The Brides of Chance Collection Read Online Free PDF

out the harness, and came back with the eggs he’d gathered.
    Logan took out the swill to slop the hogs, came back, scowled at the floor, and grumbled, “Don’t know why I have to scrub it. It’ll be dirty again, soon as anyone walks across it. Can’t see wasting my time.” His brothers all gave him nasty looks, so he grabbed the broom.
    After shaving half a cake of soap into the wash kettle, Gideon set it over a fire in the yard and filled it with water. As it started to heat, he paced back into the cabin. Quietly as he could, he eased the bedroom door open and tiptoed in. He stood still for a moment, but he didn’t hear a thing. Every step he took sounded clumsily loud as he walked across the planks to gather shirts and britches off the pegs and floor. Finally, he reached the far side of the room and paused outside the blanket partition.
    “Miss Miriam, I aim to fetch the laundry if you don’t mind.”
    She failed to answer, so he peered in to be sure she was okay. He strained to listen and heard soft breaths in a slow, deep cadence. Good. She’s sleeping . Moving away, he snagged his shirts off the pegs, used the toe of his boot to hook out the blanket stacked with her soiled clothing, and finally went to the other end. He reached under the bed to get his grime-encrusted britches.
    In morning light, she looked more delicate, more ethereal. The way her braid unraveled across the pillow invited a man to test each rippling, golden wave.
    Hannah’s kid sister—the one he’d heard her mention and somehow pictured as a schoolgirl in pigtails—was an eyeful of femininity. Gideon tamped down that line of thought and beat a hasty retreat. He left the clothes by the boiling laundry pot and headed toward Daniel’s tiny cottage.
    The Chance men never stood on formalities. Gideon walked in without knocking and scooped Polly from the floor. Over at the table, Daniel tried to get Virginia to take one more sip of apple cider. The two of them seemed to be wearing more of the contents of the glass than drinking it.
    “I’m doing laundry,” Gideon announced as he started to toss clothes into a crate.
    “Great!”
    After he filled the crate, he turned and looked at his brother. Daniel showed remarkable patience with his two little ones. Three-year-old Polly chattered twenty to the dozen, and Virginia had hit the walking stage a few days earlier.
    After Hannah died, Daniel had advertised for a housekeeper, but the only one who responded made it clear she held far more interest in matrimony than in mending. After a short time, it became clear that for the sake of Daniel’s sanity, the Chance brothers were going to have to handle matters on their own. They devised a simple solution: Each man took a day every week to watch the girls. Daniel took both Wednesday and Sunday since the girls were his, and he minded them from sundown to sunup all of the time.
    “Dan, we’ve got a visitor.”
    “Oh?” Daniel wiped Ginny Mae’s face. “Who?”
    Gideon watched his brother intently. “Miriam Hancock came into town last night.”
    “Miriam?” Dan looked dazed. “What is she doing here?”
    “It seems Hannah wrote her and mentioned she didn’t feel well. Miriam came to help her out.”
    “Why’d she do a foolish thing like that? Letters take up to eight months to get there!”
    “Don’t ask me to figure out the mind of a woman. Fact remains, Miriam is here. I figured I’d best tell you before you ran into her in the yard. I’m sure she’ll want to see her nieces today.”
    “How long is she planning to stay?”
    “I didn’t ask.”
    As it was Saturday, it was Gideon’s day to have the girls. He popped both of them into the fenced-off play area Daniel had made to contain the girls while his brothers did yard chores. Some of the clothes were so badly soiled, Gideon couldn’t even put them in the wash kettle. He toted them down to the creek, knelt, and swished the worst of the grime from them. Beating them on a rock