“If that’s all that’s stopping you from coming with me, get your things together.” He lifted the candle and looked around her bedroom. “Do you have a bag or sack you can use to pack?”
When he saw the quick shake of her head, Hart moved to the bed. Lifting a pillow, he removed the pillow slip and handed it to her. Again she shook her head while he shook the covering at her. “No, I can’t leave with you.”
“Don’t you understand about me?” Why wouldn’t he take no for an answer?
“You really don’t want me, won’t marry me? I thought it was just an excuse…Don’t shake your head at me!” Hart’s voice rose as he watched her vigorously shake her head from side to side. “Talk to me!”
“Shhhh! Mother will hear.” She hissed at him, hoping this would calm him down. She wasn’t certain what to do and was barely able to make out his expression since he held the single candle away from him to better see her.
“Good! I think your mother has the answers. Let her come in here so we can clear up who is decent and who isn’t!”
Thinking about facing Ma’am now caused her even more fear than when Ralph had yanked her toward the woods. She grabbed Hart’s free hand and tried to pull him back to the open doorway. He needed to leave now.
The bedroom door flew open and lamp light suddenly flooded the room. “What?!” Ada’s screech moved Zelly to hunch protectively behind Hart.
Before she could say more, Hart took control of the situation. “I am taking your daughter with me ma’am. I don’t expect a dowry or your blessing.”
Pausing, Hart cast a commanding glare towards Ada. “But I do want to know by what right you made my future wife believe she wasn’t a decent person?”
After snorting, Ada barked, “In my house I can do what I want.” Zelly thought, as she peeked around Hart to look at her mother, Ma’am’s eyes looked especially evil.
Hart reached his free hand behind him and guided her to his side. “Zelly, don’t hide. Get your things.” After giving her those instructions, Zelly felt his hand gently push her forward toward the clothes hanging from pegs on the wall. She shoved dresses into the pillow slip, deciding he would have to marry her now whether she was decent or not.
“I want an answer Mrs. Fuller.” The soft tone Hart used with Zelly was gone as he turned his attention back to her mother and almost growled as he asked his question. “Why have you made this wonderful person believe she was somehow lower than everyone around her?”
“Wonderful person?” She screamed the words. “She is a bastard. No bastard is decent!”
Zelly stopped taking small clothes from the wooden box on the floor to stare at Ma’am. “You never married my father?” Ma’am warned her to never let a man touch her.
Did Ma’am let a man touch her without being married?
Her mother’s words must also have shocked Hart since he didn’t respond. For a long moment, he simply stared at Ada then shook his head, perhaps out of shock.
In a cold voice she answered Zelly. “I’m no floozy!” Zelly guessed Ma’am saw the shake his head as if he didn’t believe her. The woman turned toward him and started to explain.
“I had a sister who was touched in the head so I had to stay with her. She fell out of the barn loft when she was little. Our parents blamed me. Even so, I refused to let them make me feel badly about a little prank.” Ada Fuller wore a mutinous expression as she said that.
“Nevertheless, I kept us together, even after marriage. What else could I do since our parents were dead?” She shrugged her shoulders and stopped speaking as if that would answer any questions they still had.
Holding her breath, she waited. When Ada didn’t continue, Zelly turned back to the wooden box and finished packing. Years of harshness taught her not to demand an explanation from Ma’am. Hart refused to be as accepting.
“What does your sister have to do with the nasty name you’ve labeled your own daughter with?” He bellowed out the question, making Zelly believe any patience he once had with Ma’am was at an end.
The words Ada bellowed in return froze Zelly. “She’s not my daughter. I have never once told anyone she’s my daughter and I never let her call me mother. I told you she’s a bastard!”
Who am I if I’m not her daughter?
Hart evidently understood the implication better than Zelly because he asked, “Why didn’t you protect your sister?”
His question confused Zelly. Doesn’t he want to know who my mother is? Why ask about the sister?
“Mr. Fuller said it was like Jacob in the Bible. That both my sister and I were his wives since we’d stood side by side before the pastor and before God at the marriage. I argued, but he claimed to be doing his duty to God by keeping us both as wives. Hah!” Cold dread filled Zelly’s gut as understanding dawned.
It was time, Zelly decided, to ask her own questions. “Where are they now? Did they really run off?” Everyone in town believed this about her father.
Ada clamped her lips shut, clearly not intending to say another word. Instead, she turned on her heel and shut the door firmly behind her. Within seconds, the door of the room next to them slammed.
Ada shut her out of her life as easily as she shut her bedroom door. Zelly clearly understood that message. She looked at Hart and whispered a question, “The skeletons?”
He nodded. “I wouldn’t be surprised. She’s acted out of character ever since their discovery.”
Placing her hand on his arm and picking up the pillowcase filled with her things, they left the room. When Hart opened the front door, they received a startle. The equally shocked face of the sheriff looked back at them, the man’s hand raised to knock on the now opened door.
“Hello again sheriff. No offense intended, but we’re seeing too much of you lately.” Hart chuckled, though to Zelly it sounded mirthless. In fact, based on his face, she thought he must be very tired.
Sheriff Redmond stood tensely on the threshold. His visage showed that, like Hart, he too was tired. “No offense taken. I’m looking for Ada Fuller. Is she still here?” His eyes darted over Hart’s shoulder to glance around the room behind him.
Hart waved the sheriff into the house and pointed at Mrs. Fuller’s bedroom door. “She went in there. If she hasn’t gone out the window, she’s there.”
The sheriff turned the knob but found it locked. Looking in Zelly’s direction, he asked, “Where’s the key?”
Zelly shrugged. “I expect it’s with her. I’ve never had a key to anything.” She knew Hart felt her trembling. She wondered if it was caused by the sheriff’s presence or was perhaps a reaction of sorts to the danger she’d experienced that day.
Suddenly, she felt very much like lying down. So much for the strength that she’d boasted of to Hart earlier. No matter how badly she longed to leave, she realized that she and Hart needed to stay while the sheriff was there. They’d heard some incredibly incriminating information from Ada about her husband and sister and would have to share it.
The thumping of the sheriff’s boot against a door brought her out of her thoughts and back to the situation at hand. The second door this evening that I’ve listened to being kicked in. Will life ever return to normal?
The door swung open. Around the sheriff’s bulk blocking the doorway, Zelly saw the hem of a woman’s dark skirt disappearing over the open window sill.
She tried not to listen to the sheriff’s low cursing and stepped back and out of the way as he swiveled on his heels and ran out the still opened front door. Hart moved, as if to follow on the sheriff’s tail, when she laid a hand on his arm.
“Please don’t leave me alone. Not after everything today.”
He looked into her face, as to assure himself of her need. He cast what she thought was a longing glance at the doorway and then wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Want to take me up now on the offer to cry on my shirt?”
Despite her fatigue and her confusion after listening to Ada’s confession, a small smile twitched at
her mouth. “I’d like to sit. Maybe talk.”
With a nod of his head, Hart led her to the faded, red horse hair sofa in the parlor. He held her hand while he waited for her to seat herself and then cuddled close to her once she was settled. The idea that Ma’am wasn’t her mother didn’t seem to faze him, if his continued attentions demonstrated his reaction to the news.
Breaking the heavy silence, Zelly croaked out, “Now you and I both know why I’m not decent.”
Zelly looked directly into Hart’s green eyes to see how he would respond to her statement. “Can you really want to marry an unwanted and misbegotten girl?”
With an intense gaze looked on her face he didn’t look away. “Only if that girl wants to marry me, a murderer’s son, and if that girl is you.”
The mention of his father’s crime brought back the memory of the day before. Then she listened to Hart’s confession and had thought at least her parent wasn’t a murderer.
Even though Ada might not be her mother, she was the only parent Zelly knew. And it truly looked like she was a murderer.
“She does…I mean I do want to marry you.” She allowed herself to finally admit it out loud. “I don’t know about love, but I have warm feelings for you. You make me feel so nice, too, when you touch…” She raised a hand to her mouth, a flush spreading across her face when she realized what she was admitting.
Hart’s hand moved away from her mouth and was replaced by his lips. Where his previous kisses were tender and light, this was different. His mouth, wet and hot, searched for and received her answering response.
Lifting his head very slightly away from hers, he chuckled. “I am taking that as a yes and will hold you to it.”
Stunned from the passion of his kiss, she only nodded and settled her head into the spot she’d found earlier that evening, under his chin, and relaxed. “What about your aunt? I just started working for her.”
His quiet laugh caused her to lean away from him and look into his face. “Why are you laughing?”
Smiling, he explained, “I wanted to be able to spend time with you so I asked her to make up a job and then hire you. It was part of a secret plan to win you over.”
Zelly returned his smile and lowered her head back to his chest. “Well, since you’re the planner, what do we do next?”
Before Hart could answer, a maniacal shriek split the air, causing them to jump. Rushing in tandem to the parlor window, they searched the darkness. Zelly saw figures moving. The night prevented her from truly identifying them, though she guessed that the sheriff caught the old woman.
Peering into the night, Zelly wondered why she didn’t feel any sadness about her dead parents or about Ada Fuller’s arrest. Ada had never been nurturing, at least not like Mrs. Hoffman. Perhaps that was why Zelly had no sympathy for her.
Life has been too full and I’m too tired right now. Tomorrow I’ll think about all the secrets I learned tonight.
Taking her hand in his, Hart gently pulled her behind him and out the door. On the porch they stood side by side while the sheriff loaded the bound, and now gagged, woman into his wagon. “Want us to tell you what she admitted to or should we come by tomorrow?”
Sheriff Redmond already sat on the seat of his wagon when he answered. “It’s late enough that I think it’s already tomorrow.” He shook his head and looked their way.
“Come on into the jail in the afternoon.” Picking up the leathers, he tapped them to the backs of the team and was off.
Chapter 10
From Idyll Wood to Wausau by wagon, courtesy of Onkel Elias. Next, Wausau to Sparta by rail. Finally, by buggy from Sparta to Cashton.
His trip had stretched out, complicated and lonely. Once again, he stood on the train platform, this time waiting to pick up passengers, and remembered those last few days spent in Idyll Wood.
Tante Greta fussed over Zelly as soon as they’d arrived on that terrible night. True to her nature, Greta demanded very few details and allowed the story to come out when both were ready to tell it. Zelly went immediately to bed in Rebecca’s bedroom. Before she closed the door for the night, she looked at Hart wistfully and sighed. “I always wanted to have a sleepover with Rebecca. Ma’am…Ada…never allowed it.”
After she went to bed, Hart shared the story of Zelly’s kidnapping as well as about Ada’s arrest with the family. An odd detail from that time stuck in Hart’s mind. At the mention of the Strong family and his dismissal by Mr. Strong from the bank, Greta looked stricken, as if Mr. Strong’s behavior had harmed her in some way.
The next morning Zelly appeared withdrawn. She whispered, if she spoke at all, and kept her head down. After breakfast, Tante Greta shooed the men out of the house to speak with her.
Finally allowed back in after a lengthy wait on the porch, Hart saw a red-eyed, yet smiling, Zelly. Thank Heaven for Tante Greta in his life.
At his questions about her conversation with his aunt, she just shook her head and said it was nothing for him to worry about. He feared that Zelly planned to change her mind about marrying him.
Horse feathers! Truth to tell, I’m still afraid.
In the early afternoon of that day, Tante Greta left her usual work and came with them into town for the visit with the sheriff. Greta and Zelly sat side by side in chairs placed in front of the sheriff’s desk.
He admitted to himself that he felt left out that his aunt was the one who sat beside her and held her hand throughout the ordeal. He stood behind her, though, with a comforting hand on her shoulder which he occasionally squeezed gently whenever she seemed overwhelmed by what she was telling Redmond.
At first, as Zelly answered the sheriff’s questions, snorts and harrumphs were heard from his prisoner. At a particularly loud screech, he rose and shut the connecting door to the cells. That put a stop to Ada’s noises.
Once both Hart and Zelly shared what they’d heard Ada say the evening before, the sheriff shook his head in what Hart could only term as wonder.
“When I got her in here last night and removed the gag, that woman started yelling why she was right to ‘remove from the world that man’. Those were her very words. Got a confession from her ‘bout him. Don’t know about the other skeleton.” The sheriff leaned back in his chair and made a steeple with his fingers.
“Guess it could be this sister she told you about. Can’t imagine anyone with the mental problems she told you ‘bout would just run off.” Here the sheriff looked directly at Zelly. “You want to ask her anything?”
She merely shook her head in response and rose. “Good day Sheriff Redmond and thank you.” She walked with what Hart thought was stately grace to the door. At the door, though, she paused.
“Yes Sheriff, I do have something I’d like to say to Mrs. Fuller.” Not waiting for the sheriff to respond, she went directly to the door that separated her from the cells in the back of the jail. Hart had to walk quickly to catch up to her and stood at her back while both of them gazed at the small form lying on a cot.
Ada Fuller uncurled from beneath a blanket but didn’t approach the bars. She didn’t say anything either as she watched them impassively.
“Ma’am, I wanted to say good bye. I need to tell you one thing before I leave.” Zelly paused as if to allow Mrs. Fuller to speak, yet she said nothing.
“I wanted to let you know that…I forgive you.” Without even glancing at Ram or Ralph who were in the other cell, she held her head elegantly erect and strode to the jail’s front door and out onto the boardwalk.
That was his girl! She hated disappointing anyone. He would bet that’s why she so readily gave her forgiveness to Ada. Since she couldn’t stand the thought of someone being angry with her, she quickly forgave others.
Before he followed her, he stepped out of the holding area and asked, “Any idea how she did her husband in? She told you any details?”
The sheriff shook his head. “You want to ask her yourself? I normally wouldn’t let anyone back in the cells, but you’re welcome to
go talk to her.”
“Nah. She doesn’t like me so why would she say anything. I’m leaving in a few days for Cashton. Send word when you need me back to testify at the trials.
“Won’t need you for Ram Strong’s trial.” This surprised Hart. He paused at the jail’s front door.
“Sheriff, you have to press char…”
He held up his hands for him to stop. “I’m pressing charges. It’s just that Ram’s confessed. When I brought Ralph in, that one spilled the whole plan. He was listening in from his cell. Didn’t take much to get him to sign a confession after that.”
Before he left, Hart brought up a loose end that was bothering him. “Why was Zelly taken to Shirleen’s apartment?”
The sheriff nodded his head. “I’m keeping an eye on her. Something fishy is happening with her and with that hotel too. Ralph is babbling about white slavers and I’m inclined to listen to him.”
Pausing, he spoke low, as if sharing a closely guarded secret. “Mrs. Fuller didn’t say anything about her sister having a funny arm, did she? Maybe something you left out of the statement you gave me?
When Hart indicated that she hadn’t, Redmond continued. “Well, it was just a thought. One of the skeletons had a short arm, deformed according to the doc.”
When he didn’t say more about it, Hart wished him a good day and went to find the ladies.
They stood outside the jail on the boardwalk, waiting to make plans with him before they parted. He told them he was going to take care of the doctor’s bill from last night. Greta took Zelly’s hand and headed to the dry goods store where he would meet them later.
As he remembered it now, he couldn’t prevent the tight grimace that twisted his mouth. He hadn’t gone to the doctor but headed, instead, to the bank.
Manny looked shocked to see him come through the door. He quickly darted a glance at his father’s office door and then back at Hart. With his eyebrows raised in question, he put on his best servile tone. “How may I help you sir?”
He decided to play along. “You can change your life and stop drinking every night.”
Hart's Longing (Secrets In Idyll Wood Book 1) Page 8
