Rose (15 page)

“I expected it,” Rose told both boys.

“See, she already knows, so I can talk about it.”

“I imagine George would prefer you didn’t,” Rose said.

“I’m going to vote to keep you,” Zac stated boldly. “I don’t care what Jeff says.”

“You little sneak,” Tyler shouted. He made a dive for Zac. The boy took refuge behind Rose’s skirts. “You wait until I get my hands on you.”

“Both of you sit down,” Rose commanded. “If you’re going to fight, you’ll have to go outside.”

“I’ve got to finish the milk,” Zac said, smiling in a superior manner at Tyler.

“Hurry up. I think I hear your brothers.”

George, Hen, and Monty entered together.

“Salty is washing up,” Monty announced. “I don’t know what Jeff is doing. I don’t mean to wait for him.”

“It’ll be a couple more minutes before I’m ready,” Rose said. “Maybe they’ll be here by then.”

The silence in the room was deafening. Rose thought she could hear the seams in her dress stretch each time she breathed. She tried not to be too tense, but she couldn’t help it. She only had to look at George’s countenance to realize how upset he was. Hen rarely talked, but she couldn’t recall a single meal when Monty had been quiet. Tyler never said much either, but she could tell Zac was bursting to talk.

But he didn’t.

Zac used George as a barometer for his behavior, and right now the prospects were for heavy weather. Zac wisely decided to keep his sails trimmed.

Rose guessed she had always known this day would come, but she hadn’t expected it so quickly. She had barely been here a month, hardly time enough for them to get to know her. It would be like deciding the fate of a stranger.

She was also anxious for George. She knew how important it was to him to strengthen the bonds that held his family together. Jeff’s not coming to dinner would be a difficult hurdle to overcome. She knew from her years with the Robinsons that as long as a family pulled together, as long as they all felt they were working for the best interests of the family, they could overcome almost any disagreement.

But Rose wasn’t sure the affection the Randolph boys felt for each other was strong enough to hold them together through even a minor confrontation. In fact, there were times when she wondered if the Randolphs were capable of love. Even family loyalty seemed beyond their grasps.

The door opened to admit Salty. Rose breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Jeff behind him.

It was nearly midnight when Rose got up from the table. “You’ll be more comfortable if you have your meeting here. It’s a nice night. I think I’ll sit in the yard. Maybe the stars are out.”

They hadn’t finished the boar until after eleven o’clock, and she would have to clean up the kitchen after they made their decision. Still, it was nice to think of the hams and rings of sausage in the larder. They really needed to build a smokehouse. She didn’t think pork was at its best when cured in salt alone. She’d speak to George about that tomorrow.

If she stayed.

“I’ll keep you company, ma’am, if you don’t mind,” Salty said, getting to his feet at the same time. “I know a bit about the constellations.”

George felt a pang of jealousy. He’d never sat in the moonlight with Rose, or talked of the stars. It seemed hardly a day passed that he didn’t find something new he wanted to share with her. He might not have an opportunity after tonight. He pulled his mind back to what promised to be an unpleasant confrontation.

“Each of us will have a chance to say what’s on his mind,” he said. “Make sure you say it all now. No matter what we decide, I don’t want to hear it again. Nobody can interrupt or ask questions until the speaker has finished. Okay?”

“Okay with me,” Monty said.

Jeff nodded his agreement.

“I want to go first,” Zac said, bouncing in his seat with excitement.

“You’re too young,” Jeff objected.

“Rose’s presence affects him as much as anyone else,” George stated. “He gets to have his say and cast his vote.”

Zac stood up on his chair and surveyed the room like one getting ready to make a far-reaching announcement. “I think she ought to stay because I like her,” he said and sat back down.

“You birdbrain,” Tyler said. “Is that all you have to say?”

“Let’s get one thing straight right now,” George said, giving Tyler such a severe look the boy subsided. “No one is to make slighting remarks about anyone else’s opinion. Regardless of what you think of their reasoning, it’s their opinion and they have a right to it, just as you do to yours.”

“But—” objected Tyler.

“If you can’t follow the rule, you lose your right to speak. Agreed?”

Everyone nodded except Tyler and Jeff.

“Who’s next?”

“I’ll go,” Tyler said. He stood up, looking all the taller because he was so thin. “I didn’t want any female here in the first place. I can do anything she does.”

George had to frown severely at Monty to prevent an outburst.

“I certainly don’t want any Yankee woman cooking my food. I also don’t like being bossed around. She’s been telling us what to do ever since she got here, and that ain’t right.”

Tyler paused.

“Do you dislike her?” George asked.

“Whether he likes her isn’t the point,” Jeff objected.

“It will make a difference in how I vote,” George said.

“I don’t dislike her,” Tyler admitted grudgingly. “She hasn’t been so bad lately.”

“That’s not the point,” Jeff interrupted.

“You through, Tyler?” George asked.

“I guess so.”

“Okay, Jeff, you can speak.”

The words started tumbling from his mouth before he got to his feet.

“It’s not a matter of whether we like her or whether she bosses us around. It’s a matter of principle. It’s a matter of what the Yankees did to us during the war. What they’re still trying to do to us through Reconstruction. I can’t see that woman, or think of her father, without seeing thousands of brave Confederate boys lying in the torn-up earth, their bodies ripped to bits by cannon fire, their life’s blood poured out in the dirt of one battlefield after another.

“How can you think of that woman in the kitchen and not think about the families whose husbands and sons won’t come home? What about Madison? Will he come home?”

George objected. “You can’t hold Rose responsible for Madison.”

“Then what about Pa? We know Yankees killed him. Shot him to ribbons.”

Jeff paused to look at his brothers, but none of them spoke.

“I don’t see how you can even consider for one moment keeping that woman here. I would never have believed it of you, George, not in a hundred years.”

George realized Jeff’s objections had nothing to do with Rose or her father. It was the war and what it had done to him
and others like him. He would never accept Rose until he learned to accept his loss.

George wondered if Jeff would ever be able to do that.

“Have you got anything else to say?” George asked.

“Yes. I don’t see how I can stay in this house if Rose stays.”

Jeff sat down.

“I think it would be better if we refrained from making threats,” George said. “It’s unfair to the rest of us. Also, who knows when any one of us might want to change our mind? Casting down the gauntlet in that manner will just make it harder to do an about-face.”

“I won’t change my mind.”

“Which of you wants to go next?” George asked the twins.

“I guess I will,” Monty said. He didn’t stand up. “I wasn’t the least bit pleased when Rose got here. As you may remember, I said we had to get rid of her. I said it rather loudly.”

“You say everything loud,” Zac said.

“Well, I changed my mind. Laying aside that she’s pretty as a picture and just about the greatest cook in the world, she’s a real nice lady. I appreciate what she did for us out there this afternoon. I’d have shot the damned scoundrels out of the saddle, and we’d have had the whole army down on us. She knew they were trying to cheat us, and she knew what to say to put a stop to it.

“Only thing is, I can’t forget she’s a Yankee. I know she didn’t fight, but her pa did. I don’t have nightmares about dead soldiers like Jeff, but I do think of the bandits and rustlers they let come in here just to keep us too poor to fight back. I don’t want us fighting over her. We’ve finally started to feel like a family. I’d hate to see that go.” Looking a little embarrassed at his show of emotion, he sat down.

George could hardly believe his ears. He would have said Monty valued the family less than anybody except Tyler.

All eyes turned to Hen.

Hen remained seated. “I didn’t like her at first either. It stuck in my craw that she turned the table over that first night. I always
took Ma to be how a woman ought to act, and Rose didn’t measure up. Then I remembered going to Ma’s room one day. She was crying about something Pa had done.”

“She was always doing that,” Monty said, anger at remembered slights making his voice tight.

“She was saying to her mirror,
If I could only stand up to him.
Ma never could stand up to Pa. But if she could, I bet she’d have acted just like Rose.”

“We’re not—” Jeff started.

“I’m not finished,” Hen said. The cold look in his eye encouraged Jeff to keep quiet.

“I yield to nobody in disliking Yankees. If it hadn’t been for Ma, I’d have been out there with the rest of you. But I don’t hold any child liable for the sins of his parents. I thought Pa was the meanest, lowest, most cussed son-of-a-bitch who ever walked the earth, but I don’t hold it against any of you that he’s your Pa. By his own lights, Rose’s pa was an honorable man. That’s a whole hell of a lot more than you can say about our old man. I can’t hold his serving in the Union Army against her. And I agree with Monty about it feeling good to be a family again. I just wonder if we would have done it without Rose. We weren’t doing too good before she got here.”

A surge of affection for his stoic brother warmed George’s heart. He knew how much Hen adored their Ma. Comparing Rose to her was the greatest compliment he could give any woman.

Everyone turned to George.

“I answered this question when I hired Rose,” George began. “She told me about her father and I knew how you would feel. But I hired her because I thought she was the best for the job.”

“Anybody can cook and clean,” Jeff objected.

“I chose her for two other reasons. I thought she was the only woman of the four who wouldn’t break the slender bonds that hold this family together.”

“You were wrong there,” said Jeff.

“No, I wasn’t. What Hen and Monty just said proved it. Also,”
George continued when Jeff tried to interrupt, “I chose her because I thought she was honest and courageous. But we’re not talking about Rose now. We’re talking about her father. I don’t care about her father. I didn’t hire him.”

“You don’t care about her father?” Jeff repeated, aghast. “You don’t care about all the honest and courageous Southern men he killed?”

“I killed honest and courageous Yankees, Jeff. You did, too, but now the fighting is over. I’d like to think if our sister had lived and if she had found herself alone in Pennsylvania or New Hampshire, she wouldn’t have been turned out to starve, or to stay alive at the expense of her self-respect.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“I think it is.”

“I’ve had enough of this,” Monty said. “Let’s vote.”

“It’s nice out here,” Salty said.

Rose sat on the chopping block. Salty stood, looking at the starry canopy overhead. They had sat in silence until the volume level of the argument inside unexpectedly plummeted to an indistinct murmur.

“Yes, it is,” she agreed, trying to concentrate on talking to Salty rather than straining to make sense of the fragments of sentences escaping through the kitchen window. “I’d never lived outside a town when I agreed to come out here. I was afraid I would miss the people and shops, things going on.”

“And you haven’t?”

“I wasn’t happy in Austin. Things would have to be much worse than they are for me to want to go back.”

“Are they bad? I thought everybody pretty much bowed to your commands.”

Rose laughed, a sputtering sound which indicated her amusement as well as her surprise. “Look again. They’re really very nice, especially when I forget my place and start handing out orders, but I’m an outsider. I always will be.”

“At least George thinks you can do no wrong.”

Rose wasn’t about to explain how things stood—or didn’t stand—between her and George. But before she could think of an answer to disarm Salty’s curiosity, the kitchen door banged open; they both spun toward the house as Jeff stomped out and strode off into the darkness.

“I take that to mean you’ll be cooking breakfast for some time to come,” Salty said, turning back to Rose. “I expect George will be here to deliver the verdict any minute.”

George didn’t get a chance. Zac exploded through the doorway almost on Jeff’s heels.

“You’re going to stay!” he shouted, racing toward Rose and throwing himself into her arms. “Jeff is as mad as a castrated bull. Aren’t you glad?”

Rose gave Zac a big hug. “I’m glad you want me to stay, but I’m not glad Jeff is upset.”

“Jeff don’t matter,” Zac stated. “Not as long as George wants you to stay.”

Unable to think of a judicious answer, Rose decided to ignore Zac’s remark and his bad grammar. Neither did she want to read too much into George’s approval. That had gotten her into enough trouble already.

“I’d better start on the dishes,” she said, getting to her feet. She took Zac’s hand in hers and headed toward the house. “Much longer and they’ll be as bad as the day I got here.”

“I got to go to bed,” Zac said when they reached the house. He very primly disengaged his hand from Rose’s clasp and turned toward the men’s bedroom. “Hen said he’d tell me a story if I promised not to nag him to death tomorrow.”

Rose couldn’t tell whether Zac was running
toward
the story or
away
from the dishes. But the question didn’t engage her
mind for long. George was clearing the table when she entered the kitchen.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said, hurrying to take the plates from him.

“You’d have been through long ago if we hadn’t run you out.”

“It won’t take long.”

“I’ll help.”

“Okay,” Rose said, a flutter of excitement making her stomach feel almost queasy. George hadn’t helped since that first night when she threw dinner onto the floor.

“I suppose Zac told you the news.”

“Was Jeff very upset? He went past me like the north wind.”

“He’ll get over it.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t stay.” She didn’t know why she said that. The last thing she wanted was to leave, no matter how Jeff felt.

“He’s not really mad at you,” George said as he settled the dirty plates into the tub of water Rose had left to heat on the stove. “He just can’t forget what the Union soldiers did to him.”

Rose felt despair close in on her. “It’ll be like it was in Austin. Everybody started out hating something else, but they ended up hating me.”

“No one will hate you. I won’t let them.”

Rose felt some of her alarm melt away. Silly man. Didn’t he know he couldn’t control people’s feelings? But he would protect her.

“You needn’t worry about Tyler either. He doesn’t even dislike you.”

“I’m still uncomfortable.”

“Don’t be. The rest of us want you here. Monty can’t say enough about your cooking. And Hen admires you.”

“I didn’t think he approved of any female except your mother,” Rose said, surprised.

George’s smile left his face.

“I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have said anything, but I never know when it’s safe to mention your mother. Sometimes you don’t seem to notice. Other times you turn as stiff as dried leather. You didn’t even tell me that was her bedroom,” Rose said, nodding toward the door still hidden behind the coats. “I had to find out by accident.”

“I guess it’s about time I told you about my mother.”

But George didn’t appear anxious to begin. He just stood there as though the memories were drawing him back in time. Rose had to take the dishes out of his hands.

“Ma was a beautiful, gentle creature. She came from an old family long on respectability and short on money. Pa mesmerized her with his good looks and charm and dazzled her with his boundless energy and wealth. But she married him because she loved him. It was the biggest mistake of her life.”

Now that he had started he seemed to relax a little.

“Ma thought Pa hung the moon. No matter how scandalous his behavior, the disgrace he brought on us, or the misery his gambling caused, she never stopped loving him or trying to make us love him just as much.”

He paused.

“After a particularly nasty scandal, a group of family, neighbors, and past friends bought this ranch and forced Pa to come out here. But he never meant to stay. He figured he’d soon find a way to get back. And he did. The war started just months after we arrived. He must have loved it. It was the only thing whose violence matched his own.”

Another pause as the lines in his face hardened.

“Ma was in poor health and Zac still a baby. The boys were too small to look after a ranch, but he never considered that. Hen says they never heard from him. You can imagine what that did to Ma. She died a year later.”

Rose knew George would never understand. To him responsibility was everything.

“Monty merely curses at the mention of Pa’s name, but I
think Hen would have killed him if he had come home. He worshiped Ma.”

George might not hate his father, but he could never forgive him. The tragedy, Rose knew, was that he wanted to.

“Your mother must have been a remarkable woman.”

“She never wanted to come to Texas—she considered it a foreign country—but it never occurred to her to oppose Pa.” George paused again, remembering something he didn’t share with Rose. “I don’t think any of us will ever forgive him for what he did to her.”

“You know that’s exactly what you have to do, don’t you?”

“Could you?”

Rose wanted to think she could, but she knew better. She hadn’t forgiven the people of Austin for much less.

“I don’t think so.”

“Maybe I could if I didn’t see the consequences staring me in the face every day. Have you noticed that faint scar around Monty’s neck? It’s a rope burn. Two bandits had just strung him up when Hen found them. Monty was fourteen.
Fourteen,
for God’s sake, and he thought he was going to die. Hen killed two men that day. He was fourteen, too. If you want to know what that did to them, just look into their eyes. They’re only seventeen, but they’re older than I am.”

Rose didn’t say anything. She couldn’t.

“Jeff didn’t want to join the army. He was afraid he wouldn’t measure up, but Pa shamed him into it. He lost his arm, and now he feels even less a man.”

Rose had never felt so useless. She had looked deep into George’s heart and seen the heat of his passion. She had also seen the iron bands that held it in check. She finally understood, and she felt more helpless than ever.

With a hiss of exasperation, Rose threw back the covers and sat up on the edge of her bed. She was exhausted, but she hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep. She couldn’t stop thinking about last night. Not about George’s father or the vote. About George.
She had made the mistake of asking him how he felt about her staying.

“I’ve told you all along how much I appreciated the job you’re doing,” he said. “That hasn’t changed.”

She didn’t know why she asked. She had told him to keep his distance. What did she want from the man?

She knew exactly what she wanted.

She wanted him to say he wanted her to stay more than anything else in the world. She wanted him to say he would be devastated if she left, that he would come after her and bring her back, drag her back if necessary. She wanted him to say he couldn’t imagine life without her, that she was as necessary as the sun or the earth beneath his feet. She wanted him to say she filled his dreams at night and his hopes during the day. She wanted him to say she would be an inseparable part of his life for as long as she lived.

She wanted him to say he loved her.

She wanted him to talk about her eyes, her hair, her lips, her skin, her nose, her ears, even her breasts. Anything except her cooking, how well she kept house, or her wonderful knowledge of Texas law. She wanted him to think of her as a woman. A desirable woman. A woman who caused him to lie awake at night. A woman whose beauty and charm had become an obsession, whose nearness tortured him, body, mind, and soul. A woman who had so thoroughly worked her way into his life he could never feel complete until he possessed her.

Utterly and completely.

She wanted him to be so filled with raging desire when he was around her that she would have to lock her bedroom door to protect her virtue. She wanted his passion for her to utterly vanquish his maddening control, his need for her to be so great he would do anything to win her love.

She longed for him to ache for her as much as she ached for him, to know the agony of spurned love, of unacknowledged love, of love forced into the ignominy of hoping for compliments on cooking and cleaning just so she would know he thought of
her. She wanted him to look into her eyes, search desperately for a sign of warmth, a sign of genuine feeling, and find only cold appreciation.

She wanted him to be as miserably unhappy as she was.

During the following week it became clear that Jeff’s anger was affecting the mood of the whole family. Monty turned almost savage; Hen grew morose; Tyler might as well have taken himself out of the family.

Rose’s heart went out to Zac. The child knew that something was wrong, but he didn’t know what. He looked to his two anchors, George and Rose, for reassurance. It was an assurance Rose couldn’t give. It was an assurance George didn’t give.

That was why Rose decided to go back to Austin.

It really was a simple decision. There was no future for her at the ranch. George had made that plain from the first. His attitude during the past week reinforced it. She was young and pretty enough to cause desire to occasionally overcome his restraint, but she wanted more than naked passion. She wanted love and a family; she would get neither from George.

Besides, her presence was tearing the family apart. All the ease and comfort had disappeared. Only tension, anger, and bitterness remained. It didn’t matter that it was unfair, that no one wanted it.

It just happened.

She couldn’t stand to see what it was doing to George. It didn’t matter that Jeff was responsible. Jeff was part of the family. She wasn’t.

She never would be.

So she decided to leave. She wouldn’t tell George. She didn’t think she could.

“If you’re going to Austin anytime soon, I’d like to go with you,” she said to George next morning at breakfast.

She had trouble actually saying the words. They seemed too final. They meant giving up any hope that George would
come to love her. She didn’t kid herself into thinking her absence would achieve what her presence hadn’t.

She knew she loved him. Despite her vows to not marry a soldier, she loved him.

She didn’t want to. It was a waste of good, honest emotion, but her heart hadn’t consulted her brain, nor taken advice when it had been offered. It had settled on George and wouldn’t have anybody else. She didn’t expect it ever would.

“Are we running out of anything?” George asked.

“No.”

“It hasn’t been three months yet.”

“There are some things I need, things I can’t very well ask anyone else to purchase for me.”

“Very well. We’ll go tomorrow.”

He knew. She could tell. After one penetrating look, he knew.

“I’ll ask Salty to come along. He offered to find us some hands. I think it’s time.”

“Hands for what?” Jeff asked.

“We can’t round up and brand a couple hundred crazy wild steers without help. It would wear us down before we even started for Missouri.”

“Are you sure we should take them to St. Louis?” Jeff asked. “We only have
her
word there’s any market.”

“It’s already been decided,” George said. “We can get nearly ten times the price.”

“But how do you know she—”

“We’re taking them to St. Louis,” Monty snapped. “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to come. As a matter of fact, I wish you wouldn’t. It’d be a damned relief not to have to look at your sour face.”

“I need a volunteer to do the cooking while we’re away,” George said, trying to divert Monty’s anger. “Tyler?”

“I ain’t cooking nothing for this lot, not after what they all said.”

“Let Jeff do it,” Hen said. “He’s the reason she’s leaving.”

“You know I can’t handle the cooking,” Jeff said angrily. “And what do you mean I’m the reason Rose is leaving?”

“You don’t think she means to come back, do you?” Hen demanded, anger making his eyes agate hard. “Not after you’ve been a bastard to everybody, acting like we’re responsible for that damn stump of yours.”

“Hen, that’s enough,” George said.

“The hell it is,” Monty exploded. His twin’s outburst blew the lid off his own smoldering resentment. “It’s about time somebody told him what a pain it is to live with him, lashing out at everybody all the time, thinking he’s better than the rest of us because he’s got a little education, thinking the rest of us ought to crawl on our bellies to him for the rest of our lives because he lost a goddamned arm. It’s a damned shame that bullet didn’t take off his head. Then he could have been a real martyr, not just a penny-ante imitation.”