Collision of The Heart

  Reaching his house, he slammed his fist onto the door handle and his shoulder into the heavy panel. It didn’t budge. Of course not. It would be locked up tight.

  “Ma, it’s me, Ayden.” He pounded his fist on the door harder than necessary. “Ma, open—”

  The door swung inward, and Ayden tumbled across the threshold, nearly knocking down his father. “Sorry, Pa. Is Ma all right? Is the baby all right?”

  “We’re all fine now.” Pa rested a steadying hand on Ayden’s shoulder. “They’re in the kitchen with the sheriff.”

  Ayden headed for the kitchen. Behind him, Rosalie, Mia, and Fletcher Lambert crowded into the front hall, chattering and asking questions.

  Ma sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea in front of her. Coffee sat before the sheriff, and Jamie appeared to be sleeping in a pallet of blankets as close to the stove as was safe.

  Ayden stopped behind Ma’s chair and grasped her shoulders. “You’re all right. What happened?”

  “Not as much as could have.” The sheriff rose at the entrance of the other ladies. “Miss Roper saw someone lurking about, and because of that and Deputy Lambert staying, we were ready for trouble.”

  “Jamie was asleep upstairs, like the lamb he is,” Ma said, “when somebody knocked on the door. I opened it, and there was a man in a railway uniform.”

  “Why did Lambert let her open the door?” Ayden glared at his future brother-in-law.

  Fletcher frowned at him. “I thought it best to look like nothing was afoot.”

  “So wise of you.” Rosalie looked at him with cow eyes.

  Ayden managed not to gag, but when he met Mia’s gaze by accident, he couldn’t suppress a snort of mirth.

  “It was the right thing to do,” the sheriff said.

  “What did he say he wanted?” Ayden asked.

  “He said he had orders to take charge of the child who’d lost his family.” Ma wrinkled her long, thin nose. “As though I would fall for such a tale. So I told him I had no idea what he was talking about and tried to slam the door in his face.”

  “He slammed it right back,” Lambert added.

  “Are you all right, Ma?” Ayden leaned over so he could examine her face.

  She smiled and pushed him away. “It bruised my shoulder a little is all. But it made me yell, and Fletcher came out of the parlor. As soon as he saw the uniform, the man took off running.”

  “Why was the deputy in the parlor and not behind the door or someplace closer?” The question came from Mia.

  Ayden glanced back to see her with her portfolio balanced in the crook of her arm and her hand sending a pencil flying across the page.

  “More grist for your periodical mill?” Ayden’s upper lip curled.

  “Of course. People will want to read about this. Deputy?”

  Lambert’s face turned nearly as red as his hair. “I went into the parlor to warm my hands by the fire. It was cold in the hall.”

  “And quite understandable.” Rosalie took one of his hands in hers and began to chafe it as though he were still cold.

  Ayden cast his gaze heavenward, then turned his attention to the sheriff. “So should we move the child now?”

  “For the sake of my family’s safety,” Pa said, “I would rather we did and let the world know so that no one tries to take him from here again.”

  “How will you all catch the kidnappers, then?” Rosalie asked.

  “We’ll find them.” The sheriff’s lips formed a hard, thin line. “That woman with the broken leg couldn’t have gotten far from here. And I agree. I’ll be taking the child with me, but I won’t say where I’m taking him. Best for all. I haven’t even informed his parents he’s safe, so no one knows we know he was stol—”

  Mia’s gasp was nearly loud enough to be a cry. She stood with her notebook pressed to her side and her hand, still holding a pencil, pressed to her lips. Above her hand, her eyes had widened to near perfect roundness.

  “What’s wrong?” Ayden took a step toward her.

  She flung out her hand as though to ward him off. “I sent some telegrams yesterday. I didn’t think what I said was harmful, but . . .” She dropped her gaze, and her lower lip protruded ever so slightly.

  “Mia.” Ayden dropped his hands onto her shoulders. His insides felt like a clock spring wound too tightly, but he managed to keep his voice light, conversational despite an urge to shout. “To whom did you send those telegrams and what did you say?”

  “I sent them to my editor and some other newspaper folk I know between here and the coast.” She met his eyes. “I told my editor I rescued a child from the train, which everyone knows from our inquiries in town, and then asked the newspaper men if they knew of an abduct—”

  “You sent that to journalists?” Ayden shoved his hands into his pockets. “Didn’t you think how it would direct the kidnappers to us? Have you no decency but to spread his story all over the world?”

  “How would the kidnappers get the telegrams?” Mia bent over her portfolio again. “If I don’t, someone else will. I may as well get paid for it, as well as credit for rescuing him.”

  Ayden stared at her as though she were a stranger, as his heart compressed in his chest. “I don’t know you anymore, Euphemia Roper.” With a mumbled apology to the others, he strode past the sheriff and the now wakeful child, slamming the back door on his way out.

  He should go to Charmaine’s. He would find peace, calm, and polite dialogue there. She would welcome him without questions or accusations. Her smile would warm him, her beauty would please him, and her conversation would . . . bore him.

  No, it wouldn’t bore him. It just wouldn’t hold his interest when he was as distraught as he felt at that moment. He couldn’t even discuss with her why he was distraught. She wouldn’t understand why whatever Mia Roper did made him want to beat his fists against something unyielding.

  He lit a lantern in the stable and carried it to the woodshed instead. Nothing like an hour of chopping branches into kindling and splitting logs to renew a man’s sanity.

  After three-quarters of an hour, Pa entered the shed behind him and removed the ax from his hand. “That’s enough wood to get us through August, son. Now get inside before you catch a chill sweating out here in the cold.”

  “I can’t go back.” Ayden raised his arm to mop his brow. “If I see her with that portfolio, I just might toss it into the fire.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Ayden faced his father, his eyes wide. “Pa, she has no sense of decency any longer. She’s writing about the train wreck and all the suffering there.”

  “She wrote about how this town came together to help one another in true Christian charity.”

  “She’s writing about how women are treated in their classes, likely looking for ways they are slighted—”

  “She’s writing about how much women are respected for their intelligence and ability to learn.”

  “And how all the professors are male.”

  “And how one of the professors takes his own time to tutor students at risk of failing.”

  “And now to make a spectacle of that unfortunate child and his family, giving them no peace—”

  “You don’t know that.” Pa jabbed a finger into Ayden’s chest. “You’re making unfair assumptions about that lovely young woman, just like you did eighteen months ago, and you’re not the only one who will be hurt over it this time.” He cleared his throat and looked away. “You weren’t the only one hurt last time. Your Ma and I love her like a daughter, and you took her away from us.”

  “I took her away from you?” Ayden pressed his arms across his chest. “I was the one who stayed to help you all.”

  “Is that why you stayed?” Pa propped a shoulder against the woodshed doorway. “We haven’t said anything to you about this. You’re a man grown and have to make your own mistakes. But I was perfectly capable of continuing my work at the store by the time you chose to stay. That was a poor excuse at best. You were
afraid to go east—”

  “Of course I wasn’t afraid to go east. I studied there for years. I was asked to return. I didn’t apply.”

  “Then why didn’t you go when Mia made it clear she would?”

  The heat from his exertions dissipating, cold began to seep deep into Ayden’s bones. Bone deep. Heart deep. Soul deep.

  He yanked his coat from a peg and threw it around his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter now. She chose to leave me, and I’ve chosen someone else.”

  Pa’s shoulders slumped. “For the right reasons?”

  “Of course.” But Ayden couldn’t meet his father’s eyes.

  Pa rested his hand on Ayden’s shoulder. “If you are certain you are making the right choices, then your mother and I will accept them. Now come inside and get warmed up.” He turned and left the shed.

  Ayden followed, his footsteps dragging just a little. He didn’t want to see Mia. He probably owed her an apology. He had made judgments about her work without reading it first.

  Seeing a light shining beneath the sitting room door, he knocked and opened it. Mia sat before the fire, still in that pretty pink dress that looked vaguely familiar to him. She wore no shoes, only her white lisle stockings, and her hair hung down her back in a single braid, her pins lying in a neat pile on the table beside her.

  She glanced up at him and hugged a sheaf of papers against her as though she thought he might steal them away. “Did you find the supper your mother left warming in the oven?”

  “Not yet.” He closed the door and approached the fire. As its warmth hit him, he began to shiver from the cold. “I can bring you more wood.” He gave her a rueful smile. “I chopped enough.”

  “No need. I just wanted to finish making notes on this article, and then I’m off to bed. I have a lot of work to do tomorrow.” She looked away and drew her stockinged toes beneath the hem of her dress. “Unless you won’t take me to campus.”

  “I said I would.”

  “You’ve said a number of things you would do.” She smacked the palm of her hand against her manuscript. “This is too long. I just can’t identify what to leave out. I have heard so many stories and have seen so much during and since the wreck.”

  Ayden smiled. “I wish I had you for a student. Most don’t have enough to say about anything. I give them a topic like the Wars of the Roses, and they say they didn’t have enough to write a twenty-page paper.”

  They exchanged polite, stiff smiles.

  Ayden crouched closer to the fire, absorbing more of its warmth. “Why don’t you write a book about the wreck?”

  “I don’t think I have enough material for a book. Perhaps two or three articles.”

  “A novel?”

  She laughed. “I am not Charlotte Brontë, as much as I wish I were.”

  “If you wish it, why don’t you do it?”

  Mia shrugged. “No time. I am always looking for the next story to write and sell.”

  “You seem to be doing well.”

  “I am for a lady journalist. But this salaried position will be less taxing.”

  “I expect so.” Ayden shifted so he faced her. “I’m sorry about earlier.”

  “You were concerned about your family’s safety with reason. I . . . well . . . I sent those telegrams, no matter how important the story. I didn’t think the kidnappers would spy on the telegraph.”

  “Have you heard anything back?”

  She shook her head. “I’m beginning to think they intercepted any return messages.”

  “It was a foolish thing to do, you know.”

  “Why? They hadn’t come here before today, and we’ve talked about the boy all over town.”

  “The house was full of people until this afternoon, making it much harder to manage another abduction.”

  “Leave it to a war historian to think of tactics,” Mia muttered. She rubbed her eyes. “I just want this story so much. It’s exclusive and—”

  “Potentially dangerous.” Ayden touched her cheek, her skin as smooth as fire-warmed silk. “Everything is all right now. The child’s been moved and will go home on Friday because you helped him on the train.”

  “What else would I do? No one else seemed inclined to do any good beyond saving themselves.”

  Of course not, except for Mia with her kind and generous heart.

  His conscience jabbed him like a foil without its button tip, and he flicked his gaze to her papers. “I’m also sorry about the things I’ve been thinking and saying about your work. I shouldn’t have criticized your work without reading it.”

  “Thank you for that. I try not to be a vulture feeding off others’ pain. I want this article about the college to encourage other young women to get an education. Even if they get married instead of having a career, an education is always a good thing. What if they end up moving to the frontier? They can educate their children well and even educate the children of others as well.” Her eyes sparkled like polished jade. “One thing I’ve learned while here talking to the women who graduated with me, and even before me, is that an education is never wasted.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  It was what he’d tried to tell her a year and a half earlier when she accused him of wanting her to throw away her education for a life with no future. Her future was to have been with him, his helpmeet, his wife, the mother to his children, an intellectual equal who could keep his thinking clear and his mental faculties sharpened, no matter what he did.

  And what she wanted to do didn’t matter because it was all for him.

  What a selfish, thoughtless man he’d been. Eighteen months earlier, he had cast a die he had weighted to land in his favor because he wanted to stay.

  Feeling as though someone had stacked upon his shoulders all the wood he’d chopped, he rose. “I’d like to read your article about the college, if you’ll let me.”

  “Of course.” She smiled at him, not quite the heart-melting smile that tilted up the corners of her eyes but not the frosty, polite one she’d been giving him all week. “I only say nice things about the youngest history professor.”

  “Will you still say nice things after our fencing match tomorrow?”

  “Only if I win.” The smile warmed a degree or two.

  “We’ll leave here at eight o’clock, then.” He reached out his hand. They shook on the bargain, and he left the room looking forward to fencing with Mia on Thursday morning far more than making an offer of marriage to Charmaine on Friday.

  Chapter Thirteen

  En guard. Prêt. Allez.” One of Ayden’s male students gave the call.

  Mia and Ayden saluted one another with their blades, then engaged. Ayden’s right foot came down heel to toe, and his blade shot forward in a lunge, as Mia knew it would. Smiling, she feinted, then raised her blade in quarte, as though she intended to protect the upper left part of her torso. A second before the foil of his blade touched hers, she countered, circling her rapier to the right and down.

  “Nice octave.” Ayden smiled back. “A pity you’re too slow.” His blade tip caught the forte of Mia’s blade near the hilt, knocking her rapier out of position.

  She disengaged and retreated, then lunged fast enough to tap her buttoned tip on his chest. The student spectators gasped.

  Mia laughed. “Too slow, am I?”

  She attacked in sixte. Ayden was ready for her with his blade in quarte. The foils rang together. A remise of parries and repostes, lunges, and retreats began. Their blades flashed like silver lightning. The foil ends rang together like chimes. The forte ends near the hilt crashed like cymbals. It was a game of speed and endurance Mia doubted she could win. Her right arm ached. Her breath rasped in her throat, and she was forming a most unladylike dew on her brow.

  “Ready to give up?” Ayden taunted.

  “No.” Even if she was.

  “City’s made you weak.”

  “Being a professor has made you boorish.”

  The students laughed. Ayden’s gaze flicked
their way for a second. Only a second. Enough time. Mia sent her blade singing down Ayden’s in a glissade, caught her forte on his, and with an upward jerk of her arm, sent his rapier spinning through the air.

  The students applauded.

  Ayden’s empty right hand dropped to his side. His lips parted, then he shook his head. “I can’t remember the last time anyone disarmed me.”

  “August 10, 1854.” Mia smiled, though her heart constricted.

  She had been happy then, certain the world was hers to conquer and own with Ayden at her side.

  “You might be right.” He retrieved his blade and glared at his students. “Not a word out of any of you.”

  “No, sir,” they chorused like reciting children in a grammar school.

  Then they dispersed, snickering behind their hands.

  “I’m undone.” Ayden grinned. “That little move of yours will be all over the campus before I get to class.”

  “You should have remembered it. I remembered all yours.” She switched her borrowed rapier to her left hand and held out her right. “It was only because I have fenced with you so often I got anywhere near under your guard.”

  Ayden took her hand, shook it, and kept holding it. “You’ve gotten under my guard, all right.”

  The way he held her gaze along with her hand told Mia he meant far more than her trick with the blade. In a moment, he would have gotten under her guard, and she would be undone to her soul.

  She drew her hand free. “I have interviews to conduct, and you have a class to attend. But thank you for the match. I haven’t fenced in about six months, not since that article I wrote about a ladies’ fencing group. They made me have a bout with one of their champions before they would agree to be interviewed.”

  “Did you win?”

  “I got the story.”

  “And an invitation to join?”

  Mia snorted. “I said lady fencers. I am not considered much of a lady. I earn my living.”

  “Euphemia Roper, you could scrub floors for a living and still be a lady.” Abruptly Ayden turned away and snatched up his coat. “I’d better get these blades locked up and get to class.” He kept his back to her. “And since you humiliated me in front of my students, I think you should pay me back by returning here and helping Miss Judd with her essay.”