Part 5 (1/2)
”Only a few,” he a.s.sured her eagerly. ”This bein' Sunday, we set aside most of the day for indoor ch.o.r.es. As soon as I finish, I'll come back inside and help.”
”Have you any bread baked?” Rachel prayed so, for she'd never turned out a loaf of bread in her life.
”No. We usually make up enough on Sundays to last us the whole week. Like I said, Sunday's our indoor day.”
Rachel's stomach tightened. ”I hope you have a cookbook. I don't know the ingredients for bread by heart.”
”No cookbook, exactly. But we do have a collection of recipes my grandma and ma wrote down over the years. Nothin' fancy, just loose sheets of paper in a wood recipe box my pa made.”
”Do you have one for bread?”
”Sure do. Otherwise, I'd be lost. I don't know the ingredients by heart, either.”
Rachel relaxed slightly. She'd be successful enough at culinary endeavors so long as she had recipes to follow. The cleaning would be a simple matter of following her nose. The main problem she would have was with the laundry. Then she would definitely need help. Maybe if she did pa.s.sably well at all the other things, Clint wouldn't mind that too much, though.
So unexpectedly that it startled her, Clint yelled, ”Everybody hit the deck up there! It's nigh onto noon! Time to get to work!”
From the loft came the sounds of mattress ropes creaking and feet hitting the planked floor. In less than a minute, one dark head appeared at the top of the loft ladder. Then another. Before she knew it, four indistinct young men were standing above her. Taking turns, they came down to join ranks with Daniel and Cody.
With the arrival of each one, Clint called off his name and age. ”Cole, seventeen. Jeremiah, twenty-four. Joshua, nineteen. Zack, twenty-two.”
As each young man was introduced to her, Rachel smiled and inclined her head. When Clint wound down, she said, ”I'm pleased to meet all of you.”
”Not all,” Cody corrected her. ”Matt ain't here. He's twenty.”
”Oh, yes, Matt,” Rachel said cautiously. ”How could I have forgotten?”
Cody wrinkled his nose and regarded Clint speculatively. ”You didn't say how old you are,” he reminded his eldest brother.
To Rachel's surprise, Clint stepped up beside her and draped an arm over her shoulders. ”I'm twenty-seven, scamp, which makes me plenty old enough to settle down, and that's just what I've decided to do. This morning, Rachel and I got married.”
”You what?” ”Why didn't you tell us?” ”I thought I was gonna be your best man!” ”Jumpin' Jehoshaphat! You've gone and done what?” ”I thought Lawson Wells was her beau.”
”I beat Lawson to the draw and asked her first,” Clint said. ”Let it be a lesson to you. Don't leave a pretty girl footloose and fancy free for too long a time, or the first thing you know, she may marry some other fellow.”
”I didn't even know you knew Rachel that well,” Zach said.
”Why didn't you tell us you were thinkin' about marryin' her?” Joshua demanded.
”Oh, wow!” Cody cried excitedly. ”You mean she's gonna stay here?”
Clint held up a hand. ”Yes, she's gonna stay,” he a.s.sured Cody. Then to the older boys, ”As for all your questions, we just decided to get married, that's all. I'm countin' on all of you to make Rachel feel welcome.”
”You're sure enough welcome!” Cody a.s.sured her. ”Especially if'n you can bake cookies like the kind Clint brought home from the church social last year.”
Rachel blinked. Cookies? ”Of course I can bake cookies,” she a.s.sured him. ”As long as there's a recipe included in those loose papers Clint mentioned.”
Marginally less enthusiastic, but warmly all the same, the older Raffertys expressed welcome, Jeremiah, the next oldest to Clint, finis.h.i.+ng with, ”We'll be proud to call you sister, Rachel. Welcome to your new home.”
Sister. Hearing the word brought a stinging sensation to Rachel's eyes that felt suspiciously like tears. She blinked a little frantically, convinced they would all think her crazy if she got weepy-eyed and sentimental over something so silly. It was just that she'd always wished for a brother, and now she had seven of them, four of them older than she. It was almost as though Clint had known how fiercely she'd wanted an older brother to look out for her.
”And I'll be pleased to call all of you brother,” she said in an oddly tight voice.
The courtesies thus observed, Clint drew his arm from around Rachel and systematically began naming off his expectations.
”Rachel's gonna be cleanin' this place up,” he started. ”I want each of you to help her in any way you can. Understand? Jer, you hightail it out to the porch and bring Rachel's grips into the bedroom. Joshua, you haul her up some buckets of water to heat on the stove. No point in her havin' to wear herself out at the pump. Zach, you gather up all the things she'll need: a broom and mop, clean rags, and whatever else she wants. Cole, while they're doin' that, you and Daniel and Cody get busy pickin' things up and puttin' them away. In their proper places, mind you, not just any old place. And, Cody! Nothin' under the bed, you understand?”
Rachel's head was swimming by the time Clint stopped issuing orders. He drew to a close with, ”Now all of you, listen up. From here on out, Rachel's word is law inside this house. I'm sure she'll be makin' up some new rules around here, and I expect each of you to mind what she says, just like it was me. Got that? No sa.s.sin' her, or I'll kick your b.u.t.ts.”
Zach, who was standing close enough that Rachel could clearly see his face, turned a solemn regard on her. After a long moment, he smiled slightly and winked irreverently. He obviously wasn't intimidated by his older brother.
Clint rubbed his hands together and turned to arch a questioning brow at her. ”Did I leave out anything you'd like said?”
”Only thank you.” Rachel smiled. ”For making me feel so welcome.”
Joshua piped up with, ”Welcome? Rachel, it's a wonder we ain't on our knees in grat.i.tude. It's been so long since we had a decent meal around here, we've forgotten what good food tastes like.”
Rachel could only hope she didn't disappoint them. First things first, though. Before she could try her hand at cooking, she had to muck out the kitchen. Luckily, she had plenty of helpers.
7.
Two hours later, Rachel had the kitchen cleaned up enough to start mixing bread dough. After enlisting Cody's help in locating the recipe box Clint had mentioned, she announced to all the older boys that it was time for them to take a much-deserved rest, preferably some place other than in the kitchen.
When they solicitously offered to help her with the cooking, Rachel waved them off, saying, ”No, no! I'm funny that way, I guess. I like an empty kitchen when I cook. Too many cooks makes for oversalted porridge, you know.”
”I never heard that sayin',” Joshua commented.
Neither had Rachel, but it served her purpose, which was to evacuate the kitchen so she could slip on her spectacles undetected to read the bread recipe.
As the last Rafferty trailed off, Rachel dived her hand into her pocket for her spectacles. Something sharp p.r.i.c.ked her fingertip. ”Ouch!” she jerked her hand back out, saw a bead of blood, and frowned in bewilderment. ”What in heaven's name?”
More gingerly this time, she reached into her pocket. As her fingers curled over the wire frames, her heart felt as though it dropped, not just to the region of her knees, which is how it usually felt when something awful happened, but clear to the floor. Her spectacles! The frames were hopelessly mangled, and as she lifted them from her pocket, she saw that both lenses were absent from their holes. Fis.h.i.+ng more deeply in her pocket, she soon leaned why. Each lens was shattered. It had been one of the jagged pieces of gla.s.s that p.r.i.c.ked her finger.
Stunned, Rachel could only stand there for a moment, staring blankly down at ruined spectacles. How had this happened? She no sooner asked herself that than she remembered falling in the church last night. Evidently her spectacles had been broken then.
As the first wave of shock subsided, she turned her gaze toward the recipe box. Panic rose within her. She quickly tamped it down. Reading without her spectacles was nearly impossible but not absolutely so. If she held the written material right in front of her nose, she could usually make out the letters. It would be tedious, but beggars couldn't be choosers.
”Oh, lands!” she whispered under her breath. ”Why my gla.s.ses? Why not an arm or leg? I could better do without either.”
Returning her ruined spectacles to her pocket, she advanced determinedly on the recipe box, her chin raised high. It took some searching, but she finally located the bread recipe. Peering intently at every ingredient until she could bring the letters and amounts into focus, she managed to mix a triple batch of yeast bread. After letting the three bowls of dough rise once on the cookstove, which still held banked coals from the supper fire the boys had built last night, she punched it down and shaped six loaves. As she recalled, Mrs. Radcliff had always rubbed her loaves with melted lard, covered them with a towel, and left them on the slightly warm stove to double in size. After finding three clean linen towels-no easy feat-Rachel followed the housekeeper's example. When she could finally step back to admire the fruits of her labor, she felt as proud as if she'd given birth to six babies.
Returning to the recipe box, she applied herself to the task of finding something to fix for supper. Since she hated to eat meat, knowing that the practice caused some poor animal to suffer, she settled on venison stew-minus the venison, of course. Oh, yes. This was going to work famously, she a.s.sured herself as she began peeling vegetables. Delicious hot bread and stew for supper would make a good first impression on all the Rafferty men, young or old.
”Jesus Christ!”
Clint couldn't quite believe his eyes when he entered the kitchen. His cookstove had been transformed into a huge, misshapen mushroom! At least, that was how it looked at first glance. At second glance, she saw that the mushroomy cap was actually some sort of dough. Mountains of the stuff oozed over the sides of the stove and dripped in gooey rivers toward the floor. Useless, the family's scruffy, mixed-breed excuse for a cattle dog, was pulling off strips of the stuff and eating it.