Behaving Herself

by Yvonne Jocks

  The widow Cribb's eyes stayed narrow. But when Audra did not flinch, only waited for approval, her aunt could do nothing but give it in one terse nod. Jack didn't blame her. He'd never seen the little gal look so respectable.

  “Mr. Harwood,” said Audra, and surprised him further by walking away from the others.

  Jack followed, pleased that their words would be private. At least he wouldn't have to cal her

  “Miss Garrison.” Along with the apology, he could ask her to come back by the store. In a visit or two, he might convince her to take the pen back. Maybe he could even manage a final kiss before he left.

  Whenever he left.

  She stopped a stone's throw from the others, still looking down at her feet.

  Jack cleared his throat. “Audra—”

  “I wish I could be sure,” she said quietly, sounding somehow sad, “that you came here for church and not just to see me.”

  When in doubt, smile. “Does it matter?”

  Her gray eyes swept up to him, then back down, stormier after seeing his smile. From the way she worried her lower lip, it did matter. “I asked you to leave me alone.”

  "I've hoped for two weeks now to tell you how sorry I am that you saw me lit up the way you did. I assure you, I am not accustomed to drinking that much. Haven't touched a drop since, either."

  There! That should please her well enough.

  “Thank you for that,” said Audra, but it would have cheered him more if she'd not spoken to her shoes. She took a deep breath. “But I did ask you to let things be, between us.”

  “But that's not what you really wanted,” he countered.

  The longer she said nothing, the better he liked it. Audra wouldn't lie. He'd bet on it. Then she said,

  “But what a person wants and what is best for her are not always the same thing.” At least she looked at him for that, silently pleading for ... what? “You are a confirmed gambler, are you not?”

  “We've discussed this before,” he reminded her, keeping his tone patient. "If I remember rightly, you concluded that you would start trusting your common sense instead of making assumptions about activities you don't even know about. Remember that? By the cedar break?"

  She flushed, eyes widening, then looked away from him or the memory, or both. Pressing her lips together, she took a deep breath, then asked, “Do you know of a place called the Acre?”

  The Acre? Jack's thoughts stumbled at the unexpected turn. “What?”

  “The Acre. Some people cal it the Third Ward.” She fidgeted, her left hand straightening the glove on her right, then swapping roles. “In Fort Worth.”

  She'd said the Acre, all right. To ask a gambler if he knew of Hell's Half-Acre was like asking a meat packer if he'd heard of Chicago. “I am familiar with the place,” Jack acknowledged, wishing she would look at him again. "It's barely a day's ride from here. But that's not where I'd been a few weeks back, if that's what you're thinking."

  “But you have ... done business there? With people who sell liquor or gamble?”

  “They are the Acre's reason for existence,” he pointed out. “Among other things better not mentioned.”

  She took another deep breath, then whispered another question. But he had to have misheard her this time.

  “Excuse me?” he asked, trying not to laugh at his misinterpretation.

  “What about... with women there? Have you done business with them?”

  While he stared at her, frozen, she finally lifted her gaze to meet his. He wished she hadn't. Her eyes somehow begged and damned him at the same time.

  Jack opened his mouth—then closed it. Then he opened it again. "I never figured myself to say something like this to you, Audra, but that just isn't the kind of question a lady ought to go asking.

  Have I ever inquired into what element of men you've known?"

  The tragic part was, Jack had meant that as a joke.

  Chapter Twenty

  It is expected that teachers set virtuous examples for the pupils.

  —Rules for Teachers

  Resisting Jack's charms by remembering his sordid world was failing miserably, even before he retaliated with the one question she must not answer. “Wh-what?”

  Jack blinked, obviously taken aback by her guilty response. A wan smile flickered across his too-handsome face, then guttered out before it could fully form. “What breed of... men!”

  But he was figuring it out quickly enough, she could see. His eyes darkened, narrowed—then fixed on hers in amazement. And why not? He was perhaps in no position to judge her past... but neither was she his.

  The need to escape rose in her like a panic. “Never mind,” she said quickly, though with desperate poise, and spun to leave. The nearness of several people—Aunt Heddy, Reverend Col ins, and Mr.

  Trigg—startled her. Had they heard her asking such improper questions? Worse, had they heard her inability to answer the last?

  But as the two men strode by her Audra realized, stupidly, that their target was Jack.

  “Don't look like the lady wants to talk, Harwood,” warned Mr. Trigg, and Reverend Col ins added,

  “Perhaps it would be best if you left.”

  They were throwing him out of church?

  Al the while, Jack watched her, his expression slackened into dismay, his silent questions continuing even as Mr. Trigg took him by the arm to lead him off. Only then did Jack twist free from

  the physical contact—still staring at Audra. “Hands off, Seth!”

  Several more of the men in the congregation were moving in.

  “Stop it!” insisted Audra, stepping between them and their quarry. “What are you doing?”

  “Did this here gambler offend you, Miz Audra?” demanded Trigg.

  When she looked at Jack again, he still stared at her. Oh, she wanted to explain to him—if anyone could understand her mistakes, wouldn't he? She'd done nowhere near as much with Peter

  Connors as she had with Jack; people simply knew about Peter. That alone had not ruined her life, but it had sorely complicated it! Still, Jack was not Peter.

  “Mr. Harwood has a name,” she challenged now, unsure where her brave words came from but making no effort to stop them. “He also has every right to speak to me, if I allow it, which I did. He would hardly insult me at a church!”

  People were staring at the spectacle they made; several women whispered behind their hands.

  Somehow the threat to her reputation did not worry her as much as usual.

  When Aunt Heddy said, “It is time we went home, Audra,” it sounded like an order. Audra ignored it to see what Mr. Trigg or the others would do next. At least the menfolk looked uncertain now, glancing at one another but no longer moving toward Jack.

  Mr. Trigg said, "A man like him ought not to have business with a lady like you, is all. Struck me as odd, ma'am."

  From behind her, Jack spoke, his voice sharp despite the practiced friendliness of his drawl. "Now that would be odd. What with the lady's and my 'respective positions' and all."

  Only Audra recognized the quote from the letter she had sent him. She turned back to him, dismayed to have upset him so much, wondering how she could possibly have made her necessary requests more kindly.

  His formal bow in her direction, complete with a flourish of his hat, seemed to her as

  uncomplimentary as his tone. “Miss Garrison.” He nodded to the others. “Paragons.”

  Then he strode away from the church, toward the mercantile. Could the others see the fury in his stiffness, or was it just her? She wanted to run after him, to apologize for the others and herself.

  But what good would that do either of them? If anybody here guessed at the intimacies they'd shared, Jack could meet with true violence. Some apology that would be.

  No, better that she stay silent. Bearing the burden of his poor opinion was no less than she deserved. Perhaps it would even make it easier for him to ... leave.

  “What did he say to upset you, d
ear?” asked the reverend, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  Where once she would see only concern, she now felt the walls of authority closing in. "With all respect, Reverend, that is Mr. Harwood's concern."

  Aunt Heddy made a huffing noise of surprise, and Mr. Trigg said, “Oh, really?”

  Quickly, Audra reviewed the rules for teachers and remembered nothing justifying outright prejudice. "Thank you very much for coming to my aid, Mr. Trigg. And you, Reverend. It speaks well

  of the town that a young lady has such protectors. But . . ." She took a deep breath, hating to offend them but unwilling to let the incident pass without comment. "But in the future, perhaps it might be wise to determine if assistance is needed, first."

  Trigg folded his burly arms. "And just how are we supposed to tell the difference, with our schoolteacher lookin' like she's about to swoon?"

  A significant question. The simplicity of its answer startled her. “You might ask.”

  With that, she did her best to smile in something close to gratitude toward the cluster of townspeople around her. Then, despite wanting nothing more than to find someplace quiet and think things through, she turned toward the path to Aunt Heddy's.

  She had not, she thought sullenly, been about to swoon.

  He was a damned fool, was what he was.

  Jack could hardly believe his idiocy, thinking Audra would be impressed by a suit, a haircut, by his not touching any liquor since the New Year. Some things, like how long a fellow's transgressions haunted him, never changed. And some things . ..

  He kept hearing his own question echo in his head: What element of men you've known, you've known, you've known . . . And each time, he saw her go pure white. Audra Garrison never did have a poker face. Until today, he figured it had something to do with her obvious innocence.

  Son of a bitch.

  Did Audra have some transgressions under her belt, as well? Audra?

  He wasn't sure who he'd rather hurt: Her, for making him jump through hoops to meet those pure and unspoiled expectations of hers? Or, more likely, whatever bastard had taken advantage of her

  —were it true, that is. She'd left home to live with a distant aunt. Scandal terrified her. Add to that her fine way with kisses—hesitant at first, but she'd caught on right quick—and he just didn't have the ammunition to deny what her pale face admitted.

  Here he'd thought he'd fallen in with a puredee lady, and she was nothing more than ...

  But that thought infuriated him most of all, because anyone who thought Audra Garrison wasn't a lady, no matter what mistakes she'd made, was a fool. Most ladies who “fell” were, in fact, yanked down by some fellow. He'd lay odds it was the same with Audra.

  But it still disappointed him, and his regret disappointed him, too.

  He used the rear entrance to the store and bolted the steps to Ham's room, pounding on the door in warning, then stalking in. “You said you had some coffin varnish up here?”

  Ferris looked up from polishing a boot and whistled. “Well, don't you look sweet.”

  Jack began to look behind boxes and above shelves. “Liquor. Now.”

  “I offered that back when I thought you were going to puke in my store.” Ferris went back to work buffing his boot to a high shine. “Maybe I'm not feeling so generous today.”

  “I'll pay you.”

  “How much?”

  “Whatever you still owe me. I'm leaving.” Even as the words came out of Jack's mouth, he knew their truth. He didn't belong here. He didn't belong at Sunday-morning services, or stalking a scandal-shy lady teacher who figured him for a drunken whoremonger.

  “I haven't got that much.” Ferris put down his boot to tug a small trunk out from under his bed, then opened it up. “Why don't you leave and then get drunk? You were figuring on going to Fort Worth anyhow, weren't you? Word has it they run a saloon or two out that away.”

  “Fort Worth,” Jack pointed out, "is thirty miles of dry townships away from here, and the moonshiners are shy to do business of a Sunday unless they know you." The only one he knew by name was Harv Jefferson, and nothing would tempt him into trying that product again.

  So Ferris tossed him a bottle, which he caught. It was a small bottle, barely half-full , but it would do to mark the official end to his foolish attempts at respectability. He wasn't craving the liquor half so much as the opportunity to do something of which Miss Audra Holier-than-Thou Garrison would not approve. Since he didn't know of any whores in the immediate area, and the only poker game was the hel hole at Ernest Varnes's, booze on the Sabbath it was.

  He started to turn back toward the stairs, then paused. Ferris Hamilton was a decent fellow. Jack would probably even miss him. “Thanks.”

  “Pleasure doing business with you,” said Ferris, going back to his boot polishing. “I believe I made a profit on it. You drinking it here?”

  “I'd drink en route, but the saddle might start drifting out from under me.”

  “If I'm out when you go, lock up and leave the key under that rock I showed you.”

  Instead of just agreeing, Jack asked, “Where you going, anyway?”

  Ferris finished with the second boot. “Same place I go most Sundays.”

  “Which would be ... ?”

  “Out.” But the storekeeper softened it with a rare grin. “Try to stay out of jail, Harwood.”

  “Try to stay out of the widow Parks, Hamilton.” And Jack finally headed down the stairs.

  “Not a problem!” called Ferris, after him. “On my mother's grave, not a problem!”

  Once downstairs, Jack settled onto his pallet, uncorked the bottle, and enjoyed the mere smell of good whiskey. Mmm. If sin were truly wrong, how come it was so damned tempting?

  He remembered Audra confessing her own experience with demon liquor and fought a grin. She would make a damned cute drunk.

  Then he wondered if that was how the faceless son of a bitch, whoever he was, got past those scruples and under those petticoats of hers. But that didn't bear thinking about, so he treated himself to a slow sip of whiskey. It burned exquisitely all the way down, leaving that familiar, comforting warmth he was looking for.

  It didn't come close to the glowing warmth that Audra Garrison's short-lived admiration of him had fueled. But at least this warmth was real.

  And this warmth he could get.

  “That was brave,” said Claudine. “Standing up to the reverend and Mr. Trigg that way.”

  Surprised, Audra looked up from her reading. It really was Claudine speaking with such civility!

  Aunt Heddy had gone visiting, and Melissa was off fussing with her appearance lest Early Rogers come by to sit with her. For once, it was just her and Claudine.

  “I did not feel brave,” she admitted carefully. “And to be honest, I did not mean to defy anyone. I know they were trying to do what was best for me.”

  “But you didn't think it was best for you,” Claudine pointed out. In Aunt Heddy's absence, she held a brush in her lap and carefully combed hair leavings out of it in the hope of making a “fall.” While Audra understood her aunt's disapproval of such vanity, she could not bring herself to criticize it.

  After all , she had short hair and Melissa's was bleached!

  “No,” she agreed. “I did not approve either of them mistreating Mr. Harwood or using me as an excuse to do it.”

  “So sometimes what people think is best for us, isn't.” Claudine let the hairpiece-in-progress rest on her lap to watch Audra's reaction closely. “Is it?”

  Oh, dear. “I have been pondering that myself,” admitted Audra.

  “You have?”

  She nodded. "I'm grateful that people care enough to interfere. And they do often have more knowledge of the world than we do. Sometimes," she added, gentling the seriousness of her words with a smile. “But occasional y they can be mistaken, as with Mr. Harwood.”

  “How can you be sure? He is a gambler. I truly didn't lie about that.”

  “Yes. He is a
gambler,” she agreed again. “Which requires a certain aloofness on our part, unkind though it seems. But Mr. Harwood has always behaved civil y”— more or less—"and does not deserve insult for merely speaking to me."

  “He has a lovely smile,” said Claudine, and sighed heavily enough to drop her shoulders. “I do love men with dimples.”

  The pang of jealousy that closed Audra's throat surprised her. "It is not his smile that convinced me, Claudine, nor his good looks. I've used my own common sense about Mr. Harwood. I've seen him be kind to children and to lonely old men. He contributed to our new books and slates. He may not always behave appropriately, but neither have I known him to be cruel. Mr. Hamilton trusts him ... and he has a sweet mare."

  Claudine laughed. “A mare?”

  “My father says you can tell a lot about a man from his horse.”

  Claudine said, “Jerome Newton wants a fast horse to race on the track in Dallas.”

  Then Jerome Newton is a fool. But Audra fought back that first reaction. If Claudine received only censure, Audra could hardly hope the girl would speak like this again.

  “Jerome is an ... enterprising boy,” she hedged. “I should hate to see him waste his potential on horse-race gambling.”

  “But Mr. Harwood gambles.” That worried Audra. Had Claudine noticed more about her feelings for Jack than she'd meant to show? Or was she merely justifying Jerome—whom she obviously admired—by comparing him to the older man? If Jack knew how his behavior set an example for impressionable boys, would he consider changing his ways then? She suspected not.

  Wasted potential, indeed.

  “Which is why the men at church today turned on him so quickly,” Audra pointed out. "A good reputation, once lost, is almost impossible to regain. Once you step off the path of—"

  But after this morning, if she pondered that blasted path of righteousness one more time, she might scream from frustration. It simplified too much, left too many questions unanswered.

  “They had no idea what Mr. Harwood and I said to each other,” she said instead. "But they automatically saw him in the wrong. Why? Because he has not guarded his reputation as carefully as I have. For all they knew, I could have stolen something from the mercantile!"