Twice Blessed (16 page)

Drawing in the back of her skirt where black ruffles fell below the narrow bustle, she stepped out into the darkness. The rain was easing, no longer frantic. At any other time, she would have welcomed this rain, for it would nourish the flowers that were beginning to sprout in her yard.

She lifted her skirt and petticoats high enough to reveal the tops of her button-up shoes as she picked her way down the street. A light breeze tugged at the list she held in the same hand as the umbrella. She tightened her grip on it, and the umbrella wobbled. She righted it, but not before she got wet.

With relief, Emma threw open the door of the telegraph office, which was in the same building as the railroad offices. Kenny Martin was sitting by the telegraph, just as he seemed to do every day and every night. Even water coming up through the gaps in the wide floorboards would probably not budge him. He was young, not too many years older than Sean. With his dark hair slicked back with some sort of pomade and his shirt immaculately pressed, he never seemed to be tired. She wondered when he left the telegraph office to change shirts. Maybe he had a supply in the cupboard beyond the desk that held all his equipment.

She almost giggled. Turning to put the umbrella by the door so it would not drip water in the small office, she chided herself. Too little sleep and too much tension was making her giddy. She needed to concentrate on her task.

“Howdy, Emma,” Kenny called.

“I need an order telegraphed.”

Kenny held out his hand and whistled. “That's quite a list.”

“I'd like you to send it to Montgomery Ward & Company up in Chicago.”

“Telegraph an order to them?” He looked as shocked as if she had told him that she was about to go ice skating on the Ohio. “They take their orders by mail, Emma.”

“Tell them this is an emergency. We're low on supplies here, and we aren't sure how much longer the trains will be able to run if the river keeps rising. Sign it with my name and with John Taber's.”

“Along with his title of being Master of the Grange Hall here?”

Emma smiled. “If you would, because Montgomery Ward & Company wrote him a nice note last year when the Grange's autumn order went in. Maybe his name will catch their attention and get the order here even more quickly. You know how they want to stay on the good side of all the Grangers and the local Granges.”

Kenny bent his head over his telegraph equipment and began to tap out the message that could be heard already in Chicago. She found it difficult to believe, as well as fascinating.

Thanking Kenny, she slipped out of the door of the telegraph office. She raised her umbrella, took a single step, and bounced off someone.

“Oh, forgive me!” she gasped. Tilting back her umbrella, she looked up at a stranger. That surprised her into silence. Very few outsiders, other than the children placed out from the orphan train, came to Haven. What was a stranger doing here in the midst of this crisis?

“My fault, miss.” He tipped his hat, then grimaced when water ran off it. “I was hurrying to get in out of the storm, and now I'm causing you to linger in it. Good evening, miss.”

She nodded and started back up the street toward the store. When she realized the man was walking behind her, she resisted the yearning to turn around and ask if he was following her. That was silly. She had thought seven years in Haven would have eased her fear of any stranger. Certainly by now the law in Kansas had given up the search for her.

Emma walked into her store without realizing where she was headed.
This
had become her haven, a place where she could help her neighbors and live the life she should have had in Kansas.

Something moved in the shadows, and she shrieked.

Noah stepped out of the shadows. He steered her to the rocking chair and sat her in it. Drawing up the chair Belinda had been using, he said as he sat, “You look as if you came face to face with your own ghost.”

“Do I?” She shivered and looked out the front window of the store. Let Noah think she was pale because he had startled her. And he had, but that had not upset her as much as the stranger who had followed her up the street. The man had every right to be in Haven and to go to the Andersons' Livery Stable. She was letting her own memories haunt her. “I was down at the railroad station, and I could hear the river is higher than it has ever been.”

“And that frightens you?”

“I wish it would stop raining.”

“It will by dawn, I suspect.”

Emma took a steadying breath and nodded. “Yes, probably by dawn, but the river won't reach its crest for several days.”

“By then everything I own may be sailing down the Mississippi.”

Sympathy ached within her. Putting her arms around his shoulders, she leaned her head against his shoulder. She wished there was something she could say, but she could not think of anything.

His fingers swept along her face and tilted her mouth beneath his. Kissing her with the strength of the emotions burning within him, he drew her closer until even the shadows inching across the floor could not come between them. She forgot the Ohio and the rain and everything but his strong arms around her and his firm body caressing her.

With a sigh, Emma drew away. “Noah, I need to—”

“I know. Let me help you.” He brushed her hair back from her face and stood. Offering his hand, he said, “One more time, I need to say thank you.”

“You? I couldn't have dealt with the rush today if you hadn't been here.” She put her hand on his. “I should be thanking you.”

“But keeping me busy helped me not to think of how the river might be running through my parlor now.”

“I don't think the water is that high yet.”

“I hope you're right.” He drew her to her feet and toward him. He did not release her hand when footsteps raced into the store.

“Supper is ready,” Belinda announced with every bit of five-year-old self-importance she could muster. “Gladys says you both need a good, hot meal and you shouldn't dawdle.”

Noah chuckled and gave a playful tug on her braid. “We wouldn't think of it.”

When he offered his other hand to Belinda, his daughter grabbed it and grinned. Emma walked with them to the doorway and knew that, for the first time in seven years, she felt as if she were going home. She treasured that thought, because she knew how fleeting that feeling could be.

CHAPTER TEN

Emma paused in sweeping the store's porch and looked between the livery and Doc Bamburger's office. The afternoon sunshine was so bright off the Ohio that she had to lower her eyes. Smiling, she continued pushing the dried mud off the boards. The rain had stopped almost a week ago, and the river and creeks were sliding back between their banks.

Her smile widened when she saw Noah coming around the corner. He had been gone long enough to reach his farm and come back with news. Waving, she lowered her hand when she saw the set of his jaw. The news, she knew, would not be good.

Without speaking, he took her hand and drew her into the store. The only person inside was Sean, who was putting some cans of meat onto the shelf at the back of the store where they would not get ruined by the heat from the stove. Noah shut the door and turned the “closed” sign face out.

“What are you doing?” Emma asked, shocked.

“We need to talk without other ears listening.” He glanced toward Sean.

Raising her voice, she asked, “Sean, will you check the boxes of laundry soap in the storage room? I need a count of how many we received.”

“Right away, Miss Delancy.” He grinned at them before going into the storage room.

Noah closed that door, too, then walked back to her, dried mud falling from his boots with each step.

Before he could speak, she asked, “How's the farm?”

“It's even worse than I'd guessed from what I heard of others farms along the Ohio.” He shook his head. “The barn is gone completely. Not even a stick of wood to suggest it ever stood.”

“Noah, I'm so sorry.”

He shrugged, the motion as stiff as the river mud on his sleeves. “Between the creek and the river, half of the trees in the woodlot are ripped out of the ground. The ones I'd cut before the rain came are still there, but they've been smashed to pieces by the force of the water.”

“And the house?”

“The house got some water on the first floor, but nothing that won't dry.”

“That's good news, then. You know you're welcome to stay at my house until your house is dried out.”

“I know.” He stared at the door to the storage room, his jaw working as if he needed to fight his own words.

She put her hand on his arm, ignoring how the still damp mud there stuck to her fingers. “Noah, something else is wrong.”

“Can you read my thoughts so easily?”

“It doesn't take much skill when every word you speak is clipped and you closed my store to talk to me privately. The loss of your barn isn't something that needs to be discussed without others around. What does?”

His gaze caught hers, and she gasped. Fury filled his eyes, a volatile, dangerous fury that seared her, making her wonder if this could be the kind man who had held her with such tenderness. Only when he dropped something into her hand could she escape that glimpse of rage.

Emma frowned at the small wooden box she held. Opening it, she saw an indentation in the velvet inside. The shape was instantly identifiable. As she closed the box, she said, “This holds a pocketwatch.”

“
Held
. The watch, which my brother gave to me, is gone.”

“How's that possible? No one could have gotten to your house when the water was surrounding it.”

He took the box and tossed it onto the closest barrel. “It wasn't stolen during the flood, but before.” He glanced at the storage room door again.

Emma whispered, “Are you accusing Sean?”

“He had the opportunity to sneak into my room and steal it while we were outside.”

“Maybe you just misplaced it.”

“I knew exactly where it was, because it was in the same place it's been since we arrived in Haven. In the top drawer in my bedroom.” His frown did not ease. “That wasn't the only drawer that had been pawed through.”

“And you believe it was Sean?”

“Don't you?”

She closed her eyes and nodded. “He took candy and other food when he first started working in the store. Even when I gave him permission to take as much as he wanted, I discovered he was hoarding the food beneath his bed.”

“Hoarding? Why?”

“I haven't asked, because I wanted him to come to trust me.” She rubbed her hands together to wipe the mud from them. “He still calls me ‘Miss Delancy,' so I don't think he has come to trust me yet.” Motioning for him to wait where he was, she went to the storage room door.

She opened it and saw Sean hard at work counting the boxes of laundry soap. On that, she could not complain. The boy toiled at the store from the hour it opened until it closed, protesting when Emma insisted that he go to school. Her hopes that he would want to play with the other children still went unrealized.

“Sean?” she called.

His head popped up. “Yes, ma'am?”

“Leave that for now. I need you out in the store.”

“Coming.”

Guilt pricked Emma. Sean was so eager to help her. Had he been equally eager to help himself to Noah's pocket watch?

Waiting by the door, she put her arm around his shoulders. He flinched, but his thin shoulders did not grow rigid as, shortly after his arrival in Haven, they had any time she had touched them.

“Mr. Sawyer, how's the farm?” he asked.

“The barn's gone, but everything in the house is there.” He picked up the wooden box. “Everything but what was in this.”

Now Sean's shoulders became stiff. Emma steered him forward a single step, then realized she would get nowhere forcing the boy toward Noah like this.

She faced him and said, “Sean, I want you to be honest with me.”

“Yes, ma'am.” The uneasy glance he fired at Noah added to the cramp in her stomach, for it revealed the truth before she could ask him a single question.

But she had to ask. Putting her hand on his shoulder again, she said, “Noah is missing the pocket watch his brother gave him. Do you know where it might be?”

“Are you accusing me of lifting it?” Defiance raised his chin.

“I asked you if you know where it might be. Sean, you said you'd be honest with me.”

“With
you
.”

“You can be honest with Noah, too.”

He shook his head. “He was going to have me thrown into the lockup when he accused me of stealing that old hammer and the bag of nails. I didn't mean to take anything out of his wagon, but he wouldn't believe me. Why would he believe me now? He'll send me off to jail and throw the key away.”

Emma knelt in front of the boy. Taking his trembling hands, she said, “There's no jail in Haven, and no one is going to send a boy your age to jail.”

“In New York—”

“This isn't New York. This is Haven, Indiana, and we don't send children to jail.” She paused, then asked, “Sean, do you know where Noah's pocket watch is?”

Sean ground the toe of his shoe against the floor. “Yes, I know where it is.”

She looked from Sean's tear-filled eyes to Noah's scowl. In the same quiet voice, she asked, “Will you tell me?”

“He won't whip me, will he?”

“No.”

“What 'bout you?”

“Sean, look at me,” she said.

For the length of two heartbeats, she thought he would not obey. Then he raised his gaze from the floor.

She wiped a tear off his cheek as she whispered, “Do you think
I
would whip you?”

“No.”

“Then tell me where the pocket watch is.”

“In my room.”