Beyond All Measure (4 page)

He ruffled the boy’s hair. “Look after the horse and wagon, will you, Rob?”

“Yes sir. Hey, Wyatt. Do you reckon Miss Ada would fry up those fish we caught? I’ve got ’em in a bucket on the back porch.”

“Not tonight. She’s had a long trip. Take those fish on home to your mama. She’ll fry ’em for you.”

“No, she won’t. She can’t stand gutting them.”

Wyatt laughed. “I suppose gutting fish is a man’s job.”

He opened the door and carried Ada’s trunk into the hallway. “Aunt Lil? We’re home!”

“There’s no need to shout, Wyatt. I’m right here.”

Ada straightened her hat and smoothed her skirt as a frail woman with piercing blue eyes and a cloud of white hair rolled her wheelchair into the entry hall. The woman set the brake and stared up at Ada. “You’re the one Hannah cajoled into coming here.”

“I’m Ada Wentworth.” She peeled off her damp lace gloves and extended her hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

Ignoring Ada’s proffered hand, the old woman said, “We’ll see if you’re still pleased a week from now.”

“Now, Aunt Lillian,” Wyatt said, “there’s no need for that kind of talk.”

“Well, I don’t see why you insist on my having yet another keeper. It’s a big waste of money if you ask me.” She peered at Ada. “So. You’ve come all this way from Boston, Massachusetts.”

“Yes.” Ada twisted her gloves into a tight ball. Where was the rest of the staff?

“Why?”

“I needed a job. I wanted to see another part of the country.”

“You came to the middle of nowhere for a change of scenery?” Lillian shook her head. “I smell a rat.”

“Lillian,” Wyatt said sharply. “Miss Wentworth is tired. I doubt she feels like submitting to the Inquisition.”

“I’m trying to figure out why a Yankee girl would want to settle in Hickory Ridge, that’s all. It seems to me she’d rather have stayed among her own kind.”

Ada lifted her chin. “It’s true that I was born in Boston, but my mother came from one of the oldest families in New Orleans. The Robillards.”

Lillian’s fine white brows went up. “Well, if that don’t take the rag right off the bush! How in the world did a nice Southern girl wind up married to a Boston Yankee?”

Ada’s nerves, already wound tight as piano wire, snapped. “My father won her in a poker game.”

Lillian gaped at her.

Wyatt’s deep laughter filled the vestibule. “You had that one coming, Aunt Lil.”

“I have every right to know who’s sleeping under my roof, Wyatt Caldwell, and don’t call me Lil. You make me sound like a dancehall girl.”

“You’d have made a fine one in your day,” he teased.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. I don’t know why I put up with your foolishness.” She glared at Ada. “Well, don’t just stand there. Make yourself useful and bring us some lemonade. It’s on the sideboard in the kitchen. Wyatt, take her things up to Hannah’s old room.”

“Yes ma’am.” Wyatt winked at Ada. “The kitchen’s that way, through the dining room and to your right.”

The kitchen? Heavenly days, was she expected to cook and serve meals too?

“The cook doesn’t—”

“Cook?” Lillian frowned. “I don’t know what Hannah told you, but this isn’t some fancy plantation house, girl. There’s no one here but me.”

Ada fled the room, her thoughts racing. She didn’t know the first thing about cooking. She hadn’t realized that all of the irascible old woman’s care would fall to her. What else had the Fields woman neglected to mention?

In the kitchen she found three glasses and poured lemonade from a cut-glass pitcher. Fighting a sudden bout of dizziness, she rummaged through the cabinets for a tray and set the glasses on it. Beads of sweat popped onto her forehead. Her hands shook. Wyatt Caldwell’s warning about Two Creeks and the Ku Klux Klan had taken her completely by surprise. Hannah Fields had described Hickory Ridge as a peaceful and close-knit town. Ada had never dreamed it would be so full of violence and secrets.

Tears threatened to overwhelm her, but she blinked them away. She picked up the heavy tray and started down the hallway, trying to ignore the worsening pain in her blistered toe.

“Miss Wentworth!” The old woman’s voice was as sharp and startling as a rifle report. Ada looked up, and the toe of her shoe caught the edge of the wool carpet. She stumbled, splashing lemonade onto her skirt, the carpet, and the watered-silk wallpaper. The pitcher and glasses thudded onto the heavy carpet and rolled beneath the dining-room table.

Instantly Wyatt was on the floor beside her. “Are you all right?”

“I’m so sorry!” She flapped her hands uselessly at her skirt, the sticky carpet, and the wayward glasses. “What a mess.”

“It isn’t that bad.” He retrieved the pitcher and the glasses. “Nothing is broken.”

“Wyatt!” Lillian called. “Where in the devil has that Yankee gotten to?”

“We’re coming, Aunt Lil!”

Wyatt drew Ada to her feet and led her back to the kitchen, where he refilled the glasses and placed them on the tray. “Go ahead and take it in.”

“But the carpet!”

“I’ll take care of it. Go on. No, wait!” He found a towel and blotted her skirt, then dabbed at her cheeks. He smiled down at her, and she really looked at him for the first time. A shock of thick dark hair brushed the collar of his denim work shirt. A straight nose. A full mouth that turned up at the corners. But it was the unusual color of his eyes that held her attention. They were the deepest blue she’d ever seen. The color of the sea in shadow. Boston blue, her mother would have said.

“There,” he murmured. “That’s better.”

She went still. There was no denying that Wyatt Caldwell was a most attractive man. And he was looking at her with such frank interest that she felt her face grow warm. “I’d better go.”

She carried the tray to the parlor where the older woman sat with a quilting bag in her lap. Without looking up, Lillian said, “It took you long enough.”

Ada set a glass of lemonade on the table beside Lillian’s chair. At last the woman shifted her gaze. “Good heavens! What in the Sam Hill happened to your dress?”

“Just a little accident,” Wyatt said smoothly, coming into the parlor. “It’s already taken care of.”

Ada sent him a grateful look. Wyatt drained his glass. “I’d love to stay and chat, but it’s Friday, and the men are waiting for their pay.”

“Go on.” His aunt waved him away. “If I need anything, Miss Wentworth here will see to it. That’s what you’re paying her for.”

“Please call me Ada.”

With a curt nod, Lillian went back to her needlework.

Wyatt kissed his aunt’s cheek. “I’ll be back on Sunday morning to drive you to church.”

“Don’t be late. I hate having everybody watch me walk down the aisle.”

Ada followed him back to the entrance hall. “Thank you for meeting my train, Mr. Caldwell. And for”—she glanced toward the parlor, where Lillian was still bent over her work—“everything.”

“You’re welcome. Don’t take her words to heart. Beneath all that bluster, she’s the kindest of souls.”

Ada nodded, hoping her doubt didn’t show.

“I hope you’ll be happy here,” Wyatt said. “It can’t be easy, starting out all alone.”

The prospect of true happiness seemed dim, but Ada said, “I’m sure I will be, when I’ve made some friends. Perhaps your wife will come to tea some afternoon?”

He smiled and crossed his arms across his chest. “Well done!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your invitation to tea. A subtle way to ask whether I’m married.”

Ada blushed to the roots of her hair. She had honestly assumed that a man as handsome and successful as Wyatt Caldwell would have a wife, but now she could see that her question looked as if she were fishing for information . . . as if she were interested in him anyway. Well, any woman still capable of breathing oxygen
would
be, but getting involved with him was just one more luxury she could not afford. “But your gardens, the flowers . . . they’re lovely. I assumed—”

“That’s Aunt Lil’s doing. She thought the place needed a woman’s touch and planted them when the house was built. I’m so busy I hardly have time to tend them.” He retrieved his hat from the hall tree.

“There is no Mrs. Caldwell?” She was stunned at how happy she felt at that prospect. But then she reminded herself why she’d come here.

“Nope.” He jammed his well-worn Stetson onto his head and opened the door. “I’ll see you Sunday.”

Wyatt crossed the yard to the buckboard. Ada returned to the parlor. Lillian hunched her shoulders, concentrating on a quilt square as if Ada weren’t there. Through the tall windows, Ada watched a wren flitting in and out of an apple tree in the orchard. The clock in the parlor whirred and chimed. She cleared her throat. “Mr. Caldwell said that you take tea at four in the afternoon. Would you like me to make some?”

Lillian looked up from her work. “I don’t think so. You’d probably burn the house down trying to boil water.”

“Mrs. Willis, I’m very sorry about—”

“Don’t think for a minute that I’m fooled about that ‘accident’—I know that Wyatt covered up for your clumsiness just now. He’s too softhearted with everybody. Spoils his men silly when what is needed is discipline.”

Ada clenched her fists. Why did this woman have to be so unpleasant? “If there’s nothing you need, I’d like to go up to my room. It has been a long day, and I’m a bit the worse for wear.”

“Supper at six. Hannah left bread and butter and half a ham. See if you can serve a meal without destroying the kitchen in the process.” She went back to her work. Her needle clicked against her thimble. “Your room is at the top of the stairs, the first one on the left.”

Ada hurried up the stairs. The room was barely large enough for a bed, a cheval glass, a washstand, and a small wardrobe, but the tall windows afforded a view of the garden and the distant mountain peaks cloaked in summer green. She opened the window and inhaled the scent of roses. The lace curtains flapped softly in the warm wind.

She removed her shoe, rolled off her stocking, and examined her injured toe. As she suspected, the blister had burst; blood and yellow fluid were forming a crust on her thin stocking. She stripped down to her chemise, poured water into the blue and white porcelain basin sitting on the washstand, and unwrapped a bar of lavender-scented soap. She bathed, running the washcloth over her hot skin and the back of her knees. Then, sitting on the edge of the narrow bed, she rested her foot in the cool, soapy water and gingerly washed it clean. She took a bottle of camphor from her trunk and dabbed some onto her toe, wincing when the smelly liquid touched her skin. She sighed. Why had she been so stupid? Now she’d have to hobble around as she went about her chores—all because of the stubborn streak that had always gotten her into trouble. She unpinned her hair, turned back the pale blue coverlet, and sank gratefully onto the bed.

It seemed that only moments had passed before Ada heard a furious pounding on the wall and Lillian’s strident voice echoing in the stairwell.

“Ada! Ada Wentworth!”

“Coming!” Ada rose with a start and pulled on her dress, her fingers clumsy at the buttons.

She ran down the stairs, her unbound hair flying, bare feet skimming the treads, and rounded the corner, only to find Lillian sitting calmly by the open window, watching a couple of hummingbirds at the feeder in the magnolia tree.

“Are you all right, Mrs. Willis?”

“It’s a quarter past six. I wondered whether you’d died in your bed.”

“I fell asleep. I’m sorry. I’ll see to dinner right away.”

Lillian waved one mottled hand. “I’m not hungry. Come and sit for a moment. The garden is lovely this time of day.”

Ada breathed a relieved sigh at the change in the old woman’s attitude. She perched on the horsehair settee, tucked her throbbing foot under her, and looked out. Late afternoon shadows lay across the garden. A slight breeze stirred the roses and the magnolia blossoms, releasing a heady perfume into the cooling air.

Lillian inhaled and closed her eyes. “Magnolias remind me of my youth. My first husband always said I bewitched him with moonlight and magnolias.” She laughed softly. “He was a corker, that one.”

She turned her watery gaze on Ada and said abruptly, “Have you ever been in love, girl?”

The question was so unexpected that Ada spoke before thinking. “Once. But my father disapproved, and my intended broke our engagement.”

“That must have been difficult for you.”

Difficult
didn’t begin to describe the anguish of betrayal at the hands of the two men she’d loved and trusted. The pain of it had seeped into her skin and lodged in her bones, becoming as much a part of her as her own breath. Her heart was still numb with bitterness. “I never forgave my father. I couldn’t understand why he wanted to deprive me of the happiness I might have had.”

“Surely he wanted only what was best for you.” Lillian gazed out at the lengthening shadows. “Just as our heavenly Father does.”

Ada watched as the evening clouds gathered above the mountains, forming a billowing canopy of apricot and blue. How could a heavenly Father think it was best for her to lose the one man she was meant to love and to lose her mother just when she most needed a woman’s guidance? Aunt Kate had tried her best to fill that void, but it wasn’t the same.