And he knew, without looking back, that she watched him until he was out of her sight.
* * *
LARK STOOD OUTSIDE long after Rowdy had gone, crying like a silly schoolgirl.
He’d said he believed her, when she told him she wasn’t a whore, but now she feared he didn’t, any more than Autry had. She was a plaything to him, an amusement, not someone he’d listen to or confide in. Not someone he’d trust—
Or love.
She sniffled. Dried her cheeks with the back of one hand.
Rowdy was an outlaw—it was just awful enough to be true.
One of these days he’d leave Stone Creek for good.
And she was in love with him.
Desperately, irrevocably in love.
Knowing this, the future sprang up stark ahead of her, dark and empty and endless. She’d be like Mrs. Porter in a few years, bravely pretending she wasn’t alone, surrounded by unseen mementos of Rowdy, as real as Mr. Porter’s coat, and books lying open everywhere, and the stub of his cigar in the ashtray on his desk in the study.
She’d remember the way Rowdy was with his dog.
The way his mouth quirked up at one side when he wasn’t inclined to smile but couldn’t help it.
She’d remember how he’d pulled that wagon to the side of the road, on the way to Sam and Maddie’s place, and again, on the way back, and brought her into a whole new realm, a whole new sense of herself as a woman. He’d awakened an unquenchable passion inside her, another reality, another existence she hadn’t dreamed was possible.
And it would all be wasted.
She’d have nothing tangible, though.
No coats or books or cigar stubs.
Heading back toward the house, where Gideon and Pardner were waiting for their supper, Lark made a strangled little sound, meant for laughter, but too raw in her throat to be anything but sorrow.
She wouldn’t even have her bloomers, with the tear in the seam, to remember Rowdy by, because he’d burned them.
Wadded them up, with her blood-stained dress and her camisole, stuffed them into his stove and let the flames take them.
He might as well have thrown her on the fire, too.
All the things she hadn’t quite dared to hope for had gone up in that blaze.
All the dreams, budded tight but straining to bloom.
With a last sniffle and a lift of her chin, Lark went inside the house.
She made a supper of scrambled eggs and toasted bread.
Gideon woke up long enough to eat, thank her and then immediately fell asleep again.
She served Pardner the leftovers—having barely touched her own food—and washed the dishes.
And when Mai Lee came, kindly circumspect, with knowing in her eyes, Lark greeted her warmly.
“Mai Lee stay with boy,” the woman said. “You go home.” She fluttered her hands, like the wings of some tiny bird. “Mrs. Porter ask, where Lark? Where Lark?”
“How is she?” Lark asked, remembering the incident in the cellar and the strong dose of laudanum her landlady had taken later. “And Lydia—”
“Lydia fine,” Mai Lee said, bending to inspect Gideon, who hadn’t stirred at her arrival. She had a lidded basket over one arm, and took out strips of cloth and a jar half-filled with some strange-colored poultice, probably intending to change the bandages Hon Sing had applied after surgery. “Mrs. Porter, she—” Mai Lee paused, searching for some elusive word “—walk-sleeping.”
Lark, in the process of putting on her cloak and trying to ignore Pardner’s mournful aspect at her going, stopped. “Mrs. Porter has been sleepwalking?”
Mai Lee nodded. “Find in cellar, hour ago. She digging in floor, with kitchen spoon.” More fluttering of hands followed. “Digging. Digging. I stop her. She not know Mai Lee.”
Lark frowned. “Did you ask Hon Sing to examine her?”
“She not let,” Mai Lee said, without rancor. “Say heathen.”
“I’m sorry,” Lark said. Pardner whimpered and tried to squeeze through when she opened the door, perhaps wanting to walk her home as he’d done for Lydia, but more likely in an attempt to follow Rowdy.
She patted him on the head. “No,” she said, gently but firmly. “You have to stay with Gideon.”
Pardner sat down heavily and gave a low, mournful howl.
Suddenly Lark felt tears threatening again. Because she wasn’t the only one who’d be left behind when Rowdy went away—Pardner would be, too. As ferociously as he’d protected Gideon at the Cattleman’s Hall the night before, and the trip to Stone Creek from Haven notwithstanding, he was an old dog, graying around the muzzle.
He simply wouldn’t be able to keep up out there on the trail.
It was all Lark could do, in that moment, not to drop to her knees on the kitchen floor, wrap her arms around Pardner and weep wretchedly into his ruff—weep for both of them.
You can be my dog, she told him silently. When Rowdy goes, and Gideon is off to college, you can be my dog.
Pardner looked up at her, his brown eyes luminous with sorrow.
He knew what was coming as well as she did.
Swallowing her heart, which had surged up into the back of her throat and swelled there, hurting as if it would surely and literally burst, Lark closed the door between herself and Pardner and hurried through the darkness, headed home.
And a fancy carriage, drawn by six matching horses, stood directly in front of Mrs. Porter’s house.
CHAPTER 18
LARK STOPPED, staring at the carriage from just outside the golden cone of light from the nearest streetlamp.
It was precisely the sort of vehicle Autry might have hired; as strenuously as he guarded his pennies, he loved to make a show of wealth and, by extension, power.
She slipped up closer behind the carriage, noted the mud on the sturdy wheels and the doors. Could such a rig be had in Flagstaff, for any price?
Lark was debating between summoning up the courage to go into the house and fleeing wildly into the night when a man stepped out of the shadows, near Mrs. Porter’s front gate, and cleared his throat.
He was tall and slender, dressed in livery and a top hat. Lark didn’t recognize him; she was still poised to bolt, but curiosity stayed her.
“May I help you?” he asked.
“Do you work for Autry Whitman?” Lark countered, backing up until she bounced off Mrs. Porter’s picket fence.
The man chuckled. “No, madam,” he replied. “I’m in the employ of Miss Nell Baker.”
Lark let out the breath she’d been holding, swayed slightly with the heady relief of drawing another. “You’ve come for Lydia,” she concluded aloud, and felt the backs of her eyes begin to burn.
The coachman studied her for a long moment, then nodded. Of course he would be reticent concerning his mistress’s business in Stone Creek; he didn’t know Lark from Adam’s third cousin, Bessie Sue.
“I live here,” she explained, with a nod toward the big house behind her, and then felt utterly foolish for saying something so inane. What did Nell Baker’s carriage driver care where she resided?
The combination of relief—this carriage hadn’t brought Autry Whitman to Stone Creek, as she’d first feared—and sadness, because Lydia would soon be going away, left her dizzy-headed.
He smiled benignly and with some amusement. “Then you might want to go inside. It’s cold out here.” He gave a shiver. “Not at all like Phoenix.”
“You could come in, too,” Lark suggested, suddenly sorry for the man. “I’ll put on a pot of coffee, or tea, if you’d prefer, and you can warm yourself by the stove.”
“And get a flaying from Miss Nell for not staying with the coach?” the driver replied. “No, thank you.”
“Is she—Miss Nell Baker, I mean—is she…unkind?”
The man frowned. “Unkind?”
Lark hesitated. “I’m Lydia’s teacher, you see,” she said. “And I’ve become quite fond of her. So, naturally, I’m concern
ed with—”
Just then Mrs. Porter’s front door banged open, and a woman appeared on the porch, more shadow than substance, but sturdily built and with imposing posture.
“Evans!” she called. “Who are you talking to out there? Why are you dawdling? I require your assistance to bring my niece out to the carriage!”
Lark opened the gate, moved cautiously up the walk.
“I’m on my way,” Evans said, hurrying past her and on toward the house. “And I was speaking to Miss…?”
“Lark Morgan,” Lark said, reaching the bottom step, looking up at Nell Baker. “Lydia has been my pupil at Stone Creek School, and I board in this house.”
Nell Baker stepped forward, into the light of the moon and the faint reach of the streetlamps. She was plain, with quick, dark eyes, her hair pulled severely back from her face. Her dress was black bombazine, and her aspect precluded nonsense in any form or fashion. “Are you the one who looked after my niece when she took ill? God knows, it couldn’t have been that trollop, Mabel, though she did show the grace to inform me that poor, foolish Herbert had managed to turn himself into a block of ice.”
Lark opened her mouth. Closed it again.
Nodded.
“Speak up!” Nell Baker ordered. “And why are you standing down there on the walk like a ninny?”
Lark, intimidated at first, gathered her forces and marched up the steps, forcing Miss Baker to make way for her. “I helped take care of Lydia,” she said. “A lot of other people did, too—Hon Sing and his wife, Mai Lee, especially. Mrs. Porter and a young man named Gideon Rhodes, too. And I am not a ninny.”
Except with Rowdy, chided the damning voice of Lark’s conscience.
She moved past Lydia’s aunt and into the house. Only a single lamp burned in the entryway, glowing dimly on a side table.
Miss Baker came in, closed the door smartly. “Mrs. Porter,” she huffed, in a loud whisper. “Loony as a goose flying north for the winter when the whole flock’s headed south.”
Lark set her hands on her hips, prepared to do battle on her landlady’s behalf. But before she got a chance to lay into Miss Nell Baker good and proper, Lydia appeared in the dining room doorway behind her, dressed in a somber but costly little black velvet dress, surely provided by her aunt.
Herbert Fairmont’s funeral had been held that afternoon, Lark realized, thunderstruck. She hadn’t even remembered when Miss Baker referred to her late brother-in-law, quite callously, as a “block of ice.” While she had been thrashing about in Rowdy Rhodes’s bed, Lydia had been mourning her father.
“Aunt Nell says I can have a pony when we get back to Phoenix,” Lydia announced. She looked pale and fragile and oddly stalwart, too.
Lark went to the child, crouched to look into her eyes. “Darling, I’m so sorry I missed your papa’s funeral. It was this afternoon, wasn’t it?”
“Lots of people came,” Lydia said. “Mabel carried on something terrible, till Aunt Nell put her hands over my ears.” She paused. “I guess you had to take care of Gideon. Mrs. Porter said he got shot.” Her eyes grew enormous, and her lower lip wobbled. “Is Gideon going to die, like my papa did?”
Lark took the little girl’s hands in hers, squeezed them. “No, sweetheart. Gideon will be fine.”
Lydia leaned close, whispering now. “I still have the letter he wrote for me,” she confided. “It’s in my new reticule, the one Aunt Nell brought me. If I ever need him, he’ll come for me, won’t he? Like he said he would?”
Lark’s eyes filled with tears. “Yes,” she said. “I’m sure he will.”
“Lydia,” Miss Baker said gently, “you’re taxing yourself. Let’s get you into your cloak, and Evans will carry you out to the carriage.”
“We’re going to stay at the Territorial Hotel tonight,” Lydia said, clearly impressed. “I’ve never stayed in a hotel before.”
Lark hugged the child, kissed her cheek, then rose, looking back at Nell Baker.
Miss Baker took a small, blue woolen cape from where it rested over the stair banister, draped it gently around Lydia’s shoulders, raised the hood and fastened the cloth buttons. Kissed her forehead. “You’re the image of your mother,” she said quietly, “and she was as beautiful as a princess.”
Looking on, Lark knew by the woman’s words and manner that Lydia would be safe with her and loved. She swallowed a lump in her throat.
“Evans!” Nell Baker called. “What are you doing?”
Evans appeared, dusting the crumbs of Mrs. Porter’s rum cake from the front of his fancy coachman’s coat.
“The lady of the house offered me refreshment,” he said, clearly unhurried. “And it would have been rude to refuse.”
“Carry Lydia to the carriage, please,” Miss Baker said moderately.
Evans scooped the little girl up into his arms. “Off to the ball, Cinderella,” he said.
Peering out from under the hood of her new cloak, Lydia waved goodbye over Evans’s broad shoulder, and they were gone.
Lark watched them go, feeling much as she had earlier when Rowdy rode out, figuratively trampling her heart under his horse’s hooves. She cared about all her pupils, but she’d come to love Lydia somewhere along the way. Lydia and Gideon and Pardner—and Rowdy.
Unexpectedly Nell Baker laid a hand on her shoulder. “Lydia is my own dear sister’s only child,” she said quietly. “I’ll raise her well, Miss Morgan, and bless God every day for the gift of doing so.”
Lark swallowed. Nodded.
Nell smiled. “And she’ll never need to send that letter, either,” she said.
“You knew?”
“I heard her telling Mrs. Porter about it,” Nell answered. “He must be quite a young man, this Gideon.”
“He is,” Lark said.
Nell opened the door, paused briefly on the threshold, ready to leave. “Life is peculiar, isn’t it?” she asked reflectively. “Why, from what little I know of Gideon, I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if he came knocking at my door, in ten years or so, just to see how Lydia was faring.”
Lark smiled, imagining that faraway day, when Lydia would no longer be a child, but a beautiful young woman. Nell Baker had already gone when she replied, alone in the entryway, “Neither would I.”
* * *
LYDIA SAT OBEDIENTLY on a settee in the lobby of the Territorial Hotel, where she’d never expected to be if she lived to be as old as Noah, and watched as Aunt Nell spoke with the clerk behind the desk. Mr. Evans, meanwhile, carried in reticules and a small trunk, winking at her once, when she sagged a little for missing Miss Morgan, and making her smile.
“Our best rooms are taken, I’m afraid,” Lydia heard the clerk say to Aunt Nell. Then, dropping his voice to a loud whisper, which Lydia clearly heard even though she was some distance away, he added, “Mr. Whitman arrived this afternoon, you see. The railroad Mr. Whitman. He’s out at the O’Ballivan place right now, taking a strip off Sam and the major both for not catching the men who robbed his train yesterday morning.”
Just then the big front doors slammed open, and a tall, gray-haired man strode inside, followed by another man dressed much like Mr. Evans. He had shiny black skin.
Lydia tried not to stare, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t take particular notice of the black man—Charlie, who ran the livery stable, was the same color, after all, and so were several of her papa’s patients. No, it was the other man who intrigued her. He looked like a big, mean lion, an old one, with his hair bushed out around his head like a mane.
“Thunderation!” he roared. “Isn’t there a decent place to eat in this backwater town?”
Aunt Nell gave him a long, disapproving look, which he noticed, but ignored.
Lydia got up off the settee and approached him. Tugged at the sleeve of his coat. “My teacher says it’s rude to shout,” she said, “in public or in private.”
The lion-man looked down at her, scowling. “Sometimes,” he said, “it’s the only way to get anything accompl
ished.”
Lydia shook her head solemnly. “Miss Morgan says it’s rude,” she insisted.
“Lydia,” Aunt Nell said firmly, turning briefly from her business with the clerk, “sit down.”
“I’ll be right with you, Mr. Whitman,” the clerk called.
Lydia returned to the settee, and was surprised and strangely gratified when Mr. Whitman sat down right beside her.
“And what brings a child like you to the hotel?” he asked her.
“My papa got buried today,” Lydia told him. “And Lark—Miss Morgan, I mean—couldn’t be there because she had to take care of Gideon. He got shot trying to keep a horse from trampling people right in the middle of the Cattleman’s Hall. I’m going to marry Gideon someday. I’ve got a letter I can send him from anyplace, if I ever need help, and when he gets it—” She fell silent. Mr. Railroad Whitman looked as though he might be fixing to behave rudely again and yell. His face was all red, and his eyes looked like marbles stuck into the sockets, all gleaming and hard, same as the ones the boys played with at school.
“Your teacher’s name is Lark?” he asked, and though he didn’t raise his voice, he splashed spittle in Lydia’s face, the way Mabel had sometimes, when she was vexed.
“I’m not supposed to call her that,” Lydia said, watching as Aunt Nell collected keys from the clerk and handed them to Mr. Evans. She hoped she wouldn’t have to sleep in a room all by herself; she was afraid she might have bad dreams about her papa. Mabel had told her once that sometimes people got buried when they weren’t really dead, and then they woke up and tried to claw their way out of the coffin and through six feet of ground, too. “But that’s what Marshal Rhodes calls her—Lark, I mean—and I like to say it sometimes because it’s so pretty. Don’t you think it’s pretty, Mr. Railroad?”
“Lydia,” Aunt Nell said, coming to stop in front of where she and the lion-man sat, side by side, “our room is ready.”
Belatedly Mr. Railroad remembered his manners and stood. “Miss Morgan said a gentleman always stands when a lady is present. She made Terran O’Ballivan and Ben Blackstone and all the other boys do it once, at school, even though she’d just come out of the cloakroom.”
A Stone Creek Collection Volume 1 Page 59