“How did the lesson go?” Daisy’s voice broke into her thoughts. “Sounds like you did most of the playing.”
Rose thought quickly. If she told the truth, that she wasn’t actually teaching Callan anything, Daisy might forbid her to continue the lessons. But if it weren’t for the lessons, Rose wouldn’t be permitted to see him at all.
“Yes,” she said presently, “his skills are really quite … rudimentary. He acted as if he hadn’t seen a violin in his life. At least he appreciates music, so he’s probably not tone-deaf. But he’s experienced a terrible injury to his bowing hand. A hazard of working in the logging camps, I suppose.”
“Maimed, is he?” Daisy clucked her tongue. “And you with your tender heart. Mind you don’t make a charitable project out of the poor man.”
“I won’t. I don’t know if I can help him, anyway. But I wanted him to hear what might be possible to achieve if he worked hard at it. At any rate, we’ll need to proceed slowly.” Rose hoped that explanation would satisfy her sister’s curiosity about how the “lessons” sounded to an outsider.
“Well, he seemed pleasant enough,” Daisy said with indifference. “And I know you well enough to know you won’t give him false hope, either of his musical potential or anything else.”
Rose’s mood lightened. Daisy hadn’t forbidden the lessons to continue. Now if only she’d stop eying Rose as if reading the very thoughts in her head. Because if she could, she was certain to disapprove.
Callan’s heart leapt when he saw Rose seated with her family at the front of the church. This time she was dressed in a green-and-white checked frock—a fresh, springtime green that reminded him of apple trees. He caught her gaze over the congregations’ heads, and she smiled. As had become his custom, he chose a seat near the back to more efficiently intercept her after the service, this time without stumbling into her like a clumsy ox.
During the service, he tried to keep his mind on higher things. But after the last “amen,” he strode toward the vestibule at the back, praying for something clever to say. With impatience, he nodded to the passersby. At last, Rose approached with her family.
“Good morning,” she said warmly.
He swallowed. “Good morning, Miss Marchmont. Lovely day, isn’t it?” Immediately he chided himself. Could he not think of anything more interesting to talk about than the weather?
“Quite.” She stopped and turned to her sister. “Daisy, may I present Mr. Callan MacTavish? Mr. MacTavish, meet my sister and brother-in-law, Daisy and Robert Tanner.” She smiled. “Mr. MacTavish is my new violin student.”
Daisy nodded at Callan and said brusquely, “I know that, Rose. I met him the other day, remember?”
“I know you did, but Robert hadn’t,” Rose replied evenly.
“How do you do, Mr. MacTavish,” Robert said, extending his hand. Callan shook it.
“How d’ye do, Mr. Tanner. I’m so enjoying my lessons. Yer sister-in-law is quite a talented teacher.”
Before Robert could reply, a tall, thin man with a mustache and spectacles rushed up to them. “So sorry to interrupt, Miss Marchmont, but it’s time for us to be going,” he said. “We don’t want to be late for our engagement.” Before Callan’s astonished eyes, the stranger extended a sharp elbow to Rose. She took it in her white-gloved hand.
“Goodbye, Mr. MacTavish,” she called over her shoulder as the man steered her toward the exit. “See you on Saturday.” And she was gone.
Callan stood in shock. It hadn’t occurred to him that Rose might have a beau. She’d never mentioned having one, but of course, Callan hadn’t thought to ask. Stupefied, he turned to say something to the Tanners, but they too had moved on. Listlessly he shook the minister’s hand, then walked alone down the street, back to Mrs. Donovan’s. In the empty room, he changed his clothes and gathered up his belongings, feeling strangely dejected. Of course, a pretty lass like her would have men taking her places. He shouldn’t have expected anything different. Even so, a burning sensation smoldered in his chest, but he pasted on a grin as he met his mates for a hearty meal and a few more hours of leisure before heading back up the mountain.
Once again, his friends wanted to make the most out of the sunny afternoon by going fishing. Callan again demurred, preferring to return to the rooming house where he could sit on the porch and read.
By now the landlady, Mrs. Donovan, had figured out that Callan wasn’t the rough-and-rowdy type of logger she was accustomed to and had taken a sort of motherly interest in his well-being. She beamed with pleasure to have him while away the afternoon on her porch.
“You just rest here in the shade, Mr. MacTavish,” she said as she handed him a frosted glass of lemonade. “No sense getting your fair skin burned to a crisp out there on the lake with the other fellows.”
He thanked her kindly for the lemonade. But he wasn’t inclined to tell her that his fair skin had nothing to do with his decision to stay behind. To be sure, there was his strong aversion to going out on the water. But even more than that, his mind was preoccupied with questions about the young lady next door. Where in the world had she gone? And who in blazes was the bloke she had gone there with?
Chapter 6
“DID YOU ENJOY THE concert?” Miles Godfrey asked Rose as they motored homeward in his fancy car.
“Yes, I did. Thank you very much.” The stirring passages of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony still rang in her ears. The concert had been wonderful and her escort courteous, if a bit stiff. He knew good music and could discuss it intelligently. And riding in his elegant automobile had been a treat.
He touched the tip of his mustache. “Then I have a delightful surprise for you. At intermission, I visited the box office and succeeded in getting seats in a balcony box for the entire summer season of Sunday afternoon concerts of the symphony orchestra. Six concerts in all.”
“You did?” Delight and dismay did battle in her heart. Not many symphony orchestra concerts came to northern Idaho, and the prospect of attending a whole summer’s worth of them made her head spin. But the thought of attending them all with Mr. Godfrey cast a pall over her joy. What if he’d gotten the mistaken notion that she liked him as more than a friend? Still, it was awfully generous of him to buy the tickets. If all they did together was attend the concerts, they’d spend most of their time listening to music, not talking. Maybe that would be all right. Conversation would be limited to the automobile trips there and back. It might be worth it to hear good music. Hearing the music of the masters played by world-class musicians surely would make her a better instructor, should she manage to get some students. And it wasn’t as if she had a full social calendar. Since coming to Sandpoint, she’d found that the hours between Sunday lunch and bedtime generally crawled, with little to do but read books and practice her violin.
“Well? What do you say?”
The gentleman’s voice interrupted her thoughts. He stole anxious glances at her as he drove. She cleared her throat. “How thoughtful of you, Mr. Godfrey. Yes, I’ll look forward to the concerts.”
“Splendid.” The twitch of his mustache as he smiled caused a slight wave of revulsion to course up her spine.
“Of course, you mustn’t feel obligated to take me as your guest every time,” she added hastily. “Surely a cultured man such as yourself has many other friends who enjoy music just as much as I do. I won’t expect to be taken to every concert.”
“What a generous creature you are,” he said. “But I wouldn’t think of taking anyone else.”
When they reached Sandpoint, he parked the automobile next to the curb in front of the Tanners’ house. Rose waited while he got out and walked around to the passenger side to open her door. As he escorted her up the walk, she thought she glimpsed Callan sitting silently in the dusky shadows of the porch next door. Was he spying on her? What nerve! Should she smile and wave, or take no notice? Would he think she was being courted by Miles? And was that a good thing or a bad thing?
Amid these flustere
d thoughts, she extended her hand to her escort. “Thank you for a lovely afternoon. I shall look forward to next week’s concert.” She shook his hand with her gloved one, stiffening her elbow to hold him at bay lest he get any ideas.
If he was disappointed not to have gotten a goodbye kiss, he did not show it. “Good night. I’ll see you next Sunday.” He held open the screen door, and she went inside, then he descended the porch steps, whistling.
As his motorcar puttered down the street, she cracked open the screen door and peeked in the direction of Mrs. Donovan’s porch. But no one was there. The rocking chair sat empty. The ersatz spy had been a product of her imagination.
Well, that’s a relief, she told herself. What right had the brash Scotsman, anyway, to be monitoring her comings and goings?
But as she turned from the door and climbed the stairs to her room, she gave one more peek out the little side window on the landing. Just to make sure.
In the back of the camp-bound rig, Callan endured some ribbing from his friends for the violin he carried.
“What’s that you got there?” Lars asked. “Some new kind of saw?”
“A lure to summon stray cats with, more like,” Mick teased.
To Callan’s relief, they soon tired of the topic and moved on to discussing their morally questionable activities of the previous night. His music lessons with Rose—or, more accurately, private concerts—were a sacred thing that he didn’t fancy sharing with anyone, least of all his boorish campmates who didn’t know a grace note from a guy line.
But his mood had lifted over the course of the afternoon. Indeed, he’d wished all manner of unpleasantries on the man she spent the afternoon with. But it cheered him up considerably that, from his hidden vantage point in the shadows of Mrs. Donovan’s porch, he hadn’t seen her kiss him goodbye.
As the summer evenings lengthened, so did the workdays of falling, bucking, and loading logs. Even so, there was still plenty of daylight left after evening chow. As was his habit, while his fellow loggers spent evenings fishing and hunting squirrels and swapping tall tales around a campfire, Callan took advantage of the empty bunkhouse to read and sketch and daydream. Now he’d added one other task best done away from prying eyes.
After an exhausting day in the woods, he bolted his supper, then returned alone to the bunkhouse. He read a couple of chapters of Moby Dick until he was sure his campmates were otherwise occupied. Then, with no one around to poke fun or ask intrusive questions, he reached into his locker, pulled out the violin case, opened it, and pulled out the bow. He tried to hold it the way Rose had shown him but clumsily dropped it, time and time again. Finally, he gave up. ’Twas a daft idea, that a man with two missing fingers could play the violin. Muttering a mild oath, he put the bow back in the case and snapped the lid, shoved the case back into his locker, and pulled out his leather journal. He opened it and lifted out a piece of paper folded inside—the receipt from his first music lesson. He liked to look at it, at the way her signature swirled gracefully across the bottom. Rose Marchmont. When he lifted it to his face, he caught a faint whiff of her violet scent. Just four more days until he’d see her again. But of course, it was possible she already had a beau, he reminded himself. Still, she wasn’t formally engaged to that skinny bloke. At least, not yet. Callan was banking on the fact that since she hadn’t kissed the man, she wasn’t serious about him. And that meant Callan still had a chance to win her over if only he could convince that vinegar-lipped sister of hers he was a decent sort.
All at once the fragile scrap of hope shriveled in his chest like paper in a campfire. What good would winning her over do, when he had nothing more to offer than a life moving from logging camp to logging camp? Maybe her sister was right. Being a logger’s wife wasna suitable future for a fine, highly educated woman like Rose Marchmont.
At the noisy clatter that signaled his mates’ return, he folded the receipt, slipped it into the journal, and stashed the book in his locker. Then he joined his companions for a boisterous evening around the card table.
But later, as he lay in his bunk reading Moby Dick by the light of a smoky lantern, he found the fingers of his left hand—the hand that remained whole and intact—involuntary tapping the book’s cover as they drummed out a half-forgotten pattern, the intricate fingering of the Brahms sonata.
Chapter 7
LEST THE SOUND OF Rose playing solo for an hour should raise her sister’s suspicions, she devised a plan. During Callan’s lesson time, she would play her violin for a while, Mendelssohn or Bach or the Brahms that he liked so much. Then she’d pause and scratch out some random passage, then say, “Well done, Mr. MacTavish. That’s the way,” or “Try it again, please,” or “Let’s try our scales, shall we?” loud enough for Daisy to hear in the next room if she happened to be listening.
“In other words, we’re deceivin poor Mrs. Tanner under her verra own roof.” Callan’s voice was stern, but his eyes twinkled with amusement.
A warm tingle crept up Rose’s neck. “Well, yes. I suppose so,” she stammered. “But she’s practically forced us into it. If she found out you’re not a genuine music student, you’ll be out on your ear.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Out on my what?”
She laughed. “Your ear. You’ll be dismissed. Sorry, I’m afraid I picked up a bit of slang at the conservatory, along with my lessons.”
“I see.” He regarded her thoughtfully. “Ye had some fun at school then.”
Warm memories filled her mind. “Yes, I loved it.”
“Then why did ye leave?”
His question doused her mood like a spray of cold water. In no way was she prepared to explain about Jeremy to this inquisitive Scotsman. Surely, he’d make some joke about the situation, or worse, pity her. Abruptly she lifted the violin from her lap.
“I should play.”
He cocked his head. “But I enjoy talkin with ye. Canna we just talk?”
“Our agreement is you pay to hear me play. What would you like to hear?”
He sat back. “The Brahms again. Please.”
“Very well.” For Daisy’s benefit, Rose spoke distinctly in the direction of the closed door. “Pay attention, Mr. MacTavish. It should sound like this.” She tucked the instrument under her chin and played, letting the ache in her heart flow out through the strings.
When the hour was over, she lowered the violin and looked at Callan. He swallowed hard, and his eyes held a shimmer she hadn’t seen before. Clearly, the music had touched him deeply. Her own heart softened. Jeremy’s eyes had never looked like that.
“That was magnificent,” he said, his voice thick. “Ye play with such deep feeling. It makes me wonder what ye think about while ye play.”
If he only knew.
He cleared his throat. “I’ve been meanin to ask ye somethin.”
“Yes?” she said, a bit breathless.
“I’ve been tryin to acquaint myself with the literature of this great country. I’ve finished Moby Dick. Have ye another book to recommend?”
“Oh.” Sighing, she stood and put her violin away, then walked over to a bookcase and ran her finger across the spines, reading the titles. She selected one, pulled it from the shelf and handed it to Callan.
“Nathanial Hawthorne,” she said. “Another early nineteenth century author and a good one.”
He glanced at the cover. “Thank ye.” He set the book aside. “I’ve another question.”
“You’re full of questions tonight.”
“This one’s different. Might ye join me for a walk after church tomorrow?”
Joy coursed through her veins, only to be chased immediately by disappointment. “Oh, I’d love to, but I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve committed to going to a concert with a—a family friend.”
“I see. How about the following week?”
She cringed. “The concerts are a weekly series. Six in all.” This was terrible. He was going to think she was putting him off.
He straightened.
“Well, sometime when yer not otherwise engaged, I’d like to find a spot on yer schedule.”
“I’m not engaged at the moment,” she said, and immediately felt her face grow warm at her presumption.
His eyes lighted. “Aye? But what about yer sister?”
She thought for a moment. “It’s a warm night. I’ll tell her we’re going for ice cream and offer to bring some back. She adores ice cream.”
The plan worked. Delighted by the prospect of ice cream, Daisy gave her permission for the pair to walk downtown and back. Never had a stroll to First Avenue and back taken as long as it did that night. Rose and Callan spoke of many things. Of Rose’s life back in Chicago. Of her experiences as a student at the conservatory. Of Callan’s adventures in logging camps across North America. At the ice cream shop, Rose said, “Let’s get chocolate mint. It’s Daisy’s favorite flavor. What are you getting?”
“Nay, none for me.”
Rose looked at him in surprise. “You’re not getting any?”
“Nay,” he said, smiling down at her. “I just wanted to walk with ye, that’s all.”
At the Tanners’ doorway, Callan said, “Well, good night.”
Rose’s shoulders sagged. “You won’t stay for ice cream?”
“Nay,” he murmured. “’Tis getting late. I don’t want yer sister to be angry with me fer keepin ye out.” He grinned. “I want her to say yes the next time. And the next.”
She was glad the darkness hid her blush. “Good night then,” she said with reluctance. When at last she went inside, Daisy took the carton from her and opened it. “It’s practically melted,” she complained. “But you were sweet to get chocolate mint. I know you prefer strawberry. Robert, come and have some ice cream.”
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