Sarah Sunshine: A Montana Romance Novella (6 page)

She may have thought he was smart, but the only thing Roy felt was confusion.

“How am I supposed to do anything to make people think she’s respectable?”

“By showing her that
you
think she’s respectable,” Delilah said as if it were obvious, which it wasn’t.  “Support her.  Find out what she wants to do.  Once you know that, help her do it without sticking your oar in.  And for God’s sake, don’t let anyone talk you into thinking she’s anything less than the fine woman she is.”  She ended on a note of grim seriousness.

It wasn’t lost on Roy.  He remembered the things Miss Jones had said about Sarah with a shudder.  That woman was trouble.

“I can do it.”  He nodded.  “I can help Sarah do what she wants to do.”

“Without opening your big mouth to nay-say or railroad her.”

“Without sayin’ nothing.”

“Without saying
anything
.  Honey, we gotta work on your grammar.”

“Anything,” he nodded.  Then he sighed.  “I’d do
anything
to win her back!”

“All right then.”  Delilah pushed away from the desk and led him out of the office and into the large, unfinished lobby towards the door.  “You’re gonna get out there and help Sarah do what she wants to do and start her new life.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“And why are you gonna do that?” she asked as she reached the front door and opened it.

“Because I would do
anything
to win Sarah back.”

“No, honey,” Delilah said.  “Because you’re not gonna be a lick of use to me until you got your head straightened out about that girl.  Now get outta my sight!”

Roy blinked once, then smiled.  “I won’t let you down.”  He rushed through the door, across the porch, and started down the steps.

“Let me down all you want, boy.  Don’t let Sarah down.”

“I won’t!” he called over his shoulder.

“And don’t open your mouth and wreck it all!”

“I won’t say a word!”

He set a fast pace, striding down the still unnamed street where the new hotel sat and crossing towards Main Street.  Purpose invigorated him.  He could make things right.  All he had to do was drop to his knees before Sarah and eat a little humble pie.  He could do it.  For Sarah he could do anything.

His steps carried him towards Main Street so fast that he nearly missed Sarah walking the other way.  When he saw her, his heart dropped to his gut, and a little lower.  She walked with her head held high, dressed in her Sunday best with her bright fringed shawl draped around her shoulders.  The bonnet she wore must’ve been new.  But it was the shining light of purpose in her eyes that drew him to her like a honeybee to a flower.

“Morning, Sarah,” he said.  “You’re looking as beautiful as a summer meadow today.”

She tipped her chin up higher and kept her eyes looking straight ahead, but warm pink flushed her cheeks.  Her lips twitched as if fighting her for the right to smile.  He pivoted and fell into step beside her.

“Good morning, Roy,” she said.  “You’re looking mighty handsome today yourself.  That suit makes you look,” her breath caught, “like a gentleman.”

Hope made him feel six inches taller.  “Where are you going on such a fine morning?”

If he wasn’t mistaken, her steps slowed.  His hand itched to take hers, to take hers forever.

“I’m going to see about my future,” she answered.

His skin prickled in excitement at the thought.  She was heading toward the hotel, after all.  His hotel.

“Might I escort you there?”

At last she looked sideways at him.  Her eyes flashed with longing.  Because he’d supported her.  Because he’d offered to do what she wanted.  Delilah was right.

Sarah stared straight forward again.  “You may walk with me if you’d like.”

“That suits me just fine,” he said.  Listen to her, Delilah had said.  Do what she wants.

They reached the corner of the new hotel road and he turned.  Sarah, however, kept walking forward.  Roy’s confidence faltered as he tripped over his feet to get back to her side.

“Uh, Sarah?  Where are you going?” he said.  His energy frazzled into nerves.

“I’m going to a place where I can learn to be a respectable woman,” she said.

“All right.”  He couldn’t think of anything else to say.  He wasn’t supposed to question her.

It only took a few minutes before questioning her was all he wanted to do.  They kept on down the road, tracing a familiar path.  When Sarah picked up her pace and walked ahead of him and turned into the lane leading to Miss Jones’s boarding house, his stomach turned over.

“Um, what are we doing here?” he asked.  Just as quickly he bit his tongue.  He wasn’t supposed to be saying nothing.  Anything.

One of the house’s front windows scraped open.

“What are you doing here?” Miss Jones snapped, sticking her head out into the cold.

“Miss Jones, I would be very pleased to talk to you,” Sarah answered, over-polite.

“I thought I told you I wanted nothing to do with your sort.”

Sarah wasn’t to be deterred.  As Roy hung back at the edge of the front yard, she marched boldly up the path to the porch.  Miss Jones slammed the window shut.  A few seconds later the front door flew open and she stormed out.

“Get off my property, you hussy!”

Roy clenched his jaw and balled his hands into fists.  Sarah had other plans.

“Good morning, Miss Jones,” she said, sweet as could be.  “I’m so terribly sorry for the misunderstanding the other day.”

“Misunderstanding?”  Miss Jones puffed in indignation.  “I was deceived as to your character and your intentions.”

“I do apologize, ma’am,” Sarah said, miles more generous about it than Roy would ever have been.  “It pains me that we started out on the wrong foot.  I do so admire you, and I had my heart set on learning from you.”

Roy snorted, figuring Sarah must have been joking with the woman.  But no, she was serious.  He dropped his shoulders and stared at the scene unfolding.

Miss Jones was caught off-guard too.  She planted her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at Sarah from the top of the porch steps.  “What do you mean, learning from me?”

“Well,” Sarah began, “you said that you wanted to offer me your godly instructions in an effort to make me a respectable woman.  I’ve come to tell you that I would still very much like that instruction.”

“Sarah,” Roy whispered, taking a step toward her.  A second later he stopped himself.  Delilah’d told him to keep his trap shut.  She’d told him to support Sarah in whatever she wanted to do.  He frowned.  There was no way in hell this is what Delilah’d had in mind.

“I will not allow an unrepentant prostitute to live under my roof,” Miss Jones said.  Of all things, Roy found himself on her side.

“I’m not asking to live under your roof, Miss Jones,” Sarah went on, worrying Roy senseless.  “I’m just asking you to let me come here every day, to learn from you about the ways of honest people.”

Miss Jones stared at her, stock still.  She looked like an owl perched on the top of a barn, staring at a field mouse.  It was clear to Roy that the rusty gears in the old biddy’s mind had ground into action.  “Is that so?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”  Sarah nodded.  She took a daring step onto the first porch stair.  Roy clenched his jaw hard to stop himself from running after her and dragging her back.  “There ain’t no one in town more upright and respectable than you, ma’am,” she went on.  “If anyone can show me the straight and narrow, it’s you.”

“That is true.”  The thin line on Miss Jones’s ugly mug that might’ve been a mouth tipped up at the corners.

“Folks look up to you,” Sarah continued.  “If they see that you’ve taken me under your wing, why they might understand that I’m well and truly done with my old life.”

The line of Miss Jones’s mouth spread wider.  “It’s possible.”

“And if I learn to be honorable and respectable and godly, like you, maybe some fine gentleman might see me as good enough to become his wife.”

Roy wasn’t sure if he imagined her raising her voice a hair and scooching her head to the side to peek at him. 

“Men are nothing but trouble, girl.”  Miss Jones shook her finger like a schoolmarm.  “You’d do best to stay away from them entirely.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sarah said, though with less enthusiasm this time.  It was all Roy could do not to march up to the porch and carry her away.  But he couldn’t.  This was clearly what she wanted.  And Delilah had said-

“What about that one?”  Miss Jones scowled and pointed a finger down the lane right at Roy.  “I won’t have nothing to do with a hussy that has
her
minion following her around.”

“Now see here-”

Roy clamped his mouth shut without defending himself.  What Sarah wanted, he told himself. 
What Sarah wanted
.

“I was just passing by, doing errands,” he ground out the excuse.

For a fraction of a heartbeat he thought he saw a smile touch Sarah’s lips.

“Roy don’t mean no harm,” she said.  “He’s opening his hotel soon, so he’s much too busy to want anything to do with me.”  She didn’t sound pleased about it.  “And besides,” Sarah went on, “It was Mr. Sutcliffe who made me think about coming back to you.  He speaks so highly of you, ma’am, and I do believe it would please him to see me under your tutelage.”

Roy’s heart dropped like a hot rock to his gut. 
That
was why she was doing this?  To please Paul Sutcliffe?  He would show that no good, son-of-a-

But no, he had to keep calm.  He had to support Sarah.  He had to keep his mouth shut.

Dammit.

“I think it’s a right fine idea,” he forced himself to say, the words as bitter as sin in his mouth.

They were worth it when Sarah turned to smile at him.  Though how she could be so pleased to be doing something so foolhardy was beyond him.

Miss Jones watched the interaction between them with a grin that Roy didn’t like at all.  She  tapped one long finger against her thin lips.  The spark in her eyes gave Roy the shivers.  If he was smart, he would ignore Delilah’s advice and carry Sarah away now.

“Well, if Paul Sutcliffe thinks you should come and learn from me,” Miss Jones said, “then I think we should give him exactly what he wants.  Exactly what he
deserves
,” she corrected herself.  “But I won’t waste my time if you’re just going to beg off when thing get uncomfortable.”

“No ma’am.”  Sarah was as earnest as a nun.

“If we do this, then you must promise me you’ll see it through.”  There was not one single thing about her acid tone that Roy found comforting.  “Do you promise?  Promise to do as I tell you without complaint?”

“Oh, yes ma’am!” Sarah agreed.

A thin, dry smile spread across Miss Jones’s lips.  “Well, come on, girl.”  She held her hand out to Sarah.

Sarah stepped up the stairs and took the old biddy’s hand.  Miss Jones closed her bony fingers around Sarah’s soft ones with a grip that Roy was convinced would turn his Sarah to stone.  It did something much worse.  Sarah smiled like something good had happened and let Miss Jones lead her across the porch and into the house.

Roy swallowed, feeling sick.  Whatever Sarah was up to, it was dead wrong of him to just let her walk into it like that.

Chapter Six

The awful feeling Roy had—that he’d let something bad happen while trying to do something good—stuck with him through the next few days.  He shouldn’t have had time to fret about it, not with the hotel opening inching closer and closer.  Delilah kept him busy day and night, checking on shipments, hiring staff, and learning how to use the new telephone she’d had installed in the lobby and a second in the office.  He should have been in high heaven, except that every time he saw Sarah traipsing around town in Miss Jones’s wake, the gnawing in his gut got worse.

“Lift it a little higher on that side,” Delilah directed him and the young half-Indian woman she’d hired to work at the hotel.  The two of them stood on chairs hanging bunting on the porch.  “Maybe down a little on your side, Martha.”

Roy’s arms ached from holding bunting up for so long, but it was nothing to the ache in his heart.  That ache got worse when he twisted his neck to stretch it, only to see Sarah turning the corner with Miss Jones, Miss Jacinta Archer, and Miss Gladys Pickering.  His pulse beat double-time.

Miss Jones stopped their group in front of the new pharmacy and began talking and pointing at the place.  Roy was too far away to hear what she was saying.  He leaned out over the porch railing as if that would help.

“Land sake’s, Roy!”  Delilah’s bark brought his attention back to his own business.  His arms had sagged and the bunting drooped to the side.

“Sorry.”  He lifted his end of the fabric up and tacked it into the beam above him.

Delilah saw Sarah and the biddies too.  “I never shoulda give you the advice to go after that girl.”  She shook her head.  “Never mind the fact that you completely missed the intent of that advice in the first place, it’s got you wrapped tighter than you were before.”

Roy stepped down from his chair.  “Sorry, Delilah.  It won’t happen again.”  He moved to fetch a second swath of bunting from the pristine white wicker lounge at the back of the porch.

“I highly doubt that,” he thought he heard Delilah mutter.

He gathered the red, white, and blue material in his arms and carried it to the other side of the porch.  As much as he tried to keep his eyes and his mind on his work, his gaze drifted out to the street, to Sarah.

She didn’t look half as determined as she had the other day.  The dress she wore was pretty enough, but the stoop of Sarah’s shoulders made it look loose and baggy where it should have been tight and flattering to her figure.  Her hair was pulled back in a severe knot, and the bonnet she’d worn the other day was gone, a plain brown thing in its place.  The shawl she wore was a ragged mess.

“…which is why we must fight to oppose sin wherever we see it.”

Roy finally caught Miss Jones’s words as the group marched on from the pharmacy and up to the foot of the new hotel’s porch.

“Oh Lordy.”  Delilah rolled her eyes as Miss Jones, Miss Archer, and Miss Pickering formed a line facing Sarah at the bottom of the stairs.

“And this, Sarah, this is the very viper’s den!” Miss Jones railed.

Delilah stepped away from the lounge and the pile of bunting and leaned against the post at the top of the stairs.  “Morning, Viola.”

Miss Jones pinched her face as tight as it would go, sniffed, and turned away from Delilah.

Delilah tried again.  “Morning, Sarah,” she said, a smile in her voice.

Sarah darted an anxious glance to the biddies before cautiously saying, “Morning, Mrs. Reynolds.  Morning, Roy.”  Her voice died altogether on his name.

“Good morning, Sarah,” Roy scrambled to put things right.  “You’re looking pretty as a picture today.”

Before Sarah could so much as blush and say thank you, Miss Jones barked, “You should not speak to the likes of them, Sarah!”

“O-oh?”

“Loose women and reprobates the lot of them!” Miss Pickering added.

Martha popped her head up from her work with a dark scowl.  Delilah crossed her arms, a wry grin tipping the corner of her mouth.

“What you see before you is an abomination against nature!” Miss Jones said, pointing up at the hotel.

“Well, this’ll be a treat,” Delilah drawled to Roy.

“The new hotel?”  Sarah glanced from Miss Jones to Delilah to Roy and up at the three stories of the hotel.

“It is not just a hotel,” Miss Jones went on, “it is a den of iniquity!  It is a resting place for sinners of the basest sort.”

“But … but I don’t think they plan to have entertaining there, do they?”

“No!” Roy answered.  “Absolutely not!”

“Don’t listen to her, Sarah.  It’s a hotel.  That’s that,” Delilah said.

All three of the biddies sniffed and huffed like hens in a yard.

“She would say as much.”  Miss Archer tossed her head, her carrot-red curls barely hidden by a bonnet of the ugliest green Roy had ever seen.

“This edifice is a house of deprivation, Sarah,” Miss Jones went on.  “Three floors of private rooms.  Men and women staying together under the same roof.  Who knows what kind of wickedness they will get up to?”

“Folks stay in hotels ‘cuz they want a place to lay their heads at the end of a busy day,” Delilah said.  “What they do behind their doors is none of my business and it ain’t none of yours either.  Of course, you never did quite grasp the concept of minding your own business, did you?”

Miss Jones narrowed her eyes.  “Spoken like a true harlot!”  The other two clucked in agreement.  “Mark her well, girl.  She may claim to have put her past wickedness behind her, but she encourages the wickedness of others!”

“Now hold on a minute.”  Roy took a step closer to Delilah’s side.  “Delilah’s well known for helping folks in Cold Springs.  She gave me a chance.”

“See that?”  Miss Jones jabbed her long finger at Roy.  “The unrepentant harlot gives shelter to thugs and patronizers of women with no morals!”

“I do believe the word you’re looking for is ‘patrons’, Viola,” Delilah corrected.

Roy would have chuckled, but he was too busy keeping his rage in check.  Sarah hunched in on herself more with each word Miss Jones spoke.  She worried her fingers through the frayed edge of her shawl.

“Sarah, what are you doing here?” he asked, rushing down the stairs to her.

The biddies blocked the way, forming a wall between the two of them.

“Tell him!” Miss Jones ordered.

Sarah chewed her lip and twisted her shawl.  She glanced from Miss Jones to Roy with glassy, worried eyes, then said, “We’re on a Tour of Sin.”

“A what?” Roy asked.

“A Tour of Sin,” Sarah repeated as though reciting a lesson.  “We are making a circuit through the town, stopping to observe the immorality of those citizens who choose to fly in the face of God’s will.”

“I’m sorry, whose will was that?” Delilah asked from the top of the stairs, humor gone.

“Sinners should be punished for their iniquity!” Miss Jones insisted.

“Funny, I thought God loved a sinner.”

“Do you hear that, Sarah?  Blasphemy!”  Miss Jones jerked her chin up, Miss Archer and Miss Pickering mirroring her in a trifecta of indignation.

Sarah moved to tip her chin as well but ended up bobbling her head in confusion.  “I think she’s right though,” she said.  “When Rev. Andrews comes to preach to the girls at the saloon he always says that God loves us and forgives us and seeks nothing more than our redemption and-”

“Silence, girl!  You will speak when you’re spoken to.”  Miss Jones’s brow darkened.  She pursed her lips and pointed up at the hotel.  “You are here to learn from me, and I am telling you that this structure you see before you represents the worst kind of sin.”

“This here is a place of business,” Roy rushed to defend Delilah and his livelihood.  “It is a home away from people’s homes, and my aim is to make them feel at home.”

“Disrespect.”  Miss Pickering shook her head.

“You will see, Sarah, how those who build themselves up with sin fall harder in the end.  A hotel is nothing but a brothel in disguise.”

“But,” Sarah twisted the end of her ragged shawl, “but didn’t the Virgin Mary give birth to baby Jesus in a hotel?”

The biddies laughed and snorted.

“The good Lord was turned away from the inn.  That says something if nothing else does!”

“Don’t confuse the poor girl, Viola.”  Delilah planted her hands on her hips.  “If the baby Jesus or his mother or anyone else in need of shelter for the night and food in their bellies wants to come to either of my hotels, I won’t turn them away.”

A hint of a smile touched Sarah’s eyes as she met Delilah’s.  It vanished a moment later when Miss Jones clamped a hand on Sarah’s arms.

“Come away, Sarah!  We have more to see, and I fear if we stay here too much longer, our very souls could be in peril!”

Sarah sent an apologetic look to Delilah.  While she was off balance Miss Jones yanked her.  She stumbled and the biddies closed around her.

Roy jerked towards her.  Jumbled up in the anger and indignation he felt over the way his Sarah was being treated ran a deep river of shame.  It was his fault things had come to this.  He should have stopped her when he could.  He ached to chase after Sarah and whisk her away to safety.

“I reckon you’ve got the right idea there, honey,” Delilah said, nodding to his feet as they inched toward the road.  “You’d best go after her.  I don’t trust that woman as far as I can throw her.”

He jumped immediately into motion.  “I won’t be too long,” he said, forgetting the words as soon as they were out of his mouth.

He jogged to catch up to the biddies and Sarah, keeping his distance once he’d matched their pace.  If Miss Jones or the others knew he was following, they didn’t let on.  They kept their backs straight, their noses in the air, and their skirts swishing as they marched.  Sarah peeked over her shoulder a time or two, but that blasted brown bonnet covered her face so he couldn’t tell if she was pleased or angry with him.

They kept marching until they got to Main Street.  Plenty of folks were out and about on morning business.  A few turned to see what was going on as Miss Jones led her band down the street and up to the front of the saloon.  Roy’s gut felt as though someone had dumped a load of rocks in it.  Sarah must be in agony with so many people watching.

A handful of girls were sitting out on the saloon porch in spite of the November chill, shawls around their shoulders and paint fresh on their faces like an advertisement.  They glanced up in mild curiosity as the biddies and Sarah stopped in front of them.

“Witness the most wretched abomination in our unfortunate town, Sarah!” Miss Jones declared, flinging out her arm.  “Our own plague of locusts!”

The saloon girls blinked and exchanged looks.  “There ain’t no locusts in November,” one of them said.

Miss Jones hissed in exasperation and dropped her arm heavily to her side.  “What you see before you is the worst kind of licentiousness, Sarah.  Fornication.  Women whose sole purpose is to tempt mankind into forsaking the path of righteousness.”

“They lure the men of our town away from their homes and families and pollute them!” Miss Archer added.

Miss Jones pursed her lips at the interruption and went on.  “They are evil harpies, every one of them, and this building they inhabit is a nest of damnation!”

“Charming new friends you got, Sarah,” one of the saloon girls, Gertie, said, rising from her seat against the porch railing.  She flipped the long corkscrew of her honey-brown hair over her shoulder and crossed her arms under her ample bosom, looking down her nose at the biddies.  One of the other girls got up and slipped sideways into the saloon, leaving the door cracked open behind her.

“Insolence,” Miss Pickering said.

“That’s just Gertie,” Sarah mumbled, working herself up to meeting Miss Jones’s eyes.  “She’s loud, but she don’t mean no harm.  And the others, why, they’re just doing what they have to do, same as I was.”

“They are
not
the same as you are,” Miss Jones contradicted her.  “You had the good sense to get away from this life and to come to us to reform you.  They continue to wallow in their sin.”

“My contract is up next spring, and I’m going to Sacramento, to my sister’s family,” Lacey, another of the girls, said.

Splotches of red formed on Miss Jones’s face.  “Harlots, the lot of them!” she ignored Lacey.  “This blight corrupts our entire town.  It should be burned to the ground.”

“Now hold on there!”  Roy stepped forward at last.  “You can’t just go saying people’s businesses should be burned down because you don’t like them.  That’s a criminal offense.  Do I need to go get Sheriff Porter?”

The biddies and the saloon girls both scoffed and snorted at the suggestion.  As soon as Miss Jones saw that she and the saloon girls agreed on something, her back went straighter.

“Mr. Porter is a decent enough fellow,” she said, “but as a sheriff-”

“He’s horse hockey,” Gertie finished.  She and the girls laughed.  The biddies clucked and fussed.  Sarah twisted the edge of her shawl.

The saloon door swung violently open and Paul Sutcliffe stepped out onto the porch, the girl who had disappeared into the saloon peeking out behind him.