by Jillian Hart
“Joshua is insisting on driving me everywhere. He’s a cautious driver and it took forever to come back from the west plains. He’s going to put me out of business.” She lifted the pedestal cake plate, carefully holding it steady—it was such a lovely thing—and let Mariah hold the screen door for her.
“Do you think it’s intentional?”
“I know it is.” Betsy waited while Rayna moved aside the coffee cups to make just enough room on the small coffee table for the cake plate.
It looked so pretty next to her china. A gift from Charlie she would always cherish, the pattern of butterflies soaring above cheerful sprays of flowers was just right. She reached for a cup now, slipping into the wooden rocker and cradling the scorching hot cup, not caring that it stung her fingers. Not caring at all.
The blue and yellow butterflies reminded her always that life went on, from caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly, and then on to the next life, which had to be more beautiful yet.
It was hope, and she clung to it, for Charlie’s sake and now for Duncan Hennessey’s.
Rayna stirred sugar into her cup and pushed the delicate sugar bowl across the little table to Betsy. “Joshua is a big brother. Of course he’s going to protect his baby sister, even if she is over thirty years old.”
“And widowed, self-sufficient, independent and a businesswoman to boot!”
“Oh, I can see you’re frustrated.” Rayna sympathized and began to cut the cake. “All I can offer you is a slice of your own cake. It’s temporary, but it is comfort.”
“Angel food cake. It is comforting. So sweet and light and spongy.” Like hope. Betsy sighed. She thought of the man she’d left still and lifeless in the mountain cabin. She felt drained of hope. Nothing seemed to make sense like it did before. “My family worries and frets, but the truth is, I’m a grown woman. If I were married with a family of my own, like James, then no one would be knocking down the fence to see what I’m up to.”
“Does your mother still want you to give up the business and move in with her?” Mariah took the sugar bowl, dumped three teaspoons into Betsy’s cup.
“You know she does. I love my mother, but I can’t live with her.”
“A saint couldn’t live with your mother.” Mariah meant it in a kind way, but the truth was the truth.
Mother was difficult, there was no denying it. “I haven’t been able to live with her since I was fifteen. She’s bossy and wrong at least half of the time. When I lived with her after Charlie’s death, you remember how I was. As crazy as a loon.”
“We remember.”
“Ten times a day it was ‘Betsy, a decent lady does not let her ears show.’ ‘It’s not eighteen thirty-two, Mother!’ ‘Betsy, a decent woman doesn’t sit with her knees gaping.’ ‘Mother, my knees are half an inch apart, not three feet and gaping while wearing no drawers in the middle of Pearl’s House of the Red Curtains.’”
“Or simply on the bench outside the mercantile,” Rayna added dryly, and they all burst into laughter.
“She went on like that all the live-long day. Without end. The woman was like to drive me mad. Until finally I reached the point that if I’d stayed much longer, I’d have gone running screaming down Main Street with my skirt over my head and my drawers showing. And here Mama was worried about my knees!”
Rayna laughed so hard she had to put down the cup. “That would have ruined your reputation for sure.”
“Yep. Everyone would have said, ‘Forget it, take Betsy Gable Hunter off the marriageable widow list!’”
“But everybody knows your mother,” Mariah pointed out. “You still may have saved some of your reputation. You know, tarnished, but still marriageable.”
Betsy sighed, no longer laughing. “Yeah, everyone knows Lucille Gable is a proper woman, but she pecks like a vulture.”
“She means well, at least you have that. My mother didn’t,” Mariah sighed.
Reminding Betsy how fortunate she was. “Exactly. My mama would crawl to China on her hands and knees if it would make me happy, but she is headstrong and I love her much better when we are under separate roofs.”
It was the way her family was. All of them. From the aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins. Nosy, every last one of them. Always getting involved in one another’s concerns. But at least it was done out of love. It was just one of those facts of life that love wasn’t always soft and mushy and gooey. Real love took grit, and it wasn’t easy to love someone no matter what in spite of their imperfections, but that was one of life’s challenges.
And the good part was that her family loved her the same in return, even if she was independent-minded and stubborn. Boy, could she be stubborn and sentimental. Lord, was she!
That overwhelming sentiment began to build up when she looked at the fluffy angel cake topped with powdered sugar and drizzled with strawberry syrup.
It was the strawberries that reminded her. Oh, Duncan. Her heart cracked wide open. She opened her mouth and it all came out. All of it. The way she’d thought it was him attacking her initially before the bear emerged from the thick foliage. How he’d come to her rescue only to be mortally wounded, protecting her. Always protecting her, even in his death.
“And he passed away, about the time I got there the other night.” She pushed the cake aside and sipped the coffee, rich and bitter; it was comforting, simply breathing in the smell of it. To let the warm liquid seep into her stomach and spread through her middle.
“How heroic.” Rayna looked thoughtful as she reached for her piece of cake, which she’d set aside to listen to the long tale. “Not many men would behave so gallantly. That’s how I knew my Daniel was a worthy man. His noble honor. It sounds as if your mountain man had a great spirit, too.”
“I’m sure many wouldn’t agree,” she teased, just a little, to hide what she felt too shy to say. “He was very embittered. I think he had a great sadness in his life.”
“His family was murdered, his mother, her husband and two daughters. Burned alive in their house.” Mariah shivered. “Horrendous, what some people are capable of.”
“You mean, someone did that on purpose?”
Mariah nodded. “No one was ever found guilty of murdering those poor people. Can you imagine, finding your family tortured and killed?”
Well, no wonder. She knew he’d endured a terrible tragedy, but to be left alone in the world, by means of injustice. She couldn’t blame him a bit for his anger. What was sad, though, was that no one had been left to soften his grief. To make gentle his world.
“…but that’s about all I know. It happened to the south, near Great Falls. I remember my father talking about it but I can’t recall any of the details.”
Mariah had laundered Duncan’s shirts for many years. Before Betsy had taken over, of course. As if she were trying to remember every important detail of her time delivering his shirts, Mariah forgot her fork was suspended in midair with a bite of delicious cake.
She looked very distant for a moment. “I was never sure about Mr. Hennessey, but I tell you, he amused me. He was so taciturn. So caustic. Actually, sometimes he was really funny. He’d say something like ‘Not so much starch next time, I’m no preacher.’ And I’d drive away before it hit me, the image of dour Mr. Hennessey in a stiff white collar and coat, preaching up a Sunday sermon. I can’t imagine how well that would go over, unless he deleted some of his especially vulgar swearwords.”
“I have increased my vocabulary because of him.” The tattered shreds of her heart throbbed with sorrow. “My brothers are always so gentle around me, and so was dear Charlie, that I had no notion of what Mr. Hennessey would be shouting whenever I’d drive up and startle him and he’d swing his hammer and hit his finger. I didn’t know words like those existed. I had to make James tell me what they meant.
“Boy, was Duncan hard to surprise, but once, when he was pulling honey from a hive and obviously concentrating very hard, I rounded the corner quite a bit earlier than usual and you know how m
y old wagon rattled louder than a stampeding herd of cattle? He didn’t hear me until I was almost upon him and he started, jumped and got stung. He was swatting and jumping and cursing and wouldn’t let go of the honey.
“About any other man would look like a fool, but he did it with great dignity. And, somehow, he charmed the bees because they stopped stinging him and started swarming again. Very impressive. But I’ll never forget the look of horror on his face when he saw me coming down his road. From his perspective he probably preferred the bee stings, and it wasn’t the bees he was cursing.”
Betsy swallowed hard. “He was everything opposed to what a perfect gentleman ought to be and yet I preferred him.”
“At least he was never two-faced. He said what he meant. You can’t say that about a lot of men.”
Rayna seemed thoughtful as she reached for the coffeepot. “Betsy, I think you owe this Mr. Hennessey a great debt. When is his funeral service?”
She didn’t know. “I don’t know if there even is one. I only know of Mariah and I who even knew he lived out there.”
“Surely he needed supplies for the winter,” Rayna persisted, filling each cup with care. “Someone must know him.”
“I don’t know if he ever came to town.” Betsy reached for the sugar bowl.
“No,” Mariah said thoughtfully. “I know he came to town a few times a year. To trade in his furs for staples, of course. But also to put his woodwork on consignment.”
Betsy forgot her fingers were holding the spoon and it slipped into the bowl. She left it, coffee drips and all, her mind skidding to a dead halt. “What kind of woodwork? Like whittling?”
“No. He makes furniture for the furniture store on Second Street.”
What kind of furniture? Betsy was dying to know. It was wrong, this interest in him. He was gone. Dead. Probably buried by now. But Rayna’s words troubled her greatly. She might be one of the few people who even knew him. Maybe that accounted for the strange way she felt moved inside…not sexually, goodness, she hadn’t thought that way for years, but in her heart. As if something had changed between them on the night of so much death.
On her way out of town, she’d convince Joshua to take her along Second and she would see for herself. She couldn’t say why she felt compelled to do so. Only that she did.
The afternoon sky felt changed, although the sunshine was lovely.
Mariah felt it, too. “Looks like we’ll be in for some rain.”
The furniture was beautiful. She knew it was his without explanation. Bold pieces, masculine and strong. As stalwart and as breathtaking as the mountains where he’d lived. As the man had been.
I never knew. She pressed her hand against the window glass, the sounds and smells and heat of the brilliant Indian summer’s day faded to nothing. Nothing but the beat of her heart, the tug of her soul. They were chairs made for sitting on a porch. A pair of deep-backed, low-slung seats made out of rich cherry gleamed like sleek marble.
It’s so beautiful. Her fingertips itched, anxious to slip along the polished armrests. To admire the crafted slats fit perfectly together. To trace the carved trail of climbing roses up the leg, along the back and across to the other side.
How could fierce and rugged Duncan Hennessey be the same man who put blade to wood and created something so fine and delicate it was hardly visible through the pane of glass?
“Bets!” It was Joshua, impatient with her again. Did he not have a ranch to run?
She ignored him, drawn back to the matching side table, equally exquisite. How comfortable those chairs would be, with cheerful yellow cushions, and it would look perfect on her back porch, where she so loved to spend a few moments of an afternoon. Dragging her kitchen chairs in and out of the house was cumbersome. But to have something more permanent…
You can’t afford it, Betsy Ellen! Don’t even reach for the door handle. Her hand seemed to be moving of its own will and the knob was sun-warmed brass against her palm. With a tug and the jingle of an overhead bell, she found herself inside the store. She caught a flash of the image of Joshua reflected in the door as it closed. His outrage contorted his chiseled face, and then she saw it. All of it.
There were more. Many more pieces than she could have imagined. No, there was no way one man could have done all this. She imagined a factory back East where men would work patiently for months to churn out such breathless pieces. She must have been wrong. It was wishful thinking, was all. Wishing she could have something to remember him by.
The tap of expensive boots on the polished floor behind her should have been a warning, if she’d paid enough attention. But no, she was too busy recoiling from the disappointment she’d created herself by wrongly believing this was Duncan’s work. Instead of pivoting right out the door and escaping his clutches, she didn’t move fast enough to elude the man who scraped to a stop behind her.
“Betsy, this is the most fortuitous occasion. I’d heard of your ordeal. And to think there’s not a scratch on you, or so it would appear.”
She grimaced, dug deep for enough courage and faced her nemesis. Ray Hopps, resplendent as always with his black coat and perfectly ironed trousers. He wore a white shirt and vest and a black string tie. His thinning blond hair was combed back at a jaunty angle. Perhaps he thought it made him debonair and attractive to desperate women.
But she was not that desperate for a man. In fact, there was only one reason she could think to even marry a man again, and that was for love. She sincerely doubted she’d ever feel more than mild repulsion for Ray Hopps, who blushed furiously as he brushed nonexistent lint off his jacket.
It was situations such as these where she admired her mother. No-nonsense Lucille would have had no problem managing any man. She simply would have spoken her mind, and Betsy wondered what the store owner would do if she simply said what she was thinking, “You have a better chance of getting a wrinkle in your knickers than me taking a spark to you.” It was Ray Hopps’s luck that she wasn’t her mother.
Instead she looked past him, making it clear she was not interested in him again. It was the bane of being a young widow in a territory where unmarried men outnumbered unmarried women by at least five to one.
She tried to be sympathetic with poor Ray. He’d never snare a wife when he wore such ironed garments that seemed to hint at a man with rigid standards. The creases down the front of his trousers were as perfect as a surveyor’s property line. She knew, because she was the one who ironed his garments weekly—and he was very picky when it came to the perfection of his ironed clothes.
Oh, he was waiting for an answer. What had he asked her about? That’s right. Her “ordeal,” as her mother had dubbed it. “I’m fine, thank you, but my buggy was damaged and I’m an entire day behind on my work schedule. I am supposed to be delivering your laundry this afternoon, but I intend to come tomorrow morning, early, if that’s acceptable?”
“My, Betsy. Of course. If you’d rather, you could make it later in the day.” He laid his long fragile hand against his heart, dramatic, but he hadn’t been raised in Montana. Maybe he thought it was a dashing gesture. She tried not to fault him his foppish manner. “If you preferred, you could make your delivery the last of your day, on your way back into town, and I know my mother would be pleased to have you to supper. She is quite fond of you.”
“Well, I do take care to starch her crinolines and mend the tucks in the seams of her corsets without charge.”
Ray’s face bloomed bright red. “I’m sure my mother appreciates that greatly.”
“I’m so glad. She’s been a wonderful client and I do want her to be happy.” Betsy knew she’d derailed Ray’s wooing and cast her gaze around the cramped, overly warm store.
There were gleaming oak tables and sideboards and heavy horsehair sofas and rich tapestry rugs of jeweled colors. Nothing that looked as if it had been made by a caustic mountain man. It looks as if you raised your hopes for no good reason. It seemed like such a small thing, to want to see his
furniture, what was she going to do had she found it? Buy it? She was scraping a living together. Barely.
But she turned to the still-blushing storekeeper and the question rose up as if she were destined to ask it and there was no way to stop the rush of words. “Perhaps you could tell me if you have any furniture from a local craftsman.”
“Why, these pieces right here. Lovely, don’t you think?” He gestured to the stunning cherrywood porch set and to the gleaning oak pieces. “We are unusually lucky to have such a skilled furniture maker in our midst. He lives in the county.”
Don’t get your hopes up. It could be another craftsman. The blood pounded in her ears and she heard herself say as if from a great distance. “Up near the Rocky Mountain Front?”
“Why, you must have heard of him. He’s anonymous. To tell you the truth, he wants it that way and that’s how we prefer it, too.” A shadow passed over his elongated face. Narrow, thin features squinted, as something seemed to occur to him. “You don’t happen to be looking to purchase these pieces, do you?”
“Yes, I am.” Her obviously wicked, less than sensible side must not see the folly of buying expensive furniture she couldn’t begin to afford. But did that halt her rash behavior? Of course not. “I would have to have the pieces lain away.”
“Oh, I think Mother and I could trust you to make payments.” Ray, as if happy to be of service, puffed out his narrow chest like a robin after gobbling the biggest worm in the garden. “Of course, we don’t often accept payments, but we are all too happy to make exceptions for our special customers.”
He slipped his fingertips into the shallow side pockets of his vest and looked very pleased with himself.
Say no, the sensible side of her urged. He will only see it as an opportunity to push for more than a proper chaperoned supper to something more suitable to a courting man—like a Sunday drive. If she agreed to his payment suggestion, then she would be in his debt for as long as she made those payments open to his advances.