Collision of The Heart

  In truth, she should interview the students, then leave the campus. She wouldn’t see him the rest of the day. The next time she was likely to see him, he would be engaged to Charmaine Finney—a decision made to, once again, choose his career over her.

  As she had done to him.

  “What time?” she asked.

  He told her. She sought for an excuse to say no. Nothing truthful came to mind.

  “All right.” She gathered up her coat and headed upstairs to meet the students.

  Two young women had turned into four ladies and a half dozen young men, two of whom she had met through Genevieve earlier, one of whom had been her partner in their ill-fated sledding race.

  Time sped by as she took notes, asked questions, and answered even more. They carried her off to eat lunch with them, and when she returned to the lobby, Ayden stood in the middle of the room, talking to Mr. Divine and Miss Judd.

  He waved to Mia. “Just in time. Gerrett and I are going to help Miss Judd by giving her a match. Unless you’ll allow me to get my revenge.” He grinned. His blue eyes sparkled.

  And Mia’s heart broke free of its protective shell and tumbled at his feet.

  Her feet half-frozen from tramping through slush, her cheeks stiff from the dried tears on her face, Mia trudged up to the Goswell house. If she was fortunate, Mrs. Goswell would be somewhere other than the kitchen—like shopping—and she could avoid her. She could avoid everyone until the trains started running, and she could escape from Hillsdale and all its memories, both old and new.

  Instinct had warned her to run the moment she realized she was still desperately in love with Ayden. Instead, she had stayed, helped Miss Judd with her understanding of the art of fencing, and been far more honest with her than their short acquaintance allowed.

  Mia pushed open the kitchen door and found Mrs. Goswell applying strawberry jam in the shape of a heart to the center of a cake.

  “Fresh strawberries would be much nicer, but none of the hothouse variety got through this year with the trains not running.”

  “It’s very pretty just the same.” Mia spoke the truth without enthusiasm. “Is that for Rosalie and Deputy Lambert? Or is it for you and Mr. Goswell?”

  Mrs. Goswell laughed. “It’s for everyone. It’s a spice cake, and I prefer brown sugar icing with it, but that doesn’t look as pretty with the white sugar icing with the red.”

  “It smells wonderful.” Which was true. The medley of nutmeg and cinnamon blending with a roast in the oven tantalized even Mia’s knotted stomach.

  “Let’s hope it tastes as wonderful as it smells.” Mrs. Goswell set down her knife. “Now, did you have anything to—dear me, what’s wrong?”

  “Wrong?” Mia kept her face averted. “I’m tired and cold.”

  “I’m sure that’s true, but you have also been crying. Why?”

  Mia compressed her lips in an effort to keep them from quivering. Her eyes filled, and she squeezed them shut to stop tears from spilling out. Instead, the action sent them sliding down her cheeks atop their dried companions.

  She dashed them away with her gloves. “Excuse me.” She tried to glide past Ayden’s mother.

  Mrs. Goswell blocked her way. “I was the closest thing to a mother you had for six years. I fed you into looking like a female instead of a beanpole. I taught you how to cook and dress right and talk like a lady. I even told my son letting you go was the stupidest thing he ever did. I think that gives me the right to know why you are so unhappy.”

  “A week ago, I would have told you that nothing I do is any of your business. But that was before I was back here and remembered that people here care about me.” Mia dropped onto a kitchen chair and laid her head onto her folded arms. “I disarmed him this morning in front of his students.”

  “You’re crying about that?” Mrs. Goswell laughed. “It’s about time someone got the best of him. You’ll be a legend here.”

  “I tried to help one of his female students with an assignment.”

  “Miss Short or Miss Judd?”

  “Miss Judd. She gives up too easily, and I told her she was a coward who wouldn’t even fight for love.”

  “Hmm.” Mrs. Goswell drew out the other chair and sat. “Do you have reason to know this?”

  Mia lifted her head. “It’s embarrassingly obvious she’s in love with Mr. Divine.”

  “I noticed that at church on Sunday. But why did that make you cry?”

  “I told her she was just like Ayden, afraid to fight even for love.”

  A gleam brightened Mrs. Goswell’s light-blue eyes. “Did he hear you?”

  “I’m certain he did.” Mia dug in her pocket for a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. “But I was wrong. At least, I was the pot calling the kettle black. I was the one who wasn’t willing to fight for my love. And I still love him, and now it’s too late.” The last emerged as a wail, one like she hadn’t uttered in front of another person since she was a child, if she had ever done it then.

  And Mrs. Goswell just smiled. “It’s about time you admitted it.”

  “It doesn’t matter if I am. He’s going to marry Charmaine Finney so he can stay here forever.”

  “Has he offered for her yet?”

  “No, but he will because if he doesn’t, his position at the college will end with the quarter.”

  “As if my brilliant son couldn’t get work elsewhere.”

  “He doesn’t want to go elsewhere. He wants to stay where people love him and respect him and he can do things professors aren’t supposed to do, like muck out stalls and chop wood.” Mia wrinkled her nose. “And my work is in Boston. Nothing has changed in a year and a half.”

  “Apparently not.” Mrs. Goswell stood and resumed decorating the cake. “You prefer your career to love and community, and he prefers his career to love and true companionship. And have either of you ever wondered if your roads are the best ones for you?”

  Mia curled her fingers around the edge of the table and gnawed on the inside of her lower lip. Finally, she shook her head. “I thought it was. I mean, of course this is the right road. Everything fell into place for me in Boston.”

  “Except that position didn’t last, did it? And now you worry every day about getting the next sale or if you will starve for lack of work.”

  “I can always find work, and if this all works out, I will have a permanent position again.”

  “Nothing earthly is permanent, my dear. And even if you found work until your old age, do your pencils and portfolio keep you warm on winter nights?”

  Mia shivered, remembering how many nights in her boardinghouse she had longed for warm, strong arms to hold her.

  But Mrs. Goswell lifted her knife and gazed at Mia, her lips curved into a shrewd half smile.

  “You don’t have much time to get him back, you know.”

  “I don’t want him back. Losing him hurt too much.”

  “Getting him back won’t be easy.” Mrs. Goswell spoke as though Mia had not. “You have to make up your mind now. Tonight.”

  Mia rose. “Considering how to get Ayden back is useless if he is determined to marry Charmaine to ensure his future position at the college.”

  “Mia, I will do what I can to help, and the rest is up to you and Ayden and the Lord.” Mrs. Goswell squeezed Mia’s hand. “Now go put on that pretty blue dress you wore to church, and my husband will take you up to the social.”

  “No, thank you. I’d rather stay here and finish my articles.”

  “All right, then. Put on that pretty blue dress for supper. Everyone will be here. And that means Ayden.”

  She couldn’t avoid dinner with the family. That would be unforgivably rude after Mrs. Goswell went through so much trouble. She would wear the one formal dress she had brought with her and perhaps wear her hair in a less severe style. Somehow, she would get through an evening with Ayden across the table from her. Meanwhile, she would lose herself in her work and not think about Ayden. It had gotten her through those
first months alone in the city. It would get her through more painful months ahead . . . and the rest of her life.

  She washed her face, accepted a cup of coffee from Mrs. Goswell, and escaped into the sitting room. Her manuscript lay undisturbed beneath the stack of books she’d set atop it, and she began to rewrite the entire article, rephrasing and moving one paragraph to another page, removing a few lines and adding others. By the time Mrs. Goswell knocked on the door to remind her to get herself ready for dinner, the article about women at college was finished, and she had begun the story of the abducted little boy ending up on one of the wrecked trains. If anything would make her famous, this article would. Even when the story became public and other journalists wrote about it, none of them possessed the inside information she did as the reporter who had carried him from the train.

  If only she knew where the sheriff had taken him. With the boy spirited away, she didn’t know how to end the story except, presumably, Jamie would be returned to his family once the trains were running again or the snow melted enough to clear the roads. She must figure out the answer to the boy’s rescue, but not tonight.

  Back and fingers stiff from working too long without replenishing the fire, Mia tucked her partially written manuscript beneath the stack of books and climbed to the room she shared with Rosalie.

  “There you are.” Rosalie grasped Mia’s hands and all but dragged her to the dressing table. “Sit. I will do your hair.”

  Mia balked. “Don’t you want to take the time to make yourself prettier?”

  “I can do my own hair in a trice. Now, sit.” She pushed on Mia’s shoulders.

  Mia sat. The woman who faced her in the mirror looked pale and tired with shadows beneath and puffiness around her eyes. “It’ll take more than a new hairstyle to make me look better.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Ma sent this up.” Rosalie darted across the room, dipped a folded cloth in the ewer, then sprinkled a few drops of oil onto it. The scent of lavender swirled through the room. “Hold this to your eyes.”

  Mia took the cloth and laid it across her eyelids. For a second it burned, then the soothing essence started its magic, and the tension began to drain from her neck and shoulders. Rosalie’s ministrations with the hairbrush added their effects to her well-being. So did the silence in the room, emphasized by the murmur of Mrs. Herring’s soft voice reading to the children. For once, Rosalie chose not to speak but to work, brushing, twisting, and pinning with deft fingers.

  Silence and a quarter hour in which Mia could do nothing but think. The former she rarely did beyond what was necessary for her work. Thinking too often meant remembering her childhood, with her father leaving and never returning, a succession of relatives who didn’t want another mouth to feed, the aunt who didn’t bother to feed her but made her fend for herself. She had been so lonely, feasting on knowledge. Then Ayden came along and introduced her to a world of family members who cared about and for one another and friendships that lasted over years and miles.

  How had she ever left it all behind?

  Because leaving was easier than being left. Because she had known Ayden hadn’t been entirely happy in the years he spent traveling between Boston and Hillsdale to complete his education, writing to her daily, pouring out his heart and loneliness. He was happy in Michigan with his family and friends and the students he cared about so much.

  Students he would no longer have if he turned down Charmaine Finney as a bride.

  She could not take all that away from him, even if he did want her back.

  She started to remove the cloth from her eyes.

  Rosalie laid a staying hand over Mia’s. “Don’t look. Trust me. You’ll be beautiful when I’m done.”

  Mia smiled and kept her eyes closed. If the cold water and lavender reduced the redness of her eyes before anyone else saw her, the stillness was worth the trouble.

  She couldn’t stay there and watch Ayden marry another woman. She had nowhere to live except for Boston, since she had no work in Hillsdale and not enough in savings to see her through to some sort of employment unless she did sell the story of Jamie’s abduction. In the East, she had a permanent, steady position. And she would not have to watch Ayden squiring Charmaine to social events, to church, down the lanes Mia and he used to tread.

  No, she could not stay.

  Rosalie gave out a low cry of delight. “This is stunning, if I may say so myself. But don’t look. We’ll get you dressed first.”

  In another quarter hour, Rosalie allowed Mia to look in the dressing table mirror. A stranger looked back at her, a lady who had taken time and care with her appearance from the crown of curls atop her head to the pearl drops suspended from her earlobes to the flowered blue silk dress with its tiers billowing over wide hoops and topped with a jacket in the same color, forming yet one more tier to the skirt.

  “This is too formal for a dinner with the family,” Mia said.

  “No, it’s not.” Rosalie began attending to her own dark curls. “Trust me.”

  Mia narrowed her eyes. “You keep saying that. It’s making me think I shouldn’t trust you. Do you have something up your sleeve?”

  Rosalie giggled. “Not me. I never—”

  She broke off at the sound of the doorbell. “That’ll be Fletcher, and here I am not dressed yet. Will you go down and entertain him until I’m ready?”

  “Of course.” She might be able to finagle some information about the baby out of the deputy.

  But when she got downstairs, she found Mr. Goswell and Mr. Divine with Fletcher Lambert. Ayden was likely still with Charmaine, perhaps proposing to her on Valentine’s Day after all.

  Mia felt sick. If the trains had been running, she would have gotten on the next one out of town, even if it were going west.

  But she couldn’t leave town until the next day. The men rose at her entrance, and Mr. Divine came forward to take her hand in both of his. “I’m glad to see you looking better, Miss Roper. Did you have a productive afternoon?”

  “I did, thank you. Is Miss Judd all right? She seemed so distraught.”

  “I expect she will be quite all right.” Mr. Divine’s smile grew warm enough to embarrass Mia. “She’s a resilient lady. Would you like to join us?”

  “I should help Mrs. Goswell.”

  “Ayden was helping her,” Mr. Goswell said. “Now he’s in the sitting room reading your articles. They were lying out, so I thought you might not mind.”

  “I said he could read the ones on the college women and the wreck. They’re—” Mia halted and compressed her lips.

  She hadn’t said he could read the one on Jamie’s abduction. He hadn’t liked the idea of her writing it, and she had left it on the secretary along with the others. She needed to retrieve it before it was too late.

  “Will you all excuse me?” She spun on one heel, sending her hoops rocking, and raced from the room.

  She nearly ran into Mrs. Goswell, who was coming out of the sitting room, her lips closed but curved up at the corners, as though she were up to mischief.

  The smile broadened when she saw Mia. “Just in time. Go on in.”

  “Just in time for what?”

  Mrs. Goswell didn’t answer. She simply opened the sitting room door without turning around, then retreated to the kitchen.

  Mia stood on the threshold with parted lips and widening eyes. She ran her hand across her brow, then lowered it to the same scene, an intimate romantic scene. A small table had been covered in a white linen cloth and set for two, with the crystal candlesticks in the middle holding long white tapers. Beyond the table, Ayden stood at the tall desk, her papers spread out before him, his shoulders stiff enough to balance the flickering candles instead of the table.

  “Shut the door. You’re letting in the cold air.” That melodious voice that usually caressed her ears with its warmth sounded more like the air from outside that frosted the windows than the unheated air from the hall.

  Mia shut the door. Her hoop stopped
her from leaning against it, but she stood as erect as a schoolgirl about to receive a lecture for bad behavior and crossed her arms over her front. “You found it.”

  “It’s not like you hid it.” Ayden faced her, his blue eyes nearly black in the candlelight, his mouth grim. “Why do you need to write it?”

  “It’s money in the bank, and I need all of that I can get.”

  “Are you so poor?” His gaze swept her blue silk gown.

  “I’m a good steward of my money.”

  “Just not others’ privacy.”

  “It won’t hurt anyone if I write that article.”

  “Won’t it?” His palm slapped the papers. “It will further disrupt that child’s life to have strangers swarm around him. It will endanger him further if others learn his family is wealthy enough to make kidnapping worth the risk. It will give others ideas of doing the same to other children.”

  “Don’t be naïve, Ayden.” Mia moved toward him with the intent of taking her partial article out of his reach. “People come up with ideas of crime on their own.”

  “Or do articles like this give them even more notions?”

  “I write about incidents after they happen, after the criminals acted, not before.”

  “And if you didn’t report on it, would so much of it continue? Don’t you think as a lady you should stay with articles that uplift and encourage?”

  Mia rocked back on her heels as though punched in the solar plexus. “How dare you tell me how to do my job. I don’t tell you how to teach.”

  “Of course you may do your job as you see fit.” He sighed and rolled his shoulders. “But you said you wouldn’t write this.”

  “I said I would think about it.” She waved her hand toward the table. “And right now, we need to think of how to get out of this cozy little dinner for two.”

  “I intend on handling it by eating it. I’m starving.” He crossed to the table and drew out a chair. “We’ll have less fuss if we just give in.”