The Courtship

She took the bucket outside, filled it at the pump near the horse trough in front of the hotel across the street, then lugged it into the mercantile. Mr. Mercer had offered to heat water for her on the potbellied stove next to the candy counter. While she waited, she rolled up the sleeves of her high-necked white waist and began sweeping down the walls.

Debris, dirt particles, even what looked like decayed bird droppings rained down on her. She rolled the sleeves back down to protect her arms. As she worked, a thick yellow dust rose and hung in the air like smoke. It made her cough, and her eyes began to smart, but she gritted her teeth and worked steadily until Mr. Mercer poked his head in the doorway.

“Here’s yer water, Miz Davis. ’Bout to boil, it was, so watch yerself, it’s awful hot.” He plunked the brimming bucket onto the floor.

Jane leaned on her broom to catch her breath. “Thank you kindly, sir.”

The storekeeper shook his balding head. “Saddest thing I ever did see,” he murmured.

Jane took his comment to heart. “I find I am quite surprising myself. It is hard work, but it just wants a bit of pluck and dash and it will all come straight.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that, ma’am. I mean the thought of a lady turnin’ my feed store into a dressmakin’ shop. Too ladyfied for the likes of Dixon Falls.”

Jane stared at the wiry man in denim overalls standing before her. “Ladyfied? Why, you have ladies here in Dixon Falls, do you not? Ladies who wear dresses?”

“We got women. Not ladies. Not like you ’n yer ma, that is.”

Jane gave him her warmest smile, then realized he couldn’t possibly see it under her handkerchief mask. “Oh, we are all pretty much the same under the skin, don’t you think?”

“I dunno, ma’am,” he mumbled as he turned away. “I jes’ dunno.”

“Well I do,” Jane announced to the dust swirling in his wake. “Women are women. We all wear corsets and underdrawers and shimmies and petticoats. And dresses,” she added. “Handsome dresses that I intend to conjure from pattern pieces and my own imagination.”

With that, she unwrapped the square of lye soap, drew out the kitchen paring knife she’d brought in her pocket, and began to shave slivers of soap into the bucket of hot water. She swirled her broom to and fro, and when the suds bubbled to the top, she plunged the straw in up to the stitching and sloshed the soapy implement back and forth along the length of the wall.

Droplets of dingy water and soapsuds splatted onto her clothes, and her hair, neatly pinned up this morning, began to loosen and now straggled about her face. She felt sodden, and her fingernails were so dirt-encrusted she could not bear to look at them. She could just hear Mama’s reproachful voice. “Jane Charlotte, what have you been doin’ with your hands!” Even if her mother had a voice that was always soft and regulated, she brooked no mistreatment of hair or skin; such a transgression was worse than disobedience and elicited as sharp a criticism as if she had volunteered to spy for the Yankees.

Oh, well, it couldn’t be helped. She’d paid off all of Papa’s debts first thing this morning; by this evening, she would have the place for her business. She positively must be a success. She had to repay Mr. Wilder’s bank loan or suffer a fate worse than death—marriage to That Man. That Yankee.

She worked through two more buckets of hot water before the walls and floors were cleaned to her satisfaction. She would not open a business in dingy quarters! Her back and shoulders felt as if she’d been yoked like an ox to a Conestoga wagon. Every muscle in her neck screamed. Even her derriere was sore.

By the time she got around to washing the front window, she was so tired her legs would no longer support her weight. She sank down onto her knees, dipped a clean rag into her still-warm water bucket, and addressed the lower half of the expanse of glass.

And that was how Rydell found her. He tapped on the open door and lifted his foot to step over the threshold when her voice stopped him in his tracks.

“You get one speck of dirt on my clean floor and I’ll dump this mop bucket over your head.”

Her back was toward him, but he realized she could see his reflection in the glass. He eased back onto the boardwalk step. “I brought your supplies from home,” he called.

She scooted around on her bottom to face him.

“What are you talking about? I haven’t sent for anything yet.”

Rydell caught his breath. She was filthy from head to toe, her hair bedraggled, her once-white waist half pulled out of her water-splotched blue skirt. A ridiculously feminine-looking embroidered handkerchief, folded into a triangle, covered the bottom half of her face. She looked like an angel-bandit. A dirt-streaked and very weary angel-bandit.

He resisted the impulse to scoop her bodily from the floor and carry her off to his private suite at the hotel. And a bathtub.

Her eyes flashed fire. “Have you come to gloat over my difficulties?”

“Believe me, Miss Davis, I would not gloat over a lady in your current…situation.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

Rydell pushed down the chuckle that threatened. “Lefty Springer got bucked off a horse this morning. I came in his place.”

Jane glared at him. “To do what? Laugh at me? I must be a pretty sight, all wet and dirty and so tired I could…” She stopped abruptly as her voice wobbled.

He tore his gaze from her face and studied the floor instead. She was tuckered out, close to breaking. He had predicted as much, but now that it was before him, he wanted to spare her pride. He concentrated on the toe of his boot.

“I came to help, Jane. Lefty gave his word, and I back him up. Always have. His leg’s hurt, so I came instead. Your sewing machine and some boxes of patterns and such are in the wagon out front.”

Jane looked up at him in silence. The blue eyes under the dark eyebrows grew shiny. “I do thank you, Mr. Wilder.” Her voice sounded choked up. “And I apologize. I am so tired I hardly know what I am saying.”

“Rafe Mercer’ll help me unload. You ready for your things?”

Jane tossed her cleaning rag into the bucket and got to her feet. “How did you know what to bring?”

“I asked your mother. She was very helpful.”

“Mama? Why, she hardly knows where she is, let alone where I am or what I am doing.”

Rydell nodded. “I think she understands more than you think. What’s important to her is you. I convinced her I was helping you.”

She shook her head. “That does not exactly make sense, Mr. Wilder. It is to your advantage that I fail in this venture. Why in the world would you offer help?”

Rydell took a single step toward her, reached out and pulled down the handkerchief mask. “Been askin’ myself that question all morning.”

“And what is your answer to that very question?” Her voice had steadied, but it dropped to a whisper, whether from emotion or exhaustion he couldn’t begin to guess.

“Damn—darned if I know,” he admitted. The scent of lavender floating in the air made his insides ache. Oh, God, he wanted to…

Before he knew what he was doing, he closed his fingers around her upper arm.

She didn’t move, just looked at him. He saw fear, and then something else in her eyes. Unable to help himself, he pulled her toward him, lifted his other hand to her shoulder, and bent his head. When his mouth found hers, he lost all track of time.

Her lips were warm and tasted of salt. He’d never known such excruciating sweetness. Instinctively he probed for more, then broke free. He didn’t think he could stop if he didn’t call a halt now.

“You’re right, this doesn’t exactly make sense,” he breathed against her temple. “No sense at all.”

Chapter Four

“No,” Jane said in a faraway voice. “It most certainly does not make sense.” She wanted her words to come out crisp and proper-sounding. Instead, she sounded as if she just woke up this morning and wasn’t sure where she was. His mouth on hers had felt simply heavenly, as if the sun and all the stars tumbled down and kindled a glow inside her.

Merciful Lord, she must not feel that way about it! After all, Mr. Wilder had taken a great liberty. She should be outraged instead. She snapped open her eyelids.

“If I had the strength to lift my arm, I would demonstrate how a lady responds to such an ungentlemanly assault.”

He said nothing, and with every passing second she became more aware of his arms about her. “Kindly unhand me, Mr. Wilder. I will then proceed as if your grievous action never took place. Back home in Marion County, such behavior would likely cost you your life.”

Rydell lifted his arms away from her. “You’re not in Marion County, Jane. Out here, nobody’s gonna challenge a man to a duel just because he lost his head and kissed a lady without her permission.”

Jane sniffed.

“Next time,” he said with a grin, “I’ll ask permission.”

She took an instinctive step backward. “You will do no such thing! This is a wild, unprincipled country, and I’ll have you know—”

“It is that,” he acknowledged. “But it’s getting more civilized every day. Got a school, now. A hotel and two churches. Even a Ladies Helpful Society.”

She would have stalked out the door, but the mop bucket and broom sat in her path; she felt so whirly-headed she didn’t think she could walk straight enough to get past them.

“I apologize, Miss Davis. Got carried away by the smell of your handkerchief, I guess.”

She looked him in the eye. “See that it never, never happens again.”

To her surprise, he turned his back on her. “I’ll bring in your sewing machine.” He removed his jacket and began rolling up the sleeves of the starched white shirt he wore underneath. His bare forearms looked so…so…unlike Papa’s. Papa’s hands and his short, plump arms had always been milk-white.

A funny tingle went up the back of her neck. This man’s skin was sun-bronzed, and sinews rippled underneath. Indecent. No proper gentleman in the South ever bared his arms in the presence of a lady.

He grabbed up the mop bucket and moved through the open doorway onto the board sidewalk.

“Never,” she repeated into the silence. Her breathing steadied.

In the next moment he reappeared, balancing her sewing cabinet on one shoulder.

Her head pounded. Her legs trembled. Oh, she wished he would just go away! Go do whatever bankers did at the end of the day.

This is ludicrous, Jane Charlotte. You’d think she had never scrubbed a floor in her life! Here she was shaking with exhaustion, her muscles refusing to obey her commands. And it was all his fault.

“Never,” she repeated under her breath.

“Where do you want this?”

Jane jerked. “What? Oh. There, by the window.”

He bent his knees and tipped his broad shoulder forward. The cabinet legs clunked onto the scrubbed plank floor, and he shoved it gently against the wall and stepped away. She pounced on it with a clean rag, flicking off the veil of dust on top and refusing to look at him.

“Here’s your pattern box,” he announced after his next trip out to the wagon.

She desperately wanted him to stop. She would not be beholden to him.

“And the iron and your button jar. Didn’t know it took so many things just to sew a dress.”

“Didn’t your mother sew?” she snapped. She regretted the words the instant they passed her lips. From what she remembered about Rydell Wilder, he’d lived on his own, without mother or father, ever since he’d come to Dixon Falls as a boy.

“No,” he said, his voice quiet.

Oh, bother. She’d been rude and she was sorry. But she didn’t want his help. His very presence in the tiny store made her thoughts tumble like the bits of colored glass in Aunt Carrie’s brass kaleidoscope. He had touched her. Kissed her. And now he acted as if nothing unusual had occurred.

But it had. She couldn’t get it out of her mind. His mouth had pressed hers, and a sweet, silken warmth kindled in her belly. Back in Marion County, she would be hopelessly compromised by such an event. Out here in this wilderness they called Oregon, one pair of lips touching another didn’t carry the same significance. What an uncivilized place!

It would certainly matter to Papa. Papa would have Mr. Wilder horsewhipped or betrothed within the hour. But Papa was gone.

And so the significance of being kissed by Mr. Wilder, or lack of significance, is up to you, Jane Charlotte.

Oh, she couldn’t think a bit straight. She was so tired she knew if she took a single step she would totter just like Granny Beaudry. Her grandmother had been near eighty when they left Marion County; at the moment, Jane felt nearly as old and just as frail. She’d worked too long without stopping to rest. Had eaten nothing since her meager breakfast of toast and tea.

Had felt decidedly wobbly ever since Rydell Wilder had kissed her. All she wanted to do now was get him out of the store, away from her.

“I will arrange the chairs and the dressmaker’s mannequin later,” she announced. “Thank you, Mr. Wilder, and good afternoon.”

He straightened. “Whatever you say, Miss Davis. Lefty’ll come by tomorrow, see if you need anything. He’s pretty handy, even if he has only one good arm. Sensitive about it, though.”

“It will be a relief to have him instead of…I mean—”

Rydell chuckled. “Got your brain tied up some, I’d say.”

Jane sucked in a quick breath. “Whatever do you mean?”

“All of a sudden, your tongue doesn’t quite know which way to flap.” He grinned at her. “That’s not like you.”

“Just what gives you a harum-scarum idea like that?”

“Instinct, I guess. Woman savvy. Either you don’t like me…” His grin widened. “Or my kissing you meant something.”

Two thoughts collided in her brain at the same instant. One, she hated him. Two, she liked the kiss. “I believe,” she said with all the ice she could muster in her tone, “the former statement will suffice to explain why I want you to depart before I—”

“Talk plain English, Jane. This is the frontier, not a parlor.”

“Out,” she snapped. She snatched up the broom and whacked it across his knees. “Out!” Fury gave her the strength for two more blows before he backed out the doorway, still grinning. She heard his lazy laughter as he climbed into the wagon and rattled off down the street.

Jane leaned against the broom handle to steady her shaking body. Even if she was a lady, the next time that man kissed her, or touched her, or even looked at her sideways, she would kill him! She had no time for such nonsense; she had work to do. Dresses to sew. A loan to pay back.

She propped the broom in the corner, swiped her dust rag over the sewing cabinet one last time, and surveyed the rudimentary beginnings of her new life. Rough, uncultured town and Mr. Rydell Wilder be damned. She would succeed or she would die trying.

“You mean you jes’ grabbed her and bussed her, right there in front of the store window? Lord love ya, Dell, you’re gonna scare the bejeesus outta the lady.”

Rydell watched his friend hobble to the potbellied stove in the corner and splash more hot coffee into his mug. “She didn’t act scared, Lefty. She acted more like she’d been poleaxed. Truth is, I don’t know exactly what came over me.”

“You’re the one that’s poleaxed. What were you thinkin’ of, fer God’s sake?”

Rydell shifted on the hard wooden chair, the only available seat in the tidy one-room cabin Lefty Springer called home. The older man occupied the neatly made-up cot on the opposite wall.

“I wasn’t thinking.”

“Well, I guess not, son! Like I said, all you have to do is stand still and wait. Don’t push her—ladies like Miz Jane may look soft, but they can be stubborn as a mule and twice as skittish.”

Rydell sipped the black sludge his friend called coffee and nodded in silence.

“Somethin’s eatin’ at you, Dell. I seen it right off.”

Again Rydell nodded. He’d fought his way to acceptance, and then respectability, in this small, close-minded town, overcome his background, his lack of education and polished manners. It had been a long, hard pull. He’d worn patched britches that were too short for his long legs, learned to spell and do sums with the younger children and been ridiculed by the older ones, watched through the hotel dining room window to learn proper table manners.

What bothered him was not that he hadn’t succeeded. He had. He’d lived in the tiny shack down by the river and eaten beans and biscuits for ten long years, worked hard, and saved every last penny. Now he owned the bank, dressed in suits that fit, ate whatever he wanted. The townspeople had begun to overlook his hard-scrabble beginnings, began to patronize his bank, even hint that their daughters were unmarried.

The only thing his life lacked now was Jane, and that was the problem.

“Well?” Lefty clicked his thumbnail against the tin cup balanced on his left knee.

Rydell met the older man’s sharp blue eyes. No use hedging to Lefty. He’d always seen right to the core of a man.

Rydell exhaled. “To be honest, I see something in myself I’m not sure I like.”

Lefty’s bushy gray eyebrows waggled. “Yeah? What?”

“I guess I’m afraid that something I’ve worked hard for in this town might slip away.”

“Why would it?” Lefty snapped. “Hell, kid, half the town borrows money from your bank to pay the other half fer somethin’ or other, and pays you back interest for the privilege. I told you at the start, it was a good idea. You ain’t got a thing to worry about ’cept where you’re gonna build a house for Miz Jane.”

Rydell worried his forefinger around the rim of his coffee mug. “What if there’s more to it? See, inside I still feel like maybe I don’t belong here among all these decent, respectable folks.”

“’Cuz of your pa, is that it? Why he never gave you his name?”

“Partly.”

“Well, spit it out, son. I’ve been cooped up here a day and a half with a swole-up knee and I’m gettin’ hungry for a hotel dinner.”

Rydell smiled in spite of himself. Lefty always had a hard time when he couldn’t move around much. Seemed to remind him of that Army hospital when he lost his arm.

“I never knew who my pa was. Whether he was a good man, or a card sharp. An honorable man or a thief.”

“So,” the older man said, heaving his weight off the cot. “You’re not so sure who you are, izzat it?”

“Partly.”

“Partly! Lordy, Dell, you’d a been a good lawyer. You gonna string this out ’til the dining room closes? Tell me the other part and let’s eat!”

Rydell stood up and set his cup in Lefty’s spotless dry sink. “The other part is this: The man who marries Jane Davis will automatically be respected.”

“Shore will. So?”

“Even if that man turns out to have a horse thief as kin, having Jane as a wife would protect him.”

“Yup. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is that it doesn’t work both ways. Such a man couldn’t protect Jane in the same way. Coming from a family like hers, being associated with him would ruin her.”

Lefty clapped his good arm on Rydell’s shoulder. “Son, I’ve known you since you was sixteen and so skinny-ribbed and knob-kneed you looked more like a baby moose than a man. And I’ve watched you fall for Miz Jane like a felled tree and moon for her these ten years while you turned yourself inside out to grow up and get yerself established.”

“That obvious, huh?” Rydell grinned at the older man.

“Plain as a duck’s bill to me, though I doubt anyone else cottoned on to it. You always were good at keepin’ secrets.”

Rydell flicked a glance at Lefty’s face. How much did the old man know?

“You’re growed up now, Dell. You’re a finelookin’ feller with half the gals in Douglas County sweet on ya. What the hell else do you want? You want to marry Miz Jane, you go ahead and marry her. If she’ll have you.”

A fifty-pound lead weight rolled off Rydell’s chest. “Should have been a lawyer yourself, Lefty. You talk just like you know all the answers.”

“Ain’t the answers that’s important, it’s the questions. An’ the question here is, what the devil’s got into you? No matter about yer pa, you’ve got everything to gain by marryin’ Miz Jane. Now come on, so’s I can get some supper before my stomach caves in.”

Rydell shortened his stride so Lefty could keep pace with him with his injured knee. With every step he took between the old man’s cabin and the Excelsior Hotel he turned the matter over and over in his mind.

He wanted Jane. Had always wanted her, ever since that day in the schoolyard. He used to walk out to their place on the hill after it got dark and listen to her play the piano. The rippling notes floated like pearls on the warm air, and he stood for hours outside the trim white picket fence and gazed at a world he knew nothing about. A world that excluded him. He wanted her anyway.

He stepped off the walkway and started toward the hotel, then stopped dead in the middle of the street.

“Whatza matter?” Lefty complained.

“Nothing. Everything.”

His dream was within reach, now. He wasn’t going to give up. Nothing on the face of the earth was going to stop him.

Jane dragged herself up the hill to her house as the red-orange sun slipped behind the mountain tops. Just as she reached for the front gate latch, a tall, wellbuilt Negro man stepped out onto her porch.

“Miz Jane?”

She stared at him. She’d seen him about town, but she didn’t know his name.

“It’s Mose, ma’am. Mose Freeman. The blacksmith.”

“Oh, yes. What are you doing here?”

“Was jus’ walkin’ home past your house and I smelled somethin’ funny, like hot iron. I know that smell, see, and I knock and I come on in cuz sure as God made sweet corn, I smell fire.”

“Fire! Is Mama—?”

“Well, ma’am, your momma, Miz Davis, she boil all the water outta the teakettle, an’ it settin’ on the stove glowing red. So I dunk it into a dishpan of water. No harm done, Miz Jane.”

“Oh, thank you, Mose. Mr. Freeman. Thank you so very much!”

The soft brown skin of his face crinkled into a smile. “You better go on in, cuz your momma sayin’ how she wants her tea.”

“Yes, of course,” Jane managed over the tight feeling in her throat. “I am indeed grateful.”

With a wave, the man was off down the road, and Jane opened the front door.

“Jane Charlotte, is that you?”

“Yes, Mama.” She smelled something sharp and smoky in the air. The scorched teakettle.

Her mother’s silvery voice echoed from the parlor. “Abner came to make tea, but Ah don’t believe it’s ready just yet.”

“It wasn’t Abner, Mama.” She moved into the room. “You haven’t laid eyes on Abner since we left home. Or Odelia or Aunt Carrie, either. That was Mose Freeman, the blacksmith.”

“The blacksmi…What have you been doin’? Your hair looks all windblown, and your skirt! My stars, that hem is simply filthy!”

Jane gazed at her mother’s slight frame curled up under a crocheted afghan on the settee. “I told you about my shop, Mama, remember? My dressmaking shop?”

Her mother looked up, a blankness in her pale blue eyes. “Why, no, dear. Tell me all about it while we have our tea. Abner? Ab—?”

“Mama.” Jane felt her heart squeeze tight. Oh, Mama, please. Please don’t leave me like this.

She turned away and forced a lightness into her voice. “I’ll fetch the tea, Mama. And then I’ll make us a nice supper.”

And then I will go to bed and cry until I can’t feel anything anymore.

“Jane, do call your father. He’s been out all morning and must surely be tired.”

Try to remember. Oh, please, Mama, just try a little bit.

The teakettle was ruined. Jane boiled water in the gray enamel saucepan and made hot milk and bread for their supper. It was a pitiful offering, but she was so tired she couldn’t think of anything else. Besides, they were running out of staples.

They ate in silence. Jane listened to the moths batting against the lighted dining room window, the ting of her mother’s silver spoon against the edge of the china soup bowl. The air was warm and smelled of rain. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. I cannot bear this alone. I cannot.