“I’ve had worse. I’ve made worse myself.”
Ellen sighed. “I guess overboiled coffee isn’t that important. Farm life has a way of paring things down to essentials. Survival is what’s important.”
“Yes, ma’am. It surely is. Makes a person wonder just how far they’ll go with survival in mind.”
He gave her a long look. His eyes were a dark, dark blue, almost black, and the way he scrutinized her started uneasy flutters in her stomach. This man didn’t miss much. Did he see how weary she was? How her back ached and her heart was shriveling up? She knew being a good wife meant sticking it out, for better or worse, but oh, how she smarted under the load.
Still, smart she must. No respectable woman on the western frontier caved in to exhaustion or loneliness.
He gave her a lopsided smile and dropped his gaze to his coffee cup, still two-thirds full.
“Miz O’Brian, would you mind if I slept in your barn tonight?” He sent her another crooked smile. A bigger one. The corners of his dark eyes crinkled and a dimple appeared on one sun-bronzed cheek.
Ellen studied him. She’d let the odd cowboy throw down a bedroll in the hay, but not often. Being alone out here three miles from town made her cautious. Mr. Flint made her more than cautious. He asked too many questions, and more than once she’d caught him looking at her as if trying to guess how much she weighed. She felt off balance. Vulnerable.
“Miz O’Brian?”
“I am considering it.” His eyes were hungry. Calculating. They made her unsure of things she’d never questioned before. Like why she kept on struggling to keep up the farm, waiting, always waiting, for Dan to return.
Still, she had no cause to be afraid. She kept Dan’s loaded shotgun under the sink. “Very well, Mr. Flint. You may sleep in the barn.”
“Much obliged, ma’am. I’ll feed your stock before I turn in.”
“There is no need. Florence needs to be milked, and I—”
“I’ll see to it.” He took a final swallow of coffee and pushed away from the table. “Thanks for the supper.”
He ambled toward the back door, the hitch in his gait even more obvious. Even with the limp, though, she liked the way he moved, unhurried and oddly graceful for a tall man with a stiff knee.
The screen whapped shut behind him. She listened to the uneven rhythm of his boots on the porch steps, then gathered up the two dirty plates and the empty corn platter. She’d cooked a dozen ears; only two cobs rested on her plate. The other ten, chewed clean, were piled high on his plate. The man was more than just hungry; he was starving.
Before she finished drying the dishes, a full metal pail of foamy milk sat inside the back door. Beside it lay a dozen eggs wrapped in a red bandanna. He must have searched under every hen she owned to come up with that many at an evening gather.
Ellen smiled wryly. No doubt Mr. Flint was hinting at breakfast. She scrubbed the last kettle and hung the sodden towel on the rack near the stove. Well, it wouldn’t hurt to let him sleep in the barn for one night.
She poured the fresh milk into four shallow milk pans, unloaded the eggs into a bowl and set it all in the cooler off the back porch. By morning there would be more cream, enough to churn and some for scrambled eggs.
That is, if she let him to stay for breakfast. Something about Mr. Flint made her nervous. Maybe it was his eyes. They were the darkest blue she had ever seen, darker even than the morning glories she’d planted along the front fence.
She tried not to think about him as she washed out the milk pail and lifted the lantern from the counter. Halfway up the stairs to her bed, she jolted to a stop. She hadn’t even offered him a candle to light his way around the barn.
Maybe he didn’t need it. With those predatory eyes he could probably see in the dark.
A shiver crawled up her backbone as she opened the door to her bedroom. Lamplight made the blue patchwork quilt, and the puffy matching pillow covers she’d sewn, glow with inviting warmth. She moved to pull the curtains shut and caught her breath.
Was he watching her window from the barn? Quickly she blew out the lantern flame.
The sooner he was gone, the better. She didn’t want to look into eyes that hungry any longer than she had to.
Chapter Two
T he rooster woke her. With a groan Ellen planted her bare feet on the floor and forced herself upright. Peach-gold sunlight spread through the cozy room, glinting in the framed mirror on the chiffonier and washing over her needlework basket and the ticking clock on the night table. This morning the light looked soft and creamy as buttermilk.
She washed, then hastily caught her unruly curls with a strip of calico at the back of her neck. On impulse, she leaned forward to inspect her face in the mirror.
Merciful heavens, what a sight! She looked every bit as tired as she felt, even more than the last time she’d looked, which was…let’s see…Easter Sunday? Her skin was sun-browned and freckles were sprinkled across her nose. The area around her mouth looked pinched, and her eyes…
Her eyes looked weary, as if ten years of trouble had been added to her life. Worse, there was a hopeless expression in their depths she didn’t like one bit. She looked like Mama had before she died. Worn-out. Was this what he saw?
Didn’t much matter, she guessed. A woman alone as much as she was got used to the darker side of things.
While she dressed in her blue work skirt and a clean blue shirt of Dan’s, she thought about the stranger sleeping in her barn. For no reason she could name, she didn’t trust the man.
Come now, Ellen. You must not judge a person by his appearance alone. Even a man with eyes she couldn’t read and a way of moving that reminded her of a cat. A big cat, with slim hips and a quiet way of speaking. He set all her nerves on edge.
With a sniff and a quick shake of her head, she marched down the stairs to the kitchen. Nerves or no nerves, she had a farm to run.
Another half bucket of milk sat just inside the back door. Blast the man. All right, she’d fix his breakfast. But first she had to sprinkle some mash for the chickens and turn the cow into the pasture.
She took two steps into the chicken yard and halted. The hens were clucking contentedly over fresh mash already spread in the wooden feeder. Well, of all the…
Ellen headed for the barn.
Florence was not in her stall. And the horse was gone! “Tiny? Where are you, boy?”
She searched the barn, then the yard. If he’d gotten into her carrots again she would scream.
Not in the garden. Not nibbling on green apples in the orchard. Not anywhere she could see.
Damn! That man had stolen her horse!
Oh, how could he? After a summer so scorching she’d watered her vegetables with bathwater and sprinkled down the henhouse at night, losing her horse was the last straw. Why could she not have one single day without feeling as if all the sand inside her was dribbling out?
Unaccountably, she started to cry. Stinging tears slid down past her nose and dripped onto her shirt front. Let me have just one day, Lord, when nothing bad happens. When I think I can make it through this.
No wonder she had aged a decade since Easter.
An insidious question needled into her mind. Was it worth it to hold on?
The answer came almost instantly. It was worth it. This farm was the only piece of ground that had ever belonged to her, and she’d be damned if she’d give it up. She held on to it partly for Dan, but mostly for herself. She’d scratched a vegetable garden out of a patch of bare earth, planted honeysuckle to spread over the privy, roses and black-eyed