Cassandra Austin (6 page)

She tried her best to swing into the saddle without Adam’s help, not as a show of independence, but to limit his very disturbing touch. She shouldn’t have this reaction to him. Everything she was feeling was wrong. She had told herself this before. She’d thought she had settled it. Obviously, she hadn’t.

Adam led the General a few feet away before he mounted. Jane was sure it was to put her at a safe distance in case the horse repeated his earlier performance. Jane held her breath, but the General stood quietly while Adam mounted, then obediently followed his commands.

“Maybe he’s only cranky first thing in the morning,”
Adam said softly as they rode away from the farm.

“Maybe you let him know who’s boss,” Jane suggested.

Adam appeared to think it over. “That’s not why,” he said, in a perfect imitation of Billy.

That night at supper Adam was the center of conversation, or more accurately, his ride was. Mr. Knapp brought it up first, with George providing additional details. The Cartland sisters were quite free with their admiration and scolded Knapp severely for putting their nice Dr. Hart in danger.

Adam seemed to be at once amused and embarrassed. Jane was glad her own first ride was nearly forgotten.

She was passing around bowls of bread pudding when George pulled out his pocket watch. “I almost forgot. I got a letter today from the Children’s Aid Society of New York City. I intend to pay some calls tonight, round up a placing board.”

“What,” wondered Nedra, “is the Children’s Aid Society?”

“It’s an organization that finds homes for orphans from the streets of New York,” George said.

Naomi wrinkled her large nose. “That would not be an easy task, if you ask me.”

Nedra nodded at her sister. “Can you imagine?”

It was clear to Jane that they were imagining dirty little urchins, and not with any compassion, either.
Her interest was so centered on watching the women exchange grimaces she was surprised to hear Adam speak up.

“Orphans, you said? They’re sending city orphans out here?” His attention was turned to George, giving Jane a chance to study him. He had more than a passing interest in the subject. In fact, he seemed excited by the prospect of orphan children arriving in Clyde.

“Orphans and half orphans. Some are immigrants,” George added. “I’m to form a placing board to round up prospective families. They like to have the children placed with farm families, mostly. They believe farm life and labor is conducive to healthy minds and bodies. ‘Course, nobody at the Children’s Aid Society ever worked on a farm.”

Adam’s eyes lost some of their enthusiasm. “So they become indentured servants.”

George pursed his lips. “Not in theory, anyway. Families are expected to treat the orphans as their own, and farmers work their own kids. They have to. It’s just that farmers are more likely to think another pair of hands is worth the extra mouth to feed, while the businessmen in town don’t usually need more unskilled labor.”

Adam raised an eyebrow. “What about adopting the children out of love?”

George grinned. “I think we need you on the placing board. You can be in charge of finding loving families.”

Adam didn’t seem at all taken aback by the suggestion. In fact, he seemed eager to begin. “I don’t know many of the families here yet,” he said, but it was more to himself than to George.

“You can get to know them fast this way.”

Adam smiled, evidently happy to have his only objection answered so quickly. “Of course I’d be happy to help.”

“That’s one down already. The orphans will come into town by train with their sponsors and be introduced at the Methodist Church, where the families can pick out a child.”

Jane remembered the few times she had ridden on a train and the bone weariness that followed. “Surely they won’t go immediately to the church,” she interjected. “They’d be welcome here for refreshments before the presentation.”

George nodded. “That’s kind of you, Jane. We’ll plan on it. Adam, you want to come with me while I try to round up the rest of the board?”

“Sure,” he said, rising as George did. “Terrific dinner as always, Jane.”

She smiled in thanks at the compliment and watched the men walk out together, already discussing whom to call on first.

The Knapps left next and the boarders shortly after. Jane remained at the table for a few minutes, telling herself she wasn’t disappointed. She was happy Adam would be helping to find homes for the orphans. She was happy he and George were becoming
good friends. She certainly didn’t need any help with the dishes.

She gathered a stack of plates and went to the kitchen, conscious of every clatter of china, every clink of the silverware. Her own footsteps seemed to echo though the rooms as she made trip after trip between the kitchen and the dining room.

How many times had she done this task alone, trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to disturb Grams, listening all the while for any sound from the tiny bedroom? The silence in that room was almost palpable.

This, she told herself, was the reason she had wanted Adam to stay. He filled her kitchen with talk and laughter. He kept her from thinking about her loss.

Maybe he had done her a favor tonight. She needed to think about her grandmother. Oddly, Jane had accepted Grams’s death but not her absence. With her gone, the burden of running the boardinghouse fell entirely to Jane. This she could accept; the last few months she had done all the work herself. But she had relied on Grams when it came to any decisions. Now she had to make those by herself, also.

Her first decision, she thought as she slid a stack of plates into the soapy water, would be what to do with the little room off the kitchen. She hadn’t set foot in it since they had wrapped Grams in a blanket and carried her away.

She swallowed a lump in her throat. Grams would want her to move on. Jane could convert the room for storage, but she didn’t have that much to store, and the kitchen was well appointed with cupboards.

She considered moving into the room herself, leaving her own room available to let. That would mean a little more money, and she needed every penny. The trip to Kansas City had used up all their savings. Making the payments on the house wasn’t going to be easy.

It made perfect sense, she decided as she scrubbed a platter clean. It also gave her something definite to do to improve her situation. The fact that there was already a vacant room upstairs kept her from feeling as optimistic as she might have otherwise.

And trading two meals for the rent of a horse hadn’t been a wise business decision. Of course, she could hope that Mrs. Knapp had enjoyed the evening away from her own kitchen enough to talk her husband into doing it again, this time for the usual fee.

Even if they never returned, Jane had a hard time regretting her excursion with Adam. It had been exciting and exhilarating. He took such pleasure in little things it was impossible not to enjoy them herself. In fact, she loved watching his face as he talked to the others around the table. She loved teasing him the way she teased the little boys that came to her back door to beg for cookies.

There was something special about the young
doctor, something that pulled her toward him, that made her want him to be with her every moment.

Her hands stilled on the plate she was drying. She was dangerously close to falling into the trap her grandmother had described so many times. Always before Jane had thought her mother was foolish to have fallen for her father’s sweet words. Foolish, as Grams had said, for trusting another with her whole life.

Suddenly Jane understood her mother and was terrified.

Adam lit a lamp and started another letter to Doreena. He had mailed a letter that morning and counted the days until he could expect to receive one in return. Tonight he had so much more to tell her.

He wrote about the horse the livery had provided, hoping it sounded humorous. It was always a little difficult to guess what Doreena would find funny. He wrote about the orphan train, and the part he would play in placing the children. As he wrote, he found himself emphasizing the importance of the board to the community and minimizing the orphans themselves.

He wanted to tell her how he felt when he thought about those little children abandoned by parents, whether by choice or by death. How it felt to yearn for someone, anyone to care about you, to say you were worth the food it took to keep you alive.

Somehow, he couldn’t imagine Doreena understanding. She had been loved and pampered since the day she was born. She put great store in family lineage, in ancestors that had arrived before the Revolution.

The thought that Jane would understand came to his mind. Jane had been orphaned, too, sometime along the way, or she wouldn’t have been so close to her grandmother. Jane wouldn’t be embarrassed by his desire to help these children find new parents.

He shook off the disloyal thoughts. Doreena was the one he should be sharing this with. He wasn’t giving her enough credit. She was an affectionate, loving girl. She would understand how hard it was to live without the very things that she found important.

Of course she would.

He took up the pen, glared at his hand until it quit trembling, and put his feelings down on paper for Doreena to read. If he thought of Jane now and then, as if it were she who listened, that was simply because he valued her friendship.

I
mmediately after the breakfast dishes were done, Jane started on the little room. She tore the bedding from the bed and put it all to soak in tubs of soapy water. She wasn’t going to think about how distant Adam had been at breakfast. She wasn’t concerned that he had work to attend to and couldn’t stay to help with the dishes.

She carried two chairs to her backyard and slung the narrow mattress over them to air in the sun. She hadn’t ever liked the thought of one of her dinner guests staying to help. Grams would never have allowed it. Grams would have had a thing or two to say about their friendship, besides.

Jane’s main weakness right now was loneliness. Had Adam become aware of it? Perhaps not or he might have stayed this morning to help with dishes and talk.

Which brought her back to the question that had plagued her all through the meal. Why was he so
distant? What had happened between the ride to the Tallon farm and breakfast this morning to change everything?

She stomped back into the house and into the little room. She flung open the windows and began gathering up the few personal items that had made their way in from the big bedroom at one time or another. She shouldn’t be worried that she had said something wrong. She shouldn’t be concerned that her realization of the night before might have caused
her
to treat him differently, and
his
behavior had merely been a reaction to it.

She
should
be glad that things had stopped before…

Before what? Before he took advantage of her? This was where Grams’s warnings were hard to associate with Adam. Jane couldn’t quite picture Adam seducing her and disappearing. He lived next door.

And there was Doreena. Yet Jane realized that Doreena was protection only if Adam had a conscience, which Grams said men didn’t, except sometimes when it came to business.

It had all made so much more sense before she actually fell in love.

When that thought surfaced Jane almost dropped the armload of pictures and books she had gathered. She couldn’t be in love. Could she?

If she was, it explained why she wasn’t thinking straight, and it meant she couldn’t trust her judgment. What she needed to do, she decided as she
hurried through the house toward the big bedroom, was put some distance between herself and Adam. This morning had been a good start.

She dumped her burden on the bed and sat down beside it. She also needed to keep her mind occupied. And she knew just the task. She had done very little spring housecleaning because of her grandmother’s illness, and had neglected the house almost entirely during the past month. She would start with the vacant room upstairs, then the parlor, dining room and kitchen. This room could be made ready to rent once the upstairs room was occupied.

First, her grandmother’s things needed to be moved into the attic. Surely there was an empty trunk up there. Jane lit a lamp, went upstairs and then took the steeper, narrow steps into the attic. She hadn’t been up here in this part of the house in a long time.

A few pieces of discarded furniture cluttered the room, decorated with a fine layer of dust and spiderwebs. Three trunks lined one wall, the trunks she and Grams had brought with them, filled with all they had owned.

She moved a wobbly chair aside and opened the first trunk. She had expected to find it empty, but a faintly familiar dress lay only inches below the top of the trunk. She pulled out the dress and held it up to the lamplight. It was a silver blue, and seeing its color clearly triggered her memory. It was her mother’s dress.

Now she remembered watching her grandmother
pack away her mother’s things, telling her that when she grew up, she might want to wear her mother’s dresses. The dresses had come west with them, then had been forgotten.

She would check the other trunks-at least one ought to be empty-but first she wanted to see more of her mother’s possessions.

Her mother had led such a short sad life, and Jane had hardly known her. She didn’t know what she hoped to learn, but she pulled the dresses out one by one and tried to remember her mother wearing them. None of them seemed like anything she would want to wear herself.

Beneath the dresses were a few personal itemsa hand mirror; a pair of shoes, the leather stiff and cracked; a Bible in similar condition; a set of blocks that had been her own. Jane smiled as she lifted one of the brightly painted pieces. They had been made from scrap lumber by one of the frequent boarders at Grams’s. Each side was part of a picture, making six different puzzles to be solved with the nine blocks.

There was also a small wooden jewelry box with a string tied around it. She lifted it out of the trunk and realized the string wasn’t holding it closed, but rather held a little note. She slipped the note out from under the string and recognized her grandmother’s handwriting.

“Hanna’s jewelry box. Key lost. Nothing of value inside.”

Nothing of value to anyone except the daughter
who was missing both women so much. Maybe there was a cheap broach or ring that she could treasure because it had been her mother’s. She carried it to the lamp and examined the tiny padlock and clasp. It shouldn’t take much to pry it loose.

When the dresses were repacked carefully in the trunk, she carried the jewelry box down to her kitchen. She was right; it took a simple butter knife to pry loose the tiny tacks that held the clasp to the wood.

Inside she found a packet of letters, tied with a faded satin ribbon. The top one was addressed to Mrs. William Sparks, her mother.

Jane left the packet in the box and closed the lid. Sometime soon she would read the letters. Sometime when her emotions weren’t quite so raw.

A young boy came to get Adam shortly after breakfast. The mother of the house was ill. She had been feeling poorly for some time and was intending to get into town to see him. That morning she had had barely enough strength to drag herself out of bed and had sent one of her boys to town.

Adam made note of the six solemn faces in the outer room before he slipped behind a curtain to see his patient. When he reached a diagnosis, he broke the news to her as gently as he could. He left her crying into her pillow and reported to the family. Only the youngest, a girl of about six, was happy to hear there was another child on the way.

Adam returned home to find Rose Finley waiting for him. “This is Rosetta,” the woman said.

“Another sore throat?” Adam asked.

Rosetta shook her head.

Adam directed her toward the examining room and, while she preceded him inside, he took a last look at the mother watching proudly from her seat across the room.

Adam closed the door and turned his attention to Rosetta. “You’re younger than Rosalie, aren’t you?”

“Only eleven months,” she said. “I’m taller, though.”

“I see. What seems to be the problem?”

The girl gave him what was probably supposed to be a sultry gaze. “I don’t know what’s wrong, Doctor,” she said. “That’s why I’m here to see you.”

“All right,” Adam said, not moving an inch farther into the room. “Describe your symptoms.”

“Well, let’s see.” She began strolling around, running a delicate finger over this and that. “I feel.lethargic sometimes and nothing can hold my interest. Other times I feel filled with nervous energy.” She brought her hands together at her breast. “It’s simply impossible to sit still and do my stitching or to concentrate on a book. Do you know what I mean?”

“Have you tried acting?”

“What?”

“Never mind. Is there more?”

She took a deep breath. “Well. I lose my temper at my sisters, which I never used to do.”

Sisters, plural?
Oh, wonderful.

“Really, I’m a very even-tempered girl, but lately their childish arguments and their silly games just irritate me. Mother says I’m not myself. Do you think I’m ill?”

“No, I think you’re young.”

She gave him a perturbed scowl.

“I mean, everything you’ve described is normal for a girl your age.”

She took a couple of predatory steps toward him, and he leaned against the door. “You mean a girl who is becoming a woman?”

“Uh, Miss Finley…”

“Can we talk more about that? My becoming a woman, I mean.”

“I don’t think so. Your father’s the one you should talk to.” Adam had the door open before she could protest. He assured the mother that the daughter was fine, but charged her a dollar anyway, hoping to discourage her from throwing any more daughters at him.

He saw the ladies to the door and stepped out onto his porch to watch them stroll down the street, their heads together in whispered conversation. He turned to look toward the boardinghouse before he went back inside.

He felt guilty about not staying to help this morning. He had been able to convince himself that there was nothing inappropriate about his feelings for Jane
until he had written to Doreena last night. Then it had occurred to him that his feelings for Doreena seemed to be changing, and his relationship with Jane was probably to blame.

If he hadn’t spent so much time with Jane, he ‘wouldn’t be thinking that Doreena’s conversation always centered on herself, that her laugh was not quite natural and that she was. always aware of someone watching her, and acted accordingly.

He loved Doreena. He had told her so. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She had agreed to marry him in spite of her parents’ misgivings. He had no intentions of betraying her.

And wasn’t comparing her to Jane a form of betrayal? It had to stop. In last night’s letter he had asked Doreena to join him—begged her, actually, as Jane had suggested. What he should do, he decided, was picture Doreena at his side every moment he was with Jane.

With that new theory to test, he walked to the boardinghouse and up the steps. It would be easier to picture Doreena here than in his own house, anyway.

Yes, Doreena would like this house, he thought as he came through the front door. She would like the long open stairway. He could imagine her making a graceful descent as guests waited in the parlor below.

At that moment Jane, her arms wrapped around a huge bundle of bedding, started down the stairs. She was peering around her burden when she saw him
and jumped. Afraid she was about to lose her balance, Adam dashed up the steps to catch her. With an arm around her waist he helped her to the bottom.

“Thanks.” She sounded slightly breathless. She had taken more of a scare than he’d realized.

“You ought to throw the bedding over the railing instead of trying to carry it down the stairs.”

“I know,” she said, walking toward the kitchen. “I forgot to move the hall table, though, and I was afraid of knocking over the vase.”

Adam followed her, noting the delicate vase of violets as he went by. Would Doreena have thought of the vase? He had trouble picturing her carrying bedding at all. Which wasn’t fair. Doreena wasn’t going to be running a boardinghouse, he reminded himself.

“Did I see Rose and Rosetta leave your house a moment ago?” Jane asked over her shoulder.

“That’s right,” he said, following her through her kitchen and into the backyard. Jane dropped the bedding on the ground and separated a sheet, which she shoved into a huge tub of soapy water. More snowwhite sheets snapped in the breeze behind her.

“Did Rosetta catch something from Rosalie?”

“Not exactly.” He tried to imagine Doreena standing beside him watching Jane do her laundry. It wasn’t easy.

“Not exactly?” Jane straightened and started the sheet through a ringer attached to the tub.

He stepped forward to turn the crank. He couldn’t stand by and watch her do it all herself. “Watch
your fingers. No, actually, neither girl has anything catching. Just a mother a little overanxious to see them married.”

When Jane looked up, she was chewing on her lip.

“Go ahead and laugh. I would, too, if they didn’t scare me so much.” Once he heard her laugh he couldn’t stop his own. “How many more are there, anyway?”

“Just one. She might be able to give Nedra and Naomi some serious competition.”

“Very funny.”

She dropped the sheet into a tub of clear water. “I thought so,” she said. “Her name’s Rosemary and I guarantee you’ll like her.”

Adam groaned. This was a conversation he was supposed to imagine Doreena listening to? Jane continued to wash sheets and pillowcases and he continued to help where he could, becoming more and more conscious that this was not what he should be doing.

It wasn’t the laundry that bothered him. He’d rather be helping with someone else’s work than doing nothing. What he shouldn’t be doing was enjoying Jane’s company. He needed to put Doreena firmly between them and keep her there.

“Doreena will really love your house,” he said, looking up at the high windows and steep roof. Even from the backyard it was pretty.

“Thanks,” she said. “Grams fell in love with it the first time she saw it”

“Not you?”

Jane shook her head. “I wanted to go home.”

“Home was better than this?”

She laughed. “No. Home was a falling-down shack in the worst part of town. We took in boarders there, too, to make ends meet. But home was familiar.”

“Well, Doreena will be jealous,” he said, coming back to his point. “She’s used to better than the little house I’m renting.”

Jane fished a sheet out of the rinse water and sent it through the ringer again. “She won’t care about the house,” she said, smiling at him as she caught the wet sheet in the basket.

Adam followed her to the clothesline and helped her spread the sheet over it. The wire sagged from the weight, making it possible for him to see Jane over it. “What makes you think she won’t care about the house?”

“She won’t if she loves you.”

Her eyes had locked with his, and he was struck by how pretty she was, with her big brown eyes so warm, her lips parted in a gentle smile. Gradually her eyes widened and the smile faded. He was touched by how vulnerable she looked in the instant before she turned away.

At that same instant he wanted to swear. Doreena wasn’t between them as firmly as he had hoped, even when they were talking about her. But the sheet was. It flipped up and slapped at him, making him back away. He watched Jane from a distance
for a moment, feeling a need to apologize but unsure for what.