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rice, dried beans and potatoes, and a hanging slab of moldy-looking bacon. No carrots or peas or turnips or herbs. No fresh fruit, either—only a lone tin of peaches and a bushel basket half full of apples. What could she make out of such a conglomeration?
    Hours later, footsteps boomed across the front porch and Thad walked in with Teddy at his heels. At the stove, Leah froze with her back to them.
    “Somethin’ sure smells funny, Pa.”
    “Looks different, too, son. Kinda…shiny.”
    Teddy clambered up the ladder to the loft and an instant later let out a squawk like anenraged rooster. “My bed’s all diff’rent! And my rocks—somebody’s been messing with my rocks!”
    His head appeared over the railing. “She did it! I hate her!”
    Thad ignored his son and gazed around the cabin. Clean windows. Scrubbed floor. No dishes in the sink. Looked as if a cyclone had blown through the place. He began to frown before Teddy finished yelling. He liked what Leah had done. But for some reason deep inside he didn’t
want
to like it. It seemed disloyal to Hattie.
    But Hattie is gone
. And Leah was here. He could hardly believe Leah was his wife now, and he had to admit his reaction to the state of his house had nothing to do with Hattie. He couldn’t bear to think about it too closely.
    The cyclone was standing at the stove. Apparently she was a fastidious housekeeper, and of course his son wouldn’t appreciate that. Thad wondered why
he
didn’t appreciate it.
    The spit and polish this half-Chinese girl had shown in just a few hours reminded him not so much of Hattie as his Scots mother. She was long dead now, as was his father. That was one reason Thad had come to America—the Scots were starving. He hadjust passed his twelfth birthday and both his parents were gone.
    Hattie, he recalled, had not been a particularly careful housekeeper, but she had been his lifelong companion. And because he had loved her, he had forgiven her any domestic shortcomings.
    But seeing another woman in her place sent a blade through his gut. It wasn’t that he regretted marrying Leah—just that he regretted losing Hattie.
    Teddy clattered down the ladder and slouched toward the kitchen table. “I spose you want me to set out the plates,” he grumbled.
    Leah turned to look at him. “Yes, thank you, Teddy. That would be nice.”
    “Don’t have enough chairs, Pa. Guess she’ll have to sit on that old nail keg, huh?”
    Thad met Leah’s questioning eyes and to his relief saw that she was amused, not angry. She clapped her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. Teddy’s suggestion of the nail keg even brought a chuckle to his own throat.
    “Well, son, you have two choices. Either you cobble up an extra chair or you eat your dinner standing up. Leah and I are sitting at the table.”
    “Aw, Pa.”
    “Don’t ‘Aw, Pa’ me, Teddy. Take it or leave it. I’d tan your hide good if it wasn’t our wedding day.”
    Teddy said nothing, but Thad noted that he dutifully laid three plates on the table and then disappeared.
    “Hunting up a chair, I’d guess,” he murmured at Leah’s back. She’d found one of Hattie’s aprons and tied it twice around her waist in an oversize, floppy bow. His heart gave an odd lurch at the sight. Dammit, he remembered that apron. Oh, God, he wished it was Hattie there at the stove.
    But it wasn’t Hattie, it was Leah. His new wife. Dammit, he could hardly bring himself to say the word. He focused on her slim figure and felt a flicker of warmth. He hadn’t necessarily expected to
like
his mail-order bride and now the woman was his wife.
    He didn’t have to like her, he told himself; all he had to do was get along with her.
    The front door banged open and in stomped Teddy, dragging a dust-coated, straightbacked wooden chair. “Found it in the barn,” he muttered.
    Thad squeezed his thin shoulder. “Well done, Teddy.”
    “I hope it breaks when she sits on it!”
    Thad bent and tipped his son’s