LITMIR.BIZ

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scooted smoothly across the floor.

      Leah spun around. “Yes,” she breathed. “Perfect.”

      Thad’s eyebrows went up. “You sure?”

      Teddy clasped both arms over his chest and scowled at her.

      Leah faced them both, her hands propped on her hips. “Of course I am sure! Did you think I would change my mind again?”

      “Yep,” Thad and Teddy replied in unison.

      Leah looked from her new husband to his young son. Their expressions were identical—narrowed eyes, unsmiling lips and a tiny frown between their identical red-brown eyebrows. Teddy resembled his father, right down to his stance, with both hands jammed in his back pockets.

      “I do not change my mind,” she said quietly. “Once I decide what to do, I do not change.”

      Frowning, Teddy studied the floor. She shifted her gaze to Thad. A variety of emotions showed in his face, a combination of surprise, bemusement and apprehension. His expression puzzled her until she remembered she wore boy’s clothing, her feet were bare and Teddy was not at all pleased that his father had married her.

      She was in no position to insist on being accepted. Here in Smoke River she was safe and protected; she could endure a great deal of hardship and disapproval in the bargain. Still, a hard kernel of doubt niggled its way into her mind.

      Thad and his son escaped to the barn, saying they had to care for the horse and do the milking. Tomorrow, Thad said, he would show Leah the chicken house and how to milk their temperamental cow.

      As soon as the front door closed, she started to make the cabin habitable. Even the poorest hut in China had been better kept than this—neater and spotlessly clean. America was strange indeed.

      She washed the sinkful of dirty dishes and pots in water she pumped and heated on the woodstove, then filled a tin bucket with more water, dumped in the last of her waning supply of powdered jasmine-scented soap and scrubbed the entire cabin floor on her hands and knees. When she rose at last, the floor squeaked under her bare toes.

      Next she attacked the window over the sink and the one by the front door with a rag dipped in vinegar water, swept down the cobwebs drooping from the ceiling and dusted every surface she could find, from the oak headboard in the bedroom to the shelf of Teddy’s schoolbooks, even the shiny black Singer sewing machine in its oak cabinet.

      Then she climbed the built-in ladder to the loft, where she made up Teddy’s disheveled bed and was straightening his jumbled collection of rocks when she spied a children’s book lodged between the bureau and the wall. East of the Sun, West of the Moon. She had read it herself as a child. Suddenly she was glad her father had made her study so hard at his mission school. Thad wanted an educated woman to care for and perhaps set an example for his son.

      She dragged the woven rag rug that covered the loft floor outside, tossed it over the clothesline and beat it with the broom until the puffs of dust made her cough.

      What next? She felt compelled to keep herself busy; if she allowed herself to stand still for a moment she would think about her marriage and the bed and the coming night and Thad MacAllister, who was now her husband.

      What would it be like, lying close to him in the dark, feeling his hands on her skin? Such thoughts made her shiver.

      She reswept the kitchen floor, rinsed out a camisole and a pair of white silk drawers in the sink and hung them on the clothesline next to the rug from Teddy’s loft. Now she must think about supper for the three of them.

       Chapter Six

      The tiny pantry off the kitchen held a barrel of flour, sacks of sugar, rice, dried beans and potatoes, and a hanging slab of moldy-looking bacon. No carrots or peas or turnips or herbs. No fresh fruit, either—only a lone tin of peaches and a bushel basket half full of apples. What could she make out of such a conglomeration?

      Hours later, footsteps boomed across the front porch and Thad walked in with Teddy at his heels. At the stove, Leah froze with her back to them.

      “Somethin’ sure smells funny, Pa.”

      “Looks different, too, son. Kinda…shiny.”

      Teddy clambered up the ladder to the loft and an instant later let out a squawk like an enraged rooster. “My bed’s all diff’rent! And my rocks—somebody’s been messing with my rocks!”

      His head appeared over the railing. “She did it! I hate her!”

      Thad ignored his son and gazed around the cabin. Clean windows. Scrubbed floor. No dishes in the sink. Looked as if a cyclone had blown through the place. He began to frown before Teddy finished yelling. He liked what Leah had done. But for some reason deep inside he didn’t want to like it. It seemed disloyal to Hattie.

      But Hattie is gone. And Leah was here. He could hardly believe Leah was his wife now, and he had to admit his reaction to the state of his house had nothing to do with Hattie. He couldn’t bear to think about it too closely.

      The cyclone was standing at the stove. Apparently she was a fastidious housekeeper, and of course his son wouldn’t appreciate that. Thad wondered why he didn’t appreciate it.

      The spit and polish this half-Chinese girl had shown in just a few hours reminded him not so much of Hattie as his Scots mother. She was long dead now, as was his father. That was one reason Thad had come to America—the Scots were starving. He had just passed his twelfth birthday and both his parents were gone.

      Hattie, he recalled, had not been a particularly careful housekeeper, but she had been his lifelong companion. And because he had loved her, he had forgiven her any domestic shortcomings.

      But seeing another woman in her place sent a blade through his gut. It wasn’t that he regretted marrying Leah—just that he regretted losing Hattie.

      Teddy clattered down the ladder and slouched toward the kitchen table. “I spose you want me to set out the plates,” he grumbled.

      Leah turned to look at him. “Yes, thank you, Teddy. That would be nice.”

      “Don’t have enough chairs, Pa. Guess she’ll have to sit on that old nail keg, huh?”

      Thad met Leah’s questioning eyes and to his relief saw that she was amused, not angry. She clapped her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. Teddy’s suggestion of the nail keg even brought a chuckle to his own throat.

      “Well, son, you have two choices. Either you cobble up an extra chair or you eat your dinner standing up. Leah and I are sitting at the table.”

      “Aw, Pa.”

      “Don’t ‘Aw, Pa’ me, Teddy. Take it or leave it. I’d tan your hide good if it wasn’t our wedding day.”

      Teddy said nothing, but Thad noted that he dutifully laid three plates on the table and then disappeared.

      “Hunting up a chair, I’d guess,” he murmured at Leah’s back. She’d found one of Hattie’s aprons and tied it twice around her waist in an oversize, floppy bow. His heart gave an odd lurch at the sight. Dammit, he remembered that apron. Oh, God, he wished it was Hattie there at the stove.

      But it wasn’t Hattie, it was Leah. His new wife. Dammit, he could hardly bring himself to say the word. He focused on her slim figure and felt a flicker of warmth. He hadn’t necessarily expected to like his mail-order bride and now the woman was his wife.

      He didn’t have to like her, he told himself; all he had to do was get along with her.

      The front door banged open and in stomped Teddy, dragging a dust-coated, straightbacked wooden chair. “Found it in the barn,” he muttered.

      Thad squeezed his thin shoulder. “Well done, Teddy.”

      “I hope it breaks when she sits on it!”

      Thad bent

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