Smoke River Bride

“That was dumb,” Teddy muttered.

Thad made a move toward his son, but Leah laid her hand on his arm.

“My father did not own a horse,” she said. To avoid explaining, she cleared the table, poured Thad’s coffee into the slop bucket and washed the dishes in water she’d left heating on the stove. Her anxiety mounted with every plate she dried. She knew he had not wanted to marry her; what would he expect of her? Would he want to sleep with her? And…perhaps more?

Thad seemed to be a reasonable, sensible man. And he’d had a wife before, so he knew…what to do in bed. But she most certainly did not.

A cup slipped from her shaking fingers and shattered against the floor. Before she could reach for the broom to sweep it up, Thad’s hand closed over her shoulder.

“You’re wondering about tonight,” he observed in a low voice. He turned to snag the broom. “I’m wondering, too. We’re husband and wife now.”

“Yes,” Leah murmured. “We are.”

Thad cleared his throat. “But I don’t really feel married, so maybe I should still sleep in the loft.”

Leah met his steady gaze and her stomach flipped. He had offered marriage to give her a respectable way of escaping what was inevitable in San Francisco. He could never know how desperately she needed the safe haven he offered. If she had stayed in the city, Madam Tang would have quickly auctioned off her virginity to the highest bidder.

This was Thad’s house. Thad’s bedroom. She could not usurp it.

“I think perhaps we could share your bedroom.”

He said nothing, just swept up the pieces of china and dumped them into the trash box next to the stove. Then he straightened to face her, and swallowed hard.

“You go on to bed, Leah. I’ll be along in a while, after I have a talk with my son.”

She lifted the broom out of his grasp. “Please do not. Have a talk, I mean. It will make him feel even more resentful. I will handle Teddy in my own way.”

At that, Thad propped both hands on his hips and stared at her. “I keep being surprised by you, Leah. You’re turning out to be some woman!”

“What does that mean, ‘some woman’?”

To her astonishment, Thad’s cheeks turned pink. “It means you are unusual. Not like other women.”

She hesitated. “Is it…is it because I am Chinese?”

“Oh, hell no, Leah. That doesn’t much matter to me.” He reached out and gently squeezed her narrow shoulders while she stood before him, the broom still clutched in her fingers. Moisture burned at the back of her eyes.

“It will be all right, I swear.” He lifted the broom out of her hands, turned her toward the bedroom and gave her a little nudge. “Go along to bed now.”

She moved away quickly so he would not see her tears.

For more than an hour she lay in the big double bed and, despite the flutter in her stomach, her eyelids kept drifting closed. Thad did not come. The moon rose, sending a cold silvery light through the single bedroom window, and still Thad did not come.

Had he changed his mind and climbed up into the loft to sleep with his son? Or perhaps he was sleeping in the barn? Why did he not come to his own bed? Was it because she was there?

At last she heard the front door open, then close, and suddenly there he was at the foot of the bed. Bathed in moonlight, he looked to be coated in shiny armor. Like Ivanhoe, as she had imagined him when she was growing up. It had been her favorite book.

“You still awake?”

“Yes,” Leah murmured. “I thought it polite to wait for you. I kept myself from falling asleep by thinking about…Ivanhoe.”

A laugh burst from the tall shadow by the bed. “Ivanhoe!”

Thad began to unbutton his shirt. He fumbled with the buttonholes halfway down his broad chest, stalled, swore a Gaelic curse and abruptly yanked the garment off over his head. His wool undershirt followed.

“Ivanhoe wouldn’t have to cope with buttons,” he muttered.

“Ivanhoe,” she heard herself say, “would have a squire to unbuckle his armor.”

Thad’s hands at that moment rested on the leather belt at his waist. He stopped and sent her a challenging look. “You want to be my squire?” he joked.

“Oh, no,” she cried. “I could never—”

He laughed softly. “Leah, you’re gonna wash my clothes. You’re gonna get so used to my trouser buttons you could undo them in your sleep.”

She pulled the sheet up over her head. The next thing she knew the bed sagged under his weight and a long, very cold body stretched out next to her.

“Oh! You are frozen! Where have you been?”

He chuckled aloud. “I’ve been out talking to my wheat field. Do it every night, mostly to reassure myself it’s still there.”

“Your wheat field? Why would it not be there? Is it growing?”

“Oh, aye. Little by little. But it’s like waitin’ for a kettle of water to boil.”

Leah rose up on one elbow. “Do all American farmers talk to their crops?”

“Nope.”

There was a long silence, and she wished she had not spoken out in such a bold manner.

“Dunno why I talk to the wheat, really. Well, that’s not true—I do know. That crop means a lot to me for two reasons. One, it’s a challenge. A gamble, really, but I like a challenge. Always have. And the other reason is this—when I was real young, about Teddy’s age, back in Scotland, my da had a farm. One year there was an awful storm that killed all our crops except for the red winter wheat Da had sown. We lived on that wheat, and goat’s milk, for a whole year. Nothing else survived. Neither would we have, if not for that crop of wheat. Saved our lives, it did.”

“That happens in China, too. If the rice crop fails, many people starve to death.”

Thad grunted. “Guess that wheat field makes me feel, well, like no matter what happens, my boy and I will survive.”

Leah gazed out the window. “Can you see your field from here?”

“Nope. Good thing, I guess,” he said with a chuckle. “Otherwise I’d be mooning out the window half the time instead of milking the cow and feedin’ the horses.”

Silence.

“Leah, you’re the only person I’ve told all this to. Townfolk think I’m a little crazy. Nobody grows wheat in Oregon. They’re all getting a good laugh over my experiment, I guess. I’m in debt up to my ears for what’s growing on those three acres, but I believe in a few years this whole territory will be growing wheat.”

“Mr. MacAllister…Thad…?”

“Go to sleep, Leah. It’s been a long day.”