“She is deceased, Miss Sanborn.”
Charlotte sat down again quickly, her gaze going to the children who didn’t seem to understand that the adults were speaking about their mother, Ann Connors. She turned her attention again to Reed Malloy, looking decidedly grave, his eyebrows once more in a fierce, straight line.
“Yes, I’m sorry. I had heard. My aunt, Alicia Randall, the children’s grandmother, wrote to me about the tragedy.”
Charlotte didn’t bother to add that it was the only time she’d heard from her aunt since her own parents died nearly a decade earlier.
“You must understand, Mr. Malloy, I have never met my cousin, Ann, and we had only exchanged a few letters during the years. To say we were not close would be to put it mildly. My parents moved here from Boston before I was born.” She paused, remembering what her aunt’s letter described.
“It was a collision between my cousin’s carriage and a horse car, as I recall. I know it is doubly hard with their father having died two years ago—”
“Three,” Reed Malloy corrected, his glittering gaze never wavering.
“Three,” she agreed, nodding. “In the light of this, I ask, why me as a guardian? Why not their grandmother?”
He stretched his arm out along the back of the sofa. “For one thing, their grandmother, your aunt, is nearly seventy years old. I don’t believe your cousin thought that Alicia Randall would be an ideal mother.”
Seventy, thought Charlotte. She hadn’t known her mother’s older sister was so much older.
“Secondly,” he continued, “while you might not have given much thought to the eastern branch of your family, Miss Sanborn, your cousin obviously gave a great deal of thought to you. Ann Connors had read all your work; in fact, it was she who first introduced me to your literary endeavors. She was one of your greatest admirers.”
Charlotte felt as if she’d been hit in the stomach, and a lump came into her throat at the thought of Ann, a cousin who knew so much about her when she, herself, hadn’t even felt much grief at the announcement of her death . . . until now.
However, her life was set and she liked it this way. She had no close friends, only acquaintances with whom she corresponded; she had her various editors who checked in with her to assign an article or push her on a deadline, and one younger brother who popped up from time to time only to make her miss him all the more when he went away again.
It was no life for children and she was not the woman to raise them. How could she ever have imagined that her cousin would do such a crazy thing?
“It is simply out of the question, Mr. Malloy. I am profoundly sorry that you and the children wasted a trip. And I do apologize for not having opened your letter. I didn’t recognize the seal and assumed it was a letter from a reader, which I would have looked at eventually, but . . . well, I do apologize again, but undoubtedly, you can see that there is nothing I can do.” As she finished, she spread her hands, giving a slight shrug.
Reed Malloy said nothing for a moment. His blue eyes merely narrowed at her. Then he stood up, dominating the room. Charlotte held her breath a moment while he seemed to come to some decision. She waited for him to yell at her, grab the children, and burst from her house.
Instead, perfectly under control, he said, “It is I who am sorry, Miss Sanborn, but there is no choice here.”
About to protest, she let out her breath in a rush, but he continued.
“You have ample space, which was my main concern for a woman living alone, even if the house is in need of some repairs. As for your objections, you have made no valid ones, nor can make any as far as I can see.”
“Really, Mr. Malloy—”
“Miss Sanborn, the children will be no financial burden to you as their upbringing has been well-provided for. All you need offer them is shelter, basic human kindness, and a moral and intellectual example, which I believe you are capable of, if I have read your works correctly. Can you not offer all of these?”
Well, of course she could. That was hardly the point. It was that no one had asked and had someone done so, she would have said emphatically that she had never had the desire to be a mother nor had she any such desire now, not even when faced with the two little urchins seated in her parlor. She refused to be bullied by his tactics.
“Mr. Malloy, neither my character nor my house is at issue here.” He inclined his head slightly, acknowledging the way she had maneuvered out of that trap.
“Rather the question is my inclination, which is strongly to the negative. I live a solitary life, here.” She gestured around her, taking in the house and the stretch of land outside her window.
Her father had set up his homestead just a fifteen-minute walk outside of town, not too far from mining camp in the foothills but far enough away from the bustle of Spring City that wagons weren’t going by their window.
In recent years, the city bustled infrequently, only when miners came through discussing gold strikes or travelers mistook the area for one of the healing hot mineral springs. And even that was happening less and less. Spring City was down to one theater, for both opera and plays, and it was threatening to close any day now.
“There are no other children close by . . . though there is a school in town,” she added thoughtfully, then bit her tongue before continuing. “Look, Mr. Malloy, I am not a heartless individual. I wish the children no ill will.”
She looked toward the children now. Having comprehended that the adults were discussing where they were to live, they knew instinctively that they were not wanted here. They stood up and once more anchored themselves to Reed Malloy, who absently stroked the top of the boy’s head.
“Honestly,” Charlotte rushed on, feeling like the hard-hearted cad she was professing not to be, “I just want what’s best for them, and it is not living here in a remote environment with a peace-and-quiet loving author, who has absolutely no idea about raising children. Can you understand that?”
“Well, Miss Sanborn, at least we are agreed that we both want what’s best for the children,” he said as if he hadn’t heard anything else she’d said. He looked down at each child, and Charlotte could see that he cared for them. Then he looked up sharply.
“And your suitability is a question in my mind. That’s why I didn’t just blindly follow Ann Connors’s last wishes, but accompanied them out here myself.” He thought a moment. “Yes, if we’re both worried about the same thing, then the answer seems obvious, wouldn’t you agree?”
Charlotte began nodding even before she asked, “And what would that be?”
“Why, for me to stay here with you and the children, of course, to assess the situation. If I find that you are unacceptable after all, then I’ll wire their grandmother and we’ll see if other arrangements can be made.”
Seemingly satisfied with his pronouncement, he began to usher the children out of the room. “Okay, little ones, upstairs to your room. Auntie Charlotte will show you the way. Won’t you?” He turned to her, the look on his face daring her to contradict his words in front of his tired wards.
Charlotte was still reeling from his highhanded manner, the way he seemed to treat her as if she were auditioning for a stage role. Unacceptable, indeed! Not to mention the address of “Auntie,” and the utterly improper and impossible suggestion that he should stay under the same roof with her.
Despite all that, after taking another look at the children’s faces, she nodded again. She brushed past them and headed for the stairs. She was sure she had said no, very firmly. Yet somehow, all three of them seemed to be staying.
“Meanwhile,” Reed Malloy continued behind her, “I’ll ride to town and wire my office that I’ll be delayed indefinitely. Do you need me to pick up something for supper, Miss Sanborn?”
“Oh, yes,” Charlotte said gratefully, forgetting for a moment that, if it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t need to be providing supper for anyone but herself. He was the source of all this confusion, but she thought only of the empty cupboard
s and bare shelves in her pantry. Even her root cellar was rootless! “Yes, whatever you and the children are accustomed to, Mr. Malloy.”
She watched as he gave her a quick nod before vacating her front hall. The infernal man seemed to be quite pleased with himself! To her sudden horror, she realized she was alone with the children, and she didn’t even know their names.
Chapter Two
“Well, here we are,” Charlotte said, smiling weakly. First things first, she thought. She turned to the boy, who looked a few years younger than his sister.
“What’s your name?” she asked, realizing how terrible it was that she didn’t even know her own kin’s names.
The little boy seemingly felt the same way for he screwed up his face, which instantly became beet red, and then burst into tears, reaching suddenly for his sister’s sleeve.
“He’s Thomas, ma’am. He doesn’t take to strangers. Are you really our aunt? Why are you alone? Are you a spinster?”
“Oh dear,” Charlotte murmured. Maybe children were as difficult as she’d always suspected. She had given up with her brother, letting Thaddeus fairly run free, after her parents deaths, as it took all of her time just to keep the house together and food on the table. Some said he’d turned out to be a bad egg—though not to her face.
Without answering any of the little girl’s questions, Charlotte tried again.
“And what’s your name?” She hoped for a better response than what she’d received from young Thomas.
“I’m Lillian Winifred Connors.”
Was it Charlotte’s imagination or had a tone of superiority crept into this little person’s voice?
“Well, Miss Lillian, as to your questions, yes, you may consider me your aunt.” She thought it best not to go into the technicality that they were actually second cousins. “I’m alone because I choose to be, though I believe you are correct in classifying me as a spinster.”
Charlotte was leading the way up the stairs as she spoke. “Careful of the fifth step up,” she added over her shoulder and they all stepped over the stair with the splintered wood and missing baluster.
Charlotte opened the second door at the left of the landing. “I’m afraid you’ll both have to share this room if Mr. Malloy is going to stay as well. It . . . it doesn’t have much in the way of toys or—” She broke off as the children stood in the middle of the sunlit room and surveyed it.
It was fairly pleasant with its four-poster bed and a bureau that had belonged to Charlotte’s grandmother, which her parents brought with them from the east. Her mother’s rocking chair was in one corner of the room, and Charlotte noticed a cobweb across the other. She hustled over to sweep it away with her hand.
“I’ll get you some clean towels and you can wash up—perhaps just a sponge bath for starters? The bathing room’s just next door, and the water closet is beside that if you need it. I’ll bring some water up.” They hadn’t said a word; probably it was extremely different from what they were used to, but she couldn’t be expected to have a full-blown nursery at hand.
At least there was an indoor “outhouse,” thanks to her mother’s persistence and her father’s ingenuity with one small windmill. She remembered the day that she and her brother, still a toddler, watched her father install the contraption that pumped water to a pipe in the attic where gravity sent it down to the water closet and the kitchen faucet. Unfortunately, the water stopped there, which meant she still had to haul it to the bath room.
Charlotte went downstairs to the pump to draw one bucket of cool, clean water. In the bathroom, she deposited half in the chamber set’s blue pitcher and the rest in the accompanying wash bowl on a low table with a porcelain top. From the bureau in her own room, she then took two towels.
By the time she returned, the children appeared a bit more relaxed, no longer standing together like huddling sheep. Thomas was peering out the window at his new surroundings and Lillian was opening drawers, which she closed with a bang as Charlotte entered the room.
“That’s all right, you can look around.” They both just stared at her so she put the towels down on the bed. “Why don’t you get cleaned up full chisel and then take a quick nap until Mr. Malloy returns. Then we’ll have supper. Okay?”
She had no idea how to speak to children, but this was apparently a failure, she thought, heading down to her study. They had not responded, though Thomas looked as if he might explode into tears again at any moment. Man alive! How would she ever get her work done and meet her deadline in two days?
If Mr. Malloy intended to see whether she was fit to raise children, then she would just show him how utterly unfit she was. He would come to understand for himself that she didn’t have the time for this, and then he would take the children and get back in his wagon and then onto the train heading east.
Yes, she thought, feeling better as she settled behind what used to be her father’s desk in the cluttered study; everything should wrap up off the reel, if not immediately.
Thirty minutes later she heard horse’s hooves again and realized that she had been lost in her work and hadn’t heard the children making any sounds of movement overhead. She supposed they’d chosen to nap before washing.
Perhaps she should check before Reed Malloy entered, she thought, standing up. Then Charlotte caught herself and sat down again. No, of course not; she’d let him go upstairs, after all she wasn’t the motherly type and wasn’t about to start proving otherwise.
There was a brief knock, then he entered the hall without waiting as if he already lived there and was a family member, instead of an unwanted guest. Charlotte merely stared at him through her open study door, not moving from behind the desk.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, glancing at her before dumping what appeared to be coarse feed bags on her hall floor. “They’re not as dirty as they look.” He ran a hand through his dark hair causing a lock to fall over his forehead in rather rakish abandon. “I’ve a few more in the wagon.”
Charlotte stood up, wondering why the sight of a male in her hallway caused such a flurry of odd feelings—in her brain, in her stomach, even in her knees, which seemed less steady. Inspection of the bags revealed them to contain not grain but apples, freshly baked bread, eggs, a fully cured ham, and some assorted locally grown vegetables.
He’d gone whole hog, Charlotte thought. The house hadn’t seen food such as this since she still had her younger brother to take care of. For Thaddeus, she would have prepared a feast every day if she’d had the money or the culinary know-how.
As for herself, she occasionally received cooked meals from her nearest neighbor, Sarah Cuthins, the wife of Spring City’s doctor. When Sarah’s only daughter had married nearly a decade earlier and moved away, she had turned her kindly eye on the eccentric, young writer. Often, though, Charlotte went into town for a mid-day meal.
Good lord, it occurred to her that Reed Malloy would expect her to drop everything and cook for them. Her brother could have told him not to expect too much in that regard. Plain to simple was Charlotte’s limited range of cooking and she’d stopped even that when Thaddeus left four years earlier.
Still, she decided to make a hospitable effort and began to tote the food down the hall, past the parlor, and into the kitchen where she found a few more cobwebs and not the thinnest layer of dust, mixed in with some tinned goods and a few sacks of cornmeal and potatoes. All she ever used the kitchen for was heating water for bathing, coffee, or tea, and cooking the occasional egg.
She placed the bags of food carefully in the middle of the maple block table, where her mother’s cook had made tasty creations before Charlotte had to dismiss the woman upon her parent’s death. Locating a duster, she began to wipe down the surfaces. At that moment, Reed Malloy’s dark head appeared in the doorway, followed by the rest of him and two more bags.
“You have a grist of food here; it would seem enough for your entire visit,” she commented.
“Oh, probably not, Miss Sanborn, but it�
��s a start.”
Charlotte stared at him. There was that feeling again—the strangeness of not being alone and of there being a man, a distinctly handsome man, in her kitchen. She watched as his deep blue eyes quickly took in the state of its disuse.
“I have to tell you, Mr. Malloy, that I find this extremely . . . all-overish.”
He raised his dark eyebrows, clearly puzzled. She set down the duster. “Uncomfortable, I mean. Your staying here is unorthodox to say the least, and—”
“If you had welcomed the children with open arms,” he interrupted her, “I would be on the next train out of here in the morning.” His eyes had taken on that steely look again, as if he were thinking something unkind about her. She swallowed.
“I told you; that is out of the question.”
“Well, then,” he said, brushing his hands together, dismissing the topic. “If you can clean up here a bit and fill a kettle as well as another pot with water, I’ll bring in some wood from . . . ?” His eyebrows raised again.
She was speechless for a moment, caught up by the manner in which he was taking over her kitchen, not to mention her life.
“The wood pile is on the left. I’ll show you,” she added, unable to help the overly sweet tone of her voice.
Charlotte was starting to wonder why she hadn’t just sold the small homestead and moved herself into rooms in town. There would have been no question of dumping two children on her if she’d lived above a restaurant or the general store. She made a mental note to check into that after Reed Malloy and his charges left.
“Over there.” She gestured with the kettle to the stacked wood under a small lean-to, and then proceeded to prime the pump with a vigorous up-and-down motion. Luckily, Sarah’s cousin didn’t mind splitting wood for a small fee, and one of her father’s old friends maintained the pump.
Once in the kitchen again, Reed began a fire in the stove and Charlotte started washing down the table and counters for the first time in a long time. She emptied the bags onto the now clean table and gingerly began organizing piles of food. Suddenly she glanced up to find Reed’s blue eyes upon her.
An Improper Situation (Sanborn-Malloy Historical Romance Series, Book One) Page 2
