Читать книгу A Family For Carter Jones - Ana Seymour - Страница 10

If Carter had any intention of soothing his feelings by forgetting the existence of Jennie Sheridan, he was doomed to be disappointed. For the next three days, as he awaited the ruling he’d sent for, a constant stream of visitors paraded through his office arguing the pros and cons of the sisters’ case. Even the three shaggy miners who were boarding at Sheridan House put in an appearance, shuffling and looking ill at ease among books and papers instead of their accustomed tools and rocks.

Just about the only person who didn’t show up was the one person he secretly kept hoping to see each time the creaky office door announced a new arrival. The person who’d unceremoniously thrown him out of her house at their last encounter.

This morning the advocate for the Sheridans was once again Dr. Millard, who had finally been called in to consult on Kate’s condition.

“Something’s got to be settled in this matter. And I mean, immediately,” the doctor said, his expression unusually serious.

“Unfortunately, courts don’t seem to be too good at getting things done anywhere near immediately.” Carter frowned at the number of pencils scattered around his desk and began to replace them in their appropriate trough.

“They’d better make an exception this time. The health of a young woman might depend on it.”

“Kate Sheridan’s not doing well?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss the condition of my patients, Carter. You’re a lawyer—you know that. But I’ll tell you that I’m making a professional recommendation that the Sheridans not be subjected to any more anxiety.”

Spending half his time on a dispute over a minor zoning infraction was not what Carter had envisioned when he’d taken the district attorney position. He’d been hoping for some kind of high-profile trial of the century that would have put him in the political spotlight for the entire state. Part of him wished the whole thing would go away. Another part of him wished he could yet come up with a solution that would make him a hero to the stubborn but lovely Jennie.

“I’ll send another wire to the court,” he told the doctor. “And in the meantime I could see the Sheridans and tell them that no one will be closing them down until we’ve heard on the appeal. Do you think that would help?”

Dr. Millard nodded. “It’s just not healthy for Kate to be sitting over there waiting for the sheriff to appear any moment. She needs total peace and rest.”

“A house full of men doesn’t seem too peaceful to me,” Carter observed.

“Jennie’s handling things. She won’t even let Kate make the beds anymore. Jennie does the cleaning, cooking, fetching water and cares for Kate, as well.”

Carter made no comment. He’d seen Jennie handling things. Himself, for one. But he’d also seen her turn shy and tongue-tied as a schoolgirl that night he’d taken her hand and asked her to call him Carter. Which was the real Jennie? he wondered. He wasn’t likely to find out if his last-ditch appeal on her case came back rejected, as he was almost certain it would.

Dr. Millard stood, pushing heavily on the arms of the chair. “Old bones don’t want to work some days,” he muttered. Then he looked across the desk at Carter, his eyes as piercing and sharp as any man half his age. “Go talk to them, my boy. Make up a story, if you have to. I’d wager it wouldn’t be the first time you’ve stretched the truth to tell a pretty girl what she wants to hear.”

Dr. Millard softened his accusation with a wink, and Carter grinned as he answered, “You’d win that bet, Doctor.”

He waited until the doctor had slowly made his way down the office stairs, then reached for his hat. He wasn’t sure he was ready to face Jennie Sheridan yet, but he would send that wire. At the very least, it would get him out from behind this desk.

Throughout his childhood Carter had watched the comings and goings of Philadelphia mainline society from hidden corners in laundry rooms and butler’s pantries. He’d not merely watched, he’d studied them until he could imitate the haughtiest Pennington or the most tiresome Witherspoon.

He’d learned early to keep out of their way, to allow no opportunities for the rich young offspring of the people his mother worked for to taunt him for his lack of a name. But it had been a lesson learned in heartache. His mother, Maude, had usually been too tired from her days of scrubbing floors and polishing mahogany staircases to lend comfort to the small boy who had, after all, been the result of an entirely improper upstairs-downstairs liaison that had been the one mistake in her circumspect life.

So Carter was left on his own to watch and plan. His blood was every bit as blue as these elegant men and women who passed him by each day as if he were no more than one of the marble statues currently in vogue. His father had given him the heritage, but not the name. Nor would he ever have the chance to do so. According to Maude Jones, Carter’s father had been sent off in disgrace on a grand tour of Europe after impregnating the family servant and had died in a carriage accident in Italy.

Sometimes Carter used to spin fantasies about what would have happened if his father had returned from that trip. He would have visited Maude in the tiny apartment she’d been forced to take to await the birth. There he’d have seen his son and would have been so full of fatherly pride that he would have resisted his entire family and taken Maude to wife. And Carter would be living in one of the fine stone mansions instead of lurking there in shadows, waiting for his mother to finish her endless toil.

Walking slowly down the main street of Vermillion toward the telegraph office, he wondered what had triggered his sudden reverie into the past. It had been months since he’d indulged in those memories. Months, too, since he’d written to his benefactor, a Mr. Arthur Trenton, one of his mother’s employers who had finally noticed the boy in the shadows and had seen fit to send the abnormally bright child first to prep school and then to Harvard.

Before his mother’s death, Carter had spun fantasies of Mr. Trenton falling in love with Maude and marrying her, which would finally give Carter the name he craved. But, of course, by then Maude was no longer the pretty English immigrant fresh off the boat. Years of labor had roughened her skin and dulled her bright eyes. Arthur Trenton never so much as glanced her way.

He’d send Mr. Trenton a wire instead of a letter. That would show him how prosperous Carter was becoming, how important. No time for pen and paper. Just a wire, businesslike and expensive. He’d tell him what an important position he’d obtained—district attorney. It sounded impressive. In a wire there would be no space to provide the exact details of his jurisdiction. He wouldn’t be able to tell the old man that his days consisted mostly of farm disputes and dealing with small-town politics.

His thoughts came to an abrupt halt as he nearly collided head-on with a solid wall of them. Henrietta Billingsley, Margaret Potter and Lucinda Wentworth, coming directly toward him with all sheets to the wind.

“Good morning, ladies,” he acknowledged with a forced smile and a tip of his hat.

“We need to talk with you, Mr. Jones. We were just going to your office,” Mrs. Billingsley said. She planted her substantial form directly in front of him, causing him to abandon any hope of slipping easily around the group to continue on his course.

“Let me guess the topic.”

Like a helpful sergeant at arms, Miss Potter continued, “It’s been four days, Mr. Jones. What’s the delay in dealing with those girls?”

“They still have that house open as if there’s not a thing wrong,” Henrietta added.

Carter waited, looking at Lucinda Wentworth. He was curious to see if she would add her voice, or if her son had convinced her to stay out of the fray. She darted nervous glances at her two friends, her pinched face looking strained, but remained silent.

“There’s been an appeal of the ruling,” Carter said finally. He wasn’t about to add that he himself had engineered the appeal. Not in front of this crew.

Henrietta huffed loudly, her face beginning to color. “We’ve already gone through an appeal. What are they going to do, appeal from now until the day that bastard child pops out for the entire town to see?”

Mrs. Wentworth gasped, then blanched and swayed toward Margaret Potter, who in turn was pushed toward Henrietta. As Carter watched with growing horror, the matrons began to topple like a row of buxom dominoes. In quick succession he threw his upper body to block Mrs. Billingsley’s fall, then reached his long arms around her to ward off the further descent of Miss Potter, who by now was entirely supporting the weight of an apparently unconscious Lucinda.

When Carter was assured that Mrs. Billingsley’s significant bulk would maintain her upright, he stepped around her, lifted Mrs. Wentworth from Margaret Potter’s shoulder and leaned her up against the post that sustained the wooden awning over the Billingsleys’ dry goods store. Her head hit the column with a thud and her eyes fluttered open.

Henrietta had recovered her balance and her voice. “Not another of your swoons, Lucinda. Honestly, you’re such a goose.”

Mrs. Wentworth’s pale cheeks grew pink with indignation. “Any decent person would be liable to swoon at that kind of language. I’m shocked at you, Henrietta.”

“It’s not the language that’s shocking. It’s the situation. To think of that hussy shamelessly flaunting her condition as if she had all the right in the world…”

Mrs. Wentworth appeared to be recovering rapidly, so Carter stepped back. Mrs. Billingsley’s eyes widened and her voice trailed off as she focused over his shoulder. Whether it was Lucinda Wentworth’s suddenly shamefaced expression or the slight hint of fresh lemon scent, he knew without seeing her that the new arrival was Jennie Sheridan.

He whirled around but could find no words of greeting. Her lips were tight, nearly bloodless. Carter watched, fascinated, as her eyes drilled into each of the three older women, then settled on Mrs. Billingsley. Her small chin went up and she said stiffly, “Far from flaunting anything, the hussy you refer to has not left her house for three months, thanks to people like you. Though I don’t recall you thinking she was so shameless when she spent a whole summer taking care of your twins when your mother was dying from consumption.”

She took a step to the side and fixed her gaze on Margaret Potter. “And I can’t remember that you thought Kate was a hussy, Miss Potter, when she stayed after school every day to help you set up the school library.”

She moved over one more step to the edge of the sidewalk. “And, Mrs. Wentworth, Kate was evidently good enough for your precious Lyle to set his cap for her.”

“He never…” Mrs. Wentworth began, but faltered as her two friends sent her withering looks, as though this lapse of discretion in her only son was entirely her fault.

Carter’s neck had grown sticky with sweat, causing his starched collar to prickle. “Ladies, I don’t think we’re going to solve anything…”

The women found common ground in ignoring him. All four seemed to be talking at once and mysteriously understanding what each of the other three was saying.

“And now that the entire town has begun this crusade against us, you all have her so upset that Dr. Millard says her health is in danger,” Jennie continued.

This statement brought a moment of silence into which Carter ventured once again. “Dr. Millard informed me this morning that Miss Kate Sheridan is not well,” he said, supporting Jennie’s assertion.

“Will she lose the child?” Mrs. Billingsley asked with a touch of eagerness that even she immediately realized was unseemly. “I mean…she’s not terribly sick, is she?”

Carter could see the rise and fall of Jennie’s breasts as she fought to keep her emotions under control. He himself wouldn’t be averse to giving Henrietta Billingsley a shove right over the edge of the sidewalk.

“I’m on my way to fetch the doctor now,” she said. The quaver in her voice told Carter that she was a lot more scared than she had let on in her feisty confrontation with the town matrons.

“I’ll go with you,” he offered.

Mrs. Billingsley looked stricken. “We were having a discussion, Mr. Jones.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. If you’ll stop by my office tomorrow morning, I’ll be happy to consider any matter you’d like to bring up.”

He took Jennie’s arm and stepped off the sidewalk into the street so the two of them could outflank the three older women before they could make any further protest. She let him pull her along without speaking until they were safely out of earshot, then she slowed her pace. “Thank you for the rescue,” she said in a stilted voice. “I wasn’t in much of a mood to deal with those women today. But you don’t have to come with me.”

He looked down at her and said simply, “I want to.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Why?”

“Let’s say I feel involved. Dr. Millard came to see me this morning and warned me that this situation was becoming unhealthy for your sister.”

Jennie nodded. “She worries too much. And she cares too much about what everyone else thinks.”

“But you don’t.”

“I care what Kate thinks. Or worthwhile people like Dr. Millard. But I certainly don’t care about the views of a bunch of old biddies with time on their hands and nonsense in their heads.”

“Good for you, Miss Sheridan. I’ve been known to ignore the court of public opinion a time or two myself.”

Jennie had continued walking along at Carter’s side in the direction of the. doctor’s office, but now she stopped and looked up at him with a curious expression. “I thought you were a politician, Mr. Jones. Your kind lives and dies by public opinion.”

Carter grinned. “It’s a matter of picking your battles. That and knowing when it might be worth it to fight on the other side awhile.”

“Well, I don’t know why you’ve decided that this is one of those times, but I’m grateful, Mr. Jones.”

“Grateful enough to call me Carter, like you did the first day we met?”

The tense look in her eyes was gradually being replaced by a warmth that was kindling another kind of warmth in Carter’s midsection. “Those guardians of the town’s morality you were just talking to will think it scandalous if they hear me.”

Carter grimaced. “It will give them something to think about besides your sister, then.”

Jennie smiled. “Yes. That’s a strategy I haven’t used yet. If I become a greater scandal, they’ll turn their attention away from Kate.” She moved closer to him and linked her arm through his. “I shall call you Carter. And you must call me Jennie. Loudly enough for them to hear it all the way back to Mr. Billingsley’s store.”

Carter chuckled. He had his doubts about the wisdom of her so-called strategy. As far as he could tell, the town matrons had plenty of ammunition to lob at Kate Sheridan and her sister both, if given cause. But he was enjoying her good humor. “Jennie it is,” he said with a grin.

“Thank you…Carter,” she replied, raising her voice as she said his name.

They turned their heads in unison and, sure enough, the three matrons were staring after them with appalled expressions.

Jennie and Carter smiled at each other, then started toward Dr. Millard’s once again. As they walked down the street, Jennie began to giggle. Carter had heard her raging and had heard her determined. He’d heard her with worry cracking her voice. But nothing he’d heard from her up to now affected him like that giggle. He found it more enchanting than a choir of angels.

Dr. Millard had been with Kate for over an hour. By the time he emerged from her bedroom at the far end of the hall, Jennie was pacing the parlor, taut with worry. Carter had left her at the doctor’s office after telling Jennie that he’d be interested in hearing a report on her sister’s condition.

She’d spent the first few minutes after arriving home going over the conversation she’d had with the handsome prosecutor. Carter Jones wasn’t so bad, she reckoned. Perhaps Kate was right that not all men were like Sean Flaherty.

But as the minutes ticked by and Dr. Millard still had not emerged from Kate’s bedroom, she began to get more and more nervous. She snapped unreasonably at Barnaby when he pushed aside the parlor door drapes, just because she’d hoped it was the doctor.

When Dr. Millard finally did come through the arched doorway, he looked tired and suddenly old. Her father and Dr. Millard had been the same age and the greatest of friends. But Papa’s cheeks had never had that pallid, puffy look. His lips had not grown crinkled with lines. And now, of course, they never would. Jennie felt a sob rise in her throat. She’d lost so much. Dear Lord, not Kate, too.

“You look like a child who’s had its toys snatched away, Jennie,” the doctor said gently. “Come on. Kate needs you to be strong right now, not weepy.”

“What’s the matter with her?” Dr. Millard’s words had hurt her pride and stiffened her back, which was most likely exactly the effect he had intended.

“Honey, some girls are blessed to have babies by the baker’s dozen without batting an eye, but your sister’s turning out to be a more delicate sort.”

Jennie bit her lip. “Is she going to be all right? I mean…is the baby…?”

Dr. Millard pulled on Jennie’s arm and led her to the settee, where he lowered himself into the down cushion with a heavy whoosh. “She’s bleeding, Jennie. That’s not supposed to happen. Could be she’ll lose the little tyke. Now, maybe that’s what’s meant to happen. Poor little thing without a father. You know sometimes the Lord…”

Jennie had let him pull her to a seat, but she sat erect, and when he began the last statement she jumped to her feet again. “Dr. Millard, this baby may not have a father, but it will have a family. A loving, caring family. So don’t tell me that it’s not meant to be. Just tell me what we have to do to be sure my sister has a healthy child.”

The doctor leaned back and closed his eyes with a sigh. “The only thing I can tell you is that she’s got to rest Keep her off her feet as much as possible. I know that puts a lot of burden on you.”

“I don’t care about that.”

“You should have some help.”

Jennie gave a little snort. “Shall I post a notice in the town square and see how many people come rushing to help the two wicked Sheridan sisters?”

“That’s not fair, Jennie. You know you have friends here. Lyle Wentworth came to see me about your sister. He’d help out around this place.”

“Kate doesn’t want to see him, Dr. Millard. And I don’t imagine you’d want me upsetting her.”

The doctor shook his head. “Definitely not. But there are others. That young Carter Jones seemed a bit taken with you when he escorted you to my place today. I bet he’d lend a hand.”

To Jennie’s amazement, she felt her cheeks begin to grow hot. Could she be blushing? Only silly girls blushed. Silly, lovesick girls. “I’m sure Mr. Jones has more important things to do than worry about us,” she said. “We’ll get along fine. I’ve got Barnaby to help out. And the miners will lend a hand, if I ask them. We’ll make sure Kate doesn’t so much as fluff the pillow from her bed.”

Dr. Millard pushed heavily on the arm of the settee and stood. He leaned over to put a soft hand on Jennie’s still-blushing cheek, which seem to burn under his touch. “You’ve got your parents’ spirit, girl. The same spirit that took them through all those winters in the mountains. Strong, independent people they were. Some of the finest I’ve known.”

Jennie nodded, her throat too full to answer.

“So you and I will do our best to take care of our Kate and of that grandchild of theirs,” he added.

As the doctor quietly left the parlor, Jennie stood staring blindly at the bombazine curtains. She’d been thinking of all the problems this coming child was causing, but what about the child itself? Her parents’ grandchild. Her sister was going to have a baby—a new life to carry on the proud tradition that her parents had done such a good job of passing on to her and Kate. Yes, she’d take care of Kate and of the baby, too. She wouldn’t let them down. And Dr. Millard was wrong. She didn’t need help from anyone to do it.