With Love from Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #2) (26 page)

Dudley stepped past the big man and felt himself—at a little less than six feet to Gregor’s six-foot-eight—almost insignificant in comparison. Only his newfound self-confidence, so magically given and so treasured, kept him from feeling like a kitten in the presence of a wild boar. Gregor’s speech, however, was gentle enough, rather like the purr of a great cat, rumbling in his vast chest and issuing out from some hidden source in the lionlike mane of beard and hair, which seemed all of a piece.

Once seated, Dudley regained his threatened composure; it took courage to pursue his course of action, with so many odds against him.

“Vell, vas iss?” Gregor resonated, at the identical time Dudley was saying, “What did you want to see me about?” Both stopped in unison, both laughed heartily.

“You first,” Gregor commanded, and when Gregor commanded, lesser men obeyed. Dudley smiled, not intimidated, for Gregor was truly a gentle giant, insomuch as anyone knew. Thus far. There was always the fearsome possibility that Gregor might decide to try out that magnificent strength, and then what?

“I’m here, Gregor,” Dudley began, and he couldn’t keep a trace of desperation from his voice, “to ask if you’ve come to any conclusion about taking over my land—buying, or if that’s out of the question, working it on shares. I just need enough cash to—” Dudley paused, swallowed, and plunged in, “to get me away from here. I want to start out on my own. I think you already know that. Surely you can understand, Gregor. You had that chance, my pa had that chance, Connor had that chance. It isn’t as if there’s not plenty of wilderness yet, calling out for homesteaders. I want to be one of them!”

Dudley breathed deeply, calming himself. “Now then,” he said, “you know what I have on my mind. Now tell me—what did you want to see me about?”

“Da same ting,” Gregor said, and Dudley’s head lifted, his eyes searching the big man’s blue ones. Blue, bright blue, but not as blue as the eyes of Gladdy McBean.

“What do you mean, Gregor?” he asked, holding his breath. Good news could be his undoing, so accustomed had he become, these last three years, to life’s harsh blows and painful disappointments. He braced himself but whether against bad news or for good news was unclear.

“I’m tinking,” Gregor continued, “dat I vill say yah! How vould dat be, Tutley?”

“Tutley” was holding onto his newly acquired manhood with all his might and main. But inside he was jigging a wild fandango of pure joy. His face must have reflected his relief, for Gregor’s broad, whiskery face took on a look of compassion.

“Yah,” he said, “ve vill work it oud. You can be on your vay long before da snow, in time to find someblace and get seddled before vinter.”

The remainder of the evening was spent working out plans, writing up an agreement, which Gregor pretended to understand and which he signed trustingly, and deciding how and when the news should be broken to Dudley’s mother.

“Don’ you vorry none aboud her,” Gregor said earnestly. “I’ll see dat she don’ need anyting, like vood and vater, and all dat stuff. Maybe it vill do her good to be alone, yah? It mide make a new voman of her.” And Gregor roared a great laugh at his own expense, but it was not an unkind laugh, and Dudley felt . . . knew he was leaving his mother in good and capable hands.

Part of the arrangement was that Dudley would go to the Peace River country and look over Gregor’s land there. If he liked it, further arrangements could be made that included a trade of property. Dudley was quite confident that he would find exactly what he wanted at the wild and rugged Peace River. His joy, as he walked home, was boundless.

One thing remained. Dudley, in the grip of a newfound confidence—which had been confirmed beyond his wildest dreams in his talk with Gregor—could believe that it, too, would work out.

But before that—his mother had to be faced.

Della raged, Della roared, Della wept, Della flung herself about. Della begged. It was almost more than Dudley could take. But somehow, a quiet resolve had settled into his innermost being. It was, in fact, as though a lifeline had been flung to him and, threatened with drowning, he clung to it as though life itself were at stake. And perhaps it was. It was slow death for all his dreams were he to stay in Bliss, subject to his mother’s demands and commands. He came from each session, each
scene, shaken and trembling but resolute, and he went ahead with his plans.

As for the wily Gregor, he avoided confronting Della, putting it off until she should have accepted the deal as done. When finally he met her as she came from the chicken house and he from the barn, her face froze into a mask of—what? Scorn? Dismay? Fury? All that, he supposed.

And yet, being Gregor, he was able to doff his worn, tweedy cap, hold it against his broad chest, and say softly, “Good day, Missus. Did you know dere is a nest in da haymow? I heard a chiggen cackling up dere.”

With a sniff Della’s chin went up, and she swept past him, or tried to. With her exaggerated flounce, her skirt snagged on the wire of the chicken run. Looking down at it, her hands engaged in hefting the egg basket, she was indecisive, for the moment, about how to proceed.

With the agility and grace of movement that some large men demonstrate, Gregor stepped around her, bent his big frame, and worked the material free. If he was more deliberate than was necessary, and if he was filled with the pure joy of having her thus at the mercy of circumstances, no one was there to judge. Della may have suspected it, however, for her face grew redder and redder, and her voice spluttered when, free at last, she managed “Thank you, I’m sure!” and fled the scene. About halfway to the house she seemed to collect herself, hesitated, and swerved toward the barn and the aforementioned nest in the mow.

Behind her, Gregor watched in silence, smiling ever so slightly when she made the decision to heed what he had told her. It was a small beginning.

At the stopping place, Ida Figbert knocked on the bedroom door and called, “Gladys, someone to see you.”

To Gladdy’s surprise and to the confirming of Kerry’s suspicions, it was Dudley Baldwin. Standing just inside the kitchen door, cap in hand, he had eyes only for Gladdy McBean.

“Dudley!” she said, surprised. “Was it Kerry you wanted to see?”

“No, ma’am, that is, Gladdy. I wonder if you’d do me the honor,” and his pale, thin face flared red, “of taking a ride with me.”

“Me, Dudley? Are you sure you mean me?”

The more she questioned, the more certain he became. “You, ma’am, that is, Gladdy,” he repeated, his voice firming remarkably.

“Ride?” she said, amazingly thickheaded. “Ride . . . where?”

“Just ride,” Dudley said. “You know—ride out together.”

If Gladdy hadn’t caught on before, the level, half bold look Dudley fixed on her should have informed her. And did, eventually.

When at last she had a glimmer of light on the subject of “riding out” (first cousin to “stepping out,” she supposed), her cheeks flamed. She breathed a faint “Just a minute” and escaped.

Back in their room, with the curious eyes of Kerry fixed on her blushing face, she stammered, “He . . . Dudley, wants me to take a ride with him! Isn’t that funny? He wants to go out . . . riding with me!” And she tried to laugh but managed only tears.

Kerry hastened to put her arms around her, and together they wept a little and eventually laughed a little, but at themselves.

“Silly goose that you are,” Kerry said tenderly. “And why wouldn’t he? Here, tidy your hair and put your hat on. Though I have an idea he’d just as soon you left your hair loose and free.”

With these confusing words in her ears, Gladdy was helped out of the room by Kerry, herded toward the door and outside. Kerry watched through the window as Dudley helped her into the rig, took his place beside her, called “Hup” in a no-nonsense voice, flourished the reins, and curveted off down the road.

Although what happened on that ride was too personal and too precious to share in its entirety, Kerry and Gladdy were good enough friends for the bare bones to be told. Dudley had driven to a spot beside a lake of blue, blue waters, and with the warm spring sun beating down and the blessing of birdsong raining upon them from all sides, had laid bare his heart.

He told her of his plans to move, to leave Bliss for the wilderness beyond. He told her enough about his mother for her to grasp his need and his desperation. He shared his dream of starting over as a homesteader in a new place; he described the probable difficulties of such a move.

“I’m young,” he said, “but no younger than thousands of men before me. I’m not green, as many have been, having helped on the farm all my life. I’m not heading out into the unknown, exactly.” And he told her of Gregor’s tract in the north, and she heard again the singing words “Peace River country.”

“This is the hard part,” he told her, but with enough courage to turn toward her and look her in the eye. Deliberately, he continued, but humbly. “I don’t want to go alone. A man needs a wife. I wonder if you’d dare take a chance on me, Gladdy McBean, and come with me. I know it seems short notice, but others do it and make it work. I can’t promise much, but I can promise I’ll be good to you and look after you the best I can. And . . . I think . . . I think I can promise to love you . . . forever.”

The neglected child who hadn’t felt loved since she left the slums of London and perhaps not then, the little maid who once said she never saw any eligible men except delivery boys, the young woman who had thrown security away for the dangers of the West and an unknown future—should she hesitate now that she was offered a home of her own, a future to work toward, and a love for all time?

Dudley, straight and strong and purposeful, was waiting for an answer. “What do you say, Gladdy McBean?”

Most of this Gladdy relayed to her friend Kerry, in bits and pieces, and between tears and laughter.

“And of course you said—” Kerry prompted at the culmination of this story of the wooing of Gladdy McBean.

“I didn’t have to say a word,” Gladdy said, rosy-cheeked. “I guess my face spoke for me.”

The truth of the matter was that it had indeed spoken volumes, and an elated Dudley had pressed those same rosy-hued cheeks into his rough shirt, looking blindly over Gladdy’s dear head at his future, a future that, for the first time, had all the earmarks of his dreams and more. Bending his head, he kissed her, and it was as sweet to both of them as the seeking honeybees around them could have desired.

And Kerry—would her plans and schemes bring the same light of joy and satisfaction into her eyes? She wondered. For the first time, she wondered.