Anita Mills by Dangerous

Author:Dangerous
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Her body turned away from Matthew McCready’s, Verena stared at the rising moon framed in the window. Her mother must surely be turning over in her grave right now, she thought, but she hadn’t really had any choice in the matter. As it was, Sarah Brassfield had given her and Matthew the bed the boys usually shared, sending them up into the loft with their blankets. Not that anyone needed blankets on a night like this.

It was too hot for sleep, but McCready didn’t seem to know it. After a huge meal of chicken and dumplings, beans, potatoes, baked yams, and hot biscuits, followed by an enormous cobbler made from dried peaches, he and Seth had played checkers and swapped God only knew what lies over a bottle of elderberry wine. While they were apparently enjoying themselves, she and Sarah had finished mending and ironing the clothes she and the gambler had all but ruined in their jump from the moving train.

For once, she’d fared better than he had. Sarah’s flour-sack gown had been huge, so much so that she’d had to tie it in with a rope, but poor Matthew’d been forced to make do with one of Seth’s old shirts, badly stretched between buttons, and a pair of heavy twill “overalls” that were apparently designed to be worn over other clothing, but which barely went around McCready without anything under them.

As his wife, Verena had the dubious honor of washing his shirt and his drawers and hanging them up to dry beside hers on Sarah’s laundry line. His pants she’d merely had to spot clean with a rag and soap. But the upshot of it all was that she’d had her head bent over her borrowed needle and thread while he’d drank and played. But in the end, there’d been a certain satisfaction in showing him that even while out of her own element, she wasn’t useless. Of course, with nine tenths of Seth Brassfield’s elderberry wine gone, McCready would have been happy no matter what she’d done, she reflected wryly.

As fastidious as he seemed to be, he’d made a point of not holding himself above the Brassfields. In fact, he’d scarce paused in his conversation when Molly had reared her ugly snout above the edge of the dinner table for a closer look at his plate. To prevent a like occurrence, Verena had headed the animal off with a good-sized biscuit dropped quietly on the floor. But Seth Brassfield had put an end to the pig’s begging with a simple, “Get down, girl,” at which Molly ambled over to the other side of the room, grunting her discontent.

She found herself smiling in the darkness, remembering the sound of Seth and Matthew singing a mongrelized version of “Bringing in the Sheaves” when three quarters of the way into the wine bottle. Only Brassfield had belted it out as “Brangin’ in the sheep, brangin’ in the sheep,” while McCready’s rich baritone kept to the right lyrics until he forgot the rest of the lines.

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