by Merry Farmer
“It is so!” she protested. “This is Haskell, and in Haskell we look out for each other.”
Rupert glanced sideways to the main desk, only to find Gunn grinning and failing to pretend he wasn’t paying attention.
“I appreciate the sentiment,” Rupert said, loud enough for both of them to hear. “But there are things about this situation that even you don’t know.”
Gunn’s grin screamed “I doubt it.”
Mrs. Faraday stomped her foot and planted her hands on her hips. “I can’t let you break two hearts and ruin two lives. Just like I can’t accept anything that will give Rex Bonneville the idea that he can get away with mischief like this. He’s been a thorn in my father’s side for years now.”
Rupert’s lips twitched into something close to a grin. Of course there was another level to the entire thing that he hadn’t considered. He believed that these people all cared deeply for Bonnie, but it made sense that they would want to see Bonneville thwarted too.
Mrs. Faraday switched tactics, gripping Rupert’s arm again with a plaintive look. “Please,” she begged him. “Surely this contract with my father will make a difference. Please try talking to Bonnie one more time. You can work things out, I just know it.”
Rupert stared at her. Had she been the one to convince her father to offer him so much money? For Bonnie’s sake?
“I tell you, it’s a lost cause,” he argued.
“Love is never a lost cause,” she replied in indignation. “It’s just like a man to think so.”
There was no way for Rupert to defend himself on that count.
She switched back to pleading. “Please, at least go over to the church and say goodbye to Bonnie.”
“The church?”
“Yes. She’s over there decorating for the wedding tomorrow.”
Rupert’s frown darkened.
“That wedding doesn’t have to take place,” Mrs. Faraday insisted, practically hugging his arm now. “You can stop it. All you need to do is work things out, assure Bonnie that you support her efforts with her girls and can help finance it.”
“There’s more going on than just the money.” It was the closest Rupert was willing to come to betraying Bonnie’s secrets.
“There’s always a solution to every problem. Love can always save the day.”
Rupert swallowed, willing himself to have patience with this determined woman. Another faint train whistle sounded. Time was ticking away. He could either stand there and let Mrs. Faraday plead with him—and Mr. Gunn stare disapprovingly at him—or he could go over to the church and show the woman that her efforts were for naught.
“All right.” He sighed. “I’ll go with you to the church. I’ll say goodbye to Bonnie. But that’s it.”
“I knew you’d see it my way.” Mrs. Faraday beamed as if he’d agreed to stay in Haskell and chain himself to Bonnie’s side. She grabbed his hand and rushed him toward the door. “I just know everything will work out.”
“What do you think of the white chrysanthemums paired with the pink ribbon?” Honoria asked Bonnie as they worked at a table set up near the back of the church.
The air was rich with the scent of autumnal flowers, a pleasant buzz of activity filled the room as a handful of Bonnie’s girls and the Bonneville sisters decorated, and morning sunlight streamed through the stained-glass windows, painting the chapel with bright colors. But Bonnie saw none of it, didn’t hear Honoria’s question. She stood with a roll of ribbon in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other, staring at nothing.
“I like the red ribbon better,” Pearl answered Honoria’s question from Bonnie’s other side. “It’s more daring, more irreverent.”
“We’re in a church, you stupid cow,” Melinda sneered from one of the windows a few yards away. “Things are supposed to be reverent.”
“Definitely the red, then.” Pearl winked at Honoria. The two burst into giggles.
“Ugh! I’m so sick of this!” Melinda threw a handful of flowers she was attempting to arrange in the windowsill to the floor and stomped. Honoria and Pearl blinked at her. Some of Bonnie’s other girls straightened in indignation. Bebe glanced up from where she was making bunting at the back of the church.
Vivian, of course, joined right in. “It’s so degrading! To be forced to labor side-by-side with harlots and cheap women!”
“It’s a disgrace that Rev. Pickering would let dirty, soiled women into the church in the first place,” Melinda ranted on.
“Who are you calling dirty, cerdo asqueroso?” Domenica hollered back from across the room, eyes flaring.
“She called me a name!” Vivian bellowed. “I just know she did.”
“I refuse to work in these conditions,” Melinda stomped again.
“Go ahead and leave, then.” Della shrugged. “That’ll mean I can use more of these in the decorations.” She held up a thick cat-tail plant that bore a distinct resemblance to something else entirely and giggled. The girls giggled along with her.
“Oh, that’s vile.” Melinda grimaced, averting her eyes. “That’s simply foul.”
“Disgusting.” Vivian sniffed. “Isn’t it disgusting, Bebe?”
“What?” Bebe lifted her head timidly from her sewing, eyes wide and wary. She saw Della holding the cat-tail and said, “Oh. Oh, yes. Disgusting,” before quickly shrinking in on herself and returning to work.
Vivian snorted. “You’re completely useless.”
“Idiot,” Melinda added.
Bebe blushed, but was quickly forgotten.
“Oh, it’s so unfair,” Vivian bellowed, then sank dramatically onto one of the pews, the back of her hand pressed to her forehead. “How can I possibly be expected to work alongside these filthy creatures? How can I be expected to work at all in my condition?”
“I still don’t understand how she can be with child at all, what with the speed at which Rance Bonneville fires his pistol,” Pearl murmured.
She wasn’t quiet enough that Honoria and several of the girls working nearby didn’t hear her. The girls laughed. Honoria had the good manners to flush and purse her lips in embarrassment. Vivian heard enough to burst into wails.
“Enough.” Bonnie finally snapped out of her miserable thoughts and took interest in the scene around her. “Don’t go making things worse, Pearl,” she scolded her friend, then leaned closer to add, “Vivian has to live with the man.”
“Oh, you’re right.” Pearl made a face as though she’d tasted something sour, then turned to Vivian. “I’m very sorry for my crude comment, Mrs. Bonneville.”
Vivian curled her lip and muttered, “Disgusting harlot,” before laying back on the pew’s bench, arm draped over her face.
There was a clatter at the door, then Hubert Strong stumbled into the room wearing his porter uniform. “This box of daisies just came in on the train. Pop said I should run them right over.” He spoke to the room at large, but looked at Bebe, a goofy grin spreading across his face.
Bebe glanced up from sewing bunting and turned an even deeper shade of pink. She burst into shy smiles and giggles. Hubert giggled right back at her.
“Bebe! Stop it this instant!” Melinda shrieked from across the room.
Bebe’s bashful good spirits died in an instant, and she slumped over her sewing again. Hubert glared as though he wanted to throw the box of daisies straight at Melinda’s face.
“Stupid cow,” Vivian muttered from her pew.
Bonnie sighed, rubbing her temples and the headache that was forming behind her eyes. She put down her ribbon and scissors and marched across the church to take the box. “Thanks, Hubert. Much appreciated.”
“No problem, Miss Bonnie.” He glanced anxiously to Bebe—whose shoulders now shook with silent tears. “Uh, do you need me to, um, maybe stick around and help for a while? Pop can spare me. He’s trying to give me more responsibility, now that I’m graduated and all.” His gaze darted back to Bebe.
Bonnie’s heart ached for the young couple. They’d b
een silently sweet on each other for months now. But they were young, and with Bebe a Bonneville and Hubert the son of the stationmaster, they had a hard road ahead of them if they were ever going to do more than stare longingly at each other across the room.
“I think Bebe needed a bit more thread for that bunting she’s making,” Bonnie said. Bebe’s head instantly popped up, her watery eyes filling with surprise. “Maybe you could walk her over to Kline’s Mercantile to pick out some more?”
“Oh, yes.” Bebe popped up from her chair.
“Yes, ma’am.” Hubert grinned like a fool.
“What?” Melinda snapped. “No! That’s…that’s unacceptable. Bebe! Stay here!”
“Go,” Bonnie told them in a low voice, making scooting gestures. “I’ll deal with her.”
“Thank you,” Bebe whispered, then promptly fled the church, Hubert right behind her. Bonnie thought she saw him take her hand just before the door shut.
“She’s my sister,” Melinda barked, marching down the aisle to stand toe-to-toe with Bonnie. “You can’t go telling her what do to like that.”
“Well, in just over twenty-four hours, you’ll all be my daughters,” Bonnie fired back, in no mood to be trifled with. “So you’d all better learn to mind your mama.”
Melinda shrieked in offense. She whipped around and stomped to Vivian’s pew. “Did you hear the way she spoke to me?”
Vivian just groaned. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Fortunately, Vivian wasn’t sick. And Melinda did nothing. She slunk back to her flower arranging, unable to do anything but send bitter scowls to Bonnie’s girls as they laughed at her. Bonnie, in turn, sent them scolding looks. They were making matters worse. No one wanted to be in this situation. There was enough enmity in the room to sink a small ship. Della started making rude gestures with her cat-tails when George came out of his office to check on the progress of the decorations. Bonnie didn’t even know where she had gotten the plants. They didn’t grow in the high desert.
She was on her way across the room to snatch them all out of Della’s hands and stomp on them when the church door opened again.
“What now?” she barked, losing all patience.
It was just her luck that Lucy came skipping through the door, dragging a glum and restless Rupert behind her.
“Lucy. How nice of you to join us.” George rushed off of the chancel and headed to where Bonnie stood scowling at the new arrivals. “Rupert, it’s good to see you.”
George tried to shake Rupert’s hand, but he didn’t seem to be in any better mood than Bonnie. “George,” he mumbled, keeping his hands to himself.
The four of them stumbled into an awkward stand-off. Lucy was nearly beside herself with nervous energy, her smile too wide as she glanced from Rupert to Bonnie. It was all Bonnie could do not to roll her eyes. Her friend meant well, but obviously she’d put Rupert up to seeing her. George bristled with nerves, as if he wanted to leap in and do something to make everything better as well.
Bonnie met Rupert’s eyes. At least the two of them understood each other, even if no one else understood them. All the apology she needed was vivid in his eyes. All the love she wished she could give him was equally apparent in her own.
And there wasn’t a single thing either of them could do about it.
The jolt of a shrill train whistle punctured the silence.
“I really need to go.” Rupert nodded to her, then turned to leave.
“Wait!” Lucy and George shouted at the same time. They were so loud that the girls all stopped their decorating work to look at them, and even Vivian sat bolt-upright in her pew.
“That’s the only train to Everland today,” Rupert told Lucy as if they’d been having a discussion about that fact for a while. “If I miss it, I can’t go home until tomorrow. And I need to go home.”
He glanced to Bonnie. She nodded subtly. She understood his need to flee, to go back to his life, to get over the mess she’d created by being unable to let him go in her heart. She didn’t blame him for running one bit.
“But you haven’t said goodbye to Bonnie,” Lucy argued. “At least not properly.”
“We’ve said all the goodbyes we need to,” Bonnie told her.
“But…” Lucy wrung her hands, unable to think of another argument fast enough.
George jumped in to help. “You’ll never catch the train if the whistle is already blowing.”
“Yes!” Lucy latched on to his reasoning. “I doubt the train is just arriving now, which means the whistle is blowing because it’s ready to leave.”
“She’s right.” Pearl dodged through the pews to join them. “Hubert was in here earlier delivering some daisies that came in on the train. So the whistle must mean it’s heading out.”
“Shoot. It’s early then.” Rupert nodded to George, then Lucy and Pearl, then sent Bonnie a long, regret-filled look before turning to leave.
“You can’t just let him walk out,” Lucy fretted.
“I can and I will.” Bonnie walked away, heading back to the table where Honoria had stopped arranging flowers.
Lucy, George, and Pearl continued to stand, mouths agape, in the center of the aisle. Honoria sent Bonnie a stern look as she returned to the table and picked up her ribbon and scissors, no idea what to do with them.
“You could have said goodbye to him and wished him well at the very least,” Honoria said. “After all he went through to come here and see you.”
Everyone else’s scolding felt like just that, scolding. Honoria’s admonition hit Bonnie more like the well-meaning advice it was likely intended to be. If anyone knew about going through a lot of trouble for love, it was Honoria.
Bonnie threw down her ribbon and scissors. “Oh, all right.” She pivoted on the balls of her feet and marched around the edge of the pews to the back door, sending George, Lucy, and Pearl a look warning them not to get too excited as she went.
“Rupert!” she called as she exited the church and hurried up the path to where he had just turned onto the road.
Rupert stopped and waited for her. His scowl had deepened and his hands were in his pockets. “I did, in fact, miss the train.” He nodded to where the train was slowly snaking its way past the small meadow on the other side of the church.
“I’m sorry.” She stopped a few yards away from him. Behind her, she was aware of several faces appearing in the church’s windows on the other side of the stained-glass. “This is not how I intended any of this to turn out.”
“Me neither.”
She crossed her arms, wishing she could think of something to make it all better. The longer the silence stretched between them, the more hopeless she felt about things. It was like her heart was slowly melting in the desert sun.
“You know why I have to do this now.” It wasn’t a question, but her brow rose as if it was.
Rupert nodded. “I admire you, Bonnie. It takes a special woman to put aside her own concerns to fight for others the way you do. I’m not sure I could do the same.”
“You could,” she assured him. “If you cared about someone the way I care about my girls, if you knew the kind of life they have and the kind of life they could have…” She took a breath. “You’re a good person too. You’d make the sacrifice.”
A sad smile filled his eyes. He stepped forward and took her hand, then said in a hoarse voice, “I just did.”
He hesitated for a moment only, then squeezed her hand harder, stepped closer. He leaned toward her, his lips brushing hers for a heartbeat before he closed his eyes and kissed her. It was a soft kiss, but it pierced Bonnie to her soul. Tears stung at her eyes, pouring bitterness into her broken heart. She wanted to pull Rupert into her arms, kiss him harder. She wanted to collapse against him and beg him to never leave her.
She couldn’t.
When Rupert swayed back, breaking her kiss, he whispered, “Goodbye, Bonnie.”
She had to swallow several times, blinking futilely to hold back her tea
rs. “Goodbye, Rupert. You know I love you.”
Rupert nodded, taking another step back. Their hands were still joined, but it was at arm’s length. “I love you too,” he echoed, then dropped her hand and walked away.
Lucy and Pearl gasped in unison as they watched Rupert and Bonnie kiss. Pearl clutched a hand to her heart, her own tears beginning to flow.
“They love each other so much,” she sniffled.
“They do,” George agreed, watching from one window down, Domenica standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him.
“So why is he walking away?” Della lamented.
“He can’t.” Lucy pushed away from the window, huffing in hopeless misery. “He just can’t. Those two were meant to be together.”
“Well, she certainly wasn’t meant for my father,” Vivian surprised them all by declaring from her pew.
It was such a shock to have the Bonneville sisters in agreement with everyone else that no one knew what to say for a moment.
Of all people, Melinda was the first to speak. She crossed her arms and sniffed. “You all aren’t seriously going to let this wedding happen, are you?”
Lucy glanced to Pearl. Pearl turned to Domenica. Domenica looked straight at George. “Well? Are we, padre?”
George stepped away from the window, his expression utterly serious. “No, we’re not.” The girls left their decorations to shuffle closer to him. Even Vivian got up from her pew to join them. “And I think I might just know how we can stop it.”
Chapter 14
The morning of the wedding dawned bright and crisp as a fresh-picked apple. From her bedroom, Bonnie could hear the call of migrating birds, the faint bustle of the town waking up and getting down to business. There was even a train whistle in the distance.
None of it helped her open her eyes and face what she had to face. In fact, the plaintive train whistle brought her to the edge of tears. Rupert would get on that train and head back to Everland. He was probably waiting at the station now, suitcase in hand, head lowered in defeat. She hated to think what she’d done to him, how she’d killed his spirit, but at their parting the day before she’d seen in his eyes what she knew in her heart—he understood why both of them had to do the things they had to do.
