In Your Arms (Montana Romance) (7 page)

“Oh, I didn’t mean that,” Mrs. Frye said.
“I just didn’t know was all.”

“Is that legal?” one of the women sitting on the pew with the Kuhns asked.

“Yes,” Christian answered over-forcefully. “It is.”

The woman who had asked the question balked.
“Well, it shouldn’t be.”

“Do you have objections to all children of color attending the Cold Springs school?” Hattie Wright spoke up from the pew directly behind the woman.

The woman turned to face her and flinched hard at the sight of Hattie’s dark skin. “Why, n-no,” she stuttered.

“Then I fail to see how it makes a difference,” Hattie told her.

“The presence of these four children at our school is not an issue for debate,” Mr. Prescott said, suddenly serious. “Miss Singer has made a request and I, for one, am inclined to grant it. I wanted to check with you all first though.”

The parents hummed.
“I don’t see why not,” one spoke up.

“It’s not like anyone else will want those dirty savages on their team,” one of the men in the Kuhn’s pew muttered.

Lily held herself together with rigid force. The urge to lecture Samuel and his friends about equality and the rights guaranteed to all people under the law had her gripping the pew to keep from jumping to her feet. Christian was still watching her, his protective frown worse than his smarmy grin. That alone kept her from doing something rash.

“Then if there is no objection,” Mr. Prescott said.

“I object!” Samuel raised his hand. “I object to those children and that teacher polluting our school!” His wife and friends nodded in adamant agreement.

Mr. Prescott sighed.
“That issue is not on the table, Mr. Kuhn, and I’ve no interest in going around and around on it.”

Samuel
stood. “How can you turn a blind eye to the crime spree that has swept our fair town due to the presence of those Indians?”

Half a dozen voices rose in protest at the same time, Christian’s loudest amongst them.

“Those were not Indians who robbed you, Samuel,” he said.  “I was there.  I saw them.”

“But what about the station house?” Mrs. Frye asked.

“No one saw who robbed it.”

“It was probably the same Indians,” Samuel said.

“It wasn’t Indians!”

“Friends, friends, settle down!”
Rev. Andrews intervened. Those who had stood resumed their seats. “This isn’t a political meeting. Let the law handle lawlessness and let us focus on the school and the children.”

His words were met with nods and approval.

Lily couldn’t let the issue rest. Heart pounding against her ribs, she rose and turned to face Samuel.

“Mr. Kuhn, you seem to be under the misapprehension that native children, and perhaps adults, are ignorant and dull.”

“They are, Miss Singer. Science has proven it.” He crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes.

“I respectfully disagree, and I will prove it to you.”

She took a step forward and turned to face the two dozen or so parents and townspeople. Christian watched her anxiously. She cleared her throat.

“I have asked to have the Flathe
ad children on my team for the academic games as a way to prove that Indian and white children can work together peacefully and excel.” She flickered a glance to Christian. Her pulse raced with the recklessness of her convictions. “I will take that wager one step forward. I believe that a team comprised of all races of children will win these games. If they do not win outright, then I will not try to stop any efforts to remove the Flathead children from our school.”

Samuel rose, the light of triumph in her eyes.
“You’re saying that if your lot don’t win, they’ll leave the school?”

“Samuel, I said the issue was not up for discussion,” Mr. Prescott said.

“It’s all right, Mr. Prescott.” Lily nodded to him. “It won’t come to that because my team
will
win.”

“
Then I accept the wager.” Samuel beamed as though he’d already won.

The room buzzed with murmurs and excitement.

“Are you sure, Miss Singer?” Mr. Prescott asked her.

No, she wasn’t.
She was reckless and impetuous. Her temper had gotten the better of her, and now she was playing with other people’s lives.

“Yes, Mr. Prescott.
I am.”

“Then if there are no other objections….”

Christian leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, to scold Lily with a frown. He knew she’d flown off half-cocked as well as she did, and it was mortifying.

“
It’s settled.” Mr. Prescott shrugged and gestured for his wife to bring him the top hat and names. “Let’s pick the rest of the teams, shall we?”

Lily forced herself to breathe as attention shifted from her to Mr. Prescott and Rev. Andrews.
She snuck a peek at Christian. He didn’t approve. Why should he? She didn’t approve herself. She should have known better than to speak without thinking. If she lost now, she would never forgive herself.

Chapter Seven

“Two and eight are sixteen, two and nine are eighteen and two and ten are twenty,” Lionel Twitchel finished his times table with a satisfied grin.

“Good, good,” Christian told the boy, although if two times was as far as he could get, they were in trouble.

“Mr. Avery?” Lionel asked.

“What, son?”

“Can I go to the bathroom?”

Christian sighed.
“Yes. We’ve only got five minutes left anyhow.”

Lionel scrambled out of the desk that was too big for him and
scurried for the door to the hall. He was the youngest of the children who had been picked to be on his team. The rest were a rag-tag combination of town and farm children in various states of disrepair. Beribboned town girls sat next to grubby boys who hadn’t washed behind their ears all winter. It was his first practice with the team, his first time seeing what they knew. He had a sudden, new level of respect for what Lily did.

“Right, let’s try something a little harder,” he said, flipping through the pages of the primer Hal had given him to coach from.
He paced the front of the classroom they’d been assigned to meet in. A dozen sets of eager eyes followed him. “Samantha.” He turned to a moony-eyed sixth grader. “Spell ‘extraordinary’.”

She blushed pink and beamed as if the sun had come out on a cloudy day as he stopped his pacing at the side of her desk.

“That’s a wonderful word, Mr. Avery. It suits you.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him.

Twelve kinds of awkwardness knocked the wind out of him.
He cleared his throat. “Just spell the word.”

Samantha sighed.
“Extraordinary. E-X-T-R-O-R-D-I-N-E-R-Y.”

He was going to lose.
Worse than that, Lily would gloat and say she told him so. He could imagine her now, straight back, sly grin, dark eyes shining, lips rosy, breasts round and pressing against her bodice.

“Mr. Avery?”

Hands resting on her hips, her long, slender fingers molding around those curves.

“Uh, Mr. Avery?”

On second thought, it might not be such a bad thing to lose if victory looked like that. In fact, defeat was looking better every minute.

“Christian, pull your head down out of the clouds and let your students go!”

Christian blinked and whirled to the door to find Eric Quinlan standing there, taking up most of the frame. He was the picture of a rugged rancher—worn coat, wide-brimmed hat, mud-spattered boots—but for his shiny-clean infant daughter, Darcy, in his arms. The older girls in the room were already cooing and craning their necks to get a better look at the baby. All but Samantha, who now had her elbows rested on her desk, her chin in her hands, gazing up at him.

“Looks like time’s up,” he mumbled, waving a hand over his students
, avoiding Samantha altogether. “You all go back to your regular classrooms now.”

The room erupted into a hive of activity, scraping chairs and thumping books as the students from young to old jostled to get out the door fastest.
Eric dodged to the side, sheltering Darcy’s head with one large hand.

“What are you doing here?” Christian tucked his primer under his
arm like he had during his own school days and crossed the room.

“Amelia’s meeting with Hal, Michael
and Charlie, Phin, and the McGees about the quiz questions,” he explained.

Mischief lit Christian up.
“You don’t think Amelia would be willing to share some of those questions, do you?”

They shuffled into the hall as
the teacher whose classroom Christian had been assigned to for practice reclaimed her space. The woman wasn’t half as sharp or spritely as Lily. In fact, Lily made her look like ragweed.

“Planning to cheat then?” Eric asked when they were in the hall.

“What?” Christian mumbled. He glanced up and down the hall, wondering if Lily might walk by on her way to her own classroom. After the penance he’d just endured in the name of getting closer to her, the least he deserved was a good, long look.

“Cheating?”

He nodded, barely hearing Eric. Lily’s classroom was at the end of the hall, near the stairs that led up to the second floor. The large outside door was in the opposite direction. He turned first one way, then the other. It really would be a shame to come all this way not to make sure she was all right. She’d been out of sorts after church. Looking in on her for five minutes wouldn’t hurt anyone. There wasn’t that much work to do at the courthouse anyhow. Well, work that couldn’t wait, at least.

“Michael was right,” Eric said.
“You really have been hit in the head with a brick.”

“What?”
He blinked and faced Eric, racing back over their conversation to figure out what they were talking about.

Eric bounced Darcy against his shoulder
, grinning like a fool. At him.

“
Mabel Twitchel said that you and Lily Singer brought Jimmy home the other night,” Eric said with a casual drawl. “Together.”

“
Yes.” Christian frowned at the tone Eric was taking, still staring down the hall. “Because we’d both been out at Sturdy Oak’s place and the weather was bad. I drove her home.”

“Yep,” Eric said.
He shifted Darcy from his shoulder to his arms. “Mabel thinks the two of you look good together.”

“We do not
‘look good’ together.”

“
Cheryl Kidron thinks so too.”

“Who the hell is
Cheryl Kidron and what business does she have thinking I look good with anyone?”

“Sh
e lives out there on New Street, next door to Samuel Kuhn,” Eric explained. “She’s one of Amelia and Charlie’s new friends. They were out at our place for tea Saturday. Said she saw the way you rushed to Miss Singer’s rescue when the robbers started shooting up the place on Friday night.”

“I was doing what a
ny responsible citizen would do.”

“Yes, well, most responsible citizens don’t end up as the center of Ladies’ Auxiliary gossip
for doing nothing at all.”

Christian crossed his arms and rested his weight on one leg.
“Have you gone and lost some necessary equipment down south?” He nodded to Eric’s crotch. “Because you’re sounding like a girl right now.”

“And you’re acting like a fourth-grader,” Eric countered.
“Folks are starting to notice.”

“Notice what?”
Christian narrowed his eyes.

“T
hat two thieves are on the loose, for one, and that you don’t seem all that concerned.”

“I’m the justice of the p
eace, not the sheriff,” Christian growled. “It’s Kent’s job to catch them and mine to preside at their trial.”

“Right,” Eric
drawled, rocking Darcy. “Not a soul in this town believes that. Everyone knows you’re the real law in Cold Springs.”

It was a glowing compliment, but it sat as wrong as Samantha’s moony smile.

“Christian, you’re as obvious as a bull in a lake,” Eric went on when Christian kept silent. “Half of town suspects you’re sweet on Miss Singer and the other half knows it.”

“It’s none of their business.”

“I know that and you know that, but folks around here are nervous about the timing.” Eric shifted Darcy back to his shoulder and rubbed her back as she began to fuss. “Along with hearing half the Ladies’ Auxiliary chattering about how good you and Miss Singer look together, I’ve also heard several of them saying that Samuel Kuhn has a good idea about bringing the army in. Do you really want the army around here because you can’t pay attention? You drop one ball and someone else will pick it up.”

“No one is going to pick up my balls,” Christian said.
His lips twitched. “Except maybe Miss Singer.”

Eric chuckled.
He also shook his head. “Fine. I’m not interfering. You never listen to anyone anyhow. Just you remember that I told you so when things move beyond your control.”

He sent Chr
istian one more “just you watch” look, then turned to stride down the hall toward Hal’s office.

Christian told himself his friend was overreacting.
He started in the opposite direction from Eric. He told himself that Kent would do his job and catch the thieves and life would go back to normal. He told himself that gossip was just hot air and none of it meant anything. Lily was not a distraction. He had the situation completely under control.

He told himself that all the way up to the door
of Lily’s classroom.

The small glass window in the door was decorated with paper snowflakes that must have been fashioned by the students.
Christian held his breath and peeked through the rough-cut lines and gaps of the snowflakes into the classroom. He could hear Lily’s voice, muffled by the door, discussing some topic with passion.

His shoulders relaxed and the ghost of a smile spread across his lips and into his chest.
That woman was passionate about everything she did. No wonder the children loved her so much. No wonder he—

He cleared his throat and reached for the door handle, letting himself into the classroom without knocking.

“…why the Bill of Rights was created to begin—” Lily stopped dead as soon as Christian was in the room. Her eyes flared wide.

The room full of children squirmed in their seats, curiosity rippling through them.
One turned to stare back at him, and in an instant a dozen and a half sets of eyes had him pinned to the door.

“Good morning, Miss Singer, class,” he said with all the pretended calm he could muscle into his body.

“Mr. Avery,” Lily answered with composure that he was certain was as fake as his calm. “Can I help you?”

Christian rubbed his chin.
He walked slowly down the side of the room, searching for a reason he was there. It was his right to be there. He was on the town council. He was the justice of the peace. He needed to be sure Lily was safe from the likes of Samuel Kuhn. He needed to be close to her.

The chalkboard
at the front of the room was filled with neat handwriting, the caption “Bill of Rights” at the top with each of the first ten amendments enumerated below. He grabbed his opening.

“I heard you were teaching
about the Constitution, and I came as justice of the peace to answer any questions the children might have,” he fumbled.

Eric was right.
He was a damned fool.

“I see,” Lily answered.

Her students squirmed in their seats, some watching her, some watching him. Their expressions said that the lesson had just gotten interesting.

“Thank you, Mr. Avery.
You can have a seat up here to be on hand in case of questions.”

She gestured for him to sit in a small wooden chair
in the front corner. He nodded, meeting her stony determination with as friendly a smile as he could manage under the circumstances.

When he sat in the chair, a bubble of half-hidden giggles
rose from the children. One girl leaned across the aisle to say “He’s in the Trouble Chair” to her friend. Amos Wright, who sat near the front, grinned from ear to ear and shook his head as though Christian should know better.

“
And that,” Lily picked up where she left off as though he wasn’t there, “is why the Bill of Rights was created. It is why subsequent amendments to the Constitution have been made. They are to protect our freedoms and to ensure the fair and effective governance of our country. Our Constitution is designed to be adaptable, to change with changing times, to be updated to fit the growing society we live in and the shifting demographics of that society.”

Christian
’s eyebrows rose. He hadn’t expected such an advanced topic in a sixth grade class, or for the students to be so engaged.

“Can anyone here tell me what the most recent change to our Constitution was?”
Lily asked.

The students blinked and scratched their heads as they thought.

“No one?” she asked the class. She turned to him, her lips curved up and her eyes alight with mischief. “All right then, Mr. Avery, do you know?”

“Yes,” he answered
. He cleared his throat. “The most recent change to our Constitution was the addition of the Fifteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1870.”

“Very good, Mr. Avery,” Lily smiled at him like a wolf about to pounce.
“And could you please tell the class what rights and freedoms the Fifteenth Amendment gives us?”

He itched to know what she was up to
.

“‘
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.’,” he quoted.

“Precisely.”

She smiled, so bitter, so sweet. Christian’s itching flooded to full-on boiling.