by Merry Farmer
Gunn’s reply was a smile that George could only describe as cocky.
He took the paper and stood. Holly stood with him. “Thank you so much for this, Mr. Gunn,” she said.
“It’s my pleasure,” Gunn replied, standing and coming around his desk to shake both of their hands. “Oh, but a word of advice? Don’t approach Rev. Robbins with your suspicions. Not until you have proof. Don’t even let him know you’ve got a glimmer of doubt about him.”
“Right.” George nodded.
It was a relief to have someone of Gunn’s competence on their side. It was even more of a relief to leave the hotel and offer Holly his arm. She took it with a giddy grin, and together the two of them headed down Main Street toward the station.
“I feel as though we’ve taken up a second career as spies,” she said, hugging his arm tight.
“Not what you’d expect from a mild-mannered pastor and his wife.”
Her giggle grew louder. “George, you were never mild-mannered.”
“Sure I was,” he teased her right back. “For about five minutes each day, right before my afternoon tea.”
She laughed outright at that. The sound sent George’s heart spinning. He was tempted to say it was just like old times, but to be honest, they’d never been this free and easy with each other, even in Baltimore. The young man he’d been hadn’t even considered the idea of being friends with the woman he married. Now George couldn’t imagine it any other way.
“Good morning, Athos.” He shifted back to business as they stepped into the stationhouse.
“Morning, Rev. Pickering, Mrs. Pickering.” Athos came out from around the stationhouse’s counter to greet them with handshakes. “Elspeth tells me great things about the choir you’ve started, Mrs. Pickering.”
Holly blushed and said, “Oh, why thank you. It’s a pleasure to have her and Hubert in the choir.”
“Ivy and Heather are pestering me to be allowed to join as well. They’ll be fifteen in February. Is that too young?”
“Not at all,” Holly replied. “That is, if George thinks continuing the choir after the Christmas pageant is a good idea.”
She turned to him. In that moment, she could have asked for him to dig a trench all the way down to the Amazon Basin and he would have said it was a glorious idea.
“I don’t see why not,” he said, then followed it with, “Athos, I need you to send a telegram for me, but I need you to be absolutely discreet.”
“Of course.” Athos nodded, then headed back around the station desk to the telegraph machine. “Discretion is part of the job.”
George stepped with Holly over to the desk. He took another look at the message Gunn had written out on the paper before handing it over to Athos. “You can see why we need to keep quiet about this.”
Athos’s usual cheery smile faded as he read the message. “Oh.” He sounded disappointed.
“Is there a problem?” George asked.
“No,” Athos answered, not entirely reassuring. “It’s just that…” He winced as he set the paper down and prepared the telegraph machine. “Well, I hope you don’t think I’m ungrateful or a traitor when I say that I sort of like Rev. Robbins’s sermons.”
George saw Holly’s eyebrows fly up out of the corner of his eye. That was about how he would have reacted if he hadn’t been able to school his expression in time. “Really?” he asked.
Athos looked sheepish as he typed in the message. “Well, they make a nice change. Not that I don’t enjoy your sermons as well,” he said quickly, glancing up from his work. “Actually, I have always enjoyed your sermons very much. It’s just that Robbins has a way of…of stirring the soul with his passion.”
“Are you sure you don’t mean frightening people?” Holly murmured.
George send her an amused glance, and was surprised to see Athos do the same.
“All right,” Athos chuckled. “I’ll admit, he is a bit frightening. But you’re talking to someone who loves reading dime novels to his children at night. The more terrifying the better.” He ended his explanation with a wink.
Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, George counted himself the luckiest man alive to be pastor of Haskell. His congregation had to be the most eclectic of any pastor in the West.
“There you go.” Athos finished with the telegram and glanced up with a smile. “Do you want me to add that to your tab?”
“No, I’ll settle the whole thing up now.”
George took a few minutes to settle things with Athos and to pay what he owed. When they were finished, Athos promised to send Hubert over with a reply as soon as it came.
“I don’t expect we’ll hear back right away,” George said as he and Holly walked home along Station Street. “It’s less than a week before Christmas, after all, and I’m sure Mr. Pinkerton is very busy.”
“I’m sure,” Holly echoed. The closer they got to the church, the slower they walked. “I’ll be happy to hear anything.”
“Me too.”
And right then and there, they ran out of things to talk about. To George, it felt like falling into a rut in the road that he knew was there but couldn’t seem to avoid. He should take the moment to tell Holly that he was having a good time doing investigative work with her, that he liked the rapport they’d established. He should tell her that his life had become so much better since she arrived. He should thank her for taking the risk of coming all the way to Wyoming. He should even accept her apology and tell her he’d let bygones be bygones sometime last week.
But no, it was like they had been ice-skating, gliding blithely along, and all of a sudden they’d lost their footing and hit a wall.
They reached the apartment and went inside, returning to their normal routine. The window of opportunity for George to say something—maybe even kiss her again—was closing fast.
“Well,” he started as Holly hung her coat and crossed back to the counter to finish putting breakfast away. Nothing more came out of his mouth.
She turned to him, her brow lifted expectantly. “Well?” she prompted him in a near-whisper.
George’s gaze zeroed in on her lips, soft, pink from the cold, and begging to be kissed. That would be exactly what he needed to break through the wall and get things flowing between them. She’d tasted heavenly before, responded so willingly. It made him wonder if they were ready for more than just a kiss. Maybe something more passionate was what they needed to get everything out in the open.
“I could put the leftover bacon into cornbread for lunch.”
As soon as she said it, George knew the moment had passed. He’d hesitated too long and lost yet another opportunity to set things right between the two of them.
“That sounds delicious,” he said, fighting to keep the disappointment out of his voice.
Her own smile faltered, and her eyes took on a pleading cast. As if she’d wanted him to do something and he’d let her down. “I’ll get started right away.”
She didn’t move.
Neither did he.
Until the silence between them became unbearable.
“I’ll just look over my notes to get ready for tomorrow’s pageant rehearsal.”
Like the fool he was proving himself to be over and over, he turned and fled to his office. But now more than ever, he left a piece of him behind with Holly.
Chapter 11
It was three days before Christmas, and Holly was feeling as though her life was a ship being tossed in a storm. One moment things seemed wonderful with George. They were talking freely and getting closer. He’d kissed her, and it was magnificent. The next moment he was shuffling his feet like a green schoolboy, barely able to look her in the eye. And as far as she could tell, nothing had happened, nothing had changed. It was the most frustrating thing she had ever experienced.
Not that she was much better. A smarter woman would have put her foot down and asked George outright what was holding him back. The trouble was, she was terrified that the answe
r to why he kept pulling back would be that he still couldn’t forgive her for being a coward all those years ago. If she pressed the issue and he admitted that he couldn’t forgive her, couldn’t trust her, even the tenuous friendship they’d developed wouldn’t be enough to keep her from crashing into despair.
“Holly,” George called across the sanctuary, jerking her out of her thoughts. “That’s your cue.”
Holly glanced around in a panic. She sat at the piano to the side of the chancel. Her choir of angels was in place on the platforms that had been set up along the back. They wore their full costumes, glittering with golden tinsel. In front of the choir, Mary and Joseph—or rather Penny Albee and Morris Plover, Bebe and Hubert’s last-minute replacements—crouched on either side of a manger stuffed with hay. A doll lay in the manger as a stand-in. The shepherds were in place as well…and everyone was staring at her.
“Oh!” She gulped. “Sorry.”
“We need to focus,” George called again from the back. “This is the last time we’ll be able to rehearse before Christmas morning.” There was a tense edge to his voice, as if he really was scolding her instead of merely trying to keep rehearsal moving.
Holly couldn’t for the life of her think what she’d done to provoke him. She started to play the first of the hymns that the angel choir would sing, but her thoughts were barely on the music. They’d had a tough day, that much was certain. Vivian Bonneville had sent word that she wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be able to sing her solo, which meant Holly spent the morning running around town looking for a replacement. That aggravated George, who had been counting on her to help with last-minute decorations. Just when Holly had convinced Jill Abernathy to stand in and sing the solo, Vivian had sent word again saying never mind, she was feeling better and wanted to sing the solo after all.
That meant Holly spent the afternoon trying to appease Mrs. Abernathy after taking the solo away. Mrs. Abernathy had complained to George, telling him that Rev. Robbins would never have allowed such laxity if he was running the pageant. Of course, George fell into a smoldering temper after that, exacerbated by the fact that they still hadn’t heard a peep from Gunn’s friend in Chicago. And to top it all off, one of George’s brothers had sent a telegram expressing his outrage that George had married Holly after all.
Of course, it didn’t help that Robbins now sat in the back of the church with Rance Bonneville and all of the other husbands who had delivered their wives to rehearsal but refused to participate.
Holly played a sour note just as the choir reached the climax of “It Came upon a Midnight Clear.” A bitter grin twisted her lips. It was a fitting example of how she felt.
“Hold up, hold up for a minute,” George called.
The choir stopped singing. Holly stopped playing and twisted to face George. He rubbed his face, then marched forward to the front of the sanctuary.
“It looks imbalanced,” he said, though Holly wasn’t sure who he was talking to.
She took a chance, getting up from the piano bench and moving to stand by his side. He stiffened slightly as she reached him, flushing, but he didn’t look at her.
“How does it look imbalanced?” she asked in as soothing a voice as she could.
He peeked sideways at her, then focused on the tableau in front of them. “The choir is too far over to one side.”
Holly squinted as she studied the scene. “Maybe we can move them to the right. Let me just check one thing.”
She stepped away from George, moving around to the side aisle and heading toward the back of the church. She checked on him as she walked. A nervous, longing tremor passed through her when she found him watching her, his expression unreadable, instead of looking at the choir. She tried to smile for him, but could barely manage it.
When she reached the back of the room, she came to a halt behind the bench where Robbins, Rance, and the others were sitting. She crossed her arms and frowned at the scene filling the front of the church. The choir was just a smidgen too far to the left. Maybe if they shifted—
“I usually do much better than this.”
Robbins’s mumbled comment to Rance suddenly had her full attention.
“What do you mean?” Rance asked, just as quiet.
“I mean, I can usually bring in a much tidier sum in the amount of time I’ve had here,” Robbins went on.
Holly stood stock still. She wasn’t sure if the men knew she stood right behind them, if they had been paying enough attention to the rehearsal to see that she’d moved from the piano. They seemed far more focused on George than her.
“What’s different about Haskell than other places?” Rance asked with a shrug.
Robbins let out a low grumble. “It’s him.” He nodded to George, who was facing the front again, his back to Robbins, Rance, and Holly. “There are too many people in this town who are loyal to Pickering. Too many people have asked me what Pickering thinks of my charities before giving a cent.”
Holly swallowed, wanting to step forward in order to hear better, but loath to give herself away just as she was getting the one thing she and George had longed for—a confession.
“So?” Rance went on. “Test that loyalty. Turn people against him. You’ve got to have a way to do that.”
Holly went hot all over, clenching her hands into fists. How dare they?
Robbins chuckled, low and menacing. “You know, you might be right. And I have just the thing.”
“Oh?” Rance looked like a gossip in the schoolyard who had just been handed a juicy bone.
“Turns out the good Rev. Pickering hasn’t always been so good,” Robbins said.
Rance laughed. “It’s always the saintly ones who have the most to hide.”
“And believe me, George Pickering has plenty in his life that needs brushing under the carpet.”
“So why not sweep that all out into the open?”
Robbins turned to him just enough for Holly to see his vicious grin. “You know, I think I just might.”
He stood and stepped out into the aisle. Holly gasped, swaying forward and raising her arms, but there was no way she could stop what was about to happen.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Robbins announced in a bold shout. “This pageant, this display, and this man are all abominations in the eyes of God.”
The stunned pageant participants glanced from George—who was giving them instructions—to Robbins as he marched down the aisle. George himself twisted to see what the fuss was.
Holly leapt after Robbins. “No,” she yelped, feeling about as powerful as a newborn kitten who had lost its mother.
Robbins didn’t even acknowledge her. “The celebration of God’s birth should not be portrayed like a common theatrical display,” he boomed instead. “It is a moment of utmost sacredness, not to be desecrated by a whoremonger and a villain.” He threw out his hand, pointing a finger at George.
The choir members gawped. Penny and Morris exchanged nervous looks on either side of the manger. The Montrose brothers—who had been waiting for their cue at the side of the sanctuary—stood and moved closer to George.
“I asked you not to interrupt,” George said to Robbins in a deceptively calm voice. Holly could see the fury dripping off of him. More than that, he glanced past Robbins to meet her eyes with something that might have been irritation, but might also have been a warning to stay out of things.
Holly didn’t know what he was trying to tell her, but she couldn’t stand by and let Robbins speak against him. “George is a wonderful man,” she insisted. “And this pageant is a loving tribute to our Lord, not blasphemy.”
Robbins whipped around, his eyes widening as if Holly was an impertinent child. “Blasphemy!” He grasped onto her word and ran with it. “She is right. This entire presentation is blasphemy.”
“It is not,” George insisted. He marched up the aisle to meet Robbins. Again, he glanced to Holly before charging on. “I mean you no disrespect, Rev. Robbins, but I have lost patien
ce with your meddling and interruptions. You are no longer required or wanted in my church. Please leave.”
“Your church?” Robbins bellowed. He stepped past George to address the pageant participants, who were all now gathered on the chancel, whispering and, in several cases, wringing their hands. “This man claims that God’s house is his house. This is an outrage, especially considering the disgusting life this man has led.”
Holly stepped forward to George’s side and held her breath. She wanted to grasp his hand and hold on tight, but the anger bubbling off of him was too powerful, and she wasn’t sure whether it was directed, in part, at her or not.
“Do you know what this man has done?” Robbins went on, half pontificating to the people gathered on the chancel and half twisting to point at George. “Not only does he allow harlots to enter into your midst while you worship, he has patronized those harlots.”
“He has not,” Bonnie spoke up from the choir. “George is not a client.”
“Perhaps not here,” Robbins blazed on, “but in the past he was a man with a wicked reputation, both in the East and in the West. This man has lain with tainted women, gambled, and wallowed in drunkenness.”
“No!” Rance gasped from behind Holly and George. “I’m shocked.”
Rance was a terrible actor. When Holly pivoted to glare at him, he wore a gleeful grin. She had half a mind to give him a piece of her mind, but Robbins wasn’t finished yet.
“This so-called man of God has made fools of you all. He stands before you, prattling about morality and virtue on Sundays, but his own life is as black as coal. He has been reckless, feckless, and corrupt in every way.” He reached his crescendo, then took a half step back, raising his arms as if to conduct a chorus of disapproval.
The Montrose brothers, the choir, the shepherds, and everyone else stood where they were, gaping in confusion. They were silent, eyes wide, unmoving. Holly’s heart pounded, but she couldn’t draw breath, as much as she wanted to come to George’s defense.
Robbins’s arms lowered slightly. His expression of triumph dropped. “Don’t you care that a wolf in sheep’s clothing is leading your congregation? Don’t you think you should demand a better, holier leader?”
