Carolyn Davidson - Eden

She sat quietly, then looked up to where he stood, and he recognized the trembling of her body as something instilled by her experiences in the past. He knew that she feared him.

He crouched down before her. “Your heart is pounding so hard, it’s a wonder it doesn’t thump right out of your chest,” he said quietly. “I can’t stand it for you to be afraid of me.”

She looked past him, at the wall behind him, and he recognized that she was unable to meet his gaze. He stood then, stepping back, unwilling to make her feel trapped by his greater build, by the size and shape of him, and his mind sought for a way to bring peace to dwell between them.

“Do you suppose we can sort out the foodstuffs we bought now? Maybe put together a meal of some sort?” His words were calm and slow, his intent being to steady her and make her more comfortable with him.

And in that he succeeded, for she rose from the chair with haste, turning to open the packages they’d brought in, sorting through the boxes of groceries and finding places to put all the supplies he’d ordered. Her hands were quick as she stacked the canned goods in the pantry and made order from the assortment of dry goods he’d purchased.

“I’m going out to tend to the wagon and put the horses in the barn,” he told her, watching as she worked.

She nodded, turning to watch him leave the cabin, then went on with the work that was familiar to her. The small pantry just next to the cookstove held most everything, with shelves on either side of the door. It was about six feet deep, and had four shelves on either wall, enough room to hold canned goods and anything they might need from town with which to prepare meals.

The lower shelf held an odd assortment of kettles, with iron skillets stacked neatly. Katie stooped before the clutter of pots and pans and pulled forth a medium sized kettle, then the smallest of the iron skillets. “These will work for dinner,” she murmured to herself, carrying them out to the kitchen and across to the sink, where she pumped water into a dishpan there.

The reservoir yielded hot water from the stove and she added soap to the pan from a bottle beneath the sink, then set about washing the kettle in preparation for cooking his meal. As she was wiping out the skillet with a piece of brown paper, John came back in the cabin and hung up his outdoor clothing, taking off his boots by the door.

Katie dabbed a bit of paper into the lard from the pail in the pantry and returned to the skillet she’d wiped clean, using the lard to coat it. “You don’t wash your iron skillets, do you, John? You’re not supposed to, you know, only wipe them out. Water’s not good for them.”

John thought she sounded worried and in response, he only nodded his agreement, unwilling to confess that he had washed that very skillet only yesterday after frying eggs in it.

She put the vessels on the stove and found a small slab of bacon in the store of supplies John already had in the pantry, located a knife and sliced through it, forming six thick pieces for their meal. The remaining bacon was wrapped in cheesecloth and put away for another time and the skillet was placed on the stove, where the remains of last night’s fire kept the stovetop warm.

“I’ll have to build up the fire a bit before you can cook anything much,” he told her and she stepped back, giving him room.

“I can do it, John, if you have chores to tend to. I know how to make a fire.”

He grinned up at her, as he crouched before the wood box. “I’m sure you do, but for tonight you don’t have to. Bill gave me the day off, and the men don’t expect to see me till morning.”

In less than ten minutes, he had a fire worthy of its name glowing in the depths of the stove, and she was busily turning bacon and thinking of what next she could do to make a meal.

“There’s beans and such in the cupboard beside the sink,” he told her. “Berta works in the big house and she brought out a supply of canned good for you to use. She heard from Bill that you’d be here, and she said she’d leave some stuff for you in that white cabinet.”

He opened the doors and revealed rows of home-canned produce on the three shelves, both pints and quarts, all of them full of colorful vegetables and fruits.

“My word,” Katie murmured. “I never saw so much good food in one place.”

“Didn’t the Schraders have a kitchen garden?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. But we had to sell a good bit of it to make money. Mr. Schrader took it to town to sell at the general store, and we canned the leftovers. I made applesauce from the windfalls, and he picked the good apples to sell. He didn’t believe in wasting the best of the crops on his family.”

John merely shook his head, aghast at yet another example of the stinginess she had lived with for so long. “You don’t have to worry about such a thing here, Katie,” he told her. And meant the words with every bit of his heart, for she had lived a life of frugality such as he had not thought possible. Yet had survived with her spirit intact. She was a bright shining flame of womanhood, glowing with a beauty he had seldom seen in his life.

Pushing that thought to the back of his mind, he settled instead on the plans he had set in motion. And decided that he needed to make his thoughts clear to the girl who would be living in his house.

“Katie, I need to tell you something, and I don’t know how you’re going to take this.”

She turned her head and her eyes were calm, as if she were ready to be agreeable, no matter what he had to say.

“I’m not a marrying man, Katie. I just want you to know that there isn’t much of a chance that I’ll ever be bringing a bride home to this house. You don’t have to worry about me pushing you out the door to make room for another woman. So long as we can get along and things go well here, I’m planning on you staying here until you decide on something else for your life. I’ve already talked to Bill about you and—”

“I don’t plan on making any changes in a hurry, John,” she said quickly. “I’ve barely had time to settle in here. Don’t be planning on me moving on any time soon.”

He laughed. “Just so we understand each other, Katie. I don’t want you to think that I’ll be pushing you to sleep in my bed or be anything other than an employee here.”

“I can sleep right here on the floor in front of the cookstove, John,” she said quickly. “It’ll be warm and if you’ve got a quilt I can wrap up in, I’ll be happy. I used to sleep with my sister, Jane, when we were young’uns. But lately…”

What she was thinking as her gaze sought the floor was not apparent, and John did not poke into her silence, but watched, even as he wondered at the mention of Katie having a sister. Something he’d not heard of before.

And so he spoke of what was more important right now. “I’ll be making a room for you in the near future, Katie. For I have but one bed, and one bedroom. You can sleep on the floor if you like, but there’s a sofa there in front of the fireplace, and it should be long enough for you. I want you to be secure here, and know that nothing will harm you, least of all me.”

Her eyes darkened at his words, and she drew in a shuddering breath. “John, I’m fearful of a man’s hands on me. I don’t know any other way to say it than that, but I’m hoping you’ll know what I mean. Jacob Schrader seemed bent on slidin’ into my bed more than once, and he gave me the shivers, just lookin’ at him, let alone how I’d have felt if he’d laid his hand on my—” Her voice broke off as she groped for words, and John knew a moment of pure rage as he thought of the man who had so frightened this girl.

He considered all he had to say to her and wondered if it might be better to call a halt to his ramblings, lest he frighten her off. There was no point in upsetting the girl.