Prim And Improper

Unfortunately for her, the wind hadn’t carried Ty far since that fateful night He had given up panning for gold to try his hand at ranching with his younger brother. Now it looked as if the man would be a permanent fixture on the Noisy Swallow landscape, an ever-present reminder of the weakness of her flesh. A constant, niggling temptation in the back of Louise’s mind. Those arms had fueled quite a few dreams during the winter months in the California hills.

But, according to rumor, Ty had suffered no such repercussions from their encounter. Two weeks after he kissed her, Louise overheard that he’d been seen in San Francisco in an establishment known for its fancy women. Indignation swelled in her. He probably thought all women in California were loose, including her. That was the kind of man he was. Thank goodness she had not let herself get carried away by him.

Not too far away, at least.

“Miss Livingston?” Gordy asked. “Are you all right?”

Gordy and Niles were staring at her oddly.

“I was just, just—” She blushed and stammered, hunting for a decent explanation, then decided to get back to the subject of liquor. “Well, as for the champagne, I simply thought we could use a dash of refinement.”

Gordy shook his head again. “At any rate, I guess we should get this stuff inside before it starts to pour.”

At that moment, thunder rumbled through the dark sky. Niles, sensing that he was about to be recruited for lifting duty, disappeared around the corner of the bar.

After getting the boxes inside, Gordy and Louise settled accounts and exchanged gossip. A half hour later, Louise left the saloon with a skip in her step and picked her way across the street. Rain meant the town was about to be graced with another layer of mud. Still, just looking at the place filled her with pride.

Noisy Swallow didn’t have much to boast of, but most of what it did have belonged to Louise Livingston. Three years before, her father had brought his family—to Louise and her mother’s utter dismay—from Chicago. Louise’s mother had succumbed to cholera on the overland journey, and her father had died soon after they’d reached California. At twenty years old, Louise was left in charge of her two younger siblings, Sally and her brother, Toby.

Before he’d died, their father had secured a two-room shack for his family. Louise moved herself and her siblings into one room and opened the other room to boarding. She also started cooking hot meals for the miners, and doing wash, which brought in even more money. After a few months, an old prospector struck gold not a half mile away, which brought a new wave of men into the area. And more profits for Louise.

Now, after two years, Louise owned not only a fine two-story wood house—one half of which she opened to paying boarders—but also the Noisy Swallow Saloon and the bigger, newer Livingston Mercantile across the road. The old prospector’s find had tapped out a year ago, and now most people in Noisy Swallow were just passing through on their way to newer finds to the north, but for better or worse Louise had put down roots.

She would be content staying in California and accumulating money for the rest of her life, she often assured herself. Her only worries now were for Sally, and what decent man her sister would ever find to marry, and especially for young Toby, who she feared would become like one of the shiftless dreamers who passed through her establishments. An impractical man like their father, who had thought nothing of picking up and moving his family all the way across the continent at the first whisper of gold. Louise wanted her sister to marry a fine, upstanding man, and her brother to return to the East for a university education.

As a blustery wind rose, Louise dashed the final yards to the mercantile. The wood slats she had put out in front of her store sank beneath her feet into the growing bog. To her dismay, she found Wilbur Abernathy, the local preacher and blacksmith, waiting for her outside the front door. The part-time parson, who was forever trying to raise money to finish his half-finished church, was a genuine nuisance. She stood near the door scraping mud off her feet and nodded. “Afternoon, Mr. Abernathy.”

He bowed and smiled. “Good afternoon, Miss Livingston. I hope your trip was uneventful.”

“I’m glad to be home, as always,” Louise said, making her way toward the door. It was only then that she noticed the message hanging on the door. Please come back later. Closed till afternoon.

The sign, written in Sally’s flowery handwriting, nearly stopped Louise’s heart Closed till afternoon! What had happened? “Where is Sally?” For that matter, where was Toby?

“Such a high-spirited girl, your Sally,” Abernathy said with a fixed smile.

When a man of the cloth called her younger sister “high-spirited,” Louise knew enough to be worried. She put her hands on her hips. “How often has the store been closed since I’ve been gone, Parson?”

“Oh, I’m sure not often.”

Louise frowned as she opened the door and stepped inside, the preacher-blacksmith close on her heels. For a moment, she tried to gauge what kind of business they’d done by simply eyeing the shelves. But the big dark room, with its huge barrels, sacks of flour and sugar, and the high shelves crammed with various sundry items, gave her very little idea of how often her recalcitrant brother and sister had played hooky from their duties.

“I believe your siblings went for one of their…walks.”

“In this rain?” Even before she had left, Sally and Toby had been disappearing often for these “walks” of theirs, strolls Louise chalked up to youth and spring. But the inclement weather made their amble today seem suspicious.

Wilbur looked anxiously out the store’s little window. “I’m sure there’s nothing in the least to worry about…” he said, but the slight tremolo in his voice was reason enough to worry.

Louise planted her hands on her hips. “I wouldn’t worry, if I knew where they had sneaked off to.”

“‘Sneaked’ is a rather harsh word, Louise.”

She narrowed her eyes on him. He knew. Wilbur Abernathy usually did know everything before everybody else. Souls were hard to save in a rough town like Noisy Swallow, so he seemed to try to content himself with collecting gossip instead. Gossip, along with money for that unfinished church of his.

Just then she saw his eye straying to a keg of nails she had near the long counter. Immediately she understood. The parson’s knowledge didn’t come free. For a moment, she balked at paying the blackmail, but curiosity and concern for her siblings won the day. “You know,” she said, sashaying casually over to the nail keg, “I just can’t seem to move these darn things. I don’t suppose you and that church of yours have any need for some good strong nails, do you, Parson?”

He practically licked his lips as she scooped up a couple of handfuls and placed them in a box for him.

“Oh, certainly,” he said. “I’m much obliged, Miss Livingston.”

“Don’t mention it.” Her arm physically ached as she handed over the unpaid-for merchandise. Nevertheless she forced a smile. “Now, what were you saying about these walks?”

Just then, the door flew open and Toby and Sally burst inside, soaking wet, their faces flushed from exercise. Breathing heavily and dripping water on the waxed floor, they looked from Louise’s stern face to Wilbur Abernathy’s surprised one, then glanced back at each other in dread.

Louise backed her two wayward siblings against the closed door, her posture rigid and especially big-sisterly. “You two needn’t bother lying to me about where you’ve been.”

“Why would we need to lie?” The effect of Sally’s spirited response was marred by her wet hair; the usually perky ringlets that now drooped across her forehead in great sopping brown hanks, and the blush of guilt in her cheeks.

“Yeah, why would we?” Toby mimicked. At sixteen, he was two years younger than Sally but fully a head taller. He had the same curly brown hair as Sally, and sharp brown eyes that they all shared, traits they had inherited from their father.

“Because you were supposed to be at home studying and doing chores. And Sally, you were supposed to be minding the store. Imagine my surprise when I came in and found your note! Luckily Mr. Abernathy was here to set me straight.”

Sally, seeing the box of nails in Wilbur’s hands and guessing that he had already snitched on her, stepped forward defiantly. “All right, I admit it. I sneaked out to visit a friend.”

Toby took a smaller step forward. “And I—”

“I made Toby come with me,” Sally interrupted.

Louise’s heart started pounding with dread. “‘Friend’?” Her suspicious query was punctuated by Wilbur Abernathy’s shuffling toward the door with his ill-gotten gains.

“Thank you for your kind donation to the church, Louise,” the preacher said.

After he was gone, Sally straightened to her full height and stood nose to nose with Louise. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been going to see a man.”

Louise gasped in horror. “Who? Who is it?”

“I don’t see what it matters,” Sally said. “You hate all men just the same.”

“I do not. It’s just that men around here fall into two categories—dreamers and chiselers. And I don’t want a sister of mine getting mixed up with either type.”

“Well, this man is a perfect angel—I even met him at Wilbur’s church.”

Louise immediately dismissed this recommendation. Everybody in Noisy Swallow went to church—Wilbur held services at two in the afternoon so his flock would be able to sleep off their Saturday night hangovers. “Who?” she asked again. “Who is it?”

Sally hesitated and bit her red, full lower lip. “It’s—” She shot a stern look at Toby before bringing her gaze back to meet Louise’s. Suddenly her voice became a shade meeker as she admitted, “It’s Tyrone Saunders.”

The room fell completely silent, except for the sound of rain battering the roof. Toby’s mouth was hanging open in shock, and Louise was sure her own was, too. Surely she’d heard wrong.

Ty Saunders! The man who had kissed her? Who had dominated her dreams all winter?