Cecilia And The Stranger

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?”

Chapter Two

Because her new quarters lacked the generous wardrobe of the teacher’s room, during the next few hours Cecilia weeded out what essential items she would need for the next weeks, packing the rest to send home with Buck, who was under a strict oath of secrecy. Once Pendergast was gone, and it was her intention to make sure his departure was close at hand, she would send for her things again and be comfortably reinstated into her old room.

Dolly filled her in on her other duties; apparently, the “laundry girl” was also the cook’s helper, maid and woodcutter. But Cecilia didn’t mind hard work—not that she’d had much experience in that area—as long as it had some reward. In this case, the prize was her little room behind the kitchen.

The room, which had originally been built as a pantry, consisted of a tiny bed, a table for a washbasin and a half window overlooking the privy. Despite the heat, Cecilia immediately shut the window. So much for fresh air.

By the time dinner was served, she also discovered that the situation of her room actually put her in a double bind. The kitchen’s wood stove was not ten feet away, which, without the window for ventilation, turned her bedroom into something like an oven itself. After taking only ten minutes to freshen up for the meal, Cecilia felt a kindred spirit to the baked chicken lying on the center of the table.

When all was ready, Dolly looked proudly at her spread. She’d used her best china, which had been her mother’s, and had put little cordial glasses by each plate. “For after dinner,” Dolly explained in a prim low voice. “I thought we should welcome Mr. Pendergast properly.”

“Everything looks fine,” Cecilia said without enthusiasm. Greeting this particular guest properly, to her mind, would have entailed meeting him at the door with both barrels loaded.

Steps sounded on the staircase, as well as the ker-thlump footfall of Fanny Baker and her cane coming from the parlor, where the elderly widow spent most of her days. Jubal’s spinster cousin, Lucinda, quietly made her way in, her nose wrinkling nervously at the sight of the china. Lucinda was shy.

At the sound of approaching heavy footsteps, Cecilia hastily straightened her clothing and ran a smoothing palm over her hair, which she’d pulled in a high bun, much like Dolly’s, away from her neck. If only it wasn’t so hot! She would have felt much more confident meeting her adversary if she wasn’t half-wilted.

When Pendergast finally appeared, she was glad to note that he was wilted, too. Dust still showed on his brown suit, although it was obvious he’d made an effort to brush it off, and his hair was damp with sweat. He’d changed his shirt underneath that awful herringbone vest, which served to work Cecilia up to the proper level of annoyance.

More laundry.

“What a beautiful table, Mrs. Hudspeth,” Pendergast said with a gusto that surprised Cecilia. “I had no idea you were planning a feast for this evening.”

In Dolly’s modest parlor, Eugene Pendergast appeared much taller than Cecilia had remembered, and as much as she hated to admit it, he was nearly handsome. His thick brown hair had a rakish curl at the brow, if the word rakish could be used in context of the schoolmaster. Not only that, but his build was much more impressive than Cecilia had noticed before. This made her more suspicious still. A person didn’t develop muscles like that by reading books!

But more than anything else, his dark eyes captured her attention, eyes as dark as two glistening coals. Their gaze was intense, wary...and very much interested. A little shiver of awareness worked its way down her spine, but Cecilia wasn’t so overcome that she overlooked the tiny lines in the man’s weathered face, especially around those dark, fascinating eyes. Up close, it was clear the man had spent a great deal of his life in the outdoors.