by Cat Cahill
“Good! I knew you’d waste no time. Why don’t you find the smithy once you’re done? I believe he’s needing some repairs to his building.”
Thomas nodded. He knew the place. It was one of the old railroad company buildings scattered on the other side of the tracks.
McFarland went on to shake other hands and give encouragement for what would certainly be a busy day. Thomas was glad to make himself scarce from the hotel before noon, when the first train was due in. He installed the last shelving unit around eleven, just as the meal preparations in the kitchen for the incoming train guests hit a frenzy.
The kitchen had set out a hunk of cheese and some bread for the hotel’s employees to grab their noon meal on the run. Thomas wrapped some in brown paper, thinking he’d take it outside where he could watch the train come in. While trains had been regularly passing Crest Stone for the past two months, this would be the first one to allow passengers to disembark.
He pushed open one of the doors that led from the kitchen to the dining room. Women in dove-gray dresses with crisp white aprons and matching white hats scurried to and fro. It caught Thomas off guard for a moment, and he paused, right outside the door.
It only took a few seconds to spot Miss Beauchamp. She was busy moving place settings a fraction of an inch at a table near the wall. The promise he’d made rose to the forefront of his mind. He’d agreed because he’d had no choice. What else could he have done? Women with money believed the world acted according to their whims, so trying to convince her otherwise would’ve been useless.
You convinced her of the truth. He batted away the inconvenient reminder. That was a different situation.
What he needed was proof. This wasn’t the first time he’d had that thought, but it somehow seemed more urgent now that Miss Beauchamp was involved. Proof that would convince the authorities his own life had been in danger, that the sheriff was the one who’d tried to steal the company pay, and that someone else had actually stolen it after he’d run. But what might that proof be? And how would he get it?
He huffed, frustrated yet again that there wasn’t some obvious solution. However, Miss Beauchamp didn’t need to know that. Maybe he still had a chance to stay here, to convince her he couldn’t tell McFarland just yet.
“Sir? Sir!”
A woman with hair the color of fire stood in front of him, her hands on her hips. He yanked off his hat and nodded at her.
“Sir, you can’t be in here. Kitchen help is forbidden from the dining room during mealtimes.” She ran her eyes over his once-white shirt, worn pants, and dusty boots, as if trying to figure out what exactly it was he did in the kitchen.
“I’m not kitchen help, miss,” he said, looking past her to where Miss Beauchamp had finally noticed him. Her eyes widened, and he was sure he’d caught just the hint of a smile before she ran her hands over nonexistent wrinkles in her apron.
“Still, you can’t be in here! Mrs. Ruby will have the vapors if she sees you in here. That is, if she doesn’t slap you first.” The red-haired girl was so put out by his presence, he couldn’t help but laugh.
“Then by all means, I’ll show myself out.” He strode purposefully through the dining room instead of returning to the kitchen, feeling almost as much as seeing Miss Beauchamp’s frown.
He didn’t know why he so enjoyed getting a rise out of her, but as he shut the front door of the hotel behind him, he knew he should stop. Nothing good would come of teasing that woman. In fact, she might get the wrong idea, and while the thought of her falling for him was unlikely, it certainly wasn’t impossible. After all, his mother had seen something in his father, enough to make her leave her wealthy family and move to a dusty cattle town in Texas where she’d then made his life anything but happy.
No, nothing good could come of teasing Miss Beauchamp.
Chapter Ten
“Remember, thirty minutes, girls. Pleasant, but quick.” With that reminder, Mrs. Ruby retreated to the corner of the dining room where she could oversee her charges.
Penny squeezed Caroline’s hand before running off to wait on her first customers. Train passengers dressed in traveling clothes were beginning to stream through the open dining-room doors. This was it. This was everything they’d been working toward for months. Caroline drew a deep breath and swallowed the fear that had risen in her throat. There was no reason to be nervous. She was well-trained. All she needed to do was prove to Mrs. Ruby that she could be head waitress.
With a smile on her face and her hands demurely clasped in front of her, Caroline made her way to the couple seated at her first table.
“Good afternoon. My name is Miss Beauchamp.” Despite all the months of training, it felt incredibly forward to introduce herself in this manner. But the couple merely smiled at her and introduced themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Foster of New York.
“I’ll bring your soup momentarily. Would you prefer the venison or the pork for your main meal? Each is served with roasted potatoes and carrots from our garden.” She was glad she was already smiling, or else she would’ve broken out into one for correctly remembering the options and side dishes.
The couple both ordered the pork, and Caroline scurried off as politely as possible to alert the kitchen and retrieve their soup. When she returned, soup bowls in hand, the rest of the tables in her section had been seated. There was another older couple and three tables of single men. The man at the table farthest from her looked up, and Caroline nearly dropped her soup bowls.
She yanked her gaze from him to deliver the soup, pasting a smile back on her face. As she made her way to the next table, she chanced a glance up. The man was looking down at his water glass, which he’d already drained. She couldn’t be certain from this angle, but he looked so much like the son of one of her family’s neighbors in Boston.
It couldn’t be, could it? It was so unlikely.
But she had to know for certain. She welcomed the older couple and took their orders, then went straight to the man in question. He looked up as she drew closer and . . .
Caroline nearly grabbed the empty chair at the table in relief. It wasn’t him.
The remainder of the thirty minutes flew by. Caroline rushed to and from the kitchen and the water station with the other girls. She successfully fed all of her customers before they needed to return to their train cars. After cleaning up her tables and righting them for the next train, which would come through at six o’clock sharp, she threw on a cloak and a pair of gloves and escaped out the back door of the kitchen.
By now it was nearly midafternoon. The sun shone and nary a cloud was in the sky. The October chill was precisely what she needed after so much hard work. She wanted to find her friends and see how their work had gone, and she would, but not now. After the scare she’d had and the sheer energy of serving so many people so quickly, she needed time alone.
The creek gurgled behind the tree line as she followed the old wagon path that led to the water. Mountain springs fed the creek, which was shallow this time of year. An old spring house stood nearby, soon to be replaced by a new, larger one. Caroline stood and let the cool air wash over her, trying to empty her mind and enjoy the scenery. But it was no use. The fear that she could have been discovered the very first day the restaurant opened overtook her.
How many more times would this happen? How many scares would it take before someone she knew from her old life appeared at the hotel? The hotel had wire service now. Once someone discovered her, it would be no time at all before her family was alerted to her whereabouts. And then what?
Tears leaked from her eyes even as she yanked off her gloves and swiped them away. They should just leave her alone. To take the dire action she did to get away from them, one would think that would be message enough that she never wanted to return. But that was impossible. Her father had never been foiled in business. Why would he let his own daughter ruin his plans?
To make it even worse, she missed them. How one could despise and miss her family at the
same time made no sense at all. But it was true, and just thinking it set another wave of tears cascading down Caroline’s face.
“Did the frogs request dinner service?” Mr. Drexel appeared from nowhere, it seemed.
Caroline turned her face away, shoving her gloves into her skirt pocket before scrubbing at tears with the heels of her hands. The last thing she wanted was this man seeing her so vulnerable.
“What happened?” he asked, the teasing grin slipping from his face.
“Nothing. Please leave me be.”
“Was one of your customers cruel to you?”
Caroline glanced at him. The man had his hands clenched and his jaw set, almost as if he were ready to run off and challenge some imaginary rude customer to a brawl. For her.
“No, nothing like that. It . . .” She wiped at her eyes again as she tried to figure out how to tell him without relaying her entire story. She was not a liar, so some kernel of the truth would simply have to do.
“Take your time,” he said, his voice softer than usual.
She swallowed hard. “There was a man at one of my tables who resembled someone I knew at home.”
He waited.
“I- I don’t wish for anyone from Boston to know I’m here.” She forced herself to keep her eyes on his.
He wanted more, she could tell, but he was too polite to ask. Somehow that reassured her. The man wasn’t completely without any social graces.
“And was it the man you knew?” he asked.
“No.” The relief flooded through her again, and new tears sprang to her eyes as the fear of what could have happened rushed back to her mind. No matter how fast she scrubbed them away, more came.
Mr. Drexel took a step forward, and then another. And then he was there, right in front of her, holding a handkerchief. She took it gratefully and pressed it to her eyes, but the tears wouldn’t stop coming. Her body shook as she imagined everything she’d worked so hard for here crumbling as her father forced her back home. Back to a man she never wanted to think of, much less see, again.
“There, now.” Mr. Drexel reached around her with both arms, and she sank gratefully against his chest. “You’re safe. No one knows you’re here.”
Another great sob racked her body, but he didn’t let go. After a moment, Caroline’s tears slowed. She clutched his drenched handkerchief in one hand, while the other, she realized with growing alarm, was flush against his chest. She went completely still as she sniffed.
What had she done?
Chapter Eleven
Caroline’s body went stiff against him. Thomas immediately dropped his arms, letting them fall to his sides. She took a step back, her face still flushed pink from crying.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.” He braced himself for a tongue-lashing.
“Thank you,” she said with a raw voice. And that was all. No lectures on propriety, no reminders that they shouldn’t be here alone together, no righteous indignation. Just a simple thank you.
He pulled at his vest, straightening it. “You’re welcome.”
She was watching him with soft eyes, almost as if something about him had changed in her mind. “Mr. Drexel, I apologize for becoming so emotional.” She ran one hand over her hair, as if smoothing it would erase what had just happened.
He smiled. She’d shown him she had a soul buried under those proper layers. He wasn’t about to forget that. “Please, call me Thomas.”
Her eyes widened, and her hand fluttered back down to her side. “I couldn’t.”
“You just spent several minutes weeping against me. If that doesn’t allow us to call one another by our Christian names, I don’t know what does.”
The ghost of a smile lifted the corners of her lips. “I suppose you’re right. I’m Caroline.” Her eyes traced the ground, almost as if she were too shy to tell him her name.
Caroline. It was like a song. “It suits you,” he said.
“Thank you.” She glanced back up at him, her face a little more pink than it was before, and looking nothing like the entitled woman he’d do well to remember she was.
He nodded and cleared his throat.
“Tell me, Thomas,” she said, and if he’d thought her name was like a song, hearing her say his was quite possibly the most beautiful melody he’d ever heard. He’d never been musical himself, but one of the few memories he had of his mother was of her singing him lullabies. As a child, he’d thought it was the most wonderful sound in the world, even though now he knew it had come from a cold-hearted woman.
“Yes?” he said, forcing his mind back to the present.
“Were you able to speak with Mr. McFarland?”
He stilled, acutely aware of every sound around him as he fumbled for an answer. A chickadee chirped somewhere in the trees above them, the shallow creek gurgled its way south, someone laughed near the hotel past the tree line, and a faint clanging sounded from the smithy shop. The latter reminded him he still had work to finish today.
“Thomas?” she said again.
“I haven’t,” he finally replied, “but for good reason.”
Her eyebrows lifted, and it felt as if something heavy had fallen in between them.
He shifted his feet and hoped she would understand why. “I need proof. Something to prove that the sheriff intended to steal the money, and that someone else actually did. Something to prove I acted to defend myself. Else why would McFarland believe me?”
Caroline’s eyes narrowed. She was pondering his words. For the second time in two days, he prayed.
“I believe you without proof,” she said. “Although I had the distinct advantage of testing you.”
He held his tongue, letting her arrive at her decision without interference. He only hoped it would be the right conclusion.
“How do you intend to find this proof?” she asked.
This was the hole in his plan. “I don’t know yet. I should have looked before now, but I was too afraid that if I did, I’d be found. So I didn’t. But now . . .” He wanted to say he was tired of hiding, tired of living in fear that the next train would carry a lawman who’d arrest him on the spot, tired of having his name—his father’s name—muddied with these accusations. He owed his father more than this.
“You want freedom,” Caroline said, her voice almost a whisper. “I understand that.”
“Will you help me?” he asked before he even realized what he was saying. Had he lost his mind? “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
Caroline nodded. “No, please don’t apologize. I don’t know what I can do, but if I can help you, I will.”
He smiled, and for the first time in months, it was unencumbered. If that was how being free from all of this would feel, he wanted it more than he’d ever wanted anything.
Caroline pulled his handkerchief between her fingers, and then glanced down at it, almost as if she’d just realized she was still holding it. “I’ll see that this gets laundered and returned to you.”
“No, please keep it.”
It was as if a shadow crossed her pretty round face, and he could almost hear her saying that it was inappropriate for her to receive a gift from him. But instead, all she said was, “Thank you.” She glanced back through the trees, toward the hotel that was hidden from view. “I’m glad to help you, but it must remain between us.”
“I understand. I’m well aware of the rules.” Even the hotel’s builder had lost his job because of his relationship with one of the waitresses. He’d only gotten it back when he married her.
“Thank you,” she said, “for everything.” She exchanged the handkerchief for a pair of gloves from a pocket in her dress. “I must return to my duties. I’ve been gone too long.”
“Of course.” He took a step back to allow her to pass. “I’ll wait a few minutes before I return.”
She gave him a grateful look. “This work means everything to me.”
Thomas nodded, although as she disappeared back up the wagon path, he tried to
piece together the riddle of this woman. It now made sense why she was working here—she was hiding from her family. He was certainly curious why, but what confused him most was how seriously she took her work. With her background, he’d have assumed she’d try to latch on to the first moneyed man she met out here. Perhaps Caroline had only meant that the work meant everything to her in the temporary sense. After all, one had to eat to remain alive. She’d now have plenty of wealthy suitors from whom to choose, now that trains were stopping regularly at the hotel.
And yet, he still couldn’t see her throwing herself at some man only because he had money.
She was a puzzle, this woman. She’d even agreed to help him search for proof to exonerate himself, and while he’d hoped she’d agree to keep his secret for a while longer, he’d hardly expected her to help him. He hadn’t even planned to ask.
As he returned to the hotel, he wondered what else there was to Caroline Beauchamp.
Chapter Twelve
“Excellent work today, ladies!” Mrs. Ruby beamed at the lines of Gilbert Girls assembled in the dining room late that night. “You all worked hard to make today a success. Please be certain to get enough rest tonight. Mr. McFarland?”
Mr. McFarland’s smile matched Mrs. Ruby’s. Their pleasure made Caroline’s heart swell. Her feet hurt, her back ached, and her stomach rumbled with hunger, but she’d never been happier. All of her train guests had been served in under a half an hour, and the few guests staying on at the hotel had enjoyed a leisurely meal later in the evening. She didn’t have to be present for breakfast in the morning, and for that small gift, she was grateful. Still, she radiated with pride at what she’d accomplished today.
“The Crest Stone Hotel and Restaurant is off to a stunning start,” Mr. McFarland said, his hands clasped behind his back. “We have twenty-two guests tonight, but know that number will increase as more trains come through. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”