Western Christmas Proposals. Carla Kelly

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      “I was,” he replied. “Beg pardon, ma’am, but where are you from?”

      “The US, same’s you,” she said. “Maine.” She spoke slowly and distinctly. “Maybe you would introduce yourself?”

      Of course. Lord, he was a ninny. “Um, Edward Avery, ma’am, and you are?”

      “Katherine Peck,” she said. Still standing on the box, she set the wet rag in the bucket, swiped her hand across an apron many sizes too large for her, and held it out to him.

      He shook her hand, enjoying the firmness of her damp handshake.

      Ned had always been a man of swift decision. Perhaps Wyoming, with its vagaries and harsh living had pounded that into him. Maybe he even prided himself on his ability to size up someone. He took another look at Miss Katherine Peck, she of the impenetrable accent and no prospects, if she was washing windows for a preacher, and wasted not a minute.

      “Miss Peck, I’ll pay you thirty dollars a month to be my chore girl.”

Chapter Two

      “What makes you think I need a job?” she asked, her eyes going from the rancher wearing a canvas duster, to the round little minister who had so kindly taken her in a few nights ago.

      “Well, Mr. uh, Reverend, uh. He said...” Mr. Avery stopped. “Maybe I was wrong.” He turned to go.

      Katie could tell she had embarrassed him, and she wondered again why she carried around so much resentment. Things weren’t good and she did need a job. She needed something. A man had offered her employment and she had snarled at him like a homeless pup with nothing going in its favor.

      “I do need a job, because I am not going back to Massachusetts,” she said.

      He stopped and turned around, but his eyes looked wary now. “You said Maine.”

      “I work in Massachusetts,” she said in a rush, unwilling to apologize for her sharpness, but equally unwilling to embarrass him further. “I’m a mill girl. I regulate four looms in Lowell at the Chase Millworks. I came West to get married, but I don’t think that’s happening.”

      The rancher nodded. “The preacher told me a little.”

      Katie could tell he was unwilling to ask any more, which touched her heart. Maybe people didn’t pry out here. Maybe others came West on a shoestring like she had, with their own histories to leave behind.

      She could tell he was a patient man—something in his eyes—but she could also see that he had no time to waste, the way he slapped his gloves from one hand to the other. And she needed a job.

      Katie stepped down off the box and seated herself on it. “Mr. Avery, you tell me what you need, and I’ll answer your questions.” She indicated the other corner of the box, as if they sat in the parlor at the dormitory at the millworks, and not the back wall of a half-painted church.

      He sat down, hat in hand, which he set on the ground beside him, and didn’t dillydally. “My father is, well, he’s dying of heart disease. He can’t do much except lie in bed and chafe about the hand dealt him. He won’t want you there, even though he knows he needs you.”

      “Just the two of you?” Katie asked. “You don’t have a wife?”

      “I have a little brother,” Mr. Avery said. He made a wry face. “He’s not altogether. I mean, he’s polite and kind and generally follows orders, but...”

      He looked away, and she saw the muscles work in his face. She knew she sat with a private man, one not accustomed to telling anyone much of anything, and here she was, a stranger.

      “You can’t quite trust him to take care of your father while you do the outside work,” Katie filled in.

      His expression changed and his shoulders relaxed. She could tell he was relieved that he didn’t have to say more.

      “I’ll pay you thirty dollars a month, in addition to your room and board,” he said, not looking at her. She saw the red rise in his face, and she knew there was more.

      “Will I have a room?”

      “No, ma’am,” he said finally. “Pa built the place a room at a time, as we needed it. It all connects and there’s nothing for a chore girl.”

      She couldn’t take his offer, even as she knew she wanted to. As it was now, she shared a tiny room with two other women of questionable virtue who were, as Reverend Peabody whispered in a low voice, “Trying to get out of the life.” The collection plate on Sunday yielded very little revenue in a railroad town like Cheyenne that was just starting to think about respectability, but not too hard. The meals were almost as sparse as they had been at home in Maine, and the minister had a wife and two hopeful children.

      “It doesn’t have to be a large room,” she surprised herself by saying. “A corner of the kitchen?” Try a little harder, Mr. Avery, she thought, encouraging him silently to think of something, because she couldn’t burden the Peabodys any longer.

      Silence, then, “I could partition off the sitting room. No one sits there.”

      He was quiet again. Kate could tell he had no intention of begging or pleading. He wasn’t that kind of man.

      She knew it was going to be a poor, hard job, but she was used to those. She put out her hand. “I’ll do it.”

      He shook her hand for the second time in barely ten minutes. She felt relief cover her like a blanket and made no effort to release his hand. He chuckled and hung on to her hand, too. “I get the feeling that we’re both really relieved by this turn of events,” he said.

      “Ayuh.”

      “What?” he asked.

      “Yes,” she translated. “I’ll try to remember that you don’t speak Maine.”

      She let go of his hand and stood up. “I... I’d better finish this window,” she said, shy now. “I promised the preacher.”

      He stood up, and put on his hat, which made him loom over her. She stepped back instinctively, teetered on the edge of the box and felt his firm hand in the small of her back to steady her.

      “Be careful!” he admonished, but kindly. “Train leaves at seven tomorrow morning. Can you meet me at the depot?”

      Katie nodded and applied herself to the window. He tipped his hat to her, and left as quietly as he had come. In another minute she was singing again, something a little livelier than the reverend’s “Rock of Ages.”

      Satchel in hand, Ned was waiting at the depot by six thirty the next morning, wondering if Katherine Peck would come, or if she had changed her mind. He had already bought her ticket to Medicine Bow, but he knew he could exchange it if she changed her mind. I need you, he thought, looking through the depot doors toward Fifteenth Street. He hoped she would see him as an ally, and not just a boss. Pop needed to be handled delicately.

      And there she was, coat too light for this climate slung over her arm, tugging a battered tin trunk СКАЧАТЬ