Carpenter's Inheritance

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by Laurie Alice Eakes


  “Or they thought you sent me up to Boston for this other client of yours.” His fingers tightened on hers. “Lucinda, this has to do with Stagpole’s threat, not me. It has to do with this client putting you in danger.”

  “What’s this?” Gertie asked from the worktable, where she was rolling out piecrust. “What’s this about threats?”

  “He didn’t threaten me,” Lucinda began.

  “Lucinda, you know you think he did.” Matt frowned at her. “Then your office was broken into, and now this.” He took the plunge. “You may need to give up this client for your own—”

  “I will not.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “I cannot. It would be wrong of me. There’s a hearing set already with me to represent him. In Boston in two weeks.”

  “You can’t go.”

  “I beg your pardon?” She surged to her feet, yanking her hand free so she could cross her arms in front of her. “I have to go. It’s my duty.”

  “You can’t travel all the way up to Boston alone with someone threatening you.”

  “I can’t stay here and prejudice the state against my client.”

  “If the judge knew about the break-in—”

  “It’s not his concern. We can tell the constable here, but who will we accuse? I can’t give him the name of my client. Unless, of course, this has to do with your potential claim, and you want to reveal that much.”

  “And have the mayor’s wife sue me for slander if there’s nothing to it?” Matt winced as though one of the intruder’s bullets had hit him in the gut. “But Lucie, he had a gun.”

  “And so do I,” Gertie said. “And Lucinda won’t be going anywhere without someone to guard her, including up to Boston. I’ll close the café and go with her.”

  “Truly, this isn’t necessary.” Despite her protests, she stopped shaking, and her face relaxed. She returned to her stool. “You need to be careful, Matt. If he broke into your house. . . What about your animals?”

  “They’re all right. Purrcilla got stepped on, but she’s all right. Growler is scared out of a year’s growth of dog hair, but I left him snoring by the stove.”

  “Poor dog.”

  “Poor Lucie.” He touched her cheek, so smooth, too smooth to be in contact with his rough fingers.

  Yet she turned her face into his palm and rested it there.

  His heart flipped over a few times in his chest. “Lucie, I—” No, this wasn’t the time or place. He rose. “I think it might be wise of me to stay here in town until this hearing. I told him I took papers up to Boston, so whether he wants mine or those of this client of yours, he may leave you alone. Until we get something resolved, I want to stay nearby.”

  “You can’t do that,” Lucinda protested. “It’s too expensive.”

  “He could stay in your rooms,” Gertie offered, crimping the edges of pie shells filled with apples, cinnamon, and sugar. “Keep anyone from rifling through your things again.”

  “I’ll have to get the animals, and it’ll take me awhile to get the horse and wagon into town, but if you don’t care, Lucie—”

  “I don’t care, but Matt, that sofa isn’t nearly long enough for you.”

  “I’ll bring a bedroll.” He stood looking down at her, having a thousand things he wanted to say, unable to get any past his lips.

  He settled for kissing her hand, took the keys she retrieved for him, and returned to the snow and cold.

  It took him until well past daylight to pack up his things in the wagon, gather up the cat and dog, and secure his house with some boards over the windows. Then he drove into town, left his things in Lucinda’s storage room, put up the horse and wagon in the livery, and climbed the steps to Lucinda’s office, Purrcilla in his arms, Growler following on a leash. Even the outer room carried her scent, something light and pure and sweet like vanilla. He set Purrcilla down, opened the door to her living quarters, and stopped, staring at the fancy dresses spread across the sofa.

  His head and his heart filled with the image of her wearing one of those, the green velvet one, spinning around the Howards’ ballroom floor with him. Just the two of them together then, always, forever.

  The image shifted back to the night before, the notion of a man with a pistol breaking into Lucinda’s room, and he knew he’d been a fool. Too easily, he could have lost her the night before. The man had nearly shot him. He might have shot her. She refused to give up her client, and he admired her for her dedication to her work, important work someone had to do in a world full of men and women who were dishonest and cruel without God’s saving grace. If the only people who came to her for help were those who could pay in eggs and roasted chickens, then why should he let that come between them? He could support a wife now. And he could keep her safer from the occasional madman, if she were with him all the time.

  “Lucinda Bell,” he said aloud, “if you’ll have me as I am, a mere carpenter who doesn’t know who my earthly father is, then I would like to spend my life with you.”

  Smiling, he held the sleeve of the green velvet dress to his cheek. “I’ll ask her when she’s wearing this.”

  sixteen

  Never being alone seemed too much like going back to childhood, when her mother or a nursemaid followed Lucinda wherever she roamed, which had usually been walking with the dogs in the mountains or curled up in the library with a book. What changed was either Gertie, Mrs. Carr, or Matt accompanied her to her office, to church on Sunday, and on the errands she ran like visiting the post office or telegraph office.

  During the week, she saw a few clients, wrote more letters for Mrs. Carr’s pension, and prepared for John Paul’s hearing. From everything she could find on Massachusetts law, he could be emancipated with good cause. His testimony of being cuffed about the head and once receiving a black eye from his stepfather and the statements showing a shocking amount of his money gone, even accounting for the financial panic that year, were more than enough evidence to set the youth free. Once she accomplished that, however, she intended to set up a trust for his money so he couldn’t fritter it away on the riotous living of an independent youth at college.

  This was more than enough evidence for her to think the man who had broken into both Gertie’s and Matt’s homes was after the paperwork she had on John Paul’s case, paperwork she had sent home with Mrs. Carr. In the event the Woodcocks figured that out, Lucinda retrieved it and mailed it to her father’s friend in Boston with an explanation. It would be there when she needed it for the hearing.

  But the man may have wanted Matt’s documents. She couldn’t deny that possibility. That meant they likely held validity.

  So did that account for his attentiveness? He was attentive. More than guarding her, he talked to her. They spent time in the library poring over favorite books and introducing one another to new ones. They talked of philosophy and religion and scripture. They walked in the snow, and on Saturday they and Mrs. Carr’s children played a game of tag with snowballs.

  Her heart filled to bursting. Beyond the apprehension of what the Woodcocks would try to do next lay a deeper, more important fear that this would all vanish once the possibility of danger to her passed.

  Then one night, while Gertie sat knitting in the far corner of her parlor, Matt picked up the Bible from a table and flipped it open. “I’ve been reading this. It’s from the eighth chapter of Romans. I’ve read it before, but it’s just coming home to me that even if I never know who my real father is, I have my heavenly Father.”

  Lucinda glowed with the joy of his new understanding. Her hopes rose that he would stop letting his background interfere with his loving her completely.

  But Sunday morning, when she walked into church with Matt and Gertie, the “ladies” of Loveland flared their nostrils and turned their backs on her. Matt’s arm tensed under Lucinda’s hand, and he pulled a little away from her, not more than an inch or two, but the gesture wasn’t lost on her.

  “Remember what you read last night,” she whispered as they
slid into the pew.

  “I do. And what about you? I haven’t been thinking about how not having enough business to make all your schooling worth the effort will frustrate you in the future.”

  “Matt—” She couldn’t protest with enough sincerity to continue, for until that moment, she had believed her alliance with him wouldn’t matter. These women shouldn’t care.

  Shouldn’t and what they did were two different things. They shouldn’t, but they did scorn him and now her for letting him court her.

  “I’m still going to the ball with you,” she finished instead.

  Samantha came to the office one day to make certain of that. “Let me see your dresses.”

  “They’re not here. I’m staying at Gertie’s now.”

  “So I heard.” Samantha tilted her head and smiled. “And Matthew is staying here in town to be near you more often. Is this good?”

  “Except for those ladies who snub me for associating so closely with him.” Lucinda rubbed her tired eyes. “Samantha, I am wondering if something is wrong with me that I’d let my work be more important than my love for him.”

  “A good question to ask.” Samantha settled onto one of the two visitor chairs for which Mrs. Carr was sewing cushions. “I thought keeping Daddy’s money was more important than him, though I think you two suit better than we did. He’s kind of bookish for an artisan.”

  “I was always considered bookish for a proper lady.” Lucinda rolled the edge of a paper on which she’d been taking notes. “I always read the law it seems like. With Daddy and Granddaddy lawyers, the books were everywhere.”

  “But who’s more important? Will you treat him like I did and find something else more important? And you are coming to the ball with him, are you not?”

  “I am.”

  And the Monday after, she would travel up to Boston for John Paul’s hearing. After that, she would tell Matt that, if it was what lay between them, she would finish up her open cases and give up practice.

  Oddly, the notion didn’t hurt as much as she thought it would. She had done it, practiced law, proven she could. If she won Mrs. Carr’s pension for her and John Paul’s independence for him, even her short time of practice was worth the effort. As for her education. . . Well, education was never wasted when it taught one how to learn for oneself.

  “Don’t hurt him.” Samantha’s face softened. “He’s been hurt enough in his life.”

  “I don’t intend to,” Lucinda reassured her. “Now let’s go back to Gertie’s and see my dresses.”

  They did so. Samantha preferred the green velvet for the time of year. “And it will look so pretty with your hair. Do you have ribbons? Flowers to decorate? What about jewelry?”

  “I have pearls,” Lucinda said. “They’ll do. And I’ll buy some ribbon.”

  “I wish I could go with you, but—” Samantha sighed. “You may as well know, she’s decided you’re a poor influence on me and would rather I not spend too much time in your company.”

  “I. . .see.” Mrs. Howard may as well have doused her with ice water and rocks. This must be how Matt felt when people rejected him.

  “No, I don’t think you do.” Samantha smoothed the fall of lace on the bodice of the green dress. “It’s not because you’re a lawyer. Mother isn’t against females getting an education. If she hadn’t gotten sick, I might have gone to Vassar or Wellesley. But she’s afraid if I’m around Matthew too much, it’ll stir up those old feelings.”

  Lucinda smiled. “Did you tell her he’s spoken for?”

  “I did, but she thinks a first love is the strongest.” Samantha laughed. “So you should be jealous of me.”

  “I’m only jealous of how pretty you are.”

  They argued playfully over who was prettier; then Samantha excused herself, Lucinda returned to work, and the week sped by, racing to the ball on Saturday and her debut in court the following Tuesday.

  On Friday, she received a special delivery notice delivered by a courier. When she broke the seals, she found news inside so exquisite she cheered aloud.

  “What is it?” Mrs. Carr popped out from the other room, needlework still in hand.

  “We won.” Lucinda ran across the room and embraced the older woman. “We—ouch!” She’d gotten stuck with Mrs. Carr’s needle.

  “So sorry.” Mrs. Carr disengaged herself and inspected her embroidery for specks of blood. “What did you win?”

  “Not me, us.” Lucinda waved the letter in the air. “You’re getting your pension.”

  “Praise God for bringing you here.” Mrs. Carr began to cry. “My boys will have Christmas for the first time in two years. How can I ever thank you?”

  “You just have.” Lucinda wiped tears from her own eyes, joy for Parthina Carr, pain for herself.

  How could she stop work that got these kinds of results?

  How could she live without the man she loved knowing she could have kept him?

  But it shouldn’t matter to him, Lord.

  She struggled with herself the rest of the day and too much of the night. She determined to enjoy herself at the party and spent the day helping Gertie serve breakfast to the workingmen crowd, then washing and curling her hair. Gertie pinned it up for her, winding the blue velvet ribbon through the curls, then hooked the dozens of buttons up the back of the dress. The dress fit fairly well, though seemed fractionally loose in the waist. Lucinda wound a satin ribbon around her middle to disguise the looseness and pinned the front with a pearl brooch.

  “She looks like a princess,” one of Parthina Carr’s boys declared.

  “If that boy doesn’t propose to you tonight,” Gertie declared, “I’ll skin him alive.”

  When Matt arrived, as elegant as any man others would call a gentleman in black suit and snowy shirt, Lucinda nearly proposed herself. She could quite get used to seeing that face every morning. She had gotten used to seeing it every day.

  And his eyes. When he looked at her, his eyes melted like chocolate on a hot stove. “Lucie.” He clasped her hands as though he would never let her go.

  She didn’t want him to let her go. She did so they could don wraps against the cold, clear night, walk to the rented carriage over frozen snow and mud, and drive to the far end of town and the Howards’ residence.

  Lights blazed along the drive, lanterns hanging from trees reflecting off of the snow. A tree hung with cranberry chains, candles, and silver paper shone in a front bay window, and from the front door spilled the sweet strains of music and the muted roar of an excited crowd.

  This was no ball for only the wealthy in town. Anyone who could afford a ticket could attend. The money supported Mrs. Woodcocks’s favorite charity, a nearby orphanage. The Howards graciously opened their home and ballroom for the occasion.

  “I feel a little like Cinderella,” Lucinda admitted, “trans-formed into a princess for the night.”

  “You are a princess every night.” Assisting her from the carriage, Matt paused to kiss her hand. “I just hope some Prince Charming doesn’t come along and sweep you off your feet.”

  “He won’t. I brought him with me.”

  Laughing, they entered the house, presented their tickets to the footman at the door, and followed the line of attendees up the steps to the ballroom. They paused in the doorway, taking in the sight of everyone from a local farmer dancing with one of the Floyd sisters, to Roger Stagpole dancing with the librarian. Chandeliers cast a yellow glow over best dresses and decorations in green and gold.

  “I most definitely feel like Cinderella,” Lucinda said. “The kingdom is celebrating—something.”

  “I think we can celebrate something.” Matt slipped his arm around her waist and drew her into the spinning crowd.

  Lucinda’s feet barely touched the floor. Nor did they stop for the next hour. Others invited her to dance, men from the businesses in town, who’d gotten to know her in Gertie’s. They guided her expertly, or they trampled her toes. Whatever their skill, they were polite, kind,
even friendly. She was becoming part of the community, finding a home in this lovely little town. No matter that the mayor had ill intentions toward her and would dislike her even more after Tuesday’s hearing, even if she lost.

  Matthew rescued her after an hour, giving her a cup of mulled cider. “I almost wish it were cold,” he admitted. “It’s warm in here.”

  “And it’s cold outside.” Lucinda tilted her head to smile up at him sideways. “Any place that’s a compromise?”

  “There’s a musicians’ gallery to this ballroom. It’s really too small for more than a quartet, so it never gets used for this ball, but I know how to get up there. I rebuilt the stairway after it suffered some water damage when the roof leaked a few years ago.” He offered her his arm. “Shall I take you?”

  “Please do. We’ll be alone without being alone.”

  “You’re such a proper lady.” He covered her hand with his. “It’s one of the many things I love about you.”

  Loved about her. He’d said it. Lucinda’s heart skipped a beat. Her feet wanted to skip along the corridor, around the corner to a narrow, dark passage, and through a door one would miss in the paneling if one didn’t know to look for it. A little light filtered from above, illuminating the staircase so narrow the lace-trimmed ruffles on her gown brushed the walls. The staircase led to a balcony above the ballroom, where a carved wooden screen allowed light through and sound out. But if she and Matt spoke softly, no one would know they were up there.

  “This is lovely.” Lucinda pressed her face to the screen and watched the dancers. “It’s like a flower garden with all the colorful dresses. That red one is beautiful.”

  “You’re the beautiful one here.” Matt took her hand in both of his. “I saw your dress in your room and imagined you wearing it here with me.” His fingers tightened. “So I waited until tonight. I want—that is—I know a lot of people won’t approve—one of them may even be your father. But I’d be honored if you—if you’d, um—” He swallowed.

 

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