Rose(19)
Playing peacemaker between Rose and his brothers was different. He’d have to explain to the boys how she must feel. They were basically good. He was certain they would try to change their attitude if they just understood.
In the meantime he would talk to her.
She didn’t know how hard they tried. She couldn’t. Not without understanding what they had gone through, being torn from the familiarity of their Virginia home and abandoned in the alien world of south Texas. Not without understanding the shock and terror of being left to run a ranch in bandit-infested country where they had to kill just to stay alive. Not without understanding the pain and rage of seeing their gentle, aristocratic mother die, deserted and nearly destitute, in a wild and savage land she could never like or understand.
Rose didn’t understand that being a son of William Henry Randolph was an excuse for almost anything.
George closed the door behind him.
“The boys are ready when you are,” he said to Rose.
She took her eyes off the pots on the stove long enough to check the bread in the oven.
“It’ll be just a few more minutes. The biscuits aren’t done yet.”
“They’re not happy about it.”
Rose looked up. “I doubt they’re any more unhappy than I was.”
“I shouldn’t have let them come in alone.”
“They’re big enough to know how to behave without you being here to tell them.”
“I know, but they’ve been left to themselves too long.”
“That’s no excuse.”
George knew it wasn’t, but he was irritated at Rose for saying it.
He wondered what had gone through her mind as she prepared dinner for the second time that evening. She had said very little while the boys were in the room. She said nothing after they left.
“Anything I can do?” he asked. He hated doing nothing. Not even four years in the army had taught him to wait patiently.
“Sit down. You’re paying me to fix your dinner.”
So she was still angry.
“This is different. I hired you to prepare only one dinner a day.”
She ladled the gravy over a second roast before setting it on the table in front of George’s place. “You can pour the milk. Zac says everybody likes something different.”
He began filling the glasses from different pitchers and setting them beside the appropriate places. “The boys really aren’t so bad,” he said. “Boys their ages never take well to discipline under the best of circumstances.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Rose replied, taking the biscuits from the oven. She placed them in a bowl and covered them with a towel. “The Robinson boys were a lot younger.”
“Then I imagine our family will take some getting used to.”
“I’m willing to try if they are.”
She wasn’t backing down. She was braced for trouble, and he couldn’t blame her.
Rose set the butter on the table, shooed away a fly showing an interest in the roast, stood up, straightened her dress, and pulled an errant lock of hair behind her ears.
“Everything’s ready. You can let them in.”
Chapter Four
They walked in like condemned men.
They had washed and changed, but Rose noticed their shirts were neither clean nor new. They moved to their places and stood waiting for her to be seated, but they either looked at her with anger in their eyes or didn’t look at her at all. George held her chair. Rose sat down, but a second look at their faces changed her mind. She stood up, her chair scraping angrily on the still damp floor.
“I think it would be better if I ate later.”
“No, you don’t,” Monty exploded, all rigidity vanished. “You made this fuss about us washing and dressing up. If we have to be miserable, you do, too.”
“It wasn’t my intention to make anyone miserable,” Rose tried to explain. “A certain standard of behavior is expected of gentlemen when they come to the table. If you continue eating as you did before, no one will ever believe you’ve been properly reared.”
“Have you ever spent the night out in the brush?” Monty demanded. “Have you seen Cortina’s men when they come? Have you watched your friends fall dead from the saddle, their bodies trampled beyond recognition?” His shouted words didn’t lessen the earnestness of his questions.
“No.”
“Gentlemen don’t live like that. Only animals. It’s not easy to change just because you walk through a door.”
Yet George had changed. He must have seen even more terrifying, brutalizing sights during the war. Still, he managed to put it aside when he came to the table. But Rose couldn’t say that to a boy who had been fighting brutal, vicious men since he was twelve.