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“Why, the minister’s wife and a couple of the ladies who are willing to teach classes to our pupils. And we’ve hired a widow lady to live in and be a chaperon.”
A chaperon. If any group of women on earth were less in need of such a dragon guarding the doorway, he didn’t know where you’d find them. And he’d be willing to bet that those self-same pupils could teach her churchgoing friends a thing or two that might put grins on their husbands’ faces.
“What sort of contribution did you have in mind?” he asked her, and was pleased by the quick smile she shot in his direction.
“Money will do very well,” she told him. “Foodstuffs would come in handy, but I doubt you have an assortment of canning jars filled with fruit or vegetables in your pantry. We need clothing for a few of them whose wardrobes are somewhat limited.”
“I’ll just bet they are,” he murmured beneath his breath, and was delighted as she bent closer to better hear his remark. A line of perspiration touched her temple and a single drop of sweat trickled the length of her jaw. Her eyes were not only blue, he noted, but that color was emphasized by a darker circle rimming it.
“How many ladies do you have at your shelter?” he asked smoothly, admiring the clear, soft skin on her cheeks. Though her hair was light, her lashes were golden brown and he noted the sweep of them as her lids closed for a split second.
“Four right now,” she said. “But there are two or three more arriving before too long, I believe, from a place on the outskirts of Dallas.”
“How did they hear about the availability of such a place?”
She sipped again from her glass, and a slowly advancing blush rose from her throat to color her face as she avoided his gaze. “I went to Dallas and approached them. I let it be known that help was available, should any of their number be interested in a new start in life.”
He choked on a mouthful of lemonade, and his cough brought consternation to her blue eyes. “Are you all right, sir?” she asked, reaching to pound ineffectually on his broad shoulder.
“Yes.” He gasped, inhaling air, then coughed again. “I’m fine.”
She settled back in her corner and eyed him over the rim of her glass. “I think you doubt my word that I went to see those women,” she said accusingly.
“No, I just doubt your intelligence that you allowed yourself to enter such a place. Don’t you know what might have happened to you? You’re exactly what some of those madams are looking for, Miss McBride. You might have been imprisoned in a room and never seen the light of day again in your lifetime.”
She shook her head. “I’m not the sort of female men look at that way, sir. And I wouldn’t have the least idea what to do in a place…like…that.” Her words trailed off as his gaze swept her form. “What?” she asked, her voice sharp.
“I’d say you’re exactly the sort of female men look at,” he told her.
“You haven’t looked at me…like that,” she said primly.
“Haven’t I?”
She glanced aside, and then, with a swift movement that left him grasping his glass, she rose from the swing. “I’m sorry I bothered you, sir. I’ll be on my way now. Thank you for the lemonade.” Bending, she deposited her empty glass on the wicker table and marched to the porch stairs.
“Miss McBride.” He called her name firmly and her feet came to an abrupt halt, right on the edge of the first step. “I’d like to make a contribution.”
“What sort of contribution did you have in mind?”
“If you’ll turn around, I’ll tell you. I’ve never been fond of speaking to a woman’s back.” Though there was a lot to be said for the shape of this particular woman’s backside, he decided. What little he could make out through the fabric of her dress was rounded and pleasing to the eye.
She turned on her heel and her blue eyes were steely, in direct contrast to their earlier softness. “Yes?”
“I’ll make it a cash contribution.” He stood, towering over her, and reached into his trouser pocket, where his money clip held several bills together. Without looking at their value, he pulled them from the clip and, reaching for her hand, pressed them into her palm, then curled her fingers around the wad of bills.
“Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your plan,” he said nicely.
Her blue eyes widened and her hand tightened around the considerable amount of cash she held. “I’ll tell the ladies how kind you are,” she said after a moment.
He lifted a hand to brush at his mustache. “If it’s all right with you, I’d rather this be an anonymous contribution.”
“Certainly, whatever you desire,” she blurted out, her gaze focused on his mouth.
He touched the underside of the dark hair he kept trimmed neatly above his upper lip, watching closely as her tongue touched her mouth again. “Whatever I desire?” His words were whisper, but they apparently caught her ear, for she jerked and then retreated from him, almost tumbling backward down his porch steps, one heel trying to catch hold of thin air.
He reached for her, hauling her with a total lack of dignity against the long length of his body. His thoughts had been right on target, he found, as firm breasts made an impression on his chest. She was not lacking in any way so far as he could ascertain, his hands gripping her hips through the starched fabric of her dress.
In fact, he’d say that Miss Augusta McBride was exceedingly well formed.
Exceedingly.
How she could have made such a complete and utter fool of herself was a point she would ponder later, Augusta decided. Her gait was rapid, her high-buttoned shoes sending up small clouds of dust behind her as she made the return journey toward the north side of Collins Creek, where the tall, white house held the first contingent of her—what had he called them?—her soiled doves.
And little did the gentleman know how fittingly that name described the women she had a burning desire to help. She thought of her own mother, whose working name had been Little Dove, when she’d been a resident in a high-class establishment in New York, a fact Augusta had only discovered two years ago.
Claude McBride, an Irishman with a heart as big as all outdoors, had fallen in love with the woman who sold him her favors. Had fallen in love and rescued her from the place that was a dead end for most of its occupants. That Dove McBride became a wife and mother, and made Claude happy until his dying day, were facts that her diary had established in detail.
After the funeral, when Augusta was sorting out her parents’ belongings, she’d come across the leather book filled with her mother’s flowing handwriting, and over the next several weeks had come to know the woman from a whole new perspective. Apart from being a beloved mother and devoted wife, Dove McBride had been a woman who would have been deemed unacceptable in polite society during her early adulthood.
Augusta had dutifully divided the proceeds from the family home and its contents with her brother and cried bitter tears as he’d left to seek a new life in the western part of the country. Alone, yet financially able to support herself until she decided in which direction to turn, she’d followed her instincts.
“I’ll make a place for myself, and then send for you, sis,” Wilson had told her earnestly. “If you leave here, be sure to let me know where you’re going.” And she had, sending a letter in care of the postmaster in Cheyenne, Wyoming, before she left New York City.
If Wilson could seek a new life in the West, so could she. And Texas promised to be more cosmopolitan than Wyoming or Colorado, she decided. With cities like Dallas and Houston developing into social communities that commanded respect, she’d headed in that direction.
How she’d ended up in Collins Creek was another story, one she refused to think about today. Her head high, her steps swift, she passed the bank, then the general store, waved at the minister who stood before the hotel’s double doors, and smiled nicely at the barber, who nodded his greetings.
“Good morning, Miss McBride,” came a salutation from her right.
“Good to see you out and about, Mrs. Pemberton,” she said properly. “I hope you’re feeling better.” And then she went on her way, aware that the white-haired widow would more than welcome a chance to describe the details of her latest illness. Not today, Augusta thought. Not now.
She marched past the schoolhouse, the church and the cemetery, crossed the street and headed toward the row of simple two-story houses that made up the second street of Collins Creek. Five of them, there were. Two turned into boardinghouses for men without families, two owned by families who scrabbled to keep body and soul together, and the fifth, set a little apart due to a fence and a row of trees with low-hanging branches, designated as the shelter.
Without a proper name, and with no desire to advertise it should they come up with one, the ladies who ran the establishment merely considered it their good deed. Not for a day, or year even, but a project into which they’d vowed to devote their time for the foreseeable future.
It stood now, its majesty faded by wind and rain, and as it came into sight Augusta viewed it anew, moving through the gap in the front picket fence, where a gate hung with but a single hinge, leaning against the ground, awaiting repair. As were several other items that caught her eye. A porch step lacked a board and she carefully maneuvered over it, mentally adding it to her list of things she would get to this very afternoon.
Inside, the parlor was almost empty of furniture, a sofa against one wall, and, before the window, a library table upon which a lamp, complete with fringed shade, stood in graceful splendor. Two chairs sat on either side of the fireplace, mismatched but sturdy. Augusta’s footsteps clicked against the bare floor as she walked on down the hallway and into the kitchen at the back of the house.
“Miss McBride.” Pearl offered a greeting as she looked up from the bread she was kneading. Flour decorated her cheek, almost concealing the remnants of a black eye, now faded to a dull yellow hue, and the presence of two stitches next to the bottom lid. “I’m almost done with this, and Bertha said I should make the loaves next.”
“Don’t forget to grease the pans,” Augusta reminded her, aware that learning basic household chores was important to these women. “Who’s cooking supper tonight?”
“I hope it’s gonna be Bertha,” Pearl said glumly. “It’s Janine’s turn, but she’s not real handy with pots and pans, yet.”
“She can sew well, though,” Augusta reminded her. “And she’ll learn to cook. We just have to be patient.”
“Yeah, but in the meantime, we could get awful hungry.”
A second glance at Pearl’s voluptuous form made that prospect doubtful, Augusta thought, and then she walked past the big table toward the back door. “Is Honey working in the garden?” she asked, peering out the screened door to where a patch of vegetables struggled to survive beneath the hot Texas sun.
“Said she was gonna water stuff and pull weeds,” Pearl told her. “She’s probably daydreamin’ about goin’ home to Oklahoma, if I know Honey. She was cryin’ in her tea at noontime.”
“I’ll find her,” Augusta said, stepping out onto the small porch and searching in all directions for the golden-brown hair of the girl she’d brought here only three days since.
“Honey?” she called, stepping from the porch and walking around the corner to where a slender young woman sat, slumped against the side of the house in the shade.
“Ma’am?” Honey looked up, wiping at her eyes, attempting to smile as she got to her feet. The fullness around her waist was proof of her condition, and again Augusta was smitten with pity for the child. For Honey was, indeed, too young to be so far from home, with a baby on its way and no one to care whether she lived or died.
“I pulled the weeds and carried water from the pump, ma’am,” she said quickly. “The lettuce is big enough to eat for supper, I figured, and the first of the peas are pretty near full in the pod.”
“Well, why don’t you go ahead and pick the peas and lettuce, then,” Augusta told her. “Do you have a pan out here?”
Honey shook her head. “No, but I’ll get one, right quick.”
She rounded the corner and disappeared from sight, the sound of the screened door opening and closing giving away her location. Augusta sighed. If only she could find a farmer who would be willing to take on the girl, and more than that, be willing to accept her child. That particular item had been on her list for two days now, ever since she’d brought Honey here from the Pink Palace, once Lula Belle had confirmed the fact of her pregnancy and decreed her unfit for her trade.
Mentally she made a note of Honey’s situation again, listing it just beneath the broken step before the front porch, and then sighed again as she considered the growing length of things to be concerned with. Beth Ann must be lying down upstairs. Slender to the point of skinny, she’d wandered down the road three weeks ago, the second day they’d occupied this house, and announced that if she never had anything to do with a man again, it would be too soon. Lula Belle had pronounced her not pretty enough for her crew of ladies, too skinny for a discriminating gentleman to pay for, and without the proper manners necessary for a resident of her establishment.
All true, Augusta agreed. But Beth Ann was willing, and once they had fed her properly and taught her some basic elegance, she’d make a fine wife for some discriminating man, whether Lula Belle agreed with their theory or not.
And then there was Janine, who was content to sit and sew a fine seam, a talent that had come in handy, but certainly wasn’t enough to find her a husband. Although Janine had quietly and firmly denounced that idea anyway.
They weren’t cooperating the way Augusta had foreseen. Certainly, women misused as they had been should be eternally grateful for the chance to remake their lives into productive channels. She bent to pull a stray weed, left behind during Honey’s travels through the garden.
“I’ve got a pan,” Honey announced, standing beyond the pea patch.
“Well, pick the stuff that’s ready,” Augusta told her, “and then I’ll show you how to shell the peas for supper.”
And that should give her just about enough time to fix the front step, she decided, turning toward the woodshed, where their pitiful collection of tools hung on one wall, and where she might find a board fit to be used. In a few minutes, she’d managed to come up with what she needed from the dimly lit interior of the building. A can filled with nails, screws and assorted bits of hardware in one hand, a hammer in the other, and a piece of two-by-ten board under her arm, she advanced toward the front of the house.
She’d barely had time to roll up her sleeves, place her hat on the floor of the porch and lay out her equipment when a tall figure walked through the opening in the fence, bypassing the hanging gate with a scornful look.
“When you going to give up on this foolishness and come on back to Dallas?” Roger Hampton’s voice was harsh, his drawl hardly audible beneath the strident tones.
She offered him barely a glance. “You might as well get on the next train,” she said, wiping her hands on the front of her skirt. “I’m not going back to Dallas, not with you or by myself. This is my home.”
“Huh! This dump is what you want to call your home? A place where you’ve chosen to gather up the scum of the earth under one roof and then waste your time and talent redeeming them?” His taunt was familiar. She’d heard it almost daily for the past week, ever since he’d followed her here from Dallas.
“You forgot to list my inheritance in that rendering of my assets,” she told him bluntly, picking up the hammer and hefting it in her right hand. She looked up at him then, focusing on the pale hair, close-set eyes and sharp, narrow nose that made up his face. His lips were thin and she almost shuddered, recalling her narrow escape from his pursuit as he’d attempted to press his cool mouth against hers.
“Your money doesn’t enter into it, Augusta,” he blustered.
“That’s a crock of—” She stopped, her mouth almost set to say the dreadful, unspeakable word she’d found on the tip of her tongue.
“Well,” Roger said slyly, “where’s the lady I proposed to, less than a month ago in Dallas?”
“She’s right here,” Augusta said quietly. “But she’s a lot smarter and busier than she was then.” She lifted an eyebrow as she scanned his length with a scornful air. “I probably should thank you for making Dallas so unpalatable for me. Collins Creek is a much better choice for my work, I think.”
Her chin tilted upward as she smiled cooly. “Go away, Roger. I don’t have time for you.” Turning her back, she pried the hammer beneath the broken step and applied her weight to levering up the board. Wood splintered, and a piece of it slid beneath her skin, piercing her hand just beside her smallest finger.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Roger said, stepping forward swiftly, reaching to take the hammer.
But she would not allow it, instead swinging her arm back and the hammer into the air. “Don’t touch me,” she warned him, painfully aware of the splinter that even now dripped blood onto the board she was trying to pry up.
“I don’t think you’ve retained many of your ladylike qualities here in Collins Creek,” Roger said spitefully. “Threatening a gentleman with a hammer when he’s only trying to help you—”
“Get out of here,” Augusta said, raising her voice as she swung the hammer in a downward arc. It missed his hand by a good margin, but he moved quickly, apparently fearing she might step forward, weapon in hand.
“I’m going,” he said, settling his hat at a jaunty level. “I’ll drop by again, Augusta. I think another week or so will be sufficient to make you see things more clearly.” And then as he left, he muttered words she made no effort to hear, aware only of the sounds of his buggy wheels rolling down the road and the jingling of his horse’s harness.
Her back to the gate, she looked at the broken step, then eyed the splinter in her hand. “I doubt it, Mr. Hampton. I’ve seen you clearly for more than a month already, and you’re running out of time here,” she muttered beneath her breath, and then turned around to sit on the top step, the better to inspect her wound.
“I’ll be glad to give you a hand, ma’am.” The offer came without warning, and she turned her head abruptly. Beside the front gate, a horse and rider stood motionless, apparently having been privy to the discussion between Augusta and Roger.
“Sir?” He was nameless but certainly familiar, he of the lemonade, and the wad of cash money she even now had tucked in her reticule. And on top of that, his dark eyes and smiling lips seemed still more attractive this time around.
“I didn’t introduce myself when we first met,” he said. “My name is Cleary. I thought I might drop by and properly make your acquaintance, seeing as how I have a vested interest in your…” He looked up at a drooping shutter, then back at the broken step. “Your project,” he finished nicely.
“I should have mentioned my name when you came calling earlier,” he told her, dismounting easily and tying his mount to the gatepost. “And when I recognized that I’d been less than gentlemanly, I thought I’d best make amends and see if there was something I could do to set things right.”
Augusta’s mouth refused to stay closed. She inhaled deeply, concerned at the lack of air available for her needy lungs, and then began awkwardly to roll down her sleeves. It would not do to receive a caller so dreadfully unclad.
“Don’t bother,” he told her, reaching one hand to halt her endeavor. “I’ll take a look at your splinter if you like,” he offered. “I have a dandy knife that will probably set things right in less than a minute.”
She could only nod as he settled on the top step beside her and took her hand in his. One long finger tilted his hat back on his head, and as she watched, he turned her hand over in his, her fair skin looking even more pale against the tanned flesh of his palm.
His fingers were gentle, his skin callused, and the scent arising from him was a blend of citrus and leather. Augusta held her breath against its lure, and he glanced up quickly. “Am I hurting you?”
She shook her head. “Oh, no. Not at all.”
“I wondered. You caught your breath, and I thought perhaps—”
But what he thought was not revealed as the front door opened and Bertha’s firm voice interrupted his healing mission.
“I didn’t know we had company,” Bertha said firmly. “Did you want to bring the gentleman inside, ma’am?”
“Uh, no. As a matter of fact, he only stopped by to…” Augusta looked up into his dark eyes. “Why did you stop by?”
He smiled and bent closer. “I already told you, ma’am. I hadn’t properly introduced myself, and when I found you were being verbally assaulted by the man who just left, I thought it prudent to keep an eye on things.”
“Oh. Oh, I see,” Augusta said. And then she looked over her shoulder at Bertha, whose arms were folded firmly across her ample bosom.
“Was that rascal here again?” she asked, her voice booming a challenge. “I told you. We need to send him off with a load of buckshot in his behind one of these days.”
At that, Augusta felt a torrid blush climb her cheeks and she rose to her feet. “I’m sure Bertha can take care of my hand, Mr. Cleary. But I do appreciate you stopping by and offering your help.”
“Most folks just call me Cleary,” the visitor said politely, and smiled at Bertha. Whether it was the look he flashed in her direction or the easy, elegant way he carried himself, Bertha nodded and lowered her arms to her sides as Cleary stepped down to ground level.
