Cloaked (Once Upon a Western Book 1) by Rachel Kovaciny

Author:Rachel Kovaciny [Kovaciny, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: White Rook Press
Published: 2017-09-28T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

For the rest of the week, Mary Rose spent all her time either riding or cleaning. Together with the two hired girls, she aired the bedding for all of the guest rooms except the two Hauer and Mr. Linden occupied. They polished all the wooden furniture. They beat dust from rugs, scrubbed floors, baked cookies, and washed windows. At home, Mary Rose had helped with such things from time to time, particularly if a mess occurred on the housemaid’s day off, or if they were preparing for a big party. Still, she’d never done quite so much cleaning all at once, and she found it tiresome.

She tried to make friends with the two neighbor girls who worked alongside her, but they held her in some kind of awe and would not speak unless spoken to. Mary Rose could not tell if this was because she was two or three years older than they were, because she came from that mysterious place known as Back East, or because she was Jubilee O’Brien’s granddaughter. Perhaps it was all three.

Mary Rose found she enjoyed the quiet evenings in the sitting room after supper, even though Mr. Linden was invariably present. She learned a great deal from his discussions with her grandmother. Hauer and she both did more listening than conversing, although whenever the conversation turned to books, Mary Rose contributed her own opinions. This pleased Jubilee, and she told Mary Rose repeatedly how happy she was to have someone to discuss novels with again. Not only did she encourage Mary Rose to read anything at all from her bookcase, she made recommendations of what to read next. Mary Rose had little time to read, thanks to the cleaning and other party preparations, but she looked forward to many happy hours with those books in the weeks to come. She had finished Pride and Prejudice but couldn’t decide what to read after it.

Hauer continued to come down out of the woods to eat supper and sleep in one of the spare rooms. But he assured Jubilee she could clean his room while he was away all day, so that it would be ready for guests to use after the dance.

One thing prevented Mary Rose from leading an idyllic new existence at her grandmother’s ranch. And it was not a thing at all, really, but a person, namely Mr. Connor Linden. Mary Rose couldn’t logically explain her distaste for him. But the way he watched her, maneuvered himself to be near her, and now found reasons to remind her that he had saved her from the runaway horse—all of that bothered her, logical or not. All the same, she knew she sometimes imagined that people’s actions meant different things than they really did. What if he was simply being courteous? How was she to know?

She had considered asking her grandmother if she thought Mr. Linden was too... what? That was the trouble—Mary Rose could not accuse Mr. Linden of a single concrete thing. True,

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