Love's First Bloom (17 page)

Even so, she had no desire to have the bird swoop at her again and took tiny sidesteps to reach the path. “Nice turkey hen. Don’t worry. I’m leaving now,” she whispered, relieved when the turkey made no effort to move.

When she finally reached the path, she even walked backward for a few steps. Satisfied she was not in any danger, she turned around but kept her pace slow and steady. She pulled her shawl a little tighter and looked back over her shoulder when she reached the bend in the path and blinked hard.

The hen was strutting along the path following her!

“Stupid turkey,” she grumbled when she realized her gown was snagged on a bramble bush. Frustrated, she stopped to untangle her skirts. Seeing that the bird had stopped, too, she worked quickly to get free. When she started walking down the path again, she increased her pace, confident she could walk faster than a simple turkey.

When she looked back one last time and saw that the bird was keeping pace with her, she whirled around and stomped her foot. “Fair warning,” she cautioned harshly.

The bird stopped and cocked its head.

“I can be a very angry woman. Now, I’m going to my home, and I suggest you go to yours. If you don’t, if you swoop up and try to peck me, I’ll swat you down, which I’m tempted to do anyway since you’re probably the critter responsible for all the snags in my shawl.”

The bird ruffled its feathers.

“Fine. Have it your way, but if you make me swat at you and you just happen to break your neck when you hit the ground, I’m taking your carcass straight to Phanaby to cook you up for dinner. And I’m going to enjoy every bite. Now go. Scoot! Away!”

The bird stared back at her, but didn’t budge.

“Mercy! You’re as despicable as … as that newspaper reporter here who’s trying to ruin my life,” she snapped, and then turned around and marched to the end of the path at the south side of the bridge before the bird finally disappeared into the brush.

“I wish I could make Robert Farrell and every other reporter searching for me disappear as easily,” she grumbled, then hurried back toward the village.

Jake waited until long after Ruth disappeared from view before he shuttered the cabin window in the loft and climbed back down the ladder.

Drenched with guilt for intruding on the poor woman’s privacy, he dismissed the urge to start a quick fire for one compelling reason: He could not afford to risk having her see smoke swirling from the chimney and realize he had been at home while she had been at her garden.

Jake grabbed a fresh pair of denim trousers and put them on. He’d had no intention of leaving Miss Wyndam’s barn just after dark last night and returning to his cabin again, but had accidentally spilled paint on the trousers he was to wear to services.

After brushing his hair, he poured fresh water into a basin so he could shave. He picked up the shaving brush, swept it through the water, and worked up a good lather of soap before he used the sliver of a mirror he had set on the mantel to make sure he slathered over his entire beard.

One tiny stroke of his single-edge razor on the cleft of his chin left a gash, and he could see his hands were shaking too hard to even attempt the task. He cast the razor aside. The way his life was unfolding, he would end up with more nicks on his face than he had managed to inflict the first time he put razor to beard.

Settling for a bit of stubble on his face instead, he wiped his face and held a cloth to his chin, hoping the bleeding would soon stop. He turned away from the image staring back at him in the mirror, but he could not stop the echo of that woman’s sobs, which had driven him from his bed to open the shutter on the loft window.

He had heard such deep, guttural grief only twice before. Once when he listened to his mother weep after his father’s death, and once several months ago when the family who had hired him to repair their roof had buried their two-year-old twin sons. And he knew now, beyond any doubt, that Ruth was deeply grieving the loss of a loved one: her father.

Farrell’s claim that Jake was foolishly risking his future as a reporter by staying here, however, overwhelmed the sound of her gut-wrenching sobs that echoed in his mind, and he stiffened. As important as it was to confirm her identity, he had never intended to eavesdrop or to intrude on the grieving woman’s privacy. Farrell, on the other hand, would have relished the opportunity. Jake was equally certain that Farrell would have no qualms about sensationalizing what should remain a very private moment, all in the name of truth, however hurtful that might be for her.

“Truth,” he murmured, recalling the conversation he’d had with Ruth, bantering about the public’s insatiable thirst for scandal and an individual’s right to privacy.

He pulled the cloth away from his chin to distract him from thoughts that were confusing him and looked back into the mirror. The cut was no longer oozing, but he had smeared blood on the end of his chin. After dipping the end of the cloth into the basin of water, he wiped away the blood very carefully so as not to open the wound.

When he recalled Farrell’s voice echoing his brother’s ultimatum, he bristled. Clifford was a responsible, though rather ruthless, businessman, but he was still Jake’s brother. Perhaps he was a bit too driven to make the
Galaxy
the top-selling newspaper in New York City to suit Jake’s more reticent personality, but he was one of the most admired newspapermen in the city. Now that he had sent Farrell out to find Ruth Livingstone, Jake knew he had to focus on finding that wooden chest Capt. Grant spoke of, to determine if the contents had any relevance at all to his assignment.

When Ruth’s voice echoed in his mind, demanding equal attention, he swallowed hard. She had reopened wounds he had struggled too long to heal when she mentioned the series he had written about Victoria Carlington. He would be a good reporter again, even a great one like his brother, and he was definitely not going to disappear into anonymity like Ruth had hoped his punishment would be.

“Maybe Farrell was right about one thing. I probably stayed away too long,” he admitted and walked over to the cabinet in the corner to see if he could find something to eat for breakfast that did not require a fire to heat it. In the process of moving a tin of stale crackers aside, he knocked over the blue bottle containing the remedy from Mr. Garner and sent it crashing to the dirt floor.

He jumped back, but still ended up with a large, wet stain on his trousers. “At this rate, I’ll be left with nothing but my nightshirt to wear to services,” he complained, then stomped across the room to change into his last pair of clean trousers.

At least he did not have to worry about what to say if Spinster Wyndam mentioned at church that he had gone home last night. Ruth would never believe that he had not heard her crying.

Gazing out toward Ruth’s garden patch, he suspected that more than a few of the older folks, who did not sleep soundly anymore, or parents of young children, who were often up during the night, may have heard the sound of a woman sobbing. Because Ruth had been raised in the city, she probably did not know how easily sounds echoed over the river. His one hope was that Farrell would have been so dosed with Mr. Garner’s remedy that he had slept soundly without hearing anything at all.

Still, he figured he could not keep the villagers from gossiping about what they might have heard during the night, though he believed he had the perfect excuse to explain why he had not heard anything at all.

Despite what Farrell or Clifford might think of him, Jake knew that the very fact that he cared about Ruth’s feelings did not mean he was not a good reporter.

Just a kind one.

Eighteen

Rev. Haines stood in front of the packed meetinghouse and concluded the Sunday service with a final, personal message. “Although I’m leaving tomorrow for several weeks, you will never be far from my thoughts. I will continue to pray that your deep faith in almighty God will remain constant, that your hope in Him will conquer your fears, and that your love for our Savior will sustain you, comfort you, and bring you joy,” he offered, repeating the theme of today’s sermon. “Pray for me, too, that I may bring this message of faith, hope, and love to those who live beyond our village. Praise God.”

“Praise God!”

The members of the congregation had answered enthusiastically in a single voice, but Ruth had managed only a whisper. Her faith felt too tenuous, her hope nearly gone. Still, she took a moment, as the congregation rose to leave, to remain sitting. Although she was grateful the reporter had not come to services this morning, she said a quick prayer, asking God’s help to at least keep Farrell away from the picnic.

Phanaby had told Ruth she’d heard her cries echoing across the river earlier this morning, and she wondered how many others may have heard as well. She did not need to look into a mirror to know that the hour she had spent pressing cold, tea-soaked cloths to her face had not done much good. Most of the redness in her face had dissipated before leaving the house, but she could feel the puffiness around her eyes. Every time she blinked, it felt as if she had tiny grains of sand caught beneath her eyelids.

Someone, if not everyone, was bound to notice how poorly she looked, and if they had heard the same sobbing sounds as Phanaby, they might suspect she was the woman who had been crying at dawn. Her only consolation was in knowing that Jake Spencer had spent last night at Spinster Wyndam’s rather than at the cabin.

The congregation was slow to clear outside, and Ruth adjusted Lily’s sleeping form to a more comfortable position in her arms, willing her to sleep as long as possible.

Unlike the small but elegant church where her father had preached every Sunday, this meetinghouse was very plain, even austere. Instead of arched windows of colorful stained glass, the windows here held ordinary clear glass. Roughhewn benches, rather than polished pews, provided seating.

The size of the congregation, in all truth, was about the same, since her father had not been invited to preach to the larger, more affluent congregations in the city. The manner of dress here, however, was much less formal, and members of this congregation considered freshly laundered clothes to be their Sunday best, which suited Ruth’s meager wardrobe just fine.

The only decoration came from two large vases on either side of the pulpit that held bouquets of early roses in a variety of colors that included white, pale yellow, shocking pink, and deep crimson. They added the only hint of beauty, which explained why Rev. Haines had encouraged her to grow flowers in her garden for him.

At the time, Ruth had been certain she would be gone by the time the flowers she had yet to plant would be in bloom. Now she found it hard not to resent the fact that she would remain here because she had no other place to go, a child to protect, and an identity to keep secret.

Sighing, she shifted Lily a bit to ease the tingling in her arms. She was a bit small for her age, according to Phanaby. But when she was asleep in Ruth’s arms, she was dead weight and Ruth grew impatient to leave. Finally, when the line of people in the main aisle started moving again, she followed Phanaby with no small measure of relief.

When they finally reached the front door, Ruth and Phanaby walked outside while Elias remained to help several other men who were carrying benches outside to the plot of land beyond the cemetery on the north side of the building.

Phanaby took her free hand. “You look much better now. It’ll do you good to mingle with folks awhile today. And I have it on good authority that Mr. Farrell has no plans to attend the picnic today, either.”

Ruth’s heart skipped a hopeful beat. “Really? How did you—?”

“Mrs. Burkalow told me,” she whispered. “Now try to relax and enjoy yourself today. Just remember: Time heals our hurts very slowly, but it does heal them. Hold on to that hope. That was part of Reverend Haines’s message today, wasn’t it?”

Ruth moistened her lips and raised her gaze to meet Phanaby’s. “Yes, it was,” she admitted, although she had little hope left that God was truly looking out for her best interests.