Behaving Herself

by Yvonne Jocks

  The women of the Ladies' Aid could speak of nothing but Candon's recent scandal.

  “Shocking!”

  “And such a poor example for the children!”

  “How do you explain something like this to a ten-year-old? That's what I'd like to know.”

  Audra sat back and listened— Close your mouth and open your ears, her father would advise. The situation did set a poor example for the children, after all . But did nobody else find the attack and the vandalism an even worse example? At least the fornication was not intended to victimize others. “That hussy should go back to her own people!” “I certainly won't spend another penny at that place.” “I've had my husband drive to Bobo's Store in Bedford!” Tentatively, Audra asked,

  “What about the blacksmith?” Ten pairs of eyes turned blankly to her. Then Mrs. Collins asked,

  “What's that, dear?”

  "Has anybody stopped doing business with Mr. Gilmer? He helped ambush Mr. Hamilton and his ...

  lady friend. Surely you don't approve of his actions."

  “Heavens, dear, what lady has anything to do with a blacksmith?”

  “That's my husband's concern.” As if driving to Bedford was not.

  And perhaps most shocking: "They were only protecting us from the shameful goings-on by the river! And two of them were murdered for their efforts!"

  Murdered? That, and the several nods that answered it, chilled Audra. If these women were spouting borrowed thoughts on loan from their husbands, Jack and his friends might face more danger than she'd feared. How could she, not even eighteen, make a difference?

  “Two men and one woman in the same household!” “And not a one married to another.” “They should be arrested, is what they should be.” Audra tried again. "But Mr. Hamilton and Miss Wolfe cannot marry here. It's illegal."

  “And rightly so!” declared Mrs. Tilton. “It's an abomination, is what it is!”

  “But... if you don't allow them to marry, how can you condemn them for not marrying?”

  “We condemn them,” announced the widow Parks sternly, “for being together at all.”

  Audra considered pointing out that Mr. Hamilton and Miss Wolfe had fallen in love, but she knew the answer to that one, too—they could just fall out of love. People had repeatedly told her oldest sister Mariah that, when Mariah fell for the wrong man. As if it were that easy!

  Were these the moral examples she'd been fol owing for so long? They made a better argument for thinking for oneself than Jack Harwood ever had!

  Close your mouth. Open your ears. But what about eyes?

  Examining the women more closely, Audra realized that only three of them truly dominated the conversation. Several more nodded, but ventured no real points of their own. And almost half the ladies just glanced up from their knitting or sewing on occasion. Could it be that at least some of them disagreed, too, and simply did not wish to draw criticism by speaking up?

  Perhaps that was wise.

  But it was not right. And for all Audra knew, the noise might indicate their very uncertainty—only a nervous cow would paw or bellow.

  She had promised to try. Best get to it.

  “Aid,” Audra said—but nobody seemed to hear her.

  “Do the miscegenation laws include common-law marriages?” asked the widow Parks. “Perhaps we could have them imprisoned!”

  “Or insist that there be a morals law in this town!”

  So Audra raised her voice. “Ladies' Aid Society.”

  Everyone in the room looked at her then, even Melissa and Claudine, who were caring for some of the small children in the far corner.

  “No need to shout, dear,” chided Aunt Heddy.

  Well, there was no need now! "When Mrs. Collins and I spoke, I had assumed that we would form a Ladies' Aid Society. Should that not encompass some kind of giving of... aid?"

  The three who'd done most of the pawing and bellowing drew back, affronted. But Mrs. Abbott, mother of one of Audra's pupils, said, “What did you have in mind, Miss Garrison?”

  And they actual y looked to her for a suggestion! She had not felt so tongue-tied since her first week as a teacher. Wasn't someone else supposed to do this part? She'd meant only to speak up on behalf of Lucy Wolfe—and surely she could not start with that!

  “Well.” She remembered something else Jack said. “Mr. Wells left a widow, yes?” When several women nodded, she said, "Perhaps we could help her with some of her chores? Take up a collection toward her debts for the funeral? We could see whether she has any proper mourning clothes, and if not, perhaps someone could loan her an extra dress."

  “When my Frank died,” said Marilyn Madison, "I could hardly rouse myself to fix a proper meal. I know most of us brought casseroles and cakes earlier this week, but we might take turns bringing an extra lunch to church for her on Sundays, just in case."

  “Or send it with folks who go that way, if she don't attend church,” added Mrs. Stevens. “When little Abby died, well ... I couldn't make myself attend church for some months after.”

  Several women reached across to touch her, to commiserate. Then Audra got to sit back and watch after all. The ladies decided which four would provide Sunday lunches for the next month. Even Mrs. Tilton agreed to bring food on the first Sunday in February.

  After that, ideas flew: socks for orphans; flowers in front of the church. But by the time Mrs. Collins

  asked, “Does anybody else have a suggestion to make?” Audra still had not kept her promise, so she straightened her spine and raised her hand.

  Aunt Heddy said, “This is not school, child.” Several ladies laughed—but some others, younger, rolled their eyes sympathetically. Perhaps they'd once been Aunt Heddy's pupils.

  “I suggest we collect warm clothes so Miss Lucy Wolfe can travel safely north,” she said.

  Nobody seemed upset at all. Some women smiled encouragingly, seeming to wait for more

  information. Others stared at her blankly. Then Mrs. Stevens asked, “Who's Lucy Wolfe?”

  They didn't know?

  “She's the woman at the mercantile,” Audra clarified. “With Mr. Hamilton.”

  The stunned silence that fol owed comprised the last bit of peace that the first meeting of the Candon Ladies' Aid society saw.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Teachers must be home between 8 p.m. and 6 A.M. unless attending a school function.

  —Rules for Teachers

  Jack enjoyed the still stretch just before dawn, when the world turned gray enough to see its possibilities, but with enough lingering darkness to shelter its flaws. Time was he'd enjoyed this quiet before bed. This morning he met it from the other end of sleep, reluctant to desert his pallet or his dreams. But he'd promised Ham and Lucy both—and Audra. So he dragged himself up,

  washed in bracingly chilly water, palmed some food tins, and left for the livery.

  Even after bed, the frosty morning welcomed him as gently as ever.

  The scent of hay, leather, and horses warmed the livery stables. Jack pumped some water for Queen's trough. While she drank he scooped a light breakfast of grain into a feed bag, then slipped it over her ears. Then he sat back on some hay and cut into a tin of oysters to join her, trying to recall the finer details of his dream. Sadly, only remnants lingered ... though enough to know that he'd deserve slapping, if Audra ever learned to read a fellow's mind.

  Several barnyard cats came begging at the smell of his treat, dancing and yowling for his attention, but they had to make do with the liquid in the bottom of the tin.

  By time Jack bridled and saddled Queen and led her out, dawn had crept close enough to pick up silver twinkles in the frost. Both his breath and the mare's left a mist in the air, just cold enough to wake him up right. He tried to imagine four-foot snowdrifts and could not do it.

  Then he heard approaching footsteps. He and Queen turned their heads in unison.

  Audra?

  For a moment he thought he imagined her, a ghostly w
ish appearing out of the gray. But if this were a continuation of his dream, the slight figure would leap into his embrace, fill his arms, kiss him like... well, like he knew Audra could kiss him. If only she would.

  This Audra slowed and murmured comfortingly to Queen as she neared. She held out a fisted hand for the mare to whiffle and praised her equine intelligence at doing so. Only then, petting Queen's nose, did she slide a happy glance toward Jack. Her eyes were the same exact gray color as the frosty morning—and just as invigorating.

  He thought: I love her. It unsettled him a bit, gut-deep, but not at all unpleasantly.

  “Good morning, Mr. Harwood!” she greeted.

  Savoring her smile, her apparent excitement, Jack tugged at his hat brim. “Ma'am.”

  “I'm glad I caught you,” she admitted. A flush of color, even in the gray light, touched her cheeks at her boldness, but she didn't take it back. “I just had to tel somebody, and you were the first person I thought of. I could barely sleep for wanting it.”

  As with the sweet torture of that candy stick the day before, she had no earthly idea what kind of risqué interpretation Jack could put on her innocent words. He'd wanted it, too.

  He took a deep, steadying breath, reminded himself to put her good first, and asked, with forced nonchalance, “What's that, darlin'?”

  “I did it.”

  Only when Queen swung her head back and bumped him in the chest with her nose—likely

  wondering why he'd saddled her if they weren't leaving—did he realize that Audra must mean the Ladies' Aid.

  “Did you now?” he asked, approving.

  She nodded. "I did! At first I did not think I could—some of those ladies were- not so nice as I'd hoped—but I made myself speak up, and they actual y listened. Well, not at first. Some thought that to collect warm-weather clothes for Miss Wolfe might reward her for... you know. But I reminded them of our duty to help her escape her current situation."

  He also enjoyed watching how she loved his horse, petting Queen's blaze and scratching under her forelock, even kissing the mare's whiskery nose as she talked.

  In fact, he felt more than a little envious.

  “Did you now?” he said again, admiring the play of excitement on her sweet, china-doll face, the glow in her large, fine eyes. “And they agreed?”

  “Well ...” She looked down, suddenly uncertain. “I also said that if they wanted her out of town, better to help her leave than not.” Then she peeked back up. "Was that wrong of me? I truly didn't set about it to dispose of poor Miss Wolfe, but I so wanted to convince them, and they were being so frustratingly impractical. And it wasn't a lie," she hurried to reassure him, as if he might condemn her otherwise. “But it's not an argument I'm proud to have made.”

  “You're asking me about right and wrong?” he challenged, increasingly amused, and a giggle bubbled out of her at his observation. Of the two of them, he was the dissolute, right?

  At least, he hoped he was.

  Ducking her forehead against Queen's, she slanted her pretty eyes up at him and said, "Perhaps I am testing you."

  Maybe she was and maybe she wasn't, but she was teasing him—and he could not have been

  index

  more pleased. “Well, now,” he said, looping an arm over Queen's neck since he could not in good conscience—or at least in plain sight—loop one around Audra. "I doubt Ham or Lucy believe the good ladies of Candon want either of them lingering, so your stating the facts of it oughtn't hurt their feelings none. And if it wouldn't hurt their feelings, I can't see the wrong in it. especially since it gets them just what they want.“ Then he smiled. ”Did I pass?"

  Audra gazed up at him for a moment, then bit her lower lip and nodded.

  He wished he could bite her lower lip for her, though softly, and with his tongue to soothe any imagined damage ... but they were on Main Street. Even the folks who went out this early general y stayed to their own backyards, seeing to livestock or pumping water or carrying in firewood. But he could not know for sure who might be watching him—-her—even now.

  And if he loved Audra, he would do nothing to endanger her position ... right?

  Toward that end, he forced himself to ask, "Aren't you taking a chance meeting with me in the open like this, schoolmarm?"

  He regretted it right off, and not just because of how his question sobered her.

  “Oh. Do you think I oughtn't have?”

  There she went, asking the dissolute again. This time he chose honesty over protection. "If we were playing by Jack Harwood's rules, you'd have arrived a few minutes earlier and slipped into the stables, where nobody could see either of us."

  Audra cocked her head. “But out here, if anybody does see us, they can see that all we're doing is talking. If we talked inside the stables, people might think we were ...”

  Jack smiled dreamily at the image. “If anybody found out,” he reminded her.

  Audra's gray eyes flared wider. “Jack! I told you we couldn't do anything like that again!”

  Again. As if his fantasies ended at kissing. Where they should. But he ignored that prim voice inside him. In fact, it was sounding increasingly like his father's.

  “Well then, Miss Audra,” he said apologetically, “You just hold tight to those morals of yours, because I'm having a humdinger of a time doing anything but thinking about just that.”

  “Just that?”

  “The that that we can't do.” He enjoyed her blush. “It's a fine enough thought that, if there were a way I could shoulder the risks instead of putting you in jeopardy, I would do it gladly.” He smiled.

  “Faint heart never filled a flush.”

  “ 'Faint heart never won fair maiden,' ” she corrected warily, eyes wide at his declaration.

  He'd better leave here, and quickly, because his heart felt nowhere near faint this morning.

  "Well then, fair maiden, before I do something to further lessen myself in your eyes, why don't I head on out to Grapevine and post that telegram to your folks? You've set so good an example with the Ladies' Aid, I'll have to be downright industrious to equallyou."

  She nodded, and for a moment it was all he could do not to close the distance between them and kiss her. Wasn't that what men and women did, especially when they cared for each other, just before the man rode off? A good-bye kiss, her straightening his muffler for him, him promising to stay safe ...

  The reality that theirs was not, nor ever could be, that kind of relationship wall oped Jack hard enough that he regretted those breakfast oysters.

  Then Audra said, "You're not lessened in my eyes, Jack Harwood. Just because I need to honor my promises doesn't mean that I'm not tempted."

  Lordy. He ached for her in more ways than he'd figured a man could ache for a woman. In fact, instead of resurrecting quilt-tangled images from his dreams, or from this morning's more immediate fantasies of haylofts, he could suddenly think of nothing more physical y satisfying than just pulling her to him and holding her, his cheek pillowed on her sorrel-colored hair.

  She blushed and averted her eyes from his hungry stare. "I apologize. That was horribly forward of me. I only meant to ...

  That's why we have to be so careful to fol ow the rules, you see. Most of them, at least. You do understand, don't you?"

  And when she again lifted her gaze to his, her eyes pleaded with him.

  “I do understand.” He swallowed. Hard. “Miss Garrison, every so often I even agree. But that usual y isn't when we're face-to-face. So I'd best be off to Grapevine now.”

  And before he could indulge in any more fantasies of her seeing him off like a favorite beau, he hooked his foot in Queen's stirrup and swung himself up into the saddle.

  She held the mare's bridle as he did, and handed him up his reins, just as a girl might see off a beau, at that. But they weren't. A girl with a beau would have chaperones and planned events to attend. A girl with a beau would make sure their families knew one another. Jack was not her beau; he was a
gambler who wanted to sneak her away into a stable or the woods and do what

  honorable beaus waited for their wedding night to do.

  Just because he loved her didn't make her less deserving of such treatment. But maybe he didn't love her, not how it counted, because he couldn't just ride away and leave her be. "See, Miss Garrison, there is little I enjoy more than your being horribly forward with me."

  And then, only when he had her blushing—was he low enough to hope, even a touch as frustrated as he felt?—he rode off Grapevine way, cursing his damned candor.

  This was a higher-stakes game than he'd expected. The longer he stayed in, the more he stood to lose. And, worse, he saw no way she would be taking the pot either.

  When a peddler from Arlington, to the south, stopped by Aunt Heddy's with a telegram that afternoon, Audra had a moment of still, clear panic. It had little to do with her aunt discovering the notorious Miss Wolfe's actual destination, either. It had to do with Jack.

  He's not coming back! she thought, numb, as her aunt thanked the man and unfolded the yellow paper. As soon as she rejected that fear, another took its place: He's been hurt!

  Worse was the realization that she preferred the second possibility to the first... as long as he could recover. Shamed to discover herself more selfish than she'd ever suspected, she could only stand miserably while her aunt read the telegram, wait for the certain aftermath, and pray.

  I take it back. I'm sorry. He can stay away if he wants. Just let him be safe.

  But Aunt Heddy read the telegram without looking at Audra once, then apparently read it a second time, and Audra realized the extent of her own selfishness. It wasn't her telegram at al .

  Aunt Heddy said, "Melissa, go down the road to the Parkers' home— walk, do not run—and ask Mr. Parker if I may ride with him when he goes into the city tomorrow morning. I shall be traveling to the hill country tomorrow. Audra, that will necessitate my leaving the girls in your charge. I need not impress upon you my reluctance to do so."

  Hill country—where her papa had grown up! “Is it Gross-mutter, Aunt Heddy?”

  “It is my brother.” Aunt Heddy put the telegram down and went into their bedroom while Melissa put on a cloak and slipped out the door.