Читать книгу A Family For Carter Jones - Ana Seymour - Страница 9

By the time he’d washed down the last piece of the Continental’s totally flavorless meat with a third mug of beer, Carter was ready to admit that the prospect of a return engagement with Jennie Sheridan had him interested. Hell, it had him downright bothered. He’d planned on postponing the encounter until tomorrow, but with the pleasantly warm hum of beer singing inside him, he stood on the steps of the hotel wondering if he should change his mind and go immediately.

“Evening, Carter.” The gruff voice of Dr. Millard was unmistakable. It could be intimidating to someone who didn’t know the disposition of the town’s only doctor.

“Dr. Millard,” Carter acknowledged. “You out seeing a patient this time of night?”

“I came looking for you. I’m concerned about this campaign against Jennie and Kate Sheridan.”

Yet another champion for the beleaguered sisters. Carter smiled. It was beginning to look as if the two lovely orphans might cause a regular civil war in town.

“I was just about to head over there,” he told the doctor.

“To the Sheridan house?”

Carter nodded.

Dr. Millard looked up and down the street. Only a few evening stragglers were still out. “Now?”

Carter gave one of his self-assured nods. “I imagine those poor girls are quaking in their shoes wondering when the sheriff is going to show up to move them out of there.”

Dr. Millard looked doubtful. “Have you met Jennie?”

“Yup. This morning. She was…”

“She’s not exactly the quaking type,” the doctor interrupted.

“No. Perhaps not. But I imagine she’ll be pleased to learn that I’ve decided to help her and her sister out of this muddle.”

Dr. Millard looked amused. “I’m relieved to here it, Carter. Ah…just how do you plan to do that?”

Carter peered into darkening street and blinked to find it empty. “I don’t know. I’ll…file an appeal or something. Get the court order blocked. I can talk to Mrs. Billingsley and get her to forget the whole thing.”

“That’s about as likely as a blizzard in July.”

Carter gestured grandly. “Would you like to come with me?”

The doctor grinned. “My boy, I’d love to see Jennie’s face when you give her the good news that you’ve gallantly decided to ride to her rescue.”

“Well, come along then.”

Millard’s smile died. “I can’t. Kate’s been avoiding me since the beginning of her…problem. She refuses to see me, and I can’t go over there without her welcome. She’ll let me know when she’s ready for my help.”

“Hey, Doc. Haven’t you learned by your age that women don’t always know what they want Sometimes a man just has to step in and take over to keep them from making a mess of things.”

“Is that what you learned at that fancy Eastern school?”

“I learned it long before then. Give a woman a chance to argue and you’re sunk. If you want to help out Kate Sheridan, you should just march on over there and tell her so. Don’t let her get a word in edgewise.”

“And that’s the approach you intend to take with Jennie tonight?” he asked.

“Actually, it’s what they like,” Carter answered with a firm nod.

Dr. Millard made a click with his mouth. “Yup, I surely would like to see that.”

“Do you want to change your mind and come along?”

The doctor shook his head with a slow grin. “Nope. But you give Jennie my regards, you hear?” He turned to leave, and Carter could hear him chuckling all the way down the street.

* * *

“I thought I told you that you would need reinforcements when you came back here, Mr. Jones.”

Jennie Sheridan’s voice was even frostier than it had been that morning, but Carter was concentrating more on the way the neck of her maroon silk evening dress scooped out a circle of creamy white skin. The sight made the air stick in his throat. He’d tried to hold on to the idea that his interest in the Sheridan case was all in the name of justice and fair play. But standing here in the doorway looking at her, he had to admit that his motives were at a baser level.

Simply put, the diminutive, curvaceous Miss Sheridan made the blood race through his veins.

“I didn’t come to put you out of your home,” he said when he could trust himself to speak. “I came to offer my help.”

Jennie looked skeptical. “Your help?”

Carter looked up and down the darkened street. The new street lanterns had not yet been placed in this part of town. “Is it too late to invite me in?”

She bit her lower lip, drawing Carter’s eyes to her full mouth. “I guess not”

She looked down at his hands as if expecting to see the papers he’d brought earlier. He held them out, palms up. “No concealed weapons,” he said lightly.

The smile she returned was slight, but it was enough to restore the confidence that had slipped a notch when he’d felt the visceral effect of seeing her in that dress. She was, after all, a woman. And if there was one thing Carter had always been able to handle, at least since the time he’d graduated to long pants, it was women.

“I suppose you can come into the parlor for a few minutes,” she said, holding the door open for him to enter. “Our board…our guests are there playing cards.”

He followed her inside and placed his hat on the hall table. “And your sister…?” he asked as she started toward the curtained archway that evidently led to the parlor.

She whirled to face him. “What about my sister?”

He held up a peacemaking hand again. “I just wondered if I would meet her, too. I was talking earlier tonight with a friend of hers who seemed concerned about her welfare.”

“What friend?”

“Lyle Wentworth.”

Jennie made a face. “He used to be sweet on Kate.”

“Still is, if you ask me.”

Jennie ignored his comment as she led the way under the drapes into the cozy room where three men sat around a small round table covered with playing cards. A fire burned cheerily behind the grate of the painted brick fireplace. “Mr. Jones, I’d like you to meet Dennis Kelly, Brad Connors and Humphrey Smith.”

The men looked up from their game in acknowledgment of the introduction, but did not stand and offered no words of greeting. The one she’d called Mr. Kelly was a heavyset blonde with muttonchop whiskers. He said to Jennie, “Is he bothering you with those papers again, Miss Jennie?”

“Mr. Jones says he’s come here to help, Dennis,” she told him with a smile.

“Why can’t the town just leave these girls alone?” Kelly asked, turning his gaze on Carter. “Ain’t they got enough problems?” The other two men at the table nodded their agreement.

Still more defenders for the Sheridans, Carter noted. “That’s what I came to talk over with Miss Sheridan. I’d like to help her and her sister out of this dilemma.”

The three men didn’t reply, but sat staring at Jennie and Carter, making no move to resume their game. After a couple minutes of awkward silence, Jennie said, “Why don’t we go in the kitchen, Mr. Jones? I’ll pour you a glass of cider.”

Carter nodded and after a distracted “Nice to meet you” to the boarders, he followed her to the back of the house, relieved that he didn’t have to talk with her in front of such a partisan audience.

“So it’s the presence of those three men that’s causing all this ruckus?” he asked her as he sat on the stool she indicated.

She stood with her back to him, filling two glasses from a clay pitcher. “Yes. But, of course, they’re not the real reason.”

“They’re not?” She turned back and offered him one of the glasses. He took it, trying to keep his eyes off the way her slender white arm disappeared into a ruffle of maroon silk.

She perched on a stool on the opposite side of the table. “It’s Kate who’s the problem,” she said. “She’s going to have a baby.”

Carter was a little taken aback at her bluntness, but he recovered quickly, saying, “It’s not illegal to have a baby.”

“Well, you wouldn’t know it to talk to the people in this town. They’d just as soon lock her up and throw away the key.”

Carter knew a lot about bitterness, but it was hard to hear it coming from Jennie Sheridan’s beautiful lips. “I’ve met a passel of nice people in this town in the few months I’ve been here. I find it hard to believe they’re as vindictive as you say. In fact, besides Lyle Wentworth, I had another person offer support for you two today—Dr. Millard.”

Jennie’s expression softened. “Dr. Millard’s a good man. A lot of the people in town are. But then there are the ones like Henrietta Billingsley. I’d thought she was my mother’s friend. Now she comes around here and tries to blame Kate for my parents’ deaths.”

Jennie took a big swallow of cider and Carter could see that her hands were shaking. Unlike his own bitterness, which had been long-standing and coldly calculated, Jennie’s was raw, sharply edged with hurt. “I had heard that your parents died of the influenza last spring,” he said gently.

“They did. Kate’s condition had absolutely nothing to do with it—the very idea is absurd. They didn’t…know about it before they died. Kate didn’t even know then.”

“People say cruel things sometimes without thinking.”

“Oh, Henrietta thinks about them, all right. Then she goes ahead and says them, taking joy in the process.”

She held herself stiffly erect on the stool, and Carter had an almost uncontrollable impulse to walk around the table and pull her off the stool into his arms. He’d met the woman only today, but he was already feeling as if some invisible thread had wrapped itself around the two of them, tangling up her feelings with his own.

“You’ll have to learn to ignore her, then,” he said instead. “Just deal with the people who are worth your attention—people like Dr. Millard.”

His comment was rewarded with another half smile. “Yes, we do have some friends left.”

Carter started to extend his hand toward where hers rested on the table across from him but changed his mind. He had the feeling that Jennie Sheridan would have to be gentled more cautiously than a wild young mare. He withdrew his hand. “I’d like to be counted as one of those friends,” he said simply.

She smiled again, this time with a rueful twist to her mouth. “Aren’t you the one who’s supposed to be shutting us down?”

“I’m an officer of the court, and there’s a court order shutting you down.”

The smile disappeared. “So there you have it,” she said softly.

“Which is why I spent a great portion of my afternoon going through law books trying to find a way out for you.”

He could see the sweep of her long lashes all the way across the table as she blinked in astonishment. “You did?”

He nodded. “I told you, I’d like to help.”

She cocked her head to one side. “Why?”

It was a logical question, he supposed, but he hadn’t expected it. And he had no idea what to answer. It didn’t seem that it would advance his case with her any to say, “Because you made my entire body come alive this morning when I saw you walking down the street toward me.” It was a woefully inadequate answer, even to himself.

“I don’t like injustices,” he said finally.

Jennie regarded him with genuine surprise. “I’ve misjudged you, Mr. Jones,” she said softly. “I think I owe you an apology for yelling at you this morning.”

Carter grinned. “I’ll forgive you on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“That you call me Carter.”

The glow in her brown eyes dimmed. “I don’t think I could do that”

“It’s not so much to ask. You call Lyle by his first name.”

“We’ve known Lyle since we were children.”

Carter slid off the stool and walked around to stand in front of her. After a moment’s hesitation, he plucked her right hand from where it rested on her knee and wrapped it in both of his. “You have lots of old friends in town. I’d like to be a new one.”

Jennie’s breathing deepened. She looked up into his eyes and nodded slowly without words.

“So you’ll call me Carter?” he asked softly, his voice persuasive, a little husky.

She gave another slow nod.

“Let me hear you say it,” he insisted. “Say, ‘good night, Carter.’”

“Good night, Carter,” she repeated, her eyes never leaving his.

He dropped her hand in her lap. “I’ll come by tomorrow after I’ve had a chance to wire the district judge in Virginia City about this case.”

Her only response was another nod and the wide gaze of her brown eyes.

He gave a satisfied smile and said, “I’ll see myself out” Then he turned, crossed the kitchen and went out through the front hall. By the time he got to the stoop, he was whistling and thinking to himself that perhaps the gentling of Miss Jennie would not be quite as slow a process as he had feared.

Flapjacks had been their father’s specialty. Or rather, they had been the only item that he ever cooked in his entire life, so it had been customary to make a big fuss whenever he, with great ceremony, donned their mother’s apron and took over the stove. Jennie and Kate had avoided the food for the first few weeks after the deaths, but when the silverheels had asked about flapjacks for breakfast, Jennie had decided she would take over her father’s duties.

She stood over the pan ladling and flipping until there was a platter of the fluffy cakes big enough to feed, as Kate pointed out each time, the entire Seventh Cavalry…or three hungry miners.

“He said he wants to help, but he didn’t say how?” Kate asked her sister as Jennie watched carefully for the first bubbles to rise on the last batch.

“He said he’d get back to us today with more ideas,” Jennie answered carefully. She’d had no choice but to tell her sister about last night’s visit from Carter Jones. The silverheels would have revealed it if she hadn’t mentioned it first. But she wasn’t sure she was ready to discuss the encounter with Kate. It had left her too confused.

“So what did you talk about?”

“I don’t know…just…well, Lyle, for one thing.” That ought to shut her sister up, Jennie thought smugly.

But she was wrong. Kate continued the interrogation. “What about Lyle?”

“Mr. Jones says he’s still smitten with you.”

Kate shrugged. “That’s his problem, I guess. Any man who would be fool enough to carry a torch for a fallen woman deserves to suffer.”

Jennie knew it was unhappiness, not cruelty, behind her sister’s brittle words. “Fallen woman, indeed,” she snorted.

But Kate would not be led away from the subject. “Well, what did you think of the man? You never answered my question about him yesterday.”

What did she think of him? “Think” wasn’t precisely the word she would have chosen. It had not been rational thought that had made her turn into a speechless goose last night when Carter Jones had taken her hand and looked at her with those riveting gray eyes. “I think he was sincere about wanting to help. And, Lord knows, we can use all the friends we can get these days.”

“And he’s a lawyer, which is good. But why does he want to help us?”

What had he said? Something about injustice. Jennie didn’t completely buy it. Carter Jones didn’t strike her as the idealistic type. But she was afraid to offer the only other explanation that seemed logical, because it was a possibility that she didn’t even want to consider. He couldn’t be attracted to her. For one thing, they’d barely met. For another, the last thing either Jennie or her sister needed in their lives was another fast-talking, charming scalawag of a male.

She piled the last three flapjacks on the platter, then put down the turner and wiped her hands on her mother’s apron. “I don’t know. It’s probably a lawyer thing. They’re always trying to see if they can find an angle that no one else has thought of.”

Kate started to pick up the platter, but Jennie pushed her sister’s hands out of the way and lifted it herself. By now Kate had stopped protesting when Jennie took over her share of the work. “Well, it doesn’t sound as if he left a very good impression on you.”

Jennie headed toward the door of the dining room. “Good enough,” she said, keeping her voice light “At least I didn’t yell at him and slam the door in his face like the first time.”

Kate giggled. “Dorie Millard says when you treat men badly it makes them want you more.”

Dr. Millard’s daughter, Dorothy, was notorious for giving advice on romance to anyone who would listen. Jennie would have liked to discount her words as giddy nonsense, but the truth was that Dorie had always had more suitors than any other girl in town.

She hesitated a minute before she said, “Mr. Jones doesn’t want me, Kate. The idea’s absurd.” Then she pushed her way through to where the miners were impatiently awaiting their breakfast.

Kate had perked up her head at Jennie’s last words. She’d only been teasing by bringing up Dorie’s proclamation. But the break in her sister’s voice had been unmistakable. And unprecedented. Could it be possible that Jennie was finally feeling what it was to be attracted to a man? Kate smiled, then clasped her hands over her stomach and addressed her unborn child. “What do you think, sugarplum? It sounds to me like we’d better have ourselves a look at this Mr. Carter Jones.”

Jennie tried to tell herself that she was acting no differently than she would on any other day. She and Barnaby cleaned up the breakfast dishes while Kate lay down for her morning rest Then she deliberately made herself put on her gardening dress, the least attractive thing she owned, and went out to weed and pick the vegetables. She refused to admit that she was hurrying through the task so that she could clean up and change her attire. And she picked her second-best day dress, the yellow one with five pink primroses tucked along the bodice. Of course, it was the one she’d been wearing when Jack Foster had told her that the yellow dress and her glossy dark brown hair made her look as pretty as a black-eyed Susan.

If she was jumpier than normal during the day, it was because she hadn’t slept well last night, still nursing her headache and thinking about that blasted court order. It had nothing to do with the fact that every time that broken shutter in front blew open she’d thought it had been footsteps coming up the walk.

In the end it was nearly five before he came. And by then she was more or less convinced that she truly didn’t care if she saw him again. But when she opened the door to see him standing there holding a nosegay of delicate purple flowers complete with a trailing ribbon, she knew that she was in trouble.

“How are you, Mr. Jones?” she managed to say calmly enough. “Come in.”

Carter frowned. “We’d progressed farther than that last night,” he said, handing her the flowers with a slight bow. “You called me Carter, remember?”

Jennie remembered every second of last night’s encounter. But she said, “It was done under duress, I believe.”

Carter laughed. “Turning legal on me, are you?”

“It’s your profession, Counselor.” The banter was making Jennie feel giddy. Growing up, she’d avoided the casual flirtations with the boys in town, preferring the solitude of home with her books or her music. Kate had always been the one who’d drawn the boys’ eyes, and that had been fine with Jennie. After Kate’s disaster with Sean Flaherty, Jennie was even more strongly convinced that men were not a necessary ingredient for happiness. Indeed, they could sometimes be the major obstacle to it.

Which didn’t explain why she was standing in her front doorway, grinning up at Carter Jones as if he were the candy man at the circus. She forced her face into a more sedate expression, took the flowers from him and gestured for him to come in.

“You can finally meet my sister,” she told him over her shoulder. “She’s back in the kitchen shelling some peas for supper.”

Carter touched her arm. His fingers were warm through the soft yellow muslin of her dress. “Would you mind if I spoke to you alone first?” he asked.

His suddenly serious tone made her stop at once. She turned back toward him. “Of course. We’ll go into the parlor.”

Once again they entered under the draped archway, but this time the room was empty. The table the miners had used for their card game was pushed back against the wall and held a vase of freshly cut flowers. Carter pointed across the room to the piano. “Do you play?”

Jennie nodded. “Yes. And Kate sings. We’re kind of a team,” she added with a smile. She sat down in one of the tufted chairs and motioned for Carter to take the settee.

“You and your sister watch out for each other,” he observed.

“Yes. We always have. But now more than ever since our parents are gone. Kate’s all I have.”

Carter’s face was still grave. “This has been difficult for you, then.”

“Losing one’s parents is one of the most difficult things…”

“No, I mean about your sister. Her…ah…problem.”

Jennie was silent for a moment. Finally she said simply, “Yes.”

“Then I hope you won’t think I’m presumptuous when I tell you I’ve been doing some work today on your dilemma.”

“Of course not.” She smiled at him. “I told you yesterday that I was sorry our first meeting was so…abrasive. I appreciate your help. Truly. Both Kate and I do.”

Carter gave a brisk nod. “First I should tell you that it appears that the court’s order on your zoning infraction is perfectly legal.”

Jennie’s smile faltered. “You mean, they have the right to make us stop renting to the silverheels…to the miners.”

Carter nodded. “So I decided we needed another approach.”

Jennie leaned against the back of the chair. Something about Carter’s businesslike manner was beginning to make her feel uncomfortable. He seemed different than he had in the dim kitchen light last night when he’d taken hold of her hand. Now he seemed more lawyerlike, more like the overbearing males who’d dealt with her case when she’d gone to the district court to give her side on the zoning issue. “Another approach?” she asked warily.

“I talked to the members of the town council.”

Jennie’s shoulders sagged against the back of the chair. “You mean you talked with Henrietta Billingsley. Because Henry Billingsley runs the council and Henrietta runs him.”

“Yes, Mrs. Billingsley was involved in our discussions.”

“I’ll bet she was.”

“But I think we were able to come to an agreement that will satisfy everyone.”

“Now that would surprise me very much.”

Carter smiled at her, but his smile didn’t make her insides do the same flip-flops that it had the previous evening. “They’re willing to give you an exemption to the zoning ordinance to rent rooms here to a maximum of four boarders.”

Jennie’s eyes widened. “They are?”

“Yes.”

“I can hardly believe it.”

“I think you’d be surprised to find that many people in town have a lot of sympathy for you and your sister. They know that it’s not your fault that you lost your parents and were left in less than desirable financial circumstances.”

Jennie gave another disbelieving nod. “So we can keep on just as is?”

“Well, not exactly. It seems that the objection is not so much to the boarders as to the presence of…the…ah…”

“My sister,” Jennie supplied, her voice suddenly hard.

Carter nodded kindly. “There’s an asylum in Carson City where she can stay until such time as she is sufficiently recovered and the adoption of the child is arranged—”

Jennie was on her feet before he could finish. “An asylum!”

Carter rose from the settee more slowly. “It’s a home, really. A home for girls in trouble like your sister.”

Jennie literally sputtered with fury. When she could shape the words into speech she leaned close to Carter and said, “The only trouble my sister has is meddling busybodies like you who can’t leave decent people alone to live out their lives.”

“I’m trying to work out a settlement that will—”

Jennie reached to grab Carter’s hat from where he had laid it beside him on the settee and she went up on tiptoe to jam it onto his head, taking care to crush the brim in the process. Then she picked up the delicate nosegay from the table and stabbed it into his chest. “You can just take your settlement and your damn flowers and get out of here. My sister is waiting for me to help her fix dinner in our kitchen in our house, the house where she’s going to have her baby and raise him or her to be a more caring, tolerant person who will be worth more than every hypocritical member of the town council put together.”

Carter made a halfhearted attempt to straighten his hat with one hand while he held on to the mangled flowers with the other. Jennie finished her speech and, without giving him a chance to reply, whirled on her heel and stalked out of the room. As she disappeared under the doorway drapery, she fired back over her shoulder, “You may see yourself out, Mr. Jones.”