Hearts

by Stef Ann Holm

  “Charming!” she exclaimed. “Now . . .”—she rose—“. . . let’s have our lunch. I already prepared us cheese sandwiches. They’re in the dining room. And I steamed caramel pudding. We can pour lots of apple jelly over it—with ample servings. Hiram isn’t here to frown at me.” She smiled, as if they shared an intimate secret. “While we eat, you can tell me about Mrs.Wolcott.”

  Half an hour later, Truvy was still seated across from Mrs. Plunkett at the dining-room table, talking about Edwina’s daughter.

  “My, but I remember when Mrs. Wolcott came back from that Chicago college. It was a shame her poor mother passed on,” Mrs. Plunkett remarked, taking a bite of her pudding. “But she’s a very strong woman. She took charge and opened that finishing school and . . .” The teaspoon in her hand paused halfway to her mouth. Dark eyes teared up. Blinking rapidly, she went on. “If I hadn’t sent my Hildegarde, she might not have gained so much poise. Men find her irresistible. She’s so . . . so . . . pretty.”

  The finely tatted handkerchief came out from her dress sleeve, and Mrs. Plunkett noisily blew her nose.

  “Yes, I can see by her photograph in the parlor,” Truvy said, trying to keep the elder woman from crying. “She looks like you.”

  Dabbing the hankie at her reddish nostrils, Mrs. Plunkett lifted her brows and she cracked a slight smile. “Do you think so?”

  “You have the same . . .”—she grappled for the right words—“. . . features. I’d know you’re mother and daughter just by the way you favor each other.”

  “Oh . . .” Once more, the pudding became tempting and she fed herself a large helping. “We have my mother’s eyes.”

  “Hmm—”

  “And her hair . . .” Mrs. Plunkett mused while studying Truvy. “You know, you should do something with yours.”

  Truvy’s hand went to her hair. Aside from the one time she spent hours pinning it up on the train, the styles she tried never turned out right, nor did the heavy curls stay put. Teaching in a gymnasium left little time for vanity. She was lucky if she had the same amount of hairpins in her hair in the evening as she had in the morning.

  “I think you’d look darling with your hair”—Mrs. Plunkett put down her spoon and gazed sideways at Truvy—“just so. More in a Gibson knot instead of loose curls in a twist. Why, I could use my curl iron on you and make you look just like Hildegarde. My baby is very fashionable. That man she married had better a-appreciate th-that a-a-about h-h-h-her.”

  Mrs. Plunkett succumbed to her emotions and fat tears rolled down her cheeks.

  Awkwardly, Truvy attempted to soothe her. “Now, Mrs. Plunkett, don’t get yourself in a state. You’ve been doing so well. More pudding?”

  “No,” she mumbled into her handkerchief. “I feel one of my headaches coming on. I’m going to lie down. We’ll fix your hair later.”

  “That’s all right. You rest. Don’t worry about me. I have some letters to write.”

  Mrs. Plunkett left the table in sniffles, and as soon as Truvy heard her bedroom door close, she cleared the dishes, then went up to her room as well. She brought the mittens with her and set them on the secretary desk, where she took a seat.

  Truvy pensively looked out the window for a while at the winter white world and the gray, bare branches of trees.

  She poised the nib of her fountain pen over crisp white paper, then began to write.

  December 18, 1901

  Dear Miss Pond:

  Joyous news from Harmony! Edwina had her baby, a daughter named Elizabeth. She was born on December 15 at 5:23 in the morning. Edwina is doing wonderfully. It’s so good to see her.

  I’ve met many friendly people since my arrival, such as Shay Dufresne, Tom’s business partner, and his wife, Crescencia. The day after Elizabeth was born, they came to the house to offer their congratulations. They brought with them their three-month-old son.

  I hope you are in fine health. Did the girls get off on their holiday all right? The weather here is cold, as I’m sure it is in Boise. We had one inch of snow overnight.

  Mr. and Mrs. Plunkett have heartily welcomed me, but I’m looking forward to making St. Francis my life long home. Please let me know how the matter of the benefactress has been resolved. Let me again reassure you, and the school committee, that my intentions are most honorable. In the future, I will conform to all rules and regulations.

  That being the case, I’d like to return as originally planned, on the 27th of December. You may write to me in care of the Plunketts at the general delivery box in Harmony and advise me of your decision.

  Respectfully yours,

  Truvy Valentine

  Truvy reread the informative letter. Two times. Wanting desperately to make a good impression on Miss Pond, Truvy had composed the letter in her head before putting it on paper. The words had to be exactly right—optimistic, enthusiastic, earnest, full of promise and energy—the things she honestly felt in her heart.

  Satisfied, she folded the paper into an envelope. She sealed the flap and laid it on top of the letter she’d penned to The Aunts last night. Later today, she’d take both correspondences to the post office.

  That letter to Miss Pond had more to do with things other than wanting to return to St. Francis than she had divulged in her neat script. Between the lines, Jake Brewster took up space.

  She found that her independent flight—the testing of her wings, so to speak—was snagged with thoughts of him. How could she dare transgress against her convictions? The words she’d emphatically spoken to Miss Pond? She belonged at St. Francis. As a teacher. Inasmuch as she was enjoying her visit with Edwina, she wanted to go home and prove to herself she could be what the school wanted her to be.

  But she caught herself allowing Jake in her subconscious.

  The way she’d held onto him in Edwina’s kitchen . . . it was shameful.

  It was wonderful.

  Beneath those muscles and that rakish personality, he might be wonderful.

  Her fingers brushed the spine of The Science of Life. She’d been reading more last night. Sometimes the book confused her. She’d had an impulse to kiss Jake when he’d breathed in the fragrance of her hair. A natural instinct to do so. How could that be, when he wasn’t a “harmony of souls” match for her?

  The book couldn’t be wrong.

  She was building him up in her mind—that’s what she was doing. She was going back to Boise where she belonged. There was no sense in making anything of him. Of them.

  But he could be so . . . interesting.

  If she wanted to make him dull, all she had to do was tell him about her coaching position. She knew that would be the end of her idiotic attraction to him, because he’d pour on all the gymnasium talk.

  On a sigh, Truvy wondered how Mrs. Plunkett was feeling.

  She didn’t mind Mrs. Plunkett’s company, but her fussing and hovering could be . . . taxing. She knew she should be polite and gracious—and she had been. But there were those moments when Mrs. Plunkett’s hankie sessions were hard to bear. Whenever they talked and Hildegarde’s name was mentioned, the elder woman cried about this and that.

  Truvy hoped the woman would forget about styling her hair. She didn’t want to wear a Gibson knot. Bother it, she didn’t want to wear cardinal mittens. She wasn’t even fond of cheese sandwiches. With Mrs. Plunkett’s present state of mind and behavior, Truvy worried that by staying at the Plunkett house, she was becoming more than a boarder.

  She was a replacement Hildegarde for the young woman’s lonely, heartbroken mother.

  Truvy woke as a brush of dawn sky settled on the horizon.

  She put her legs over the side of the bed and shivered as she slipped her feet into felt house slippers. The heating stove had gone out during the night and the room’s air had a nip about it. She went to the window and parted the curtains.

  Frosty ice blanketed the outdoors and new snow had fallen overnight. Even with the chill in the room, the scene outside made her long to feel a bite of
cold air on her cheeks, to feel her feet glide over ice. She hadn’t been on her ice skates since last winter. She’d brought them with her in the hope she’d find time to put them on.

  Today seemed like the perfect morning.

  Truvy gazed at the time on the desk clock: five forty-eight. What she wished to do would be considered inappropriate by small-town standards. But if nobody saw her . . . she could go out and be back in the house before Mr. Plunkett left to open the mercantile at eight. Mrs. Plunkett hadn’t been fixing him a breakfast meal. She claimed she was too fragile to rise at that hour and face a table without her precious daughter sitting across from her.

  Normally at nine o’clock, Mrs. Plunkett dragged herself out of bed to take on the day; Truvy would again occupy Hildegarde’s vacated seat and listen to Mrs. Plunkett’s sighs of woe while having more food pushed on her than she’d ever encountered. If Truvy could steal a moment for herself, she’d feel much better, be much better company at that table.

  On that thought, she swiftly dressed, then quietly crept down the stairs, through the vestibule, and out the front door without a sound. Her heavy cape enveloped her shoulders. She held onto her ice skates hidden inside the folds. She’d laced on her reliable Spaldings. Their soles fit snugly onto the blades.

  Feeling decadent, she dashed across town. Nobody was up yet. She had the snowy streets to herself. She knew exactly where she was going. Edwina had told her about a mill pond beyond Old Oak Road and off the tributary of Evergreen Creek. The frozen surface of the pond was used as a skating rink. It was an easy landmark to find—the top of the mill could be seen from her bedroom window at the Plunketts’.

  Snow-dusted evergreens lined a trail that had been packed down by the previous skaters. A birch stand grew tall, the trunks strong white sentinels. Leafless bushes marked the north shore of the pond. An inverted icicle crown glittered like a jewel from the lumbermill’s roof eaves.

  Truvy reached the clearing and sat on one of the makeshift benches—a split-down-the-middle tree. She buckled on worn russet leather straps; the polished runners were bright steel from toe to heel plates. Once the skates were in place, she stood and removed her cape. An instant bite of frigid air curled around her.

  Her attire was sparse. And unconventional. She wore an apricot tunic and willow-green Turkish pantaloons she’d sewn. The sports uniform for St. Francis was broadcloth blouses and bloomers, but Truvy found the fabric stiff and unyielding. When she’d come to the tennis court in the pantaloons, Miss Pond had frowned her objection and told her she wasn’t allowed to wear such a thing.

  Disappointment weighed on her that she hadn’t been able to try out the costume. But there was nobody to stop her from wearing the outlandish garb now. No rules. No one to comment on her behavior.

  She rubbed gloved hands together, then tested the ice by extending first her right leg, then her left. The surface was lumpy in places but overall was smooth.

  After a few minutes, she worked across the ice with a fast speed. The wind nipped her cheeks, blew wisps of hair across her cheeks, and pressed her tunic flat against her pelvis.

  Invigorated was a word that came to mind. Pure heaven and freedom and bliss. The costume proved itself. Simply delicious.

  Toe-kicking herself up into a single rotation, she flew into the air. She’d learned the skating trick while growing up in Emporia. She could still do the acrobatic twirl fifteen years after she’d mastered the airborne revolution when her ankles and knees came together and her body tilted slightly. That instant of suspension in the sky was like nothing else.

  When she landed, she raised her face heavenward and shouted her glee, her voice echoing in the din of trees that watched like an audience. The tunic sleeves rippled against her arms; the pantaloons melted next to her skin. Oh, perhaps Miss Pond had been right. The costume was too scandalous for girls. But it felt just right on Truvy.

  Scissoring one foot in back of the other, she skated backward, pumping and pushing her legs. She lost all inhibition, all sense of place. The only sound coming to her ears was the whir of blades as they cut over ice.

  “ ‘Dashing through the snow,’ ” Truvy sang, the notes on key, “ ‘in a one-horse open sleigh, o’er the fields we go, laughing all the way.’ ”

  Impulsively, she pulled the long pin from her hat and let the smart blue taffetine rosettes with the two quills and netting sail away. She held her arms out, skating in a broad circle while cutting up the ice. The combs loosened in her hair and bounced off her shoulders as they fell out. Brown curls came free as her hair spilled in disarray to her waist.

  She giggled. “ ‘Ohhh—jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way,’ ” she chimed, “ ‘Oh, what fun it is to ride—’ ”

  Truvy’s shin struck something in the middle of the chorus, something wet and big and furry. The something was Barkly.

  A pair of bloodshot eyes filled her vision as she tripped and fell, landing with a painful thud on her hind end. The dog trotted off, tail happily wagging, slipping and sliding on the ice as he chased a whistle. A whistle belonging to a man who stood on the bank, eyes curiously drawn to her spread-eagled legs and the pantaloons that bunched halfway up her exposed thighs.

  The man was none other than Jake Brewster.

  Naturally.

  Chapter

  6

  J ake’s imagination hadn’t prepared him for legs like Truvy’s.

  His gaze lingered, appreciatively, over her lithe legs and supple thighs, shapely knees and straight shins. Soft green silk pooled in the juncture of her lap; black knit stockings hugged every visible inch of legs down to graceful ankles, where a pair of tennis shoes had been converted with ice blades into skates.

  She wore a suggestive costume. As he’d watched her gliding across the ice, it seemed as if she wore nothing at all. The fabric clung to her body like a lover’s whisper, cupping, curving, billowing over the high swell of her breasts and the definition of her legs. He’d never seen anything like those trousers before. He found them exciting. Stimulating. Downright damn provocative. Just like her unbound hair.

  The first rays of sunshine kissed the color, highlighting strands of auburn in the deep-hued brown. She had very long hair. The shiny curls fell past her waist and brushed the curvaceous round of her bottom—a bottom that was no doubt giving her a jolt of pain at the moment. She’d hit the ice hard.

  She looked up at him. Her pointed chin was thrust out in an attempt to cover her embarrassment. He was conscious of how her lips parted. How moist they were. Long, dark eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks, much like her heart must be fluttering beneath the jerky rise and fall of her full breasts. A tightening sensation gripped his skin at the thought of those breasts thrust next to the whaleboning of her corset.

  He could have made things easy for her, but he didn’t. Any woman out in the morning wearing something as sinful-looking as underwear should be up for a little ribbing.

  “Hurt your bum, Truvy?”

  “What are you doing out here?” she shot back, disregarding his query.

  Jake walked toward her, his footing firm on the ice in arctic, fleece-lined boots. “Taking Barkly out for a morning run. Tom asked me if I would.”

  “You couldn’t have done so elsewhere? People use this area to skate, you know.”

  “I know. But he likes to run around with pinecones in his chops, and this place is loaded with them.”

  “Not another tree with pinecones to be had in Harmony, is there?”

  Her sarcasm tempted him.A devilish quirk touched his lips. “Are your cheeks cold?”

  Seconds passed as she comprehended that he wasn’t talking about the ones that blushed. She took in a quick, sharp breath. Rather than refusing to deny knowing his meaning, she tossed a lock of hair over her shoulder. “Positively numb.”

  She attempted to stand but winced when she put pressure on her right leg. The skate’s blade slid, and thin ice shaved off the frozen pond in an even ribbon. “I think I bruised my
knee.”

  “Let me help you up.”

  She gazed through the part in her hair, studying his face for a moment while deciding whether to let him.

  In return, his eyes measured her, falling to the creamy expanse of neck where brownish hair brushed against the slender column. His extended hand remained an invitation. Anticipation leaped to life within him at the prospect of what she would do.

  Tentatively, she rested her hand in his. His fingers curled tightly over her slim knuckles. The sensation of intimate contact warmed him. Without expending any effort, he pulled her to her feet.

  They stood facing each other. Her mouth was a deep red from the cold. The straight edge of her teeth caught a plump lower lip. His blood seared his veins. A burning sweetness cut through him. Her hand felt warm and gentle in his. He wanted to explore the softness of her luscious mouth.

  Instinctively, his body arched toward hers.

  She slowly leaned backward. He held more tightly onto her hand.

  Color spread over her cheeks and flushed down her neck. “I won’t fall,” she assured him, then added in a restrained tone, “You can release me now.”

  The dent in his ego wasn’t deep, but it was a dent just the same.

  Reluctantly, he let her go.

  She tested the weight on her leg by taking small steps.A wayward curl teased her forehead.With a raised hand, she pushing the strand away from her face. The absent gesture caused her breasts to rub next to the silky drape of fabric covering them. Jake’s body grew taut while his whole consciousness focused on her.

  Lifting his chin, he indicated the diaphanous outfit outlining her curves; when he spoke, his voice sounded raw—even to his own ears. “What’s with the shirt and trousers?”

  The mood surrounding them changed, as if she suddenly remembered how she was dressed. She looked down at the clinging fabric, then back up, but made no immediate comment.