“No, you won’t,” Zac said, and raced from the room.
“He’s a scamp,” Rose remarked to George as she came out of the house.
“He’s the only one Pa and the war didn’t ruin,” George said. “At least I don’t think he’s ruined.”
“I don’t understand,” Rose said.
“Never mind. The water’s hot. Want to hand me one of those turkeys?”
“Do the boys bring home wild game often?” Rose asked. She took the turkeys down from the hook, weighing each carefully with her eye and the pull on her hand.
“I don’t really know. It probably depended on what Tyler could do with the meat. We could try to get more if you like.”
“It would help. A diet of bacon and dried beef can get monotonous.”
George dipped the turkey in the pot long enough for the scalding water to loosen the feathers. Then he handed the dripping bird to Rose. He dipped a second bird, then tackled it himself.
“I want to save everything but the wing and tail feathers,” Rose said, pointing to a woven basket she had brought with her from the kitchen. “I plan to make some more pillows.”
“Are you always thinking about something practical?” George asked.
“That’s what you pay me for.”
“I thought women liked to dream.”
“Some might, but I hate dreaming about things I can’t have. It makes me irritable.”
“But don’t you think about them in spite of knowing better?”
“Of course,” Rose said. She tossed a handful of wet feathers into the bucket with a little more energy than necessary. “But as soon as that happens, I make myself concentrate on something else until I forget.”
“How old are you?”
“You didn’t ask that before you hired me. Why do you want to know now?”
“Curiosity, I guess. I’d say you were twenty, still young enough to indulge in all sorts of dreams. And pretty enough to have a hope they might come true.”
Rose tugged at a handful of stubborn wing feathers. They held tight. She was forced to pull them out one at a time. Even then she had to pull hard.
“I used to daydream,” Rose admitted, “before the war. The men looked so handsome in their uniforms it was hard not to make up stories about them. But all that ended when my father decided to fight for the union .”
Rose remembered with painful vividness how she felt when her father told her of his decision. It had destroyed her world. She respected his allegiance to the army which had given him his career, as well as his belief that the union should never be divided, but he couldn’t seem to appreciate that it would alienate her from the people she had grown up with.
He never understood her feeling for Texas. She guessed he was too much a son of New England for that.
He had been so certain he would be able to set everything aright after the war. Well, he wasn’t around to see what happened or to fix it.
But then he’d never been around.
“The good people of Austin soon made it clear that neither they nor their sons would be part of my dreams.”
She finished plucking her turkey. Holding it by its neck and feet, she held it over the low flames to singe the hairs. Then dipping it into a bucket of clean water, she began to scrape the skin clean.
“As things got worse, I found myself having nightmares about the terrible things that could happen to me.”
“Didn’t you ever dream of some young soldier coming to save you?”
“Of course I did. My mother once read me a story about an English knight who slew a terrible dragon to save a princess. Of course I knew it was all make-believe, but when things were at their worst, I would imagine him coming to save me.” She paused in her work and looked at George. “The knight was named St. George. You can’t imagine what a shock it gave me, after you’d beaten up Luke, to learn your name was George.”
George laughed. “St. George rescuing Princess Rose.”
Rose smiled a little sheepishly. “Something like that.”
George handed her his plucked turkey to singe and clean. He dipped the last turkey into the still scalding water and started to remove the feathers.
“Is that why you accepted this job, to get away from Austin?”
“Yes.” Rose didn’t tell him that was only part of the reason.
“Weren’t you worried about what might happen after you got here? I did say seven men.”
“I knew you’d protect me.”
“How could you know that?” George asked, surprised.
“I could tell the minute you stepped into the Bon Ton.”
“How?” asked George, stunned that anyone could feel they knew him so well after just one look.