Hill Country Courtship. Laurie Kingery

tacit agreement, Mrs. Meyer saw Dr. Walker out while Maude, carrying the sleeping baby, and Juana went next door to a room vacated by Felix Renz. The other drummer boarding in the house had departed just that morning. He’d promised to keep an eye out for Felix Renz as he made his rounds. Unfortunately, they had no clear idea where to look for him, specifically. April Mae had never recovered sufficiently for Maude to be able to ask.

      Maude settled herself onto the room’s only chair, while Juana sat on the bed.

      “Poor motherless child,” Maude murmured, staring down into the sleeping, innocent face of baby Hannah. “You don’t even know you’ve lost your mama.”

      “You care about this baby very much,” Juana said with the quiet kindness she had exhibited since arriving at the boardinghouse, as Maude bent to kiss the little girl’s downy dark head.

      “Yes.” Even while she had helped Doctor Walker fight for April Mae Horvath’s life, she had begun to love this helpless little life with more devotion than she had ever thought possible. She had loved before in her lifetime—her family and her friends—but something about Hannah’s helpless state made her feelings for the child deeper than any love she’d felt before, and it filled her with determination to guard the child from any further harm. With God helping me, I won’t let any more tragedy touch your life, she promised the sleeping infant.

      “Perhaps you could be little Hannah’s new madre,” Juana suggested.

      Maude blinked at the other girl. “But...but she has a father,” she stammered. “Even if we don’t know where he is right now, it’s not up to me to decide what is best for the child.”

      Juana made a dismissive gesture, as if Felix Renz were no more than a bit of dust she had dropped from the palm of her hand. “Bah! Even if that worthless hombre is found, what kind of a life can he give her, a wandering seller of pots and pans? He did not even care enough for the little pobrecita’s mother to stay with her after he had gotten her into trouble.”

      Juana hadn’t even met Renz, as Maude had, yet her assessment of the man was accurate enough, Maude thought. Felix Renz wasn’t wicked or cruel—if he was, Mrs. Meyer would not have permitted him to stay in her boardinghouse. But he was shiftless and irresponsible. Not the sort of man who could be trusted to take proper care of a newborn, even if the child was his own.

      She gazed down again at Hannah’s sleeping face as Juana’s words began to take hold in her heart. She had conceived a fierce, protective love of this child from the first moment she’d held her, a love that did much to fill an empty place within her she hadn’t even known existed. Hannah needed a guardian and protector...while Maude needed someone to love. Yes. She wanted to keep this baby and call her her own.

      Then she felt a pang of guilt, remembering that Juana had been the one who had been nursing this baby, despite her grief over her own lost child and husband. “But what about you?” she asked Juana. “Don’t you want to—” The infant in her arms gave a little squeak, and Maude realized her arms had tightened around her too much, in instinctive fear that the little one might be taken away from her. She relaxed them immediately, and Hannah resumed slumbering.

      “I love that little dear one,” Juana said, nodding toward Hannah in Maude’s arms. “She has given me a purpose and kept me from despair after losing my Tomás and my little Tulio.” It was the first time she had mentioned her dead baby’s name, or her husband’s, since she’d arrived, though Maude often heard her weeping at night through the their common wall. “But she is an Anglo baby, sí? I love her, too, and I will stay with her as long as she needs me, but if I raised her as her mother, she might not be accepted in either the Anglo world or the Tejano one, do you see?”

      Maude stared at her as the simple, stark truth sank in. However good relations were in Simpson Creek between the Tejanos and the Texans—or Anglos as the Tejanos called them—outside of it there was much anti-Mexican prejudice on the part of the whites, and resentment on the part of the Tejanos, who had settled this land first. A child caught between the two worlds would face the worst of both communities’ prejudices. Juana was right—it wouldn’t be fair to do that to Hannah—and it was all the more reason for Maude to keep her.

      But if Maude kept Hannah and raised her—assuming Renz never returned to claim his daughter—she would need Juana’s help, and Juana couldn’t stay here at the boardinghouse indefinitely. Maude knew Mrs. Meyer well enough to know that as fond of Hannah as she was, the old woman was already fretting about the loss of rent from the room Juana was using. She’d had to turn away one customer already. And several of the men had lost no time in complaining about the noise of the baby’s crying.

      Maude would have shared her own room with Juana gladly, but the room was tiny and the bed too narrow for two. Her funds wouldn’t stretch to the rent for two rooms. And that still wouldn’t resolve the problem of Hannah’s crying disturbing the other boarders. Even if Maude tried to arrange some deal with Mrs. Meyer to rent the two rooms, Maude doubted the woman would agree if having the baby on the premises drove away any of her other customers.

      Juana’s mother lived in town, and the girl had mentioned that she wanted her daughter to come home now that she was widowed, but if Juana took Hannah there, the child wouldn’t know Maude by the time she was weaned. And Juana was young and attractive. Men might not wait long to come calling. And if Juana remarried, she might move away and Maude would lose track of Hannah forever.

      She thought of the little cottage on the grounds of Gilmore House, the sumptuous mansion where the mayor and his wife lived. They would have let Maude and Juana use it for nothing, and it would have been perfect for the purpose. But Ella and her new husband would be occupying the cottage until Nate could build their house behind the café, which might not be for months unless the winter was very mild.

       What to do? Please, Lord, show me the way...

      Just then a knock sounded at the front entrance below. She tensed, thinking she might need to answer it, but then she heard Mrs. Meyer’s steady, measured steps heading for the door. It was too soon to expect the undertaker, in all likelihood. Would Mrs. Meyer have to turn away another customer? Was there any chance it was Felix Renz? Had someone found him already?

      Maude rose and pushed open the door of Juana’s room about halfway, so they could hear who it was. She saw the swift look of understanding in Juana’s eyes.

      “Yes, sir. What may I do for you?”

      “My name is Jonas MacLaren, ma’am,” Maude heard the newcomer say. “I’m here to see Miss Harkey, if I may?”

      Maude’s felt her heartbeat lurch into a gallop. Could the Lord be answering her prayer already, just a moment after she had prayed it?

      “You have a gentleman caller?” Juana asked, a small smile playing about her lips. “An amante—a sweetheart?”

      “No, nothing like that,” Maude said. “Juana, do you want to go home and live with your mother?”

      Juana Benavides’s reaction was quick and unmistakeable. “No, I do not. I love mi madre, of course, but her house is diminuto, tiny. And full. My abuela, my grandmother, lives there, and my brother Luis, and my younger sisters...I have been a wife, Maude. I do not want to go back and live like an unmarried daughter.” Her eyes were wistful and sad.

      “How would you feel about living on a ranch, at least for a while, until Hannah is weaned?”

      Juana’s lovely forehead furrowed with confusion. “You have a ranch? Then why do you live here?”

      “No, I don’t own a ranch. But I have an idea. I’ll explain everything after I talk to the gentleman downstairs—if he’s agreeable.”

       Chapter Four

      Jonas watched her descend the stairs, regal as a queen, despite the fact that the dress she wore was everyday