Lady Lavender (10 page)

J
eanne dangled her work boots over the sparse grass and weeds beyond the single wooden step she perched on, meticulously weaving the dried strands of lavender into generous wreaths that she tied at the top with a wide purple ribbon.

She paused to rub the muscles of her shoulders. Four completed wreaths hung from nails she had driven into the bunkhouse wall; she knew she would need at least twice that many, but her neck was growing stiff from looking down at the fronds of lavender in her lap.

Idly she watched Manette gather a fistful of the yellow dandelions dotting the stubbly hay field. Her daughter was fascinated by the sizes and shapes of growing things—even weeds. How she wished the girl would collect flower blossoms or pretty leaves in her secret box instead of spiders!

But she had to laugh. When she herself was a girl,
growing up in France, she had collected cocoons—hundreds of them.
Maman
must have worried over her the same way Jeanne fretted over Manette.

Manette could now attend the Smoke River school instead of doing her lessons at home. The school had been too far away for someone who lived miles out of town, in Green Valley. But, besides her warm winter coat she would need shoes. And, Jeanne thought with a stab of anxiety, a proper home and nourishing food.

She puffed her breath upward to chase a loose tendril of hair off her forehead and flexed her shoulders, resuming her work on the wreaths. It took money to buy food and warm clothing; her only source of income was the lavender sachets and wreaths she made and sold at the mercantile. She bit her lip. Would they earn enough?

“Look,
Maman,
I am making a daisy chain!”

“Those are dandelions,
chou-chou,
not daisies. But they will be very pretty.” And thank You, God, for a respite from the crawly insects Manette gathered wherever she went.

She bent over the wreath once again and seamlessly wove in the last strands, all the while thinking about Wash Halliday. When she was with him, she felt valued. And…beautiful.

A shard of doubt poked into her thoughts and she gazed toward the distant hills. They had exchanged no words since last night; how would it be between them when they met again?

It would be dark soon; she must think about supper, not the man who smelled of leather and smoke and had spent all night with his arms wrapped around her.
The setting sun bathed the bunkhouse and the wagon parked beside it in gold light, and a blush of crimson washed over the mountains to the east. Would he come tonight?

The low thud of horse's hooves brought her head up. Yes! He was here! Her heart skittered under her apron top. Heavens, what should she say to him?

Manette's squeal of joy cut through her uncertainty. “Look,
Maman,
it is Monsieur Rooney!”

Jeanne clenched her teeth. It was Rooney and not Wash who rode up in a froth of dust. She swallowed back a surprisingly sharp prick of disappointment.

Manette dashed toward the gray-haired man. “Look what I made!” She held up the chain of yellow dandelions. Rooney dismounted and squatted on his haunches at her level, and the girl draped the necklace about his throat.

“It's for you,” she said with a happy laugh.

Rooney said nothing for a moment, and then Jeanne saw that his eyes were shiny.

“Well, thank you, Little Miss. Nicest necklace I've ever had.” The older man rose and tramped toward Jeanne.

“Evenin', Jeanne. All quiet and peaceful out here?”

“
Oui,
all is quiet. Except for Manette reciting stories to the dandelions. Her favorite stories,” she added with a laugh. “In French.”

Rooney chuckled. “Now that's somethin' I didn't know about dandelions. Understand French, do they?”

“I was about to prepare supper. Would you join us?”

“Oh, no, ma'am. I ate already at the boardinghouse.”

“Perhaps some
café,
then?”

Manette flung her arms about Rooney's knees. “Oh, yes, you want some coffee, don't you? Say yes, Rooney. Please say yes.”

“Well… Listen, Jeanne, I hope you won't mind, but Wash sent me out to watch over you tonight.”

“Oh?” Even to herself she sounded puzzled. “Wash is not coming?”

“Yeah, well, no. He's got some figurin' to do for his railroad crew tonight and— To be frank, Jeanne, I'd like to roll out my pallet and stay the night, kinda keep an eye on things.”

“Ah. Of course.” With trembling hands she gathered up the wreath makings, rolled up the leftover lavender fronds in an old blanket and set it just inside the doorway.

Rooney cleared his throat. “I thought maybe we could do some talking. Maybe there's some things I might explain about my partner.”

Jeanne stopped short at the bunkhouse door. “What things?”

Rooney wiped one hand over his sweaty forehead. “Uh, maybe we could have us a conversation later, over coffee? After Little Miss goes to bed.”

“I am not going to bed!” Manette announced.

Rooney hunched down to where she stood gazing up at him. “Why not? You afeared of ghosts?”

The girl giggled. “No, I'm not.”

Rooney's voice dropped. “Or maybe spirits or demons that go bump in the dark?”

“N-no. I'm not going to bed because you're here!”

Rooney straightened. “Well, now, Little Miss, I'm gonna be here for a while.” He shot Jeanne a look.

Jeanne nodded. She wanted Rooney to stay. She was not afraid of being alone at night, but she wanted to talk about Wash.

“Come inside, both of you. I will make supper. And some
café.
”

Rooney stepped over the threshold into the bunkhouse and snatched off his gray hat. Jeanne pointed to a hook beside the door and waited. She knew the instant he spotted her shotgun, mounted over the door; his head bent slowly and his eyes fastened on her hands.

“Yes,” she said in answer to his unspoken question. “I can shoot it.

Rooney scratched his salt-and-pepper beard. “Oh, I don't doubt that, Jeanne.”

“What surprises you, then?”

“Just that…well, I didn't figure you was as self-sufficient as you're turnin' out to be. You know, bein' a French lady from a big city like New Orleans.”

Jeanne turned to stir up the fire in the potbellied stove.

“I am not in New Orleans, now.”

Rooney grunted and plopped onto a weathered straightback chair, then shot up, turned it around and straddled it, folding his hands on the back. Manette clambered onto the adjacent chair and pinned him with a blue-eyed stare. “I want my chair backward, too.”

Rooney laughed, then reversed the chair for her and continued his speculative perusal of Jeanne. She could tell he was studying her. She lifted the skillet onto the stove, and tried to calm the flutters in her stomach. Did he know Wash had been with her last night?

Did he know something about Wash she should know?

She fixed thin, delicate pancakes in the skillet, each one rolled around slivers of hard cheese.
Fromagettes
she called them. Manette gobbled down seven—seven!
Mon Dieu,
in six months, her daughter would grow out of any clothes Jeanne could purchase for school.

She poured Rooney's coffee and made a diluted cup for Manette—mostly milk from Monsieur MacAllister's cow. Little by little her head drooped onto the table, her eyelids closing.

Jeanne unbuttoned the weed-stained pinafore, wrestled a muslin nightgown over Manette's head and tucked her under the quilt on the top bunk.

Rooney was washing their plates in the basin of water heating on the stove; the skillet he wiped spotless with a clean scrap of cloth and hung it up on the wall. Then he refilled both cups with the last of the coffee in the speckleware pot and waited for Jeanne to reseat herself at the inverted wooden fruit crate she used as a dining table.

“Manette was most active today,” she remarked. “She will sleep soundly.”

“Meanin' we can talk now?” Rooney asked from the stove.

Jeanne sighed. “
Oui.
She will not hear us.”

“Just as well, Jeanne. This is grown-up talk.”

She ignored her coffee and fisted her hands in her lap. “About Wash?”

“Yup. I've known Wash a long time. Scouted for him in the army out of Fort Kearney, and when he decided to come back to Oregon to work for the railroad, I came with him. He grew up here, ya know.”

Jeanne studied the man's sun-lined face. “Where was your home, Rooney?”

“Comanche country. Up around Kansas. Now my home is wherever we travel. See, Wash risked his life to save mine once in a skirmish with the Sioux, and I swore then I'd protect him, no matter where he went.”

“And now he has come back to Smoke River?” Jeanne questioned.

Rooney resumed his place on the reversed chair at the table. “Well, not right away. He had some bad feelings 'bout the place, but by the time he'd hired on with Sykes and the Oregon-Central, he'd pretty much got over it.”

Jeanne felt her entire body go still. “What was ‘it'?”

Now she would find out about the strange reticence she had sensed in Wash from the beginning? About whatever burden he carried inside that colored his sometimes harsh attitude toward her.

“Well, first he was wounded in the War. He spent some awful years in a Confederate prison, and it takes a man some time to feel normal after somethin' like that. For a long while he was mighty withdrawn, like he'd crawled into a shell.”

Rooney shot her a look. “You understand what I'm talkin' about? He was all busted up inside.”

“I do understand, yes.” She unknotted her hands and sipped her cooling coffee. “It must have been terrible for him.”

Rooney chuckled, but when she met his gaze, his eyes were dark with pain. “Naw, it got ‘terrible' lots earlier, before he left Smoke River and joined the army. There was this girl, see. Laura Gannon. She jilted him, ran off with another man right before their weddin', just before he left for the War. Broke him up somethin' awful…things pretty much went downhill from there.”

Jeanne wasn't sure she wanted to hear any more, especially about Laura Gannon. Something close to jealousy pinched her heart.

But Rooney went right on talking. “Wash wasn't himself for years after that. After he got out of that Yankee prison, he drank a lot and crawled right back into that shell he'd been buildin'. To make a long story short, Jeanne, when the railroad sent him to Smoke River, Wash carried a girl-shaped hole in his heart and a chip on his shoulder the size of a railroad tie.”

Jeanne frowned. “What means ‘chip on his shoulder'?”

Rooney smoothed his hand over his beard. “Means he's kinda mad at the world and everybody in it. 'Specially women. Attractive women. Like you.”

She sat without speaking for a long time. What could she say? Wash was scarred inside. Likely he did not want involvement with her; he was still too vulnerable.

“I see,” she breathed. “I understand what you are
trying to tell me, Rooney. I would guard my heart against this man, but it is too late.”

Rooney just grinned. “Kinda figured that out, Jeanne. Just wanted you to know the why of his behavior. It's got nothin' to do with you personal-like.”

“
Au contraire.
It has everything to do with me. I think Wash has taken a step toward life again, and I think he didn't expect to. Perhaps he did not even
want
to. He is a brave man when it comes to being a man—managing his railroad crews, fighting a bad man like Monsieur Montez to protect me.”

“Yeah, you got that right.”

Jeanne swallowed and went on. “But he is perhaps not so brave when it comes to a woman? Is it… I mean, do you think that may come with time?”

“Dunno. It gets complicated when it's a woman like you, a woman who's right pretty, sure, but one he really likes underneath.” He swirled the coffee dregs in his cup around and around. “I just plain don't know.”

“Oh.” She blinked hard to keep the hot tears from spilling over.

“Now, I've always been a bettin' man,” Rooney said. “Can't hardly walk past a card game or a horse race… I'd ride a hundred miles for a good horse race.”

Afraid her voice would crack, Jeanne just looked at him.

Unexpectedly he reached across the table and clumsily patted her hand. “I'll tell you this, though—this looks to me like a pretty good race shapin' up right now. And I'm bettin' you're gonna win.”

A shaky laugh escaped her. “A horse race, is it? You
mean Wash will run for his shell and I must head him off before he buries himself?”

“Somethin' like that, yeah. If you choose to.”

She closed her eyes. “Oh, Rooney, I am not skilled at this kind of game. I do not think—”

“That's exactly right,” he interrupted. “You just hold that there, and
don't
think.”

 

Rooney unrolled his pallet in the niche between the wooden wagon and the bunkhouse, stretched out and ran his hand over his eyes. By jingo, he hadn't done this much talking since his years scaring around the plains with Wash, and then he'd mostly listened. Something about Jeanne just made a man open up.

He rolled over, pulling the wool army blanket up around his chin. That woman made a man feel…bigger than his usual self. And that's exactly what Wash Halliday needed, something—someone—to grow toward.

He lay perfectly still and gazed up at the bright stars dotting the night sky. “Life gives life,” he murmured, remembering an old Indian chant.
God keep you both, and may your days together be good and long upon the earth.

 

The next thing he knew a shaft of hot sunlight was blinding him. He shrugged out of his bedroll just in time to see Jeanne set off for the stream lugging a bucket. He hoped that meant coffee sometime in the next half hour. Thinking about Wash and the widow Nicolet last night sure hadn't left time for much shut-eye.