Regina Scott - Would-Be Wilderness Wife

“Mrs. Child?” Drew asked, but his sister nodded eagerly.

“I know Mrs. Child! Ma has her book on being a good housewife. She’s very clever.”

Beth might have gone on as she often did, but Catherine directed her toward the stairs, then turned to Drew. “I’ll need warm water, as well.”

Drew frowned. “To drink?”

Pink crept across her cheekbones, as delicate as the porcelain cups his mother had safeguarded over the Rockies on their way West. “No,” she said, gaze darting away from his. “To bathe your mother. Can you see that it’s warmed properly? Not too hot.”

“Coming right up,” Drew promised, and left to find some help.

He managed to locate the rest of his family at Simon’s cabin, which was a little ways into the woods. His brothers were cleaning up before dinner, but they all stopped what they were doing to listen to his explanation of what had happened in town. He thought at least one of them might agree with him that Levi’s actions were rash. But to a man they were too concerned about Ma to consider how Catherine Stanway must feel.

“So this nurse,” Simon said, draping the cloth he’d been using to dry his freshly shaven face over the porcelain basin in a corner of his cabin. “What do we know about her? What are her credentials?”

Figure on Simon, his next closest brother in age at about two years behind Drew’s twenty-nine, to ask. He was the only one tall enough to look him in the eye, for all they rarely saw eye to eye. With his pale blond hair and angled features, Simon was too cool. Even looked different from Drew. Every movement of his lean body, word from his lips and look from his light green eyes seemed calculated.

The middle brother, James, leaned back where he sat near the fire, effortlessly balancing the stool on one of its three legs. “Does it really matter, Simon? She’s here, and she’s helping. Be grateful.” He turned to Drew. His long face was a close match for Simon’s in its seriousness, his short blond hair a shade darker, but there was a twinkle in his dark blue eyes. “Now, I have a more pressing question. Is she pretty?”

“That’s not important,” Drew started, but his second-youngest brother, John, slapped his hands down on his knees where he sat at a bench by the table.

“She must be! He’s blushing!” He shook his head, red-gold hair straighter than his mother’s like a flame in the light.

Drew took a deep breath to hold back a retort. Of all his brothers, John was the most sensible, the most studious. If he’d seen a change in Drew, it must be there.

But he wasn’t about to admit it.

He started for the door. “Pretty or not, she has work for us to do. She wants lots of water warmed. You bring it in. I’ll heat it up.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “And John, find Levi. He should have finished in the barn by now. I don’t want him wandering off.”

“Where would he go?” James teased, letting the stool clatter back to the floor as he climbed to his feet. “It’s not as if he has tickets to the theatre.”

“Or one to attend within a hundred miles,” John agreed, but he headed for the barn as Drew had requested.

For the next couple of hours everyone was too busy to joke. His brothers took turns bringing in the water to Drew, who heated it in his mother’s largest pot on the step stove. Then they formed a line up the stairs and passed the warm water in buckets up to Beth and Miss Stanway.

“She washed Ma with a soft cloth, then rubbed her down with another,” Beth marveled to Drew at the head of the stairs when he ventured up to check on them after he and his brothers had eaten. “And she changed the sheets on the bed without even making Ma get up. She’s amazing!”

Drew had to agree, for when Catherine beckoned him closer, he found his mother much improved. No longer did she look like a wax figure on the bed, and she smiled at each of her sons as they clustered around to speak with her.

“I think it’s time to rest,” Catherine said to them all after a while. “I’ll come talk to you after I’ve settled her.”

Drew herded everyone down the stairs. They all found seats in the front room, Simon and James on opposite ends of the table, John on a bench alongside, Beth in Ma’s rocking chair and Levi sprawled on the braided rug with Drew standing behind him leaning against the stairs. He caught himself counting heads, even though he knew everyone was present. Habit. He’d been watching over them for the past ten years, ever since the day his father had died.

It had been a widow-maker that had claimed their father. Drew had been eighteen then, and only Simon at sixteen and James at fourteen had been old enough and strong enough to help clear the timber for their family’s original claim. None of them had seen the broken limb high on the massive fir before it came crashing down.

“Take care of them,” his father had said when his brothers had pulled the limb off him and Drew had cradled him in his arms. Already his father’s voice had started wheezing from punctured lungs, and blood had tinged his lips. “Take care of them all, Andrew. This family is your responsibility.”

He had never forgotten. He hadn’t lost another member of the family, though his brothers had made the job challenging. They’d broken arms and legs, cut themselves on saws and knives, fought off diseases he was afraid to name. Even sweet Beth had given him a scare a few months ago when she’d nearly succumbed to a fever much like their mother’s.

He’d kept them safe, nursed them through any illness or injury. His had been the shoulders they’d cried on, the arms that had held them through the night. He’d been the one to ride for medicine, to cut cloths into bandages. He’d been the one to sit up with them night after night. Having someone help felt odd, as if he’d put on the wrong pair of boots.

That odd feeling didn’t ease as Catherine came down the stairs to join them. As if she were a schoolmarm prepared to instruct, she took up her place by the fire. The crackling flames set her figure in silhouette.

“I thought you would all want to hear what I believe about your mother’s condition,” she said, and Drew knew he wasn’t the only Wallin leaning forward to catch every word.

“Two culprits cause this type of fever,” she continued, gaze moving from one brother to another until it met Drew’s. “Typhus and typhoid fever.”

Neither sounded good, and his stomach knotted.

“Aren’t they the same thing?” John asked.

She shook her head. “Many people think so, and some doctors treat them the same, but they are very different beasts. With typhus, the fever never leaves, and the patient simply burns up.”

Beth shivered and rubbed a hand up her arm.

“Typhoid fever, on the other hand,” Catherine said as if she hadn’t noticed, “is generally worse for the first two or three weeks and then starts to subside. Given how long you said she’s suffered, I’m leaning toward typhoid fever, but we should know for sure within the week.”

Simon seized on the word. “A week. Then, you’ll stay with us for that long.” It was a statement, not a question.

“I promised to return Miss Stanway to Seattle tomorrow,” Drew said.

Simon scowled at him.

“We need her more than Seattle does,” Levi complained.

His other brothers murmured their agreement.

“That isn’t our decision to make,” Drew argued.

“No,” Catherine put in. “It’s mine.”

That silenced them. She clasped her hands in front of her blue gown. “Doctors take an oath to care for their patients. My father believed that nurses should take one, as well. It is my duty to care for your mother and for you, should you sicken.”

A duty she took seriously, he could see. Her color was high, her face set with determination as she glanced around at them all. “I will stay until your mother is out of danger.”