Instant Frontier Family. Regina Scott
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the sound of their heavy boots against the wood planks as loud as thunder. Voices rose in entreaty, hands held out coins. They were the happiest gang of rioters he’d ever seen.
One of the men with a deep voice managed to make himself heard over the din. “Whatcha got for us today, Miss Maddie?”
“Cinnamon rolls dripping icing,” Maddie assured him, beaming around at them all. “Fresh-baked bread with the steam still rising and gingersnaps to tickle your tongue.” She waved one arm down the display counter as if presenting jewels to royalty.
“I’ll take one of each,” someone declared.
“I’ll take two!” another shouted.
Voices rose louder as they surged forward.
How could he leave her surrounded?
Michael wasn’t sure how he heard the noise on the stair. Looking back, he saw Ciara creeping toward him. Her brown hair was tumbled into her face, and she hugged a plaid flannel wrapper around her nightgown.
“Is it the mob?” she whispered, face pinched. “Have they come for us, then?”
She must be remembering the violence that had cut like metal through the fabric of life in Five Points, as the Dead Rabbits clashed with other gangs.
“Just some happy customers come to sample your sister’s baking,” Michael assured her. He handed her the rolls. “Take these upstairs for you and your brother. I’ll be up shortly.”
Her face brightened as she accepted the rolls. Holding them close, she scurried back up the stairs.
Michael turned to the fray. Maddie was handing out loaves, rolls and cookies at breathtaking speed and grabbing payments even faster. He wasn’t sure how she knew which came from whom. He started to wade through the men, but they squeezed closer, frowning at him as if thinking he was trying to reach the food before they did. He was only thankful he could match or better the muscle arrayed against him.
With the liberal use of his shoulders, he managed to reach the counter and slide in next to Maddie. “How can I help?”
“Take their money and give them what they want,” she said, turning her smile on the next fellow. The wizened man asked for a roll and a half-dozen cookies, and she named an exorbitant price that would have set the denizens of Five Points to crying with despair or laughing at the sheer lunacy of it. The man piled his silver on the counter, offering a toothless grin.
“How about you?” Michael asked the next fellow.
This man was tall and lean, short-cropped dark hair showing under the edge of a broad-brimmed black hat. His gaze swept over Michael as cold and gray as the Confederate cannon on display in the Battery.
“I’ll wait for Miss O’Rourke,” he said, voice low and gravelly.
Was he a suitor? She certainly hadn’t mentioned a particular fellow. In fact, she’d seemed pretty against marriage last night.
“Suit yourself,” Michael told him.
He tried the next man over and the one after him, but the answer was always the same. Even though the food was disappearing by the moment, every man was content to wait until Maddie could serve him personally.
That’s when it struck Michael. They weren’t here because they loved Maddie’s baking. They were here because they loved Maddie!
He wanted to throw wide his arms, shove them all out of the shop right then and there. They had no right to treat her as if she was one of her own confections, available for a smile and some pieces of silver. Yet even as the thought poked at him, he knew it was none of his affair. In the end, the only way he could help matters was to control the crowd.
Stalking around the edges, shoulders thrown back and eyes narrowed, he managed to herd the men into some semblance of a line. At least then they couldn’t all rush her at once. He yanked back a few who tried to push ahead before their turn, made one fellow sit down on the floor when he shouted for her attention. One by one, they bought their food and left.
A gentle rain had begun to fall as he opened the door to let out the last two men. The one who had first refused Michael’s services paused to glance back at Maddie.
“Hired a man-of-all-work, have you now, Miss O’Rourke?”
Maddie’s smile was as sweet as the icing on her rolls. “Mr. Haggerty brought my sister and brother to me on the ship, Deputy McCormick. He’s staying with us until he finds a job.”
Deputy. So this was the law in Seattle. Michael met his gaze straight on, refusing to be the one to look away first. The deputy’s steely eyes narrowed.
“Yesler is looking for another man on his saws,” the lawman offered. “Long hours but good pay. And there are rooms at Patterson’s boardinghouse by the mill.”
Michael nodded, relaxing. “My thanks to you. I’ll go by the mill today.”
Deputy McCormick touched the brim of his black hat to Maddie, then stalked out.
As Michael shut the door behind him, Maddie collapsed against the counter. “Like ravens, they are, swooping in to devour.” She glanced around the empty counter and smiled. “But they are loyal, bless them.”
Surely she knew it went beyond loyalty. “They’re sweet on you, every last one of them,” Michael told her.
She tsked, pushing off from the counter. “It isn’t me. They act that way with every unmarried female within miles, all twenty of us.”
Michael found that hard to believe. “They’d pay those kind of prices to any woman?”
Maddie shrugged as if the matter were out of her hands. “There are nine men for every female over the age of twelve here. Before we came on the Continental, fellows were paying fathers to hold their newborn daughter to marry when she was of age, just so they’d know they’d have a wife someday.”
“That’s madness,” Michael said, stepping away from the door.
“That’s loneliness,” Maddie countered, pulling open the curtain to the kitchen. “I suppose they think it’s better to have a spouse than live alone. Can’t say I agree with them.”
Was she so willing to encourage her customers, only to leave the men dangling? He couldn’t help thinking of Katie, with her sweet smiles and warm words, until he’d refused to risk his future to help the Dead Rabbits. He’d wondered whether she was the only woman to think her power was more important than her suitor’s love. He wasn’t sure why he was disappointed to find Maddie O’Rourke might think the same way.
Michael followed her into the kitchen. “With dozens of suitors to choose from, you haven’t found one to your liking?” he asked, trying for a light tone. “Are your standards so high, Maddie?”
She chuckled as she pulled a canister from under her worktable and pried off the lid. “Sure-n I could find more than one fellow in that lot to marry, if marriage was important to me.” She jingled the coins she drew from her skirts and dropped them into the tin with a clank. “As it is, if I marry I have to share all this. Why would I want to be doing that, when it’s my efforts that earned it in the first place?”
He couldn’t argue with her there. He knew the law generally granted any money a woman earned to her husband. But to be so coldhearted about it? That didn’t make sense.
She cocked her head, watching him. “You look disappointed in my answer. Did you think I should give up my dreams to marry? You never let love get in the way of your goals, did you now? You wouldn’t have let your Katie sway you from your intended course.”
“I fell in love,” he admitted, “but I never lost sight of my goals. If I had been willing to compromise my values, I might be married by now.”
“Love is compromise from what I can see,” she said, going to the washbasin, wetting a cloth and wringing it out. “You work