Always (34 page)

“Respectable women do not turn their eyes away from the wrongs of this world!” returned a hefty-bosomed, middle-aged woman in a feathered hat. “If we are to be the keepers of morals in this society, then it is our duty to ferret out injustice and expose it for the world to see!”

Ross approached the gathering nearest the ladies to see Karl Becker leaning on his cane. His attention seemed fixed on the proceedings. Judging by the broad grin on his face, he found the unfolding events amusing.

Elbowing his way through the crowd, Ross nudged him. “What’s going on?”

Karl glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, it’s you. For a newspaperman, you’re certainly behind on current events, aren’t you, Rossy?”

“It’s a little early in the morning for your sarcasm, Karl.”

He chuckled. “Gibson’s hearing started fifteen minutes ago. I was going to attend, but then the ladies showed up with their signs. That only added fuel to the fire.”

“What fire?”

“Oh, you missed that, too.” Karl handed him a folded handbill. “That little woman of yours is a real firebrand.”

Ross unfolded the handbill and saw what Karl meant. In bold letters across the top was printed:
Local Woman Beaten. Villain Walks Free. Is this Justice?

“Oh, hell,” Ross muttered as he scanned the words that followed. It was a scathing editorial blasting the injustices of the court system with regard to women’s rights. The author felt that when females finally won the vote and could sit on juries, such vulgar inequities would begin to be addressed.

Firebrand was right. Even though the editorial was officially unsigned, it was obvious who was behind it. Emily must have had a full head of steam when she’d penned this one, but not so much that she’d lost sight of a business opportunity. Near the bottom of the handbill she’d inserted a flamboyant advertisement: Job Printing Done in the Highest Style of the Art!

In honor of the grand reopening of the Winters Print Shop, the ad said, the first twenty customers would receive a twenty-five percent discount. Ross suspected that twenty-five percent off a sizable print order just might make even the most politically conservative businessman think twice before turning down her offer.

“Where is she?” Ross asked, surveying the group of women. His protective instincts were stirred. He believed in Emily’s right to speak out, but he certainly didn’t intend to stand by and allow her to be verbally attacked in public.

“She distributed about a hundred of those things, then went inside with Stacy for Gibson’s hearing,” Karl said, not shifting his attention from the women. He paused, then shook his head in wonderment. “Damn, but she’s magnificent, isn’t she?”

“Sure she is,” Ross said. “Who else would have the harebrained gumption to write such a thing, then attach an advertisement to stir up business?”

“Not Emily. Melissa.”

“Who?”

Karl pointed. “Melissa Carpenter. Look at her. She’s right in the thick of it. Why, who would have ever suspected such a lovely, peaceful creature to be full of such fire and passion? By George, I love a woman with fire and passion, don’t you?”

Before Ross could respond, a beefy man in shirtsleeves shook a fist and bellowed over the grumblings of his comrades. Ross recognized him as Charles McMinn, owner of a tavern near the cotton mill.

Charlie and Miss Bea were old antagonists. Miss Bea’s active involvement in various temperance societies had pitted them head-to-head on many occasions.

“The laws are designed to protect the fair and weak among us!” shouted Charlie. “Not to condone the shameless behavior of trollops!”

“Shame on you, Mr. McMinn!” Miss Bea jabbed a bony finger at him. Her piercing voice rose so that it carried clear across the street and then some. “Shame, shame, thou hypocrite! Thou dispenser of spirits! First cast the beam out of thine own eye and then shalt thou see clearly to cast the mote out of thy sister’s eye!”

“Beatrice Ellinger, don’t you be spewin’ Bible talk at me, you old bat!”

Miss Bea’s eyes sparked as she moved forward to address her attacker. She brandished her placard like a medieval war weapon. “Why, you crusty old drunken coot!”

Melissa snagged her elbow in the nick of time. “Miss Bea! Remember our mission. We’re soldiers of the Lord.”

The older woman’s cheeks flushed. She was still as furious as a bee trapped in a bottle, but she halted her advance. “Onward, Christian soldiers!” she called, then began leading her little group in a march around the square.

“We might have a little bit too much fire and passion today,” Ross observed dryly. He held up Emily’s handbill. “Do you mind if I keep this?”

“Not at all. You going to do a story on it?”

“Not in the
Herald
, I’m not.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I’ll explain later.” Ross slipped the sheet of paper into his coat pocket as he turned away. “I’ve got to go.”

As the shouting in front of city hall had grown more pronounced, so too the throng of curiosity-seekers had thickened. As Ross negotiated his way through the crowd, he took notice that many were passing around the already notorious handbill and commenting upon its contents. Surprisingly enough, not everyone seemed to find it offensive. Many of the men were plainly amused by Emily’s ideas concerning petticoat government, and he even caught a few references to the late Nathaniel Winters’s penchant for playing devil’s advocate.

Ross pulled open the door to the Davenport building and nodded to two clerks who had been observing the city hall fiasco from the front window. Their shocked expressions upon seeing him spoke volumes. The news of his broken engagement had already spread.

When he entered the city room, the copy boys were busy and most of the reporters were already at their desks.

“What? Gee whillikins! Mr. Gallagher! What are you doing here?”

“Good morning, Iggy.” Ross spared the slack-jawed youth a smile in passing. “How’s your mother?”

“Ma? Uh, she’s just fine...”

“Morning, Virge,” Ross said as he approached his own desk.

A grizzled Virgil Davis sat at his neighboring desk, pen held frozen in midstroke. “Ross, what the hell are you—I mean, we didn’t expect—”

“Quite a spectacle taking place across the street,” Ross commented, “I hope someone is covering it.” A quick scan of his desktop revealed that it was conspicuously empty of Associated Press telegraph sheets, a sure sign that something was amiss. His first priority each morning was to go through the national news dispatches and assign write-ups.

Pulling open his top drawer, Ross located his favorite pen and a pair of cuff links. Slipping both into his side pocket, he moved on to a side drawer to find a fresh shirt collar, a folded handkerchief and a half-full drugstore bottle labeled Swayne’s Compound of Wild Cherry, a sore throat remedy Iggy’s mother had recommended. So much for personal effects. Perhaps he had never settled in here as comfortably as he’d once believed.

“Gallagher!”

Ross decided to take the shirt collar and handkerchief and leave the Compound of Wild Cherry. Perhaps Malcolm could use it after he was through bellowing his lungs out.

“Gallagher! In my office! Now!”

“Time to get hauled over the coals,” Ross muttered to himself, then gave Virgil a crooked smile and a careless shrug before turning and taking the long walk. As was getting to be habit of late, all eyes in the city room followed his progress until he closed Malcolm’s office door behind him.

“You sure got a lot of sand in your craw to come here today, you know that, Gallagher?”

Ross met Malcolm’s burning gaze. The older man hadn’t taken a seat but stood behind his desk, feet planted wide apart, his big hands clenched into fists. The barely controlled fury on his jowled face might have been deadly if he were a man prone to physical violence.

“What did you expect?” Ross asked. “I thought it would be a good idea to clear the air between us.”

“Clear the air? You humiliate my daughter and make a fool out of me, and you thought it might be a good idea to clear the air?”

“It was never my intention to hurt Johanna. I thought we could make a good marriage, but I was wrong. She deserves a man who will care for her like a husband should. That man isn’t me.”

“Oh, you were wrong, all right. Wrong to underestimate my tolerance for traitors. How long have you been in cahoots with Emily Winters?”

Ross sighed. “Let’s leave Emily out of this.”

“I suppose you found it amusing that she took advantage of her position here to try to rob me blind?”

“No, I didn’t, but I also couldn’t blame her. She had reason to believe that you were responsible for forcing the
Gazette
out of business.”

Something in Malcolm’s expression faltered as he absorbed this information, then he smiled thinly and narrowed his eyes. “Did she? Well, we all know how a woman’s imagination can be driven by her emotions.”

“Not in this case. She has sources to verify that you and your partners applied financial pressure to the
Gazette
’s advertisers to drop their ads with Nathaniel. Is that true?”

“What if it is? There’s nothing illegal about it. Business is business. That was something poor Nathaniel never quite grasped. Now it’s too late for him, isn’t it?”

“Maybe so, but his daughter certainly seems to be quick to learn.” Reaching into his side pocket, Ross withdrew Emily’s handbill and tossed it onto Malcolm’s desk.

He gave Ross a wary look before picking it up to scan its contents. A brief frown creased his brow as he took in the advertisement, but then he crumpled the paper and threw it down with a dismissive snort. “Doesn’t matter. We’ll drop our rates to match hers.”

“But not before she gets her twenty orders today.”

“Maybe not, but we’ll keep them down until she folds. She can’t possibly outlast us.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Ross said. “She can be very tenacious once she gets fixed on something. Have you taken a look out your window this morning?”

Malcolm grunted in disgust. “It’ll blow over.”

“Only time will tell. Maybe you should have stuck to sound business tactics to deal with Nathaniel Winters from the beginning. Like trying to put out a better paper.”

Ross moved to leave. He’d said all he’d come to say, but Malcolm wasn’t about to allow him the last word.

“Take a good, long look around before you leave, Ross. I told you that you were wrong to underestimate my tolerance for traitors. I intend to see that this is the last newspaper you ever work on.”

“Do your worst,” Ross muttered, then yanked open the door.

This time the city room was quiet as a cemetery as he strode through. Poor Iggy stared, looking almost on the verge of tears. Ross offered him a wink and a two-fingered salute on his way out. There was no turning back now.

*

The war wasn’t over, but the first battle was won. Unless he changed his mind and pled guilty, Arnold Gibson would go to trial in a few weeks.

Of course Emily was happy as she and a conservatively dressed Stacy came out of the city hall building. She accepted Melissa’s warm hug and Miss Bea’s fond pinch on the cheek. It was with a certain sense of accomplishment that she watched a new, more confident Stacy Bliss leave under the wings of Miss Bea and her do-or-die quilting circle. And she also had a very good feeling about Melissa and Karl. When Karl took Melissa aside to confer on the corner of the square, she paused to watch them with a wistful sense of completion. Neither of them seemed to know it yet, but she predicted a wedding before the year was out.

It was certainly a day for celebration, Emily thought as she strolled back to the print shop, yet she wondered why these victories tasted so bittersweet and why she was suddenly left feeling so curiously empty inside.

When she entered the shop, Dorcas came scurrying up to her before the door bells could stop jangling. “Aunt Emily, look! We got orders! A hundred of ’em!”

“Twelve,” Karen corrected with a smile from behind one of the front desks. She waved a handful of order sheets. “I meant to get your office floor mopped, but it’s been so busy, I haven’t had a chance to get back there all morning.”

“Which is for the best,” Marguerite interrupted sternly, coming forward with a huge feather duster in hand. She addressed Emily. “I told her she wasn’t to do any heavy work today. Her ankles are swelling up like pumpkins.”

Karen rolled her eyes. “Mama, I can’t just sit here like a crystal statuette. What good is that?”

“Plenty good,” Emily cut in, eyeing her sister’s very pregnant middle. “You’re here to take print orders. You needn’t worry about cleaning. I’ll take care of that later.”

“When ‘later?’” Karen demanded, again waving the print orders at her. “You’re going to be a very busy lady.”

“What have we got?” Emily asked.

“Three hundred business cards, fifty raffle tickets, one hundred programs...”

Emily nodded. This was all well and good. What she’d been hoping for in offering a temporary discount was an order large enough to help offset her immediate cash problem. “Anything big?” she asked hopefully.

Karen gave her a sly smile. “How about five thousand carton labels and two thousand billheads?”

Emily’s eyes grew wide. “All in one order?”

Grinning, Karen nodded. “You’re lucky that Mr. Bertram Douglas happened to be in town this morning on business and that he knows a bargain when he sees one.”

Emily didn’t wait for her sister to elaborate. It was common knowledge that Mr. Douglas owned, among many other business enterprises, an iron foundry in nearby Sadsbury Township. She snatched the print orders and shuffled through them. There it was, in black and white, with Mr. Douglas’s spidery signature to verify it. With an order that size, there would be room for a small profit despite her discount. Better yet, if she could impress the man with the quality of her work, there might be more orders in the future.

“It looks like we’ll be in business for another month,” Emily said, looking up to meet her family’s beaming faces. “We may make a go of this yet.”

“Isn’t that what you’ve been saying all along?” Marguerite inquired teasingly.