Hill Country Courtship (Brides of Simpson Creek Book 8) Page 8

  He led her outside to where Hector waited, holding the reins of a strapping sorrel as well as those of a gray gelding.

  “This is Stirling, Senorita Harkey,” Hector said, indicating the gray. “He’ll carry you well. He hasn’t a treacherous bone in his body.”

  “Sterling? Like silver? What an apt name.” She stroked the horse’s arched neck.

  “No, like Stirling Castle, Stirling, with an I,” Jonas said. With his accent, the word came out Stirlin’. Then, noticing her lack of reaction to the name, he added, “Stirling is called the Gateway to the Highlands. ’Twas the scene of a great battle many years ago between the English and the Scots.”

  Another bit of Scottish history she didn’t know. Taking advantage of Hector holding the reins, she mounted the gelding, aware of Jonas’s eyes on her as she did so, and proud that she accomplished the move with grace.

  Once she had settled herself, she followed MacLaren as he led the way across a wide meadow that ended in a rise in the ground. As the foreman had promised, the gelding’s paces were smooth, and he carried her without fighting against her directions or any attempts to trick her with a bit of bucking. They headed toward the hills that formed a ring around the ranch.

  He led her first to a field where scores of long-horned cattle grazed.

  “A fine herd,” she commented, seeing that the varicolored beasts appeared fat and content.

  “Aye,” he said. “They’ll be going to market the next time Brookfield organizes a cattle drive to Abilene or wherever he thinks best.” Maude nodded at the reference to Milly’s husband, who owned a nearby ranch. “’Tis good neighbors we have here, who work together for everyone’s good.”

  “Nick Brookfield’s a good man,” she said, figuring MacLaren found much in common with his fellow British expatriate, for Brookfield had come from England only a few years ago. His marriage to Milly was the first success story for the Spinsters’ Club.

  As they climbed toward the ring of hills that surrounded the ranch, Maude spotted dozens of black-faced sheep with heavy wool coats, some with curling horns, all cropping what remained of the summer grass amidst the limestone hills. Here and there she spied small black-and-white collies and shepherds keeping a watchful eye on their charges.

  “How heavy their wool looks,” she commented. “What kind are they?”

  “Merinos and Blackies—Black-Faced Highlands, mostly. We brought them with us from Scotland, since they’re used to the hills. Everything woolen on this ranch—including our tartans—is spun from their wool. They’re sheared in the spring.”

  “I imagine their lambs are darling,” she murmured, picturing little black-faced lambs gamboling on the sides of the hills.

  She’d forgotten how unsentimental a man Jonas was. “Aye, ‘darling,’” he said. “I wonder if you’ll still think so when you have a bleating orphan or two to raise and feed every few hours. There’s always a couple that are rejected by their mothers or whose mothers die, for whatever reason. The lambs are too valuable to be allowed to perish with them, so it’s up to everyone on the ranch to contribute to their care.”

  Thinking of hand-raising an orphan black-faced lamb made her smile. She’d never been able to have pets, growing up at the tiny doctor’s residence. How fun it would be for Hannah to watch the little lambs grow from close at hand. This was a delightful aspect to becoming a mother—she was already looking forward to the wonderful experiences she could give her precious child. “I’ll gladly help, if that happens,” she pledged, and was relieved to see him smiling at her in approval again.

  “So when was this battle of Stirling you named the horse for?” she asked, after the silence stretched on between them for a while.

  “The battle of Stirling Bridge took place in 1297, and involved William Wallace. Nearby to it, the battle of Bannockburn happened in 1314, involving Robert the Bruce. Both men are considered great Scots heroes, as you’ll no doubt learn, living here.”

  “Robert ‘the’ Bruce?” she said. “What’s a Bruce?” she asked, thinking it was likely some Scottish nobility title she wasn’t aware of.

  MacLaren chuckled. “‘The’ means he’s the senior member of his clan, the head of the household. I am considered ‘the MacLaren’ by my mother, or any other true Scot.” There was a flatness to his tone then, and he avoided her gaze—an unusual shift, since prior to that he had seemed pleased and proud to tell her about Scottish history and customs.

  “You seem so very Scottish at times,” she observed. “How long has your family been in America?”

  “Since the summer of 1863,” he said. His tone was bitter. Clearly the memory was not a pleasant one. Had he suffered from a particularly rough or unpleasant crossing? Or was there something else behind his sour look?

  “We landed at New York City just in time for me to be caught up in the draft riots affecting the city then,” he continued. “Since none of my new countrymen could tell a Scottish accent from an Irish one, we were thought to be Irish, who were considered the scum of the earth there at that time. Thus I was swept into the Union Army like every other lad who didn’t have three hundred dollars to buy his way out of the draft. I went from immigrant to cannon fodder before I’d properly lost my sea legs.”

  No wonder he was bitter. “Why would you choose to come from Scotland to a land in the middle of civil war?” she wondered aloud, and winced inwardly as she saw that wintry, distant look shutter his eyes again. When, oh, when would she learn to keep her thoughts to herself? Somehow, she had managed once again to ask a question on a forbidden subject.

  “As dangerous as it was to be a new American, it would have been more dangerous still for my mother and I to stay in Scotland when we left it,” he said, lips thinned and tight. She waited, hoping he would explain further, but he clucked to his horse and the big sorrel stated moving again. Evidently the interview was at an end—the maddening man!

  “So how did you end up in Texas, after starting out in New York?” she persisted, kneeing her horse to follow his.

  Perhaps he sensed her exasperation with his earlier vague answer, for he answered readily enough. “I was mustered out of the army after Appomattox, of course, and I returned to our tenement in New York City to find Mother more than ready for a change of location,” he said. “She longed to be away from the noise and bustle in New York, and wanted to live somewhere that wasn’t flat, where she could enjoy a climate that wasn’t so bitterly cold in the winter as New York City. We chose the Ozark country of Missouri at first, because it was most like the highlands, but it didn’t seem like a good fit. ’Twas a border state in your war, aye? Too many folk there seemed to be still fighting the war.”

  “So you chose the Hill Country of Texas, after living in Missouri for a while, you said. Why would you choose one of the conquered, beaten states of the Confederacy after leaving the Union Army?”

  “Since the ‘Fifteen’ and the ‘Forty-Five’—the big battles between Scotland and England in which Scotland took a thorough drubbing—a Scot is used to living in conquered territory,” he said. “Not being Southerners, though, we were able to come and buy land at a reasonable price, thanks to the last owner of Five Mile Hill Ranch being a thoroughgoing scoundrel, as I understood it.”

  “Drew Allbright?” she said. “Calling him a scoundrel is the understatement of the year.” Briefly, she told him how the once-respected newcomer to Simpson Creek had nearly murdered Nick’s sister Violet Brookfield—now Violet Brookfield Masterson—and Raleigh, who won her love and saved her from Allbright’s clutches. “He’s now serving time at Huntsville Prison,” she concluded. “And Violet’s married to her Raleigh.”

  “Just in time for me to buy Five Mile Hill Ranch at a bargain price,” he said. “How convenient for me. And Raleigh won the fair maiden. Love conquers all,” he said as if concluding the tale for her. His old mocking tone had returned.r />
  What female made him so cynical? Maude wondered, not for the first time. She sensed he hadn’t told her half of what he could have about his history and what brought him here, but the edge in his voice and that guarded look in his golden eyes warned her not to probe further just now.

  They stopped to water their horses at a branch of the Colorado that wound its way through the low hills at the boundary of the ranch. “No tour of Five Mile Hill Ranch can be considered complete without enjoying the view at the overlook here,” he said, reining in and pointing back the way they’d come.

  She gasped as she looked in the direction his finger pointed. Below them, Five Mile Hill Ranch was spread out before them, the ranch house looking sturdy and yet elegant even from a distance, with smoke curling from its chimneys and the bunkhouse lying at a right angle to it, behind the barn.

  “What a view—it’s beautiful,” she said sincerely. “Are you glad you’ve come to Texas?” she dared to ask.

  He shrugged. “Time will tell, I expect. So far, I like it. There are good people here, and my mother seems content—as content as the woman can be, I suppose. I’m not sorry to have left New York City, that’s for sure. I’m not a man for the big city—I feel trapped when I can barely see the sky for the big buildings, let alone breathe the air.”

  She knew he was telling the truth. He seemed to fit here in Texas, somehow. She hoped he would find happiness here. He seemed sorely in need of it. “What’s that little cottage there?” she asked, indicating a smaller building to the left of the ranch house.

  “That’s Senora Morales’s house,” he told her. “No doubt she’ll invite you and Miss Juana for tea and dulce de leche, once she knows you both better.”

  Maude had tasted the sweet confection as a child, thanks to a Tejana housekeeper that had worked for her father and mother, and she gave an unconscious sigh of delighted anticipation.

  He smiled at her reaction. “I see you’re acquainted with it. So tell me, how is it that you’re not living on your own ranch or a house in town, with your own Mexican housekeeper to make dulce de leche for you?”

  She was surprised that he had asked her such a probing question.

  “Come now, Miss Maude,” he teased. “Turnabout is fair play, surely,” he said in a mock-chiding tone. “I’ve answered your questions about my personal history—surely ’tis fair for you to answer one or two of mine.”

  It was fair, she supposed. “All right,” she agreed. “Though I haven’t figured out the answers completely myself. I grew up the pampered daughter of the town doctor, and the picture you just painted was certainly how I pictured my life at this stage.”

  “And what transpired to prevent it?”

  “The Comanches,” she said. “They raided one day, and Papa was killed along with a few other unfortunate Simpson Creek citizens. I went from being the doctor’s precious daughter to being an orphan, for my mother had already passed on. When Dr. Walker came to be the new doctor, I lost my home.”

  “I see,” he said, and she was relieved to see compassion but no pity in his gaze. It was always painful, retelling what had happened, and she could not have borne pity from him, especially since she now knew that he and his mother had lost their homeland, thanks to whatever had caused them to flee their beloved Scottish Highlands.

  “But you told me you’re the leader of an intrepid band of ladies called the Spinsters’ Club,” he went on. “And the purpose of the group is to make matches for its ladies, which it has done with some success since the war left the town without eligible young men.”

  He turned to face her directly then, and there was an edge of disbelief in his voice when he spoke.

  “Yet there was no happy match for you? Are the men of this part of Texas blind, then? How is it you’re still Miss Maude Harkey? These hills should be watered with the tears of your disappointed suitors.”

  His questions provoked the old pain within her.

  “A gentleman never asks a lady why she is not wed, Mr. MacLaren,” she said archly. “It calls for her to confess all her failings, all the faults that have kept her from becoming the light of some man’s life.”

  “Forgive me,” he murmured. “But who said I was a gentleman, Miss Maude?” he asked her then. “And apart from a tart, too-ready tongue, I have not seen any faults in you...just yet.”

  His remark stole her breath. He hadn’t seen any faults in her? What about her temper, and her tendency to argue and to be opinionated? Was he being sincere now? There was no shadow in those golden eyes, no quirk of his mouth to suggest otherwise. Did that mean he found her...fair? Attractive? Worth knowing?

  The idea flustered her to the point where she almost didn’t know what to say. She was so accustomed to being overlooked by men that having that sharp focus directed at her left her shaken. Should she be flattered? Perhaps. But instead, all she felt was unsettled. She prided herself on being capable and calm in nearly every circumstance. She could face a bleeding wound without flinching, could sit by a deathbed with quiet resignation. She did not panic or lose her poise during any manner of sickness or injury. Medical emergencies were familiar to her and therefore held no fear for her. But a man’s admiration...that was new and strange. And in that moment all she wanted was to put some distance between them so she could recapture her sense of self-possession, which had mysteriously vanished.

  “Thank you, but perhaps we had better return to the house,” she said quickly. “The afternoon is getting late, and little Hannah can be very fussy at this time of day. I wouldn’t want to overburden Juana,” she added. She reined the gray around, and nudged him into an easy, rolling canter in the direction of the barn.

  The rest of the tour could be postponed for now. While she would like to see more of the place that was now her home, she knew she’d be far more comfortable in a setting with a little less of this puzzling, discomfiting man.

  Chapter Seven

  After making sure the scent of horse was washed away and changing her clothes, Maude found Jonas—the MacLaren, she reminded herself, amused at the idea of the title—along with his mother and Juana cozily ensconced in chairs in the parlor in front of a roaring fire. Juana looked not in the least “overburdened” with the care of Hannah; in fact, Mrs. MacLaren was holding the baby and smiling as fondly as if she were the child’s grandmother as she clapped the baby’s hands together and hummed some nonsense song.

  Hannah seemed to be enjoying being the center of attention; one of her precious moments of focused alertness lit her baby features. Maude wondered why Juana wasn’t helping the housekeeper prepare supper, since her friend was not currently occupied with the baby, but she supposed she’d find out about that later.

  “I hope you’re being agreeable, young lady,” Maude greeted the baby. “She can be a little cranky in the afternoons,” she explained to Mrs. MacLaren.

  “So Juana was telling me. Nothing unusual about a little colic in a newborn bairn. It’s probably just that you two are new at mothering and indulge her fussing. She likely only wants the attention,” Coira MacLaren opined, with the calm assurance that this far from her childbearing years, she must be right. She apparently had no idea how condescending she sounded. Or perhaps she knew and simply didn’t care. “But we’re having a marvelous time, aren’t we, wee lassie?” She looked back at Maude. “My son tells me you’re quite the competent horsewoman, Maude.”

  Maude couldn’t help the way her eyes widened and her gaze involuntarily flew to Jonas. “It was kind of him to say so,” she said, surprised to learn he had been speaking about her, and in a complimentary way, too, in front of his mother. “But I’m afraid it’s not such a remarkable accomplishment here. Most Texans, men and women, learn to ride before they can walk properly.” She remembered following her father’s buggy out into the country on her pony when he’d go on doctor calls.

  She turned back to Mr
s. MacLaren. “I really enjoyed the ride—especially the lovely view of the ranch house from the overlook. It was marvelous, seeing the ranch and its outbuildings spread out like that, and the livestock... I’ve never seen such thick-wooled sheep before.” She’d never seen many sheep at all before, truth be told.

  “Aye, our Scottish merinos and Blackies,” Coira MacLaren said, her face proud. “All our tartans are spun of their wool. I don’t know why you Texan ranchers are so anti-sheep, when they’re so useful, both for food and clothing.”

  Maude knew why. This was cattle country. Ranchers claimed that sheep poisoned a pasture so that their cattle wouldn’t graze on it after sheep had been there. There was nothing poisonous about the sheep, of course. It was only that they tended to graze so thoroughly that they consumed the grass down to the roots, so that there was no grazing to be had for weeks. As for the benefits to come from raising sheep, Maude didn’t personally care for the taste of mutton, and she couldn’t stomach the idea of eating a sweet little lamb, either, no matter how much more tender it was than the mutton from a sheep full grown.

  “She’s already volunteered to foster an orphan lamb or two, come spring,” Jonas said.

  His mother gave an unintelligible grunt—was she skeptical that Maude would even be here that long?

  Coira MacLaren cleared her throat. “Well, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, would one of you ladies fetch me some hot tea, and find out when Senora Morales means to serve supper?” she asked, a pettish tone creeping into her voice. “You two weren’t around at noon—you’ve got to be hungry, even if you took some oatcakes to munch on,” she said to Maude and her son.

  “I will, Senora MacLaren,” Juana said, rising gracefully and leaving the room.

  Maude couldn’t help but notice the way Jonas MacLaren’s gaze followed her friend. Was he, too, becoming attracted to the pretty Mexican widow? Little Hannah noticed that her nurse was leaving, too, though, and let out a little wail that escalated in seconds to full-scale distress.