Plum Creek Bride

“I can see that,” he snapped. With a sigh he turned away, gesturing toward a wrinkled wraith of a woman in a severe black dress, seated beside an unadorned white wicker cradle.

“This is Mrs. Benbow, my housekeeper. Erika. what was it again? Ah, yes. Scharf. Erika Scharf.”

The older woman fanned herself with one corner of a tea towel and pinned snapping black eyes on her. “What church are ye?” she demanded over the baby’s cries.

“Church?” Did she dare admit she did not regularly attend church? All she knew was that the service was not conducted in Latin, so she could not be Catholic. “Why, Protestant, I suppose.”

“You suppose? Don’t you know? How were ye raised, if I might ask?”

“I was brought up in Germany,” Erika replied, trying to keep her voice steady. “Papa Catholic. Mama Lutheran.” She did not add that her grandfather, her father’s father, had been a Jew. Papa had converted before he met Mama.

“Well, that’s a fine muddle!” The woman jostled the edge of the wicker crib. “Hush now, child.”

Erika risked a peek into the cradle. A tiny pink mouth stretched open, emitting screams of anguish. At Erika’s touch, the crying stopped abruptly, and two startled, tear-filled blue eyes gazed up at her.

Mrs. Benbow sighed. “The wee thing’s hungry. Again,” she added with a grimace.

Erika glanced at Dr. Callender, who had resumed his pacing. The tall man tramped back and forth before a huge mahogany desk littered with papers and journals.

“The child cries constantly,” he growled. “Likely cannot yet. tolerate cow’s milk. I cannot see patients with all this din and uproar, and Mrs. Benbow cannot cook and clean house and care for a child as well. She must be sent to Scotland, and the sooner the better.”

Mrs. Benbow nodded in agreement. “I canna climb stairs any longer, so we have kept the bairn down here, in doctor’s study. But with my back the way it is.” Her voice trailed off.

The wailing resumed Erika disengaged her forefinger from the baby’s grasp. “May I pick her up?”

“Of course, of course,” the old woman rasped. “That’s why ye’ve come, isn’t it? Miss Tess had me send for ye. Not that I thought much o’ the idea, but seein’ as how things turned out, perhaps it’s for the best.”

Erika hesitated. She sensed the woman’s resentment. She deduced that Mrs. Benbow had run the Callender household for some time. Erika’s arrival was an obvious intrusion on the crusty housekeeper’s territory.

“Well, go on!” the older woman rasped. “Pick the babe up and get her to stop crying, if ye can.”

Erika reached into the cradle and slid her hands under the blanketed bundle. Lifting her up, she held the infant securely against her body. The tiny creature lay warm and fragrant on her breast. A sweet, soapy fragrance rose from her skin.

Erika’s heart squeezed. The baby was exquisite, like a porcelain doll with her fair skin and rosy cheeks and huge blue eyes. And so tiny! So perfectly formed!

“Mrs. Callender must have very beautiful been,” she murmured.

The doctor turned away abruptly. Erika watched as he bent his head and fingered a framed portrait on his cluttered desk.

“Aye, she was that,” Mrs. Benbow volunteered with a significant look at her employer. “‘Tis a sad house ye’ve come to, lass. Nothing’s been the same since Miss Tess has been gone.”

Erika saw the doctor turn the photograph face down on his desk, but still he did not turn around. A silence thick as cold molasses descended as Mrs. Benbow dabbed at her eyes with the towel.

Erika waited for someone to speak. After a long minute, she concluded that the conversation had come to an end.

The baby’s comforting weight against her breast reminded her why she had come in the first placeto help with the infant. Now more than ever she wanted to stay and work in this house with its spacious, elegantly arranged rooms and the lacy, private bedroom upstairs. More than that, she realized, she felt an inexorable pull toward the soft bundle snuggled in her arms.

“I presume you will leave in the morning,” the doctor announced. His voice sounded ragged with fatigue. The expression in his face was cold, as if a lifeless mask had been drawn over his features. But in his eyes, Erika saw the agony of a bereaved man and a silent, unconscious cry for help.

She shifted the baby to her shoulder. “I stay for three dollar a week,” she said quietly.

“No,” the physician said. “Mrs. Benbow can manage until—”

Mrs. Benbow slapped the tea towel onto her lap. “I say she’s a gift from God.”

“No,” Dr. Callender repeated.

The housekeeper studied Erika with unsmiling eyes. “She’s young, but she’ll do in a pinch.”

The doctor scowled.

“Just until—Lord preserve us, lass!” the housekeeper cried. “Where are your shoes?”

Erika winced. In her haste, she’d forgotten them.

Fighting back a choking fear, she caught Dr. Callender’s cool, calculating gaze as he awaited her answer. Would he dismiss her on the spot for being a lackwit?

“Well, Miss Scharf?” His tone was silky with derision.

“I—” A warm wetness seeped through the soft blanket. “The baby is needful,” she said, quickly shifting the topic.

She bent over the cradle and laid the infant on its back. Reaching for the diaper folded over the foot of the crib, she spoke over her shoulder. “I stay. Shoes do not matter.”

Erika lifted the square of soft cotton diaper and froze. She knew nothing about babies! She was a cobbler’s daughter, the only child Mama and Papa ever had. She’d never even had any younger cousins to care for. Oh, what was she to do?

- She knew what a diaper was for, but how in the world was it attached? She’d been engaged to do laundry and ironing, maybe watch over the child when the mama went out. But now she was not the helper—she was the mama!

She felt eyes boring into her back—one pair black and disapproving, one pair gray and distant. Measuring.

Erika closed her eyes and uttered a brief, silent prayer. Help me, God! Show me about diapers!

When she opened her lids, the room hummed with tension. Summoning her courage, Erika unfolded the diaper and peeked under the infant’s soaked cambric gown.

Chapter Two (#ulink_b6538ef7-5126-5a48-99ad-75113466b323)

With grudging admiration, Jonathan watched as Erika bent over the wicker cradle. She wasn’t the first serving girl to be subjected to Adeline Benbow’s assessing eye and pointed questions, but she was the first to stay more than five minutes after the experience.

How long Miss Scharf would last under his housekeeper’s exacting rule was another matter entirely, but at the moment the prospect solved the problem of what to do with the young woman. Since Mrs. Benbow expressed a preference for the girl’s help, however temporary, he couldn’t simply turn her out.

He’d lay odds she’d last less than a week. Mrs. Benbow could be a stem taskmaster, and now that she was too old to climb the stairs more than once a day, she bore an extra grudge against life in general and young women in particular. If Miss Scharf lasted more than the week, he’d try to find her another position. But she would need the hide of a rhinoceros to survive even one day under Mrs. Benbow.

He watched Erika gently lift the folds of the cambric sacque away from the baby’s body with capable, graceful hands. The look on her face when she touched his daughter told him she had a sentimental nature. And sentiment meant vulnerability. If he knew anything about women, Miss Scharf had a soft heart, and because of it, she would suffer. In spite of himself, he felt a twinge of sympathy for the eager, rosy-cheeked woman.

Erika smoothed out the diaper and draped it over the edge of the wicker cradle. Moving very deliberately, she unsnapped the safety pins holding the wet garment in place. As she did so, she studied the arrangement of folds in the material, the position of the fasteners, how they were attached. With care, she lifted away the wet diaper.

The housekeeper watched her every move, then tossed the tea towel she’d been fanning herself with into the cradle. Erika’s toes curled. What was she supposed to do with that?

“Cornstarch is in the candy dish,” the older woman offered in a dry tone. She pointed to a fluted glass bowl on a side table.