Embraced in Love's Melody, page 8
Not that he cared about the pie so much. It was her refusal to even hear his side of the matter which concerned him. What sort of wife would she be? The last thing he wanted to do was to welcome someone of a shrewish disposition into his home.
Ed came to stand with him. “My parents,” he said fondly, pointing to the nearest picture, that of the woman. “My mother, God rest her soul, died not long before we left New York. My father, a few years before that. This bowl here was hers. We carried it with us as careful as we could, but as you can see it suffered on the journey. It was not an easy trip. But then, it never is. Maggie here insisted we keep the bowl when we saw what a state it was in when we arrived. She has always clung to our life in New York, to where even small things like this bowl carry significant meaning.”
“The fact that the bowl belonged to Grandma Adelaide is reason enough to cherish it,” Margaret…no…Maggie said with a fierce note to her voice as she rose to join them. “It is important not to forget where we came from. Our pasts shape who we are today. Would you not agree, Mr. Pierce?”
“Mr. Pierce might not be inclined to talk about his past, Maggie,” her father chided her. “Stories of war are not appropriate for suppertime conversation.”
“We are not eating yet,” she said, lifting her chin a little to meet Cliff’s eyes. He saw the spark of intelligence there, the unspoken challenge, and felt a corner of his mouth rise in a smile he hadn’t intended on giving.
“What would you wish to know, Miss Kelly?” he asked as he gestured for her to sit again upon the couch. “Do you wish to hear about the devastation of the South, left by General Sherman, which made getting home challenging at best, where even his own men were forced to suffer from privations because of his intense need to lay waste to all he saw? Or would you be more inclined to hear about the battles firsthand, every gory detail down to the way the cannons thundered and the men screamed and wept as though they were children still. Maybe that was the hardest part, realizing that in the end. they were all just boys calling for their mothers.”
“Mr. Pierce!” There was a note of warning in her father’s voice, but it was Maggie herself that held his attention. Maggie had gone pale, but her eyes hadn’t left his for a moment.
“If you need to talk about such things, I can promise you I will listen, even if I might recoil from your words. War is a horrible thing under any circumstance,” she said softly.
“It is at that.” Cliff swallowed hard past the sudden lump in his throat. “You are most kind when I have been nothing but cruel. I spoke to shock you, which was highly improper of me. Perhaps you would be more interested in the story of how we all came from Durham, North Carolina in so short a time.”
“It was an impressive feat. However did you manage?” she asked, settling back on the sofa with her hands folded primly in her lap. Her father, he could see had relaxed considerably.
“Thankfully not every railroad was destroyed in the conflict. We traveled as far as we could by rail then took to horseback through the mountains. It was a considerable ride, but we were hardened soldiers and the threat of meeting with snow in the mountain passes seemed almost a jaunt in the woods after some of the things we’d been through. Unfortunately given the time of year, the only pass we could even chance brought us into California. We came the rest of the way by ship from San Francisco.”
“As did we,” she said softly. “It is still not an easy trip. You must have wanted to come back to Oregon a great deal.”
“It is my home,” he said simply and she looked at him in surprise.
“If you will excuse me, I think supper must be about ready.” Ed stood up abruptly and disappeared through the parlor door.
Maggie looked after him and shook her head, laughing. “He thinks I am behaving, and so it’s safe to leave us alone together. I think he came out because he was afraid I would not let you in.”
“I had that worry as well,” Cliff admitted with an answering smile.
“Maybe because it was quite likely I would not. However, I will have you know that if I am willing to entertain the idea of getting to know you it is solely for the benefit of my family. Things have…”
He came to sit next to her. “I understand. Let us both make the best of things if we are able. It might be we are more compatible than we have previously supposed.”
“You speak with a great deal of confidence regarding a lady you have never met before tonight,” she murmured with a raised eyebrow.
“We have met,” he reminded her.
“Nonsense. It never happened. That whole incident with the pie was someone else entirely.”
He couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Someone else. Are you saying you have a twin?”
“No, only that I was not myself that day.”
He considered this statement seriously. “Perhaps I was not myself as well,” he said softly. He would have liked to have said more, but her father reappeared at that moment to call them in to supper.
Chapter 12
Sitting down to eat together proved not to be as much of an ordeal as Maggie has previously supposed. To her surprise, Cliff turned out to be an interesting dining companion, talking rather well she thought on politics, the weather, and matters of Sky’s Edge. He listened avidly to descriptions of the town’s growth in his absence.
That was when Maggie realized that to him this dusty cluster of buildings was his home, and that he had perhaps missed it while he was gone the way she missed New York now. Until that moment it had not occurred to her that Sky’s Edge was worthy of such notice.
The problem was, her father guided the conversation and what Maggie was most curious about never came up again. Once, she tried asking about the war and her father gave her such a quelling glance that she immediately subsided.
“I think there are other topics, more suited to the table,” he said, and Cliff rumbled his agreement.
Sadly, this also meant she had no way of finding out about Cliff’s scar. Seated across from him, Maggie had a quite distinct view of the red, puckered skin. She found herself concocting heroic stories to explain away the disfigurement until she was caught out in her daydreams by her mother who had to ask her twice to fetch more gravy from the kitchen.
“Yes, Mama.”
Cheeks flushed, Maggie leaped from the table to the amusement of her sister who smothered a giggle as she brushed past.
Once she was well hidden in the privacy of the kitchen, Maggie took her time in carrying out the task she was sent to do. “I am not in the least interested in matrimony. And even if I were, Cliff Pierce is the last man I would consider,” she muttered, giving the gravy a good stir before refilling the gravy boat.
“You had better consider him,” Anna said softly from behind her. “I overheard what father was saying to mother earlier today. It was when you had come back to the house to look for that shirt I was mending last night.”
“You should not have been eavesdropping,” Maggie said primly, picking up the gravy boat and turning toward the door.
Anna moved to block her. “You need to know,” she said with a hasty glance over her shoulder. “Look, I have but a minute. I offered to fetch in the rest of the rolls and we already are taking too long. In truth though, the situation is dire. They were talking over the books. The door to the sewing room was not completely closed and I heard Mr. Pierce coming into the store. I also heard much of what they were saying.”
“That is quite a lot from your chair by the window. I am surprised the sound would carry so far,” Maggie murmured, giving her sister a suspicious look.
Anna ducked her head, blushing. “I might have moved to listen. But when you hear, you will understand. They are talking about selling the store. Of starting over somewhere else.”
Maggie blinked in surprise. “Going home?”
Anna stamped her foot in frustration, narrowly missing trodding on her sister’s foot which, from her viewpoint, might have been well-deserved. “We are home. When will you realize that?”
“You no longer wish to return to New York.”
Anna touched the ribbon on the end of her braid which lay over her shoulder. “I do not. Not that it makes any difference. They would not go back to New York even if there were not…someone…here. Do you have no idea how much it would cost to undertake such a journey? We would more likely go to Portland, where Father could find work.”
“Where, in a factory?”
“Or on the wharf.”
Maggie sank into a chair at the kitchen table, gravy boat thunking down hard enough to spill on the scarred surface. “So, when they invited him to dinner, he accepted? That easily? Is he so desperate for a wife?”
Anna bit her lip. “He seemed so.”
What sort of man would consider such a thing? To offer for a girl he had never met outside of…well…the experiences they had already shared, which hardly classified as a meeting of any sort.
Anna gave her sister a sympathetic look and grabbed the rest of the rolls from the table before darting from the room. Maggie swallowed back tears. That even her younger sister was asking this from her, only added to her burden. She had already made her stance clear, that she had no wish to marry. But did she truly have a choice?
Slowly, she stood and picked up the gravy boat, taking a moment to wipe up the spill before returning to the dining room. The question lay in whether or not she should even give consideration to Cliff’s suit. Neither of them had exactly hit it off the last time they had spoken. But if he had come here to give her another chance, could she do any less?
Maggie drew herself up. She could. But only for them.
With that, she stalked back into the dining room, head held high. She didn’t even flinch when her father greeted her with forced enthusiasm. “We were just wondering about you. Maggie. The meal is about over.” There was a gentle chiding in her father’s words, an uneasy look in the direction of Cliff as though wondering how he would take such a lapse in manners. Ed cleared his throat. “It occurs to us you can likely tell more about the doings of the town than we can. If you’re both done, perhaps you would enjoy setting on the porch a spell with Mr. Pierce.”
She could feel his eyes on her as she set the gravy boat carefully next to her father’s place. “I would be delighted, Father,” she said softly and kissed the top of his head before glancing at Cliff with an unspoken challenge in her eyes. “Of course, it’s entirely up to him.”
Did Cliff seem hesitant as he thanked the Kelly’s for their hospitality? He dropped his napkin on his empty plate and smiled at her easily enough, as though nothing would delight him more. “Lead on,” he bid her, sweeping his arm out in a gesture which might have been called magnanimous.
If Alfred had done it, the gesture would have seemed mannerly. Proper even. From Cliff, it seemed mocking.
He could at least meet me halfway, Maggie thought as she swept past him, going through the open door into the parlor and from there out to the front porch. She chose not to sit, instead going to the railing, to look down the street toward what could kindly be termed as the downtown. Bushes grew on each side of the stairs leading down to the front walk, a tree to the right shading the house and protecting them from the view of one of the nosier neighbors. She was pleased to see no one was about. The hour was still early and most were probably indoors, still at their own dinner table.
“What would you like to know?” she asked, turning that she might lean on the rail rather than sit. To do so would only encourage him to stay and she was as yet unsure of this entire idea of being courted so soon after her disastrous engagement.
“Hmm. What I would like to know? Maybe how you came to drop a pie upon my best shirt?” he asked, the corner of his mouth coming up in a wry, half-smile.
Maggie stiffened. “Will we forever be haunted by that pie?” she asked sourly, moving to sit after all. She took a seat in the rocking chair which was placed under the front window, where one could easily see the street. This was her mother’s chair, her only connection to the community since her stroke. Sitting there was a reminder of how much her mother had suffered since falling ill. How much was depending upon Maggie now to save them all?
Maggie swallowed, trying to ease the knot in her throat at the thought. “I truly am sorry about the pie,” she said, not a little ungraciously.
“I was teasing.” Cliff came to sit in the chair next to hers, drawing it close that he might lean in to speak. She recognized he was trying to talk quietly so those inside the house would not overhear the conversation. She almost liked him for his discretion.
“I am perhaps a mite sensitive on the matter,” Maggie admitted, leaning back so the chair rocked gently. Her movement put some distance between them, though it did nothing to remove the painful awareness she had of him. Alfred had never seemed so large, as though bigger than life itself.
“Perhaps.” He reached to still her chair. “It is important though,” he said as she looked at him. “You were obviously upset that day.”
Maggie stifled a sigh. “It is not important now.”
“A broken engagement is a painful thing.”
Maggie flushed angrily. “Perhaps that is none of your business. Or are you here to likewise gloat about my failed romance?”
“Gloat?” He seemed confused by this pronouncement. “No, I was only saying you seem to be in a situation—”
“Situation? You think because I caused an incident with pastry that I have a situation? What kind of girl do you take me for?”
He blinked, drawing back a little. “Unlucky?”
Unlucky? She was unsure whether to take that as an insult or not.
“I think your father wanted us to get to know one another better,” he said as the silence between them lengthened.
“We already know each other quite well enough.” Maggie got up from the rocking chair and returned to the rail. “You carry grudges.”
He stood, but made no move to join her. “Because I mentioned the pie?”
Maggie turned on him. “A gentleman would not have.”
“You are saying I am not a gentleman?”
“I am saying you will not let me forget that I made a mistake once.”
He threw up his hands. “For a foolish remark, I am condemned?”
Behind them, the door opened. Anna appeared, a plate in each hand. “Who here would like dessert? I have made a fresh blueberry pie only this afternoon.”
Maggie and Cliff stared at one another, gazes never wavering.
“I think perhaps it would be best if I go. Heaven knows I do not need to ruin this shirt as well.” Cliff reached for his hat which he had brought out with him and was sitting upon the porch rail.
“Truly, given how few shirts you seem to own, it would be best for you not to take that chance,” Maggie said and fled back into the house, so she would not have to see him leave.
Chapter 13
Thump!
Maggie threw another pillow down in place, then plumped it again for good measure before tugging at the blanket one final time to make sure it lay neatly over the sheet.
“What in the world did that pillow ever do to you?” Anna asked from the doorway where she was holding a pitcher of water for the washstand.
“Nothing. I’m just making sure it’s plumped properly, that’s all.” Maggie turned to give similar attention to the pillow on the other side of the bed.
“Normally they don’t expel feathers when you plump them.” Anna pursed her lips and set down the pitcher where it belonged. “Maggie, maybe it would do you good to tell me what’s wrong? You’ve been grumpy all morning.”
