The Courtship

Chapter Five

“Anything else this morning, Miz Davis?”

Jane drew in a deep breath. She had inspected every bolt of yard goods Mr. Mercer had in stock—crisp yellow percaline, rose and pale green checked gingham, airy white dimity. Nothing seemed just right. She wanted something unusual, something eye-catching to display in her shop window. Something that would stop the ladies of Dixon Falls in their tracks.

“Miz Davis?” the mercantile owner reminded.

She scanned the shelves of fabric once more. “There, on the top. What is that red?”

Rafe Mercer pushed a ladder into place and clambered up four rungs. Reaching out his long arms, he grasped the bolt and dragged it off the pile, balancing it on his shoulder. “Muslin, ma’am. Ordered it by mistake.”

He descended the ladder and plunked the fabric down on the polished wood counter before her. “Ten cents a yard.”

Jane’s head began to buzz the way it always did when she began to envision a new design for a dress or a hat trimming. Yes, she could see it now. And in red, just the thing. The eyes of every woman in town would be glued to her store window display!

“And the blue, next to it?”

With a sigh, the thin, graying man propelled his skinny legs up the ladder again. “Cambric,” he called down to her. “Bought extra this year for the big Fourth of July doings at the schoolhouse on Sunday, but the ladies decorating committee didn’t use it all. Sell it to you for…eight cents a yard.”

“Seven cents,” Jane countered. “And I will offer you one dollar for the bolt of red muslin.” Oh, how Papa would bellow if he knew she was bargaining! But her money was borrowed; she certainly could not afford to squander it.

Mr. Mercer’s thin face blanched. “Ma’am, that’s near thirty yards of muslin.”

“Ordered in error, I believe you mentioned.” She swiped her gloved forefinger across the rolled fabric and held it up. “Unless I am mistaken, Mr. Mercer, this has been on your shelf for a good while, long enough to collect dust. Seven cents.”

“Oh, all right, Miz Davis. A dollar for the bolt. That’ll be, lessee, two dollars and five cents altogether. You need any thread?”

In her mind’s eye she was already laying out the yardage and marking the gathers. And two bright colors, red and blue, just perfect for the Fourth of July. Every female in Dixon Falls would want one.

“Miz Davis?”

Jane jerked to attention. “What? Oh, yes, thread, if you please. Two spools of Brook’s cotton.” She counted out the coins while the mercantile owner wrapped up her parcels.

“I’ll send the Harrelson boy over with your purchases, ma’am. The flour and tea and such I’ll deliver to your house on my way home this—Ah, good morning, ladies.” He turned his attention to the two new customers sweeping through the doorway. “Mrs. Tanner, Miss Price.”

Jane shut her reticule and fairly floated over the planked floor, her brain whirling with ideas. She’d done it, made the first purchase for her new business! The feeling was so heady, and so unexpected, she suppressed an urge to laugh out loud.

Jane Charlotte, just you stop and think what Papa would say.

For a moment her elation dimmed. Of course Papa would disapprove. How could he not, coming from a long line of gentleman plantation owners? Working with your hands for a living was “common.” Face it, Jane. You yourself are now an employed woman. A shopkeeper.

And Mama…she dared not think about Mama. She would not think of them, she resolved. She was doing what she had to do, either that or marry, and the only offer she’d had was from Mr. Wilder and it hadn’t been the least bit proper. To succeed she had to care for her widowed mother and earn enough money to keep them fed and clothed until they could return to Montclair. It would take every ounce of concentration and fortitude she could muster, but it would all come straight in the end. She knew it would.

The two ladies passed her by. “Good morning,” she said automatically. Jane heard one of them give an audible sniff.

She should have addressed them by name, but she realized suddenly she did not know which one was which. Was Mrs. Tanner the dark-haired woman in gray, or was that Miss Price? The latter had golden ringlets and a merry laugh, but looked too young to be married. In fact, both women looked to be not a day over twenty.

For just an instant a dart of envy pricked her. By comparison, at twenty-six, she herself would be considered “old.” And probably stiff-necked, as well.

Behind her, she heard the two young women whisper together, and then a soft giggle. They were talking about her. She could feel it in her bones. Pain swallowed up her envy.

She had lived here in Dixon Falls ever since she was fifteen years old. Eleven full years, and she still felt like an outsider. Oh, people were polite enough; no one had ever been unkind to her except for schoolboy bullies years ago. But somehow she felt separate from everyone else, as if she didn’t belong.

She closed the door of the mercantile on the happy laughter of the two women, punctuated by Mr. Mercer’s deeper tenor voice. “Right this way, ladies. Allow me.”

An empty feeling yawned in the pit of Jane’s stomach. I feel so alone.

In the next moment, she felt her spine stiffen. Jane Charlotte, you stop that this instant. Don’t you dare go all mooney over your lot in life! Just because Papa is gone and Mama isn’t well doesn’t mean you are any less than you were before, does it?

Certainly not. She’d had private tutors, had studied history and Latin and Greek grammar, took years and years of piano lessons from Mama. She knew how to serve tea and plan a dinner party—everything a proper young lady should know. She was Ready.

But ready for what? What was it all for? She’d lived all these years in suffocating isolation. A bell jar. She’d never been allowed to join the other young people at socials because they “weren’t the right sort,” Papa said. She was never allowed to walk into town unless Papa accompanied her. No friends ever came to call. She had been so lonely growing up she hadn’t wanted to grow up!

But she had. She’d gone right ahead and done it, and before she knew what had happened, she had turned into an old maid.

Her steps slowed. Was this some kind of punishment for coming to live in a town full of Yankees?

She unlocked the door to her shop, surveyed the dim interior, and rocked back on the heels of her black buttoned leather shoes. She would need a kerosene lamp, even in the daytime. And a stove of some sort to heat her sadiron. And…

She gazed at the tiny space, small as a shoe box. At least it was clean. The air still smelled faintly of soap. She would bring the long cheval dressing mirror from the upstairs bedroom and Aunt Carrie’s bust form. What amazing foresight her mother’s older sister had shown when she insisted that the padded dressmaker’s form come west with them. Jane had used it ever since to fashion new garments for herself out of her mother’s old gowns. She used the illustrations in Godey’s Ladies’ Book for inspiration, and the fabrics had lasted through many remakings. She knew the styles had grown outdated over the years, the skirts too full, the tops too ornate, too stiff and formal for a small dusty town in Oregon. She always looked different. Out of place. And the townspeople still called her Queen Jane.

“But no more,” she vowed. It would be sheer joy to work with something crisp and new from the mercantile! With her first earned dollar, she would send for the latest edition of Godey’s book. “And,” she announced to the silent cherry sewing cabinet, “since I cannot any longer use our dining room table, I will need a cutting board. A nice big one. Propped up on…what?” she muttered to herself. She hadn’t the faintest notion. Barrels? Stacked-up old trunks?

“Sawhorses! Yes! Now where can I find—”

“Beggin’ yer pardon, Miz Jane…”

Jane whirled to see Lefty Springer standing in her open doorway. “Mr. Springer.”

“Lefty, ma’am, remember? Mose down to the blacksmith shop, he’s a pretty fair carpenter. Bet he’d cobble you up a pair of sawhorses quicker’n a frog snaps flies.”

“Of course! The perfect thing. Oh, I do admire a man who can think.” She headed for the door, then stopped dead in the middle of the room. She couldn’t go traipsing around town, down to the blacksmith’s shop, without an escort; it just wasn’t done. Mama would have a fit.

“Mr…. Lefty, I am so glad you came visiting this morning. I need your help.”

The old man beamed.

And when Mrs. Evangeline Tanner and Miss Letitia Price stepped through the mercantile doorway and onto the board walkway, they gasped and pointed.

“Well, did you ever see the like!”

“Queen Jane and that old one-armed freight wagon driver!”

Jane rested her fingers on Lefty’s extended good arm and was skipping—skipping!—across the street in the company of an old man who couldn’t stop grinning.

Rydell counted out ten dollar bills and handed them through the cage to the trim, gray-haired woman on the other side. “There you are, Mrs. Manning.”

The woman folded the bills into her black crocheted bag and smiled at him. “Thank you, Mr. Wilder. Now, you’ll remember to come on out and meet my granddaughter sometime, won’t you? She’s come all the way from Kansas City to visit for the summer.”

He watched the woman’s small black shoes move toward the bank entrance and shook his head. Only yesterday it seemed, Mrs. Manning’s daughter, Eula, had moved back East to be married; now Eula had a grown-up daughter looking to do the same thing. All of a sudden, he felt old.

And left out in an odd way. He’d sent Josiah, his bank clerk, home to be with his wife. The young man was so nervous at the prospect of their first child he was useless this morning, but—Rydell had to laugh—he himself wasn’t much better. All morning he’d done nothing but think about Jane Davis.

A small grimy fist appeared on the counter before him. “Kin you save this for me, mister?” The fingers unfolded to reveal a single copper penny.

Rydell leaned forward. A round freckled face peered up at him, wide blue eyes questioning.

“You want to deposit this in the bank?”

“Yessir. Else my brother’ll grab it from me. Will you save it for me?”

“Sure thing, son.” With a chuckle he slid the coin into a bank envelope. He’d not been much older than this when he’d started saving pennies, only there hadn’t been a bank then. Rydell saved all his earnings in a pickle jar secreted under his mattress.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Tommy. I helped the Queen Lady down the street set up a sawhorse ’n she done paid me.”

The Queen Lady? Did he mean Jane? He dipped the pen in the inkwell and scribbled on a piece of notepaper.

“Okay, Tommy, here’s your deposit receipt. When you want your money, just show it to the clerk.”

The boy nodded, and the round face disappeared.

A sawhorse? He’d step down the street and investigate, but he couldn’t leave the cash drawer unattended. He’d wait until noon, when he could lock up the safe.

Customers drifted in and out for the next hour, and Rydell’s curiosity grew. What the devil did Jane want with a sawhorse?

The clock on the wall tick-tick-ticked toward twelve. At one minute before noon, Tommy’s freckled visage reappeared at the counter.

“Mister, I got ’nother ’posit to make.”

Rydell reached for the envelope marked Tommy. “How much this time?”

“One big an’ one little. Here’s the little one.” He plopped another penny onto the smooth wood surface, and Rydell added it to the envelope.

“’N here’s the big one.” With both hands he lifted a tiny ball of orange fur and set it on the smooth oak surface. “It’s lost. I found it in the alley back of the livery stable, but if I take it home, my brother’ll steal it for sure.”

Rydell eyed the clock. “Okay, Tommy. I’ll take care of it.” He scooped the purring kitten into his coat pocket, where it curled up and burrowed its nose into a corner seam.

“Thanks, mister.”

Rydell sent the under-clerk to lunch, closed up the safe, and locked the front door of the bank. Then he headed up the street to see what Jane was up to.

“That’s it. A little to the left. No, too much, Lefty. Yes, right there will do nicely.” Jane cocked her head, assessing the position of her new cutting board, a discarded door plank Mose Freeman had carted from Tanner’s lumberyard. With a sawhorse propping each end, it made a perfectly level, smooth surface on which to sponge-shrink her yard goods and lay out pattern pieces. Already, a bucket of water and her sadiron were heating on the small oil stove Lefty Springer had “found” for her. It looked so new she suspected Lefty had actually purchased it from Mercer’s Mercantile.

The old man’s interest in her new business touched her heart. He’d even volunteered to watch over the shop while she’d walked up the long hill to check on Mama and boil up some eggs for her lunch. She left Mama dozing on the settee, and Jane hoped she would sleep until suppertime, when she would return to fix the evening meal.

All morning she’d worried about another teakettle incident—or worse. What if Mama fell and couldn’t get up again? What if she went out to the orchard to look for Papa and couldn’t find her way back? A hundred dangers suggested themselves as she organized her little dressmaking establishment. A hundred reasons why she felt torn in two.

She didn’t really know any of the women in town, much less the farm wives that lived out in the country and came into town only occasionally. Not only did she have to start her business, she had to befriend her clientele, women who were virtual strangers. She would have to work hard to make them think of her not as Queen Jane, but as a capable dressmaker.

And of course Mama needed her attention, too. Merciful heavens, how could she be in two places at once?

She blotted the perspiration from her face with a damp wadded-up lace-edged handkerchief and tried to think. The hot, still air smelled of dust and acrid smoke. The heat from her little stove made it stifling inside the shop. Lefty perched on an empty nail keg positioned half in, half out of the doorway, whittling on a piece of oak.

“Why’ntcha sit yerself down, Miz Jane? You’re gonna melt into a puddle if’n you don’t slow down and rest a bit.” He motioned to a second upturned keg.

“Oh, I just can’t, Lefty. I must get this muslin sponged before suppertime so I can cut out my patterns first thing tomorrow. The Fourth of July is only two days away, and I simply must be ready by then! It offers such a wonderful opportunity for my…well, my first original creation.”

With his boot, Lefty pushed his wood shavings out onto the board sidewalk. “Cain’t sew if you cain’t stand up.”

“Oh, but I can,” Jane countered. “I sew sitting up. It won’t matter a whit if my legs won’t hold me up, I can seat myself at the sewing machine. I intend to finish my—”

Through the open doorway stepped a tall figure, and Jane gave a little gasp. Her heart somersaulted at the sight of Rydell Wilder.

“Why, howdy, Dell. Come to oversee yer investment, have ya?”

That man! What right did he have to come barging in without even a by-your-leave? Jane grabbed a length of red muslin and hastily draped it around the padded bust form in the corner. Surely it wasn’t proper for a gentleman to see a lady’s…well, replica of herself, without a stitch of clothing?

All at once she was doubly grateful for Lefty’s presence in the tiny shop. Her brain seemed as sluggish and sticky as molasses, and her stomach felt as if thousands of bird feathers swirled inside it. She was afraid of him.

Afraid he would kiss her again.

Afraid she would like it.

She stared at him, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.

“Miss Davis.”

“If you have come to watch me struggle, you can turn right around and…I declare you’re watching me just like a hungry tiger stalking its prey.”

“I assure you—”

“Waiting until I fail, and then you’ll pounce on me.” She heard Lefty make an odd choking sound, but he lowered his head so she couldn’t see his face.

And then she noticed something strange. Mr. Wilder looked lopsided. The right pocket of his well-fitted suit bulged out of proportion, and then, right before her eyes, it moved.

Mesmerized, she watched the dark fabric pooch out. Unable to contain her curiosity, Jane moved forward, eyeing Rydell Wilder’s coat pocket.

Chapter Six

Jane stopped two paces in front of Rydell, narrowed her eyes and pointed at his coat pocket. “What have you got in there?”

With a sheepish grin, Rydell plunged his hand into the opening in the soft worsted and brought forth the orange kitten. Jane’s eyes widened.

“Why, the darling little thing! Wherever did you find it?” She took an involuntary step forward, stretching both hands toward the tiny ball of fur.

“A young…bank patron found it in back of the livery stable. He entrusted it to me for safekeeping.”

Jane’s hand darted toward the animal, then retreated. If she touched the kitten, her skin might brush against his. She laced her fingers together behind her back. But oh, how she longed to smooth her fingertips over that soft-looking fur.

The hand holding the kitten moved nearer. “Jane?” a low voice spoke. “Would you like to have it?”

Yes! All those years when she was growing up she’d longed for a pet, something of her very own to care for. Papa always said an animal would make too much work for Mama.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t. It really belongs to your patron, you see, and I just couldn’t—” She broke off as Rydell offered the kitten. Taking extreme care not to touch the hand of the man who stood before her, she extended one finger and nuzzled the tiny face. A small pink tongue licked her forefinger, and at that moment her hand brushed his.

A zing of awareness raised the fine hair on her forearm and danced on up past her elbow. Her heart beat so loudly she could hear it. Could he?

He just stood there, looking at her with those knowing gray eyes and that firm, unsmiling mouth. It gave her the shivers.

Lefty grinned at her from the doorway, then dropped his gaze to the oak piece in his lap. Snick, snick went the blade of his pocketknife, and then he began to hum a tune to match the rhythm. Little Brown Jug.

A spell seemed to have fallen over her. She could neither move nor talk nor even think rationally. Why, merciful heavens, what a silly bit of nonsense!

She ordered her knees to bend, knelt and set the feline onto the plank floor. On wobbly legs, it headed for her sewing basket, climbed in and curled up next to the calico-covered pincushion. The soft rumbly purring rose into the quiet room, and no one moved.

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