'May I help you?' a soft female voice asked with forced politeness.
Automatically Zaccheus took off his boater and held it against his chest. He turned around.
The woman who had spoken was young and very pretty in a pert sort of way, with a heart-shaped face framed by two lustrous dark pigtails tied with robin's-egg-blue ribbon which matched the color of her eyes. She was wearing a calf-length smocklike dress with a high collar, loose long sleeves, and a huge waist pocket which hung heavily, full of jingling change.
'I'm looking for Miss Clowney,' Zaccheus said. 'They tell me she owns the rooming house across the street.'
Jenny bit down on her lower lip, nodded, and glanced toward the kitchen doors. 'You'll have to wait awhile. Auntie's in the kitchen. She won't be out until the lunch rush is over. Sit down if you like . . . there's an empty table over there by the kitchen doors. Do you want something to eat?'
He shook his head.
'You can leave your suitcase by the front door. Nobody will take it.'
He smiled, gazing into her eyes, but it was impossible to look past the surface. The irises were glazed veneer, at once clear and yet opaque.
She eyed him intently and tilted her head. He was aware of the faint sprinkling of freckles on her nose. 'Well, I'd better be off and clear some of the tables,' she said. 'I'll have Auntie come out soon as she can.'
'Thank you.' He took a seat and waited patiently, watching her hurry back and forth, carrying steaming plates of delicious-smelling beef stew from the kitchen and returning weighed down by stacks of dirty dishes. From what he could see, the place was doing a thriving business, especially considering the size of the town. Each time the swinging doors behind him thumped open and closed, an almost visible delicious aroma of cooking hit him squarely, and the cacophonous clatter of pots and pans was pronounced. Occasionally he caught the sound of a woman's voice, firm but cultured, and the machine-gun staccato of a second woman speaking laborious English mixed with rapid-fire Spanish. He watched diners leave the money for their meals on the tables and get up.
It was nearly twenty minutes before Elender Hannah Clowney finally pushed her way briskly out through the kitchen doors, wiping her hands on a towel. Her piercing gaze made a sweep of the dining room. She wore a high-necked cream-colored blouse with long tight sleeves and a cameo brooch pinned to the collar. Her skirt was gray, with cotton ruffles which swept the floorboards. She was thin and elegant, with chestnut hair streaked liberally with strands of silver. Finally her eyes came to rest on Zaccheus. She looked down at him with consternation. 'Oh! You weren't served—'
'No, ma'am, that's quite all right,' Zaccheus said hastily. He got quickly to his feet. 'You're Miss Clowney?'
Elender inclined her head.
'I didn't come here for lunch, ma'am. They told me to see you about a room.'
'I see.' Elender paused. 'How long do you intend to stay?'
'Overnight, ma'am.'
'Hmmm.' She pressed her lips together. 'As a rule, I rent out rooms to regular roomers only. On a weekly basis.'
Zaccheus looked stricken. 'Please, ma'am. This town doesn't have a hotel, and I'm very tired. The train doesn't leave until tomorrow morning. The stationmaster said you sometimes made exceptions.'
She nodded. 'Very well. One night it is.'
But as it turned out, he would stay a lot, lot longer.
2
After she was satisfied that Jenny had everything under control, Elender escorted Zaccheus to the rooming house. 'It's a beautiful house,' he said as they crossed to the other side of Main Street.
She stopped and gazed up at it, a faint smile on her lips. 'Yes, it is, isn't it? Few people really see it, if you know what I mean, it's been here so long. They all take it for granted, myself included. Even I tend to forget that it has a kind of unofficial honorific name.'
'Oh?' He looked sideways at her. 'And what's that?'
She smiled. ' 'McMean's Folly.' That's what we call it around here.'
'Why? Because of all the plants?'
She laughed. 'I see what you mean. But no. It's the house's history. You see, after Neeland McMean went through all the pains of having it built in Missouri, then having it dismantled and shipped here and put back up, only to make his bride less homesick—'
'She left him!' he blurted out vehemently.
She looked startled. 'Why, yes. How did you know?'
He blushed suddenly. 'I—I didn't,' he stammered. Then he looked quickly away. 'I guessed it.'
'I understand,' Elender said softly. She touched his arm gently. 'Women . . . have been known to be unkind.' Her eyes clouded over as she remembered her own tragic youth. 'And so have men,' she added painfully. Then she clapped her hands briskly together, signaling a change of subject. 'Let's go in, shall we? You're fortunate, you know. There's only one empty room. It's quite a climb, though, and really very small, I'm afraid.'
It was on the third floor, in a circular turret. Elender stood in the doorway, hands clasped in front of her, as Zaccheus inspected the room.
It surprised her, because none of her roomers had ever done that before, not in the way he did. Generally they poked the mattress and peered into the wardrobe. He did none of that. Instead, he stood back and noted the architectural details, obviously fascinated by the elaborate plaster molding that encircled the ceiling, and the three oriel windows that looked out onto the street.
'I like it,' he exclaimed.
Elender, ever the practical businesswoman, responded by saying, 'That'll be two dollars, in advance.'
He nodded, reached into his pocket, and counted it out.
She pocketed the money and smiled. 'Supper at the Good Eats Caf6 is served from five o'clock on.'
'I'm not hungry,' he said quickly, stifling the growling of his stomach. There was no money to squander on sit-down restaurant meals. The room cost enough as it was, but, given its comfort, he felt it well worth the price.
'Of course you're hungry.' Elender permitted herself a smile. 'The price of the room includes board over at the café. Breakfast, lunch, and supper.'
He grinned sheepishly. 'Would it be all right if I took my lunch today instead of tomorrow, since the train leaves in the morning?'
'Then come across the street right now. After lunch, you still have supper and tomorrow's breakfast coming to you. You can unpack later.'
The Good Eats Café was empty. The lunch crowd was gone. He took a seat facing one of the windows so that he could look out across the street at the pink house. From the kitchen he could hear the sounds of dishes being washed.
'May I help you?' a soft voice behind him asked.
Zaccheus turned around. This time a different girl served as waitress, and in one glance he could see that she was the antithesis of the other. He thought her to be about two years younger, about sixteen, he guessed; and whereas the other one had been coldly pretty, with hard, opaque eyes, this one was the exact opposite. She radiated a kind of fragile softness coupled with deeply rooted strength and purpose. Her hair was the color of golden wheat, pulled back in a fuzzy, thick ponytail, and her eyes were translucent aquamarine—so translucent that he could feel himself tumbling into their depths. She was dressed in a smock identical to the other girl's, with the same huge waist pocket, only hers was pale aquamarine to match her eyes. Despite the heat, she wore spotless white gloves.
'Miss Clowney said I might have a late lunch,' he said.
Elizabeth-Anne nodded. 'I'll have Rosa heat up the stew. If that is all right with you?'
Zaccheus smiled. 'Right now, anything would suit me just fine.' He eyed her hesitantly.
'Will there be something else?'
He fixed his gaze on the tablecloth, two fingers running in place. 'I was just wondering . . .'He glanced up at her and blushed. 'You're Miss Clowney's other niece, aren't you?'
Elizabeth-Anne felt the force of his brilliant blue eyes and lowered her own eyes demurely. Her voice was soft. 'In a manner of speaking, yes. Auntie ado
pted me unofficially many years ago, after my parents were killed in . . . in an accident.'
'I'm sorry to hear that.'
She smiled ruefully. 'That's quite all right.' Then her quivering smile broadened as she paused. Almost furtively she extended a gloved hand. 'My name is Elizabeth-Anne.'
He got to his feet and they shook hands, and her strong, firm grip surprised him. 'That's a very pretty name,' he said softly, staring deep into the limpid, shifting shoals of her eyes. 'Mine is Zaccheus How-Hale.' For an instant, and he didn't really know why, he had been tempted to blurt out his real name to her. Just in time, he covered his blunder. Ever since St. Louis, he had gone by the name Zaccheus Hale.
'You're a new roomer?' she asked with quickening interest as he sat back down.
He nodded. 'Only for the night, I'm afraid.'
The corners of her lips seemed to tighten. 'Oh. I see,' she said with visible disappointment. For a long moment they locked eyes. There was something very attractive about him, she thought; that, and something else that she had difficulty putting her finger on. After a moment she realized what it was. A kind of reckless excitement that he seemed to have suppressed smoldered deeply within him. He was unlike any of the young men she knew around here. Somehow, he seemed special.
'Well, I'll have your lunch ready in a moment,' she said quickly, suddenly afraid of her own runaway emotions. She made a nervous gesture of running her gloved fingers down along her sides; then she pirouetted swiftly and retreated into the kitchen.
As he watched her being swallowed up by the swinging doors at the back of the café, Zaccheus couldn't help thinking that Miss Clowney was blessed with two of the most attractive nieces a woman could ever hope to have.
A peculiar kind of longing started up within him. What a strange placed Quebeck, Texas, was turning out to be! The two young nieces . . . each attractive in a different sort of way, as unalike as night and day, each as unique as the hard, glittering coldness of a diamond and the shimmering red warmth of a ruby. The pink house . . . a fairy-tale dream come true, which had curdled into the symbol of a nightmare for some long-dead man named Neeland McMean. The turret room he was renting for the night . . . a charming, comfortable, cozy little room which he wished he could call his own forever. Miss Clowney . . . efficient, yet strangely and elegantly attractive, a friendly woman whose brisk, businesslike veneer could not quite mask the warmth of her heart. And, finally, there was Quebeck itself . . . this improbable, quiet, slumbering little town far off the beaten track, a town which was in the United States only by virtue of the side of the nearby wide riverbank on which it had been built, a town where there was no danger of anyone ever discovering the truth about his sordid past. Combined, all these characteristics suddenly made Quebeck extraordinarily attractive. It was the kind of place where, for the first time in years, Zaccheus felt certain he would be content to settle down and grow roots, a place where he believed he wouldn't mind forging a new life for himself.
In the stifling hot kitchen of the Good Eats Café, Elizabeth-Anne hummed softly to herself as she watched Rosa, the Mexican cook, dunk a ladle into a pot of rice. The porcelain chimed clearly as the big brown-skinned woman with her flat face flipped the ladle expertly upside-down in the exact center of the plate so that the rice came out as if from a mold, in a perfect steaming ball. Nodding to herself, Rosa then deftly ladled a generous portion of the chunky rich beef stew around the orb of rice, careful not to drip any on the pristine whiteness of the rice itself.
Rosa held the plate out to Elizabeth-Anne and grunted.
Elizabeth-Anne took it and looked down at it. For a moment her face broke into an uncharacteristic scowl. There was no doubt in her mind but that the dish both looked and smelled delicious, but she felt the sudden urge to make it even more special . . . to add that extra artistic woman's touch which it lacked. She had a sudden inspiration. Quickly she set the plate down on the table and hurriedly chose a perfect ripe beefsteak tomato out of the basket on the floor. She washed it and sliced it in half in a zigzag pattern, and placed one of the halves on a corner of the plate. She then sprinkled the tomato with parsley leaves, cracked a hard-boiled egg, and sliced it perfectly. She laid the center portions with their rich yellow circles of yolk around the orb of rice, so that they overlapped slightly.
Rosa watched her from a distance with hooded wise brown eyes, but her flat face was devoid of expression. When Elizabeth-Anne pushed her way back out through the swinging doors, the Mexican woman quietly padded over to the doors, pushed one of the flaps open a crack, and looked out at the handsome stranger. She nodded knowingly to herself. Only this morning Elizabeth-Anne had been a child. But this afternoon . . .ah, this afternoon she had become a woman.
When morning came, Rosa was not at all surprised to learn that the handsome stranger had decided to stay on awhile longer.
3
The arrival of Zaccheus was a time point for both Jenny and Elizabeth-Anne.
It was like a fight to the death. Abruptly the rivalry which had always existed between the two of them deepened. They had both fallen head-over-heels for the stranger who called himself Zaccheus Hale, and for once Elizabeth-Anne was not content to simply withdraw and let Jenny walk all over her. For years they had both lived under the same roof, two sticks of dynamite lacking only the fuse.
And now the fuse was not only in place; it had been lit.
Suddenly the girls fought to outdo each other. In the past they had taken turns serving lunches and suppers at the Good Eats Café, Elizabeth-Anne liking her job and taking it seriously, while Jenny, who obviously hated it, counted the hours and minutes until her shift was over. Now, overnight, they were in the café at the same time, working the lunch and supper shifts, each in her own way vying for the opportunity to serve Zaccheus in order to get his full attention. Jenny was more blatantly forward, relying on her pert prettiness and feminine wiles, while Elizabeth-Anne was subdued and quietly efficient, counting on her shy charm and all the little ways she could think of to make everyday things more special for him. But there was one thing both girls had in common. Each seemed suddenly more vibrantly alive, eyes more intense, skin more radiant and glowing. One smile from Zaccheus and they melted, their legs weak and trembling.
Elender could not help but become aware of this sudden new tension. Yet some feminine intuition told her to stand back and let matters take their natural course. She realized that this was one time when meddling would only make things worse and stretch everything more out of proportion.
Nor was Zaccheus unaware of the girls' attention. He would have had to be blind and unfeeling to miss it. But much as their flurry of activity pleased him, it unsettled him in equal measure. The last woman he had been attracted to was Phoebe Flatts—and only too late had he realized that Phoebe had wanted him only to suit her own purposes. Now, like lightning bolts out of the clear blue, here were two attractive young ladies vying for his undivided attention. He hardly knew what to make of them, and for the first time since Phoebe's cruelty, he found himself flattered and . . . yes, actually wanting and needing feminine company.
Jenny aroused in him a kind of strutting, bantam pride. Most men would think her the more physically attractive of the two, the one who seemed so sure of herself; her facial expressions and her physical grace seemed to whisper unspoken promises.
Elizabeth-Anne, on the other hand, touched a sensitive nerve in his heart. Here, he knew, was someone who had been beaten down, who had suffered; yet despite her shyness, she held herself with a kind of fierce, aloof dignity—there was a strength coursing through her which was so well hidden that hardly anyone even knew it was there. But he did. Something told him that she was special. She needed, he felt, only to be given a dose of kindness in order to have her dormant confidence restored.
When he sat down to supper the next night, Elizabeth-Anne and Jenny collided as they hurried to his table. Jenny turned her back to him so that he would not see her bared teeth as she hissed 'Scram!' to Eli
zabeth-Anne. Then she turned around, a sweet smile on her lips as she approached his table. 'We have a Texas-style chili,' she said in a throaty voice, adding quickly in a whisper, 'and anything else you might want.'
He glanced up at her, his eyes unfocused as he gazed past her across the dining room. He could see Elizabeth-Anne gnawing on a clenched knuckle; then, when she became aware of his gaze, she swiftly whirled around and scurried into the kitchen.
Zaccheus withdrew his gaze, and his bright blue eyes looked up at Jenny. 'What I want is to find out where I can hire a car.'
'Oh.' Jenny's face fell for an instant. 'There aren't any. But you could hire a horse and buggy at the livery stable. It's two blocks down Main Street. Next to Pitcock's Hardware Store.'
'Do you happen to know what time they open in the morning?'
'Six, I think.' Jenny hesitated. 'Will there be anything else?'
'The chili, please.'
She pursed her lips and hurried to fetch it.
The next morning Zaccheus hired a horse and buggy and started on his Bible-selling rounds.
It was late Sunday morning, five days later, when the church service finished and the congregation came spilling from inside the blistered wood building. The white-hot sun was baking the rutted dust of Main Street with a furnacelike heat.
Jenny blinked in the sudden light, shielded her eyes with a cupped hand, and glanced around. Everyone was milling about as usual, catching up on the latest gossip. Beside her were Elender, who wore a severe long black dress with a matching bonnet, only a touch of lace at her throat softening the funereal look, and Elizabeth-Anne in the hand-me-down flowered dress which had been Jenny's favorite until she'd outgrown it. While Elender and Elizabeth-Anne stopped to talk to the Byrd sisters, Jenny murmured her excuses and withdrew to the sagging white picket fence that surrounded the little church. She leaned against it, watching Zaccheus intently. He was standing on the top step of the church, conversing with Reverend Drummond.
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