by Lisa Plumley
“On the contrary. It’s my pleasure!” Grace turned away, coming to a brisk stop at Deputy Winston’s desk. She clanged her chain with evident zeal, then wrapped one length of it around the deputy’s desk leg. “It’s been ages since I’ve enjoyed a good old-fashioned civil protest. I can’t possibly allow married life to make me complacent, now, can I?”
Miles could have sworn he heard Deputy Winston whimper.
“When motherhood enters its full swing, I’ll undoubtedly be too busy to fully engage in the pursuit of justice,” Grace went on. “At least for a while, that is. Also, my husband will be so disappointed if I don’t follow through with this. Why, he’s already looking forward to banning you from his saloon for life, Deputy Winston. The sheriff, too, of course. He said so.” Grace aimed a delighted smile at Miles as she reached for the lock she’d brought. “My Jack is very supportive of my interests.”
Miles laughed outright. He hadn’t seen much of Morrow Creek yet, but so far, he liked it. He knew he could be happy here.
Then he unfolded the note Grace had given him…and realized he’d underestimated Rosamond McGrath Dancy yet again.
Tarnation. She sure did keep a man on his toes.
Chapter Six
“And one, two, three. One, two, three.”
Rosamond’s voice floated from a nearby window as Miles strode toward her house. Belatedly spying his approach, Seth moved from the side yard to intercept him. Miles waved off his interference and kept going inside. He headed down the hall.
No mere security man was stopping him from getting to the bottom of things with Rosamond. But the music he heard next, overlaid with the sound of Rosamond’s voice, just might.
He recognized that song. He’d wager Rosamond did, too.
She gave no sign of it as she called out encouragingly in the distance, speaking loudly to be heard over the sound of a fiddle. “That’s right, ladies! Keep going. Very nicely done.”
Frowning, Miles followed the familiar lilt of her voice around the next corner. The lodgings Rosamond occupied were surprisingly large, with irregular twists and turns in the architecture and rooms added higgledy-piggledy next to other rooms. Miles couldn’t help thinking those eccentricities suited the house’s occupants. None of them were as expected, either.
As he neared the music’s source, it grew louder. So did the shuffling of many feet. A dance lesson was under way, Miles surmised, with Rosamond at its head. The realization made him feel even more provoked than he had when arriving.
Catching flickering shadows moving against the hallway wall, Miles arrowed in on those telltale movements. He heard breathless exclamations and effortful footsteps. He reached the next room’s threshold and glimpsed Rosamond herself at its far corner, keeping time. The room had obviously been pressed into service as an impromptu ballroom for Rosamond’s mutual society.
Determinedly, Miles strode inside.
Women caught in middance parted in confused pairs as he came. As he passed the dancers—the saucy Miss Yates among them—whispers kicked up. They gained intensity as Miles reached Rose.
She didn’t see him at first. She was concentrating on demonstrating the dance movements for her students, her arms outstretched to embrace an invisible partner. But once Lucinda Larkin, Tobe’s mother, spied Miles and brought her surprisingly proficient fiddle music to a stop, Rosamond stopped. She looked for the cause of the silence. She found him immediately. Aha.
She seemed pleased to see him. “Mr. Callaway! You’re back. You must have reconsidered your stance on my mutual society.” Her gaze took in his rumpled clothes and hat, then landed on his face. “Not too worse for wear, I’d say. Although I think you’re going to be sporting a black eye come this time tomorrow.”
“You should know. You’ve seen a shiner or two in your day.”
“Of course I haven’t!” Rosamond issued an unconvincing titter, not letting on that she’d nursed Miles through a few of those bruises herself in the past. In fact, this whole situation was strongly reminiscent of their friendship…and their missed chances at having more, too. “I’m far too ladylike for that.”
“Have it your way. My mistake, Mrs. Dancy.”
“Indeed.” She lifted her chin, then shifted her attention toward her waiting dance pupils. She found her assistant nearby. “Miss Yates, would you please take over for me here? I have something to discuss with Mr. Callaway.”
“Of course she’ll take charge.” Miles wasn’t in the mood to wait for that meddlesome woman to spoil his momentum. “If she can’t, then I’m sure Miss O’Malley, Miss Jorgensen, Miss Scott, Mrs. Larkin, or any one of the others would be happy to do it.”
Rosamond stared. “How do you know all their names?”
Miles smiled. “You’d be surprised how many of your friends found reasons to visit the backyard on the day I brought Riley. I think I’ve met…” He studied the room. “Everyone.”
A general murmur from the women present confirmed it.
“Oh.” Rosamond frowned, seeming taken aback. “I see.”
“You’re about to hear an earful, too,” Miles assured her. Then he took Rosamond’s hand and towed her out of the room, headed toward the silent—and much more private—hallway beyond, leaving all the ladies and a glowering Miss Yates in their wake.
*
Rosamond had forgotten exactly how tall and imposing Miles could be, especially when he had his dander up about something.
Well. She could be imposing, too, when she put her mind to it. Determined to do so, she tugged her hand from his grasp.
“Exactly what do you think you’re doing, bursting in on my dance lesson this way? I have half a mind to call Dylan.”
“Go ahead. Call him.”
Whoops. She wished Miles would quit challenging her. No one else did. They didn’t dare. They knew that of all the people in her household, Rosamond was the least likely to back down.
She didn’t want to back down now, either. Because the truth was, she didn’t want to call Dylan. Or Seth. Or Judah. She didn’t want to put a stop to being alone with Miles.
Now that she had him, freshly jail broken, she wanted him all to herself. She wanted him to smile at her and talk with her. She wanted to know him, inside and out, the way she once had. That could only happen if they spent time alone together.
Urgently, privately, recklessly alone together.
She hesitated, trying to dream up a method to have it both ways—to preserve her authority while still being alone with Miles. Instead, all that flooded her mind were thoughts of how different he appeared today, with his longer hair and casual clothes and workaday boots.
He seemed so much…freer here in Morrow Creek.
She liked that about him. She liked the new easiness she sensed in him. In truth, she’d never approved of the gaudy livery that Arvid Bouchard had outfitted his male employees in. Miles had made it look better than most, but all the same…
All the same, she had to get down to brass tacks. She wanted Miles Callaway not to be the only man on record who’d refused a membership in her mutual society. She wanted…him.
She wanted him to stay until she made up her mind about him—which was taking much longer than she’d anticipated it would. In her experience, the best way to keep someone around was to keep them guessing. Hadn’t that worked wonders to keep up her interest in Miles? She was certainly guessing about him. And the best way not to crack under pressure was to stand up straight—to forge brazenly onward, whatever the consequences.
Ready to do just that, Rosamond batted her eyelashes. “Why, Mr. Callaway, what’s wrong? You look ready to breathe fire.”
“Please call me Miles.”
As if she hadn’t done that a hundred times already.
“All right, Miles. What seems to be the problem? Are you having trouble thanking me for having you released from jail?”
“I think you’ll find Mrs. Murphy did that.”
“I promise you I was instrumental in the effort.” R
osamond peered more closely at him, confused by his stern demeanor. Seth had filled her in—with relish—on Miles’s supposed wrongdoings. His misdeeds hadn’t been serious enough to warrant further conversation, but Rosamond had been glad that Miles had been wrongly jailed for doing something chivalrous. That was just like the man she remembered. This obduracy, on the other hand, wasn’t. “All the same, you didn’t have to burst into my dance lesson that way.”
“Yes, I did.” He sounded inexplicably aggrieved. “Did you know it was the same song? The song Mrs. Larkin was playing just now. It was the same song that you and I heard…that night.”
Seeming undone by that knowledge, Miles ran his hand through his hair. He paced a few steps down the hall. He turned and then gazed down at her, hard-faced and vaguely inscrutable behind his dark trimmed facial hair. If Rosamond hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he found her dance lesson more distressing than his jailing or his impending black eye.
She raised her eyebrow, hoping to compel him to continue.
Thankfully, he did. He gave a gusty sigh, then confessed…
“I always thought I’d be the one to teach you to dance.”
Oh. Relieved, Rosamond relaxed. Nothing dangerous was going on. Nothing threatening was happening. Miles was just…
Well, Miles was just being exactly as nostalgic as she was.
Maybe he felt just as lost these days as she did, too.
In that moment, with that lonesome stray thought, Rosamond mislaid another fraction of her resistance to him. When she should have been defending herself and her very reasonable dance lesson, she could only feel guilty for leaving Miles behind in Boston. When she should have been calling for Dylan to ensure her security, she could only take another step nearer to the man whose arrival had endangered her carefully built new life.
When she should have been moving away, Rosamond could only move closer. Because as soon as Miles mentioned dancing, she remembered the song in question…and she remembered the night during which they’d heard it, together, back in Boston.
They’d been sitting on a hay bale outside the stables, both she and Miles illuminated by the artificial light of dozens of distant dazzling gas lamps. They’d been listening to the music and laughter at one of Genevieve Bouchard’s innumerable society parties. They’d been pretending to have a highbrow conversation about investments and holidays, about summer homes and orchestras…about the kind of certainty and freedom that neither Rosamond nor Miles would ever enjoy in their lifetimes.
She recalled the two of them guffawing as they imitated Mrs. Bouchard’s stuffy guests. She remembered Miles gallantly and elaborately bowing to her as he asked Rosamond’s hand for the next waltz. She remembered her own heart hammering as she reached out, there on the mansion’s grassy grounds, to accept.
She remembered Arvid Bouchard hollering in the moonlight for Miles to come hoist a heavy crate of whiskey for the kitchen staff, ruining the moment before it had a chance to blossom.
They’d both been so young then. It didn’t matter that only a year or so had passed. She—and Miles—were much older now.
Looking into his face, Rosamond deeply regretted it.
“I tried to be the one to teach you to dance.” Miles’s gravelly voice reached all the way inside her, steady and familiar. “Remember? I was willing to risk you stomping all over my toes, just so you could know what it felt like to dance.”
She’d so wanted that. She still did. Rosamond shut her eyes, just for a moment—just long enough to regain her composure and stop feeling the yearning that stretched between them.
“You could teach me now,” she heard herself say. “We can hear the music from here. No one would need to know we did it. You could teach me now,” she urged, “and we could—”
“We could go on pretending not to know one another?”
Miles’s sharp tone snapped open her eyes. Rosamond inhaled, ready to defend herself. She wished she didn’t have to defend herself. But before she could formulate a coherent reply…
“I accept,” Miles told her.
Her whole body felt glad.
It was a silly idea. Rosamond knew that. She felt it keenly as she gazed up into his handsome face, as she took in his outstretched arms and alert posture. Just then, she didn’t care.
A part of her innocence had been stolen from her. A part of her vivaciousness was gone forever. If she could feel just a fraction of those things again, even for a single moment…
Yes. Willingly, Rosamond touched her hand to Miles’s, her gesture as light as a summer breeze stirring the grass. She straightened her spine. She held her breath, feeling the anticipation between them grow as each moment ticked away.
Carefully, Miles placed his free hand at her waist. For an instant, feeling the gentle but unfamiliar pressure of his palm at her side, Rosamond thought she would panic. But then she looked up at Miles. She saw the certainty in his gaze and the caring in his face, and she knew she would be all right.
For this moment, with this man, she would be…
Held. She would be held in a way she never had been before, as Miles deftly danced them a few steps across the hallway. His gaze remained fixed on Rosamond’s, his movements sure and his footsteps light. It was the dance they’d both been hoping for, however delayed it had been in coming, and it was…perfect.
Just for now, Rosamond didn’t have to be on guard. She didn’t have to be in charge. She didn’t have to be afraid, the way she’d been afraid for all these months on her own. She didn’t have to have all the answers for herself and everyone else who was depending on her to save them. All she had to do was let Miles clasp her hand and dance them both away.
He did, and Rosamond felt sure she was flying. She felt too carefree not to be flying. Higher and higher they went, and as that fanciful notion caught hold of her imagination, Rosamond couldn’t help glancing down at their feet for reassurance.
She tripped over Miles’s big boot. The spell was broken.
She laughed, releasing Miles’s hand. “I’m sorry! It seems I’m the last person who should be instructing anyone in dancing, doesn’t it? I learned from Lucinda, but she doesn’t enjoy speaking in front of people. So the lessons fell to me and I—”
“It was a perfect dance.” Miles’s sparkling eyes told her he believed it. “Perfect. We could have another one. Right now.”
His ready arms coaxed her to agree. So did his smile.
“I can’t.” Rosamond shook her head. “I shouldn’t.”
“Let’s go outside, then. We can talk.”
The abrupt change in his tone confused her. “About?”
“About your note.”
Warily, Rosamond examined the angle of his head, trying to discern his plans. “You want to talk outside…in the yard?”
“Outside anyplace you want to go. I’ve heard the Lorndorff Hotel has a fine dining room. I’ll take you to lunch. Or dinner. Or lunch and dinner.” Miles aimed a mischievous glance at her. “After all, I still have far too much money for any honorable man to possess in Morrow Creek. I need to spend it.”
“No.” Rosamond shook her head, too preoccupied to examine where that money might have come from. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
Miles seemed disappointed. He crossed his arms. “Grace was right about you, then. She said you never leave here.”
Uncomfortably, Rosamond shook her head. “I wouldn’t say never. After all, I did arrive here at one time.”
Miles wasn’t fooled. “When she told me, I didn’t believe her. The Rose I knew would never have hidden herself away.” He examined her as he spoke, his tone sure and unrelenting. “She was too full of life for that. She was too strong, too bossy, too stubborn to keep herself hidden from the world.”
His voice all but accused her of complacently letting herself be crushed by circumstances. Rosamond couldn’t take it.
“Do you think that makes it better?” She whirled away, full of frustration and regret. Things had been so nice a
moment ago. “Do you think throwing the past in my face will help?”
“No. I think telling you the truth will help.”
Except it wasn’t the truth. Rosamond knew that. Miles’s assurances that she was somehow supposed to be better than she was—better than she’d turned out to be—only made her feel worse. They made her feel weak. She wasn’t strong. Otherwise, she’d have found another way. She’d have found a way that didn’t hurt Miles. Because now she knew it had hurt him to be left behind. Even though she’d been trying to protect him, she’d hurt him.
“I am not the Rose you knew,” she said. “I never will be.”
“But you danced with me.”
As if that solved anything. Rosamond wished it did.
Now she’d have to tuck away that memory along with her hopes for a husband and family of her own, an Irish setter of her own… With effort, she put aside those self-pitying thoughts.
“Of course I did. You’re a good dancer.”
“I had a good partner. You’re a good woman.”
Now, that’s where he was wrong. For proof, Rosamond only needed to remember the note she’d written to him today. She’d purposely brought Miles back here. Now it was obvious that doing so would only disappoint them both in the end.
They couldn’t recapture what they’d had.
She didn’t know what she’d been thinking.
“I’m sorry. I’m not who you think I am.”
Miles’s gaze searched her face. “Are you sure?”
Rosamond wished she was. Her thoughts and feelings had never been more mixed up. Not even when Genevieve Bouchard had offered her that awful “choice” all those months ago.
“I’m as sure as I’ll ever be.” At the irony of it, Rosamond almost laughed. Because her certainty—about her life, about Miles, about love and right and wrong—was fading fast.
So were her opportunities to see Miles, if she didn’t act.
“How can I make you feel sure?” Miles asked. “I’ll do it.”
Warmed by his audacious conviction, she shook her head. “If I told you that, I’d have to tell you everything.”
