Falling for the Teacher

Such strength in his arms. Like his brother.

Shivers coursed through her, stole her strength. She leaned against the wall, stared at the candle sconce across from her and waited for the memory to pass. She’d given up hoping it would go away.

“...in the morning.”

Cole. She held her breath and listened to the sound of his footfalls in the downstairs hallway. The door to the morning room closed. She gathered her courage and moved to grasp the top of the banister to lend strength to her shaking knees. “May I have a word with you, Mr. Aylward?”

He paused, turned and looked up at her. “In the sitting room?”

“This is fine.”

The dim light outlined his tall form at the bottom of the stairs. “I am not my brother, Miss Spencer. You’ve nothing to fear from me.”

How easily he discerned her thoughts. She tightened her grip on the banister and braced herself against the memories, the quivering that took her. “We will not speak of that, Mr. Aylward. I only wanted to express my appreciation for the care you have given my grandfather. And to tell you, again, that I intend to free you from that...service, as soon as possible.”

“You are going to hire someone to care for Manning?”

“I am going to hire someone to help with the physical labor involved. I will care for Poppa.”

“I see.” Lamplight flickered over the knit hat he pulled from his pocket. “I misjudged you, Miss Spencer. I didn’t think you were the sort of woman who would condemn a man who has done no wrong, nor go against her grandfather’s wishes.” His head dipped in a small bow and he stepped back from the stairs. “I will be here in the morning...and for as long as Manning wishes my help. Good evening.” He tugged his hat on his head and strode down the hall toward the dining room. The back door opened and closed.

How dare he make her the guilty one! She caught up her hems and ran to her bedroom, crossed to the window and watched Cole Aylward striding down the garden path toward the woods, the rising moon casting silver epaulets on his broad shoulders. Memories drove her from the window before he neared the trees and the entrance to the wooded path that led to her grandfather’s sawmill.

* * *

Cole glanced right and left, aware as never before of how the trees encroached upon the path, of their thick trunks and looming branches. He slowed his steps at the curve where it had happened, took a breath against the sudden clench of his stomach. He’d walked this path at least a hundred times, but now he’d seen her. That made it all different.

The sylvan depths drew his gaze, halted his steps. How easy it would be to steal silent and unseen from trunk to trunk in order to overtake someone walking along the path. Is that how Payne had done it?

He raised his arm and scrubbed his hand across his eyes, trying to rid himself of the image of the fear on Sadie’s face as she’d stood on the stairs looking down at him. Payne had caused that fear. Payne, who had been so pleasant and funny and kind. What had changed in his brother that he could do that to someone?

His gut churned. Bile surged into his throat. He fisted his hands and continued down the path toward Manning Townsend’s sawmill. If only he’d been here when the attack took place. Perhaps he could have prevented it somehow or at least found out what had caused Payne to do such a thing. He knew his brother’s habits, had hunted and fished with him. He could have tracked him down, talked him into staying and facing justice, helped him atone somehow. But Payne had already disappeared when he’d come to Pinewood to tell him their mother and father were dead, and Payne’s trail had been obliterated by the angry men of Pinewood who were searching the hills for him.

Cole climbed the steps to the sawmill deck and stepped under the shingled roof, walked by the silent saws and entered the attached office. He stepped behind the partition he’d built, jammed his hat onto one of the pegs he’d driven into the wall, shucked his shirt and hung it on another peg, then sat on the wood edge of his cot and tugged off his boots.

The horror and disgust, regret and guilt that had weighed so heavily on him when he’d learned of Payne’s actions had returned full force when he’d looked into Sadie Spencer’s eyes and now sat like a rock in his stomach—though why it should he didn’t understand. He’d stayed in Pinewood and tried to find Payne to bring him back to face justice in spite of the disgust and distrust of the irate villagers who’d watched his every move with suspicion. He’d trudged countless times to the outcropping of rock where the men said they’d lost all trace of Payne’s trail to see if he could find something they had missed. It wasn’t for lack of trying that he’d failed. He had no reason to feel guilty. But the way she’d looked at him...

He yanked off his socks, flung them over his boot tops, rose and snatched the soap and a towel from the make-do washstand. The rough puncheons scraped against his bare feet as he marched to the end of the sawmill deck, dropped the towel and dove into the deep pool formed by the stone dam. The shock of the icy mountain-stream water drove all thought from his mind.

He soaped his hair, threw the soap up onto the deck, did a surface dive and swam upstream underwater to let the current from the overflow carry the soap film away.

If only it could carry away his troubled thoughts that had resurfaced. He kicked his trouser-clad legs, dug hard and deep with his arms and circled around the pond until his shoulders and arms screamed for mercy and his lungs burned for air. What sort of depravity coursed through his brother’s veins that he could look at a woman as delicately beautiful, as quiet and refined as Sadie Spencer and then—

He arched and dove deep, swam to the center of the gently rippling water, flipped over onto his back and stared up at the stars, bright against the dark sky. Peaceful evening sounds filled the night as the water lapped over his chest, but the fear he’d been carrying around for four years wouldn’t leave. Wash me clean, Lord, wash me clean. Don’t let that violence and depravity be in me.

Bats darted and swooped overhead in erratic patterns as they snatched insects from the air. An owl hooted. Another answered. Something rustled through the brush and grasses on the bank. Something big.

A she-bear and her two cubs ambled toward the water. Last year’s cubs, by the size of them. He moved his arms beneath the surface to stay afloat but stationary without causing a ripple and hoped the cubs weren’t in the mood for a swim. Mama Bear reared up on her hind legs and stared out over the pond, snuffled.

His moonlight swim was over.

He drew in air, sank out of sight beneath the water and stroked hard for the deck ladder, leaving the bears behind. If only he could outdistance the fears that plagued him.

* * *

She strolled along the path, humming softly, the basket of berries she’d picked swinging at her side.

Payne Aylward stepped out of the woods onto the path ahead, his tall, broad-shouldered frame large in the sunlight filtering through the leafy treetops. The glitter in his dark gray eyes frightened her. She stopped.

He smiled, his teeth white against his black beard. “I been watching you, Sadie.” He stepped forward, reached for her.

* * *

Sadie bolted upright gasping for air, her heart pounding, her body quaking. Moonlight flowed in the windows, bathed the objects in the dark room in silvery radiance. She stared at the blanket chest at the foot of her bed, the dark blue-and-white cross and crown woven coverlet that had warmed her every night of her childhood. “It’s all right. It was the nightmare. You’re safe.”

Her whisper trembled on the warm night air. She clutched the fallen sheet, slipped beneath it and curled into a tight ball. She wanted so desperately to believe that was true, but how could she? Cole Aylward was here. Cole Aylward. Payne’s brother.

A shudder shook her. She tugged the sheet tighter around her neck and roamed her gaze over the familiar objects in the room to hold at bay the face that hovered at the edge of her fear.

Chapter Three

Sadie left her grandmother in the kitchen discussing the day’s meals with Gertrude, carried the stack of washed dishes to the butler’s pantry, put them in their proper place on the shelves and continued through to the dining room. Her stomach was settling—not that she’d been able to do more than choke down a few bites of breakfast. But the knots from having Cole Aylward seated at the table were slowly coming undone.

To come downstairs after the sleepless hours haunted by the nightmare made more powerful by her return and to see him there...she paused and pressed her hands to her stomach as the knots twisted tight again. Cole’s likeness to his brother unnerved her. And try as she would, she could not ignore his presence—the man dominated a room. She would be thankful when he was gone, though it was clear after last night that he would defy her request. It had to be her grandfather who told him to leave. She would have to find a reason.

She lifted the lamps off the mantel in the dining room and carried them back to the table beneath the window in the butler’s pantry. She’d learned long ago that plunging into work the morning after having the nightmare was the best way to bury her fears. Being in control of something drove away the feeling of helplessness—and this morning that helpless feeling was overwhelming. And not only from the nightmare.

It pained her to see her grandfather’s efforts to cope with his infirmities and know there was nothing she could do to make him better. She removed the lamps’ glass chimneys, wiped them with a soft cloth, then turned up the wicks and picked up the silver trimmers. And Nanna...

“I’ve been studying on—” The scrape of a chair against the porch floor drowned out the rest of the words.

Cole. She’d thought he’d gone. She leaned toward the window and peered to her left. Her grandfather sat in a rocker on the porch and Cole Aylward stood leaning against the railing. She drew back lest he see her and took a breath to calm the pounding of her heart the mere sight of the man provoked.

“...best sit here on the porch. That sky doesn’t look too promising, and it smells like rain.”

Her pulse skipped. If they talked on the porch, perhaps she could discover why Cole was being so helpful and—

“What are you doing, sweeting?”

She started, jerked the trimmer handles together and snipped off too much of the wick on the first lamp. “I’m cleaning the lamps from the dining room mantel, Nanna.” She tossed the charred piece of wick into the small trash bucket on the table, adjusted the wick and replaced the cleaned globe, straining to hear the conversation taking place outside. Her grandfather’s halting words were difficult to understand, and Cole Aylward’s deep voice was hard to hear, but she dared not open the window lest they become aware that she was eavesdropping.

“What holds your interest?” Her grandmother frowned and moved into the pantry.

“Nothing, Nanna.” She quickly cleaned and trimmed the second lamp and stepped away from the table. “I’m finished.”

“What cost...buy...one?”

Buy what? She tilted her head toward the window.

“I’ll help you carry the lamps, Sadie.” Her grandmother bustled to her side, lifted one of the lamps in her small, pudgy hands and moved toward the doorway to the dining room. “Come along.”

She snatched up the other lamp and followed, wishing she could have waited to hear what her grandfather was considering buying. What had Cole Aylward suggested? What was he after?

Her grandmother set the lamp on the fireplace, turned it just so, stepped back and looked up at her. “I’m so glad you’ve returned.”

The smile brightening her nanna’s dear face brought a surge of guilt. She should have come home years ago. Willa and Callie had both written of how much her grandmother missed her, of the sadness in her eyes when she spoke of her. Yet she had let her cowardice keep her away. How selfish she was. Well, no more. She was home now and she would make it up to her grandmother. She set the lamp she held on the other end of the mantel, then tugged the bodice of her gown down into place at her waist.

“Turn it so that the knob is on the right, Ivy.”

Ivy? She caught her breath and turned.

Her grandmother looked up at her, a mild rebuke in her eyes. “I’m not scolding, Ivy. But I should think that after all these years in our service you could remember that little detail.”

Nanna didn’t know her. Something awful took her by the throat, squeezed life from her heart.

“Well, gracious! There’s no reason for tears, Ivy. I said I wasn’t cross with you.” Her grandmother reached out and patted her hand. “Now wipe the tears from your eyes and come along. We’ve the lamps in Mama and Papa’s room to tend to.”

* * *

“It’s something to think about, Manning.” Cole yanked his gaze from the dining room window—for the third time. Or, to be more accurate, from the slender, shapely young woman he could see through the glass.

“Cost...ly.”

He frowned, braced himself with his extended left leg, shifted his weight onto his right hip and rested his thigh along the railing. “Yes. But no one else in the area has a clapboard machine. I think it will pay for itself with the first few loads we ship downriver.”

The fading brown eyes took on a speculative gleam. Manning swept his hand through the air. “Big mar...ket.”

The show of enthusiasm brought a smile to his lips. It seemed he might have found a way to get the afflicted man excited and involved in his businesses again. “Very big. I’ve been doing some letter writing. There’s no other supplier of machine-milled clapboard from Olville to Buffalo. And none I could find a trace of from here to Pittsburgh.”

He twisted front and leaned forward. “You’d be the first, Manning. The other timber companies will still be riving clapboard by hand, and you know shaving them clean is a slow process. They wouldn’t be able to compete with your time or price.”

He stared down at his hands dangling in the open space between his legs. Big hands. Strong and powerful from felling trees and making shakes and clapboard. Payne had big, powerful hands, too. He glanced back up at the window and watched Sadie turn from placing a lamp on the fireplace mantel. So lithe and graceful. So unable to defend herself.

Stop it! He clenched his jaw so hard the muscle along the bone twitched. He couldn’t throw away four years of effort and hard work because he felt guilty for something that was not his doing.

Lightning flashed white brilliance through the air. Thunder rumbled a warning of things to come. The approaching storm seemed an ominous omen. He pushed off the railing, looked up at the darkened sky and turned to Manning. “I’d best take you inside before the storm hits.”

“No.” Manning’s face worked; his eyes flashed as brilliant as had the lightning. His good hand fisted on his knee. “Stay here. Like...storms.”

“All right. If it gets too bad, I’ll come back and take you in.” He turned toward the steps at another flash of lightning. “You think about the clapboard machine, and we’ll discuss it more tonight.”

Raindrops angled down from the black clouds rolling in, splatted in a halfhearted warning on the wooden steps, made dark wet splotches on the slate stones of the garden path. “Looks like this is going to be a soaker.” He stole another look at the window. Sadie was not in sight. Disappointment pricked him. He frowned, tugged the collar of his shirt up to cover the back of his neck, trotted down the steps and set off down the path.

* * *

Lightning flashed through the room. Thunder rumbled. Sadie replaced the glass chimney on the lamp she’d lit, glanced at her grandmother serenely dusting the serving table for the third time and started for the door. “I’ll see if Mr. Aylward is still here to bring—”

“Sadie.” She halted, startled by the ring of authority in her grandmother’s voice. “Cole Aylward is our good friend. You are to call him by his given name, as you do Daniel. Do you understand?”

Did she mean it? Or was she lost in her own world? She searched her grandmother’s eyes for that opaque look she was beginning to recognize and nodded. “Yes, of course, Nanna, if that is what you wish.”

“It is. Cole doesn’t take you off on dangerous adventures the way Daniel does. Now, you’d best hold the door for Cole. He’ll be bringing Manning inside.”

She nodded, swallowed back tears at the way her grandmother slipped in and out of the present, wished with her whole heart she could help her. Lightning flashed again. She opened the porch door, then stared agape. “He’s gone.”

Irritation flared. She stepped out onto the porch, heard the soft splat of raindrops, felt the freshness of a quickening breeze on her face and hands. How would she get her grandfather inside? She cast a sidelong glance at him, worrying over the problem. Perhaps the rockers would slide...

Her grandfather chuckled. His eyes twinkled with humor, crinkled at the corners. Her own mouth pulled up into a grin, tugged there by the chortling sound that accompanied so many of her happy childhood memories.

“Can’t...do it. Too...heavy...for you.”

Her amusement fled. “Don’t worry, Poppa. I’ll get you inside someway.” She cast an angry glance toward the garden path and stepped toward him. “Mr. Ayl—” she glanced at her grandmother standing in the doorway “—Cole never should have left you out—”

“Stay here!”

She stopped and stared at her grandfather, taken aback by his sharp tone. He reached out his good hand and took hold of hers.

“Not...child.” His face worked; his hand squeezed hers. “Told Cole...leave me. Like...storms.”

Not child. How humiliating for a proud, independent man like her grandfather to have to accept the care, the control of others. She swallowed hard and pushed back a tendril of hair the wind had plucked free of the thick coil of hair at her crown. “I’m sorry, Poppa. I should have asked your wishes.”

“You keep Poppa company, Sadie. I’ve work to do. Don’t go off the porch now.” Her grandmother smiled and stepped back into the dining room.

She stared at the closed door, aching with the need to have her grandmother and grandfather well, to have everything the way it was. “I remember, now that you’ve mentioned it, how much you like storms, Poppa. It used to frighten me when you would stand out here on the porch with the lightning flashing and the thunder crashing.” She turned from the door and forced a smile onto her face. “I was usually huddled up on the settee with Nanna.”

He tugged her closer, laid his cheek against her hand. “I...miss her...too.”

“Oh, Poppa...” She sank to her knees, placed her head against his knee and snagged her lip with her teeth to keep from crying. “Is there nothing Dr. Palmer can do to help Nanna get better? Can’t he give her some sort of medicine, or—” Her throat constricted, closed off the flow of words.

Her grandfather shook his head, his mouth working. “Some...thing in her...mind shuts...off...now and then. Doc can’t...stop it. Sorry, Sa...die.” He rested his big, work-worn hand on her hair, and she closed her eyes and imaged him whole and well and for a moment her world righted itself.

The wind gusted, snatching at her skirts. A door banged. Banged again. Her grandfather tensed. She looked up.

“Stable...door.” A frown knit his gray brows together. “Wind break...it.”

“I’ll go close it, Poppa.” She rose and shook out her long skirts.

“Lightning...”

She pushed out a small laugh and shook her head. “I’m not afraid of thunderstorms anymore.” It isn’t nature that hurts you, it’s men. “I’ll be right back.” She lifted her hems and ran down the steps, veered left onto the path that led to the stable. The wind blew her skirts against her legs. Raindrops spattered on her hair and shoulders, chilled her bowed neck.

She grabbed hold of the stable door with both hands and tugged with all of her strength to pull it closed against the rising force of the wind. It moved after a momentary lull, and she planted her feet and backed toward the gaping stable doorway, hauling the big, heavy door with her.

Lightning snapped, sizzling to the earth in a yellow streak. Sulfur stung her nose. Thunder clapped and the rain came—a wild, stinging deluge driven by the wind that snatched the door from her grasp. “Oh!” She ducked her head and jumped inside.

Raindrops drummed on the shakes overhead. The wind whistled across the open doorway and banged the door back against the building again. She stared in dismay at the heavy fall of water pouring off the roof to splash against the ground and tried to work up enough courage to go out and try again to drag that heavy door closed. And then it didn’t matter.

A large figure loomed in the opening, then pulled the door closed, shutting out the splashing curtain of water. Lightning flashed through the windows in a watery shimmer, shone on the rain-slick rubber jacket and glittered on the wet, black beard and dark gray eyes of Cole Aylward.

Chapter Four

Ice spilled down her spine, flowed into her arms and legs and froze her in place. Sadie stared at Cole Aylward, saw the image that haunted her nights. His black beard bobbed and his lips moved, but no words penetrated the glacial wall of fear.

“Did you hear me, Miss Spencer? Your poppa sent me to bring you to the house.”

His raised voice crumbled the ice, broke through her numbed senses. Poppa? How dare he use her pet name for her grandfather! A quaking took her, so strong, so furious in intensity her long skirts shook. “Don’t you call him that!”

“Look, Miss Spencer—” He took a step toward her. A towering shadow in the dim light.

She gasped and jerked back, her spurt of defiance dead.

He jolted to a halt and a heavy breath escaped him.

Light flashed on something in his hand. She caught a glimpse of a knob on the object he held before he turned and leaned it against the wall, shrugged out of his rubber jacket and tossed it on top of a nearby feed chest.

No, Almighty God, no! Not again. Her heart thudded. She stared at his hands, raised hers to cover her arms where his brother’s hard fingers had dug into her flesh as he threw her to the ground. Memory froze her lungs. A prickly warmth flooded her body, and the room swam in a slow, sickening circle, the edges turning dark, closing in.

Lightning snapped, startled her from the encroaching darkness. Thunder shook the building and rattled the windowpanes. She shook her head to clear away the fuzziness, forced strength into her quivering legs and edged backward, not daring to take her gaze off Cole.

“I came back because the storm worsened and I wanted to get Manning inside before he got soaked by the driving rain. He sent me after you—told me to tell you your poppa had sent me so you wouldn’t be frightened. That was his word, not mine.”

Did he think her a fool? If that were true, why would he remove his rain jacket? She needed a weapon. Something. Anything! She stretched her right hand backward, groped through the space behind her.

“Obviously, that didn’t work.” He turned toward her, lifted his hands.

She whirled to run, spotted a hay fork and snatched it from its place in the corner then spun back, the wooden tines extended toward him. Rain beat on the roof. Lightning flickered, and thunder rumbled. The horse in the stall behind her snorted and pawed at the floor.

Tension quivered on the air. Cole stared at her, silent and still, slowly tugged his shirt collar up around his neck and lowered his hands. “I’ve told you, I am not my brother, Miss Spencer. I abhor what he did to you. But I am at a loss as to how to convince you of that. Perhaps time is the only answer.” His voice, deep and quiet, blended with the drumming overhead. He turned, gestured toward his rain jacket. “That should keep you dry. Please hurry back to the house. Your grandmother is worried about you.”