Carpenter's Inheritance

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  She hesitated on the threshold, her head half tilted in his direction. The one eyebrow he could see, arched in a golden-brown question mark.

  “The dog is friendly.” Matt smiled at her. “He just doesn’t bark. And the cat won’t bite unless you’re a rodent.”

  “I’m not afraid of your animals.” Her chin stiffened. “I simply didn’t think it polite to enter your house without you.”

  At her side now, he touched his forefinger to that firm chin, finding the skin smooth and a little moist from the damp air. “So you think the Floyds are rude? Tut-tut.”

  “I suppose I did say that.” She tucked her head.

  Purrcilla rose on her back legs and pawed at Lucinda’s skirt.

  She jumped and glanced down. “Your cat thinks she’s a dog?”

  “Something like that.” Matt stooped and lifted the cat onto his shoulder. “This is Purrcilla.”

  “You don’t mean Priscilla?”

  “Nope.” He stroked the feline’s soft black, orange, and white fur. “She purrs constantly, thus the name.”

  “So I hear.”

  The feline rumbled nearly as loudly as Growler greeted two of his favorite people—probably because they usually brought him some sort of food treat.

  “I like cats.” Shyness tinged Lucinda’s voice, and she looked at Purrcilla, not him.

  Without a word, he held the calico out to Lucinda. She took the cat and nestled her beneath her chin. Purrcilla draped her paws over Lucinda’s shoulder and settled down like she intended to stay as long as she could get away with it. Her cheek against the soft fur, Lucinda smiled, a faraway look in her eyes.

  She looked happy. Happy holding his quite ordinary calico cat. For the same reason he found joy in the warm, furry body nestled on his shoulder? Loneliness, an otherwise empty pair of arms.

  Careful, he warned himself.

  She wasn’t for him. She was an educated woman, probably the most educated woman he’d ever meet. He was a carpenter, at best; a man of all work, at the least. With his background—or lack of it—she would do better for herself. Unless those papers were real, meant something he could prove if he ever had the money, which was unlikely.

  But of course the warning ran unheeded by his heart. As Lucinda stepped over his threshold, perfectly comfortable holding his cat and settling with the Floyd sisters on his simple furniture before the fire, his heart ignored his head and tumbled hard for another female who would have nothing more to do with him than his business, just like Samantha Howard.

  He waited for the pain to strike of that youthful infatuation pulled asunder. While he set about preparing a pot of coffee for the ladies, he felt nothing beyond the warmth, the glow, of having Lucinda Bell seated at his fire.

  Perhaps that was the insanity that prompted him to ask her to walk with him the next day.

  Coffee was served. The Floyd twins appeared sleepy, nodding before the blaze; Growler curled up on their feet, tiny feet shod in neat, black shoes so high the tops disappeared beneath the old ladies’ frothy skirts. Lucinda took the other seat on the old-fashioned settee, Purrcilla on her lap, and a thick earthenware mug between both her hands, hands too small for such a clumsy mug. She sipped daintily as though drinking from one of her English bone china cups, as delicate as eggshells.

  With nowhere else to sit, except one of the two chairs at the kitchen table away from the women, away from the fire, Matt propped his shoulders against the mantel and gazed down at the top of Lucinda’s hat. Of gray felt, it sported a jaunty feather, curling over the brim to caress her cheek. If a man could envy a feather, Matt did. The feather was red; a red nothing in nature would produce, not nearly as pretty as the crimson maple leaves. So he blurted out, “If you’d like to see the leaves’ turned color, I’ll be happy to walk with you tomorrow.”

  The Floyd ladies’ heads jerked upright. Growler lifted his head. Lucinda kept her gaze on the cat, her coffee, something besides him. He couldn’t tell, with the brim of her silly hat shielding her face.

  Nausea clawed at Matt’s middle. She was going to say no. Well, she was likely to say no thank you, perfectly polite. She had gone to lunch at the Howards’. She wouldn’t want to be seen with him, and he’d just made a fool of himself to a potentially lucrative customer.

  He opened his mouth to retract the offer, give her a way to gracefully turn him down.

  Then she raised her head, looked him in the eye for so brief a moment he barely caught their rich color, and nodded. “Thank you. I believe I’d like a walk, provided the sun is shining.”

  “Oh, it will, my dear,” one of the Floyds said.

  Matt didn’t look to see which one. He kept his gaze focused on Lucinda in the event she looked him full in the face again.

  “Tomorrow at one o’clock, after church, then.” He hoped the pounding of his heart didn’t reach his voice. “That’s the warmest time of day, and late enough for the ground to have dried out a bit. And I’ll bring the chair now. I can load it into my wagon.”

  Needing the chilly air outside, he headed for the door.

  “That’s not—” Lucinda began to say something, but the door had already closed behind him.

  He took several long, deep breaths of cold, damp air, felt himself steady, and paced to his workshop for the chair, then the barn, little larger than a shed, to load the chair into the wagon. He wrapped the wood in an old quilt and tossed a tarpaulin over it, then hitched his horse to the rig and led him into the yard, where the Floyds’ driver had just returned from walking their horses.

  “I believe the ladies are ready to go,” Matt told the older man.

  “Ay-yup, and bringing cat and dog hair with them to get all over the seats.”

  Matt laughed. “I expect so, but then, you’re used to cat hair on the cushions, I expect. How many deliveries this week?”

  “Six cats picked up from some farmer ready to drown the lot,” the driver said. “Keeps me busy keeping all that fur away, and then the claw marks I have to repair.” He shook his grizzled head. “Wish they’d take up something else.”

  “You’d be bored without all that cleaning.” Matt patted his draft horse that had cost him a year’s worth of earnings, but proved necessary when hauling heavy furniture and lumber about. “Will you be so kind as to— Never mind. Here they come.”

  Led by Lucinda, the three ladies emerged from the house, Growler and Purrcilla following. All five approached him.

  “Thank you for the coffee, Matthew, dear boy.” Miss Hester patted his cheek.

  “We’ve decided we need to find a cat for Miss Bell,” Hope added. “We didn’t know she liked cats so much.”

  “Or that they would like her.” Miss Hope winked.

  The tips of Matt’s ears warmed, and he was thankful for his overly long hair. Nor could he figure out why her remark would embarrass him.

  “I’ll, um, just follow your carriage,” Matt said.

  Lucinda nodded to him, the gracious lady of the manor, and climbed into the barouche without a direct glance.

  But she said she would go walking with him. That thought kept him warm on the damp drive into town. First, the carriage paused at the Floyd ladies’ mansion on the edge of town. Likely, they were weary and cold and Lucinda would have insisted on it. They were her clients, after all, and she was polite.

  Matt continued to follow the vehicle until they reached her office and home on Main Street. The carriage stopped in front of the harness shop then drew forward before stopping again. Lucinda, being gracious again, gave him the space in front of the steps so he would carry the chair a shorter distance.

  “She’s a true lady,” he muttered. “It means nothing. Remember how she was at Gertie’s.”

  But she’d been tired and hungry then.

  No, no excuses for her rudeness, her condescension. He must remember that.

  He leaped from the wagon seat and hitched his horse to the post. If the Floyd coachman were younger, Matt would ask him for help lugging the ch
air up the steps. But he couldn’t ask it of the man, who was nearly as old as his employers.

  He unwrapped the tarpaulin from the chair and tossed the former into the wagon bed. He could lift the chair without any trouble, but keeping the blanket over it, so he didn’t bang the smooth wood against the railing or a step and mar it, proved impossible the instant he drew the chair to the edge. For a moment, he stood motionless, frowning.

  “Let me help.” A small hand in a gray leather glove reached past him and gripped the edge of the quilt. “I’m stronger than I look.”

  “But this is heavy.” He couldn’t stop from grinning down at her.

  She said nothing.

  “All right, but if you drop it, it’s your chair.”

  “Of course it’s my chair. That’s why I’ll help, so nothing happens to it.” She flashed him a sidelong glance.

  Flirting with him? No, never.

  “Please, I had a time of it convincing that ancient coachman not to come back here.”

  “All right. Just keep the blanket in place.”

  “Yes, sir.” Too solemn. Teasing?

  He didn’t care. She was near him, smelling of flowers and rain. Springtime in late October.

  “You go first, then,” Matt directed her.

  He needed her a little farther away so he could concentrate.

  She followed his directions, holding the quilt in place until the chair slid free of the wagon bed. Then she held the front of the furniture, her hands curled around the arms and over the quilt. Matt still took most of the weight, especially once they started up the steps, but she was indeed stronger than she looked. Perhaps she liked to ride horses or play something like tennis. Probably tennis. All the society girls played tennis nowadays, running around the courts in their shortened skirts or even bloomers. Oh, he’d gone to watch as a younger man. He’d met Samantha there. . . .

  At the top of the steps, they set the chair down on the landing. Lucinda took out her keys and unlocked the door. Chilled through his wool coat and flannel shirt, he anticipated warmth flowing from the opening. But the air was as frigid as that outside.

  “Is something wrong with your heat?” He set the chair down in front of the desk and headed for the radiator.

  “Nothing more wrong than that Mr. Shannon won’t leave it on when his shop is closed.” She dabbed her forefinger on her nose, where the tiniest bead of perspiration glistened. “But the inner room remains fairly warm. And it keeps the ice frozen in the icebox longer.”

  “Before long, you won’t need an icebox.” Matt puffed out a sigh of exasperation. His breath hung white in the cold for just a moment, and a moment too long. “Why don’t you use your lawyering skills to make him leave the heat on?”

  “Because. . . Because. . .” She swung away and stalked across the room to the back window. A curtain of soft, dark fabric hung there, likely helping with the drafts. Her shoulders slumped as though she were fatigued or carrying a burden too heavy for her, she pushed aside the curtain.

  And her shoulders stiffened. Her head snapped up. Then she darted toward her room.

  “What is it?” In three strides Matt reached her side as she fumbled with her door. “Miss Lucinda?”

  “Someone’s been here.” She yanked open the door.

  Matt followed her across the flowery carpet and into the storage room. “How do you know?”

  “There’s mud on my back steps.” She rested her gloved hand on the glass knob of the back door, and the latch rattled with the shaking of her hand. “There are muddy footprints on my back steps.”

  seven

  Lucinda wrapped her arms across her middle and pressed her fingers into her upper arms. Still she trembled, from cold, from mortification, from the intensity of her reaction to seeing muddy footprints on steps that had been clean before she left.

  “No one should have been here.” She didn’t know how many times she’d said that since looking out the window. “No one was inspecting anything. No one—”

  “Shh.” Matthew Templin dropped one of his broad, calloused, yet gentle hands upon her shoulder. “It’s all right.”

  She should have pushed him away for having the temerity to touch her so familiarly. She should snap at him that he had no idea whether anything was all right. She was alone in a town whose leaders didn’t particularly want her there. And, good grief, she had promised to go for a walk with this carpenter the next day. What had she been thinking?

  That she didn’t want to be alone another day, especially if it proved to be sunny and fine, and nature bore a cloak of autumn glory to show off. But now she knew she shouldn’t do that, shouldn’t have even considered that Matthew Templin was attractive, let alone agreed to a walk with him. She would tell him to go now, explaining that she couldn’t take a walk with him after all.

  She uncrossed her arms and stepped to one side, out from beneath that all-too-comforting hand. “I’m being silly. Please forgive me.”

  “Considering someone has broken your locks, I think it’s reasonable for you to be upset.” Matthew opened the back door and frowned down at the steps. “These are too large to be any female’s I’ve seen about town.”

  “Why would a female come to my back door?” Lucinda glared at Matthew’s broad back.

  He shrugged. “Maybe some lady didn’t want anyone seeing her calling on the lady lawyer. Sam–an–tha Howard, for example.”

  “But Samantha—” Lucinda stopped, catching the hesitation in Matthew’s voice when speaking the young woman’s name, remembering how Mrs. Howard objected to Samantha suggesting she would take Lucinda out to Matthew Templin’s workshop for furniture.

  So he wasn’t heart-free either. Perhaps that would make going for a walk with him easier. If the weather cooperated. A cold blast of wind suggested no one would want to be outside from now until next April.

  “These are male footprints,” Lucinda said. “And it’s possible, I suppose, that someone wants to talk to an attorney without anyone knowing. Strange, though, with the other lawyer’s property right behind that wall. From an upper floor, he can see anyone coming or going from this door.”

  “Maybe it was him.” Matthew turned, grinned at her, and closed the door.

  He had such a nice grin, open and warm.

  Lucinda took a step backward. “In other words, I’m being a fool to get upset, even though someone broke my locks when I arrived.”

  “No, ma’am, not a fool, but maybe more nervous than you should be. You know Gertie will take you in. It might be better than you living alone here.”

  “Yes, I expect you’re right, but one needs money to rent an extra room, and until my clients pay—” She slapped her hand over her mouth. “Forget I said that,” she added behind her glove.

  Instead, he laughed, a throaty snort. “I understand how that is. People can be slow to pay around here. But they will pay, I promise you.”

  “And meanwhile, I have to watch my pennies.”

  And find a way to stay warm in the evenings.

  Involuntarily, she shivered.

  “I think all is well here,” Matthew said. “So let me go ask Shannon to turn on your heat. He can shut off the valves for his store if he thinks he’s using too much oil.”

  “That isn’t necessary. You’re right. I should use my lawyering skills on him. It’s just. . .” She ducked her head. “It’s just that I don’t want to make an enemy of him.”

  “Shannon may be stingy, Miss Bell, but he’s not unkind. His house is on the way to mine. I’ll put a flea in his ear.” He held out his hand. “And see you tomorrow around one o’clock.”

  If he was going to get her heat turned on, she couldn’t very well renege on her agreement to go walking with him.

  “All right. Thank you.” She walked with him to the door, then closed and locked the portal behind him. She didn’t hear his footfalls retreat down the steps until the last tumbler clicked into place.

  What a kind man.

  Shivering, Lucinda retre
ated to her living quarters and lit the spirit lamp to make tea to accompany her bread, cheese, and apple supper. On a Saturday evening, neither of the cafés was open. As a single woman, she couldn’t go into the hotel dining room.

  Which gave her the impulse to do so. She was an attorney at law in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, yet she couldn’t eat dinner alone in a restaurant. Ridiculous.

  On her way to fetch the cheese and apples from the storage room, Lucinda returned to her now-boiling water and turned off the spirit lamp. She suddenly felt unwell. Perhaps she would be too unwell to go for that walk she shouldn’t go on the next day. Or perhaps she was just cold.

  She began to pace up and down her narrow room to drive some warmth into her feet and hands. Matthew Templin was right. She should have confronted Mr. Shannon about turning the heat either off or down so far no steam reached her chambers. She couldn’t survive the night like this, let alone the winter. She should know where Mr. Shannon lived so she could go to his house now and get him to return and make the place warmer. Or she could go to Gertie’s for hot food, too, and kindness, if she went with a humble countenance over her display of snobbery before.

  Still wearing her coat and gloves, she pulled a valise from the back room and placed some personal items in it. She would go to Gertie’s. This cold was ridiculous for only October. Michigan was as bad or worse, but she hadn’t been forced to endure it without heat in her boardinghouse.

  She tucked her toothbrush into the valise and began to close it. A clang and a bang startled her. The case’s lid slammed down on her hand. She cried out and raised the injured fingers to her face, nursing them to her cheek while stopping tears of pain.

  A trickle of heat seeped past her. The clang and bang came from the radiator. Either Mr. Shannon realized he’d been inconsiderate, at best, in turning off the heat, or Matthew Templin had shamed the man into returning. Whatever the answer, it didn’t matter.

  Lucinda charged to the radiator and held her hands over the heat, breathing in the warmth like perfume. She wouldn’t have to go to Gertie’s, after all. She could remain in her own room with her tea and apples, and books.