Printer In Petticoats

Chapter Five

Cole hated churches. He’d been married in one and a year later he’d sat through Maryann’s funeral and felt his heart turn to stone. Ever since then he’d steered clear of religious establishments.

To his surprise, the Smoke River Community Church meeting hall wasn’t oppressive. The walls were painted a soft cream color, accented by dark wooden beams. Oak, he thought. Nice.

About two dozen townspeople sat on benches around the perimeter, waiting for the tryouts to begin. Including, he discovered with a jolt of pleasure, Jessamine Lassiter.

Tryouts, he discovered, involved singing alone, and Cole immediately felt uncomfortable about that. Trapped would be a better word. Maybe he should give up the idea. He had started to rise when the choir director, Ellie Johnson, impeccably dressed in a black skirt and a soft pink shirtwaist, clapped her hands and everyone sat up straighter.

“Let’s start with the women’s voices.”

The women sang selections from church hymns for their tryouts. Ellie selected four altos and three sopranos that blended with each other. One of the sopranos was Jessamine, who had spent all evening studiously ignoring him.

The tenors tried out next. The director chose five, including Whitey Poletti, who had a whiskey-smooth tone and an extraordinarily high range. Whitey had launched into “Santa Lucia,” but got no further than the first stanza before Ellie smiled and nodded at him.

By the time the director got around to the baritones, Cole was ready to bolt. He couldn’t sing like Whitey. He had no musical training, never sang in a church or any other choir and he hated the thought of doing it in public.

He looked for the exit, but just then Ellie pinned him with an expectant look.

He maneuvered to sing last, praying that those already chosen, including Jessamine, would go on home.

No such luck.

“Cole Sanders? Your turn.”

Cole stood up, wishing a trapdoor would open beneath him. The director smiled encouragingly. “What would you like to sing, Mr. Sanders?”

He felt Jessamine’s cool green-gray eyes on him, and his throat closed up tight. The director waited.

“Uh, could I do this outside? Just the two of us?”

She shook her head, and the onlookers began to whisper among themselves. Shoot sake! This wasn’t any worse than facing down a rabid mob of pro-slavery demonstrators back in Kansas. He drew in a deep breath.

Jessamine waited. She’d bet the country bumpkin from Kansas couldn’t sing a note. Then he opened his mouth and started in.

“‘Oh, my darling, Oh, my darling, Oh, my darling, Clementine...’”

Suddenly the room was so quiet she could have heard a hatpin hit the floor. She sat straight as a ramrod and stared at him.

“You are lost and gone forever...”

She’d never heard a more beautiful male voice. Rich and full, like a hot mince pie warm from the oven. The director stopped him after “dreadful sorry, Clementine.”

“Mr. Sanders, do you read music?”

Aha! Jess would bet a million dollars in gold that he couldn’t. That was why he’d chosen a simple folk song for his audition, and besides that, his voice was entirely untrained.

“Yeah, some,” he said. “My momma taught me when I learned to play the guitar.”

“Then we would be honored to have you in our community choir. We’ll be performing selections from Handel’s Messiah at Christmas. Are you familiar with this work?”

Cole shook his head.

“In addition to the choral numbers, there is also a mixed quartet of voices included—soprano, alto, tenor, baritone. Perhaps you would consider—?”

“Just four voices singing by themselves? ’Fraid not, ma’am. I—”

The director stepped up close to him. “Please, Mr. Sanders. I am short one good baritone voice.”

Jessamine clenched her fingers together in her lap. Say no, she urged. Ellie had chosen her to be the soprano singer in the quartet. The last thing she wanted was to stand next to Cole Sanders and sing. The very last thing. The thought made her cold and then hot all over.

She caught Cole’s eye and subtly shook her head.

He gave her a long, unreadable look. “I’ll do it,” he announced.

Jess’s heart contracted. She sat numb with anxiety while Ellie selected two basses, rancher Peter Jensen and Ike Bruhn, who owned the sawmill.

“That will be all for tonight,” Ellie announced. “Rehearsals will start next Tuesday when Winifred Dougherty’s grand piano arrives from St. Louis. Until then, pick up a score and look it over.” She gestured to a pile of music on one of the benches.

“And for the quartet...” She glanced meaningfully at Cole and then Jessamine. “Please start learning your parts. We will rehearse separately, on Thursday evenings.”

Jess pressed her lips together. It wasn’t enough to have Cole Sanders in her hair every day of the week, but nights, too? She considered dropping out of the choir, but she’d looked forward to singing the Messiah ever since Ellie had chosen it.

She would just have to cope. She’d lived through worse than standing next to Cole Sanders. When Miles was killed she’d wanted to give up on life, but she hadn’t. Now singing was something that kept her alive inside. She prayed she could manage to learn her part. Even when she was a child, her father said when she sang she sounded like a sick cat.

Cole made a move toward her, but she slipped out the side door. She was still trembling inside at the prospect of standing next to him twice each week. She comforted herself with the knowledge that it would only be until Christmas.

But Christmas was weeks and weeks away. Oh, bother. She would just have to learn how to keep the man from nettling her at close range.

* * *

Cole stared down at the draft page of his latest editorial, scattered across his desk. Time to pull out all the stops, he guessed. He hated to ride Jessamine any harder, but newspapering was a business like any other.

He dipped his pen in the ink bottle on his desk. Let’s see, now...

“Arbuckle Opponent Cowers,” he wrote. Good headline.

Yeah, that ought to do it. Something to elicit a response from the Sentinel and bring in some more subscriptions.

“We note the recent absence of Sheriff Jericho Silver,” he continued. “And we wonder. Is it possible the man is hiding from confrontation with his opponent, Conway Arbuckle?”

He ran his hand across his stubbly chin. He needed one more verbal jab to draw blood.

“Only a coward would skulk in his jail-cell office instead of getting out and campaigning among the good voters of Smoke River.”

“Noralee,” he called. “Set this up right away, will you?”

* * *

Tuesday night rolled around. Cole rode back into town after delivering the last of his papers to his outlying subscribers, hurriedly sponged off, ate a quick supper at the restaurant and made it to the choir rehearsal with five minutes to spare. He hoped Jessamine had read his editorial.

The new music school smelled like fresh paint and new wood and had ample seating for the twenty-seven-member chorus now drifting in for rehearsal in twos and threes. Good acoustics, too, Cole noted as their chatter reverberated around the room.

The morning rain had eased off, and outside the air smelled of frost. Felt like it, too. Women were bundled up in wool fascinators and fur muffs, and men lumbered in wearing sheepskin coats or wool mackinaws and leather gloves.

Jessamine Lassiter entered, stamping her feet and blowing on her fingers. He knew she’d already read his latest edition when she sidled past him and hissed a single word at him. “Snake.”

She took a seat next to the potbellied stove in the corner and glared at him with eyes like green jade. Her nose and cheeks were reddened from the cold.

They all stood to warm up their voices, and then the director arranged them by vocal part, basses on the left, then tenors, baritones, sopranos and altos on the far right. The piano accompanist, Doc Dougherty’s wife, Winifred, struck a chord.

Cole could hear Jessamine’s clear, sweet soprano soar above the others, and a shiver went up the back of his neck. Anger sure made her voice sound beautiful.

Then Ellie Johnson dropped her arms. “I want to mix up the voices more, to get a better blend.” Instead of standing in vocal sections, she arranged them in quartets—one soprano, one alto, a tenor and a baritone, all grouped close together.

Cole ended up standing beside Jessamine. She held herself rigid, as if her corset stays were made of iron, and he fancied he could see sparks pop off her body.

The choir la-la-la’d up and down a scale, and now he was quite sure fury was affecting her voice. Her enunciation was so crisp her tongue could cut paper, and the tone... Jehosephat, it was so clear and beautiful it stopped his breath.

“Jer-i-cho-Sil-ver-is-not-a-co-ward,” she sang up and down for the next scale. She glared at him for emphasis.

He cleared his throat. “He-is-too-a-coward,” he sang.

Her cheeks flushed as she attacked the next scale, this time in a minor key. “Just-you-wait-you-snake-la-la-la-la.”

The rehearsal itself wasn’t near as much fun as the warm-up scales and the la-la-la battle with Jess. Then the words of the Messiah took precedence over the insults they were passing back and forth. Cole was halfway disappointed.

But what almost did him in was standing next to her, catching the scent of her skin as the room warmed up, smelling her hair as that tangle of wild curls bobbed near his shoulder. He groaned without thinking.

Watch out, Sanders. After Maryann you swore you’d never have thoughts about another woman. Well, hell, he wasn’t having thoughts. He was having feelings. Normal male feelings. Feelings of the most basic variety. Feelings of just plain wanting.

But, he assured himself, his mind was in full control. A man could look, couldn’t he? Just as long as he didn’t let Jessamine Lassiter mean anything to him beyond admiration for a pretty rival newspaper editor. Just as long as she didn’t matter to him.

Maybe he should just crawl onto his cot tonight and forget about watching her silhouetted form against the window blind across the street.

At that moment she tossed her shiny dark hair back over her shoulders and he sucked in his breath. Or maybe not. Damn, she smelled good.

Ellie had the sopranos sing the next section by themselves. Standing next to Jessamine, Cole tried to keep his mind on the music instead of surreptitiously watching her.

“‘For unto us a child is born...’”

He worked hard to screen out Jess’s lilting soprano voice, but with little success. He heard every single syllable, felt every indrawn breath she took until he found himself unconsciously breathing right along with her. It was a bit like making love, he thought. Instantly he wished he hadn’t thought it.

She moved unconsciously when she sang. Just enough to bring her body an inch or two closer to his. He began to sweat.

Too close.

Not close enough.

Despite the chill in the rehearsal room, his body began to grow warm. He fought an urge to rip off his flannel shirt, but he settled for rolling his sleeves up to his elbows.

Big mistake. As she swayed beside him, the hair on his forearms rose as if reaching toward her. The urge to feel her skin brush against his was overpowering.

Move toward me, Jessamine. Touch me.

Shoot, he was going nuts. Another hour of this would make him crazier than a wolf in heat. He sidled away from her, and tried to control his hammering heartbeat.

What he couldn’t control was his groin swelling into an ache. He wanted to toss her over his shoulder and take her...where?

He suppressed a groan. To bed.

Oh, God.

That night he didn’t sleep at all.

Chapter Six

Jessamine headed across the street, her footsteps crunching against the frost-painted boardwalk; it was so slick she had to concentrate to keep her balance. Mercy, it was cold this morning! She saw no sign of life at the Lark office, so she bent and carefully laid the Wednesday edition of her Sentinel against Cole Sanders’s door.

Back in her own office, she turned her backside to the potbellied stove in the corner and rubbed her frozen hands together.

“Cold out, huh, Jess?”

“You know it is, Eli. The temperature outside is below freezing.”

“Gonna be a lot hotter when Sanders wakes up and reads yer editorial.”

She ducked her head to hide her smile. “Cole Sanders is a grown man, Eli. Sticks and stones and so on.”

“Yep, reckon so. Names ain’t never hurt you, huh?”

Jess sobered instantly. Names had hurt her. When she was young and just starting out to help her papa and Miles on the newspaper, her schoolmates had teased her mercilessly about her ambition to be a journalist. “What d’ya wanna do that for? Too ugly to get a husband? Boys don’t like brainy girls, smarty-pants!”

And it was names in an editorial her brother had printed that had cost him his life; that had hurt even worse. After Papa died, she and her older brother had moved out West and Miles had taken her under his wing.

She had been just a young girl, but he had begun teaching her about operating a newspaper, things her father had never let her do such as cleaning the ink off the rollers and setting type. Miles had also let her try her hand at writing stories, and he instructed her in the basics of journalism—being accurate and objective.

Then Miles had been killed, and now she was struggling to carry on the newspaper he had established in Smoke River.

Jess didn’t really think Cole Sanders would shoot her for writing an inflammatory editorial. But she would wager he might want to. She bit the inside of her cheek. This morning she couldn’t help wondering what the no-nonsense editor of the Lake County Lark would do about the editorial she’d published.

She kept one eye on the front windows of the Lark office across the street and set about planning her Saturday issue. She’d write a feature story about the new choir Ellie Johnson would be directing, and another article on the children’s rhythm band the music school director, Winifred Dougherty, was starting, together with the director’s plea for a violin teacher. Maybe she’d add an interview with the sheriff’s wife, Maddie Silver; what it was like being the mother of twin boys while also a Pinkerton agent?

Across the street the front door of the Lark office banged open and Jess caught her breath. Then just as suddenly it slammed shut. Cole had picked up her newspaper and retreated inside. She waited, her heart pounding.

Eli held up the flask of “medicinal” whiskey he kept under the counter. “Want a snort?”

“Certainly not.” She tried not to watch the front door of the Lark office, and then suddenly it flew open again. She gasped and held her hand out to Eli. “Well, maybe just a sip.”

Cole Sanders started across the street toward her, his head down, his hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans, and a copy of her newspaper stuffed under his arm. Jess uncorked Eli’s whiskey bottle and glugged down a double swallow.

Cole marched straight for her office, his face stern, his boots pounding the muddy street. Jess bit her lip, stiffened her spine and laid her hand on the doorknob. She would do her best to smile and graciously welcome him inside.

But she glimpsed his brown sheepskin jacket moving past her front window and on down the boardwalk.

The air in her lungs whooshed out. What on earth? Didn’t he want to yell at her about her editorial? She’d used the word insidious more than once, and nasty at least twice. And her new favorite word, larcenous; she’d used that one three times. She really relished larcenous. She’d even put it in boldface type.

Wasn’t Mr. Sanders livid with fury?

She couldn’t stand the suspense. She grabbed her heavy wool coat and knitted green scarf off the hook by the door.

“Hey, Jess,” Eli yelled. “Where are ya...?” She blotted out his voice and sped down the frost-slick sidewalk.

Then her steps slowed. Drat. If Cole stopped at the Golden Partridge she couldn’t follow him. No lady entered a saloon.

But he strode past the Golden Partridge and entered the restaurant nearby. Thank the Lord. She could unobtrusively steal inside, sit in one corner sipping a cup of tea and watch his face while he read her editorial.

She tiptoed inside the deserted restaurant, shed her coat and scarf and hung them on the maple coat tree in the corner. “Hot tea, please, Rita,” she whispered.

Cole sat with his back to her, calmly sipping a mug of steaming coffee. But he wasn’t reading her newspaper. He was gazing out the front window. And humming! She recognized the tune, “The Blue-Tail Fly.”

Rita brought her a ceramic pot of tea, plunked it down and tipped her gray-bunned head toward the front table. “Kinda odd, you two settin’ in the same room but not havin’ breakfast together.”

“Oh, Mr. Sanders and I are not together.”

The waitress blinked. “No? Shoot, I thought—”

“Sure we’re together,” Cole said without turning around.

Jess jumped. The man must have ears like a foxhound.

“You misspelled larcenous,” he called.

“What? I thought you hadn’t read my editorial yet.”

He maneuvered his chair around to face her. “Oh, I’ve read it all right. Like I said, you misspelled—”

“I heard you the first time,” she retorted.

“Never figured you for a sloppy writer, Miss Lassiter.”

“I never figured you for a schoolmarm, Mr. Sanders.”

“Point taken.” He rose and came across the room to her table. “Scrambled eggs?”

“No, thank you. I am having tea.”

“Rita, scramble up some eggs for me and the lady. Add some bacon, too.”

Rita bobbed her head, hid a smile and disappeared into the kitchen.

“Cold out this morning,” Cole said amiably.

“Very.” Jess fiddled with her napkin, refolded it into a square, then shook it out and folded it again. “Very well, how do you spell larcenous?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Got your attention, though, didn’t it?”

She bit her lip. “It most certainly did. Are you always so underhanded?”

“Nope. Hardly ever, in fact.”

“Only with me, is that it?”

Cole leaned across the table toward her and lowered his voice. “Jessamine, if you don’t stop worrying your teeth into your lips like that, so help me I’m going to kiss you right here in front of everybody.”

Her eyes rounded into two green moons. “I. Beg. Your. Pardon?”

“You heard me. Stop biting your lips.”

She turned the color of strawberry jam. “What business is it of yours what I do with my lips?”

“None at all. But I’m only human, and I’m male, so stop it.”

She tossed her napkin onto the table and started up, but he snaked out his hand and closed his fingers around her wrist.

“Sit.” He gave a little tug and her knees gave way.

“Now,” he said in a businesslike tone. “We’re gonna have a council of war, Miss Lassiter, so listen up.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it with a little click, and he proceeded.

“Some things are fair in journalistic jockeying, and some things are hitting below the belt. What you wrote about Conway Arbuckle is below the belt.”

“What things?”

He dragged her newspaper from inside his jacket pocket, spread it flat on the table and tapped his forefinger on her editorial. “That he’s larcenous. And that he’s a cheat. You shouldn’t sling mud around with accusations like that unless you can back them up with facts.”

“What if I can back them up?”

“I’m betting that you can’t.”

“How would you know?”

“Jessamine, you keep this up and Arbuckle will sue you for everything you’ve got.”

Her face turned whiter than the tablecloth. She studied the teapot, her spoon, the squashed napkin that lay on the table between them. At last she looked up at him, and his heart flopped into his belly.

Tears welled in her eyes. Big shiny tears that made him want to lick them off her cheeks.

“When Miles...” She bit her trembling lip and Cole stifled a groan.

“My brother was always the brainy one,” she said on a shaky breath. “We came from a long line of newspaper publishers, our great-grandfather in England, and our grandfather and father in Boston. Papa taught Miles everything, and I...well, I just tagged along because I was a girl. When Papa died we came out West to start over on our own, and then...then Miles was killed and I—I am doing my best to carry on the family tradition. “

“And you’re doing fine, Jessamine. But you might, uh, ask Sheriff Jericho Silver what his law books say about defamation of character. And libel.”

The color drained from her face. “L-libel? Miles never talked about libel.”

“That’s probably what got your brother killed. Jessamine, exactly how much do you know about editing a newspaper?”

She drew herself up so stiff he thought she’d pop the buttons off her red gingham shirtwaist. “I know enough,” she said in a tight voice.

“Not hardly.” He tried to gentle his voice, but he was irritated. Damn fool woman. No doubt she’d stepped up to fill her brother’s shoes and take on the newspaper, and he had to admire her for that, but wanting and succeeding were two different things. Doing it badly could get her killed.

“There are rules,” he said. “Good journalists don’t go off half-cocked, and good journalists don’t sling accusations around without hard facts to back them up.”

“Oh.” She sounded contrite, but her eyes were blazing. “Exactly why are you helping me, Cole? After all, we are competitors.”

“You’re darn right, we are competitors. But look at it this way, Jess. We may be on opposite sides of the fence, but actually we’re helping each other. My subscriptions have nearly doubled. I’d wager your subscriptions are up, too. But if your newspaper goes under, there goes reader interest in the competition between my Lark and your Sentinel.”

She gripped the handle of her teacup so tight he thought it might snap off. “I’ve sunk every last penny I have in the Sentinel,” she said in a shaky voice. “I cannot afford to fight a lawsuit.”

“Then don’t. Get yourself a set of law books and start studying what’s libelous and what’s just legitimate criticism.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but Rita interrupted. “Eggs and bacon, right?” She plopped down two loaded platters and stepped back. “You two aren’t gonna fight over breakfast, now, are you?”

“Not this morning,” Cole said with a smile.

“I guess not,” Jessamine said in a small voice. “Not when I’m this hungry.”

Cole crunched up a strip of crispy bacon. “Hunger makes us good bedfellows.”

She flushed scarlet and he suddenly realized how that might have sounded, but it was too late. Then with extreme care she upended her teacup and poured the hot liquid over his knuckles.

While he mopped at his hand and swore, she calmly picked up her fork. “Bedfellows?” she said, her tone icy. “That remark is positively indecently suggestive. I should sue you.”

Cole bit back a laugh. “Yeah, well, it just slipped out. But maybe you should think about it.”

“Think about what?”