“Ramon’s my foreman,” Gray explained. “Ramon, this is Miss Seaforth. And Emily.”
Ramon bowed. “Señorita. I have already meet Emily,” he said with a wide smile.
Clarissa untied her shawl and lifted it off her shoulders. Maria’s sudden gasp reminded her she was still wearing the green taffeta with the too-low neckline.
The housekeeper marched up to Gray and poked her finger at his chest. “Señor Gray, I ask what you do, and you say ‘nothing’? Is obvious you do something, and now you bring her home!” She shook her head in disapproval.
“Hold on, Maria. It’s not what you’re thinking.”
“Eh? And what I am thinking?”
Clarissa took a shaky step forward. “Mrs. Rocha, Gray rescued me from a very bad man in town.”
Maria’s black eyebrows folded into a frown. “Is so?”
“Is so,” Gray said with a sigh. “Caleb Arness.”
The Mexican woman crossed herself. “Very bad man. Very bad.” She pointed to the kitchen. “Come. I make coffee.”
Gray caught her arm. “Maria, wait. Would you move the things in my bedroom to the room in the attic? Miss Seaforth’s gonna be with us for a while.”
“Maria,” Clarissa said quickly. “Please don’t move any of Mr. Harris’s things. Emily and I will sleep in the attic.”
“But is all dusty up there,” Maria protested.
“I can dust.”
“And with even cobwebs!”
Clarissa suppressed a shiver. “I can deal with...with a few spiders.”
Emily grasped her hand. “I wanna deal with spiders, too! Can I, Mama? Can I?”
* * *
The attic room was at the top of a steep staircase, and while Clarissa saw no spiders, a thick layer of dust lay over the chest of drawers and the night table. And the bed! My gracious, when she plopped the suitcase down on top of the quilt, a cloud of dust puffed up into her face.
Maria appeared in the doorway, her arms loaded with bed linens. “Señorita, I bring sheets and pillows, with feathers. And—ay-yi-yi!—the air up here is make my eyes water!”
“Me, too!” Emily chimed. “It feels real sneezy, doesn’t it, Mama?”
“So, the little one is your daughter?” Maria sent a pointed glance at Clarissa’s exposed bosom. “But you not married lady?”
“Emily is adopted,” Clarissa said quickly. “Actually, she is my brother’s child. Her mother died in childbirth.”
“Papa not want daughter?”
“He was lost in a shipwreck at sea.”
“Ah.” Maria tossed the armload of sheets onto a chair and patted Emily’s red curls. “Pobrecita!”
Clarissa snatched the patchwork quilt off the bed and gave it a good shake. The air filled with dust. Maria spread the clean sheets over the mattress and plumped up the pillows while Emily scrambled into a white lawn nightie and launched herself onto the bed. “Look, Mama, it bounces!”
She stepped out of the green taffeta gown and into her batiste nightrobe. “Maria, what time will Mr.—will Gray be up in the morning?
“Early,” Maria said. “Before the sun. Señor Gray likes his breakfast at six.”
Six! She was so tired she wanted to sleep until noon.
“You cook food for him?”
All at once Clarissa remembered that the smiling Mexican woman was Gray’s housekeeper, not his cook. “I—” Good heavens, what should she say? She had no skill whatsoever in the kitchen, or anywhere else. In Boston they had employed servants before... But she couldn’t think of that now. “Um, I can try.”
With a nod, Maria left a candle on the nightstand and made her way heavily down the stairs. Clarissa tumbled between the sweet-smelling sheets and tentatively ran the fingers of one hand over her derriere. She couldn’t feel a thing.
“Mama?”
“Yes, Emily?” she said with a yawn. “What is it?”
“I forgot to say my prayers. Can I say them in bed?”
“Of course.” She would say a few hundred herself.
Emily folded her little hands under her chin and closed her eyes. “Forgive us our trash baskets,” she whispered, “as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets.”
“What? Oh, honey—”
“Shh, Mama, I’m not finished yet. God bless Mama and Mister Cowboy and Ramon and Missus Maria and...and that pretty black horse I petted.”
Clarissa mentally added a special blessing for Graydon Harris and for Maria. Then she lay awake, staring up at the thick wooden beams over her head, studying the blue-painted walls and the single grimy window on the opposite wall. Every flat surface was covered in dust. Being “out West” was the farthest thing she could imagine from civilization.
But perhaps there was one bright spot—she hadn’t seen a single spider! Still, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the fix she found herself in. No money. No job. No husband to give her and Emily a home. And absolutely no idea what to do next.
With a ragged sigh she leaned over and puffed out the candle on the nightstand.
Gray faced his foreman across the woodstove in the tiny cabin. “You took that woman away from Caleb Arness?” Ramon slapped the side of his head. “Señor Gray, have we not trouble enough?”
“Yeah, guess I did take her away. And, yeah, we have plenty of trouble all right. More than before, that’s for sure.”
“But, señor...”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Arness is bad news.” Real bad news. Ever since he’d outbid the rival rancher in the auction when he’d bought the Bar H, Arness had been hounding him to sell and making threats. Not idle threats, either—real ones. Not only were his cattle being rustled, but Gray had also found fences pulled down, water holes fouled and his ranch hands had been threatened.
Ramon plunked his mug of coffee onto the stovetop. “You are, how you say, playing with the devil, you know?”
“Playing with fire, you mean?”
“I mean fire. Yes.”
“Heck, Ramon, when it comes to Arness I’m not playin’. I’m fightin’ for my life.”
“Si, that I know. And I am helping, but you don’ need no lady to stir up the hornets.”
Gray clapped the slim Mexican on the back and headed to the house for breakfast. Hornets he could deal with. He could even deal with Arness when it came down to it, and he guessed it would, sooner or later.
Emily met him in the kitchen, a crust of bread in her hand. “Mama can’t walk,” she announced.
“Oh, yeah? Well, that happens sometimes after a long horseback ride.”
The girl propped her small hands at her waist. “It won’t happen to me, ever! I want to ride your horse, that shiny black one.”
“No, you don’t, Emily.” Clarissa’s voice came from the staircase. In the next instant