Her appearance surprised him, and it seemed to fluster Faith who had followed her into the room. “I just need to light the burner and I’ll be done here.” He’d traveled some during his years as sheriff, but had never seen anyone like Iris, or any woman as beautiful as Faith.
Iris clasped her hands in front of her. “Let us repay you by sending a few herbs home to your mother. Or perhaps you’d rather choose a few for yourself? We grow special herbs for men,” she said with a wink. “Ginseng and passionflower—”
“Basil!” Faith blurted, crowding Iris away from him. “We grow basil and valerian and aconite.” Pink stained her cheeks, but she didn’t spare Iris a glance. “We grow healing herbs like comfrey, chamomile, feverfew; that sort of thing. But your mother would probably prefer cooking herbs like chives, basil, or bay leaf.”
“I wouldn’t know one from the other,” Duke said, gazing through the open doorway at the rows of flats covering the greenhouse, “but I’d like to look around.” And he would enjoy the pretty widow’s fetching blushes while he found out a little more about her unusual business.
“Clean your hands and wait out front, Adam,” Faith said. “We’ll be out in a moment.”
After Duke lit the burners for the tub and boiler, he stepped into the greenhouse with Faith.
“This is comfrey,” she said, lifting a large, hairy leaf on a plant about three feet tall. “We use the root in tea to help reduce inflammation and to heal broken bones.” Faith moved to a neighboring plant about a foot tall with strap-like leaves that she didn’t touch. “This is autumn crocus. The seeds are used to treat gout and rheumatism, but all parts of the plant are poisonous.”
Alarm bells went off in his head. “Then why would you give it to a person? Aren’t you afraid of accidentally killing somebody?”
She faced him squarely. “I know my herbs, Sheriff Grayson. I have over one hundred varieties in my greenhouse, thirty of which are highly toxic but of immense value. I know how to use them for safe and effective treatments of minor ailments, but I don’t pretend to be a doctor.”
He watched Cora dump a bucket of soil into a mound on the greenhouse floor, and his gut tightened with worry. “Aren’t you afraid to have these poisonous plants around your daughter?”
Instead of answering, she lifted her slender fingers and beckoned Cora. The child leapt to her feet and ran to her side.
“Sheriff Grayson wants to see our dangerous plants, Cora. Will you show him which herbs are poisonous?”
“That’s aloe,” the child said, pointing to a green plant with long, tapering stems that reached up from the soil like grasping fingers.
Duke reached out to touch the fleshy stems, but Cora pushed his hand away.
“Don’t ever touch them!” she said dramatically. “You could get poison on your fingers and rub it in your eyes and go blind. Or you could get it in your mouth and die.”
“I didn’t realize aloe was poisonous.”
“It’s good for healing burns and minor wounds,” Faith said, “but it’s a violent purge if you ingest it. To Cora, anything that could hurt her is off limits. That means no touching.”
Duke nodded then gave Cora a little bow. “Thank you for protecting me.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, so sincerely that Duke bit his lip to stop a grin. “I’ll show you more, but you can’t touch them.”
“I won’t,” he promised then followed the little imp as she dashed from one dangerous plant to the next. “How do you know which ones are bad?”
She pointed to a red ribbon tied to a stick in the corner of the flat where the herb was planted. “Mama marks them with a bright cloth. That’s foxglove, and it’s very bad because it’s marked with red.”
“What if somebody came in here and stole all your ribbons?” he asked, hoping his question wouldn’t offend Faith, who stood protectively beside her daughter. “How would you know the good plants from the bad plants?”
Cora wrinkled her nose as if he were a pitifully stupid man. “I would look at their leaves or their flowers.”
“What if someone like me came in and got confused? I don’t know much about plants. What if I can’t tell if it’s foxglove or a snapdragon?”
“Then don’t touch it.”
He laughed at her refreshingly honest and simple answer. Faith’s lips twitched, but she didn’t gloat. “Since you’re such a smart lady,” he said to Cora, “perhaps you can tell me the name of that plant over there with the blue eyes and brown handkerchief that’s watching us.”
The little girl pivoted on her heels and looked behind her. “That’s not a plant!” she said with a giggle. “That’s my aunt Tansy hiding behind the fennel.”
“Oh,” he said in a whisper. “Why is she hiding from us?”
“Because she don’t like you.”
“Cora!” Faith gasped and laughed at the same time, blushing dark pink as she spoke to Duke. “I believe your badge has made Aunt Tansy wary.” She turned and gestured for the woman to come out.
Tansy stepped into the row and offered a nervous smile. Her hands flitted to her throat, and Duke thought of a butterfly. She’d tied her kerchief on her head, leaving the tail ends sticking up like antennae, and she seemed breathless and alert, as if the slightest move would make her fly away.
“Good morning,” he said with a polite nod.
Her vivid blue gaze flitted from him to Cora to Faith as if searching for a place to land.
“Aunt Tansy, this is Sheriff Grayson,” Faith said, but he sensed her reservation in introducing them.
“G-good mornin’, Sheriff.”
Her soft southern drawl surprised him. He would guess the blonde to be in her forties, but he could never tell with women because they were sneaky about concealing their age with face creams and hair dyes. But no herb or balm could change Tansy’s demure southern drawl or camouflage Iris’s dramatic Oriental looks.
Faith’s aunts could not be related.
Faith tapped her palm against a bushy green plant that looked like a weed to him. “You may as well come out, too, Aunt Dahlia.”
To his surprise, another woman with red pouty lips stepped from behind the bush. She looked Tansy’s age, but was shorter and more buxom, her hair and eyes dark brown. Maybe this one was related to Faith, but not the other two.
“Hello, Sheriff.” Dahlia bobbed her head, then surprised him by reaching behind the bush and tugging a fourth woman into sight. “This is Aster,” she said.
There was no doubt that Aster was the oldest, and she had the air of one in charge. Though she was Faith’s height, she had white hair, a solid build, and wide shoulders.
Aster stood like a soldier and met his eyes without a shred of shame that she’d been caught peeking at him. “We’re glad you stopped by, Sheriff. It’s good to know our niece has a man to depend on.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake!” Faith scowled at the women and slipped her hand into the crook of Duke’s elbow. “My aunts will take up your entire day if you don’t escape now.” She pressed her lips together and steered him to the front corner of the greenhouse, where she’d set up a counter and shelves to make a small store of sorts. “Don’t forget your balm,” she said, grabbing the jar off the counter as they passed. She thrust it into his hand then hurried them outside to where Adam waited in the warm sunshine.
“How can those women be your aunts?” Duke asked, wanting to hear her explain it to his satisfaction.
“I used to ask my mother the same thing,” Faith replied brightly, “but she assured me they were.” She pushed the hair out of Adam’s eyes, putting an end to the discussion if not Duke’s suspicion. “Come straight home from the store,” she said to the boy. “You need a haircut. And don’t forget my cheesecloth this time.”
He lowered his chin. “I won’t.”
Faith turned a warm smile on Duke that made him wish his call was personal. But she’d dodged his question and he wanted an answer.
She spoke before he could pursue it,
however. “Thank you for your kindness today, Sheriff. Please let me know how else I can repay you.”
He hooked his thumb in his gun belt. “If this balm relieves the ache in my shoulder, I’ll be in your debt, Mrs. Wilkins. I’ll let you know how well it works.” He wanted her to know that he would be back, that he would be watching her, and that he was interested in more than her business.
“Consider it an even exchange, Sheriff.” She kept her smile in place, but his gut insisted there was something secretive about her, something odd about her business and her aunts.
Maybe the boy could answer some of his questions. He clapped his hand on Adam’s shoulder and turned the boy toward town. “Well, young man, let’s go settle your debt with Mrs. Brown.”
The minute the two males were gone, Faith rushed into the greenhouse. Her aunts were gathered near a flat of peppermint-scented geraniums, tittering and whispering. She didn’t even want to imagine what they were talking about, but they needed to clean up their behavior before the sheriff guessed the truth about them—and herself.
She made sure Cora was occupied with her pail and hand spade and safely out of earshot before she confronted her aunts. “Iris, what you thinking being so bold with the sheriff?” she asked, certain they had just forfeited their one chance to build a safe and decent life for themselves.
“You need a husband. The sheriff is interested.” Iris shrugged. “I’m just trying to hurry things along for you.”
“Faith, you should listen to Iris,” Tansy said. “That the sheriff is the most handsome man I’ve ever met.” She placed her long, artist’s fingers over her heart as if on the verge of swooning.
“He was all eyes for you, Faith,” Aster said in her blunt fashion.
Faith gritted her teeth. “The only thing the sheriff will be interested in is evicting us from his town if he finds out where we came from. You can’t talk to him like you talked to your…to the men you knew before.”
“The sheriff loved our flirting,” Iris said.
“Well, I didn’t!” Faith said. “I was terrified one of you would go too far and—” She bit her lip to stop her rush of words, but tears welled up in her eyes.
“Oh, dahlin’, don’t do that.” Tansy grasped Faith’s hands. “There’s no need to worry.”
“This is our only chance,” Faith whispered, choked by her emotions. “Please, think of Adam and Cora. We have to be careful not to tarnish our reputations.”
“We know that, child.” Tansy parked her hand on her narrow waist. “We only teased the sheriff a bit.” She nodded toward the corner where Cora was plowing a stick through soil. “Not one of us will do a single thing to ruin that little girl’s future.”
“Or Adam’s,” Dahlia said.
Her aunts adored Cora and Adam, and Faith wanted to believe they would behave themselves, but she feared the women had spent too many years working in a brothel to be able to conform to polite society.
“Faith, you were so tense you were making the sheriff suspicious.” Iris said, softly. “I just flirted a bit to get him to hook up the gas line.”
“I could have hired a man to do that.”
“With what?” Iris asked. “We spent everything we had to make the move to Fredonia and set up our business. Other than the few coins in your jar, not one of us has a penny to our name.”
“All the more reason for us to mind our manners and present ourselves as decent, respectable women,” Faith insisted.
“Being respectable isn’t going to put food on our table. The only way we’re going to eat this week,” Iris said, “is to get some paying customers into that soaking tub.”
“No.” Faith pressed her palms to her nervous stomach. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to open a bathhouse.”
“Selling herbs won’t earn enough to feed us,” Iris insisted. “Our stock in trade is our ability to make men feel good.”
“That’s exactly what worries me! You know what people will think when they hear we’re giving herbal baths and massages.”
“My growling stomach is begging me to agree with Iris,” Aster said, her white eyebrows dipped in a scowl. “We need an income or a provider, Faith.”
Dahlia patted her small paunch. “I know we detested working at the brothel, but at least we ate well.”
Tansy nodded. “What harm can come of giving herbal baths as long as our patrons wear bathing garments and we don’t give any massages in private?”
“The harm is that one false move, or one nasty rumor, could tear our reputations to shreds, and it’s a risk we can’t afford to take,” Faith said. “We’ve only been here three weeks. Let’s wait a while and see how we do selling herbs.”
“We could afford to wait if one of us had a husband who could provide for us.” Iris arched one ebony eyebrow at Faith. “Maybe you should have flirted with the sheriff.”
“He wouldn’t want a woman like me.”
A sly smile tipped Iris’s lips. “Trust me, he is interested.”
Faith heaved an exasperated sigh. “I meant that he wouldn’t want to marry a woman with my questionable past.”
“None of us will get a marriage proposal if we don’t get some men in the door,” Dahlia said.
Aster nodded. “We need money, and we can only get it from the men in town. Without that bath we’re going to starve.” Aster widened her stance and crossed her arms over her chest. “When was the last time we ate a decent meal?”
It had been at least a month. The week before they escaped from Syracuse they had barely slept, much less eaten a decent meal. But their goal had been to stay alive and to get out of town before Judge Stone returned and stripped them of everything they owned. Faith and her aunts had pooled their money and hired a local livery owner to secretly transport the contents of their greenhouse to Fredonia. In addition to paying his enormous fee, Faith had to buy the grist mill and pay a carpenter to install the huge windows in the first floor. They were broke, out of food, and out of options.
“Faith, you promised to use your pretty face to get a marriage proposal from a man who can protect us from Judge Stone. The sheriff is interested and available.”
“Are you daft?” Faith asked. “The last person I want snooping around here is a lawman.”
“But who better to have defending our lives than that handsome sheriff?” Iris asked.
Who indeed? The sheriff was a take-charge man, a man in control of himself, a sharp-eyed investigator aware of everything around him. His dark eyes had sized up Faith within seconds of their introduction. His smile said he liked what he saw, but she sensed a fierce resolve in him that scared her to death.
Chapter Four
Adam was glad the sheriff had hooked up the gas line for them, but the man should have kept his big mouth shut. He should have put Adam in jail, or let him pay his debt privately instead of upsetting Faith.
As they headed toward Water Street, Adam stole glances at him. The sheriff’s hands were huge, with big knuckles that could knock a person’s teeth out with one punch. Adam’s own knobby, long-fingered hands would never be as big or strong as the sheriff’s. The man was a giant. His arms bulged with so much muscle they were bigger around than Adam’s legs.
“I’ll drop this at my office before we visit Mrs. Brown,” the sheriff said, lifting the jar of balm that Faith had given him.
Adam didn’t know if the sheriff might throw it out, but it had taken a long time and a lot of work for him and Faith to make that balm. If the sheriff was just going to waste it, he was going to ask for it back. “You should use it, sir.”
“You think it will help then?”
Adam nodded. “The salicin and herbs work good on sore muscles.”
“So you know a bit about herbs?”
“Yes, sir.” Adam lengthened his stride, but was unable to match the sheriff’s long gait. “I know almost as much as Faith does. She’s been teaching me since I was Cora’s age.”
“Did your mother grow herbs too?”
&
nbsp; “No, sir. She grew roses.”
“How did Faith learn about herbs?”
“Books. She says that’s the best way to learn about things.”
The sheriff angled his Stetson to shade his eyes from the sun. “You enjoy reading?”
“Yes, sir.” Adam squinted up at him. “We read every night after supper.”
“We?”
“Faith and I read to Cora.”
“Would your sister let me come by some evening and listen?”
“No, sir. Faith dislikes men.” And Adam didn’t want the sheriff around spying on him or upsetting Faith.
The sheriff raised his eyebrows. “That must have made her husband uncomfortable.”
Adam looked at his feet and called himself an empty-headed idiot. He wasn’t supposed to talk about Faith’s husband. His big mouth could ruin everything if he wasn’t careful.
“Something wrong, son?”
“No, sir. I was... I was thinking that Cora might tell you a story, but it’ll be so crazy you won’t understand it. The last story she told was about a flying snake named Lester who gave Cora a ride over a rainbow and turned them both into butterflies so they could live in my mother’s rosebush.” He glanced up to see if the sheriff had that squinty suspicious look on his face, hoping his story had smoothed over his mistake. The sheriff’s grin relieved him. “I told Faith that Cora must have eaten jimsonweed. It makes a person hallucinate.”
“You don’t ever eat those type of plants, do you?”
“No, sir,” Adam said between clenched teeth. He hated that everyone always thought the worst of him.
“Good.” The sheriff clapped his big hand on Adam’s shoulder and drew him to a stop in front of the barbershop on Water Street.
A man even taller than the sheriff stepped into the rutted street to meet them. “Where have you been hiding?” the man asked. “I’ve been by your office twice this morning.”
“I’ve been training my new deputy” The sheriff patted Adam’s shoulder.
Although he was joking, a thrill rushed through Adam. He couldn’t even imagine what it would feel like to be a strong, respected lawman.
My Heart's Desire Page 3