Spirit of Love

by Duncan, Alice

  “My goodness.”

  Georgina tried to screw up her courage to ask something she’d been too timid to ask her parents. But Vernice was so kind and seemed willing to unburden herself. She blurted it out at last. “Why didn’t they ever marry?”

  “I don’t know, dear.” Vernice shook her head and looked very sad. “I know Mr. O’Rourke asked her once or twice, but Mother never accepted his proposals.”

  Such a scenario didn’t sound right to Georgina, who had always assumed women wanted and needed to be married if they expected to get anywhere in, life. What else could a woman do, after all? It’s not as if there were worlds open to women on their own. And, according to popular logic, women didn’t possess the mental faculties of men and, therefore, couldn’t be relied upon to take care of themselves.

  Georgina had never felt the need to question popular logic. Not that she had ever been or wanted to be on her own, but, well, she didn’t understand her grandmother’s refusal to accept the hand of a man with whom she lived, anyway. “But why didn’t she? I mean, they must have”—she shrugged, not quite knowing what to say—”cared for each other.”

  “Oh, yes. But when they first moved out here, you know, your grandfather Murphy was still alive. Mother said she considered—” Vernice broke off suddenly and turned bright red. “Oh, dear.”

  Fascinated by these confidences, Georgina urged her on. “She said she considered what?”

  “Oh, it’s too shocking to say—I really shouldn’t—it’s not to be spoken of—I mean, I shouldn’t—and to a young, unmarried lady,” Vernice stuttered, her voice muffled by chagrin.

  “Nonsense Georgina did her best to sound bracing and worldly. She was dying to hear the worst. “I need to know, Aunt Vernice. How else will I be able to help?” That didn’t make sense even to her, but she hoped Vernice was too agitated to notice.

  Evidently she was. Vernice took a deep breath. “She told him she considered fornication less of a sin than divorce,” she blurted out quickly, as if she couldn’t get the words out fast enough.

  “Oh.” Actually, that made sense to Georgina. In a way. After all, Maybelle was an Irish Catholic. Georgina’s mother had been a Catholic until she’d married George Witherspoon. She’d then turned to the Episcopal Church, the church in which Georgina had been reared.

  Catholics weren’t even allowed to obtain divorces, were they? Wouldn’t they be excommunicated if they divorced? Georgina knew very little about the church of her grandmother, but she understood not wanting to be banished from it.

  “But what about after Grandfather Murphy died? Why didn’t she marry Mr. O’Rourke then?”

  “I don’t know, dear. She’s always been as stubborn as a mule. I suppose he didn’t ask her in the correct tone of voice or something “ Vernice put a hand on Georgina’s sleeve and spoke confidingly. “Your grandmother is a very, strong-willed woman, dear. She has awfully peculiar ideas about some things, as well.”

  “Yes. She must.”

  The two women snapped beans in silence. Georgina’s brow furrowed as she ruminated over all the things she’d seen and heard since Vernice’s letter had arrived in New York City a little over two months ago.

  After some time, she said, “But about that ghost. Er, does Grandmother honestly believe it exists?”

  “Goodness, yes. Why, he’s a petted pest.”

  “Oh.” That seemed to settle the matter, at least for the time being. Since Georgina didn’t believe in ghosts, it still left open the question of lunacy. She guessed she’d simply have to wait and watch.

  If things got too outrageous, she supposed she could always go home again, but she didn’t want to. What was there for her in New York, after all? The same stuffy society she’d been born into twenty-three years ago. The same parties. The same people.

  Henry Spurling. Georgina’s nose wrinkled in distaste.

  Now why, she wondered, should the thought of Henry make her feel sick to her stomach? She didn’t understand it, but she aimed to hang around Picacho Wells until she figured it all out.

  “Vernice, don’t you and that silly girl have supper ready yet?’’

  Maybelle Murphy’s voice grated like a rasp. Georgina and Vernice exchanged a glance. Vernice looked chagrined. Georgina, her heart filled with sudden affection and sympathy for this aunt of hers who was clearly faltering under the heavy burdens of her life, grinned at her. After blinking for a moment, Vernice grinned back.

  Georgina whispered, “Don’t let her upset you Aunt Vernice. We’re in this together now you have an ally at last” She even managed a wink.

  She called out to her grandmother, “Supper will be ready in a little while. Aunt Vernice and I are doing our best.”

  “Humph. Your best doesn’t seem to be any too good.”

  “Then you’ll have to put up with it until you can get around on your own.” Georgina kept her tone light to rob the words of any sting. After all crazy or not, obstreperous or not Maybelle Murphy was her grandmother and as such if for no other reason—and Georgina couldn’t think of one offhand—she deserved Georgina’s respect

  “Humph. You’re a sassy bit of goods, aren’t you?” Maybelle didn’t sound at all distressed by Georgina’s sassiness. In fact Georgina thought she detected a note of approval in the querulous old voice.

  “I certainly am,” Georgina agreed cheerfully.

  Vernice giggled. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here, Georgina!”

  “So am I.”

  She meant it, too. With, perhaps, one or two qualifications

  Chapter Three

  Ash Barrett told himself the only reason he was riding out to the Murphy place was to check on Vernice Murphy. The poor woman had her hands full, what with that crazy mother to contend with and the added responsibility of a worthless city girl to take care of. Getting in the way. Whining and complaining. Demanding things.

  The fact that the worthless city girl had shiny, wheat-colored hair, bright blue eyes, and skin like a porcelain rose didn’t mean a thing. Nor did her shapely body. Hell, those were only trappings. Ash knew good and well a female’s appearance didn’t count for a hill of beans in the overall scheme of things.

  In fact, pretty trapping generally meant there was something rotten at the core. Hadn’t Phoebe demonstrated that fact to him years ago, beyond the shadow of any doubt? Yes, she had, and Ash didn’t intend to forget it.

  Besides, Georgina Witherspoon’s nose was too small, her ears stuck out too far, and she wasn’t tall enough for him. She wasn’t perfect. Not at all.

  Ash didn’t like it that her imperfections failed to overpower her other attributes. Nor did he like it that he felt the tiniest—only the very slightest—smidgen of a proprietary interest in her. He tried reasoning away his interest as merely the result of his being the one sent to meet her train. If someone else and done it, Ash wouldn’t be thinking about her at all this morning. He wouldn’t have to. But he was the sheriff of Picacho Wells, after all. He reckoned it was his duty to look out for folks. Especially folks who couldn’t look after themselves, and Georgina Witherspoon fit that bill to a T.

  Anyhow, all that was beside the point. Ash had met pretty females before. Females no longer had the power to affect him in any way whatsoever. When he had certain needs, as all men did, the girls at the Turquoise Bracelet Saloon filled them admirably. He didn’t want or need a woman of his own. He’d made that mistake once. In fact, the notion of marriage made him shudder as he guided Shiloh, his saddle horse, down the road from his home to the Murphy place.

  Ash lived a little ways outside of town, on a small ranch which he operated when his duties as sheriff let him, which was most of the time. Picacho Wells wasn’t a hotbed of nefarious activity. Yesterday’s bank robbery had been a weird anomaly. Ash chalked it up to the full moon. All sorts of strange things happened during a full moon.

  In fact, he realized, the full moon undoubtedly accounted for the marginal, almost minuscule, bit of interest he felt in Georgina Wither
spoon.

  The day was just about as perfect as spring days got in these parts. The wind was blowing, of course. The wind always blew. But it was almost gentle this morning. In the afternoon, around four o’clock, it would probably whip up into a frenzy.

  The plains didn’t look as dry and brown as they generally did because if had , rained a week ago—a torrential downpour that had flooded many of the buildings in Picacho Wells. Spring floods were only natural and normal, however, and nobody much cared. They just shoveled out the mud and went on with, their lives. Floods were as much a part of life out here as droughts were. Odd country, this. Ash loved it.

  Originally from Galveston, Texas, he appreciated the lack of humidity in these parts. When it rained, it rained, but the moisture didn’t stick around in the air to glue a man’s shirt to his back and smother him when he tried to breathe.

  Not that Ash didn’t appreciate Galveston. That’s where his money was, in his uncle’s cotton brokerage business, and it was multiplying like bunny rabbits. Ash was, by anyone’s estimation, a solidly wealthy man today. He supposed he could have retired, but he didn’t want to. Hell, he was only thirty-three. Nobody retired at thirty-three. And what would he do if he couldn’t be sheriff? Sit home all day and count his money? That wasn’t his idea of a fulfilling life. Besides, he loved his job.

  The plains were level and bare in these parts, covered by scrub grass and creosote bushes. There were a few rises here and there, but not many Mostly the landscape was flat.

  Folks had been planting trees in the area for a couple of decades, though, and civilization was taking a tenuous hold on the land. As he neared the Murphy place, Ash noted with approval the rows of fruit trees Devlin and Maybelle had planted. There were plums, peaches, and apricots coming into season now, and in the fall there would be plenty of apples and pears. Maybelle’s peach preserves were the talk of the Picacho Wells Fall Fair. This autumn’s fair would be the fifth annual. Picacho Wells was indeed growing by leaps and bounds. By God, there were upwards of a thousand people living in and around it now.

  Ash smiled as he rode. Maybelle was probably sitting in that wheelchair of hers, slicing fruit for preserves and , scolding Vernice, right this minute. He wondered if she’d managed to rope Miss Witherspoon into helping her. He doubted it. Hell, the girl would probably cut off a finger if she were made to handle a knife.

  Pecan trees lined the drive of the Murphy place from the gate to the yard. That was another thing, Ash thought with another smile—anticipatory this time, and with a rumble in his belly—Miss Maybelle’s pecan pies were about the tastiest he’d ever eaten. He hoped she’d make a bunch of them come fall. He’d buy as many as she wanted to sell him.

  He almost fell from his horse when the porch of the Murphy house came into view through the pecan branches and he caught sight of Georgina Witherspoon. She sat on the porch and sweat beaded her forehead. Ash couldn’t believe his eyes. He even rubbed them to make sure he wasn’t seeing things.

  No, by God, he wasn’t. There she was, thumping away at the butter churn as if she’d done such chores all her life. Ash reined in Shiloh behind a bushy pecan tree loaded with fuzzy catkins, and watched.

  He was certainly wrong about one thing. She hadn’t churned butter before. He ought to have known better. He grinned, pleased that his initial impression of her as a no-account city girl was right after all. She was useless. Laughable. As out of place here as a flower in a pigpen.

  Folding his hands over his saddle horn, he watched, intrigued, as Miss Witherspoon tried to make herself useful. He counted. Thirty-seven nominally vigorous thumps of the dasher. A pause to wipe sweat from her brow. Twenty-one somewhat less vigorous thumps. A pause to turn the dasher to feel if the butter had come. Doubt. Another pause to lift the lid and peer inside. Disappointment. A huge sigh. Twenty-nine energetic thumps. Pause to catch breath. Seventeen more thumps. Pause.

  She turned to look at the door of the house. “Aunt Vernice?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Urn, how long does it usually take for the cream to turn into butter?”

  Ash grinned. She wasn’t whining about it; he’d give her that much.

  “Several minutes, dear. I know it’s difficult work. Would you like me to take over for you? You can help your grandmother slice peaches.”

  Ash heard a cackle from inside the house, and a series of unintelligible words uttered in a scathing, rasping tone. Evidently Maybelle expected Georgina to accept Vernice’s offer. She and Ash obviously shared the same opinion of Miss Witherspoon.

  Georgina’s spine stiffened. A look of defiance crossed her face. Her chin lifted. She resumed churning butter with a vengeance. “Oh, no. I’ll keep going. I know I’ll get the hang of this with time.”

  Vernice appeared at the front door, wiping her hands on a towel. “Are you sure, dear? I know you aren’t used to doing these kinds of things. Unfortunately, we have to do our own chores out here. Even if we could afford them, there aren’t enough spare people to do the work that servants do back in New York. I do miss that about New York.” Vernice sounded wistful

  “Of course, you don’t have servants.” Georgina, on the other hand, sounded firm and resolute and even cheerful, if slightly breathless. “It’s only us pampered city people who have servants.”

  She laughed, a light, happy, self-deprecating laugh that entered Ash’s ears and slithered around in his body until he was warm all over. Vernice laughed with her. Vernice’s laugh didn’t do a thing to him; it only sounded like a laugh. Ash didn’t like these symptoms; they made him uneasy. He tore his mind away from contemplating his reaction to various women’s laughs and watched some more.

  The churning didn’t abate. By God, she was going to do it. Ash felt a lick of appreciation. Her arms must be about falling out of their sockets by this time. Churning butter wasn’t something one could do in one’s sleep. It took strength, endurance, and energy. And callused hands. Ash looked closely when Georgina released the dasher with her right hand—she kept churning with ;her left, albeit more slowly—and eyed her palm. Blisters. Ash would bet money on it.

  That was enough for him. His compassionate impulses, usually reserved for people he respected, smacked him in the conscience, and he rode Shiloh out from behind the pecan tree and up to the porch. Georgina heard him and looked up from her churning—surprised, Ash presumed, that anyone should be calling on the Murphys this morning. When she realized who the visitor was, she frowned, although she didn’t stop churning.

  “Need some help, Miss Witherspoon?” He tried very hard to sound polite, but he knew he’d phrased his question wrong as soon as she narrowed her eyes.

  “I should say not. I’m perfectly capable of churning butter, thank you very much.”

  Her attitude irritated him. Hell, he was trying to be nice, was all. He swung himself out of the saddle. “That so? And exactly how many crocks of butter have you churned in your life, anyway?”

  A pause. A frown. “Not that it’s any of your business—this is the first.” Grudging. Her admission came out about as grudging as any Ash had ever heard and, as an elected sheriff in a wild territory, he’d heard plenty of them.

  “You’re going to tear the hell out of your hands.”

  “Thank you for your concern.” She spoke through her gnashing teeth. “I can do my own work.”

  “You won’t be good for anything if you get blisters all over your hands.”

  “I have some lanolin cream in the house. If I get blisters, I shall doctor them myself.”

  “If you get blisters?” Ash couldn’t stand it. He knew her hands were already blistered. The notion of her tender skin being damaged did funny things to his innards. He didn’t like it, but he wasn’t going to fight it. He yanked off his gloves and stuffed them into his waistband. “Here. Give me that dasher.”

  “I will not!” She hunched over the butter churn as if she were a child protecting a beloved toy.

  “Don’t be foolish, Miss Witherspoon. I
f you’re trying to be a help to your aunt, you won’t do it by injuring yourself.”

  “Don’t you dare call me foolish! Churning butter is a chore any true western woman should be able to do, and I’m going to do it.”

  Any true western woman? What in the name of gracious was she talking about? Ash marched up the steps and went over to her. “Don’t be stupid. Give me that dasher.”

  “I won’t”

  “You will.”

  “I won’t!”

  “Dad-blast it, Miss Witherspoon—”

  They were both startled into jumps when the front door swung open suddenly and Vernice rushed out. She was agitated, and Georgina hopped up from her churning stool, thus accomplishing what Ash had been trying to bully her into doing.

  Georgina paled and held out a hand to her aunt. “Oh, Aunt Vernice, what is it?”

  “Chickens!” Vernice’s voice held a note of honest consternation.

  Ash understood.

  Georgina plainly didn’t. “Chickens?” She gazed at her aunt as if she suspected she were as loony as her grandmother.

  Ash grabbed the stool before she could regain her composure.

  “Chickens got out,” he explained. “They’re probably in the vegetable garden.”

  “Yes!” Vernice cried. “Yes, they’re out there pecking at the bush beans this very minute!”

  She raced down the porch steps. Georgina, unsure of herself in this calamity, stared after her. Then she glanced at Ash and glowered down at him. Too bad. He wasn’t going to give up either the stool or the dasher to satisfy her misplaced notions of what a western woman should be able to do—whatever in hell that meant.

  He glowered back at her. “You’d better help your aunt, Miss Witherspoon. Otherwise, you won’t have any beans to preserve for winter.”

  “Oh.” She blinked at him for a moment, as if she thought he might be trying to fool her in order to usurp her butter-churning assignment. Then she turned, held up a hand to shade her eyes, saw Vernice in the garden, noticed the chickens pecking away, and rushed down the porch steps to help rescue the beans.