Harmony (52 page)

Breaking their kissing, he said, “I'll make you happy, Edwina.”

“You already do.” She leaned back and smiled at him. “Even though you got to Ab Trussel and took that extra foot.”

Joining in her playfulness, Tom laughed. “What are you calling an extra foot? It was my foot to begin with.”

“I've got to give you credit—you know how to make a good bribe. What would you do if you ever had to bribe a woman? You couldn't get her to take your side with froggies.”

“Never had to bribe a woman.”

“Maybe not,” she said with a grin, “but you've used your share of trickery with me, that's for sure. You knew all along that line was off and you had the nerve to eat all those cookies.”

“You shoved them at me, as I recall.”

“I was trying to distract you.” She toyed with the hair on his nape, the action of her fingers raising gooseflesh on his arms. “Just like you were trying to distract me wearing that holey old shirt you sleep in when I came to your door.”

“How was I supposed to know it was you?” He grazed her lips with a kiss.

“I don't know . . . you just should have.” Her eyes narrowed a little. “When I think how you painted your side red just to get back at me . . . Tom Wolcott, don't you ever do a thing like that again.”

“From now on, I won't paint a thing unless you approve.”

“I should hope so.”

They kissed once more, smiling as their warm mouths joined, teased, nibbled and lingered. As they sat on the stumps with their arms draped over each other's shoulders, Edwina gazed into Tom's eyes. “You do make me very happy, Tom. I never thought I could be so happy.”

“Likewise, Edwina. I can't imagine what my life would be like without you in it.”

“I don't want you to try to imagine.”

“Me neither.” He gave her another gentle kiss. Her lips were soft and full and would be his forever. Stroking his thumb across the nape of her neck, he felt the satiny texture of her perfumed skin. As a way of leading into his surprise about the property he'd bought, Tom murmured against her damp mouth, “We'll have to tell Calhoon
to start sorting our mail and putting it in the same place.”

“Mail.” The
m
vibrated on his mouth. “That reminds me. I got a letter from Denver a few days back.” She kissed him once, then pulled far enough back so he could see her face. “It was from Madame DeVille. She owns a bridal salon in Denver. She said she could help me find a position. But I don't need her to do that now, because obviously I won't be going. I'll be working here.”

Tom creased his forehead. “You mean the school?”

“Well, of course I would continue the finishing school. I do so enjoy it.” Her eyes sparkled in an enthusiastic way. “And the most amazing thing happened to me this afternoon. The ladies—the girls' mothers—they came by to see me, and you'll never guess why. I suppose I should thank Abbie for gossiping about me.”

Tom recalled the vindictive woman's words in Healy's. That's why he'd asked Edwina if anyone had treated her ill. He'd assumed those old bats would have come down hard on her for the dancing.

“What did they say?”

“Abbie told them about my dancing to ragtime and after an agonizingly long moment, they asked me if I'd teach them and their daughters to do the crazy bones! Imagine that. I thought for sure they'd scorn my past visits to the clubs, but they weren't in the least. They even defended me against Abbie. I couldn't believe it. So I'm going to be adding dancing to the curriculum at Huntington's Finishing School.”

“That's good, Ed, but once we're married, I don't want you to teach school anymore.”

The animation left her face. “What do you mean you don't want me to teach school?”

“I don't want you employed. It's as simple as that.”

“Teaching isn't working. It's educating.”

“You're getting paid for it. That's employment.”

“I told you I'm in financial straights right now. I have to work.”

“Not after we're married. I'll take care of your debts.”

Fire lit her gaze and a thin chill fell into her words. “You will do no such thing. It's my responsibility. I'm not foisting it off on you.”

“You aren't ‘foisting' it off on me. I'm telling you that once we're married, you and all you have will be for me to take care of.”

Edwina ducked out of his arms. “If that isn't the most archaic thinking I've ever heard. You've said pigheaded things in the past about women, but I never thought you'd lump me into your idiotic ideals about them. I thought I was special to you . . . that you thought my running the school was commendable.”

“And I do think that, Edwina. But that was before—when you weren't going to be my wife. Now you will be. How the hell would I look if my wife kept a job after we were married? I'd look like one sorry son of a bitch who couldn't take care of her. That's what.” He dug for his smokes, then swore and gave up on finding one.

“Well, I should give a you-know-what what people think about my marriage. It's none of their business.”

“Sweetheart, in this town, everything everyone does is everyone's business.”

They stared at each other for precious seconds, then she put her hands on her hips and said in an exasperated tone, “What a ninny I was. I thought you were coming around and were going to stop all this superior manhood folderol.”

“Edwina, thanks to your reasoning, I don't have a problem with a woman making her own way. But when she's got a man, she doesn't have to.”

“That shouldn't be an issue. Having to and wanting to are different.” She glared at him. “You really mean it—I can't continue to teach finishing school?”

“I'm sorry, Ed. . . . It just goes against my way.”

She abruptly stood. “You're a Neanderthal.”

Not knowing what a Neanderthal was put him in the precarious position of not knowing how to defend himself.
So he faked his way through the taunt. “I'm not a Neanderthal. I'm a realist.”

“Realist schmealist. I don't care. Tom Wolcott, you're infuriating. You ask me to be your wife, then you make plans to take over my life. It was a very difficult decision for me to come to. You don't know how hard I fought off the idea of marriage because I thought I wasn't good enough for the institution. When I did reconcile myself to it, I thought I'd be blissfully happy. I'd have a husband and I'd have the school—two things I never thought I'd have. I scraped the money together to open Huntington's Finishing School. I persevered through a time when my sisters might have fallen into a fit of weeping. You said I should be proud of myself. Well, I am. I may not be able to use my accounting certificate, but I've accomplished something just as good. I'd rather have no husband than a husband who thinks like you. I won't be one of the ladies in this town with no outside interests other than darning your holey socks or worrying about what to prepare you for dinner.”

“What are you saying, Ed?” He ground the words out between his locked teeth.

“I'm saying . . .” her voice faltered, then her eyes grew misty. “I'm saying that I can't marry you after all.”

He tried to bring her into his arms, but she backed away. “Edwina, you don't mean it.”

“I do mean it,” she exclaimed, a tear rolling down her cheek. “I won't turn into my mother. I watched her wither away through twenty-five years of marital monotony doing for my father. She had no outside interests, no money, no nothing. That will
never
happen to me.”

Tom could settle this right now. He had the means. All he had to say was she could keep the school and start up this dancing thing.

But he had his own memories, and they weren't ones he wanted repeated for his wife. Curling his fingers into fists, then straightening them, he relived the anguish of his childhood, of how he'd seen his parents grow estranged. “My ma, she worked every damn day of her
married life washing clothes for other people. She died at the age of thirty-two because of working. Hell, I'm thirty-two. I'm not ready to go to my reward yet. I've got a lot of living left, and I wanted to do that living with you. I will not have any wife of mine go out and make her own way. I've seen how it wears a woman down. I won't watch you do it to yourself, Edwina.”

“There's a big difference between physical work and mental work.”

“Not to me. Work is work.” Combing his hands through the hair that rested above his ears beneath the brim of his hat, he added, “You won't find Crescencia Stykem going out to earn a paycheck after she marries Shay.”

“Crescencia doesn't want to earn a paycheck. She's perfectly happy to stay in the house and take care of it. That may be fine for some women, Tom Wolcott, but I'm not some women.”

“Don't I know that.”

Edwina swiped at the tears rolling from her eyes. “Well . . .” she managed in a tone that was more brittle than ice, “we seem not to have anything further to say.”

He didn't want to let her go, but he could not compromise his convictions.

She held back a sob, her shoulders quaking. With the pride and dignity only Edwina could gather in such a moment, she walked away. Tom watched her go, a painful knot forming in his chest. He had his pride, too.

Mr. Alastair Stykem requests your presence at the marriage of his daughter, Miss Crescencia Louise Stykem,

to

Mr. Shay Martin Dufresne, on Monday, December 24th, at 4 o'clock, Harmony General Assembly Church, Hackberry Way.

The young girls inside Crescencia Stykem's parlor giggled while the bride-to-be received and opened small tokens of their affection and accepted good wishes for her Christmas Eve wedding, just days away. Edwina sat with a smile frozen on her mouth until her cheeks began to hurt and she felt like crying once more.

Abigail and Ludlow Rutledge had boarded a train out of Harmony three days after they had arrived. Edwina had begged off further invitations, and once Abbie realized she couldn't reduce Edwina to bitterness about her choice of husband, she'd stopped sending messages to her. Ludie hadn't come to see her again, nor had he tried to get in touch with her in any way.

It saddened Edwina that the two people she'd thought the most of in Chicago she now thought the least of in Montana. Both had become self-centered and were arrogant in thinking she would be withered by despair at their news. But Edwina couldn't spend time thinking about a couple who had moved on; she had something more pressing on her mind: Tom.

The past week had been the worst she'd ever had to cope with. She cried, then was angry, then cried again. She hadn't wanted to face it. Tom didn't love her enough to see her reasoning. At the age of twenty-four, she had been left at the altar twice before even coming close to it. This was the end for her. Never again would she allow herself to think for even a second that she would marry.

With Tom, she'd given herself hope. After she'd told him about Ludie and he hadn't walked out the door, she'd thought there was a chance . . . albeit one of her own making. She shouldn't have let herself think about marriage. But the walls she had put up had begun to crumble. She'd fallen deeply and madly in love with him, and she had pushed better judgment and past experience aside.

She hadn't spoken with Tom since that day in the grove. She'd seen him pass by her window on occasion with Mr. Dufresne, but he never stopped, never came
inside to see her and tell her he'd rethought his views. And she had not gone to him. She couldn't. Her aspirations and beliefs held steady; this was no whim.

At least she hadn't seen him in four days, so her chronic upset over catching glimpses of him had faded some, but her heart still longed for him. The school had closed last Friday for the holiday break and Edwina had yet to tell the girls of her plans.

Huntington's Finishing School would not be opening again. In a way, Tom had won. She wouldn't be teaching anymore.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, she observed the merriment around her, but her thoughts were not on the day Crescencia would wed. They were on the last few days, during which her world had careened, jostling her into facing the facts.

She could not remain in Harmony without Tom in her life. It was too painful. She couldn't—wouldn't—do it.

She'd spoken to the telegraph office on Tuesday and asked Mr. Beady to send a wire to Helena's telegraph office, asking the telegraph operator there to put in a phone call to DeVille's Bridal Salon to say she would be leaving Montana Christmas Day and making her way to Denver. Then she'd gone to the bank and spoken to Mr. Fletcher about her loan with Equity Mortgage in San Francisco. She'd asked him the best way to handle her default on the second mortgage, as well as the first. There was no way she could continue to pay both. He'd told her he'd have to foreclose on the property. His words had pained her like nothing else had, but she could not see that she had another choice in the matter.

Staying in Harmony would have eventually meant being debt free, but how could she start over in Denver with ties to Montana? With new employment, she'd have to pay for housing. Rent on an apartment would be high in the city. Not to mention that without Marvel-Anne, she'd have to take care of her own wardrobe. That would mean sending out to laundries. More costs. She
simply could not afford to keep up residences in two places.

Foreclosing on the Sycamore Drive home that had been in the Huntington family for two generations would have Edwina's mother turning over in her grave. All she could hope for was celestial forgiveness.

“Look!” Cressie beamed, lifting a quaint gift. It was a diary from Meg Brooks.

Meg gave Crescencia a smile. “So you can write all your feelings in it about marriage.” Then with a conspiring grin, she added, “And share them with us!”