Something in her life of being shuffled from indifferent family member to indifferent family member, then her career in a heartless city, had taught Mia to hide her feelings behind a smooth mask of indifference. She could even smile without changing that lack of interest, as she did at that moment.
“I wish you happy with your hostess. She is so ornamental and well connected I expect an education isn’t important for her.”
Coup de grâce delivered, she glided from the kitchen, leaving behind a half-iced cake and the fragrance of lemons.
Ayden had slammed out of the house to shovel the inch or so of new snow. Not until he returned to the warmth of the kitchen and found Ma finishing the cake icing did he realize he’d gone out without his coat.
“What did you say to her?” Ma demanded.
“I’m proposing to Charmaine on Friday.” Before Ma could respond, he took the steps to his makeshift room two at a time, but he didn’t find peace or rest there.
Yet one more reason not to want to go to church—he was going his own way and not taking counsel from his parents. The Bible lying on the scarred classroom table and the simple act of worship with fellow believers would surely squeeze his conscience to a screeching point.
But of course he went. He rose early to take care of the horses and scrape some ice from the walkways, then ate breakfast in the kitchen. Then he walked to church with the entire crowd from his house, happily darting ahead to corral the two Herring children out of the street.
“I’m sorry they’re being so naughty.” Mrs. Herring blushed. “They haven’t been able to run around for days.”
“We’ll organize a sledding party.” Ayden grabbed Roy Herring’s arm before he could toss a snowball at his sister. “I expect a lot of the children are in need of a romp.”
From the shrieks and squeals in front of the church, he spoke the truth. A game of snowball tag seemed to be in progress, to the hazard of those coming to the service. One snowball came flying at Ayden’s head. He ducked, and Mia cried out behind him.
He turned to see her wiping the frozen crystals from her face. “I am so sorry.” He reached out to pluck a chunk of snow from the fur trim of her hood, caught sight of Charmaine and her father coming up the walk, and dropped his hand. “Take my muffler.” He gave her the length of red wool around his neck, then strode past her to greet the Finneys.
“Would you like an arm, Miss Roper?” Gerrett Divine asked Mia. “I’ll protect you.”
Ayden tensed. He should have protected her from missiles for no other reason than she was a guest in his house. But Charmaine was there, expecting him to escort her into church.
They walked behind Mia and Gerrett. The two of them chatted about something in New York City, while Ayden had no idea what Charmaine was saying to him. Surely, it was interesting. He’d never been bored in her company. She might not have had a formal education past her Philadelphia finishing school, a place she spoke of often, but she was well read and intelligent and would have done well in academics.
Just like his sister.
Rosalie strode arm in arm with Fletcher Lambert. He bent his head toward hers, and their soft laughter drifted through the icy air.
“Stop scowling.” With a quiet laugh of her own, oddly accompanied by a wistfulness to her gaze, Charmaine elbowed his side. “They’re in love. Do you think you should stand in their way with your grousing about it?”
“I wouldn’t anyway.”
“Don’t be so sure about that. She’s already turned him down once because she knows you disapprove.”
Ayden stopped on the church steps to stare at her. “How do you know?”
“She told me.”
“So my little sister confides in you.” A little fist squeezed Ayden’s heart. “She used to talk to me.”
“She has me now that you’ve chosen to be unreasonable.”
Rosalie looked so happy these days, perhaps he was being unreasonable.
“I’ll think about changing my mind.”
“You should.” Charmaine glanced at her father. “Change your mind about interfering with others’ hearts.”
Focused on what Charmaine meant by that last remark, whether it was merely about Rosalie and Fletcher or someone else, Ayden didn’t realize he ended up in the pew between Charmaine and Mia until changing places would have been awkward and too obvious.
Mia, however, didn’t seem to notice him. She kept her attention either on the pastor or Gerrett Divine, sharing a hymnal and a Bible with him, keeping her shoulder turned in just enough to cut out Ayden.
He angled his shoulder away from her as well. That was how things should remain between them throughout the service. Afterward, she would go to his parents’ house, and he would go to the Finney house.
Then Charmaine insisted Mia join them for dinner. “You must tell me all about Boston. I’ve been to every city on the coast except for Boston and so wish to go.”
Don’t accept, he urged her in silence.
But she agreed after only a moment’s demur. “I’ll be happy to tell you about Boston, and we can compare our impressions of New York and Philadelphia, too.” Mia cocked her head, and her slanted eyes grew positively feline, an expression Ayden knew meant he should brace himself for the direct hit coming. “In return, I think you would be a fine foil to my article about women who choose to go to college alongside men, since you chose not to get an education and all.”
“It wasn’t really my choice.” Charmaine bowed her head and peeked out through her extraordinary lashes. “My mother died, and Father needed a hostess.”
“So you would go to college if you could?” Mia pressed.
Ayden grasped her elbow and nudged her toward the end of the pew. “At least refrain from pursuing your career on a Sunday.” He leaned toward her and murmured, “And use your razor tongue on someone who can reposte in tierce.”
“Seconde.”
“You’re slipping, Mia. You’re better off reposting in tierce and parrying in seconde.”
“I prefer to parry in—”
“Don’t tell me you fence, too, Miss Roper.” Charmaine sounded so bored she nearly yawned.
Mia gave her a big-eyed look. “You don’t fence?”
Charmaine shuddered. “Those blades of Ayden’s rather terrify me.”
“Have you managed to recruit any other females to learning the art?” Mia asked.
“One or two. Perhaps you should come interview them.”
“I’d like that.” Her face lit, all signs of strain and fatigue vanishing with one flash of her warm smile. “And perhaps I can persuade Miss Finney not to be afraid of the fencing blades. They’re not dangerous when handled properly. Not any more dangerous than a butcher’s knife and less so than an ax.”
“You are so right.” Charmaine looked more interested in his collection of weapons than she had any time he mentioned it.
Leave it to one female to communicate with another.
He started to thank her, but she headed away from him down the aisle. “I must speak to Genevieve. I’m interviewing her and some others tomorrow morning.” She paused. “Then I’d like to find a way to get safely back to the train.”
Ayden stepped into the aisle in front of her. “Not by yourself.”
“Perhaps Deputy Lambert will take me when he’s off duty. If Rosalie comes along—”
“I’ll take you.” Ayden smiled at Charmaine to assure her he wasn’t abandoning her, then returned his attention to Mia. “I have classes in the morning, but after lunch, I will take you back to the train, if the sheriff says it’s safe. Now hurry with Mrs. Baker. We must not keep Dr. Finney waiting on his dinner.”
Ayden might as well not have been there for all the attention anyone paid him over the dinner table or coffee afterward. Dr. Finney asked Mia innumerable questions about what she wrote. Charmaine and Mia talked about publications for ladies, about Boston culture, about an education versus staying at home.
“I believe the Lord calls ea
ch of us differently,” Charmaine concluded. “We each have to examine our hearts and pray and see where the Lord leads us to go, whether in a career or marriage or taking care of a relative.”
Ayden poised himself to kick Mia under the table if she started to argue. The preparation was unnecessary. A thoughtful look settled over her features, and she nodded.
“You make a good point.” And from beneath the table, she drew out her portfolio and began to write.
“Euphemia Roper,” Ayden snapped, “have you no manners?”
“Not when I need to remember something.” She spoke around a pencil between her teeth.
Charmaine and her father emitted genuine laughs, not merely polite huffs of amusement to appease a slightly eccentric guest.
Later, while Mia assisted Charmaine in the kitchen, cleaning up as best she could with one hand, Dr. Finney cast Ayden a warm smile. “I confess I was wrong about her. She was a brilliant student, but I thought her a little vulgar for being so independent and traveling the eastern cities on her own. But she is quite charming as well as brilliant. If we had female professors at the college, she would be a fine asset to the staff.”
“She’d think of something she wanted to remember and stop in the middle of a lecture to write it down on paper.” Ayden meant to sound disparaging. Instead, he spoke with all the warmth and affection he wished he didn’t feel for her.
Finney’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps we should have her stay here. Your house must be bursting at the seams.”
“She might like that.”
And so would he.
“I’ll speak to my daughter about it,” Finney said. “Now, since you chose to get shot at by counterfeit railroad guards yesterday instead of coming here, would you like to see that papyrus now?”
Ayden followed the older man into his office, which reeked of pipe smoke, and lost himself in ancient history for an hour. When he emerged, leaving Finney with his scroll, the early twilight was falling, and Charmaine suggested they leave before dark.
“The sky is so clear it’s going to get terribly cold for walking.” Charmaine laid her hand on Ayden’s arm. “Will I see you tomorrow?”
“I don’t think so.” He plucked at the fold of his neck cloth to stop himself from giving in to the urge to push her hand off his arm. “I tutor on Monday nights. But perhaps Tuesday? I’d like to arrange a sledding party Tuesday or Wednesday. The children need exercise, and their parents need a respite. Will you help with that?”
“You know I will. Wednesday will be best.”
The sledding party settled, Ayden offered Mia his arm and started for home. Neither of them spoke for the four-block walk between the Finney house and Ayden’s. Mia clutched her portfolio as though it held all her worldly wealth, which perhaps it did, and Ayden no longer knew what to say to her. After her display in church, he expected her to continue honing her knives on Charmaine. Instead, the two of them parted on cordial, even warm, terms. Weren’t they supposed to despise one another?
How self-centered of him. Of course, they had to be rivals for him. Apparently Mia had decided they were not. She truly no longer cared whom he wed. For some reason, that notion set his molars grinding and his heart feeling like a piece of cloth must beneath the blades of a pair of shears.
At the back door of the house, Mia turned to him and spoke at last. “I wish I didn’t like her. If she were less kind and gracious or if she didn’t have a warm heart, I could believe you only wished to marry her to advance your career. But she is all of those things, and I think perhaps you do love her more than you think.”
He wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe he loved Charmaine Finney because she was kind and intelligent and beautiful. He enjoyed her company. She brought him peace and had soothed his still-bruised heart after Mia left. But the pressure her father placed on him always lay between them.
To Dr. Finney, Ayden was the son he never had, a man-child he could bring up to follow in his academic footsteps, a male in the family to whom he could leave the fortune he had inherited and built. Finney would interview other candidates for the professorship, but no one at the college would consider hiring an outsider when their own director’s future son-in-law was there and qualified and beloved by his students.
For months, Ayden had tried to convince himself he was courting Charmaine because she was worth courting and nothing more. Then Mia appeared in the doorway of that train car, and the doubts began. And in the middle of those doubts, Dr. Finney pressured Ayden to make a commitment to Charmaine. He’d made it, too. He’d promised to offer for her. From what Mia had told him outside his family home, she had accepted his decision and gave it her blessing.
“But does it have yours, Lord?” He stood before the kitchen stove with its banked fire still allowing some warmth to radiate into the room. “I’m still not certain my staying here had your blessing, and I can’t make that mistake again. I can’t hurt another person like I did Mia.”
No answer came to him. No peace washed over him. Fatigue weighed him down like a barrel of snow. With classes in the morning, he climbed the steps to the attic, where he slept until Ma’s soft knock on his door woke him in time to see to the horses, dress in his formal teaching clothes, and head to campus.
After his first class, two female students approached him with tentative smiles and downcast eyes. “Professor Goswell,” one of them spoke in a soft, breathy voice, “Dorothea and I would like to be interviewed by Miss Roper. Will you arrange it?”
“We promise to say only nice things about you.” Dorothea Simon’s voice never failed to startle Ayden, for it was almost mannishly deep in comparison to her petite, blonde femininity.
He grinned at them both, not in the least fooled by their demure behavior. “You may say what you like of me to Miss Roper. I’m sure she’ll be happy to talk to you two and others. Thursday morning in the museum, if that’s all right with her?”
He stowed his lecture notes in his office, then returned home to fetch the sleigh. Rosalie and the Herring children ran around the front lawn, rolling snow into enormous balls to form a snowman. Their cheeks glowed and their eyes sparkled, Rosalie’s most of all.
She ran to him across the fluffy terrain and grabbed his hands. “Help us get this ball atop the others, or he’ll be without a head.”
“We’re going to give him a carrot nothe.” Roy gave Ayden a gap-toothed grin.
“Hey, when’d you lose that tooth?” Ayden gave the boy a playful punch on the shoulder.
“Thith morning.”
“He talks funny now,” Ellie said.
“Not for long.” Ayden crouched to examine the head-sized lump of snow. “Let’s see. I think I can lift this, but I’d like some help.”
More hindrance than help, the two children got their mittened hands beneath the ball of snow, and Ayden hefted it atop the stout statue. The children and Rosalie danced around with glee. Smiling, Ayden continued toward the house.
“Thank you, Ayden.” Rosalie waved to him, then dashed after him. “I almost forgot. Fletcher said there are deputies out at the train, so if you want to go looking, it’s all right. He said they haven’t found anything, but you’re welcome to look in the cars that are still upright.”
“Thank you. And thank Fletcher.”
“Thank him yourself”—Rosalie’s eyes flashed—“by being nice to him so he’ll ask me to marry him.”
“If that’s what you want. If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
Studying the dreamy softness that came over her, Ayden believed her. She looked like he wished he felt about Charmaine. “All right. I’ll be nice to him.” He kissed her chilly cheek, then entered the house.
Ma and Mrs. Herring sat at the kitchen table, sorting through children’s clothing and drinking coffee. The nameless little boy sat under the table, stacking and knocking down a pile of blocks Ayden recognized from his childhood.
He greeted the ladies, then asked, “Where’s Mia?”
&
nbsp; “She’s in my sitting room, writing.” Ma rose. “You look cold. Have some coffee and take her some. She’s been in there for hours.”
“Of course she has.” He accepted the coffee for himself and for Mia, then crossed the hall to the sitting room, which was tucked between the dining room and the back of the house. It overflowed with flowered cushions, baskets of sewing, and more baskets of knitting, books, and piles of ladies’ journals. At one end, Mia sat at a secretary, her bandaged left wrist cradled against her front, her right hand flying across a sheet of paper. She made no movement to indicate she noticed his entrance until he set the coffee directly in front of her.
“Thank you,” she said, then continued to write.
“Would you like to go to the wreck?” he asked.
“Mmm.” She set her pen down long enough to sip some coffee, then resumed her work.
“Fletcher says it’s safe there.”
“Mm.”
Scratch, scratch, scratch went her pen.
“He doesn’t think we should get shot at more than once or twice.”
“Mm—what?” She dropped her pen and twisted around to face him. “What did you just say?”
Ayden grinned. “Trying to get your attention. We should leave for the wreck now so we don’t lose the daylight.”
“What time is it?” She glanced at a little enameled clock on the mantel, biting her lip and smoothing her right hand over her dark-green wool skirt. “Goodness, time has flown. Your mother must think me shockingly rude.”
“My mother knows you better than that.” He touched her shoulder. He shouldn’t touch her, but she looked so unsure of herself, he wanted to give her some kind of comfort. “She knows you need to work. If you want to continue, I can go alone.”
“No, I want to go if we won’t get shot at again.”
“Not with deputies there to guard it. They should have been there all along, but with all these people in town, they’ve been busy keeping things calm here, and they thought the train was safe.”
Collision of The Heart Page 10