XIV
"I've made an agreement with our cook, Hop Sing. I'll bring you for a dinner on next Friday." Hoss held his hat from the rim and didn't waver a bit when Elin shot tomahawks at him with her stare. "I made sure you can bring your kids over, too, so you don't have to leave Thor babysitting Secret and Rebbeca for the whole night alone, too."
"They are old enough to not require a babysitter", Elin slipped, before she hid her mouth with her hand. Her eyes widened, as she realized that she had actually been invited somewhere. And accepted the invitation, for that matter. "I don't have anything to wear."
Hoss laughed at her and scooped her up in his arms like she was as little as Rebecka. "You'll come wearing a flour sack if you like, as long as you come."
Elin breathed strongly against his neck and inhaled the scent of rough life outdoors from him and his skin and his leather vest. As usual, Hoss couldn't see why she did so and how on earth it could've been a pleasure; but he let her nest her face against his neck where the stubble was already growing so fast you could hear, although he had shaven well in the morning. "Don't say so or I just might", she giggled in a way that made his throat tremble.
"I'm happy you chose to come, Elin."
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Hoss was waiting for Elin to get dressed, as for this one and only moment she had insisted on privacy and discretion. Having had two brothers who were quite a sensation among the ladies, Hoss, too, had acquired an instinct to wait when a woman asked to wait, and also an instinct to show surprise at the beauty of any particular dress or a fashion chosen, even though he couldn't have thought of any curtain or a carpet that would have draped her lady in an unjust way.
In the middle of wondering how well Elin would in fact appear wearing a curtain over her body and a travelling bag as her hat, Hoss was interrupted from his imagination as Elin pushed her head out from the kitchen door. "Hoss, I need your help. I can't... tie myself in." She furrowed, as she didn't know the expression.
"You need somebody to lace you up, is that it?" Hoss raised his eyebrows and took off his brown coat, and felt a sudden blush arising to his cheeks when he thought that as a young boy he would have secretly enjoyed this task very much. Well, quite openly, to be honest. He took a moment's pause to shrug off any thoughts of such whimpering adolescence and stepped in.
Elin was facing her back to him and trying to pull the laces behind her waist to tuck in the corset, but her strength wasn't enough to keep the knots tight. She couldn't pull the strings against a bedpost or a doorknob, as there were none firm enough, and now she was standing with her dress half-done, the pine green hems flourishing to all directions at the same time as the bodice was hanging loose in front of her.
"Are you sure this is all right?" Hoss asked and took hold of the laces.
"Go on. The dress won't go on me if you don't." The intonation jumped up and down, with its foreign clang hung to the air.
He laced her an inch smaller from first parts from up and bottom of the corset, and saw her wincing under the pressure. "Ailynn... "
"Go on. I'll be tough."
He pulled the garment a bit tighter yet, closing the gap a bit more but leaving the waist and diaphragm area ajar enough for her to breathe while getting ready for a tighter pull. She stood panting, without saying a word, and held to the wall while she all of a sudden seemed weak as an autumn leaf.
His expression changed from worried to bothered, when he saw her cheeks grow pale and the tip of her nose a bit red. The normal glow of the cinnamon freckles was dumped and a veil of gray swept over her face. "This can't be good, Ailynn, when's the last time you've been wearing this... thing?"
Disgust was dropping out of his tongue, but he didn't care. If it took so much of his precious Elin, he could as well burn the dadburn thing. He didn't want to have it anywhere near the house if it shackled her into something she wasn't.
"Before my... some years ago", she squeaked, and held her composure while resting her arms on the wall. "Pull, it's this close. I was even more... plump... back then."
Hoss didn't believe her for an inch. "I ain't gonna pull this cage any tighter on you, Elin. I'm taking you to see my family and if it requires you to break your ribs in this thing, it ain't worth it."
She dropped her head down, staggering as the air wasn't able to fill her lungs and her blood wasn't throbbing so vigorously anymore. "I'm sorry, Hoss."
"You... Dang if you are, you shouldn't be, silly gal", he muttered while he loosened the laces a bit from the chest and fixed the waistline as tight as he dared. He motioned her to try the bodice on. "It's about two inches open. Can you release the seams or somethin'?"
Elin peeled out from the bodice and turned the seams inside out, touching the lining and the outer fabric with her fingers gently and examining the seamstress work beneath her fingers. "I think... I think it might be enough." She wasn't breathing all normally, yet, but Hoss forgave her for her vanity. This time.
After all, she had chosen to come.
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Hoss patted Elin's knee one more time in assurance, when he finally reined the buggy in at the Ponderosa yard. She had left the children at her farm, because despite of all the good excuses, Hoss could tell she was just plumb insecure. Lack of confidence didn't fit her character at all, but it was her first dinner out of her queendom for a very long time, and Hoss mused her. He'd have time to show the kids to the Ponderosa, too.
Thor had promised to protect his sisters until the 'wailing end', though Hoss hoped he never had to come across that promise directly. By this time, though, Hoss was certain they would have tried all the sugar and pastries they could find from the house, they would have played a dozen of games and wrestled and fought over the end results at least as many times, and though screaming and yelling at each other tonight, the children would never admit to any such thing tomorrow. If a plate or a piece of a chair leg would be broken, it would have happened all by itself, without any of their help and in complete solitude.
Nobody was standing outside when Hoss pulled the reins of the horses and helped Elin down from the cart, but the curiosity of the rest of the family was still thick enough to be touched at the yard. Elin tucked her pine green dress one more time to see that the hastily fixed seams would hold in the right place, and made sure that the green plume was fastened firmly in her hair. She had curled a couple of locks very carefully with a coal poke as the final thing to do, and the soft shimmer of the silky hair made Hoss hold his breath when he looked her in the askew light of the porch lantern.
"How do I look, Hoss?"
"As if you escaped from heaven itself."
He saw that she was pleased, even though her answer was a slap on his arm. "Stop flattering", she murmured, before she took a controlled breath to face the Cartwright family. "Let's go in."
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Little Joe came outside. Hoss had hitched the horses in front of the buggy and was leaning his back against it. Joe circled the buggy and came next to his brother, putting his hands to his pockets and leaning to the buggy, too. "She's really quite somethin", he said, watching the profile of his brother in the evening light.
"Ain't she?" Hoss said softly with a grin that creased his nose, and kicked the ground under his feet. Under his skin, though, he was really proud of the unreserved liking that Joe had shown, and the delighted laughter of his Pa when he had been answered by the radiant smile of Elin, and the captivated glance of Adam when he had found out how challenging she was to debate. Her answers were unexpected, and her disarming smile that wasn't covered by any paints or powders was sincere enough to leave the brothers and the Pa to wonder what exactly it was that they had heard.
Joe chuckled, and bowed his head for a moment. "Though I had to admit I was a bit scared when I had to face her eye-to-eye", he said, and made Hoss remember how surprised he had been to notice her out of average height, that had been quite hidden in the solitude of the farm. Compared to him, she appeared short, like most of the people did. He had thought of her as a slender little figure, frail as a flower petal, but all of the sudden she had become a strong and alluring creature like any ribbon prized thoroughbred. Even her appetite was good enough to match Joe's, as she was curious to try all the treats Hop Sing had created for them, and the tight laces of the corset that had bothered her very much couldn't stop her from enjoying the delicacies of the table or having a third plate of dessert.
"Yeah", Hoss agreed, remembering how she had declined from singing when Adam offered to bring down his guitar. 'I sing to the trees and the birds and the meadows, only', she had replied, and her eyes had glimmered as she explained, that she knew none of the American songs and even the ones in her own tongue had been long dead and forgotten by now. "She is really quite somethin'."
She had feared there would have been nothing in common to talk about. And yet, there had been a lot of common words that she shared with the Cartwrights, about her family and where they came from, what she did for her living at the farm and how she knew the landscape and its various moods. How she had been schooling her kids at home to teach them to count and to read, even with the little of English that she knew to write, and how the forests and the mountains that shielded their borderland was very dear to all of them. Independence that she had had to acquire after her husband's death had been mixed with a wonderful carelessness that had made Hoss stare at her all night, knowing that he was being goofy, yet without being able to stop.
Joe took his hand from his pocket and patted the arm of his brother. "I'm real glad you went up there and found her", he said, with the look of his eyes expressing a lot more than his simple words.
Hoss creased his nose in yet another goofy grin and pressed his lips together for an even goofier face. He tried to be something else than goofy, but feeling as if he floated on bubbles and petals all the time, he couldn't be but goofy. "I'm glad you like her, brother."
The door opened and Ben escorted Elin gallantly to the yard. He held her hand and pressed it against his arm a bit longer, to say farewells, and walked her to the buggy before releasing his hold. He helped her up with a shade less ease than Hoss would have, but with grace that implied that in his youth he might have been close. "I thank you, Elin, for the lovely company at dinner with our humble household."
She smiled and her white teeth lighted up the shade of the night like a little star for a moment. "Ben Cartwright, it's me who should thank you for such a delightful evening. I'm much obliged to be invited", she said, and was bid farewell by a quick kiss on her knuckles by the older Mr. Cartwright.
"Feel welcome any time", he offered. "You are quite something, Elin Nilsson."
"Adam, Joseph..." she nodded to the other brothers and jerked back when Hoss slapped the reins and encouraged the horses to move. As they departed into the night, they left three cowboys behind them in an identical pose, all of them leaning their fists to their belts under the tails of their coats, wondering in their heads what had struck them and where it was from.
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"I liked it a lot, Hoss", Elin spoke from behind a veiled inward smile that had overcome her pointy features on the way back. "I want to come and see this picnic with you."
She stretched her legs and revealed a pair of thin leather slippers that she had been able to hide from the family under her hems the whole evening. As much as they had searched from her trunks and the barns, they hadn't found her a normal pair of shoes for the dinner and in the end they had had to settle for what she wore in her chores. It was their little secret, at which they were both laughing in an art of modest conspiracy.
As she started to sing softly to the night, allowing the silvery tone of her bright voice to caress over Hoss' ears and escape to the darkness around them, Hoss was drowned in a mixture of pride, belonging and gratefulness over what her reaction had been back at his home. He captured and hid a secret feeling of happiness in his heart, because he knew from her humming that she let him belong to the land and the scenery to which she gave her melody.
She was really quite something.