Love's First Bloom

by Delia Parr

  Fearful that she might revert back to biting him, he held Lily close to him with his free hand. As they worked their way through the crowd, he whispered softly to the child to try to calm her, but she still cried every step of the way.

  He was halfway through the crowd when he spied Phanaby standing on the sidewalk in front of the general store with several other women. After quickly changing direction, the three of them exited the fringes of the crowd almost directly in front of her.

  Phanaby waved and smiled at them. “Over here. I’m over here!”

  After leaving Lily behind with Phanaby, along with his promise that he would have Ruth back within an hour and join them for the picnic dinner, he and Ruth started walking side by side toward Lawrence Street. They followed a herd of others who were headed for the church grounds, although he was not particularly interested in seeing the villagers’ offerings that were due to be judged before the area was cleared for a variety of games to be played this afternoon.

  He kept his pace slow, in part to accommodate her shorter strides, but mostly to allow the others to pass by them. Fortunately, she was not holding his arm as they walked, or he feared he would be too distracted to focus on his goal for the day.

  He chanced another look at her. Like many of the women in the village, she wore a new gown today, but there was not another woman there who could wear a simple dark blue and gray gown with a tiny lace collar and look as stunning as she did.

  In all truth, there was not a woman here or anywhere he had traveled who had her startling eyes, either, and he had a hard time making his heart beat normally instead of pounding against the wall of his chest until he kept his gaze focused on that silly bonnet she wore.

  They had only covered half a square before she looked back over her shoulder for a third time. “You were right,” she finally admitted. “We were standing much too close to the stage for Lily, but she looks very content now that she’s away from the noise and the music.”

  He chuckled. “Either that or she feels safer being away from those dangerous weapons you’ve got stuck on that bonnet you’re wearing again today, although the ribbons add an interesting touch.”

  She looked over at him and narrowed her gaze. “My bonnet would look much better if you’d remember to return the two feathers you took home so I could put them back where they belong.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll try to remember them tomorrow and drop them off at the apothecary before I go to the Swains’.” He pointed to the northeast with his cane. “They live about half a mile past Spinster Wyndam’s cottage and need me to repair their front steps,” he explained, grateful for the opening he needed to pursue a more important topic. “After that, I haven’t got any work, so I’d like to fix those shelves for Mr. Garner,” he said, hoping to remind her that she had promised to speak to the man on Jake’s behalf.

  Ruth sighed. “He’s been so busy lately that he’s been content to have everything where he can find it, even if it’s all such a mess. Maybe you should ask him about it today when we all have dinner together.”

  He shrugged, hoping to appear nonchalant. “It’s a holiday. Tomorrow will do just as well.”

  “Actually, any conversation you start at the picnic dinner might be better than focusing on Mayor Pendleton’s speech today, given your views on principles like truth and honor,” she quipped.

  He moved a bit closer to her when a couple of boys ran past them, chasing each other, before putting a more proper distance between them again, which gave him a bit of time to choose the proper bait to lure her into a discussion. Drawing in a long breath, he glanced down at her. Her gaze was focused straight ahead, but her steps were quicker now. “I should have known that the mayor’s speech would end up as a topic of conversation today, one way or the other, since it hits very close to the pointed discussions we’ve had about newspapers and the articles they print,” he ventured.

  “On the contrary,” she argued. “I have no desire to discuss his speech or anything relevant that’s been printed in the newspaper with you or anyone else. And in all truth, the few discussions about newspapers we’ve had weren’t all pointed. We obviously disagreed at first, but—”

  “As I recall, that’s an understatement,” he noted, trying to keep his voice firm but calm.

  She stopped and looked up at him, forcing him to stop walking. “Nevertheless, I still consider the argument you made that day to be superficial. And I still believe that newspapers and the men who own them or write articles that appear in them can’t use principles like truth or justice as a pretext to print everything and anything they like simply because it appeals to the more prurient interests of the public. There’s still no honor in doing that as far as I can see, which I thought you understood, considering the last time we talked about a specific article, you actually agreed with me that it was inappropriate. Unless you were simply trying to placate me.”

  He cleared his throat. He found it difficult to pose a single argument that might provoke her when she was looking up at him with those dazzling eyes and tempting him to kiss her instead of arguing with her. Instead, he tried to refocus their conversation if only to give himself the time he needed to redirect his thoughts from personal to professional.

  “Are you suggesting I was being less than honest when I agreed with you?” he prompted.

  She dropped her gaze, shrugged, and resumed walking again. “No, but as I recall, you were sitting on the floor in a great deal of pain at the time. Now that you’re recovered, I wouldn’t be surprised if you changed your mind and decided that the reporter had every right to print those horrid allegations about that minister’s daughter. So I think it’s probably pointless to discuss anything else,” she whispered.

  Her voice was laced with emotion. She was still no doubt grieving for her father, which made her all the more vulnerable. This made him question the kind of man he must be to take advantage of that vulnerability for his own purposes.

  He guided her away from the walkway, but waited until they were under the shade of an old maple tree before he reached out and touched her arm.

  She stopped but did not look up at him. “I haven’t changed my mind,” he insisted. “Not at all, and I should hope you know me well enough by now that if I did have an opinion or if I changed my opinion about something, I’d tell you. I told you my opinion of that silly bonnet you wore when we went to supper with Spinster Wyndam, and I told you again today that I thought it was silly, didn’t I?” he added with a smile when she hesitated to respond.

  She sighed, but when she looked over at him, her gaze was misty. He knew she was battling tears, which added yet another layer to the guilt he was already carrying. “Yes, you did,” she admitted. “I’m sorry. You’ve always been very open and honest with me. I shouldn’t have assumed the worst of you.”

  He swallowed the lump of guilt in his throat, but it lodged in the middle of his chest.

  “I’ve been awfully busy for the past few weeks,” she continued. “Although I have little interest in the newspapers, I really haven’t had any time to read them. Perhaps you’ve read something recently you could tell me about that we could discuss.”

  “It’s a holiday. Maybe we should just think about enjoying the festivities and have a discussion of the news another day, perhaps while you’re working in your garden,” he suggested.

  She smiled and her eyes sparkled. “I expect to be at my garden tomorrow morning to see if the fireworks later tonight did any damage.”

  “Tomorrow it is,” he replied and nodded toward the church grounds. “We’ll need to hurry if we expect to get back in time for our picnic dinner.” He guided her toward the first row of tables, where the women had set out their best pies to be judged.

  Walking beside her, Jake’s dreams of professional redemption suddenly felt selfish. Was he willing to destroy the future of the woman by his side and the little girl she protected? His worries exploded into outright fear, however, when he spied a man standing across the stree
t, in the alley where they had argued last month, watching them from afar.

  With his heart racing, he deliberately dropped his cane and took a quick step to the side to block Ruth’s view and prevent her from seeing something that made it all the more imperative for him to stay by her side today: Robert Farrell, the scoundrel, had finally come back, just as he had vowed he would.

  Twenty-Nine

  Like most of the men he saw escorting women up and down the rows on the church grounds, Jake followed along behind Ruth. He left her to survey the entrants to the competition without rushing her or offering his own opinion about the wares, all the while keeping a sharp lookout for Farrell, who seemed to have disappeared.

  He watched Ruth study the pies as they passed by them, but she waited until they were at the end of the row and starting for the next one before announcing her choice for the blue ribbon. “Mrs. Toby should win. Her apple pie looked the best, but Mrs. Ayers will take home the blue ribbon,” she whispered.

  When he gave her a questioning look, she leaned closer. “Apparently, she wins every year. Don’t ask me why, but I overheard someone say it has to do with the fact that Mr. Ayers contributes a sizable donation for the fireworks display later tonight.”

  “That’s a good example of not being truthful … or perhaps it’s more like a breach of honor. You might want to mention that to some of the folks who organized the contest. What do you think?” he teased.

  When she glared at him, he chuckled and let his remark stand as they started up the second row of tables, filled with an assortment of cookies ready to be judged informally by the crowd. He still had not seen any sign of Farrell again, but spied the Jones cousins up ahead and watched them for a moment to make certain they were not headed this way. He stopped abruptly when he realized that Ruth had gone ahead to the next row, where he saw a blur of red, white, and blue decorations. He hurried to catch up with her.

  He slowed his steps, however, and stopped under the shade of a maple tree where he decided he could both observe her and watch for Farrell. For her part, Ruth scarcely noticed he had stepped away. In fact, she was surrounded by a group of women standing in front of a display that would only seem odd to anyone in the village who had been living under one of those docks at the river’s edge.

  As it stood, he was more than glad he was nothing more than a distant observer when the women urged Ruth closer to the display, chattering at her like a flock of squawking sea gulls chasing after a single gull with a fish in its mouth.

  “Come and see!” “We were hoping you’d agree to be our judge.” “It’s all in good fun. Please don’t be offended.” “The general store sold out quickly, so we had to change the rules and let women enter their used ones, too.”

  Even when Jake strained his neck, he could not see Ruth’s face, but her back was as stiff as if her spine had been replaced with one of those gaily decorated brooms leaning against a small fence positioned on top of the table. He was half afraid she would refuse to be a part of anything even remotely related to the nickname she found so annoying or speak her mind and offend the women.

  That is, until he heard her laugh and clap her hands, exactly like Lily did when something truly pleased her.

  Some minutes later, after she had chosen a winner and he had still not seen any sign that Farrell was close by, she looked around and smiled when she finally spied him. She said something to the other women that he could not quite hear, but judging by the laughter coming from the other women, he had a sinking feeling he might somehow be involved. He promptly deemed the idea ludicrous. They were probably just teasing her that she needed to do something to get him to ask if he could court her—an idea he had briefly considered but dismissed as taking his investigation over the line that separated honor from dishonor.

  She walked over and joined him under the tree, and he was grateful she could not read his thoughts of just a moment ago, or even now when all he could concentrate on was the sight of her soft, smiling lips. Her pale gray eyes were sparkling with merriment, and her cheeks were flushed the color of the red stripes on the many flags that were flying throughout the village.

  “I was hoping you’d help me choose the winner, but I couldn’t see you anywhere,” she said with a glint in her eye.

  He held up his cane defensively in front of him. “There were too many women and too many brooms over there to suit me. Besides, I wasn’t quite sure how you’d react when you saw all those brooms decorated in your honor, and I’d rather not be anywhere near you when you’re upset and doubly armed with those feathers and a broom,” he teased.

  “You’re armed with that cane you have there, and you can easily defend yourself now that your back is healing so well. But since you didn’t bother to come with me or to help me choose the winner, you’ve lost any right to complain later.”

  His heart thumped in his chest. “Complain about what? I didn’t have anything to do with the idea of decorating those brooms,” he argued.

  She laughed. “Perhaps not, but you do now.”

  “Why? Because I just happen to be spending a little time with the Broom Lady?” he quipped, finding her gaiety at his expense as unnerving as the matchmaking fever that had struck nearly everyone in the village where he and Ruth were concerned. He, however, found the notion all too distracting and had actually turned down several invitations to supper lately if Ruth had been invited, too.

  “No. Guess again.”

  He narrowed his gaze and tightened his hold on the cane. “I sincerely hope this isn’t some sort of joke—”

  “It isn’t a joke at all. Apparently, the women who decorated those brooms all paid an entry fee, which will be donated to the church. They all took their work very seriously because they each wanted to win very badly. Would you like me to tell you who the winner is, or would you rather be surprised at dinner? No, now that I think about it, you can’t wait. I really need to tell you now.”

  He snorted. “I think I’d rather wait, at least until you stop jabbering nonsense and speak plainly so I have some notion of what you mean.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Plainly speaking, the broom I picked to win was the one Lorelei Jones decorated, although I didn’t know it at the time. You’ll be sharing the picnic dinner today with her, much to the dismay of the other unmarried women who entered the contest, because along with winning a blue ribbon, you were the additional prize given to the winner.”

  Jake looked into her eyes, saw them twinkling with sheer merriment, and nearly choked. “I’m the prize? In that broomdecorating competition?”

  Her grin widened as she took his arm. “Don’t be a spoilsport. It’s all in good fun, and those women raised quite a bit, considering they only had their pin money to use for their entrance fees. I’ll make your excuses for you with the Garners, too, and don’t worry about being alone with her and the broom she made,” she assured him before she leaned closer to him and lowered her voice to a whisper. “I heard from a very reliable source that she plans to share you with her cousin, too, but don’t say anything. I think it’s supposed to be a surprise.”

  Most of the ribbons had been awarded, but the picnic dinner had not yet started when Ruth approached the table where Jake sat alone while his two companions waddled up to the judges’ stand for Lorelei Jones to accept her blue ribbon.

  “You’ve managed to smile more than once or twice so far. Don’t stop on my account,” she teased when he got up from the bench to greet her.

  “I wasn’t smiling. I was smirking,” he insisted, quite certain Farrell had good reason to disappear from this part of the festivities. “Contrary to all those ladies’ good intentions, I’m about as embarrassed right now as I was when I was seven years old and my schoolmaster, Mr. Ephraim Pitts, forced me to wear a toga costume for a play about Rome at the end of the winter session.”

  She chuckled. “That doesn’t sound so awfully terrible.”

  He snorted. “Trust me when I tell you that it was,” he argued, but for propriety�
��s sake he didn’t add that when the toga fell off, he ended up standing in front of the schoolroom wearing nothing but his nightshirt in front of everyone.

  “Did you dig in your heels then, too? Or did you go straight to fuming and fussing and downright refusing to be in the play before he bribed you to participate, like I had to do?” she countered.

  “If you need to know, Mr. Pitts didn’t try to bribe me. He had a very intimidating strap that I’d felt once too often. And in case you’re interested in being fair, wearing that costume may not sound too awful to you, but being a prize for anything or anyone, especially a ridiculous broom competition won by one of the Jones cousins, is a bit hard to swallow.”

  “But you did it, even though you made me promise to do a whole list of things,” she said and pouted her lips. “I should think letting you escort me to the fireworks display tonight and allowing you to walk me home afterward would have been enough. You can drive a hard bargain, Mr. Spencer,” she teased.

  Jake smiled. He looked forward to spending the entire evening alone with her and decided he deserved to be with her tonight, without any worries about Farrell or his assignment or even his brother. For this one night, he wanted to be with Ruth as the man he wanted to be, rather than the man he would turn out to be in the end: her nemesis.

  And he knew just the man who could help him make that happen.

  Thirty

  The festive celebrations had replaced more than the humdrum of daily life in the village. For one entire day, villagers set aside their disappointments and disagreements, their sorrows and sins, to revel in the joy of simply being alive in the greatest nation on earth, where they were free to acknowledge their blessings, their love for God, and their belief that the government their forefathers created would protect their freedoms.