He pinned her in place with an unsmiling gaze. “Marv said you’re hunting Ed and Ruby Early.”
Amelia’s knees began to quake, and she offered a jerky nod. “Yes, sir.”
“For what reason?”
“My name is Amelia Emmett. I work—er, worked—for the Good Shepherd Asylum for Orphans and Half-Orphans in New York City. Mr. and Mrs. Early adopted a little girl”—she caught Lucy’s shoulders and pulled the child tight against her leg, grateful for something to which to cling—“from Good Shepherd. I’m to deliver her to them today. Do you know where they are?” Dear God, please don’t let them be sitting in one of his jail cells.
The sheriff’s thick eyebrows descended. He stared at her long and hard for several tense seconds, and then he blew out a breath. “Yes, miss, I know where they are. And they won’t be comin’ here to collect this child.” He glanced at Lucy. For a moment his stern gaze softened, something akin to sorrow shimmering in his steel blue eyes. “We put Mr. an’ Mrs. Early to rest in the Kingsley cemetery only this mornin’.”
Dead? Oh, so much worse than arrested. Lucy was orphaned yet again. Amelia’s knees gave way. She dropped onto the bench.
Lucy touched Amelia’s cheek, her sweet face puckered. “Miss Meela, what’s a matter?”
“Shh, darling, everything’s all right.” Such a bold lie. Amelia cupped Lucy’s head and guided it to her shoulder. The child’s silky curls tickled her jaw, a welcome distraction. She gaped up at the sheriff. “How did they…?”
He grimaced. “Fire broke out in their farmhouse two nights ago while they were sleepin’. Neither one got out.”
Amelia pressed her palm to her throat, closed her eyes, and forced herself to think rationally. Miss Agnes always had adoptive parents list next-of-kin for emergencies. If she remembered correctly, Mr. Early had a brother residing in Kingsley. She popped her eyes open and zinged her gaze to the sheriff. “Mr. Early’s brother…”
“Abe,” the sheriff said.
She recalled the name from her paperwork. “Yes, Abraham Early. Did he survive the fire?”
“Ed an’ Abe worked the ground together, but they didn’t live together. Abe has his own place a short piece from his brother’s house. So he wasn’t affected by the fire.”
If the brothers lived side by side and tilled their farmland together, he was certainly affected. Sympathy wove its way through her. She planted a quick kiss on Lucy’s curls and pushed to her feet, taking hold of the little girl’s hand as she rose. “Will you direct me to his farm, please? I need to speak with him.”
The sheriff shrugged. “I doubt he’s at his farm yet seein’ as how we buried his brother an’ sister-to-law less than an hour ago. You’ll likely find him at the cemetery.”
She shuddered. Such a dismal place for a meeting. She pulled in a steadying breath and straightened her spine. “I need to put my trunk and Lucy’s bag in a safe place. Then, sir, I ask that you take me to the cemetery.”
Chapter Two
How long would he stay with his knees pressed in the fresh-turned soil? The noonday sun, hot already for late April, scorched his uncovered head. Underneath his good Sunday suit, perspiration dampened his shirt. Work waited at home. Lots of work. He should go.
Abe braced his palm on the thigh of his trousers, intending to push himself upright and move away from the moist mound of richly scented earth, but instead he settled his backside on the heel of his boot. Sorrow sat as heavy as a boulder in his chest. He wanted to pray—add his request for the peace and comfort the preacher asked God to give him during Ed and Ruby’s service—but no words would form.
He rested his hand on the bar of Ed’s simple wood cross and let his head hang low. He sighed. What would he do without Ed? Without his brother, his partner, his best friend? His chin started to quiver. He scrunched his eyes closed.
“Abe?”
The voice startled him so badly he almost yanked Ed’s cross from the ground. He jolted to his feet and spun. Sheriff Bailey stood a few feet away. A timid-looking woman and a little girl, both strangers to Kingsley, were with the man. Heat filled his face. How long had they been gawking at him?
The woman’s gaze traveled from his dirty knees to the top of his head. Her green eyes went wide, her mouth formed an O, and pink splashed her cheeks. He’d seen that reaction before. Not for the first time, he wished he could shrink himself to a normal height. Why’d he have to be such a flagpole of a man anyway?
He sniffed hard and slapped his hat on his head, trying to ignore the woman’s startled expression. “Whatcha need, Sheriff?”
The lawman jabbed his thumb toward the woman. “This here is Miss Amelia Emmett. She came from New York, expected Ed an’ Ruby to meet the train. But…”
Understanding washed through Abe. He dropped his attention to the little girl—the one his brother had claimed would call him Uncle Abe. Ed and Ruby made all the arrangements over the wires and through back-and-forth mailed exchanges with the orphanage in New York, accepting responsibility for a child sight unseen. When Abe questioned the wisdom of such a venture, Ed laughed and said, “Are you worried she won’t be as pretty as my Ruby? Well, how could she be? But it don’t matter. Me an’ Ruby can love a homely child if need be. After all, we both love you, you big galoot!” The memory sat pleasantly in the back of Abe’s mind.
Now, looking at the child from the orphanage in New York, he decided that neither Ed nor Ruby would’ve called this one homely. The little thing stared at him with big eyes as blue as the Kansas sky. Brown ringlets, sparkling with gold in the sunshine, framed her heart-shaped face. Her button nose and pink lips were as perfect as those he’d seen on a porcelain doll in a store window. She was probably as fragile as a doll, too.
He frowned at the sheriff. “Didn’t you tell her about …?” He held his hand toward the pair of crosses.
“Sure I told her.”
“So then why not put her back on the train?”
“’Cause she asked me to bring her to you. Figured you’d still be here.”
Abe slipped his hands into his suit pockets. Sweat dribbled down his forehead and stung his eyes. “I won’t be for long. I’ve finished my goodbyes.” Pain stabbed his chest like somebody’d impaled him with an arrow. “Gotta get back an’—”
“Is everything all right?” Preacher Henry strode across the yard from the direction of the church and joined their circle. He shook hands with the sheriff and then fixed his attention on Abe.
Abe bobbed his head toward the woman and child. “Remember Ed an’ Ruby saying they were gonna adopt an orphan? Well, that little girl is the orphan, and that lady is the one who brought her. Preacher Henry, I’d appreciate it if you’d—”
“Mr. Early.” Miss Amelia Emmett moved toward him. Just two steps with her brown-and-tan skirt sweeping the tips of the scraggly grass blades poking up from the ground. The little girl held to the woman’s skirts and came, too.
Instinctively, Abe eased backward the same distance and almost stepped on the preacher’s toes.
The woman’s fine brown eyebrows pinched together. “I wish to offer my condolences for your unexpected loss. I realize you are in mourning, and I don’t intend to sound shrewish, but would you speak to me rather than speaking of me?”
More sweat dripped down Abe’s forehead. She wasn’t harsh. Actually, her voice was soft, gentle as a spring rain shower, and matched the soft turn of her jaw. But the words pricked him as hard as marble-sized hailstones. His ma had taught him better manners. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, miss. Didn’t mean any disrespect.” He shifted himself behind Ruby’s cross and fingered its smooth, warm top. “I’m real sorry, too, that you came all this way for nothing. Seein’ as how my brother an’ his wife planned to adopt the little girl, I probably ought to pay for your tickets back to New York.” He reached for his pocket where his money pouch held a few coins. Would he have enough to cover their fare? Paying for two carved maple caskets lined with fine linen—he couldn’t bear to
bury his brother and sister-in-law in plain pine boxes—had used up a good portion of his bank account.
The woman shook her head slowly. A strand of hair the color of ripe wheat fell from underneath the brim of the fanciest hat he’d ever seen in Kingsley and waved beside her smooth cheek. “Mr. Early, I don’t think you understand. Your brother and his wife didn’t plan to adopt Lucy. The adoption was finalized before I made the journey.”
Abe gnawed the inside of his cheek. What did she expect him to do? “Well, I—”
“Miss Agnes Swenson, the matron of the Good Shepherd Asylum for Orphans and Half-Orphans, is always very thorough. She required Edwin and Ruby to choose a next-of-kin who would assume responsibility for Lucy should illness or accident befall them.” Pink filled the woman’s face again. “They chose you.”
Abe raised his eyebrows and touched his chest. “Me?” He gulped. “For what?”
“To take care of Lucy in their stead.”
He barked a laugh. “No, they didn’t.”
She patted a pouch hanging from a cord over her shoulder. “I assure you they did.”
The woman was mistaken. Or flat-out lying. Weren’t the big cities full of swindlers? This gal must be pulling a trick on him. Ed and Ruby wouldn’t make Abe responsible for a child. They knew better than anyone how inept he was around delicate things. Hadn’t Ruby always given him tin cups instead of china ones for his milk or coffee? And Ed always told him to stay out of the chicken coop until the chicks were full grown in case his big feet crushed one of the fuzzy little fowl.
Abe folded his arms over his chest. “I don’t believe you.”
She opened the bag, pulled out several sheets of paper folded together, and offered them to him. “See for yourself.”
He kept his arms tight over his thudding heart. “Don’t want to.”
Sympathy pursed her face. “Are you illiterate, Mr. Early?”
He pondered the unusual word. Meaning struck, and his face grew hot. He jammed his hands into his pockets. “I can read just fine, miss. But I don’t need to read it. Even if my name is on there somewhere, it don’t mean anything.”
Sympathy changed to stubbornness. “I assure you, Mr. Early, it means a great deal.” She opened the pages and pointed to several lines. “This is a legally binding document naming you as Lucy’s guardian in the event of Edwin and Ruby Early’s demise.”
For a small person, she sure had starch. He admired her stick-to-itiveness, but she wasn’t going to push him into taking that child. Neither he nor that little one would come out of the deal unscathed. He shook his head. “Huh-uh.”
Miss Emmett offered the pages to Preacher Henry. “Sir, would you please read this and confirm its contents for Mr. Early?”
The older man scratched his chin and chuckled. “I’m not much for legal reading, Miss Emmett. Maybe we ought to take these to Ben Cleaver. He’s an attorney-at-law.”
“I believe you’ll discover the document is very straightforward.”
Abe snorted. Wasn’t she a pushy thing?
The preacher flicked an uncertain look at Abe. He took the pages and held them at arm’s length. Sheriff Bailey ambled up behind, and they both scanned the lines on each page. Miss Emmett stood close, one hand on Lucy’s curly hair and the other balled on her hip.
Abe kept his gaze angled off to the church steeple while they read. The sun nearly roasted his head through his hat. He twitched in his suit coat. The shoulders were too tight, and the collar scratched the back of his neck. Why hadn’t he left the graveside earlier? By now he could be in his comfortable dungarees and chambray shirt, walking behind the plow, turning the soil, working off the sadness that made his stomach ache with a hunger food couldn’t fill. Instead, he stood here waiting for the preacher to tell Miss Amelia Emmett from New York City her paperwork was all a farce and she should take her shenanigans back to the big city.
Preacher Henry shuffled the pages, scowled at the top paper, and let out a big sigh. He nudged Abe’s elbow and pointed to a paragraph in the middle of the page. “Abe, this part talks about what will happen to the child if the adoptive parents die before she reaches the ‘age of majority.’ She’s supposed to go to the guardian named by the adoptive parents.” The man aimed a sheepish grimace at Abe. “Your name is right here. Ed and Ruby made you the guardian.”
Abe grabbed the papers and stared at the block of print. Sweat slid along his temple and dripped onto the sheet. A couple of the letters smudged. But he could still read his name. He shook his head. “Ed wouldn’t do this. Not without tellin’ me.”
Miss Emmett toyed with Lucy’s curls and turned a pensive gaze on Abe. “Listing a guardian is required of all adoptive parents. Miss Agnes wouldn’t have considered the application without it.”
Abe closed his eyes. Lord, let me be dreamin’. He opened them. Nope. The lady was still there, her fingers in the child’s hair. Thanks a lot.
“Are you his closest relative?”
Abe nodded.
“Then you would be his most likely choice.”
“But—”
“I’m sure he had every intention of honoring his commitment to Lucy himself, but…”
But he died. Abe wadded the pages and shoved them into the woman’s hand. “Well, it don’t matter anyway. No matter what that paper says, I can’t take care of a little girl.” More sweat broke out over his body, and not from the sun’s heat. The little one wouldn’t last a week with him and his bumbling ways. “Take her back to New York.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
She glowered at him and held the rumpled papers under his nose. “Unless a judge severs this agreement, no, I cannot.”
Abe could be stubborn, too. “Then I’ll get the judge to sever it. Sheriff Bailey, when’s the circuit judge comin’ to Kingsley?”
“You know his schedule as well as I do, Abe. He’ll be here sometime durin’ the first week of June.”
Abe stifled a groan. Still six weeks away.
Miss Emmett slipped the adoption papers into her bag. “Mr. Early, did you come to town in a wagon or on horseback?”
Now what was she up to? “In a wagon.”
“Good. Would you kindly meet Lucy and me at the train station?”
His pulse gave a hopeful leap. “You want me to buy you some tickets?” He’d do it even if it cost him every penny in his pocket.
She frowned. “I left Lucy’s bag at the station. Although it isn’t terribly heavy, I’d rather not carry it here to the cemetery. I would appreciate you fetching it.” She took hold of the little girl’s shoulders and aimed her toward Abe. For a moment her chin quivered, and tears winked in her eyes. But then she blinked, set her lips in a grim line, and raised her chin. “Go to your uncle Abe now, Lucy.”
Panic flooded Abe. Holding up both palms, he shuffled in reverse. “Wait!”
She frowned. “Why?”
“You ain’t sendin’ her home with me.”
A mighty sigh left her throat. “What else am I to do with her, Mr. Early? Even the sheriff conceded she is your responsibility until the circuit judge changes the edict—if he changes it.”
Abe unbuttoned his jacket and shrugged it off with jerky, impatient yanks. Threads popped, but he didn’t care. He would suffocate if he had to stay in this suit one more minute. He wadded it and held it in front of him like a shield. “She can’t come with me. I have to ready my ground for planting.”
Preacher Henry cleared his throat. “Now, Abe, to be honest, I don’t know that you have a choice in this. Ed and Ruby adopted that child. Ed made you guardian. She’s yours whether you like it or not.”
He hadn’t slept more than an hour at a time or eaten more than a bite or two since Ed’s house burned down with Ed and Ruby in it. Planning a burial, keeping up with the chores, wondering how in the name of all that was sensible he was going to survive had taxed him beyond anything, including losing his parents when he wasn’t yet old enough to shave. Because for the
first time he had to do it all on his own with no big brother lending encouragement or chiding him or delivering a good-natured kick on his back pockets.
He blew a breath skyward and let the frustration pour out. “I’ve got a farm to run—got a crop to put in the field. All day long, sunup to sundown, I work. Now with Ruby gone I’m gonna have to see to my own meals an’ laundry an’ housecleaning as well as carin’ for the livestock. How can I do all that if I’ve got some little kid needin’ my attention, too?”
Miss Emmett pulled the child against her skirts and cupped her head, her thumb gently stroking the little girl’s temple. The gesture was sweet. Protective. Reassuring. All the things Abe didn’t know how to be. The woman’s green eyes met his. “Mr. Early, I’m sure all new parents feel the same way you do. But in time you’ll find the means to—”
“Time won’t make one bit of difference, Miss Emmett. The only way I could take that child with me is if I had a wife to see to her, an’ there ain’t no likely prospects in Kingsley.” He coughed out a laugh. “Unless you’d like to hitch up with me.”
Chapter Three
Every girl anticipated her marriage proposal. Amelia’s daydream included a dapper beau bent on one knee offering a bouquet of fragrant flowers and a poetic promise of undying love and commitment. Her fantasy shattered with Mr. Early’s outburst, even though she knew he’d spouted the suggestion in jest. Would she ever have the joy of a real proposal? She was twenty-six years old already—beyond the age of desirability. The realization stung. To ease her deep pain, she chose to pretend this one was real.
She met his surly gaze. “To be frank, Mr. Early, it’s too soon for us to consider matrimony even for Lucy’s sake. But I would be willing to stay in Kingsley for a time, help you ease into caretaking for Lucy, and become better acquainted.”
The Rails to Love Romance Collection Page 41
