After a moment, Gerald laughed, perching his hip against the press. Somewhere in his late fifties, his hair in wild disarray upon his head, he had soft eyes and a welcoming smile. His calm temperament completely contradicted his size. He bested Adam’s six feet two by an inch, with a chest like a barrel and arms the width of small pine trunks.
“Her father just died, you know. And...” Gerald shifted and resettled against the press. “Selling the
Sentinel
has been hard. Really the only thing that’s ever meant much to her.”
“She can still work here. Jesus, I might not think it’s the best idea, but I wasn’t planning to get rid of her.” He threw the rag to the floor and stalked to a desk stacked with newly delivered supplies. “Whose desk is this?” Hell, for all he knew, it was
hers
.
Gerald’s gaze met his from across the room. “That was Edward’s desk.”
Edward. Giving name to the dead father. Gerald’s downcast eyes paid tribute to
his
sorrow. What about the girl’s? How would it feel to lose your father and your business in such a short period of time?
Adam sighed. “What, Mr. Lambert, do you suggest I do? Beg her? Our encounter this afternoon was not one I wish to repeat.”
Gerald lifted his hands to his mouth, fingers steepled, palms pressed. He seemed to mull it over before speaking. “Charlie has been running around here since she was, ah, fourteen or so. She’s a better writer than Edward was, more organized, too. He loved her to pieces and her”— he glanced at Adam with a faint grin— “willful nature sprouted from that, I reckon. Spoiled her, he did. But, they only had each other.”
Adam grunted. He didn’t have the patience to play nursemaid to an overgrown tomboy.
“She’d be interested in the things you have planned. The rotary press and that fancy lead type.”
As if enthusiasm for lead type could solve everything. “It matters little to me, Mr. Lambert. If she’s not available, I can find someone who is.”
A pleat of skin appeared between Gerald’s brows as he lowered his hands from his face. “You’ll never find someone who loves this paper more. You couldn’t get more for your money.”
“You think money has anything to do with my decision to be here?” Adam laughed. “I would pay a modest fortune to get
out
of this mess.”
“Then why—”
“Mr. Lambert—”
“Gerald.”
Adam sighed and slid a pencil across the desk. “Gerald, I’m here to turn this newspaper around. Oliver Stokes is willing to put capital into his...investment. New equipment” —he tilted his head toward the worn-out press— “is first on my list. Also, we should have a telegraph in less than a month.” He turned his attention to a pile of editorials on the desk. Flipping through them, he noted very few were good enough to salvage.
Edward Whitney had indeed been a dreadful writer.
“Oliver Stokes hasn’t done anything good for this town, Mr. Chase.”
Adam cast a quick glance at Gerald before resuming the paper shuffle. “My experience is the only thing of significance with regard to the
Sentinel
. Oliver Stokes will simply pay the bills.” He wadded a piece of paper in his fist and tossed it to the floor. “I know what a bastard he is. All of Richmond knows him as a miserly, hard-nosed capitalist and generally acrimonious man. Why he’s interested in a small, southern newspaper, I have no idea.”
“He was born here, in Edgemont.”
Adam turned. “Oh?”
Gerald nodded. “Case of the rich man coming back to his hometown and buying everything.”
“I see. Well, that makes sense.” Once more, his gaze dropped to the editorials.
“Charlie hates him. She and Edward tried to keep the
Sentinel
from him. Can’t you understand how tough it’ll be for her to work for him?”
No, he didn’t understand. Then again, how many times over the years had he been forcibly reminded of his heartless nature? “She would be working for me, not Stokes.”
“Yeah, but the money goes in his pocket.”
“There’s not likely to be much of that.”
“Then why does he want it?”
Adam paused. What in the world did a man like Oliver Stokes want with a small-time outfit like the
Edgemont
Sentinel
? “Actually, I have no idea.”
Silence. Then an awkward cough from Gerald. “Will you talk to her again?” He slid the toe of his shoe along the floor.
Adam grabbed the few satisfactory editorials and circled the desk. He stuffed the papers in a leather satchel and moved to the door, all the while considering Gerald Lambert’s words.
Talk to her?
Hell, in a town this size he wouldn’t be able to avoid her for long.
* * *
Charlie glanced at the line of colorful flowers edging the path that led from her cottage to the main road. The crisp scent of pines and fresh-cut grass mingled in the air; the syrupy odor of honeysuckle was strong, too. She could see a patch of it just ahead.
Charlie inhaled, concentrating on the warmth in the air, the heaviness of it. Edgemont was a beautiful place, rugged and unblemished. Fertile and green, situated between two grand rivers, the town fostered a vigorous class of farmers, laborers and businessmen. She looked to the mountains in the distance. Even on a cloudy day, when she could not see them, she could imagine the imposing peaks rising above rolling hills of pine and oak, above deep valleys of soil and rock.
No matter what happened, the mountains were always there. Solid, steadfast, unfailing.
“Well, have you met him?”
Charlie clutched her hand to her chest and whirled about. “Hellfire, Kath! You scared me.”
Katherine Lambert laughed and clapped her hands. “I had to tell you the news. Who else would?”
No one. Only, Charlie did not want
this
news. “Did you run straight out of the kitchen?” She looked Kath over with a frown.
Kath glanced at her wrinkled dress and smiled. She always smiled. A vivacious woman with eyes the color of sour apples, she looked all of sixteen, and often acted it. She grabbed Charlie’s hand. “Let’s sit on the porch.”
Charlie climbed the steps and slid into her rocker with as much enthusiasm as she’d show at a funeral.
Kath slid into the other one, a huge grin on her face. “His name is Adam Chase.”
Charlie scrunched lower in the rocker, until her back was practically resting on the seat. She closed her eyes and knocked her head against the wooden slats.
“He just arrived in town. Yesterday, I think. He’s staying at Widow Davis’. Not married. Not hard on the eyes, either, from what they say.”
Charlie tapped her finger on the rocker arm. “Who have you been gossiping with?”
“Well, Myra Hawkins for one...”
She rolled her head to the side, fixing Kath with an irritable glare. “For heaven’s sake, that one would sink her hooks into anything under eighty.”
Kath leaned forward. “He’s the new editor of the
Sentinel
.”
Charlie lifted her hand in a half-wave. “Oh. I met him.”
Kath bounced once on the seat of her chair. “What did he look like? Is he tall like Mary Ellen Rogers said? And charming like Aileen Fitzsimmons—”
“
Stop
.” Charlie halted the restless motion of Kath’s rocker. “You’ve been going to too many Beautification Society meetings. Heavens, is every woman in this town desperate?”
“From what I heard, you wouldn’t have to be desperate.” Kath clapped her hand over her mouth as a blush stained her cheeks.
“Katherine Hamilton Lambert. Those other women I could see spreading this...this silliness, but you?”
Kath placed her hand over Charlie’s and squeezed. “I know this is difficult.”
Charlie snatched her hand back. “Life goes on, Kath. I understand that better than anyone.”
“And?”
“And, nothing.”
“So, he did look that good.”
“No, he did not look that good.” Actually, she hadn’t even gotten a decent look at the man. She hadn’t even tried.
“Then why are you blushing?”
“I’m not blushing.” But she was. The slow rise of heat felt much like she imagined a painter’s stroke across canvas would. “I barely met the man, for heaven’s sake.” But his deep voice and the sharp angles of his face had created an image in her mind, even if she hadn’t been able to see him clearly, and the image wasn’t ugly.
Kath pleated her skirt between her fingers. “Oh, well, I thought you might know more since you’ll be working with him.”
“I am
not
going to work with him.”
“How about going to the Beautification Society meeting with me this week then? You have the time if you’re not working.”
Charlie suddenly felt like crying. “No. Not now. Not ever.”
“Sewing circle next week?”
“Nope.”
“Fourth of July picnic meeting?”
“Sorry, can’t make it.”
Kath pursed her lips. “You could try, you know.”
Charlie shook her head. Kath meant well, she knew. Only Charlie was not her mother. Eleanor Dane Whitney had been a charming, gracious woman. Her mother’s death had ended any hopes Charlie had ever had of being a lady.
At any rate, whose dream had that been?
She liked who she was. So, she was smarter than most of the men in town. So, she worked. So, she wasn’t married.
It was also true that she would cook and clean as well as any young woman. After her mother’s death, the household chores had fallen on her shoulders. Thanks to two years in Mrs. Mindlebright’s Deportment School, her manners were impeccable. She could drink tea without spilling; she could sew a fairly straight stitch; she could walk Main Street with a book balanced on her head.
Granted, she had never entered a cake in the annual cake contest, never brought a basket to the spring picnic (where Mrs. Mindlebright would have you know that many a lucky couple had entered into a nice, respectable courtship), never held any meetings of the Edgemont Beautification Society at her home. She was glad to forego the pleasures she was
supposed
to enjoy: tittering over the cutest beau, discussing the latest kinds of embroidery, displaying if-not-new-then-very-presentable dresses and slightly scuffed kid leather boots. A room filled with aged white gloves, hairstyles marred only by the incessant humidity, dainty cups and saucers, cookies and tea.
Not that she didn’t get invited. Well...she used to get invited. But events always seemed to be at the most inopportune times. For instance, the Edgemont Beautification Society meetings were always on Thursdays. Thursday was print day at the
Sentinel
. The Beautification Society frowned upon ink-stained fingers.
The plank floor creaked as Kath rose from the rocker. “You haven’t forgotten about dinner this Sunday? Five o’clock.” She crossed to the decrepit wagon she and her husband, Miles, had been talking about replacing for at least five years.
Charlie raised a hand in farewell, watching the wagon bounce along the rutted drive, the small figure seated atop the seat swaying with the motion. Kath was a good friend. Charlie knew Kath had won no prizes for attaching herself to a woman most viewed as rather peculiar.
Charlie knew what she had become. A freckle-skinned hoyden with no respect for proper behavior. A woman who spoke too directly, even to men, and worse, considered herself to have a career.
She swallowed any sorrow she felt and concentrated on the real issue.
What could she do about the
Sentinel
?
* * *
Adam Chase lay in a narrow bed in his rented room. He let his gaze drift. Cozy. The room was cozy. Moonlight from the lone window poured in, sliding across his legs to pool on the floor in a neat puddle.
Amazing how different it was from the other bedrooms he had occupied in his life.
His childhood room had been filled with his grandfather’s furniture and books, the old man’s globe, compass and rifles. A man would have appreciated the antique pieces, the significance, the history associated with each. To a boy of eight, they were a dead man’s belongings, warm from hands he had not known and, at eight years of age, did not want to know.
Conversely, his room in his home in Richmond was practically naked of any furnishings except a bed. The house had been decorated by a man with preferences contrary to his own. On the day of his return from an arduous assignment in the West, Adam had walked into an exquisite home that repelled him. He had no one to blame but himself. The decorator, Pierre Janvier, had repeatedly asked for his opinion, but he had been busy...and hell, a thousand miles away.
The ladies in Richmond loved his home—Mr. Janvier was the
crème de la
crème
of the society circle. Simply put, he was the most expensive. Adam could hardly believe—considering how much how he had
despised
his father’s home—that he was once again residing in a palace teeming with furniture he could not sit upon. One night in an inebriated frenzy, he had stripped his bedroom of everything but the necessities. His housekeeper, Mrs. Beard, had nearly had a seizure when she looked out her window the next day to see the lawn littered with the consequence of his overindulgence.