Читать книгу Temple's Prize - Linda Castle - Страница 8

“Confound it, Constance Honoria, I will not allow that scoundrel to steal Montague’s endowment from this university!”

“Now, Papa.” Constance tried to placate her agitated father. “Remember what your doctor said.”

“Confound him, too. I refuse to stay home while that bounder goes in search of the prize. I have survived jungle rains, snakebite and insect infestation.” He flung the newspaper he had been brandishing like a weapon across the crowded office. It narrowly missed several native clay pots Constance had been meticulously illustrating while she cataloged them into the university archives.

Professor Charles Herbert Cadwallender rose unsteadily to his feet. Even with the aid of his cane, it was obvious the heavy plaster cast on his leg was cumbersome to manage. When he glanced away Constance picked up the newspaper and looked at the photograph on the front page. She could see why her father was in such a state. The caption below Temple Parish’s handsome visage declared him on the way to becoming the most noted scientist and explorer of 1889. That alone would be enough to send her father into an apoplectic fit—without mention of Filbert Montague’s rich endowment.

“Papa, I’m sure Temple will earn—”

“Earn? Earn? Temple Parish has never earned anything in his life!” The aging professor leaned heavily on his cane beside a table strewed with odd rocks and bits of broken bones. His spare weather-hardened body vibrated with indignant fury. “Temple has charmed or cajoled or committed outright thievery to worm his way into the scientific community ever since I hired him as my assistant.”

Constance pushed the wire-rimmed spectacles up on the bridge of her nose, and as she did the past came into sharp focus. She remembered the day her father and Temple had parted company as if it were only yesterday. That was the day Temple Parish had pulled on her braids, winked at her, kissed her forehead and walked out of her life.

“Something must be done! Dandridge University is going to lose out on a one-hundred-thousand-dollar endowment unless I can find a way to go on that dig.”

“Papa, would it help if I went to see Temple—if I talked to him? Maybe we could reach some sort of understanding.”

“Constance Honoria Cadwallender, haven’t you been listening? I am talking about Temple Parish—the blackest-hearted pirate to walk God’s earth since Captain Kidd!”

Constance tilted her head and frowned at the idea. She had. thought of Temple in many different ways over the past ten years, but as hard as she tried to conjure up the image, she simply could not consider Temple something as outmoded as an ancient, unscrupulous pirate.

It was just silly. And even though people whispered his name in the hallways of the university, and just because her father refused to discuss him at all, there was really no cause to think that he would be unreasonable about this little problem.

Constance pushed up her glasses. There had to be a civilized and sensible way around this dilemma and she intended to find it.

“Mr. Parish?” The fledgling reporter was clearly in awe.

“Please, Thaddeus, call me Temple.” Temple smiled, hoping to set the eager young man at ease. Noise surrounded them as the elegant dining room started to fill with refined, well-dressed women and their evening escorts. Temple glanced down at his dusty clothes and worn high-topped boots and realized he was sorely out of place in New York’s finer dining establishments. The clothing he wore would have been out of place no matter the time of day. He unconsciously rubbed his finger across the raised scar on his cheekbone.

“Mr. Parish—Temple, I mean?”

“What? Oh, I’m sorry, Thaddeus, go ahead with your interview.” Temple leaned back in the comfortably padded dining chair.

“Do you have any comment on the criticism that Professor Cadwallender has been giving you in the Sentinel? Would you like to rebut his recent comments?”

Temple’s scalp prickled but he kept a broad smile pasted on his face and forced himself to remain calm. “I respect C.H. very much. I have nothing but respect and admiration for him. I only hope his advancing years do not prevent him from accepting this challenge. It would be a great boon to Dandridge University if he could at least make a good showing—for the sake of his reputation.”

While Thaddeus Ball scribbled in a small dog-eared pad, Temple allowed his gaze to skim over the women seated around him. Feminine whispers accompanied flushed cheeks. Several smiled and let their eyes linger a. moment longer than polite society dictated was proper. He smiled back, even though none of them caught his interest. The Sentinel had been running a series of articles about him and had managed to paint him to be a combination of Louis Lartet, the discoverer of Cro-Magnon man, and Casanova, the world’s greatest lover. In truth Temple was no more than a weary wanderer in desperate need of a bath, a bed and a woman who could understand multisyllable words—not necessarily in that order, of course. As he glanced around the room he realized he would be lucky to find even one of those three in his present environment.

“Well, Mr. Parish—I mean, Temple, is there anything else you would like to tell our readers?”

“Yes—tell them that C. H. Cadwallender was the best teacher a man could have, but I fully intend to be the first explorer to find and catalog a new species of extinct reptile and name it for Filbert Montague. I am confident my quest will be a short one. You can tell Mr. Montague to get that one-hundred-thousand dollars dusted off, because it will be going to Ashmont University, the institution of my choice, very soon.”

Constance read the newspaper article again. She found it hard to believe that Temple Parish could be bristling with so much confidence, but there it was in black and white. He had issued a blatant challenge to her father, and the prize at stake was the endowment promised by Mr. Montague. She sighed and set the paper aside.

“Papa will be beside himself,” she told the mynah bird eyeing her from its black iron perch.

“Awrk,” the bird said. “Beside, beside, beside.”

“Be quiet, Livingstone. This is serious. I have to find some way of helping Papa and the university.” Any chance of trying to reason with Temple was out of the question now. Even if he were inclined to make some private and amicable arrangement with her, the newspapers would hear of it and everyone involved would risk being discredited by Dandridge University and her father’s stuffy, narrow-minded colleagues.

She pushed her spectacles up on her nose and tried to think. Sunlight was streaking through the beveled glass transom in the hallway. The parquet wood floor was striped in shadow and light. Livingstone hopped down from his perch to the round oak table and started shuffling through the day’s mail. He picked up several envelopes and then dropped them to the floor. Then he found a letter more to his liking. While Constance was preoccupied he began to pierce the paper with his sharp pumpkin-colored beak.

“Give .me that—you nuisance.” Constance jerked the envelope from Livingstone’s bill. “You pesky little thief.”

She held up the perforated letter and looked at the damage with a critical eye. “Now look what you have done.”

Luckily it was addressed to her, C. H. Cadwallender. Papa was beginning to grow impatient with her pet. He was far too talkative and his habit of ruining anything he got his beak into had begun to wear on her father’s nerves.

She ripped open the tattered envelope, tossed it into a wicker wastebasket and began to read the letter. A frown creased her brow. Constance retrieved the discarded envelope and read the address again.

“C. H. Cadwallender,” she mused. She refolded the letter and replaced it in the envelope. A smile curved her lips. It was a natural mistake, since she and her father had identical initials.

“Perhaps Papa can go on that dig after all.” She urged Livingstone to step onto her hand and returned him to his cage before he destroyed anything else. While she picked up the scattered mail from the hall floor a plan had begun to form in her mind. By the time the uneven tap and click of her father’s cane announced his arrival home, Constance was ready.

She opened the door and greeted her father with a kiss to the cheek. “Good afternoon, Papa.”

C.H. hung his hat on the tall oak hall tree. “Honoria. You seem in particularly ebullient spirits—what has made you so buoyant?”

Constance straightened her collar, nudged her spectacles up on her nose and looked her father straight in the eye. The time had come to tell him her plan. “Come sit down, Papa, I have something to discuss with you.”

C.H. hobbled to his chair and flopped down awkwardly. Whenever Honoria got that glint in her eye he knew he was in for stormy weather. Constance placed the ottoman in front of him and gently put his foot in the middle with a pillow beneath it. When he was as comfortable as she could possibly make him, she drew in a deep breath and told him of her plan.

Professor Cadwallender stared at his daughter in disbelief. She had come up with some bizarre schemes in her life, but this one was the most far-fetched yet.

“I can do it, Papa. I am a better digger than many men and I know how to map and grid by using the system you taught me. I can do it—I am sure I can be successful.” Constance heard a challenge ringing in her own voice.

“It’s ridiculous. It’s no place for a female on her own. To even consider it is preposterous.”

Constance felt her own pride surging forward. She wanted this chance to prove herself. “I have gone on many digs with you in the past.”

“That was entirely different, Honoria. Those were my digs. If you went to Montana you would be completely on your own.”

“Would you rather see Temple Parish win by default?”

She knew her words had hit their intended mark when her father’s lined face turned three shades of crimson.

“That bounder!” Professor Cadwallender struck his cane against the fat pillow elevating his cast. A spiral of dust wafted into the still air of the overcrowded study.

“I am capable of succeeding, Papa. And I would be able to make detailed sketches for Dandridge’s archives.” Constance reassured her fatheragain.

He’ looked up at her and tilted his head much as Livingstone did when studying a new toy. “Are you sure, Honoria?”

“You can depend on me, Papa—I promise you won’t be disappointed. You have my solemn oath, I will not allow Temple Parish to win.”

C.H. sighed in resignation. “All right, Honoria— go. Go and show that ungrateful Temple-Parish what we Cadwallenders are made of.”

Temple propped up his feet and stared out the window of the train car as mile after dusty mile of terrain rattled by the window. The fine film of grit that coated the glass added a soft sepia tone to his view of the world.

Other than an occasional antelope springing away with a flash of its white rump, and the sporadic long-eared jackrabbit bounding alongside the tracks, Temple seemed to be the only person in the train car who was not napping. Not a sound came from the other passengers. It was the kind of quiet that grated on Temple’s nerves—the kind of quiet before a godawful thunder-boomer raced across open country, or some terrible disaster swept into his life—or he was cursed to have a month’s worth of nightmares about his mother’s death. He rubbed the scar on his cheek and directed his thoughts to his recent departure, forcing the old pain below the surface of his consciousness.

He would reach the tiny town of Morgan Forks tomorrow morning. There, he was to meet with the local man Filbert Montague had hired to guide him to the ravine where a cache of bones was rumored to be. From that point on it would be a soft job.

All he had to do was dig out some unknown critter—and most everything being found was unknown—ship it back to New York and watch Filbert Montague hand over the money to Ashmont University.

“After reasonable expenses,” Temple muttered to himself. The cash he had managed to save from his last dig was rapidly dwindling. He had hoped Ashmont would be grateful enough to offer to finance a new expedition, but they had not. Luckily Filbert Montague’s inflated ego and fat bank account had solved his problem. “For the moment,” Temple muttered aloud.

The job would be easy and quick, hardly so much as a challenge. He knew he should be happy about that, but he was still sorely disappointed that C. H. Cadwallender had been unable to make the trip. It had been a ten-year-old thorn in Temple’s side that old C.H. never gave him his due, just as he had never given him the benefit of the doubt.

Temple was good at what he did—perhaps he was even the best—and he was itching to prove it to C.H. and the rest of those stodgy old fools at Dandridge who had been so quick to pass judgment on him ten years ago.

He wondered why it should mean so much to him, after all these years and all these miles, but deep down inside he knew. All he had wanted since C.H. found him living in the streets and started teaching him the science of the past was to measure up in the old man’s eyes. He longed to show C.H. and his fellow academics that book learning was not the only way. And he needed to hear them admit that he was just as honorable, just as fair, as somebody who had not grown up in the gutters of New York. Temple had been forced to learn his methods through backbreaking work, but they would not acknowledge his skill or forget the rumored scandal that still clung to his name like dust to his boots.

Temple leaned back in the seat and pulled his shapeless felt hat down over his eyes. It was a constant source of irritation to him that he could not simply let the past go. To the professors at Dandridge he was the street rat, a guttersnipe, and that was that. Temple knew he might as well take a nap and forget his tenyear-old frustration. Besides, when he returned to New York and accepted Filbert Montague’s endowment, those same snobby professors would finally be forced to admit he had done what one of their faculty had not been able to.

That would have to be enough, because that was likely all he could ever expect from C.H. and his kind, he told himself as he shifted in the seat and tried to find a comfortable spot.

Constance lifted the veil on her traveling ensemble and allowed herself a better look at Temple. She had chosen a seat at the back of the train car, and in truth, she doubted he even knew she was there.

His battered knee-high boots were carelessly resting on the back of the seat in front of him. Dull brown pants were stuffed tightly into the high tops. Other than that, all she could see was the crown of his worn hat. His tawny hair, which he always wore a little longer than was considered fashionable, was concealed along with the dark brown eyes she remembered so well.

She smiled in anticipation of his reaction. It had been ten years and she had grown up. Even Temple Parish would have to see how much of a lady she had become since he left her father’s house. Constance had planned their meeting and the shared expedition down to the last detail, including taking the liberty of contacting the man Mr. Montague had hired to be the guide for C. H. Cadwallender and Temple Parish.

Constance felt a small shiver go through her body.

She had always dreamed of working side by side with Temple, as his equal. She couldn’t wait to sit down and have a serious discussion with him about the hominid bones found in China, or the theories about what had actually happened to all the amazing creatures that were being unearthed.

Yes, Constance mused, it was her girlhood fantasy come true. Working with Temple Parish in the middle of Montana. And perhaps she would finally learn what had caused the terrible estrangement between Temple and her father and why the other professors at Dandridge said his name with contempt and then only in whispers when they thought she could not hear.

After she returned to New York with the specimens and received the praise due her, perhaps her father would stop treating her like a child. And maybe, just maybe, she could bring about a reconciliation of the two men she cared for.