Authors: Rose Jenster
Leah opened the back door, and North slunk outside to escape the stink of her ruined supper. She put a cool cloth on her wrist where the grease had burned her, and she sank down on a chair, disappointed. She couldn’t even cook her husband a decent meal. She wanted her mother, who hadn’t had a chance to teach her good plain cooking and sewing. What good was picking out “Für Elise” on a piano or making a row of perfect French knots when she couldn’t even fry potatoes?
Henry came in and looked from the pan to his bride, and understood instantly.
“I’m sorry,” she said hesitantly. “I wanted to surprise you.”
“Well, you’ve succeeded. I can’t say as I’ve ever come home to anyone trying to cook me anything since I’ve been in Montana Territory. I’ll give you credit for effort and make us some eggs. How does that sound?”
“Very kind of you,” she said warmly. “How can I help?”
“I’m sure you have belongings you’d like to unpack. I’ll call you when the eggs are ready,” he said indulgently.
Leah retreated to his bedroom—
their
bedroom, she corrected herself. She took out her embroidered nightdress with the ribbons at the throat and laid it across the eiderdown quilt. Next she removed her beloved copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets and placed it on Henry’s shelf beside his volume of that playwright’s tragedies and histories. Her own copy of the comedies joined it there, as well as the yellow-bound potboiler Jane had sent her. She had brought it along as a good luck charm, and it did bring a ready smile to her face to see it there alongside Henry’s
Titus Andronicus
.
Henry called to her and she joined him for a supper of fried eggs and toast. Their quiet conversation about the coming winter made the modest supper perhaps the most wonderful she had ever had. After the supper things were cleared away and Leah began to pump water into the washbasin for the dishes, Henry covered her hand with his and shook his head.
He took both her hands in his and turned her to face him. Color flamed in her cheeks at the memory of their other kisses. Timidly, she waited—and was not disappointed. Henry’s lips met hers, and Leah felt all her love and longing kindle into a powerful yearning that made her hands tremble and her heart race. He crushed her in his arms, kissing her so deeply she felt breathless. She knew her legs would not hold her, so she clung to the front of his shirt, supported only by his arms. In one swift motion, he swept her feet out from under her and lifted her, kissing her all the while as he carried her to their shared bedroom.
* * *
Henry woke at dawn as usual to see to his horses. He lingered in bed, looking at his new bride, fast asleep on her pillow beside him. He brushed her hair back from her face tenderly and kissed her forehead, careful not to disturb her sleep.
When Leah woke in the morning with a joyous smile, knowing by the slant of the sunlight that she had slept late, she rose and dressed with care, feeling glowing and brand-new and loved. She knotted her hair and buttoned her boots, and within minutes she was at Mrs. Gibson’s door with a scheme.
“Best wishes to you this day, Mrs. Rogers,” Mrs. Gibson beamed at her happy young friend.
“Good morning. If I may come in, I’ve a great favor to ask you.”
The two women settled in the sitting room, and Leah had to overcome a sudden bout of shyness to speak her request.
“I—I tried to cook supper for my husband last night and I burnt it,” she confessed. “I believe you know that my own good mother passed away before I mastered any home cooking. Would you teach me, please? I would be happy to embroider some household items for you—”
“Leah, you need not barter with me. It would give me as much happiness to teach you to cook as when I taught my own daughters. Come with me now into the kitchen,” she said warmly.
Together they spent the day practicing basic cooking methods, and Leah felt much more able to produce a serviceable meal for that evening. While Mrs. Gibson had visitors to attend to, Leah hastily prepared the shortbread crust her mother had taught her and made a pair of apple pies complete with delicate leaf designs carved from the top crust. When the pies were done, Leah left one for the Gibsons’ supper and took the other home with her proudly. She set it on the windowsill and rushed to the mercantile to buy a few things, glad of her embroidery money for household sundries.
By the time Henry got home, a hearty stew was at a low simmer and cornbread, only slightly burnt, was being cut for his supper. He chuckled, impressed at her swift progress, and sat down to eat dinner. When she brought out the pie, golden and pretty, he exclaimed over her artistry, her care for presentation, and her heart swelled with happiness.
That night she sat down and wrote to Jane, telling her dear sister-in-law that she was now a happy wife, settling in Montana Territory with every hope for a prosperous future.
BILLINGS, MONTANA, 1885
It was a week after the first snow of a hard winter to come when the mayor’s daughter, newly widowed, returned to Billings. Seven years ago, Melody Baker had left town to marry a rich old man back in Kansas, leaving a heartbroken shop assistant called Henry Rogers behind. Stepping onto the train platform with yards of European lace dyed black adorning her dress (which showed a bit too much décolleté for an evening at the opera, much less an afternoon at a Western train station), Melody was as beautiful as ever.
News of her return had stirred the gossip in the boom town for the last fortnight. Leah, in the full bloom of expecting their first child, had listened with interest but no notion of the connection between the prodigal widow and her own taciturn husband.
In the intervening months, Henry had been an attentive but sometimes withdrawn companion. She had struggled to make him as comfortable, as happy as she was before deciding that he simply cared for her and was kind, but did not love her with the force that she loved him. She could hardly blame him, with his angelic handsomeness and impressive achievements, married to a quiet wren like herself—what had she to stir any man’s ardor? She would content herself with his devotion and hope that their child would bind them together more closely.
The exquisite Melody Carver,
née
Baker, was staying in her father’s mansion but spent most of her time flitting about town, twirling a parasol and remarking about how “quaint” everything looked after her time in Europe. She came to the inn, ostensibly to meet the innkeeper’s new wife from back East, but really to display her beauty and riches in front of Henry Rogers.
Melody exclaimed over the size of the establishment and tapped Henry’s arm with her fan playfully.
“I had no idea you would be such an entrepreneur! Why, when I left here, you were nothing but a clerk sweeping the floors at the trading post back in Coulson!”
Henry winced, the muscle in his jaw tensing visibly. Leah’s hand tightened on his sleeve comfortingly.
“So you’ve been away a long while, I suppose—if you knew Henry way back then,” Leah said, wondering how best to defend her husband from this blowsy, flirtatious woman’s onslaught of rudeness.
“Oh, it seems a terribly long time, to be sure, Leila.”
“Leah,” Henry corrected her stonily. “My
wife’s
name is Leah Rogers,” he emphasized.
“Oh, yes, of course. Dear little Leah,” she said with a dismissive wave of her fan. “Did I have it wrong? I’m so dreadful with names. Mother says it’s because I’m flighty.” She tittered, and Leah was privately inclined to agree with the woman’s mother.
“We’re having a little dinner party tomorrow night, just family and a few close friends at Father’s house to celebrate my return. Do come and join us. It’s to be at seven in the evening. You will come, won’t you?” she requested , fluttering her eyelashes prettily. Leah was almost sure the woman had on rouge—it couldn’t be—only painted ladies, prostitutes did that!
“Certainly,” Henry said, not meeting her eyes.
“Oh, la la, I must be off. I’m to take luncheon with dear Mrs. Gibson. Sweet old thing, but dull as powder,” Melody mused, dismissing one of Leah’s dearest friends so lightly.
When the woman floated out of the inn, her silk taffeta skirts rustling beneath her massive bustle, Leah looked quizzically at her husband.
“Who was she? I mean, apart from being the mayor’s daughter?”
“No one. Old acquaintance,” he said, shrugging her hand off his arm and returning to the stables. Leah felt the old distance return between them, and his withdrawal stung as always. That woman seemed so insincere and offensive, but Leah felt something threatening gripping her emotions.
Disappointed, Leah returned to their sitting room, where she resumed embroidering a gown for the baby they expected in a few weeks. She made a row of tiny French knots in yellow along the twisting green vine she’d just completed. As she stitched, she thought about the months she and Henry had spent as husband and wife. Their cozy evenings by the fire reading aloud to one another from novels and poetry books, just sharing whatever they each happened to be enjoying at the time. The time they spent sitting in rocking chairs on the back porch looking at “their” mountain and talking over their hopes for the baby and for the babies who would follow. She wanted four in all, while Henry jokingly claimed to want eight.
If this child were a boy, she planned to call him Josiah Henry after his father, while she hoped to call a girl after her own mother, Hazel, and Henry’s mother, Kathleen.
Leah shifted in her chair to ease the pain in her back and contemplated making some tea. She would have liked to visit with dear Mrs. Gibson, but knowing that Melody Carver was lunching at the rectory was enough to keep Leah at home. She read over the latest letter from Jane again and worked on her reply half-heartedly.
Something about the mayor’s daughter was troubling Leah, but she couldn’t figure out what it could be. Perhaps, she thought sternly, she was jealous of the woman’s golden-haired beauty and was looking for a reason to dislike her.
Scolding herself for being petty, Leah resolved to try harder to befriend the poor widowed lady the next time they met. She wondered what she could wear to dinner at the mayor’s mansion. She had nary a shirtwaist that would button over her growing stomach. Taking down her sewing basket, she set to work laboriously on the slow job of finishing the loose calico blouse Mrs. Gibson had cut and pinned for her.
She would dearly love to see the inside of the mayor’s fine home. It was rumored to have a crystal chandelier and china dishes from England. Leah had plenty of money saved from her embroidery work at the dry goods store, but she couldn’t bring herself to part with some of that nest egg just to get finer fabric for her pregnancy blouse.
Nothing she could afford would hold a candle to the lace and silks Melody Carver was bound to appear in. Plus, Leah would never be as pretty. She was jealous, pure and simple, she told herself. And ever so slightly worried that such a woman might turn every head in the room, including Henry’s.
When she was certain Melody must have departed the rectory, Leah set out with her sewing things and visited Mrs. Gibson for advice and stitching repair.
“You’ll look lovely in your calico blouse and a plain skirt. No one expects you to dress like the mayor’s family. I, for one, will be there in the same dress I have worn these three winters past—although I plan to wear the lace collar you tatted for me to smarten it up a bit,” Mrs. Gibson said as she removed a row of crooked stitches from Leah’s sleeve.
“You’re right. I know it. I just feel—inferior.”
“She was a dazzling beauty from the time she turned sixteen. The boys gathered around her like, well, flies,” Mrs. Gibson said mischievously. “And you know what flies are attracted to.”
“Oh, surely she isn’t that bad. She’s just lively, and I am so shy and—I suppose my condition doesn’t help any. I look as though I’ve swallowed a whole Christmas turkey.” Leah tried to smile.
“I would have said a ham by the shape,” Mrs. Gibson replied teasingly, and Leah did have to smile at the rejoinder.
They sat companionably and talked over the supposed finery of the mayor’s house, and planned to sit side by side at the dinner the next night. By the time Leah reached home, however, she had a terrible headache. It was all she could do to make a simple soup for Henry’s supper before she went to lie down on their quilt and rest. When he got home, Henry was all concern, but she was so miserable she wanted only to sleep.
In the hours he was awake without the companionship of his wife, Henry thought of Melody, of all their history together, and how she had broken his heart almost beyond recovery. He had been a very young man when he moved West, and after a few months of doing odd jobs, he got a place at the trading post in Coulson. It was a rough town and lawless, but rumors of the railroad coming through were enough to keep Henry in town. The summer after the Northern Pacific came through, the wealthy banker’s daughter came home from the boarding school she attended in England.
By some chance, Henry was paid a few coins to fetch her luggage when it arrived by wagon. Upon delivery, he caught a glimpse of Melody—only the smallest glance of a pink silk dress, her milk-and-roses complexion, her fair hair as she passed through the front hall of her parents’ new home in Billings. Her gaze had fallen on him and he took his hat in his hands, gaping at her in worshipful awe.
“You there, boy. Are those my trunks?” she had demanded imperiously, and he nodded. He would have assented to anything she asked. “Bring them to my room at once,” she ordered.
With that he was led up a flight of stairs to a delicate bedchamber furnished with a rose-figured carpet and a four-poster bed. She directed his placement of her boxes, and when she was satisfied with their delivery, she dismissed him, never once asking his name. Her rudeness didn’t matter. Her figure and manner were so graceful, her airy step and gentle laugh belying her imperious nature
. For six months after that, Henry was the delivery man who brought her every order from the trading post. He knew when she had correspondence from her friends at the school she had finished, or when her new dancing slippers arrived. He was young and impressionable, and she was beautiful and far above him, the star he wanted to reach.