her floor. She reached for her robe spread over the foot of the bed.
Her bedroom door eased open inch by inch. Lucy’s curly blond head peered around it level with the doorknob.
“Mama Emma, I can’t sleep in my new bed. It’s scary.”
Emma opened her arms and Lucy dashed across the floor. They tumbled together in the center of the big feather mattress.
With a long sigh, Lucy snuggled into her arms and fell asleep.
From his perch on the fence, Matt had turned to look at the house. She held his gaze, although he wouldn’t know it.
But would he feel her? Would he guess what might have happened had Lucy not come in? Would his heart feel how hers melted away in her chest just watching him sitting in the summer moonlight?
Would he know that she’d made up her mind to be a real wife for the days they had left?
* * *
“When’s Papa coming home?”
Emma hoped it would be before the biscuits finished baking, but the timeliness of a trip to town couldn’t always be predicted.
“Go to the parlor window and look out.”
Lucy padded across the floor, with her slippers kissing whispers against the wood.
Emma opened the oven door to check on the stew baking alongside the biscuits. It wasn’t the finest of baking skills, to open and close the door so often, but she couldn’t get enough of feeling the weight of her own oven door in her hand.
“I still don’t see him and it’s getting dark!” Lucy called from the parlor.
Not only was it getting dark, but rain was coming.
Murky clouds built one on top of another until the sky to the north resembled great heaps of dirty laundry.
By the looks of the storm, it meant to be a vicious one. If Matt didn’t get home before it broke, it would delay him for hours. Wagon wheels and mud had a way of sucking at each other.
Emma took the stew from the oven and set it on the stovetop to keep warm. She removed the pan of biscuits and set it on top of the pot. Matt would need a warm meal when he came in.
Billy, Red and Jesse sat around her new table staring at her every move. Were they anything less than a nest of hungry hatchlings?
“We’ll wait a few more minutes for Matt,” she announced.
To their credit, the men didn’t groan or complain. Red pulled a deck of cards from his vest pocket and began to deal them out for some sort of game to pass the time.
Out in the parlor, Lucy stood with her nose pressed against the glass. Emma walked over and knelt beside her with her arms folded on the sill. Lightning scattered within the clouds, made darker by the setting sun.
“Papa might get wet.”
“He’ll be along before the rain.”
The view from the parlor window stretched out for a good half hour ride by wagon. With any luck the drenching would hold off a little longer.
“Fluffy and Princess might be scared in the barn.” Lucy turned round blue eyes on her. They blinked wide in question. “Can’t I bring them in?”
The thought of dogs, even little ones, scampering over her floors with hard nails, shaking dirt, fleas and who knew what else on her polished wood, made Emma cringe.
“They won’t be scared.” Emma hugged Lucy tight while they both scanned the horizon toward town. “They have a nice warm bed of straw and Pearl and Thunder to keep them company.”
“I wouldn’t be scared of my new room if they slept with me.”
“Dogs belong outside, sweetie.” Emma stood and dusted a spot of flour from her apron. “We might as well go ahead and have our dinner before it gets cold.”
Worry for Fluffy and Princess appeared to vanish. Lucy clapped her hands and turned her attention to dinner.
“I love dinner in the new kitchen!” she called from halfway down the hall.
If only her own worry for Matt were so easy to dismiss.
Emma set out dinner for the boys and Lucy. She set aside a good-size portion for Matt. She might even feel like having a bite herself once he walked safely through the door.
As soon as he flashed her one of his heart-stuttering, cheek-creasing smiles, she’d find the nerve to tell him what she’d decided.
Over dinner the subject might come up as easily as a knife slicing through the spice cake she’d baked. Spicy cake would naturally lead to talk of the marriage bed.
Spice to spice—it couldn’t miss. She would turn the lamp down