RNWMP: Bride for Jonathan (Mail Order Mounties Book 8) Page 5

  “Oh, all right.” She tried to keep her voice light, but she really was very confused, and also a little hurt. “I’ll just put it over here on the bookcase and you can look at it when you get the time.”

  “And that’s another thing,” he said, turning around and putting his hands on his hips. “Why are you so . . . obsessed with books and that bookcase? It’s all you can talk about!”

  She opened and closed her mouth a few times, dumbfounded. Was he actually angry at her? What had she done? She thought over their entire conversation that morning . . . no, she couldn’t see where she’d been unkind or insensitive, or even nagging. She’d thought they were having a very nice morning until just that second. To be honest in every way, he was overreacting, and she didn’t believe she should just take it.

  “Mr. Murray, you just raised your voice to me, and you have no good reason to do so. I suggest that we talk this out reasonably or that you step outside for a while and calm down. It’s your choice either way, but I will not be spoken to like that, and it’s best you know it right now.”

  She had no idea how he would respond. She only knew that she had to speak up or she’d regret it. If he turned out to be an angry man at heart, she’d rather know it now than later.

  He pulled in a long breath while she nearly held hers, wondering how he was going to react.

  “Elaine, I’m so sorry.” He crossed the floor and took both her hands in his. “I didn’t mean to shout at you. I was just . . .” He sighed. “It’s nothing. Let’s forget this happened and move on, all right?”

  She studied his eyes. Something was bothering him, something deeper than he was willing to let on. If she didn’t press him, it would continue to build. “Don’t you think it would be better to talk about it and share the burden? You’ve often said how glad you are that I’m your friend. Let me be your friend in this too. Let me share whatever is troubling you.”

  “If I tell you, I’m afraid you’ll lose all respect for me.”

  “What do you mean?” She searched his face, her heart pounding. Had he broken the law? Been unfaithful? Whatever it was, he was genuinely upset, and she couldn’t bear to see him hurting.

  He guided her back to the table, and they sat. “The truth is, I can’t read.”

  She exhaled sharply and closed her eyes. That’s all it was? What a relief! She’d expected any number of things that could have been so much worse.

  He must have mistaken her reaction because he rushed on. “You’re so well educated and you read all the time—you must have wanted to marry someone who could do the same. But when I look at letters, it’s as though they start moving around on the page and don’t hold still long enough for me to figure them out.”

  “I’m not upset or disappointed—not at all,” she hurried to say. “In fact, I’m relieved—so relieved to know what’s been bothering you this whole time.”

  He looked shocked. “You’re relieved?”

  “I am, especially considering all the alternatives. I thought that perhaps you’d fallen for one of the pretty young Indian maidens and had chosen to ship me back to Ottawa.”

  “Oh, you’re not leaving now,” Jonathan said. “I’ve grown rather fond of you.”

  “Good. I’m glad to hear it.” She smiled and reached out to take his hand. “And there’s something I haven’t had the chance to tell you yet. I used to be a teacher with a special emphasis on reading.”

  He blinked. “You were?”

  “Yes. I gave it up a year ago because the school where I was teaching didn’t approve of some of the new methods I was trying. Methods, in fact, designed for the very thing you’re describing.”

  “Really?” He leaned forward with interest. “They didn’t want you to try new things? Why?”

  “They felt it was too experimental, but in reality, it was simply a matter of the teacher working one-on-one with the student and discovering how they learn best. And here, now, we have one teacher and one student.” She motioned back and forth between the two of them.

  “You’d be willing to teach me?”

  “Of course!” She laughed with delight. “I became a teacher because I love to teach, and I love you, so it’s a perfect combination.” As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she blushed. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud quite so soon. Maybe he wouldn’t notice.

  But he did—that was obvious from the grin on his face. “You love me, huh?”

  “Maybe. It’s a strong possibility.”

  “I see.” He smirked, but then his face fell. “I don’t know, Elaine. You have it in your head that this is going to be an easy fix, but I’ve talked to so many people and tried so many things—there are some people who just can’t read, and I’m one of them. I’ve accepted it, and I’ve learned to work with it. Shouldn’t we leave well enough alone and focus on other things, like fixing up the house and planning our garden?”

  She sat back, absolutely shocked. “Jonathan Murray, you can’t mean that. I just . . . you’d give up on my plan without even trying it? Don’t you have any faith in me?”

  “No! That’s not what I meant.” He ran a hand through his hair, as he always did when he was frustrated. “I mean that perhaps I’m unteachable.”

  She blew out a breath. “I have to say, that disappoints me a great deal, and I’m not used to being disappointed by you. How can you just accept this as truth without fighting for it?”

  “But I have fought for it! I just told you—I’ve spoken with people about this for years. When you’ve been told something over and over again your whole life, you tend to believe it.”

  Elaine rose from her chair, placed her hands on either side of his face, and looked into his eyes. “I’m asking you to give me a chance. I’m not saying I’m a miracle worker, but I do have some training in this, and I want the opportunity. Will you give that to me?”

  He looked back and forth between her eyes. Finally, he nodded. “I will. I do have faith in you, Elaine. It’s myself I don’t believe in.”

  “Then I’ll believe in you enough for the both of us.” She bent down and kissed him. His arms came up and encircled her waist, and they kissed until she had to draw back and breathe.

  “So, tell me,” he said, a grin on his face. “How do reading lessons work?”

  “Well, first I clean up the dishes, and then we get busy.”

  “All right. I’ll fetch you some water.”

  Chapter Nine

  Isabelle lifted up two skinned rabbits by their ears and showed them to Elaine. “Surprise! I caught them myself.”

  Elaine took a step back and let her friend into the cabin, eyeing her trophy suspiciously. “You did that?”

  “I did! I decided that I was going to learn to be self-sufficient, and I met an Indian woman named Janey who has been teaching me how to hunt. Well, I snared these because bows and arrows are . . . well, I snared them instead, and these are for you.”

  “Thank you.” Elaine tried to look pleased as she took them, but she didn’t want to think about having to cut them up. “They’ll make a wonderful dinner.”

  “What are you doing over here?” Isabelle asked, walking over to the table where Elaine had spread out her fabric.

  Elaine put the rabbits in the washbasin for lack of a better place. “The yellow is going to be curtains and a tablecloth, and the blue will be a dress.”

  “Oh, that will be nice.” Isabelle glanced around the cabin. “Yellow will work well in here.”

  “I hope so. I held it up to the window to see, but it’s hard to tell until it’s actually done.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Elaine wasn’t too sure how to answer. Isabelle wasn’t the best with household chores, and she didn’t want to hand over a pair of scissors only to have the fabric ruined. “You could show me how to prepare the rabbits, if you wouldn’t mind. I saw our family’s cook do it once, but I wasn’t paying much attention.”

  “Of course.” Isabelle walked Elaine through
the process step by step to get the most meat. Elaine held her breath a few times, but she managed to survive the demonstration without throwing up, which she considered to be a triumph.

  “And Janey showed you all this?” Elaine asked, motioning down to the rabbits now in the largest pot she could find.

  “She did, including how to drain them. Aren’t you glad I did that before I brought them?”

  “Drain them? Oh, you mean of blood.” Gracious. Elaine didn’t want to think about that for too long. She’d known before she ever came out here that she was more of a city girl than a country girl, but she was determined to adapt, and this was just a stark reminder of how very far she had to go.

  “Yes. I don’t like it either, I promise, but it’s so liberating to know that you can fend for yourself. I have to be grateful to the Yukon for that. I used to believe that I needed others to take care of me, and now I know that I have the courage and the strength inside myself to face whatever comes. Thank you for believing in me, Elaine.”

  “All I did was tell you the truth. And I would give you a hug right now, but your hands . . .” She motioned down, and Isabelle laughed.

  “They are pretty messy. I’ll go wash them.”

  Elaine opened the door for her so she wouldn’t touch anything, and then she walked back over and looked in the pot. She didn’t know if she could ever do what she’d just seen Isabelle do, and she was so proud of her friend, she could just about burst.

  ***

  “Just a little more to the right, I think. Perfect.” Elaine stepped back and nodded. “Oh, those do make everything look so much better.”

  Jonathan jumped down from the chair where he’d been standing and looked up at the curtains he’d just hung in the kitchen. “You did a good job, Mrs. Mountie. Do you like them enough to hang all the others?”

  “Yes, please. Now I can’t possibly wait.”

  He laughed. “You realize that when I came home, you said you’d feed me if I hung just one little set of curtains for you first.”

  “I did . . . and I still will. Come sit down.” She turned toward the stove, trying not to look disappointed, but a promise was a promise, and she couldn’t deny her hungry husband his dinner.

  He reached out and caught her around the waist. “No, let’s hang the curtains. I can wait a few more minutes.”

  She spun and looked into his eyes. “Really? You mean it?”

  He laughed again. “Of course. Which ones are next?”

  There were only three windows in the cabin, so it wasn’t a difficult choice. A few minutes later, all the curtains were up, and Elaine set dinner on the table. “As you can see, I didn’t get the cloth hemmed yet. That will be tomorrow,” she explained.

  “All in good time. You’ve been working hard. How long did the curtains take you?”

  “Three days,” she confessed. “I’m not as quick with a needle as I’d like to be, and I don’t think we could fit a sewing machine in here even if we had one.”

  “Someday we will,” he replied, “and we’ll have a place to put it. I want to start expanding the cabin as soon as spring hits.”

  “Honestly?” It was all she could do not to spring out of her chair. “What are we doing first?”

  “I thought we’d add a bedroom onto the back. That will give us more room out here.”

  “And room for a cooking stove? Oh, please say room for a cooking stove.”

  “Why, my dear, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you wanted a cooking stove.”

  She scowled and shook her head at him. “Now you’re teasing me.”

  “I would never tease you about something so crucially important as a cooking stove, Mrs. Mountie.”

  After they finished dinner and the dishes were washed, Elaine pulled out the reader and opened it to the page where they had left off the night before.

  “Couldn’t we take a day off?” Jonathan asked. “Today was pretty long, and I’m tired.”

  “We could, but it’s better to practice consistently,” she replied. She really didn’t want him to feel pestered, but there was a certain amount of convincing she already had to do, and she didn’t want this to become even more difficult.

  “All right,” he said with a dramatic sigh.

  She put her hand on his arm. “You’re really doing very well,” she told him. “I see progress every time we sit down together.”

  “I’m sure it helps that my teacher is so pretty.” He leaned down and nuzzled her neck.

  “Now, now, now. Distracting me isn’t going to get you out of this,” she said, and he sighed again.

  “It was worth a try,” he said, sitting down and pasting an innocent look on his face.

  Chapter Ten

  “Mr. Dubois!” Jonathan spurred his horse onward when he caught sight of the scruffy mountain man up ahead on the trail. Toussaint Dubois turned, saw who was calling after him, and took off at a run, veering into the trees.

  Jonathan slid out of his saddle and continued on foot as well, dodging branches until he was finally able to reach out and catch the man by the scruff of his jacket.

  “There’s no need to get rough, Mountie,” Dubois said when Jonathan released him, dusting his hands down the front of his jacket like he had been horribly mussed up. It was almost comical—he had so much dirt encrusted on his clothing that anything done to him would be an improvement, but Jonathan wasn’t feeling amused.

  “How many times have I warned you to stay away from the Indians?” Jonathan balled his fists at his sides, remembering Dermot’s warning not to get physical. He’d done what he had to do in order to stop the man, but he wasn’t entitled to any other contact unless Dubois became violent.

  “I recall that we have had that conversation a time or two,” Dubois said, scratching his chin. “I don’t recall you being able to change my mind, though. The Indians are real good customers, and a man’s got to make a living.”

  “The Indians have got to make a living too,” Jonathan all but spat. “You’re cheating them out of their livelihood. Two bottles of rotgut for a pile of furs? How is that even fair?”

  “He was willing,” Dubois said, spreading his hands wide. “How can I turn a customer down when they’re begging me for my product?”

  Jonathan clenched his teeth so hard, his jaw ached. “You’re interfering with people’s lives, and you can plan on one thing—when I find your still, I’m destroying it. I won’t leave one bottle or one pipe lying anywhere around.”

  “Then it’s a good thing that I’ve hidden it where none of your patrols have even touched,” Dubois said, giving something of a whinny. “Good day to you now, Mountie.”

  He turned and vanished into the trees. Jonathan took a moment to calm down, willing his jaw to relax and his hands to unclench. Someday. Someday they would make this happen. In the meantime, Dubois had given him a good clue. If the still was hidden someplace they hadn’t patrolled, it was time to change the search pattern.

  ***

  There. It was perfect. Elaine reached out and smoothed the yellow cloth on the table. She’d honestly thought those hems were never going to end, but they finally did, and now her whole kitchen looked bright and summery. It was a good thing, too, because outside the day had definitely become gray and gloomy. Jonathan came in and hung up his hat, then gave her a quick kiss.

  “How was your day?” she asked. She knew that his run-in with the Frenchman Dubois the day before had left him a bit glum, and she hoped that today had gone much better.

  “Not bad, but the natives are turning in more reports about a female cougar prowling around, and the settlers in town aren’t too pleased about it either,” he said. “Hey, you got the tablecloth done. It looks great.”

  “Thank you,” she said, pleased that he’d noticed. This just underscored the realization she’d come to a few days before—he only blocked out things related to books and reading. Once he’d pushed past that block, he’d complimented her on the bookcase, and Dermot had said she could kee
p the wood. That was good because she’d grown rather fond of her little creation and she didn’t want to give it back.

  “Looks like you need some water,” Jonathan said, glancing in the bucket. “I’ll go.”

  “No, let me,” she replied. “I’m practicing.”

  “Practicing? For what?”

  “To be a real wilderness wife. Isabelle runs around snaring rabbits—I have to do something.”

  He laughed. “All right. You go practice.”

  She scooped up her bucket and headed across the bumpy ground to reach the well. That looked like Ann up ahead getting ready to leave, so she hurried, wanting to catch her before it was too late.

  “Ann!” she called out, and the woman turned and waited for her.

  “I made bread this morning, but I accidentally made too much,” Elaine said when she finally caught up, feeling winded. Running while carrying a bucket would be something else to practice. “Would you like some?”

  Ann’s gaze darted down to Susan and then back up. Elaine could see it as plain as day—she didn’t want her daughter to go hungry, but she hesitated to take something away from Elaine. “If you don’t take this bread, it will go to waste,” Elaine told her. That wasn’t entirely true, but she wasn’t going to quibble about little white lies.

  “All right. I will come,” Ann replied after a long moment. “But I will carry your water.”

  “Oh, no. That’s not necessary,” Elaine began to argue, but when she looked in the woman’s eyes, she saw that to Ann, it very much was necessary. She needed to feel as though she had done something in exchange, and so Elaine relented and let Ann carry her water. It was difficult—she had two buckets instead of just one—but Elaine walked along as though nothing unusual was happening. She would give Ann this moment of dignity by not commenting on it.

  When they reached the cabin, Elaine wrapped up the loaf of bread in a cloth and handed it to Ann, but Ann removed the cloth and put it in a corner of her dress instead. Then with a nod, she and Susan walked back to the village, now with one bucket of water.