Softly Falling (13 page)

They put their purchases in the buckboard next to the chair and coat. Amelie ran her hand over the chair, with its cane seat and gilt tracery.

“I don’t think Miss Carteret will break this one,” Jack told her. “Try on that coat.”

She did as he asked, holding her breath with the pleasure of black velvet on the collar. It sagged a bit off her shoulders and the sleeve tips nearly covered her fingers, but Jack knew Madeleine could alter it.

“I can give Chantal my old one,” she said. She took off the coat as if it was made of ermine and patted it carefully between the chair and the packages. She looked around at the shabby little town, satisfaction writ large on her face. “Let’s go see Bismarck.”

“Not until we have lunch,” Jack said.

“But you spent all the money,” she reminded him.

“All the
school
money, but I have thirty cents for two plates of chop suey at the Great Wall. Besides, a gentleman doesn’t ask out a lady and not pay for her lunch.”

He could tell that so much largesse in one day was almost too much. He knelt down beside her. “Amelie, just remember: Always save your lunch money for lunch.”

“Will I like chop suey?”

“Miss Carteret did,” he lied.

C
HAPTER
12

T
o Lily’s surprise, Luella Buxton showed up two hours into the Great Schoolhouse Cleanup, as Chantal called it. She stood in the doorway, watching, as Lily and Chantal swatted at spider webs.

Lily put down her broom. “Luella, I’m delighted you could join us.”

“Mama said I shouldn’t because the dust would make me sneeze and upset my delicate system,” she said seriously. She gave a fleeting smile which transformed her solemn face for the briefest moment. “I told her I would brave it.”

“We’re glad you did,” Lily said. “Suppose we let you stand outside on a box and wash the windows? There
is
a lot of dust in here.”

“I can do that, because I am wearing my most ragged dress,” Luella said. “There isn’t a breeze so I will not catch cold, sicken, and die.”

“Goodness,” Lily said, trying not to smile, “that would be distressing.” How trying it must be to be the only child of a hypochondriac.

With Fothering’s help, Luella was soon washing windows. Lily watched her through the wavy glass. Luella’s most ragged dress was better than Chantal’s dress. Lily remembered her own childhood at Miss Tilton’s School, dressed as well as the others, but kept apart because of her skin color. Everyone was polite, but no one was friendly.

My school will not be like that
, Lily thought.
Heaven knows what we will learn, but we will be friends
. She shuddered as she picked the cobwebs off the broom straws, feeling not much braver than Luella but determined not to show the hard-working Chantal what a faint-hearted specimen she was.

She admired the little girl who pitched in, scrubbing and cleaning without complaint. To her delight, Chantal started to sing. It was a tune Lily recognized. In a moment, the words came back to her, so she joined in. “
Sur le Pont d’Avignon, l’on y danse, l’on y danse. Sur le Pont d’Avignon, l’on y danse tous en rond.
”

Chantal looked at Lily, her eyes bright. “Do you know the rest? Can we dance too?”

Lily glanced out the window to see Luella watching. She motioned her inside. “Chantal, let’s teach this to Luella right now.”

Luella hesitated in the doorway, but Lily gestured her closer until she stood close to Chantal. “Luella, we’ll sing it again, but slowly this time.”

They sang the catchy tune several times until Luella was tapping her foot to the rhythm. After another time, she joined in, with a voice so sweet and clear that Lily clapped her hands.

“Luella! I’m impressed!”

The child blushed, then told them to sing it again. After a few more times, Chantal taught Lily and Luella the short verses between the lively chorus. After they sang along, they put it all together, with Fothering as their appreciative audience.

“What does it mean?”

“Pont d’Avignon is a bridge in La Belle France,” Chantal said. She frowned. “I don’t know where it is.”

“If we had a map of France, I could show you,” Lily said. “I’m hoping we will have enough money for Mr. Sinclair and Amelie to get a map. Dear me, if the store in town even has such a thing.”

“Beg pardon, ma’am, but I have prepared a repast, and it is the luncheon hour,” Fothering said from the doorway. “Do take a moment to indulge yourselves.”

“Girls, I think the spiders and mealy bugs can wait,” Lily said and held her hand out. “After you.”

Fothering had brought along a wicker hamper, which he opened with real flair. He snapped out a red-and-white checked tablecloth and declared they could eat
al fresco
.

“Who is Al Fresco?” Chantal asked as she smoothed down her dusty pinafore with a certain Gallic flair of her own that made Lily smile.

“I think he means we will eat outside on the grass,” she explained. “I’ll get Preacher, and you two help Mr. Fothering.”

She saw Luella hesitate and knew the child had never been asked to help the butler.

“We need everyone,” Lily said softly. “School is going to be different than home.”

Luella nodded. “Mama needn’t know.”

While the girls took the napkins and actual silverware that Fathering handed them, Lily pondered the propriety of joining a man working on a privy and decided it was time to put England far behind. She couldn’t see him, but she heard the sound of sandpaper. There he was, humming and sanding. She cleared her throat. Nothing. “Preacher?” she asked. Nothing. She touched his shoulder, and he jumped.

“Mercy, Miss Carteret,” he managed to gasp out.

Trying not to smile, Lily clasped her hands in front of her. “I appreciate a man who throws himself into his work but not literally.”

He smiled at her mild witticism and brushed the shavings down the hole.

“We’ve been invited to lunch,” she said.

“Oh, not me,” he said, but there was a light in his eyes that touched her heart.

“There is plenty for all,” she said, hoping it was true.

“Loaves and fishes?” he joked.

To her surprise, Preacher was right. Fothering produced bread and butter cut into diamond sandwiches, and little slices of picked herring from a jar. Chantal’s eyes opened wide, and Lily doubted she had ever eaten anything from a jar. Olives in a crystal bowl came next, followed by deviled eggs and raisins.

Lily glanced at Fothering, who had forgotten his butler demeanor and grinned from ear to ear as he watched the little girls eat. He must have known what she was thinking, because he leaned toward her and whispered, “I confess I raided the larder, but none of it will be missed.”

“You’re a wonder, sir,” she whispered back.

When they finished, both girls helped Fothering repack the hamper. The two remaining deviled eggs went into the now-empty herring jar, which the butler elaborately presented to Chantal. “One for you and one for your mother.”

“I will cut mine in half for Amelie,” the child said. “Miss Carteret, do you think she is having as good a time as we are?”

“You can probably count on that, but I know she isn’t getting deviled eggs as you did,” Lily replied.

After Preacher declared the outhouse a thing of beauty and a joy forever, and took himself down the hill, Fothering left with Luella. Lily could see regret in her eyes, but she said with a straight face that she had to take a nap or Mama declared she would droop and faint. Lily and Chantal finished sweeping out the classroom. As Chantal hummed and worked, Lily realized what was happening: Both girls had begun to invest themselves in their school. Spiders and mealy bugs were part of the curriculum, and so was a bridge in France and a song.

Finally, Chantal put down her cleaning cloth with her own regret. “Mama needs my help preparing for supper,” she said. “It is to be potato soup, and someone must peel.”

“Very well, my dear,” Lily said. “You have been of monumental help.”

“Monumental?” Chantal asked, her voice dubious. “Is that good?”

“It is . . . it is monumental,” Lily said with a laugh. She made a big circle with her arms. “Enormous, gigantic. That is monumental.”

“Very well!” She picked up the glass jar with the two deviled eggs crowded close inside and went to the door. She stood there, then stepped back. “Freak.”

Lily joined her in the doorway. There sat the cat she had heard so much about, blocking the path. His ears were ragged, and Lily wondered if they had been frozen off during a bad winter. He was probably gray and white, but he was dingy, probably unable to be the kind of cat he wanted to be, considering his surroundings. His tail had a crook in it as though he had fought a door and the door had won. He watched them and hissed for good effect, which made Chantal leap back until she was molded to Lily’s legs.

“He’s just a bully,” Lily told the child, who obviously hadn’t noticed that Lily had backed up too.

“He doesn’t like us. He will sit there until I am late to help my mother.”

Since she was Chantal’s teacher, maybe it was time she showed a little bravery. “Chantal, would you sacrifice one of your deviled eggs?” Lily asked, keeping her eye on Freak, who looked as though he wouldn’t mind settling in for a day or two, just to intimidate them.

Chantal unscrewed the jar and took out one egg. “I don’t know,” she said, handing it to Lily.

Lily started to sidle out the door with the peace offering, wondering if Freak ever took prisoners, when an ear-splitting yell made the cat perk up what remained of his ears, and hiss louder. The fur on his back rose to amazing height. In another second, he was gone, a gray-and-white streak.

“Was he going to hold you for ransom?”

It was Preacher, coming back up the hill with a tin in his hand. “It’s safe now, little lady,” he told Chantal, who ran down the hill.

Preacher came inside, tossing the tin from one hand to the other. “Thought you might need some reinforcements. I noticed him eyeing the schoolhouse when I went down. Maybe planning a frontal attack.”

“Heavens, it’s just a cat,” Lily said, grateful the cowhand didn’t know that her knees felt like jelly.

“Boy howdy, what a cat!” he said. “You should have seen him scare off a grizzly bear last winter.”

She still held the deviled egg.
Maybe I need another friend
, she thought as she went outside and set the egg on a rock. “Maybe Freak could use a break from mice.”

“You’re too kind,” Preacher said. He opened the tin. “Ol’ Fothering slipped me a tin of stove black. How about I put a shine on that stove?”

“I won’t argue,” Lily said, grateful for his company, in case the timid offering of a deviled egg was an insult to a cat used to living rough. She swept the room as he worked. Her school was still a sow’s ear, but at least it would be a clean one, come Monday.

She wanted to talk to Preacher, but her years of loneliness at Miss Tilton’s, where she was merely tolerated, and other years of solitude in her uncle’s manor had reinforced her difference, and she didn’t know where to begin. It was easy with children, she was discovering, but this was a grown man.

Preacher made it easy for her by starting the conversation first. “My name’s Wally Spears, ma’am,” he said as he took a rag from his back pocket and applied it to the stove in a circular motion, working from the top down.

“Are you really a minister?” she asked.

“Ordained preacher, ma’am. Minister sounds too fancy.” He worked the stove blacking into the crevices. “I can pray and baptize sinners, marry the willing, and preach a stem-winder of a sermon that’ll chastise you and keep you humble for years to come.” He chuckled. “Well, not necessarily
you
, ma’am.” A few more rubs, and a faraway look came into his eyes. “Yes sirree, I got the call to serve Jesus.”

“Here in Wyoming?” she asked, fascinated.

“No, Alabama. Not so sure the Savior would waste his time on the quality of sinners in this territory.”

She laughed. “I don’t know about that, Mr. Sp—”

“Just Preacher, or you can call me Wally,” he said magnanimously. He stepped back and checked his work like an artist.

“Did preaching get slow in Alabama?”

“Not precisely,” he said, not looking at her. “Let’s just say I needed a change of venue from some of my parishioners.”

He looked so uncomfortable that Lily knew she shouldn’t have asked. She thought of that song, “What Was Your Name in the States,” and decided a massive change of subject would suit them both.

“Has Mr. Sinclair always been the foreman here?” she asked.

“Far as I know, but I heard from some of the boys in Cheyenne that he spent a fair share of time starving and eating out of garbage cans like the rest of us. There. It’ll dry and I’ll buff it.”

She offered him a stool. He scrutinized it, then pulled out two hunks of sandpaper, tossing one her way.

They sanded in companionable silence. “You’ve heard about his bull,” Preacher said finally.

“I’ve seen the bull.” Lily flicked away the bits of wood. “Do you . . . do you think he’s right about the coming winter?”

“Never known him to be wrong. Mr. Buxton doesn’t give Jack enough credit.” He started on another stool.