The Second Chance Bride Read online

  “Daddy said I can’t play with Jimmy,” Janet said angrily, and it was clear that she could think of nothing else to say.

  “I think you know that he means that only as a last resort, Janet. He doesn’t know how else to get you to listen to him. But he didn’t say that he’d stop you playing with Jimmy right away, he only said that he would stop you if you didn’t settle down better at school. So, it’s in your hands, isn’t it? It’s up to you whether or not you keep your friend, isn’t it?” Grace smiled to herself as Janet slowly turned and started to sit up in the bed.

  She had finally done it, she had reached her. She had made an ally of her; she had promised to help. So, when Janet looked at her with the most furious little expression Grace had ever seen, it came as something of a shock.

  “I don’t want anything from you,” Janet said angrily, the tears still rolling down her face. “I don’t want you here, I don’t want any of you here. Why can’t you just go like all the others? We don’t need you here. We don’t need your help. We’re managing just fine.”

  “That’s not really your decision, Janet. And your daddy asked me here because he needs the help.”

  “We don’t need anybody. And I know you’re only here to steal my daddy. I hate you,” Janet said seriously. “I hate you and your food and everything about you. Just go, get out.”

  By the time Grace made her way out of the room, careful to leave the plate of food in the hopes that Janet would at least eat something, she felt entirely crestfallen. What a fool she had been to think that she had triumphed, that something as complicated as a child’s grief and inability to deal with it could be solved so simply.

  She had pushed too far too soon, and she knew it. She should have left things as they were, she should have kept her distance and let Janet get used to her slowly.

  Grace knew she had seen an opportunity to help herself more than Janet and Josh. She had wanted a new challenge, a sense of purpose, something to truly work toward that would help her feel differently, help her cope with her own loss.

  When she walked back into the kitchen, she could tell by the look on Josh’s face that he immediately realized she had failed. He smiled sadly and shrugged as if to apologize, and she heartily wished that she had been able to do something to ease a father’s worry if nothing else.

  But she became more determined than ever at that moment that she would not give up on Janet Lacey.

  Chapter 6

  Some weeks later, Grace awoke with a sense of panic. She couldn’t have explained what had forced her to open her eyes so early in the morning and sit bolt upright in bed as if the Devil himself had chased her out of her slumber, except that there had been a sudden and deep sense of knowing.

  As she sat there in her bed, the early morning sun just beginning to show itself, Grace knew with absolute certainty that she was expecting a child.

  In those first few minutes of waking, Grace tried to navigate the confusing tide of a consciousness coming back into the real world from the land of dreams. She counted out on her fingers just how long she had been at Josh Lacey’s house, then realized that it had absolutely nothing to do with it, it couldn’t help.

  Grace tried to steady her breathing as she realized that she must surely be a little more than two months pregnant. Had Peter really been gone that long? And yet somehow, unbelievably, it seemed as if she had lived a lifetime without him in those few short weeks.

  She knew she couldn’t be absolutely certain she was with child, she had no forceful symptoms. But she had felt a little queasiness here and there, queasiness which had come to nothing and worn off very quickly.

  Grace had hardly given it a thought and, when she had, had simply put it down to the stress of the last months and the newness of her surroundings, not to mention her concerns that she would never make any sort of headway with Janet.

  But Grace didn’t need symptoms, she just knew. There was something deep inside her which knew it was certain, the intelligence which lived within, the same intelligence which had woken her from her sleep to make her face the reality of her situation.

  Grace got out of bed and crossed the room to the window. She opened it wide, welcoming in the cold winter morning air in the hope that it would somehow make things clearer.

  All it did, however, was make her shiver, and it certainly didn’t clear anything up. And what was there to clear up? After all, she knew, didn’t she?

  Grace walked back to the bed and sat down on the edge, scooping her woolen shawl from the footboard and wrapping it around her shoulders.

  The sensible thing to do would be to wait and see, to be absolutely certain that she knew before she made any decisions. Of course, she knew, in the end, that all the decisions might not be hers to take.

  Josh Lacey had employed a live-in housekeeper, someone to work hard and keep an eye on his daughter at the same time. He was hardly likely to be keen to keep her on there in the house. After all, he had enough of his own troubles with Janet, why on earth would he want a tiny baby in the house to add to it all?

  And if that was the case, if her short term of employment was to soon end, what would she do next? She certainly wouldn’t be able to set off with the guides in spring to make her way back east, not with a baby in her belly who would undoubtedly be born out there in the wilderness.

  The idea of it brought tears to her eyes and she instinctively laid a protective hand over her still rather flat stomach. It was the first inkling of an instinct for protection and she realized that she would never set off with Peter’s baby only to have it die out there just as he had done. She would have to wait another year, perhaps even longer.

  The idea made her feel a little trapped, as if she was fated to stay in Oregon forever. But if she was expecting a child, she knew that she would never make that perilous journey and risk its life. And, as much as she had wanted to close her eyes and join Peter in those first days after his death, she realized now that she would not risk her own life either. Childbirth was a dangerous enough occupation without embarking upon it for the first time out on the plains and making dreadful river crossings.

  And if she did have a baby coming, Grace realized that she had a purpose now, a reason to be. She would have to make life work, come what may, because she had the responsibility to keep more than just herself safe now.

  Realizing for the first time that she would truly have something left of Peter after all, Grace began to cry tears of joy. For just a moment, all the fears for the future melted away and she realized that she had been truly blessed. Peter was not gone, not entirely, not if she truly did carry his child.

  She closed her eyes and pictured his face and wished above all things that she at least had a grave to visit, somewhere she could go to kneel and quietly tell him everything that had happened since he’d gone.

  But she would never have that, not even if she went looking would she ever find that place he had been buried more than two months before. He was just somewhere out there in the vast expanse, an unmarked grave his final resting place.

  Grace dried her eyes on the rough wool of her shawl and determined not to think of the sadness, but to think of the joy, the love. Peter would have been thrilled to know that they were expecting their first child, and she would take it upon herself to be thrilled for the pair of them.

  But there were still things to be done, conversations to be had, and plans to be made.

  Sooner or later, Grace would have to tell Josh that his new housekeeper was perhaps not going to work out quite as well as he had hoped.

  The idea of letting him down affected her greatly. She hadn’t known Josh for long, but there was something about his own plight which had touched her deeply and she didn’t want him to be alone with his worries anymore.

  There was something about giving an eye to somebody else’s problems which had made her own somehow easier to deal with. But she knew that if he did dismiss her, which was more than likely, her own problems would grow out of all proporti
on.

  How would she support herself? Even if she could get her room back at Connie Langdon’s boarding house, how would she pay for it when the money finally ran out? And she would struggle to take in washing, for where would she do it? She couldn’t take over Connie’s kitchen, make life awkward for her, just to be able to pay the woman for the roof over her head.

  As kind as Connie was, Grace knew that she couldn’t ask that much of her.

  Grace tried hard to think only of the joy of having something left of her and Peter’s love. She didn’t want to stare at a future full of mounting problems, not yet at any rate.

  Perhaps the best thing would be for her to keep it to herself a while, to be absolutely certain of her circumstances, before she mentioned it to Josh.

  Surely, she could wait until she was three months, perhaps even more, before telling him about it. At least that would give her time to think, time to make a plan in case the very worst happened. And it would give her a few more weeks of work, of pay, and perhaps he would even allow her to work on a little longer, until her time came. Perhaps that way she would be able to earn enough money to keep a roof over her head at Connie’s in those first weeks when she would be unable to work at all. That would give her time, wouldn’t it? Time to work out what she could do next, time to find another way to make a living.

  Time to plan, to save, to decide just how on earth it was she was ever going to get back east.

  With a sigh, Grace stood up and decided to get herself ready for the day. She still had an hour before she needed to get on with things, but she knew she would never be able to get back to sleep. All she would do was lay there and worry and, in the end, what good would that do?

  Josh had been relieved at the speed with which Grace had overcome the disappointment of Janet’s rejection of her offer of assistance. He had worried at first that it would be the final straw, for Grace had looked truly resigned when she had returned to the kitchen on that evening of dreadful upset.

  But she had carried on as normal, picking herself up and dusting herself off and Josh quickly realized that it was just Grace Salter’s way of doing things.

  He could see how it was that a woman of such quiet determination had survived out there on the trail with her shock and her grief, keeping going and making it to her destination.

  She wasn’t obviously forceful, but Josh was beginning to see a strength in her, a sort of fearless heart that he couldn’t help but admire.

  And it was not the only thing he admired, for no man with two working eyes could deny her obvious beauty. Josh had noticed it from the first, although he had tried to ignore it. But with her thick, shiny dark hair, her olive skin, and her glassy dark eyes, he had been fighting a losing battle.

  Not that he had any intention of making his attraction known, for he didn’t want to. As far as he was concerned, it was enough to simply notice it, to acknowledge the beauty, the femininity, the softness of her curves.

  But she was still his housekeeper, and not only that but she was the one woman so far who seemed to have any hope of finally getting through to Janet. There had been no obvious signs of capitulation on Janet’s part, not yet, but Grace unknowingly gave him the confidence that it must one day surely come. There was just something about her, something which made Josh determined to keep her there at all costs.

  And yet, for all her quiet confidence, Grace had seemed a little out of sorts the last couple of weeks. When he’d first noticed it, Josh had surreptitiously kept a very close eye on things, wondering if Janet was going out of her way to make things even worse.

  But when he perceived nothing in particular had changed, Josh began to have serious concerns that Grace might be considering leaving them as every other housekeeper before had done.

  It could, of course, have been any one of a number of things playing on her mind and he couldn’t help but wonder if grief might be chief among them. He’d never seen any obvious signs, and yet he was certain that she felt her loss very deeply.

  It was only as he had come to know her a little better that Josh realized that Grace, for the most part, was a woman who kept her emotions very much on the inside. She rarely talked of her husband, Peter, but when she did, Josh knew, without a doubt, that she had loved him very dearly. Perhaps she was just made that way, self-contained, unwilling to let her sadness finish her.

  Whatever the case was, Josh hoped, albeit a little selfishly, that he and Janet would not be the ones to suffer for it in the end. If anybody had a hope of making things right in the Lacey household, something told Josh that it was Grace Salter.

  Chapter 7

  Grace was more than three months along when she first noticed signs of thickening around her middle. She knew that it would not be long now before her condition started to become obvious, and the time really had come for her to say something.

  She had already waited an extra couple of weeks, hoping that she could buy herself some extra time, stow away just a little more money. But if she wasn’t careful, she was very much in danger of Josh pointing it out to her rather than the other way around. And then what hope would she have of him keeping her on a little longer, allowing her to work until she was nearly ready to give birth?

  Grace knew that it was not much to hope for, but she would hope for it all the same. She had to make the best of every opportunity presented to her, whatever it was, to keep her and her baby safe.

  She had to admit to feeling just a little tired, although she knew it was more on account of lack of sleep through worrying than anything else. Whenever she had slept well, her day went well and she often had a curious spurt of energy.

  But her morning’s work had tired her out that day and when Janet returned from school in the early afternoon, Grace had to admit that she was relieved that the child had chosen to stay outside and play.

  She had Jimmy Dalton with her, a nice boy with a shock of red-brown hair and startling blue eyes, and the two of them had gone racing out through the garden and around the back of the house. It was still cold, still wintry, but she could hear the two of them charging about happily, chattering, laughing, all the things that Janet never did unless Jimmy was around.

  Perhaps that was why Janet had chosen to take her schoolroom lessons a little more seriously. When no word had been received from Miss Martin, Josh had made his way into town to make his own inquiries.

  When the teacher had told him that Janet had quieted down considerably, he returned home a much less anxious man.

  Whenever she thought of his obvious love for his daughter, his constant worry, his unstinting care, she gave a little prayer that everything would come right for him and his daughter in the end. And if she wished such things for other people, surely such things would come to her and her own child.

  And when she had cleaned Janet’s room only to discover a little bookmark some way through the little volume of children’s stories that Grace had bought her in town when she had purchased a book for herself, she had excitedly reported the news to Josh.

  Between them, they had decided to remain silent on the subject. Janet had never thanked Grace for the book and had left it on the kitchen table for a number of days, untouched, before it finally disappeared. Both Grace and Josh were simply pleased that she was reading it and decided not to put a stop to her effort by praising her, for praise was a sure-fire way of antagonizing the stoically awkward little character.

  As Grace sipped at a cup of hot tea, she leaned back in her chair and enjoyed a few minutes rest. The evening meal was already prepared, a hearty stew that she had put together very easily. Still, it seemed to be a firm favorite with both Josh and Janet who, whenever she made it, left barely a drip of the gravy in their bowls.

  All in all, Grace realized that she was beginning to feel at ease in Josh Lacey’s house. And just when she was finally settling down into her new life, she knew that there was every chance it would all be turned on its head.

  But before she could lose herself in her most current
fears, she was shocked back into the present by the kitchen door flying open and the drip-white face of Jimmy Dalton staring at her, his bright blue eyes opened wide with fear.

  “What is it Jimmy?” Grace was already on her feet and making her way to the door.

  “It’s Janet. It’s Janet,” he said, his voice quavering. “She’s hurt.” He set off running with every faith that Grace would run after him.

  She ran around the side of the house, her breath creating plumes of steamy warmth in the cold afternoon air.

  When she reached the back of the house and ran through the garden, Grace could see Janet lying at the foot of one of the trees and immediately realized what must have happened.

  “How far did she fall?” she asked and, when Jimmy looked as if he might try to pretend otherwise, she spoke more firmly. “Jimmy, I know she was in the tree. This is important, how high up was she?”

  Without words, Jimmy pointed shakily to a bent branch, some six feet from the ground. With her heart in her mouth, Grace bent over Janet and gently laid a hand on either side of her face.

  Immediately, Janet began to stir.

  “Try to stay still, Janet,” Grace said gently. “And see if you can open your eyes for me.”

  Janet murmured a little and continued to move just like a person who is coming out of a deep sleep.

  “Jimmy, run down to the lumber yard and go fetch Mr. Lacey, please,” Grace said and smiled at him encouragingly. “Go on, as quick as you can.”

  When Grace turned back to look at Janet it was to see that she had opened her eyes finally. She regarded Grace with a mixture of confusion and her customary disdain.