by Natalie Dean
“Heard you from the hall,” he said. “And, Jimmy, I’d keep a tight leash on your new woman. She starts believing Miles over me, she’s bound to get into trouble.”
At this, Jimmy’s face darkened. And he moved to Victoria, putting a protective hand around her shoulder.
“Let’s get one thing clear, John,” he said in the harshest tone Victoria had yet heard from him. “I won’t have anyone threatening my fiancé. You do it again, I’m going to have to let you go.”
John’s expression didn’t change, and though he addressed Jimmy, his eyes remained locked on Victoria’s.
“Wasn’t a threat at all,” John said. “Just a piece of friendly advice. God doesn’t like people who spread gossip. Bad things happen to people like that.”
With his eyes still focused on Victoria, he moved away from the door and down the hall.
As soon as he was gone, Jimmy’s hand slipped down from Victoria’s shoulders to her waist as he guided her to the front door and outside.
Under different circumstances, Victoria would have been thrilled at the feeling of Jimmy’s protective arm wrapped around her. But, when she remembered John’s dark expression, the way he’d looked at her, it was all she could do not to shudder.
“Can’t tell you how sorry I am about that, Victoria,” Jimmy said as soon as they’d climbed back into the waiting wagon and headed down the road.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Victoria said. “But, now I hope you see what I mean about John. There’s something not right about him.”
She looked over at Jimmy who nodded, his lips pursed tight in thought.
“I suppose I didn’t want to see it,” Jimmy said. “I’m so used to not believing Mr. Miles after everything he’s done. But now…”
He glanced over at Victoria and gave her a small smile.
“I’ll just give John his notice in the morning,” Jimmy said. “Time to start looking for another farm hand.”
Victoria smiled and nodded.
“I think that might be best,” she said. “It would certainly make me feel more comfortable without him here.”
He reached over and touched her hand lightly, and she allowed her heart to settle.
There was no more talk about John or Mr. Miles that evening. And, after a lovely dinner at Mr. and Mrs. Peter’s home, she bid goodnight to her fiancé and went back to her room at the hotel feeling that, maybe, she could be of use to Jimmy just as she was.
Maybe her gift made her valuable. Even if she couldn’t cook, gather eggs, or clean house.
This feeling of contentment carried her off to a peaceful sleep filled with nothing but good dreams.
It was not until she woke up to the sound of shouts through the hotel that the nightmare truly began.
Chapter Six
Mrs. Matthews was the first to pound on the door of her hotel room. Victoria, still groggy from a peaceful sleep, blearily put her feet on the ground and opened the door for her.
When she did, she found the older landlady’s usually rosy face pale with terror. Her wrinkled hands fluttering about her waist.
“Oh, Miss Weston! You must see…it’s horrible!” she said. Her voice was almost hysterical.
“What is it?” Victoria asked, her voice still groggy. “What’s happened?”
“The barn…Jimmy’s barn…they were able to save the house and most of the horses but…”
She trailed off again bringing the handkerchief to her nose as her voice broke. Victoria grasped the dressing gown beside the bedroom door and slipped it on.
“Mrs. Matthews, what’s happened to the barn?”
“Burned to the ground,” Mrs. Matthews said finally. “And that farm hand, John, is nowhere in sight. Most of Jimmy’s savings are gone too!”
Victoria’s heart caught in her chest.
“Give me a moment to dress,” Victoria said hastily to Mrs. Matthews. “Then I’ll come downstairs. Can you have a wagon ready?”
“I’ve already taken care of that, dear,” she said. “I was planning on going myself to see if there was anything I could do.”
“Good,” Victoria said. “I’ll be out in ten minutes time.”
Without waiting for an answer, Victoria closed the bedroom door and put on the simplest dress she could find. Pulling her hair hastily up into a bonnet, she rushed out the door several minutes earlier than she had planned.
Even so, she found that Mrs. Matthews was already waiting outside with the wagon hitched and ready.
It seemed to take no time at all to travel down the dirt road towards Jimmy’s farm. When they arrived, Victoria gasped.
The tall, half-finished barn that she’d been greeted with just one day before was now a black, hollow shell.
Timbers burned to a crisp fell in all around the structure. And she could see three horses braying and bucking in the pasture as though frightened out of their wits. Three men were with the horses trying to calm the beasts down.
It took her a moment to realize that, her horse, Albus, was not in the pasture.
She was still staring at the braying horses when a voice called her back to the fence.
“Victoria!” Jimmy said. “Thank God you’re here.”
Victoria turned to her fiancé. His ever-present smile had disappeared, and his pale complexion was covered in black smudges. The light seemed to have gone out in his eyes.
As he made his way to the fence, she saw an older man with a gray mustache and sharp gray eyes walking behind him. Two women accompanied him.
One was the large, black-haired Lizzie Peters whom she recognized from dinner the evening before. The other was a thinner blonde woman Victoria had not yet met.
“Jimmy, are you alright? What happened?”
“You were right about John,” Jimmy said sounding breathless. “He set a fire in Albus’ stall before taking off early this morning.”
“In Albus’ stall?” Victoria asked. Her voice was small as she remembered the beautiful horse she had taken such a liking to just the day before.
Jimmy’s face fell even further. The sympathy in his eyes as he looked at her told her everything she needed to know about the fate of her horse.
“I’m sorry, Victoria,” he said. A lump came into Victoria’s throat, and she could do nothing but nod.
“Well, Mr. Fairchild,” the older man with the gray mustache said. “It looks like a fairly clear case of arson. Good morning, Miss.”
The man tipped his large hat to Victoria.
“Oh, Victoria, this is Sheriff Barnes,” Jimmy said. “Sherriff, this is my fiancé. Miss Victoria Weston.”
“Please, call me Victoria,” she said nodding to the sheriff.
“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Victoria,” he said. “Though I wish the circumstances were more pleasant. Now, Jimmy tells me you had a bit of a confrontation with John Marx yesterday evening.”
“I’m not sure I would call it a confrontation,” Victoria said feeling a flush come into her cheeks.
“Jimmy says he threatened you, is that correct?”
“I suppose so,” Victoria muttered.
“And that was because you advised your fiancé to fire him, is that also correct?” Barnes asked. His voice carried very little emotion and did not betray any sense of personal feeling at all. Even so, Victoria felt the accusation come at her in full force.
It was your fault. It told her. If you hadn’t told Jimmy to believe Mr. Miles, John wouldn’t have had any reason to fear for his job. He wouldn’t have had to take it out on Jimmy. If you’d only kept your mouth shut…
“Yes, sir,” Victoria stammered.
“Well, I think I’ve done just about as much as I can do here,” Sherriff Barnes said. “We’ll send a telegram to the other towns nearby about John Marx. But, I’ve got to tell you, Jimmy, it’s not likely we’ll catch him.”
Jimmy simply nodded. His lips pursed tight. Beyond the sheriff, she could see the two women, Lizzie and the one Victoria had not met, speaking quietl
y amongst themselves.
“Well, we’ll need to clean up the barn before you start rebuilding,” Mrs. Matthews said moving purposefully in front of Victoria and towards the men. “We women can take care of that. Jimmy, you’d best take the boys into town. Buy the supplies you’ll need.”
Jimmy looked from Mrs. Matthews to Victoria. His eyes met hers as though he was silently asking Victoria’s permission to go on this mission.
Just yesterday, this look would have sent a pleasurable shiver up her spine. Today, however, that shiver was mixed with a profound sense of guilt. The hint in the back of her mind that this entire thing had been, at least in part, her fault.
Still, she knew she would have to put on a brave face. Not only for Jimmy but for Mrs. Matthews who was now eyeing her critically. Just as she had at dinner the first night of Victoria’s arrival.
So, Victoria took a deep breath and gave Jimmy a small smile.
“That’s a good plan,” she said. “We’ll clean the mess from the barn. You go on into town for supplies. I’ll be okay here.”
With an expression of relief, mixed with more than a hint of sadness, Jimmy nodded again.
A moment later, the three men with the horses were summoned from the pasture. These turned out to be Billy Peters, a man named Mattathias Jacobs (the husband of the blonde woman, Bernadette Jacobs) and Sam Meeks. The editor of the town newspaper.
Hasty introductions were made before the men climbed aboard the sheriff’s wagon and moved down the hill into town.
“Well, there’s no time to waste,” Mrs. Matthews said matter of factly. “I’ll start sweeping at the far end of the barn, Victoria can start at the closest end. Lizzie, Bernadette, you pick up any bigger pieces of debris you find, and we’ll meet in the middle.”
Victoria knew she should object to this plan. She had no experience with sweeping. And, while it seemed intuitive, she remembered her attempt at cooking, which had also seemed simple.
Even so, when Mrs. Matthews shoved a broom and a dustpan into her hands, she took them without complaint and moved to the close end of the barn.
Victoria soon discovered that, while sweeping was not as difficult as cooking had been, she still could not seem to keep her mind on the task at hand.
She found herself looking up at this large, spacious barn. Nearly finished yesterday, complete with a beautiful white horse, the other horses nestled peacefully in their stalls.
Today it was nothing.
Nothing more than a charred shell.
The guilty voice in her head told her again that, if she hadn’t mentioned her suspicions, perhaps the barn would have stayed. She could have come back today and ridden on her horse, or she could have learned how to cook in the farm house’s little kitchen. Perhaps, if she’d just kept quiet, everything would have been all right.
Shaking her head, she glanced back at Mrs. Matthews. With a jolt, she realized the old woman was nearly finished sweeping her side of the barn. Victoria looked down at the floor beneath her feet. In all the time they had been cleaning, she had only managed to clear a ludicrously small space.
Her heart started beating quickly. Picking up the broom again, she began to sweep so fast that spots of debris missed the dust pan completely and started flying about the rest of the barn.
Victoria began to feel Mrs. Matthew’s judgmental glare on the back of her neck. Sure enough, when she turned around, the older woman was looking at her frowning.
Finally, Mrs. Matthews started moving towards Victoria. Though her expression was less fierce, Victoria felt the same exasperation that had been there the night she’d nearly set fire to the kitchen.
“Victoria, dear, why don’t you let Bernadette finish up here?”
“No, I can finish,” Victoria said. “I…I just got distracted. That’s all.”
Victoria began to sweep again, as soon as she did, Mrs. Matthews put a soft but firm hand on the broom to stop its progress.
“Really, dear,” she said. “No need to fret over it. Why don’t you go out and tend to the horses? I’m sure they’re still a bit shaken.”
Though Mrs. Matthews tried to sound conciliatory, Victoria could tell that looking after the horses was not entirely essential. Mrs. Matthews was trying to get Victoria out of the way.
And, when Victoria looked at the debris still littering her feet on the barn floor, she found that she couldn’t blame the old woman. So, with nothing more than a nod, Victoria handed Mrs. Matthews the broom.
She heard Mrs. Matthews calling Bernadette in from the outer perimeter just as Victoria moved out to the pasture.
When she arrived, she moved to the large brown mare Jimmy had ridden just one day before. Ruby, he’d called her.
As Victoria approached, the mare lifted her head from the grass she had been eating and looked her in the eye. There was something sad in the way Ruby cocked her head at Victoria. The horse gave a little shake of her mane as though she was asking Victoria to tell her that everything was all right. That the destruction of her barn and the horse who lived beside her was nothing more than a bad dream.
“I’m sorry, sweet girl,” Victoria said walking to the side of the horse and gently patting her mane. “I’m afraid it’s all true.”
She didn’t know how long she remained by Ruby’s side. It felt like hours but, she was sure only several minutes had passed before Victoria heard Mrs. Matthews muffled voice come from the mostly burned down barn.
Though the large wooden doors, charred but still intact, hid the older woman from view, it was clear that Mrs. Matthews was talking to someone in hushed tones. Interested and more than a little nervous about what she would hear, Victoria made her way to the barn door and listened.
“…I’m just not certain this is the best choice for Jimmy,” Mrs. Matthews said. Her voice was so low that Victoria had to strain to hear her. “With John gone and more work now to be done on the barn…”
“But, isn’t it Jimmy’s choice to make?” A voice Victoria recognized as belonging to Bernadette answered. “Clearly he thinks it’s a good match.”
“Oh, I’m not saying anything against Miss Victoria herself,” Mrs. Matthews said. “She seems like a nice enough girl. But, with John gone and the barn needing more repairs…I wonder if a woman of Victoria’s background will be able to cope with this kind of life. The girl can’t even sweep a floor!”
“She could learn,” Bernadette said.
“If she does, it’ll be a hard learning curve,” Mrs. Matthews answered. “And it’s Jimmy who will take the brunt of it. He needs a partner on this farm. And I don’t think Victoria can be that for him. I worry that once they’re married, she will simply be in the way.”
At these words, Victoria pushed herself silently away from the barn door.
She didn’t need to hear any more. She’d heard the same conversation back home in Boston. She would listen at the door of her bedroom as her brother and sister-in-law argued about what to do with her.
“Really, Robert,” Julia would say in her posh accent. “There’s nothing for her to do here. She’s merely in the way.”
Her brother would argue that he felt a sense of duty to Victoria, especially since their father’s death. But, behind these words, Victoria had always heard the truth.
Robert resented her as much as his wife did.
And, what was worse, she could now see why that was.
Her parents had not given her any useful skills. Playing piano and drawing pictures, while entertaining, were of no real use to anyone. And, even the one gift she’d always believed she possessed, the gift of seeing through people, had brought disaster.
Given all this, she couldn’t help but wonder: would Jimmy come to resent her as much as her brother did? After they were married, Victoria imagined Jimmy keeping her on out of a sense of duty. All the while feeling as though he would be better off without her.
She imagined him having to run the entire farm on his own while she could do nothing to help. She imagined his s
trong, ruddy face growing weathered and wrinkly, old before its time.
There was no possible way she could let that happen.
She knew what she had to do.
Without going to the barn to fetch a saddle, she called Ruby to her and, climbing bareback on the horse, she used the mare’s mane to guide her to the road.
From there, she would go back to the hotel and fetch her things.
Then, she would take the first train she could find back to Boston.
Chapter Seven
The new boy that Mrs. Matthews had hired, Jeremy, met her at the door of the hotel.
“Miss Victoria!” he said in surprise when he saw her astride the horse with no saddle. “Is something wrong?”
“It’s nothing to worry about,” she said sliding off the horse as gracefully as she could. “If you can, just take this horse to the stables behind the hotel. She belongs to Jimmy Fairchild, so make sure he gets her back.”
“Yes, Miss,” Jeremy said dutifully. Though, he still looked skeptical as he walked the horse around the building.
Once he was out of sight, Victoria moved as quickly as she could down the corridor and into her room. There, she immediately grasped her bag and began packing her belongings.
The plan had changed a bit in her mind on the road back to the hotel.
She wouldn’t…couldn’t return to her brother’s house in Boston.
She would move further west, to California. There, she would look for a job as a secretary or a typist.
Her father had taught her to use a typewriter. And, now that the invention had come into widespread use, businesses were employing women who were able to use it.
This was far from the life she had imagined for herself. She had imagined that she would marry a hardworking, simple husband and help him run his household. But, now that that seemed impossible, she knew that this was the only other chance she had for a decent life.
She had nearly finished packing when she heard a knock on the door.
She stopped packing her things and fell completely silent. Surely that was Mrs. Matthews come to check up on her.
