Hill Country Courtship Read online

  He drew back, and his intent gaze was now shuttered. “The last thing I’m looking for is a wife, Miss Harkey.”

  * * *

  He saw the exact moment when she misinterpreted what he’d said and came to a scandalous conclusion. Her indignation at the suggestion sparked a temper as hot as her hair was red.

  Maude Harkey rose to her feet, some five feet eight inches of spitting-mad female. “Mr. MacLaren, I’m afraid you’ve formed the wrong idea about our little group. The Spinsters’ Club was founded by ladies seeking marriage, not a...a dishonorable alliance! If that’s what you came here looking for, I suggest you seek it down at the saloon—one of the girls who serves whiskey might be able to accommodate you,” she said, her voice as icy as her temper was blazing.

  He rose, too. “Miss Harkey, simmer down. I wasn’t suggesting anything remotely like what you’re thinking. My intentions are entirely honorable. I’m simply not looking for a wife—romantic claptrap has never appealed to me, you see—”

  “‘Romantic claptrap?’” she echoed, a dangerous chill remaining in her voice. “Is that what you call our efforts to make matches here?”

  He shrugged. “Courtship and that other nonsense is all very well if that’s all a man or a woman is looking for,” he said with a dismissive gesture. “But it seems to me most of these single young women would be much better advised to be seeking employment, not matrimony. And it’s employment that I have come to offer—with nothing scandalous or unseemly to it at all. What I’m looking for is a companion—for my mother, that is.”

  She sank back to her seat, her face fiery red. The flush rather became her, he noted—though he’d thought she looked even more striking moments before, with that fierce fire burning in her eyes. “I...I see. I beg your pardon, Mr. MacLaren. Your mother is in need of a companion?” she asked, her voice now scarcely stronger than a whisper.

  He sat down again, too, and felt a moment of compassion for her embarrassment. “Yes, she’s got rheumatism and a host of other ailments that keep her from moving around easily, and it’s made her a mite...crotchety, shall we say?” Not that her medical condition was solely to blame for her behavior. Ill humor was as much a part of his mother as her piercing eyes and the strident voice that never failed to find fault and clamor it to the skies. “The ranch keeps me busy from can-see to can’t-see, and I thought if she had another female to keep her company, it might make it easier for her.”

  And a lot easier for me. He’d taken the brunt of his mother’s ill temper for far too long, and each time he hired a companion for her and the unlucky female quit after being subjected to Coira MacLaren’s tirades, her irritability toward her son grew worse.

  “So you wish to hire a companion for her,” Maude Harkey said carefully.

  “That’s about the size of it,” he agreed with a nod. “I’d pay the lady well, of course, and she’d have a room of her own.”

  “I’m afraid it’s out of the question, Mr. MacLaren,” Miss Harkey told him, her tone warming from icy to crisp. “Pardon my plain speaking, if you would, but I don’t believe there’s a single one of my friends in the Spinsters’ Club who would be willing to risk her reputation living out on a ranch with no one but an invalid to chaperone her.”

  “She wouldn’t be alone,” he informed her. “Senora Morales is my housekeeper and cook. She lives in the ranch house and is always present. Are you quite certain no one would consider it? What about you, Miss Harkey? You look like a capable female. Do you have any encumbrances that would prevent you from taking the job?” He found he rather relished the idea of his mother’s temper meeting its match in Maude Harkey’s. Perhaps each flame would douse the other. Sen ora Morales would stop threatening to quit on a daily basis, and he’d have a peaceful household for a change.

  “No, thank you,” Maude Harkey said, getting to her feet again. “Feel free to speak to Jane Jeffries about it, but be aware she has two lively boys who would not do well, I think, in a house with an invalid. You might ask Louisa Wheeler, but she is devoted to her job as schoolmarm, or Daisy Henderson—but she’s got a son, too, and what the hotel would do without her as cook, I have no idea. There are other newer young ladies in the Spinsters’ Club with fewer ties to bind them to Simpson Creek, but I’ll leave it to you to discover who they are.” She gestured vaguely in the direction of the clumps of ladies and male guests clustered around the punch table and chatting in pairs at various points around the spacious lawn in front of Gilmore House.

  “Failing that, you might consider putting an advertisement in the Simpson Creek Intelligencer or in the Lampasas newspaper. I’m afraid I must go now and fulfill my duties as hostess by mingling with the other guests. I wish you all the best in your search, but I’m afraid I can be of no further help to you. Good day to you, Mr. MacLaren,” she said, and sailed off in the direction of the veranda.

  Regretfully, he watched her go, noting absently how gracefully she moved, even while perfectly conveying her wrathful state. There had been a moment there when, after realizing how much she had misunderstood his meaning, he’d thought he had a chance of getting her to consider the matter, if only to make up for thinking he’d been up to no good.

  He stared around him at the other females of her so-called Spinsters’ Club who seemed to be unattached, but none of them appealed to him. Every one of them looked too young, too giggly or too meek of manner to survive his mother’s temper. He wasn’t sure which one Jane Jeffries was, but the very last thing Coira MacLaren would stand for was the presence of two noisy, ill-mannered boys in her home, though enough room to accommodate everyone in the vast, mostly empty ranch house certainly wasn’t a problem.

  No, he wanted Maude Harkey for the position, he realized, and suddenly no one else would do. He didn’t want to examine his reasons too closely. The woman didn’t have to suit him, just his mother, after all. He wasn’t seeking a bride, as he had told her. Romance held no interest for him—not anymore. Whatever companion he hired would see as little of him as possible. One MacLaren would be more than enough for her to have to deal with.

  Of course, if he was truly seeking someone only to suit his mother, then one of the meeker, more pliable young ladies might please her just fine. She’d have someone new to chew on, which she might enjoy for a time—until she’d worn the poor girl out entirely.

  But he would hire Maude Harkey or no one. At least, no one here.

  After taking a last look around, he retraced his steps past the wrought-iron gates of Gilmore House, found his horse where he’d left him tied at the saloon and headed for Five Mile Hill Ranch.

  Chapter Two

  “The nerve of the man!” Maude seethed to Caroline, finding her on the veranda. “To imagine that this was an event where he could hire a—a nursemaid!” She stared back out over the green expanse of lawn, but she didn’t see him. Perhaps he stood speaking to one of the ladies out of sight, or perhaps he had taken his silly offer and left. Either way, she cared very little, except to hope that he had not spoiled the party for anyone other than her.

  “As he put it, the last thing he was looking for was a wife—as if anyone would have him as her husband with an attitude like that! Can you imagine, he called the idea of finding someone to love and build a life with nothing more than ‘romantic claptrap’!”

  “A companion,” Caroline corrected her. “Not a nursemaid. At least, that’s what you said he called the position. It’s honest work.”

  “I don’t see the difference,” Maude snapped, then was instantly contrite. “I’m sorry, Caroline dear, but there was something so high-handed about him that irritated me right down to the bone. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

  “No offense taken,” Caroline said cheerfully. “But perhaps you ought to consider his offer, Maude. Wouldn’t living out on a ranch be better than the boardinghouse? From the sound of it, you’d have only one
cranky old person to live with, rather than all those complaining boarders with all their tobacco spitting and biscuit hogging. And perhaps Mr. MacLaren would be so grateful for your help with his mother that he might lose some of that high-handedness and realize what a treasure he has in you. He might be quite a pleasant man underneath that initial curtness.”

  Maude stared at her friend. Of all the things Caroline Collier might have said, she hadn’t expected her to hint that MacLaren might decide to take a shine to her, after all.

  “I don’t think Jonas MacLaren seemed like anything but a confirmed bachelor and dedicated misogynist—how’s that for a word?” she asked the former schoolmarm with a chuckle.

  “Very good, Maude. You must have been reading the dictionary again,” Caroline teased. “If you’re that fixed against the man and his offer, then so be it. I can see that you won’t change your mind. But perhaps he’ll convince one of our newer members to take the job and whisk her off to his lair at Five Mile Hill Ranch, never to be seen again,” she said with a droll imitation of an evil cackle.

  “And you must have been reading fairy tales,” Maude shot back. “In any case, I am not desiring to exchange my room at the boardinghouse for what might well be a worse existence. If Mr. MacLaren’s rude and dismissive manner wasn’t reason enough, the isolation of living out there would be. It’s so far away from everything I’m used to. I’ve only ever lived in town, you know. And out on the ranch, I’d never get to see any of you, or come to church...”

  “Pshaw, you make it sound like it’s the end of the earth,” Caroline said.

  “It’s ten miles if it’s an inch from here,” Maude argued. “Maybe farther. There’s no use arguing, Caroline, my mind’s made up.”

  Caroline sighed. “All right, then. Forget I suggested it. Perhaps we should tell the fiddlers to start tuning up so our single Spinsters can invite the men inside. Too bad Mr. MacLaren left—there’d be another man to partner the ladies.”

  Why did Caroline have to mention him again? Now Maude would be tormented with the image of Jonas MacLaren, his arm around her waist, gazing down at her through those intense hazel eyes as he swept her around the floor in a waltz...

  But no, she refused to clutter her mind with such nonsense! She had no interest whatsoever in dancing with the man. And even if she did, he likely had no interest in “romantic claptrap” like dancing, either. Indeed, the rest of the evening—and, as far as she was concerned, the foreseeable future—would be far more pleasant without Jonas MacLaren.

  * * *

  Maude was startled out of her sleep later that evening by the pounding on the front door of the boardinghouse. Gracious, it’s got to be the middle of the night, she thought, as the remnants of her dream faded like smoke in a breeze. Didn’t the sign on the porch plainly state that new boarders must arrive by no later than eight at night?

  But Mrs. Meyer was no stickler for rules when she had a vacancy. The boardinghouse provided her livelihood.

  Still drowsy, Maude huddled under the quilt and heard rain drumming on the tin roof overhead. Then she heard Mrs. Meyer’s footsteps below and her sleepy voice calling out, “All right, I’m coming, I’m coming! Stop pounding or you’ll wake everyone in the place!”

  Mr. Renz, the drummer from Kansas, had left just this morning, so there was an empty room, Maude knew—the one right next to hers. In a few minutes there’d be footsteps on the stairs, and she’d hear Mrs. Meyer’s muffled voice informing the new arrival of the house rules before she turned over the key and let them all get back to sleep.

  But, instead of that, the next sound she heard was Mrs. Meyer’s running feet, followed by a pounding on her own door.

  “Maude, Maude, get up, I need your help! There’s a woman here, and I think she’s about to give birth!”

  Hoping she was still dreaming and there would be no one there when she got downstairs, Maude threw her wrapper on and trudged to the door, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles.

  It was no dream. Mrs. Meyer stood there, wearing a threadbare, patched wrapper, her iron-gray hair in a thick braid down her back. Trembling, she clutched a candle in a tin holder. Her shakiness left a dancing shadow on the wall.

  “Where is she?” Maude asked, for Mrs. Meyer was alone in the hall.

  “Downstairs at the entrance,” the boardinghouse proprietress said in a hushed voice, jerking her head toward the stairs behind her. “She’s drenched—and bleeding, too, I think. She didn’t look strong enough to make it up the stairs, even with me to help her.”

  Down the hall, a couple of the other inhabitants’ doors creaked opened and curious faces peeked out to see what all the fuss was about.

  Mrs. Meyer seized on the closest one. “Delbert, come with me. There’s a girl downstairs about to have a baby. I need you to assist Maude to get the poor girl upstairs to the vacant room, then I want you to run for Doc Walker. I’ll get the bed ready. Hurry, now—she’s about ready to drop—”

  Whether “drop” meant to deliver the baby or Mrs. Meyer thought the woman might collapse, Maude didn’t linger to clarify. Darting a glance at Delbert Perry, who looked thunderstruck at the older lady’s words, Maude dashed for the stairs.

  The girl huddled in the circle of lamplight cast by the kerosene lamp Mrs. Meyer had left burning by the door, clutching an abdomen that looked impossibly large in such a small frame. In the flickering light she was waxy pale, slight in stature and possessed of a matted wild mane of a nondescript color. An irregular splotch of blood stained the floorboards beneath her battered short boots. Mrs. Meyer’s statement seemed correct in both interpretations. The baby was clearly coming—and soon—and the pregnant girl herself looked as if she might swoon from exhaustion at any moment.

  “What’s your name? Is it your time? Is the baby coming?” Maude demanded as she skipped the last two steps and landed with a thud next to the girl.

  “April Mae Horvath, and yeah, it’s comin’. I bin havin’ pains since early mornin’,” the skinny girl told Maude, then drew back her lips to let loose a scream as another pain seized her. The small pool of blood on the floor widened. “Is Felix here? This was where he told me he stayed when he came to Simpson Creek—he has t’be here, t’ help me...”

  “Are you talking about Felix Renz, the drummer?”

  The girl nodded emphatically, her eyes lit with a weary hope.

  “No, he left this morning.”

  The girl clutched Maude’s arm so tight it would undoubtedly leave a bruise, her eyes desperate. “But he cain’t be gone!” she cried. “I come fifty miles here to find him!” Big tears rolled down her pallid cheeks and trickled into the rain-drenched neck of her dress.

  “Is he your husband? He never said—” But she’d given her name as Horvath, hadn’t she? So Renz hadn’t married this slip of a girl who now claimed him as the father of her soon-to-be-born child. Inwardly, Maude consigned the drummer to the nether regions for leaving this girl to whatever fate dealt out. But she couldn’t afford to spare more than a thought to him, wherever he may be. Her attention right now had to stay focused on the girl. His problem was now their problem, and she meant to deal with it as best she could.

  Maude stopped talking and grabbed the laboring girl just as she sagged toward the floor in a faint.

  “Delbert, help!” she yelled up to the town handyman, who still stood transfixed at the top of the stairs.

  The four years since her father had been cut down on Main Street by raiding Comanches fell away as if no time had passed at all. She’d assisted her father at a score of deliveries. Admittedly, the situation had never before been quite so...fraught. But, still, she knew what needed to be done. “Get her arms,” she told Delbert, “and I’ll get her legs. Ella—” for her friend was awake now, too, and hanging over the railing above, watching with wide eyes “—as soon as we get past, you run down to the kitchen an
d set some water to boiling while Delbert goes to fetch the doctor.” Even as she rattled out the instructions, she said a prayer that Nolan Walker would be able to stanch the bleeding. From the pallor of the girl’s skin, she’d already lost way too much blood.

  Once they’d helped April Mae into the bed whose covers Mrs. Meyer had hastily pulled down, and Delbert had dashed out into the downpour in the direction of the doctor’s house, Maude and Mrs. Meyer assisted the girl out of her blood-drenched dress and into one of Maude’s clean nightgowns. Every three minutes or so they had to stop what they were doing while April Mae shrieked her way through a contraction.

  “April Mae, don’t scream!” Maude ordered her. “Breathe with the pain, don’t hold your breath. You’re just making it harder for that baby to come. Watch me, next time it starts, and I’ll show you—”

  “Ain’t F-Felix h-here?” April Mae panted, ignoring her, while Maude grimly shoved dry towels under her to replace the blood-soaked ones she’d just pulled out. “He said he always stays here, when he...comes to sell his wares in San Saba County... You got to find him, lady,” she said to Maude, watery blue eyes pleading.

  “I’m Maude,” Maude told her, realizing she hadn’t introduced herself during all the ruckus. “We’ll find him,” she promised, though she had no idea where the drummer had been heading. And when they did find him, she was going to give him two black eyes before she’d let him see his baby, she vowed. “But first we’ve got to help you give birth to his son or daughter. How old are you, April Mae? Where are your parents?” And why did they give you two months as a name?

  “Fifteen last week,” the girl told her with a wan attempt at a smile. “And they’re back in Vic—” Her words broke off as another contraction seized her in a merciless grip. Maude tried to help her breathe through it—to demonstrate the technique that would help with the pain—but April Mae was too frightened and pain stricken to pay her much mind.