Cinderfella

by Linda Winstead Jones

  Cinderfella

  Linda Jones

  This book is dedicated to my middle baby, Brian,

  the only one of my three sons who will read a

  book without the dreaded threat of his mother’s singing.

  Here’s to happy endings.

  Prologue

  Kansas, 1895

  It wasn’t just a ranch, it was an empire. It wasn’t just land, it was his kingdom.

  Stuart Haley shoved his hands into his pockets and squinted against the golden sunset’s radiance that poured through the window. The setting sun shone on this fine house, lit the study that was his domain in this, his castle.

  What would become of his empire when he was gone? Felicity, the eldest and most practical of his three daughters, was firmly settled in Boston with that physician husband of hers and a little girl of her own. Jeanette, who had been flighty all her life, was now content to make a home in Philadelphia with her husband, a lawyer for God’s sake! They had their own lives, families of their own. It seemed neither of his older daughters had any concern for their childhood home.

  He never should’ve allowed them to go East. His wife, Maureen, had been so insistent on seeing her daughters properly educated, and one after another his girls had headed from home for a so-called better life. Hogwash! He should’ve insisted that one of them stay here and marry a local boy who would become the son he’d never had, but he’d never had the heart to deny Maureen anything.

  Charmaine was his last chance. If he was to see this kingdom passed on to his own blood, it would be through her. His youngest daughter was his last chance to save this empire.

  “Where are your thoughts, Stuart?”

  Maureen’s soft question wiped the frown from his face, and when he turned to see her standing in the doorway of his study his heart beat a little faster. She was nearly forty-five years old, he was just past forty-eight, they’d been married twenty-seven years — and the sight of her still took his breath away.

  “I was just thinking about Charmaine. She’ll be here in three days.”

  Maureen’s smile was brilliant. If anything, she was more beautiful today than she’d been at seventeen, when he’d met her and fallen instantly in love. Her hair was no longer a pale blond, but was a light brown streaked with touches of gray. Her body had matured with the birth of three children and the passing years, but she was slender and graceful as ever. “I’m excited, too.”

  He’d never uttered a word of displeasure to Maureen about not having sons. He’d rather have her than a dozen sons to follow in his footsteps. The girls had come not much more than a year apart, each more beautiful than the last, and then — nothing. Not because they hadn’t tried. The doctor had no answers, and Maureen had finally accepted her inability to have more children as the will of God. It had rarely been mentioned in the past fifteen years.

  “Maybe she’ll decide to stay,” he said hopefully.

  Maureen crossed the room, gliding gracefully across the thick carpet and stepping past his polished walnut desk until she stood beside him. She slipped a slender arm around his waist and leaned against his side. “She might not, you know,” she said softly. “This is just a visit, and she agreed only because your letters have been so insistent. She’d just as soon wait to see us when we can make the trip to Boston.”

  “She does like the city, doesn’t she?”

  Maureen nodded. “Remember her last letter? It was three pages long and exclusively about that masked ball she attended. Felicity and Howard evidently thought it much too foolhardy, but Charmaine had a grand time.”

  Charmaine was his only hope. Somehow he had to convince her that there was nothing in Boston that she couldn’t have in Salley Creek. “We could throw a masked ball right here.”

  Maureen laughed lightly. “Here? Why, there’s never been such a thing in Salley Creek.”

  “There’s got to be a first time for everything.” He would show Charmaine that Salley Creek could be just as exciting as Boston. There would be music, food, people from miles around. Men, lots of good, solid, Kansans who would be happy to marry into the Haley family.

  “I don’t know. . . . ”

  “Let’s do it.” It was the perfect solution, and his mind was made up. Maureen would try to change it, but the decision had already been made. “Why, Charmaine might even meet a man who can convince her to stay here where she belongs.”

  “Stuart!” Maureen stepped away from him and stared up with shock in those big blue eyes of hers. “You’re not thinking. . . . ”

  He couldn’t stop the grin that spread across his face.

  “You are!”

  “And why not?” He pulled her back into his embrace. “If I put out the word that I’m looking for a husband for Charmaine, every eligible man for a hundred miles will be here. There’s bound to be one —”

  “Stuart!”

  “One man who can convince Charmaine to stay here where she belongs.” It was a chance he had to take. “Dammit, Maureen, what have I worked for all my life, if not for my family? What’s going to become of this place when we’re gone?”

  Those blue eyes softened. “I should have given you a son.”

  He placed a finger over Maureen’s lips to gently silence her. “You know I wouldn’t trade any one of my girls for a son. I have no regrets about my life, and goodness knows there’s nothing like having four beautiful women in the house to keep a man on his toes.”

  His finger slid away, and he bent to kiss her. Her lips were welcoming, tender, and anxious. She pulled her mouth away from his, but continued to hold on tight.

  “Don’t get your hopes up about Charmaine staying. She’s been away eight years, and not once in her letters or during our visits East has she expressed a desire to come back to Kansas to live. She’s building a new life for herself in Boston, with the help of Felicity and Howard.”

  “You don’t know,” he began, turning with Maureen in his arms and heading for the door, “that there’s nothing and no one who can convince her to stay. We’ll have that masked ball, and just see what happens.”

  “But Stuart,” Maureen protested weakly.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” he said, propelling her toward the stairs and their bedroom.

  One

  Odd, this flutter in her chest that could only be called excitement. She hadn’t expected it at all, but the closer the train came to Salley Creek the more decidedly eager Charmaine felt.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” she breathed, turning from the window to her traveling companion.

  Ruth looked less than impressed, but then the poor girl had been sour since their departure from Boston, even though Felicity had promised a nice bonus for this service that was above and beyond that of a ladies’ maid. Charmaine would have been quite content to travel alone but Howard would have none of that, so Charmaine found herself saddled with a young and inexperienced ladies’ maid who evidently didn’t like her job or traveling.

  Ruth glanced beyond Charmaine’s shoulder, as if perhaps she’d missed something in her earlier perusal of the landscape. “It’s lovely, in its own simple way,” she said tactfully.

  Lovely. Charmaine ignored the hint of reservation in Ruth’s voice. Green, rolling hills as far as she could see, the tall grasses swaying in the wind. Sunshine touching it all with a gentle golden light. Sky so wide and so bright a blue it nearly hurt her eyes to look at it. Lovely, and she hadn’t missed it until this very moment.

  Her homecoming was spoiled by the certainty of her father’s plans. Yes, she knew exactly what he wanted, what he expected of her. He tried to be subtle, the poor dear, but it simply wasn’t in his nature. A few loudly mumbled sentences on his last visit to Boston, terse lines scribbled at the bottoms of her mother�
��s letters — his intentions were quite clear. He wanted her to come home and stay, marry a man who would follow in his footsteps, and have a baby every year until the Haley land — all 720 acres — was bursting with them.

  How could she make her father see that she was a modern woman, with ideas and plans of her own? She would forever be the baby in his eyes, she feared, and he would never approve of her plan to stay in Boston and assist Howard by giving lectures and distributing manuals to educate women. Charmaine was certain she was meant for greater things than domesticity, and working with Howard gave her such a sense of purpose. Still, Stuart Haley would never understand why one of his daughters might choose to never marry.

  They were almost there. She could see the buildings at the edge of Salley Creek. Goodness, it had grown in eight years, but it was still such a small town. The buildings were rough and low, and only one rose above two stories. The entire tiny town was dusty and crude, in a charming way, and was utterly isolated. How could she convince her father that she could never be happy here, except on an occasional visit?

  Charmaine nervously smoothed the skirt of her blue serge traveling suit. Why, she just wouldn’t mention it. When he brought up the subject she would be vague and pretend not to understand. She could do that, couldn’t she? Pretend not to understand and keep her opinions to herself. Keeping her opinions to herself had never been her strong suit, but in this case she would make the effort. And when her father gave up, as he finally must, she would visit and rest, spend time with her mother, and see old friends.

  In spite of her nervousness, she smiled widely. Eula was still in Salley Creek, married to the owner of the mercantile, and the mother of two. Delia was teaching school now, unmarried and living with her brother, since their folks had given up the farm and moved back to St. Louis. Those were the only two she was sure of. So many of her old chums had moved on, searching, as she was herself, for a better life.

  Ash Coleman was still there, she was sure, even though her mother never mentioned him in her letters. Maureen Haley had never approved of her youngest daughter’s childish infatuation with the son of the farmer whose land adjoined theirs to the west, and Charmaine remembered still that the very idea had made her father livid.

  Ash was firmly planted in her mind, an indelible part of her memories, but in the past few years the clarity of his features had faded. Sometimes, for a fleeting moment, she could picture him so distinctly, and then he’d be gone. Ash had been beautiful at seventeen, when she’d last seen him, and for all of her life in Kansas the sight of him had made her heart beat a little faster. She’d even declared — to Felicity and Jeanette more than once and on one mortifying occasion to Ash himself — that one day she was going to marry him.

  Goodness, why was she wasting her thoughts on such childish memories? Ash Coleman was probably already married and raising a brood on his father’s farm. After all, he was twenty-five years old.

  They were slowing down, approaching the station at last. Charmaine fluffed the oversized bow at her throat and checked her fashionably small felt hat to see that it was seated properly. She couldn’t believe that she was so excited about a two-week visit in a town where nothing ever happened. There would be no seminars, no heated discussions of the latest manuals over coffee and cake, no theater, no concerts. Why, if she were to discuss the latest thoughts on women’s rights, she would likely shock all of Salley Creek. If she were to discuss the latest findings on the more intimate aspects of marital relations, she’d likely be run out of town on a rail. This was, after all, a sleepy town where nothing ever happened and time stood still while the rest of the world marched forward.

  Oh well, in her heart it would always be home. And it was, after all, just for two weeks.

  She saw her father’s head towering above the rest as she stepped down onto the platform. He was wearing a great smile, a grin that deepened the wrinkles on his weathered face. Less than a minute later she was lifted from her feet in a great bear hug.

  “I can’t believe you’re finally home,” he said as he set Charmaine on her feet.

  It sounded so permanent, finally home, but she wouldn’t argue with him now and ruin this homecoming. Her mother’s hug was gentler, but no less loving.

  After Ruth was introduced and arrangements were made for the luggage to be delivered, they all walked from the depot to the house. Charmaine was positioned comfortably and closely between her parents.

  “You’re too durn skinny,” her father said as he slipped his arm over her shoulder.

  “She is not,” her mother said with a despairing sigh. “She’s perfectly lovely and looks very grown up.”

  Charmaine didn’t correct her father with the admission that she was far from skinny, nor did she tell her mother that at twenty-one she was grown up. She was too busy looking past her parents to the bustling town that was familiar and at the same time very unfamiliar. There were two mercantiles and a feed store, and with customers coming and going they all seemed to flourish. The bank had doubled in size, and there was a restaurant right next door. The post office now had its own building, leaving the funeral parlor the lone occupant of a building they had once shared.

  The boarding house, the single three-story building in town, had expanded and was freshly painted. Right next door to the boarding house was a small pharmacy, and there was a sign in the window that advertised ice cream. At the end of the street stood the newly built stone schoolhouse, a building that had recently replaced the log cabin where the children of Salley Creek had attended school for thirty years.

  There were lots of people out and about, most of them strangers to Charmaine. Some of the faces that turned her way were vaguely familiar, but names eluded her. Eight years hadn’t seemed like such a long time until this very moment.

  Ruth was evidently unimpressed. She kept her eyes on the boardwalk and followed silently.

  Memories flooded Charmaine as she walked down the boardwalk, sandwiched between her parents who were chattering happily. The move from the original ranch cabin to the big house at the edge of town, when she was six years old. That crotchety old schoolmaster, Mr. Warren. Her first heartbreak at the age of ten, when Zachary Middleton had told her he didn’t play with girls. She could almost taste the lemon drops her father had always bought for her when he purchased his tobacco from the mercantile.

  She remembered Ash Coleman laughing at her when she declared she was going to marry him one day, and how well she recalled watching him ride away with his father, laughing still, a man at sixteen while she was still a puny and unformed twelve.

  He’d called her Runt, after hearing Jeanette use that dreaded nickname once as they left church. It had always been the bane of Charmaine’s existence that she wasn’t tall and willowy like her sisters. She’d always been short, and though she’d been a late bloomer, her breasts and hips had rounded quickly. Even now, she wished for a leaner and taller frame, a more austere silhouette. There were some people who simply refused to take you seriously if you were short, and rounded in the wrong places.

  A squeal that was uncannily familiar after all these years made Charmaine stop in her tracks. She whirled around in time to catch the woman who hurled herself forward.

  “I can’t believe you’re really here!” Eula said as she squeezed once and then stepped back, her hands resting comfortably on Charmaine’s arms.

  The voice hadn’t changed, but Charmaine was sure she wouldn’t have recognized Eula if she’d passed her on a Boston street. Not only was the dark-haired woman considerably taller than she’d been at thirteen, but she’d put on several pounds with each of the two children she’d given birth to, a fact she’d complained about in her frequent letters. Charmaine, to her own dismay, had barely grown an inch in height since leaving Salley Creek. She stood a mere five-feet-one-inch tall, if she stretched out as much as possible. She had to look up into Eula’s face.

  “Neither can I. Can you come home with me now? Talk to me while I settle in? We have so mu
ch to catch up on.” A visit with Eula would also postpone the inevitable confrontation with her father.

  Eula shook her head quickly. “I can’t. This is a busy time of the day for us. The only reason Winston allowed me to run out here and greet you is so I can give a message to Mrs. Haley.”

  Eula straightened her spine and turned to face Charmaine’s mother. “Winston is certain he can have those supplies for you in two weeks, and Mrs. O’Neal is going to help me with the masks.”

  “Two weeks?” Maureen Haley repeated, obviously disappointed.

  “Masks?” Charmaine looked to her mother for an answer.

  “Two weeks, ma’am, and that’s paying extra freight costs for the materials that are coming in from San Francisco.”

  Maureen Haley had always been unfailingly practical, and she was calm now. “That doesn’t leave us much time for preparation, does it? Oh well, we’ll just have the party in three weeks.”

  “Party?”

  Eula turned her smiling face back to Charmaine. “Why, everyone’s so excited they’re about to bust. Just think of it, a masked ball right here in Salley Creek. I’ve already started working on my gown.”

  “I’m supposed to return to Boston in two weeks.” Charmaine directed this statement to her mother, who continued to smile serenely.

  “Another week or two won’t make all that much difference, now will it?” she replied.

  “Not a bit,” Stuart Haley thundered.

  Charmaine rolled her eyes at her father’s hearty and much too jolly interruption. Fortunately, no one saw but Eula, and her only reaction was a slight lifting of dark eyebrows.

  “There’s nothing in Boston,” he declared with finality, “that won’t still be there in a month or two.”

  Charmaine sighed. Had her two weeks already turned into a month or two?

  Eula hurried back to the mercantile and to her husband, Winston, and Charmaine was physically turned about by her father’s big hands on her shoulders.