She hung up his long johns in the lean-to where she hung her underclothes. The heat would dry them just as quickly as the sun.
By noon, Janice had come to the decision to wire Daniel. She didn't like to disturb Georgina, but Daniel had to know. Surely they knew some fancy lawyer in Houston or somewhere who could come out and put an end to this farce. There really wasn't any evidence against Mulloney. Surely they couldn't hang him on the basis of nothing? That thought brought back the edge of panic, and she carefully blanked her mind and returned to her routine.
She ate one of the biscuits she had made for breakfast that no one had come to collect. Her stomach wasn't really prepared for food, but she got it down anyway. She tucked her hair neatly beneath her hat, donned her spectacles and gloves, and started down the street. She had the appearance of a very proper, very respectable old-maid schoolteacher. No one would believe she was a weeping, hysterical fifteen-year-old inside.
She stopped at the grocery to order some more flour and sugar sent up to the house to replenish her supply. Talking hushed as Janice entered, but one of her older students rushed up to whisper that she thought the prisoner was the handsomest man she had ever seen and she didn't believe for a minute that he did it.
That gave her some indication of which way the wind blew. Janice nodded politely and inquired after the girl's mother, then sailed out to visit the pharmacy, where she partook of a sarsaparilla to quench her thirst. There she was confronted by Mrs. Danner, who declared Mulloney ought to be hung immediately and demanded that Janice agree with her in front of a store full of attentive ears. Janice smiled politely, informed her antagonist that the Ten Commandments said "Thou shalt not kill," and walked away. Ambiguity was rapidly becoming her forte.
She didn't want to wire Daniel unless absolutely necessary, but it was becoming more and more clear that absolute necessity had arrived. She didn't dare look to the sheriff's hole-in-the-wall office and jail, fearful she might see Mulloney's accusing eyes looking out at her. He was keeping quiet. The least she could do was see that he received the help he deserved.
She ran into Jason Harding just before she walked into the telegraph office. So grateful was she to see him that Janice grasped Jason's shirt sleeve and looked up at him with genuine relief. She had never touched him before, scarcely ever looked him in the face, and his reaction was one of shock when she did.
"Jenny, are you all right? My word, I had no idea this had hit you so hard or I would have been out to see you sooner. What did that bastard do? So help me, if he hurt you—"
Janice shook her head violently and interrupted. "No. No, that's not it. They're going to hang an innocent man, Jason. You have to stop them. I was just going to wire Daniel. Mr. Mulloney could not possibly have done it."
Jason relaxed and patted her hand. "I know he's been friendly to you and all, Jenny, but the fact is, he could have done it. There's no one to say he was in that lean-to all night sleeping. It's almighty suspicious that there were two fires in town directly after he came here. I don't want to believe it either, but the sheriff has to do his duty. I'm sure a jury will consider all the evidence."
Deflated, Janice pulled her hand away. "Samuel could have fallen asleep with a cigarette in his hand. He could have got in an argument with some of the drunks that hang around over there. Almost anything could have happened, Jason. You can't pin simple coincidence on Mr. Mulloney."
"It wasn't simple coincidence that Mulloney was the only one in the vicinity of the schoolhouse when it caught on fire. I don't believe in coincidences, Jenny. Let me help you word that telegram to Daniel. I think his brother is in a heap of trouble."
He caught her elbow to escort her in, but she couldn't do it. Georgina was expecting their second baby. Daniel would be torn apart wanting to come down here to rescue his brother and needing to stay with his wife. She owed it to Daniel to tell the truth. Daniel had rescued her when her whole world was falling in. She hated to have to turn to him again. She hated being obligated to anyone. But she was obligated to Daniel, and she couldn't repay that debt by putting his brother through the mockery of a jury trial.
"No, Jason. I can't worry Daniel and Georgina like that. Come with me to the sheriff's office. I only mean to tell this story once."
She didn't even ask to see the prisoner when she swept into the sheriff's narrow office with Jason trailing behind her. If she were Peter Mulloney, when that jail door opened she would run from this town as fast as she could go. She wouldn't be seeing him again.
Mentally, as she faced Sheriff Powell, Janice counted the coins she kept in her cookie jar and the savings she had in the bank. There should be just enough for her to make it to Natchez and Betsy. What she would do after she got there, she would worry about later. She didn't have a doubt in her mind that she was destroying her life and her home by rescuing Peter Mulloney. She despised herself as much as she despised him for having to do it. She just kept telling herself she owed Daniel for these five years of contentment.
"Sheriff, I don't mean to cause anybody any trouble, but you're holding the wrong man," she said, facing him with determination. "If that fire really was set, the arsonist is still on the loose, and I can't allow that to continue."
The sheriff looked her over carefully, then looked to Jason hovering behind her. He hawked and spit a wad of tobacco juice at the spittoon. "Miss Harrison, I believed Mulloney was as innocent as you did the last time this happened, but I can't let him go just 'cause he's used a few honeyed words and made you think he's something he's not. I got a wire from Daniel saying the last time he'd heard, his brother was in New Mexico. That might not even be Peter Mulloney in there. When I asked him a few simple questions Daniel wanted me to ask, he couldn't answer them."
"Couldn't, or wouldn't?" Janice asked wearily. "The man is precisely who he says he is. I can positively identify him. You forget, I'm from Cutlerville too. He's simply protecting his family, like he's protecting me. I can't say as I've met any other man with that much arrogant stupidity in my life, but there's no doubt that he's a Mulloney. He fell asleep in Betsy's bed last night while Ellen Fairweather was over at the house. We'd been hanging new curtains, and it was late, and I didn't have the heart to wake him. He was right there, sound asleep, when the fire bell went off."
Janice heard Jason's angry intake of breath, saw the doubt in the sheriff's eyes, and knew it was going to happen all over again. The last time, she had been guilty as sin. This time, she was only trying to do a good deed. But people believed in sin a lot easier than good. They wouldn't believe Peter was hanging curtains. They wouldn't believe an old-maid schoolteacher would allow a man to sleep in her sister's bed. And if tongues started wagging fast enough, they just might assume Betsy was just exactly what she was: a bastard. She would have to leave town before that happened.
The sheriff asked flatly, "You willin' to testify to that in court?"
Janice sighed and held her gaze on her neat white gloves. "If it comes to that."
"Go ask the bastard for his version of the story," Jason ordered from behind her. "That one's too farfetched for him to make up."
"He claims he slept in the lean-to," the sheriff protested.
'Tell him the schoolteacher's in here telling different."
The sheriff nodded at the wisdom of that and disappeared through the doorway to the jail. Janice didn't turn around to look at Jason. He was generally a fair man, but he had the prejudices of most men. She could see his point of view. A healthy, virile man did not normally hang curtains for a young woman without reason. And to a man, there could only be one reason.
Right now, she couldn't even think of another one herself. She didn't know why Peter Mulloney had helped her hang those curtains. Maybe he had thought he was seducing her. Maybe that's why he had the sense to keep his mouth shut. She would never understand the male mind.
Raised voices emerged from the other room. Jason took a step toward them, heard the angry clang of tin against iron followed by normal tones,
and waited. The sheriff appeared a few minutes later, shaking his head.
"Mule-headed son of..." He stopped, glanced apologetically at Janice, and continued, "He tried to tell me she was just protecting him because of Daniel. When I said she was prepared to testify in court, he got kind of upset. Then he asked if she'd have to go to court if he told the truth now. I promised she wouldn't if she didn't want to. Then he told the same exact damned story as she did."
He talked as if she weren't here. Janice was used to that, and she was too emotionally drained to care right now. Peter had verified her story. That was that. She turned around to leave.
Jason caught her arm. "I'm sorry, Jenny. I shouldn't have let them send him up there to work on the school. I just didn't think..."
"Just leave it at that, Jason. You just didn't think." Janice shook him off and tried to pass around him. He just didn't think an old-maid schoolteacher would be attracted to a young good-looking man like Mulloney. He just didn't think she had a life or feelings of her own. He just didn't think she was anything more than a machine like his fancy typewriter. She was the one who had let him think that. She couldn't blame the man.
"Jenny..." An uncertain plea tinged Jason's voice as she skirted around him and opened the door.
Janice didn't look back. She had overreached herself. She could have had Jason if she'd really put her mind to it. But no, she had dallied with delusions of marrying the fabulously wealthy Peter Mulloney. She had encouraged him, if she was truthful with herself. She had been prideful and greedy and now she reaped her just reward.
For she knew as sure as God made little green apples that the gossip would be all over town before day's end: the schoolteacher had slept with the prisoner.
Chapter 11
Peter felt the sweat pooling under his arms as he walked out of the makeshift courtroom. He disguised the damp by keeping his arms down and bending his neck to don his hat. He straightened and nodded politely at a staring young girl as he passed by.
He felt the stares everywhere. He dusted an invisible dust mote off his freshly laundered coat sleeve. His garments had arrived that way at the jail: all scrubbed and smelling of fresh air, pressed and folded neater than any laundry had ever done them. He'd accepted it as the farewell it was and hadn't tried to contact the teacher in any way since.
The trial had been a farce, just as he had known it would be. He hadn't any money to pay a lawyer, so he had been assigned a young man fresh out of school. There wasn't much either side could say. Once Jason had stood up in front of the courtroom and repeated the teacher's account of the evening, the prosecution lost all interest.
With Jason Harding on the defense side, there hadn't been a case. Not in this town, anyway.
Peter stood hesitantly in front of the local livery. The sheriff had told him his horse was boarded there. His impulse was to ride out of town and keep riding until he reached Natchez. But he'd already used up over six weeks of his three months. The ride to Natchez might take him another month if he ran into bad luck. If he got the loan there, he'd have the money to take the train back, but the tracks ran out at the foot of the mountains. That would be cutting the timing a little close. And if he didn't get the loan in Natchez...
That didn't bear thinking on. He would have to tackle Jason Harding. The man owned a bank. He knew Daniel. He'd stood up for him in court. There might be some possibility that he could convince him to part with a few lousy dollars. Then he could go home to New Mexico and get rich and come back and see if the schoolteacher was still talking to him. She'd said she would marry a rich man. He'd have to hope she didn't settle for Harding first.
Peter walked past the livery. He hadn't intended to do that. He was organized and efficient, a man who set his eyes on certain goals he meant to attain in a logical order. That order demanded that he get on his horse and head for the Harding ranch. Instead, he was walking in the direction of the little house at the end of town. He noticed no one had worked on the school since he'd been thrown in jail.
Peter heard the titters first. Without seeming to, he glanced from beneath his hat brim to discover two young girls lingering in the shadows next to the pharmacy. They were looking at him. There had been a time when he wouldn't have believed they laughed at him, but that had been knocked out of him recently. Stoically he walked on.
He wished he could stop in the pharmacy and buy her a box of candy or something. It was the least he could do for the woman who had saved his life. She hadn't come to visit him once throughout the wait for the trial. She hadn't been in the courtroom. He could understand that. The neatly laundered clothes had told him all he needed to know. She didn't harbor any ill feelings toward him, but she couldn't afford to make a spectacle of herself. He still wanted to thank her.
He wandered into the pharmacy wondering if he couldn't arrange to pay the bill later. It was a truly foolish idea, but he needed to at least try. He lingered over the fancy wrapped packages of chocolate bonbons and wondered if the prim little schoolteacher would like such decadence, or if she wouldn't prefer the little sewing kit with the shiny scissors and needles and pincushion.
He didn't know how long he'd stood there, lost in this decision, before he heard the voices whispering in some corner of the room. The acoustics in here were rather odd. He could barely see the women out of the corner of his eye, and he would swear they were too far away for him to hear, but he heard them just the same.
"That's the one, Isabelle. That's the one I told you about. It's easy to see how she fell for him. Isn't he the handsomest thing you ever saw? Of course, you haven't met the schoolteacher yet. She's a mousy little thing, just as prim and haughty as they come. You wouldn't think it of her, but those are the ones who fall the hardest, they say. The school board's voting tonight, but there isn't a chance they'll extend her contract. Mr. Danner means to see to that. And Mr. Holt never was for a woman teacher no how. I heard they've found a man over Obion way willing to move here. It doesn't do for a woman like that to be teaching our young, now does it?"
Peter considered crushing the pretty box of candies in his hand, but he couldn't pay for them and he'd only make a scene. He set them back on the shelf and walked back to the street, his mind churning.
She was prim and haughty, all right, and probably as cold as the devil. She had a way of looking at a man as if he wasn't any more than a cheap piece of glass not worth picking up. She was a calculating bitch who planned to marry for money.
She was the woman who had saved his life.
Pretending to light a cheroot, Peter stopped near the open barbershop door. The men inside didn't even see him. Their voices carried clearly. Their message was the same. The schoolteacher would lose her job tonight. They didn't believe for a minute that the arsonist had just accidentally fallen asleep in one of her beds. They weren't entirely convinced he wasn't an arsonist. The next logical step to these theories was set forth by the surly voice of Bobby Fairweather: the schoolteacher and arsonist were no doubt in cahoots.
Even the men in the barbershop found that hard to swallow, but Cutlerville, Ohio, wasn't so different from Mineral Springs, Texas, and Peter knew how it was in his hometown. Once a nugget of gossip got rolling, it snowballed fast. The schoolteacher would be out of a job and a home and not a soul in town would dare to help her.
She could wire Daniel, maybe. Daniel would send her enough money to go to her sister or brother or someone. Peter crushed his cheroot under his boot and kept walking out of town. He remembered her refusal to accept charity, even for her bull-headed neighbors. She wouldn't like wiring Daniel.
He smiled as he remembered the day he had seen her flying through town on her tricycle, ribbons flying. He'd never seen a woman on a cycle before. And she knew how to type. She wrote a perfect hand, and she was educated enough to teach. A woman like that could have any number of uses. A mining business needed good secretarial help.
He didn't think she would be much interested in going to New Mexico on the basis of a prospectiv
e job in a business that didn't exist. But he wanted her there.
His footsteps quickened. He could see the advantages. He was a practical man. She was a practical woman. They would work well together. He didn't think she could be any more cold than the ladies he had considered courting back East. He'd once planned on marrying Georgina, and she'd never even kissed him.
All he had to do was offer the schoolteacher wealth. She wouldn't refuse him. He had found just what he wanted in a woman, just a little sooner than he had anticipated. He had wanted a woman to cook and warm his bed, one who wouldn't cheat on him behind his back. He could almost swear on a stack of Bibles that Miss Janice Harrison would never even look at another man. And she could cook better than any woman he'd ever known. He was a little uncertain as to the warming his bed part, but he rather thought she would do her duty, and that was all he needed, wasn't it? He had never expected more.
Peter's heart beat faster as he approached the little house where the new ruffled gingham curtains blew in the open window. He had never expected to find a wife who could also help him in his business, but he was coming to like the idea. It would be nigh on to impossible to find qualified help in the. wilds of New Mexico. And then, when they had children, she could teach them.
The thought of having children gnawed a little worriedly at his stomach, but he figured if Daniel could handle it, he could. He was thirty years old. It was past time that he start a family, now that he was going to have the wealth to raise one. If he had the wealth to raise one. He couldn't dwell on that right now. He had to persuade one Janice Harrison that he was going to be a rich man indeed.
* * *
Janice shook her head at the big man standing on the braided rug in front of her chair. Jason Harding wasn't used to sitting still, but he made her nervous with his pacing up and down. She wished he would light somewhere and quit towering over her.
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