Читать книгу Cecilia And The Stranger - Liz Ireland, Liz Ireland - Страница 6

Even in late September, Annsboro was cloaked in a dry haze. What few patches of buffalo grass there were in the town itself had long since withered and yellowed, their scorched leftovers, as well as the occasional scrubby mesquite or cedar, lending the place its only landscaping.

Jake pulled one of Pendergast’s white starchy handkerchiefs from his coat pocket. No wonder the schoolteacher had picked up new clothes, Jake thought as he raked the stiff cotton across his brow. The wool suit he had found in Pendergast’s suitcase, which was a snugger fit than Jake had first thought it would be, was so hot it felt like he was walking around with a brick oven on his back.

“If you’ll look to your left, you’ll see not only Annsboro’s mercantile, but also the sight of our future drug emporium.”

Lysander Beasley, Jake’s self-appointed guide to this wretched place, gestured grandly toward a squat brick building and the empty lot next to it. On a large wooden sign above the store, the word Beasley’s was spelled out in red curlicued letters.

“Owned and run by yours truly.” Beasley pinched proudly at one end of his pointy mustache. His neatly greased hair, parted down the center, created a pulled-back curtain effect, as though his forehead were a stage. The loud check print of his expensive-looking suit was showy, too—a flashy display of wealth, like his shiny new gold watch chain that glinted in the sun. Pudgy, florid and fatuous, Lysander Beasley appeared every inch the prosperous model citizen—the kind Jake remembered from his deputy days who would rave for hours about law and order. Then, when one of their own, like Otis Darby, happened to land in jail, they would discover compassion.

But even putting his own feelings aside, Jake couldn’t see much to be smug about in Annsboro, although one glance down the town’s dusty main street confirmed that the mercantile was probably the town’s most successful enterprise, except perhaps for what looked like a saloon clear over on the other end of town. That would make sense. If Jake lived here, he was sure he’d want to do more drinking than buying.

You do live here, fool, he thought, shaking his head in disbelief.

Incredibly, Lysander Beasley mistook his discouraged amazement for awe. “Oh, it’s a fine little town, all right. Why, I’d bet that in two years we’ll have a courthouse!”

“You don’t say,” Jake said, striking what he hoped was the appropriate note of wonder. He was rewarded with a hacking chuckle from his companion.

“But I’m sure you’re more interested in the schoolhouse than in buildings that don’t even exist yet.” Beasley guffawed again. “This way, Mr. Pendergast.”

Jake was staring at a dilapidated brick building directly across the dirt road from the mercantile. The place proclaimed itself to be a blacksmith’s, but the windows were boarded up. And other than some scattered houses, that was it as far as the town went.

“Mr. Pendergast?”

Startled, he looked at Beasley and they continued walking. If he didn’t get used to answering to the name of Pendergast, he might find himself with a heap of explaining to do.

The schoolhouse, set down a rutted road from the rest of the town, was in considerably better shape than the other buildings. A new coat of paint made the white wood-frame structure a standout against the dusty terrain.

“On Sundays Parson Gibbons comes in and holds services in the school. Other than that, the school will be quite your domain,” Beasley explained. “Cecilia Summertree has been overseeing the children since our last schoolteacher left us. Wonderful girl, Miss Summertree.”

But his disdainful tone conveyed the fact that he meant just the opposite. “Her father’s quite a cattleman. The Summertree ranch is one of the biggest in the region.”

So Jake had heard. It was impossible to have passed through this part of Texas without having heard something of Summertree and his vast spread. Jake had dreamed of having a ranch that would be even a fraction as successful. He couldn’t imagine why a daughter of such a man would want to teach school in this barren place, though. “She’s a local girl?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. She’s not a professional academician like yourself, Mr. Pendergast. Mercy, she doesn’t even have a certificate. Sometimes out here we’re forced to bend all these new regulations, you know. She did spend five months at a school for young ladies in New Orleans this year.” Beasley stopped and raised a speculative eyebrow. “She was supposed to have been gone for a full year...” He left the sentence dangling tremulously between them.

Kid probably got homesick, was Jake’s first reaction...if a body could get homesick for this patch of dust. But what he thought wasn’t at issue. “Hmm,” he murmured suspiciously for Beasley’s benefit, knowing the man probably expected his Philadelphia schoolteacher to be loaded with moral superiority.

“Precisely,” Beasley said, pleased to have indoctrinated the new teacher in one of his own personal prejudices. He continued walking. “Now I wanted to tell you about my daughter, Beatrice. She’s quite the little student.”

As they approached the school, Jake only half listened to the litany of Beatrice Beasley’s accomplishments. Undoubtedly any child of Lysander Beasley, formerly of Louisville, Kentucky, would be nothing less than a prodigy. Jake was more interested in the laughter and periodic high-pitched whoops coming from the schoolhouse. It was late afternoon already—just finding the town had taken Jake the better part of a day after disembarking the train in Abilene that morning—and school was definitely out.

Noticing his companion’s distraction, Beasley broke off and cocked his head to the side, listening. “Hmm. Sounds as if Miss Summertree’s in her usual high spirits today.”

“It would seem so,” Jake answered, injecting a hint of disapproval into his voice.

“I might add that my daughter’s true genius would seem to lie in the area of literature,” Beasley droned on. “Her dear mother, God rest her soul, started her early. Why, Beatrice could recite Shakespeare by the age of three!”

Jake nodded at this impressive tidbit, but at that moment, his attention was completely derailed. Through a window, he saw a young man—a cowboy—and woman cavorting around the teacher’s desk. The woman, a pretty blond creature, let out a laughing cry and hopped nimbly on the high desk, revealing a glimpse of shapely leg.

“C’mon, Cici,” Jake heard the man saying. “You know you want to.”

“Not if you were the only man in Texas, Buck!” The woman’s bright blue eyes sparked with a mix of amusement and annoyance.

“But I am the only man for you, sweetheart.”

“You crazy—”

The cowboy reached for the woman’s waist. She attempted to back away, but was thrown off-balance and regained equilibrium only by allowing herself to be hoisted high in the air. She rolled her eyes in distress, and as she did, caught sight of movement outside.

As her eyes alit on Beasley, dread crossed her face. Then when she glanced over to Jake, her expression changed to one of complete mortification.

Jake couldn’t help it. He smiled.

Even caught slack-jawed with surprise, this Cecilia Summertree gave him hope for his short stay in Annsboro. Her figure, so easily held aloft by the rustic youth, appeared lithe and sturdy at once. It was encased in a blue muslin frock of practical design, but she wore the gown with a dash that would have made the cowboy’s forwardness with her person humorous, had not her own reaction to seeing a stranger peeping in the window—and catching sight of such a spectacle—been comical in itself.

After the initial shock passed, Cecilia Summertree’s eyes swept over him with feminine curiosity, making Jake groan at the memory of his ill-fitting brown suit. Not that he was normally a lady-killer...well, maybe he had made a few pulses flutter in his day. He instinctively tugged down his tight herringbone vest.

But the smirk that crossed the young woman’s face halted him in mid-preen. Obviously, she found nothing heart-stopping about his appearance. And she couldn’t even see that his pants nearly reached his shins! Jake silently cursed his suit as he watched her expression change yet again—to guarded anticipation.

“Put me down, fool!” the woman whispered urgently to her companion.

Beasley, beyond the sightlines of the window and therefore ignorant of the drama awaiting them inside, hurried his straggling companion into the building with a wave. Jake sobered his expression and eagerly stepped over the threshold ahead of Beasley, into a small hallway that held a coatrack. Suddenly, the subject of Miss Summertree’s early return from finishing school, or anything else about the woman, fascinated him.

Before he could step through the door, the man named Buck had set her down, and she was giving the bodice of her dress a firm straightening jerk. When their gazes met again, her brilliant blue eyes were narrowed on him suspiciously.

Jake was irked that he wasn’t able to make more of an impression. Not that what this woman thought made any difference, he reminded himself. He was just here to lie low, not to spark the local schoolteacher. Ex-schoolteacher.

“Mr. Beasley,” she said in a high feminine voice whose energy enchanted him immediately. “What did you bring me?”

“Looks too old for a student,” the cowboy joked, eyeing Jake with genial curiosity.

“Good heavens!” Beasley said sharply, as if the offhand comment had done grave insult to their guest. “This is Mr. Eugene Pendergast. Mr. Pendergast, this is Miss Summertree, who I was telling you about. And this is...”

“Buck McDeere,” Cecilia supplied. That Beasley wouldn’t know the cowboy’s name came as no surprise to Jake, or apparently, to Cecilia.

“Mr. Pendergast is our new schoolteacher, just arrived from Philadelphia.”

At the word schoolteacher Cecilia Summertree’s mouth dropped open. Once again her blue eyes assessed his person, this time without mirth. She stiffened her spine and jutted her jaw forward. “Philadelphia, you say?” she said disbelievingly.

Jake bit back a laugh. No curtsy, no how-do-you-do. Just a question about his origins and another scathing once-over. Maybe Miss Summertree expected men from Philadelphia to have better tailors.

In spite of the cool reception, he bowed politely. Trying to think of a way to respond, Jake remembered his uncle Thelmer, from St. Louis. The one time Thelmer had visited his relatives in Texas, it was clear he had considered himself to be hands-down more civilized than his poor relations. And to give the man his due, the ladies had been impressed.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Summertree,” he said now in his best impression of Uncle Thelmer’s sophistication.

Cecilia Summertree pursed her lips. “You sure took your time getting here. We’d begun to think you weren’t coming.”

“I’m afraid I was detained.”

“Detained where?” Cecilia demanded sweetly.

“Now, now, Cecilia,” Beasley interjected, agitated by the girl’s curiosity. “It’s true, Mr. Pendergast, we’d expected you last week. Nevertheless, we’re simply glad that you had a safe trip.”

Jake breathed a sigh of relief at Beasley’s interruption. He hadn’t expected to meet with such skepticism. Obviously Miss Summertree wasn’t happy giving up her post to a stranger. He managed a weak smile. It helped to remember the reason he was late—the real Pendergast had apparently been on a week-long toot. What would Beasley have said to that?

“I’m certainly glad to be here.”

Cecilia’s eyes narrowed to fiery little slits. “He doesn’t sound like a Yankee.”

“Cecilia!”

“My parents were from Alabama,” Jake retorted sharply. The woman was beginning to make him nervous. Besides, his parents were from Alabama.

“There now,” Beasley said, as if Pendergast’s parentage settled everything. “I expect you’ll be a marvelous help getting Mr. Pendergast acclimated to his new surroundings, Cecilia. But all that’s left for you to do today is to hand over the building key.”

Cecilia crossed her arms. The young woman was at least a foot shorter than Jake, but that didn’t seem to intimidate her any. Nor, apparently, did the fact that Beasley was going to stand by him. Jake took in her honey blond hair and bright blue eyes with admiration and annoyance. She didn’t look as if she would be much help.

“I suppose you went to college,” she said sharply.

Jake grinned. “Of course.” Pendergast had looked like the college type. Soft, sheltered.

“Where?” she pressed, surprising him.

Jake’s smile froze. “You want to know where?” he asked inanely, fingering the hat he held in his hand with stiff, sweaty fingers.

“The University of Pennsylvania!” Beasley cried, angered by Cecilia’s inquisitiveness.

Jake’s gaze shot to the obnoxious man in gratitude. “Yes, that’s right.” He grinned broadly at Cecilia.

“Same as Watkins,” Beasley added.

“Yes, Watkins,” Jake agreed. Who was Watkins? “Good old Watkins.”

Beasley chuckled anxiously. “There. Now that’s settled...” He held out his hand toward Cecilia. “The key?”

“The key is on the desk,” she said proudly, nodding toward it. Then, impulsively, she glared at Jake and added, “But I wouldn’t trust it to this—this fraud!”

Jake felt the blood drain from his face as her accusation hit its mark. Yet fraud though he was, he hadn’t narrowly escaped death to let his future be snatched away by an ornery little rich girl. He clenched his fists at his sides and prepared to speak in his own defense.

But this time, chiming right in with Beasley’s shout of outrage was a mumbled warning from Buck. “Cici, I’d watch my words...”

“But it’s true!” she cried. “This man isn’t a schoolteacher any more than I’m a...a—”

“Lady?” Jake couldn’t resist drawling.

Her blue eyes flew open in shock. “How dare you!”

“Hey, now...” Buck said, as if he’d never heard a man speak unkindly to a woman before.

“He couldn’t even tell you what college he went to,” Cecilia argued.

“The University of Pennsylvania!” Beasley again cried out in exasperation.

“Like I said,” Jake said, smiling at her smugly.

Cecilia pushed past Buck and came forward menacingly, in spite of Beasley’s ineffectual sputtering. Before setting foot in this little classroom, Jake hadn’t given much thought to the difficulties of assuming another person’s identity. Having spent two years one step ahead of an assassin, he couldn’t imagine much danger in pretending to be a schoolteacher.

He was wrong.

When Cecilia spoke, she punctuated her sharp words by jabbing a slender pointy-nailed finger toward his chest. “I’ll be watching you, Pendergast, and following you like a shadow. You might be able to fool the likes of the Bucks and Beasleys of this town, but you can’t fool me.”

By the time she finished, mere inches separated them. Jake had to give her points for bravery, as well as keen insight. Nevertheless, he smiled. This little performance of hers had Beasley so distressed that the storekeeper would probably stand by him even if it turned out that he was Sam Bass resurrected.

Even so, if he didn’t try to settle this now, this little slip of a woman would try to harass him right out of town. Keeping in mind that he was a mild-mannered schoolteacher, Jake took a slight step forward and looked straight into Cecilia’s eyes.

“If a beautiful flower such as yourself cares to stay close to me, how could I be anything but thrilled at the prospect?”

In a gesture that would have done Uncle Thelmer proud, Jake clasped her hand and gallantly hoisted it to his lips. Letting loose a startled gasp, she attempted to yank it back all the while, so that when he did suddenly let go, the loss of resistance propelled her backward.

“Oh!” she cried, colliding with a desk. Her eyes were wide pools of blue as she stared at him, a furious blush rising in her cheeks. Jake was prepared to be slapped, spat upon or shouted at, but Cecilia remained immobile, for the first time—blessedly—at a loss for words.

Beasley quickly stepped between them. “How nice! Now that you two have settled your little differences, I’m sure that I won’t have to mention your unfriendliness to your father the next time I see him, Cecilia.”

“My father?” Cecilia pivoted toward Beasley.

The man grinned again in that smug way that made Jake’s skin crawl. “Cooperation, you know,” Beasley blustered, “it’s what makes little communities like ours flourish.” He obviously thought he had her over a barrel.

And apparently he did. Cecilia aimed one last glare at Jake, then turned with a flounce and stomped toward the door. Before crossing the threshold, she sent Jake a final warning. “Don’t forget—I’ll be watching. Come on, Buck.” Her companion mumbled something to the two men, then shuffled after her.

When the door closed behind them, Beasley smiled stiffly. “Like I said, a wonderful girl. So...wealthy,” he added, as if this explained exactly what made her wonderful. Most likely to Beasley it did.

“I see.”

Beasley wasted no time in launching into another monologue, this one mostly about the moral standards expected of the schoolteacher by the community. Once he realized Beasley was one of those blowhards who was only interested in the big picture and not in details that might actually prove helpful, Jake only half listened. Instead, through the window he watched Cecilia Summertree’s slim, alluring figure in retreat.

She was beautiful. Strange, Jake thought, that it seemed like years since he’d noticed a woman. Of course, never before had a woman demanded his attention in such a way. But he liked that about her, too. Cecilia Summertree was the most tenacious, forthright woman he’d ever met. He had no doubt that if she set her mind to do something, she’d do it.

Like run him out of town on a rail.

Jake frowned. That woman could mean trouble. Big trouble.

* * *

Cecilia barreled toward Dolly Hudspeth’s boardinghouse as fast as the heat would allow. But it wasn’t only the temperature that caused her to flush red. She couldn’t wait to ensconce herself in the privacy of her spacious room and start plotting her revenge. That slimy hand-kissing Alabama Yankee wasn’t going to get the best of her.

“Cecilia, wait up!”

At the sound of Buck’s voice Cecilia stopped and turned, her arms akimbo. “Buck, why are you following me?”

He came up short a few feet away, his face a mask of confusion. “You told me to.”

That’s right, she did—but then, she hadn’t been thinking clearly at the time. With a limp wave, she attempted to shoo him away. “Well, never mind. Go home. And don’t you dare whisper a word of this to my father!”

A wide smile broke across Buck’s face. It was a handsome face, bronzed from the sun. His hair was colored a light brown and his blue eyes were open and friendly. Too friendly, Cecilia thought. The man hadn’t stopped pestering her since she’d come home from New Orleans in disgrace.

“Don’t you think it’s time you came back to the ranch, Cici?” he asked. “Not much keeping you in town now.”

Not much, Cecilia agreed, except the thinnest thread of civilization, which incidentally meant everything to her, although she couldn’t expect the heathens she was surrounded by to understand. There was no way she was going back to that ranch. She’d go out of her mind with boredom, and the tension there between her and her father was thick enough to cut with a knife. No, thank you. That house had seen too much sadness.

Cecilia had watched her poor delicate mother languish for years on that blasted ranch, fretful and depressed. Not that her father had cared. He’d allowed his wife to return to her people in Memphis for visits to her family, but she’d inevitably come back ahead of schedule, unable to stay away from that mournful place. When she’d finally died of scarlet fever, her parting words to Cecilia had been instructions on where not to live, and Cecilia had taken the advice to heart.

Even so, before Evelyn Summertree’s eyes had closed that last time, she’d been watching out the window, waiting, her eyes scanning the hated barren landscape.

“I’m staying in town,” Cecilia said firmly, fighting against a familiar ache in her heart that came with thoughts of her mother.

Buck ambled closer, one thumb looped at his belt. “Aw, c’mon, Cici. You don’t really believe the man’s not a schoolteacher, do you?”

“Didn’t you hear him call me a beautiful flower? What kind of snake-oil salesman talks like that?”

“But you are,” Buck responded with a grin that made Cecilia puff in exasperation. “Besides, he looked just like a regular fella to me.”

“That’s just the trouble, Buck. Everyone looks nice to you.”

“Especially you, sweetheart.”

She ignored the flirtatious comment. “Besides, he looked too much like a regular fellow—not a teacher. He was staring around the place as if he hadn’t been in a classroom before!”

“Maybe it looked different than the ones up North.”

Cecilia bit her lip thoughtfully. No, there was something else....

Before she could finish her thought, Buck took another troubling step forward and then pulled her to his chest. Cecilia freed herself with one firm shove.

“Buck, go home,” she repeated. “I’m staying here.”

He crossed his arms, growing petulant. “How are you going to pay for your room?” he asked. “Your father won’t give you money for that.”

“Leave my father out of this. As far as you’re concerned, the new schoolteacher still hasn’t arrived. I’ll figure out a way to pay Dolly.”

“Your father’s going to find out sooner or later, you know,” Buck warned sensibly, “and he’s going to be madder than a hornet when he finds out you didn’t come back to the ranch first thing.”

“I know, I know.” First she was kicked out of Miss Brubeck’s, now this little deception. When he found out, her father would probably lock her in her room till the turn of the century. Well, she’d cross that tedious little bridge when she came to it. At least locked in her room she wouldn’t have to deal with randy ranch hands.

“Let me worry about my father,” she said with finality. “If nothing else I’ll tell him that I still have work at the school. You heard what Beasley said about helping Pendergast get settled.” As if anyone would need help running that ragtag little school—and as if she would actually do it!

Buck looked away, trying to think of an argument to dissuade her. Not surprisingly, nothing came to him. “It’s your funeral,” he said at last. Smashing his hat more firmly on his head, he turned and ambled away. Toward Grady’s saloon, no doubt.

Freed from that appendage, if not from her worries, Cecilia continued full steam toward Dolly’s. Oh, she had known it would be hard to give up her teaching job—though during the past week, when the man failed to show up, she was beginning to hold out hope that he would never arrive. Now his breezing into town late made losing her position all the more agonizing.

Eugene Pendergast! She didn’t know why he struck such a chord in her, but something about the man wasn’t right. He didn’t look right. He didn’t talk right. His clothes fit funny.

Damnation! This temporary teaching job had been such a godsend. After being sent home from New Orleans in disgrace, she’d desperately needed a way to get out from under her father’s disapproving glare. She and her father had clashed ever since she’d been old enough to wear long skirts. He thought her only purpose in life was to get married, preferably to a rich rancher, and since her mother had died when she was twelve, there was no one to take her side.

No, it was always Cecilia against the world. Convincing her father to send her to New Orleans had seemed such a coup, so freeing. Then, due to her own stupidity, she’d been sent home for “rowdy behavior.” Just because she sneaked out one night—just that once! But what was the point of being in New Orleans, she’d insisted, if you could only see a tiny, well-manicured portion of it, and then only during the daytime with a fussy old chaperone?

Her father had been livid. She’d jumped at the opportunity to move into town and serve as schoolteacher until the real one came along. A room of her own in Dolly Hudspeth’s boardinghouse wasn’t like living in New Orleans, but it was as close to it as she was going to get in the foreseeable future. Now the schoolteacher had arrived—supposedly—disrupting her life yet again....

But she wasn’t willing to admit defeat yet.

Cecilia marched up the dirt path to Dolly’s, the only two-story house in town. Dolly’s husband, Jubal, had been the first blacksmith in the area, so they had been prosperous before his untimely death. Now Dolly made do by renting out the extra rooms in the generous house her husband had built for her.

Grateful to finally have some privacy to think through her troubles, Cecilia headed straight for the stairs. Maybe she’d prepare herself a bath, she thought. No, that was too much trouble. Her imagination settled for a quick wash, then a leisurely afternoon nap on her soft mattress.

“Cecilia, is that you?” Dolly’s head poked out from the parlor.

“Hello, Dolly,” Cecilia said, only slowing as she single-mindedly headed for her haven of a room. “I’m bushed. Will you call me for dinner?”

“Oh, dear...”

Cecilia heard a rustling of skirts behind her and stopped. Dolly Hudspeth was still a young woman, not yet thirty, and the closest thing to a confidante Cecilia had. Her light brown hair was swept back from her face and pulled into her usual economical bun. As she caught up with Cecilia, she looked as put-together as always, except that her high forehead was wrinkled in dismay and her bow-shaped mouth puckered into a frown.

“Is something wrong?” Cecilia asked, continuing up the stairs. Dolly was always in a snit about something.

“Oh, I do wish I’d had some warning!” Dolly said, keeping one pace behind her friend.

“Warning about what?” Cecilia asked.

“I’m sure we could have handled this better.”

Confused, Cecilia walked to her door and turned the knob. “For heaven’s sake, Dolly, you’re not making any sense. What is the matter?”

She threw wide the door and saw immediately what was wrong—her things were gone!

“What happened!” she cried, surging forward. Her trunk, her clothes, even her silver comb set that had been on the washbasin stand—all were gone.

“Now, Cecilia,” Dolly began. “You know that this is my best room. It’s always been reserved for the town’s schoolteacher. Always, even when Jubal was alive.”

Cecilia’s gaze narrowed in on the black leather valise on the floor next to the bed. It belonged to Pendergast, that snake. He’d usurped her job, and now her room.

But not for long, she vowed.

Taking a deep breath to compose herself, she turned to Dolly with a warm smile. “Of course,” she said, even managing a gay little laugh as if she didn’t care a fig about losing her prized accommodations. “How stupid of me to forget. Just tell me, Dolly, where are my things?”

Dolly looked at her anxiously, not quite trusting Cecilia’s sudden change of mood. “Well, I stowed them downstairs. I imagined you’d probably ask Buck to give you a ride home this evening.”

“Home?” Cecilia asked, blinking innocently. “With Buck? Whatever for?”

Dolly put her hands on her hips. “Cecilia,” she said sternly. “Now, you know how things are. I have three rooms to let. One to the schoolteacher, and Miss Fanny’s been here since you were in school yourself. And I couldn’t put Jubal’s cousin Lucinda out. He’d come back to haunt me for sure.”

Panic began to seize Cecilia. Home. She was being sent home, back to the ranch, when she had so much to do right here in Annsboro. If no one would believe her suspicions about Pendergast—who she was willing to bet money wasn’t a schoolteacher at all—then she needed to stay close by and gather her own evidence. In the end, the town, even Beasley, would thank her for her pains.

But there was no way to stay if Dolly didn’t help her. She wouldn’t be able to spy on Pendergast. She’d never get her job back, or her independence. She’d be trapped on the ranch to wither away until she finally gave in and married some rancher who would take her off to another patch of dirt. And then she’d still wither away, just like her poor mother.

She practically threw herself at the older woman’s feet. “Oh, Dolly, you must have a place for me somewhere! Anywhere!”

Dolly shook her head worriedly. “I can’t think of a thing. The house only has four bedrooms, Cecilia, apart from the tiny room off the kitchen for my laundry girl, and that’s no bigger than a cupboard.”

Laundry girl? Cecilia remembered Lupe, the young woman who’d been doing laundry before she’d married one of the poor farmers in the area. Her heart surged with hope. “Cupboard?” she asked excitedly. “I can sleep in a cupboard, I don’t mind!”

Dolly’s face fell. “Oh, no, Cecilia.”

“I could even have some of my things sent home—I’ll tell Buck to take my trunk this very evening!”

“Absolutely not,” Dolly said, shaking her head. “That room is for the laundry girl. I’ve always done the wash for my boarders. And if I pay the girl room and board, I don’t have to come up with as much cash money.”

She was right, Cecilia realized, her spirits plummeting fast. About the only thing to hope for now was that Buck hadn’t left the saloon yet. What a miserable day this was turning out to be!

Dolly giggled.

Annoyed by the other woman’s laugh, Cecilia lifted her head slowly and caught her doing it again. “I fail to see anything amusing about this situation,” she snapped.

Dolly shook her head and then laughed outright. “I’m sorry, Cecilia,” she said, breathing hard to hold back a chuckle, “it’s just...” A rumbling laugh exploded from her chest, cutting off her words. “Oh, it’s too silly!”

Cecilia bit her lower lip and waited for Dolly’s laughter to subside. “What is?” she asked impatiently.

The other woman wiped a tear from her eye. “Oh, Cecilia, I just had this picture in my head of you leaning over a washboard.”

Cecilia laughed along heartlessly for a moment—until she was struck, rather violently, by the obvious. She snapped her fingers and turned joyfully to Dolly. “That’s it!” she cried, circling the older woman in a playful little jig. “Dolly, you’re a genius! When can I start?”

Dolly wasn’t laughing anymore. “Oh, no, Cecilia, I was just joking you.”

“Joke or not, I’ll take the job.”

“But I can’t offer it to you,” Dolly countered firmly. “Your father would have my hide, not to mention yours, if I hired you to do the wash. Do you even know how to do wash? The idea!”

“What’s wrong with my doing a little work? Father didn’t mind me teaching!”

Dolly sent her a wry look that made it clear she wasn’t buying into that line of thinking for one second. “There’s a whopping difference between teaching and being a washerwoman.” She laughed again. “Imagine if your father found out you were rinsing out my boarders’ underclothes for a living!”

“He won’t find out,” Cecilia said, her usually merry voice dropping an octave. Having seized on this improbable solution, she was not about to budge.

Sensing that she was moments away from hiring the Summertree heiress into a position of manual labor, Dolly’s eyes widened in alarm. “There are no secrets in Annsboro, Cecilia.”

“I know,” Cecilia said, more brightly. “But Daddy doesn’t live in Annsboro, does he?”