taking out a cup of milk. “Join us.”
“I can wait until you are done,” she said.
“Maybe you could if you were the czar of Russia’s chore girl. I mean it. Get a bowl and join us.”
She did as he said. He pushed out the empty chair with his foot.
“Barn’s getting cold and Pete isn’t much fun to cuddle,” he said, as he took a sip of the coffee, nodded and raised the cup to her in salute. “Damn fine, Katie Peck. I’m going to build you a room today.”
And he did, after instructing her to move what little furniture the sitting room possessed to the other side of the doorway arch that cut the room into roughly two-thirds and a third. She did as he directed, coughing from the dust she raised.
“The only problem I have noticed with housework is that five or six months later, you have to do it all over again,” he commented, gesturing for Pete to pick up the other end of a settee.
Once the furniture was moved and the floor swept, Ned worked quickly, measuring and marking boards he had dragged from the barn with Pete’s help. When he gave her no assignment, Katie decided to tackle the stove, which hadn’t seen a good cleaning in years.
She found a metal pancake turner in the depths of a drawer of junk and scraped away on the range top until her shoulders hurt. All the time, Ned and Pete walked back and forth, bringing in more boards. After the fifth or so trip, Ned stopped to watch.
“Funny how this stuff built up and I continued to ignore it,” he told her, sounding more matter-of-fact than penitent, which scarcely surprised her. She was coming to know Ned Avery.
“A little attention every day—not much, really—keeps the carbon away,” she said, and surprised herself by thinking, Kind of like people.
“Tell you what,” he said. “We’ll surprise you. No peeking, now.”
She stopped long enough at noon to fix everyone jelly sandwiches and canned peaches, then continued into the afternoon until the stove was clean. The hammering continued, punctuated with laughter, which soothed her heart in strange ways.
With his own shy smile, Pete borrowed the kitchen broom.
“How does my new room in there look?” she asked, pretty certain that Pete would spill the beans, because his mind was too simple to keep a secret all the way from breakfast to supper.
Pete surprised her. “Not gonna tell. You have to wait.”
Impressed, Kate built a fire in the stove, determined to cook something better than sandwiches. Ned had already pointed out the smokehouse next door. She sliced off several steaks as her mouth watered. Even in her more enlightened place of employment in Massachusetts, meat was a rare treat administered only on holidays. Soon steaks and sliced potatoes sizzled. She opened another can of peaches and poured them into a bowl this time. She had found some pretty dishes that only needed a rinse.
She was about to call the brothers to the table when they came into the kitchen. Ned held out a key to her, just an ordinary skeleton key for a simple lock that anyone could pick, but which meant more to her than Ned Avery would ever know.
“Take a look.” He gestured her into the sitting room, or what remained of it.
She stared in surprise. “I... I thought you were going to carve a tiny space out of this side of the doorway,” she said, delighted. “Where will you sit in the evenings?”
“I already told you we use the kitchen for everything,” he reminded her, his eyes on her face.
Ned had turned the larger side of the sitting room into her bedroom, leaving only a small area on the other side of the open archway for a chair, settee and a table, the kind for books or magazines. She stared at the new wall and door, then opened the door and sighed with the pleasure of it all.
The bed was just a cot, perhaps an army cot scavenged from somewhere. Because her boss had given her the lion’s share of the former sitting room, it included the potbellied stove. He and Pete had dragged in one of the stuffed chairs and a footstool.
“I have another washbasin somewhere, and I can put up some pegs for your clothes. Sorry I don’t have a bureau.”
What could she say to such kindness? She barely knew this man, and he had given her something priceless—a room of her own, a safe one.
“Thank ye,” she managed, hoping tears wouldn’t well in her eyes. No employer wanted to hire a crybaby.
“Try it out,” her boss said.
She walked inside her room, her own room. She sat down in the chair and put her feet upon the footstool. I can sit here and reread my Ladies’ Home Journal, she thought. This might be the best winter of my life.
Kate spent a peaceful night in her room, sitting for a while in the chair and reading, as she suspected wealthy people did. Her new bed was narrow and the mattress thin, but she had no complaint.
She debated whether to lock the door. Key in hand, she had the power, but the urgency was gone. She closed the door, and that was enough.
In the morning, she woke to angry voices in the back bedroom. Kate opened her door slightly and listened as Ned and his father argued about leaving him alone to the mercies of “a dratted female I can barely understand” while his sons rode fence today.
“Try a little harder, Dad,” Ned said.
“What for?” his father shot back. “You know I’m dying, I know I’m dying, and that...female with the damn fool accent knows I’m dying!”
“I guess because it’s the civilized thing to do,” Ned replied, and he sounded so weary.
“You don’t need me,” Daniel Avery argued. “You can run this ranch.”
“Did it ever occur to you that we love you?” Ned asked, sounding more exasperated than weary now, and driven to a final admission, maybe one hard for a man not used to frills, if love was a frill.
Katie dressed quickly, pleased to see that Ned or Pete—likely Ned—had laid a fire in the cookstove. While the argument about her merits and demerits continued in the back room at a lower decibel, she deftly shredded potatoes and put them in a cast-iron skillet to fry.
She silently ordered the argument down the hall to roll off her back. She was the chore girl and she was getting through a winter doing something she hadn’t planned on, because Saul Coffin, drat his hide, had a temper. Sticks and stones, she thought. That’s all it is.
Breakfast on the table brought a smile to Ned Avery’s set expression. He asked for the ketchup, then ate silently before finally setting down his fork.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” he told her.
“I’ll set his food on that little table by his bed and just leave him alone with it,” she said, getting out another plate.
“I can take it to him. Maybe I had better,” Ned said, starting to rise.
“Eat your breakfast,” she said, as she started down the hall with Daniel Avery’s steak and hash browns on a tray.
Mr. Avery was staring at the ceiling, which she noticed for the first time was covered with newspapers. Just standing there, she stared up, too.
“‘Archduke Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian crown, is found dead with his mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera in Mayerling.’ Oh, my,” she said, then sat the tray of food on the table where he could reach it and left the room. She thought she heard him laugh.
She sat down in the kitchen to oatmeal, which she preferred to steak in the morning, and was just spooning on the sugar when she heard, “Ned!” from the back of the house.
“You