Philip came inside holding a broom and wearing an uncertain expression. “Uh, Miss Clark?”
“Yes, Philip?”
“Mr. Sanders is coming up the lane.”
“No,” she whispered, then held her breath to listen. She could hear wagon wheels—a dreadful sound. There are more than one Mr. Sanders in Gresham was the first hopeful thought she could muster. And as most of the village’s pastureland was leased from the squire, this person could have some business at the manor house.
Philip walked over to the window. “He’s holding some flowers, Miss Clark.”
“Oh.” There was nothing Lydia could do but send Philip and Aleda home. And since propriety wouldn’t allow her to invite a man into the schoolroom, even to stress to him that she wanted to be left alone, she walked out on the porch with the two. In the lane Harold Sanders sat in a new-looking wagon behind a team of speckled drays.
“Hullo, Miss Clark,” the man called, wearing his May Day suit of clothes and holding up a bouquet of violets as proudly as a flag-bearer displays his colors.
“Good day, Mr. Sanders.”
“Shall we stay with you, Miss Clark?” Philip whispered at the bottom of the steps.
From the boy’s other side, Aleda suggested, “Philip could stay while I fetch Papa or Luke.”
She gave them both a grateful smile. “Thank you, but I should speak with him.” When they looked doubtful, she added, “He’s quite harmless. At least around women and children.”
Lydia walked over to the wagon as the Hollis children—with several backward glances—cut across the school yard to the north. “Please stay in your wagon, Mr. Sanders,” she said when he started looping his reins around the whip socket.
“I just thought you’d wanter ride…”
“I’m quite content to walk, thank you.”
“…in my papa’s new wagon,” he finished lamely, his heavylidded eyes seeming to glaze over.
She didn’t have the heart not to make some comment. “It’s a fine wagon, Mr. Sanders. But as I said, I will be walking home. And shouldn’t you be fetching your brothers anyway?”
“They got archery practice.” He shrugged and held out the bouquet to her. “But I brought you some flowers.”
The faint pleading in his voice made Lydia feel sorry for him again. She had no experience with these things but sensed there was a delicate line between nipping a romance in the bud and destroying a man’s pride. And so she took the flowers and thanked him. “For the students,” she made it clear. “They’ll enjoy looking at them.”
Harold had been so confident Miss Clark would accept the ride that he found himself with time on his hands. If he went home, he would just have to turn around and come back to fetch his brothers. Papa oughter get them their own horses, he thought. Even Mercy and Seth’s Thomas rode a pony to school. But his father had calluses on his thumbs from squeezing pennies, so that wasn’t ever likely to happen. It was in a foul mood that Harold reined the wagon to a halt under the elms outside the grammar school yard. Practice took place behind the schoolhouse near the squire’s orchard, but he was in no mood to watch. So he sat slumped forward with elbows propped on his knees and tried to figure out where he had gone wrong with Miss Clark.
She took the flowers. That had to mean something. Or did it? Why was she so hard to court? Other men weren’t queuing up to ask her hand, as far as he could tell. He wasn’t the most handsome man in Gresham, but he still had all of his teeth and bathed regularly, sometimes as much as once a week. He didn’t get drunk more than once a month either and had never dipped snuff. While he had yet to warm a church pew, as Mercy had suggested, Miss Clark had never mentioned it as a hindrance to their courtship.
Heaving a sigh, he rubbed the back of his neck and pictured himself as an old man, still breaking his back for his father. Presently a child’s voice penetrated his thoughts.
“Let’s go again, Phoebe.”
He edged the team up so he could see past the elm that blocked his view of part of the school yard. The merry-go-round was in motion with a handful of children seated and Phoebe Meeks doing the pushing. When it squeaked to a stop again, he recognized Lester and Trudy among the younger children. Mark must be at archery practice, he thought. Not that he cared a lick.
“Again, Phoebe?”
“You’ll have to let me rest another spell,” the girl panted, sitting down on the edge of the contraption.
I thought she was supposed to be wearing spectacles. Again, it was none of his affair. He tried to peer around the school building for any sign of the archers. Wasn’t school the place where a person learned to read and cipher? It was bad enough that he and his brothers had to take up the slack with Jack’s and Edgar’s chores, but with all the time the archery foolishness took, they were almost worthless around the farm.
The merry-go-round squealed into motion again with Phoebe pumping her feet and trying to hold her skirt about her knees with one hand. It would go much faster had she been a boy, but of course all the grammar school boys of any size were at archery practice.
He went back to cradling his head with his hands.
“Faster please, Phoebe!”
“I’m going as fast as I can.”
With a groan Harold whipped the hat from his head and flopped it on the seat beside him. He tied the reins, jumped to the ground, and was across the school yard before Phoebe could push the merry-go-round another turn. “Get on,” he ordered.
Straightening, she blinked at him as if he had told her to fly, while the five seated younger children stared with gaping mouths. “Sir?”
Harold heaved another sigh. “Do you want me to push this thing or not?”
“Yes, sir—thank you, sir.” She sat and grabbed one of the metal bars.
“Will you go fast, Mr. Sanders?” asked a grinning Lester.
In spite of his sour mood, Harold grinned back at him. “Just hold onter your cap.”
That evening after a supper of saveloy sausage and cabbage was served by a sullen Mrs. Winters, Harold took up a lantern and walked down to the cottage at the end of the lane. He gave the door a rap and then let himself in the parlor. “Anybody here?” he called only out of courtesy because light had flowed from the windows.
“We’re in here, Harold,” his brother-in-law called from the kitchen.
He walked into the room, where Seth and Mercy sat at the table. Seth gave him a nod and went back to penciling something into a ledger book, and Mercy, who was hemming a shirt, smiled. “Would you care for some chocolate biscuits?”
That was one good thing about coming here—his sister didn’t mind folks helping themselves in her kitchen. Mrs. Winters, on the other hand, ranted as if the food came out of her wages. He scooped up a handful of biscuits from the crockery jar in the cupboard, heaped them on the table in front of an empty chair, then poured a cup of tea from the pot on the back of the stove. “Anybody else?” he thought to ask.
With cups already before them, his sister and Seth declined. Harold pulled out the chair and crunched his way through a half dozen biscuits while the two continued with their tasks. “Amanda and Thomas asleep?” he finally asked, unsure of how to begin. The last time he had come for advice, he was confident that Miss Clark would be eager for him to court her. It was hard on his pride to admit she might not be as fond of him as he had thought.
“They are,” Mercy replied.
Harold crunched down on another biscuit. “Children need their sleep.”
“That’s true.”
“And apples too. Mr. Trumble says that if a body was to eat one every day, he’d never need Doctor Rhodes.”
“Indeed? Well, it’s good that we have apple trees then, isn’t it?”
“That’s just what I told Mr. Trumble,” Harold nodded. “I said, ‘It’s a good thing we have apple trees by the creek.’ I didn’t mention your trees exactly, but if they’re good for one body, they oughter be good for everybody…right?”
Setting her sewing
down upon the table, his sister studied his face. Even Seth looked up, marking his place in the ledger with a finger. “Is there something wrong, Harold?” Mercy asked.
He raked his fingers through his hair, then wiped the excess Sir Lancelot’s Fine Grooming Pomade on the edge of the tablecloth. “It’s that Miss Clark. I tried all the things you told me to do, and they ain’t workin’.”
“Hmm. Then you’ve been to church?”
“Well, no. She’s said nothing about it though, so that can’t be what’s wrong. But I gave her flowers—two times—and asked her advice like you said.”
“Maybe it’s time to give up,” Seth advised while making another mark in the book.
“Give up?”
“Sh-h-h,” Mercy scolded. “The children.”
“Sorry.” Harold ate another biscuit. “There’s got to be something else that would make her want to marry me.” And he was sure if he sat there long enough, the answer would come to him. Or better yet, to Mercy and Seth, so they could explain it to him.
Presently, Seth put down his pencil and closed his ledger. “We’ll be turning in soon, Harold. You may sit here and eat biscuits, if you’d like.”
Fat lot of good that would do, Harold thought, though the biscuits were better than Mrs. Winters used to bake—back in the days when she made treats for them—before she got it in her mind that she needed a worktable. But since it would do no good to argue with Seth Langford, he let out a long pitiable sigh. “I just figgered if anybody could help me it would be the two of you.”
“I gave you a suggestion, Harold,” his brother-in-law reminded him.
“You said to give up.”
“That’s your only option at this point. Miss Clark is aware that you’re interested in courting her by now, so if she has any feelings in kind, she’ll find a way to make them known to you.”
Harold sent a helpless look to Mercy.
“He means it’s time to step back and see if Miss Clark misses the attention you’ve been showing her,” she explained.
That didn’t make sense. If a man wanted to catch a fish, he took his line and bait to the riverside and kept at it. How many fish ever jumped out of the river into a man’s arms? He scratched his head. “I don’t know…”
Now it was Seth who gave a sigh, and by the look on his face, Harold reckoned he would soon be sitting at his sister’s table alone.
“That was how Mercy won my heart,” his brother-in-law explained.
“It was?”
Seth winked at Mercy, who smiled back. “For some weeks she paid Thomas and me lots of attention, coming over here and cooking Saturday dinner for us. And then suddenly she would hardly speak to me.”
“Yes?” Harold looked at his sister with renewed appreciation. Until she set her cap for Seth Langford, she had always been so softspoken and meek that he had to wonder how she found the courage to change. “You was uppity?”
“Not at all,” she replied. “Just distant.”
Distant? But until her marriage, she had never lived anywhere but their father’s cottage. “Where did you go?”
Seth shook his head. “She didn’t leave Gresham. But when I came across her in town or at church, she was just polite, not overly friendly.”
“And that made you want to marry her?”
“Yes.” He smiled at Mercy. “There were other reasons as well, but that was what got my attention.”
Less than five minutes later, Harold walked back through the night with hope in his heart and chocolate biscuits in his pockets. Why not try something different, seeing as how giving Miss Clark all that attention wasn’t working? He could be distant too.
He just had to make sure she noticed.
Chapter 25
Noelle wasn’t fooled by the emptiness of the shop as the door chimed to a close behind her. She had caught sight of Mr. Trumble through the window on her way across the lane. The curtain to the storeroom was even swaying a bit. With lips pressed together like a disapproving dowager’s, she crossed the room and paused at the counter. “Mr. Trumble?”
She heard movement in the back, and then silence. This shop wouldn’t last a year in London, she fumed inwardly. “Mr. Trumble, I know you can hear me. Shall I go back there and find you?”
This time the curtain moved, and the round-faced shopkeeper came through it. “Oh, Mrs. Somerville,” he greeted, his eyes not quite connecting with hers. “I thought I heard someone out here. Fancy meeting you again today.”
She was certain he was being sarcastic, but as vexed as she was, she could not afford to get on his bad side. So with a great act of the will, she stretched her lips into a smile. “Forgive me, Mr. Trumble. I’m so very worried that something happened to that letter. It would be from an old friend in London—actually my cousin-twice-removed on my father’s side—who has been courting the most charming woman you would ever wish to meet. I introduced them, actually, at a soiree on derby day. My friend promised to write as soon as he’s gathered the courage to propose and tell me all about it.”
The shopkeeper nodded as she spoke, but with eyes glazed over. Noelle supposed she ought to stop telling him the story, for by now surely he was aware of the letter’s importance.
“Anyway, when Mr. Jones had nothing for me today, I wondered if you had received tomorrow’s mail yet.” She walked over to look behind the postal slots and discovered a canvas sack in the corner, about the size of a bed pillow. “And so you have.”
“Now, Mrs. Somerville,” he appeased. “I ain’t ready to sort it yet. I’ve a crate of goods just arrived last hour needin’ to be stacked on the shelves first.”
“Then just allow me to look through the sack. I won’t get in your way.”
He gaped at her as if she had suggested she douse the sack with kerosene and burn it. “Postal regenerations, Mrs. Somerville.”
“Then I’ll stack the merchandise.” She couldn’t believe she was offering this, but she had had a strong feeling all day that the letter would come and had spent practically the whole morning in the garden waiting on Mr. Jones. When he had something for almost everyone in the Larkspur but her, she could have wept. “Just show me where it goes.”
“But I can’t allow—”
Noelle rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me postal regulations forbid that as well, Mr. Trumble.”
“Well…” He raked a hand through his thinning blond hair and, mumbling to himself, went back behind the curtain. The crate he set on the floor at the end of the counter contained what appeared to be about five dozen tins and jars of assorted vegetables, fruits, and meats along with some household supplies. “It ain’t as easy as it seems, Mrs. Somerville. You’ll have to rotate the merchandise.”
“Rotate?”
“The newer things go in back so’s everything stays fresh as possible.”
“Very well,” she said, waving him away. It was a simple task, actually, and gave her something to do besides pace the floor. She just had to move aside the merchandise already on the well-dusted shelves, arrange the newer items behind them, and place the older in the front again. To reach the two highest shelves she used the footstool and resignedly stepped aside twice whenever Mr. Trumble waited on patrons.
The first, a middle-aged woman purchasing a spool of thread and card of buttons, sent so many curious glances in her direction that Noelle finally smiled brightly and held up the jar that was in her hand. “Would you care to buy some Beetham’s Glycerin and Cucumber Lotion, ma’am?”
“Ah…no, not today,” the woman replied and did not look at her again.
The second customer was a man of dubious hygiene and stubbled cheeks who bought several items. He stared boldly at her, and after returning to the shop to heft a sack of oats upon his shoulder, he went over to where Mr. Trumble had resumed sorting mail. Stacking tins again, Noelle could not hear the question the man murmured to the shopkeeper, but her ears prickled at Mr. Trumble’s reply.
“She’s a widow, Mr. Towly.”
“
And content to stay one!” Noelle snapped so that the odious man was sure to hear. She did not turn to see his reaction, but a few seconds later the bell over the door jingled, followed by a hearty slamming noise. She sent a sharp look over to Mr. Trumble, who shrugged.
“He asked if you was married. What was I to say?”
“You could have told him I was a nun.”
The shopkeeper chuckled. “You could do worse. Mr. Towly makes a decent living.”
“Then you marry him.” Noelle went back to stacking tins. But when the task was halfway finished, she stepped down from the stool again and folded her arms. “You know, you have no order here.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Making a sweeping motion with her hands, she told him, “Tins of tooth powder standing next to tins of beets, matches shoved in here beside lard…”
He stood with his hands on his hips, staring at her with injury across his round face. “But it’s all stacked neat.”
“It’s chaos, Mr. Trumble. I don’t see how you ever find anything.” Giving a sigh, she asked, “Are you about finished there?”
“Not quite.” The injury in his tone matched the look he had given her. “I’ve had customers, you recall.”
Staring up at the shelves again, she asked herself, What else have you to do today? She sighed again. “Well, I’m just going to have to put some order here.”
“Order?”
“Clearly this place needs a woman’s touch. I should wonder why your wife hasn’t complained.”
“My—”
“Please get on with sorting the mail, Mr. Trumble.” Noelle motioned him back toward his postal counter. “Trust me, you’ll be glad I came by today.”
Pursing her lips, she scanned the rows of merchandise. Tinned foods should have a shelf of their own. She had shown heroic patience with the local people’s lack of urban sophistication but now felt compelled to bring some light into the darkness. She picked up a tin of stewed apples and mused, “Now let’s see. We should start with fruits. Alphabetically, of course.”
The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark Page 26