Zach was confused. They were man and wife. They lived together. That was the way of things. He decided not to say anything and devoted himself to his soup. No sooner did he swallow the last spoonful than Lou was at his elbow, taking the empty bowl.
“Now for the main course.”
Zach marveled at how much time she must have spent cooking and baking. There was the roasted grouse. There were carrots and baked potatoes. There was gravy. There was freshly baked bread with butter. “It’s not Christmas, is it?” he joked.
“I just wanted to show you how much I love you, how much you mean to me.”
Zach’s mental guard went up again. “I love you, too, Louisa. There was no need to go to all this bother.”
“Love is never a bother. Love is love.”
Zach fidgeted in his chair. There she went again with another silly remark. Of course love was love. What else would it be? He ate in silence. When he finished the main course he was close to bursting. She brought over a thick slice of apple pie, and he sniffed it, savoring the scent. It was another of his favorites.
Lou sat back down and folded her hands in front of her. She waited until he forked a piece into his mouth, then cleared her throat. “How do you feel?”
“Like a snake that has swallowed a bird and is so swollen, it can’t hardly move.”
Lou didn’t think much of his comparison, but she smiled and said, “Just so you’re happy.”
“I am.”
“I want you to always be happy. I want us to always be happy. I want our children to be happy, too.”
About to fork another piece into his mouth, Zach looked at her. He remembered how lately she had been sick in the morning. Suddenly the feast fit for a king took on a whole new meaning. “You’re with child.”
Lou smothered a frown. She’d wanted to break the news, not have it broken to her. “You don’t have to say it quite like that. But yes, I am.” She waited, and when all he did was bite the piece of pie off the fork, she goaded him with, “Well?”
“Well, what? You must take care of yourself. Don’t lift heavy things. Don’t eat a lot of sugar. Stuff like that.”
Lou waited again, then said, “That’s all you have to say?”
“What else? I’ll need to make a cradle. Or maybe my pa will let us have the one they used for me and my sister. We’ll tell them as soon as they get back. My ma can give you advice on all kinds of female stuff.”
“That’s all you can think of?”
Zach was uneasy. Her tone warned him that she was on the brink of anger, and he had no idea what he had done. “I’m right pleased. We’ve talked about having a baby and now we will.”
“All you are is pleased? You’re not giddy with excitement? You’re not wonderfully happy?”
“Of course.” Zach was none of that. But if saying he was kept her content, he would pretend.
“I mean, I go to all this trouble. I break the greatest news a wife can break to her husband, and you sit there and tell me you have to build a cradle.”
“Do you want the baby to sleep on the floor?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“All right. The bed, then?”
“Where the baby will sleep isn’t the issue. The issue is how you reacted to the news.”
“Be reasonable. It’s not as if it was a huge surprise.”
“A child is taking shape inside me as we speak. The miracle of new life. The greatest thrill we will ever know. And you sit there as if I just told you a weasel got one of the chickens.”
“If a weasel got a chicken, I’d be mad. I’m not mad.”
“You’re not glad, either. Don’t deny you’re not. I can see it in your eyes.”
Forgetting himself, Zach replied, “Don’t tell me how I feel or how I don’t feel. I should know better than you, and I tell you, I’m happy.”
“Oh, Stalking Coyote.”
Zach inwardly winced. She used his Shoshone name only when she was upset. She confirmed her distress by doing the one thing he couldn’t stand for her to do.
Louisa burst into tears.
Chapter Three
Shakespeare McNair cleared his throat. “ ‘To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of trouble, and by opposing, end them.’ ”
Blue Water Woman looked up from her knitting. She was in the rocking chair, by the window. He was at the table honing his ax. If she had asked him once, she had asked him a thousand times not to hone his ax at the table. He always got tiny flakes all over. But did he listen? No. He was a man.
“Is there a point, or were you talking to hear yourself talk again?” Her English was excellent. She didn’t speak it quite as well as Winona King, but she took great pride in how well she had mastered it. For a Flathead, the white tongue was as strange as a tongue could be.
Shakespeare harrumphed and stopped honing. “Did you just accuse me of being in love with the sound of my own voice?”
“What is it that whites say?” Blue Water Woman smiled sweetly. She wore a soft doeskin dress and moccasins. Her black hair, lightly streaked with gray, hung past her slender shoulders. “If the shoe fits…”
“A pox on thee, wench.” Shakespeare bristled, and quoted the Bard, “ ‘I am well acquainted with your manner of wrenching the true cause the false way.’ ”
“There was a point to your Hamlet, then?”
“There is always a point to old William S.,” Shakespeare informed her. “I was suggesting you might want to go over and talk to Lou tomorrow. She’s breaking the news to Zach tonight, and I expect a storm cloud or three.”
Blue Water Woman set the woolen cap she was making him in her lap. “That was your idea of suggesting I go see her? To be or not to be?”
“I thought it quite clever.”
Letting out an exaggerated sigh, Blue Water Woman said, “I hear there are husbands who make sense when they talk. Husbands who use their own words and do not recite the words of a man who lived so long ago no one else remembers him.”
Shakespeare slapped down the file. “Don’t remember him?” he sputtered. “I’ll have you know, woman, that he has been called the soul of his age. His writing is to words what flowers are to a mountain meadow.”
“Perhaps it is best you recite him. Your own words make even less sense than his.”
“ ‘Thou art so leaky, we must leave thee to thy sinking,’ ” Shakespeare countered.
“I am a boat now?”
Shakespeare smiled in anticipated triumph and declared, “If there is a purpose to women, I have yet to find it.”
“Is that what you were doing with me last night in bed? Looking for my purpose?”
Shakespeare felt his face redden and burst out laughing. “Oh, that was marvelous. Your best yet. I swear, jousting with you is the most fun I know.” He paused. “Next to what we were doing in bed, of course.”
“You are male.”
Coughing, Shakespeare changed the subject. “About Lou. She doesn’t know Zachary like I do. They’re apt to have an argument.”
“I should think she knows her own husband.” Just as Blue Water Woman knew hers and his fondness for butting into the affairs of others. To his credit, he always did it with the best of intentions.
“She’s known him a few years. I’ve known Zach since he popped out of his mother and was swaddled in a blanket. I predict he won’t take the news quite as merrily as Lou expects. So maybe you should go over and see if everything is all right. What with Nate and his other half gone, Lou has no one else to talk to.”
“Wait a minute. Did you just say he popped out of Winona?”