Heart of Mercy (Tennessee Dreams) (7 page)

A flicker of attraction to at least one of her callers would’ve helped, but none quite measured up to the standards she’d set for her future husband: (1) Must love God, (2) Must love children, (3) Must have a sense of humor and enjoy life. It went without saying that “Must have front teeth intact” ranked rather high. Her list went on, even as she questioned whether her extreme pickiness had slowed the process. Her mind kept skipping back to Harold Beauchamp, the kindhearted, highly respected, even godly, Paris postmaster. Surely, she could grow fond of him over time, despite his being so much older than she. Perhaps she might even encourage him—tactfully, of course—to lose the bulge that hung over his belt.

As it turned out, Mercy and the boys had waited exactly one hour at the train station the day after her encounter with Sam Connors, only to be stood up by the one man she’d hung her last hopes on. According to Caroline Hammerstrom, her brother had lost his nerve in the final minutes before boarding his train in Chicago, claiming he simply wasn’t ready to make such a commitment. Well, fine. Mercy didn’t want to marry a coward, anyway, so it was best he hadn’t come. Still, it had been a deep disappointment not to at least meet him. Surely, he would have loved the boys and immediately sensed their deep need for a father’s care. On the other hand, perhaps he had an even bigger breadbasket than Mr. Beauchamp.

She had decided to tell the boys about the judge’s decree. With all the talk around town, not to mention the stream of male callers, they’d figure it out soon enough, anyway. Best they hear it from her, even though their young minds wouldn’t fully grasp it. Of course, they’d bellowed to the treetops and cried rivers at the thought of having to live with anyone other than her, and nothing she’d said had consoled them, until she’d finally promised it wouldn’t come to that. And she wasn’t about to break her promise. Even if it meant that she had to marry her least appealing candidate—Festus Morton, a toothless farmer who’d traveled seven miles by mule to offer his hand that very day in exchange for lodging at her house and all the food he cared to eat. He’d even promised he’d give up farming and spend all his time with the boys so she could keep on working full-time, or even overtime, if she had a mind to. In a word, he wanted room and board for life.

She’d shooed him out the door as quick as she could, but now she told herself that if it came down to it—if marrying Festus Morton was the only way to keep the boys for good—she would go crawling to him on her hands and knees.

Her cousins Frieda Yeager and Wilburta Crockett, daughters of Uncle Albert and Aunt Gertie, paid her a visit to tell her how sorry they were to hear of her plight. “Marriage ain’t always what it’s cracked up t’ be,” Frieda said. “I shore hope y’ don’t get y’rself into a fix you’ll regret f’r the rest o’ your life.” Frieda and her husband and kids had moved back to Paris just a few months ago, after spending five years in East Tennessee. In that time, she’d picked up a stronger accent, and Mercy suspected it came from living up in the hills.

She knew she had a southern drawl, herself—who in Tennessee didn’t?—but her mother had been a real stickler for proper English, so she’d spent a good share of her life reading grammar books and working on polished speech.

“Indeed!” Wilburta agreed. “You might hitch up with some half-wit, and then where would you be, Cousin?”

Had Mercy’s conscience not pricked her ahead of time, she might have told her cousins that their husbands were nothing to brag about. Land of Lincoln, Wilburta’s husband, Ellis, had Festus Morton beat in looks and smarts by only a hair or two.

“I’m lookin’ for someone with some brains,” she said, hoping to earn a smile from them. “And it wouldn’t hurt if he were halfway decent to look at.”

Both remained solemn-faced while they all sat around the table sipping on sweet tea. Frieda plunked down her glass and stared off. “Cain’t say I could name a single eligible bachelor in all of Paris that fits them traits.…unless y’r talkin’ the likes o’ Samuel Connors.”

Mercy’s spine stiffened. “Which I am not.”

“I should say not, Frieda Yeager. He’s a Connors, anyway. No Evans would ever consider hookin’ up with a Connors. Why, it’d be downright sinful.”

Mercy would’ve liked to ask Wilburta how she’d come to that conclusion, but since she had no interest in Samuel Connors, she kept the question tucked away.

“Still, it don’t hurt t’ ask what he’s like,” said Frieda, her green eyes flashing with interest and a speck of mischief. “He is right fine-lookin’. Don’t know why nobody’s ever snatched him up. Did he have much to say to you whilst you helped Doc take care o’ him?”

Mercy recalled how he’d tried his darnedest to make conversation with her, even attempting to flirt, and how she’d kept her words to a minimum. She’d probably come across as just short of boorish, but she preferred to think she’d acted professionally. “Nothing out of the ordinary. We were civil with each other.”

Frieda’s shoulders slumped. “Well, I s’pose it’s f’r the best. He might be good-lookin’, but he comes from devil’s stock.”

At that, Mercy bristled from the top of her head clear down to her toes. “Why on earth would you say that?”

“Mercy Evans, you need to ask?” Wilburta’s voice rose to a pitch that rivaled the highest piano key. “His father killed your pa!”

“That doesn’t make Samuel Connors responsible. Have you forgotten he walked into a burning house, with no thought for his own well-being, to save the lives of John Roy and Joseph?”

Wilburta, the more garish of the two, turned her mouth down and sniffed. “O’ course, I hain’t forgot that, but that don’t erase the fact he’s a Connors. Everybody knows the Connors clan is bad.”

“Not everybody, Burtie. To my knowledge, it’s only Evans folk who feel that way.”

“Well, no matter. Evans and Connors blood don’t mix.”

Rather than argue, Mercy changed the subject to something safer, inquiring after her cousins’ latest quilting and sewing projects. When the boys came bounding down the stairs, asking what she planned to fix for supper, the two ladies gathered up their things and said good-bye—and none too soon for Mercy.

When she’d finished washing the supper dishes, Mercy reined in her thoughts and gazed out the kitchen window at her neglected garden, where the boys climbed an old apple tree in need of a good pruning. At least they’d found something to while away their minutes before bedtime.

“Mercy Beauchamp.” She tested the name on her lips. Wrinkling her nose, she stepped away from the window, passed through the dining room, and entered the front parlor. “Good evening, Mrs. Beauchamp.” She plopped down into the old settee that had been sitting against the same wall since before her father passed. “How do you do, Mrs. Beauchamp?” she said in a singsong voice, mimicking Thelma Younker, the reverend’s wife. “Lovely day, isn’t it? My, my, I do declare, the longer you and Harold have been married, the more you two look alike.” That thought snapped her back to the present and made her groan.

Resting her head on the back of the sofa, she stared at the ceiling. “Oh, Lord,” she vented in sheer frustration, “is Mr. Beauchamp really Your best choice for me?”

Wait and trust.

She groaned. “Wait and trust, wait and trust. What does that mean, Father? Show me a sign.”

But all she got in return was the constant, irksome ticking of the heirloom clock on the fireplace mantel in the front parlor.

***

Sam mopped the sweat from his brow with his shirtsleeve, ready to clean up after a long day of work. This time of year, Connors Blacksmith Shop grew uncomfortably warm. The fact that it had been built into a hillside, constructed of stone, with plenty of shade trees surrounding it, meant that it stayed cool in early summer, but these factors were no match for the relentless rays of the late July sun.

Across the room, his uncle, not quite ready to call an end to his labors, put the final touches on a garden gate he’d been crafting for one of their customers by attaching a forged hinge to it.

Sam took up the broom and started sweeping dust and shavings from under the table onto the dustpan, then dropped the debris into the nearby wastebasket.

“You find y’rself a place to live yet?” his uncle asked.

“Nope.” Sam glanced at Uncle Clarence, who hadn’t bothered to look up. “But I did learn Bessie Overmyer has a room to let at the boardinghouse.”

Now Uncle Clarence shot him a quick glance, his gray eyebrows upturned. “You must be pretty desperate to get out from under your ma’s clutches if you’re thinkin’ ’bout movin’ there. Hear them rooms are about as big as Mother Goose’s shoe. Ain’t she mostly set up for travelers passin’ through?”

“Yeah, but I talked to her, and she says she has a room at the back of the second floor that would accommodate a longer stay. ’Course, I’d have to share the single washroom with the other tenants.”

His uncle wrinkled his nose. “Seems y’ought to be able to find somethin’ better’n Bessie’s Boardinghouse, son. Think I’d endure your ma’s constant carryin’ on for the comforts of that big ol’ farmhouse ’fore I’d resort to livin’ in a twelve by twelve room.”

Uncle Clarence never had been one to mince words when it came to Sam’s mother. He couldn’t fight back the grin. “You don’t live with her.”

“Thank the good Lord for that!”

Truth was, Sam had been giving serious thought to approaching Mercy Evans about her need for a husband. As far as he could tell, he’d be her best bet. Just that morning, while sipping a tin mug of hot coffee over at Juanita’s Café, a dingy little hangout where the local laborers liked to gather before heading to their job sites, he’d overheard a few men jawing at another table. “If I weren’t married m’self, I’d offer up my services to that pretty little Evans dame. That one’s a looker.” This from the rough-and-tumble Bill Jarman, who worked over at the tanning factory. Several men had added their two cents on the matter, one middle-aged fellow joking that it might be worth a divorce, and one old codger saying, “Divorce nothin’. My wife died five years ago. I been thinkin’ on startin’ over with someone.”

Juanita Mendez, the healthily plump owner of the establishment, had sauntered over with a tray of breakfast buns, her black hair done up in its usual braided knot at the nape of her neck, her long red skirts whooshing around her chubby ankles. “You boys don’t stand a chance,” she’d said in her machine-gun-fast Spanish accent. “Miss Evans, she already name her future husband.”

All ears had perked, including Sam’s, as she’d taken her time setting the tray of goods in the center of the big round table. “That so?” Bill had asked, stretching out his fat paw to snatch up a jelly roll. “Who’s the lucky feller?”

Juanita had straightened, shifted to one side, and placed a hand on her round hip. One black eyebrow had jutted higher than the other. “Harold Beauchamp.”

Sam had coughed, not so much from his continued bouts of congestion since the fire but from the fact that his coffee had gone down the wrong pipe at her response. A few surprised gasps had filtered through the room, followed by spurts of laughter. “The Paris postmaster?” someone had asked. “Are you sure?”

“Sí, señor. I hear it from the man who bring my mail to me.”

“Well, ain’t that somethin’?”

“What’s he know about raisin’ young’uns?”

“Who says it’s them young’uns he’s interested in?”

“What in all creation does she see in him?”

The questions and remarks had kept up until Sam had heard enough and pushed back in his chair, its legs screeching loudly across the grainy concrete floor. He’d tossed a few coins on the table, nodded his thanks at Juanita, then stalked out the door, his dander up for reasons he couldn’t identify. Why should it matter one whit whom Mercy Evans chose to marry?

But even as he’d strode through the shop door that morning and fired up the forge, he’d mulled over the idea of offering her his hand. She’d probably chase him right out of her house, but it was worth a shot, even if she refused. He cared about the future of those little boys, and he frankly couldn’t see Beauchamp having the energy or desire to invest a lot of time in them. Not that he wasn’t a nice enough guy, but what did Mercy see in that balding, pudgy bachelor, who had to be nearing his mid-forties?

Now Sam decided to test his uncle’s reaction to the notion of approaching her. “You hear about Mercy Evans and her search for a husband?”

“Yep.” His uncle kept his eyes on his task, using a mallet to fix an angle, then laying it down and taking up a file to perfect the shape to his liking.

“You ever talk to her?”

“Nope.” The filing motion made a
swish, swish
sound.

“She’s a pretty thing.”

“Yep.”

“I been thinkin’ ’bout…makin’ her an offer, I guess you could say.”

Uncle Clarence stilled his hands, and he looked up, his thin lips barely visible beneath his bushy mustache. Still, Sam swore he detected the faintest upturn of the corners of his mouth. However, his gray eyes refused to give away any emotion. “That so?”

“You think it’s foolhardy o’ me?”

“Depends on your motive, I guess.”

“My motive?” Sam stood the ancient cornhusk broom in a corner and set the dustpan alongside it, then reached around to untie his apron and lifted it over his head.

“Sure. Are you lookin’ for a permanent place to hang your hat? The fastest way to pull your mother’s chain? Are you marryin’ for love?”

“Love? Heck, no!” A tiny knot of guilt rolled around in his gut. “I won’t deny it’d be nice to have my own place.”

“It wouldn’t be your place. It’d be hers.”

“Yeah, but she’s advertisin’ for a husband. I would expect she’d be willin’ to share her house with ’im.”

“I wouldn’t expect much more than that from her.”

Sam caught his uncle’s drift, and a wave of warmth stole into his cheeks. Made him glad for the shop’s dimming light. “It’d be a purely legal arrangement, nothin’ more.”

“Uh-huh. And how long would you stand for that?”

“Uncle Clarence!”

“She’s an Evans, son. I don’t have to warn you what the outcry would be, from both families, if you two hitched up.”