Carpenter's Inheritance

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  “Yes, you can. Of course.” He cleared his throat. He shuffled his feet beneath the table; then he set his cup down and looked at her. “I suppose if this is legal advice, I should pay you.”

  “The first consultation is free, Mr. Templin. You may not need advice or legal services.”

  “Maybe not.” He drummed his long fingers on the edge of the table and stared past her, out the window. “How much proof does a body need to prove he is who he says he is?”

  Lucinda’s eyes widened. “I beg your pardon? I mean, that depends on the state and the circumstances. Usually a birth certificate is enough.”

  “And if he doesn’t have one?”

  “That gets more complicated.” Lucinda leaned forward, trying to catch his eye. “Mr. Templin, do you have need of proof of your identity?”

  “I don’t know.” He picked up his mug and hid his expression behind the thick crockery. “I may.” He drew his brows together. “You may as well know this from me, as you’ll hear it anyway, but my mother was. . . Well, she didn’t know who my father was.”

  “And so?”

  “I’m not much accepted in this town, except for my work.”

  Lucinda laughed. “That makes two of us, minus the work part for me.”

  four

  Matt clamped down on his interest in Miss Bell, heightened by the companionable laughter. He must not care about her, a lady. She would never accept him, unless he proved what he’d found in those papers.

  Those papers. Surely someone’s idea of a joke, giving him hope just when he met Miss Bell.

  He set down his half-full cup. “I should get back to work.”

  “Finish your coffee, Mr. Templin. You’re going to get chilblains on your hands if you don’t warm them a few more minutes.”

  “Chilblains?” Matt laughed. “Miss Bell, this is only October. Wait until December.”

  “I know.” She rubbed her own soft, white hands together. “I lived in Michigan.”

  “Did you?” He leaned slightly forward. “Why?”

  She smiled. “First I went to college at Hillsdale, then to the University of Michigan for law school. They seem to like to educate females there right alongside males, which is why I didn’t go to Vassar. I wanted to go to classes and hear the male perspective. I was so used to it from my father.”

  “I would have been happy to go to college anywhere.” The words slipped out without his realizing that he even thought them, let alone that he would admit to such a thing. His face grew hot, and he opened his mouth to apologize.

  She laid her hand over his on the edge of the table, her smooth fingers warm and gentle, and slamming something like a fist right into his chest. “You don’t need to go to college to be smart or well read, Mr. Templin. Once I have those books unpacked, you’re welcome to borrow them anytime. That is, if I have something the library doesn’t have.”

  “Thank you.” His mouth dry, he drained his coffee and rose. “I’d better get that shelving done so you can unpack your books. Thank you for the coffee.” He exited with as much speed as he could without being rude and recommenced his work, making as much racket as possible—so she wouldn’t be tempted to come out and talk to him. If she did, he’d likely do something ridiculous, like ask her to go walking in the woods with him to see the beautiful autumn colors. She’d be too cold anyway, and he’d have to hold her hand to warm it up. Or be tempted to do so.

  Just because his hearthside seemed lonelier each winter was no reason to succumb to the charms of every new female in town, especially those far above him. Oh yes, preachers and politicians alike could speak of equality of all. Matthew knew that one day he could make a great deal of money, have the financial equality of many and more than most, but he also knew he could be as wealthy as Andrew Carnegie or any of the other steel magnates, and yet the circumstances of his birth would shame him.

  Unless those papers he’d found between the wall panels proved true. Or he could prove them to be true. Doubtful. No one would believe anything against Charity Woodcocks. She was the town matriarch, living up to her name with all her good works.

  He wanted to look up inheritance laws in Lucinda’s books before he talked to a lawyer. So kind of her to offer. So gracious. The lady of the manor bestowing largesse upon the serf.

  Except for that touch on his hand.

  The ham-sized fist slammed into his chest again at the memory. He couldn’t breathe. For a moment, all he could see was her face, so delicate, so feminine, so intelligent. She’d been to not just one college, but two, more education than most men enjoyed. And he’d only read half the books in the lending library. He wasn’t simply not good enough for her; he wasn’t smart enough for her.

  But he had his work, and he knew he was good at it. Better than good. Bless the Floyd ladies for recognizing it. Their generosity and appreciation of his craftsmanship had enabled him to buy a house. Every time he thought of the ladies of Loveland entering the Floyd parlor and sitting on those chairs, he smiled. Eventually, someone would ask who had made them. He was certainly good enough for the town ladies to patronize his work.

  And Lucinda needed chairs for her office and for her room, if she insisted on living there. He could take her to his workshop.

  A plan forming in his head, he finished varnishing the last shelf and stepped back to admire his work by the fading afternoon light. The wood gleamed a rich, golden brown in the final ray of sunlight. With a couple of chairs, a rug, and a table beneath the shelving, the office would look downright elegant. He was finished for now and could go home.

  He knocked on Lucinda’s door to tell her he was leaving. She didn’t respond. Beyond the panel, the room seemed too still, too quiet. He dared not open the door for fear she was changing her dress or something, but he didn’t want to leave without saying good-bye. No, to be honest, he wanted to see her, to offer to show her furniture on Sunday. All the way to Sunday. And if she was inside and ignoring him, she didn’t want to see him. If she wasn’t inside, she must have departed through the back door, and that could also mean she didn’t want to see him. Or maybe she just didn’t want sawdust on her clothes before she went out.

  Out in the evening, when someone had vandalized her office out of deliberate spite or a senseless prank.

  Matt locked the front door then realized he needed to find her. He hadn’t given her the keys. She couldn’t get into her office without them. He headed for Gertie’s. Nothing would be open this late; therefore, Lucinda would return there. More than likely, Gertie had invited Lucinda to dinner.

  He knocked on Gertie’s kitchen door, and there she was, Lucinda Bell, perched on a stool at the tall work counter, drinking from a steaming, thick white mug and eyeing a plate of fried ham and eggs, her brow furrowed. A yard away, Gertie stood with her hands on her broad hips. She spun around at his knock and motioned for him to enter.

  “You tell this girl to eat,” Gertie greeted him.

  “I doubt Miss Bell will listen to the hired help, Gertie.” He strode forward and took the plate away from Lucinda. “But I’ll eat it. Can’t let good food go to waste.” Without invitation, he perched on a stool, picked up a fork, and cut off a mouthful of egg. “Do you expect coq au vin, mademoiselle?” He didn’t try to keep the hint of sarcasm from his tone.

  Her face turned the glowing pink rose color he’d noticed before, faint, but a definite blush.

  Gertie gasped. “Matthew, that was unkind.”

  “So is not eating food you prepared.” He ate the mouthful of eggs. They were perfect, of course, and he was starving, having skipped lunch.

  “I didn’t. . .I never intended. . .” Lucinda’s lower lip quivered as though she were about to weep.

  Matt’s conscience pricked him, but he kept eating.

  “I just—” She heaved a deep sigh that fluttered the ruffle at her neckline. “I don’t like eggs fixed that way is all.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so, girl?” Gertie stomped over to the stove. “Scrambled?
An omelet?”

  “Don’t go to any trouble for me, please.” Lucinda slid off of her stool. “I should get home. I just came for my things, now that Mr. Templin has my new locks on.”

  “And how do you plan to get in?” Matt grinned at her and held up the keys.

  Her eyes widened, and her hand flew to her cheek. “I didn’t think. I came down the back way so as not to disturb your work. . . .”

  “Put those away and make her stay for a decent meal,” Gertie directed. “If this is all the better you take care of yourself, how did you survive on your own all those years?”

  “I had friends.” Lucinda ducked her head.

  “You have friends here.” Gertie cracked eggs into a bowl then began to whisk with vigor. “Doesn’t she, Matthew?”

  Matt took a bite of ham so he wouldn’t have to answer.

  “Matthew Templin, where are your manners?” Gertie demanded.

  He set down his fork. “With my full stomach. I didn’t eat lunch so I could get those shelves done today.”

  “Thank you.” Lucinda looked at the keys he had laid on the table, at Gertie standing over the stove, at the canisters of flour, sugar, and the like above Matt’s head, anywhere but right at him. “Let me know how much I owe you and I’ll pay you straight off.”

  Put firmly in his place.

  Appetite gone, Matt picked up his plate and carried it to the bin where Gertie dumped uneaten food. She kept a few pigs on a little land outside town, and the scraps never went to waste.

  “I should be home. My cat and dog will be wondering where their dinner is.” He nodded to both ladies and walked out. And maybe the door closed behind him a little harder than necessary.

  Nice to him, while he did her work for her quickly, as a favor to a newcomer, to a pretty lady on her own in a strange place. Once the work was done, he was no more than someone to pay and dismiss, not call friend. He shouldn’t care. He shouldn’t let himself fall for females because they were bright and intelligent. They wanted more than he could offer—soft hands and fine suits; top hats, not a simple cap.

  But his dog, Growler, and his cat, Purrcilla, loved him. They greeted him in his cottage’s small, fenced yard as though he were the most perfect human in the world. Neither of any breed, just the appropriate four paws, floppy ears for the dog, pointed ones for the cat, and the needy love of pets. Growler never barked. From puppyhood, he had merely growled when happy, when angry, when warning of a stranger’s approach. Purrcilla did her share of meowing, as she did racing ahead of him to the back door. But she purred a great deal, too, snuggling on his lap or on a pillow, expressing her appreciation for warmth and shelter, and for rescuing her from boys who had intended to drown her in a stream. Matt had found Growler wandering about in the woods, so young he shouldn’t have been weaned yet. The three of them enjoyed a familial life together, three creatures without kin to speak of and no recognizable ancestry.

  Except for those papers.

  Once he had fed the animals and made himself a cup of coffee then built a fire, he settled before the blaze with the cat on one side of him, the dog on the other, and pulled the papers from behind the cushion where he’d stuffed them. He should find a better hiding place for them, perhaps in his workshop, in the event they were real.

  But they couldn’t be. Someone was playing a nasty trick on him. For what reason he didn’t know, but people did things like that. Maybe John Paul Daggett, the mayor’s stepson, wasn’t as quiet and nice as everyone thought him, though Matt found believing otherwise difficult. A more polite youth, Matt didn’t know.

  But the papers lay on his knees, yellowed around the edges, ink slightly faded—a birth certificate and a baptismal certificate for a baby boy born on October 10, 1867, in Virginia City, Nevada. Matt’s birthday. The birthday of lots of people, but lots of people named Matthew Templin?

  five

  The office still looked empty. Matthew Templin’s shelves added a touch of elegance and formality to the room, especially once Lucinda stacked them with her books—law books to hand, and others higher and farther from where clients would sit, once she found chairs. So far, though she had found a rug in the back of the hardware store, a carpet in rich, deep reds and greens, no one seemed to sell furniture, and she hadn’t dared return to Gertie’s to ask her where chairs could be furnished.

  Lucinda had offended Mr. Templin, and thus Gertie, apparently. She hadn’t meant to. But he was the carpenter, a workman who had done good work and quickly, above and beyond quickly with the door and new locks. She thought he would want his pay straight off. He had bills to pay, food to buy, a dog and cat to feed.

  A dog and a cat. Somehow that knowledge left her feeling rather warm in the middle, as she visualized him seated by the fire, a dog and cat curled up at his feet. She loved her father’s dogs, had been around them all her life except when she was away at school. Then, as now, she felt the lack, the emptiness so easily filled by a furry body and bright eyes that said “I love you” no matter the circumstances.

  If Trudy hadn’t reneged on her promise to come practice, too, they could have had a little house, a garden, a cat at the least.

  Now all that came into her office was a bill from the carpenter and an invitation to a “tea.” Apparently, one of Mrs. Woodcocks’s ways to raise money for a children’s home. The cost was outrageous for the entertainment of some local lady poets reading their work, a handful of sandwiches and cakes, and cups of what Lucinda suspected would be weak, tepid tea. But she would pay the fee and look at it as a business expense. An excellent way to meet the town’s ladies, potential clients like the Floyds, now that laws had changed and married women could control most of their own money and make their own wills, independent of their husbands.

  Not that she didn’t meet people at church. The pastor and his wife were warm and friendly. They invited her for Sunday dinner. The Floyd sisters introduced her to everyone they could. Most looked at her as though she were some odd species of insect and hurried on.

  As though she were beneath them.

  It stung. She wanted friends in the town, too. She liked luncheons and dinners and talking about books she’d read with others. She didn’t like being treated like—

  The hired help.

  If only they would hire her. She couldn’t build a successful practice on wills for only ladies. But if she did well, the men would come. She needed other cases, the lucrative ones, like lawsuits.

  For now, she began work on the Floyd sisters’ wills, not easy work. They were shockingly wealthy with numerous holdings, both joint and individual. They enjoyed various activities and organizations, which they liked to support, mostly those promoting women’s rights: the right to vote; to be educated alongside men; and if married, to have the same rights as their husbands. Women like Hester and Hope were why Lucinda could prepare these wills and outline their trusts. They had gone before her and paved the way for her ability to be educated as well as men, and then to practice law.

  “Except in Virginia, where it’s warm.” She shivered in the draft creeping beneath her door. The day was dark and threatening rain, but no one had fired up the boiler, so no steam heat reached her room. She would have to make peace with Matthew Templin to persuade him to build that foyer to keep out the drafts, if the owner of her building intended to be parsimonious with the heat.

  She stopped unfolding his bill and listened to her thoughts. Make peace to get more from him? That made her sound self-centered. She should make peace with him because. . .well, she wouldn’t go so far as to say she liked him.

  Or maybe she should.

  ❧

  She enjoyed so little conversation over the next weeks, she even looked forward to the tea, to meet people who weren’t hurrying in and out of church. She dressed with care, eschewing her severe suits for a flowing chiffon skirt in deep blue and a white silk blouse, trimmed with lace and matching blue ribbons. For warmth, she wore a short, red velvet cape and perched a tiny hat atop her carefully
piled hair. Fortunately, none of the ladies would be embracing her and so wouldn’t figure out that, even in more formal dress, she wore the new corsets with elastic insets instead of boning that ladies wore for playing tennis or bicycling.

  How she would love to do either. She missed rigorous exercise but hadn’t dared indulge herself in one of her brisk walks. She’d given the town enough to gossip about with just arriving, let alone setting out on the road to the wooded countryside on her own. Perhaps she would meet someone with a like mind. From the look of them, aged as they were, Hope and Hester Floyd enjoyed brisk walks.

  Heart racing somewhere closer to her throat than her chest, Lucinda set out for the church indicated on the invitation. The tea would be held in the parlor, suggesting no more than twenty ladies or so. Not too intimidating. Her mouth shouldn’t be dry, blood roaring in her ears. She mustn’t be a chicken. Must not. Must not.

  She climbed the steps of a church that looked as old as the American Revolution, but well maintained, with its red brick and white trim. Inside the foyer, a woman with a face as pale as sifted flour and hair so fine and light it seemed to float over her head instead of spring from it, stood behind a podium on which lay a thick book. “Your name?” she queried in a voice as deep as a man’s.

  Lucinda jumped, having expected something wispy and frail to issue from the woman’s lips. “L–Lucinda Bell.”

  She gritted her teeth at her stammer, the stammer a law professor warned her would destroy her in court if she didn’t conquer it.

  At the sound of her voice, nearly as wispy as she’d expected the gate guardian’s to be, two women behind the receptionist stopped talking and stared. Ladies farther down the corridor fell silent in waves that turned to the rising wind rustle of silk and chiffon skirts, lace petticoats, heels on carpet, as they shifted forward to get a good look at the newcomer.