Reed Malloy said nothing for a moment. His blue eyes merely narrowed at her. Then he stood up, dominating the room. Charlotte held her breath a moment while he seemed to come to some decision. She waited for him to yell at her, grab the children, and burst from her house.
Instead, perfectly under control, he said, "It is I who am sorry, Miss Sanborn, but there is no choice here."
About to protest, she let out her breath in a rush, but he continued before she could speak.
"You have ample space, which was my main concern for a woman living alone, even if the house is in need of some repairs. As for your objections, you have made no valid ones, nor can make any as far as I can see."
"Really, Mr. Malloy—"
"Miss Sanborn, your young cousins will be no financial burden to you as their upbringing has been generously provided for. All you need offer them is shelter, basic human kindness, and a moral and intellectual example, which I believe you are capable of if I have read your works correctly. Can you not offer all of these?"
Of course she could. That was hardly the point. It was that no one had asked and had someone done so, she would have said emphatically that she had never had the desire to be a mother—nor had she any such desire now, not even when faced with the two sweet little urchins seated in her parlor. She refused to be bullied by his tactics.
"Mr. Malloy, neither my character nor my house is at issue." He inclined his head slightly, acknowledging the way she had maneuvered out of that trap.
"Rather the question is my inclination, which is strongly to the negative. I live a solitary life here." She gestured around her, taking in the house and the stretch of land outside her window.
Her father had set up his homestead just a fifteen-minute walk outside of town, not too far from a mining camp in the foothills but far enough away from the bustle of Spring City that wagons weren't going by their window.
In recent years, the city bustled infrequently, only when miners came through discussing gold strikes or travelers mistook the area for one of the healing hot mineral springs. And even that was happening less and less. Spring City was down to one theater, for both opera and plays, and it was threatening to close any day now.
"There are no other children close by, though there is a school in town," she added thoughtfully, then bit her tongue before continuing. "Mr. Malloy, I am not a heartless individual. I wish the children no ill will."
She looked toward the children now. Having comprehended that the adults were discussing where they were to live, they knew instinctively that they were not wanted by her—no doubt relieved, Charlotte thought. They stood up, once more anchoring themselves to Reed Malloy, who absently stroked the top of the boy's head.
"Honestly," Charlotte rushed on, feeling like the hard-hearted cad she was professing not to be, "I just want what's best for them, and that does not mean living here in a remote environment with a peace-and-quiet loving author, who has absolutely no idea about raising children. Can you understand that?"
"At least we are in agreement that we both want what's best for the children," he said as if he hadn't heard anything else she'd said. He looked down at each child, and Charlotte could see that he cared for them. Then he looked up sharply.
"And your suitability is a question in my mind. That's why I didn't just blindly follow Ann Connors's last wishes, but accompanied them out here myself." He thought a moment. "Yes, if we're both worried about the same thing, then the answer seems obvious, wouldn't you agree?"
Charlotte began nodding even before she asked, "And what would that be?"
"Why, for me to stay here with you and the children, of course, to assess the situation. If I find that you are unacceptable after all, then I'll wire their grandmother, and we'll see if other arrangements can be made."
Seemingly satisfied with his pronouncement, he began to usher the children out of the room. "Okay, little ones, upstairs to your room. Auntie Charlotte will show you the way. Won't you?" He turned to her, the look on his face daring her to contradict his words in front of his tired wards.
Charlotte was still reeling from his highhanded manner, the way he seemed to treat her as if she were auditioning for a stage role. Unacceptable, indeed! Not to mention the address of "auntie," and the utterly improper and impossible suggestion that he should stay under the same roof with her.
Despite all that, after taking another look at the children's faces, she nodded again. She brushed past them and headed for the stairs. She was sure she had said no, and very firmly, too. Yet somehow, all three of them seemed to be staying.
"Meanwhile," Reed Malloy continued behind her, "I'll ride to town and wire my office that I'll be delayed indefinitely. Do you need me to pick up something for supper, Miss Sanborn?"
"Oh, yes," Charlotte said gratefully, forgetting for a moment that, if it weren't for him, she wouldn't need to be providing supper for anyone but herself. He was the source of all this confusion, but she thought only of the empty cupboards and bare shelves in her pantry. Even her root cellar was rootless! "Yes, whatever you and the children are accustomed to, Mr. Malloy."
She watched as he gave her a quick nod before vacating her front hall. The infernal man seemed to be quite pleased with himself! To her sudden horror, she realized she was alone with the children, and she didn't even know their names.
Chapter 2
"Well, here we are," Charlotte said, smiling weakly. First things first, she thought. She turned to the boy, who looked a few years younger than his sister.
"What's your name?" she asked, realizing how terrible it was that she didn't even know her own kin's names.
The little boy seemingly felt the same way for he screwed up his face, which instantly became beet red, and then burst into tears as he reached suddenly for his sister's sleeve.
"He's Thomas, ma'am," the girl said at once. "He doesn't take to strangers. Are you really our aunt? Why are you alone? Are you a spinster?"
"Oh dear," Charlotte murmured. Maybe children were as difficult as she'd always suspected. She had given up with her brother, letting Thaddeus fairly run free, after her parents deaths; it had taken all of her time just to keep the house together and food on the table. Some said he'd turned out to be a bad egg—though not to her face.
Without answering any of the little girl's questions, Charlotte tried again.
"And what's your name?" She hoped for a better response than what she'd received from young Thomas.
"I'm Lillian Winifred Connors."
Was it Charlotte's imagination or had a tone of superiority crept into this little person's voice?
"As to your questions, Miss Lillian, yes, you may consider me your aunt." She thought it best not to go into the technicality that they were actually second cousins. "I'm alone because I choose to be, though I believe you are correct in classifying me as a spinster."
Charlotte was leading the way up the stairs as she spoke. "Careful of the fifth step up," she added over her shoulder, and they all stepped over the stair with the splintered wood and missing baluster.
Charlotte opened the second door at the left of the landing. "I'm afraid you'll both have to share this room if Mr. Malloy is going to stay, too. There's nothing in the way of toys or—" She broke off as the children stood in the middle of the sunlit room and surveyed it.
It was fairly pleasant with its four-poster bed and a bureau that had belonged to Charlotte's grandmother, which her parents brought with them from the east. Her mother's rocking chair was in one corner of the room, and Charlotte noticed a cobweb across the other. She hustled over to sweep it away with her hand.
"I'll get you some clean towels and you can wash up. Perhaps just a sponge bath for starters? The bathing room's just next door, and the water closet is beside that when you need it. I'll bring some water up."
They hadn't said a word; probably it was extremely different from what they were used to, but she couldn't be expected to have a full-blown nursery at hand.
At least there
was an indoor "outhouse," thanks to her mother's persistence and her father's ingenuity with one small windmill. She remembered the day that she and her brother, still a toddler, watched her father install the contraption that pumped water to a pipe in the attic where gravity sent it down to the water closet and the kitchen faucet. Unfortunately, the water stopped there, which meant she still had to haul it to the bath room.
Charlotte went downstairs to the pump to draw one bucket of cool, clean water. In the bathroom, she deposited half in the chamber set's blue pitcher and the rest in the accompanying wash bowl on a low table with a porcelain top. From the bureau in her own room, she then took two towels.
By the time she returned, the children appeared a bit more relaxed, no longer standing together like huddling sheep. Thomas was peering out the window at his new surroundings, and Lillian was opening drawers, which she closed with a bang as Charlotte entered the room.
"That's all right, you can look around." They both just stared at her so she put the towels down on the bed. "Why don't you get cleaned up full chisel and then take a quick nap until Mr. Malloy returns. Then we'll have supper. Okay?"
She had no idea how to speak to children, but this was apparently a failure, she thought, heading down to her study. They had not responded, though Thomas looked as if he might explode into tears again at any moment. Man alive! How would she ever get her work done and meet her deadline in two days?
If Mr. Malloy intended to see whether she was fit to raise children, she would just show him how utterly unfit she was. He would come to understand for himself that she didn't have the time for this, and then he would take the children and get back in his wagon and then onto the train heading east.
Yes, she thought, feeling better as she settled behind what used to be her father's desk in the cluttered study; everything should wrap up off the reel, if not immediately.
Thirty minutes later, she heard horse's hooves again and realized that she had been lost in her work and hadn't heard the children making any sounds of movement overhead. She supposed they'd chosen to nap before washing.
Perhaps she should check before Reed Malloy entered, she thought, standing up at the nervous flutter in her stomach. Then Charlotte caught herself and sat down again. No, of course not; she'd let him go upstairs, after all she wasn't the motherly type and wasn't about to start proving otherwise.
There was a brief knock, then he entered the hall without waiting as if he already lived there and was a family member, instead of an unwanted guest. Charlotte merely stared at him through her open study door, not moving from behind the desk.
"I hope you don't mind," he said, glancing at her before dumping what appeared to be coarse feed bags on her hall floor. "They're not as dirty as they look." He ran a hand through his dark hair causing a lock to fall over his forehead in rather rakish abandon. "I have a few more in the wagon."
Charlotte stood up, wondering why the sight of a male in her hallway caused such a flurry of odd feelings—in her brain, in her stomach, even in her knees, which seemed less steady. Inspection of the bags revealed them to contain not grain but apples, freshly baked bread, eggs, a fully cured ham, and some assorted vegetables.
He'd gone whole hog, Charlotte thought. The house hadn't seen food such as this since she still had her younger brother to take care of. For Thaddeus, she would have prepared a feast every day if she'd had the money or the culinary know-how.
As for herself, she occasionally received cooked meals from her nearest neighbor, Sarah Cuthins, the wife of Spring City's doctor. When Sarah's only daughter had married nearly a decade earlier and moved away, she had turned her kindly eye on the eccentric, young writer. Often, though, Charlotte went into town for a mid-day meal.
Good lord, it occurred to her that Reed Malloy would expect her to drop everything and cook for them. Her brother could have told him not to expect too much in that regard. Plain to simple was Charlotte's limited range of cooking, and she'd stopped even that when Thaddeus left four years earlier.
Still, she decided to make a hospitable effort and began to tote the food down the hall, past the parlor, and into the kitchen where she found a few more cobwebs and not the thinnest layer of dust, mixed in with some tinned goods and a few sacks of cornmeal and potatoes. All she ever used the kitchen for was heating water for bathing, coffee or tea, and cooking the occasional egg.
She placed the bags of food carefully in the middle of the maple block table, where her mother's cook had made tasty creations before Charlotte had to dismiss the woman upon her parent's death. Locating a duster, she began to wipe down the surfaces. At that moment, Reed Malloy's dark head appeared in the doorway, followed by the rest of him and two more bags.
"You have a grist of food here; it would seem enough for your entire visit," she commented.
"Oh, probably not, Miss Sanborn, but it's a start."
Charlotte stared at him. There was that feeling again—the strangeness of not being alone and of there being a man, a distinctly attractive man, in her kitchen. She watched as his deep blue eyes quickly took in the state of its disuse.
"I have to tell you, Mr. Malloy, that I find this extremely all-overish."
He raised his dark eyebrows, clearly puzzled. She set down the duster.
"Uncomfortable, I mean. Your staying here is unconventional to say the least, and—"
"If you had welcomed the children with open arms," he interrupted her, "I would be on the next train out of here in the morning." His eyes had taken on that steely look again, as if he were thinking something unkind about her. She swallowed.
"I told you, that is out of the question."
"Well, then," he said, brushing his hands together, dismissing the topic. "If you can clean up here a bit and fill a kettle and another pot with water, I'll bring in some wood from...?" His eyebrows raised again.
She was speechless for a moment, caught up by the manner in which he was taking over her kitchen, not to mention her life.
"The wood pile is on the left. I'll show you," she added, unable to help the overly sweet tone of her voice.
Charlotte was starting to wonder why she hadn't just sold the small homestead and moved herself into rooms in town. There would have been no question of dumping two children on her if she'd lived above a restaurant or the general store. She made a mental note to check into that after Reed Malloy and his charges left.
"Over there." She gestured with the kettle to the stacked wood under a small lean-to, and then proceeded to prime the pump with a vigorous up-and-down motion. Luckily, Sarah's cousin didn't mind splitting wood for a small fee, and one of her father's old friends maintained the pump.
Once in the kitchen again, Reed began a fire in the stove, and Charlotte started washing down the table and counters for the first time in a long time. She emptied the bags onto the now clean table and gingerly began organizing piles of food. Suddenly, she glanced up to find Reed's blue eyes upon her.
"Eventually, it has to be prepared," he mentioned dryly.
She nodded at that. "All right, then, Mr. Malloy, help yourself." She crossed her arms. He blinked at her.
"Please," she continued, "since you already seem to consider my home yours and the children's, consider my kitchen your kitchen as well. Besides, about the only thing I can make is Indian pudding, and I doubt you bought molasses. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got work to do."
Not waiting for an answer, she headed down the hall quickly, her face feeling flushed and her ears perked waiting for the sound of his steps behind her. They came after a moment, but his footfalls went right past her study door and up the stairs.
Briefly, there was silence followed by Reed Malloy's voice in what Charlotte could only describe as a bellow: "Miss Sanborn, would you please come up here a moment?"
She sighed. It was beyond the pale. What had happened now? She trudged up the stairs, dragging her feet.
"Yes," she began as she entered the room that used to be her parents' bedroom, but stopped s
hort at the sight of the children, still in their clothes sitting quietly on the bed looking, if possible, even more miserable than before.
Just then a yawn split open Thomas's mouth, and Lillian stifled one of her own with her small, white hand. There were circles under their eyes and a slight paleness to their skin.
Charlotte frowned. "I thought they were going to wash up and take a nap. They look positively peaked," she added.
Reed looked at her as if she were the stupidest person he'd ever met. "Did it not occur to you that they need assistance with their clothes, with the hot water, with turning down the bed? Miss Sanborn, even you must be able to see that they are small children in need of some kindness and consideration, if not motherly tender love and care."
He finished on a harsh tone, and Charlotte pursed her lips. "I will do my best to assist you, in taking care of them," she said pointedly, "for the time that you are all here. What do you want me to do?"
She avoided looking at the children, whom she was sure would be staring at her as if she were a monster from one of their fairy tales. Her brother had been like a marten or a gopher—always grubby but able to do for himself. It simply had not occurred to her that they would want a hot bath rather than just washing their hands and faces.
With her small offering of help, however, the tension eased, and Charlotte soon was working side-by-side with the children's lawyer. Thomas and Lillian seemed to have more intricate layers to their clothing than she and Thaddeus ever had, and she could see why they needed help to undress.
Meanwhile, Mr. Malloy heated water downstairs and, in a moment, transformed himself from a smartly dressed Bostonian into a regular washerwoman, rolling up his sleeves and preparing to bathe the boy.
Not that he could ever be considered regular or ordinary, Charlotte thought, not with his striking profile. And then there were his well-defined muscles, which Charlotte was seeing evidence of as he wrestled Thomas into submission with one strong arm while scrubbing him with the other. She sat on the bathroom rug with Lillian while Reed soaped Thomas all over.
The Defiant Hearts Series Box Set Page 10