by Denney, Hope
Somerset saw the momentary confusion on her face as she looked at Myra’s face and compared her to Blanche. Myra sprang forward with the smile of a friend, extending her hand.
“You must be Ivy. I’m Myra Marshall. I’m a first cousin from Virginia. I’d know you anywhere because Somerset has talked so much about you. She said you have eyes like the sea during a rain and you do. We’re just playing dress-up. You might as well stay and eat some candy with me. We’ll get to know each other while my better-looking cousin does her hair.”
Ivy’s face pinked up under Myra’s greeting, and she accepted her hand as well as the proffered peppermint stick.
“What is the grand occasion?” she asked, taking a seat on Somerset’s threadbare ottoman and licking her sweet.
“She has a caller coming and won’t say who it is.” Myra’s mouth pouted.
“Does it have anything to do with that silhouette on your wall by your bed?” asked Ivy, springing up to take a look at it.
Bess made an impatient sound that indicated it was so. Somerset laughed.
“Don’t pay any attention to Bess, Ivy. She hasn’t approved of a single caller since Eric.”
“You hit perfection the first time. It’s all downhill from there,” grumbled Bess.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” admired Ivy. “It’s a replica of the one in the house, isn’t it?”
“It is. Now I’ll have with me always even if I can’t live there. My hair is wild. I don’t want to tuck it in a bun, though. Do you think a chignon would work?”
“I have a net with tiny silver bows somewhere in this trunk. It will be just the finishing touch,” agreed Myra.
“That was a very personal and forward gift,” remarked Ivy.
“I call it thoughtful,” disagreed Somerset.
“Do you think Phillip meant the man in the picture to be him or Eric?” queried Ivy.
“Eric, of course!” answered Somerset. She lowered her head so that Myra could slip the net on her hair.
She surveyed her reflection in the mirror, craning her head from side to side. The waves of her hair were already poking through the netting, just like her mother’s hair did. She smiled at herself and pronounced her endeavors successful.
“I want to meet this Phillip,” said Myra. “He sounds like he’s worth taking a second look at.”
“He’s worth looking at,” concurred Ivy.
Joseph knocked on the open door. His face was scrubbed, and he was wearing another shirt borrowed from Thomas.
“I couldn’t help but notice a bevy of good-looking ladies and wondered if they could be persuaded to go walking,” he said.
He asked them all, but the question was directed at Ivy.
“I’d love to go,” she said. “Myra, will you join us?”
“I think I will,” Myra replied, reaching for a shawl. “I don’t think Cleo will let me downstairs—it’s such close proximity to her kitchen. I’d best play gooseberry rather than encroach on her territory. I don’t suppose you’re coming with us, Somerset.”
Somerset was on the verge of staying in but decided against it. She didn’t want to be found lounging around the parlor waiting for Phillip if he did show. Her dress proved that she expected to see him. It would be better to go out with the group. Myra was always arrayed in expensive finery, whether receiving company or failing miserably at her chores. She would look less overdressed beside her cousin.
“I’ll come along. I hate to waste this pretty day indoors,” she said.
***
She and Myra lagged several feet behind Joseph and Ivy as they walked. Joseph zealously pointed out all the improvements to the farm he hoped to make. Ivy showed absolute absorption in each word, but Somerset was bored as she had to listen to the same speeches every night over their meal and make the according notes to their finances. She drowned out the dull roar of his monologue about mending fences and finally finishing the barn and focused on the interaction between him and Ivy.
Ivy glowed when she looked up at him, like the iridescent heart of a seashell illuminated by the sun. She made all the proper responses to his remarks and Joseph savored it. Somerset wondered if he began to regret his words about a woman agreeing with him all the time. Somerset rolled her eyes. She didn’t know a single man who was immune to flattery from a woman. There was mutual interest in their relationship, but Somerset saw the obvious lack of spark between them. Joseph was accustomed to other kinds of women, women with a certain contrariness to their personality and an underlying coarseness to their character. She wondered who Joseph was seeing on the side. If he wasn’t true to Fairlee, he wasn’t being true to Ivy, and she knew she could take that to the bank.
“They’re a new couple, aren’t they?” murmured Myra.
“Yes,” conceded Somerset.
“She loves him.”
“She always has. People say opposites attract, but I maintain it isn’t always for the best. How could you tell?”
“He wants to touch her but he isn’t comfortable doing it. Normally a man finds some excuse to touch a woman and get away with it. He might hand her a flower or steady her and say he thought she was about to stumble. It doesn’t really matter what excuse he comes up with. He hasn’t tried to the entire time. She really wants him to, though. She looks at him as though he thought up the idea of love and all it entails. I take it she’s a wallflower and he’s a rascal,” whispered Myra.
“Well, I don’t want to use those adjectives.”
“I thought they were. He was engaged?”
“Fairlee broke it off. She was the oil to his flame, his ideal mate. I witnessed the end of their spat. She wants some changes out of him that he is unwilling to make, although I’m in the dark about exactly what they are. They’re both prideful to a fault. She mailed back the engagement ring as an afterthought when she made it back to Tuscaloosa. I daresay she regrets it.”
“He told me he was a captive at Elmira. He might just be the most fascinating man I’ve ever met. He’s an imp of mischief one minute, a hard-working machine the next, and a temperamental brute all in the same hour. I could spend the rest of my life talking to that man and not get to what lies at his core. I see Ivy’s interest in him, but I pity her. It will never last. It’s true—I know these things.”
Somerset didn’t doubt Myra for an instant, but Myra’s mind was racing on to other courses of conversation.
“I haven’t been at Orchard Rest a week but I’ve ruined the wash and also some preserves,” she said and looked pleased. “It’s been great excitement, though, and it’s ever so nice to have a framework of what I should be doing even if I can’t put it into practice. Your help doesn’t care for Birdy making her own excellent mark, though. The one thing I can do well is sit with your mother. Her pneumonia drags on and on. It cheers me to be of use to someone, and I don’t mind to take my turn and yours too if it leaves you to do real work. I can lounge on the chaise by Auntie’s bed and make proper conversation. I’ve spent the majority of my life being served tea in someone or another’s parlor.”
“I hope you’ll stay with us always,” said Somerset.
“Oh, don’t say that!” said Myra. “I like all of this well enough, but a girl like me can’t be happy forever in this desolate place. Can you fancy me getting up at the crack of dawn to make bran mash for the chicks for the rest of my life? Or washing dishes with a smile on my face?”
“What’s that?” Ivy asked as she knelt in the dirt.
She scooped something into her palm and straightened up, offering it to Joseph.
“Would you look at that! That’s an old liberty cap half cent!” exclaimed Joseph with real interest. He took it out of Ivy’s open hand, and Myra nudged Somerset. “This kind hasn’t been minted since the last century. I wonder whose pocket it fell from as they marched across this country.”
“Whoever he is, I hope he made it home,” replied Ivy. “I think I’ll keep it as a good luck charm.”
“I ha
ve a good luck charm!” proclaimed Somerset and reached for the nonexistent pocket on Myra’s fine gown.
She carried Eric’s arrowhead everywhere. It comforted her to feel the steady rhythmic banging against her hip as she went about her day. All she had to do in a sore moment was reach into her pocket and run her thumb along the sharp flinty edge of it and she was grounded and hopeful once more.
“I forgot I can’t carry it in this dress,” she said sheepishly to the three pairs of expectant eyes facing her. “I’ll show it to you when we get home.”
“Bother!” said Myra.
“What is it?” asked Ivy.
“I forgot that I’m supposed to relieve Birdy and go sit with Auntie. No, don’t escort me back to the house. There’s no reason to ruin everyone’s good time just because I’m flighty as a June bug.”
“I’ll see you back at the house,” said Somerset. She didn’t relish being an extra wheel.
“I do like that girl,” remarked Ivy as soon as Myra was out of earshot.
“So do I, although not as well as the lady before me,” said Joseph.
Somerset fell back a few paces out of respect and because she didn’t want to hear their flirtations. Instead she focused on the smattering of pink clouds on the golden horizon and the way it looked like Bess’s strawberry preserves spread on a slice of toast. She enjoyed the heavy breeze that occasionally spattered her with a fat raindrop, although it could not be said that it was even sprinkling. For no reason she pondered how different the sunsets in the Dakota Territories might be and wiped the thought from her mind with the same vigor she might remove a smudge from her mirror.
A rider on a horse leading another horse came out of the woods suddenly on her left. She thought it was Sawyer for a split second because he rode Bruno, but then she saw it was Phillip. His black hair shone almost blue in the bright light that is the sun’s protest against twilight. He wore a chestnut-colored suit with a peachy waistcoat embroidered in cherry blossoms. It was fortunate that Myra had given her something new to wear, and she gauged from his appreciative look that he found her appearance lacked nothing.
He returned Joseph’s caught-off-guard greeting and swung down off the horse, looking almost as powerful as the animal he rode.
“Good evening,” he said. “I was just at Orchard Rest to see you, and the staff said you’d gone out on a walking party. I thought you might like to go for a ride.”
“You met my brother at the party,” said Somerset. “May I present to you Ivy Garrett? I’m afraid I’m not dressed for riding the back roads, though, Mr. Russell. Won’t you join our little excursion?”
“Miss Garrett, I’m pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said as he left the horses to forage for clover. “Walking isn’t the most competitive way to spend an evening, but I’ve no other plans this evening so I’ll join you.”
“Must everything be competitive for you?” asked Somerset as he fell into step beside her.
Joseph increased his pace to move himself and Ivy several yards ahead of them.
“I wouldn’t be well known in the mining sector if I wasn’t competitive. Men who own gold mines aren’t demure creatures, Miss Forrest. I suspect that’s why we’ve taken to each other so well.”
“You’ve said something in that vein since the night I met you, and other than a few poorly planned run-ins, I don’t see any evidence of it.”
Phillip smiled at her.
“Indeed, Somerset? Tell me: what did you do with the print I sent to you? What did you do with the gift so intimate anyone else would have returned it?”
Her cheeks stung from the rush of blood to them.
“I take it you didn’t throw it away then,” he surmised. “Did you find it romantic?”
Somerset tossed her head.
He looked victorious.
“You must have thought it one of the most romantic gestures you’ve ever had. I can tell by your transparent reactions.”
“It was not,” she protested, but her voice gave away the lie.
“Really? Because I gave you the one material thing in this world that you want and don’t have. What ranks higher?”
“Anything Eric ever touched,” Somerset said. “Nothing will ever compare to my engagement ring or the intent to gift me with house itself.”
“What will it take to surpass him?” asked Phillip.
Somerset stopped in her tracks and looked up at him. The slight give in her knees whenever she made eye contact with him was proof enough of her emerging feelings, but she kept her face calm as she studied the uncannily familiar blue eyes.
“The house.”
“You jest!”
A ribbon of satisfaction wound about her insides as she digested the fact that she’d managed to take him aback. Her gaze never flickered from his. She couldn’t see past the pale blue of his eyes or the sharp indentation over his upper lip that was so like the one that she had kissed millions of times in her belle days.
“I don’t jest. I want the Unnamed House. It really is mine even if I don’t own it. If someone could restore it to my ownership, that would be the most romantic gesture to me. The house is the cornerstone, the centerpiece of my adult life. It has stood guardian over me when no one else could. I want to take care of it in return—every corbel, every cornice, each cupola.”
“You’ll never have it,” Phillip said. “No one offloads the last epic piece of their child’s life. If the house is what you ultimately seek, you’ll be disappointed to find the pinnacle of your romance is far behind you forever. Paul and Margaret would choose to be buried in it if they could.”
“You aren’t telling me anything that I don’t already know,” she countered. “What did you think, Mr. Russell? That I expected you to procure the deed to the house for me? Come, you don’t think I’m that naïve, do you? There’s also no doubting that the pinnacle of my romantic life is far behind me.”
He laughed aloud, and the sound rang out in the open section of the field they were in. Somerset imagined it carried at least to Buchanan’s Loft. Joseph turned and looked at them but Ivy nudged him to make him turn around.
“I do enjoy sparring with you,” he said. “I can’t remember the last time I had such a good time in the company of a lady. I said before that you are complex, but I find your unapologetic realism most stimulating.”
“I like sparring with you as well,” she winked. “Tell me something. Did you imagine yourself in the silhouette you sent me?”
“Is there any difference between the one I sent you and the one on the bedroom wall?”
“Not that I did notice.”
“Then why does it matter? I’m no school chap in love, Somerset. I don’t know what you’re accustomed to, but I’m not about to make some tremulous confession in the middle of a field. I’ve made it obvious that I’m interested in you.”
Somerset began walking again as she realized Joseph and Ivy were beginning to dwindle out of sight as they took a curve on the path that would lead them back to Orchard Rest. From that distance, Joseph’s gait looked as smooth and controlled as Ivy’s, and they were only two people-shaped blotches against a coppery sunlit sky.
Her pulse thrilled at the prospect of being left alone with Phillip. There was something so provocative, so animated about Phillip and his inherent lack of frivolity that every time she was around him she found herself moving away from him. Some primal part of her desired nothing more than to push him into the copse of trees nearby and kiss him over and over. She wanted to know once and for all where his hands would come to rest when he pulled her close to him.
“I see. You are ‘interested in me.’ I am interested in why you’ve never married.”
“I’ve never met a woman whom I thought could endure the life I lead,” Phillip replied. “I travel even more than I would like, which is unfortunate because I enjoy travel to a new place. A man with as many assets as I is not a popular fellow, either, when everyone else is struggling to fill their plates. So I would su
bject my chosen wife to a lifetime of loneliness and required independence. I don’t want a marriage if it’s going to be fraught with discontent.
“Of course, someone is always willing to let me escort them to the opera, the symphony, or the newest restaurant in town. There’s no shortage of ladies happy to help me spend my money and have a sophisticated evening out. I haven’t been lonely in the slightest, but at the end of an evening it would be a relief to discuss something other than the weather, the church fundraiser, or the audacity of Reconstruction. Every woman has the same cultured opinion about every well-bred topic to discuss. I’m not lonely but I am bored. I believe I’ve learned how to sleep with my eyes open over the last few years.
“I liked you instantly at my birthday party, Somerset. I like to think about the game way you handled me cornering you during Blind Man’s Bluff. I have nothing but praise for the cool way you handled two hundred red-faced country oafs cheering you on when I advanced on you and you cleared the davenport. You’re used to being watched, plagued even, by the expectations of the public eye. The loyalty you express for my cousin isn’t mawkish and miserable. You haven’t dried up like an old apple over him the way other women have over their mates. The torch you carry for him is passionate and bright, and I covet that kind of devotion within my own life.”
“Just what are you trying to say?” asked Somerset.
Her senses whirled around her as she sensed the threads of a proposal being woven together.
Phillip smiled, and the penny-colored light illuminated the creases around his eyes.
“I’m saying that you interest me. What did you think I was saying? I already told you that I wasn’t going to make foolish declarations in a cow field. I like you. I hope that you like me as well, so that I don’t have to keep inveigling visits here and there. I’d like to have permission to see you for the rest of the time that I’m in town. The worst thing that could happen is that you find you like me a bit as well.”
He sounded amused by her distress.
“Don’t bother being coy,” he added. “It doesn’t suit you, Somerset. I think you like me. I think you are more yourself around me than you are around most of the hapless farmers wandering the fields of the Grove.”
