Free Stavewood (Stavewood Saga Book 1) by Nanette Kinslow

the boy reminded himself that his late arrival was not unusual and did his best to help Rebecca heal quickly.
          She followed him out to feed the chickens in the afternoon.
          “What would happen if you didn’t take their eggs away?” Rebecca asked as she helped Mark gather the eggs.
          “They’d grow chicks,” he informed her, perplexed that the woman knew practically nothing about keeping fowl or any animal at all.
          “I would expect that,” she replied in her funny proper way.
          “Then we’d have no breakfast and a bunch of chickens!” Mark laughed.
          Rebecca scowled. She wasn’t a fool, she thought that there was something to taking away the warm eggs daily that she didn’t quite understand, but the boy found her ignorance so entertaining she held her tongue. His attitude towards her was improving though, she thought. She told him the best way to weed the garden while the soil was soft and damp, but not too muddy and he taught her not to be afraid of the chickens. She overdid, lying in pain at night, but she didn’t want the boy to see her as fragile and incapable of doing all the things a child could do.
          Both of them remained watchful, not venturing far from the cabin. Rebecca avoided the boy’s questioning about her as much as possible, preferring not to explain her reasons for leaving the train, or why she had come to America, and Mark spoke about his relationship with his father only when pressed, being as evasive as possible.
          Some books were left for Mark to study, but his father had stopped checking his progress over time and Rebecca helped him catch up. When they talked he’d ask her about England, never tiring of teasing her about her accent or what he called her “proper ways”, often mimicking her and laughing heartily at how different their descriptions were of the same things.
          Mark began to talk more and more about his mother and how desperately both he and his father had missed her. It concerned Rebecca that, although very capable of caring for himself, so young a child was left unattended for such a long period of time. She didn’t think much of Mark’s father for his neglect of the boy, even in the light of explanations of the man’s business dealings and grief over his lost wife.
          Rebecca did not put much thought into the man during her early convalescence. But now his return began to concern her. She stood in front of the mirror and tried to see herself through the eyes of a stranger.  The boy’s clothing was clean and decent she supposed, but she could not adjust to wearing pants instead of a skirt. The huge scab that had formed on her hairline was healing well, but still looked ghastly to her so she took to wearing a felt cap much of the time, stuffing her hair up into it to keep the waist-long mass out of her way. The clothing, though small, still fit her badly so she wore a large jacket over it most of the time. It occurred to her that the boy may have spent so much time laughing at her, not simply because she was a “foreigner”, as he called her, but perhaps because she looked so utterly ridiculous. She tried removing the cap, removing the jacket, replacing the cap without the jacket. Rebecca gave up hopelessly.
          It worried her that anyone might encounter her in such a state and she tried to devise a way she might find acceptable clothing. She was handy with a needle and she knit quite well. She mentioned that to Mark one day and it seemed to surprise him that she could be handy, even in a feminine way. Contrary to what her dead husband had once said to her about such things being best left to the peasants, as he often referred to the help, she enjoyed them and missed her tatting and the hours spent before the fire working on her bobbin lace. There was no way however that she could do anything about clothing herself in a suitable manner now. Rebecca began to