Nate pulled the crumpled issue of Hand and Heart out from under his shirt where he’d stashed it. “I dare you to send an advertisement to them.”
Rose’s hand flew to her mouth. Her eyes looked enormous. “Dad would kill me. So would Mother.”
“How will they know? How many Hand and Heart copies have you ever seen?”
“None,” she admitted. “Columbine brought it home from visiting in Rock Springs.”
“Well?” Nate held his breath, counting on her well-known unwillingness to let him get the best of her and pushing back the thought this wasn’t fair.
“All right.” But she sighed. “I don’t know why I let you get me into pickles all the time, and this will probably be another one, but I said I would and I’ll do it. Why don’t you send one?”
Nate had already prepared himself for that question. “Too much competition. Anyway, there are hardly any from girls. You’re sure to get answers.” At least one, he promised himself.
An hour later an announcement more exaggerated than any in Hand and Heart had been composed. “I’ll write it out and send it,” Nate promised. “That way there’s less chance of your getting caught.” That night he kept part of his bargain. He copied and mailed the advertisement and sent a picture, but not to Hand and Heart.
Chapter 2
Carmichael Blake-Jones stared at the ivy-covered walls that had held him ever since he graduated from college and began teaching. The late afternoon sunlight that turned the stone walls rosy flickered in his curly golden hair and reduced his twenty-three years until he looked more like one of the boys who came to the private school than an instructor. A pang of regret slipped through him. Had he been insane to give up this privileged teaching post? Had the whim of a moment resulted in folly?
He could go back into the dean’s office and retract his resignation. Yet Carmichael hesitated and the moment passed. He turned on his heel and walked away, only pausing at the stone-arched gates to look back.
An imaginary parade of teenage boys marched between him and the school. Tall, short, overweight, underweight, timid, bold, good, and mischievous, he had loved many, despised a few for their cowardice or cheating, but served all. His fun-loving personality sympathized with their dilemmas, and he had often been hard put to keep from laughing instead of meting out the necessary discipline. Even the boys who thought him a pushover on first acquaintance soon learned that B.J., as they called him, offered friendship as well as education but never allowed himself to be maneuvered.
Now his new freedom sat heavily on his broad shoulders. What next?
The unspoken challenge echoed in every footstep between the school and his ancestral home. Born and raised in Concord, “one of those dyed-in-the-wool New Englanders,” a fellow teacher had labeled him, Carmichael loved his home. And yet…. He tossed his head back and laughed aloud. If that teacher and the others only knew! How often in dreams had the dedicated teacher longed to step from the rut he could feel growing deeper and more comfortable daily—to strike out and travel, to search for more adventure than he could find here.
Carmichael automatically returned greetings from those who hailed him, left the business district, and walked on, glad for the considerable distance between home and the school. In bad weather the walk had proved inconvenient, but on an early summer day with a beckoning sun spilling its joy Carmichael was unaware of the distance. His steps dragged, however, when he came to the corner of the Blake-Jones property. Not large enough to be called an estate, the spacious grounds and solid brick home showed the permanence of long standing. Sparkling white columns gave the mellowed brick a clean and welcoming look. Carmichael sighed. In the weeks since his parents had been killed in a railway accident he hated coming home. The youngest of the children and able to live at home long after the others married and gone, a special bond had strengthened between him and his parents.
The mouth that stayed etched in a smile twisted bitterly. Since the accident Carmichael had been bereft of even his heavenly Father’s comfort. A dozen times he had cried out, “Why, God? They loved and served You. You could have protected them. Why didn’t You?” Only the high ceilings replied, with silence. At last his prayers dwindled to formal recognition and he suffered alone.
“Michael, is that you?” a girlish voice called from the top of the curving staircase that led to the second floor.
His heart lifted. “Here. What are you up to?”
Sixteen-year-old Mercy Curtis pelted downstairs, her skirts clutched with one hand to keep her from tripping. Plump and just a little over five feet tall, she wore her gold curls, so like her mother Caroline’s and Uncle Carmichael’s, in a topknot that threatened to topple at any moment. Her blueberry-blue eyes twinkled. “I’ve come to take care of you, of course.”
“You have what?” Long familiar with her impetuous actions, her blunt announcement still surprised him while her warm hug took away some of his emptiness.
“You know I’m as good a cook as Mandy and can keep house a whole lot better. I just told Mama and Daddy that it didn’t make sense for you to be rattling around all alone in this ark, excuse me, house—” She paused to grin and her teeth flashed against the healthy red lips. “Anyway, now that school is out, I don’t have anything to do except help Mama, so here I am.”
For the second time this afternoon Carmichael laughed spontaneously. Mercy had dressed for the part by adding one of Mandy’s voluminous aprons over her gingham dress and wrapping it around herself twice. She wore a cap whose origins looked suspiciously like a dish towel. Now she bobbed a little curtsy and assumed a meek expression that her twin dimples somehow defeated. “Will Master Michael be ready for his tea in five minutes?” In her own voice, she added, “He’d better. I helped Mandy make popovers, and they’ll fall if you don’t hurry.”
Still laughing, Carmichael sped upstairs, hastily washed, and arrived at the tea table where the popovers sat puffed and waiting. For the first time in weeks he actually enjoyed a meal. “You aren’t serious, are you?”
Her blue eyes opened wide. “Of course I am. Once I convinced Mama it would be good training for me to have charge of a house because I’ll be getting married one of these days—”
“Married!” He set down his teacup with a little crash that brought a cry of dismay from Mercy until she saw it hadn’t cracked. “Why, you’re still a baby!”
“Oh?” Red flags of color flared in her face but her voice stayed sweet. “Let me run this house for one month and you’ll see how much of a baby I am.” She fixed him with a stern stare. “In case you’ve forgotten, I am almost seventeen years old.”
Delighted at her reaction, he added, “Your birthday isn’t until December.”
She hurriedly changed the subject. “Can I stay?”
He wasn’t to be sidetracked. “Just who do you have in mind to marry, that you need this practice?”
“How should I know?” She shrugged her plump shoulders and grinned again. “Your school’s filled with boys, isn’t it? I thought maybe you could pick out a few of the extra nice ones. Oh!” She jumped up so quickly the little tea table rocked. “You got a letter.” She ran to the mantel and brought back a fat envelope, then perched on the arm of his chair and peered over his shoulder. “Nathaniel Birchfield. Isn’t he that boy who went to your school last year?” An undercurrent of excitement pinkened her smooth face.
Carmichael eyed her suspiciously. “How do you happen to remember him? I don’t think I ever introduced you.”
“You didn’t have to. He came to church with his grandparents. He was—different. Sort of nice different.”
Totally amused but intrigued, he let the letter lie unopened on the table. “What do you mean by that, Mercy?”
She traced the damask pattern on the tablecloth with her forefinger. “He just smiled and didn’t act smart or try to flirt.”
“Well, I would certainly hope not,” Carmichael retorted. “Nice young gentlemen don’t flirt with little girls.” Storm warni
ngs in his niece’s eyes made him add, “After all, last year you were only fifteen and didn’t even have your hair up.”
She relaxed and smiled. “Aren’t you going to open your letter?
Carmichael scowled. “If you take over as housekeeper, you are going to have to learn your place and not show such vulgar curiosity about the Master’s mail.” But he hugged her and smiled, then slit open the letter. A flat, tissue-wrapped card fell out and to the floor.
“I’ll get it.” Mercy swooped off the arm of the chair and scooped it up. The wrapping fell back. “Why, it’s a photograph!” She stared. “Uncle Michael, have you been keeping secrets?”
Carmichael grabbed the photograph and gasped. A girl mounted on a fine-looking horse smiled back at him. A long, thick braid with a curl on the end hung over her shoulder. The likeness had caught sparkling eyes and a wide, white smile. Dressed for riding, she was clad in boys’ jeans and a long-sleeved shirt.
“Who is she?” Mercy demanded.
“I have no idea.” Carmichael couldn’t take his gaze from the picture.
“She’s beautiful. No, not exactly, but better than pretty.” Mercy judged. “She looks like she’d be fun, and see the way she sits her horse? Oh, if Mama would let me ride in pants! I hate riding in skirts, they bundle so.”
Carmichael’s keen eyes caught the rearing mountains in the background and he turned toward the letter. “I wonder why Nate Birchfield sent this picture. Perhaps he put it in by mistake.”
“Read it and find out,” Mercy said practically and resumed her seat on his chair arm, avidly following Nate’s letter.
Antelope, Wyoming
June 1893
Dear Mr. Blake-Jones,
You probably didn’t think you’d ever hear from me once I got back home. I’m not coming back to Concord, as I told you when I left. I learned so much from you, but now it’s time to move on and out here in the West is where I belong.
I want to thank you for everything you did for me and I will write again after I decide what to do with my life. I’m taking this summer to consider and I just may have surprising news for you a little later. In the meantime, I wonder if you’d do a favor for me. It’s this way:
My cousin Desert Rose Birchfield is always trying to get ahead of me and she usually does! Now I have a chance to have some harmless fun if you’ll help. I talked her into writing an advertisement for Hand and Heart magazine, the one where people advertise for wives and sometimes husbands….”
Mercy interrupted with a little scream. “My stars, how did she have the nerve?”
“If you have to read my mail, kindly refrain from commenting on it,” Carmichael told her, tipping the page so she couldn’t see it. As usual with Mercy, he relented and read aloud.
Now, fun is one thing but having someone answer who will get angry when she turns him down—as she will—or even worse, someone who will hang around her wouldn’t be funny at all. Besides, her parents and mine would lambaste us for doing this.
Anyway, I just thought that you might write her a letter. She probably won’t ever answer or, if she does, you can stop corresponding at any time and she’ll think you lost interest. I am enclosing a picture of Rose and her letter to Hand and Heart and will be much obliged if you will at least write one time.
Respectfully yours,
Nathaniel “Nate” Birchfield II
P.S. If you write, please don’t tell her how you got her advertisement.
“Of all the ridiculous requests!” Carmichael dropped the letter to the table.
“I think it’s perfectly splendid,” Mercy cried. She caught the single sheet of paper that had drifted out and laid it to one side. “Will you read Desert Rose Birchfield’s advertisement or shall I? Oh, what a pretty name!” All eagerness, her greedy fingers unfolded the page but she waited for Carmichael’s permission.
“Go ahead.” He leaned back in his chair and feigned indifference even while he glanced again at the laughing girl in the photograph. Desert Rose. Her name suited her.
“Just listen!” Mercy giggled until he couldn’t understand her. In exasperation, Carmichael took the advertisement from her.
Wanted: Young man to correspond with almost-eighteen-year-old girl.
“I wonder when her birthday is,” Carmichael broke off to say. “Go on!” Mercy ordered.
Must be at least five foot ten, have sense of humor, faith in God, be willing to relocate in Wyoming should correspondence lead to a closer companionship. No drinkers, smokers, or dandies. Must have good education but not be stuffy, no younger than twenty or older than twenty-five. Financial stability required. No ranching experience necessary, but must love horses and be willing to learn range lore. The ability to adapt to scorching and freezing temperatures, blizzards and droughts, hailstorms and gully-washers mandatory. Must be good-natured and not easily provoked. No divorced men or widowers need write. Will exchange photographs only after advertiser determines it worthwhile.
“Is that all?” Mercy tried to see the page.
“What more do you want?” her uncle demanded. “You can see that this Rose deliberately made up an impossible person in order to best Nate.” He tossed the advertisement to the table.
Mercy immediately took possession of it. A golden curl fell over her forehead as she perused it. “Hmmm. You’re exactly five foot ten, have a sense of humor, faith in God—”
“For goodness sake, Mercy! Stop your foolishness.” But Carmichael had all he could do not to show curiosity as she ignored him and rattled on.
“You don’t drink or smoke and you’re the right age. Now that you’ve inherited a tidy sum from Grandpa and Grandma you are financially stable. You aren’t a dandy and haven’t been married and I’d hate to see you go to Wyoming but you could adapt if you had to and you love horses and already ride well. You’re good natured, at least when you get your own way, and, why Uncle Michael! You’re everything Desert Rose made up!” She stared at him admiringly. “May I read your letter to her?” Mercy’s eyes shone with plans and dreams. “What if you write and she answers and you fall in love? You could use your inheritance to buy a ranch in Wyoming and I’ll come out and keep house for you until I find a cowboy who’ll carry me off on his horse and marry me and we’ll all live happily ever after!”
Why should a wild leap of excitement shoot through him at his niece’s nonsense? For a single moment her eloquence had swayed him. Common sense came to Carmichael’s rescue. “I thought you said you were grown up enough to run a home? This kind of talk certainly proves how wrong you are,” he said sarcastically. “I have no intention of getting involved in a childish prank.”
Mercy’s dismay seemed out of proportion to his decision. Her blue eyes darkened. “You mean you won’t answer? But you have to! What if you don’t? Desert Rose will think no one likes her well enough to correspond. She will feel absolutely terrible.” Mercy dramatically pointed to the photograph. “You can’t be so mean you won’t write just one little letter to her! I know how I would feel if I never got a reply.” She managed a woebegone expression that sent Carmichael into fits of laughter.
Mercy seized her advantage. “Just one letter, Michael?” she pleaded.
“I’ll consider it.” He shut his lips tight in the way that warned the subject had been closed.
Mercy said no more—then. But in the days following after Carmichael and the girl’s parents agreed the responsibility of housekeeping might do Mercy good, she quietly began a campaign that made the most illustrious army general look like an enlistee. Innocent little phrases such as, “Desert Rose will start looking for a letter soon” crept into her conversation. Now and then she sighed, “I wonder if Desert Rose would like to have me write to her? No, that would spoil Nate’s plan.”
Finally Carmichael capitulated, aware of how the simple photograph propped on the mantel (where Mercy placed it) drew his attention each time he entered the well-kept, comfortable room. “All right, I’ll write tonight.”
“Go
od!” His tormentor became his ally and clapped her hands in victory. Never had her eyes glowed more like sapphires, and Carmichael recognized a startling truth. His not-yet-seventeen-year-old niece indeed trembled on the brink of womanhood. In spite of her small stature, Mercy no longer could be considered a child. Even Mandy admitted it.
On one point he held firm against her half-pouting pleas. “No, you may not read my letter. In the first place, all I’m going to do is tell her the truth—that I’ve been a teacher at a private boys’ school and am in the process of making some changes in my life.”
“Are you going to tell her you know Nate?”
He drew his brows into a straight line and a rueful smile played on his lips. “I think I’ll have to. She’s bound to discover it or ask Nathaniel.”
Long after Mercy slept in the guest room she had appropriated, the one with the canopy bed she had always adored, Carmichael struggled with his letter. He wrote and discarded a dozen letters and finally settled on a simple message based on the outline he had sketched for Mercy’s benefit. His golden curls grew damp with effort. His blue eyes brightened and dulled in turn. At last his sense of humor won over the feeling he wasn’t being quite square with the girl who wore the odd name Desert Rose so well.
He sealed the envelope, exhilarated yet half-disgusted with himself. An hour later he lay wide-eyed and sleepless. Tales Nate had shared with the teacher who had seen through his bravado to find a homesick but determined young man crept into Carmichael’s thoughts. Never once had he felt Nate exaggerated.
“He didn’t have to!” Carmichael whispered and chuckled. The Old West and its fight against the elements certainly hadn’t faded into history. Just living and winning in Wyoming could challenge a man or a woman to the utmost.
What was she like, the young woman in the picture? Obviously as filled with a love of fun as her cousin Nathaniel. She must also possess a tremendous faith or she wouldn’t have included that in her ridiculous advertisement. Something in her eyes showed innocence wedded to mischief, the same traits Caroline once said her younger brother Carmichael possessed.
Wildflower Harvest: Includes Bonus Story of Desert Rose Page 16