Collision of The Heart

  “What about Miss Finney? Won’t she care that you’re eating dinner with me?”

  Ayden shrugged. “You’re an old family friend now, nothing more.”

  Mia flinched. “You can dismiss your past commitment to me so easily?” Suddenly, she could scarcely breathe. She could scarcely see. “It meant so little to you?”

  “It meant everything to me.”

  “Except for the part about you not coming with me.” Mia closed the distance between them, the firmness of her strides sending her skirts swaying and swishing like wind-tossed treetops. “So what happens to your commitment to Miss Finney if her father can’t persuade the others to hire you permanently? Do you abandon her, like you did me?”

  “You abandoned me. You made a promise—”

  “Don’t you talk to me about promises. You made a promise to me.” She jabbed her finger into the center of his chest. “You said you’d love me forever.” She poked him again. “You said you would honor and respect my wish to write. You—”

  He clasped her jabbing finger in his hand. “I had no future in Boston. You wouldn’t listen to me about that. You wanted your own way without listening to my side of things. And now, Mia, mi amore . . .” He closed his eyes and raised her hand to his cheek.

  The motion drew her forward. Her other hand grasped his shoulder for balance. He wrapped his free arm around her waist, and she was in his arms, her hands clinging to his shoulders, her lips clinging to his.

  He kissed her like a starving man took nourishment—deeply, thoroughly, as though breath itself took second place to the cherished contact of the embrace.

  Mia slid her fingers into the thick, soft waves of his hair and yearned for the kiss to never stop. But a closing door, a giggle, and the need to breathe intruded.

  Ayden released Mia first. He yanked his hands from her waist and shoved them into his pockets, as though her cool silk had turned to hot coals. “I’m sorry. I had no right to do that.”

  She gave him a tentative smile. “I didn’t stop you.”

  “But you should have.” Ayden fisted his hand around his somewhat crumpled neck cloth. “I should have stopped it before it started. We have no right to behave that way.” He began to pace from the table to door. “We’re not engaged anymore. And we won’t be again. Your future is in Boston and mine is here.”

  Mia clasped her hands at her throat to hide her racing pulse. “You would have to break things off with Miss Finney. And then—”

  “I would have no future at all, which is a sorry reason to offer marriage to a lady.” He swallowed. “I counted on this one so much and convinced myself so thoroughly that I adored Charmaine that now I have no job prospects elsewhere.”

  “And you are not willing to give up a loveless marriage and security for seeking teaching prospects elsewhere?”

  Ayden turned on her, his palms up as though warding off a blow. “And when are you willing to give up your position in the East?”

  Mia bit her lower lip.

  Ayden smiled without humor. “I didn’t think so. You aren’t willing to go with me wherever I can find work because you might not be able to be a lady of letters wherever that is, or so you think.”

  “Or fear,” Mia whispered.

  “And I fear not being able to find work.”

  “So you’ll still offer for Miss Finney, just to have a job?”

  “And a wife who is a helpmeet, not a competitor to see which of us can succeed the fastest.” He stalked from the room, and a moment later, the front door slammed.

  The cry of protest she would not utter choking her, Mia snatched up her story of Jamie’s kidnapping, tore it in half, and threw it in the fire.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ayden started walking. His footfalls crunched on the frozen snow, loud in the quiet of the night. By the light of moonlight and starlight and lamps glowing in people’s houses reflecting off the whiteness, he paced through the streets, up the hill as far as the campus and beyond. His lungs ached from the cold. His heart ached from the love he had abandoned. His conscience ached from the actions he had taken.

  Worse, his conscience ached from the action he had intended to make.

  “What was I thinking?” Alone in the countryside, he cried aloud.

  He was thinking that, with Mia out of his life for good, marrying a woman for whom he had respect and liking was good enough. Even without the benefit of being wed to the daughter of the director of his department, he would have made Charmaine an offer. He needed a wife and a home of his own. It was time to join the ranks of his sober and respectable colleagues where single men were always a problem in social gatherings. The hostesses needed to find an acceptable female to even out the numbers. Charmaine already belonged in those ranks, accepted by professor’s wives as her father’s hostess. So she was a logical choice for a wife.

  But Mia owned Ayden’s heart, and she was not gone forever. She still loved him. She hadn’t said it, but her kiss told him she did.

  But she didn’t love him enough to stay. Ayden leaned against an oak and covered his face with his hands. Without gloves, his fingers were numb. If only his heart had remained as frozen as his extremities. “She will leave me with that story about the abducted child to make her fame and fortune. She loves her work more than she loves me.”

  But hadn’t he loved his work more than her a year and a half earlier—and now? He had looked at the position in Boston and the one offered him in Hillsdale, and saw more of a future in his hometown with his family and friends around him, people who wouldn’t expect him to behave in ways that countered his moral convictions. They had respected and been impressed enough with his academic acumen to want him to pass his knowledge on to others, but they had never understood the life he chose outside the college campus. At home, he got both, with the love of his parents and sister nearby, and his brother and his family frequently visiting home.

  How could he give that up?

  How could he not for the woman he loved?

  Certain he would transform into one of Rosalie’s snowmen if he didn’t get moving, he turned his footsteps toward town. He didn’t go home. He veered his course to a house too large for the number of inhabitants and pulled the cord for the doorbell with perhaps more vigor than necessary.

  From beyond the oval glass pane in the door rumbled the murmur of voices rising and falling in polite dialogue.

  Ayden rang the bell again.

  The murmur of voices continued. Footfalls clicking on hardwood floors added a staccato beat to the rumble. Then Dr. Finney stood in the doorway.

  “I need to see Charmaine.” Ayden made his request before the older man could speak.

  Finney scowled. “She is waiting on my guests. You are scheduled to attend her tomorrow.”

  “I need to see her tonight.” Ayden’s voice shook just a little.

  Finney scanned him, from his head without a hat to his lack of an overcoat to his hands without gloves. His mouth thinned, but he stepped back so Ayden could pass him and enter the house.

  Even the unheated entryway felt warm compared to the outside temperature.

  “She’s in the kitchen, preparing coffee for my guests.” Finney’s face softened. “Go get yourself warm.” Already stooped shoulders slumping, head bowed, he returned to the parlor.

  Feet dragging, Ayden rounded the graceful curve of the stairway and entered the kitchen. Charmaine stood at the table, arranging china cups on a silver tray. She glanced up at his entrance, and a cup slipped from her fingers.

  Ayden dove forward and caught it before it hit the stone floor. “I’m sorry to startle you.” He set the delicate china on its saucer. “I had to talk to you.”

  “I know.” She sank onto one of the chairs and folded her arms atop the table. “I heard about your fencing bout this morning. I heard about the sledding accident yesterday. I saw how you kept looking toward the door this afternoon.” Her face resembled that of a painted china doll—beautiful and devoid of emotion. But wheth
er she looked blank because she loved him and the hurt ran too deep to show or because she simply didn’t care enough, Ayden doubted he would ever know.

  That made him sadder than if she had wept and wailed and clung to him.

  He crouched down beside her. “I never should have courted you. I knew deep in my heart that I still loved her. I simply covered it up with ambition and my deep liking and respect for you. If she’d never come back . . .”

  “We would have had a perfectly comfortable and boring life together.”

  “I don’t think that at all. Believe me, Charmaine, you are—”

  “Don’t say it.” She held up one hand, palm toward him. Her nose wrinkled. “I am a beautiful woman who will find someone who loves me one day because I’m intelligent and kind and worthy and all that rot.” Her lower lip quivered ever so slightly, and the pale blue of her eyes brightened. “You know what, Ayden Goswell? I’ve heard that speech before.”

  Ayden rocked back on his heels, his eyes widening.

  Charmaine emitted a ladylike bark of laughter. “You look shocked. Do you think you were the first man who’s courted me with an eye to marriage? I am nearly twenty-five.”

  “Of course not, but I can’t believe he let you go.”

  “You’re letting me go.”

  “I discovered I still love another lady. Surely . . .” He rose to slide more wood into the stove.

  “Surely he didn’t leave me for the same reason? No, he loved me. His name was Dermott Druggett. He had eyes as blue as yours but hair the color of a raven. He was ten times richer than Daddy, but because he spoke with an Irish accent and grew up on the streets of Dublin, Daddy didn’t approve. So when Daddy commanded me to leave Philadelphia, Dermott tried to convince me he didn’t love me enough to wed me, just enough to let me go free.”

  Ayden slammed the lid on the wood box. “He was a fool not to simply drag you away.”

  “Or maybe I was the fool to listen to my father and let him go away.”

  Memories flashed through Ayden’s mind. “I wondered why you always looked sad when Philadelphia and your time there came up.”

  “Yes, I was happy there, even before I met Dermott. I fit in more than I do with the ladies here.” Charmaine rose and pulled the coffeepot from the stove. “Will Mia stay here?”

  “She has a position back in Boston, and I am likely not going to have one here for long. But if she’ll have me, I’ll go and muck out stables until I find teaching work, if I must.”

  “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but you are going to be offered the permanent position at the college. They are going to notify the other candidates and you tomorrow.”

  Ayden’s heart leaped, then raced until it stumbled and twisted, knowing what he was giving up. What he must give up. “I’ll still go to her.”

  “I want to be loved like that.” Charmaine blinked back tears.

  Ayden took her hands in his. “I think you were. He let you go so you didn’t have to choose between loyalty to your father and loyalty to him.”

  “Then I was the one who didn’t love him enough to make the choice for him.” She rose on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “I wish Miss Roper would choose to stay here with you. This is a fine place to raise a family for people like you and Miss Roper. But I think perhaps it’s time I went back to the city I love.”

  “To him?”

  “If he’ll have me.”

  “He will.” He embraced her as a friend, a lady for whom he had more liking than he had throughout their courtship. Then he left the house. On his way home, he said a prayer for Charmaine to have the strength to go after the man she still loved, a man about whom she had told him nothing other than her regrets of having to leave the East, likely for the same reason Ayden had told her nothing of his feelings for Mia. They wanted the same things—security, family, a position of respect, and purpose in the community. Marriage to one another would have given them both that. They would have had everything but the people they truly loved.

  A little light-headed over the enormous error they had both come too close to making in the name of ambition, Ayden slipped in through the back door of his house, into the kitchen, the only room where a light still burned.

  His parents sat at the table, drinking tea and holding hands. Thirty-five years of marriage, and they still held hands across a table.

  They glanced up at his entrance and smiled below raised eyebrows.

  “You look cold,” Ma observed. “Are you trying to catch a lung fever by going out without a hat or gloves or an overcoat?”

  “I didn’t think about the cold. I didn’t think at all. I just had to get away.”

  “Why?” Pa’s dark-blue eyes pinned Ayden to the center of the floor. “What did you say to her?”

  “Or she to you?” Ma added.

  Despite the chill still racing through him, Ayden’s face heated, and he tried to look away. “It’s not what either of us said. It’s, um . . .” He shifted from foot to foot, like a child commanded to confess slipping a garter snake into Rosalie’s bed, knowing the consequences would prove uncomfortable. “I kissed her.”

  “Then I presume you intend to marry her.” Pa made a statement; he didn’t ask a question.

  Ayden nodded. “If she’ll have me.”

  “Will you move to Boston?” Ma asked.

  “At the end of this quarter, yes. Tomorrow morning, I’ll withdraw my application for the permanent position.”

  “What will you do to support her in the city?” Pa asked.

  Ayden smiled. “Euphemia Roper is perfectly capable of supporting herself. And I’ll find work. Maybe not teaching at first, but I’ll find something. What I do doesn’t matter if I’m with her. And . . . and . . .” He faltered. “And she wants me there with her.” He took a step back to the door. “Is she upstairs? I’d like to tell her . . . ask her . . .”

  Pa shook his head. “Not tonight. I think, because of what you did to her in the past, you need to withdraw your application first and then make her an offer.”

  Ayden opened his mouth to protest but saw the wisdom of his father’s counsel and inclined his head. “I’ll be on campus first thing in the morning.”

  His parents’ faces shone with pride and love as they wished him good night.

  Certain he wouldn’t sleep, Ayden went into the sitting room to write the letter withdrawing his application for the professorship at the college. A few embers glowed on the hearth. As he started to add kindling to replenish the flames, he noticed a scrap of paper singed on one edge but not consumed. He plucked it out and read what words showed on the torn bit of paper.

  Ransom note fo

  Two full words and a partial one were all Ayden needed to see to realize she had burned her story about the abducted child.

  “It could just be a draft.” He sprinted for the desk.

  Her other two articles lay in neat stacks held down by books. Nowhere did he find a single word about the abduction.

  “Oh, Mia, mi amore.” He clung to the secretary like it was an anchor that kept him from sailing up the stairs and pounding on Rosalie’s door.

  His parents were right. He needed to sever his ties to Hillsdale completely before he could go to Mia offering her a heart unfettered to anything but hers.

  He drew out paper, pen, and ink and began to write his letter of resignation.

  Chapter Fifteen

  In ten minutes, the first train in over a week was scheduled to pull into Hillsdale, the town Mia Roper hoped to call home once again. Whether or not she had calculated correctly and that home would be with Ayden Goswell, she didn’t know. He had come home after she was in bed and left before she rose, without leaving her a message. Nonetheless, she bundled up in her warm clothes, tucked her handbag and portfolio under her arm, and headed for the train depot in town.

  The station resembled a lemonade stand during a Fourth of July celebration. Lines snaked out the door and around the corner. Voices rose and fell in animated dialogue, and
children wove through the crowd in a game of tag, their clear voices piercing the frosty air like bells. Even waiting in the cold, people smiled and chattered, their faces bright and hopeful.

  “Those with eastbound tickets for today get on first,” a railroad worker shouted from the depot doorway. “Tickets for today. Right now, we have no more seats on this incoming eastbound train.”

  Many faces fell. A few groans rose into the crystal sky.

  “Westbound?” some shouted.

  The conductor leaned back into the depot, then stepped outside again. “Westbound train has a few seats available. First come, first served.”

  “Ma, we’ll never get there in time,” an adolescent boy protested.

  “I’m just believing the good Lord will provide,” announced a woman with a baby in her arms.

  A chorus of “Amen” swelled through the crowd.

  Mia started past the line, headed for the station doorway. If she could get her money back for her ticket, she would have more than enough to support herself until she sold her articles and got paid for them.

  Mrs. Goswell offered her a room in their house for as long as Mia wanted to stay. “We have the space now Mr. Divine and the Herrings are leaving us.”

  But if Ayden ended up offering Charmaine marriage after all, Mia didn’t want to meet him over the breakfast table.

  Heart pounding, she explained to the conductor at the door that she had a ticket to exchange and a telegram to send. He waved her inside to the ticket counter. A rotund man with white hair standing on end in the hot, dry air examined tickets and waved people through the door to the platform with the rapidity of a steam shuttle.

  “Next,” he barked to the shorter line before him. “People are waiting. Have your ticket ready.”

  Mia joined the line and drew forth her ticket. When her turn came, she laid it on the counter. “I would like to redeem this ticket. I am not returning to Boston at this time.”

  Without looking at her, the agent picked up the ticket, glanced at it, then handed it back to her. “You’ll get more money for it if you sell it outside.”