“It’s all I’ve asked of you,” he said quietly.
Elizabeth felt a blush rising. “I know. I just wanted it to be understood from the very beginning.”
“Of course. Your bedroom door has a lock on it, but you won’t need it. I’m a man of honor. I have no intention of taking advantage of you.”
“Good,” she said as she tapped her heels against the mule’s sides. She hoped she wasn’t putting herself in danger by agreeing to live in his house. She was fairly certain no other adult lived there. But by his own admission, he had no interest in her, and that would make her job easier. She should be glad of it. This way they each knew what the other expected.
All the same, she wished she hadn’t brought it up.
“Why the name Mary Kate?” she asked as they rode down the hill.
“It’s my mother’s name.”
“It was a good name.” But wouldn’t most men have named her after the wife they had just lost? This seemed to be further proof of his coldness toward Celia.
When they topped a rise and Brice’s ranch came into view, she couldn’t conceal her quick intake of breath. The ranch was even more beautiful than she remembered.
Brice noticed her reaction and smiled. “I know. It affects me the same way.” His manner was matter-offact, not in the least boastful. “I love the West. This part of the state reminds me of my boyhood home in Texas. The winters here are tougher, though.”
She glanced at him as they rode down the incline. “I would imagine so, Texas being all desert and tumbleweed.”
He chuckled. “No offense intended, but I’d bet even money that you’ve never been there. It’s actually quite beautiful, even the part out west that’s like a desert. The eastern side where I was raised is rolling hills and piney woods.”
“If you love it so much, why did you leave?”
“My brother inherited our ranch when my father died. My stepmother and I never did see eye to eye on anything, and Papa always believed everything she said against me. There were hard feelings between my brother and me, so it seemed like a good idea for me to pack up and leave. Papa did, however, leave me money, and I bought this place from one of the sooners who rushed in here to homestead when the government opened the Territory for settlement. He had only been here a short while and had done nothing with the land.”
“I would think the money would have been the better inheritance.”
He grinned again. “Not if you’re a Texan.”
“I gather you met Celia in Texas?”
He nodded. “We married after I built this ranch. Her parents weren’t at all happy about me taking her so far away. They blame her death on me.”
Elizabeth studied his face for any expression of guilt. There was none.
“Celia was never robust. She was sick off and on all her life. Maybe if we’d stayed right there with her family she would have died anyway. I don’t know.”
“I’m sorry about your loss,” she said sincerely. “Losing her in childbirth must have been very difficult.”
Again he was silent. “It’s a funny thing about the frontier. It seems to bring out things in people that, in settled places, they never discover.”
He didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t think she should press him to explain.
They rode to the barn and left the animals with one of Brice’s hired hands, who looked at her with curiosity but didn’t ask any questions. Brice carried her bundle as if it weighed nothing at all.
The back of the house had a porch almost as long and wide as the front. A broom and a mop in a bucket stood beside the chimney. A gray cat lay on the step in the sunlight. The back door was covered with wooden gingerbread that matched the front entrance. Brice had spared no expense on this house. Elizabeth was again struck at the disparity between this house and her hut.
The kitchen was large and built inside the house, unlike many of the older homes in Hannibal, which had their kitchens in a separate building. The hearth was deep, high enough to walk into, and of a width that would accommodate the roasting of a whole steer. Hanging on the walls and from a rack suspended from the rafters were utensils of every size and description. Elizabeth was glad she hadn’t bothered to pack the single iron skillet and iron pot she owned. Everything she could possibly need was here.
“We had a cook for the first couple of years but she became homesick and went back to Texas. Consuela was her cousin, and I’m surprised that she stayed as long as she did. When the cook left, everything fell onto Consuela’s shoulders.”
“Where is the baby? Surely you didn’t leave her alone here while you went after me?”
“Of course not. Wandering Cal is with her.”
“Wandering Cal?” she asked doubtfully.
“He’s my foreman. He’s called that because his right eye has a way of wandering off to one side. Cal has been with me since a year or two after I came here. Mary Kate is safe with him.”
“I think I should go get her.”
Brice led her into the wide hall that served as a foyer and across to a back parlor. “We’re back. Mrs. Parkins, this is Cal. Cal, has Mary Kate given you any trouble?”
The man stood and gingerly handed the baby to Elizabeth. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. Nope, her and me’s been playing.” His deep, gravelly voice sounded at odds with his words. He was as tall as Brice, several years older and far more grizzled. He looked more like a bandit than a nursemaid. Elizabeth automatically held the baby closer.
Mary Kate regarded her solemnly with large blue eyes. Then she spotted her father and gurgled happily and waved her plump arms and legs.
Brice grinned, and when he touched her arm with his forefinger, Mary Kate grabbed it and tried to put it in her mouth.
Elizabeth found herself smiling and felt love growing in her heart. No one could see this baby and not fall in love with her. “She’s beautiful! And her eyes are as blue as Celia’s.” She looked up at Brice’s dark ones.
“One baby looks pretty much like another, if you ask me,” Cal said in a rumbling voice.
Mary Kate cooed to him as if she saw right through his facade of disinterest. To her relief, Elizabeth saw a faint smile lift his lips. He immediately removed it.
“I’m going back to work if you don’t need me no more.” He looked at Brice as if he was going whether he was needed or not.
“Go ahead. I’ll be out as soon as I get Mrs. Parkins settled in.”
Cal nodded as he grabbed his hat and left without a word to Elizabeth.
“He’s talkative today,” Brice commented when they were alone. “I’ve spent days on the trail with him and not heard him say a word. Mary Kate is a good influence. I guess.”
“What do you know about him? He looks as if he chews bullets as a pastime.”
Brice laughed “Cal is a mystery. He has no past, no family, no ties to any place or thing. He owns only his clothes, a horse and tack. He was a drifter, and for some reason decided to settle here.”
“You don’t know anything about his past? How do you know he isn’t wanted somewhere by the law?” She couldn’t get over the foreman’s rough appearance, in spite of the gentleness he had shown with the baby.