Hearts

by Stef Ann Holm

“Sorry, Bruiser.” Lou removed his hand and lightly placed it on Jake’s shoulder.

  “Positions, everyone,” Truvy instructed. “We’re ready to begin.”

  She tapped the beat of the music with her foot. The tip of a petite black shoe peeked from the hem of her skirt. “A waltz is danced in a three-quarter meter with the accent on the first beat. Waltzing is a smooth and graceful dance stepped in an even rhythm. When you hear the notes descend, we’ll push off with our left foot in this pattern: Step forward on the left, step to the side with the right, close left to right, take weight off the left.”

  The boys’ faces took on bewildered expressions. Nobody understood the mathematics of where their feet should be and when. But before anyone could ask questions, Truvy pushed off in a twirling motion and took Milt with her. She instantly stepped on his toe. “I beg your pardon!” she exclaimed.

  “It’s all right, Miss Valentine.” Milt’s smile faltered as he jogged about the room without a clue as to what he was doing. “Perfectly all right.”

  The thuds of Truvy’s shoes on the floorboards echoed in the studio as she nearly tripped over the fullness of her petticoats. Pink petticoats.

  Jake propelled Lou in the right direction, yanking him along by the fabric of his coat.

  The boys made a good show of footwork.

  Barely aware he lugged Lou across the dance floor, Jake kept his eyes on Truvy. She was no serpentine dancer. She had them waltzing in two-time, not three-quarter. She kept apologizing for skewering Milt’s instep with the high heel of her shoe.

  “Now,” she said breathlessly, trying to keep up with Milt’s tug and pull around the room’s circumference. “As soon as you master these steps,” she panted, out of breath from fighting Milton’s tight hold, “you’ll learn the box waltz . . . the running waltz . . .” Milt spun her like she was a kid’s toy top going out of control. His movements were choppy and clumsy, but he didn’t notice his own ineptness. He kept staring at Truvy, his face inching closer to hers. “. . . canter waltz . . . And mazurka.”

  The recording came to an end and Truvy practically threw herself out of Milt’s arms. “Well, then. That was . . . fine—for a first try.”

  Her forehead was damp; her cheeks were flushed. She lifted a hand to her hair and patted the tendrils that had come free.

  Lou still held on to Jake, and Jake warned in an ominously low voice, “Cut me loose, Lou, or I’ll crack your ribs.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure, Bruiser. Sorry.”

  Lou let go; his gaze, like that of the other men in the room, landed on the rise and fall of Truvy’s breasts as she caught her breath. They looked, then looked away. Glimpsed again, then stared at the ceiling or their toes.

  The Barbell Club’s unsuppressed libidos put a tightness in Jake’s chest. He affected a display of vague indifference, but his leg muscles continued to tense until they burned.

  “Now then, we’ll do this once more.” Truvy restarted the recording. “I saw some technical difficulties that last time around.”

  Was she looking at herself? Jake wondered. Did Edwina know Truvy couldn’t waltz any better than Barkly?

  Milton eagerly held out his arms, a satisfied smile on his mouth. “May I?”

  “No, you may not,” Jake said, interrupting. “Shove over, Milt, and take a turn with Lou.”

  “But I don’t want—”

  Jake gave him a feral glare and said nothing further. He didn’t have to. Milt took the cue and paired up with Lou.

  The music started. Truvy didn’t move. She stood there. He could sense exactly what she was thinking.

  How do I dare hold his hand in front of these men?

  Did she think about their kiss as much as he did? The sight of her, even in the modestly cut dress, did things to him, evoked feelings he had felt only once in his life before—but those feelings had turned out to be erroneous. That was the exact word for how he characterized marriage to his former wife.

  erroneous: characterized by error; incorrect; mis taken; wrong.

  As the music played on, Jake coaxed Truvy into taking his lead; he held her fingers in his and lifted them to his shoulder. She reluctantly let him. The lightness of her touch sent a wave of heat up his neck where her slender fingertips accidentally grazed his skin. The shirt he wore had no collar and was cambric. The thin, worn fabric was hardly a barrier against the sensation of her hand resting on his delts as he guided her through the motions of the waltz. Three steps. The right-foot pattern. One, two, three. One, two, three.

  His quads melded into the thin volume of her skirts. Awareness of the faint rustle of her petticoat exploded in his mind. Pink. She’d said pink satin. He couldn’t release the thought.

  He stared at her, watched the pink of embarrassment burn on her cheeks. She held her breath. She moved with the flexibility of a broom handle.

  As Jake whirled her in tempo to the music, he wondered what she was feeling. What she was thinking. Did she battle the urge to study him? Did she find him more than “interesting”?

  As he leaned toward her, her gaze collided with his and she stepped on his toe. The impact didn’t affect him. He wore his Creedmoors; the leather on them was thick enough to ward off any pain Truvy’s clumsy feet could inflict.

  Her eyelids quivered upward. “Sorry.”

  “You’re trying to lead. Let me.”

  She looked away rather than face him.

  He’d mistaken her confidence earlier. She wasn’t confident—not in the least. It was evident in the way she refused to meet his gaze. The tension in her body said she feared him—or maybe it was more like she feared men like him, big and powerful. He didn’t know who Moose Thompson was, but he knew he was nothing like the man. Jake wasn’t a die-hard scholar, but he was no slouch either. He didn’t do things like duck and punch the air for sport with other men while they were goofing off in the gymnasium. He wasn’t a clown, a comic, a character. He could be damned serious. He was no rough and coarse ass.

  He kept trying to think of anything political he knew, but all he could come up with was a quote from Teddy: Speak softly and carry a big stick.

  The latter part of the quote applied to him—he felt his body responding to Truvy in a way that if he didn’t get it under control, he would look like an ass. Because they were dancing so close, hip to hip, chest to breast, his groin tightened.

  From behind, Lou bumped into Truvy, knocking her against Jake. The high, round breasts Jake was trying hard to put out of his mind bounced into his chest. Truvy’s nearness, his head down and hers up, allowed him to feel the silky smoothness of her forehead. Instinctively, his arms tightened around her. Every blood vessel inside him pulsed wildly. He didn’t want her to jump back, but he could feel she was ready to by the way her hand moved on his shoulder, by the way she gasped and leaned away from him.

  He held her close, and blurted, “I was reading about Teddy’s diplomatic affairs the other day. He thinks effective government control can be exercised without the formality of colonial rule.”

  “Oh?” she breathlessly replied, easing back. Regretfully, he let her. He had to remind himself there were four other men in the room and he couldn’t exactly be manhandling the teacher. “What were you reading?”

  “The newspaper.”

  “Twice in one week?”

  Jake frowned. “Yes. So what do you think?”

  “Well, I think it’s admirable you’re broadening your reading tastes.”

  “Not that.” Maybe he shouldn’t lead her into a political discussion. He could lose ground here. What was he really thinking anyway? He wanted her to be attracted to him, nothing beyond that. But dammit, he wanted to impress the hell of out her while he had the opportunity, so he chanced it and pursued the matter—because he had an ace up his sleeve. He knew something she didn’t. “What do you think about Teddy’s policy?”

  A cynical curve lit on her mouth. “Are you setting me up for anything, Mr. Brewster?”

  “Why would I do that?”
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  “Because I’m not quite sure you weren’t involved with this—your taking dance instruction while I’m the teacher. You and Edwina could have cooked this whole thing up together. All she does is tell me how wonderful you are.”

  Jake’s heartbeat snagged. “She does?”

  “Yes, but her accolades aren’t working on me.”

  “That’s too bad. And for the record, I didn’t have anything to do with your giving lessons.”

  “I suppose I believe you.” She stepped on his toe again. “Pardon me.” Her apology came fast, and right on its heels, she said, “As for President Roosevelt, he advocates a larger and more efficient army and navy. It’s his way of making a better Department of War after what happened with the Spanish-American War.”

  “I knew that.” Here was his opening, and he took it like a bull running through a corral. “He also wanted the army to have better dental hygiene.”

  “What?” She danced over his foot again. “Pardon.”

  “See, the thing of it is, you can’t have our men going over to foreign countries with their teeth falling out.”

  Puzzlement lifted her brows a fraction. “That’s not one of President Roosevelt’s diplomatic affairs.”

  “You doubt me? Look it up. The U.S. Congress established the U.S. Army Dental Corps to make sure the military had dental hygiene.”

  The previous month, Obtaining Strength magazine had done an article on teeth. The piece was actually on arnica, a homeopathic herb that helped tooth pain, so he took the idea and ran with it—because Jake put the pieces in place and figured out that you had to have teeth in the military.

  “I really don’t think—”

  Jake cut her short. “You don’t have to think with this one, sweetheart, because I have the answer. How can you arm yourself to the teeth if you don’t have any?”

  “What? That makes no sense at all.” She stepped on his foot again, but it was she who winced this time.

  Jake lowered his voice, “Why do you keep wearing shoes that hurt your feet? You’re going to physically harm yourself. You know, in China, women bind their feet and they become cripples, cutting their lives short.” He hadn’t read that bit of trivia. He’d heard it in an opium den. It didn’t take a reading genius to have knowledge.

  “As a woman, my life expectancy is already three years up on yours, so if I shave a couple of years off for vanity’s sake, I’ll still die after you.”

  The recording ended and Truvy got in the last word. Or so he let her think. Jake had some of his own. “You don’t know how to dance, do you, Tru?”

  Shaken, she didn’t answer.

  Milton came over and patted Jake on the back. “Nice show, Bruiser. I guess me and the boys owe you an apology. You can dance. Really well.”

  “It helps,” Jake said, looking directly into Truvy’s eyes, “when the lady I’m dancing with knows what she’s doing.”

  “That she does! A great dancer, Miss Valentine,” Milton said, complimenting her.

  “Thank you,” she mumbled.

  “You know, this dancing sure can get a guy out of breath,” Walfred said as he joined them.

  “I know I am,” Lou huffed, making a show of gasping for air. “I feel like I’ve lifted a bunch of weights.”

  “I’m sure Bruiser doesn’t feel winded,” Milton added, then turned his attention on Truvy. “I’ll bet you didn’t know Bruiser can blow up a hot water bottle with the air from his lungs. To do that, it takes six hundred pounds of pressure.”

  Jake gritted his teeth. He didn’t know how to duck from Milton’s verbal punch without coming back with a jab of his own. And at the moment, his mind had gone blank.

  Even though he’d told that story to the boys over a game of cards and after a lot of downed beer, it wasn’t something he used on women. The feat made him look like a sap, a dunderheaded jock with nothing better to do than blow up a hot water bottle. True, he could do it. Blowing up the rubber apparatus was something he’d done at the World’s Columbian Exposition. He and Sandow were the only two men who could perform such a stunt.

  “I don’t think she’s interested in that,” Jake said, then looked at his motley group of contenders.

  “Oh, but I am,” Truvy declared, lifting the needle from the record. “My, my! A hot water bottle? Blown up! With agility like that, it’s no wonder you were Mr. America.”

  “The Strongest Man on Earth,” Jake said, correcting her through clenched teeth.

  “I didn’t know you were Mr. America, Bruiser,” Walfred commented.

  “I wasn’t. There is no Mr. America.”

  “But if there was, I’m quite certain Mr. Brewster would be the winner!” Truvy’s enthusiasm was so cardboard, her words practically bent over Jake’s head. They annoyed him, more than he cared to admit. But she started things, and he was going to run with them.

  “I can tell you this,” Jake said, “if there was a Miss America contest, our Miss Valentine here should enter it, because she’d win. She moves athletically on the dance floor. And she’s not even wearing sandals.”

  That got her. Her face went pale.

  He didn’t go far enough to thoroughly embarrass her. He wouldn’t let her secret out of the bag about being a sports instructor. He had his limits. And more than a little class.

  “Wouldn’t that be something,” Milton mused aloud. “A Miss America competition where available young ladies perform acrobatic feats on a stage.”

  Lou put in, “Say, now that would be something.”

  “Forget the idea, fellows. There’s never going to be any Miss America competition,” August predicted, “because what woman would enter it?”

  “Prize money would be an incentive.” Lou adjusted the knot in his tie.

  Jake took charge of the conversation before it got out of hand. “Maybe. Right now, you boys need to really work on this waltz.” Truvy stood at the Victrola with a look on her face that said she wanted to whack him. He pretended not to notice. “Miss Valentine, please put the music on again.”

  “I’d be delighted.” Her sincerity was as phony as a thief’s honor. “New partners, please. Mr. Brewster, since you danced so well with Mr. Bernard, I’d like for you to partner up with him once more.”

  Lou jumped to attention. “I’m the woman. Don’t worry, Bruiser, I’ve got it straight now.”

  The music started and Jake’s eyes iced over as Lou headed toward him.

  There was no way out of dancing with the porter. And Truvy knew it.

  She’d had the last word after all.

  December 29, 1901

  Dear Aunt Gertrude and Aunt Beatrice:

  I’m writing to inform you that I’ll be staying on in Harmony for a while longer, until that matter (the one I told you about in my last letter, which you have not yet received) can be cleared up at St. Francis. Nothing to worry over. Although I’m away from Boise, I have some thing to be excited about.

  I’m a dancing instructor.

  Edwina needed a teacher, so I’m taking over her classes—temporarily. My first day was invigorating. I found my first class to be utterly charming. My second . . . well, they were apt pupils who need encour agement. Jake Brewster, the owner of the gymnasium, has students (and himself) enrolled so that they can be more poised on their feet for a Mr. Physique competition.

  Although I find this training method to be commend able, I also find Mr. Brewster to be somewhat uncouth. He’s the tallest man I have ever encountered. And the most muscular, which he feels is an asset. I do not. His manners can be passable when he tries, but he forgets himself at times and acts his shoe size, which I wouldn’t put past a ten. But I shall do my very best with all my classes, the one he’s in included. Next week I’ll meet more students. I’m to teach Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

  I miss you both dearly. Please write. I await news from you. How was your Christmas?

  Mr. Brewster was at Tom and Edwina’s house Christmas Eve and I must say his presence was . . . reas suring. I was
having a harrowing day and he told me a joke about a woman who was tall—as if she wore stilts. I’ve never seen a woman on stilts, but suffice to say that doing so would make my own height seem tolerable.

  Until I hear from you, stay well and happy. I read in the local newspaper that there is to be a rally in Washington this summer for the passage of a suffrage bill. We should all go.

  Love,

  Truvy

  As Truvy addressed an envelope, a knock sounded on her bedroom door and she bid the visitor enter.

  Mrs. Plunkett burst into the room holding onto a dress of old rose nun’s veiling, and trimmed and stitched with taffeta piping. “Look, oh my dear, just look! I had the seamstress put a rush on this breathtaking creation. And you didn’t even realize I took one of your dresses and had her measure it for your size!”

  Truvy could only stare, wordlessly. Her mind floundered for something to say. Horror paralyzed her as she gazed at all that pink.

  The dress’s partially tucked blouse waist had shaped pieces forming tabs over the tucked sleeves. The front opened over a vest of cream white Oriental lace. Yoke pieces formed a border around the skirt hem—a skirt that didn’t come to Truvy’s ankles.

  It was a costume for a young girl, of eighteen at the most, not a garment for a woman seven years older.

  “Stand up, my dear. Let’s hold it up to see how it will look on you.”

  A lump formed in Truvy’s throat. Woodenly, she rose to her feet.

  “Ah! Let me look at you. Hold it up. There now.”

  Truvy’s arms numbly lifted so she could touch the shoulder seams of the dress and keep it in place as Mrs. Plunkett backed away, hands clasped together in front of her bosom. “I knew it! You’re as lovely as my Hildegarde. You’ll be pretty as can be next Monday for your dancing lessons. Madame Teacher!”

  It took every ounce of decorum and the most polite smile Truvy could muster not to gasp in despair.

  Chapter

  11

  “F or some reason, Miss Valentine wasn’t impressed with that hot water bottle story, Bruiser,” Milton commented while testing the stretch in a newly purchased jockstrap. The balbriggan cotton cup dangled in the air as Milt expanded the length of elastic, then released it with a snap. “You know I was when you told it to us. But I detected she was a tad insincere when she called you a former Mr. America. Anybody ought to know there is no such thing, and I believe she knew it, too.”