Reluctant Brides Collection
Page 57
With an effort, he pushed away the thought of taking her in his arms. “There is no more.”
She put her hand on his arm. “Eric, are you running away from something?”
He swallowed. “Aren’t we all?” he answered lightly. “Now I really have to get back to work.”
“Eric…” She followed him as he started to walk back to the fields, and he stopped.
Without turning around, he said, “Rose, we made a pact when I said I’d be the subject of your articles. Do you remember the three terms of our agreement?”
“I can’t shadow you. I have to respect your privacy. There is no assumption of friendship.” Had he imagined it, or had her voice cracked on the last sentence?
“Quit asking about my past. Just quit,” he said. “It has nothing to do with my homesteading, and thus nothing to do with you or your articles. Leave it alone. Leave me alone.”
He strode into his fields, wondering why he felt as if his world had just crashed down around him—again.
Rose walked through the twilight and looked at the houses in Jubilee. They weren’t all that different from the ones in Chicago, she told herself. Inside each one, people lived, people with the same wants and needs as those in the city.
They needed food and water and shelter to keep their bodies alive and healthy. And they needed God to keep their souls alive and healthy. Jubilee wasn’t a rough-and-tumble wild town. Quite the contrary—a sense of moral strength was evident in the residents, a trust in a higher power that came through in their everyday lives.
She was changing, too, she realized. She’d lost some of the edge she’d had, and she honestly didn’t know if she wanted it back. When she’d held that duckling and it had settled trustingly into her hands, she’d felt something shift inside her—felt it settle and make a home.
Children’s laughter floated from one of the houses, and a pang struck her heart. Suddenly she was tired, very tired, of living like a whirlwind in Chicago. She wanted to slow down, to feel earth beneath her feet rather than the sidewalks of the city. There was more to life than the run of parties she covered for the Tattler.
Her walk had taken her through the circuit of the small town and brought her back to the center. She was just about to return to the room at the Territorial when Linnea caught up to her.
“Rose,” the schoolteacher said breathlessly, “you certainly do walk briskly. I’ve been trying to catch up with you since the corner.”
Her pace hadn’t seemed rapid to her, but she was still moving at the speed of the city, where everything went faster. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I was thinking. I could use a rest now, though. Let’s sit here.” She motioned toward the bench across from the church.
“How are you liking Jubilee so far?” Linnea asked when they had seated themselves.
The evening had deepened since Rose had begun her walk, and she looked down the street at the darkening town. “I like it,” she said simply at last. “I do.”
“It’s a splendid place to live, you know,” Linnea said. “We chose to live here, and you’ll have to excuse us if we’re a bit protective of our own.”
Rose’s head swung around, and she stared at Linnea. “What on earth do you mean? Are you saying that I’ve done something wrong here?” Her breath stalled in her throat. Quickly she reviewed her activities since arriving. What could she have said or done that would have offended the residents of Jubilee?
“It seems as if almost everyone here is talking about your visit.”
Rose struggled to put the words together so they would make sense. What was Linnea talking about?
The icy edge to Linnea’s voice struck fear into Rose’s heart. She needed the cooperation of the townspeople for her stories to succeed. Had she alienated them already?
Even in the cool of the summer evening, she began to sweat. She needed their help.
Eric lives here, too, she reminded herself. Rose Kelly, if you’ve driven him away, you have nothing. Was that why he was so standoffish today? Oh, dear God, help me. Please help.
She took a deep breath and spoke. Her voice was remarkably steady and strong. “Linnea, what aren’t you telling me? What do I need to know that I don’t?”
Linnea didn’t meet her gaze for a moment, and when she finally faced Rose, her face was filled with pain. “When you arrived in Jubilee, I was at the station. You were so elegant, so exciting, and I thought—I thought you might be my friend.” Tears clouded her usually clear eyes. “But I didn’t expect that you would do that.”
“Do what?” She knew she sounded snappish, but she couldn’t help it. If Linnea had a problem, why didn’t she just say so? This sashaying around the lamppost was frustrating.
A single tear spilled over and coursed down Linnea’s pale cheek. “Under the guise of friendship, you were researching your stories, trying to make us talk about Eric. Every single conversation that we had was directed toward your articles. Did we even matter to you?”
Rose started to speak, but Linnea interrupted her. “And it wasn’t just that. You wouldn’t stop digging, trying to find something horrible in Eric’s past. Even when we said you shouldn’t, you kept on. Why can’t you just leave him alone?”
“I was not—” Rose began, but even as she spoke, she knew she had done just that. Now that she looked back on what she’d said earlier in the day to each person she’d talked to, the innuendos she’d planted, she realized how manipulative she’d been.
“Did you really think we’d talk behind his back?” Linnea shook her head sadly. “We would never do that. Never.”
“I was only trying to find out more about him,” Rose protested. “Secondary interviews are an accepted form of newspaper work.”
For a moment, Linnea didn’t say anything. Then she said with a touch of resignation in her voice, “That may be true in Chicago, but things are different in Jubilee. What you might call ‘investigation’ is what we’d consider ‘prying.’ To be honest, people are feeling as if you’ve taken advantage of their goodwill.”
This wasn’t the first time someone had accused Rose of snooping to get information, but the charge hadn’t bothered her before.
“I’m sorry. I really am.” The words were true. She hadn’t intended to hurt anyone. “I wanted to fill in the spaces in Eric’s history—and there are some major gaps there, you know.”
Linnea seemed to relent a bit. “You can’t do that.”
“I can’t?” She tried not to show how those words sparked her interest anew. “Why not?” The schoolteacher shook her head. “Rose, don’t ask.”
“I just wonder where he was before he came here. Did he ever tell you?”
“Who knows? It’s not like he’d ever say—or we would ever ask.”
“Why not?” For the life of her, she’d never understand this town’s ability to overlook the past.
“It’s just the way we are,” Linnea said. “One day, I hope you’ll understand.”
Rose stood up. She’d respect it, but she’d never understand it.
Eric herded the ducklings into the cage he’d built for them beside the barn. They were the silliest creatures he’d ever seen. As soon as he thought he had them corralled, one would waddle out, and the others would follow.
He rocked back on his heels and watched the ducks. One of them seemed to be the ringleader. It didn’t surprise him that it was the one Rose had named Downy.
How had this woman finagled her way into his life…and his heart? He couldn’t quite trust her, but more than that, he couldn’t quite not trust her. It was as if his heart had its own mind.
He thought back to the way her face had softened as she held Downy. He’d known at that moment that she wasn’t just a big-city newspaperwoman with hard edges. He saw intelligence compliment her inquisitiveness, and tenderness temper her crustiness. She was quite a woman.
He looked out toward his fields. The moonlight was bright on the newly emerging wheat, and he thought he’d never seen anything as beautiful
as this field on this night.
A duckling quacked beside him, and he moved protectively closer to the cage as something rustled in the tall grass next to the barn. He smiled as he remembered Rose holding Downy. The glossy veneer of her big-city ways had vanished when she had the soft duckling in her hands.
Only a city girl would name something destined for the dinner table. Downy nipped his trouser leg through the cage, and Eric chuckled. “Don’t worry. You’re safe. Thanks to a pushy newspaperwoman from Chicago who can’t keep her nose out of my business, you’ll live a nice full life here.”
He stroked Downy’s soft head through the grating of the cage. It was a beautiful night. Nothing on earth could compare to a July night with moonlight spilling across the land.
God had given him his share of problems, his share of suffering, but He’d also given him a full portion of blessings. Tonight his plate was full.
July was the month of beginnings, a time of tender green shoots, of precious ducklings, of strange newspaperwomen who came and tore your life apart.
As Rose went into Redeemer Church, the atmosphere wasn’t quite as frosty. People nodded to her, perhaps not as amiably as before, but they were at least recognizing her.
She sat in the front row of the church, her Bible positioned primly on her knees. This morning she’d taken special care with her appearance, and her sleek reddish-gold hair was pulled back into a tight bun with a new white lace bow riding atop it.
Her dress, a pale blue and white windowpane check, was new, having been fashioned just this week by Mrs. Jenkins, who, she’d found out, had sewing talents equal to those she had in the kitchen.
Linnea, who sat at the other end of the pew, nodded briefly to her before turning her eyes back to Reverend Wilton, who was approaching the front of the church. Linnea’s eyes looked as red as Rose’s felt.
After a mostly sleepless night, she’d come to the decision that she couldn’t worry too much about the townspeople mistrusting her. She had asked the questions she’d had to ask. There was no more she could do.
Reverend Wilton began the service, and she opened her Bible to the day’s text, which, according to the sign at the side of the sanctuary, was Proverbs 18:4–8. As the minister read the Scripture aloud, she followed along with a growing sense of distress. “ ‘A fool’s mouth is his destruction,’ ” read Reverend Wilton.
She could feel the congregation’s eyes on her, blaming, accusing. And in the back of her mind, she heard her mother’s tired voice: “Rose, dear, watch your words. Take your time. Think before you speak.”
Rose bent her head as the minister led the congregation in silent prayer.
God had given her this impetuous mouth. Could He also give her the power to control it?
Chapter 7
Inside each of us is a big locked room with double-bolted cabinets and closets where we hide our sins not from others as much as from ourselves.
We may not see those sinful blots on our souls, but they remain there, hidden away and carefully caged, always hoping for the day when they can wriggle free.
Rose sat in her tidy room at the Territorial, her little note-pad open beside her. She scowled at it and tapped her pen testily. For the most part, the sheets of paper were empty.
She had a story due in the mail by the end of the day, and she was no further along than she’d been when she first arrived.
Where to start? She stood up and paced across the room, the rhythm of her steps helping her direct her unfocused thoughts.
She had many possible angles to take on the story. Mentally she sorted through them, trying to determine which was the best.
George Marshall, her editor at the Tattler, had given her some wonderful advice when she’d begun writing for the newspaper. She imagined him standing beside her, clucking in dismay at her skimpy notes. “Don’t know where to start? How about the beginning?”
She sat down, and slowly, at first, but with increasing speed, she began to tell the tale of her arrival in Jubilee, carefully leaving out her first unexpected meeting with Eric Johansen. This was Jubilee’s story.
At last she had it ready. Woven into it were the notes she’d taken so far. She read it through one more time and sat back in her chair, smiling with satisfaction. It was good, and her readers would love it.
She gathered up the story and her little bag and left to send the story.
The small wooden building in the center of the town housed both the telegraph office and the post office. It hummed with activity, and she had to stand in line at the counter.
She wasn’t intentionally eavesdropping, but the building was so tiny and crowded that hearing others’ conversations was unavoidable. Years of training in the newspaper business had made it nearly impossible for her not to pay attention to those speaking around her.
Two men in work clothes discussed the progress of their respective crops. A woman with two children playing tag around her ankles talked to an older woman about a laundry mishap. An older couple exchanged brief comments about the possibility of rain.
At last it was her turn, and the young man behind the counter, who couldn’t have been older than seventeen, put down the mail he was sorting and took the envelope from her. “Chicago, eh?” he asked. “Is this one of those articles I’ve been hearing so much about?”
All discussions in the room ceased, and an almost-palpable silence fell over the crowd. Everyone turned and stared at her.
Rose smiled widely at all of them. “Why, yes it is, and I imagine you’re all curious about what it says, aren’t you?”
The assembled townspeople murmured in assent.
“I’ll be delighted to share it with you when it goes into print, which should be soon. My editor at the Tattler has promised to send me copies. I hope you’ll all be pleased with what I’ve written.”
A slow current of excitement ran through the group, and relief washed through her veins. Perhaps the veil of suspicion had been lifted.
As she turned to leave, she noticed the top envelope of the pile that the mail clerk had been holding. The address brought her up short.
Dr. Eric Johansen.
After that, Boston Hospital had been crossed out and Jubilee, Dakota Territory, added.
Doctor? Eric was a doctor?
Why would a man leave a medical career in Boston and come to Dakota—and not practice medicine?
And furthermore, why wouldn’t he just tell her that?
Eric checked his reflection in the cracked mirror that hung in his bedroom. He looked presentable enough. He must be losing his edge, letting the people at church talk him into this.
A play. And a comic romance, too.
True, he wasn’t portraying the lead character, a young swain who, through a series of misunderstandings, ended up courting his loved one’s pig.
It could have been worse, he reminded himself. He could have been cast as the pig.
He rode into town, reviewing his lines. He was portraying the next-door neighbor in the play, and although he didn’t have many lines, he’d never acted before. He must be out of his mind. That was the only rational explanation.
The play was being staged in the town hall, Jubilee’s newest addition. A cluster of people were already milling around the door, waiting for the play to begin. Eric slipped past the group and made it to the back room, where the cast was getting ready.
The cast members were nervously reviewing their lines as if they were opening in New York City. The atmosphere was charged with anticipation.
Eric donned a formal black coat for his part in the play, then wandered through the packed room. Although the play featured only six roles, with the addition of the director, the costumer, and the prompter, the room quickly became overly humid and extremely hot. He ducked outside, welcoming the cool night air.
“You’re going to the play, too?” Rose’s voice came out of the shadows.
“I’m in the play.”
“Ah, a new career for Eric Johansen?”
“Tonight is my debut and my swan song,” he answered lightly. “I suspect after this performance, I won’t be called on again to act.”
“You never know,” she said, moving toward him. “You may have hidden talents.”
That did it.
“It’s nearly curtain time. I’d better head back inside.” Before she could say more, he darted back into the building.
Somehow, in a corner of the busy back room, he found a pocket of solitude. God, I need Your guidance more than ever. I thought I was getting away from all my mistakes by coming here, but apparently I brought my past with me. And now Rose is here, and without Your help, I’m afraid I might fall in love with her. I can’t do that. Help me know what to do. I need You more than ever. I’m lost…again.
The play was charming, Rose thought. It wasn’t anything that would have made the dramatic circles in Chicago, but it was entertaining. And while Eric would never be the darling of the Broadway stage, he’d done a respectable job with his role.
“Now don’t forget about that concert next week,” Mrs. Jenkins said as they left the town hall. “Charlotta Allen is quite the rage in New York City, and we’re very lucky to get her to perform here.”
Rose had no idea who Charlotta Allen was, and she was fairly sure that she would have come across the name in her work with the Tattler if the woman had been famous in New York. Nevertheless, she looked forward to the opportunity to hear her.
The evening had been quite revealing, all in all. Apparently Jubilee had a healthy cultural life. The room had been packed. Matthew was there, as were Arvid and his family, the entire Nielsen clan, and the Treases. Even Reverend Wilton and Linnea were there, sitting next to each other.
Plays, concerts, socials, and parties went on regularly, according to Mrs. Jenkins. Rose had seriously underestimated how well established the town was. It wasn’t Chicago, but it was far beyond the two-horse village she’d envisioned.