Love's First Bloom (22 page)

Without worrying what either Elias or Phanaby would think or having to be careful to set a good example for Lily, she polished off a platter filled with nothing but the food she loved most: raisin pie and thick slices of bread with lots of molasses on top.

She put the kitchen back to rights and decided she still was not tired. She got the apron she was making for Phanaby from her bedroom and took it into the living room, where the fire would keep her toasty warm and where Phanaby’s sewing basket had the notions she would need. On second thought, she returned to the kitchen for the oil lamp before she settled down to work.

She sorted through the array of sewing tools stored inside the basket and snipped the frayed threads on the edges of the fabric before she started to hem them.

Once she started sewing the hem into place, her thoughts strayed and focused on Jake Spencer until her needle got stuck in the fabric. She remedied the problem by forcing the needle through a piece of soap from the sewing basket and smiled when the needle glided through the fabric with ease.

Jake Spencer was a lot like that troublesome needle, she decided, and chuckled out loud. The comparison was a bit odd, but it fit her perceptions of him perfectly.

At first she had dismissed him as nothing more than a miserable recluse, who threatened the peace she had found working in her garden, along with the privacy she craved. She stopped for a moment, tied a knot in the thread before it got too short, rethreaded the needle, and resumed sewing. Now, however, she knew he was not miserable or reclusive by nature. He might be cranky now and again, but only when his back acted up.

In all truth, when he used the remedy from Mr. Garner, she might even agree with most of the others in the village that Jake Spencer could be quite a charming man, and she felt badly that Mr. Garner had not made any remedy for the man before leaving for Forked River. She felt even worse when she recalled how terribly she had misjudged him.

Jake was not uncommonly attractive, but she liked the way the sun caught the reddish highlights in his hair. The cleft in his chin made him look a bit roguish, too, when he did not have a nick in it.

“Ouch! Speaking of nicks,” she grumbled, yanking back her finger and pressing her thumb against the small dot of blood where she had poked the needle into her flesh. “That’s what I get for thinking he might be a prince of a man. Even if he did prove he isn’t completely incorrigible by accepting my apology, I’m still not convinced we share all the same views about newspapers today.”

Pausing, she checked her finger to make sure the bleeding had stopped and chose not to think about the nature of their discussion of the news. “Stay out of the shadows and follow His light,” she whispered. “Just follow His light.”

A loud, hard pounding downstairs on the back door came so unexpectedly, she nearly leaped out of her skin. Heart thumping, she recoiled against the back of her chair. For as long as she had been here, no one had ever come to the apothecary at this hour, when everyone in the household would normally be abed.

But most, if not everyone, in the village also knew that the Garners were out of town, and when Ruth opened the apothecary tomorrow, she would only dispense the medications he had prepared in advance. She could hardly imagine anyone would demand to buy them now, in the middle of the night.

The pounding started again, more urgent this time, and a man’s voice rang out. “I’ve been looking and looking for you. I know you’re in there. Open up!”

Trembling, Ruth set aside her sewing. Fear that Mr. Farrell had somehow snuck back into the village and waited until everyone was asleep and she was alone to come here grew stronger with every wild, erratic beat of her heart. Or had another reporter followed the same lead that had brought Farrell here?

“Regardless of who he is, the man’s apparently not going to give up,” she whispered, all too aware she had no one here to protect her, but more important, there was no one that could protect her from the fact that she was, in truth, Ruth Livingstone.

Her one and only consolation was that Elias and Phanaby were not here to discover that while she had welcomed their kindnesses to her and to Lily, she had been lying to them all along.

More pounding. More shouts. “Open. This. Door! I know where you are and I’m not leaving until you let me in!”

Fearful that the insistent reporter would wake the entire village, she got to her feet. “I’m coming!” she shouted and headed toward the hallway. She stopped by her bedroom to get her shawl before she remembered she had left it behind again and so exchanged her robe for a heavier one instead.

She headed toward the door at the end of the hallway with her shoulders set and her head held high and her heart and soul wrapped around one thought: follow His light. When she opened the door and looked down, she saw a sliver of light coming through the window and the bottom of the door and sighed.

“The man brought a lantern?” she questioned, but used the meager light to guide her down the steps. “I’m coming,” she shouted again when he kicked at the door. Once she was in the storeroom, she grabbed the broom and glanced out the window, but the glare of the lantern made it impossible to see anything beyond the shadow of the man standing there.

Broom at the ready, she unlatched the door and cracked it open, just enough to poke her head through. Temporarily blinded by the light, she caught a glimpse of a large, very tall, very broad-shouldered man before he shoved at the door and forced his way in, leaving the lantern sitting outside.

He stole every breath from her lungs when he lunged at her and grabbed her, effectively disarming her when he pinned her against him. “Now that I’ve found where you are, I’m never gonna let you go. Never.”

Twenty-Three

The man overpowered Ruth so quickly and so completely, she had only one desperate thought: survival.

Strong arms wrapped around her upper body, pinning her arms at her sides and rendering her makeshift weapon useless. With her face pressed against his chest, she could not see anything at all. She had mere seconds before he crushed the life out of her, yet it seemed as if time had either stopped or was passing in slow motion.

Struggling to breathe, she could not draw in enough air to scream, even though his chest would absorb any sound she made if she did. She kicked him once, but since she was wearing bedroom slippers, she only ended up smashing her toes. With her heart pounding and sheer panic gripping her spirit, he gave her one more option when he lowered his head to kiss her.

His breath was so rank with spirits, her stomach churned, and she reacted without a single hesitation when his mouth was a hairsbreadth away from her lips: She bit him as hard as she could.

“Darlin’!” he yelped and staggered back a few steps, dragging her with him. Though he hit his back on the shelves hard enough to send some of the baskets and medications stored there to the floor, he pulled her hard against him and tried to kiss her again.

She bit him twice as hard on his cheek.

Yelping and spewing expletives she had only heard once before from a seaman on Capt. Grant’s ship, he relaxed his hold on her to cradle his face, and she squirmed free.

“Fiend!” she hissed and smacked at him with her broom.

He pushed off from the shelves, knocking one of the more rickety ones down, and staggered toward her with outstretched arms. “But darlin’!”

She backed up a few steps, flipped the broom from end to end, and aimed for his legs with the wooden handle. “You’re addled, you fool! I’m … not … your … darlin’!” she hissed. She hit him again and again as she backed away from him, but he was unfazed and just kept coming.

The closer they moved to the light streaming in through the open doorway, the more she could discern his features. He obviously was not Robert Farrell, and she knew she had never seen this bear of a man anywhere in the village. When she reached the doorway, she was still hitting him, but she was almost ready to accept the idea he was too intoxicated to feel any pain at all.

When he suddenly pitched forward, she managed to leap out of the way. She landed on the bottom step, just in time to see him fall through the open doorway and land facedown on the ground outside. She peeked outside, saw his upper body lying next to the lantern, and grimaced. Since all the blood oozing out from beneath his face could not have come from the bites she had given him, she assumed the man must have broken his nose when he fell.

She snorted, smoothed the hair away from her face, and glared at his form. “If your feet weren’t halfway inside blocking the door, I’d slam it shut and leave you right where you are, you addled simpleton. But if you broke your nose, you probably can’t breathe. Not lying facedown in the dirt, which means I have to help you,” she snapped.

She stopped just long enough to set her broom down and readjust her nightclothes. Once she had her robe tied tightly again, she picked up the broom and carried it outside with her, just in case he woke up and tried to grab her again.

She tried rolling him onto his back with one hand. “Pointless,” she muttered. Stooping down, she tugged at one of his shoulders with all her strength, but the man was dead weight. She tried again and kept tugging until her face grew hot from the exertion and her arms were aching.

Finally, he started rolling over, but she heard the sound of multiple footsteps charging down the alley from Burkalow’s Tavern before his back even hit the ground.

“What did you do? Bring an army with you?” she snapped and glanced at the doorway. Even if she had the strength, she did not have the time to drag him clear of the doorway so she could get back inside and latch the door closed before his friends arrived.

Running up the staircase and locking the door at the top of the steps made better sense, but if these men broke down the door, she would have no escape from them, short of jumping out a window. “Not an option,” she hissed, noting the footsteps were getting dangerously close.

She stood next to him, blocking most of the light from the lantern, planted her feet, and brandished her broom with both hands to defend herself.

“We’re coming, Widow Malloy! We’re coming!”

Confused, she lowered the broom the moment the men came out of the shadows and into full view.

When the three very sober, very breathless men reached her, they braced to a halt and stared at the man lying at her feet. Ruth could not tell which of the three men was more surprised, because tears of relief blurred her vision.

When she could see clearly and her heartbeat slowed, she realized two of the men were gaping at her. She looked down at Mr. Burkalow, who was kneeling by the unconscious scoundrel who had assaulted her.

“It’s him,” he pronounced and got back to his feet.

Ruth stared at the fallen man and blinked her eyes several times in disbelief. From the way his nose was bent at an impossible angle, the man had most definitely broken it when he fell. But in addition to a bruise already forming on his forehead, his bottom lip was split open where she must have bitten him. He also had a circular wound on the flesh of one of his cheeks that bore the unmistakable pattern of teeth marks that would heal but leave a scar.

Instinctively, she flexed her wrist that bore a scar similar in shape, albeit much smaller, and groaned. Granted, she had bitten that horrid man out of desperation and fear. But she had bitten him nonetheless, and she wondered fleetingly if it was desperation or fear rather than sheer temper that had led Lily to bite.

When Mr. Toby took a step toward her, she flinched.

“You feelin’ all right, Widow Malloy? That man hurt you any? I could fetch Doc Woodward for you.”

“No, he … he didn’t hurt me. He frightened me half to death, but I’m fine,” she said.

“I’ll go fetch the sheriff, then.”

“No! I mean … there’s no real harm done,” she insisted, horrified to think the sheriff or any other official might get involved.

Mr. Ayers, the owner of the livery who had hired Ned earlier that afternoon, looked down at the man on the ground and shook his head. “Better fetch Dr. Woodward anyway. Widow Malloy might not need him, but this poor fella sure does. He’d be hurtin’ real bad if he weren’t sleepin’.”

She snorted. “That ‘poor fella’ attacked me!” She did not realize she was pointing the broom at Mr. Ayers until he raised his hands in surrender and took a very deliberate step back from her. “I’m sorry. I’m still a bit … flustered.” She lowered her broom.

“There’s no need for you to apologize,” Mr. Burkalow argued, but he did not approach her, either. “I had a sense this man was goin’ to find another bucket to drown his sorrows in when he left the tavern after I refused to serve him another drop. Never suspected he’d end up findin’ a whole bucket of trouble here, though I suspect he wouldn’t have either, even if he hadn’t been addled.”

“Do you know him?” she asked, dismissing any blame to put on Mr. Burkalow’s shoulders at the moment.

“His name’s Maxwell Flynn. Never knew him to stir up this kind of trouble before. He lives about five miles out in the pinelands, but comes into the village now and again, lookin’ for his Abigail,” Mr. Toby offered.