“He was a good friend,” Rowdy explained. “I had him for almost three years. He found me one day. He’d been abandoned or somethin’ out in the middle of nowhere. I took him home, and Dodger and me were the best of friends ever since.” He paused a moment, smiled, and closed his eyes. “Sometimes if I close my eyes like this and listen real hard, I can almost hear him barkin’…hear him welcomin’ me home in the evenin’.” Rowdy grinned. “I can see his face clear as day in my mind.”
“What did he look like?” Shay asked.
“Oh, he was a big ol’ black-and-white dog,” Rowdy said. “He stood about yay high,” he explained, leveling one of his hands near Shay’s shoulder.
Calliope felt tears well in her eyes as Rowdy patted the large stone on top of the grave. “I sure do miss him. He was a good dog. He was my best friend.”
“Why, that’s the saddest thing I ever heard of, Mr. Gates,” Shay mumbled. Calliope looked to see Shay’s eyes brimming with tears as well. “I just don’t know what I’d ever do if Molly up and died! I think I’d probably die along with her. How can you stand it, Mr. Gates?”
Rowdy reached out and took Shay’s hands in his own. “Death is a part of life, Miss Shay Ipswich—a part we all have to face at one time or another. But it helps me to know that there’s a place in heaven for everything, even ol’ Dodger. And when I get too sad over missin’ him too much, I just think of him up there in heaven where there ain’t no pain and nobody can harm him ever again. I’m guessin’ he’s found an old willow tree to nap under up there and that he’s just as happy as can be.”
Shay smiled a little. “Maybe he’s eatin’ cake. That’s what would make me happy if I was in heaven.”
Rowdy laughed, wholeheartedly amused. “Maybe he is,” he concurred. “Or bacon. It was his favorite treat, after all. And I certainly can’t imagine heaven bein’ heaven if it didn’t have cake and bacon, can you?”
“No, sir!” Shay agreed emphatically. She looked up to Calliope and asked, “May I go pick some flowers for ol’ Dodger’s grave, Calliope? I promise I won’t tarry. I’ll be quick. I saw some pretty wild daisies just a ways up the road.”
“Of course,” Calliope said with a smile and a nod. “But do be quick, all right? It’s almost suppertime.”
She wondered how she would ever manage to be a good mother; she couldn’t even refuse her little sister anything. How in the world would she manage to tell her own children no?
“I will,” Shay agreed as she hurried off toward a beautiful cropping of wild daisies.
As Rowdy stood up once more, Calliope nervously warned, “She’ll probably take to leaving flowers on the grave every few days or so now. I hope you don’t mind. I’ll tell her not to bother you—just to leave the flowers and leave you in peace. But now that she knows the story, she’ll worry over your poor dog’s little grave forever.”
“She’s a tenderhearted little soul, isn’t she?” he commented.
“Yes, she is,” Calliope confirmed. “I’m thinking that’s why her cat Molly puts up with all the nonsense Shay showers over her.”
Rowdy chuckled. “Yeah, the poor cat. I’ve seen little Shay draggin’ that poor cat around town on a leash.” He looked to Calliope, his handsome brow puckered with astonishment. “A leash, mind you! I never did hear of a cat that would tolerate a leash.”
Calliope giggled. “Oh, Molly tolerates a lot that most cats wouldn’t.” She watched Shay picking flowers for a moment and then added, “And I think it’s because that sweet old marmalade cat knows a good heart and soul when she sees them in Shay.”
“It must,” Rowdy agreed.
Calliope studied Rowdy as he watched Shay gathering flowers. She wondered if any of the other young women in town had seen him since he’d been shaved. Blanche, Winnie, Sallie, and all the others would swarm around him like moths to a lamppost once they saw just how handsome Rowdy was. The thought entirely disheartened her all of a sudden. Up until the millpond incident the day before—up until Doctor Gregory had had to shave Rowdy in order to stitch the wound on his cheek—Calliope had had Rowdy Gates all to herself. The other girls in town never paid him much mind. In fact, they were all a little scared of him, in truth—his being so solitary and all. But now—well, if there was one thing Calliope understood about her friends, it was how fast their attention was arrested by a handsome man. Calliope’s secret bliss of being in love with Rowdy Gates—the secret that only Shay knew—was about to be brutalized by jealousy and competition with other young women.
In fact, the sudden realization that the other young women in town might actually begin to try and win Rowdy Gates’s heart for their own caused a sense of urgency and near panic to rise in Calliope. If anyone ended up winning Rowdy’s heart, she wanted it to be her! Couldn’t endure it if it weren’t her!
Thoughts of all the possibilities regarding Rowdy and the other young women of Meadowlark Lake converged into a tangled clump in Calliope’s mind—so tangled that she couldn’t even sort them all out.
Therefore, thinking of the day before—when she’d nearly been caught spying on Rowdy and ended up in the millpond with him after he saved her—bundled her feelings of powerful emotions for him, and before she even realized what she was doing, Calliope acted on the one impulse she could determine.
Raising herself on her tiptoes and placing her hands on his shoulders to steady herself, Calliope placed a lingering kiss to Rowdy’s cheek just below his wound. As she kissed him, she slowly inhaled—relishing the scent of him, the feel of his whiskers and skin against her lips.
“Thank you, Mr. Gates…for saving me,” Calliope said in such a quiet, timid voice that it was almost a whisper.
“Thank you for the pie,” came his response.
To her great, great, nearly devastating disappointment, Rowdy seemed entirely unaffected by her gesture of thanks—by her pitiful attempt at allure. He hadn’t touched her in return—hadn’t been tempted to kiss her in return. He’d simply accepted her thanks and thanked her for the pie.
Calliope tried not to blush as she stepped back from him, just as Shay raced up to Rowdy holding a lovely bouquet of daisies, buttercups and poppies.
“Here you go, Mr. Gates,” she said, offering the flowers to Rowdy.
“Oh, you go on and put them there, little miss,” he said, smiling, however. “Ol’ Dodger would rather a pretty girl paid him some attention than me anyhow.”
Shay giggled and gently arranged the flowers at the head of the dog’s grave. She exhaled a heavy sigh and said, “Rest well, Dodger. And don’t worry. I’ll be back with more flowers another day.”
Calliope looked to Rowdy to find him looking at her with a smile conveying that he understood she had been right in her prediction that Shay would want to place flowers on the dog’s grave regularly from that day forward.
“I told you,” she whispered.
Quickly then, for she found her blush of humiliation at having kissed Rowdy’s cheek so spontaneously was fast returning, she said, “Let’s go, Shay. We’ve taken up enough of Mr. Gates’s time this evening.”
“All right, Calliope,” Shay agreed. “But you go on ahead for a moment. I have somethin’ private I’d like to say to Dodger here at his restin’ place.”
“Well, I…maybe you should ask Mr. Gates if that’s all right with him, honey,” Calliope suggested. “After all, it is his dog, and he’s a very private man, and—”
“You say anything you want anytime you want, Miss Shay Ipswich,” Rowdy said to Shay, however.
“Thank you, Mr. Gates,” Shay said with a giggle. Looking to Calliope then, she gestured that Calliope should start home by shooing her little hand at her big sister. “You go on, Calliope. I’ll catch right up to you.”
“Um, all right, Shay…but don’t dilly dally,” Calliope said. She didn’t want to leave Shay behind with Rowdy—not for a moment. Who knew what she was liable to say to him?
But with no choice before her—for she didn’t want to make an
issue of it in front of Rowdy—Calliope said, “You have a good evening, Mr. Gates.”
“You too, Miss Calliope,” he said with a nod.
Calliope turned then and started toward home, praying that Shay would use the good sense of tact Kizzy had been trying to instill in her.
Shay Ipswich shook her head with obvious disapproval as she looked up to Rowdy. She exhaled a heavy sigh, planted her hands on her hips, and quietly asked, “Do you have oatmeal for brains, Mr. Gates?”
“I beg your pardon?” Rowdy asked, astonished by the girl’s scolding manner.
Shaking her head again, Shay answered, “She wanted you to kiss her, you big, silly goose! What do you think she kissed your cheek for?”
“Um…uh…to thank me for yesterday at the millpond,” Rowdy stammered, still astonished at being scolded—and now further astonished by what he was being scolded for.
Shay Ipswich rolled her dark eyes with exasperation. “She kissed your cheek because she wanted you to kiss her, oatmeal brain.” She leveled a small index finger at him, adding, “Next time you kiss her back, do you hear me?”
“Oh, she wanted me to kiss her, did she?” Rowdy chuckled, amused by the child’s assumption. “And just how do you know that?”
“Because I’m a gypsy, Mr. Gates,” Shay informed him. She shook her head with renewed aggravation.
“Well, I happen to know, Miss Ipswich Gypsy, that Fox Montrose is plannin’ on askin’ your daddy if he can court your sister Calliope,” Rowdy baited. “What do you have to say about that?”
But Shay again rolled her eyes. “Oh, she told Daddy some time ago to tell Fox Montrose no if he ever comes askin’ to court her, so I know that…”
The little girl gasped, covering her mouth with both hands. “Oh no! I’m not supposed to tell anyone that, Mr. Gates! Mama and Daddy will give me such a talkin’ to if they find out, and Calliope might never, never tell me another secret!” She lowered her voice even further so that Rowdy could hardly hear her. “Please promise you won’t say a word about what I slipped up and told you, Mr. Gates! Just promise me you won’t let on.”
“Even torture couldn’t drag it from me, Miss Shay,” Rowdy assured her with a smile. “I swear it to you.”
“All right. All right then,” Shay said, obviously feeling better. She looked to Rowdy again and said, “Just don’t be an oatmeal brain next time my sister gives you a chance like she just done.”
“Shay!” Calliope called.
Rowdy looked up to see a rather worried Calliope motioning for her little sister to join her.
“I gotta go,” Shay said. “Remember what I said, okay?”
“Oh, I will,” Rowdy chuckled as Shay ran to catch up to her sister.
He watched them clasp hands and start toward home. The fact was he watched them because he was too stunned to move for a second or two.
Was it true, what Shay had told him? Had Calliope wanted Rowdy to kiss her? Surely not. The child simply misunderstood. Calliope was still feeling guilty for the little bumps and scrapes Rowdy had gotten the day before when he jumped with her into the millpond. That was all. That was why she had kissed his cheek—to thank him.
Yet then there was the other part of it—the accidental revelation that Calliope wanted her father to deny Fox permission to court her. Could it be true? Rowdy knew it could, for in all his time in admiring Calliope from afar, it was always Fox coming after Calliope, never the other way around. Rowdy had always just assumed that Calliope wasn’t as flirtatious as other women her age. But could it really be that she didn’t like Fox Montrose as much as everyone in town seemed to think?
Rowdy finally came to his senses and returned to the house. He had a peach pie waiting for supper, after all. A peach pie made and delivered by the one girl in town who had managed to put her mark on his heart—and her little gypsy sister, of course.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“I still can’t believe he denied me,” Fox growled. “The almighty Judge Ipswich denied me permission to court Calliope!”
Fox’s ranting was wearing on everyone else’s nerves. Fox had done nothing but fume most of the day over the fact. Yet Rowdy had begun to wonder if Fox wasn’t a bit more upset over the fact that he’d been denied something than over what he’d been denied.
“Give it a rest, Fox,” Dex grumbled. “We know, we know—there’s no good reason on earth for Judge Ipswich to have told you no. But he did. So shut up and get on with the day. My ears are achin’ over your whinin’ about it all mornin’.”
“Mine too,” Tate agreed.
Fox’s eyes narrowed. “I know what the two of you are thinkin’. I ain’t stupid. You’re both thinkin’ that since I got turned down by Calliope’s father, then that leaves her for the two of you to have a go at. But it doesn’t! She’s still my girl. You hear me?”
“She was never your girl,” Dex argued. “Did Calliope even want you to talk to her daddy about courtin’ her?”
Fox straightened his shoulders indignantly. “She didn’t have to. Every girl in this town wants me to ask her daddy if I can court her.”
Dex and Tate both shook their heads with disgust. Even Rowdy’s eyebrows arched with his wonder at Fox’s conceit.
“You might want to simmer down that ego a bit, Fox,” he began, “before that swelled head of yours explodes.”
Fox glared at Rowdy, but Rowdy just exhaled a sigh of annoyance and said, “Let’s get back to work here, boys. We’re fallin’ behind.”
“All right, boss,” Tate agreed. Dex nodded as well.
Fox, however, stood glaring at Rowdy a moment. Finally he asked, “Don’t you think the judge was wrong to refuse me?”
Rowdy looked Fox straight in the eyes and answered, “I think a good man who’s also a good father knows…well, I figure he knows what’s right for his daughter and when.”
Fox huffed a breath of frustration.
“Settle it down, Fox,” Rowdy encouraged. “Things have a way of workin’ themselves out for the best.” He cleared his throat, adding, “But next time, maybe make sure the girl wants you to ask her daddy to come courtin’ her…before you go askin’.”
Glaring at Rowdy a moment, Fox eventually turned and stormed off to move some sacks of flour.
“That’s what he gets for thinkin’ he’s the sweet cream in every milk bucket,” Dex whispered to Rowdy as he passed him.
Rowdy didn’t respond with more than a mild, almost imperceptible nod—but he wholeheartedly agreed with Dex. Fox Montrose was way too fond of himself—and if the truth be told, Rowdy was elated that Judge Ipswich had refused his permission for Fox to court Calliope. For one thing, it verified to Rowdy the truth of what little Shay Ipswich had told him the day before—that Calliope herself had actually asked her father to refuse Fox’s proposal of courtship. It might also have proved that the youngest Ipswich gypsy wasn’t completely loco when she’d told him that Calliope had wanted Rowdy to kiss her.
Rowdy shook his head, rattling his brains back to reality. His thoughts where Calliope was concerned were as foolish as Fox’s assumptions had been.
Still, one thing he couldn’t lie to himself about—and that was the fact that he was purely jubilant in knowing that Fox Montrose had no real claim to Calliope. Therefore, as Fox continued to mope around the mill, muttering angrily to himself, Rowdy unconsciously took to whistling a happy tune.
*
“Ladies,” Calliope said as she stood in the center of Dora Montrose’s parlor, “I’d like to make an announcement.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Calliope,” Evangeline mumbled, blushing with humiliation.
But Calliope was undaunted. “I’m pleased to tell you all that my own very sweet sister Evangeline here…well, she’s managed to convince Floyd Longfellow to allow Mamie and Effie to take part in our Tom Thumb wedding as the flower girls!”
Every woman in the room applauded and squealed with delight.
“Oh, however did you manage it, Evangeline?” Winnie ask
ed.
“Yes, I can hardly believe it! Mr. Longfellow is so severe,” Blanche chimed in. “I’m afraid to even look him in the eye, let alone ask him anything…especially somethin’ the likes of this!”
But Evangeline shrugged. “I-I don’t quite know why he agreed,” she admitted. “I did take the time to explain everything to him, all the details and things. I noted that I thought it would be a good experience for Mamie and Effie—you know, something to help them get to know the other children in town.” She shrugged again and added, “And before I knew it, he’d agreed to allow the girls to participate.”
“Maybe Mr. Longfellow is a bit sweet on you, Evangeline,” Pauline suggested.
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Pauline,” her sister Callie laughed. “Mr. Longfellow is old enough to be Evangeline’s father, for heaven’s sake!”
“My father married Kizzy,” Calliope kindly pointed out, “and he’s old enough to be her father.”
“But that’s different, Calliope,” Callie suggested.
“How so?” Dora Montrose asked.
Callie shrugged. “Well…because Judge Ipswich is so wildly handsome! It makes sense he would win the heart of a younger woman.”
“Well, I think Mr. Longfellow is quite nice looking,” Evangeline said.
Callie seemed to ponder the statement for a moment. Then she nonchalantly shrugged and said, “I suppose he is. But I still wouldn’t want to marry a man old enough to be my father.”
“I find that older men are quite often far more attractive than younger ones,” Blanche’s mother, Judith, said. “Why, Mr. Gardener is a full ten years older than I am.”
“It’s not such a bad idea, now that I think about it,” Josephine Chesterfield commented. “You’d make a fine wife to a man in need of a woman to raise two little girls, Evangeline.”
Evangeline blushed, and Calliope leapt to her rescue.
The Secret Bliss of Calliope Ipswich Page 11