She detected footsteps in the hallway outside. They weren’t her Aunt’s dainty steps. Then a knock at the door. “Come in,” she called.
“Hello,” Paul said as he opened the door. “Corrin told me you’ve been up here alone for some time, and I thought you might like some company.”
“Good evening, Paul. Yes, I would enjoy your company. Please, come in and sit down. I hope you don’t mind if I just stay where I am. I’m so lazy today that I just don’t want to move.”
“No, I don’t mind at all. You look so comfortable---and pretty the way the firelight is dancing upon your hair and face.”
“Why Paul Strupel, that was poetic. Do you like poetry?”
“Sure.” He made himself comfortable on the couch beside her.
“That’s what I’ve been reading. Would you like to hear some?”
“I’d like that. Is that one of those new Braille books?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Show me how it works.”
She sat upright, and he moved closer.
“Give me your hand.”
When he did, she separated his index finger and with her left hand, identified the letter ‘a’. Then she placed his finger over the ‘a’ and told him what the letter was. She demonstrated several more letters, and then helped him identify a short word.
“This is more difficult than I had imagined.” He withdrew his hand and placed it on the back of the couch. “I admire you for being able to read Braille.”
“Shall I continue?”
“Sure.”
Amelia read the beautiful words by moving her fingers across the pages. She was aware that Paul kept his hand on the back of the couch. Amelia’s whole body was tingly from having him so near. It became difficult for her to concentrate on reading.
There came another knock at the door, and Jeremiah Cowan enthusiastically entered without waiting to be invited in. “Well, hello there. Corrin told me you would be here. What are you doing?”
“Shouldn’t you be out chopping a tree or something?” Paul said with a note of sarcasm in his voice.
“Too wet,” Jeremiah said. “This kind of storm slows us down too much, and it’s too dangerous to move the logs in this mud. So after almost two days of this, I’m temporarily out of business. But, of course, you already knew that, didn’t you, Strupel?” Amelia heard him stoke the fire. “So I thought I’d come to town to keep Amelia company. But if you want me to head back up the mountain, I guess I will. Just let me warm myself up a bit before I catch a cold or something.”
“We don’t mind your company at all.” Amelia was grateful for the interruption which had caused Paul to withdraw his hand from behind her. But she knew he was anything but thrilled at Jeremiah’s presence.
“This is quite cozy, Strupel,” Jeremiah said. It sounded like he sat on the floor by the fire. “With the fire being the only source of light, you know a true gentleman wouldn’t even consider taking advantage of a young lady by sitting so close to her in a dimly-lit room---unchaperoned.”
“Taking advantage of her!” Pal bolted to his feet. “Amelia is blind and sits in dark rooms all the time. As long as I can see where I’m going, it’s not a big issue.”
“That doesn’t matter. It’s the principal of the situation that counts. And it sure didn’t look like you were planning on going anywhere. Except maybe with your hands.”
“I can’t believe you’d even think that, Cowan!” Anger surged through Paul’s voice. “Is that why you came here tonight? To insult me?”
“Gentlemen! Please, stop!”
“There Cowan. You’ve upset Amelia.”
“I thought you Christians were supposed to behave more honorably than that.” Jeremiah got to his feet
“I should have known you’d bring that into this. Well, I don’t have to justify myself to you. We were simply having a nice time reading when you barged in---uninvited I might add.”
“I think I know what’s happening here,” Jeremiah said. “You’re jealous because Amelia’s going to the dance with me Saturday night, so this is an attempt to try to change her mind about it. Right, Strupel?”
“Jealous of you? I can’t believe you’d be so immature as to think---”
“That’s it!”Amelia jumped to her feet, her book crashing to the floor as she spoke loudly and sternly. “I’ve had enough of your quarreling. I’m appalled at this behavior coming from full-grown men. Why, I’ve seen children behave better than this. And I refuse to become an object of contention, a trinket for you two to argue over.” She picked up her cane and maneuvered around them to the door and opened it. Her face was tight and flushed. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask both of you to please leave.”
The men were obviously caught off guard at her discomposure.
“I’m sorry, Amelia---”
“It’s too late for your apologies, Jeremiah,” Amelia interrupted. “You’ve managed to ruin the evening. So please, just leave.” She gestured toward the open door. He headed toward the door and stopped directly in front of her.
“I really am sorry and embarrassed for my behavior, Amelia.”
“I may forgive you later, but I just don’t feel like it right now.”
“What about Saturday night?”
“Well, fortunately for you, my temper usually fades quickly, so let’s just leave Saturday as it is. That is, if you’ve learned to control yourself by then and will promise to behave like a gentleman.”
“I will. You can count on that,” he said and then headed out the door.
“I’m sorry too, Amelia.” Paul stepped toward her and put his hand on her shoulder.
“I’m particularly disappointed in you.” She brushed off his hand. “You should know better than to let him get to you like that. I’ll never understand what it is between you two that causes such behavior, but I don’t like it and I won’t stand for it.”
“You want me to leave too?”
“Please.”
Without any further words, Paul took his leave and Amelia was left alone at the door, flustered and disappointed at the unpleasant incident that was imposed upon her by two people she cared about.
She went to her room and packed for the coming trip, hurling articles of clothing into her valise with exasperation. When she had finished, she went to bed with a headache and without saying her nightly prayers.
› › ›
Amelia awoke the next morning with anticipation of the shopping trip with her Aunt, but with regrets for the harsh words she had spoken the night before. She immediately knelt and asked God’s forgiveness for her anger and for treating her gentlemen guests so poorly.
When finished, she repacked her clothes more neatly, and then decided to take a quick towel bath, realizing that there would be no hot water prepared at this time of the day. She collected her toiletries and headed for the bath.
When Amelia opened the door to her room, she heard the sound of something being pushed across the hallway floor. She poked and prodded with her cane until it alighted upon something. Placing her cane in the hand that was carrying her clothes, she bent over and felt for the object. It was a box wrapped in paper with a ribbon tied around it. What was this on the top? It was dry and crumbly and she had crushed them before she realized they had been dried flowers.
Dropping her clothes to the ground, she picked up the parcel and untied the ribbon, retrieving the wooden box from inside as the wrappings and what was left of the flowers dropped to the floor. Opening the box, she felt inside and found straw surrounding the contents and pushed it aside until she found the object it contained and immediately recognized it.
Retreating back to her room, Amelia left her clothes and the wrappings on the floor in the doorway, sat on the bed, and carefully extracted the precious music box. Holding it lovingly in her hands, tears formed in the corners of her eyes. She fingered the entire porcelain lady and locating the brass key at the bottom of the base, wound it carefully. As the music played and the min
iature lady twirled and danced in her lap, she swallowed hard.
“I forgive you, Paul. Please forgive me.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Amelia, it’s time to go. The stage master won’t wait any longer.” Corrin probably saw the downhearted look on her niece’s face. “I don’t think he’s coming today, Honey.”
Amelia sighed loudly and boarded the stage with her Aunt’s help. She had hoped Paul would see her off so that she could thank him for the wonderful gift and ask his forgiveness for her behavior. Now it would just have to wait until Friday.
“Haw!” The stagecoach driver yelled loudly to the team and tugged the reins. The stage jerked and began its four and a half hour journey to Glenwood Springs. Corrin and Amelia were the only two on this portion of the trip, which allotted them plenty of time to talk.
“Aunt Corrin, why do Paul and Jeremiah fight with each other the way they do? Have they always acted this way?”
“Well, sweetie, it may be hard for you to believe, but almost twenty years ago, those two were vying for another young woman’s heart, similar to the way they are now battling it out over you. Of course, they were much younger then, and it was actually worse than it is now.
“But I think I should begin before that. You see, about twenty-two years ago, I fell in love with a tall, handsome, young, Southern gentleman named Alister Jackson.”
“My father?” Amelia gasped. “You were in love with my father?”
“Yes, Dear. And we were engaged to be married. But there was something I hadn’t told him. When I was a young woman, around fifteen years old, I got a disease that almost killed me. The doctors never were able to identify it, but the disease settled in parts of my body and did lots of damage. The doctor told me that one of the results was that I couldn’t bear any children.”
“Oh, Aunt Corrin. I’m sorry.” Amelia took her Aunt’s hand in hers, not sure if she were trying to comfort Corrin or brace herself for the rest of the story. Her mother had never even hinted that her father had loved someone before her, especially her sister.
“Until then, that had been all Alister could talk about; he wanted children. It was only two weeks before our wedding when I finally got up the nerve to tell him that I couldn’t give him a baby.”
“What did he say?”
“Well, he said that it didn’t matter. He said our love was strong enough to stand without children, but I knew he was crushed.” Corrin paused and sighed.
“What happened?” Amelia couldn’t handle the silence.
“The day before the wedding, he eloped with my sister, Grace.”
Amelia’s heart thumped hard inside her chest. Corrin couldn’t possibly know the full extent of what she had just revealed to her suspecting heart.
“He took her back to his precious Georgia to live. I guess I never did forgive either of them. Grace tried writing me, but I just sent her letters back unopened. Then they stopped coming altogether and we drifted apart.” She looked touched Amelia’s cheek and put her arm around her. “Now you can understand why I didn’t want you here, sweetie. You reminded me of the loneliness in my life and everything I had tried to forget, but never forgave. You forced me to look straight into the eyes of my past and deal with the pain I left there. But, I think I finally forgave Alister and Grace last week. And now I’ve been given a chance to live a whole new life. I’ve got my very own daughter to love and take care of. If only I had read her letters, I would have known about your father’s death. I hope you believe me when I tell you that I would have tried to help you and Grace.”
Amelia laid her head on her aunt’s shoulder, not knowing what to say, wondering if this would be the time to reveal her own secrets. She allowed her gesture to speak for her.
“Anyway, I began looking for my own life as far away from Georgia as I could get. I had seen an advertisement for a teaching position and applied. I got the job and settled in here.
“Jeremiah and Aaron were orphaned when Jeremiah was about fifteen years old, so he went to work as a woodcutter. By the time I met him . . . I think he was around twenty years old. He and Paul had their own logging company that employed a dozen men. They had been friends for some time, and the two worked closely together. Their business boomed.
“When Paul’s mother died, Paul was about twenty-three. He inherited his father’s fortune. He thought it wise to build in a sawmill in the area to help the logging industry, as well as make himself a tidy profit.
“They both fell head over heels in love with me. But I’d just been scorned and didn’t want anything to do with men. You should have seen them.” Corrin laughed. “They were a sight. Because they were so young, they were even more intense back then with me than they are with you now. Eventually, after I had put them off long enough, the marriage proposals stopped, and they just fell out of love with me I guess.”
“But you’re still such good friends with them, Aunt Corrin. I’m afraid that if I hurt one of them, I’d lose the other as a good friend.”
“I don’t think that would happen, honey. They’re acting up right now, but if you were to settle on just one of them, they’d go back to being civil toward one another. You may not believe it now, but if either one of them were ever in trouble, the other would be at his side in a heartbeat, helping in whatever way he could. I think you’d be amazed at how deep their friendship goes.
Amelia knew that kind of friendship with Molly, at least she hoped it was that close. She realized Molly had made up some of the things she’s told her, so a niggling doubt grew in the back of her mind. How many other things had Molly kept from her?
“To give you an example of the kind of friendship these two men are capable of, after about five years of teaching I started talking of owning my own business of some sort. I was tired of doing whatever someone else said I had to, and I wanted to stand on my own two feet. But, of course, on a teacher’s salary that was impossible.
“A couple months later the saloon was put up for sale. When Jeremiah suggested that I could run it, I laughed at him. But the longer I thought about it, the better it began to sound. I could run it any way I wanted to, with no ‘fallen doves’, no spitting on the floor, a place where the townsfolk, including ladies, could come and have lunch together, or rent out for dances and such. Of course, I didn’t have near enough money saved to put a down payment on the place, so I ruled it out. About ten days later Paul and Jeremiah showed up on my doorstep with the most impish grins on their faces. I asked them what they were up to, and Paul pulled some papers out of his pocket and plunked them down in my hand. It was a deed to the Saloon with my name listed as principal owner and the two of them as partners! I was shocked, to say the least.”
“Aunt Corrin! You mean Paul and Jeremiah are partners with you in the Silver Slipper Saloon?”
“Sure are! They gave me 48% interest and they split the remaining 52% between them. Paul is the one who is good at numbers, so whenever I get my books in a mess, he comes over and helps me straighten them out. And they both come around as often as they can just to be sure people are abiding by my rules. You remember the night when I introduced you and told everyone they’d better not bother you or they’d have to answer to me?”
“Yes.” Amelia remembered the night well. “I didn’t know them then, but both Paul and Jeremiah spoke up for me.”
“That’s right. Well, nobody wanted to cross them because they would kick them out and not let them return. No one would want to be banned from the only watering hole in town,”
Both ladies laughed. Amelia wondered how Paul could be making money on a saloon while professing to be a Christian man. It didn’t make sense. She knew she liked him a lot, but maybe she needed to pull back a little bit. After all, how much did she really know about him?
“For the most part they let me run the place any way I want,” her aunt continued. “They’re silent partners for sure. But the most amazing part is that half of the time neither of them takes their share of the profits.”
“I’m not joking, honey. That’s the kind of friends they are to me. Oh, they’ll have a drink on the house, and they eat here whenever it’s convenient for them. Sometimes they’ll use the place for parties like the dance this Saturday night. And every now and then they’ll use a room to put up a client over night, and Jeremiah and Arron use a room whenever the need arises. But it’s not unusual for one or both of them to simply hand me back their share of the profits, saying it’s for improvements or whatever. And they never ask questions about how I spend their money, either.”
“I think that’s the noblest thing I’ve ever heard.” Amelia admired the men more than ever.
“Sweetie, I think you already know which one of them you’re heart is pulling you toward. Follow your heart, honey. It won’t fail you. The longer you wait before you make up your mind, the harder it will be on the one you don’t choose. That is, if you decide to choose either of them.”
Her Aunt was right about her heart being tugged toward one of them. But Amelia enjoyed the company of both men, and leaving one behind as a mere friend seemed almost cruel. Her young heart was so unsure of itself. The remainder of the trip was either spent in silent meditation or inconsequential conversation.
The ladies occupied their days in Glenwood Springs flitting form one shop to another. They each scrutinized many, beautiful party gowns, Amelia always asking for something in pink. And they enjoyed the attention the shop proprietors were pouring over them.
They finally settled on a rose colored satin gown for Amelia. It had short, ballooned sleeves and a scooped neckline that gently curved and scalloped inches below her neck with burgundy piping along the edges and hand crocheted lace layered behind that. There was a matching, burgundy satin sash along the waistline that ended in the back with a large double bow and a peek-a-boo overskirt drawn up on the right with more crocheted lace lavishly peeking from behind the skirt, imitating a frilly petticoat. But the most striking feature was the rose colored embroidered brocade interspersed with tiny seed pearls, bugle beads and sequins that spiraled and swirled its way from the top left shoulder, across the front of the dress and down to the bow on the right side of the skirt. Amelia thought she had never felt or worn such an elegant gown in her life.
Angel In The Saloon (Brides of Glory Gulch) Page 9
