Collision of The Heart (3 page)

Wisdom and common sense were not on the list of Rosalie’s many good qualities. She was kind, intelligent, and beautiful. She also followed her heart more often than good judgment. Her adoration of Fletcher Lambert lay on the list of poor judgments.

But she was right. Tonight was not the time to poke at her about her future.

“I’m happy to hear Fletch is at the church,” Ayden said. “It looked rather chaotic there.”

“I expect it was worse at the wreck.” Rosalie’s eyes clouded. “Was it terrible?”

“It was unpleasant, but it could have been worse. I think we managed to save most everyone. If we didn’t, they were beyond our help, I’m sad to say.”

Rosalie gave him a sidelong glance, as she lifted a spoonful of soup to her lips. “Mia wasn’t injured, was she?”

“Her wrist is hurting her.”

Yet she had continued to seek that baby’s people in spite of her pain. Mia would have sympathy for an abandoned child. She knew too much about abandonment.

Guilt pricked Ayden. He shook it off. She had left him, not the other way around.

Rosalie frowned at him. “If she’s injured, you should have brought her here.”

“She didn’t want to come.” Ayden turned away and started toward the inside kitchen door and paused there, his hand on the latch. “She wants no more to do with me than I want to do with her, so that’s the end of it.”

If only his heart would resume its normal operations instead of interfering with his breathing each time someone spoke Mia’s name.

Chapter Three

E
uphemia scowled at the bandage the doctor had wound around her left wrist, immobilizing it. “I’m not much use to anyone with only one free hand.”

“You should be in a warm, dry bed with someone helping you, not the other way around,” Dr. Clark told her. “If you don’t get out of those wet clothes soon, a sprained wrist won’t be your only trouble.”

“Of course, Doctor. There’s just one problem with that.” Euphemia smiled sweetly. “I don’t have any dry clothes.”

“Then find a hot fire to stand in front of and steam yourself like a dumpling.” He grinned despite the lines of fatigue etching his face, then he turned away to attend to a child with a woolen scarf wrapped around her foot instead of a shoe. “What happened here?”

“I loozed my shoe.” The child’s rosebud mouth quivered.

The sight reminded Euphemia of the toddler on the train, and she touched the doctor’s shoulder. “I’m sorry to interrupt you, but have you tended a woman with a broken leg?”

He didn’t look up as he began to unwind the scarf. “Nothing that serious yet. Looking for someone?”

“Yes, there was—”

Blood appeared on the pink yarn of the makeshift bandage, and the child started to wail, drowning Euphemia’s words.

She glanced at the pale young woman with the child, guessing from the poor quality of her dress in comparison with the girl’s thick wool and fur she was a nanny or governess rather than her mother. Mia decided not to ask her about the abandoned little boy. The young woman’s pallor suggested she would be the doctor’s next patient.

“Send a message to the boardinghouse if you encounter a woman with a broken leg,” Euphemia said above the girl’s cries of distress.

She turned and headed for the door of the church. Around her, passengers accepted blankets and dry clothes and cups of hot coffee and tea from townsfolk. The pastor of First Church offered the building for anyone who had no place to stay.

“Though we’re getting crowded.”

“So’s the hotel,” someone called. “Try the boardinghouse.”

“I only have one room left, and it’s reserved.” Mrs. Greene, who had owned the boardinghouse practically from the founding of the town two decades earlier, stood in the doorway to the sanctuary. “If she don’t show up in another ten minutes, I’m giving the room to someone else.”

“I’m here.” Euphemia wound her way around knots of people gathered in the entryway and reached out her right hand to the boardinghouse keeper. “I’m here, Mrs. Greene. Please don’t give my room away.”

“You can stay with us, Mia,” Mr. Goswell said from behind her.

Euphemia smiled at him over her shoulder. “Thank you, but I’d rather you gave the space to people who truly need it.”

“We already have,” Mr. Goswell said. “That woman and her children will be staying in Frank’s room.”

He referred to their elder son, who now lived in Chicago.

“But we could put you up with Rosalie,” he continued. “I wouldn’t be able to put a stranger there.”

“Of course you can’t. But—” Euphemia cradled her injured wrist and writing case with her right arm. If Ayden weren’t there, she would go in an instant. She always got along well with Rosalie. She adored Mrs. Goswell. Losing Ayden’s family had been nearly as difficult as losing him—precisely why she could not stay in their house, accept their kindness and generosity of spirit. The hope she read in Mr. Goswell’s face reminded her she must not give them the impression she would renew any sort of relationship with their son. She couldn’t hurt them again any more than she wanted to be hurt again.

“I think we’re all better off if I stay at the boardinghouse.” She turned away and skirted a knot of people to reach the boardinghouse proprietress. “I’m here.”

Mrs. Greene’s eyes gleamed in her moon face. “I saw you. Gonna put you up in your old attic room. I know it’s tiny, but I had to put families in the bigger rooms.”

“That’s quite all right.” Euphemia tightened the corners of her mouth. “I’ll pay the full rate.” Before the woman could argue with her, Euphemia spun toward the door.

Mr. Goswell remained near the opening, and Ayden had joined him. So had a man and woman, each carrying a piece of luggage in one hand and holding the hand of a child with the other. The older Goswell male carried a piece of luggage. The younger one held a boy of perhaps five or six whose head lolled against Ayden’s shoulder. His eyes met Euphemia’s across the room, and at the sight of him holding a child so protectively in his arms, Euphemia felt as though the weight of one of those railroad cars were crushing her chest. If only things had gone differently, if only he had taken the teaching position in Boston instead of remaining in Hillsdale when the opportunity arose there, he could be holding their little boy like that in another few years. But he’d broken his promise and made a choice that took them in different directions, and her hope of having everything she wanted died in one spectacular razor-tongued dispute.

The scene blurred before Euphemia’s eyes, and she turned away. She would exit the church through the back door.

She entered the sanctuary. People huddled together on the pews, many slumped or stretched out in repose, if not sleep. Volunteers from the town moved around, distributing blankets and cups of steaming liquids. Euphemia passed the little girl with the injured foot and the pallid governess. The former lay on the pew wrapped in a crocheted blanket, her bandaged toes sticking out. The latter sat beside her charge, her hands in darned black gloves and folded in her lap, her pale eyes fixed on the altar.

Euphemia nodded to the young woman and then slipped through the door beside the choir loft and away to the rear of the church. Little light save for the ambient reflection of snow shone through the window. The odor of burned candle wax and old songbooks stung her nostrils, scents as familiar to her as the college library but not as comforting. These aromas pricked her conscience.

She hadn’t been to church in far too many weeks as she pursued and followed her dream—just like her father. Except she never made promises she didn’t intend to keep. She would return to this church on Sunday and thank the Lord for preserving her life and that of so many others.

She opened the rear door to a blast of snow-thickened wind.

“Miss? Miss, a moment please?” The high, thin voice battled the whine of the wind around the corner of the building.

Euphemia slammed the door and turned back. “Yes?”

“May . . . may I speak with you a moment?” Light from the sanctuary shone on the pale hair and face of the governess.

Legs suddenly as stiff as a snow sculpture’s, Euphemia retraced her steps down the passageway and joined the young woman just inside the church. “How may I help you?”

“I . . . well, I was wondering . . . I couldn’t help but overhear . . .” The young woman twisted her hands together and gazed past Euphemia’s left ear. “Some people offered you a place to stay, and I’m afraid my employers won’t like me keeping their daughter amongst the hoi polloi. That’s what they’ll call this.” She swept one hand out to indicate the assembled persons sleeping on the pews. “But the hotel and boardinghouse are full. So I was wondering . . . we can compensate you, of course. My employers are generous when it comes to their daughter’s needs.”

“You’ll compensate me for what?” Euphemia asked.

The young woman stared at Euphemia as though she were a rather dull-witted child. “Why, for you to give up your room in the boardinghouse and stay with your friends.”

Euphemia’s wrist throbbed. Her head ached. She could no longer feel her toes inside their sodden stockings and boots. She wanted nothing more than to steam herself dry beside a fire and then go to sleep in a real bed. But not a bed at the Goswell house. The strength to guard her heart against seeing Ayden, hearing Ayden, catching his scent of sandalwood and thyme and not suffering no longer ran through her veins.

She opened her mouth to say absolutely not, she needed that room to work, but the governess had begun twisting her hands together hard enough for her fingertip to protrude through one of the darns in her gloves. She must be poorly compensated or need her wages for other more important matters to wear such shabby gloves in the winter. The employers who were generous with their daughter’s needs apparently didn’t feel the same about her governess. Were they ungenerous enough to dismiss her for not taking good enough care of their daughter despite the circumstances?

The mere possibility kept Euphemia’s mouth shut until she found the courage to answer. “All right. Tell Mrs. Greene you may have my room.”

“Thank you.” The young woman smiled, and her eyes glowed like sunlit silver. “I’ll pray extra for you for this kindness.” Back straight and steps light, she hastened to wake her young charge.

Euphemia retreated to the entryway. The Goswells had gone. She must, like a supplicant, arrive at their door in the middle of the night.

“How humiliating,” she muttered.

The alternative, remaining at the church to sleep on a pew in her wet garments, was less acceptable. For warmth and food and a dry bed, she could swallow her pride just this once and risk encounters with Ayden—or perhaps not.

For several minutes, she stood in the doorway to the sanctuary, poised on her toes and uncertain whether to run up the aisle or out the front door. The sanctuary was warm enough. She would dry eventually beside the stove. Then again, Rosalie would lend her warm and comfortable garments in which to sleep. Ayden no longer assisted at the church and would be present at his home. On the other hand, the Goswell household seemed so crowded with stranded passengers that she should surely be able to avoid him.

The notion of comfort won in the end, and she headed down the street. Despite a new moon and the predawn hour, the lanterns hung outside houses and the glow of the snow lit her way along a route she knew well, a mere three blocks from the church.

In the night, the house looked the same—square and solid. Wood smoke scented the air around it, and a dog barked from beyond the front door.

Euphemia skirted the house to knock on the kitchen door. Ayden was less likely to be in the kitchen than the front parlor or study.

She was wrong. He opened the door.

“Mia.” He jerked back a step. “I didn’t think we’d see you again.”

“I apologize. It wasn’t my intention.” She avoided looking at his deep-blue eyes, so warm in the cold night. “I gave up my place in the boardinghouse to a governess and her charge.”

“You would.” His voice held a tender note that brought tears to Euphemia’s eyes.

She was tired was all, worn to a thread from the travel and the wreck and her aching wrist.

“You know you’re welcome here.” He waved to a brightly lit kitchen smelling of coffee and bread. “Come in.”

Euphemia entered. Not until she pushed back her hood and shoved clumps of frozen hair out of her face did she notice the blonde seated at the table, peeling potatoes. She stood, revealing a trim figure in a merino dress over what had to be a crinoline to appear so crisp at that hour and a chignon without a hair out of place.

“This is Charmaine Finney,” Ayden said. “A friend.”

“You’re a very good friend to be here helping in the middle of the night,” Euphemia responded. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Finney.” She pulled off her glove and held out her hand.

Miss Finney touched her fingertips. “When I heard how many people the Goswells had taken in, I just had to come and help. Father wouldn’t have anyone in our house, I’m sad to say. He fears Mother’s silver will disappear.”

“Charmaine’s father is now director of the Classics Department,” Ayden said, as he closed the door.

What he didn’t need to say was that the lovely lady’s father was his director at the college.

“I remember Dr. Finney.” Euphemia smiled at Ayden with the first genuine warmth she’d managed all night. She could afford to be friendly with him. “You should have told me you were taken. I wouldn’t have worried about your parents trying to matchmake us.”

“No, you shouldn’t have to.” His tone was brusque. “Let me find Momma and Rosalie. I think they’re in the attic, digging up clothes for the children.” He bolted from the kitchen like a schoolboy about to be caught in a naughty deed.

Euphemia raised her eyebrows. “I think I’ll get myself some coffee and steam dry by the stove here, if you won’t be inconvenienced by it.” She removed her cloak and hung it on a hook by the door, beside several other wraps.

“Of course you will not inconvenience me. May I ladle you out some soup?”

“I think I am too weary to eat anything.” Euphemia’s head spun.

Miss Finney resumed peeling potatoes. “Do you know where to find cups, or should I help you?”

“I know where the cups are, if nothing’s changed.” Without releasing her left-armed hold on her writing case, Euphemia selected a thick mug from a cupboard and lifted the pot from the back of the stove.

The brew streamed into the cup, as thick and dark as oil. No doubt, the Goswells kept milk in the cellar this time of year, and she could fetch some to dilute the coffee, but she didn’t bother. She needed the stimulating brew to keep her wits about her now that she stood in the Goswell home, now that she stood face-to-face with the new lady in Ayden’s life.