Page 57 of Mail-Order Lady

He turned back to Enoch. “You’re right to be cautious. We’ll bring him in for a meal. Let him sleep on a mattress tick in the barn tonight. Get to know him a little at a time and keep our guard up.”

Enoch’s shoulders loosened a degree. Not full agreement, but close enough that they could work with it.

CHAPTER 17

Nathan walked into the dining room like a man entering a courtroom for his own trial.

His shoulders carried a hard set—not quite braced but not relaxed in the slightest. Ready to spin toward any threat that flared.

He moved with careful steps like he’d spent years in tight spaces. And his gaze swept the room once before settling somewhere just past Thomas’s shoulder.

Clara took her own seat as the rest of the family gathered. Bea had set the table more formally than usual. The good plates. A few purple flowers in the center. As though they were receiving a dignitary instead of a stranger who’d slept beside the barn overnight.

“Sit there.” James gestured toward the chair between him and Enoch. The only seat that didn’t put him beside one of the women.

Nathan moved to the chair without comment and sat.

As the other men settled around them, Clara folded her hands in her lap and made herself smile and breathe normally. Kate sat beside her, pale but upright, her fingers gripping the table edge like she was fighting the storm rising in her middle. Rose sat across from them with little Catherine on her lap as the baby gnawed on a piece of crusty bread.

Mandie brought in the last of the meat, and Bea followed with another plate of bread.

When both women sat, silence threatened to settle.

But Robert glanced around. “Shall we say grace?”

Everyone bowed their heads, but she kept hers just high enough to watch Nathan through her lashes. He hesitated a beat before following suit. His eyes closed, but the tension in his shoulders didn’t ease. She closed her own eyes.

Robert’s voice came steady. “Lord, we thank You for this food and ask for your blessing through it. We also ask for Your wisdom as we seek to understand Your will in all things. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.”

She’d heard prayers all her life—at the dining table and long formal ones at church that droned on until her legs went numb from kneeling. But something in the way Robert spoke to God made her chest ease.

He prayed like a man having a conversation. Like he genuinely expected God to hear and answer. So different from anything she’d heard before coming here.

“Amen,” came the chorus around the table, and she added her own.

Everyone began reaching for dishes and scooping food onto plates like usual. Rose passed a platter of meat to James, who took a portion before handing it to Nathan.

Nathan studied it, then slid a look at James as though to judge his motive before taking it. He must have deemed it safe, for he forked a chunk onto his plate, then passed the dish on to Enoch. Was that a flash of relief in Nathan’s eyes? Yet his gaze was already searching, seeking out his next food.

Or maybe his next obstacle? His gaze looked more wary than hungry.

James passed a plate of bread and Nathan slid a look to James’s plate as he took the platter. James had taken two slices, and maybe that looked odd to Nathan, for his gaze flashed to the other plates around the table. He took a single slice of bread, which was what all the women and Robert had done. Thomas had taken two, and Enoch none so far. Maybe Nathan thought one piece safest.

With every item…with every action…he never once made a step without watching what others did first. Had he never eaten a meal in company? Or maybe not at a dining table. Mayhap he’d always eaten in taverns and…where did sailors eat on the ship? While they manned their posts? Or in their quarters?

“So.” Thomas, as usual, was the first to begin conversation. He leaned back in his chair and aimed the easy version of his attention at Nathan—the kind that looked casual but wasn’t always. “Taken by pirates, eh?”

Clara held in a wince. There was a way to approach a thing, and then there was Thomas.

Nathan didn’t seem bothered, just set his fork down on the edge of the plate. “Stayed with them six years. Near enough.”

His accent—what did it sound like? Almost English in the vowels, the way certain sounds either rolled or clipped.

But the whole of it had a different edge, with some words rushed. The cadence of it tumbled in a way that felt like it didn’t belong anywhere. “From when I was five to near eleven.”

Five years old. She couldn’t imagine how frightening it must have been to have his ship attacked, to be taken from his mother, and everything he knew. What had he been forced to do aboard the pirate ship?

James must have read her thoughts. “What did they have you do as such a young lad?”