The Oldest Flame (8 page)

* * *

Mrs. Meade did not see Rose Grey again for
nearly a month after the fire. At the end of that time Rose and her
mother came to Sour Springs for the benefit of Mrs. Grey’s health,
her nerves having never quite recovered from the ordeal and what
had followed. Rose seemed to have grown a little older in the
intervening weeks, quieter and more observant, but her smile was
still as quick and as sweet.

It was several days after their arrival
before she and Mrs. Meade found themselves alone, sitting under the
arbor behind the Colonial Hotel. A very light, soft breeze quivered
the leaves of the clematis vines on the arbor, and the first fallen
petals were already tumbling on the ground. Rose put out one hand
and bent one of the woody tendrils of the vine, curling it around
one of the slats of the arbor.

“How are you, my dear?” asked Mrs. Meade,
breaking a short silence.

Rose looked over at her and smiled. “I’m all
right,” she said.

“You’ve been a very great comfort to your
mother, I know,” said Mrs. Meade.

“I didn’t always
feel
like I could be
a comfort to anyone,” said Rose with a sigh. “It’s all been so very
strange—I didn’t know where I was or what I was feeling half the
time.”

“It must have been very difficult for
you.”

“Well—I’m just glad that my father didn’t
know anything about the murder until afterward,” said Rose. “It was
bad enough finding out about the embezzlement, but that would have
been so much worse. I’ve told Mother that, and I think she
understands—although she’s still terribly upset about it all.”

There was a moment’s silence. Rose looked
down at the toe of her shoe as she smoothed out the short-cropped
grass with it meditatively. “Mrs. Meade…could you tell me…do you
think it’s at all strange, if I don’t feel—well, quite as upset as
I ought to have been?”

“No,” said Mrs. Meade, who understood the
different inference in this. “It isn’t a bit strange. I think it
only means you didn’t care quite as deeply, at the time, as you
thought you did.”

“I certainly never would have believed that
then,” said Rose, still staring thoughtfully at the ground.

Mrs. Meade quietly concealed a smile over her
embroidery. “No, I think not.”

“He was very—very handsome, and had such nice
manners,” said Rose with a little difficulty, as if trying to
explain something. “He treated me like a lady—like a grown-up lady,
and it was lovely. It was thrilling to talk to him in that way. But
when I think about it now, I don’t believe I ever really knew him,
as well as I know—anyone else.” She gave the older woman a quick,
inquisitive sideways glance. “Do you think I still would have
married him if he asked me—just feeling like that?”

“Good heavens, I don’t know,” said Mrs.
Meade. “I only thank God you didn’t get the chance to decide!”

“I did remember what you told me, and I
understood,” said Rose a little more quietly, “and it helped.”

Again there was silence for a moment. Then
she added, with a funny little tremble of laughter in her voice,
“When you said all that to me, I thought you were warning me
about—Mark!”

“About Mark!” said Mrs. Meade, letting her
work drop into her lap as she looked up in astonishment.

“Yes.”

“You knew that he was suspected, then?”

Rose nodded. “That day, at the hotel, I
opened my door and Mrs. Lansbury’s maid was whispering in the
corridor with Mother’s Nellie. They were saying how Mark must have
done it—and I knew why. It made me feel so terrible. I didn’t think
Mark could act that way—it wasn’t like him.”

“It may not have stood up in court,” said
Mrs. Meade, smiling, “but that was what I told Sheriff Royal all
along. As it turns out, you and I were both right about Mark. He
would never do anything so thoughtless and dangerous, even if he
does sometimes lament the shortage of dragons.”

“Dragons?” said Rose, puzzled.

“I think Mark has yet to discover,” said Mrs.
Meade, “that ‘dragons’ are just another name for all the little
ordinary difficulties that meet us every day of our lives.”

“Oh,” said Rose, perhaps not too enlightened,
but looking thoughtful.

Mrs. Meade did not trouble herself to inquire
why Rose had felt so badly over the idea of Mark’s supposed guilt.
But she was smiling a little to herself as she picked up her
embroidery again.

###

The Silver Shawl: A Mrs. Meade Mystery

In a small town in turn-of-the-century Colorado, a
young woman has disappeared from the boarding-house where she
lives. Her distraught fiancé is certain that she must have been
kidnapped. But the case takes a new turn when a city detective
appears on the scene, looking for a woman who matches the
description of the missing girl. Was Charity really kidnapped, or
did she have a reason to flee? Mrs. Meade, a gentle but shrewd
widow lady who lives across the hall in the boarding-house, feels
that there is something wrong with the story of Charity’s
disappearance…but can she unravel the mystery before it is too
late? The first entry in the Mrs. Meade Mysteries series,
approximately 15,700 words long.

Find it at Smashwords:
www.smashwords.com/books/view/241238

The Parting Glass: A Mrs. Meade Mystery

Mrs. Meade is not the only one in Sour
Springs who is shocked at the news when Clyde Renfrew is accused of
drunken assault on a woman. Clyde, a sober, steady young rancher,
seemed the last person likely to do such a thing. Between an
emphatic witness and Clyde’s own apparent reluctance to defend
himself, the case seems open and shut. But Mrs. Meade—who seems to
have a knack for being just across the hall when things happen—has
a few ideas of her own…

Find it at Smashwords:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/346361

More books by this author:

The Ranch Next Door
and Other Stories

War Memorial: A
Short Story

Some Christmas
Camouflage: A Short Story

Elisabeth Grace Foley grew up an avid reader and has
always been fascinated with history, so when she turned to writing,
historical fiction was naturally her first choice. Her first
published story, “Disturbing the Peace,” was an honorable mention
in the first annual
Rope and Wire
Western short story
competition, and is now collected with six others that are
appearing for the first time in her debut short story collection,
The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories
. A homeschool
graduate, she chose not to attend college in order to pursue
self-education and her writing career. She also enjoys music,
crocheting and spending time outdoors. She lives at home with her
family and a large stack of writer’s notebooks.

Elisabeth’s Blog:
www.thesecondsentence.blogspot.com

Twitter:
www.twitter.com/ElisabethGFoley