Stricken by the painful irony of it, Marcus took a step backward. His fists clenched uselessly at his sides. His insides hurt. He’d have sworn there was something wrong with his chest, something wrong with his heart; otherwise, why did he feel such emptiness there?
“Our engagement is ended,” Molly said.
“No! Molly, hear me. Damnation! Your baked goods are fine now. My men have not taken my money for them for weeks. I did not know it until today.”
“Marcus—”
“In the beginning, I was wrong. But later…later it made you so happy, to see them clamoring for your sweets. It made me happy, to see you that way. How could I put an end to that? ’Twas only that I wanted to help you. I swear it.”
Her voice softened, just for a moment. “I—I think it’s wisest we don’t see each other.”
No. This could not be happening. He would explain. He would make her see the truth.
“We live in this same small town,” Marcus told her gruffly. “Morrow Creek is less than a mile from end to end. We’ll see each other.”
“No.” Hesitantly Molly placed her palm over the empty-feeling place in his chest. She gazed up at him. “I could not bear it if we did. Please, Marcus. Please leave me alone.”
With a desperate gesture, he reached for her hand. At the same instant, she whisked it away. This was the last time she would touch him, Marcus realized with a sense of disbelief. The last time he would ever touch her, and know the softness and light that had made him a better man…for however short a while.
Their fingers grazed each other, a heartbeat’s brief embrace. Then Molly turned and hurried into town—her final gift to him a backward glance that told him he was not the only one who wept over all they’d lost.
In her meeting room at the top of Jack Murphy’s saloon, Grace sighed. “You are not meant for this work, Molly. Look at that sign you just lettered.”
Dispiritedly Molly glanced downward, pencil in hand. For the whole afternoon, she’d been sitting on the floor helping her sister make signs, meant for use by her women’s group members as they paraded throughout the Chautauqua.
“Fight For Female Stufferage,” she read, voice wooden. She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, Grace, I’m sorry. This sounds as though I mean for all women to stuff balled-up stockings into their corset tops, or some such.”
“Not a tactic all of us have need for,” Grace agreed, giving a nod toward Molly’s generous bosoms. She leaned forward on hands and knees, then prosaically flipped over the signboard. “Why don’t you try again on the other side?”
Molly stared at it, nearly moved to tears. These days, she found herself frightfully close to bawling at the oddest moments. She sniffled. “You’re being very understanding.”
Her sister shrugged. “We women must stick together, through good times and bad. That philosophy is at the root of all my dealings, you know.”
“Even your dealings with Jack Murphy?”
“Shh!” Grace hissed. She rolled her eyes meaningfully toward the floorboards. “He might hear you. He’s right downstairs.”
“I’m sorry.” Morosely, Molly traced three ruler lines onto the clean side of her sign, forming guides for the slogan letters to come. “I’m the last person who should be nosing into your relationship with Mr. Murphy. Or into anyone’s relationship with a man, in general. Clearly, I know nothing of the species.”
She recalled the disaster her dalliance with Marcus had become, and a lump rose to her throat. She fought back tears again. When last she’d seen him, reaching for her hand on the road, he had looked…broken. Lost, almost. But how could that be, when he was the one who’d broken her heart?
“They are incomprehensible at times,” Grace agreed with a breezy wave. “High-handed. Domineering. Stupidly opinionated.”
Helplessly Molly thought again of Marcus, and was forced to stifle a sigh. Yes, at times he’d been all those things. But he had been so much more, too. It had been days since she’d last seen him. He had done as she asked and stayed away. But the pain of losing him—of missing him—had not lessened.
What she needed, Molly decided, was to move on. Otherwise, she might be miserable forever.
“Too true,” she said to Grace, hoping to goad her sister into detailing more of the faults of men. Ordinarily, she could be counted on for a good suffragette-spirited discourse, something that Molly figured might help ease her broken heart.
“Why, one pass through Murphy’s saloon to get here,” Molly went on, “made it plain as day that men in general are sloppy, often foulmouthed—”
“True, true. But when they smile at you…” Grace crossed her arms in her lap, her paintbrush at serious risk of dripping green paint onto the floor. She did not notice, though, so dreamy was her expression. “Oh, then they are magnificent.”
Molly was dumbfounded.
Her sister’s faraway gaze drifted sideways. Caught Molly’s aghast expression. Grace cleared her throat and got back to work. “Overall, though, they are useless creatures.”
In astonishment, Molly observed Grace’s awkward movements as she sketched. She took in the blush on her sister’s cheeks, the rose cameo pinned uncharacteristically at the throat of her high-necked dress, the slight fragrance of lavender that clung to her sister’s person. Ordinarily Grace could not be bothered with feminine modesty, did not care for fripperies like jewelry, and smelled of nothing more exotic than commonsense castile soap.
“If I did not know better,” Molly marveled, scrutinizing her further, “I would swear that the matchmaker has been at it again. With you…and Jack Murphy.”
“Nonsense.”
“You are smitten! It’s plain in your face!”
“Jack Murphy wants me to yield my portion of this building,” Grace replied staunchly. “He wants to know the identity of the matchmaker. If he seeks to charm me to gain what he wishes, then I—”
“Oh, Grace.” Molly eyed her elder sister’s trembling hands, her facade of serenity. “I pray that this ends more happily for you than it did for me. I truly do.”
A moment’s silence fell between them. They shared a telling glance, one filled with understanding. Over the past days, while Molly had suffered, Grace had listened. She had listened, and she’d been there to commiserate while Molly cried, as only a sister could.
Grace reached out and squeezed Molly’s hand. For a moment, she looked strangely uncertain. She bit her lip in thought. Then she turned to Molly decisively.
“You can change this, Moll!” she said. “Don’t let what you’ve had with Mr. Copeland slip away. If you still love him…”
Shocked, Molly stared. Was this truly her female suffrage-minded sister advocating true love?
“Loving him does not matter,” she managed, “when—”
“It is the only thing that matters!” Grace insisted. “Apologize to him, and move past this. Men are proud. You’ve always been too stubborn for your own good. For once in your life, don’t let your pride stand in your way.”
“My pride? ‘For once in my life’?” Piqued, Molly threw down her pencil. “What are you accusing me of? How dare you?”
“I dare because you’re my sister. I want you to be happy.”
“Fine.” Stiffly, Molly stood. “Because I must tell you—making these signs with you no longer makes me happy.”
“Moll, wait. You are stiff-necked at times, you must admit that. When you think someone has no faith in you, you are driven to extremes. We’ve all seen it.”
“I am in no mood for this babying.” She grabbed her things.
“It is not babying! What does it matter what anyone else believes, so long as you believe in yourself?”
Molly faced her, trembling. “Such a thing is easy for you to say. You are the eldest. No one has ever doubted you.”
Sadly, Grace shook her head. “That is where you are wrong. Everyone has doubted me. But I…I have never doubted myself.”
In disbelief, Molly stared at her sister. Th
en she pulled on her gloves. “Good luck with your signs,” she said, and left.
The men of Morrow Creek gathered together late of night, pints of lager and bottles of whiskey at hand. Grousing raised the rafters at Jack Murphy’s saloon, all of it related to one woman. One mysterious, troublesome woman.
“The matchmaker has struck again!” someone said.
“Ruined another perfectly good bachelor,” added another.
“A toast, to Marcus Copeland!” yelled the butcher. “Sorriest son of a bitch in the territory. He set out to corral the matchmaker, and nearly got himself hitched for his trouble.”
A chorus of hoots and hollers rang out.
“Barely escaped with his manhood intact,” a miner chortled. “Glad to have you back, Copeland!”
From his customary chair at the back of the room, Marcus frowned. He raised his whiskey glass in a halfhearted salute, then slugged its contents down. More and more these days, liquor seemed a good solution to the god-awful ache inside him. In the days since he’d last seen Molly, he’d finished more than his share of strong spirits.
Oddly enough, though, they never provided the relief he sought. Only being with Molly might do that, Marcus knew. And that was impossible now.
I don’t need your help. I don’t need you.
With a cynical arch of his brow, Marcus raised his whiskey glass again—to himself. He drank. He’d set out to find the matchmaker…and wound up losing his heart to the one woman who was most wrong for him. What were the odds?
What were the odds he would ever forget her, when day after day he longed to see her smile, to touch her cheek, to hear her voice as she called his name?
A rail worker stood with his ale in hand, weaving a bit. “It’s up to Murphy and McCabe to uncover the blasted matchmaker now,” he said, saluting them with his pint. “Good luck, boys.”
“Good luck!” came other shouts.
Marcus shook his head. Perhaps Jack and Daniel would find the matchmaker, he thought. To be certain, the meddlesome creature could not be Molly, despite the scant evidence he’d gleaned of her handwriting. No woman who could savagely stomp on his heart like this could truly be the marriage-minded matchmaker they all sought.
Later that night, Marcus told Jack Murphy exactly that.
“I am ready to have done with this,” Marcus added. “More than ready.” He’d lingered in his chair after the men’s club meeting had ended, then wandered to the bar for another slug of Old Orchard. “I’m sorry I ever set out to uncover that damnable woman in the first place.”
“Between the two of us,” Jack said as he slapped his cloth onto the bar, then leaned forward, “I’m sorry, too. Grace Crabtree eludes me at every turn. If I told that woman the sky was blue, she’d argue it for green just to aggravate me.”
Beside them, Daniel McCabe finished his ale. “Her sister’s not like that. You’ve never seen a more amenable woman than Sarah Crabtree. She hasn’t given me a lick of trouble.”
Marcus and Jack raised their eyebrows at him.
“What? It’s true.” He wiped his mouth, then picked up his flat-brimmed black hat. He fitted it onto his head, giving them both a cocky look. “You just have to know how to handle women, is all. Like I do.”
Daniel slapped Marcus heartily on the back. He prepared to leave.
“Hang on, McCabe.”
“Yeah. Hang on.”
The blacksmith turned, a hint of apprehension on his face. He hid it beneath a blustery smile. “You two wanting pointers on handling females?”
Jack shared a glance with Marcus. “She’s gone and snared him, too,” the saloonkeeper said.
Marcus nodded. “I guess you’re right.”
“What the hell are you two talking about? Nobody’s snared me.”
“The matchmaker has,” Marcus and Jack said in unison. They shook their heads. Marcus tipped back a little more whiskey.
“You might as well surrender, McCabe,” he told the blacksmith. “No use fighting it.”
“You two are crazy!”
“We’re right,” Jack told him blithely, wiping the bar. “Don’t fret, though. If I were a different kind of man—a weaker man—I might’ve succumbed, too.”
This time, it was Marcus and Daniel who shared a disbelieving look. They shook their heads at Jack.
“Only a matter of time, Murphy,” Daniel assured him.
“Just give in now,” Marcus advised. “I’ve met Grace Crabtree. If she’s set her sights on something, you don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of changing her mind.”
Murphy’s jaw tightened. The three men fell silent, each lost in his own thoughts.
Despite his own troubles, in that moment Marcus experienced a sort of shared kinship between them, a bond forged by the muddle he and Daniel and Jack seemed to have made of their matchmaker search. Feeling relieved to be in good company, he looked at both men.
“I guess we’re in a fix,” he said. “What do we do about it now?”
Murphy’s jaw dropped. “Not a thing! I’m not beaten yet.”
“Don’t look at me.” McCabe raised his broad palms, obviously aghast. “I’m not giving up. Beaten, by a woman? Hell, no!”
So much for kinship, Marcus thought wryly. It looked as though he was on his own. He finished his whiskey and stood.
“I’ve got ledgers to see to,” he said, pulling on his coat. “Best of luck to you both. You’ll need it.”
Outside, the autumn night made Marcus clutch his coat tighter. Holding it in one fist, he turned. Thoughtfully, he regarded the saloon, the place where his decision to meet with Molly had begun. It was shuttered now, quiet and mostly dark, but upstairs…was that lamplight in the window?
He squinted. Two feminine faces showed clearly there, and they were faces he recognized, too. Hardly able to believe his eyes, Marcus stepped nearer.
They saw him. Rapidly they clapped the shutters closed.
Marcus frowned, distracted now from his plans to walk home and lose himself in work. Exactly what had Grace and Sarah Crabtree overheard from upstairs? he wondered. And exactly what, he wondered further, would they do about it?
Upstairs in Grace’s meeting room, Grace and Sarah clapped the shutters closed with a small shriek. Arms fluttering, Sarah paced across the room.
“He’s seen us,” she blurted.
“I know.” Grace crossed her arms over her chest. “Plain as day. Why did you have to breathe so noisily, Sarah?”
“Me? You were the one who gasped when he emerged from the saloon.”
“Only because you whooshed the shutters open so quickly. It’s cold outside!”
“How else were we to see where he was going?”
Calmly Fiona Crabtree halted her sewing needle in mid-stitch. “I told you he would see you, girls.”
“We had to do something, Mama,” Sarah insisted, still pacing. She paused for an instant, staring at the signs they’d spent the evening painting. “You know what Molly is like. And Marcus Copeland seems to match her for stubbornness!”
“The two of them are obviously miserable,” Grace agreed. She cast her mother a pleading look. “Something must be done.”
“You may be right,” Fiona said. She began stitching again, her work on the embroidered shirt cuffs she’d been sewing nearly at an end. “At this rate, Molly and Mr. Copeland will never make amends with each other. Especially not in time for the wedding date they’d set. They so clearly belong together, too.”
She raised her head, sharing a conspiratorial glance with her daughters. “It may be time, girls, to pay a special visit to the Pioneer Press.”
Chapter Eighteen
The day began as any other in the Crabtree household. Molly came downstairs to the sight of her family bustling around the dining table, pouring coffee or tea and sitting down to bowls of porridge with apples. Conversation carried throughout the room, amiable and frequent. Cook hurried in and out with fresh plates and napkins, her face flushed with the heat of the kitchen’
s cookstove.
Molly slid into her place. With a sideways glance at Grace, she arranged a napkin atop her skirts. Her sister may have been right about her, Molly had decided after much thought. Perhaps she was overly prideful at times. Perhaps she did react overmuch to any perceived lack of faith. Perhaps it was necessary to believe in herself, first of all.
But that didn’t mean Molly meant to give Grace the satisfaction of knowing she’d been right. Chin high, she reached for a teacup.
“Molly, have you seen the newspaper?” Sarah asked. She pushed the folded issue across the table. “It’s this morning’s edition.”
“Thank you.” Leaving it for now, Molly accepted a slice of toasted Graham flour bread from Cook. “Are there any strawberry preserves?”
She glanced around the table, looking for them. As she raised her eyes, she glimpsed something curious—her entire family was staring at her.
Molly frowned. As one, they studiously returned to what they’d been doing. Her papa raised his book. Her mama stirred cream into her porridge. Her sisters buttered their bread, sneaking a shared glance.
Molly shrugged. Most likely, they were merely worried about her. She had been miserable lately. She could hardly fault her family for caring about her.
“The preserves are right there,” Grace said. “Beside your newspaper.”
“Oh. Thank you.” Molly grabbed them.
A collective sigh issued.
She cocked her head, examining her family inquisitively. Again they returned to their tasks.
Molly had finished two-thirds of her toasted bread when her papa cleared his throat. He nodded toward her place at table. “I am finished with that newspaper, you know. If you’d like to read it.”
Her mama, Sarah and Grace looked on eagerly.
“Yes,” Fiona urged. “There are some interesting features in your father’s newspaper this morning.”
They all beamed at her with bright, expectant smiles.
Slowly Molly reached out her free hand for the newspaper. She may as well humor them, she reasoned. “If it would make all of you feel better about my well-being…”
Lisa Plumley - [Crabtree 01] Page 23
