Collision of The Heart (10 page)

How self-centered of him. Of course, they had to be rivals for him. Apparently Mia had decided they were not. She truly no longer cared whom he wed. For some reason, that notion set his molars grinding and his heart feeling like a piece of cloth must beneath the blades of a pair of shears.

At the back door of the house, Mia turned to him and spoke at last. “I wish I didn’t like her. If she were less kind and gracious or if she didn’t have a warm heart, I could believe you only wished to marry her to advance your career. But she is all of those things, and I think perhaps you do love her more than you think.”

He wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe he loved Charmaine Finney because she was kind and intelligent and beautiful. He enjoyed her company. She brought him peace and had soothed his still-bruised heart after Mia left. But the pressure her father placed on him always lay between them.

To Dr. Finney, Ayden was the son he never had, a man-child he could bring up to follow in his academic footsteps, a male in the family to whom he could leave the fortune he had inherited and built. Finney would interview other candidates for the professorship, but no one at the college would consider hiring an outsider when their own director’s future son-in-law was there and qualified and beloved by his students.

For months, Ayden had tried to convince himself he was courting Charmaine because she was worth courting and nothing more. Then Mia appeared in the doorway of that train car, and the doubts began. And in the middle of those doubts, Dr. Finney pressured Ayden to make a commitment to Charmaine. He’d made it, too. He’d promised to offer for her. From what Mia had told him outside his family home, she had accepted his decision and gave it her blessing.

“But does it have yours, Lord?” He stood before the kitchen stove with its banked fire still allowing some warmth to radiate into the room. “I’m still not certain my staying here had your blessing, and I can’t make that mistake again. I can’t hurt another person like I did Mia.”

No answer came to him. No peace washed over him. Fatigue weighed him down like a barrel of snow. With classes in the morning, he climbed the steps to the attic, where he slept until Ma’s soft knock on his door woke him in time to see to the horses, dress in his formal teaching clothes, and head to campus.

After his first class, two female students approached him with tentative smiles and downcast eyes. “Professor Goswell,” one of them spoke in a soft, breathy voice, “Dorothea and I would like to be interviewed by Miss Roper. Will you arrange it?”

“We promise to say only nice things about you.” Dorothea Simon’s voice never failed to startle Ayden, for it was almost mannishly deep in comparison to her petite, blonde femininity.

He grinned at them both, not in the least fooled by their demure behavior. “You may say what you like of me to Miss Roper. I’m sure she’ll be happy to talk to you two and others. Thursday morning in the museum, if that’s all right with her?”

He stowed his lecture notes in his office, then returned home to fetch the sleigh. Rosalie and the Herring children ran around the front lawn, rolling snow into enormous balls to form a snowman. Their cheeks glowed and their eyes sparkled, Rosalie’s most of all.

She ran to him across the fluffy terrain and grabbed his hands. “Help us get this ball atop the others, or he’ll be without a head.”

“We’re going to give him a carrot nothe.” Roy gave Ayden a gap-toothed grin.

“Hey, when’d you lose that tooth?” Ayden gave the boy a playful punch on the shoulder.

“Thith morning.”

“He talks funny now,” Ellie said.

“Not for long.” Ayden crouched to examine the head-sized lump of snow. “Let’s see. I think I can lift this, but I’d like some help.”

More hindrance than help, the two children got their mittened hands beneath the ball of snow, and Ayden hefted it atop the stout statue. The children and Rosalie danced around with glee. Smiling, Ayden continued toward the house.

“Thank you, Ayden.” Rosalie waved to him, then dashed after him. “I almost forgot. Fletcher said there are deputies out at the train, so if you want to go looking, it’s all right. He said they haven’t found anything, but you’re welcome to look in the cars that are still upright.”

“Thank you. And thank Fletcher.”

“Thank him yourself”—Rosalie’s eyes flashed—“by being nice to him so he’ll ask me to marry him.”

“If that’s what you want. If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

Studying the dreamy softness that came over her, Ayden believed her. She looked like he wished he felt about Charmaine. “All right. I’ll be nice to him.” He kissed her chilly cheek, then entered the house.

Ma and Mrs. Herring sat at the kitchen table, sorting through children’s clothing and drinking coffee. The nameless little boy sat under the table, stacking and knocking down a pile of blocks Ayden recognized from his childhood.

He greeted the ladies, then asked, “Where’s Mia?”

“She’s in my sitting room, writing.” Ma rose. “You look cold. Have some coffee and take her some. She’s been in there for hours.”

“Of course she has.” He accepted the coffee for himself and for Mia, then crossed the hall to the sitting room, which was tucked between the dining room and the back of the house. It overflowed with flowered cushions, baskets of sewing, and more baskets of knitting, books, and piles of ladies’ journals. At one end, Mia sat at a secretary, her bandaged left wrist cradled against her front, her right hand flying across a sheet of paper. She made no movement to indicate she noticed his entrance until he set the coffee directly in front of her.

“Thank you,” she said, then continued to write.

“Would you like to go to the wreck?” he asked.

“Mmm.” She set her pen down long enough to sip some coffee, then resumed her work.

“Fletcher says it’s safe there.”

“Mm.”

Scratch, scratch, scratch went her pen.

“He doesn’t think we should get shot at more than once or twice.”

“Mm—what?” She dropped her pen and twisted around to face him. “What did you just say?”

Ayden grinned. “Trying to get your attention. We should leave for the wreck now so we don’t lose the daylight.”

“What time is it?” She glanced at a little enameled clock on the mantel, biting her lip and smoothing her right hand over her dark-green wool skirt. “Goodness, time has flown. Your mother must think me shockingly rude.”

“My mother knows you better than that.” He touched her shoulder. He shouldn’t touch her, but she looked so unsure of herself, he wanted to give her some kind of comfort. “She knows you need to work. If you want to continue, I can go alone.”

“No, I want to go if we won’t get shot at again.”

“Not with deputies there to guard it. They should have been there all along, but with all these people in town, they’ve been busy keeping things calm here, and they thought the train was safe.”

“Those men were looking for something, and we were intruding.” She looked down, plucking invisible lint or threads or something off her pretty dress. “They’ve probably already found it.”

“Maybe not. We might have scared them off, too. I’ll go hitch the horses.” He drained his cup of coffee as he strode back through the kitchen. “We’re off.”

“Be careful.” Ma met his gaze and held it long enough that he suspected she meant for him to be careful with more than the journey out to the wreck.

Be careful with Mia’s heart? Be careful with his own?

Mia seemed bent on pretending she hadn’t said anything about Charmaine the night before. She chattered in that sparkly, lively way he remembered too well, telling him about her morning’s work.

“I interviewed Genevieve and a few others earlier this morning, then I started to write about the women students and what I’ve gleaned so far, but then words about the wreck kept intruding, so I’ve been writing about that instead. I think the editor will love a story about how the town has come together to help everyone stranded. You know, it’s truly amazing. I’d forgotten how much people here care about one another.”

“Unlike in the city?”

“I wouldn’t say they don’t care in the city. They just don’t open their doors so trustingly. There are more people, so knowing whom to trust is more difficult. But here . . . you know which are the rotten apples right away.” She stared at the portfolio she clutched on her lap, smoothing her fingers back and forth on the battered leather cover. “I didn’t realize I missed it until I found myself back here, needing help.”

Ayden stared at those smoothing fingers, something swelling inside his chest. “No one was particularly good to you the first four years you were here.”

“People can’t be good to you if you don’t let them. The stationer offered to let me have all the pencils I wanted after that incident with Deputy Lambert catching me. But I wouldn’t take charity. I burned sticks in the fire and wrote with the charcoal ends instead.”

“Ah, Mia.” Ayden leaned his head against the back of the sleigh seat. “Is that why you’re so eager to get everything you have on your own? You’re still that ridiculously proud sixteen-year-old girl with more pride than sense?”

And no family left, as the aunt had died five years ago, and the others had sent her away long ago.

“I think,” she said by way of not responding to him, “that’s the car I was in.”

Ayden reined in and leaped out first this time, dropped the reins over a tree stump, and offered Mia a hand out of the sleigh. She set her portfolio on the seat, then clambered to the ground. Together, they strode through the drifts and hollows of snow to the abandoned car.

Ayden crouched at the edge of the car. “Let me lift you in.”

He did and wished she were less scrawny beneath her heavy clothes, because he didn’t want to worry about her taking good enough care of herself.

She hesitated in the doorway, then shook herself and led the way back through the car. “I was sitting here—ah, fifty cents.” She snatched up the quarters and dropped them into her pocket.

“And a comb.” Ayden fished it from beneath the seat.

They spent several minutes peering under and between the seats in search of dropped objects. They would take them to the church for passengers to collect. The rack above the seats appeared to be picked clean of luggage. Perhaps the passengers had taken it with them, good persons had collected it and taken it into town to be claimed, or thieves had been at work—likely a combination of all three.

“The wounded lady was back here.” Mia moved to the space in front of the car’s rear door. “I think she was coming after the child when the trains collided, and when she fell, she broke her leg.”

“Then how’d she get away?”

“Someone took her out the back?”

Their eyes met.

“Why?” Ayden asked.

“And without the boy.” Mia grasped the upper rack with her good hand and started to step onto a seat.

Ayden grasped her waist. “What are you doing?”

She froze. “Looking more thoroughly into the rack.”

“I’ll do it, but I’m tall enough to see there’s nothing there.”

“Not so much as a postage stamp?”

“Nothing.”

Mia drew away from him and dropped to the floor, which was coated in frozen mud. “One last look beneath . . . the . . . seat . . .” Her voice trailed off on a kind of squeak.

“Are you hurt?” Ayden reached for her.

She evaded him and rocked back on her heels, waving a grubby white envelope in the air. “Wedged between the seat and the wall but not fallen all the way through. Should we open it?”

Her eyes shone as though someone had lit gas lamps behind them.

Ayden took the envelope from her and turned it over. “It’s not sealed.” His fingers shook, and his insides vibrated. “It might be nothing more than a shopping list.”

“But you don’t think so.” She laughed. “Your eyes are sparkling.”

He felt like a child on his birthday as he pulled up the flap of the envelope and drew out a single half sheet of paper. His breath snagged in his throat, and the blood drained from his head.

“What is it, Ayden?” Mia’s face paled.

Ayden handed her the paper. “It looks like a ransom note.”

Chapter Nine

M
ia braced her feet on the front board of the sleigh and grasped the seat with her good hand. Those precautions barely kept her from sliding onto the floor during their wild ride back to Hillsdale. When they found no deputies around the train, Ayden seemed to throw caution to the wind and urged the horses to fly along the runner ruts in the snow. Wind whipped into Mia’s face, stinging her cheeks. If she looked anything like Ayden, her face was as red as a freshly ripened strawberry. Long before they reached town, the stinging turned to numbness, and water from her eyes froze on her cheeks.

Broad Street, in the middle of the afternoon, had grown too crowded for speed. Grumbling about people afraid to drive their sleighs or wagons faster than a crawl, Ayden reined in the team to match the pace of the traffic.

“Shall I take you home first?” Those were the first words he had spoken to her since they agreed they needed to get the note to the sheriff as quickly as possible.

She glared at him. “Of course not. I’m a witness.”

“But after the last encounter with Fletcher, I thought—”

“I wouldn’t want to encounter any more arresting officers?” Her smile was stiff, brittle, the corners of her eyes tight. “I wasn’t a serious criminal, you know. I only took pencils and paper, nothing more costly.”

He drew up the horses. “Until you stole my heart.” He intended the remark to tease her, make her laugh.

She wrapped her arms around her portfolio as though it protected her heart from any invasion, and lifted her chin. “Like the pencils, I gave it back. If you no longer have it to give away, it’s none of my doing. Perhaps you lost it somewhere between breaking your word to me and your ambition.” She stepped from the sleigh and spun away, sending her skirts swirling around her like a cloud.

Ayden reached her in two strides and slipped his hand beneath her elbow. “I thought you believed I love Charmaine Finney.”

“I do. You do—with your head. That is still in excellent working condition and looking more handsome than ever. The two of you will make a fine pair at college socials and the faculty dinners.”

“Could we save this for the fencing floor?”

“Date and time?”

“Thursday morning on campus. I have two victims for your pen there.”

“I’ll be there. And right now, we need to be here.” She headed for the sheriff’s office.

Different people milled around the warmth of the stove, and a middle-aged deputy stood behind the desk. Otherwise, the office remained the same—stuffy and odorous. The deputy showed no recognition of Mia but practically bowed to Ayden.

“How may I help you, Professor?”

“We need to speak to the sheriff right away.” Ayden stuffed his hands into his coat pockets, and the note crackled.

“He’s busy, but I’ll see if he’ll give you a minute.” The deputy pushed through a door behind him.

Mia arched one brow at Ayden.

“His son is in one of my classes.”

“Ah. I wondered at the reverence.”

“Don’t be absurd.” The corners of Ayden’s mouth twitched.

Mia looked away, her fingers pressed to her own lips as though doing so could shove back the memory of kissing him for the first time. The corners of his mouth had twitched then over something silly she’d said. Then, without warning, he leaned forward and—

“Professor Goswell, how may I help you?” The aging sheriff stood in the doorway to the back office.

“We need to talk in private.” Ayden glanced toward the watchful, listening people near the stove.

The sheriff nodded his understanding and led them into a back room with a stove and hot coffee and straight-backed chairs. Ayden introduced Mia, and the sheriff gave her a hard look. “I’ve heard of you, Miss Roper.”

“Yes, sir. I went to the college with your son.”

“Ah, yes, good of you to return to us, though not here, I expect.”

“No, it’s not good.” Mia perched on the edge of the chair and told the chief about finding the little boy right before the wreck.

He nodded as she spoke. “Mr. Goswell told me about it the other morning. I’ve put the word out here in town, but no one’s come forward to claim him.”

“We’re here,” Ayden said, “because we think we’ve found out why they haven’t.” He handed the sheriff the ransom note.

The man studied the half sheet of cheap paper, the block letters formed with what seemed to be a bit of coal for they smudged at the merest touch. Nonetheless, the message was clear:
Fifty thousand dollars if you want to see Jamie again.

“Hmm.” The sheriff laid the note on his desk and steepled his hands beneath his stubbly chin. “So how did you come across this?”

They told their stories again. The chief listened, nodded, and at the end, shook his head.

“You have no reason to believe this was tied to that child you found. After all, the ransom note was in the same train car. What good would it do there?”

“I expect whoever took him intended to mail it along the route to divert any hunters off the track,” Mia suggested. “And it may be the reason someone shot at us the other day. They could have been looking for it.”

The sheriff gave her a condescending smile. “That sounds like the sort of far-fetched idea a writer would come up with.”

Mia stiffened. “I write true stories, sir, not fiction.”

“Sir,” Ayden said, rather too quickly, “this does add up, you know. An abandoned child, a ransom note found in the same area, a woman who has disappeared.”

“Yes, indeed it does add up.” The sheriff rose, grinning. “It adds up to a lot of melodrama for which I do not have time.”

“Perhaps you should make time,” Mia said through her teeth.

The sheriff’s head jerked back as though she had slapped him. “Maybe I can send out some telegrams to my colleagues in other cities. But if a child had been abducted early enough to be on that train, you’d think we would have heard something before Thursday night, now wouldn’t we, Miss Roper?”

Shoulders slumping, she nodded.

“Nonetheless”—the sheriff smiled—“I’ll keep this just the same.” He tucked the note into his desk, shook their hands, and escorted them back to the frigid afternoon air.

“The audacity.” Mia quivered with her effort not to scream in frustration. “How dare he belittle me that way. It’s all nonsense because I’m a writer. I’ve never written an untruth in my life. I’m a serious journalist who thinks falsifying stories is unethical and—”

Ayden laid a gloved finger across her lips. “You’re drawing a crowd. Let’s get back to my house, and we can discuss it.”

They climbed into the sleigh and drove the few blocks to the Goswell house. But once they arrived, discussing anything seemed impossible. First Ayden needed to see to the horses, and in the house, Rosalie sat in the middle of the front parlor, lining up toy soldiers for the toddler. Charmaine sat on a sofa with a child on either side of her as she read fairy tales to them, and Mrs. Goswell, along with half a dozen other middle-aged women, stirred pots on the stove, rolled out pastry dough, and filled the circles of crust with meat and potato filling, creating the pasties Mrs. Goswell learned to make from her Cornish grandmother.

“Pasties.” Mia spoke the word with awe. “I haven’t had a pasty like these since I left here.”

“Then you shouldn’t have left us.” Mrs. Goswell all but pushed her into a chair and set a steaming meat pie in front of her. “We’re making these for the stranded passengers, so you deserve one. Did you eat lunch?”

“Not yet.”

“And you barely touched any breakfast. Ayden, sit.” She spoke as he entered the back door.

He paused in the doorway. “I see Charmaine is here. I should talk to her.”

“She’s occupied with the children right now.” Mrs. Goswell dusted flour off the second kitchen chair. “Sit and tell us what you’ve been about all day.”

Between bites of the succulent pastry, they told Ayden’s mother and the other ladies about their hunt for the baby’s people. They did not tell them about the ransom note. By silent agreement, they kept that information to themselves. No sense in alarming people or letting gossip spread through town and warn the kidnappers, if they were still around.

Of course they must be. Getting anywhere since the wreck would be difficult with the snow and blocked train tracks unless they managed to hire a sleigh or heavy wagon.

Finished with his pasty and the report of their activities, Ayden excused himself and left the kitchen. A few moments later, his compelling voice rippled from the parlor. He would be talking to Charmaine, perhaps making plans to take her out in the sleigh with no leather portfolio or past pain between them, only a bright future before them.

The meat pie dried in Mia’s mouth. She took a long draft of milk to wash it down and nearly choked on the lump blocking her esophagus.

“Are you all right?” Mrs. Goswell leaned over the table and spoke in an undertone. “Do you need to lie down?”

Mia shook her head. Lying down would merely give her time alone to think of Ayden with Charmaine Finney, holding her hand, kissing her, perhaps. It would only give her too much time alone to remember the myriad details of the day that reminded her why she had fallen in love with Ayden.

She pushed back her chair. “I should do something useful, like finish writing up my notes in a legible form, unless, of course, I can be of use here?”

“We’re almost done.” Mrs. Goswell studied Mia with her brows knitted. “You may wish to wait a while before going into the sitting room. I banked the fire after you left, and it’s got to be pretty cold in there.”

“I’ll be all right.” Better off than she would be in the same room with Ayden and Charmaine.

Mia started for the door.

“Oh, wait,” Mrs. Goswell called. “I also forgot to tell you that the laundry came back today, and we found embroidery inside that little boy’s clothes. Probably his initials.”

Mia gripped the doorframe and turned back slowly. “What are they?” She posed the question in a strained whisper.

All the ladies stopped rolling and stirring to stare at her.

“It’s JMY,” Mrs. Goswell said. “Worked in fine stitching on every piece of his clothes.”

“JMY,” Mia repeated, her blood roaring through her ears. “Jamie.”

With no consideration for good manners, she shoved through the kitchen door, allowing it to bang shut behind her, then raced down the hall to the parlor and flung open the door. “Jamie?”

Ayden looked up from the book he read to the children, his eyes a deep, sharp blue. Charmaine raised perfectly arched golden brows in query. The two older children’s mouths dropped open. Giving a start, Rosalie knocked over the row of soldiers.

“Jamie.” Mia dropped to her knees on the rug. “Will you come to Aunt Mia, Jamie?”

A grin spreading across his face, the abandoned little boy from the train toddled toward Mia.