What absolutely did not need replacing despite somebody apparently ordering it every month. "Why do you have six jars of nutmeg?" she asked.
Matthew frowned. "I don't know."
"Neither does anyone else."
He looked at the jars. "Wallace ordered supplies."
"All six, I assume."
Rachel made another mark. Matthew watched her. She was tired.
He could see it in the way she pressed one hand briefly against the small of her back when she thought nobody was looking. Still, she did not complain once. At supper, she made beef stew with onions, potatoes, dried carrots, and a little barley she found forgotten behind a flour sack.
She put cornbread beside it. The men ate quieter than they had the morning before. Not because they were unhappy. Because they were busy.
A young hand named Charlie Dunn scraped the bottom of his bowl with bread. Eli pointed his spoon at him. "Plate's tin, boy. Leave some for tomorrow."
Charlie ignored him. Matthew sat at the end of the table. Rachel did not sit with them.
She stayed near the stove, watching who finished what. Who reached for seconds. Which pot emptied first. Matthew noticed that too.
After supper, he carried his own plate to the wash basin. Rachel looked at him. "You don't have to do that."
"Neither do you."
"I was hired to run the cookhouse."
"You weren't hired to wash 36 plates alone."
He set the plate down, then took two more from the table. Rachel watched him for a second.
"Does your foreman know you do dishes?"
"No."
Eli called from across the room, "I do now."
A few men laughed. Matthew's ears went faintly red. Rachel looked away before he caught her smiling. That night, after the men had gone to the bunkhouse and Eli had finished the last barn check, Rachel stood alone in the cookhouse doorway.
The snow had stopped. Moonlight silvered the yard. The mountains were only dark shapes beyond the pasture. Behind her, the kitchen was cleaner than it had been at noon, though still far from right.
Her sleeves were rolled up. Flour marked one cheek. She held her list in one hand. Matthew crossed the yard carrying a lantern.
He slowed when he saw her. "You all right?"
Rachel looked back into the cookhouse. "I think so."
"That sounds uncertain."
"It is."
She looked at the smokehouse, then the pantry, then the barn beyond. "There's enough food here."
Matthew stopped beside her. "Doesn't look like it."
"That's because half of it's in the wrong place. A quarter is being wasted, and nobody seems to know what the other quarter is for."
He lowered his head slightly. "Can you fix it?"
Rachel looked up at him. He was even larger standing this close. But now she noticed different things.
The fatigue around his eyes. A split in one leather glove. The careful way he waited for her answer instead of assuming it.
"I can try."
"That wasn't what I asked."
Rachel's gaze held his. "No."
She looked back into the kitchen. "I can fix it."
Matthew nodded once. He did not praise her. Did not tell her she was remarkable.
He only lifted the lantern a little higher so she could see the list in her hand. Somehow, standing there in a cold ranch yard 12 miles from the only room she had called hers for nearly a year, Rachel felt less afraid of Matthew Holloway than she did of one simple thought. At the end of the week, he might tell her to go.