Finding Her Heart (Orki War Bride #2) Read online

  Benjere often exploited her widowhood to his advantage. Offers of helpful charity also opened many an opportunity to lecture. With their oldest sibling living two days journey, Benjere held the esteemed and coveted role of ‘Bossiest in the Family.’

  He corrected her with, 'head of the family.'

  But even Mama called him bossy when they were children.

  If he couldn't help her with his great wisdom, he'd offer generosity by purchasing bits and pieces of her life to make things easier. Having cattle of his own, he knew what to do with Annabell's heifer, talking them both through the process in between trying to buy the west pasture off Annabell and accusations against her isolated ways.

  He told her she should wash her hands and arms up to her shoulders, that she would have to help the cow deliver. "Just put your whole hand in."

  "I don't want to hurt them," Annabell moaned, her cheek against Daisydoo's flank as she sank her arms into the cow's vagina up to the elbows.

  "Don't be afraid to get a good hold now. The young will be slippery. Better hurt than dead. Better fed than starved. So, when do you think I can have that north field? You haven't put up any crops and saw for yourself when the cows broke your fence how hard it was to keep a full herd."

  "There was a dog chasing them, Benjere," Annabell said.

  "But you couldn't fix the fence alone."

  "I didn't have the right shovel to make the post holes."

  "You should come live with Bess and me."

  He said it at least once every visit. As a man of legacy and means, he sat on the town council and bartered for a pretty wife. Lovely little Bo Bess, one of the baker's daughters who turned out to be good at baking bread and not much else.

  He'd taken on a teen orphan girl from the village of Pearl as Bess's companion in the meantime. Annabell pitied the child, Bess wouldn't be mean to a poor orphan.

  She didn't believe it. That Bo Bess had a viper’s temperament to go with her pretty face and figure.

  "You should be the one to help. Family is family," the voice of Annabell's mother whispered in her head.

  Daisydoo, the heifer, mooed low in pain as Annabell got her hand on the calf nestled tight in the womb. She said out loud to the Bossiest, "Head first, I think that's a leg. What if it's something else? What if I'm wrong?"

  "Head first is why the young is stuck. You sure you felt the head?"

  "No, I'm not sure. I can't tell. I've never done this. But it feels head-ish. Nose, chin, jaw, ears, I think. I don't know. I can't see!"

  "No reason to yell, Annabell Roe."

  "Maybe head, and chest and legs folded back?" Annabell grunted as she sank deeper into the heifer's body.

  "Sounds about right. Now, get a firm hold, and pull them forward."

  "Why aren't you doing this?"

  "Your cow, sister. You are the one who thought to breed her." She could hear the self-satisfied smirk in Benjere's voice, telling her to do things that might be difficult for Annabell to do alone, provided opportunities for him to be right.

  Outraged, she responded, "You said she was ready!"

  "She is more than ready. But you don't seem to be, sister. This is common with heifers. That's why you were watching her, isn't it?"

  No, Annabell watched her because trading or buying milk and butter from others had become difficult. And she missed cream.

  In her own home—Annabell knew who she was—this calf would not die. Daisydoo would not die.

  "Are you stained? Then a little water does redeem." Her mother's words echoed loud. Annabell grit her teeth, forcing herself to stay where she was not to go and wash her hands.

  Her lips pulled back in a mask of disgust and resolve. With her arm buried in cow womb she felt around for the calf's legs to grab a hold of and pull. The young was coming out. She could do this.

  She gritted her teeth against the squeeze of the cow's body. Perspiration dotted her forehead and quickly turned cold.

  "Work with her, not against her," Benjere said, his directions firm and unworried.

  Positioning the cow's head, holding the heifer still, and talking low to Annabell, the bossiest man she knew tossed out casual, unworried instructions. He wanted Annabell to see how difficult this was, but was too greedy to kill off a perfectly lovely heifer and her first calf. Declaring his bony hands too big for the job, Annabell knew he'd do it if he had to. Making more noise than the first-time mama, biting back obscenities, Annabell braced herself to pull that calf's legs forward and make delivery possible.

  Her unkept hair fell across her eyes and she huffed it out, blinking at the sweat, waiting for a chance to work with Daisydoo and put the young into the right place. It felt wet and weird and oh, so wrong. But there was no choice but to keep going. Hope for the best.

  "I think I did it!" she shouted at her brother.

  "Did you? And not rip anything up along the way?"

  "What?"

  Daisydoo heaved a pained sigh, warning Annabell to pull her arm out before a contraction hit hard. As if the animal's body naturally knew what to do, the front feet of the young followed Annabell out on exit. "It's coming, Benjere. I did it. You don't think I can do anything on my own, but I did it, and you just stood there and watched."

  "I helped ya, girl. What do you mean?" He slapped at his thigh.

  Annabell ignored him, watching the birth of the calf. It happened fast and slow at the same time. The little spindle-legged thing pushed from the heifer in three heaves, the sack shining blue and wet. A baby.

  Daisydoo got pregnant her first try.

  Annabell had not. And not any time after.

  "A wife is subject to her husband," Mama said for Annabell alone.

  "It takes a bull to mount a cow," Annabell said out loud, the words slipping free from the constant dialog in her head. Mama's shade would never forgive her for not having children.

  Benjere quirked his eyebrows at her, looking like a befuddled coop weasel. "Yes, Annabell, that is usually how it works."

  Shrugging off the misspoken thought, she watched the cow and her first calf as the crucial first minutes of life unfolded. There was no bull around now to help her. Not that she wanted one.

  Cleaning and care. She’d do her chores, take care of her home and animals, and get all the things done. If she kept moving, everything worked out all right.

  Don't stop moving, Woman of Woe. Don't stop moving.

  One ugly-sad thought after another tumbled through Annabell, the futile things she couldn’t change. Joy drained out to reality. The new mama and baby represented what she would never have or be.

  As if he read her thoughts, he said, "I know you got an offer for marriage. That guy from Pearl, and the other one from Rivrtonn. And what about—"

  "I'm too old for marriage."

  "Mother had four more children after her thirtieth birthday, and ya ain’t there yet, girl. She would want you married. You should have children about you. You can have that. Come and live with Bess and me."

  "Those are your children. Not mine."

  "Don’t you love your big brother’s children like your own? No? Well, then sell this place to me, get yourself a cash dowry. Go marry again. Have a chance at happiness."

  "They don't want me, Benjere. Marriage would mean selling myself to someone who didn’t want me. I'm doubly cursed. They just want my money."

  "Ha, sister. Little you know. You may be tall for a woman, but you have all the assets men like in all the right places."

  She stared at him blankly. Had her older brother said she was desirable to men? She almost cocked her hip and cupped her chest to highlight her 'assets,' and thank him for noticing that she was a woman and not a child.

  "Vinegar just makes you sour." Mama's reprimand stopped her.

  Out loud, Annabell said, "When are you going to stop asking?"

  "When you gonna do something I say?"

  "Not anytime soon." Daisydoo would be fine without a bull, and so would she. Nor did she want to go grazing in a
nother woman's pasture, caring for her children. The moons bleed again, but Annabell would not be a servant in her brother's home, under his thumb and his wife's command, taking care of his children and possessions.

  "It's not good to be alone. If Mother and Father were here, they would never permit this. I don't know why I do this with you. But we both know you can't run this place all by yourself. That you talk to no one but yourself. Don't you want more? Do you have plans you aren't saying?"

  "I have plans."

  "Are you going to run off into the Peace Lands and find a native husband?" His voice turned ugly, words hitting like a slap. He resented the smear against the family caused by the Orki's courting. Did he bring that up to make her feel dirty? Unlike the lessons she had taken to heart as a child, stories she delighted in, her brothers opted to fear and resent the Orki. A few years ago, the town council sent a man into the Dorsus wilderness controlled by the Orki with a proposal to expand the Peace Contract. The Orki sent him home, face down, not breathing, over the back of a horse for having broken the law.

  No talking. No mercy from the Orki.

  Relations between the peoples were fraught with tension.

  Benjere pushed guilt and regret at Annabell. She had done nothing. But her life was a disgrace to everyone who thought they had a right to comment on it. In spite of them, that day the Orki proposed sat in her heart like a sweet thing, a dream of childhood come true. There was no space within her to let the memory shame her, not in the least. Even if the bossiest thought it should.

  Looking down at her hands, filthy from birthing the calf, Annabell gave him her back as she went to the bucket to wash.

  "Will you come in for tea?" Annabell asked with cold courtesy, soaping up to her elbows.

  "Nice is as nice does," their Mama would say, covering tension with polite routine.

  "Looks as though things turned out well for your heifer here, mind the bleeding. There shouldn't be too much if everything is well. It's late. Need to get back to my family." Oblivious to her coldness, he resettled his hat on his head and looked about the barn, as if to check to see that he had everything he'd arrived with.

  "The girl is there now, yes?"

  "Yes, she sleeps in the children's room, but my Bess will wake her up at dawn and have a list of tasks. If you won't come, I think I will have Missus Yoyersdotter come in the afternoons. It's too much for the girl to do the chores and the children."

  "Your hired girl has a name, doesn't she?"

  Benjere looked at her blankly. "The girl? I suppose she does."

  Annabell sighed.

  Grabbing her by the shoulders, giving a quick kiss to her forehead, her brother said his goodbyes. Disappearing into the dark as soon as he was through the gate, Annabell took a moment to watch him. It was a cool night—but not so bad he'd freeze his toes–and the walk took a familiar path. He was the only person to talk to her in weeks, but she wouldn't miss him now that he was gone.

  She wouldn't.

  It was hard not to stay in the barn with the mother and newborn calf, but it was already late, and the morning sun would come too early with the demands of living alone on the farm. She rushed through her evening routine and wash, feeling the pressure of responsibilities starting to mount.

  Dried in the sun, stored with mint and river green, her sheets smelled like the clean shores of the Peace River, a smell she found comfort in since she was sixteen. Fresh this morning, this set of tightly-woven linens gave her a satisfied feeling, filling her head with scent and memories, sun-crisp against her skin. Warmed by the heat of the room below it, her bed sat in the loft, tucked above the iron stove. She had been sleeping naked for months now, after shucking her gown and woolens on a humid, too warm night. The decadence of nudity made her feel wicked. In a good way.

  "Annabell Roe, what have you done?" her mother's voice complained. Mark's ghost stood at her shoulder in disapproval.

  Annabell ignored them both. She longed to be touched. To be loved. Her husband was gone. And her mother's nagging was silenced with sweeter thoughts.

  There was no one to see.

  No one to see when her hands wandered over the skin of her thighs. Using the pungent, clover-scented mixture Mark used on the animals on sores kept her from forming calluses. The smell wasn't nice, somewhere between wet hay and rancid fat, but smoothing the sticky stuff all over after washing gave her the skin of a girl rather than that of a farmhand.

  She missed the hope of touching.

  Mark never wanted much touching. The memory of his grimace was etched in her mind. Once considered passably attractive, his constant rejection showed her the truth of things. She was plain and needy, not worth his time. The farm required his attention.

  Discovering after her marriage ceremony that she could not please him, his desire to save her from herself and get a child from the deal, had hurt. Every day the silence of his absent-minded condemnation carved grooves into her heart.

  Hands crossed over her chest, she breathed deep. The night was quiet, her heartbeat loud. Not everyone thought her not good enough or feared her curse.

  Opening her palm over the swell of her chest, Annabell felt the emptiness in her breast. Mark never touched her there. No one had. She squeezed the weight, full of unanswered questions. Would other hands feel different? Would her nipple tighten under male fingers? Would it feel forbidden or delicious? Would she like it?

  Her brothers talked about women's breasts and bottoms all the time when they thought their little sister wasn't listening. She made a point of trying to listen. It was the only information they passed to her about men and women. Good thing she lived on a working farm and could figure out some things for herself. Because her brothers didn't talk to her.

  Breathing deep, she took in the smell of her sheets. Remembered the sun on her skin and being young. So young. Remembered the world when she still had hope. Her fingers moved, counted her ribs, smoothed over her belly to her thighs. Deeper.

  She was a woman, and she was alive.

  Chapter 2

  Smells Like Woe

  There was no help for it. She was going to have to go to town. The supply list was as long as her arm.

  "Needs must. Why do you dawdle so, Annabell Roe?" Mama admonished from the back of Annabell's mind. Her voice was always there, reminding Annabell to be proper and patient—tidy and quiet.

  "I'm not dawdling," Annabell said to the empty family room.

  She pulled out a chair to sit and tie the laces on her favorite pair of her boots, running her finger over the slot in the heel. Tucked inside, sat a packet of hidden homemade matches her father taught her to make before he died. She'd never used them-doubted she ever would. But Papa said light and fire were essential for survival. The stockings were old, the red stitched boots were her favorite, and those matches felt like a legacy, a gift her father left her with.

  "Dawdling and distracted. Look at this frock! What will the neighbors think when they see you?"

  "They would as soon spit at me as look at me, Mama." With no one around to see or care, Annabell let herself fall into the habit of answering Mama’s voice in her head out loud. Now she did it without thinking.

  Mama's memory floated in a misty haze. A missed one. Annabell could no longer remember the exact color of her eyes in the sun or feel the warmth of a good night forehead kiss. But Mama's words and way of speaking were embedded in Annabell's head. The last threads of the past, a connection to her father and the days before the Curse of Woe.

  The hardest thing about living alone was the silence. No footsteps. No humming. No grunting. No arguing. No sounds of conversation or arguments. No signs of life.

  Her six brothers had made constant noise.

  Marriage sounded quieter.

  Alone for two years, there was no partner to care for, cook for, lay down for. There was no heartbeat filling up the empty spaces, adding warmth to a bed, making sure there were no left-over meal scraps going to waste. Mark had not been a talker, but he'
d been fully alive until the sick took him—his presence changed the atmosphere of a room from empty to filled just as good as any.

  "It is only quiet because you are hiding under your bed. Time to brush yourself off and face the consequences. I have a wooden spoon all ready."

  "No wooden spoon for me. I have to get to town and catch Kejere before he's too busy with that fine, perfect family of his. My brother married before me, with no grandchild for you. Why don't you complain about that for a change, Mama? Kejere's Lurann hasn't done her duty." Annabell argued in her head. Even in the quiet of her own home, she could not do right and her brothers and their wives could do no wrong.