They both looked at Pa, who nodded. “That’ll for sure find him a wife, unless he’s dancing with another man’s missus.” He laughed. “Then we’ll have a shoot-out and a hanging!”
“We’ll practice every night,” Katie assured Ned. She started sticking hairpins back in place, but gave it up for a bad business and shook the rest of her hair down.
Ned hadn’t realized how long it was, almost to her waist, and the prettiest shade of just ordinary brown, with little bits of red glimmering in the light of the lamp.
He looked at Pa, whose eyes were closing. “No objections from you, Pa,” he said, as he carried his father back to his room. Katie trailed along behind, watchful, and Ned began to realize the strength of her attachment to his father.
“I’ll help him from here,” he told her. She went into her room and closed the door. He listened for her to lock it, then realized with a start that she had never locked her door, not even the first night when he handed her the key.
We’re doing something right, he thought.
They danced every night, and soon Katie had no fears for her toes. Ned’s conversation still suffered, but she knew him as a reticent man. A dancing partner would have to appreciate taciturnity, Katie decided. She knew she didn’t mind his silences. He had a lot on his mind.
“Did you mill girls have dances?” he asked one night.
“Ned, you’re wonderful!” she exclaimed. “You asked me that and didn’t look down at your feet.”
“Did Saul Coffin dance with you?”
“Now and then, but he was mostly all business around the looms.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t bring him up,” he said after another turn.
“Doesn’t matter,” she replied. “We may never know what happened.”
She didn’t mind the silence that followed, because she had a moment to reflect on how seldom she thought about Saul Coffin, the man who had partly paid her way to Wyoming Territory. She knew the truth, though: hard life had taught her not to expect anything. When Saul Coffin had been notable by his absence in Cheyenne, she quietly set about forgetting him.
She looked up at Ned, struck by the knowledge that she would miss him, when he didn’t need her any longer. Ned made another turn, and she glanced at Mr. Avery, sitting at the table and looking healthier. She decided that lying alone all day in a back bedroom wasn’t designed to cure any ailment, even if a bad heart is a fragile thing.
It struck her that a good heart was a fragile thing, too, and she hoped that Ned Avery found someone to share his life with. Maybe a wife, the right one, would ease his way in this hard land.
The day of the dance, she took the piece of forest-green brocade from her traveling case to make Ned a cravat. The matter gave her less of a pang than she thought, considering that the fabric was the only item remaining from her real father, a sailor lost at sea during the China run. Besides a pittance so small that Mama was forced to remarry, the skipper had given her a length of green brocade. She had no use for it, except to parcel it among her four children as their only legacy from their father.
After morning chores, Katie picked apart his old cravat, ironed the pieces and angled them here and there on the brocade to be her pattern. She hesitated only a moment before cutting.
“That’s mighty elegant,” Ned said, as he came into the kitchen, prepared for a day in the saddle. “You didn’t find that in Wyoming.”
Without thinking, she told where it came from and noted the dismay on his face. “You needed a new cravat, and I have the material,” she pointed out.
“It’s a treasure,” he protested. She had already cut into the fabric, so a man as practical as Ned knew the argument was over.
She continued cutting. The long strip remaining to her could easily be hemmed and turned into a bookmark for her Bible. That would do. As it was, she barely remembered her father.
That day, Kate skimped on reading from A Tale of Two Cities, which raised a protest from Mr. Avery. “Bad as he is, we cannot leave St. Evrémonde with a knife through his heart,” he reminded her.
“I fear we must,” she said. “If I am to finish the cravat, we’ll have to leave the marquis weltering in his gore.”
“You sound remarkably like Dickens,” he told her, but gave her no more argument.
She sat with Mr. Avery and sewed, determined to have the pretty thing finished by the time Ned carried in the milk bucket late in the afternoon. He had insisted on doing her chores so she could finish the cravat, even though she knew it was seven miles to Medicine Bow and the dance started at nine o’clock. She handed the cravat to him after the last stitch.
“No one will have a cravat this fine,” he said, and held it up to his neck. “I have an ironed shirt, too.”
Her heart nearly stopped when he took her hand and kissed it. Impulsively she put her free hand on his head for no reason, except that she wanted to touch the man who had been so kind to her. He had helped her when he had no idea if she would steal the spoons in his house and vanish the next day, and he had built her a room. Her heart was full.
Kate wiped her eyes. “Go find someone nice,” she whispered. “I’d better read to your father while you take a bath in the kitchen.”
“You won’t scrub my back?” he teased.
“Not for thirty dollars a month,” she said, and he laughed.
* * *
A fellow could hope, Ned told himself, after he filled the galvanized tub in the kitchen and eased himself in for a quick soak, which turned into a longer one, because he had not enjoyed such luxury since his visit to Cheyenne. Ordinarily, a fast wash at the bowl and pitcher in his room sufficed. He sat so long in the cooling tub that he could have used one more bucket of hot water from the cooking stove’s reservoir. He doubted Kate would pour him one, but he could ask.
She surprised him by coming to the doorway of the kitchen, her head averted. “Another bucket?” she asked, and he heard the timidity in her voice.
“Yes, please. I’ll cover up. Just pour it behind my back,” he said, and hunched over his middle, his washcloth in place.
She did as he said. His hair was already damp so he lathered in soft soap. “If you could dip out half a bucket of hot water, and add an equal amount of cold from the kitchen pump, I can rinse this.”
“I’ll help,” she said, sounding businesslike. “A body can’t rinse his own head.”
Kate rinsed his hair without a complaint, even though it took two buckets to meet her apparently exacting standards.
“There. If you can’t manage the rest of this bath, you’re too young to go to a dance,” she scolded.
He sat a little longer in the water, wishing he could stay at home and listen to more of Lucie Manette, Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, too, as read by his chore girl to his dying father who had taken on a new lease on life. Ned had enjoyed the book years earlier, but there was something almost royally sinful about having enough time to listen to another read it. Ned almost resented losing an evening at a dance, when he could be home, lying beside his father, listening to Katie read.
Or maybe he just didn’t want to dress up and ride through the dark to a dance where there might not be anyone young and even remotely eligible, Wyoming being what it was. I’m getting set in my ways, he thought. Kate is kind to rescue me.
Katie had managed to repair his one pathetic collar, stiffening it, and sewing it together to fit on his shirt. He called to her