His For Christmas (16 page)
Authors: Fiona Shin
Such
words
of
wisdom
from
one
so
young.
The
door
closed
behind
the
pair
of
them,
leaving
the
once--heiress
and
toast
of
Seneca,
New
York,
in
silence
and
the
memories
she
did not want
.
“
I
fear
you
’
re
wrong,
Timothy,
”
she
whispered
to
herself
in
the
semi--darkness.
“
Tomorrow
will
not
be
better.
”
The girl was kneeling on the floor.
Elliot stopped at the threshold of the kitchen, initially drawn to the tantalizing smell of Mrs. Chang's special beef stew and dumplings.
But this was not something he'd expected.
“Er, Mrs. Chang?”
The housekeeper turned around from the pot with something very akin to disconcertion. “Yes, Elliot?”
He cleared his throat as he watched the girl industriously scrub the spotless floor on her hands and knees, hair tied back with a length of leather. “What...exactly is Miss Stevens doing, might I ask?”
The person in question apparently didn't even notice he was there, so intent she was on getting a tar spot off the floor by the oven. It was not going to come off, not if Mrs. Chang had given up on it, but the girl did not stop scrubbing. At this point, Elliot was mostly worried he’d have a hole in his kitchen floor, and that would not do.
Mrs. Chang sighed and crossed her arms. “There’s no stopping her, I'm afraid. The moment she rose from bed, she found one of my aprons, marched herself right in front of me and asked me for a rag.”
For some reason, Elliot couldn't tear his eyes away from the image of Ivy Stevens scrubbing the same two inches of the shining wooden floor. “And it didn't occur to you to ask why she needed it?”
The housekeeper shrugged. “You know me. I ask questions at the end. And to be quite frank, I was curious to see what she would do.”
“Didn't you try to stop her?”
She pulled an expression of extreme annoyance. “Well, of course, I tried! Do you really think I’m capable of pulling someone from their sickbed just to scrub a kitchen floor, which I may add, was perfectly spotless to begin with?”
Elliot sighed and sat down on his haunches. “Mm. Miss Stevens?”
She either did not hear him, or preferred to ignore him, as she scrubbed at the floor that was starting to look a little thin by the oven. Her head was down, startling bright violet eyes fixed on that one black spot.
Mrs. Chang let out a small laugh. “You see what I mean? She's a bit occupied at the moment. If I might offer a suggestion, Elliot?”
“Yes, Mrs. Chang?”
“Perhaps it would not be the worst thing to wait?” she said with a small smile. “I don't think Miss Stevens is who she appears to be.”
Of course, she wasn't.
The girl, well, woman, really, although it was hard to see her as anything vaguely resembling one when dressed the way she was, in one of Mrs. Chang's castoff gowns and an apron that threatened to trip her with every move she made.
He leaned against the doorway, arms crossed. “How long until lunch, Mrs. Chang?”
“Well, I think it is time,” she replied. “However, I'm not sure what I ought to do. I've tried calling her name to get her attention, but it’s as though she’s a million miles away. So I thought it would be best to wait until she tired.”
“Which, at her state, shouldn't be too long,” he said thoughtfully.
The housekeeper nodded. “Just so. I...I'm not sure if I ought to touch her. What with how Timothy had reacted...”
Her voice trailed away and Elliot was well-aware of what she spoke of. For the first couple of weeks, the boy had jumped and cringed every time he, Doc Warner, or Mrs. Chang tried to touch him, and it took Timothy the better part of a year to get used to being around people who would not strike at him, given half the chance.
Was the woman just like Timothy?
He grinned. “We seem to have a habit of acquiring orphans, Mrs. Chang.”
“I think Miss Stevens might be a bit old to be considered an orphan,” she said, brow quirked. “But I would not argue that very much with you.”
It did feel quite strange to speak about someone while that someone was within earshot, and indeed hovering about their knees, belaboring at a spot that would not come out.
His stomach growled loudly, but he knew there would be no lunch until Miss Ivy Stevens decided to give up.
Which, judging from her look of intense concentration, did not seem to be any time soon.
“Hopefully she won't try to head-butt me in the face,” he said and winced at the memory of just that happening the first time he tried to pat Timothy on the shoulder to get the boy's attention. The boy had given him a hell of a black eye and it’d been interesting to hear the rumors as to how he
really
acquired the shiner.
really
acquired the shiner.
He reached for her. “Miss Stevens?” he said quietly. “Miss Stevens, please. While I do appreciate the sentiment, such work is not necessary. You are welcome here as a guest. Guests are not obligated to do housework.”
She said nothing, just continued to scrub at that spot and suddenly, for some bizarre reason, Elliot was reminded of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, the accursed lady who would forever try to scrub the blood and murder from her hands.
The housekeeper made a small sound in the back of her throat, either that of disapproval or approval. “You see? Really, I just don’t know what to do. She hasn’t even bothered to wash!”
And indeed, there was a rather unsavory smell emanating from the woman and he felt his appetite wane considerably.
And just when he thought it would be better to leave the girl until she decided enough was enough, she stopped and sat back on her haunches, the rag still in one dirty hand.
“Miss Stevens?” he asked.
There was beauty underneath all that grime, he was sure of it. It was evident in the tilt of her brows, the subtle curve to her high, sculpted cheekbones. But really, none of that matters. After all, he would merely welcome her as a guest and she would go off to wherever she was meant to be.
Suddenly, Elliot never felt so alone in his damned life. “Miss Stevens, are you quite all right?”
She shook her head slowly, breathing heavily, looking very much as though she would like to cry. “I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry.”
Her voice was clear, surprisingly husky considering her small stature.
He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“I am so sorry. Truly, I...”
Mrs. Chang patted the girl on her head as if she were a small house dog. “There, there. It's all right now. You are safe now, don't you worry about a thing.”
Moisture glistened in those extraordinary violet-blue eyes and she swiped at them impatiently. “I am so sorry to have disrupted your life. If there's anything you'd like for me to do, I’ll do it. But, outside...”
He thought he understood.
And how he'd wished Timothy was here to talk to her.
They were, after all, two birds of a feather.
Or something like that. “How long have you been here?”
She let out a slow breath. “I don't remember.”
“When did you leave New York?”
“In...November,” she said quietly. “I was...”
The silence stretched on between the three of them, and Mrs. Chang harrumphed under her breath, the ladle in one large, calloused hand. “Never mind all that. We don't give a fig about where you've come from. Or where you plan on going. But we are going to have lunch very soon, so perhaps it would not be such a bad thing to wash before we do so? With all due respect, girl, but you smell as though you've slept the whole week in the alleyway behind the saloon.”
A strange expression crossed the girl's face and Elliot couldn't help but wonder if that indeed had been the case.
Christ. What kind of situation would dictate such an action? What had happened to this elegant, soft-spoken woman that she'd have to spend nights outdoors with nothing more than a dirty coat for comfort?
She stood up and Elliot was once again surprised. He wasn't excessively tall, quite comfortably a few inches above the medium, or whatever was considered the medium, but she was tiny.
How could someone so small have survived?
“Please,” she said in that surprisingly husky voice. “Call me Ivy.”
Mrs. Chang nodded. “If that is what you wish.”
Ivy. An interesting name.
And yet, it suited her. “And you are free to call me Elliot. Having people call me Mr. Whitley keeps making me look over my shoulder to make sure it isn't my father they want to talk to.”
She shook her head vehemently. “Oh, no, I couldn't.”
He managed a smile. “Either I call you Ivy and you call me Elliot or I call you Miss Stevens and you call me Mr. Whitley? Considering how I hate being called Mister, how about we just call it even and go with the first names?”
She was still for a moment, eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. “You don't strike me as a terrible man.”
Behind her, Mrs. Chang's eyes widened. “What a perfectly strange thing to say, Ivy.”
The woman set the rag next to the cast-iron stove and her shoulders slumped, fingers clenching into the calico blue rag that Elliot had last seen wiping mud off the bottom of Timothy's shoes. “I might have been raised as a lady, but during my time away from home...” she paused. “May I be frank?”
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