Saturday's Child (14 page)

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Katie had managed to put thoughts of the lovely Alice from her mind by the next morning. She'd received so much from this marriage. It was greedy to want still more. If Quentin never loved her as he'd loved his Alice, then he could still come to care for her and that would be enough. She'd make it enough. Many marriages had far less.

After the supper dishes were done and the kitchen cleared, Katie pumped water into four big kettles and set them on the stove to heat. She and the stove had learned to get along, though not until she'd received several burns for her efforts. She usually made do with a sponge bath but tonight she longed for the comfort of a tub of hot water that she could really immerse herself in.

With the water heating, she pinned her hair up so that it wouldn't get wet. Quentin was down in the barn with one of the mares. He'd told her that he'd be there most of the night. Since it was a first foal, he wanted to wait until it was born.

When the water was steaming hot, she lifted the kettles from the stove, carrying them to the galvanized tub she'd set just close enough to the stove to enjoy the heat. Then she added cold water from the pump, just enough to prevent her scalding herself.

Sliding her wrapper from her shoulders, she dabbled a toe in the water to make sure the temperature was right. With a sigh of pleasure she sat down. The tub was too short to allow her to stretch her legs out, but that didn't matter. With the water lapping at her breasts, she leaned back, making her mind a blank.

She'd listened to the hands talking at dinner. They'd seemed to agree that a storm was brewing, though the clouds building over the mountains looked innocent enough to her. Well, rain would be good for the garden. Without rain, she'd have to haul buckets of water to her little plants. As long as it didn't rain too hard.

She picked up a cloth and set one foot on the edge of the tub, running the cloth over it in a desultory fashion. The warmth of the water was soaking into her bones, making her feel pleasantly lethargic. She tilted her head back, squeezing the cloth out so that water ran down her neck.

And that was how Quentin saw her when he stepped into the kitchen. He froze, feeling the breath stop in his throat. The water lapped around her breasts, half revealing, half concealing, hinting at so much more. Her face was flushed from the heat. She looked warm and languorous, wholly desirable. And wholly out of reach, he reminded himself as she caught sight of him.

She seemed as frozen by shock as he was. She stared at him without speaking for the space of several slow heartbeats, her wide eyes fixed on his face in an expression he couldn't read.

Without a word, he turned on his heel and left, the door banging shut behind him. It was a good thing that he knew the path to the barn like the back of his hand because all he could see was Katie, her skin sweetly flushed from her bath, her hair slipping loose to caress her neck with damp tendrils.

"Damn!" He muttered the curse between gritted teeth. This marriage that wasn't a marriage couldn't go on forever. Something had to give. What worried him was the possibility that what gave might be his sanity.

The clouds that had looked so innocent the day before had built and darkened until they filled the whole sky to the north in one great gray bank. Katie watched them with a mixture of anticipation and concern. If only the rain wasn't too heavy.

Not that the rain was the main thing on her mind. But it was safer than wondering what Quentin had thought of their encounter the night before.

When she'd looked up and seen him standing there, her heart had seemed to stop. She'd felt no fear as his eyes had slashed over her. The odd quivering sensation in the pit of her stomach hadn't been fear. He'd been so still. She'd waited—for what she wasn't quite sure. For him to stride over and lift her from her bath? And when he'd turned without a word and walked away, she'd felt—what? Disappointment?

She flushed just thinking about it. It wasn't ladylike to think like that. Surely, the lovely Alice would never have had such a thought. She scowled at the gray sky, which seemed to scowl right back.

Alice. The woman had been hovering in the back of her mind ever since she'd found that dratted picture. It wasn't as if she hadn't known that there must have been other women in Quentin's life. And it wasn't that she'd been such a fool as to think that he'd ever give his heart to her.

But it was one thing to know that her marriage was based on practicality and not love, and another thing altogether to find out that he'd once loved deeply, so deeply that he hadn't wanted to continue living without his Alice.

Turning away from the window, she moved to the kitchen table and poked an experimental finger into the bread she'd set to rise earlier. The loaves were ready and she transferred them to the oven, once she'd tested the heat by thrusting her forearm inside. It had taken her much trial and error and more singed arms than she cared to remember before she learned to judge the temperature. She'd buried any number of ruined loaves behind the woodshed, concealing the evidence of her failures before anyone could see them.

But she'd learned. Her bread was as good as any she'd tasted. She wondered if Alice had ever baked a loaf of bread. Katie pushed the oven door shut, exasperated by the way her thoughts kept turning to the other woman. She felt as if she were in competition with the dead girl. But that was foolish.

Alice was dead. Quentin was married to her now. No matter how much he'd loved the other woman, his life had gone on. He was building something good and fine here and he'd asked her to be a part of it.

But he'd thought he was asking a woman with some expertise in all the myriad tasks that went with running a home, she reminded herself.

"Well, I've learned, haven't I?" She asked the question of the bowl she was washing, a note of defiance in her tone.

She'd learned but it hadn't been without cost. The singed arms, the burned bread, the garden she hadn't known enough to plant. If it hadn't been for Joe's somewhat bemused help, she'd have revealed her ignorance half a hundred times.

He'd been a help and a companion during her first few weeks on the ranch. While his leg was healing, he'd been limited to tasks near the house and he'd taught her more than he realized. It was Joe who'd shown her how to milk a cow and churn butter, Joe who'd explained how to go about finding the eggs the hens loved to hide.

He'd plowed the garden for her but he hadn't known much more than she did about actually planting it. He had vague memories of his mother planting corn when the oak leaves were as big as a squirrel's ear. But Katie didn't have much idea of the size of a squirrel's ears. Besides, there wasn't an oak in sight. Cot-tonwoods didn't seem a likely substitute.

Luckily, she'd found a garden manual on Quentin's bookshelf. The title had promised much and it had lived up to its promises:
Growing Food: Being a Manual for the Education and Illumination of Those Who Wish to Provide Healthy Produce for Themselves and their Families. Covering all Aspects of Fruit and Vegetable Culture.

She'd followed its instruction faithfully and now had a healthy patch of young plants to show for her efforts. It was the one place where she felt she'd been a complete success.

Her cooking was only adequate. The milk cow seemed to despise her, if the fact that she kicked over the bucket every morning was any indication. The chickens showed a certain amount of tolerance but that was because she hadn't yet tried to introduce any of them to the joys of the chopping block. It was still Joe's task to prepare Sunday's chicken dinner for cooking. And Katie found her appetite disappearing every Sunday as she wondered which of the chickens she was cooking.

Quentin left early and worked late. They rarely talked, they still didn't share a bed, so she could hardly say that her marriage was a total success. She couldn't say that she and Quentin knew each other much better now than they had when they got married.

Katie sighed, picking up a linen towel to dry the bowl she'd just washed. Quentin was probably sorry he'd married her and who could blame him? He hadn't looked sorry when he'd seen her in the tub last night. But then he hadn't seemed to have any difficulty turning away, either. Perhaps he had it in mind that, as long as they didn't share a bed, an annulment was possible.

She sighed again, trying to shake the feeling of failure that was creeping over her. Maybe it was just the feeling that a storm was about to break that was making her so tense. If it would just rain, some of the electricity that seemed to crackle in the air would be dissipated.

As if in answer to the thought, thunder cracked, loud enough to rattle the windows. Katie jumped, running to the window as the skies opened with a roar.

In all her life, she'd never seen a storm such as the one she was witnessing now. Rain fell in sheets, a nearly solid wall of water. There'd been no preliminary sprinkles to politely announce the coming deluge. One moment it was not raining and the next it was pouring.

She ran to the back door, throwing it open to step out on the little porch. She was oblivious of the wind that blew her skirts back against her legs as she peered out toward her garden. Would the dry ground be able to absorb the rain or were her small plants going to be washed away? Perhaps if she covered them with some of the bushel baskets she'd seen in the shed...

Her fingers fumbled with the buttons on her shoes. She dropped them onto the porch and stripped her socks off before lifting her skirts up to her knees. Drawing in a deep breath, she ran into the storm, her bare feet splashing through the puddles already forming in the path.

She was drenched by the time she reached the shed: Stumbling into the dark interior, she found the baskets more by feel than by sight. Lifting a stack of them, she hurried out, pushing the door shut with her foot.

She'd taken only a few steps when she realized that the rain had changed. Where it struck her arms, it stung, like tiny pebbles flung by a careless child. And the ground beneath her feet was rough and cold. Hail. The driving rain had turned to hail. The realization speeded her footsteps. If the rain had posed a threat to her precious garden, the hail surely spelled its doom.

By the time she'd covered the few yards to the garden, the ground was covered by a thin layer of hailstones. The size of the stones had increased to that of small rocks, striking with force enough to raise welts. But Katie hardly noticed.

She knelt beside the rows, setting baskets over small plants already showing signs of damage. In her mind, it wasn't just a few plants she was trying to save, it was her marriage, maybe her whole life. Since she was a small child, she'd dreamed of sinking roots deep into the soil, building a life. These tiny plants represented that life. They were the newly sprouted seeds of a lifelong dream.

The hail pelted her unprotected head, bruising in their force, but she didn't pause in her efforts.

"What do you think you're doing?" Quentin's bellow startled her into looking up. He loomed over her, seeming tall as a building from where she knelt.

"I'm saving the garden," she told him, without pausing in her efforts.

"Are you crazy?" he asked incredulously. "Katie, it's hailing. You haven't a coat. Or a hat. You don't even have shoes. Come in the house."

He bent to take hold of her arm but she jerked away from him.

"No! Not until I've done what I can." She had to raise her voice to be heard over the storm. As she looked up at him, she saw a hailstone the size of a silver dollar strike the ground between them, while more pelted her head and shoulders,

"Dammit, woman, you'll be hurt. Let the plants be and come inside."

"Not until I've covered as much as I can," she said stubbornly.

"Now." She tried to pull back as he took her arm but this time, he didn't release her. He drew her to her feet, glaring at her from under the brim of his hat.

"Let me go," she demanded, trying to twist her arm away.

"Let the damn plants take care of themselves," he all but shouted.

"I won't."

A bolt of lightning speared down, striking the earth so near them that the air seemed electrified by the power it held. Thunder crashed in a deafening crescendo. Katie glared at Quentin, no sign of give in her pose.

"You will," Quentin said calmly. He stepped forward, bending to catch her under the knees and shoulders. There was time for only a gasp as he scooped her up against his chest and strode toward the house. Katie made one convulsive attempt to escape and then held still, knowing he wasn't going to let her go.

There was another slash of lightning and Quentin's strides lengthened, his boot hitting the bottom step as the thunder roared. The door slammed shut behind them, shutting the storm out.

The kitchen was warm, filled with the rich scent of baking bread. He set her on her feet in the middle of the floor. Her hair hung down her back in a thick, wet braid. Her dress was soaking wet, the light wool clinging to her in a way that might have struck her as immodest at another time. But modesty wasn't on her mind at the moment.

"Are you crazy?" Quentin demanded, glaring at her, his eyes dark and stormy under the shadow of his hat. "That's hail. We can get hailstones the size of a man's fist in one of these storms. You were out there without a coat, without a hat, without shoes."

"I had to cover the plants," she said stubbornly, raising her chin a notch. For the first time since they'd met, she wasn't conscious of the fact that he came from a level of society she couldn't normally approach, or of the fact that he could have married any number of girls from bis own class, or of the fact that he'd brought so much more to this marriage than she had.