Chapter 23

C HAPTER 23

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire,

but my heart is all my own.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Marigold's impromptu bicycle ride over the pockmarked paths crisscrossing the island began with a rush of pleasure so sharp she found herself laughing out loud at the simple joy of movement, but it ended the moment she spied Ellery Hatchet ahead with that long-handled spade over his shoulder.

She immediately dismounted, edging herself into the stand of birch trees so as to be as inconspicuous as possible. She might say it was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, but it was easier still to avoid asking for anything at all.

And the awful, cold truth was, Ellery Hatchet terrified her.

He was pacing up and down along the low boggy spot where the woods met the shore—precisely where she and Cleon had shoveled up the sandy sediment for the garden. Hatchet was muttering to himself as he kicked the sandy earth to and fro, much as he had her garden, but she could not make out his ravings—whatever he said was lost to the wind.

Though she was rabidly curious, she kept herself resolutely still, afraid he would sense her presence or hear her heart pounding like a blacksmith's anvil. But when he was finally done venting his spleen, he tromped off, out of sight.

Relief left her drained. Marigold remounted in an unseemly rush, putting as much distance as possible between them as quickly as she could. But she could not escape the questions that revolved through her mind like a card catalog.

What could he have been looking for in such a spot? What had she overlooked? And what on earth was he always trying to dig up with that omnipresent spade?

But the feeling of needing distance—both emotional and geographical—pushed her across the beach to the dory, and without a second thought, she stowed her bicycle in the bow and put her back into the long pull. Fortunately, both wind and tide were in her favor, pushing her across the sound without too much exertion, so Marigold felt both rewarded for her choice and invigorated and reassuringly sporty as she pedaled through the placid streets of Pride's Crossing, very much enjoying the sight of the townspeople goggling at her beautiful bicycle.

By the time she had reached the library, a small pack of children were clamoring in her wake. "Yes, this is my bicycle, and no, you may not ride it. But I will pay you"—she picked out the tallest, most capably older-sisterish of the girls—"in penny candy to keep my machine safe and not let anyone else touch it."

The girl was delighted to be given license to boss. "You heard miss—no touching."

Marigold waved to Miss Morgan, who had come to the window along with a number of other patrons but was back behind the circulation desk by the time Marigold made her way inside.

"Good afternoon, Miss Manners." Amelia Morgan adjusted her spectacles. "What a beautiful machine."

"Thank you." Marigold made sure not to preen under such warm regard. "Do you cycle, Miss Morgan?"

"Alas, I have not yet had that pleasure."

"Then perhaps we can find a time of mutual convenience when I might show you the machine and teach you to ride?"

"Would you?" Amelia Morgan's face lit with astonished hope. "That would be marvelous."

"It would be my pleasure." There was more way than one way to make friends and bring townspeople—especially the young female townspeople—over to her way of thinking and prepare the way for Daisy. "Perhaps we might even form a Ladies' Cycling Club."

Miss Morgan's cheeks went pink with delight. "Oh my, what a stir that would make!"

"Miss Manners is well used to making a stir, aren't you, Marigold?"

Marigold turned to find long, tall Cab Cox filling the library's wide, arched doorway.

"Oh, Mr. Cox!" Miss Morgan's voice went breathless with suppressed excitement. "What can we do for you this afternoon, sir?"

"Miss Morgan, ma'am." Cab swept his hat from his head and tucked it beneath the arm of his somehow immaculate flannel spring suit, oblivious of his effect upon the poor woman. "I suppose I had to see what all the fuss was all about. I should have known it would be our Marigold."

"Our Marigold?" Poor Amelia Morgan sounded as if she might strangle on her disappointment.

Marigold decided to gift her with hope. "Mr. Cox and I are merely old collegiate friends, Miss Morgan. I do believe I've known Cab since he was in leading strings."

"Whereas no one has ever led Marigold about, not even when she was two years old."

"You flatter me, Cab."

And there was that charming, self-aware smile winching up one corner of his mouth. "I'll admit to trying. Might you have a spare minute to walk with me?"

"Yes, of course." She camouflaged her curiosity in politeness. "Let me just return my books." Marigold passed the small stack of primers she had copied into her own notebook over the counter. "Thank you, Miss Morgan. I'll be in touch about the cycling club."

"Yes, thank you, Miss Manners. I'd like nothing more."

"Making friends everywhere you go, Marigold?" Cab remarked as he held the door for her.

"Naturally." She fished the promised candy out of her pocket for the budding young extortionist in pigtails, who had likely been charging the congregated urchins a penny each to touch the bike—but who was Marigold to quash such an entrepreneurial spirit, especially in a young female?

"Let's head for the wire office, if you don't mind." She wheeled her bicycle along the sidewalk. "I've an urgent request for Isabella—an appropriate gown for Daisy for the Endicotts' dance. If she receives an invitation." Marigold stopped to focus what she hoped was the full force of her panache on Cab. "I'm hoping you can give me more information about your cousin. He's told Daisy that he's a journeyman, but given his family name, I doubt that's true. Care to save me the indiscretion of asking Isabella?"

Cab smiled. "He likes to tell people he's a journeyman—a journeyman journalist, because he has been paying his dues and working his way up in the New York papers, where the Endicott name isn't so well-known as it would be in Boston. But truth be told, he's planning on taking the money that's about to come to him on his majority to start a magazine that I think is going to be a big success."

"You'd bet on him, would you?"

"I would," Cab answered without hesitation.

"Is he sincere and not just playing fast and loose with Daisy because she's poor?"

"Not Tad. I'd stake my life on it."

"Then that is good enough for me." Marigold's sense of responsibility was satisfied—for the moment. "I've a second request—might I prevail upon you to be Daisy's escort for the party?" She would work things out with Seviah later—after she was sure she had secured the invitation for Daisy.

Cab's expression was both surprised and unhappy. "I'll admit I was hoping to invite you, Marigold. After yesterday morning—"

"Why, thank you, Cab." If she had secretly been hoping the same, she ignored the ridiculous little frisson of pleasure that sighed across her skin in favor of a more careless sort of enthusiasm. "I would normally accept with alacrity—you do dance divinely." And she would quash the tiny shard of jealousy needling at her brain at the thought of him dancing with all the town's eligible young women—Amelia Morgan deserved not to be disappointed. "But I'm prepared to make the sacrifice of your exceptional company if you will instead escort Daisy. I should so hate to see her disappointed or shamed by not receiving an invitation. And if she's escorted by you, I know she won't be a wallflower without support."

"Oh, I doubt she'll be a wallflower," Cab said. "Tad seems quite taken with her."

"But your cousin will be the guest of honor and a host, and will have more pressing obligations than to dance with a beautiful but socially inconsequential girl. Which is why my plan is for you to make her the belle of the ball."

"Naturally, you have a plan." He turned that wry smile on her. "Happy to help as much as I'm able."

"Oh, thank you." Marigold reached for his sleeve in gratitude. "You're an absolute lamb."

"Not entirely a lamb," he objected, before he covered her hand with his own. "I shall want a favor of my own in recompense."

That little shiver of excitement slid deeper, under her skin. She made sure to answer in a self-possessed tone. "And what shall you want in return?"

His smile was so slow and subtly subversive, Marigold felt her breath still in anticipation.

"I'm not sure yet," he finally answered. "But I'm sure I'll think of something."

"Naturally." Marigold decided she didn't care if her voice had gone slightly stupid and breathy before she shook off the languid feeling in favor of more practical considerations. "In the meantime, I will make arrangements with Isabella for the perfect dress, so you can be assured that Daisy won't embarrass you."

"Under your tutelage, I could not conceive of such a thing." He smiled down at her in that way he had of making her feel like the best part of herself. Gracious, he was a wonderfully tall-boned man.

Marigold strove to return her thoughts to better-regulated order. "I suppose I must let you return to your lawyering. How goes your case—a dispute about your uncle's land, was it?"

"That's it," he confirmed. "Truth is, once I began to look into the particulars, I found out there really is no case to be made. The circuit and appellate courts had already rendered judgment that the deed was transferred fair and square some fifty years ago. My uncle wanted me to find some grounds for an appeal, but I could find none."

Trust Cab to do what was right instead of what was convenient for his uncle. "And that made him unhappy with you."

"Naturally." Cab's smile was somehow both so sweet and so subtly derisive that Marigold felt again all the force of her illogical attraction. He really was a formidably rational, attractively handsome man.

"As you predicted, he didn't care for my opinion," he admitted. "And he didn't mind letting me know, especially after our trip out to see you. Said what use was a Harvard law degree if I didn't know how to make the law do my bidding? And then he told me to get out of his house. So I have." He spread his arms in a gesture of chagrin. "So here I am, not doing what was expected of me this time." He shook his head at the strange wonder of it. "But I'm satisfied knowing I did the right thing."

Cab really was such a man. "As am I," she agreed. "But what does that mean for the party—are you still invited?"

"My Aunt Julia assured me my uncle's cholers , as she called his denouncement, were the product of the moment and would pass. So I've taken temporary rooms at a boardinghouse—though I'm told it's on the wrong side of the railroad tracks, I've also been assured it has the best kitchen."

"Dare I hope that means you are residing with Mrs. Bessie Dove, who is also a new friend of mine?"

"Trust you to have gotten there before me, Marigold. And yes, I am happily ensconced at Mrs. Dove's." He turned that formidable focus upon her. "And what about you? I'll admit to being worried about you, after meeting old man Hatchet. When do you think you'll return to Boston? Or your studies?"

"Oh," she said airily, as if she hadn't soothed herself to sleep last night with thoughts of resuming her archaeological studies. "I have no other plans at present. My cousins give me plenty of scope for occupation."

"Your cousins and not your mythology? Does that mean Isabella was right and you're tidying them up and making them over to your requirements?"

Marigold was going to have words with Isabella. "She would be doing the same, were she in my shoes—only Isabella would be making over their wardrobes instead of teaching them to read."

"Is that what you're doing? I thought you'd be teaching them to dance," Cab teased as he steered Marigold around two boys pasting up waybills for a religious revival on the brick wall of the druggist. "Far more practical."

"I assure you," Marigold rejoined, "I can do both at the same time."

"But not write your book?"

Damn him for being so insightful. "Practical considerations before the theoretical. And I only just recovered my books and notes from you yesterday morning."

"True." He stopped and looked down at her for a long moment before he tugged the brim of his hat. "You know, speaking of Isabella, I wonder if she might be the solution to both our problems."

There was something in his tone that prompted her to tease, "Do you need evening clothing as well?"

"No," he laughed. "I have dinner suits to spare. But let us both wire Isabella with our requests. But a word to the wise—I wouldn't get your hopes up."

"About Isabella, or about the party?"

"The party. I mean to warn you that there are other forces in play here—things that happened long before you or I came to the North Shore or were even born. So don't be surprised if all your plans come to naught, Marigold. There are some things—some minds—that won't be changed, no matter what you do."

Marigold took in the weight of this latest warning and made a decision. The time had come to ask for a different sort of help. "Then I should like your help acquiring a gun."