“Until he says otherwise, you’re a guest, little miss. I—”
“Please put me to work before I go insane.” Another moment and I’ll get on my knees and beg. She didn’t add that, but since she sounded like a morning bird whose tail had been goosed, all the usual rhythm of the syllables high and jumpy, she expected he figured it out.
“I’ll make you a deal.” Facing her, he crossed his arms over that massive chest. “You clean up every bite, and I’ll let you help me. All right?”
“At my lady’s station, I’m second to Mrs. Pritchett, the main housekeeper.” She wanted to sound reasonable, but knew her blue eyes were snapping. “I’ve served as Lady Danny’s personal maid and servant for nearly a year. I’ve been cooking and cleaning practically since I could walk. Why everyone is treating me like a half-wit who can’t do for herself, I don’t know. Just because . . .”
Just because she’d been torn open for the world to see, and everyone seemed to know about it. They all wanted to cradle that damaged part, when all she wanted was to close the door and leave it behind, never have it touched by prying, sympathetic eyes again.
Kohana reached out, closed a hand on her shoulder. Before she could ask what he was about, he’d moved her into the hallway with two hopping long strides for him, about four or five steps for her, and faced her toward the hall tree mirror.
“That’s why,” he said.
The face that peered back at her was hollow-eyed from stress and lack of sleep, her eyes dominating her face, the pupils dark and large. The work dress she wore was a neatly designed yellow one she’d had for several years. While she didn’t intend to accent it, it had a pleasing fit over her curvy figure. Now it hung on her, the waist loose and too low because the bodice that once had strained a bit over her ample bosom was much looser in that area, her hips far less round.
“That isn’t me.” She firmed a chin determined to tremble. “The way I look isn’t what’s going on inside me. I want to see my children. I need to see them. Can you take me to where they are?” She knew her expression was abruptly pleading, not reserved and in control the way it should be. She just had to see them, to know they were okay.
“Not yet.” Kohana’s tone was firm, but gentle. At least he didn’t correct her, tell her to call them fledglings. Instead, he settled both hands on her shoulders, a comforting mantle of strength. “He lacks tact, but Mal knows a lot more than it may seem, little miss. We’ve had animals brought here who were beat up in so many ways, most of us thought there’d be no teaching them about living under a wide sky and rolling against the warm earth, but he does it. He watches, and he listens until he finds the key to it. Sometimes he figures it out right away, sometimes it takes him days or weeks, but he always does.”
Days or weeks?
Registering her alarm, Kohana pressed on. “I’m not saying that’s how long it’ll be before you see your young vampires. I’m just telling you what he does and how he does it.”
“He thinks they’re mistakes. That they should be dead.”
“What do you think?”
It was the first time in a while anyone had asked her, such that it gave her a moment’s pause. “I don’t think God creates mistakes.”
“Maybe not. But they aren’t as God created them. From what I heard, they aren’t even proper in the sense of a vampire-making.”
“That may be so, but just because that’s one truth doesn’t make it the whole picture. Do you know that when William sleeps, sometimes he cries?” She turned under his hands, looked plaintively up into Kohana’s creased face. “He won’t talk when he’s awake, but I was in the barn—that’s where we had to keep the cages, because it was the only place big enough—and I was sitting there, not being idle, but Mrs. Pritchett said she had everything done that day, so I was reading, and I heard him.
“He wasn’t crying like some savage monster. It was the way a young boy cries. Crying for something he’s lost, something he can’t even see or feel anymore when he’s awake, but when he’s asleep, he does. They’ve been hurt so bad, for so long, they don’t know what’s right. But there was this one day—”
She was talking too fast, the words too jumbled, but she pressed on, because he was listening. Kohana was a member of the household, and maybe he had Mr. Malachi’s ear.
“That Dev, he’s so clever. He had the cages put on wheels so they could be rolled out into the yard at night when it’s pretty. For one brief second, Miah realized she didn’t have to be afraid or quite so watchful. She was caught up in the way the clouds were rolling over the night sky, how the moon kept hiding and then coming back out. She lifted her hand toward it, as if she was trying to touch that light, every time it came out behind its curtain. Then she saw me looking and tucked everything back in again. Like a rock, all hard sides, so nothing’s vulnerable.
“Willis said . . .” She bit her lip, unable to get that thought all the way out, though the words still went through her mind. Willis had said she’d become as attuned to their state of mind as if she’d birthed every one of them. She’d flushed, thinking he was telling her how good a mother she’d be. He’d seen it and stolen a kiss, murmuring against her hair. “Plenty of time for that, girl. And God help me if most of them come out little girls with their mother’s eyes and smile.”
They said time was supposed to blur memory, but sometimes it was as if he was still there, right beside her. She wanted that voice and those hands, that reassuring presence, so much. He’d stood with her, and now she stood alone against the whole world, it seemed. It made her feel trapped, all by herself with her fears.
But she also remembered Willis would have worry in his eyes when he made that observation, a worry similar to what she saw in Kohana’s eyes now.
“I think you should sit down, little miss.” Kohana steered her firmly back to the chair. He gave her a pointed look. “Do we have a deal? You eat; I put you to work.”
She bit back a sigh, her fingers curling into her lap. “All right. But I really can help fix the breakfast.”
“Are you saying a crippled man doing woman’s work can’t?”
Elisa’s gaze flew up to his face, mortified that she might have caused him offense, but the twinkle in the eyes gave him away. It helped her find a flicker of her usual spirit. “I’ve not yet met a man, crippled or otherwise, who can handle a day’s worth of woman’s work, Mr. Kohana. They usually make up some nonsense about hunting or herding sheep and run for the hills.”
He grinned then, patting her shoulder with a large hand. “I’ll prove I’m the exception. Scrambled okay?”
7
AFTER consuming one scrambled egg, a piece of bacon and a bread that impressed her with its softness and taste, as well as the fact it was called a biscuit—what she thought of as biscuits Kohana called cookies , and wanted to know if she could bake them—she insisted she was full. When she promised to nibble at the rest throughout the evening if it was left under a cloth on the counter, they bartered again. She agreed to eat one more item for each chore she performed.
She knew she was too thin, but it was so hard to have an appetite when her stomach was upset so much. Willis had liked her fuller figure. Most men did. Danny was tall and lean, and Dev liked her better than any other, but Elisa had seen his gaze stray as much as the others to the loose wobble of her heavy breasts when she was on her knees scrubbing the porch boards, or his attention linger on the nice breadth of her arse, though he was discreet and polite about it.
There was a difference in Dev’s kind of looking. It was kind of like the wildflowers growing out by the billabongs. He had no intention of plucking them out of the ground or otherwise disturbing them, because he already had the beautiful, greenhouse rose he wanted most. Regardless, he still appreciated the others.
Now Willis wasn’t here, and for a long time she hadn’t cared what she looked like, to anyone. Kohana had made his point, though. It was hard to take someone who looked like this seriously. So she tried to eat between dusting the front room and then sweeping the vast expanse of wraparound porch. The only task he gave her was the dusting, but she’d fallen into what she did at the station, noticing what needed to be done and doing it. After she swept, she persuaded him to show her where cleaning supplies were kept and tackled the porch windows, giving them a good shining.
She tried to focus on the tasks and not get lost in her head, where she’d shame herself with tears again. Fortunately, she found a distraction. As the night deepened, there was a plethora of animal noises she’d never heard before. A rough coughing, a rumbling grumble. Then a sudden sharp cheep sound, with needles all along the sound. Coming in behind that was a repetitive chirping, like crickets but far more spaced out.
While she was listening, Kohana stepped out, leaving his crutch leaning against the wall and balancing himself with obvious long practice at the railing as he shook dirt out of a rug. Noticing her attention, he nodded. “The chirp’s one of the cougars. Mal’s probably with her tonight. It’s a sound of welcome. The coughing is the mating call of the leopard. He’s trying to catch a female’s attention.”
“What’s the sharp sound, like a screech, but not, because it’s too short and prickly? Like an angry little girl.”
Kohana gave her that grin again. “Good description. That’s Lola, one of our female cheetahs.”
“Good heavens, are they so close?”
“The habitat area for our non-rehabs or new arrivals is close by, enough that if the wind shifts, you’ll get a faint whiff of them. However, what you’re hearing are the ones on the open preserve. Sound carries a little differently here.” Kohana busied himself with turning the rug. “Plus, your hearing’s good. Second mark, remember?”
Having been second-marked by Danny, she knew it did improve her senses. She’d used them for detecting what might be going on in the yard with the stock hands. She could catch a plume of dust farther out on the horizon, an indication guests were coming, which gave her time to help Mrs. Pritchett make lemonade and set out biscuits for the arrivals, whoever they might be. A snippet of conversation caught from Danny—not eavesdropping, mind you—would let her warn Mrs. Rupert there might be more coming for dinner. But perhaps having two second marks made the effect even more pronounced, because she could swear the beasts were just beyond the tree line flanking the property.