by Lynn Morris
****
“And so, Mr. Duvall, you and Locke have devised a means of strengthening the structure of Locke’s Day Dream with iron? How can one combine the use of new iron with old wood?” Bain asked, his brow furrowed.
“We make the hanging knees of iron, completely replacing the wooden ones,” Richard explained. “The secret is the bracket, you see. You must devise the brackets so that they are attached to still-healthy wood.”
As often happened in mixed company, the men had drifted to one part of the room and the women to the other. Cheney and Irene watched the gentlemen with affection. They were gathered at the door of the parlor, and Jauncy was—amusingly—dressing them. Even as Richard spoke so knowledgeably about such masculine things as iron and ships and braces and brackets, Jauncy was helping him into his overcoat and briskly brushing his shoulders and handing him his gloves and hat and walking stick. Richard never missed a word. Then Jauncy retrieved Bain’s articles, held up his coat, which Bain slipped into, talking all the time, and Jauncy repeated the treatment before going on to the next set of outerwear, the next oblivious gentleman.
“Jauncy is absolutely priceless,” Irene observed to the ladies gathered around. “If anyone ever thought that my son-in-law may be inexperienced in retaining servants, I offer Mr. Phinehas Beddoes Jauncy as proof of Shiloh’s ingenuity.”
“How did he find him?” Miss Wilcott asked curiously. “I don’t believe I’ve heard Jauncy’s story.”
“Oh, he just sort of popped up,” Cheney said, quoting Shiloh mischievously. “Actually, Shiloh could hardly have missed him. Jane Anne, Laura’s cloak is an absolute dream. Here, may I help you?” The Blues’ daughter, Laura, was mentally handicapped, and though she was now ten years old, she only weighed twenty pounds, and was simply a lap baby. Jane Anne was having some difficulty putting Laura’s new cloak—a long velvet one with a hood trimmed in rabbit fur—around her. Cheney helped hold Laura while Jane Anne draped it around her. “Mrs. Buchanan gave Laura this for Christmas, and I must admit it’s so nice to actually dress her, instead of swaddling her in blankets like a baby,” Jane Anne said. “Doesn’t she look so pretty?”
The ladies all agreed, for the child did look pretty, with her honey gold hair and big blue eyes.
They were readying themselves and the children to go out to the park for the band concert and the fireworks. It was a cold night but brilliantly clear, and there was no cruel wind. Mrs. Barentine dressed Dart and her son Alex in their woolen jackets and caps. Laura and Lisette were securely wrapped up in their carriages, and Fiona helped Solange with her brand-new woolen mantle with the tasseled tie and hood. The women managed to get their own cloaks and gloves and hats on, and Victoria observed mischievously, “Isn’t it amazing how helpless men are? Look at them. I swear, if Jauncy wasn’t making them wear their coats and mittens, they’d wander out in the cold without them, poor little lost kittens. Oh, dear, Solange, perhaps we’d better not read quite so much Mother Goose. I’m beginning to sound just like her.”
****
Although it was cold, the Irons-Winslow party lingered until the very last firecracker. By the time they returned to the town house and went upstairs to the library, it was already eleven o’clock.
Jauncy and Sketes had, again, been extremely busy while the party was in the park. They had set up the long library table as a buffet. There were sandwiches, cold meats, cheeses, crackers, the fruits that Locke’s Day Dream had so providentially brought in, hot punch, cocoa, tea, coffee, sparkling water, lemonade, and a big silver bowl of wassail that was so fragrant with spices it seemed to be more for the scent than for the beverage.
Earlier that day Shiloh and Jauncy had rolled up the rugs and stored them and polished the hardwood floors. In one corner of the room they had set up the musicians’ four straight chairs and made room for their instruments and music stands. The room was the largest in the house, and with the furniture either stored or pushed against the walls, there was plenty of room for dancing.
Once everyone had had at least one hot beverage and had, as it were, settled in, Shiloh clapped his hands and announced, “My wife and I would like to thank you all for joining us tonight, and we ask that everyone please join us in beginning the dance with the quadrille!” This was the dance that opened even royal balls, a stately, formal, sedate choreography that was one of the oldest formal dances known.
Cheney and Shiloh, leading the group, were doing exceedingly well, as they were graceful dancers and in particular danced well with each other. Unfortunately, Sean and Shannon decided that this would be a fine time to perform their favorite greetings. Sean head-butted Shiloh’s knees, and Shannon leaned on Cheney’s legs. This spoiled the beautiful symmetry of the dance somewhat, but it only increased the merriment. Sean and Shannon were incorporated into the remainder of the dance by Cheney and Shiloh, laughing, with hands joined, simply threading their way around with the dogs shuffling with them.
Next came a fast, fun polka, then a lovely waltz, an energetic allemande, and then another waltz.
Bain bowed to his partner, Miss Wilcott, as they finished the allemande, then turned and headed straight for Fiona. She was sitting in the bay window with Solange, half hidden in the depths of the window seat. When she saw Bain coming toward her, her breath caught, her cheeks stung, and her heart began beating its foolish fast skip. She wanted to avert her gaze, but as if she were a pinned butterfly, she struggled but couldn’t move.
Solange, with her poignant ultrasensitivity to adults’ moods, cringed slightly as Bain approached, and she clung to Fiona’s hand.
Bain’s eyes flickered when he saw the child flinch. He stopped a few feet away from the seat, so as not to loom over them threateningly. “Miss Solange, I believe? We have not been properly introduced, but perhaps Miss Keane would do me the honor now.”
Fiona managed to sound much calmer than she felt. “Mr. Bain Winslow, may I present to you Miss Solange Fortier. She has only lately come to Mr. and Mrs. Devlin Buchanan’s household, and we are just today making fast friends. Solange, may I present to you Mr. Bain Winslow. He is Mr. Shiloh’s cousin.”
“And is he your fast friend too, Fiona?” Solange asked shyly, in her manner of repeating English phrases.
Fiona blushed painfully again, while Bain’s wide full mouth twitched with amusement at her confusion.
“I cannot answer for Miss Keane, Miss Solange, but for my part, Miss Fiona is my fast friend. I hope.”
“Yes—I—Yes,” Fiona finally managed. “Yes, Solange, we are friends. And yes, Mr. Winslow, I should like to think that we are fast friends.”
“Good,” he said briskly. “Because I believe that fast friends should dance the waltz. It should be a rule. Miss Solange, I should very much like to ask Miss Keane for this dance, so may I escort you to another friend so that you won’t be left alone and lonely in this window seat?”
Bain was an extremely charming man when he wished to be, and even Solange responded to it in her little girl way. “Would you? May I hold your arm, as the ladies do?”
“Why, of course,” Bain said gravely, bowing and offering his arm. She hopped down and took it. It took some clever bending to accomplish it gracefully, but Bain took Solange over to Victoria, who was sitting out the waltz and drinking punch with Mrs. Barentine.
He returned to Fiona, much too quickly, it seemed to her. He bowed, then extended his hand without a word, merely watching her in that coolly amused manner that upset her so terribly. She didn’t know what to do except to take his hand and dance.
Her thoughts were whirling so that they made no common thread of sense. They were like small bits of debris caught in a strong whirlwind: He never touched me except my hair…fixed my hair…So warm, too warm in here…Am I dizzy? His hand, his touch…
Bain watched her face, her blazing eyes darting from his face to fall away in confusion, the tension in her hands, the stiffness of her back as his hand gently rested on it. A glint of cold amusement lit his eye
s for a few short moments, but then his hard expression softened, and he said calmly, “Hello, Fiona. It’s so good to see you again.”
She took a deep breath and managed to look up at him. “H-hello, Mr. Winslow.”
“I must deliver a message from Sweet before I forget. He sends his warmest, most respectful regards and hopes that you will always know his immense gratitude toward you for nursing him through his illness.”
Fiona managed a smile that was somewhat breathless but genuine. “Mr. Sweet never said all of that,” she asserted. “Did he?”
“No, I lied,” Bain said lightly. “But it was in a good cause. What he actually did was shove a package into my hand and mumble, ‘Give this to Miss Fiona and tell her my thanks.’ So that is what I did.”
“He sent a gift?” Fiona asked with surprise. “How very thoughtful of him! I shall certainly write him my sincerest thanks.”
“Mm, better wait and see what it is first,” Bain said gravely. “It may be a pretty rock or a big clamshell or a bottle of bay rum men’s cologne, knowing Sweet.”
“It won’t matter,” Fiona said. “I will be grateful anyway, because Mr. Sweet is a sincere and honest man.”
“So he is,” Bain agreed carelessly. “But I don’t want to talk about old Sweet. How are you? How are you faring with Dr. Duvall and my cousin?”
As always, when Bain chose to be personable, he could make even the shyest companion feel comfortable. By the end of the waltz Fiona was laughing and talking with remarkable ease. He offered her his arm and said, “Will you have some refreshment, Miss Keane? I can personally vouch for the hot punch. It’s absolutely delicious. I never would have imagined that a winter punch would be worth the bowl it’s in without a good shot of spirits. Shall I spike it, do you think, and see if it improves the taste?”
Fiona’s eyes grew huge and shocked, “Oh, Mr. Winslow, please don’t do any such—” Suddenly she frowned darkly. “You were just teasing me, sir.”
His glance was angelic.
“Weren’t you?” she asked tenuously.
He smiled.
“Oh! Mr. Winslow, you really shouldn’t tease a girl like me!” Fiona said, ducking her head with embarrassment.
“Why not?” he asked lightly. “You’re not the kind of girl to have the vapors over a bit of teasing. Now, here is your punch, unspiked, and please direct me to where you should like to sit now. I hate to see you shrinking back in the shadows of the window seat again.”
Fiona managed a smile, though she was dismayed that evidently her time with Bain was ending. “I’ll sit with Mrs. Barentine, thank you.”
Shiloh loomed up beside them, his sculpted features hardened as he said to Bain, “If you would excuse us, Fiona, I need to speak to my cousin for a moment.”
“Of…of course.” Fiona fled.
Bain sighed theatrically, set his cup of punch down, and went out into the stairwell, followed by Shiloh. Bain went down a couple of steps to put some distance between them and the laughter and loud music coming from the library, then he turned, leaned with arms crossed against the wall, and looked up at Shiloh mutinously.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Shiloh growled.
“I knew you would do this,” Bain said tensely. “And you’re wrong to act like this, Locke. I wasn’t doing anything to that girl.”
“Don’t call her ‘that girl.’ It’s disrespectful, and it shows me that you were doing something wrong.”
Bain looked uncomfortably surprised for a moment, and then he said with obvious difficulty, “Very well. It never occurred to me how that phrase sounds. But I was not doing anything at all to the lady. I never have.”
Now Shiloh was nonplussed. “Then…then why were you dancing with her? And talking to her?”
“Because I wanted to dance with her and talk to her,” he answered very slowly, as if he were speaking to an inattentive child. “I didn’t do anything wrong, Locke.”
Shiloh frowned. “She—Fiona’s innocent, you know, and she doesn’t know how to play the games that some other women—I mean, ladies—er—”
One of Bain’s eyebrows arched high. It was a curious Winslow trait that Shiloh, too, evidenced sometimes. “I understand what you’re trying to do, Locke. You want to defend her from a dastardly ne’er-do-well like me. You can see that she’s infatuated with me, but you don’t want to say such a thing about a lady. It would be like gossiping about her. Dear, dear, you are in a mortal coil, aren’t you, Cousin?”
Shiloh glared at him, then suddenly they both grinned and then chuckled, shaking their heads. Though they looked nothing at all alike physically, and certainly their personalities, their behavior, their gestures, their entire deportment could not have been more different, there was still some odd similarity between them. They had the same muted manner of showing mild amusement. Perhaps it was because their mouths curled in the same manner, or maybe it was the arched eyebrow, or perhaps it was a similarity in the timbre of their voices. They were, of course, completely unaware that they shared any similarities at all.
“Sweet sent her a gift,” Bain continued, “and he often mentions her, Locke. After all, she was a very important part of our lives back then. Sweet thinks—and I must say I agree with him—that she saved his life. So I just wanted to talk to her and dance with her. She’s a pretty and nice lady.”
Shiloh nodded with agreement, but his eyes narrowed somewhat. “You do understand that she is vulnerable, Bain, and she is in my household, under my protection. I’m not going to let anyone—particularly you—hurt her.”
Bain sighed with exasperation. “Why is it that every conversation we have turns into a fight? We might be an old married couple!”
They glared at each other again and then burst into laughter. Finally Shiloh said, “Okay, we’re grown mature men. We can do this over again like grown-ups. Hello, Cousin, I’m glad to see you. I hope you will be staying awhile this time.”
He stuck out his hand.
Bain grasped it, shook it, and said, “Hello, Cousin. It’s a pleasure to see you again. Perhaps I will stay awhile this time, Locke. Perhaps I will.”
Gilbert Morris & Lynn Morris are a father/daughter writing team who combine Gilbert’s strength of great story plots and adventure with Lynn’s research skills and character development. Together they form a powerful duo!
Lynn has also written a solo novel, The Balcony, in the PORTRAITS contemporary romance series with Bethany House. She lives in Alabama.
BOOKS BY GILBERT MORRIS
THE HOUSE OF WINSLOW SERIES
1. The Honorable Imposter
2. The Captive Bride
3. The Indentured Heart
4. The Gentle Rebel
5. The Saintly Buccaneer
6. The Holy Warrior
7. The Reluctant Bridegroom
8. The Last Confederate
9. The Dixie Widow
10. The Wounded Yankee
11. The Union Belle
12. The Final Adversary
13. The Crossed Sabres
14. The Valiant Gunman
15. The Gallant Outlaw
16. The Jeweled Spur
17. The Yukon Queen
18. The Rough Rider
19. The Iron Lady
20. The Silver Star
21. The Shadow Portrait
22. The White Hunter
23. The Flying Cavalier
24. The Glorious Prodigal
25. The Amazon Quest
26. The Golden Angel
27. The Heavenly Fugitive
28. The Fiery Ring
29. The Pilgrim Song
30. The Beloved Enemy
31. The Shining Badge
32. The Royal Handmaid
33. The Silent Harp
34. The Virtuous Woman
35. The Gypsy Moon
36. The Unlikely Allies
37. The High Calling
38. The Hesitant Hero
39. The Widow’s Choice
/> 40. The White Knight
CHENEY DUVALL, M.D.[*]
1. The Stars for a Light
2. Shadow of the Mountains
3. A City Not Forsaken
4. Toward the Sunrising
5. Secret Place of Thunder
6. In the Twilight, in the Evening
7. Island of the Innocent
8. Driven With the Wind
CHENEY AND SHILOH: THE INHERITANCE[*]
1. Where Two Seas Met
2. The Moon by Night
3. There Is a Season
THE SPIRIT OF APPALACHIA[**]
1. Over the Misty Mountains
2. Beyond the Quiet Hills
3. Among the King’s Soldiers
4. Beneath the Mockingbird’s Wings
5. Around the River’s Bend
LIONS OF JUDAH
1. Heart of a Lion
2. No Woman So Fair
3. The Gate of Heaven
4. Till Shiloh Comes
5. By Way of the Wilderness
6. Daughter of Deliverance
*with Lynn Morris **with Aaron McCarver
Don’t Miss
CHENEY & SHILOH: THE INHERITANCE
Book Three
There Is a Season
It had been a brutal winter in New York City. St. Luke the Physician Hospital had treated countless cases of the three scourges of the bleak season: frostbite, catarrh, and influenza. One of the victims of influenza was Irene Duvall, Cheney’s mother; she had contracted the flu twice and now, at the end of February, had suffered a relapse. And in the unforgiving freezing cold spells that lasted for days, sometimes weeks, Richard Duvall suffered from rheumatism in his hip from his old wound. Once again he limped and leaned heavily on a cane. Cheney, Devlin Buchanan, and Cleve Batson had all worked ceaselessly day and night since the loss of Dr. Marcus Pettijohn. Finally, after interviewing almost one hundred physicians, they did engage two staff physicians for the hospital. Even the tireless, driven Devlin Buchanan admitted that he would like a short vacation.
Sangria House seemed like an answer to prayer. Victoria Buchanan had been considering purchasing a winter home in Florida. Acquaintances from New York who had moved to St. Augustine ten years before were now selling their estate, a small citrus plantation, and had contacted Victoria to invite her to bring a party and stay as long as she liked while she considered the purchase. Cheney, Shiloh, and Dev, concerned for Richard and Irene Duvall’s health, thought that it was a good idea for the three families to spend the rest of the winter in Florida.
