Rexanne Becnel (45 page)

“Thank you, Tanner,” she murmured, made suddenly shy by their harmony on this subject.

“I only said I wouldn’t oppose the idea. You’re still on your own when it comes to convincing Hogan.”

“A passel of kids! Here?” Willard Hogan shouted from across the immense desk in his office. Three secretaries stared at Abby as if to see how she dealt with his frequent outbursts.

“You don’t have to shout.” Abby crossed her arms and stood her ground.

He cleared his throat and glanced uneasily around. “Get out of here,” he growled to his staff. Once they’d scurried off, he met Abby’s stubborn gaze. “If you want me to make a donation to the orphanage, I will.”

“Why, what a splendid and generous idea, Grandfather.” She gave him her sweetest smile, but her determination didn’t falter in the least. “Between your donation and my instruction those poor unfortunate little children shall surely prosper.” Before his sputtering could form into a new protest, she added, “You know, Mama always said a person’s soul was shaped in childhood. Give them love and hope—and a good education—and there is no limit to what they can accomplish in life.”

Up to now they had stepped lightly about the subject of her mother—his daughter. Abby suspected it was because he saw Margaret’s abdication as one of the few failures of his life. Bringing her mother into this matter was a bit of a gamble. But Abby saw from the convulsive workings of his beefy throat that she’d hit the mark this time. He slid one thick finger back and forth along the edge of his desk pad.

“There is no guarantee they will ever thank you for it.”

Abby paused at the bitterness in his tone. All at once it seemed more important to deal with the past than with the present. “My mother loved my father. So much—” She broke off, for emotion clogged her throat. For the first time she really understood how much her mother had loved Robert Bliss. Enough to give up her family and the comfortable future awaiting her. Abby understood because she would do the same for Tanner. The difference, however, was that Robert Bliss had wanted Margaret to give it up. He’d placed very little value on money and the things it could buy. He’d expected her to give it up and follow him. But Tanner was not like that. He needed to make his own fortune, and that perversely would not allow him to cost Abby her inheritance. Though Abby could willingly give it up for love, just as her mother had done, Tanner would not hear of it.

Her grandfather swiveled in his high-backed leather desk chair and stared out the window onto the grounds that stretched green and well tended down toward the road that led into town. “She loved him so much it seemed that she had no room left in her heart for me.”

An abandoned little boy could not have torn at her heart more than her aging grandfather did at that moment.

“Would you ever have accepted my father as her husband?”

He tensed, then just as quickly slumped back into the chair. “If he hadn’t been such a stiff-necked bastard, I might have. But he … he …” He trailed off under her steady gaze.

“You and my father are so much alike—”

“Like hell we are!”

“So much alike that I understand completely why my mother was drawn to him.”

He grumbled beneath his breath, but Abby ignored it. “My mother was loved all her life. First by her father, then by her husband. She had a good education and made certain I had one as well. And she was the most optimistic and hopeful person I ever knew. I think it’s only right that I pass on those gifts she passed on to me. That’s why I want to bring children from the orphanage here. There’s no reason why you should say no.”

“Tell me one thing, first. Tell me why in all those years she never wrote me. Tell me why she never told you anything about me.”

In truth Abby had wondered about that very thing. “My father … He was a man of strong opinions.”

“Inflexible is what you mean.”

Abby sighed and wove her fingers restlessly together. “I suppose he was. Just as you are,” she added. “Anyway Mama never openly opposed him. I suppose she thought it best to keep the peace. And perhaps she thought you wouldn’t have anything to do with her anymore anyway.” She bit her lip anxiously. “Did she have any reason to think that might be the case?”

Her grandfather let his head sag against the chair back and stared up at the high coffered ceiling of his office. Carved cross beams with classical egg-and-dart detailing and with a different scene of heaven painted in each recess gave testament to the vast riches he commanded. Not many kings lived as well as did he. But Abby knew such wealth could not substitute for the love of a family. And she suspected he realized it as well.

“I told her …” He faltered, then blinked as he cleared his throat. “The last time I saw her, I said … that if she married Bliss, she would no longer be my daughter.”

Abby sucked in a harsh breath. So there it was. Words spoken in anger—though he’d later repented of them—had sent them off in opposite directions forever. Her mother should have realized he would eventually regret them and written him. But no doubt Abby’s father had forbidden it. Dear Lord, Abby wondered. What had been the use of all that foolish pride?

On impulse she came around the desk and knelt before her grandfather. He looked down at her when she took his two hands in hers, and she saw all the pain and sorrow he’d hidden up to now.

“Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past, Grandfather.”

He caught her fingers between his own and held on tight. “No, let’s not.” He managed a smile. “I suppose that means I should abandon any hope that you might still agree to marry Patrick.”

She nodded.

He shifted in his seat but kept hold of her hands. “All right. But you must abide by my wishes and stay on the grounds until we’ve determined who it is that seeks to hurt you.”

“And the children from the orphanage? Can I bring them here?”

He shook his head in exasperation. “If you want those children underfoot here—just during the day, mind you—then I suppose it’s all right.” Then his faint smile faded and he looked every one of his sixty-odd years. “It’s glad I am to have you home, Abby girl.”

She smiled up at him. It was the first time she’d truly been glad to be home too.

“… S
NITCH STARED AROUND HIM
, not at all certain about this place that Tillie’s curiosity had brought them to. Bits of dust and dried roots sprinkled down upon his head as they inched along through the low tunnel, and he wondered why any creature would choose to live beneath the surface of the earth.” Abby paused and stared at the rapt faces of the children spread out on the morning-room floor. “Can anyone tell me why prairie dogs build their homes—whole cities even—underground?”

“I know! I know!”

“To hide from wolves and coyotes and foxes!”

“’Cause there’s no trees to climb!”

Strictly speaking it was not the most organized way to run a classroom. But Abby couldn’t help smiling at her enthusiastic young charges. Sometimes order and discipline got in the way of true teaching. How much easier it was to teach geography by way of her two traveling mice. How much more readily her students learned and responded. Their interest in a subject normally considered dry and dull was obvious.

In the week since she’d begun her school for the orphans, her whole life had turned upside down. From the moment her eyes opened in the morning until the time she dropped into exhausted slumber, she was on the go. She’d had rooms to convert, transportation to arrange, meals to plan and lessons to prepare. Only the youngest students came each day, for the older students had lessons at the orphanage in the mornings and worked at a variety of small jobs in the afternoons. But the fourteen little ones she taught were handful enough. Most of them had never even seen a book or a slate. Other than “please” and “thank you,” they were abominably lacking in manners, and from their chewed fingernails to their scraggly hair, they were all poorly groomed.

But Tillie and her fastidious manners were a great aid to Abby, and so the storytelling had become a twice-daily part of her teaching program.

So had Tanner’s visits.

She knew when fourteen pairs of eyes shifted toward the doorway now that he was here.

“It’s playtime,” a towheaded rapscallion named Cliff shouted, leaping to his feet. “Let’s go dig for prairie dogs!”

“That’s so mean,” fussed Rosemary, a serious little girl with huge brown eyes.

Cliff made a face at her. “I’m not gonna hurt them. I just wanna see them up close.” He ran to take Tanner’s hand. “Can you find some prairie dogs for us to see?”

From order and quiet to rowdy excitement, Abby’s classroom had disintegrated. Yet she didn’t have it in her to object. If anything, Tanner’s visits threw her more off kilter than her students. Or maybe the children sensed her befuddled state whenever Tanner came around and simply took advantage of it. At any rate she tried to compose her features and still the nervous trembling of her hands as she rose to face him.

For just a second their eyes met, just one tiny moment stolen from the rest of the day’s time. Yet that moment meant more to Abby than any portion of the rest of her day. Tanner stood tall and oh so masculine in the midst of the swarming children. As always he dressed austerely. Dark trousers, a collarless white shirt. A black leather vest. But the same appearance that might intimidate adults worked somehow to beckon Abby’s students. If she was the storyteller who drew them into adventurous worlds peopled by all sorts of odd little creatures, then he was the adventure come vividly to life, someone who encouraged them to act out those adventures on the well-tended lawns that surrounded the house.

He would make a wonderful father, she thought, not for the first time.

“Aren’t you coming, Miss Abigail?”

Abby glanced toward the terrace door at Dorothy’s question. She was a delicate little girl, but that fragile exterior hid a will of iron, as Abby had soon discovered. Each of her students dealt with their orphaned state quite differently, and Dorothy had attached herself to Abby with a determination that was almost frightening. The child stood in the open door, clutching Tanner with one hand and reaching out to Abby with the other. “Come on, we’re waiting.”

So Abby went, though awkwardly. She didn’t know how to act around Tanner anymore. She didn’t know why he came every day. Though she wanted it to be for the sake of her company, and not just to check on her as part of his job, she feared he came mainly for the children. He would very likely never admit it, but she knew he enjoyed their company as much as they enjoyed his. From what little he’d revealed of his past, she knew his childhood had been sorely lacking in family. No father. A mother who had died when he was still young. The way Tanner responded to these children was proof to her that they were as good for him as he was good for them.

As they made their way down the terrace and out to the lawn, Dorothy holding on tight to the pair of them, Abby decided not to let her wistful yearning get the better of her. She would just enjoy Tanner’s presence and not long for anything further. Besides, she had an idea and she knew she’d have to get his approval first.

“I’m gonna be a prairie dog!” a sturdy fellow named Alfred shouted. He glanced over at Dorothy. “Come on, Dottie. You can be a prairie dog too.”

“I want to be Tillie,” she called back.

“But I want to be Tillie,” Rosemary protested.

“I’m Snitch,” Cliff stated, jumping up and down while he turned around in circles.

“You can be the prairie-dog girl,” Abby said, trying to head off an argument. “Priscilla the prairie dog.”

Dorothy ran off, happy with that, and caught up with Alfred. How dear they all were, Abby thought, hugging her arms around herself. If only she could get other people to see this side of them, she would have no trouble finding them homes. That brought her back to her idea. But first she must get Tanner to agree.

She turned to him, ready with the words she’d practiced last night in bed: it would be perfectly safe; he could oversee any safety precautions he wished.

But those words died on her lips when she met his eyes. He was staring at her as if he were baffled, as if she completely confused him.

“What?” she whispered, surprised she even had the voice to speak.

At once his expression changed. “Ah, you have something … something in your hair.” His fingers brushed lightly at her temple. Just a feather-light touch. But it threw Abby into a dither.

She looked away. “I … I have an idea. Something very important to me. For the children,” she added, moving forward again, though her direction had become aimless. She plucked a glossy green leaf from a boxwood plant sculpted into the shape of several stacked spheres.

“Be careful, you’ll destroy the symmetry,” Tanner warned, his voice mocking.

“If I do, I’m sure my grandfather will simply buy another plant to take its place,” she answered, adopting his tone. It was easier to be sarcastic than sincere. Less risky. “He certainly enjoys spending the money he makes.”

“And you don’t?”

She turned to face him. “There are other, more important things in life. Such as these children.”

“For you he’ll build them a whole new orphanage. You only have to ask him.”

“The finest orphanage in the world could never be as nice as homes for each of the children.”

He studied her, then sighed and gazed out at the frolicking children. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

“I have an idea how to do just that.”

That drew his attention back to her. “Don’t get your hopes up too high, Abby. Most people don’t give a damn about kids like these. They’re the leftovers of society. When they’re twelve or so, someone might take them in, in return for their free labor. But little ones like these?” He shook his head, lost, it seemed, in memories of his own past. For all his appearance of invincibility, there was a sad, neglected child still somewhere inside him. It made her want to take him into her arms and kiss away his pain.

With an effort she stepped back a pace and concentrated instead on the subject at hand. “What if I organized an afternoon reception—any pretext will do. And what if the children from the orphanage provided the entertainment? They could sing. Maybe put on a play. I could write one, you know. If they were all clean and well dressed with their hair cut and combed, and their manners drilled into them,” she added, breathless with her rising enthusiasm. “If we invited not just my grandfather’s society friends but others as well. Shopkeepers and boatbuilders and doctors and … and everybody. Especially people who don’t have any children of their own.” Her smile faded, however, when his face closed in a disbelieving frown.