Imogene's Ingenuity (The Alphabet Mail-Order Brides Book 9)

by Reina Torres

Doom and gloom began with the gnawing hunger in his belly. Looking up from the piles of paper he’d amassed on the drying shelf, Silas turned to look at the clock and shook himself from his stupor.

  “Im- Miss Wigg. Miss Wigg, the time.”

  He heard a soft murmur from her across the room.

  Leaving his papers behind, he crossed the room, his stride only slowing to lean into the warm pot-bellied stove that sat in the middle of the room for heat.

  “Miss Wigg.”

  When she held up a hand asking him for a moment more, he almost smiled at the delicate gesture, but there were more pressing matters at hand.

  “Miss Wigg, the time.”

  “The time?” Slowly she turned her head to look at the clock on the wall and that was when her eyes rounded at the sight. “Oh! I’m late!”

  Silas nodded, even though she wasn’t looking at him. “We both are.” He gestured toward the other side of the room. “Come, Miss Wigg, we’ll get our coats and be off. The Hampton House is just down the road. We’ll be there in no time.”

  Nodding, Imogene reached for the weight and set it on top of the papers. He was touched by the gesture. The wind could be wild in Bower. When they opened the door to step outside, the paper could easily blow from the desk and scatter on the ground.

  Waiting for her to rise gingerly from her chair, he gestured toward the other side of the room and when she stopped to get her coat, he walked a few paces away to claim his coat from a hook on the wall.

  For a brief moment he worried about what others might say if they walked into the house together, but as it was, the other guests would likely be inside and they could excuse their coordinated arrival with just a stroke of odd luck.

  His coat was thick and warm, and as he pulled it on, he felt for his gloves. They were in his left pocket again, and laughing a little at himself, he pulled them free and started to tug the first one onto his left hand.

  “Do you need any assistance, Miss Wigg?”

  Her own chuckle reached his ear as a warm rush of sensation. “I believe I have my things, sir. Madam made sure that before we left home we had the ability to button our coats and slip on our gloves. Do you need any assistance?”

  He heard the teasing tone in her voice and almost turned around to look at her, but he was afraid that she might see something else in his regard besides his humor. “I might button my coat askew from time to time, but it’s big enough to keep me warm regardless.”

  Silas turned and smiled at the pretty picture she made standing in the center of his world, the deep color of her coat complimenting her pale features and hair.

  “Ready?” He offered her his arm and enjoyed her startled gaze at the gesture.

  She reached out and slipped her hand under and around his arm, setting her fingers high up on his forearm. “Ready,” she agreed, “but don’t be shocked when I tuck myself behind you if the wind shifts.”

  “Are you planning to use me as a shield?”

  She tilted her head and gave him a sideways glance. “Yes. It may shame me later, but I’ve been told that the wind can make the winter very bitter indeed and I hope not to mar my impression of Bower with frostbite on my nose.”

  Silas laughed out loud. “Well, we can’t have your nose suffer the indignities of that, can we?”

  They walked to the door and Silas reached out to grasp the handle. A quick twist and the door swung inward. He kept his gaze on her face and stopped up short as her jaw loosened and went slack. “Oh dear.”

  “Miss Wigg?”

  He turned to look at what she was staring at out through the frame of the door and found himself adopting a very similar expression of shock.

  While they had been warm and cozy inside his print shop, snow had descended upon Bower.

  Descended and walled them in.

  In the space of a few hours, Mother Nature had settled her blanket of white all the way up to Imogene’s waist.

  He felt Imogene’s fingers dig into his arm and he covered her hand with his.

  “Stay here,” he began, but when he started to move away from her, her fingers only squeezed tighter, “Miss Wigg?”

  “Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.”

  His heart ached to hear the worry in her voice.

  He gave her hand another squeeze, worrying that she couldn’t feel it through the layers of their gloves. “I won’t leave you. I promise.” He turned and leaned down to meet her eyes. “I’m just going to test the snow. It might be deceiving. The height could just be how it settled on the ground. It might be just a matter of pushing through the snow, but I won’t know until I test it.” He took a step toward the door and felt her fingers loosen on his arm. “You won’t lose sight of me. I promise you that.”

  He watched her wide-open eyes ease back to their nearly normal size and when her hand lowered from his arm, he gave her an encouraging smile.

  “I’m just a few feet away.”

  She nodded slowly but he didn’t turn away from her completely. He knew how worried she was, and while he was trying to bolster her confidence, keeping contact with her in some way was helping him hold himself together.

  He’d been in Bower for over a year, but the past winter had been vastly different from this sudden onslaught of snow. Last year you could read the sky like a book, but then again, maybe this was his fault. All the added work that he’d been doing had kept him inside even more than he had last year.

  Using his knee, he pushed into the wall of snow that had remained upright when he’d pulled the door open and air rushed from his lungs as his knee moved into the snowy drifts easily.

  Another dragging step and he was moving through the snow.

  He swung a look over his shoulder and smiled at Imogene. “So far, so good.”

  And that’s when it hit him.

  Or rather, it hit him a moment later when he pushed into the snow with his first leg again and came up short.

  Lifting up his leg, he used the toe of his brogan boot to kick at the snow, willing it to collapse and give-way.

  It did.

  It almost did.

  By the position of the posts stationed across the porch he knew he was near the edge, but instead of getting easier to move through the snow it became more difficult with each step. He looked down the road and saw the thick white swath unbroken between his porch and every other door.

  And the dark expanse of clouds that shut out any hope of sunlight was still sending drifts of snow down around him. There was a chance he could fight through the snow to one of the adjacent buildings, but all the way to Hampton House?

  Even if he carried Imogene in his arms or on his back, there was no way he could make it to the Hampton House now, and with the added snow still coming down, they weren’t going to make it later. Turning back around he hoped that he could keep a hopeful look on his face.

  “I’m going to go to the next-door buildings and see if either of them are home.” Wading out of the snow and back inside, Silas closed the door and rooted about under the stairs for a shovel. “If they are both here, we can dig a path to get you to Hampton House.” The noise level under the stairs drowned out any other sounds and by the time he wrapped his hand around the handle of the shovel and stood, Imogene wasn’t standing where he’d left her.

  “Miss Wigg?”

  There was no answer.

  “Miss Wigg?”

  His gaze moved over the room from one end to the other. When the room still remained empty, he dashed for the door and drew up short. She had moved along the same narrow path that he’d cleared and was standing on the porch amidst the white expanse of snow.

  He walked up behind her and moved as close as he could to her to be a comfort instead of crowding her. “Miss W-”

  “They’re not here,” she told him and continued on to answer his next question. “Mr. Winslet and Mr. Fairfield. Their windows are dark, there’s no smoke from their stoves. They’re likely at Hampton House.”

  He thought thr
ough her words and nodded. It was a good assumption, especially since most of the single male population had been appearing at the Hampton’s dining table, the numbers growing every night.

  Shifting the shovel handle in his hand he looked off down the road toward the impressive multistoried building and struggled with the options he had open to him.

  “You should go back inside,” he put conviction into his voice. “I’ll start shoveling a path.” With a nod, he moved to the edge of the porch and adjusted his hold on the handle, readying himself to dig into the snow.

  “Wait.”

  He paused, the blade of his shovel a good foot into the snowdrift before him. Silas turned his head toward Imogene.

  “Don’t, please.”

  Silas narrowed his eyes at the young woman. “What’s wrong?”

  She held out her hand and a flurry of snowflakes swept around her glove, sticking to the leather and also the wool of her sleeve. “You’ll catch your death before you make it halfway. I can’t let you do it.”

  “You need to get back to the Hamptons,” he was struggling to argue with her. He was lanky enough that the cold cut through his body easily and even with the limited exposure he’d had so far, he was pushing the limits of his health. “If I can get you half of the way there, maybe they can meet us halfway.”

  He pulled the shovel free of the snow and started to swing the shovel backwards to get enough momentum to cut into the snow, but he felt a touch on the back of his arm.

  “Let’s go back inside.”

  He heard the soft tone of worry in her voice.

  “The snow is still falling. Trying to dig our way through seems a fruitless exercise until the snow stops.”

  Silas shook his head. “The voice of reason.” With a gesture toward the door, Imogene preceded him inside and he couldn’t help but feel the finality of the moment when he shut the door behind them.

  Imogene was slowly nodding off in the circle of heat cast off by the potbellied stove in the center of the print shop. She looked over at Silas where he was huddled within a quilt from his bed wrapped around his body.

  Earlier he had gone upstairs and upended his mattress and set it on its side, pushing it down the short hall and then down the long flight of stairs.

  For her.

  She was still in her coat, her boots still on her feet and woolen blanket that reminded her of something they might drape over the back of a horse before a saddle, but she wasn’t complaining. She was warm and she was as comfortable as one could be trapped in a building by a snow storm.

  Her desk now displayed a collection of foods from Silas’ pantry. Crackers, jerky, and a container of homemade jam.

  When they could no longer ignore the growling in their bellies, they made the most of his meager supplies. Even though the air was too cold to use the jam for anything but a deep indrawn breath of the delicious jam, they’d left it beside the other two items just to make their bounty seem all the more… bountiful.

  Coffee had been their salvation.

  The chill in the air had made the jerky as thick as leather and Imogene had taken great delight sopping the jerky in a cup of coffee to warm it up and make it possible to tear off a piece of the jerky with her teeth and then gnaw on it until she could swallow it down.

  Instead of making their snowbound captivity even more awkward it was just the opposite.

  Sharing the odd meal together had developed into an evening full of funny stories about food and tales told about moments of adversity in their lives.

  And Silas had fallen asleep first.

  He’d exerted enough of his energy earlier struggling through the snow and she didn’t begrudge him his rest, especially when she had the opportunity to observe him asleep.

  It was an oddly intimate moment. The only other people that she had seen asleep were here sisters.

  Now, warm in her clothes and coat, covered in her woolen blanket, she saw the inky lengths of his eyelashes against his pale cheeks and the slightly slack part of his lips as he slumbered on.

  Looking at him laying just a couple of feet away gave her leave to wonder… and dream.

  Was this what it was like to have a husband?

  His comforting presence in the night?

  His warm-hearted caring giving her more warmth than the stove.

  Since the moment that they’d discovered that they’d been snowed in, he’d taken care of her. Kept her calm. Kept her warm. Seen to her comfort.

  Every moment was a precious memory and one that she would hold onto in her heart of hearts. It was cruel in a way. Turning onto her back, drawing the blanket about her she looked up at the ceiling far above her head.

  “Why?” She spoke her words quietly. “You know I had little interest in marrying and then you introduce me to a man so kind and gentle, with a mind as strong as his heart. What was supposed to happen?”

  She struggled to stifle a yawn and lost the battle in moments.

  Tucking her hands under her chin she rolled back to her side and faced Silas.

  “Good night,” she whispered. “Sweet dreams, Silas.”

  The secretive thrill of using his Christian name put a smile on her lips as she drifted off to sleep.

  She fought down all the worries that threatened to darken her dreams.

  The world would still be there in the morning. Her mistakes and shortcomings would be there as well, but for a few hours at least, she could enjoy his quiet presence.

  With a weary sigh, she let her eyes drift closed.

  And moments later, just before she fell into her customary deep sleep, Silas Hix began to snore.

  Chapter 9

  Silas awoke to a banging and rattling of noise the likes of which he’d never heard before. Being pulled from sleep in such a manner brought to mind the cacophony of sound that came along with an earthquake he’d experienced in California as a child and that got him up on his feet in a hurry.

  Or rather, he tried to get up on his feet, but the blanket that he was wrapped up in tangled about his feet, sending him sprawling onto his hands and knees until he managed to kick off the blanket.

  “Open the door, Hix!”

  Blinking his eyes to rub the sleep from them, he stumbled to the door and opened the lock. Before he could turn the handle, the door was pushed in, stumbling him back.

  “Where is she?”

  He watched a bunch of people push through into the room but it was the florid face of Pastor Clement that came into focus before his eyes.

  “Miss Wigg?”

  “Yes,” the pastor’s expression tightened with worry, “is she here?”

  Silas pointed toward the pot-bellied stove still pumping out heat and suppressed a yawn. “She’s-”

  “She’s here!”

  He recognized Mr. Hampton’s voice as he reached up a hand to rub at the tight muscles in his neck. “I think she’s still asleep.”

  “Miss Wigg?”

  He watched as Mr. Hampton knelt beside Imogene who was sleeping soundly on the mattress, covered in the woolen blanket that he’d brought down from his bedroom.

  “Miss Wigg, wake up!”

  Imogene startled awake and sat up blinking furiously. “Did I miss my chores? Is Madam upset?”

  Mr. Hampton sat back on his heels with a chuckle. “No, Miss… we were just worried that something had happened to you.”

  “To me?”

  Silas saw the haze of confusion slowly lifting from her eyes.

  “It was the snow,” she began to explain. “I was visiting Mr. Hix and by the time I realized that I would be late to help Mrs. Hampton with the table and the food, the snow was too high… too thick. Mr. Hix offered to shovel a path, but the snow was still coming down and I was afraid that he’d freeze before we made it halfway to the house.”

  “You’ve done it now, Hix.”

  Silas turned and saw Appleton’s face inches from his.

  “I’m sorry, I-”

  “You are sorry,” the attorney’s wor
ds bit from his lips like a drum cadence, “how could you?”

  Silas’ head was quickly clearing of the last remnants of sleep, didn’t like the vitriol he heard in the other man’s tone.

  “How could I… what?”

  “Do you see all of these people here?”

  Looking about the room he saw his neighbors, friends, concerned citizens that he knew meant well. “I see them. I’m glad to see them in fact. All of you,” he met their eyes, “thank you for coming.”

  Appleton grabbed his collar and pulled him close. “How can you act like this? This isn’t a social call. They’re all here because of your misdeeds.”

  “Misdeeds?” Silas was beginning to wonder if he might still be asleep.

  An indrawn gasp from Imogene turned his head. She peered up at him with horror in her eyes. “Mr. Winslet, please. Mr. Hix hasn’t done anything wrong.”

  Shaking his head, Appleton jostled Silas a bit because his hand was still wrapped tightly around his collar. “How can you say that? Don’t you understand what happened here?”

  Mr. Hampton helped Imogene to her feet and tucked her hand in the crook of his arm. “Miss Wigg, you have to understand-”

  “It was my fault.” Imogene blurted out the words and continued on. “I stopped by to see Mr. Hix. Sometimes I stop in and help him set type for a few minutes between visits to other friends in town. I was distracted when I started to read something that Mr. Hix had written and I overstayed.

  “The snow came down while I was reading and-”

  “We’re not blaming you, Miss Wigg. Mr. Hix,” Appleton nearly spat out his name, “should have taken better care of you. Of your reputation.”

  “Taken better care?”

  Silas watched as she seemed to grow an inch or two and took a step forward from Mr. Hampton’s side.

  “It was my fault that I was careless. Too absorbed to pay attention to the time, to the storm outside.” She took a few steps toward the middle of the room. “You can’t blame him for this. It’s not his fault.” She gestured back toward the mattress and the blanket she had left behind. “He brought the mattress down from his rooms upstairs, gave me a blanket, and kept the stove going all night long so I wouldn’t take a chill.”