as possible. “Their parents perished in a fire.”
“I’d heard that,” he answered just as quietly.
“Where?”
“From the ticket taker at the train depot.”
“Oh.” That wasn’t alarming. She had made mention of it, just so the man would understand her delay in payment more clearly.
“That doesn’t explain why you have them,” he whispered, leaning closer yet.
Marie had to swallow and sat back a bit. “I was hired as their nursemaid last year, after the one they’d had for several years got married.”
“Is this your first job? The first time you’ve been a nursemaid?”
Ruffled slightly, wondering if he was suggesting she wasn’t capable, she squared her shoulders. “It was my first permanent position, but I graduated at the top of my class five years ago.”
“Whoa,” he said. “I can tell you’re well trained and confident in what you do.”
“Thank you,” Marie said, although a lingering doubt had her wondering if that had been a compliment or not. Men were difficult creatures to understand. This one more so than any other she’d encountered.
“How old are you?” he asked.
That was an inappropriate question, but being in the wild as they were, he was their only hope of survival, so she should attempt to be civil to him. Besides, he probably didn’t know the difference between appropriate and inappropriate questions. “I’m twenty.”
A brow was lifted as he asked, “Twenty?”
She nodded.
“So, if you graduated five years ago, and just got this job last year, what did you do in between?”
“I worked for several families,” Marie answered. “Just for short terms, helping out as families looked for permanent nursemaids or while others were ill and such.” She attempted to keep the frustration from her voice. Moving from family to family, staying only a few weeks or days at times, was extremely difficult. She’d barely get to know the children in her charge before being assigned elsewhere. It had been expected, though, because of her age. “A large number of families like their nursemaids to be on the older side. Even the Meekers, but they were willing to hire me permanently considering their last nursemaid, though she’d been a woman well into her thirties, had chosen to get married and end her employment.”
“Had she become a mail-order bride, too?”
Marie chomped down on her lip, preventing a startled no. How had she talked herself into this corner? Not seeing a direct escape route, she took the only one she could fathom. “My letter to Mr. Wagner explained everything.”
He was frowning deeply and holding those gray eyes on her. “Mr. Wagner isn’t here right now.”
“I know that,” she snapped, unable to stop herself.
He lifted an eyebrow as his gaze roamed up and down her for a moment, and then he turned and stared at the road ahead of them.
The pressure was enormous, but Marie held in her sigh. They’d talked enough. Silence would be a good thing for a few miles. No longer thinking about her past, the future and its dilemmas were clamoring for her attention.
“He’s not at the ranch, either,” Mr. Burleson said then.
“Mr. Wagner?” she asked, even though she knew that was exactly who Stafford Burleson meant.
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
He shrugged. “Texas. Mexico.”
Marie couldn’t deny a quick flash of relief washed over her. Maybe she wouldn’t have to face the marriage issue right away. She and the children could get settled in and... “For how long?” she asked.
His gaze never left the road. “Can’t rightly say. Could be next spring before he gets back.”
“Next spring?” Panic overtook any sense of relief. Her funds were almost gone. The children would starve to death by then, unless... She shivered at the thought, but unfortunately, Stafford was her only hope.
Something in his eyes, the way they shimmered, had her mouth going dry, her nerves tingling as though a storm was approaching. Maybe there was another option. “Who lives at Mr. Wagner’s ranch in his absence?”
“Me.”
She swallowed. “You?”
Nodding, he said, “Yep. I told you I was his partner.”
An icy chill raced up her spine. “So the children and I will be living with...”
“Me.”
Good heavens, what had she done? Not thought her plan out clearly, that’s for sure. Living with this man had to be worse than marrying Mick Wagner.
Stafford told himself a hundred times over that he shouldn’t get pleasure out of someone else’s fear, but he just couldn’t help it. When he’d said she’d be living with him, it had scared her into next week, but he was enjoying how it had knocked some of the haughtiness out of her.
She was still uppity, and continued to use that insufferable tone with him—when she had to speak to him—but she was wary. That’s the part he liked. She needed to be wary. Very. A nursemaid hauling someone else’s kids across the country as a mail-order bride? What kind of tale was that? There was more to it. The way she wouldn’t look him in the eye when she talked said that. If he didn’t know better, he’d wonder if she’d kidnapped those kids. She’d left too clear a trail, though. Anyone could have followed her, if that was the case.
He had a lot to learn, and with all that was going on, Stafford was discovering one thing about himself. Flipping the cards, so to speak, on a woman, was rather exciting. That opportunity had never come up in his life before now. Being raised in a family of seven children with only one brother had given him plenty of experience with women. He’d been born in the middle of five sisters. His brother, Sterling, was the oldest, and had already been working alongside their father by the time Stafford had come along. That meant he’d been told what to do and when to do it by women since the day he was born. Not to mention Francine Weatherford. She, too, had thought a man was little more than a dog that needed to be trained. He’d grown and changed a lot since leaving Mississippi ten years ago, on his eighteenth birthday, shortly after Francine broke their engagement and announced she was marrying Sterling.
Out of duty, and at his mother’s insistence, he’d stuck around for the wedding, and he’d even been back a half dozen times over the years to check in on everyone, but there wasn’t a day that went by when he wasn’t thankful he’d made his escape when he had. Sterling had a load of kids now, too, almost as many as their parents’ house had held. And Francine, well, last time he’d seen her, she hadn’t been nearly as pretty as she’d looked to him all those years ago.
A ferocious round of barking had Stafford lifting his head from where he was harnessing the team. The little dog, dubbed Polly by one of the kids, was kicking up a dirt storm near a thick patch of bushes several yards away. Stafford made a quick head count. All six kids were piling things in the back of the wagon as Marie had instructed. It was she, he noted, who was missing from the campsite. He’d quit thinking of her as Miss Hall sometime yesterday. Using her given name seemed to irritate her, and he liked that, too.
“Jackson,” he shouted toward the teamster readying the freight wagon. “You know where Marie is?”
The man, a big blond Swede with a voice that came from his ankles, shook his head. “Nope.”
They’d caught up with the freight wagon before