Not that it must be a hardship. Charmaine was pretty. On second glance, she was beautiful, with her pale-blonde perfection, eyes the color of a summer lake, and skin as pure and smooth as that of a porcelain doll. Beside her looks, her attraction must also lie in her kindness. Not everyone would give up a night’s sleep to help the Goswells prepare food for their household of unexpected guests.
The coffee turned to acid on Euphemia’s lips and burned in her stomach, and she set the cup on the table, too weary to hold it any longer. She slumped in one of the kitchen chairs and held out her bandaged wrist. “I don’t think I can help you peel potatoes, but maybe I can cut them.”
“I think you should be in a bed, Miss Roper.” Charmaine smiled. “Don’t look so surprised. Of course I know who you are. My father talked about you when you were in his class as a freshman at Michigan Central College before it was Hillsdale College. He said you wrote the best papers of anyone, including Ayden.”
“He was kind to me.” Euphemia rested her head on her good hand. “But I don’t remember you.”
“I didn’t go to the college. I attended a finishing school in Philadelphia.” For a moment so brief Mia thought she must have imagined it, Charmaine’s clear blue eyes clouded. Then she smiled, and the sun emerged again. “And now, I am Father’s hostess and housekeeper and do some charity work for the church.”
“And Ayden has made a good choice for his wife.”
She wouldn’t be running to a city to take on that unfeminine occupation—a career in journalism—or any other career beyond wife and mother, as Euphemia and a handful of other females did nowadays.
Charmaine laughed with a decided lack of humor. “Not quite that . . . yet.”
The sound of voices outside the kitchen prevented Euphemia from saying more. She rose in time to meet Mrs. Goswell’s voluminous, cinnamon-scented embrace.
“Mia. Oh, my, Mia Roper, you don’t know how happy we are that you’re here.” The older woman drew back and wiped her eyes with the corner of her pristine apron. “We’ve prayed and prayed for you, and I knew I was right to know God promised you’d come back.”
Euphemia refrained from saying God had nothing to do with her presence in their kitchen at four o’clock in the morning. At least she didn’t think He did.
“I’m happy to see you, too, ma’am.”
She was much happier now that Ayden’s parents couldn’t want her there for a reunion between her and Ayden, a painful prospect at best.
“You’re drinking coffee to warm up?” Mrs. Goswell said. “I’ll get you some soup and bread, too.”
“She needs dry clothes first.” Rosalie also embraced Euphemia. “Come up to my room, and I’ll find you something. You’re a little shorter and a little thinner than I am, but not by much.” She slipped her arm through the crook of Euphemia’s elbow and started for the door, then paused by Charmaine. “Thank you for doing all of those potatoes. Should Ayden walk you home?”
“I can stay if you need more help.” Charmaine suppressed a yawn.
“You look tired after collecting all those blankets,” Mrs. Goswell said. “But I’ll have my husband take you in the sleigh. Not proper for you and Ayden to be out alone this time of the morning.”
“And the snow looks deeper.” Charmaine glanced to the doorway, where Ayden now stood.
The two shared a smile, and Euphemia closed her eyes.
Seeing the intimacy between Ayden and Charmaine should not hurt. She just wished “should not” and “did not” came out the same in the end. Unfortunately, her heart had wrapped itself around her windpipe, and each breath pained her.
Rosalie squeezed her arm. “Move out of the way, brother. This lady needs to change her dress.”
“How’s your wrist?” Ayden asked.
“Sprained and sore.” Euphemia tried to smile and failed. “I’m managing.”
“You always did.” He moved away from the door and strode to stand behind Charmaine’s chair. “If there aren’t any classes tomorrow, which I doubt there will be . . .”
Rosalie nearly dragged Euphemia from the kitchen, allowing the door to bang shut behind her. “If there aren’t classes tomorrow, he’ll bring her back here to help Momma cook, and we’ll all be miserable.”
Euphemia blinked. “You don’t like her? She seems like a nice lady.”
“She is.” Rosalie paused with one foot on the bottom step. “She is sweet and pretty and giving and kind and just so good at everything she makes the rest of us feel like a herd of elephants in a crystal room.”
“Ah, no wonder Ayden is taken with her.” Euphemia managed the words in a neutral voice.
Rosalie snorted. “He is taken with the notion of being married to the daughter of someone who can get him the position he wants at the college.”
“Ayden would never be that mercenary.” Euphemia’s defense of Ayden emerged in a flash. At once, she called herself a hypocrite since she had thought much the same thing mere moments earlier.
“I would like to think that about my brother, but I’m not entirely sure sometimes.” Rosalie started up the steps. “You’ll share my room. I have a blazing fire and warm things for you, and I’ll bring you up a tray so you don’t have to see my brother until you feel more yourself.”
“Do I have to see your brother at all?”
“Oh, I do hope so.” Rosalie turned right at the top of the polished wood steps and headed along a strip of red Turkish carpet to the end of the hallway. At the last room on the left, she pushed open the door to a room with a fire crackling in the small hearth and a dressing gown and slippers toasting over a chair before the blaze. “Now that you’re here, Mom and Pa and I all hope he will change his mind about making an offer for Miss Charmaine Finney’s hand in marriage and come to his senses about you.”
“Um, no, Rosalie.” Euphemia stumbled into the pink-and-white bedroom and held her free hand out to the flames. “I didn’t come back here to renew anything with Ayden. I’m strictly here for work. If not for the wreck, I would have avoided seeing any of you at all.” She ducked her head. “I am sorry to say that after you all were such a family to me, but what was between Ayden and me is obviously over.”
“Ha. You went all stiff down there when Ayden looked at her.” Rosalie adjusted a carved wooden screen across one corner. “Go in there and change into this nightgown and robe. Then I can tell you why your arrival is such an answer to prayer.”
Euphemia didn’t move. “I don’t want to hear any such thing. I wouldn’t interfere with Ayden and his fiancée, even if I still wanted him to court me, which I do not. He hurt me too much.”
“I know he did. But, Mia”—Rosalie grasped Euphemia’s hand between both of hers and gazed at her with the Goswell blue eyes, rich in color, intense with emotion—“if I thought Ayden loved Charmaine, I would make sure you didn’t interfere with their courtship. But he doesn’t.”
“He didn’t love me either, obviously.” Euphemia blinked back moisture in her eyes. “You know that.”
Despite the seven years’ difference in their ages, Euphemia had wept on Rosalie’s shoulder a year and a half ago.
Rosalie sighed. “I know he was beastly to you. I didn’t speak to him for weeks after you left and he didn’t. But, Mia, him marrying Charmaine would be worse. She is a nice person, but he’s courting her for all the wrong reasons, even if he won’t admit it.”
Chapter Four
Ayden rested his elbows on the kitchen table, too weary to move, too awake to go to bed. At five o’clock in the morning, he may as well stay awake. He needed to shovel snow. The horses also needed to be fed and their stalls mucked out. With all the soup she’d heated and coffee she’d brewed during the night, Ma would need more wood chopped for the stove.
Most of Hillsdale might call him Professor Goswell, but he was still Wilson and Rebecca Goswell’s younger son, who was living at home, and as such, he was expected to help with the chores. He tried to execute those chores before he headed for campu
s at seven thirty in the morning. Otherwise, he found himself wielding an ax and splitter between preparing lectures and grading tests. That didn’t work so well when he arrived at class with wood shavings clinging to his coat and hair. Students, especially the female ones, concentrated more on his disheveled appearance than his history lectures. The young women vied for custody of his overcoat to brush it clean. More than one young lady had tried to brush his hair for him. Being no more than ten years older than the students, he needed to watch his step with the women, gently reminding them they had come to get an equal education with the male students, an opportunity less than half a dozen colleges in the country offered.
Too often, his subtle reminders of the young ladies’ purpose in attending Hillsdale College failed him. No matter how often he made it clear he was the professor, not a potential husband, numerous women students persisted in leaving cookies, pies, and even a layer cake in his office. They weren’t trying to bribe him to give them better grades. Most were perfectly capable of earning those grades all on their own. They did not, however, hesitate in their attempts to earn his attention outside the classroom.
God bless Charmaine for coming along with her sweet nature and blonde beauty. During the past few months of their courtship, the gifts of baked goods had dwindled, though a few trickled in from time to time.
Of course, discouraging the female student population from flirting with him was not the only reason he’d begun to court Charmaine. He enjoyed her company, her serenity, her kindness. Never in his life had he been so comfortable in the presence of a female, including Mia.
Mia was anything but a comfortable female to be around. She voiced opinions. She argued. She set out to accomplish a task and wasn’t always careful about how she got there.
But he had loved her to distraction. He had wept when she left Hillsdale with a vow never to return. So now, when he was all but engaged to Charmaine, Mia reneged on her promise to never see him again and leaped off that wrecked train.
“Now what do I do?” He didn’t realize he had cried out in a moment of desperation until a hand dropped onto his shoulder.
“You might want to try a few hours of sleep,” Ma suggested.
Ayden smiled up at her. “Too much to do. The horses, the shoveling, avoiding Mia.”
“That’s going to be rather difficult.” Ma went to the stove and began to make coffee. “This is a fine, big house, but it’s not that big. Unless you stay away from dawn to bedtime, you’re bound to see her.”
“I’ve got plenty of work to keep me away.” He rose. “I’ll see to the horses and the shoveling.”
“You don’t want some coffee and breakfast first?”
“It’ll taste even better after hard work in the cold.”
Maybe the physical labor would clear his head of the image of Mia’s arresting face surrounded by the snow-crusted fur trimming her hood. It was surely the same hood that had surrounded her face on many a ride in the sleigh or on a sledding expedition like the one when he first kissed her until her lips were no longer stiff from cold, until they glowed as rosy as her cheeks and were warm enough to melt falling snowflakes.
His own cheeks suddenly far too warm, he stamped his feet into his boots and stalked from the house, away from the heat and into the cold. He closed the door behind him, wishing he could so easily close the door on memories of how happy Euphemia Roper had made him before that first kiss, during those glorious moments, and long afterward.
“Think about Charmaine.” He spoke the words aloud, then repeated them.
While raking soiled straw from the horses’ stalls, he focused on Charmaine’s face, her curls the color of ripe wheat, her eyes the color of the sky on a clear day in August, the luscious strawberry hue of her lips—lips he hadn’t yet kissed. Maybe he should. Maybe that would once and for all drive memories of Mia from his head.
But he couldn’t get Mia out of his head while she slept under his parents’ roof.
He forked fresh straw into stalls and hay into mangers with so much vigor the carriage team backed against the walls of their stalls as if they expected him to grab their manes with the tines and haul them behind the stable. His own mount snorted and stamped, as though more than a little sympathetic.
“Charmaine is restful.” Ayden grabbed the shovel and attacked the snow drifting across the walkways. “She will make a perfect hostess.” He flung snow into piles Rosalie would no doubt diminish to produce one of her snowmen. “She’s had a great deal of practice.”
She had played hostess for her father since her mother’s death a year earlier. And Dr. Finney entertained a great deal, as the director of the Classics Department at the college was expected to do. Ayden should attend because he was the newest lecturer awaiting Finney’s approval for the position to become permanent.
A shovelful of snow sailed off the walk and struck the kitchen window, then tumbled atop one of Ma’s lilac bushes. Two branches snapped beneath the onslaught.
Ma yanked open the back door. “I think you’ve done enough shoveling, Ayden. You should get yourself in here and warm up before you do any more damage.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He set the shovel beside the back door, then gathered an armload of firewood before shouldering his way into the kitchen.
The aromas of fresh-brewed coffee, fried ham and potatoes, and baked apples and cinnamon caused his mouth to water and his stomach to growl. After dumping the firewood into the box, he removed his boots and coat and crossed the room to slide a stack of plates from the cupboard. “Should I set these in the dining room for you?”
“Thank you, and get a fire going.” Ma didn’t look up while flipping sliced potatoes in a skillet. “Then maybe you could go wake up that sleepyhead sister of yours.”
Ayden paused in the doorway and faced his mother with a shake of his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” Ma drew her silver-flecked eyebrows together.
Ayden let the kitchen door swing shut behind him. She would work it out. If the creak of floorboards overhead was any indication, Rosalie was already awake. She must be trying to let Mia sleep, since no voices drifted through the ceiling plaster. Kind of her, but then Rosalie was nothing if not kind. If only she’d go to the college or find a beau more worthy of her lively goodness.
He set the plates on the table with a clatter of crockery, then stooped before the hearth. A fire had been laid. All he needed to do was crumple newspaper and wood shavings atop the logs and set a match to the kindling. They ignited with a whoosh and blaze of heat. He held his hands to the warmth while cold cloaked his back. The kitchen was far warmer, yet Rosalie’s voice, sparkling like sun-dappled water, told him she spoke of Mia.
“I think her wrist is paining her, and we should make her stay in bed. She looks so tired and sad. I don’t think the city agrees with her.”
“It’s a long journey,” Ma pointed out. “And with the wreck, she’s probably a bit overwrought.”
Not to mention seeing him again. Or maybe it was arrogant of him to think encountering him had any effect on her at all.
He rose and returned to the kitchen. In the event Mia did rise for breakfast, he should make matters easier for her and vacate the house.
He pushed open the door in time to see Rosalie tipping a few drops of laudanum into a cup of tea. She startled at his entrance, and a few more drops splashed into the cup.
“What are you doing?” His tone was mild, his look sharp.
Rosalie shrugged. “You know Mia. Unless she’s changed a great deal, she’ll be insisting she get up unless we make her sleep.”
“Shouldn’t you let her choose whether or not she wishes to be drugged?” Ayden reached for the cup.
Rosalie snatched it out of his reach. “She’s in pain from her wrist. The doctor recommended a few drops, but she wouldn’t let me get up for it last night.”
“Ayden is right.” Ma reached for a clean cup. “You shouldn’t give her medicine without her knowin
g.”
“All right. I’ll ask her.” Rosalie’s lips turned down. “But if she says no and then ends up dashing around town and hurting herself worse, it’ll be on your head, brother.”
“If she says yes,” Ayden countered, “we’ll know she’s seriously hurt and maybe needs to see the doctor again.”
And if she said no, he needed to make himself scarce.
He strode to the back door and got his boots and coat. “I’m off to see if I can look for clues about that child’s people at the wreck, and then I’ll be on the campus.”
“There aren’t any classes today.” Ma cast him a narrow-eyed glance. “Do you plan to move into the museum while she’s here?”
“That sounds wise.”
Or make Miss Finney an offer of marriage sooner than he had planned.
He stamped his feet into his boots. “I have some weapons to examine and oil and two students to tutor.”
“You and your tutoring.” Rosalie balanced a tray of tea and toast on her hip. “I’m surprised Charmaine endures it with such grace.”
“Miss Finney,” Ayden said, “endures everything with grace.” He yanked on his coat and left the house.
He couldn’t go out to the wreck this early. The sun had not yet risen, and he couldn’t take the horses into the cold so soon after they had eaten. He would head up to the campus. The museum, where he kept his collection of ancient weapons, always gave him shelter. He could lose himself in the work there for hours.
Which he did. Between oiling each blade with loving care and making a few notes on blade details to ensure no erosion of the metal was taking place, and three interruptions by students anxious about their assignments, most of the day sped by him. One of his tutees was doing so well she was unlikely to need his help much longer. The other one, a male student, needed to play less baseball and read more history.
When Ayden was about to close the museum and head out to the wreck, his third tutee appeared in the museum doorway.
Collision of The Heart Page 4