Isabelle let the latch snick before drying her hands and stepping to the pantry shelves. On her tiptoes, she removed the cracker tin from the top shelf. Inside the tin lay a stack of letters, many of their edges worn and browned. Isabelle flipped through the stack looking for Mother’s fanciful handwriting.
Four letters deep, she pulled the familiar ivory letterhead with delicate daisies trailing across the top from the tin. July fifteenth stared back at Isabelle from the top of the page. Over three months ago, Aunt Lou hadn’t been lying.
July 15, 1898
* * *
Dearest Lou,
* * *
I trust my letter finds you in good health. Should you decide to take a break and much deserved rest from your labors at the logging camp, please know the door to our home is always open.
* * *
I’m taking the initiative to write to you in hopes you will be able to help us. My Dear Alexander has allowed my correspondence to you; however, I fear he has given up on Isabelle and believes neither you nor anyone else can help her.
* * *
Our precious daughter languishes day after day in her room. She will take only the barest of sustenance and has grown impossibly thin. We all fear for her life.
For months Isabelle had preferred the solitude of her room. Hiding away seemed like a better option than rousing her energy to walk out the door and perhaps see Daniel. Isabelle never wanted to face him again.
But even in the darkest days, her own death had never felt like a solution to her pain, and she’d never wished to slip its black cloak around her shoulders. How Mother must have suffered with her worry.
The cause is not an uncommon one…
Isabelle’s brow wrinkled at the words. Not an uncommon cause? Were young women regularly accosted by the men they trusted?
…under the pressure of a young man, a young man we wholly approved of, our daughter put herself in a compromising situation, and unfortunately one of our deepest fears was realized.
* * *
Even more appalling, one of the local girls discovered the couple’s indiscretion and has taken great joy to ensure Isabelle’s reputation was completely sullied.
Stella had indeed taken great joy in spreading the story of the evidence she’d found to prove her belief Daniel and Isabelle had engaged in a romantic tryst.
The young man in question has returned to our home several times to express his sorrow over the occurrence and request our forgiveness. We had hoped that, given time, Isabelle would overcome her shame and sorrow to resume her relationship with the young man, who intends to marry her. Alexander feels it would make the best of a difficult situation.
* * *
However, Isabelle will not listen to reason and refuses to see him.
Of course Isabelle refused to see Daniel. What a scoundrel. He hadn’t admitted to her parents he forced himself on her, or they would have thrown him out. But Mother was right about one thing—the incident had indeed been Isabelle’s fault. She was the one who climbed into the carriage without a chaperone.
If you would be kind enough to allow our wayward daughter to come and work with you. I hope the change of scenery will restore her health and spirits and also encourage her to comply with her father’s wishes.
* * *
My sincerest regards,
* * *
Emily Franklin
Daniel had misrepresented what he’d done. It was no marvel Isabelle’s parents expected her to marry him. If she had known how they were being manipulated, Isabelle would have overcome her reluctance and told them the whole story.
Daniel, Father, Preach—even Joe. Why should they decide what Isabelle did and didn’t do? By her own choice, she would stay at the camp and help Aunt Lou until she fully recuperated, and then Isabelle would decide where she went next.
Pulling the collar of her coat up around her cheeks, she marched from the cook shack to the camp office, ignoring the comments and catcalls from the men loitering around the bunkhouse. They, too, would have to get used to her presence at the camp—single woman or not.
At Isabelle’s knock on the rough door, a gruff voice bid her enter.
A broad-shouldered burly man with a mop of black locks and a broad nose sat at a narrow desk. Tidy stacks of paper lay on its surface below a calendar tacked to the wall where a scantily clad woman looked back over her shoulder as she walked a tightrope carrying a frilled parasol. Isabelle averted her eyes.
“You must be the woman Lou’s been hiding away from us. Isabelle is it?” He crossed his arms and leaned back to tip the front legs of his chair back before taking Isabelle in from head to toe.
“Isabelle, leave.” Aunt Lou sat across from the man, head down, picking at a spot of sap on the lap of her dress.
“You said she was your niece.” A slow smile spread across the man’s face. “I can’t say as I see much resemblance.”
“She’ll be gone shortly. She can walk down the mountain and catch the train today.” Aunt Lou glanced at Isabelle from the corner of her eye. “She’s done it before. I’m sorry for all the trouble she’s caused, Joe.”
The train would run through Stony Creek today, but it wouldn’t be taking Isabelle with it.
Joe sniggered. “I’m surprised you could keep her hidden this long. But I agree, she’ll have to leave.” He dropped the chair legs to the floor, picked up a fountain pen, and commenced entering a number in a column book.
“I would like to stay,” Isabelle said.
“You’re not staying,” Aunt Lou snapped before dropping her gaze to her lap again.
Isabelle squared her shoulders. “I would like to stay, sir.”
The man’s pen paused, and a drop of ink dripped from the tip obscuring the last number he’d written in the column. “Blast.” He dabbed the spot with a blotter before turning toward Isabelle, his scraggly eyebrows pulled into a deep furrow. “Perhaps I’m mistaken. The girl appears to be more like you than I thought, Lou. She’s got the same spunk you had that first summer. How old are you, miss?”
“Seven—”
“She’s not staying.” Aunt Lou had twisted the lap of her dress into both fists and was squeezing it with whitened knuckles.
“She’s older than you were at Bear’s Paw.”
He swung an arm out to take in the shack. Along the back wall a small fire blazed in a stone fireplace. Several feet away, a narrow bed with a smooth red wool blanket stretched under a small window. At the head of the bed, a wooden stump served as a bedside table, where a copy of Walden rested next to a lamp. “You appear to be a woman used to finer surroundings.” With two fingers he supported his chin as though working something out in his mind before continuing. “The work days are long. Although, I’ve been informed you’ve been here for two weeks”—he glanced at her aunt—“so you must know that by now. I’m not sure why you would want to stay.”
“I’ve nowhere else to go.”
He laughed. “You could have said you loved the work.”
“She can go home,” Aunt Lou said.
Isabelle took a step toward Joe. If she went, wherever it was, it would be Isabelle’s decision. “Please believe me when I say, sir, I have nowhere else to go. Yes, the work is hard, but it’s done me a lot of good. Ask Aunt Lou.”
“Send her home,” Lou said. “She’s already caused enough trouble with the men.”
“I promise, you won’t regret letting me stay. I will not encourage any attention from the men.”
He rested his forearms on the desk. “The girl says she’s got nowhere to go, Lou. I’ll speak to the men, and I’ll threaten them with firing if they bother you, but like you said, it will be up to you not to encourage their attention. I won’t tolerate bedlam at this camp.”
“But—”
“Lou, give the girl a chance. I never regretted giving you one.”
Chapter 11
Preach slapped the reins against the horse’s backs to speed their pace down the rutted road toward
Stony Creek, even though the narrow wheel base of Joe’s buggy caused Isabelle to knock against his shoulder constantly. The experience wasn’t an unpleasant one.
He’d been taken aback when Isabelle had agreed to attend church with him. Since their conversation on the trip home from town three days before, he’d taken her aside and apologized for speaking so bluntly. She’d said she understood his convictions about the kind of girl he should marry, and they had agreed to remain friends.
Only friends. As much as his head told him that was best, he couldn’t seem to convince his heart. But at least she hadn’t left the camp.
How Isabelle had convinced Joe to let her stay on as assistant cook was a complete mystery. Lou had been muttering under her breath about it ever since.
“I’ll admit, you’re good for business.” Preach looked out the back window to eye the wagon of men following them down Cougar Ridge Mountain.
Isabelle coughed politely and rearranged her skirt to cover the toes of her boots, a fruitless gesture as, once again, a deep rut threatened to bounce her out the side of the buggy. She clutched his sleeve for an instant.
“It’s a wonder Joe let you stay on after he found out Lou was hiding you away in the kitchen. What did you promise him?”
A gasp could be heard over the rumble of the wheels.
Preach could slap himself. Everything he said to the woman this morning was the wrong thing. “That didn’t sound like I meant it to.” His gaze darted to Isabelle. “I was just wondering…”
“What, Preach? What were you wondering?” Isabelle’s brown eyes searched his.
What were they looking for, encouragement? He couldn’t give it. Preach turned back to the road before clearing his throat. “It’s just that Joe likes to follow the rule of no marriageable women working at the camp.”
Isabelle turned to stare down the road, and her voice slipped to a whisper. “Like you said the other day, I pretty much fit the description of that kind of woman.”
“You know that’s not what I was saying. Any one of the buffoons behind us would be happy to marry—”
Isabelle pressed her mouth into a tight line.
Drat, he’d done it again.
“Any chance I can join you two up there?” Will called out from the wagon. “It’ll be a bit tight, but it might keep the pretty lady from bouncing over the side. Your driving could use some refining, Preach.” Will’s high pitched laughter reverberated off the thick bank of pines lining the road and began a rash of opinions on Preach’s driving from the other men in the wagon.
As they died down, Alvin called out, “I could drive you, Miss Isabelle. It wouldn’t be no problem for me.”
“Until you take a bath, Alvin, no woman wants to come within six feet of you,” Perley said, and the others agreed.
“Preach isn’t looking for our help, boys,” Snoop said. “He’s happy enough to have the lady to himself.”
“It’s a fair enough exchange, you warrant?” Preach called over his shoulder.
Snoop could be heard growling his displeasure to the other men.
“Exchange for what?” Isabelle asked.
It wasn’t an exchange, nor was it a comparison. As Preach had tactlessly mentioned the other day, Isabelle wasn’t marrying material for him, but he couldn’t resist having one up on Snoop. The man always thought he had everything figured out. “It’s just a little friendly banter between me and Snoop.”
“I would never have taken you two for friends.”
Isabelle had only observed Snoop and Preach during a couple of meals, but anybody who spent more time with them would know how deep the animosity ran.
“Hang on,” Preach said. “We’re going to put a little distance between ourselves and the wagon. I need to be at the church a few minutes early, prepare some people for the rowdies behind us.”
Isabelle gripped the side of the buggy as Preach slapped the reigns, and they bounced and jostled down the rough clay and rocks.
Ten minutes later, Preach pulled the buggy to a stop in front of a low hedge of caragana bushes running parallel to Stony Creek Chapel. Situated just outside of town, the church had been built five years ago, the white clapboard siding on the rectangular building looked bright and fresh. The bell tower above the front door boasted cedar shingles, and a tall cross rose from its roof point. The cross doubled as a lightning rod owing to the fact that the last church building had burned down during a violent spring storm.
“What a pretty little church,” she said. “It’s absolutely stunning tucked into the evergreens like it is.”
Preach rounded the buggy to assist her descent. “It’s tiny, all right, and a small congregation, too, normally no more than thirty or so of us. I’m not sure where we’ll put the extra men. I’ll have to let Miss Sophie know they’re coming. She can warn all the mothers to keep a close eye on their daughters.” Not funny at all, Preach. Why did he constantly say the wrong thing? He’d never been such a dunderhead.
If Isabelle took what he said as an insult, she wasn’t letting on. Preach gripped her elbow and guided her toward the cobblestone path crossing the lawn to the front door.
“I haven’t been back,” she said.
“To church, you mean?”
“Not since,” a rosy flush peeked above her collar, “well, you know. I couldn’t bring myself to face them, the folks I’d known my whole life. I felt like I’d let more than my family down. I’d let the whole church down, too.”
He’d seen enough of it. Some decisions changed the entire course of a person’s life. The people of Stony Creek didn’t know Isabelle’s secret, though. “Nobody knows you here. You’ll be fine.”
“I’d like to think so, but I just don’t have that much faith in people anymore.”
The church lawn was filled with people. Isabelle’s gaze drew to the statuesque woman crossing toward them. As she grew closer, the woman’s catlike blue eyes, accented by long, curled lashes, fixed on Preach, and her generous lips, tinted a soft plum, turned up in a bright smile. She touched her fingers to the edge of a crisp straw boater hat wrapped with a single, grosgrain ribbon the exact light pink of her dress.
The gesture reeked of a reprimand, and Isabelle’s cheeks warmed under the wide brim of her old felt hat. Mother had tried to convince her to bring her own boater at the last minute and she had refused by saying they were only for the summer season and she wouldn’t need anything stylish if she was hidden away.
Isabelle scanned the church lawn. All the young women sported boaters, although none as elegantly as the woman towering before her.
Preach dropped Isabelle’s elbow as though it were on fire and stepped forward, causing the woman’s eyes to widen.
Did the woman have a claim on Preach?
“Dearest, Preach.” She slid her hand into his while cupping his elbow with the other.
The woman’s dress was exquisite in its simplicity. Sewn of cotton lawn in a delicate pink, the dress had narrow sleeves with velvet cuffs and a blousy bodice pulled into a narrow waist. Stony Creek held more than a flair for decorating.
Isabelle wrapped her arms around her sleeves in an effort to minimize their leg-of-mutton shape. She was as a complete frump in her plain blue calico work dress, even if it looked better than the other two options hanging in her bedroom. The woman’s snubbing indicated she knew it, too.
Isabelle twisted to observe Preach’s reaction to the woman’s lavish greeting. His face bore no expression, but the vein along his jawline beat a fast pulse.
Pulling from the woman’s grasp and dropping his arms to his sides, he said, “Miss Thorebourne, how nice to see you.”
Of course. This was Phyllis’s daughter. She looked nothing like her mother, or her aunt, for that matter, and certainly appeared interested in Stony Creek’s newest pastor.
Preach didn’t appear overjoyed to see Josephine, however. What was holding him back? Isabelle shifted on her feet, and Preach made room for her to step forward.
“Josephi
ne, I’d like you to meet my friend, Isabelle Franklin.”
The description was favorable, more than she deserved, and thrummed in the pit of her stomach.
Josephine dragged her gaze away from Preach’s and tossed a stiff smile at Isabelle before returning her gaze back to Preach’s. Her fingers fluttered near her mouth. “Have I met your friend before?”
Of course they’d never met, and Josephine knew it. Isabelle wasn’t likely to get a puffed head around this woman.
Preach looked at Isabelle and raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think so. She’s working at the camp as cookee for Lou, her aunt.”
“Oh.” Josephine’s pretty lips pursed in a delicate O, one she’d most likely practiced in the mirror. “Mother mentioned something the other day about Lou hiring her niece.” She pulled at a soft curl behind one ear. “She didn’t say…”
Preach bent his head forward as though urging Josephine to say more, but her words trailed away.
What had Josephine’s mother not said? That Isabelle was a bumpkin who only wore fashions from two seasons ago? Or perhaps Phyllis hadn’t mentioned that Isabelle was so thin it was a wonder she could find clothes at all. Go ahead, Josephine, say what you mean to say.
“Never mind.” Josephine’s gaze flitted to Isabelle and back. “Preach, mother and I were wondering if you would honor us with your presence at lunch today.” Her chin lifted to present her beautiful face at a fetching angle not many men would resist.
“Thank you for the offer, but I’m not alone.”
The other men would be more than willing to escort Isabelle home in the wagon. They’d said as much on the way in. It would be bothersome, but perhaps the trip would satisfy some of their curiosity, and they would leave her alone at the camp. “I can—”
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