Tomorrow's Dreams (53 page)

Curling a corner of the napkin on her lap between her thumb and index fingers, she wondered for the millionth time what to say to him. Perhaps if she explained her feelings and asked him for more time …?

She heaved a frustrated sigh. Where was the use in that? Even if he gave her the rest of their lives, she doubted she'd ever be sure enough either way to decide.

“He'll be here at one,” Jake added, his pointed tone piercing her meditation.

A wave of relief washed through Penelope. She'd promised to fill in for Alberta Filer at the Mission School for Special Children this afternoon, and therefore wouldn't be home when Seth called. That meant she'd have a reprieve from making a decision, at least for a few hours.

Slowly and with exacting deliberation, she retied the ribbons on one of the fashion doll's kid slippers, careful to avoid looking at Jake and Hallie as she said, “I'm afraid I'll have to miss his visit. I'm due at the school at eleven, and probably won't be back until after five. You will give him my best, won't you?”

“I thought Thursday was Alberta's day to teach the class hygiene and etiquette?” Hallie said with a frown in her voice.

Penelope made a show of straightening the lace trim on the doll's petticoat, feigning a nonchalance she didn't feel. “She does,” she murmured, not lifting her gaze from her fussing. “But her husband is leaving for business back East today, and she wants to see him off. I promised that I'd help the children practice tying their shoes and buttoning their coats in her absence.”

There was a beat of silence, in which she was sure Hallie and Jake exchanged troubled glances. Then Hallie sighed. “I see no reason for us to pretend that we don't know that it's you Seth really wants to see. He's going to be terribly disappointed when—” She was interrupted by a clattering racket, accompanied by a duet of childish shouts.

“Reed! Ross! You stop that this instant and eat your breakfast,” Hallie commanded her four-year-old twins. For all their angelic beauty, the boys were regular imps.

With smiles sweet enough to beguile a saint, the twins plunged the spoons they'd been using as swords into their oatmeal and took an obedient bite, exchanging a look that anyone could see prophesied more mischief.

Silently blessing the boys for their interruption, Penelope wadded up her napkin and tossed it next to her untouched breakfast plate. Excusing herself, she headed for the door, anxious to retreat before Hallie resumed her lecture, thus making her feel more guilty about Seth than she already did. She was halfway across the room when her brother's voice stopped her.

“He loves you, Penelope, but he won't wait forever.”

She nodded her bowed head without turning, then exited.

A half hour later, she was on her way to the cemetery. For the first time since returning to San Francisco, she circled, rather than cut through, Seth's Rincon Hill neighborhood, though the most convenient route from her brother's South Park home took her right past his mansion. With her luck of late, she'd probably run right into him, and she wasn't about to risk a chance meeting.

She arrived at the cemetery just as the morning fog lifted. Fringed with evergreen oaks and frosted with dew-kissed white lilac, the verdant dell where Tommy lay was like a little piece of heaven on earth. To the right lay a magnificent view of the city, this morning looking almost mythical in its shroud of white haze. To the left was the ocean, an endless, ever-changing study of blues and greens. Warblers, their throats swelled with shrill yet ecstatic song, serenaded her from the drooping boughs above.

Someone—Seth, she was certain—had laid an impressive bouquet of lilies, roses, and irises at the feet of Tommy's white marble angel monument, reminding her anew of her quandary. Tucking a pink rosebud next to the rabbit cradled in the angel's arms, she whispered, “Oh, Tommy. Whatever am I going to do? I love him so much that I can't imagine living without him. Yet, I'm afraid to marry him.”

Torn by warring emotions, she sank to her knees before the angel and began to arrange the rest of her roses. As she covered the tiny grave with the flowers, softly singing a lullaby as she worked, a nearby bush began to shake. Out wandered a gray rabbit with three babies. While the mother and two of her offspring placidly nibbled at the grass several feet away, the third hopped bold as brass right up to the angel, its nose twitching frantically as it eyed Seth's flowers.

Penelope held stock-still, barely daring to breath for fear of scaring it away. How Tommy would have delighted in the baby bunny. She smiled then, sudden peace warming her soul as she watched the tiny animal sit up and steal a particularly tender-looking piece of greenery from the bouquet. No. Tommy
was
delighting in the rabbit. She could feel his joy as surely as if he sat on her lap chortling his pleasure. As Hallie had promised, he was very much alive within her.

She was still smiling when she arrived at the school, a smile that broadened as she greeted her class. Ranging from ages four to sixteen, her eleven students were the children no other school would accept and no governess would teach. They were children like Tommy: different, yet wonderful, each blessed with a capacity for love that was nothing short of miraculous. They had renewed her interest in life and given it meaning. They were her salvation. And she adored every last one of them.

Like the other days she spent with “her children,” usually teaching them simple songs and reading them stories, this one flew by in a haze of satisfaction. Over and over again she guided clumsy, and in instances like Tommy's, twisted, fingers through the simple acts of buttoning and tying, giving hugs and praise for every effort, successful or not.

She was showing eight-year-old Hattie Lawrence how to direct the button through the hole for the ninth time when thirteen-year-old Emmett Lockwood let out a strangled laugh and began thrashing his hands in the air in frenzied excitement.

“Look, Miz Parr-sh,” he chortled, gesturing at his correctly tied shoes and buttoned jacket with spastic jerks.

Penelope returned his gap-toothed smile as she admired his handiwork. “Well done, Emmett! Perfect!” she praised, as pleased as if he'd mastered the principles of algebra. Giving him a congratulatory hug, she pulled him up from the circle of children on the floor and stood him in the place of honor in the center.

Clapping to get the attention of the other students, she exclaimed, “Three cheers for Emmett! He's tied his shoe and buttoned his coat for the first time.” She nodded at the boy, who looked ready to burst his properly anchored buttons in his pride as his classmates shouted, “Hip-hip-hooray!” as she'd taught them. “Emmett, dear,” she whispered into his malformed ear, “why don't you bow like Miss Filer showed you last week?”

He did so, several times, more than making up for his lack of grace with his enthusiasm. When the applause died, she put her arm around his thin shoulders and announced, “As your reward, you get to choose what game we'll play for the rest of the day.”

He grinned and shook his head. “No game. You sing.”

The rest of the students bobbed their heads in agreement, several clapping and echoing, “Sing! Sing!”

She returned their eager smiles with one of pure pleasure. Of all the audiences she'd sung for, none had been more appreciative or given her more joy than did her children. “Then, a song it is,” she agreed, sitting Indian-style on the floor, not caring that she crushed the crape trimming on her black mourning skirt.

After a moment of deliberation, she began to sing her “Song of Dreams,” the first time since Tommy's death she'd sung it. As she sang, her voice soft and filled with tenderness, she saw a bit of Tommy in the delight beaming from every face before her. Truly at peace for the first time in months, she closed her eyes and poured her heart into the song. The children sat in perfect enchantment, not stirring or making a sound.

For several seconds after the last note faded away, there was complete silence. Then someone began to applaud. After a beat everyone else joined in, adding a chorus of “Hip-hip-hooray!”

When she opened her eyes to acknowledge their tribute, she found herself staring at a very fine pair of brown riding boots, which now occupied the previously empty space between Minnie Rinehart and Michael Maloy. Up she looked, past muscular thighs encased in snug gold, olive, and cream checked trousers, up over a gold Chinese silk waistcoat half-covered by a dark olive jacket dandified with cream braid binding. Up right into a pair of sparkling hazel eyes.

“Seth,” she exclaimed, holding out her hand to him as she rose to her feet. “It's wonderful to see you.” And it was. More wonderful than she'd ever have believed.

As he swept off his hat, his mouth crooking into a grin as he stepped into the circle of children and took her outstretched hand in his, she was struck by the purity of her joy. She'd expected to feel pain at the sight of him, to be stricken anew with the crippling sorrow she'd suffered during the terrible weeks following Tommy's death. But she felt only gladness.

“I know I shouldn't have disturbed your class, but I couldn't wait to see you,” he murmured, bending down to kiss her palm.

She smiled at the head bowed over her hand, a head now covered with thick, gloriously shiny hair. It was wavier than she remembered, darker, too, in a shade closer to the deep burnished gold of her great-great-grandmother's wedding bracelet than its previous sun-kissed honey. It was the most beautiful hair she'd ever seen, and she said as much.

He chuckled as he straightened up. “I admit it is looking better, though it does seem odd to see myself looking so conventional.” He chuckled again. “Oh, well. At least I no longer scare myself when I look in the mirror.”

“Your hair might be cut in a proper, gentlemanly style now, but you'll never be conventional,” she teased.

His gaze met hers, his eyes simmering with the topaz heat that had haunted her dreams of late. “You used to say that you loved my unconventionality,” he said, his words a sultry whisper.

She wanted to tell him that she still did, that she loved not just his wild spirit but every untamed inch of him. Yet she couldn't bring herself to say the words. She didn't want to give him hope for a future she was still uncertain existed for them.

Hating herself for her cowardice, she looked away and asked, “Speaking of unconventional, how is Lisbet? Her last letter mentioned something about you talking your mother into letting her take a detective correspondence course she saw advertised in the
Police Gazette
.”

“She's doing fine, as are her course studies. I don't doubt that she'll make a fine sleuthhound someday.” The teasing warmth had fled his voice, leaving it as coolly polite as that of a stranger extending careful, well-bred courtesy at a social event.

“And your mother?” she asked, stealing a glance at him through her eyelashes. Always the master of the moment, he was still smiling. In truth, if she hadn't known him as well as she did, she'd never have guessed how deeply her subtle rejection had cut him. Knowing him as she did, however, she had only to look into his expressive eyes to see how truly devastated he was. The sight of his hurt deepened her loathing for her fears.

“Mother is extremely busy with the newly merged Queen City and Vanderlyn breweries, and loving every moment of her frantic life,” he reported, releasing her hand to slip his own into his coat pocket. “Right now we're in the process of converting the Shakespeare into a respectable beer garden, where men can take their wives and sweethearts dancing.” He chuckled dryly. “You should have seen the look on Monty's face when I told him that he'd be serving ice cream and lemonade at his bar.”

Penelope managed a faint smile as she pictured the lively bartender's indignation. “Effie mentioned your plans in her last letter. She also said that you've asked her and Bert to perform skits during band intermissions. Neither of the actors had anyplace to go after the company disbanded, and they're both terribly grateful to you for your offer.”

He shrugged. “It's the least I could do after the way they came forward to testify against Adele on your behalf.”

“Adele.” She sighed. She was still haunted by nightmares about the awful woman. “Sam and Minerva wrote that she's been transferred to Boston to stand trial for three counts of murder and twenty-two counts of extortion. Apparently she's blackmailed just about every family on Beacon Hill over the course of the last twenty years, and society is all in a froth to see her brought to justice.”

She reached out and gave his arm a warm squeeze. “They were also singing your praises. Between the political endorsements you secured and the money you contributed to their son's campaign, Alexander Skolfield is expected to be the next mayor of Boston.”

“Sir?” piped up a childish voice. Penelope glanced from Seth's handsome face to see Emmett tugging at his sleeve.

Seth smiled warmly at the boy. “Yes, young man?”

“See!” He pointed excitedly at his coat and shoes.

At Seth's questioning glance, Penelope explained, “Emmett buttoned his coat and tied his shoes for the first time today. We're all extremely proud of him.”

“Did he indeed?” Seth intoned, his face serious as he bent down to examine the boy's handiwork. After a moment of intense scrutiny, he praised, “Fine job, Emmett. Well done! I couldn't have done better myself.” The boy practically glowed with pride, especially when Seth offered him his hand, which he shook just the way Alberta Filer had taught him.

“Who's him?” asked seven-year-old Minnie, crawling forward to pull at Penelope's hem while staring shyly up at Seth.

Penelope gently hoisted the girl's stunted form to her feet and introduced her to Seth. To Minnie's wide-eyed delight, he bowed and kissed her hand while addressing her with the same courtly charm he often used to ease the jitters of overly shy debutantes. Like those debutantes, Minnie was immediately put at ease. So was the rest of the class.