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them might agree with him that Levi’s actions were rash. But to a man they were too concerned about Ma to consider how Catherine Stanway must feel.
    â€œSo this nurse,” Simon said, draping the cloth he’d been using to dry his freshly shaven face over the porcelain basin in a corner of his cabin. “What do we know about her? What are her credentials?”
    Figure on Simon, his next closest brother in age at about two years behind Drew’s twenty-nine, to ask. He was the only one tall enough to look him in the eye, for all they rarely saw eye to eye. With his pale blond hair and angled features, Simon was too cool. Even looked different from Drew. Every movement of his lean body, word from his lips and look from his light green eyes seemed calculated.
    The middle brother, James, leaned back where he sat near the fire, effortlessly balancing the stool on one of its three legs. “Does it really matter, Simon? She’s here, and she’s helping. Be grateful.” He turned to Drew. His long face was a close match for Simon’s in its seriousness, his short blond hair a shade darker, but there was a twinkle in his dark blue eyes. “Now, I have a more pressing question. Is she pretty?”
    â€œThat’s not important,” Drew started, but his second-youngest brother, John, slapped his hands down on his knees where he sat at a bench by the table.
    â€œShe must be! He’s blushing!” He shook his head, red-gold hair straighter than his mother’s like a flame in the light.
    Drew took a deep breath to hold back a retort. Of all his brothers, John was the most sensible, the most studious. If he’d seen a change in Drew, it must be there.
    But he wasn’t about to admit it.
    He started for the door. “Pretty or not, she has work for us to do. She wants lots of water warmed. You bring it in. I’ll heat it up.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “And John, find Levi. He should have finished in the barn by now. I don’t want him wandering off.”
    â€œWhere would he go?” James teased, letting the stool clatter back to the floor as he climbed to his feet. “It’s not as if he has tickets to the theatre.”
    â€œOr one to attend within a hundred miles,” John agreed, but he headed for the barn as Drew had requested.
    For the next couple of hours everyone was too busy to joke. His brothers took turns bringing in the water to Drew, who heated it in his mother’s largest pot on the step stove. Then they formed a line up the stairs and passed the warm water in buckets up to Beth and Miss Stanway.
    â€œShe washed Ma with a soft cloth, then rubbed her down with another,” Beth marveled to Drew at the head of the stairs when he ventured up to check on them after he and his brothers had eaten. “And she changed the sheets on the bed without even making Ma get up. She’s amazing!”
    Drew had to agree, for when Catherine beckoned him closer, he found his mother much improved. No longer did she look like a wax figure on the bed, and she smiled at each of her sons as they clustered around to speak with her.
    â€œI think it’s time to rest,” Catherine said to them all after a while. “I’ll come talk to you after I’ve settled her.”
    Drew herded everyone down the stairs. They all found seats in the front room, Simon and James on opposite ends of the table, John on a bench alongside, Beth in Ma’s rocking chair and Levi sprawled on the braided rug with Drew standing behind him leaning against the stairs. He caught himself counting heads, even though he knew everyone was present. Habit. He’d been watching over them for the past ten years, ever since the day his father had died.
    It had been a widow-maker that had claimed their father. Drew had been eighteen then, and only Simon at sixteen and James at fourteen had been old enough and strong enough to help clear the timber for their