“Quite all right,” he said, smiling as though nothing had happened, but there was a glow of sweat on his brow.
Nellie was quite suddenly very embarrassed, and she started backing out of the pantry, her face red.
“Nellie.” He caught her arm and pulled her close to him, but she pushed at him and gained her freedom.
“Mr. Montgomery, I am truly apologetic for…for my conduct,” she muttered, moving into the kitchen. It was better not to look at him. If she didn’t look at him again, perhaps she might forget how she had just behaved.
“Please look at me,” he said, and when she wouldn’t he took her by the shoulders and put his face close to hers. “You aren’t going to believe what your sister said about me, are you? I haven’t looked at any other woman in town except you. Those two overdressed fillies in church sat by
me,
I didn’t sit by them. And at your father’s office I’ve never been anything but polite to the ladies.”
She pulled away from him. “Mr. Montgomery, I have no idea what gave you the idea that your social life is my concern. You are free to pursue any and all of the pretty young women in town.” She began slicing bread and beef to make a plate of food for Terel.
He could see that she didn’t believe him. Damn that little brat Terel, he thought. Nellie believed everything she said. “I’ve never made any advances toward your sister, nor have I—”
“Are you implying that my sister was telling a falsehood?”
“If the shoe fits, wear it,” he said before he thought.
She glared at him. “You may leave now, Mr. Montgomery. And I do not believe you should return.”
“Nellie, I apologize. I didn’t mean to say that about your sister, even if it is true. I meant—” He didn’t continue because Nellie was looking at him with a great deal of anger. “Nellie, please walk out with me. Just leave everything here and walk with me. Let me show you how much you mean to me.”
“As you just did in the pantry? No, Mr. Montgomery, I think not. I know what I am. I am an old maid who happens to have a rich father. You need not bother wasting any more of your time on me now that I have seen through you.”
The pleading look left Jace’s face and was replaced with one of rage. “I have never been dishonest with you,” he said through clenched teeth, “and I do not like being accused of dishonesty.” He stepped toward her, and Nellie stepped back. The anger on his face was frightening. “Someday, Nellie, you’re going to have to make a choice—either your own life or your family’s. I’m willing to help, but not when I’m called a liar and told I’m courting a woman merely to get her father’s money. If you took a little time to get to know me, you’d find out I’m not like that. I’m—” He broke off. He wasn’t about to tell her what he was like. If she believed her sister, believed what someone else told her instead of what she knew to be true, that was her problem. He wasn’t going to defend himself to her.
He took his hat from the table. “If you want to be an old maid, that’s your decision. It was nice meeting you, Nellie,” he said, and then he turned on his heel and left the kitchen.
For a moment Nellie was too stunned to think. She stared at the empty doorway, unable to move.
So, she thought at last, Terel had been right. He wanted only her father’s money. When he knew he wasn’t going to get it, when he knew Nellie had been told of his devious plan, he left.
For a moment Nellie considered going after him. For a second it occurred to her that it didn’t matter whether he wanted her for her father’s money or not. Whatever had caused his interest in her, the afternoon and evening they had spent together had been the happiest hours of her life. She closed her eyes and remembered being on the wall with him, the way he’d made her feel light and pretty. She remembered his head being in her lap as they talked. She thought of the way he’d sung the hymn and how the tears had coursed down his cheeks. And today in the pantry. She had never before felt passion, and it was a new and heady experience. She folded her arms across her chest and rubbed her forearms.
Money, she thought. All he’d wanted was her father’s money, and as Terel said, he was courting a fat old maid to get it.
Behind her the kitchen door swung open. “She wants her lunch,” Anna said, sullen at having to do some work.
Nellie came back to the present. “Yes, I’m coming,” she said, gathering up the tray and food.
Terel was sitting on the bed reading, pillows propped behind her, her silk skirt wrinkled beneath her. Nellie put the tray across her lap and began hanging up Terel’s clothes.
“There is no flower.”
“What?” Nellie asked absently. She kept seeing Jace’s eyes. He had been so angry at her. Maybe she shouldn’t have accused him as she had. Perhaps she should have gathered a little more proof that his intentions were dishonorable. Maybe—
“You always put a flower on my tray,” Terel said, as though she were on the verge of tears. “Oh, Nellie, you don’t care about us anymore, only about him.”
Nellie took the tray off Terel’s lap, pulled her young sister into her arms and stroked her hair. My child, Nellie thought. Terel is the only child I’ll ever have. For a moment she felt like crying, too. Perhaps the only chance she’d ever have of having her own home and family had just walked out.
“I do care about you,” Nellie said. “I’ve been so busy lately that I just forgot the flower. It doesn’t mean I no longer care for you.”
“You like Father and me better than
him?”
“Of course I do.”
Terel clasped Nellie to her. “You wouldn’t run off with him and leave us, would you?”
Nellie pulled away and smiled at Terel. “A fat old maid like me? Who would have me?”
Terel sniffed.
“We
want you. Father and I want you.”
Nellie was beginning to feel hungry. She moved away from Terel and replaced the tray on her lap. “You should eat your lunch and perhaps take a nap. You’re probably tired from all the worry.”
“Yes, I guess I am, but Nellie, don’t go.”
Reluctantly Nellie sat on the edge of the bed. Hunger was gnawing her stomach.
“He really is gone?” Terel asked, her mouth full. “You don’t have him lurking downstairs somewhere, do you?”
“No.” Nellie was getting hungrier by the second.
“Oh, Nellie, you don’t know what a curse it is to be young and beautiful as I am. Men have the most awful motives for wanting to be near you.” She broke off a piece of bread Nellie had baked just that morning and gave her sister a hard look. “Have you been invited to the Harvest Ball?”
Nellie could feel her face flushing. “Yes,” she whispered.
Terel set her luncheon tray on the table by the bed, then put her hands over her face. “I have not been invited. I am the only person in town who is not going.”
Again, Nellie pulled her sister into her arms. “You may have my invitation. I don’t guess I’ll be going now, and besides, what would I wear to something like that?”
“I can’t take your invitation. The Taggerts don’t think I’m socially acceptable. Me! Everyone knows the Taggerts are little better than coal miners. Oh, Nellie, I wish…”
“You wish what?”
Terel pulled away, sniffing. “I wish I were the most popular girl in Chandler. I wish I were invited to every party, every outing there was. I wish no one in Chandler would consider giving a party without me there.”
Nellie smiled. “Then that’s what I wish, too.”
“Do you really?”
“Yes, I really do. I wish you were the most popular girl Chandler has ever seen, and that you had more invitations than you could possibly accept.”
“Yes, I’d like that,” Terel said, smiling.
“That would make you happy?”
“Oh yes, Nellie, I would be very happy if I were popular. That’s all I’d ever ask out of life.”
“Then I very much hope that you get your wish,” Nellie said. “Now, why don’t you take a nap? I have some work to do.”
“Yes,” Terel said, smiling and stretching out on the bed. She was wrinkling her dress, but it didn’t matter to her; she didn’t have to iron it.
Nellie quietly took the tray and left the room. In the kitchen, when she was alone again, she thought more about Jace. If he wasn’t after her for her father’s money, then she had insulted him greatly. What had he said about courting? Something about having the woman he was courting call him a liar.
The more she thought, the hungrier Nellie became. She tried to control her appetite by sheer force of will, but with every thought she had her hunger increased. Jace had said she had choices, that she was choosing her family over herself. Of course she was choosing her family over herself! Wasn’t that what a person was supposed to do? Didn’t the Bible teach that a person had to give to receive?
Nellie slammed bread dough on the table. What a selfish man Mr. Montgomery must be to not realize that life’s greatest joy was in giving to others. Look at how she and her family gave to one another. Her father gave his love and support to his two daughters, and Terel also gave love. In return for their love Nellie cooked for them, kept the house clean, waited on them, ran errands, listened to them, cared about them, and—
To stop the flow of thoughts, Nellie began to eat. She ate anything she could find: five slices of beef, half a pie, a jar of peaches, the heel of a loaf of bread; and when the kitchen was denuded of food, she moved to the pantry. When she entered the pantry she remembered Jace, remembered the way he’d held her, the way he’d kissed her.
“I don’t care if he wants me only for my father’s money,” she whispered, and then, to keep from crying, she opened a jar of strawberry jam and began eating it with her fingers.
It was while Nellie was in the pantry that Terel’s first invitation arrived, and by the time she awoke from her nap five invitations were waiting for her.
“How?” Terel whispered when Nellie handed them to her.
“Wishes,” Nellie said, smiling, glad to see Terel so happy. “You wished for it, and you got it.”
Terel clasped the invitations to her breast for a moment, then opened her eyes wide, “What am I going to
wear?
Oh, Nellie, you’ll have to get my dressmaker and tell her to bring fabric samples and patterns.”
“I can’t go, I have to prepare dinner. I’ll send Anna, or maybe you should go to her.”
“I can’t. One of the invitations is for tea today. And you can’t send Anna. She’ll never get the message right. You’ll have to go yourself, Nellie. If only Father would put in a telephone!”
“Terel, I haven’t time to—”
Terel turned on her, “I thought you wished for me to be popular. I thought you really, truly wanted me to be popular.”
“I do, but…”
Terel put her arm around Nellie. “Please help me. If I meet a lot of people, perhaps I’ll find a man to marry, and then I’ll be out of your hair forever. Maybe this time next year I won’t be living here, and you won’t have to bother with my needs. Then you can have all the free time you want with just Father to care for.”
Nellie didn’t like to think of living alone with her father. The prospect of a house without Terel was too gloomy to contemplate. “I’ll go,” Nellie said. “You get dressed.”
It was hours later that Nellie was again in the kitchen. Her father would be home soon, and dinner wasn’t ready. She had managed to get the dressmaker to Terel and had helped Terel dress and do her hair before Howard Bailey came for her in his carriage. Now she was hurriedly trying to get the evening meal ready.
“What is going on?” Charles Grayson asked, bursting into the kitchen. “Anna said Terel has spent a fortune on dresses today.”
Nellie made a silent vow to have words with Anna. “Terel began receiving invitations this afternoon, and she felt she needed new clothes for the occasions.”
“Terel
always
believes she needs new clothes.” He looked at the table, noting the vegetables that had been chopped but not cooked. “Is Terel the reason dinner is going to be late?”
“I was helping her, yes.”
“You were playing with Terel and neglecting your work?”
Nellie gripped the rolling pin so hard her knuckles turned white. “I will have dinner on the table at six.”
“Good,” Charles said, then he seemed to search for something else to say. “Anna said you wished for Terel to receive the invitations.”
“It was a bit of nonsense, that’s all.”
“Well, if you’re having wishes come true, then wish that I get the money to pay for all these new dresses.” He turned away and left the kitchen.
For a moment, Nellie closed her eyes. “I wish Father would be very successful,” she whispered. “I hope he makes more than enough to pay for Terel’s dresses.”
She opened her eyes, then smiled. Such nonsense, she thought. Wishes don’t come true, because if they did…She thought of Jace but then pushed the image from her mind. Father, she thought. I hope he gets what he wants.
K
ane Taggert stood at the window of his office and watched his cousin pacing through the garden. When his wife came to stand behind him Kane didn’t turn.
“How long has he been there?” Houston asked.
“This is the third day. He goes off to work for that Grayson man, but he spends the rest of the day wanderin’ around out there.” Kane frowned. “He’s beginnin’ to annoy me.”
“I would imagine his pain is a great deal worse than yours,” Houston said.
He turned to look at her. “I wouldn’t go through that courtin’ time again for all the money in the world.”
She smiled and kissed his cheek, but as she started to move away he pulled her to him. “Think ol’ Jace is in hell?” he asked.
“I would guess so,” she answered sadly. “No one in Chandler has seen Nellie and him together for days, but Terel is everywhere.”
Kane kissed his wife, then released her and went back to his desk. “Nellie Grayson.” There was wonder in his voice. “How come he wants a woman who’s so—”
“Don’t say it,” Houston said quickly. “Nellie is a lovely woman. Whenever that family of hers allows her out, she does a great deal of church work. Her heart is loving and kind, and I think Jace sees that in her.”
“Yeah, maybe she’s a great person, but Jace ain’t a bad-lookin’ guy, so how come he wants a woman who’s so”—he looked at his wife—“so big?”
“Jocelyn’s mother is LaReina.”
Kane obviously had no idea who that was.
“We heard her sing in Dallas.”
“Oh,” he said, disappointed. “An opera singer. What’s that got to do with Jace likin’ Nellie?”
“By tradition, opera singers are Rubenesque, and from what Jace has told us, he grew up surrounded by his mother’s friends.”
Kane had some trouble understanding what his wife was saying, but then he smiled. “Oh, I see. You mean Jace has always been around fat ladies.”
Houston’s eyes narrowed. “Any woman with a voice so blessed as to be a coloratura soprano does
not
deserve to be dismissed as a ‘fat lady.’ ”
Kane continued smiling. “To each his own, I guess. But f…” He stopped. “Plump or not, it looks like Jace ain’t exactly havin’ an easy path down the road to gettin’ the woman he wants. You better go talk to him.”
Houston watched her cousin by marriage disappear down a path. “I was thinking the same thing.”
Kane gave a snort of laughter. “Now things’ll get straightened out.”
Houston didn’t answer as she went outside into the garden.
“Hello, Jocelyn,” she said softly, and then she smiled at him when he turned toward her. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he looked as though he hadn’t shaved this morning. In the right clothes, she thought, he’d look like a pirate.
“How’s Nellie?” she asked.
Jace jammed his hands in his trouser pockets and turned away. “I don’t know. She won’t see me.”
“Did you quarrel?”
“Yes. I think so.” He gave a sigh, then sat down heavily on a stone bench. “Houston, that is the
strangest
family I have ever seen.”
She sat down beside him and waited for him to continue.
Jace leaned back against a tree and stretched out his long legs. “When I met Charles Grayson, all he could talk about was his beautiful daughter. From the way he talked I got the impression he knew about my family’s money and wanted to marry off some ugly daughter to me. I don’t know why, maybe I was intrigued, but I went to his house to meet this daughter. I went an hour early, when I knew Charles wouldn’t be home.”
Jace closed his eyes for a moment. “Nellie was everything her father said she was. She is beautiful, kind, and I could see in her eyes that there was so much inside her. From that first night I wanted to take her away with me and show her the world.”
“But her family stopped you,” Houston said.
Jace’s face showed his puzzlement. “I don’t understand them. It seems that I can have the younger sister if I want her, but not Nellie.”
He stood, and his face grew angry. “Three days ago I went to see Nellie, and she was afraid of her family seeing me. I had to hide in the pantry like the grocery boy who isn’t supposed to be there. That…that sister of hers came in and told Nellie one lie after another about me, saying I was after her father’s money—as if the man had any.”
Houston suppressed a smile over the vanity of rich men. “What do you plan to do now?”
Jace let his hands drop to his sides; his shoulders slumped. “I don’t know. Nellie won’t see me. I’ve sent flowers, two letters, I even sent her a puppy, but everything was returned to me with no explanation, nothing.” He looked at Houston. “Is there a Western way of courting that I don’t know about? The last time I courted a woman I sent her flowers, we walked out together, one day I asked her to marry me, and she said yes. I don’t remember courtship being so difficult.”
Houston patted the seat by her, and Jace sat down again. “Since I talked to you about the Harvest Ball I’ve talked to some people about Nellie. Tell me, is Charles Grayson an ungenerous man?”
Jace rolled his eyes. “He could give Scrooge lessons. He pays his employees as little as possible and docks their wages for every minute they’re late. I can hardly bear to stay in the office. Three days ago he got a contract out of Denver—I don’t know how, since he expects to make vast profits on every deal—but he did, and he fired two freight drivers because he said the other drivers could work longer hours. He’s a mean, miserly man, and if it weren’t for Nellie I wouldn’t have anything to do with him.”
“That explains why he expects Nellie to do the work of a household full of servants. He works Nellie harder than his employees, and he pays her even less than he does them.”
Jace was quiet for a moment. “Grayson wouldn’t want to lose an employee who worked hard and took none of his money.”
“Exactly.”
Jace leaned his head back against a tree. “I guess I’ve been so enraptured with Nellie that I never really looked at her family. That younger daughter is a real bitch. Oh, sorry.”
“Quite all right, since I happen to agree, but she’s quite pretty, and lately quite popular. For the last few days she’s been in great demand at every social function.”
“She’s not half as pretty as Nellie,” Jace said, smiling. “Nellie has a way of looking at a man…well, she makes me feel as though I could do anything. Since I met her I’ve been doing some sketches for a steering mechanism for a boat. It’s the first time I’ve drawn anything since…” He trailed off, remembering Julie’s death, but for once not feeling empty.
“They’ve poisoned her mind against me,” Jace said softly. “They tell her I’m up to no good, then tell her she can’t see me. I don’t even get an opportunity to defend myself. If I could just get her away from them for a while, maybe I could show her that I’m not a bad sort.”
“You can’t kidnap her,” Houston said thoughtfully. “Women don’t take well to kidnapping.”
Jace didn’t smile. “I’ve already dismissed the idea. I thought of kidnapping her onto a boat and sailing her around the world, but Colorado is too far from the ocean.”
Houston blinked. “There must be some less drastic measure you could take. Is there something Nellie loves, loves above all else in the world?”
“Kids,” he said quickly. “I think maybe that’s why she does anything her bratty sister tells her to do. She thinks of Terel as her kid. I volunteered to give her a few kids of her own, but now I don’t guess I’ll get the chance.”
Houston stood. “There. You have your answer.”
Jace looked blank. “You mean impregnate her?”
She grimaced. “Of course not. Give Nellie what she really wants and she’ll come to you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Think about it, Jocelyn,” she said as she put her hand on his shoulder. “If you want Nellie, it looks as though you’re going to have to fight for her. If you want her enough and fight hard enough, I think you can get her, but it’s not going to be an easy courtship. One of those to a customer.”
Jace took Houston’s hand and kissed it. “You’re not going to help me figure out what to do, are you?”
“No. You just have to open your eyes and look, and you’ll be able to see what needs to be done.”
He smiled at her. “I wish I’d met you before Kane did. I would have given him a run for his money.”
She smiled. “He had me picked out since I was a child. I never had a chance, and neither would you. Now, I must go in and see to my children.”
As she walked away Jace called out after her, “Would you like a puppy?”
“Send it over,” she said, laughing.
When he was alone Jace thought about what Houston had said. There
must
be a way to win Nellie.
Nellie was in the kitchen, which had to be a hundred and ten degrees. The stove was going at full heat to cook the pastries for the tea Terel was giving the next day, and to warm the six irons on top. Nellie was bending over the heavy ironing table, applying a fluting iron to the delicate ripples in Terel’s silk blouse.
The changes in the Grayson household in the past week had tripled Nellie’s work. Terel’s new popularity had greatly increased her need for freshly washed and ironed clothing. Nellie had tried to get Anna to help with the load, but the stupid girl had left a hot iron on the skirt of one of Terel’s best dresses and ruined it. Afterward, Charles said Nellie had better see to the ironing herself as he could not afford to have clothes ruined.
So Nellie was trying to keep up with Terel’s ever-increasing wardrobe and to cook for the many guests now flooding the house. Terel said she couldn’t accept invitations without extending some herself.
Through all the ironing and the cleaning and the cooking, Nellie kept thinking of that glorious afternoon she had spent with Mr. Montgomery. She also thought of the day he’d come to the kitchen and kissed her in the pantry.
She slammed an iron down on a pink brocade skirt. So much for courting, she thought. She hadn’t had a word from him since that day in the pantry. Terel often told of him, though—of how he was at one social event after another and how he had been seen often in the company of Olivia Truman.
“Terel was right about him,” she muttered, trying to make herself feel grateful to her sister for warning her away from the man. But every time she thought of the afternoon with him, a part of her wanted to see him again. Part of her didn’t care if he was after her father’s money or not.
“Hello.”
Nellie jumped half a foot at the sound of the voice, and when she saw Jace, before she thought, she smiled warmly at him. Quickly, she caught herself. “You should not be here, Mr. Montgomery,” she said sternly, trying to look away from him, but in truth she wanted to memorize his features.
“I know,” he said, humbly, “and I apologize. I came to ask for your help.”
“Help?” she asked. Remember, she told herself, this man is only interested in your father’s money. He is the worst kind of scoundrel. “I’m sure you can find someone else to help you with whatever you need.”
“I need a recipe.”
She blinked at him. “A recipe?” For what, to make cakes for Miss Truman? She chided herself. What he did was none of her concern.
He took a little notebook and a stubby pencil from inside his jacket. “I’ve been told you’re one of the best cooks in Chandler, so I thought maybe you’d know how to make biscuits. Mind if I sit down?”
“No, of course not.” She put her iron down. “What do you want a biscuit recipe for?”
“I just need it. Now, let’s see, you need flour, but how much?”
“How many biscuits do you want to make?” She walked to stand by the table.
“Enough for six kids, so how much flour?”
“Why can’t their mother make biscuits?”
“She’s sick. How many biscuits can I make with fifty pounds of flour? Do I need anything else? I just add water, right?”
“Flour and water makes glue, not biscuits.” She sat down across from him.
“Oh, right, glue,” he said, writing. “I need yeast, don’t I?”
“Not for biscuits. Whose children are they?”
“One of the freighters who used to work for your father. Your father fired him, and the poor man has six kids to feed and a sick wife. I got their father a job hauling a load of corn to Denver, but there’s nobody to take care of the kids, so I thought I’d go cook something for them. Now, about these biscuits—if you don’t use yeast, what do you use?”
“Did you go to Reverend Thomas at the church? He always has people ready to help. One of the women—”
He gave her a sad look. “I thought of that, but I feel responsible for these people. Maybe if I hadn’t taken the job with your father, the driver wouldn’t have been fired. You see, I helped make out the job estimate that got the new contract for your father. So, about these biscuits—”
“Why did my father fire him?”
“The fewer people he has to pay, the more money he makes,” Jace said simply. “Baking soda? Is that something that goes into biscuits? What about lard? You wouldn’t know how to make flapjacks, would you? You use yeast in them?”