I leaned in a bit and brushed away the hair that had fallen over his forehead. “This might be the loveliest thing anyone has ever done for me. Making lemon jam out of season.”
“If you could try it, so could I. I went to three different grocers before finding lemon at St. Lawrence Market.” He ducked his head a little. “I even consulted that book of yours.” Flora Merriweather’s name sounded out of place in his voice.
I took a deep breath. “I wish we never quarreled the other night.”
Ray turned from me a moment and began twisting lids on each jar with his long fingers. I took a few and helped. There we stood, side by side, me stealing a glance at his profile and long, downturned lashes now and then.
He said, slowly, “You have no idea how badly you hurt me, Jem.”
I blinked. “Hurt you?”
“Thinking that I was angry over the state of our kitchen and missed dinner.”
“You’re right to have an expectation for our home, Ray.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t notice the kitchen! I just noticed the door open and you gone. And you didn’t come home for hours.”
“I hadn’t thought of—”
“You didn’t think of us. Broken dishes, a stove still sputtering, and the door open. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to surmise what could have happened!”
I kept my eyes on my jam pots. “That’s why you were so angry.”
He nodded. “I know someday there’s going to be a case that will make you step into something dangerous. It’s not going to get any easier. But I can’t live with you thinking that I’ll be home waiting for dinner on the stove, or that my first thought might be that you left a mess. I was driven right mad. Is this the day, I wonder, when it won’t just be some silly rooster? Is this the day when she’ll go too far and the best part of my life will be taken away from me?”
Heat sprang to my cheeks. “You were worried about me.”
He blew out a breath. “I should have just talked to you about it. I was foolish enough to want to hurt you the way you hurt me. That’s why I acted the way I did at Jasper’s party.” He trailed off, bit his tongue, and then lightened his voice. “If you start making perfect dinners and keeping house, then what about me? You’ll start noticing when I saunter in late. You’ll start noticing when I fall asleep on the sofa with my shoes on.” He smiled sheepishly. “The only expectation I have when I walk up the step is that hopefully there will be a Jem inside. Sometimes you’ll be off looking for your missing suffragettes, and sometimes I’ll forget to ring home and fall asleep at my desk. But you know I am trying. I want both of us to try.”
I loved him too much in that moment to string a sentence together. Instead, I held up a little jam pot with the brightest, most beaming grin I could conjure. “So I found a missing girl who wasn’t really missing.”
He shrugged and with an easy smile said, “And I made jam.”
In several of the romantic books I read, the author breaks a deepening kiss with a series of ellipses, allowing the reader’s imagination to fill in the blanks after the abrupt cutoff. In my case, it was Merinda’s voice from the front hall. She never bothered knocking.
I rolled my eyes at Ray and went to meet her, pulling him in tow as he disentangled the apron from around his neck.
She was bouncing in the doorway in trousers and hat. “Jem, you will never believe what Jasper has!”
We peeked out. On the rim of the curb Jasper was leaning against a motorbicycle. And there was something else tucked under his arm.
“Did we actually win the bet?” I yelled down to Jasper. “You do know the girl wasn’t actually missing!”
Jasper switched the motor off, but his voice still compensated for its chug and roar. “Merinda and I called off the bet.”
Ray snickered. “Merinda’s too competitive.” He looked down at her. She punched his arm.
“No, DeLuca, he’s right.” There was a slight hint of sincerity in Merinda’s surprisingly subdued tone. I sensed she was recalling George and Robert. Then she tugged me down the walkway while verbally shooing Jasper off the bike.
Then I could see what Jasper was carrying under his arm.
My eyes went wide. “What—why—for goodness’ sake—”
The bird seemed to erupt in a flurry of feathers. Jasper struggled to keep it under control, finally shoving it toward me with both hands. “Here you are, Jem,” he said. “Something I brought for you and Merinda.”
“A rooster!” I took a closer look. He was a fine fellow, a proud red wattle dangling under his chin. “But why… ”
“A reminder,” Jasper said, a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. “A reminder of all your fine adventures.”
“Well… thank you,” I said. “But you’ll have to hold him just a minute longer. I intend to take a drive.” I took the opportunity to skip back over the walkway and to where Ray stood, amused, arms crossed over his chest.
A smile tickled his lips. “Forget something?”
“I am about to get on a mechanized contraption and speed over the city streets with Merinda at the helm.”
“Yes, you are.”
“So I reckon before I embark on this reckless adventure, I should at least kiss you goodbye.”
We both stole a look at Merinda and Jasper, who were too busy speaking of gears and cogs and speed and directions to notice Ray unfold his arms, grab me around the waist, and finish what we had started in the kitchen.
“It’s not big enough for the two of us!” I told Merinda a few moments later.
“Nonsense! How do you think Jasper and I got here?” She positioned herself over the bar stretched between the wheels and I settled cautiously onto the seat.
“But you’re in trousers. I’m in a dress!”
“Are you chicken, Jem DeLuca?”
No. I certainly was not.
She took the handles and kicked the apparatus into gear. I held on for dear life, never quite finding a comfortable position for legs ensconced in bloomers and skirt and corseted torso, squeezing my eyes shut while the breeze played over my hair and cheeks. She kicked the pedal harder, and we accelerated.
“Are we going too fast?” she yelled over the wind and the roar of the motor.
Knowing she would ignore me if I said yes, I squeaked, “I don’t know!” and held to her more tightly.
We swooshed onto Parliament, and I opened my eyes just enough to take in a few amused onlookers as we sputtered and squealed over the bumpy pavement, nearly colliding with a streetcar. Merinda was laughing too hard to notice a gathering throng.
When we skidded and veered onto Yonge, she screeched the contraption to a stop, my ears still ringing.
Merinda stroked the sleek frame of the motorbicycle. “Marvelous, isn’t it?”
My head was pulsing, my heartbeat staccato. “Oh, yes,” I said lamely. “It’s something, all right.”
We sped through the crackling bright, the clanging trolleys bordering us as we slid over and around the tracks. Overhead grand billboards winked down, spurting and buzzing in their electric promenade. I held out my arms to the rustling wind and opened my eyes so wide I wouldn’t miss a blinking, kaleidoscopic thing.
Merinda’s laughter mounted and finally surpassed the hum of the quickening engine as we sped recklessly, without destination, into the night.
Epilogue
Several months later, as winter frosted the windowpanes and ice slicked the Toronto streets, an envelope arrived. Inside were two newspaper clippings, dated several weeks apart. The first extolled the excitement around a strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Workers had been given the hour decrease that Nicholas had rallied for a few months earlier, but salaries were cut along with the hours. The article was tremendously exciting, telling of militia and bayonets, violence and tension, hunger and horrid conditions in the raging winter.
The second article brought the pleasant outcome: Mill workers had settled the strike with a twenty-percent wage increase.
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br /> I would always remember the letter that accompanied the article. “It just takes a step, doesn’t it?” Del had written. “One little step to try and understand someone, and the whole world can change for you.”
The Herringford and Watts Mysteries
Can’t wait to read more of Merinda and Jem’s adventures? Find out what’s next for the intrepid detectives in The Herringford and Watts Mysteries.
A Singular and Whimsical Problem
Christmas 1910. Merinda Herringford and Jem Watts would be enjoying the season a lot more if they weren’t forced to do their own laundry and cooking. Just as they are adapting to their trusty housekeeper’s ill-timed vacation, they are confronted by the strangest mystery they’ve encountered since they started their private investigation firm.
In this bonus e-only novella, what begins as the search for a missing cat leads to a rabble-rousing suffragette and the disappearance of several young women from St. Jerome’s Reformatory for Incorrigible Females. From the women’s courts of City Hall to Toronto’s seedy docks and into the cold heart of the underground shipping industry, this will be the most exciting Christmas the girls have had yet.
The Bachelor Girl’s Guide to Murder
In 1910 Toronto, while other bachelor girls perfect their domestic skills and find husbands, two friends perfect their sleuthing skills and find a murderer.
Inspired by their fascination with all things Sherlock Holmes, best friends and flatmates Merinda and Jem launch a consulting detective business. The deaths of young Irish women lead Merinda and Jem deeper into the mire of the city’s underbelly, where the high hopes of those dreaming to make a new life in Canada are met with prejudice and squalor.
While searching for answers, donning disguises, and sneaking around where no proper ladies would ever go, they pair with Jasper Forth, a police constable, and Ray DeLuca, a reporter in whom Jem takes a more than professional interest. Merinda could well be Toronto’s premiere consulting detective, and Jem may just find a way to put her bachelor girlhood behind her forever…if they can stay alive long enough to do so.
A Lesson in Love and Murder
The legacy of literary icon Sherlock Holmes is alive and well in 1912 Canada, where best friends Merinda Herringford and Jem DeLuca continue to develop their skills as consulting detectives. The city of Toronto has been thrown into upheaval by the arrival of radical anarchist Emma Goldman. Amid this political chaos, Benny Citrone of the Royal North-West Mounted Police arrives at Merinda and Jem’s flat, requesting assistance in locating his runaway cousin—a man with a deadly talent.
While Merinda eagerly accepts the case, she finds herself constantly butting heads—and hearts—with Benny. Meanwhile, Jem has her own hands full with a husband who is distracted by his sister’s problems but still determined to keep Jem out of harm’s way.
As Merinda and Jem close in on the danger they’ve tracked from Toronto to Chicago, will they also be able to resolve the troubles threatening their future happiness before it’s too late? Independence, love, and lives are at stake in A Lesson in Love and Murder, the gripping second installment of the Herringford and Watts Mysteries series.
About the Author
Rachel McMillan is a keen history enthusiast and a lifelong bibliophile. When not writing or reading, she can most often be found drinking tea and watching British miniseries. Rachel lives in bustling Toronto, where she works in educational publishing and pursues her passion for art, literature, music, and theater. Visit Rachel at www.a-fair-substitute-for-heaven.blogspot.com.
About the Publisher
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To learn more about Harvest House books and to read sample chapters, visit our website:
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
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