Chapter Eleven

“Where’s Fiona?” asked Thaddeus when Ellie stepped out to greet them on the long front porch.

“Shh. Lower your voice. She’s sleeping. Finally. Was up most of the night waiting for you. Drank more coffee than any ten cowpokes sitting around a campfire, and I just tucked her in, thank you very much.”

Remington dismounted, took the three steps to the porch in a single leap, and enveloped Ellie Madison in a fierce hug. “Seems like someone else drank their fair share of coffee. You’ve got the jitters.” He looked over his shoulder at Ellie’s son. Ben was still sitting beside Phoebe in the buggy they’d used to bring her to Twin Star. “Your ma’s got the jitters, Ben!”

“I don’t think those are the jitters,” Ben said mildly. “Better put her down. I’m not sure she can breathe.”

Remington set Ellie on her feet. She promptly slugged him in the shoulder with the heel of her hand. “Idiot child. My Ben was always smarter than you.”

“No denying it.” He swooped, kissed her cheek, and stepped aside so she could stop ducking and weaving in order to look around him.

Ellie extended her arms in a welcoming gesture. “Come here, young lady, and let us get you inside. Ben, help her down from the buggy. Oh, but what a journey you must have had. Remington, you and Mr. Frost take her bags. Do you have a trunk, dear? Yes? Remington will get that in a moment.”

Phoebe took the hand Ben held out, grateful for the support when her legs wobbled once her feet were on the ground. After Thaddeus formally introduced her to the housekeeper, she was hustled inside while Ellie directed the men around with the authority of a stage manager. Phoebe felt completely at home.

“We’ve spruced up Ben’s room for you,” said Ellie. “You’re not putting him out. He likes the bunkhouse fine, and come warmer nights, he’ll be just as content to sleep out of doors.”

“I won’t,” said Ben in an aside to Phoebe. “But she’s right about the bunkhouse.”

Ellie cuffed her son on the side of his head. “I heard that. Go on with you; show her to the room. And quietly. Mrs. Frost is sensibly asleep as all of you should be.” She herded Phoebe and her escorts down the hall then shooed the men out of the room after they dropped the bags and the trunk.

Phoebe stood beside the bed, hands folded in front of her, waiting for Ellie to shut the door. When she did, the housekeeper was on what Phoebe considered to be the wrong side of it. “You don’t have to stay,” Phoebe said. “I can manage.”

“Of course you can, but that doesn’t mean you should. Go on. Sit down before you drop. I’m going to unpack a few things for you, find your nightgown and slippers. Do you have a robe?”

Phoebe nodded dumbly.

“Good. I’ll set that out for you as well. There’s fresh water in the pitcher. The washstand’s in the corner. Soap is beside the basin. Towels and washcloths in the cupboard underneath. Up to you if want to clean up before you crawl under the covers. Piss pot’s under the bed. First thing, though, is to get you out of Remington’s coat. You must have been chilled to the bone if he gave you that.”

There was no resisting her, Phoebe realized, and there was no shame in surrendering to a superior force. In every way it was exactly what she needed to do, and in short order her bags were unpacked with every item disappearing into the wardrobe or the chest of drawers. When directed, she closed her eyes and raised her face for a gentle washing, and with no protest at all, she stripped down to her shift and then allowed a perfect stranger to exchange it for her nightgown.

She was asleep before her head touched the pillow or she would have known Ellie tucked her in.

• • •

“Snug as a bug,” Ellie said when she entered the kitchen. Thaddeus was slathering sweet cream butter on bread she had baked that morning while Remington was using a knife to get the last bit of strawberry preserves out of a jar. She laid Remington’s long coat over the back of his chair. “A spoon would serve you better, Remington. Where’s Ben?”

Remington did not stop his excavation work. “Took the horses and the buggy to the barn, then he was going to turn in.”

Ellie pulled out a chair and sat. “It wouldn’t hurt you to do the same.” She looked pointedly at Thaddeus. “You, too, Mr. Frost. I don’t know that I’ve seen you so tired after a week of riding the property and sleeping on the ground. What happened? Because surely this late arrival cannot be because Miss Apple missed a connection somewhere. I cast that line to Mrs. Frost but she wasn’t having any of it.”

Thaddeus looked up. “No, she wouldn’t.” He took a bite of bread and washed it down with a gulp of coffee. “I don’t think I’m the one that ought to explain. Remington can do it. I have to tell Fiona.”

Ellie and Remington exchanged surreptitious glances but neither of them spoke.

Thaddeus looked out the window above the sink. A faint orange glow was just becoming visible on the horizon. “Hardly seems worth going to bed,” he said, lifting his chin in that direction. “Day’s breaking. Time to get to work.”

In the event that his father was serious, Remington quickly finished spreading preserves on his heel of bread and took a bite. He slowed down so he could taste what he put in his mouth when he heard Thaddeus snicker. “Funny,” he said, cheeking the bread.

Thaddeus shrugged, stretched his arms wide. “I thought so.” He finished his coffee and stood. “I’m going to bed, to sleep, perchance to dream.”

“That’s not the kind of sleep Hamlet had in mind.”

Thaddeus looked at Ellie. “You ever notice that college knocked the stupid right out of him? Sometimes I think it’s a damn shame.” He chucked Remington on the shoulder as he skirted the table. “Thank you again for seeing after her,” he told his son. “You, too, Ellie. She needed wrangling in the worst way.”

When Thaddeus was gone, Ellie’s candid gaze fell on Remington. “Are you going to tell me?”

“Are you going to feed me?”

“Fried eggs or flapjacks?”

“Both. It’s a long story.”

• • •

By nature, Phoebe was an early riser. The long nights demanded by the theater had never translated into lingering in bed come morning. Ellie had closed the curtains in her room—Ben’s room, she reminded herself—so that contributed to the lateness of the hour when she woke. She knew it was late because somewhere in the house a clock chimed and she counted out nine on her fingertips.

She turned onto her back, pulled the quilted coverlet up to her shoulders, and took inventory of the parts of her that didn’t hurt. As it happened, it was a short list, and she finished it before she was ready to leave what she determined was an extraordinarily comfortable nest.

The choice was taken from her when the bedroom door opened in a grand manner that could only mean that Fiona was about to make an entrance. In Fiona’s hands, the door had such a significant supporting role that Phoebe was always tempted to give it credit in the playbill. Such was Fiona’s gift.

“Ah, you’re awake. You are, aren’t you?”

Phoebe raised herself up on her elbows to prove that she was but did not fool herself into believing that it mattered. Fiona was obviously determined that she should be awake and would have made it happen.

“Good.” Fiona closed the door and crossed the room. The hem of her satin robe swept the floor behind her. “Are you comfortable like that? You can’t be. Sit up.”

Phoebe did, resting against the headboard after she stuffed a pillow behind the small of her back. “Is that better for you?”

Fiona made a moue. “Don’t be cross.” She sat on the edge of the bed, turned slightly so she could draw up one knee, and set her hands on Phoebe’s shoulders. “Let me look at you. Suffer the examination if you must, but I am determined.” After several long moments of serious study, Fiona removed her hands from Phoebe’s shoulders and placed the back of one of them against her forehead. “You don’t have a temperature. You are simply quite fine, aren’t you? No ill effects from your ordeal?” She dropped her hand to her lap. “Thaddeus told me all about it. How awful it must have been. Was it awful?”

Phoebe did not expect Fiona to wait for an answer, and she was not proved wrong. Fiona launched into an explanation of her absence at the station and then her absence from the front porch when Phoebe arrived. Further, she explained why she had written so few times and why the invitation to visit had come from Thaddeus and not her. Phoebe listened with half an ear to what was likely only a quarter’s worth of truth. She would sort through it later, parse what she thought she could trust. Fiona needed time to settle with the truth as well.

Phoebe waited for the spring inside Fiona to completely unwind before she asked, “What about you? Are you well?”

“Now that you’re here, I am. You cannot imagine how I worried.”

“Oh, I think I can.”

Fiona’s amethyst eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “I’m not sure I like your tone.” She held up one finger. “No, wait. I am sure, and I don’t like it.”

Phoebe flushed. It was a reminder that Fiona could still make her feel like a child. “I’m sorry. Of course you were worried.”

Fiona tilted her head to one side, thoughtful now. “Perhaps you are more overwrought than your appearance suggests. I think a hot bath and a hotter meal are in order.” She stood, put out a hand to forestall an argument. “Put your robe on and I’ll have a couple of the hands move the tub in here. Once Ellie’s heated the water, they can fetch and carry. I have bath salts.”

Phoebe admitted it sounded wonderful. “I should help.”

“Ellie won’t let you,” Fiona said. “Doing for others is her domain.”

Phoebe thought that the way Fiona said it, it was a matter of fact, not opinion. She wondered, then, about the faint thread of bitterness that stitched the words together. She did not think she imagined it, but it was also difficult to believe that Fiona longed for purpose in her life that included doing for others.

Fiona rose and picked up Phoebe’s flannel robe from where it lay over the spindle rail of a rocker. She handed it over. “I’ll see that everything’s made ready.”

Then she was gone.

• • •

Phoebe was already wearing her robe but still searching for her slippers when there was a knock at the door. The knock was a sure sign that it was not Fiona returning. She padded to the door and opened it a few inches. When she saw it was Ellie Madison, she stood back and let the housekeeper in.

Ellie wiped her damp hands on her muslin apron. “I was washing up,” she said. “Your sister’s corralling a couple of the boys to set up a bath.”

“I know.” Phoebe was apologetic. “I hope it’s not too much trouble.”

“No such thing. Trouble’s trouble. You can’t have too much of it. I just came to make sure you had some privacy for personal matters before they came traipsing in here. Outhouse is in the back, about a hundred feet downgrade from the stream, but like I said, there’s a pot under the bed.”

“I remember. I think I’ll use the privy. I need to stretch my legs.”

“Suit yourself. I don’t know how it is in the city, but there’s a bucket of wood ashes inside. Pour a handful down the hole when you’re done. Keeps things smelling like the good earth.”

“Um. Yes. I’ll do that. Do you know where my slippers are?” When Ellie’s gaze dropped to the bedside, Phoebe realized Fiona must have accidentally pushed them under the bed. “Never mind,” she said. “I know what happened to them.”

“You probably want to put on shoes to go out and keep your slippers for indoors.”

“You’re right. Thank you.” Phoebe found her ankle boots on the floor of the wardrobe. She sat in the rocker to put them on, aware that the housekeeper was waiting to provide an escort at least part of the way. “Has everyone else eaten?”

“That’s neither here nor there. You haven’t.”

“I can make breakfast for myself.”

“Never thought you couldn’t, but it’d give me pleasure to do it just the same. You don’t mind that, do you?”

“No,” she said. “At least not this morning.”

“Good. Come now. Let me point out the way.”

• • •

By the time Phoebe reached the privy, she had met three of the five hands working the ranch since winter passed. Ralph Neighbors, a bow-legged cowpoke in his early forties, tipped his hat and murmured his name as he sauntered by on his way to the house. Scooter Banks, closer to Phoebe’s age, walked like his boots had springs, not spurs, and introduced himself with a firm handshake and a toothy smile. Arnie Wilver’s age was indeterminate, but it fell somewhere between Ralph’s and Scooter’s. He was carrying a coiled length of rope on his shoulder and he merely raised a gloved hand in her direction. It was Scooter who supplied his name.

Working in the close quarters of the theater, rubbing elbows at almost every turn, slipping between actors in various states of dress—or undress—Phoebe allowed that she was on loose terms with modesty. Perhaps it was just as well if she was going to be presented like a debutante every time she walked to the privy.

She smiled around a bubble of laughter, but that faded as she recalled a moment in the cabin at Thunder Point right after Remington had cut her loose. The first thing she had done was rearrange her skirt so that it covered her legs. She wondered that she had felt the urge at all. Was it because she knew that it was expected or because he was watching her?

Phoebe also remembered that her reserve, such as it was, was short-lived. How else to explain that she had allowed herself to be fitted against the curve of his saddle and in the cradle of his crotch? And when he suggested that she put her arms around him? Not a second thought; not a moment’s hesitation.

She sighed. She could not have given him a good opinion of herself. On the heels of that thought, she wondered if that mattered and whether it should. He had been quiet on the ride from Frost Falls to the ranch. Thaddeus asked him some about his business in Chicago, and Remington responded but kept his answers brief. Ben wanted to know more about the men on the train, and here Remington deferred to her. That was when she realized that she preferred the quiet as well.

She thought he had fallen asleep in the saddle, but then they reached the house and he made the leap to the porch effortlessly. His affection for Ben’s mother was real and transparent. It had not occurred to her until that moment that if Thaddeus had come to treat Ben as a second son, then Ellie might feel similarly toward Remington.

It made Phoebe wonder what kind of feelings Remington might harbor for Fiona, but she did not speculate on the subject long. There was a bath waiting for her inside the house and two more hands that she still had to meet.

One of them, Les Brownlee, was shifting his slight weight rather urgently from side to side not above twenty feet from the privy. As soon as he saw her, he blushed red to the tips of his ears, tucked his receding chin against his chest, and mumbled his name as he passed without looking up.

The other, who told her his name was Johnny Sutton, was helping Remington carry pails of water down the hall to her bedroom. He was so young and such a skinny thing, and laboring mightily under the weight of the water, that Phoebe was tempted to take one of the buckets from him. Truly, she was tempted to take both. He was lightening his load by sloshing water each time he took a step.

Phoebe hurried back to the kitchen for a mop, took it over Ellie’s protests, and followed the wet trail to the bedroom. She thrust the mop into the young man’s hand and pointedly directed him to the door. Remington chuckled until she gestured at him to do the same.

He held up his hands, an empty pail in each. “What did I do?”

“You let that boy make a mess.”

Remington lowered the pails. “That boy is seventeen and has to learn to carry more than his weight in water if he’s going to last the summer, and since his ma is depending on him to help support the family, he needs to stay motivated. I swear if you had asked him to hand over a bucket, he would have done it.”

Phoebe pressed her lips together. “Mm. I came close to telling him to give me the pair. I didn’t because I thought it would embarrass him.”

“Unlikely.” He set the pails down. “I still have to make a couple of trips but the water’s heating now.” His dark eyes took her measure from head to foot. “How are you?”

“Sore. A little achy. Nothing that won’t pass.”

“Ellie makes a balm that will put heat under your skin. You rub it in and wait a minute or so. I’ll tell her to give you some. It will work best after you take your bath. Oh, and I’m going to ask for a salve for your wrists. They’re still chafed.”

Phoebe nodded. Of course he would notice what no one else had. She fiddled with the belt of her robe. It was happening again—an odd sensation of shyness was rooting her feet to the floor but making her want to twist in place like a silly schoolgirl. She managed not to do that, but only just. His eyes were not looking anywhere but into hers, and yet Phoebe felt as if his gaze was wandering over her again, touching the soft hollow of her throat, glancing off her shoulder, lingering just a moment past decency on the curve of her breasts. The sensation that his eyes were moving over her had a tangible quality. There was pressure on her waist, at her wrist, on the curve of her hip. Impossibly, she felt his touch at the backs of her knees.

Phoebe did not blink as much as she slowly and deliberately lowered and then raised her lashes. The effect was owl-like, and when her vision cleared, she saw he was regarding her with both amusement and curiosity. The curiosity faded, leaving only amusement, when she swallowed hard and pointed to the pails.

“Right. More water.”

Phoebe swore she heard him chuckling as he exited stage left.