by Merry Farmer
“Yes.” Athos moved to stand toe-to-toe with her, shoulders squared, jaw set. “Give me my children back.”
Mrs. Lyon cleared her throat and picked an imaginary piece of lint from her sleeve. Without looking at him, she said, “I see you have the court order in your hand. You have been deemed an unfit parent, and I, as representative of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children, have performed the necessary act of mercy in removing the mistreated children from your home.”
“My children are not mistreated,” Athos boomed. “They are loved and cared for.”
Behind the door, cries of, “We are!” “Papa loves us!” “He’s the best papa in the world!” rang out.
A muffled voice within the room shouted at the children to be quiet. The supportive shouts instantly stopped. Athos saw red.
“You will let my children out of that room at once,” he demanded. “You have no right to keep them prisoner.”
“This is a hotel, not a prison,” Mrs. Lyon sniffed. “And they are only being secured in this room to prevent you from doing them further harm.”
“Further harm?” Athos bellowed in outrage. He might have been a fool, but he wasn’t so big of a fool that he couldn’t see dealing with Mrs. Lyon was pointless. He whipped around, marching back down the hall toward Rex Bonneville. “You’re behind this.”
Bonneville crossed his arms and stood straighter. “I don’t deny it. The way those children behave is a disgrace.”
“It’s about time someone put a stop to it.” Vivian echoed her father’s pose, crossing her arms and tilting her chin up to look down her nose at Athos.
“Yes, and that someone is us,” Bebe added, trying but failing to have the same authority as her father and oldest sister.
“This is going too far.” Athos wasn’t about to be intimidated by Bonneville. “These are my children. They are my life. You can’t just take them away from me.”
“A court in Cheyenne says I can.” Bonneville shrugged. “I presented ample evidence to the territory office for housing and citizenry.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Elspeth interjected. “I’ve never even heard of it.”
The Bonneville sisters stared at Elspeth, raking her with glances from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet.
“Who are you?” Melinda asked.
“I’m Mrs. Athos Strong,” she told them, planting her hands on her hips.
A sudden burst of pride and relief that Elspeth was on his side filled Athos. “I sent for her from Hurst Home and we were married yesterday.” He rounded on Bonneville. “Elspeth is here to help care for the children.”
“Clearly she’s not up to the task,” Mrs. Lyon interrupted. “When I went to the house to rescue the children it was in a deplorable state. Laundry was scattered all over the backyard. The two oldest girls were engaged in slave labor hanging it on the line.”
“What?” Elspeth barked in protest. “They had kindly offered to help.”
“Two of the boys were stranded in a tree where one nearly fell to his death,” Mrs. Lyon went on. “The younger ones were screaming like banshees. The oldest implied that he hadn’t been fed for days.”
“Hubert is a growing boy. He’s always hungry,” Athos protested.
Mrs. Lyon ignored him. “And the youngest admitted that he had nearly died twice that day, once by consuming soap.”
“They’re children,” Athos roared. “They’re lively, curious, industrious children.”
“They are in harm’s way and they have been removed,” Mrs. Lyon insisted.
“I want them back.” Athos moved as if to rush down the hall. Mrs. Lyon stepped into his path, and the two men guarding the door rushed forward to protect her.
“You had your chance, Strong,” Bonneville said, a sly grin narrowing his eyes. “You are a failure as a father. The law and the government of this great territory has finally caught up with you.”
Athos wheeled back to face down Bonneville. “You mean your crony friends in the Wyoming Stock Grower’s Association stepped in to do your dirty work. Everyone knows that little club controls the territorial government.”
Bonneville shrugged, not denying it. “Either way, your children will be placed in foster homes as the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children sees fit. Even if they have to be split up,” he added with a vicious smirk.
“No, you can’t,” Elspeth gasped.
“What do you care?” Vivian snapped.
“You barely know them,” Melinda added.
“Yeah, you just got here yesterday,” Bebe finished.
“Perhaps we should give them a chance to explain,” Honoria added, inching sideways to come out of the shadows where she’d hidden. Her eyes were rimmed with shadows, and she coughed before going on with, “Mr. Strong has remarried, after all. Maybe all the children need is a new mother to help settle them.”
“Shut up, Honoria,” Vivian snapped.
“These children obviously need to be sent to reform school,” Melinda added.
“That or the workhouse,” Bebe said. She paused and frowned. “Does America have workhouses or will we have to ship them to England for that?”
“No one is being sent to the workhouse,” Gunn stepped in, holding up his hands to quiet both sides. “The children are safe in the hotel until we sort this confusion out.”
“There’s nothing to sort out,” Mrs. Lyon insisted. “I have a court order for their removal.”
“Let me see.”
Athos quickly handed over the crumpled parchment. Gunn studied it with a frown. As he did, Athos shifted closer to Elspeth. He might feel a bit calmer if he held her hand. But Elspeth was busy staring intently at Gunn.
“This order contains a clause allowing Athos to appeal the decision,” Gunn announced.
“What?” Mrs. Lyon, Bonneville, and his daughters barked at the same time.
“It says right here that Athos has the right to ask for an impartial judge to hear the case and make a decision of appeal.” Gunn lowered the document. “I suggest we wire for a judge to come to Haskell immediately.”
“Theophilus Gunn!” Elspeth’s exclamation was so sudden and so out of tune with the scene that more than just Athos started. “I didn’t make the connection before.”
“Do you know him?” Athos asked.
Elspeth sent him a quick glance before turning back to Gunn with a wide smile. “I…I think I used to.” She blinked and took a step closer, studying Gunn as though reading a forgotten favorite book. “My uncle Stephen once had a valet named Theophilus Gunn. Uncle Stephen was killed in the Crimea, but our family has kept in touch with the valet. Mr. Gunn used to visit when I was just a girl. Is it really you?”
Gunn’s eyes widened as he studied Elspeth right back. He then broke into a wide smile. “Lady Elspeth! You’re so grown up that I didn’t recognize you.” He stepped forward and took her hand, bending over to kiss her knuckles like a man approaching a queen. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, my lady.”
“My lady?” Vivian Bonneville snapped.
Athos recovered from his own shock long enough to send a glance Vivian’s way. The Bonneville sisters had gone from turning up their noses at him and Elspeth to studying Elspeth with a jumble of confusion and fascination. And just a little bit of awe.
“You’re a lady?” Melinda asked.
“As in, a real, fancy, honest-to-God lady with a title and everything?” Bebe blurted.
Elspeth turned bright pink as she stepped away from Gunn. Athos caught a flash of cunning in her eyes before she executed a perfect curtsy for the Bonneville sisters. “I’m afraid I am.” She raised her eyes with regal steadiness and went on to say, “My father is the Marquis of Southampton.”
The Bonneville sisters gasped audibly. They began to blubber and flutter and fall all over themselves to mimic Elspeth’s curtsy.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, my lady,” Melinda said.
“You must come to tea at our
house, my lady” Vivian agreed.
“Wow! A real lady,” Bebe snorted.
Honoria simply smiled and said, “Hello.”
Silence followed. Bonneville frowned, his daughtered preened and primped. Athos stood there with his jaw hanging open, not quite sure what had just happened.
“What’s going on out there?” Hubert called from behind the door.
“You’re too quiet,” Heather’s voice followed.
That spurred Mrs. Lyon into action. “Enough of this nonsense. The children are in my care, and they will be taken to Cheyenne to be distributed to better homes.”
“The children will stay here,” Gunn contradicted her, “until a judge can be sent for to hear an appeal to the case.”
“Right.” Athos nodded, then withered. “Are you certain they have to stay here? They’re my children, they should come home.”
Gunn moved so that he could rest a hand on Athos’s shoulders. “Think of it as giving the children an exciting vacation. Or think of it as a wedding present.” The glanced to Elspeth with a smile. “You’ve just been married and you need some time to get to know your new wife. Leave the children in my care and take a few days to yourself.”
“But…”
Gunn leaned closer. “I’ll set the wheels in motion and send for a judge to hear the appeal. In the meantime, I suggest you consult with Solomon.”
“Solomon?” Athos blinked in surprise.
“Yes.” Gunn nodded, pivoting to explain to Elspeth, “Solomon Templesmith is our town banker, but before he took up finance, he studied the law. He was prevented from practicing back East because of his race, but he still knows the law better than anyone in Haskell.”
“Ha,” Bonneville sniffed. “If you want to employ that jumped-up darkie to fight your case for you, go right ahead. I won’t stop you. Come on, girls.” He stepped away from the scene, retreating across the lobby and toward the door.
As the Bonnevilles moved away from the end of the hall, it became apparent that several other hotel guests had flooded the lobby to see what was going on. Now that the excitement was over, they rushed to look as innocent as possible.
Mrs. Lyon cleared her throat, face scrunched as though she’d eaten something sour. “If I’m going to be forced to stay here until a judge can confirm the opinion of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children, then I expect to be fed and sheltered appropriately.”
“Of course.” Gunn inclined his head to the woman, but his expression had gone so stony that Athos had no doubt Gunn wasn’t happy.
“And someone must send bundles of the children’s clothing to the hotel at once,” Mrs. Lyon went on.
“Of course. I’ll see to it,” Elspeth said.
“Not you.” Mrs. Lyon sneered. “Someone reliable and uninvolved with this deplorable man.”
Anger poured through Athos all over again. “Elspeth is perfectly capable of—”
“I’ll see if Mrs. Evans next door can do it.” Elspeth put a hand on Athos’s arm to calm him.
“That sounds like a good idea,” Gunn agreed. “Until then, I’ll keep an eye on things here. The best you can do right now is to head home.”
That was the best thing he could do, but it didn’t put Athos any more at ease. In fact, now that the surge of action was over, he was left feeling cold and hollow. He turned to glance over his shoulder at the door and the men guarding it. His heart twisted in his chest.
“Don’t you worry, kids,” he called out. “Your Papa is going to get to the bottom of this.”
“Good luck, Papa!”
“You can do it!”
“I love you!”
The calls that came from the other side of the door broke Athos’s heart as much as they strengthened it. He was close to unmanning himself with tears as Elspeth took his arm and led him out of the hotel.
Chapter Six
Stunned by the afternoon’s events and how quickly a family’s fortunes could change, Elspeth walked with Athos out of the hotel, around the corner, and home. Guilt gnawed at her. One day. Not even that. She hadn’t completed a single day of being mother to Athos’s brood, and the whole lot of them had been taken away. History books would record that she was the most unsuccessful mother in history.
Her thoughts were interrupted by Athos’s declaration of, “It’s all my fault.”
“No, no it isn’t,” Elspeth insisted, surprised that they had been thinking more or less the same thing, taking on the same burden of responsibility.
“It is.” Athos plodded up the stairs and onto his porch.
A battalion of tin soldiers were scattered in one corner, an interrupted doll tea party in another. A few of the downstairs windows had been left open, and sheer curtains billowed out over piles of books one of the older children had left on the windowsill. Silence and the creaking of the boards as Athos crossed to hold the front door open for Elspeth betrayed that even the house was mourning the loss of the children.
“You can’t blame yourself,” Elspeth insisted, laying a hand on his arm once he came inside, shutting the door behind him.
“I should have spent more time at home,” he contradicted her. “I should have remarried sooner or hired someone to help Piper watch the children in the afternoons.”
Elspeth shook her head. “It seems to me that you did the best you could, and that those horrible Bonnevilles are to blame.”
Athos rubbed a hand over his face, now showing signs of stress and fatigue. “Bonneville is a bully. And I’d say a thing or two about his daughters, but I was told never to speak harshly about a woman.” He paused, then said, “Honoria is all right. I don’t like watching the way her sisters treat her.”
“She was the one with the cough?”
Athos nodded. Then he grimaced. “I don’t care what Gunn says about taking care of them while they’re at the hotel and treating it like a vacation. My children belong here, in this house, with me.”
He finished his declaration, and the two of them stood still. Elspeth lifted her eyes and glanced slowly around. The house seemed bigger somehow, hollow. The breakfast dishes still hadn’t been cleared from the table in the dining room to her right. Across the hall in the parlor on the left, the furniture had been moved to create some kind of fort, the books on the shelves had been shoved in willy-nilly, and it appeared as though someone’s doll’s washing day had resulted in an explosion that took up a corner of the room. Even the hall bore marks of the children, from the pile of shoes caked with dried mud near the front door to the hobby-horse propped up in an alcove.
Through it all, the house was dead quiet, holding its breath.
“I can’t take it,” Athos said at last, crossing behind Elspeth and heading for the stairs. “I have to do something. I’m going to pack the children’s clothes.”
“Some of them are still hanging on the wash line out back.” Elspeth launched into motion too, heading down the hall, through the kitchen and out to the yard where she’d left her day’s work.
Someone had slipped into the backyard and hung the rest of the family’s clothes while they had been gone. That was the first thing Elspeth noticed. More than that, the items of clothing that she had sworn the girls had gotten so dirty they would need to be scrubbed again were clean and blowing on the line with the rest of the laundry. The basket had been returned to the porch, along with armfuls of toys that had been scattered throughout the garden. A warm knot filled Elspeth’s heart as she walked slowly down the back porch stairs. The only thing left for her to do was to check the chicken coop for eggs and take them inside.
Once in the kitchen, she kept herself in motion by cleaning up from the day’s meals. It was both easy and hard to get everything organized, to stack the dishes and put away a few food items that had been left out. Without children under her feet she was able to think and plan. Without children everything around her seemed pale and lifeless.
“These will have to do.” Athos shuffled into the kitchen half an hour later with two ca
rpetbags in his hands and one tucked under his arm. His eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, and the very air around him seemed to sag with sadness. “I’ll just take them over to Josephine and explain the situation.”
He moved on and was out the back door before Elspeth could say anything, before she could question his appearance or throw her arms around him and hug him until they both felt better. The impulse do to just that took her by surprise, yet at the same time it felt perfectly right. She continued with her supper preparations, sniffling and wiping the back of her hand under her eyes.
By the time Athos returned, supper was more than halfway done. Elspeth had prepared the simplest meal she could think of: stew that was made from the remains of the chicken they’d had for supper the night before and whatever vegetables she had been able to find in the pantry.
“We…we need to go shopping,” she murmured softly as Athos shuffled to the kitchen table, pulled out a chair, and sat.
“Hmm.” He sat with his shoulders slumped, his hands resting on the table. His gaze was unfocused.
“I suppose I could find some time to do the shopping after we speak to Mr.…was it Mr. Templesmith?”
“Yes.” Athos shook himself and focused on her. “Solomon Templesmith. He’s a good friend of mine. If Gunn has faith in him, then he’s who I want to talk to.”
Elspeth replied with a hesitant smile. She wasn’t sure what else she could do. She turned back to the stove, stirring her stew and wishing there was something more substantial that she could do for her new family.
“So you know Gunn from England, do you?” Athos asked.
“Yes.” Elspeth latched onto the topic of conversation, grateful to have something to break the silence. “Like I said, he was my late uncle’s valet. They were very close, more like friends than master and servant. I always supposed that was because Mr. Gunn was American and not as steeped in our ways.”
“I wonder why Gunn was working as someone’s valet in England,” Athos said with an exaggerated frown, as if pushing himself to think of something else.
If he was going to use this as a distraction, she would too. “I’m not entirely certain, but I think it had something to do with the army, of all things.”
