Yankee Wife (25 page)

“Hungry?” he asked.

Frodine tore off a chunk of the bread and stuffed it into her mouth. “Whaasss—scht-tme-” she said.

Joe opened the jar of raspberry preserves, given him by Brigham's cook, and set them on the table, along with a knife. “You shouldn't talk with your mouth full,” he said.

Frodine's black eyes mocked him. “Well, excuse me, Mr. Fancy Pants. I didn't know I was in one of them mansions with the prissy curtains!”

Joe shook his head, amazed at her audacity and the amount of dirt she'd managed to amass. “I'm Dr. Joseph McCauley,” he said. “But you can call me Joe.”

She ripped away another piece of bread, slathered it with a thick layer of preserves, and gobbled down the whole mess in no more than three bites. “Thanks,” she said.

Heat was beginning to surge through the water in the kettle, and Joe got out a tin of tea and the cheap crockery pot he'd bought from Polly. She didn't have much on the shelves of the general store yet, but it seemed like new goods arrived almost every day on the mail boat. “Do I know your pa?” he asked.

Frodine spoke around another mouthful of bread. “I don't reckon so. He likes to move around a lot, but we come here whenever he runs out of drinkin' money. He's a sawyer, but he's done some bull whackin' in his time, too, and Mr. Quade, he's always willin' to give Pa a job. Pa says that's because Brig knows a good worker when he sees one, but I think it's just that he's always shorthanded up there on the mountain.”

Joe looked at the girl over one shoulder, figuring that any man who'd go along with the idea of naming a defenseless baby “Frodine” would probably be willing to sell that selfsame daughter to a brothel when he thought she was ripe. “You could get married, you know,” he said thoughtfully.

Frodine sighed dramatically. “Sure. That way I'd only have to whore for one man instead of a hundred.”

“Frodine!”

“Well, it's the truth!” she wailed, looking at him plaintively with those black, black eyes. “Ain't it?”

“Isn't it,” he corrected automatically, taking up the kettle and pouring hot water into the reapot. “And no, it isn't. There are a lot of nice young men on the mountain who'd be thrilled to have a pretty wife like you. Provided you were cleaned up a little first, of course.”

Frodine sighed and looked very put-upon. “You try bathin' in a creek or somebody's horse trough,” she challenged.

“There've been times in my life when I would have been glad to do just that,” he said, entertaining memories of prison camp for only a moment before he pushed them aside. Joe was a pragmatic man, but he didn't feel sorry for himself; he'd seen levels of suffering that went far beyond the trials he'd known. Some of those poor wretches would even have envied his luck.

“You gonna turn me over to Pa?”

“I won't have much choice if he comes here looking for you,” Joe said. Under the law, a man could no more confiscate another man's daughter than he could take his horse or his tobacco pouch.

Tears glistened in her great dark eyes, and she brushed back a lock of dirty hair with one grungy paw. “Please,” she said. “You gotta help me.”

Joe sighed. Leaving the tea untouched, he rose from the table and went out back to get the tub down from its nail on the wall. He set it in the middle of the kitchen with a clatter and reached for the two buckets sitting by the stove.

“All right,” he said. “But first you've got to take a bath so I can stand being in the same room with you.”

He went back and forth to the pump in the yard until he'd nearly filled the tub, then put the last two bucketsful of water on the stove to heat. Frodine wouldn't get a hot bath, but at least he could take the edge off the cold.

She put a grubby finger into the tub and winced. “Hellfire, Joe, that's cold enough I could write my name in it and have it stay.”

Joe was getting out his bar of yellow soap, the stuff he used to scrub up before delivering babies and stitching up torn flesh. “Can you write your name, Frodine?” he asked moderately.

The expression in her eyes was one of chagrin. “No. And I can't read it, neither.”

“Then I think you should go to school. I know just the lady to teach you.”

Frodine gave a derisive hoot. “School?
School
? Are you blind or somethin', Doc? I'm near on twenty years old! Besides, what need have I got for readin' and writin' and figurin' anyhow?”

Joe found a clean towel, also bought from Polly's general store. “Everybody needs to know those things. They help you look after yourself.”

She clenched one fist. “I can look after myself just fine, thank you all the same.”

He nodded. “That's why you were hiding in my outhouse like an escaped criminal, no doubt.”

Frodine's eyes widened, then narrowed. “I was afraid Pa would send the hound out after me. I figured that would throw ol' Homebrew off the trail, if I hid in the outhouse, I mean, but it turned out your privy was practically new and it don't stink much.”

“Thanks,” Joe said, biting back a grin. He'd seen chicken coops cleaner than this girl, and yet she brought a certain freshness with her, like a cool breeze blowing in off the water.

She glanced around speculatively, and it was clear that his humble quarters looked pretty luxurious to her. “Where's your wife?”

“Don't have one,” he said. Then he cleared his throat because the words had come out sounding so hoarse.

“Oh,” said Frodine. “Then you don't got nobody to keep house for you and the like.”

With an index finger he tested the water heating on the stove. “I'm content to look after myself,” he said.

Frodine made a sound of contemptuous disbelief. “No man likes doin' for hisself. It ain't natural.”

Joe took out his pocket watch and saw that it was eleven-fifteen. He wondered if Lydia was sleeping already, or maybe entertaining her husband. In either case, he wouldn't want to disturb her, and yet he needed help.

“You get into the tub as soon as I'm gone and scrub yourself good. I'll see about getting you a decent dress and some night things.”

Frodine looked at the water, now steaming on the stove top, and swallowed. “You ain't cleanin' me up just so you can take a turn at me, are you?”

“No,” Joe said quietly, aching with pity, which he kept well-hidden. “I'm not going to bother you, Frodine. I just want to help.”

She was untying the strings that held the front of her dress together when Joe went out the back door. He rounded the house and walked resolutely to the end of the street, toward Lydia's cottage. To his relief, there was a light in the front window, and as he came up the walk, he could see her sitting quietly in a rocking chair, reading.

He made plenty of noise coming up onto the porch, so he wouldn't startle her.

“It's Joe,” he said after knocking.

The door opened readily. Joe saw signs of strain in Lydia's violet eyes and in the set of her mouth, and he wished he could take her into his arms and hold her.

“Is everything all right?” she asked, stepping back to admit him.

“No one's sick or having a baby, if that's what you mean,” he answered, shoving one hand through his rumpled hair. It was only then that he realized he was still barefoot, and wearing only his pants and suspenders. He blushed, more embarrassed than he'd been since his father had presented him with his first mistress at the age of fourteen.

Lydia pretended not to notice his state of dishabille. “Then what's wrong?”

“I found a woman in my outhouse,” he blurted out, “and I don't know what to do with her.”

Lydia stared at him for a moment, then started to laugh. “You found a woman in your outhouse?”

“A girl, really, for all that she says she's twenty. She talks like a sailor and has about as much education as the average bilge rat, but she's in trouble and I can't just turn my back on her.”

“Of course not,” Lydia said reasonably. “But what
are
you going to do with her?”

He sighed. “I don't know. She says her father means to sell her to the people over at the Satin Hammer, though, and I can't let that happen.”

Lydia's cheekbones glowed with crimson. “At least there's one man in this town with some decency.”

By all rights he should have refuted her remark, since he'd been to the saloon several times, and taken his fleshly comfort upstairs with various women as well, but he didn't have the heart. Everybody knew the Satin Hammer was a very sensitive subject with Lydia. “She needs something to wear,” he said gruffly, after an awkward silence. “And I told her you'd let her go to school. She can't read or write, either.”

Lydia sighed. “There's a big market for brides around here. Maybe she should just marry one of Brigham's men. At least she'd have a home that way.”

“I suggested that, but she said…” Joe paused, flustered again. He couldn't repeat what Frodine had said when he'd brought up the marriage idea. “She didn't want any part of that.”

“Great Scot,” Lydia said, but she marched into her room and in a few minutes came out with a neatly folded stack of clothes. Joe could see a couple of calico dresses the pile, along with a nightdress and some underthings. “You'd better send her over here to stay, or the whole town will be talking by morning.”

Joe knew he should have been relieved by Lydia's willingness to take Frodine off his hands, but oddly, he wasn't. During those few minutes with the ragamuffin he'd found in his outhouse, he realized, he'd been free of the grinding loneliness that had possessed him from the moment he'd gone away to war. Even Lydia, with all her gentle practicality, hadn't been able to reach that part of him.

“We'll see,” he said. Then he thanked Lydia for the clothes and left again. He knew Frodine wouldn't be through with her bath, so he sat on his back step in the moonlight, holding the pile of clothes and listening with a smile as his house guest splashed happily beyond the door.

When she'd been quiet for a time, he called her name, softly.

“You can come in if you keep your head turned aside!” she called generously.

Joe stood, drew a deep breath, opened the door. He was careful not to look toward Frodine, and yet he was painfully conscious of her nakedness. He caught the pleasant scents of her freshly washed hair and skin, and he felt his groin tighten.

He set the clothes on one of the crates and made his way around the tub like a blind man.

“I'm still hungry,” she called after him as he took refuge in the room where he saw his patients. “You got anything to eat around here besides bread?”

Joe chuckled, and a fine mist of tears covered his eyes, though he couldn't think why. “There's some cold meat. I'll get it for you as soon as you're dressed.”

“I could eat the north end of a southbound skunk,” Frodine marveled.

Joe leaned back against the door of his surgery and smiled in the darkness. “That won't be necessary,” he replied.

He heard splashing as she rose from the water. “You could probably use a woman around here,” she said.

“You know, somebody to cook and clean and sew and stuff like that.”

“Like a wife?” he inquired, unable to resist teasing her.

“Well, yeah, except for the part where we'd lie down in the same bed and all,” she said.

“You can have my bed for tonight,” he answered, anxious to put her at ease. “I can bunk on the floor.”

She was quiet for a long time, so long that he began to suspect she'd crept out the back door and vanished into the night. The thought filled him with an unaccountable loneliness.

“You're right nice, for a man,” she said. “You can come out now.”

Joe was surprised at his eagerness. After all, Frodine was the complete opposite of all he'd ever admired and reverenced in a woman. She wasn't gentle-spoken, Lord knew, and her manners would have embarrassed Genghis Khan. She couldn't even read, let alone discuss the great books, and her appreciation for music probably didn't go beyond jug bands, mouth harps, and fiddles.

Still, when he came out of his office and saw her standing there, wet-haired and wide-eyed in Lydia's white lawn nightdress, something inside him, something long dead, was resurrected.

L
YDIA STARED AT
M
R
. H
ARRINGTON, FIRST BEFUDDLED
, then infuriated. Brigham's clerk seemed healthier since his elopement a few weeks before; his previously skinny frame was filling out, and his coloring was ruddier. He'd stopped wearing his high celluloid collar and parting his hair down the middle, and there was a disconcerting look of obstinance in his eyes.

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Quade,” he said, sounding not the least bit remorseful, “but I have specific orders from your husband. He is to pay your salary personally.”

Lydia felt the blood drain from her face, then surge in again in a fresh tide of fury. “This is unacceptable, Mr. Harrington!” she said, pounding one fist on the tidy desk he occupied in a corner of Brigham's office. “I have taught those children faithfully. And for the last three days I've been staying after classes were dismissed to help prepare the new schoolhouse. I deserve to be paid the agreed-upon wages!”

Harrington finally rose from his chair, holding up both hands in an effort to calm the roiling waters. “I agree, Mrs. Quade—absolutely. Totally. But I cannot go against Mr. Quade's orders.” His thin chest puffed out a little. “May I remind you that I have a family to support?”

Lydia sighed. Arguing with the man would obviously be a fruitless effort, and she was tired from her hard work at the schoolhouse. “Where is he?” she asked on a long breath.

Mr. Harrington gestured toward the looming mountain, with its dense covering of trees. “In the main camp, I suppose. A couple of the bull whackers quit, and Mr. Quade is assisting with the work.”

Lydia's heart beat a little faster at the prospect of confronting Brigham; she hadn't seen him, up close at least, since that wonderful-dreadful night when he'd made thorough love to her. He'd said he would come to her only when he needed her as a husband needs a wife, and a full month had gone by since their last encounter.

Lydia was of two very different minds about that. She yearned to be close to Brigham, to be held by him, to hear his voice. At the same time, she feared facing the man she'd married so rashly, feared looking into those tempestuous gray eyes of his and seeing that he no longer desired her. After all, he could go to the Satin Hammer for his comforts now, and Charlotte had mentioned her father's “meetings” with Clover O'Keefe, the madam, on several occasions. Each time, Millie had given her sister a nudge with her elbow and narrowed her eyes in warning.

A spiky lump formed in Lydia's throat, and she turned away so Mr. Harrington wouldn't see her dilemma in her face. It was nearly suppertime, though the sun would be up for several hours. If she did not go to Brigham that very day and demand fair treatment where her employment was concerned, he would bully her at every turn.

She sniffled subtly, squared her shoulders, and turned to look back at the flustered clerk. “Thank you,” she said somewhat contemptuously, causing a rush of chagrined color to flood Harrington's neck and glow along his jawline. “You've been very helpful.”

Outside, Lydia stood glaring up at the mountain. It represented Brigham in her mind, huge and impervious and unmindful of the wants and foibles of mere humans. Then, resolutely, she hefted her skirts and started up the curving track, made by the hooves of oxen and mules and the enormous timbers they dragged behind.

The foliage was thick on either side of the road, for this was a virile land, junglelike in its lushness. Ferns and berry thickets covered nearly every inch of ground, and the trees, hemlock and cedar and fir, mostly, gave each other scant elbow room. The clamor of the mill receded as Lydia progressed up the slope, but ahead she heard the shouts of men, the braying of mules and oxen, the rhythmic rasp of cross-cut saws, the steady thwack-thwack of axes.

After fifteen minutes of steady climbing, Lydia reached the main timber camp, a helter-skelter arrangement of tents and wagons. A campfire burned at pie center of things, and Elly Collier stood beside it, stirring the contents of the enormous pot suspended over the blaze.

The rough-edged woman smiled when she saw Lydia approaching, and wiped her hands on her apron. Lydia felt a twinge of guilt because she hadn't come to pay a social call.

She smiled. “Hello, Elly,” she said. “As I'm sure you know, Jessup and Samuel are making fine progress with their lessons.”

Elly beamed. She was not a pretty woman; her features were too coarse, her body too broad and bulky, but when she smiled, it was like stepping close to a warm stove on a chill winter morning. “Seems there might be some hope for the two of them after all,” she said, her voice booming like a man's.

Lydia's heart ached, just a little. It was a natural thing for a mother to have aspirations for her children, but life was full of perils. Sometimes, boys grew up to be soldiers, and died screaming on battlefields. If war or disease didn't get them, drink might, or a falling tree, or another man's bullet.

Elly gave the schoolteacher a whack on the shoulder that nearly sent her toppling into the campfire. “You're looking mighty down in the mouth, Mrs. Quade,” she thundered. “It's no secret that things ain't right between you and the mister, you know. If you want to talk, you go right ahead. Old Elly will listen.”

The scent of the stew bubbling in the big pot gave Lydia some badly needed strength. Her stomach growled, and she recalled that she hadn't taken the time to eat since breakfast. She stifled an urge to ask the gruff, kindly cook if the rumors were true, if Brigham was really visiting Clover O'Keefe.

“I need to speak directly to Mr. Quade,” she said. She was so eager, her knees were trembling, and yet she wanted to turn and flee down the mountain at breakneck speed.

Elly gave the stew another slow, thoughtful stir, then gestured toward the woods. “He's up there, bull whackin'. Supper'll be ready in a little while, though, and then the boss and all the rest of them will be down here tearin' into my corn bread. You might just as well sit a spell, and I'll give you some coffee. Got to warn you, though—these timber beasts like the stuff strong enough to strip rust off'n a tobacco tin.”

After drawing a deep breath and setting her shoulders at a steadfast angle again, Lydia shook her head. “If I don't go to him right now, Elly,” she confided miserably, “I'll lose my courage for sure. And if that happens, I won't have any respect for myself.”

Regard glimmered in Elly's faded eyes, but she issued a warning all the same. “Your man ain't gonna like it, you traipsin' around in the woods. He's one to hold firm opinions about such things as womenfolk gettin' in the way of dangerous work.”

Lydia sighed. There was no denying that the coining confrontation with Brigham would not be a pleasant one, but she doubted that he'd be surprised by her appearance on this sacred, masculine ground. After all, he'd forced her to come to him by refusing to let Harrington pay her wages like everyone else‘s.

“I have a few firm opinions of my own,” she said distractedly. Then she set out again, through the camp, along the crude trail leading to the place where the men were working.

Lydia walked perhaps a quarter of a mile up the mountain and presently came into a small clearing. An enormous tree had been felled, and men climbed all over it, sawing off branches, paring the bark away in great curved peelings. Brigham's shirt was soaked with sweat, and his flesh was so dirty that he looked like a performer made up for a road show. With the help of several other workers, he was hitching a team of eight lathered oxen to the half-denuded tree, using a system of heavy chains and ropes.

As Lydia watched, her eyes shaded from the late afternoon sun by one hand, Brigham scrambled up the side of the trunk, which was so big that she couldn't see over it, to attach giant hooks in place. Only when he'd finished did he climb down again and stride toward her.

His pewter eyes snapped with annoyance and a hint of amused triumph. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, raising his hands to his hips.

That stance might have intimidated Charlotte and Millie, and maybe Mr. Harrington, but Lydia was determined not to knuckle under, no matter how fierce her husband looked and acted. “I think you know the answer to that question,” she said. “A workman is worthy of his—or her—hire, Mr. Quade. I am owed a month's salary. Mr. Harrington refused to pay me, and he said he was following your instructions.”

Brigham's gaze slid over her, heating both her flesh and her temper as it passed, and his white teeth flashed in a brief, quicksilver grin. Immediately after that, he scowled. “I expected you to pay me a call, all right,” he said. “I just thought you'd have the good sense to come to the house or to my office. In case you haven't noticed, Mrs. Quade, a timber site is a very dangerous place.”

Lydia stood toe-to-toe with him, knowing he could run roughshod over her if she didn't stand her ground. “So is a field hospital,” she replied.

He narrowed his eyes. “The war is over,” he reminded her tautly. “This is Washington Territory, not Gettysburg or Richmond or Bull Run, and I give the orders here. Go back to town and wait for me there.”

She was intimidated, but she hid the fact as best she could, tilting her head back to look defiantly into his sweat-streaked face. “I will be happy to go back to town,” she replied evenly, “as soon as you give me my money. And I will not ‘wait for you there' or anywhere else. I am not a child being sent to the woodshed!”

Brigham bent until his nose was nearly touching hers. She could smell sweat, fury, pine sap, and pure, undiluted masculinity, and the combination affected her like strong drink. “You will do as I say,” he told her in a lethal whisper. “And I warn you, Mrs. Quade: I will not have my authority undermined in front of these men.”

Lydia would have retreated a step, but she was afraid she would lose her tenuous balance and fall. “Fine,” she said, summoning all her dignity. “Then all you have to do is pay me my salary, and I will gladly leave.”

He glared at her, and there was a sizing-up in his look. “Suppose I told you you're fired?” he said. “Suppose I say I don't want my wife to work?”

“If you fire me, I can go to work for Dr. McCauley, as his nurse. And since you are no kind of husband, sir, it makes precious little difference to me what you might want your wife to do or not do!”

Brigham was fairly seething by then; his nostrils flared, his breathing was shallow and rapid, and there was a steely glint in his eyes. A trickle of sweat streaked down over his temple and cheek, leaving a trail in the dirt. “I will warn you once more, Mrs. Quade.
Go home
.”

Lydia held out her hand, palm up. “Certainly. As soon as you give me my money.”

For a moment she thought Brigham was going to spit in her hand instead of giving her the few dollars he owed her. His eyes narrowed again while he assessed her expression and manner. “You're going to make a scene if I don't give in, aren't you?” he asked, his voice dangerously calm.

“One you'll never live down,” Lydia promised, smiling up at him. She had been heartbroken and humiliated by the thought of this man turning to a prostitute for pleasure, and having the whole town know made things infinitely worse. As far as she was concerned, a little embarrassment was no more than he deserved.

Brigham reached into the pocket of his trousers and, for one delicious second, Lydia thought she'd won. Then he laid a shiny nickel in her palm. “There you are,” he breathed, as though flinging down a challenge. “With all the charges deducted, that's about what I figure I owe you.”

Lydia stared at the coin, then at Brigham. “Charges?”

“Yes,” he replied, clearly pleased with himself, and began ticking things off on his grubby fingers. “There's the roof over your head, for instance. And all the food I've provided. The clothes Devon bought for you, and your passage to Quade's Harbor, and the furniture in your cottage—”

“You snake!” Lydia interrupted.

He raised one eyebrow and looked affronted, and Lydia longed to slap him. “Did you think all those things came with the job?” he asked in a damnably reasonable tone.

Lydia clenched one fist at her side. It wouldn't do for her to strike him, no matter how badly she wanted to do just that. She was a teacher, and she would be setting a bad example if she indulged in violence.

“I am your wife,” she pointed out, but she'd lost most of her momentum, and they both knew it.

Brigham smiled, folding his arms and regarding her indulgently. “Exactly. All you have to do is move back under my roof, where you belong, and we'll call it square. You'll have a more than adequate allowance, and we can bring in a schoolmaster to replace you.”

Lydia's fury was so intense that it made her dizzy. She took a firmer hold on her balance. “I will not share your home, not before you close that brothel, apologize for your supreme rudeness, and pay me what you owe. And if you hire another teacher, after I've worked my fingers to the bone with those children, I swear by all that's holy that I'll make you wish you'd never been born!”

He had the temerity to laugh. “Damn if you're not the stubbornest woman I've ever had the misfortune to run across,” he said a moment later. “You'll do as I tell you, and that's the last of it.”