A Family Found (10 page)

After dismissing the boys to play with the puppies, she straightened the library table and found Bertie in the kitchen. “I'll be on my way. Thank you for the delightful picnic fare.”

“My pleasure. When will we see you again?”

“I will be hiking for the next two days. Then I'll return. Meanwhile, I've given the boys some assignments. In my absence, perhaps they can spend more time with their father.”

The housekeeper pursed her lips. “One can hope.”

Sophie heard resignation in Bertie's voice. Determined to remain cheerful, she said, “He has just returned from a long journey. After he rests, he will surely give them his attention.”

Bertie's sigh followed Sophie as she went to get her wraps. As she was putting on her hat, she heard footsteps, and when she turned around, Tate was standing there studying her. From his impassive face to his clenched hands it was impossible to guess what he might say. When he finally spoke, he surprised her. “I was wrong. Please forgive me.”

She had no idea what his apology had cost his pride, but she was grateful for it. “It is not my place to forgive you, although you are welcome to forgive yourself.”

He took one step toward her, and despite her rapidly beating heart, she was determined to stand her ground. “You are right. The sphere of learning is broad, indeed. I shouldn't have assumed a frivolous purpose for your outing or implied you had put the boys in danger. On our walk home, they quite amazed me with their perceptions.”

She stared into the depths of his brown eyes, afraid of losing herself there. “You are not a man for whom apologies are easy.”

“Another one of your ‘scientific' observations?”

Looking at him, she thought he might actually be on the verge of a smile. “That...and a strong hunch.”

“I fear you are coming to know me rather well.”

“And to like you.”

She had no idea she'd uttered those words aloud until he murmured, “And I you.” After a long moment that grew exponentially more uncomfortable, he stepped back and held her cloak for her.

Flustered, she sought comfort in the mundane. “You shall find us working from books next time. You are welcome to come and oversee.”

A softer expression replaced the intensity in his eyes. “You do not require supervision. Proof of the boys' learning will come soon enough. Good day, Sophie.”

When the door closed behind her, she stared off into the distance, more confused than ever. The man was an enigma.

* * *

“How's the tutoring going?” Belle asked the next morning as they set off on a rugged trail with a steep rise in elevation.

Sophie, trudging behind her friend, inhaled deeply. “It's too early to tell, although both boys seem enthusiastic and willing to learn. I still can't believe I allowed myself to be talked into the position.”

“Tate Lockwood can be quite persuasive when it's to his advantage,” Belle said drily. “And getting you to tend to his boys' education will relieve him of the responsibility.”

Sophie took a few more steps. “You sound critical of him.”

“I haven't walked in his moccasins, as the saying goes, but those motherless boys don't need an uninvolved father.”

“It's my perception that beneath his stern exterior he cares deeply for them.”

Belle paused, leaning on her walking stick to catch her breath. “Perhaps you can bring some of that paternal love out in the open.”

“Me?”

“Face it, Sophie. You are a lively, caring young woman. Even Tate can't help but notice and respond to you. I figure you will lead him into a more loving relationship with Marcus and Toby.”

“My, that's quite an assignment.” Yet even as Sophie doubted her abilities to effect such a change, she remembered the earnestness of Tate's recent apology.

Belle waved her arm and they resumed their hike. Along the way, Sophie examined her surroundings. The gnarled junipers that resembled old men, the stately spruce spearing toward the sky and the industrious chipmunks scampering from rock to rock in search of food. Each time she and Belle rested, she was transfixed by the rocky peaks. Iced by snowy crevices, they gleamed in the sun like nature's El Dorado.

In the early afternoon when they reached the timberline, Sophie shivered in delight. Above and beyond were boulders and rocks that bespoke of time eternal. Looming in the distance, even higher, was massive Longs Peak. Belle interrupted her thoughts. “There it is, sister. Magnificent, isn't it?”

“I can imagine the thrill of setting foot on the summit. Such a triumph shouldn't be reserved for males.”

Belle handed Sophie a piece of jerky. “Are you sure you want to make the attempt?”

“Do you doubt my abilities?”

“No, but now that you've gained some hiking experience, it's your commitment of which I must be assured. The ascent is arduous and subject to unanticipated danger.”

It was only reasonable that Belle satisfy herself regarding Sophie's motives and will. Her friend was undoubtedly trying to prepare her for rigors of which she herself was ignorant. “I would be foolish to disregard the challenges of the ascent, but it is those very challenges that make me even more determined.”

“Well, then, thanks to Wild Bill, we will set our sights on a grand adventure.” Belle sat down on a protruding rock. “Beyond the physical challenges, are you prepared for the disapproval, even censure, we may reap for ourselves?”

Sophie looked down at Belle, in whose eyes she read the importance of her compelling question. “You think two young women climbing to the summit of Longs will result in an outcry?”

“I don't
think
. I
know
. Word will get out. The press may even descend, and naysayers will be gleefully waiting for us to fail.”

Sophie had to admit she had given little thought to the repercussions from what she viewed as both an adventure and a showcase for women's capabilities. She laid a hand on Belle's shoulder. “If not us, then who? I will not falter, Belle, and if real or symbolic rocks are thrown, then so be it. Nothing worthwhile was ever achieved without risk.”

Belle covered Sophie's hand with her own. “All right. It's the two of us against the world.” She lowered her eyes. “I didn't want the uproar we may cause to come as a shock to you.”

“Thank you, Belle.” Sophie studied the sky, telltale wisps of cloud clinging to the farthest peaks. “Looks like we need to head for our horses.”

On the descent, they were accosted by two men who stood blocking their path and eyeing them with distaste.

One, dressed in the tweedy alpine garb of a tenderfoot, muttered to his companion. “I say, old chap, who are these wild women?”

A bearded giant of a man, apparently the guide, snorted. “Hussies who think they can brave the treacherous heights of Old Man Mountain.”

“Hussies!” Belle exploded. “Virgil Dennis, you know very well, I am not a hussy.” She turned to Sophie. “Nor is my companion, who happens to be the tutor of the Lockwood boys.”

“That's supposed to make it right?” The guide rolled his eyes in disgust.

“Where I come from,” the first man drawled in his aristocratic British accent, “upright, civilized women do not wear...uh—” he raked his eyes over Belle and Sophie, clad in their hiking bloomers “—masculine garments. Most irregular.” He sniffed as if at some noisome odor. “Pray tell, do permit us to pass.”

“Nobody's stopping you,” Belle said with a scorching look.

“And where we come from,” Sophie added, “men are not so rude and narrow-minded.”

“Then you don't come from around here,” the man called Virgil Dennis barked. “You're both a disgrace.” He urged the Englishman forward. As the two passed Belle and Sophie, Dennis muttered under his breath, “Don't be thinkin' the likes of me will help get you out of any trouble you get yourselves into.”

“And a good day to you, too,” Belle snorted, throwing Sophie an I-told-you-so look. After they had put considerable distance between the men and themselves, Belle commented, “That, my dear hiking companion, is the least of what we can expect from the populace when word gets out concerning our Longs Peak aspirations.”

“I don't know about you, but their censure has only hardened my resolution. Nothing would give me greater satisfaction than for us to make a statement by waving a flag from the summit.”

Belle stopped and held out her hand to Sophie. “You carry it to the top, and we'll both wave it!”

Sophie saluted her friend. “That's a deal.” Then looking down at herself, she couldn't help it. She burst into giggles. “I think it was the bloomers that did those fellows in.”

Belle's accompanying laughter echoed across the valley below.

Chapter Eight

T
ate sat in front of the fire, an open book in his lap. From the library alcove, he could hear the murmur of voices—Toby reading from a primer, Marcus asking a question, Sophie affirming their efforts. In less than two weeks, she'd made significant strides with the boys. Toby had actually crawled into his lap one evening as he was reading a recently delivered Denver newspaper and proudly pointed to words he recognized. “See, Papa?” he'd boasted. “I'm getting to be a good reader. And I computed the size of this house.”
Computed?
Clearly that word sounded more sophisticated to the boy than “doing sums.”

“Did you know that music is based on mathematics?” he heard Sophie inquire of her students.

“That can't be true,” Marcus objected.

“It's just singing and fiddling,” Toby added.

Curious, Tate leaned forward.

“Look here,” she said.

From his chair, Tate watched her make notations on a piece of paper, the boys clustered around her,

Tate turned back to his book, but found himself rereading the same paragraph. Any remaining concentration was broken by the sound of a lilting, clear soprano. “Lullaby and good night, with roses bedight...” Her voice held him in thrall, but it was the final words of the song, dying away, that brought tears to his eyes. “...Lay thee down now and rest, May thy slumber be blessed.” Who had ever sung lullabies to his sons? Maybe a nanny early on. Certainly not Ramona. Then another equally disturbing thought occurred to him. Who had ever sung him lullabies?

“...and this song is by a wonderful new German composer, Johannes Brahms. Did you like it?”

Both boys gave enthusiastic assent.

“Look, now, at the mathematics. You see that I have drawn lines and symbols on this paper. This is the way music looks on a page.”

“Why?” Toby's voice was mystified. “Just sing it.”

“If we only heard music, it would be much more difficult to pass it on to others far away or to perform it the way the composer intended.”

“That makes sense,” Marcus said. “Toby, think about it. Mr. Brahms lives in Europe. How could we know his music unless there was a way to communicate it in writing?”

Tate couldn't help himself. He stepped into the alcove, and after securing Sophie's nod of approval, took a chair at the other end of the table. He watched in wonder as she explained the mathematical timing involved in the shape of the notes and the vertical bar lines. Then she tapped out the rhythm, drawing out
by
longer time than
lulla
, and showed them how the notes reflected the timing. Then she reached for another piece of paper and quickly sketched four bars of a score. “Now, then, boys. How would you tap out this rhythm?”

Tate watched in amazement as the boys quickly grasped the concept.

“Enough for this lesson,” Sophie announced. “Let's finish by singing Brahms's ‘Cradle Song' together.” She nodded to him, soliciting his participation, yet he could hardly utter a sound, so moved was he by his sons' sweet voices raised in song. When the notes died away, silence hovered in the air until Sophie clapped her hands. “Bravo, young men!”

Tate noted how his sons gazed at her with delight. Even though he had engaged Sophie reluctantly, he doubted a male tutor from the East could have aroused such curiosity and adoration. Yet caution was needed, lest the boys become overly attached to her. He couldn't bear the thought of their being crushed once again by a female who, for whatever reasons, might walk away from them.

Released from their studies, the boys ran off in search of the pups. Sophie gathered up the papers and stowed the writing utensils. Finishing, she turned to him. “It was good of you to join us...to show the boys your interest. I hope you know you are always welcome.”

“It's not often I have the time,” he hedged. “Business occupies me.”

“I understand your myriad enterprises require your attention, but so do your sons.”

He winced. “Is that a criticism?”

“I did not intend it as one, but as a reminder. Children are not forever, and what happens to them as youngsters has a great bearing on what kind of adults they become.”

The woman had pricked a sore. What had happened to him as a child should happen to no one. He wanted his boys to know they were loved. Sophie was right. He had been too detached, too afraid his influence would more closely resemble that of his own mother and father rather than that of a more loving parent. He swallowed back his hurt and self-insight.

“Tate?” He looked up into Sophie's quizzical glance. “Are you all right?”

“Just lost in thought. You...you opened a wound.”

She sat down and folded her hands on the table. “I'm listening.”

Could he bring himself to say what he was thinking? In the distance a puppy yipped, a boy laughed, the fire crackled. “I don't know how to be a good father.” She raised her hand in protest, but he rushed on. “Please, no demurrals. I had no parent after whom to model myself.”

“They died when you were young?”

“No. But I never felt wanted or appreciated. I couldn't do much of anything right in their eyes. Now, as an adult, I understand that they were cold, unloving people. I doubt there was much, if any, affection between them. Our home, our so-called family, was all for show.”

He looked away from Sophie, whose eyes were awash with tears. “I was foolish to expect Ramona to be any different. Once she and the boys moved to Colorado, no matter how hard I tried to create the loving, stable home of my boyish fantasies, I failed. So—” he sighed deeply “—here we are.”

Sophie covered his hand with her own. “My dear man, you are too hard on yourself.”

He curled his fingers around her hand, as if it were a lifeline. He cleared his throat before daring to look at her. “I appreciate how you so effortlessly give Marcus and Toby the love they need. They soak it up. I don't seem to know how to do that.”

“It's natural to want to make men of them, I suppose, just as my father did with my brothers. He didn't want them to be soft. But that does not mean you should withhold your approval and affection, as your parents obviously did. Discipline is necessary, of course. But always, first and foremost, is love.”

“How did you become so wise?”

Her smile lit up the room. “I owe any wisdom I possess in this regard to scientific observation. This ornery, outspoken sister and daughter learned a great deal from the school of experience. As for you? You don't need my help, you just need to allow yourself to love. To let go of an unhappy past and embrace the present. Trust me, God desires the best for you.”

He stared at her, caught between wanting to believe her and longing to retreat to the comfort of his customary isolation. Her eyes never left his, and in them, he read both challenge and caring. Finally he mumbled to himself, “What's God got to do with anything?”

Before she could respond, Toby burst into the room followed by Marcus, who carried a spoon and large tin can covered with canvas. “Listen to this! We made it ourselves. Bertie helped.”

Marcus began slowly beating on the makeshift drum, the tempo slow-slow-quick-quick-slow. Then both boys chanted in rhythm, “We-like-learning-things.”

When they finished, Tate held out his arms. “Great job!” The boys came and nestled within his embrace. Only when he looked up did he note that Sophie had slipped from the room.

“Wanna hear more, Papa?” Toby whispered, his face alight.

Tate inhaled the outdoorsy smell of his son's hair. “I do,” he said quietly. “That was quite remarkable.”

“It's because of Miss Sophie,” said Marcus.

Even as he listened to another drum performance, Tate understood that it was too late for any of them to view Sophie Montgomery as merely a tutor.

* * *

The next day while Beauty played in the yard, Sophie knelt beside a row of lettuce in her small garden. It seemed she had only to turn her back before weeds encroached or animals enjoyed the leafy delicacy. The day was warm and perspiration dampened her brow. Busy with tutoring Marcus and Toby and hiking with Belle, she'd neglected her own home. Now everywhere she looked another chore demanded her attention. Mending, dusting, grooming Ranger, blacking the stove—the list was endless. When she was occupied with the Lockwood boys or with Belle, she didn't have so much time to think. Or remember.

Today the loss of Charlie was a weight crushing her spirit. By now they'd not only have been married but would surely have had a child or two. She pictured his strong, tanned hands, the way they had caressed the limestone of the Flint Hills, as if he intuited how it would perfectly suit the buildings he had in mind. Those same roughened hands had ever so gently traced the line of her jaw and lifted her fingers to his lips. Savagely, she rooted out a weed. Memory. Sometimes she could keep it at bay. Other times, like now, it intruded, threatening to overwhelm her with what might have been. Little Reuben and Jessica remained only fantasy—the future children she and Charlie had named in their daydreaming. Listening to the water rushing over the rocks in the nearby stream, she sometimes thought she heard Charlie's robust laughter, and every time she contemplated the stony faces of the mountains, she imagined discovering them with Charlie, whose affinity for all things geological had been moving to observe.

She sat back on her heels and removed her bonnet. In moments like this, she was forced to acknowledge that she had failed to foresee the challenges involved in setting up housekeeping by herself in the middle of an untamed environment. Nights when a fearsome, cold wind rattled the wooden shingles or when the baying of coyotes sounded close, she wondered what she had been thinking to cling so stubbornly to her vision. Not to mention one protective she-bear who had destroyed any illusion of control. She didn't even want to think about winter—the snow, the isolation, the sheer boredom. Although it wasn't in her nature to give up, the thought of wintering in the cabin was increasingly unappealing.

Disgusted, she retrieved her bonnet, stood and focused on the scene before her. Meadows green with waving grass, peaks bold and timeless and the silver of the rushing stream. Where would she rather be? At home, pitied and protected in the bosom of the Kansas family who loved her dearly? Being a schoolmarm in a small New England town, like so many of her fellow academy students? Suddenly, nothing seemed more important than soaking her tired feet in the icy stream. She went into the house, set her bonnet aside and picked up the latest book she'd borrowed from Tate's library—the fascinating
Around the World in Eighty Days
by the Frenchman Jules Verne—then walked to a rock beside the stream and sat down. The bracing massage of the water over her bare feet coupled with the exciting story made for pure indulgence. Not for the first time, she was thankful for Tate's standing order with a Philadelphia bookseller, since new titles arrived with almost every post. She wondered about the neglected little boy he'd been whose main companions, by his own admission, were books and a dog. She pulled her feet out of the water and sat back on the rock. She would simply have to discipline herself in order to accomplish her domestic chores and also fulfill her obligations to the Lockwoods and to Belle. As she finished a chapter, the sun settled over the western mountains and a cool breeze raised goose bumps on her arms. How could she consider being elsewhere? Her place was here in this special valley.

Tucking the book under her arm, she strolled toward the house, determined to iron the shirtwaists she'd washed yesterday, but just as she reached the porch, she heard someone approaching on horseback. Tate's foreman, Sam, slid from the saddle and waved. “Got letters for you, miss,” he called.

She hurried toward him. “It's thoughtful of you to deliver them.”

He shifted from foot to foot. “Not my idea. Mr. Lockwood's. Sent me for the mail down to Harpers'. Said if there was anything for you, I was to deliver it.” He reached in his saddlebag and pulled out a pair of envelopes. “Here,” he said, thrusting them at her. “Duty's done. I'll be takin' my leave.”

He remounted and started off at a trot. She stared at the letters—one from Lily and one from Rose, her sisters-in-law, so different from one another and yet so loving and dear. The tears she'd been fighting throughout the afternoon tempered her joy at receiving messages from her family. She pulled a rocker nearer the edge of the porch where the light was better and settled with the letters. She started with Rose's.

My dearest Sophie,

Seth joins me in sending you our love and also our thanks for your recent communication concerning the wonders of Estes Park, both natural and human. We are grateful you are thriving. I know you are curious about your father.

Living with him on the ranch has been a blessing, since he does require some attention. Although his speech is getting easier to understand, he has trouble with his right hand and arm and needs assistance with things like buttoning his shirt and holding a cup. That has not stopped him from trying to help around the place. He is able to ride, which is a blessing since it gives him pleasure and makes him feel useful.

Our Alf is growing into such a fine boy and enjoys helping his grandpa, and of course little Andrew is a joy to us all. Seth tells me to convey how much he misses you and your feistiness. I miss you, too, dear.

Sophie stared into space, letting Rose's words wash over her. It was difficult to imagine her vigorous, vital father impaired in any manner. He would fight to get better—that was his nature—but not without a great deal of frustration. Rose hadn't said much about her responsibility in caring for him, but that was just like her—self-effacing. Yet Sophie knew Rose was devoted to all the Montgomerys and would spare nothing to ease their lives.

She set Rose's letter aside and opened Lily's.