by Yvonne Jocks
Then the Garrisons descended the steps to make way for the next emerging family. The little blond girl bolted for a cluster of nearby children. What with the interest Jack felt—Melissa's wide-eyed encouragement, Hedda Cribb's narrow-eyed disapproval, and increasingly nervous glances from Audra—he figured he'd best show his hand before anyone forced it.
But this time he'd do it by Audra's rules.
He strode deliberately up to them, right there in the churchyard. “Miss Garrison,” he greeted, careful not to cal her darling or fil his arms with her or kiss her until they both felt drunk with it, right there, imminent death or not. It had been so long.
Instead he gave her a polite bow and satisfied himself with just being this close.
She searched his face, anxious. He wished he knew what exactly she feared. Her voice came uneven when she said, “Mr. Harwood. Will you ... be in town long?”
Do you want me to be?
“That depends,” he hedged. Since God and everyone was watching, he doubled his stake by facing her stern, white-bearded sire. “I'm guessing this is your family,” he said to Audra, feeling nowhere near as confident as he sounded.
She nodded, awkward. It could be that his presence shamed her. It could be that she didn't know how this would go either. “May I introduce my father, Jacob Garrison.”
Jack offered a hand. “Sir.” When the rancher clasped it in his own then released it with no damage done, he felt relief. The barn remained his and Audra's secret. He had to concentrate to catch the other introductions—mother; Kathryn, called Kitty; Elise.
“This is John Harwood, who used to work at the mercantile.”
Once she said the name Harwood, the temperature from the direction of her sire dropped
significantly. Pa must've been talking to Thaddeas.
“I hear tel , Miss Garrison,” Jack said now, while he still could, “that your school term ends tomorrow. Some kind of entertainment's scheduled, isn't it?”
Audra nodded, waiting with clear questions.
“You'll no longer be under contract as a local schoolmistress after that, correct?”
She nodded again, her confusion slowly clearing as she began to see his direction. Was it that shocking that he might do something by rules other than those according to Hoyle, for once? He guessed it was.
'Then will you be so kind as to permit me to speak with you afterward, Miss Garrison?" Jack quietly held his breath. This was why he'd waited until now, because Audra was worth more than secret trysts and rol s in the hay. She'd always been worth more. Either he courted her openly, or he didn't deserve her. And once her contract ended, he could court her openly.
If she allowed it. And therein lay his gamble.
Audra's smile warmed him far more deeply than even the smoothest of whiskeys.
“Perhaps at the picnic,” he suggested. “I hear mention of a box social. Will you be—”
Hedda Cribb said, “The box social is for unmarried girls, not for teachers.”
Jack swallowed back a few choice names for the battle-ax. “My mistake.”
Then Audra said, “Yes,” and he felt like he'd just been dealt a third queen, until she added a less committal, “I will be there.”
“Then so wil I,” he promised. He said, “Ladies,” to the women, charitably including the widow Cribb. “Sir,” he added toward her father, since respect didn't cost anywhere near what doctor bills could. “Miss Garrison. Tomorrow, then.”
Audra's mother, smiling pleasantly enough, held her husband's arm quite firmly, as if she had a leash on a bear. So Jack decided to get while he could, until tomorrow anyhow. He would figure how to handle Audra's father if and when it became necessary.
If and when Audra gave him a second chance. That would depend on her hearing him out, on the changes he'd made, was willing to make . . . and those things he could not, would not change, not even for her.
Audra felt like singing—and like praying. She wanted to hug herself, and she wished Jack had hugged her instead. She felt the last two months of loneliness even more acutely, now that she'd seen him again, now that she could look forward to speaking at further length.
About what? she wondered, dreams and fears taking her imagination in radical y different directions. About . . . them? She'd meant to leave with her family, visit Grossmutter and Uncle Matthew, then return to Wyoming. What if he wanted her to stay? Could she risk more than she already had—including the possibility of a second good-bye?
After seeing him again, how could she not? Despite her fears and those around her?
Papa growled the name, “Harwood,” the way he might say, “hoof rot.”
Claudine said, “Him? Audra, him?” and Melissa nudged the younger girl with an elbow before anybody else figured out the context of her question.
Aunt Heddy said, “How dare he? And how dare you behave so brazenly, young lady!”
Audra wasn't the only person in the group to stare at her aunt, but she was perhaps the only one who did not do so with surprise. "Perhaps I should have slapped him, Aunt. The nerve of the man!
Perhaps we should have Papa shoot him."
While Aunt Heddy gaped, Papa warned, “I could.” He didn't normal y set himself against people on such short notice, except sheep herders and rustlers. Thank you so very much, Thad, Audra thought, then steeled herself. “With all respect, Papa, I agreed to speak with him at a public picnic, not to—” Oh, dear. Kiss him? Hold him? Let him touch her and put his mouth—
Mama, thank heavens, quickly dragged Papa's glare to herself by announcing, "I say we leave this between Audra and Mr. Harwood."
Papa said, “You would.” But he said no more. Normal y Audra admired her parents for not fighting in front of her or her sisters, when they fought at all . Now it annoyed her. This wasn't her mother's battle, after all. It was her own.
finally she trusted herself to ask what counted. “Don't you trust me, Papa?”
The things she and Jack had done together were in no way proper—but at the very least she'd gone into them with her eyes open. When they'd needed to make a painful decision, they'd both used common sense. So yes, she realized, standing straighter. She did trust herself!
Papa held her gaze for a long moment—not angry, she thought, but weary, concerned. He hadn't liked anyone her older sisters fell in love with either. A couple of them he still didn't.
He said, “Don't see as I have a choice.” No promise of good behavior on his part, but neither was it a command. He was, at the very least, giving her a loose lead ... or enough rope to hang herself.
Either way, the freedom boosted Audra's morale.
As long as she didn't hang herself—or get Jack hanged either.
With the arrival of Claudine's father and Melissa's parents and family, the teacherage overflowed with guests. Fathers and brothers slept in the barn, mothers and Aunt Heddy shared the beds, and the five girls slept on floor pallets. Rather, the Garrison sisters lay on a shared pallet and whispered to each other, still savoring their reunion too much to sleep.
“It won't be so crowded at Grossmutter's, wil it?” asked Elise, cuddled at Audra's side.
Audra said, “Don't be rude.” Then she thought about it and added, “Probably not.”
“I like this,” insisted Kitty softly. “It's more like home was, before...”
She seemed to change her mind, then, but Audra sat up on an elbow and brushed long brown strands of hair out of the twelve-year-old's pinched face. “Before what, honey?”
“Before you all grew up and went away,” Kitty admitted. In the pale moonlight through the kitchen window, her eyes unfocused without the protection of her spectacles, Kitty looked even more fragile than usual. "Don't you remember what it was like, Audra? Al six of us in two bedrooms, eating together and dressing together and fighting over the silliest things?"
“Of course I remember!” Audra pulled her sister more closely against her. "But Mariah's barely two hours away, and Laurel's claim is only twice
that far. And Victoria lives in town! They didn't go away, honey. Not Really."
“It's not the same,” Kitty insisted.
And Elise, yawning, said, “You did, Audra. You went away.”
Both of them spoke the truth. Audra wanted to defend herself against a pang of guilt, and she almost said, I had to. But that wasn't wholly true, was it? She'd left to teach, of course. Sheridan had denied her a teaching job, and Aunt Heddy had offered one. But she'd also left to preserve her precious reputation, to start over someplace where people didn't know about her mistakes. She'd told herself she did it for the good of her family— but she'd done it for the good of Audra. Now she remembered how she'd resented Mariah's leaving, back when she still had four sisters left at home. By the time Laurel and then Victoria left—happy though Audra felt for them—home
seemed increasingly deserted. She had their parents, of course, and Kitty and Elise. But compared to the homes of their childhood, it had been lonely.
And then she'd left, too, traveling not a day's ride but half a country away.
“I'm sorry,” she told her sisters now. “I can't help growing up, and I won't always live at home, but I'm sorry I moved so far.”
“It's all right,” Kitty assured her quickly, contrite for having mentioned it, and wrapped her slim arms around Audra, cuddling against her shoulder. “You're coming home now.”
Audra thought about Jack Harwood's request to speak to her tomorrow. She'd held her joy at his return tightly to her all day, taking small sips of pleasure from it instead of letting the joy pour over her... and now she knew why. The same impractical fantasies she'd not dared consider head-on still danced through her imagination. But they were still fantasies. They had to be, and for reasons far more important than her reputation.
She held her two younger sisters to her tightly. “Yes,” she said. “I'm coming home now.”
Once she got home, she probably wouldn't want to cry so badly.
The end-of-term entertainment the next day only increased Jack's admiration for Audra. After her fears about her teaching abilities, he'd worried what kind of showing she would make. Not that it mattered to him if she could teach a chicken to scratch. But he knew it mattered to her, especially with her family looking on.
He ought to have known better. Even the widow Cribb's smaller pupils looked to Audra for encouragement as they made their standard little presentations, sang their songs, proved that they could spell and read and count to the approval and applause of their audience.
But Audra's older pupils took the day. Unlike the widow Cribb's charges, Audra's had apparently been given more of a free rein in choosing their recitation pieces. It showed in their level of enthusiasm. Jerome Newton's rendition of “Give me liberty, or give me death!” had Jack ready to do just that—give him death—but he admitted a bias. Early Rogers's and Melissa Smith's recitation of the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet hinted at a mutual interest Jack hadn't seen before now. Little Charlotte Calloway read a story she'd written, complete with gunfights, Indian attacks, swooning women, and true love; most of the parents agreed she had a future in letters. Even Claudine Reynolds surprised Jack, giving a passionate rendition of “The Highwayman,” although Jack noted that she took unnecessary relish in the outlaw's bloody end.
Miss Garrison's pupils had not only learned; they'd enjoyed it. Their pride went beyond the advancement of a grade level. It did Jack's heart good to see the pride Audra felt on their behalf, especially when she sought him out from her place up front to smile especially at him.
Then, insidiously, the townsfolk's satisfaction with their new teacher began to please Jack less and worry him more. For weeks he'd waited for Audra's contract to end, just so he could ask to cal on her properly. But what good would it do to court her if she meant to teach again?
He watched Audra's class present her with a surprise gift—a handmade book with all of their signatures in it—and he listened to the applause, watched Audra's pleasure, and he felt like a heel.
If he asked Audra to choose him, Jack asked her to choose against a job she loved. Suddenly the argument that it was her choice seemed more selfish than he liked.
“What are you looking so long in the face about?” demanded Ferris Hamilton, limping up to Jack without need of a crutch as the festivities ended and preparations for the box social began. Jack had stayed with Ferris the night before, settling a few things there as well , and had been as glad for their continued friendship as he was for the news that his friend and Lucy Wolfe were writing regularly, still planning to reunite once Ham sold his store.
“I am a low-down, good-for-nothing snake in the grass,” said Jack, losing track of his sorrel-haired darling in the crowd. The crowd loved her, after all. They gave him wide berth.
“And?” challenged Ham.
“And I want to ruin a good woman's life.”
“Ah,” said Ham. “You know, if you're talking about the same good woman I'm thinking you are, she might prove harder to ruin than you'd expect.”
“Yep,” said Jack. He hoped that were true. He also feared it.
Ham said, “The town council likes your idea to get the depot.”
Jack said, “Not if they knew it was my idea.” That was why Jack had asked Ham to present it.
Things had gone mostly back to normal after Lucy had left.
Ham shrugged. “They may already be voting on it.”
Jack hoped it worked out, both for the town and his friend. He would not have made the
suggestion otherwise. But at the moment he didn't give a wooden nickel about it.
Some kind of commotion caught their attention from the plank table folks had set up to show the box lunches, and jack's curiosity got the best of him. While Ham wandered off to check on the council vote, Jack headed toward the display of prettily wrapped boxes, tins, and baskets. By time he reached it, the disturbance—whatever it was—had been resolved. This wasn't Hell's Half-Acre, after all, where people turned to fists or firearms to solve their disputes.
Still, Jack suddenly felt wary. He got that same itchy feeling at the back of his neck that he sometimes did in a red-light district, when he had to walk back to his room flush with cash and short on protection. It was the feeling of too many people paying him too close attention.
He didn't vary his pace or his expression as he sought out the cause of his sudden, dubious popularity. And when he fol owed the gaze of other folks to one end of the table, when any normal man likely would have reacted, he couldn't think far enough to respond in any way other than to stare . . . and then finally, slowly, to smile.
He'd attended box socials in his childhood, so he knew the order of play. The ladies brought homemade luncheons and the gentlemen bid on them. When a lady had a beau, she general y
gave him hints to which basket was hers—the one with a yellow bow, or bluebonnets—so that they could share lunch and private conversation. Assuming he could afford her.
The widow Cribb said schoolteachers couldn't participate. But the basket on one end of the table, causing its own minor scandal, said differently.
Someone had decorated it with an indulgent length of green ribbon, the kind a fellow might use to wrap a Christmas gift— and from one end of the ribbon hung a playing card.
The jack of hearts.
Chapter Thirty
Women teachers who marry will be dismissed.
—Rules for Teachers
Audra had expected moderate resistance to her offering, especially with its unorthodox
decoration. But she had to let Jack know which lunch was meant for him, so she risked it.
It caused more stir than she'd imagined. Aunt Heddy insisted that box socials were not proper activities for schoolteachers. Mr. Trigg reminded her that even between school terms a teacher must behave herself if she wished to be invited back in the autumn.
At which point Audra heard herself clearly say, “Then I quit.”
The school board members stared, silent at
last. finally, Mr. Trigg said, “You what?”
"I appreciate the opportunities Candon has given me, and I am pleased to be invited back. But if your invitation hinges upon my slighting a kind, decent man who waited until the end of the term to approach me“— official y, anyway—”then I must respectfully resign my post."
Reverend Collins said, “Now, Audra, by acting in haste you might repent at leisure.”
She'd best tel the truth here, as well . "I have already decided not to return next year, Reverend.
My family is in Wyoming. If I cannot find a school there, I will find some other way to teach. But I have no intention of living so far from them again."
Reverend Collins nodded, and Mr. Trigg said, “I see.”
“That still does not resolve the issue of your scandalous lunch basket,” insisted Aunt Heddy, then raised her attention over Audra's shoulder. “Talk some sense into the child, Jacob.”
Audra's stomach knotted. Oh, dear. “Jacob” meant her father, and that he said nothing only confirmed his presence. Even without hearing him, she could feel him, like an adobe wall at her back. Her father, who often said, “There's no room at the cookfire for a quitter's blanket,” had heard her quit a job. He'd heard her disrespect her elders.
And she would somehow deal with his disappointment after she settled the issue of her basket. “I believe the purpose of the box social is to raise funds, is it not?” she asked. “And I believe the person who so concerns you tends to donate generously, does he not?”
Aunt Heddy said, “Propriety is not for sale!”
Audra said, "You are selling the companionship of young girls to the highest bidder, Aunt Heddy.
How does the presence of a simple playing card denigrate that?"
“Now, Miss Garrison,” chided the reverend.
Audra raised a hand to fend off more protests. She did not want to embarrass herself further in front of her father, and she'd said all she could say. Almost. "It is of course the decision of the school board. But if you remove the card, remove the basket, too. I shall lunch with whom I please, whether or not he pays for the privilege. Good day."