Collision of The Heart (7 page)

He had lied.

Mia feared she whimpered like a wounded puppy.

Genevieve gave her a one-armed hug. “It’s just talk. You know how this town is about gossip.” She yanked open the back door.

Warmth greeted them like a mother’s embrace. With the enthusiasm of a flock of birds settling in a tree at dusk, the chatter of female voices rose and fell in rapid-fire conversation. In seconds, Mia was surrounded by former colleagues, new female students, and a handful of women stranded in town by the train wreck. They hugged her. They fussed over her bandaged wrist; they scolded her for leaving them behind without a word of where she’d gone or what she was doing.

“You could have died in that city, and none of us would have been the wiser,” said a former classmate who now worked at the bank.

Mia’s legs wobbled. Her eyes blurred. “A few people knew where I was.”

“Like Ayden Goswell,” someone called from the far side of the large kitchen.

“Yes, Ayden knew.” Someone in front of her rose and pushed her chair toward Mia. “Sit down. You look like you’re ready to fall down.”

“You should have stayed in bed.” Genevieve poured a cup of coffee and set it before Mia.

“I have work to do.” Mia wrapped her hands around the cup to warm them. “There’s a child at the Goswells’ whose mother has gone missing.”

She explained about the little boy and the woman who disappeared from the train in the chaos. The ladies exclaimed, offering their prayers for the mother to be found. While carrots and potatoes were peeled, onions chopped, and stock stirred, the talk turned to Ayden and his work at the college, then diverted to the wreck. Genevieve, always good at arithmetic, pulled up a slate and chalk and began to ask for suggestions on how to provide people with enough food and shelter.

“We have finite supplies until the tracks are cleared,” she reminded them all.

The ladies took turns listing what supplies they had on hand, and Genevieve tallied up pounds of flour, sugar, and root vegetables. Before she finished, someone once again demanded to know why Mia had written to no one.

Mia gazed at the sea of faces around her—her college classmates, some friends from the years she lived with her now-deceased aunt in Hillsdale, some from her teaching days. She remembered the camaraderie and frustrations of life they’d shared and found no useful response. “I think I was just ready to put Hillsdale behind me. I wanted to forget—”

The back door opened with a blast of frosty air. The women fell silent, all gazes flashing to the newcomer—except Mia’s. Some scent, some indefinable perception of mind or perhaps the prompting of her heart, told her who had arrived.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, ladies, and I’m looking for Mia Rope—ah, there you are.” Ayden strode forward and rested his hand on her shoulder. “You disappeared on me.”

“You were occupied.” Mia didn’t look at him. His touch was enough to disconcert her without adding the sight of him to the mixture of chills from the blast of cold wind from the open door and an internal ice pick working at her heart.

“Momentarily only. I’m ready to head out to the wreck now. If you want to go with an escort, you’ll have to say good-bye to the present company.”

Mia glanced around at the circle of open, friendly, and now-familiar faces—sisters in scholarship, potential good friends—and an impression like an anchor cable urged her to stay.

“Charmaine,” someone murmured.

She understood the mention of the lady. She had laid claim to Ayden, and he couldn’t risk alienating her and thus her father.

As for Mia’s career, its needs admonished her to get up and go with him. She might lose the opportunity for another part of her train wreck story. But her heart warned her to stay where she was, warm, safe, still free of caring too deeply for Ayden—when she managed to not be near him. But two good stories would guarantee her a permanent position with the journal. Perhaps even three, when she had enough to write about the rescued child whose people seemed to have disappeared.

She shrugged Ayden’s hand off her shoulder and rose. “I’ll come back, if I may.”

“You are always welcome here.” Genevieve hugged her and murmured in her ear. “You should stay.”

Genevieve had said something similar a year and a half ago as well. But Mia had gone, and Ayden hadn’t waited all that long before taking up the courtship of Charmaine Finney. Choosing her career had been the right choice then. It was the right choice now. Her heart had survived the wound Ayden had dealt it in ’54; it could survive another hour or two in his company.

Chapter Six

S
he looked like the old Mia, sitting there amid a crowd of ladies, laughing, voice sparkling, hands moving as though she illustrated her words in the air despite her bandaged wrist. She belonged with these women. They were so intelligent and kind, committed to their families and committed to education. Many times, he had seen Mia in such a group, peeling potatoes or knitting while discussing Hannibal crossing the Alps on elephants or Plato or something else of an intellectual pursuit.

For a moment, when he had stood there with his hand on her shoulder as though he had a right to touch her, let alone act so possessively, he had wanted to pull his hair and cry out, “Why couldn’t you see that this is the best place in the world to live?”

Because she longed to be a journalist and Hillsdale possessed only the
Standard
, the smallest of newspapers, let alone a magazine that would print the sort of long pieces at which she excelled.

“I fetched the sleigh.” He spoke with a curtness he didn’t bother to disguise. “I can’t keep the horses standing any longer.”

“Ooh, a ride in the sleigh,” several of the ladies chorused.

“A far cry from when we were students and not allowed to ride in a vehicle with just a gentleman.” Genevieve winked. “And of course the two of you never broke that rule.”

Mia blushed and laughed, then gathered up her pocketbook and portfolio and rose. “It’s been lovely to see all of you again. Perhaps—do you all think I could interview some of you for my article about women in academia with men?”

“Come back any day.” Genevieve nudged her toward the door. “We’ll be meeting daily to cook, I expect, as long as the town is full of all these passengers.”

“Now that you mention passengers . . .” Mia crossed the room to where two women who looked like governesses sat in a corner shelling peas. The voices of the others drowned out Mia’s words, but the ladies nodded, their eyes cast down. No doubt more victims for her journalistic pen.

“Mia.” His tone was sharp. “I’m leaving.”

The last two words she had spoken to him until she stood poised in the doorway to the train: “I don’t care if you’ve reneged on your promise, Ayden Goswell. I’m leaving.” And she had.

Because she hadn’t loved him enough to stay. She accused him of not loving her enough to go. Perhaps they were both right.

He yanked open the kitchen door, nodded good-bye to the ladies, and set his mouth in a firm line, while Mia shared a few more embraces with her old friends and exited the house ahead of him.

“How did you know I was here?” she asked.

“I saw you leave with Genevieve.” He slipped his hand beneath her elbow. “Careful. It’s slippery where people have walked.”

“I’m surprised you noticed anything but Miss Finney.” She opened the gate before he could do the gentlemanly honors. “She looked so picturesque, standing there by the door, out of the way of the hoi polloi.”

“That is unkind.” Ayden closed the gate with too much vigor, sending the crash reverberating through the neighborhood like a cannon blast. “And unfair. She had just brought a basket of pastries for those stranded.”

“Produced in her tidy little kitchen, away from the hoi polloi.” With a half smile tossed in his direction, Mia stepped into the sleigh. “Or should I say riffraff?”

Ayden yanked the reins from the hitching post. “When did you turn so mean?”

“When I had to survive in the city on my own.” She looked away from him so her hood hid her face.

A twinge of guilt poked at Ayden, and from that stemmed annoyance. “Do not blame that on me, Euphemia Roper. No one made you go.”

“And no one made you stay.”

“You have an answer for everything, do you not?” He climbed into the sleigh and gathered the reins.

“I get paid to answer questions.” Mia moved as far away from him as the seat allowed. Half a dozen inches lay between them. Her portfolio leaned against her side, a pen warrior’s shield to fend him off.

For a moment, Ayden was tempted to toss the scuffed leather case into Genevieve’s yard. But Mia would simply leap out and retrieve it.

Instead, he reached behind him and gathered up two fur rugs. “You will want to cover up with one of these.”

“Thank you.” She took the rug from him without looking in his direction.

As he covered himself with the fur as best he could while still holding the reins, he remembered the last time they’d ridden in a sleigh together. They had staved off the cold by sitting close beneath the same rug. For once, the portfolio had not lain between them. They had touched from shoulder to thigh, their gloved fingers entwined—

He yanked his thoughts from that direction and gestured to her wrap with the reins. “You might want to pull that all the way up to your neck. The wind will be stronger out of town.”

“I can’t seem to manage it with just the one hand.” She held up her left hand. “My fingers don’t want to grip very well.”

“Should I help you?” He looked at her, and their eyes met, held for just a moment too long.

She licked her lips and broke the contact. “No, thank you. I won’t feel the cold.”

With Euphemia Roper beside him, neither would he. Her nearness always managed to heat his blood, whether from ire or yearning. Ire, or at least annoyance, was the name of the game today. She no longer made him long to touch her.

He could believe that if he did not look at her or stand close enough to inhale her scent or . . .

He flicked the reins with more vigor than necessary. The horses plunged forward, the bells on their harness jingling in discordant chorus. Their hooves rang on the hard-packed snow. Hissing like wind through leaves, the sleigh runners followed in the ruts of other vehicles before them. Beyond the sounds of the horses and sleigh, the world lay silent. No one wanted to be out in the cold unless necessary, and at that hour, most had tucked themselves by fires to eat lunch.

Between Mia and Ayden, the silence stretched to the edge of town. It expanded beyond the outskirts and into the surrounding farmland. The lack of conversation between them, when once they only ceased talking to embrace, grew so profound after the first quarter mile Ayden’s ears began to ring as though the harness bells had attached themselves to his hat.

“Did you get snow like this in Boston this year?” he asked out of desperation.

“Nothing that lasted like it does here.”

“I found the ocean wind harsh.”

“The bay and cape protect us a good bit, but I think nor’easters . . .” She stopped and a plume of white vapor swirled in front of her face. “Ayden Goswell, when were we ever reduced to talking about the weather?”

He fixed his gaze on the sleek gray horses. “Since you got aboard an eastbound train and swore you would never return.”

“And you chose not to follow me.”

“This is my home. I had a chance to stay here and help my father.”

“And I, of course, never having had the luxury of a real home, found going to more lucrative pastures wiser.”

“You could have had a permanent home here.”

“And we could have built a permanent home and professorship with me in Boston instead of the temporary position you have now.”

“The position in Boston might have been temporary, you know that now as well as you knew it then.”

“But wait,” she continued as though he hadn’t spoken, sarcasm creeping into her tone. “You will have a permanent position for the mere cost of a wedding ring through your nose.”

Ayden reined in so fast the sleigh slewed sideways, and Mia’s portfolio fell against him. He shoved it upright as he turned to glare at her. “Explain right now what you mean by that.”

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. They were chips of green ice. “You’re the most eligible bachelor in Hillsdale. You marry Miss Charmaine Finney, and her daddy ensures you get the professorship, now that it’s a permanent one. Then Daddy gets to order you around the rest of your life.”

“Who told you that?” Ayden spoke between clenched teeth to keep himself from shouting.

Mia shrugged too slowly, too dismissively. “Your sister.”

“I should have known.”

“And Genevieve.”

His stomach sank. “What does she know of it?”

“And Rose and Marianne and—”

“Enough.” He flung his hands up as though warding off blows.

The revelation of such gossip hurt like fists to the gut.

The horses began to move, flinging Ayden against the side of the sleigh. His head struck the seatback with a resounding crack, and he remained motionless as the spots before his eyes ceased dancing on the snow, letting the horses have their heads.

“Are you all right?” Mia took the reins from his slack hands and drew the team to a halt. “Ayden, are you hurt? That bump sounded nasty.” She leaned toward him, her face mere inches from his.

“I’m all right. Just stunned.” He concentrated on ensuring the horses pulled straight and even through the runner ruts in the snow alongside the railroad tracks. “Rosalie might not survive my wrath if she persists in talking about my courtship of Miss Finney that way.”

“I told you that it isn’t just Rosalie. It seems to be the prevailing belief amongst the ladies of this town.”

“She started it and eggs them on.” Ayden emitted a grumble of annoyance through his teeth. “She’s just angry because I don’t like her beau.”

“Why not?”

“He’s an uneducated lout who talked her out of going to school.” Ayden glowered at the first glimpse of the wreck by daylight.

Beside him, Mia stiffened and cradled her left wrist against her middle. “Getting on another train is going to be difficult.”

“A pity you didn’t find it so a year and a half ago,” Ayden muttered.

“A pity you couldn’t keep your word.” She blinked as though clearing her eyes of tears, but her voice remained impassive.

Ayden squeezed his eyes shut against the lack of pain on her lovely face. “I never broke my word about wanting to make you my wife. I simply changed my mind about where I would teach after Pa had his accident.”

“He seems quite all right now.”

“He is, but he wasn’t two years ago. A man needs a good, strong back to run his hardware store.”

“And Dr. Goswell thinks he can move from swords to plowshares?”

Ayden grinned in appreciation of her wit. “Very nice, Mia, mi am—” He stopped before using the pet name he’d used so effortlessly before. Mia, mi amore. Mia, my love.

“I was never your love.” Mia sounded weary now. “You would have come with me if I had been.”

“You could have stayed.”

“And done what here in Hillsdale? Write a gossip column for the
Standard
?” She jerked her face away, but her hand shot up as though she wiped away tears. “It wasn’t the best writing job in Boston, but it was a writing job, and you had that teaching position waiting. We’d have done well together.”

“So do you still have that position?” His question was more a taunt than a query. Mom had subscribed to the periodical that hired Mia. Not six months after she left, her name ceased appearing under contributors.

Beside him, her lips tightened. “They encountered financial difficulties and let me go, but the editor recommended me to her colleagues, and I have always had writing work.”

“I still have my teaching position.”

“Will they hire you?”

“I believe they will.”

“Would they hire you permanently if you were not with Charmaine?”

Ayden flinched but tried to lighten the tension between them. “You apparently remember how to fence with your tongue, even if you have forgotten how to fence with rapiers.”

“I have not forgotten how to fence with rapiers.”

He had taught her the ancient art, and she had been an apt pupil. They had spent many enjoyable hours sparring during his holidays home from the East.

“We should—” He stopped himself. No, they should not have a fencing match. In their present state, they just might remove the buttons from the ends of the rapiers and stab one another with more than their tongues. “We should stop sniping at one another,” he finished instead.

“Because you do not wish to answer my question?” She slid him a sidelong glance, a mocking smile.

He stiffened. “My qualifications to teach classics at the college have nothing to do with my courtship of the department director’s daughter.”

“I know that, Dr. Goswell.” Her tone was too sweet. “But surely many others have applied who are as much as or more qualified.”

“A direct hit under my guard.” He rubbed his head where he had smacked it on the seatback. The flesh was tender, perhaps forming a lump. His head did not feel as bruised as did his spirit, his heart.

He took a deep breath to keep his voice steady. “I began to court Charmaine before a permanent opening at the college was announced.”

“Of course you did.” She patted his arm. “And if she throws you over for someone else, you can always go away to find work.”

Ayden caught hold of her hand before she could draw it back. “Mia, stop it. It is not in your nature to be mean-spirited.”

“I didn’t think it was in your nature to be untrustworthy.” She blinked and turned her face away but squeezed his fingers for a fraction of a second before tugging her hand free and rolling it into the edge of the blanket. “We will simply not talk about our past together or about your future at the college.”