Redemption

His gaze found her again. “You’re a woman, aren’t you?” His eyebrow twitched, and his mouth followed suit, as if he mocked her. Not quite a smile, but almost.

“A woman, yes. But perhaps not the sort of female who appeals to men who are looking for a girl to marry.”

“What sort of female are you?”

As if he cared, she thought. The man was being downright rude, perhaps wishing he could push her from this room, out the front door and away from his house merely by his behavior. She would not allow it. Not until she’d had her say. If he refused her help, so much the better, as far as she was concerned at this very moment.

“What sort of female am I? I’m a schoolteacher-sort, Mr. McPherson. I’ve never planned on marriage. At my age, it’s out of the question, anyway.”

“How old are you?”

Rude. The man was rude beyond belief! “How old are you?” she countered smugly.

“Thirty-nine,” he said. “Not that that has any bearing on the subject.”

He looked at her expectantly. “Your age, Miss Merriweather?”

None of your business. The words were alive in her mind, but refused to make their way to her lips. Instead, she found herself obediently blurting out the truth. “Thirty. I’m thirty years old,” she said firmly. “On the shelf, I suppose it’s called.”

“Surely there’s been some farmer in need of a woman, or a parson looking for a helpmate,” he said, emphasizing the words that he obviously thought described her best.

“Apparently not,” she said, refusing to rise to his bait. “Had such a man offered for me, I doubt I’d have accepted. My future does not lie in raising a brood of children whose mother had the good sense to desert them, and leaving myself open to being used as a slave by their father.”

“Not all children left alone have been deserted by their mothers,” Jake said harshly. “On occasion, such women are stricken by illness, and they’ve been known to die, leaving their households without a woman’s touch.”

Alicia felt pain strike her, the aching knowledge that she’d hurt another person with no reasonable excuse. She’d spoken out of turn because of her anger with this man.

“I apologize, Mr. McPherson,” she said quietly, unable to look into his face but unwilling to remain silent when an apology was in order.

“I’m not sure why you think I merit such a thing,” he answered. “It seems we strike sparks from one another, Miss Merriweather. I was equally at fault.”

She looked up at him then, shocked by his words, stunned by the reasonable tone of voice he used. His face had lost just a bit of its stony demeanor; his eyes were narrowed as he looked her over. The change was quite disarming.

CHAPTER THREE

THE WOMAN HAD DUG DEEPLY beneath his skin. He’d been angry for three solid years, yet the emotion he’d bent in her direction today had made his fury during that time seem as nothing. Still, she’d tossed his anger back at him, as if she were untouched by his words. As a result he’d been unkind and insulting, to use her own description of his remarks.

Alicia Merriweather rubbed him the wrong way, and yet he felt a sense of anticipation as he thought of her next visit. Perhaps she would not return, and at that notion, he rued his bad temper.

Never in Jake’s life had he been so abrupt. Except for the early days, before the time when Rena had come back to him—those days when he’d made Cord’s new bride the target of his anger, reducing her life to a living hell for a matter of long weeks.

He thought of his brother’s wife, of the changes she’d made to his life, and then his mind compared her to the woman who had so recently left his home. Rachel was sweet, caring and petite, a woman who inspired a man to watch over her, as did Cord. Yet she was feisty, as Jake had reason to know.

On the other hand, he’d seldom seen so capable a woman as Alicia Merriweather. She was tall, big boned, and bore her weight well. He’d had a second look today. The dress she’d worn had fit somewhat better than the one she’d had on the last time she’d been here. It wasn’t too difficult to acknowledge the fact that there was, indeed, a waistline beneath its enveloping folds. Her hands were capable, her nails short, her fingers long and tapered. Her hair was nondescript in color. Brown was as close as he could come to describing it. Yet he wondered if it wouldn’t gleam with red undertones in the sunlight.

Jake shook his head. Of all the foolishness in the world, this really took the cake. Miss Merriweather was a self-proclaimed spinster. And yet, he vowed the next time he saw her, he’d coax a smile from those soft lips. Soft lips?

He shook his head at his fanciful thoughts. After all, her one redeeming feature was the fact that she seemed to truly like Jason. Make that two redeeming features, he decided with a satisfied nod of his head. She knew how to argue, and wasn’t afraid to open her mouth. A quality he admired in any human being. Rena had never allowed him to run roughshod over her, had always been vocal about her views and opinions.

Rena. My God. He bowed his head. He hadn’t known he would miss her so much. His teeth clamped together as he fought the sudden despair that gripped him.

“Pa?” From the doorway behind him, he heard Jason speak to him, and he blinked against the hot tears that threatened to unman him.

“Yes, Jason?” Was that his voice, that calm uttering of his son’s name?

“Pa, how come you and Miss Merriweather were fighting all the time she was here?” Jason sounded almost…bereft, Jake thought. And that would never do.

He turned his chair and fought for a smile. “I’ve always enjoyed a good argument, son,” he said. “I suspect Miss Merriweather does, too. I know it got a bit out of hand, but it’s all repaired now.”

“Pa? Have you thought about what she said? About taking me to the store for clothes? And to the barber for a haircut?” He thought a note of pleading touched Jason’s words, and he shot the boy a long look. Jason slouched in the doorway in a casual manner, but beneath his spoken queries lay a hope he could not hide.

“I’ve thought about it,” Jake answered. “Is that what you’d like to have happen?”

Jason shrugged as if it were of no matter to him, one way or the other. “I guess I wouldn’t mind if she took me, so long as she walked behind me or in front of me, or some way didn’t let everybody know she was takin’ care of me.”

The boy looked so earnest now, Jake almost smiled.

“I wouldn’t care, not for myself, but I wouldn’t want folks to be thinking she was trying to act like my mother. You know? They might not be nice to her.”

“Let’s send her a note, Jason.”

In an attempt that appeared aimed at hiding his pleasure at Jake’s announcement, Jason merely shrugged. “I’m goin’ outside, Pa. Just call me when you’ve got it ready, and I’ll take it to her,” Jason offered. Quite a turnabout for the boy.

Jake thought of what he might say in such an epistle. Something that would signify his change of heart, without letting her know he’d be beholden to her should she accept the task. He wheeled his chair to the dusty desk in one corner of the parlor. The rolltop slid up readily and he found a writing tablet there. A small bottle of ink and his pen lay beside it, both of them unused for so long. He’d had no reason to write a note to anyone in that length of time. Perhaps the ink had dried out.

He drew the paper before him and dipped the pen into the inkwell, pleased that it came out stained darkly. How to begin? Dear Miss Merriweather… Perhaps. Then again, she wasn’t his dear anything, now that he thought about it.

Alicia. There, that looked fine. Not that she’d given him leave to call her by her given name, but he’d managed to fight with the woman. Twice, for pity’s sake. That ought to entitle him to some small bit of intimacy.

And at that word, he stilled. Intimacy. He’d only thought it, not spoken it aloud, but the result was the same. How on God’s green earth could he think of Alicia Merriweather and intimacy in the same breath? She was a female intent on spinsterhood, a woman determined to make inroads on his life, and more frightening yet, he was on the verge of inviting her to do that very thing.

Jake pushed his chair away from the desk and looked across the room. The draperies were closed, only a crack of sunshine peeking through a place where the two panels didn’t quite cover the window. Cord’s words reverberated in his mind.

You need to open these windows and let the breeze blow through.

Rena would be heartsick if she could see her house as it was today. Just three summers past, the windows had gleamed from her efforts with vinegar and water. The floors had been burnished to a fare-thee-well, and even when the wheels of his chair had sometimes marred the surface, she’d only brought out her cloth and worked for scant moments on the trail he’d left behind, and then bent to kiss him as she passed his way.

He rolled closer to the window, tugged ineffectively at the heavy drapery and watched as a cloud of dust rose in the air. Another tug brought the rod tumbling to the floor and he winced as bright sunlight flooded the parlor.

Now, isn’t that better? He looked around quickly, for a moment convinced he’d heard her beloved voice. And then a flurry of movement from the yard caught his eye and he groaned aloud. Mrs. Blaine, a widow who had worked for him for all of three days, was marching with a militant stride up his front walkway. Even as she halted before the door, just out of his sight, he heard the back door open stealthily and his hackles rose.

“Mr. McPherson! I know you’re in there. Come and open this door.”

The woman had a voice loud enough to wake the dead, he thought, his ever-present anger fueled by the demanding tone. His chair rolled across the parlor floor and into the hallway. The doorknob turned at his touch and he looked up at the Widow Blaine’s furious face.

“Your boy has really done it this time!” Mrs. Blaine announced, her nostrils flaring, her teeth set rigidly. “If you don’t do something about him, the law is going to get involved.”

Jake sat glumly in his chair, wondering what Jason could possibly have done to infuriate the woman so. He raised his hand to cut her off mid-tirade. “What did Jason do, ma’am? And when did he do it?”