Love's First Bloom (11 page)

“You may be right. Come,” Phanaby said as she urged Ruth out of the room. “I’d like to get a kiss from that little one before you put her to bed.”

A short time later, Ruth laid Lily down in the bottom of the trundle bed and tucked a light blanket around her. “Sleep tight,” she whispered and pressed a kiss to Lily’s forehead.

Lily scrambled out from beneath the blanket and popped onto all fours before Ruth had taken a single step to leave. “Lily play!”

“Lily sleep,” Ruth said gently, but firmly. “You can play when you wake up.”

Rocking back and forth, Lily burst into exaggerated tears that Ruth had learned to recognize as a sign that the child was simply overtired. Rather than trying to reason with the single-minded toddler, she sat down on the edge of the bottom mattress, laid Lily down again, and covered her with the blanket. “That’s a good babe,” she whispered, and hummed softly, rubbing the small of her back until the toddler stopped crying and drifted off to asleep.

At moments like this, when Lily was lying asleep next to her, so tiny and innocent and so very vulnerable, the desire to protect her and keep her safe was so strong and overwhelming, Ruth wondered how she was going to give this precious baby away for perfect strangers to raise.

With her own eyes beginning to droop and her head nodding forward, Ruth wanted nothing more than to crawl onto her own mattress, just above Lily’s, fall asleep, and stay there until she had gotten word from her father that it was safe to come home.

Instead, she shook off her weariness and tiptoed out of the room, hoping she would find the energy to finally start working on the apron she wanted to make for Phanaby.

Phanaby was waiting for her in the hallway but held silent until Ruth had eased the bedroom door shut again. “Here. Take off the one you’re wearing and put this one on,” she whispered, holding a large white apron like the one Elias always wore when he was working downstairs in his shop.

Ruth hesitated for a moment before she untied the apron she was wearing. “I’ll try not to stain this one as badly,” she said as she exchanged aprons with the woman.

Chuckling, Phanaby rolled the soiled apron into a ball. “I’ll set this one to soak, but I wouldn’t worry overmuch about getting any stains on that one. Elias’s customers rarely spill anything on him, they don’t usually throw anything at him, and they never scream at him, either,” she teased.

Ruth had the apron strings nearly tied together, but instantly dropped her hands back to her side. “H-his customers?” she sputtered. “Are you trying to tell me that I’m supposed to go downstairs and—”

“I was hoping you would, so I could get a bit of a nap myself so I don’t snap at you or anyone else today. If you’d rather not …”

“No. I’ll do it, but I-I’m just not certain that I’ll be able to—”

“Don’t work yourself into a stew,” Phanaby cautioned, walking around Ruth and tying the apron strings snugly at her waist. “It’s been three days since you came home all flustered and upset by what those old men at the general store were arguing about. You can’t stop people from gossiping about Reverend Livingstone’s trial or that poor daughter of his who’s gone missing, any more than you can convince men that they’re twice as guilty of spreading gossip as women are. You can’t keep yourself up here forever, either, and don’t try to tell me you’re not hiding out. You haven’t even gone back to your garden, which means the shawl you left behind is probably ruined. And you did promise Elias that you’d help out a bit when he needed you, as I recall.”

“I did promise to help, but I was thinking I could tidy up the storeroom. I never thought he’d want me to help him with customers.”

Phanaby took her by the elbow and guided her down the hallway to the staircase. “Elias just got in a large shipment of patent medicines. He needs to check each crate to make certain none of the bottles or jars cracked or broke open before he stacks the crates in the storeroom. He can’t do that very easily if he has to run back and forth between the storeroom and the shop. Don’t worry about Lily. I’ll keep an ear out for her while you’re downstairs.”

Ruth took a long breath and started down the staircase.

“Ruth?”

She held onto the railing and looked back over her shoulder.

“Remember, you aren’t the only one whose heart is aching because of the terrible things reporters write in those newspaper articles about Reverend Livingstone,” Phanaby offered, her gaze troubled.

“I’ll try,” Ruth whispered, but her heart was not just aching. Her heart was truly breaking because she could not speak out to defend him or tell anyone here that she was proud to be his daughter.

An hour after she had taken Mr. Garner’s place in the apothecary, Ruth had given two customers the remedies that had been prepared and set aside for them, dusted the display in the front window, and wiped down the entire length of the counter.

When she heard the front door open, she looked up into the mirror and stiffened when she recognized the man who entered the apothecary. She dropped her gaze for a moment, then turned around after she forced her lips into a smile.

The middle-aged man was wearing the same patched overalls and plaid shirt he had been wearing several days ago when she had seen him arguing with another man in the general store, and he shuffled over to the counter. “You must be that new widow lady moved to the village. I heard you were living here,” he said, making it rather obvious that he had been so busy arguing with his friend that he had not taken notice of her. “Where’s Elias?” he asked.

“Mr. Garner is working in the storeroom,” she replied. “Would you like me to fetch him for you?”

He did not bother to answer her; instead, he leaned over the counter and pointed to one of the two brown parcels lying there. “Name’s Toby. Jedediah Toby, just like it says right there. No need to fetch him,” he said as he reached over and grabbed the parcel. “I’ll settle up with Elias at the end of the month.” He tucked the parcel inside his pocket.

“I’ll be sure to tell him,” she offered, anxious to get back to her work.

Mr. Toby, however, seemed rather content to stay and chat. “Heard you come here all the way from New York City with your baby.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Suppose you read all about that minister long before his trial, then.” He leaned closer, his gaze sparkling with curiosity. “Is it true he actually went into them brothels and visited with those harlots in their bedrooms, just like he did the night he killed that woman? The newspapers said—”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know anything about that. I was too distressed and I didn’t have any free time to read any newspapers. I was struggling to provide for my daughter after my dear, sweet husband died so suddenly.” She brought her apron to her face to dab at her eyes before he noted the flash of annoyance that made her cheeks burn.

“Why, look who’s here, Lorelei! It’s that sweet young woman we bumped into on the sidewalk the other day.”

“ ‘We’ didn’t bump into her, Gertie. You did, but it certainly is convenient for us that I spied you in here through the window, Mr. Toby,” her cousin replied as they approached the counter. “Since you didn’t show up at the cottage to fix that broken window like you promised, Mrs. Jensen helped us to find someone else. He did a fine job of repairing her kitchen steps, so you needn’t bother. We’ve hired him instead.”

Ruth stared at the two women who had slipped into the shop so quietly, she had not even heard them. Apparently, neither had Mr. Toby, who spun around so fast he nearly lost his balance. She flushed with relief that someone had interrupted the difficult conversation she had been having with the man, even if that someone turned out to be the Jones cousins. Since the focus of their interest had shifted to Mr. Toby, she almost did not care that she had no escape from their banter, although she sent up a silent prayer that Elias would hear them and intervene.

The man sidestepped the counter and started for the door, walking in a wide arc to get around the two women. “I’ve been feelin’ poorly… .”

“From all we’ve heard, you’ve been plopping yourself down at the general store instead of working,” Gertie argued, her spectacles hanging precariously from the tip of her nose. “And the next time we need something fixed, we won’t be bothering you. We’ll be asking Jake Spencer to help us again.”

Lorelei huffed so hard the brim on her sorry bonnet flopped up and down. “He won’t take a single coin from us, either. He knows how hard it is for widows like us to get by, unlike some other folks who take advantage.”

Mr. Toby didn’t respond. He just shuffled past them and hurried out the door.

As the women approached the counter, bantering back and forth with each other about their handsome new handyman and his easygoing nature, Ruth had a hard time believing the man they were talking about was the gruff, cranky, ill man she had met several days ago. “Good afternoon, ladies. Did … did I hear you say the man who helped you was Jake Spencer?” she asked.

Gertie sighed and a faint blush stained her sunken cheeks. “Lovely man. Lovelier smile. Makes me wish I were just a few years younger. I’d invite Mr. Spencer to supper tomorrow night if you hadn’t put up such a fuss. I still might do just that.”

Lorelei waved at her cousin’s arm, giving her a playful reprimand. “You’ll do no such thing. Even a child could see that Mr. Spencer is sufferin’ quite a bit with that back of his that’s still healin’. Since he already promised to repaint Mrs. Walker’s shutters tomorrow morning, I doubt he’ll be up to walking into the village twice in one day,” she quipped, without answering Ruth’s question any more directly than her cousin had done.

Simultaneously, they paused and looked at Ruth. “Do you know him, too?” they asked in unison, as if they finally realized she was still standing there.

“Yes, I believe we’ve met,” she replied, curious to know why the man she had encountered, who had been so preoccupied with his privacy that he had accused her of trespassing, had apparently been leaving his cabin to go into the village to work. How could he possibly have done any work as a handyman at all when he was hardly able to walk and needed to lean on a cane just to keep his balance?

Unless Jake Spencer was not the man he had appeared to be.

The very thought sent chills coursing up and down the length of her backbone as possibilities clashed against one another in her mind. Perhaps he had just been having a particularly difficult time of it the morning they met. On the other hand, he may have exaggerated the state of his health and demanded privacy because he had something in that cabin he did not want anyone else to see.

Or he could be a reporter who had somehow tracked her here, which made little sense since he had practically tossed her off the property he had rented and had only reluctantly agreed to allow her to return.

Ruth realized now that she had made a mistake by hiding upstairs for the past three days. But she had no time to waste on fear or self-indulgent pity or paranoia. She could panic and assume the worse—that the man had come here looking for her—in which case she would have to pack, take Lily, and disappear this very night. Or she could remain calm and rational, dismiss Jake Spencer as a minor annoyance, and return to the everyday rhythm of her life here for just another day or two until her father sent word that his plans for their future were finally in place.

She chose the latter course of action, and almost immediately a plan took shape in her mind.

Twelve

“Finally!”

Jake quickly turned off the sandy trail and disappeared into the thick of the forest the moment he spied the young Widow Ruth Malloy crossing the bridge at the head of the river. From his hidden vantage point, he waited until she turned down the path that led to the garden she had ignored for the past three days before tucking the crook of the cane over his arm. He then hurried back to his cabin, surprised that she was returning in late afternoon rather than at the break of day as had been her custom.

And that she was not alone.

Keeping the shore of the river in view, he worked his way through scrub pines, stands of fragrant cedar trees that towered over him, and wild mountain laurel that had burst into bloom just yesterday. He was nearly out of breath by the time he reached the cabin and rushed inside.