A Little Learning

by Margot Early

  CHAPTER TEN

  HE’D BEEN AT THE HOUSE for an hour, waiting for Lauren, while Rory and Belle played with stuffed animals in Belle’s room. The warthog that Seamus had bought Rory was bossing around Mouse, Elsie Cow and Belle’s new squid, Squish.

  Finally, Lauren came home.

  Seamus nodded toward Belle’s room, so that Lauren would know they weren’t alone. “Shall we go upstairs to talk?”

  Lauren gave him a wary look, and he thought how pretty she was and how much she looked like Janine. A spark went through him as he remembered Janine’s laughter, her silly streak, vibrancy in the midst of her usual anger and fear. “Yesss,” Lauren said with effort, drawing out the word.

  Still wearing her parka, she followed him up the stairs and down the hall to an unoccupied bedroom with its single bed, its vanity table and two chairs by the filmy curtains. Seamus walked to one of the chairs and sat down.

  Lauren sat on the bed, beside the door, ready to flee.

  He’d done little in the past hour but think—about Rory and the possibility of her living with them in Telluride, but mostly about what he had to say to Lauren and the rules and restrictions he needed to impose. He worried that rules would make her wilder; that if he restricted her, she would make foolish choices just to thwart him.

  “Here are the rules,” he said. “You’ve made friends in Sultan. I think your friends are too old for you and that the males may want more than friendship from you. You’re fourteen years old and you need someone to talk intelligently to you about boys, but I’m not sure it can be me.”

  “It’s never been you. For anything. You didn’t even know when I got my first period.” Her voice accused. “Fiona’s the only one who has ever told me anything. At least she’s open-minded for someone her age. But I guess she’s not coming back.”

  “She won’t be with us as often as she used to be. Her family needs her, which wasn’t the case earlier.” He refocused. “The first rule: You can see your friends at the coffeehouse, the ski area or here. When you’re going out, you tell me where you’re going and when you’ll be back. I don’t want you going to their houses.”

  “Things are different here. Kids of all ages hang out together. They just like to ski. They’re not druggies or anything.”

  “Did you hear me?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yes. I don’t care. We’ll only be here a few more days.”

  “The next rule: Don’t lie to me. Period. If you lie to me, you will be grounded.”

  She looked away, toward the doorway, already gone.

  “Those are the rules for right now. Please follow them.”

  “Mom used to make rules,” she said.

  A cloud lifted and Seamus suddenly saw Janine before him, gazing straight into the eyes of Lauren—or Beau—saying, “Hear this: Don’t lie to me. Ever.”

  Like him.

  Peace came softly, briefly.

  “She made good rules,” Seamus said.

  Lauren stole a look at him. Her wide mouth turned down as she faced the floor.

  “Lauren.”

  She looked up.

  “How would you feel about Rory coming to Telluride with us?”

  Lauren shrugged. “I figured you’d do that.”

  He wasn’t sure what she meant. And right now he was afraid to ask.

  *

  RORY LAY IN her double bed in the pink house, where she’d lived for so many years. She counted. Five… Six, at least…

  What was she going to do?

  Seamus had asked her to go to Telluride, where she had no employment. And that would mean yet another job change on her résumé. She was supposed to choose between working with her father—and perhaps moving into a position of more responsibility at the Sultan Mountain School—or being with Seamus.

  Logic told her what to do. Intuition seconded it. Sultan was her home. And she could not abandon another job after just a few months at it. But could she make Seamus understand?

  She hugged the warthog that Belle had insisted she get. Rory had named it Mrs. Turpin and explained to Belle and Seamus that it came from a story she’d read in which one of the characters had been called a warthog.

  Finally, she reached for the cordless phone beside her bed and dialed the Empire Street house. Seamus answered.

  “It’s Rory.”

  “Hi. I was just thinking about you—again.”

  “I can’t…go with you. I can still see you when I have free time. I can come to Telluride for a day or two sometimes—I’d like that. But my work is here. I need to honor the commitment I’ve made.”

  “For your father.”

  “For me. My résumé shows me hopping from one job to another. I’m actually perfect for the work I’m doing now, and I want to keep doing it. I would feel…flaky…if I went with you.”

  A pause. “I understand. I’m disappointed, but that’s the way it is.”

  Sultan and Telluride were little more than an hour apart. An hour and fifteen or twenty minutes, say.

  “And evenings,” Rory said. “It’s not that far.”

  “On the other hand, you’re going to be out of a place to live soon.”

  “Yes, I know. But I’m always welcome at my grandmother’s. I won’t be homeless.”

  “You could live in Telluride and commute,” Seamus suggested.

  “The weather is too unpredictable. The passes close in bad weather, and then I wouldn’t be able to get to work. Seamus, I want to be closer to you. I just know it’s wrong not to fulfill my duty here. I need to be here, and I’m sorry. I know you can’t just pick up and move your business…”

  “Oh, I’ve thought about it.” Standing in the living room of the Victorian where he and his children had been living for the past several months, he considered it again.

  The plan had seemed perfect. Settle in Sultan. Move his employees to Sultan or let them commute. Even have two studios—one in Telluride, one in Sultan. And it was time for him to get his mind on Ki-Rin, the dragon boy who was his creation and his family’s means of support. He wanted Rory to see his life in Telluride, to be part of that life. He wanted to be tied to her.

  And that was the answer.

  Standing in the living room, holding the phone, watching Caleb play with a tilting maze that had been his choice as a souvenir, he knew simply that he must find a way to join his life to Rory’s, and she must join hers to his.

  Lauren and Beau were upstairs watching a movie and Belle was asleep.

  He said, “Can I come over?”

  “Yes.”

  *

  THEY LAY TOGETHER, dressed, on her Victorian four-poster, Mrs. Turpin sitting on the pillows against the headboard.

  Seamus kissed her as he’d wanted to since they parted that morning. He wrapped his fingers in her hair and brushed his lips to her lush eyebrows and across the freckles on her nose. He found her mouth and touched his lips to hers, each kiss falling upon the one before. He said, “Will you marry me?”

  Rory grew perfectly still. The room around her seemed cavernous, dark, magical. Will you marry me?

  She had been asked once before, by a boy she’d thought of as selfish and immature.

  This was entirely different.

  He was so sure. But was she sure, as well?

  “I still couldn’t live in Telluride,” she said at last.

  “Yes, but we’d be united. I want that with you—I want you to be part of my family.”

  The prospect terrified her, and she couldn’t have said why. At the same time, it seemed like her destiny, as if Seamus and his kin were made for her and she for them.

  “I will,” she said. “But maybe not right away? I think I’m a little afraid.”

  He kissed her again. “Thank you.” Another kiss. “Thank you.”

  *

  “TOMORROW’S YOUR DAY OFF,” her father said to Rory on the Lees’ last day in Sultan. “What are you going to do?”

  She and Seamus had told no one of their engagement.
Seamus planned to tell his children today, and Rory had not offered to be there. If the children objected to her, she wanted them to have the freedom to say so to Seamus privately.

  Rory did, however, want to tell her father, her grandmother and Samantha, and she would do that today.

  The first person was the hardest one to inform….

  “I’m going to drive to Telluride, just for the day.”

  Her father gazed at her, his eyes direct, unyielding. “You remember what I said.”

  “Actually,” she interrupted, “we’re going to spend the day finding an engagement ring.”

  Kurt Gorenzi sat down. He touched the arms of his chair. He looked up and smiled. “Well, good. I like that. That’s actually great.”

  Rory could see that he meant it.

  “But I’ll hate to lose you,” he said. “Here, I mean.”

  Yes, Rory thought, no use pretending you hate to give me away like a traditional father, you hate for your daughter to leave the home where she was raised, all your protection, everything you never gave me. She dismissed the bitter thoughts.

  “You won’t be losing me. I’m going to continue living in Sultan, maybe with Grandma. I told Seamus that I need to honor my commitment to this job. I’m proud of what I’m doing here, and I don’t want to leave. So…we’re going to be together sometimes and apart sometimes.”

  Her father nodded, thinking it over. Again, he smiled his crusty smile. “You’ve turned out fine, Rory,” he said.

  *

  SONDRA SAID, “YES, I’m happy for you, Rory. Just don’t rush. You don’t know what marriage is. It will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done, no matter how much you love him.”

  Her grandmother had been a widow for decades and had never remarried, although she certainly could have, Rory reflected. Sondra Nichols was beautiful still.

  “You have freedom now,” the older woman continued. “That’s something you can’t buy. When you marry, it’s gone. I’m not saying there aren’t positive aspects to marriage. I’m just telling you to be sure.”

  “I’m sure,” Rory said. “And I’ve told him I want to hold off on the ceremony for a little while. To be absolutely sure.”

  Her grandmother embraced her. They stood beside the bed in the room that had been Rory’s growing up. Her grandmother was pleased to have her back.

  Sondra said, “So many changes for you, Rory. Desert’s moving away. Her house being sold. Working for your father. But you do seem happy.”

  “I am.”

  “And I think it’s better,” Sondra said, “easier for you, that is, that the mother of those poor children is dead, rather than simply divorced from their father. Well, easier in some ways and harder in others.”

  “She’ll always be their mother,” Rory said.

  “I’m not being callous, dear, and I understand that their grief will never completely heal. I just mean that the last thing you need, in taking on a husband and four children, is some kind of rival for the affection of those children. Or for his, for that matter.”

  Rory nodded, not wanting to hear any more of this advice. Janine was dead, and absolutely Rory would not have had her dead. If Janine had lived and remained married to Seamus, Rory doubted that Seamus would ever have fallen in love with her or she with him.

  “I’ve been insensitive to say these things,” Sondra told her. “I just know that everything that happened when your mother died had been set in motion from the time she met your father.”

  Rory sat on her bed. She lifted her face to see the older woman’s. The death of her daughter had been the most painful loss in Sondra Nichols’s life, and Rory knew that.

  “I think the way your father was with her,” Sondra said, “is something like he has been with you. Distant, uninvolved. He’s a man’s man.”

  “He can talk just fine,” Rory said. She knew she hadn’t expressed what she wanted Sondra to know. “I mean, he knows how to say what he thinks and feels. He has talked to me a few times now, since I’ve been working for SMS, and he’s told me some truly nice things.”

  “Yes, you’ve shared that with me,” her grandmother replied. “And I’m glad, Rory. I don’t believe that he’s a bad man at all. I simply think he was emotionally inaccessible, where your mother was concerned. She needed to talk about her feelings, and he couldn’t do that. He came from a different culture; the mining culture, if the truth be told.”

  Her father, too, Rory remembered, had mentioned that his background was quite different from her mother’s. That had been an element of his warning about becoming involved with Seamus.

  Remembering that, she shivered. What if she couldn’t give Seamus what he needed in a mate? What if he needed someone better educated or more worldly? He might not realize that immediately. He might not see it until it was too late.

  We won’t marry right away. We’ll have a long engagement, she reminded herself.

  “Well, Seamus isn’t emotionally inaccessible,” she said at last. “Not with me, at any rate. And he’s doing the best he can with the kids.”

  Her grandmother touched her cheek. “I love you, Rory darling,” she said.

  *

  SEAMUS HAD DECIDED to tell his children together. He knew Rory thought they should each be encouraged to express their true feelings about the engagement. Perhaps he was a coward for telling them all together, where sibling approval might drown out any dissenters.

  So they assembled in the living room of the Empire Street house, their belongings half packed for their departure. He’d asked them to sit down there; he’d said he had something to tell them.

  “We’re moving here,” Lauren predicted, without enthusiasm. She’d seemed depressed ever since the conversation when Seamus had given her the new rules. But maybe the rules weren’t the reason. He suspected that Jay Norris had wasted no time in spreading the word that Lauren was fourteen years old.

  All four children sat on the couch, with Seuss at Beau’s feet, and Seamus drew up a chair across from them. “Rory and I are engaged to be married.”

  There was no instantaneous reaction, either of pleasure or displeasure.

  Belle’s eyebrows drew together slightly. “She’ll be our mom?”

  “Stepmom,” said Lauren, with less sensitivity than she usually showed her little sister. “Like in Cinderella.”

  Thank you, Lauren, Seamus thought.

  Belle said, “Rory’s not mean.”

  Caleb said, “Is that all? Can I go outside?”

  Seamus considered his younger son. “You don’t have anything you want to say?”

  “I like Rory,” he said and shrugged. Uncomplicated. The easiest of Seamus’s children, which often made Seamus wonder if Caleb would somehow slip through the cracks, simply because he didn’t demand attention by acting out or behaving as a loner.

  “Yes, you can go outside. If you’re using your snowskate, wear your helmet.”

  Caleb nodded resignedly, pushed off the couch and stood.

  Beau stood, too, without asking. “I’m going to walk Seuss.”

  “Beau?” Seamus looked up at him, waiting for Beau to meet his eyes. “Anything you want to say?”

  Beau shook his head.

  And gave Seamus not a clue to his feelings, but simply picked up Seuss’s leash and said, “Here, boy.”

  “You don’t want to hear what I have to say,” challenged Lauren.

  “That may be, but I’d prefer you to say it, anyway,” Seamus answered, almost without thinking.

  She snorted. “I don’t think it matters what any of us think or say or want, anyhow. All that matters is what you want.”

  Seamus didn’t know how to respond to this. Was it true? Of course it mattered what his children wanted. But would their feelings change his decision to marry Rory? Absolutely not.

  “You’re probably going to want to move here to be with her and there’s nothing in this town, and the school’s not that good,” Lauren continued.

  “I got the impressi
on you wanted to live here.”

  Lauren shrugged.

  “You like going to fire-juggling classes with Rory, don’t you?”

  “That doesn’t mean I want you to marry her.”

  “I’ve never thought it did mean that.”

  Belle said, “I want Rory to be my mom.”

  “Well, speak for yourself,” snapped Lauren.

  “She just did,” Seamus pointed out. He smiled at Belle and asked her, “Where’s Squish?”

  “He’s playing with Mouse. He wants to come out here, though,” Belle said, and she ran toward her room to get her toys.

  “So is she moving to Telluride or are we moving here?” Lauren asked gloomily.

  “Neither, at the moment. She doesn’t want to leave her job here, and I can’t pack up the studio in a moment. Also, I need to get back to work.”

  Lauren shrugged and sat down on the floor to play with Belle.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  FIONA AWAITED THEM in Telluride, and Belle, in particular, greeted her happily. Rory had followed the Lees in her own car; the splint allowed her to grasp the steering wheel with her left hand as well as her fully functional right. She planned to return to Sultan later on in the day. Not only did she have to work the next morning, but both she and Samantha had to move out of Desert’s house, and then clean the Victorian.

  Still, Rory had promised to come to Telluride, to visit Seamus’s studio and to shop with him for an engagement ring.

  His house was large, built in Victorian style and painted pale yellow with white trim. However, despite the vintage exterior, the house was actually modern. Seamus and Janine had been the first owners. Now, as Seamus and Rory walked under oaks much older than the structure, Seamus said, “First, let me show you the house. Then, we’ll drive into town.”

  They entered through the mudroom. Even after Janine’s death the family had continued to use this back door as their main entrance to the house. Seeing the laundry hampers and the washer and dryer, Rory remembered vividly what Seamus had told her.

  He led her through the kitchen and into a dining room with Spode china on the walls and in the china cabinet, then on to the living room, which was furnished with antiques. What struck Rory at once was that the house appeared to have been decorated professionally. It wasn’t like a home where people actually lived, but more like a vacation home for someone wealthy.