An Improper Situation (Sanborn-Malloy Historical Romance Series, Book One) (2 page)

It was his turn to flush.
“But how is that possible? I sent the letter myself.”

“
The letter?” At least this wasn’t a random visit by lunatics wanting food, she thought. Perhaps soon they would get to the bottom of this and she could return to her work.

“
Yes,” he affirmed. “Are you telling me that you never received correspondence from the offices of Malloy and Associates, posted about a month and a half past?”

“
Malloy?” The name sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

“
Well, I’ve been awfully busy, Mr. . . . ah—”

“
It’s Malloy. Reed Malloy.” He said it slowly as if speaking to a child, but his voice registered a tone of definite annoyance.

“
You needn’t get in a pucker, sir. I didn’t realize you meant that you were . . .,” but Charlotte broke off, deciding to ignore his tone. “Let me take a look in my study. It’s possible that something came and got overlooked. Editors forward a lot of mail from people who read my work. I don’t always get a chance to look through it right away,” she added apologetically.

She turned and entered her study, stepping delicately over the unsightly hole. The good Lord knew she often let the papers and envelopes just pile up. It was an unfortunate habit, and she would have to allow that it looked as if it had her in some deep trouble now.

She heard them follow her, all three of them, trailing behind, as she went to her desk and began to sift through the papers on the edge of it. When these finally slid to the floor, she bent to try another pile that already had collapsed off of a small oval Pembroke table, with its leaves always in the up position to accommodate more stray papers and books.

“
It’s amazing that your work, which seems to come from such an orderly mind, can be created here, in this chaos,” observed the man behind her.

At his tone, she looked up. He seemed genuinely displeased, and she felt a little like a naughty school girl in front of the teacher. His sapphire eyes bore into hers for a second and she felt the same jolt as when he’d taken her hand.

She was the first to look away, continuing to rummage through the papers and then moving to a stack of
Scientific American
mixed with
Yale Literary Magazine
, ignoring his remark.

Charlotte wanted to tell him how she used to be organized, how she used to have food in the pantry, and wood ready for the fires, and not a speck of dust anywhere . . . she wanted to, but it would be a bald-faced lie. It had ever been this way—chaotic, at best. Her mind, however, was sharp and orderly and with it, she created works that were concise, easily understood, and a step ahead of her peers.

“Some of us have time to do housework,” she commented lightly, “while others of us put our minds to more important things, such as . . . aha!”

“
Did you
salvage
something, Miss Sanborn?”

She stood up and faced them, triumphantly waggling the cream-colored envelope with Malloy and Associates embossed in blue lettering on one side.
“Here it is.”

Charlotte recalled now having received it, even remarking over the blue ink and placing it on her desk to read after dinner, and then . . .

She looked guiltily up at the dark-haired stranger with his flashing eyes. The seal had not even been broken.

“
Well, perhaps you should open it and see why we’re here,” he continued evenly, crossing his arms over his broad chest, “though perhaps you could do that somewhere where we can all sit down. The children are growing tired.”

“
Oh, of course.” She had been caught out again without manners. Her mother would be appalled. Though, for the sake of her husband, Regina Sanborn had grown tolerant of the relative cultural vacuum in the west, she had, nevertheless, tried to instill in her bookish daughter a sense of propriety and manners and social graces. Charlotte failing miserably, and knew in her heart that this was why she welcomed her own isolation.

“
Please, come this way.” She went between the boy and girl who still stared at her as if she were the latest exhibit at the fair, and headed off down the hallway to the parlor. She tossed open the door and froze; how long had it been since she’d use this room. It was dark and musty, and, frankly, it smelled like a horse blanket.

“
Excuse the a . . . well, I don’t entertain much. Let me just air it out a bit, but come in, come in and find a seat.”

In the dark gloom, she could barely make out the furniture, all relics from her mother’s day. She went directly over to the windows, pulling aside the heavy curtains, and opening the shutters, letting the fresh spring air flood the room, bringing with it the scent of the purple-flowered fireweed that grew all around the house.

Unfortunately, when she got to the third window, she opened the curtains and saw cracked panes of glass and a board nailed onto the sashes from outside. She hastily drew the curtain closed, hoping the elegant man in her parlor had not noticed.

She turned to face her guests who had spread themselves gingerly around the room. By the look on his face, it was undeniable that Mr. Malloy had seen the poor repair job. The little boy sat directly next to the man on the high-backed sofa in front of the rough stone fireplace with its faded, embroidered screen, and rifle hanging above; the little girl had taken one of the petit-point cushioned chairs.

Charlotte was well aware of the dust still settling after they’d seated themselves. As she crossed the room, she noticed Reed Malloy’s stare of disapproval. She sat in the only seat left, a small mauve-colored chair with bits of horsehair sticking out where it shouldn’t be, and took the letter out of her skirt waistband.

She opened it and skimmed the salutation and the niceties and then suddenly caught her breath.

“I take it you’ve reached the part where . . .,” he began.

“
Blazes!” Charlotte jumped out of her seat. “She gave the children to me? Is she mad? Does she understand—?”

“
She is deceased, Miss Sanborn.”

Charlotte sat down again quickly, her gaze going to the children who didn’t seem to understand that the adults were speaking about their mother, Ann Connors. She turned her attention again to Reed Malloy, looking decidedly grave, his eyebrows once more in a fierce, straight line.

“Yes, I’m sorry. I had heard. My aunt, Alicia Randall, the children’s grandmother, wrote to me about the tragedy.”

Charlotte didn’t bother to add that it was the only time she’d heard from her aunt since her own parents died nearly a decade earlier.

“You must understand, Mr. Malloy, I have never met my cousin, Ann, and we had only exchanged a few letters during the years. To say we were not close would be to put it mildly. My parents moved here from Boston before I was born.” She paused, remembering what her aunt’s letter described.

“
It was a collision between my cousin’s carriage and a horse car, as I recall. I know it is doubly hard with their father having died two years ago—”

“
Three,” Reed Malloy corrected, his glittering gaze never wavering.

“
Three,” she agreed, nodding. “In the light of this, I ask, why me as a guardian? Why not their grandmother?”

He stretched his arm out along the back of the sofa.
“For one thing, their grandmother, your aunt, is nearly seventy years old. I don’t believe your cousin thought that Alicia Randall would be an ideal mother.”

Seventy
, thought Charlotte. She hadn’t known her mother’s older sister was so much older.

“
Secondly,” he continued, “while you might not have given much thought to the eastern branch of your family, Miss Sanborn, your cousin obviously gave a great deal of thought to you. Ann Connors had read all your work; in fact, it was she who first introduced me to your literary endeavors. She was one of your greatest admirers.”

Charlotte felt as if she’d been hit in the stomach, and a lump came into her throat at the thought of Ann, a cousin who knew so much about her when she, herself, hadn’t even felt much grief at the announcement of her death . . . until now.

However, her life was set and she liked it this way. She had no close friends, only acquaintances with whom she corresponded; she had her various editors who checked in with her to assign an article or push her on a deadline, and one younger brother who popped up from time to time only to make her miss him all the more when he went away again.

It was no life for children and she was not the woman to raise them. How could she ever have imagined that her cousin would do such a crazy thing?

“It is simply out of the question, Mr. Malloy. I am profoundly sorry that you and the children wasted a trip. And I do apologize for not having opened your letter. I didn’t recognize the seal and assumed it was a letter from a reader, which I would have looked at eventually, but . . . well, I do apologize again, but undoubtedly, you can see that there is nothing I can do.” As she finished, she spread her hands, giving a slight shrug.

Reed Malloy said nothing for a moment. His blue eyes merely narrowed at her. Then he stood up, dominating the room. Charlotte held her breath a moment while he seemed to come to some decision. She waited for him to yell at her, grab the children, and burst from her house.

Instead, perfectly under control, he said, “It is I who am sorry, Miss Sanborn, but there is no choice here.”

About to protest, she let out her breath in a rush, but he continued.

“You have ample space, which was my main concern for a woman living alone, even if the house is in need of some repairs. As for your objections, you have made no valid ones, nor can make any as far as I can see.”

“
Really, Mr. Malloy—”

“
Miss Sanborn, the children will be no financial burden to you as their upbringing has been well-provided for. All you need offer them is shelter, basic human kindness, and a moral and intellectual example, which I believe you are capable of, if I have read your works correctly. Can you not offer all of these?”

Well, of course she could. That was hardly the point. It was that no one had asked and had someone done so, she would have said emphatically that she had never had the desire to be a mother nor had she any such desire now, not even when faced with the two little urchins seated in her parlor. She refused to be bullied by his tactics.

“Mr. Malloy, neither my character nor my house is at issue here.” He inclined his head slightly, acknowledging the way she had maneuvered out of that trap.

“
Rather the question is my inclination, which is strongly to the negative. I live a solitary life, here.” She gestured around her, taking in the house and the stretch of land outside her window.

Her father had set up his homestead just a fifteen-minute walk outside of town, not too far from mining camp in the foothills but far enough away from the bustle of Spring City that wagons weren’t going by their window.

In recent years, the city bustled infrequently, only when miners came through discussing gold strikes or travelers mistook the area for one of the healing hot mineral springs. And even that was happening less and less. Spring City was down to one theater, for both opera and plays, and it was threatening to close any day now.

“
There are no other children close by . . . though there is a school in town,” she added thoughtfully, then bit her tongue before continuing. “Look, Mr. Malloy, I am not a heartless individual. I wish the children no ill will.”

She looked toward the children now. Having comprehended that the adults were discussing where they were to live, they knew instinctively that they were not wanted here. They stood up and once more anchored themselves to Reed Malloy, who absently stroked the top of the boy’s head.

“Honestly,” Charlotte rushed on, feeling like the hard-hearted cad she was professing not to be, “I just want what’s best for them, and it is not living here in a remote environment with a peace-and-quiet loving author, who has absolutely no idea about raising children. Can you understand that?”

“
Well, Miss Sanborn, at least we are agreed that we both want what’s best for the children,” he said as if he hadn’t heard anything else she’d said. He looked down at each child, and Charlotte could see that he cared for them. Then he looked up sharply.

“
And your suitability
is
a question in my mind. That’s why I didn’t just blindly follow Ann Connors’s last wishes, but accompanied them out here myself.” He thought a moment. “Yes, if we’re both worried about the same thing, then the answer seems obvious, wouldn’t you agree?”

Charlotte began nodding even before she asked,
“And what would that be?”

“
Why, for me to stay here with you and the children, of course, to assess the situation. If I find that you are unacceptable after all, then I’ll wire their grandmother and we’ll see if other arrangements can be made.”

Seemingly satisfied with his pronouncement, he began to usher the children out of the room.
“Okay, little ones, upstairs to your room. Auntie Charlotte will show you the way. Won’t you?” He turned to her, the look on his face daring her to contradict his words in front of his tired wards.