Faithfully Yours

Hope grinned smugly.

“I know. That’s why I’ve decided to hook him up with Flossie Gerbrandt. She’s exactly the same.”

“Flossie?” Charity shuddered. “I hate that name. Can’t understand why Clara called her that. Always reminds me of a rabbit, for some reason.” Her brow furrowed in thought. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Hope. I just can’t picture Flossie in her support hose and caftans going to church with the elegantly turned-out likes of him.” She coughed discreetly behind her hand. “Anyway,” she murmured repressively. “The Lord has his own plans for Jeremy Nivens. He doesn’t need you to meddle.”

“I’m just going to give the man a helping hand,” Hope told her, stacking the plates in the cupboard. “Nothing wrong with that, is there?”

Hope sipped her tea pensively, staring at the embroidered Lord’s Prayer on the wall. She was lost in thought until Charity’s voice called her back to the present.

“Pardon?” she asked softly, enraptured by the picture her mind had drawn.

“I just wondered when you were going to get to work on your new project?”

“Soon, dear. Very soon.” Hope returned her gaze to the figure of Jesus holding a sheep in his strong arms. “The sooner the better—for Faith, for Jeremy and for Gillian.”

Chapter Three

Gillian stared at the cut on the boy’s knee.

“Jed, I told you to stay with the rest of us. How did you do this, anyway?” She dabbed at the injury carefully, noting the dirt imbedded in the cut.

“I had to go pee” she was told in no uncertain terms. “When I was doing up my pants, I tripped on somethin’. It made me fall.”

Gillian grinned. No responsibility for Jed. If something had cut him, it certainly wasn’t his fault. She grimaced. There was no doubt in her mind that Mr. Nivens would believe that the cut was all her fault.

“Come, children,” she called, ushering them ahead of her onto the path through the woods. “We have to get back to the school now. It’s almost time for the bell. Quietly, Rowena.”

Who are you kidding? she asked herself sourly. Quiet? First-graders? Not likely. As they stumbled and pushed and shoved their way back into the classroom, she glanced round surreptitiously. Her heart fell as she noticed the man in the blue pin-striped suit heading directly for her.

“Come along, children. Let’s get your things together now. Don’t forget to collect as many leaves as you can this weekend.” She handed out knapsacks and lunch bags, just managing to grasp Jed’s arm before he headed out the room as the bell rang. “Just a minute, Jed. We’ll have to see to that knee.”

“Miss Langford? What is the meaning of this bedlam?” Mr. Nivens’s voice was raised to counter the excitement coming from the rest of the children now pouring into the hall.

She ignored him as she drew Jed over to the sink and began dabbing antiseptic from the first aid kit onto the child’s knee. She held one bony little shoulder firmly as the boy wriggled.

“Ow!” His bellow was loud and angry.

“Has this child injured himself on school property, during school hours, Miss Langford?”

Old Jerry was in a cranky mood, she decided glumly. There was no way he would let her off easily for this one.

“We went on a nature hike, and Jed cut his knee,” she told him, still gripping the child’s wriggling shoulder. “If you could assist me with this, I’d appreciate it. I have to cleanse the area.”

“He should be seen by a doctor,” Jeremy Nivens began firmly, but he knelt beside the boy and peered at the affected area. “At least it won’t require stitches,” he muttered, taking the cotton from her hands and briskly wiping the grit and particles of soil away.

“That hurts, ya know,” Jed shrieked. His face was red with anger.

“Nonsense. A great big boy like you wouldn’t feel a little nick like this. You have to be strong when these things happen—stiff upper lip and all that.” His finger slapped a Band-Aid across the knee with surety, and he pulled Jed’s pant leg swiftly down.

“Huh?” Jed sat staring at the older man in perplexity.

Gillian bent down and stared into Jed’s puzzled face. “He means that you were very brave for handling that so well, Jed. Here’s your knapsack now. You’d better run and get that bus.”

As the boy scurried from the room, he cast a suspicious look at Jeremy’s suited figure. “My lip’s not stiff,” he told the older man seriously. “My leg is, though.”

“Have a good weekend,” Gillian called and waved briskly, watching the most daring member of her class dodge the other children in his rush to get to the bus.

“Miss Langford, you and I need to have a discussion.”

She turned back wearily to face her towering boss’s stern face. He had that glint in his eye, she noticed. The one that always spelled trouble. For her.

“Have a seat, Mr. Nivens. I’ll just clean up a bit as we talk.” She avoided his eyes as her hands busily picked up the shuffle of papers on her desk, brushing the bits of twigs and crushed leaves into the garbage.

“I would prefer to speak in my office. In a more formal setting.” He was still standing, Gillian noted.

“Oh, why bother to walk all the way down there?” she murmured airily. “We’re both here now. Why don’t you just tell me what’s on your mind?” Smoothly, without a pause in action, Gillian slipped the books into order on her shelves, removing a bubble gum paper from Jonah’s reader. When he didn’t speak, she finally glanced up and found his remote stare fixed firmly on her. “Well?”

“Miss Langford, do you ever read the notifications I leave in your mailbox?”

He brushed a hand gingerly over the edge of the table, checking for stickiness before reclining against it. It was the most relaxed she had ever seen him, and the sight was very appealing. As she watched, Jeremy brushed a hand through his hair, destroying the immaculately arranged strands. “Miss Langford?”

She jerked her gaze away from the silky softness of his hair and focused on his frowning face.

“Of course I read them,” she muttered finally. Her thought winged back over the past few weeks, trying to recall which particular missive he could be referring to. If the truth were known, she barely glanced at his memos lately. She had been centering every bit of time and attention on her students.

Jeremy crossed his arms over his chest.

“Then I’m sure you noticed that I asked teachers to be particularly aware of permission notes and the necessity of having parents sign if their child was to be taken off the school property,” he said smugly. “May I have the notes?”

“But we only walked through the land right next door,” she told him wide-eyed. “Surely we don’t need a permission slip for a little nature walk.”

“I take it that you didn’t bother to procure the signatures then,” he bit out, shaking his head angrily. “Miss Langford, you cannot keep ignoring the rules that are part of the function of this school.”

“Oh, but surely for a little nature walk…”

“Your little walk may have engendered a lawsuit,” he rasped, standing straight and tall before her.

“What?” Gillian stared at him, half-amused. “Why would anyone sue the school?”

“What if Jed’s cut becomes infected and requires further treatment? What if one of the children had been badly hurt? What if you were injured and they were without a leader?” His eyes were icy as they glared at her.

Gillian shook her head. “We didn’t go to Siberia,” she said softly, peering up at him in confusion. “We walked not fifty feet beyond the school property. Any one of them could have made it back safely, without trouble.”

“Deidre Hall couldn’t,” he said angrily, standing directly in front of her. “What about her?”

Gillian thought about the young girl in the wheelchair whom she’d pushed through the undergrowth. She shrugged. “All right, Deidre needed my help. And I was there. Nothing happened. No big deal.”

“Not this time, no.” His jacket was unbuttoned, and Gillian could see the missing button on his vest as his hands planted themselves firmly on his hips. For some reason that lost button gave her encouragement; maybe Jeremy Nivens was human after all.

“Fine,” she murmured softly, staring up into his stern face. “I admit I should have checked with you first. I’m sorry I didn’t advise you of my plans or get the childrens’ parents to sign permission slips. I’ll ensure that it doesn’t happen again.” Gillian smiled placatingly. “Is that all right?”

“I don’t think it is. You have perverse ideas on teaching that seem to dictate constantly removing the children from the classroom. I cannot condone that. The classroom is where they should be doing their learning, not in the woods.”

Gillian tried to control the surge of rage that flooded through her at his words. How dare he criticize her efforts! She was a good teacher, darned good. And she focused her attention on teaching children to learn in whatever situation they found themselves.

“My students,” she began angrily, “are learning to be aware of the things around them, whether or not they are in the classroom. Today they experienced all five of the sensory perceptions of fall. They saw things in a different way than they would have looking out the window at the woods.”

“Five senses?” He jumped on her statement immediately, his voice full of dismay. “What did they eat?”

“We peeled the outer shell off acorns and tried to crunch the centers. They tasted the flavor of the woods,” she told him proudly.

If it was possible, Jeremy Nivens’s body grew even tauter as he stood glaring down at her. His hands clenched at his sides, and his jaw tightened.

“They’ll probably all get sick,” he muttered angrily. His voice was cold and hard. “Why can’t you learn to just follow the rules?” he demanded angrily.

“Why can’t you learn to live with a few less rules and a lot more feeling in your life?” she flung at him. “This isn’t a prison. It’s a school—a place of learning and experimentation meant to prepare the children for the future. If you constantly deny them the right to find things out for themselves, how will they solve the problems of their world? You can’t keep them under lock and key.”

He stood there fuming, his anger palpable between them. Gillian could feel the tension crackling in the air and tried not to wince when his hard, bitter, exasperated tones stabbed at her.

“In the future you will okay all field trips with me, whether the students go fifty feet or fifty miles. Do you understand, Miss Langford?”

Gillian stifled the urged to bend over at the waist and salaam to him. He would find nothing funny in such an action, she knew.

“Yes, Mr. Nivens,” she murmured softly. “I understand completely.” Her voice held a nasty undertone that she did not attempt to disguise. “Would you also like to sit in on my classes and make sure I’m not teaching my students political activism or the making of pipe bombs?”

He turned to leave, stopping by the door for a moment His eyes glittered with something strange as he smiled dryly at her. “Thank you, Miss Langford,” he murmured slyly. “I may yet find it necessary to do that.”

She could have kicked herself for offering, and spent the next hour mentally booting herself around the room for falling into his little trap. “Odious manipulator,” she mumbled, checking her daybook for the plans she had made. “As if I’d let him in here to check up on me. No way.” Of course there was really nothing she could do to stop him, Gillian knew. And if he decided she wasn’t doing her job, he could call for a review on her work.

Why did Michael have to die? she asked God for the zillionth time. If he were alive, they would be married, and she would be in her happy, carefree position at St. Anne’s, blissfully oblivious to the presence of Mr. Jeremy Nivens and his immense book of rules.

But there was nothing to be gained by going down that road. She would just have to learn to accept it and get on with living. The past was no place to dwell, and time was flying by.

Gillian laid out the work she had planned for the next day and checked to see there were enough copies of the Thanksgiving turkey she planned to begin in art class next week. At least she had the children, she consoled herself. She would never have Michael’s child, but she had twenty-eight needy ones in her classroom every day, and she intended to see to it that they got the best education she could offer.

Gillian was about two blocks from her aunt’s house and dreaming of relaxing for the weekend when she saw the smoke. Thick, billowing, dark gray clouds of smoke rolling out the window of a house. Gillian raced across the street and dashed inside the open front door. This was Faith Rempel’s home, she was pretty sure. And if she remembered her aunt’s description correctly, Mrs. Rempel lived alone.

Gillian found the woman in her kitchen, slumped over a counter, the smoking remains of a pan with something resembling cherries bubbling blackly on the stove. She snatched a dish towel and grabbed the pan, dumping the entire contents into the sink and pouring water over it. Steam and smoke combined to cover her in a cloud of acrid odors.

“Mrs. Rempel? I’m Hope’s niece. Are you all right?” Gillian checked the elderly woman’s pulse and was relieved to find it seemed strong and healthy. When the green eyes opened, they stared at Gillian blankly. “Come on, Mrs. Rempel. We’ll have to get you out of this smoke.”

“Yes, thank you, dear. That would be lovely. I’m afraid my cherries jubilee didn’t quite turn out. Such a pity.” Faith Rempel’s English accent was pronounced as she rose from the table with alacrity and waved her apron back and forth briskly, whooshing the air as she walked.

“Cherries jubilee?” Gillian couldn’t believe her ears. Who made cherries jubilee at four-thirty on a Friday afternoon, for goodness sake? And wasn’t the sauce supposed to be set on fire when the dish was served, not hours before?

She left Mrs. Rempel sitting on a patio chair outside and checked for further damage in the kitchen before opening all the windows and doors. Thankfully the light, afternoon breeze soon whisked the smelly fumes and billows of blue-black smoke away.

“I’ve brought you a glass of water, Mrs. Rempel. Are you sure you’re all right?” The puffy lines in the woman’s face had been there before, Gillian decided, checking her patient once more.

“Of course, dear. I’m perfectly fine.” Faith’s green eyes stared into hers. “Do I know you?” she asked curiously.

She grinned. “I’m Hope’s niece, Gillian. I’m here teaching school.”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Rempel smiled brightly. “You’re Jeremy’s new girlfriend. You two make the sweetest couple.” She stood suddenly and moved briskly to the back door. “I’ll have to clean this mess up before he gets here. Jeremy hates a mess.”

“I’ll help you,” Gillian offered, remembering that this woman, according to her aunt, had slight lapses in memory. That would account for her erroneous linking of their names. How strange that such a lovely woman should be old sourpuss’s aunt.

“Does he come every day?” she asked curiously. It seemed odd to think of her boss checking up on his aunt. More likely he came for a free meal so he wouldn’t have to dirty his own kitchen, she decided, still fuming at his biting remarks.

“Almost every evening. We have dinner together. I was hoping to surprise him with a new dessert Piffle,” she grunted, glaring at the charred remains of the cherries. “Should have turned the heat down sooner.”

Gillian grinned. So Jeremy Nivens came for a free dinner every night. Somehow she had known human kindness wasn’t the reason for Jerry’s visits. She wondered what he’d think of his aunt’s messy kitchen right now.

“You know,” she told Faith, smiling as she wiped down the counters and stove. “In our family we had a standing joke whenever Mom burned something. We always said she thought we must be little gods because she was serving us burnt offerings.”

Faith giggled appreciatively.

“Underneath all this smoke, something sure smells good,” Gillian told her seriously. She opened the oven door and sniffed appreciatively. “What is that?”

The older woman blushed, her salt-and-pepper head bending forward shyly.

“Oh, just a little rouladin. Jeremy loves beef, you know. I imagine you’ll be cooking it often after you’re married, dear.” She scurried about, putting the last of the now-dry dishes away. “I just need to get a salad together and check the potatoes.”

“Uh, Mrs. Rempel, Jeremy and I aren’t getting…”

“Oh, silly me. Of course you aren’t announcing it right away. I can understand that. You both being so new to the community and all,” Faith twittered happily as she rinsed the lettuce and set it carefully in a colander to dry. She grasped Gillian’s hand in her own and glanced at her finger. “Oh, you haven’t found a ring yet?”

“No, we haven’t,” Gillian searched for the right words, but she needn’t have bothered. Jeremy Nivens’s aunt was lost in a world of her own, green eyes sparkling with happiness as she stared at her own rings.

“It seems just last week when Donald and I became engaged. He insisted that I choose my own ring, said it was going to have to last a good long time and he didn’t want me wearing something I didn’t like. It has lasted, too.” She didn’t say it, but Gillian could almost hear her thinking that the rings had outlasted the husband.

“He gave me that cabinet over there,” Faith pointed to the corner china cabinet in the next room. “For our anniversary it was.” Her green eyes grew cloudy. “I forget which one, but I remember Donald saying it was my special place for my little china dolls. He sent them to me from overseas during the war.”

“Auntie Fay? Are you all right?”

The anxious tones of her authoritative boss jerked Gillian from her happy daydream of the past. It was strange to hear that note of concern in his voice, but moments later she decided she must have imagined it as he glared across the room at them.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, staring at Gillian. “Oh, never mind right now. Auntie Fay, the neighbors phoned me to say that there was smoke coming from the house. Are you all right?”

“Oh, I’m just fine, thank you, dear. A wee bit early for dinner, aren’t you?” Faith blinked up at him innocently as her hands tore the lettuce apart and placed it in a crystal bowl. “I’m afraid I haven’t got the table set yet.”

“There’s no rush,” he told her softly, his gray eyes gentle. “As you say, I am early. I’ll talk to her while I wait.” His head nodded at Gillian, who felt an immediate prickling of anger.

“Yes, I suppose you two lovebirds do have some catching up to do. Go ahead out on the balcony and relax. I remember young love. Why, your fiancée and I were just talking about it.” Her benign smile left Gillian smiling back, until Jeremy’s rough voice roused her.

“Yes,” he agreed, frowning severely as he grasped Gillian’s arm in his firm fingers and tugged her from the room. “I think Miss Langford and I definitely need to have a discussion.”

Obediently Gillian preceded him out the back door and sank onto one of the wicker chairs Faith had placed under the awning. She slipped off her new, black patent shoes and wiggled her feet in the fresh air as she summoned enough nerve up to glance at his forbidding face.

“Would you mind very much telling what in the dickens is going on in this nuthouse now? I mean since you are my fiancee and everything!”

His scathing tone rasped over her nerves, but there was no way he was intimidating her, Gillian decided. Once today was enough. She glared back at him, daring him to holler at her again.

“Well? Exactly when did we become engaged, Miss Langford?”

Gillian couldn’t help it, the grin popped to her mouth, splitting it wide with mirth. “Since I’m your fiancee and everything,” she murmured slyly, “don’t you think it’s about time you started calling me Gillian?” Laughter burst out of her at the stupefied stare on his face. “Well? Jeremy?” It was the first time she’d seen him dumbfounded, and it was very refreshing. “Honey?” She shook his arm teasingly.

A second later the grin was gone from her mouth as he tugged her into his arms and kissed her on the mouth. It wasn’t a passionate kiss, or even a very practiced one. In fact, Gillian suspected it had more to do with anger than anything.

Still and all, it shook her. She liked the feel of his firm lips against hers, she decided dazedly. And his arms were strong, but gentle, around her.

“Wh-what are you doing?” she stammered at last, staring up into his glittery blue eyes. They had a wariness about them that added to the unreality of the situation.

“Kissing my fiancée. Surely that’s allowed?”

Gillian stared at the transformation taking place in front of her. For once, the stern, haughty face had been replaced with a handsome, smiling countenance that drew her like a magnet. It was disconcerting to find that he affected her so. Clearly he wasn’t nearly so bothered by that kiss. His entire demeanor was calm, cool and collected. Carefully she extricated herself from his embrace and stepped back.

“Not this early in the relationship,” she murmured, peering up at him from between her lashes. When he said nothing, she pressed on. “Your aunt is a little confused,” she told him quietly. “I don’t know where she got the idea that we are a couple. Maybe it’s due to the fire.”

His face blanched.

“Then there really was a fire.” He smacked his hand on his pant leg. “Darn. I was afraid of that.” His eyes had dimmed to cool gray again. “What happened?”

“She was flambéing cherries jubilee, and I think they caught on fire, which in turn started the pot holder smoking. She had everything well under control when I arrived,” Gillian lied. “I merely opened the doors and windows to let the smoke out. No damage done.”

“No damage done?” Jeremy stared at her as if she’d grown two heads. “Miss Langford, really! My aunt almost burns her house down. While she’s inside, incidentally. She decides to cook cherries jubilee in the middle of the afternoon, and then, out of the blue, decides you’re my fiancée.” His eyes narrowed as he stared at her calmly nodding head. “I don’t think you are a very good influence on my aunt.” He shook his dark head vehemently. “Not at all.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Gillian said, chuckling at his stern look. “I got her uppity nephew engaged to me without even trying. I must be doing something right.”

The whole town was loony, Jeremy decided, staring at the vibrant young woman in front of him. Absently he noted the way her freckles drifted across her nose and cheeks.

It was her eyes that really got to him, though. They were like jade daggers, stabbing at him in angry little jabs as she bristled up in her chair.

“Oh, for goodness sake,” she complained at last. “Can’t you tell that your aunt’s a little confused? Cut her some slack, would you?”

Jeremy stared. “I beg your pardon?” he murmured, trying to figure out what she was talking about. “Cut some slacks?”

Gillian Langford sighed, pleating her trousers between her fingers as she stared back at him.

“How old are you, Mr. Nivens?”

“Thirty.” Jeremy was too shocked to stop his immediate response. “Why?”

“Don’t take this personally,” she told him with a teasing little grin that reinforced how beautiful Gillian Langford really was, “but you act like you’re from another planet. Where have you been for the past thirty years?”

“England,” he murmured at last. “At least for twenty-eight of them. I was raised in Oxford and attended school there. I was headmaster at a school nearby until this summer, when I returned to the States.” His brow creased. “Why?”

Gillian’s narrow shoulders shrugged. “Doesn’t matter,” she murmured, tugging her mane of reddish gold off her face. “Anyway, the point is, your aunt is a little mixed-up. For some reason she’s decided that you and I are engaged.”