Hooked (36 page)

“I believe this is yours.” Matthew gently handed the petticoat to her, his fingers resting on top of hers.

“Thank you.”

She was touched. Truly. In a way that she had never been before.

She was supposed to be giving Matthew lessons. Instead, she'd had one of her own.

Not all stunt reporters stirred up trouble and angst.

In fact, this one had stirred up nothing more than her passion.

Beyond that, he could talk to children as if he remembered what it was like to be one. Meg suspected Matthew would make a fine father if he ever married and wanted to have a family.

Suddenly it occurred to Meg that by not marrying, not having a husband, she would never have the chance to be a mother. No children. No boys or girls. No toys to clutter her house.

The thought brought a tear to her eye and she quickly blinked it away before Matthew could see. “Now,” she said, her voice cracking with an emotion deeper than she'd ever experienced, “about fishing upstream. This is what you'll need to know . . .”

She was speaking, but she couldn't hear the words. The uneven beat of her pulse had taken over the rhythm of her thoughts.

*  *  *

Sighing heavily, Meg sat at the kitchen table resting her chin on her fists, one fist stacked on top of the other. An unladylike position if there ever was one.

In two hours, she was supposed to be at Johannah Treber's bridal shower. A party she didn't want to attend. Even though she'd decided
she
wouldn't be getting married, she feared the excitement surrounding the shower would carry her away and get her thinking things she ought not to.

She had to accept marriage wasn't for her. In twenty years, she'd had two prospects.

Harold Adams and Vernon Wilberforce.

A namby-pamby and an impostor.

Meg sighed once more and fingered the newsprint edges of Grandma Nettie's
Sisters in the Suffragette
gazette.

She sat watching Mr. Finch prepare supper. He moved with efficient energy, never wasting a minute. Bowler hat on and apron in place, he was a veritable treasure. She wondered if Grandma Nettie knew he fancied her.

“Mr. Finch, do you and my grandmother talk about things?”

“And what things would those be, Miss Margaret?” The carrots he'd sliced on a wooden board were shifted into a pot.

“Oh, I don't know. Just things. Anything.”

“We discuss a wide variety of topics. Your grandmother is quite worldly.”

Meg dared to say, “You're in love with her, aren't you?”

Mr. Finch faced Meg, the knife in his grasp pausing in thin air. She could swear he blushed, his dapper cheeks softening to pink. “I. . . Miss Margaret, where would you get such an idea?”

“I watched you once when you were watching my grandma.”

After a moment, Mr. Finch conceded, “Yes. I am fond of your grandmother. Does that bother you?”

Meg sat up, laying her hands palm down on the table and scooting forward. “Oh, no! In fact, I think it's the most romantic thing given yours and Grandma Nettie's ages. You should tell her that you love her.”

Mr. Finch gave her a wistful smile as he set the knife down and folded his arms over his chest. He uncharacteristically leaned his backside into the counter and stood in a relaxed manner she'd never seen from him before. He really was a dear-looking man, so polished and refined. Why, any woman would be glad to have him as her husband.

“Miss Margaret, your grandmother has so many important things she wants to do,” Mr. Finch began in his perfect British voice. “I don't believe she'd be anxious to add me to her busy life.”

“But how do you know unless you ask her?” Meg
insisted. Then an idea came upon her, sparkling with hope and optimism. “Ask her to Durbin's for an ice cream. Right after supper tonight. I know that she adores chocolate.”

“I couldn't. I'm merely the butler.”

“Of course you could. And you aren't a real butler. Besides, Grandma doesn't base her friendships on social ranks and all that. She isn't stuck up at all.”

“What if she turns me down?”

“Well then,” Meg said thoughtfully, grazing the tip of her fingernail with her teeth, “if she does decline, at least you'll know. If you never ask her, you'll always wonder if she would have said yes.”

Mr. Finch broadly smiled, bringing his hand to his neat beard and drawing several strokes down the manicured black hair. “I'll do it.”

Meg brought her hands together. “Wonderful.”

Even if she wasn't getting married, there was no sense in Grandma Nettie missing the boat—so to speak.

Missing the boat.

That's what Meg was destined for in her carefree, independent, do-as-she please and untamed—yet solitary—life. When she got old, she'd be left in dry dock. The only one not sailing on a sea of matrimony.

On that thought, she slumped back in her chair and brought her hand to her temple.
Don't feel sorry for yourself You stop it right now.

Absently, she began to flip through the pages of her grandmother's rebel-rousing gazette. The inside was filled with the accounts of fearless exploits. Sketches of militant women—none that Mr. Gibson would have drawn—appeared beside some of the articles. Meg
gazed at several ladies who wore britches and carried brooms.

The print blurred; she blinked her eyes and tried to refocus. A headache nagged at the base of her head. She'd been getting them more frequently the past three days. She knew the cause. All that stuffing her hair into Mr. Bascomb's hat and pinning the thick weight onto the crown of her head for long periods of time. It was such a nuisance to manage.

Mr. Finch slapped the lid on the pot, a smile still pinned on his mouth, and then he wiped the countertop. Meg looked at his beard once more. So tidy. So very in order—spit-spot, clipped, cut short.

Clipped. Cut short.

Once more, she glimpsed at the page she'd been staring at. A woman posed with her arms folded across her breasts. She wore her hair short. To her shoulders. Curls swept softly next to her cheeks. Quite shocking.

Meg raised her brows. Dare she even think it? Surely not. A woman who did such a thing—why, it was beyond scandalous to even consider cutting her hair. Then again, why keep it if it made her head hurt?

Who would she consult? A barber would be the logical choice to get the job done. The mere thought of Moses Zipp slicing away her hair with his razor-sharp scissors caused Meg to shiver. His reputation wasn't all that grand—more times than not, he was too preoccupied with discussing his hunting abilities than his hair cutting abilities. Not to mention, his shop was practically across from the hotel. She couldn't sit in one of his chairs with people walking by and looking in. Not even the newfound Meg had that much nerve.

“Mr. Finch,” she said, her brows turned down in thought, “who trims your beard for you?”

“I do it myself.”

Meg slanted her head, eyeing his thoroughly symmetrical beard once more. “It looks very respectable.”

“Thank you, Miss Margaret.”

With an inward sigh, Meg thought through her decision, giving herself ample opportunity to talk herself out of it. But she realized she'd kept her hair long all these years to please her mother and to be pleasing to society. She'd never thought about what she liked about keeping her hair long. Frankly, she was sick and tired of all the pulling on her scalp when she pinned the long lengths up.

Meg stood. “Mr. Finch, I'd like for you to cut my hair,” she firmly said.

He smiled at her as if he thought she was teasing.

“I'm deadly serious, Mr. Finch. I want my hair short.” She raised the gazette for him to view. “Cut it like this.” Looking down at her shoulder, she brought her hand to rest at the base of her neck. “Right about here should do the trick. As short as the woman's in the picture.”

Understanding she wasn't making light of her request, he stammered, “Miss Margaret, I don't think you really want me to do that.”

“I do. I must have been thinking about it for months because it came as no surprise to me that I want it cut. I think it will be quite invigorating to shake my head without the weight of a twist on top of it.”

“What will your mother say?”

“Don't worry about my mother,” Meg replied, reaching for Grandma Nettie's sewing basket that
she'd left in the kitchen this morning. Pulling out the sharp scissors, Meg gave them to Mr. Finch. “I trust you.”

Then Meg began to slide the pins from her hair. The curly copper strands shivered down past her shoulders and to her waist. “Shall I sit or shall I stand?”

“Sitting would be better,” Mr. Finch remarked. “Really, Miss Margaret, I don't want you to do anything hasty.”

“I'm not.”

Meg dragged a chair from the table and sat. Conviction fueled the tick of her pulse as it beat at her wrists. She waited, barely conscious of breathing in and out. She had come to a decision. An important one. And yet . . .

Mr. Finch stood behind her. “Are you quite sure, Miss Margaret?”

She had a moment of uncertainty. She thought of all the times that she'd looked at her curly hair in the mirror, waiting for the iron to heat in the lamp chimney and testing it with a moistened finger. There would be no more high pompadours for her. No more finger curls.

No more headaches.

“I'm quite sure. Cut my hair.”

*  *  *

A raspberry dusk had long since descended behind the trees growing on Main Street and the day had broken up with people setting off for home. Lamplight filled parlor windows. Fireplaces had been stoked, curls of smoke rising from chimneys to tinge the air with a homey, cozy scent.

Gage ground out his cigar into a butt can, stuffed
his hands into his coat pocket, and began to walk to the hotel. Ham Beauregarde had left the restaurant minutes ago and from where he stood, Gage watched the salesman make a straight path to the hotel's porch, up the stairs, and right inside.

Nice and smooth.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

Gage had stayed behind. No sense in chasing Ham; Ham wasn't running anyplace sneaky. If the Gurney salesman had been planning something devious, he was doing so in secret. Because his actions hadn't disclosed a thing. Gage had all but decided the man was innocent.

So he'd wanted to buy Gage's lottery number. He hadn't.

So he'd gone to see Doolin at the hatchery. What good would it do him? Ham hadn't garnered one of the best fishing stakes so how could he stock a place at the end of the creek? Impossible.

So . . . ? Gage was back to where he started.

Though he still couldn't figure out how in the hell Wayne Brooks had done it. But he couldn't yet put it from his mind, no matter how badly he wanted to.

David West had sent another letter several days ago asking for a rough draft on the contest article. Gage had yet to write one. He couldn't. His usual zest for describing events as he saw them, just wasn't with him these past few days. He couldn't do a hack job on this piece. So he'd let David's letter go without a response. For all Gage knew, he could be on the road to getting himself fired.

He had to grasp the tail of what seemed to be a nasty local rat and expose it for the crooked-minded rodent it was.
Wayne Brooks.

Only Gage couldn't think through the fiery piece. Couldn't think through the angle without seeing Meg's face on the page of his blank typewriter paper.

As Gage passed the Harmony bank, he knew the hour had to be near eight. That's the time Beauregarde went back to the hotel for the night. So Gage might as well, too. Only one more day to practice before the contest.

Only one more day alone with Meg. The thought of going back to San Francisco left him aching.

Crossing the street, he paused in the middle of it hearing the laughter and voices of women coming from up Sycamore Drive. A group of ladies gathered on a house porch, talking in an animated way—much as those at his Bissell sales pitch had done. The neardarkened street was lit by the many lights beaming from the house's front windows. Otherwise he wouldn't have been able to make out Meg.

He knew her form well. The way she held her head. The tilt of her chin. The way she kept her shoulders erect.

Gage slowly walked across the street and changed his course. He took Sycamore even though it wasn't the direction he needed to go. Although he made no conscious effort to do so, he stayed close to the shadows created by picket fences and shrubs that lined the sidewalk.

The group of women began to scatter, some coming toward him, others taking the north route up the street. As a pair of ladies passed him, he put his hand to his hat and murmured, “Good evening.”

He watched Meg as she walked with those two friends of hers, Hildegarde and Ruth. Then the pair
broke off around the corner and disappeared into one house together, leaving Meg alone.

Gage held back, liking the way Meg strolled—as if she were in deep thought. She reached her arm out and brushed the picket fence boards in front of her house, then she stopped at the gate and stared at the sky.

He looked as well. A high ceiling of elms marred his view. But he heard what she had to hear. The tree toad's chanting barreled up from the elm branches in an unchanging rhythm. A sliver of moon shown. Stars scattered high, some dim, others brighter.

Meg stood there a long moment. Listening. Gage heard and saw it, too. There came the song of the trees, of the moon, of the night.

She gave a sigh with a wistfulness that pained him. He felt it from where he stood and could no longer remain.

As he approached, he said her name. “Meg.”

With a start, she turned to see him walking toward her.

“Matthew.”

He liked the way she said his name in return.

“I was out,” he offered, feeling suddenly foolish. As if he'd been spying on her and lurking like a youthful boy.