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Thad ignored his son and gazed around the cabin. Clean windows. Scrubbed floor. No dishes in the sink. Looked as if a cyclone had blown through the place. He began to frown before Teddy finished yelling. He liked what Leah had done. But for some reason deep inside he didn’t want to like it. It seemed disloyal to Hattie.
But Hattie is gone. And Leah was here. He could hardly believe Leah was his wife now, and he had to admit his reaction to the state of his house had nothing to do with Hattie. He couldn’t bear to think about it too closely.
The cyclone was standing at the stove. Apparently she was a fastidious housekeeper, and of course his son wouldn’t appreciate that. Thad wondered why he didn’t appreciate it.
The spit and polish this half-Chinese girl had shown in just a few hours reminded him not so much of Hattie as his Scots mother. She was long dead now, as was his father. That was one reason Thad had come to America—the Scots were starving. He had just passed his twelfth birthday and both his parents were gone.
Hattie, he recalled, had not been a particularly careful housekeeper, but she had been his lifelong companion. And because he had loved her, he had forgiven her any domestic shortcomings.
But seeing another woman in her place sent a blade through his gut. It wasn’t that he regretted marrying Leah—just that he regretted losing Hattie.
Teddy clattered down the ladder and slouched toward the kitchen table. “I spose you want me to set out the plates,” he grumbled.
Leah turned to look at him. “Yes, thank you, Teddy. That would be nice.”
“Don’t have enough chairs, Pa. Guess she’ll have to sit on that old nail keg, huh?”
Thad met Leah’s questioning eyes and to his relief saw that she was amused, not angry. She clapped her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. Teddy’s suggestion of the nail keg even brought a chuckle to his own throat.
“Well, son, you have two choices. Either you cobble up an extra chair or you eat your dinner standing up. Leah and I are sitting at the table.”
“Aw, Pa.”
“Don’t ‘Aw, Pa’ me, Teddy. Take it or leave it. I’d tan your hide good if it wasn’t our wedding day.”
Teddy said nothing, but Thad noted that he dutifully laid three plates on the table and then disappeared.
“Hunting up a chair, I’d guess,” he murmured at Leah’s back. She’d found one of Hattie’s aprons and tied it twice around her waist in an oversize, floppy bow. His heart gave an odd lurch at the sight. Dammit, he remembered that apron. Oh, God, he wished it was Hattie there at the stove.
But it wasn’t Hattie, it was Leah. His new wife. Dammit, he could hardly bring himself to say the word. He focused on her slim figure and felt a flicker of warmth. He hadn’t necessarily expected to like his mail-order bride and now the woman was his wife.
He didn’t have to like her, he told himself; all he had to do was get along with her.
The front door banged open and in stomped Teddy, dragging a dust-coated, straightbacked wooden chair. “Found it in the barn,” he muttered.
Thad squeezed his thin shoulder. “Well done, Teddy.”
“I hope it breaks when she sits on it!”
Thad bent and tipped his son’s chin up with his forefinger. “No, you don’t, Teddy. Things are plenty difficult for all of us right now, so you’ll hold your tongue. From now on, if you want to say anything about my wife, you say it directly to Leah, understand?”
“Okay.” Teddy sucked in a breath and sent a venomous look at her back. “I don’t like you, Leah.”
Thad grabbed the boy by his shirt collar, then heard Leah’s calm voice offer a retort he could not have predicted with a crystal ball.
“I do not like you either, Teddy.”
The boy’s mouth dropped open. “Huh? How come?”
“Because,” Leah said, turning to face him, “the things you say hurt my feelings.”
Thad blinked, then caught Leah’s steady gaze. He raised his eyebrows and gave his new wife as much of a smile as he could muster.
In an agony of unease, Leah watched Thad and Teddy seat themselves at the wooden kitchen table. She poured Teddy a glass of fresh milk from the pail Thad had brought in, then filled Thad’s china cup with coffee that suddenly looked too black and too thick. Thad reached his spoon to the milk glass, dipped some out and dribbled it into the cup. Now it looked like water from a mud puddle.
Teddy poked his fork at his father’s cup. “That sure looks awful.”
Leah’s face grew hot. “I have never made coffee before,” she confessed. “In China we drink tea.”
Hiding her face, she gathered up the three plates and whisked them over to the stove, where the skillet rested with her steaming dinner dish. There was no wok, so she had used the iron frying pan to cook in. She scooped a large dollop of the mixture onto each plate.
