All in Good Time (17 page)

To his astonishment, she left Foster’s side to thread his arm with her own. “It’s as sound as can be, and I’m so very grateful for your help. Do you know Mr. Turk Foster?”

Henry offered his hand, though any warmth he might have
felt a moment before quickly evaporated. Foster took it, appearing every bit as cool as Henry himself.

“Won’t you stay for dinner, Mr. Hawkins? It’s the least I can do for your trouble. The dinner will be one of gratitude all the way around. To you for the sign, and to Mr. Foster for his help earlier today.”

“What help was that?” He hoped his suspicion didn’t show through the inquiry.

“One of the street kids threw a rock through her window,” Foster said as they walked up to the porch. “I happened to be passing by at the time and offered to have the window repaired.”

Henry looked over at the window beside the sign he’d hung. It appeared intact, though now he noticed a few glistening shards on the ground beneath.

“It was fortunate for Miss Caldwell that you happened by,” he said.
If it was a coincidence. . . .

Inside the house, Henry removed his hat and gloves as Foster did the same. Despite being convinced he had been right to drive this way—and right to stop, which had forced a dinner invitation from a woman whose goal in life seemed to be to feed anyone who came by—all Henry felt was irritation. For all the male visitors to this house, a casual observer might think the place fit right into the neighborhood.

Another unwelcome thought crossed Henry’s mind as he followed the others to the dining room. Had Foster been approached to run in next year’s Senate race, as Lionel had indicated? If Foster had been foolish enough to agree, wouldn’t someone like Dessa Caldwell be just the right kind of wife to capture the votes Foster’s blemished reputation would scare away otherwise?

“Oh, Mr. Hawkins!” Jane’s surprised voice reached him from the direction of the kitchen door. She held out her hand as she approached. “How wonderful to see you.”

Henry accepted her handshake while Miss Caldwell spoke.

“Jane, you already know Mr. Hawkins, but I didn’t get a chance to introduce you formally to Mr. Turk Foster. Mr. Foster, this is Jane Murphy, who lives here with me at Pierson House.”

Henry recognized the interested glint in Foster’s eye, creating in Henry an unexpectedly strong sense of protection.

“Dinner will be served shortly, gentlemen,” said Miss Caldwell as she left them to approach the kitchen. “Jane, perhaps you could show our guests to the table and have them choose where they’d like to sit.”

Miss Caldwell disappeared behind the kitchen door.

“So, Jane,” said Foster, “how is it that you’re familiar with the elusive Mr. Hawkins? Rumors have always proclaimed him to live in a rather small social circle. A circle of one, if I may say so without offense.” He bowed his head Henry’s way.

“No offense taken,” Henry said, then stepped toward the dining room table with the sincere hope that Jane was too embarrassed to admit how they’d met. If Foster hadn’t read about the incident in the newspaper, there was no sense enlightening him. She should put all that behind her, where it was best left.

“Mr. Hawkins and I met at his bank,” Jane said without a trace of the chagrin Henry had hoped for.

“That’s right,” Henry said, and caught Jane’s eye with the slightest shake of his head. “Now then, Jane, where will you be sitting? I assume Miss Caldwell will want to take the place closest to the kitchen.”

“Oh.” She looked momentarily confused, then motioned to the chair on the far side. “I’ll sit there.”

Henry found his way to the end of the table, opposite where he knew Miss Caldwell would sit. Foster appeared to be contemplating something; otherwise Henry was quite sure they’d have had a race to the seat he now claimed.

“At the bank . . . You’re too young to work there, too young to
do business there.” Foster looked at Henry with a new light in his eye before turning that gaze back to Jane. “You must be the girl I read about, the one who came into the bank and threatened Mr. Hawkins with the false nitro?”

Jane looked abashed at last. “Yes, I’m afraid so.” She moved closer to the kitchen door. “I believe I’m needed in the kitchen before we sit.”

“So,” Foster said, his full attention on Henry now. “I thought there was something curious about that story. You called it a prank, but she clearly intended to rob you.”

Henry placed his hands on the chair in front of him, staring at the table rather than at Foster. “It was a prank, nothing more.”

“Only because she didn’t get away with it. And you let her go. Why? Because she’s a girl?”

“She’s a child. Children make mistakes.”

“I’d say she’s a bit more than that,” Foster said with a glance toward the kitchen door. Though he’d kept the comment to little more than a whisper, Henry heard the appreciative tone. Perhaps some of the girls on Foster’s stage were as young as Jane.

“She has a home here,” Henry said, hoping the reminder would keep any thoughts of exploiting the girl far from Foster’s mind.

He shrugged, then returned his gaze to Henry. This time Henry did not look away, though the other man’s scrutiny went on longer than he thought necessary. “Curious about your letting a would-be thief go, Hawkins. Knowing you by reputation, I’d have said you thought money far more important than forgiveness for a prank, even one from a girl.”

Just then Miss Caldwell came through the swinging kitchen door, and Foster’s face changed from dubious to welcoming faster than Henry could take his next breath.

Henry might have been out of practice at social gatherings, but he meant to participate in—and direct—this conversation.
He smiled at Miss Caldwell. “I couldn’t help but notice the table is set as if you’d expected me. Am I taking someone’s place again?”

Miss Caldwell laughed, a sound he found all too pleasant. “I’d invited the glazier who did the work on the window this afternoon, but Mr. Foster said he was unable to attend. So you see? With or without an earlier invitation, Mr. Hawkins, you were meant to sit at this table.”

Henry kept his gaze ahead, afraid if he did so much as glance Foster’s way, he’d look like the strutting peacock he felt like inside.

“Jane,” Henry said after they’d been seated, after Miss Caldwell’s prayer for the meal, and after she’d begun filling the plates, “have you decided yet whether or not you’ll return to school?” He wasn’t above revealing his familiarity with the girl to make it appear to Foster that Henry had more right to sit at this table than he.

“Miss Caldwell and I have discussed it, but I have the rest of summer to decide.” She looked hopefully in Henry’s direction. “What do you think I should do, Mr. Hawkins? Go back to school, or get a job?”

He was about to answer—school, most definitely—but he’d barely opened his mouth before Foster spoke up. “I can offer you a job starting tomorrow, over at my theater. The Verandah. Have you heard of it?”

Jane shook her head slowly.

“It’s the finest concert hall in Denver. I’ll admit there is some gaming that goes on, but I assure you—and you, Miss Caldwell—that it’s a fine, upstanding venue for variety theater. It’s really a happy place! People come every night of the week to laugh and enjoy music and escape the worries of their day.” He winked at Jane. “Have you ever wanted to be on the stage, Jane?”

“I . . . hadn’t thought of it before. I can’t sing.” She glanced at
Miss Caldwell. “At least not like Miss Caldwell. I’m good at math, though.”

Foster laughed and looked to the head of the table. “You’re both welcome to my stage at any time.” Then, as if he’d guessed the offer wasn’t stirring interest, he raised his glass in a toast to Jane. “Mathematics, eh? I’ve always admired a smart girl. To perfect the old French proverb that says only men and queens can afford to be ugly, there is nothing more desirable than a girl who is both smart and beautiful.”

Jane’s cheeks turned instantly pink, and Henry lifted a brow at the man’s easy charm. He was clearly everything Henry was not.

The thought prompted him to glance Miss Caldwell’s way. Did she think Foster charming? How could she not?

“I’m sure we can find suitable work for you, Jane,” Foster went on, “perhaps helping my assistant with the books. He’s always appearing overworked and would probably welcome the help of a pretty assistant.”

As Jane’s brows rose with interest, Henry’s gathered in concern. If Miss Caldwell had any idea what Foster was proposing, she’d be protesting already. Get the girl in a place like that and she’d lose any chance in polite society—the kind of society Miss Caldwell would want her to be part of.

“There is an academy over on Seventeenth Street that offers an extensive mathematics course,” Henry said. The school was looking to build a larger facility, which required more funds. An exploratory committee had contacted Henry some time ago, trying to sell him on the merits of their faculty. Unfortunately for them at the time, he’d refused to get involved. It was a school exclusively for girls. Until meeting Jane, he’d thought only boys needed the rigorous environment of such a school. “It’s called Wolfe Hall. They have scholarships available for young women such as you. Would you be interested?”

“Oh yes, Mr. Hawkins!”

With a mix of satisfaction and secret embarrassment, he turned his attention back to his meal. Scholarships, indeed. He had no idea if they offered such a thing. What he did know, however, was that he’d sooner spit into the wind than have the likes of Turk Foster snatch away a girl he’d already saved from jail once.

Surely an anonymous scholarship fund for the girl could be arranged.

Dessa sipped the water in her glass, looking at Mr. Hawkins over the brim and trying to hide her astonishment. Was this the same Mr. Hawkins sitting at this very table, the one who had previously offered little more than yes or no to any given question? He was a veritable chatterbox today.

Surely it had been God Himself who’d sent Mr. Hawkins by this evening!

Sometime later, when she saw both gentlemen to the door, after Mr. Foster had kissed her hand in a lingering way that pushed politeness to its rim, she watched Mr. Hawkins place his hat on his head and turn to the door for a silent departure.

But then he turned back to her. “May I say, Miss Caldwell, that the stove has proven to be a fine investment for you?”

Dessa couldn’t contain her broad smile. “Why, Mr. Hawkins, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

She was amused at the curious look on Mr. Foster’s face as he followed Mr. Hawkins from her house. He was charming, indeed—but she didn’t deny that sharing a private exchange with Mr. Hawkins was more delightful than it should be for a woman intent on staying a spinster.

18

DESSA FILLED
the trash bin with the remnants of breakfast: orange peels, the scrapings from her bowl of oatmeal, a few crumbs from the soda biscuits she’d baked. With the food trash separated from the rest, she took it all out to the two bins the garbage wagon would empty on Wednesday.

Outside, she expected the air to be fresh—but as she approached the side of the carriage house where the bins were kept, she smelled something other than the clean air or the trash. She smelled smoke.

Heart pounding, she looked back at the house but saw nothing suspicious, not even from upstairs, where Jane still slept. Turning around, she looked along the yards in both directions.

Nothing.

The smell seemed to be stronger as she approached the covered trash bins. Could someone have tossed in a match?

Instead of lifting the lid on either the food or the regular waste bin, she felt the sides first. Neither was hot.

Yet that smell . . . She looked at the carriage house. It was old and dilapidated, that was true. But the scent seemed stronger now that she was so near the building.

Setting aside the buckets, Dessa approached the door she always had such trouble opening. It took several minutes to pry it loose, even as she tugged it back and forth. Once again it sprang open most unexpectedly.

The scent of smoke was stronger than ever, though she saw
nothing unusual. Stepping inside, she found her eye drawn to the blanket on the bed—more specifically, to a rather large and black circle burned right through to the hay mattress beneath.

Rolling up the rest of the blanket and pressing on the marred center to be sure there were no flames left, she felt dampness instead. Someone had started this fire . . . but just as surely, someone had extinguished it.

Dessa turned around to study the space. There was noplace to hide; she knew she was alone.

Walking back to where the boards were loose, she pushed one. The plank slid easily out of the way, wide enough for her to slip her head outside. Two loose planks, side by side, would allow a person of some girth to pass through. Someone
had
been here! And this was how they were coming and going.

There was no one in the area now, though. Turning back again, she searched for any sign of regular occupancy. There were no clothes, no leftover food, nothing but the burned blanket and a discarded bowl. She realized it was the same one that last time held nuts for that squirrel.

“Oh, Lord,” she said aloud, “if someone wants a roof over their head, why won’t they come to my front door?”

Determinedly, she left the carriage house to return to the kitchen, where she found the same hammer and supply of nails Mr. Ridgeway had used to hang the sign beside her dining room window. She would show this person, whoever it was, they needn’t resort to poaching. They were welcome inside.

She pounded nails in the planks until they were firmly in place—a task that took far longer than she expected. Jane came in search of her and offered to help when Dessa found several more loose boards, all the way around the structure. Between the two of them they sealed sixteen planks—a few of them crookedly, but firmly all the same.

“Now all we have to do is write a note.”

“A note?” Jane said, following Dessa inside.

Dessa brushed a loose tendril of hair from her face. Between the morning’s exertion and the heat of the sun, she wanted to take a bath. But that would have to wait. “We’re going to invite whoever was living here to come to the door.”

“But you don’t know who it was! It could be anybody. A criminal, even!”

“Then they probably won’t take advantage of the offer. But I don’t want someone staying here without knowing who it is. They must come to the door to find welcome under either this roof or that one.”

Dessa wrote the note, then nailed it to the first plank she’d righted, at the back of the building.

Just as she returned inside the house, her thoughts on that bath, someone knocked at the front door.

Henry stepped out of his carriage and approached the door to his bank, but something prompted him to take a look around. It had been a long time since he’d felt a pang of nervousness that someone was watching him. Those pangs had faded once he knew he was no longer liable to go to jail for his youthful mistake, particularly after he’d repaid the money he’d stolen so long ago.

But there it was again, the feeling that someone had followed him out to City Park and was even now watching him walk into his bank.

Memories of those two notes came to mind. He’d received only the two, so he’d preferred to forget about them. Until now.

On the top step leading to the door, Henry turned around, pretending he’d forgotten something in his carriage. But instead of going back to the carriage, he scanned the street again. There
were a few pedestrians walking on the other side of the road, coming out of the market. A boy ran from one doorway to another, while a delivery wagon sat outside. Nothing unusual, no one even remotely shady.

He shook his head, then continued on toward the bank’s entryway.

Dessa opened the door just in time to see the back of a woman dressed in one of the loveliest gowns she’d ever seen. It was far more ornate than something Dessa would wear, the shade a pink of the ripest watermelon, with shirred sleeves that were pulled low off the shoulders to complement a satin basque fading into a pleated skirt drawn tightly at the back. When she turned, Dessa’s eye was immediately drawn to the low and wide cut of the square décolletage, made almost decent by a threadlike trim along the edge.

“Hello!” Dessa said, opening the door wider. She wished she hadn’t exerted herself quite so much this morning; she felt soiled and ugly next to this light-haired beauty. “Come in, won’t you? I’m Dessa Caldwell.”

The young woman looked momentarily indecisive, as if she might turn around again. She clutched a velvet pouch so tightly that Dessa saw her knuckles were nearly as white as the handkerchief sticking out the side of one hand.

Dessa neared her. “Is that one of the handkerchiefs I made?”

The woman held it out, not so much to hand it back as to simply show it. “I stole it from another girl.”

It didn’t matter. “Come in, won’t you?” Dessa nearly whispered the invitation, but it was enough. As she held the door, the other woman came inside. “Can I get you something? Tea, perhaps? Would you like breakfast, or perhaps an early lunch?”

She shook her head. “No . . . I don’t know why I came.” She
turned back to the door, but Dessa still stood near it. “I need to go.”

“Oh, but do stay!” Dessa insisted. “Just for a visit.”

Dessa led the woman to the settee in the parlor just as Jane joined them from the kitchen. Dessa introduced Jane, though she couldn’t offer the name of their guest in return.

Jane looked between the visitor and Dessa. “Do you want me to keep sewing those pillowcases?”

Dessa nodded, grateful the girl had noticed the other woman’s tension. “Yes, Jane. There is more material upstairs. Take your time finding something suitable, all right?”

With Jane gone, Dessa turned her attention fully on the woman who sat on her settee. “Are you quite sure you wouldn’t like something? Tea?” Dessa gave a quick smile as she watched the woman twist the ribbon on her little pouch. “I don’t like tea much myself, but I’ve always welcomed it when I’m looking to do something with my hands.”

The woman’s light eyes took on a hint of what could only be relief. With that simple observation and admission, Dessa had broken through, tipped the woman’s indecision in favor of staying. The woman burst into tears, and Dessa moved immediately to a spot next to her so she could put her arms around her.

“Oh!” She leaned back from Dessa’s touch.

“I’m sorry,” Dessa said gently, settling her hands back in her lap. “I only wanted to offer comfort.”

The woman stood, but thankfully did not go near the door. She moved to the chair Dessa had vacated. Then she wiped at her tears, using the handkerchief in the very manner Dessa had hoped it would be used. “It’s been a long time since anyone’s touched me without wanting something.”

“I shouldn’t have assumed you’d welcome such contact,” Dessa admitted. “I’m so very sorry.”

The woman shook her head, then wiped away another tear and offered an unexpected, brief laugh. “I’m a little nervous, but I suppose that’s obvious.” She took a moment to compose herself, closing her eyes, stiffening her shoulders. Then she opened her eyes and looked at Dessa curiously. “Do you know that we can hear you singing those hymns at night? Here you are, singing to God while Miss Leola curses you. She’s just happy you go to bed early, or you’d ruin her business altogether.”

“I never meant any harm. Is my voice so unpleasant?”

“No, not at all,” she said. “It’s
what
you’re singing, not how you’re singing. Men don’t tend to stop in when they hear words like ‘Sinner, come home.’”

“I suppose I should offer an apology,” Dessa said with a smile, “but it wouldn’t be a very honest one.”

“Miss Leola always has the piano player play his loudest while you sing, so anyone who makes it past the door won’t be bothered. I suppose she should apologize for that.”

Dessa thanked her, then said, “Do you mind if I ask your name? I’m so glad you’ve come, but I don’t know what to call you.”

“I’m known as Miss Remee to everyone around here. You’ve probably guessed I live at the bordello down the street.”

Dessa nodded. “You’re most welcome here, Miss Remee. For as long as you like.”

Miss Remee looked around the room, her gaze settling on the stenciled wall. “My mother used to have curtains in the kitchen with pineapples on them. A symbol of welcome, she used to say.”

“That’s what I hoped they would be here, too.”

Miss Remee’s delicate brows tried to gather, but her forehead was too smooth for such an expression to mar her appearance. Her eyes were a lovely shade of amber, nearly gold, and just now they seemed to be swimming in a pool replenished with diamonds.

“My mother’s kitchen wasn’t very welcoming, though. Not once it was obvious I wouldn’t attract a suitable husband.”

“Does your mother live here in Denver?”

She wiped her eyes again, dabbed at her nose. “My folks are in Indiana. Far enough away, even with the railroad.”

“Sometimes distance is just what we need.”

“That or a shotgun.” She smiled at Dessa’s raised brows. “Say, do you have a family you left behind somewhere?”

Dessa shook her head. “Plenty of bad memories, though.” Then she asked, “Are you sure you wouldn’t like some refreshment?”

Miss Remee hesitated, but a slow smile soon appeared. “I overheard a couple of the girls claiming you bake a good scone.”