘romantic’ connection. She simply wanted to return to Baltimore, and she offered him a small fortune if he would help her get there.” He hadn’t confessed this to anyone but Ian. How was Katie pulling this from him with nothing more than an empathetic look? “She took all her clothes and prized belongings and Ivy, and she left.”
“Wait. She took Ivy?”
Joseph sighed. “Yes. Ivy—and not Emma. Poor Emma didn’t understand the reasons her mother left; she only remembers that she was left behind.”
Katie said something in Gaelic. From the tone and inflection, it was not a flattering reflection on Vivian’s actions.
“My thoughts exactly,” he muttered.
“How could any woman do that to her child?”
“I tracked Vivian down and brought her back, but she died of the fever not long after. There was no time for Emma to feel secure again.”
Katie glanced briefly in Emma’s direction. She pulled Joseph a single step down the hallway.
“I have a suggestion.”
“For Emma?”
“For the both of you.”
“What do you have in mind?” He’d listen to any suggestion Katie had.
They took another step away from Emma—not far enough to cause the girl alarm.
“The poor dear is worried out of all reason that you’re not coming back for her. That is a fear I know all too well.” A flash of pain crossed Katie’s face. “I know what it is to watch my father leave me behind. But he never looked back; he never returned.”
He took her hand. The stories she’d told him of her past returned with force to his mind. She’d known too much heartache in her life.
“The thing that pulled me through those days was having my father’s fiddle,” she said. “’Twas a part of him I had with me to touch and to hold. So long as I had something of his, he didn’t feel completely lost to me.”
Her suggestion became instantly clear. He needed to give Emma something of his to cling to while he was away. “That is a brilliant idea.”
He stepped around her and knelt in front of Emma. He pulled from his jacket his pocket watch. “I need you to look after something for me, Emma. Do you think you could?”
She nodded, some curiosity sneaking into her worried expression. He set the watch in her hand and wrapped her fingers around it.
“I need you to keep this for me, hold on to it until I return.” He gave her a most serious look. “I know you’ll take very good care of it.”
“Oh, I will, Papa.” Her grip on the watch tightened. “I won’t lose it or anything. I’ll still have it when you get back.”
He leaned in very close and whispered, “I will always come back, Emma. Always.”
Emma pressed the watch to her heart. He ran a hand along her still-messy hair.
“Pompah, this isn’t our house.” Ivy tottered in from the hall, one eye closed, the other heavy with sleep. She rubbed a fist against the eye she hadn’t opened. “This is Mrs. Claire’s house.”
Joseph looked up at Katie from his position kneeling in front of Emma. “She will be difficult today if she’s tired.”
“She will be fine.” Katie spoke with a confidence that contrasted sharply with her full-bodied uncertainty the first day she met the girls. “Let her have a good-bye.”
He had to drop his gaze away from her beautiful brown eyes. She distracted and tortured him, and she had no idea.
Katie knelt beside Ivy, wrapping a protective arm around her. Ivy leaned her head on Katie’s shoulder. Emma wandered to Katie’s side, her gaze continually dropping to his watch.
There they were, side by side, the three people in all the world he would miss more than anyone else over the next week. A quick good-bye seemed best. Ivy would be too sleepy for protests. Emma had found some solace in keeping his watch with her—the tears that hovered in her eyes seemed to have dried. And Katie was there beside them both. She would offer them the comfort they needed.
“Good-bye, sweet girls.” Reminding himself to be quick and on his way, he pressed kisses to their cheeks. “And thank you, Katie.”
She nodded. He flattered himself that she looked sad to see him go.
He stood and stepped out. Emma and Ivy gathered in the doorway, with Katie right beside them. Joseph made his way up the walk.
Still within sight, he turned back one more time, wanting a last look at his girls before he left. They waved. He waved as well, and set himself firmly back on the path.
He’d only gone a step or two when the sound of swishing fabric and quick footsteps stopped him. He turned back. Katie reached him and, without warning, threw her arms around his neck.
His heart lodged in his throat, pounding painfully. His mind couldn’t settle on a single thought, couldn’t focus on anything except Katie, in his arms, embracing him.
He stood a moment, too shocked to move an inch. But she didn’t pull away. He slowly wrapped his arms around her, fully expecting her to object. She didn’t. He wasn’t complaining; he was only very, very confused.
He somehow managed to find his voice. “What has brought this on, Katie?” Whatever it was, he’d make certain to do it again and again.
She pulled away enough to look into his face. He kept his arms close about her.
“You looked back.” Her voice quivered a bit. “The girls were standing there, missing you already, and you looked back.”
She’d tossed herself into his arms because he’d glanced back over his shoulder? But the answer came in the next moment. Her father had left her, never intending to return. And he hadn’t so much as looked back at her one last time.
Joseph rubbed her back, remembering with clarity the heartache in her eyes when she’d first told him of being left behind. How long had she been waiting for someone to regret leaving her? The painful longing lingered in her eyes.
He let his mind memorize the moment. Loving her was sometimes a physically painful thing—it too often felt pointless.
“Thank you, again,” he said, “for watching the girls while I’m gone.”
She smiled at him, and his heart cracked that much more.
“Have a safe journey, Joseph Archer,” she said. “Come back to us whole.”
He lightly touched her face. He couldn’t help himself. Color touched her cheeks, but she didn’t flinch.
“I’ll see you in about a week,” he said.
She gave a small nod. Her eyes never left his face. He thought he saw a question there, but he couldn’t be sure.
He stepped back. She dropped her gaze. An odd tension pulled between them, an awkwardness that was not usually there.
A week. In another week he could begin making his case in earnest. Maybe, just maybe, he would be permitted to hold Katie Macauley in his arms again.