24. Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Four
T hey shared a wide-eyed look, and then both were moving. Isa frantically braided her loose hair, searching for the tie on the settee while Junior strode to the picture window. He cursed.
"It's my pa and…why the hell did he bring her ?" Junior said it with so much disbelief Isa didn't bother asking who "her" referred to. "Stay here." He left the parlor without waiting for a reply.
John Stone parked a flashy buggy pulled by a couple of glossy bays with powerful haunches and feathered feet. Through the window, Isa watched Junior step onto the porch. His whole demeanor had hardened into square angles and rigid lines. A brawny, aging man helped an elegantly dressed woman from the buggy. Her sleeves were enormous, and her hat was a veritable cornucopia of decorative fruit.
Kristy Anne?
Isa looked down at her own ensemble. There would be no standing ovation for her rust-colored riding skirt and sensible shirtwaist. Her hastily plaited braid was messy and thick, bristling over her right shoulder like a frayed rope. Unwilling to sneak out the back door, and disinclined to meet the visitors in the yard, Isa snagged Junior's tobacco sack off the central table and made herself comfortable on one of the parlor chairs.
When Junior reluctantly led his father and ex-fiancée inside, Isa was reclined in his favorite chair, legs outstretched and ankles crossed. She leisurely rolled tobacco into cigarettes, as unconcerned with their entrance as a cat in the middle of its hourly bath. The woman who was smiling hopefully up at Junior in the foyer froze when she spotted Isa through the open parlor door. A curious maelstrom of emotions threatened to discompose Isa, and by willpower alone could she appear relaxed. Continuing her ministrations, she licked the paper and sealed the cigarette.
"Oh. I wasn't aware you had company." The woman's voice was breathy, and her features were a tad too sharp. She was nonetheless attractive, stylish, and of appropriate height for a woman; the top of her head just reached Junior's shoulder.
"Company is far too formal a word for my presence," Isa responded, pulling out another paper. It helped to concentrate on this rather than the three people staring at her. "Consider me a part of the furniture and think of me no more."
"Easy enough," John Stone said, taking up the rear. His blue gaze was that of a raptor, absorbing her relaxed position in his son's chair.
Cupping a hand around her mouth, Isa shouted, "Hello, Mr. Stone! How are you? How is your rheumatism faring?"
Junior quickly averted his face and succumbed to a coughing fit. Isa caught a glimpse of his profile behind his fist; his dimples cut deeply into his cheeks.
John's eyes narrowed in speculation. "I ain't deaf, girl."
"It's Miss Isa Williams," Isa corrected patiently, still using what Lucy called her "outside voice."
As though cobwebs had been brushed from whatever store of manners he had left, Junior tucked his handkerchief in his pocket and nodded in Isa's direction. "Pardon me. Iz—Isa, you remember my pa, John Stone? And this is Kristy Anne Guthrie."
"Your predecessor, yes. Of course I recall." Isa set aside the papers and tobacco. When she rose to her feet and approached the little group uncomfortably clustered by the door, she saw Kristy Anne's eyes widen to the size of dessert plates as the brown eyes looked up…and up. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Kristy Anne."
"Likewise." Kristy Anne neither offered a hand to shake nor gave a dip of a curtsy.
Isa felt a surge of dislike but remained placid. "Junior, do you have coffee or tea that I can heat up for our guests?"
Kristy Anne stiffened at the word "our."
"Uh, yeah. I've got some coffee in the cupboard."
"I do not partake of coffee," Kristy Anne said stiffly. The babyish quality of her soft voice sounded particularly insufferable now that a hint of haughtiness had leaked into it.
"Of course not," Isa tutted understandably. "Not every woman has the constitution for it. I'll get the men and myself coffee and bring you some warm milk."
Cheeks reddening, Kristy Anne sputtered, "Oh, no, I do not—"
"No? Cold milk it is." Isa glanced at the elder Stone and raised her voice a decibel. "And do you like your coffee black?" Like your soul?
John muttered something, but Isa was already walking away, winking conspiratorially at Junior as she passed. It took some time to make coffee; the pre-ground canister was empty, so she spent ages grinding the blasted coffee beans. Voices floated to the kitchen, and Isa discovered that John had brought Kristy Anne to be escorted back to her family in Huntsville before the men journeyed to Lufkin. By the time Isa brought a tray out, Junior was stiffly sitting in the chair she'd vacated. John scowled ferociously at the thick, gold-embossed ledger, and Isa wondered if he spied the several sheets of notes she had left within its pages. Kristy Anne sat perched at the end of the settee like a sparrow tempted to take flight.
As if nothing was amiss, Isa set the tray on the table between them. "Unfortunately, Miss Guthrie, any milk in residence is more solid than liquid, and I wouldn't serve such a concoction to my worst enemy. Junior, when was the last time you shopped?"
"I've been sicker than a dog," Junior retorted.
"Miss Guthrie, I've brought an extra cup in case you change your mind about coffee."
Miss Pickney would be so proud that her lessons in etiquette had finally found purchase in her young charge. Isa poured fragrant black coffee into four white mugs and settled herself on the fringed ottoman beside Junior's chair. If she didn't know any better, she'd speculate that John Stone was angry and annoyed by her presence. Looking at Isa beneath thick, imposing eyebrows, the elderly man snapped the ledger shut and set it on the coffee table beside the tray. An uncomfortable silence ensued. Kristy Anne held her cup in her tiny gloved hands but didn't drink it. Junior sat straight in his chair, jaw working. All the while, John looked at Isa as though trying to peer into her very being.
Isa looked back, unperturbed. She knew a bully when she saw one. Nothing would please her more than to be a splinter in his side.
"I recall you," John said finally. "Doesn't your sister work at The Hound Dog Saloon?"
Junior, who had just taken a sip of coffee, went impossibly still.
Isa smiled. "Yes, she works with your mother."
An explosion of coughing erupted to Isa's right. Junior choked on his coffee, his eyes bulging and cheeks the color of bricks. Across the table, Kristy Anne's mouth had dropped open to reveal crowded bottom teeth.
"What's that, girl?" The shelf housing John's bristling eyebrows dipped so low that the folds of his eyelids almost encompassed his eyes. "Speak up."
Raising her voice to a shout, Isa replied, "I said you have mistaken her for another!"
"Let's get back to the matter at hand," Junior said, clearing his throat. His watery eyes refused to look anywhere near Isa.
"Are you well, Mr. Stone?" Kristy Anne asked, the picture of concern.
Isa's eye twitched. "If a bullet couldn't kill him, I doubt a bit of coffee can."
The other woman gaped. "You were shot?"
"When was this?" John snapped.
Shooting a betrayed look in Isa's direction, Junior gave a watered-down version of the confrontation with the Grenert Brothers. Isa picked at the fringe dangling from the ottoman's cushion, eyes glazing over as the conversation moved from Junior's healed gunshot wound to his mother.
"She wants to know what time you'll come by for Thanksgiving. Miss Guthrie's family will attend, and no expense will be spared." John leaned back comfortably on the settee, sipping his cooling coffee.
"Do you think that's wise, considering you're losin' money?" Junior's question was sharp.
John stopped sipping. "What maggot's diggin' around in your head, boy? You better keep men's business out of female's ears."
"Izzy has a degree in mathematics. I reckon she can catch on just fine."
"What's come of this country when women are allowed to gallivant around, claiming young men's educations, taking over their jobs?"
Junior stood so fast that his chair almost overturned. Both women looked up at him; Kristy Anne seemed tense and ready to move out of the way; Isa's muscles warmed in readiness to come to his aide. Fists clenched at his hips, Junior ground out, "Father? A word outside?"
Surprising everyone, John Stone stood from his recline without argument, and both men exited the parlor, leaving the two women alone.
"Well," Isa said after the front door had snapped shut, and she glanced beyond Kristy Anne through the picture window. Junior and his father gesticulated in the yard. "Your family is going to spend the holiday with the Stones. They must be very close. How long have you known each other?"
Kristy Anne set her full mug on the table, and her timid expression firmed into something less pleasant. For an instant, she looked just like Junior's mother with her nose in the air. "For a while now." She spoke with the thread of reluctance, a queen forced to speak of the weather with her scullery maid.
"Since this past spring, at the very least," Isa said conversationally, thinking of the summer engagement.
Kristy Anne's eyes darted to the ledger. "Why do you say that?" Her voice was tight. Nervous.
Isa straightened from her laggard slouch on the ottoman at this curious reaction. "Isn't it quite obvious?" Testing a theory, Isa slid her eyes meaningfully to the ledger.
Eyes flitting between Isa and the heavy book on the table, Kristy Anne stammered, "I won't pretend to know what you're prattling about—"
Prattling ?
"—but I'm very certain that I do not have to explain my family's relationship with the Stones to you . I have been told all about you."
Resting her fingertips over her heart, Isa asked, "You've been told about me?"
"You're money hungry," Kristy Anne spat, glancing behind her at the window to ensure the men were still occupied. "Mrs. Stone told me all about your…sharecropper family." The latter was said in an impugning whisper.
"Oh, I see." Isa was whispering, too. She leaned forward as though to share a secret. "And everyone knows just how desperately poor we are."
"Yes."
"Marriage to a man like Junior would set my family up for life. We could put our feet up and swill rotgut until we die. We'd never have to work the fields again."
Kristy Anne nodded, her entire face puckered with contempt. It made the hairs on Isa's neck stand up. She didn't give the woman across from her the satisfaction of a reaction. For years, she'd been heckled by male college students and angry protesters outside the college grounds for being a woman attending their alma mater. She'd been mugged twice in the last five years—only once successfully—and had dealt with plenty of hateful comments and ill-treatment at the bank when Mr. Corner's back was turned. Even before that, as a young girl, she'd suffered the discrimination of her father's trade and its financial lack. Not to mention the many jokes at her expense about her height, her gapped teeth, and how she failed in every way at being a perfect example of femininity. This angry, bitter woman across from her was no different than those many naysayers. And no more special. Kristy Anne was just another consciousness in the twenty percent of living bodies who despised Isa on principle.
But something else became clear.
Junior would never have married a woman like this. Never. She was his mother made over, a little shadow of Loretta Stone, only separated by years and sharper features.
Disappointed and bored, Isa moved from the ottoman to Junior's favorite chair and made herself comfortable. While she gathered the tobacco and papers back into her lap, she made conversation. "Do you want to know what I've learned about money during my terms at university, Miss Guthrie?"
Kristy Anne stared resentfully and made no response.
"I've learned that there is more than just one way to make it. And for a woman, it's considerably harder. Heavens, the obstacles females must overcome to earn coin hand over fist are bountiful. I'm sure you grasp our plight." Isa ran her tongue over her paper. Seeing that her cigarettes were neater and tighter than Junior's pleased her, another skill mastered. "But if you are willing to bend the rules, learn the tricks of the trade, and even manipulate situations in your favor, an income is possible. Some women are born into riches. Some marry into it, as you're desiring to do."
The young woman finally found her voice. "I do not—"
"And some ingratiate themselves into a family of means." Isa ignored the offended squeak across the coffee table. "Loretta Stone is a woman of means. She's also a shameless social climber. And your family, Miss Guthrie, is at the top rung of the social ladder in Huntsville, is it not? It would be nothing to weave a tale of financial woe to a woman with stars in her eyes. But I'm curious—were you ever truly interested in a marriage with Junior? He can't have been home long enough for you to have fallen madly in love with him."
"What you are insinuating—it is all lies! You are deplorable!" Kristy Anne cried. "I-I will—" She broke off, rhythmically clenching her skirts in her small gloved fists.
Brows climbing her forehead, Isa asked slowly, "You'll what?"
Cheeks blanched of color, the young woman abruptly stood and vacated the parlor, tripping over the leg of the coffee table on her way out. The wild fear on Kristy Anne's face had revealed her hand. Isa's suspicions of where John Stone's money was disappearing to had just run out the door as though her skirts were afire.
"What the hell did you say to her?" John Stone barked five minutes later from the parlor door.
"Don't talk to her like that," Junior shouted, hot on his heels. "Izzy, what happened to Kristy Anne?"
Isa set the tobacco and papers on the side table and picked up the Circle S ledger. "I told her I knew Loretta Stone is giving money to her family."
"The hell you did," John growled. He stomped across the parlor and wrenched the book from Isa's hands. "I knew you were trouble as soon as I saw you."
"Don't talk to her like that," Junior said softly. He was inches away from his father and looked seconds away from swinging. "Izzy, come here." He held a hand to her, beckoning her to come around the other side of the coffee table to him.
Isa ignored it and stood toe to toe with John Senior, feeling her brain crack its knuckles for a round of verbal sparring. "There's no need to be angry, Mr. Stone. I'm sure you would have made the connection eventually."
A vein bulged in John's forehead. His brown teeth were slightly bared. "You're just like my first son's wife. Got that same mouth and spit-in-your-eye look. I can't for the life of me understand why my boys attract such rabble."
"Perhaps it's because good men find us irresistible."
Junior had apparently had enough; he hauled his father back with a hard hand and shouted, "Get the hell out of my house!" He placed himself between Isa and his father, who didn't budge from the parlor.
"I said, get the hell off my property," Junior said, low and serious.
Isa's muscles tensed.
It was the moment after cannon fire when both sides were deaf and dumb, waiting for someone to make the first move. The moment dangled, a weighted object on a string threatening to snap. Then…John whirled on his heel and strode from the room without another word.
JUNIOR WAS STONILY quiet after his father left. He mumbled something and disappeared out the back door. Through the kitchen window, Isa saw him enter the barn. Hopelessness flooded her usually logical train of thought.
During the weeks he'd traveled with his brother, she had kept herself busy training Mirage and working at the hotel and general store. She'd visited her parent's farm for an exhausting weekend. The children of her many siblings were perpetually underfoot and always up to mischief, so her mother never sat down for more than ten minutes as a result. Isa had found herself missing the quiet of her job at the bank, the scratch of a pencil to paper at her university classes, and even the incessant chatter of David Corner after a successful night of gambling.
But most of all, she had missed Junior.
He occupied her thoughts as much, if not more, than travel. An old dream and a new one at war with one another, battling for space within her future. Taking a deep breath, Isa followed him. Once in the insulated quiet of the barn, however, she veered into Mirage's stall instead of following the sound of Junior pitching hay from the loft to the breezeway. The ebony mare, in the last few days of her season and irascible, tried to nip at Isa's skirts when she attempted to dig through the saddlebags.
"Don't bite me, you cow," Isa hissed, flicking the mare's sensitive ear.
Back in the dusty breezeway, Isa held a stack of books and pamphlets, watching Junior climb down the ladder. Wiping his forehead with a kerchief, he took in the pile straining in her arms.
"What'd you do, rob a library?"
"No, they're for you. Come look." Together, they walked across the yard and into the kitchen. She dropped the stack on the empty kitchen table and showed him each book, all on carpentry and architecture. "I know you're fond of building and thought you would enjoy these."
Junior sat, bewildered, and grabbed a book titled The Carpenter's New Guide to thumb through its eighty-four plates. He stopped at two pages titled "Hand Railing" and "Staircasing," studying them.
Pointing, he said, "Look at this. I always wondered how they get these handrails to bend this way and that. See how sharp the wood has to turn to fit the curve of the staircase?"
Isa listened closely, his excitement contagious. She pulled a travel pamphlet out of the pile. "Look at the architecture section in this." Black and white printed photographs of spectacular buildings and bridges occupied its pages, some of the architecture too intricate to be believed.
Eyes devouring the photos, Junior stroked his fingertips down the Gothic Revival architecture of one building in particular. "It looks like a queen lives here."
"This is the Midland Grand Hotel in London."
"That's a hotel ?"
"Yes, and one I plan to visit," Isa said excitedly, her eyes sparkling up at him. "Just for one night, as I imagine it is exorbitantly expensive."
He looked back at the picture, more subdued. Something cinched her throat into uncomfortable tightness. "You could come with me and see it, if you'd like."
It was said half-jokingly, but Junior looked up at her with a telling swiftness. "Yeah?"
"Certainly. I wouldn't have to get a chaperone if you accompanied me. Think of all the money I'd save."
The shy smile that spread across his face was one she hadn't seen before. She wasn't accustomed to boyish, enthusiastic Junior. "I'm not exactly hurtin' for money, either, you know."
Dryly, Isa said, "I know."
His lips straightened into a firm line. "And that doesn't have a damned thing to do with my pa. I haven't taken a cent from him since I was eighteen."
Isa widened her eyes dramatically and held her hands up. "I would never presume otherwise. I'm sure being a Ranger paid a fortune."
"No, it didn't," Junior said, turning his attention back to the travel pamphlet. "Not even when I was a lieutenant. Bounty hunting, though…that paid decent, even at a percentage. Especially when I brought in the real nasty ones."
Intrigued, Isa leaned forward. "Tell me more."
They talked until the sun sank dangerously low in the distance, and Isa was forced to cut their visit short. They parted reluctantly.
"I'm glad you're feeling better," Isa said, gathering her pamphlet—then thought better of it and dropped it. "You can keep that. I have it memorized."
"I'm sorry my pa was a bastard to you," Junior said seriously. His nose was still chafed, but he hadn't sneezed or blown it since that morning. His eyes were clear, no longer red-rimmed.
"You need never apologize for him."
"Well, I am." His jaw was angled obstinately, and Isa stifled a smile.
"Think nothing of it."
"Is what you said true? Is Mother giving Kristy Anne's family that money?"
Isa chewed the inside of her cheek. "It's a possibility. I may have bluffed a little just to see what she'd do. Kristy Anne's reaction to my accusations was certainly suspect, but I'm sorry if I made it worse between you and your parents."
"I'm not sorry. It's been bad with them since I can remember. Has nothing to do with you." Watching her closely, Junior held the pamphlet up and changed the subject. "We can take this with us when we travel."
We . The word did funny things to her insides.
She touched the tip of his nose. "Don't forget to put petroleum jelly under that nose, or you'll be teased mercilessly at Thanksgiving."
Junior's hand was quick, snagging hers in midair. He kissed her fingertip. "Thank you for takin' care of me."
Chest aching from heart to ribcage at the terrifying strength of her feelings for him, Isa cleared her throat. "It was nothing."
"It was."
"Being ill makes you maudlin," she teased, but her heart was twice its normal size, rising in her chest, surpassing her reason.
She thought, I will do anything for this man.