Anger surged through Terel, anger at being betrayed by her own sister.
Terel put on a smile and walked forward. “Nellie, you look beautiful, really beautiful.”
Nellie turned and forced a smile. “It’s a lovely dress, isn’t it?”
“Yes, really lovely, but do you think you should be wearing it in the kitchen? I know it is only money, but aren’t you concerned with ruining such an expensive dress?”
“Yes, how thoughtless of me.” Nellie removed her apron and started upstairs, Terel close behind her.
“I am so glad to see that you’ve lost weight. I guess I can say it now, but you don’t know what an embarrassment you’ve always been to Father and me. There were times we hated to be seen with you. Not that we don’t love you, but we love you in spite of the way you look, do you know what I mean?”
As Nellie stepped out of the velvet dress her stomach growled with hunger. “Yes. I think I know what you mean.”
Terel scrutinized Nellie’s figure in the borrowed corset. “It looks as if you’re going to need all new clothes, so perhaps I’d better choose them for you. Maybe you didn’t realize that velvet doesn’t exactly fit with working in the kitchen. Or maybe now you don’t want to cook for Father and me. Maybe now you’d rather go to one ball after another and dance with men like Mr. Montgomery. Maybe more men—”
“No!”
Nellie half shouted. “No more men. I don’t trust them. I want nothing to do with them. You choose the dresses, I don’t care what I wear.” She pulled on her oldest housedress, which now hung off of her, and ran down the stairs, buttoning as she went.
Once in the kitchen she grabbed a pie, still hot from the oven, and began to eat it. “No more men,” she said aloud. “No more men.”
If Nellie wanted nothing to do with men, the same couldn’t be said for men regarding her. After having been ignored by the male population all her life, suddenly she was besieged with invitations. Handsome young men waited for her outside her house, then followed her wherever she went. They offered to carry her purchases, run errands for her. They invited her everywhere.
There seemed to be nothing Nellie could do to discourage them. She didn’t talk to them, didn’t so much as smile at them. She made no physical effort to make herself more pleasing to them. She wore the drab, oversized dresses Terel chose for her; she never minded when Terel burned her hair with a curling iron. But nothing seemed to put the young men off, for the truth was, now nothing Terel did could hide Nellie’s beauty, and Nellie’s reserve only encouraged the young men.
At home Nellie listened to Terel, because once she hadn’t listened to her and she’d been duped by a lying, traitorous man.
“You don’t want to go to the Christmas party at the Masonic Lodge, do you?” Terel asked, looking at the invitation. “You remember what happened at the Harvest Ball, don’t you? I don’t think I could bear seeing my beloved sister make a fool of herself like that again.”
“No, I don’t want to go,” Nellie whispered, feeling very hungry. After two months, just the thought of Jace still made pain shoot through her. “I don’t want to embarrass you or Father.”
“It’s not that you embarrass
us,
it’s that you embarrass yourself, what with eating so much all the time, and then, of course, you have no taste in men. I’d be afraid the town drunk would walk in the hall and you’d believe you were in love with him.”
“Terel, please…” Nellie pleaded.
“Oh, I am sorry, Nellie, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I guess I’m just overly protective, that’s all. Here’s an invitation for you to sing with a choir. You don’t want to do that, do you? I mean, there will be men there, and you know how you are.”
“No,” Nellie said, tears beginning to choke her. She didn’t want to go anywhere. She just plain wanted to disappear.
“I really do think it’s for the best that you stay home, at least for a while. Are those cupcakes? They smell delicious. Why don’t you have one or two? People are saying you’re too thin.” She kissed Nellie’s cheek. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”
When Terel was gone, Nellie ate a dozen cupcakes.
Jace stepped off the train and breathed the cold Colorado mountain air. It felt good to be back, good to return to the place he’d come to think of as home. He gave a boy a nickel to carry his bag to the hotel and check him in. He didn’t want to take the time to go to the hotel first. All he wanted now was to see Nellie.
He smiled as the cold, dry air hit his face, and he patted his breast pocket where all Nellie’s letters lay, tied with a ribbon. It had been two and a half months since he’d seen her, the longest ten weeks of his life, but it had taken that long to arrange everything. When he’d first arrived in Warbrooke and found his father to be perfectly healthy, his impulse had been to jump right back on the train and go back to Chandler. He’d had no doubt the rotten Terel was behind the phony telegram.
But the telegram had made him realize how much his parents meant to him, so he’d gone out sailing, just he and his father, and he’d found himself telling his father all about Nellie. At the end of the day’s sailing he’d known what he wanted to do with his life. For all that he loved the sea, for all that he knew he’d miss it, he knew he wanted to live in Colorado with Nellie.
That night he’d written her and told her of his plans. He didn’t tell her that someone had created the telegram. He didn’t want to fight Terel from across a continent, so he just wrote of his plans. He planned to remain in Warbrooke long enough to sell most of his holdings, the land and house he and Julie had owned, all three of his sailboats, and he needed to work out property divisions with his brothers and father. When that was done, he planned to return to Chandler and make her his wife.
He’d written her long letters telling her of his home town, telling her about his father and brothers, telling her of his mother’s music and how good it was to hear her sing again. Once he was in Warbrooke he realized how little he and Nellie had talked, so he found himself pouring out everything to her. He told of visiting the grave of Julie and his little son and how his grief for them had been merely a dull ache. He wrote of the future he had planned for them, and one night, very late, when he was feeling very lonely, he told her of the trick he’d pulled on her by taking her to the Everetts’ house. And always, repeatedly, he told her he loved her.
Nellie’s letters to him hadn’t been as long as he would have liked; in fact, they were almost curt, but they had been enough to let him know that she was all right. He hadn’t written to tell her he’d be arriving today because, unexpectedly, he’d found a buyer for his last sailboat, and he was at last free. He had thrown clothes in a bag and taken the next train out of Warbrooke. He wanted to spend this Christmas with Nellie, and next Christmas his family promised to come to Colorado to visit him and Nellie and—he grinned—maybe his first kid.
Now, leaving the train station, he was on top of the world. Everything was cleared away for him and Nellie. Nothing else stood in the way of their happiness.
He was so happy, so engrossed in his thoughts that he didn’t see the way the people of Chandler stopped and stared at him. They stared, then they frowned, then they put their heads together and muttered about how he had dared to return to this town.
He was walking so rapidly, trying to get to Nellie as quickly as possible, that he didn’t see the door to The Famous swing open and Terel’s friends step out. He walked right into them and packages went flying.
“Excuse me,” he said, stooping to pick up packages, “it was all my fault. I wasn’t watching where I—”
“You!”
Louisa said.
Jace looked up at the three young women and was puzzled to see them looking at him in horror.
“How could you dare show your face in the town?” Charlene said, teeth clenched. “After what you did to Nellie!”
“Is Nellie all right?” Jace asked, rising.
“As if you cared,” Louisa hissed.
Mae had not said a word, but suddenly she whipped out her hand and slapped Jace across his cheek. “I will
not
have your child,” she said, pushing past him. Louisa and Charlene, after snatching their packages from him, followed her.
Jace put his hand to his cheek and stared after the women. “What in the world is going on?” he said aloud.
After that encounter he slowed his pace and began to notice the unpleasant looks he was receiving from nearly everyone he passed. He was beginning to feel like the villain in a melodrama.
Three blocks from Nellie’s house he saw Miss Emily.
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d have the nerve to return,” Miss Emily said. “I guess you heard that Nellie’s, shall we say, dilemma was a false alarm, so perhaps you figured it was safe to return, but I doubt very much if Charles will give you the freight company now.”
She started to walk past him, but he caught her arm.
“Would you please tell me what’s going on?”
Miss Emily looked down her hawklike nose at his hand on her arm, and Jace dropped his hand. “Is no woman safe from you?”
“Safe?”
Miss Emily started to walk away, and Jace’s temper got the best of him.
“What the hell is going on?” he bellowed.
Miss Emily was disgusted by his language, and she was furious with him for hurting Nellie, but something in his tone made her halt and turn back. “Where have you been since the Harvest Ball?” she spat at him.
“Home in Warbrooke, Maine. I sold everything I owned there so I could come back and marry Nellie and live here in Chandler.”
Miss Emily stood blinking at him. “Why didn’t you tell Nellie?” she whispered.
Jace was sure everyone in this town was crazy. “Tell her? I’ve been writing to her since I left.” He pulled the packet of letters from inside his coat pocket, pink and yellow silk ribbons dangling from them. “Here are her letters to me, and”—he pulled a little box from his trouser pocket and opened it to reveal a ring with a big yellow diamond set in gold—“this is the engagement ring I plan to give to Nellie. It’s been in my family for years. Think she’ll like it?”
Miss Emily was trying to recover herself. A man whose family had a ring like that probably didn’t need a small business like Grayson Freight. “Oh, my goodness, what in the world is going on? Do you have engagement rings for the other young ladies of this town?”
Now Jace was sure the people were crazy. “No,” he said patiently. He hadn’t thought Miss Emily was senile, but he thought so now. “I only marry one woman at a time. Perhaps you have me confused with Bluebeard. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He tipped his hat and turned away.
“Mr. Montgomery!” Miss Emily called, halting him. “You and I must talk.”
“We’ll talk later, I promise. Right now I want to see Nellie.”
Miss Emily firmly clasped her arm to his. “You and I have to talk
first. Before
you see Nellie. I think there are some things you need to know.” When he opened his mouth to protest, Miss Emily continued, “I’m not sure Nellie will see you.”
“See me? But Nellie has agreed to marry me.” He held up the letters.
“I don’t believe Nellie wrote those letters. Nellie believes, as does the whole town, that you jilted her.”
For a moment Jace couldn’t speak. He glanced down the street toward Nellie’s house. “Perhaps we should talk,” he said softly.
It was an hour later that Jace left Miss Emily’s house, and he was in a rage, a towering, furious rage.
“You’ll never guess who I saw today,” Johnny Bowen said to Terel. He was walking her home from her shopping expedition, carrying her packages.
“Who?” Terel asked, not really caring. She knew that Johnny was just walking her home in hopes of getting a glimpse of Nellie. Since the Harvest Ball, and especially since Nellie had lost weight, it seemed that every man in Chandler wanted to court her. As Miss Emily had laughingly said one day, “Nellie has everything: beauty, brains, a sweet temper, a rich father, and she can cook. She is every man’s dream.” And it seemed as though Miss Emily was right, because men seemed to swarm around Nellie. Not that Nellie paid any attention to them, but the more she ignored them, the more they tried to get her attention. Terel could no longer go anywhere or have anyone to her house for all the questions about Nellie.
“I saw that man, Jace Montgomery.”
Terel stopped in her tracks. “You saw him? When? Where?”
“Here in Chandler, about an hour ago. He and Miss Emily were talking. Actually, it looked almost as if they were having a quarrel, but I was across the street and couldn’t hear what they were saying. He didn’t look too happy.”
Terel quite suddenly didn’t feel very well; in fact, she felt quite frightened. She put her hand to her forehead and swooned against Johnny.
“Terel, are you all right?”
“I’m ill,” she whispered. “Take me inside.”
“Sure.” He put his arm around her shoulders and started to help her walk.
“Carry me, you fool,” she hissed.
“Oh, sure.” Johnny bent and picked her up. “You’re heavier than you look.” Struggling, he got her up the stairs, across the porch to the front door, then had to balance her on one knee to open the door. He was sweating, and his back was straining. “On the sofa?” he asked, his voice high with effort.