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Wildwood. Lynna Banning
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Jessamyn found her hand shaking so violently she couldn’t hold her fork steady. She laid it down on the desk. “No wonder he’s so brusque,” she said half to herself. “He must hate all Northerners.”
“Oh, no, ma’am,” Jeremiah offered with a chuckle. “Not just Northerners. Part of him hates most everybody, ‘cept your pappy—Mr. Whittaker—and me. And sometimes I think he even—”
Something in the man’s raspy voice struck a nerve. Sometimes, she supposed, the sheriff acted as if he even hated his faithful companion, Jeremiah. A resonant chord of understanding tolled in her heart. She knew from her own experience how devastating it was to be abandoned. She also knew how healing it could be to find a friend.
She had nothing in common with Sheriff Ben Kearney. He was a rich Southern plantation owner, she a poor Northern working girl. Ben Kearney was a man of few words, a loner, unfathomable and unyielding as an iron strongbox. Jessamyn relished every waking moment of watching the fascinating parade of people that made up day-to-day life.
No, sir, she had nothing in common with Sheriff Ben Kearney. But she shared an unspoken bond with thoughtful, soft-spoken Jeremiah. Then and there she resolved she would be the deputy’s friend.
“Come on, Jeremiah,” Jessamyn announced. “Let’s have some of Cora’s applesauce cake, then get back to work!”
She unwrapped the square of cinnamon-scented cake, cut it in two pieces with the paring knife Cora had provided, and handed one to Jeremiah. Just as she opened her mouth to take a bite, the door banged open.
Sheriff Ben Kearney leaned his tall form against the door frame, the rowels on his spurs chinging. With slow, deliberate motions he pushed his hat up off his forehead and crossed one black boot over the other.
“Evening,” he said, his voice lazy.
The look in his hard gray-blue eyes sent Jessamyn’s heart skittering into her throat.
“Smells like a Carolina stump whiskey still in here,” the sheriff remarked, his voice ominously soft.
Jessamyn bristled. “We were—I was cleaning my printing press, Sheriff.”
“With whiskey?”
“Yes, with whiskey. The mercantile had no kerosene. Your deputy here—” She glanced toward Jeremiah and gasped. The solidly built man had vanished out the back door.
“Jeremiah came to my aid at the Red Fox,” she finished lamely.
Ben’s dark eyebrows rose. “The Red Fox,” he echoed. “A saloon is no place for a woman. Miss Whittaker. I thought I made that clear yesterday.” Flinty blue eyes bored into hers as he waited, arms folded across his chest, for her response.
“You did. But, you see, without kerosene, I had no choice but—”
“You had a choice,” the sheriff said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “A choice that didn’t involve my deputy in your difficulties. No doubt Jeremiah ‘came to your aid,’ as you naively put it, because he’s an intelligent man and he saw that your presence at the Red Fox spelled trouble. In the future—”
“Now, just one minute, Sheriff,” Jessamyn interrupted. “You don’t own this town. You’ve no right to come barging in here and tell me how to live my life!”
“I’ve got the right,” Ben said. His tone hardened. “You’re a damn menace traipsing into a saloon in your petticoats and lace. When you Yankees mess with things you know nothing about, mistakes come easy. It’s a wonder you didn’t start a hell-fired hullabaloo.”
A heated silence fell. Jessamyn felt her cheeks flame. She rose to her feet, twitched her apron into place with short, jerky movements and turned her back on the man lounging in her doorway.
“Excuse me, Sheriff. I have work to do.” She snatched up her rag and the bottle of Child’s.
A hand closed like an iron band about her upper arm. “Put that down and listen to me.” He gave her a little shake and pulled her about to face him. The whiskey sloshed back and forth in the container.
Jessamyn sucked in a breath.
His mouth thinned into a fine, straight line with no hint of a smile. “Put that down,” he repeated. “Now.”
His voice, Jessamyn thought irrationally, became oddly quiet when he was angry. The timbre of it sent a current of unease dancing up her spine.
She lowered the bottle to the floor, dipping her knees to settle it with care on the plank surface. “Take your hands off me,” she said evenly, keeping her eyes on his.
A flicker of pain surfaced in the smoky depths of his gaze, masked at once by a careful shuttering. Jessamyn cringed at the unfathomable expression in his eyes.
He lifted his hands, dropped them to his sides. For a long minute their gazes locked.
Across the street the piano plunked out a ragged snatch of “The Blue Tail Fly.” A moth batted against the windowpane, and the slow tick-tock-tick of her father’s clock on the wall contrasted with her heart’s erratic beating beneath the starched white waist.
Ben breathed in, out, in again, the air pulling raggedly through his nostrils. Jessamyn blanched at the carefully expressionless face of the man before her. It was plain as day he was furious at her. She had challenged his professional judgment as sheriff.
When, she moaned inwardly, will I ever learn to keep my mouth shut? What was he thinking? Worse, what was he going to do?
At last his low, quiet voice broke the stillness.
“Let me explain something about life out here in the West, Miss Whittaker.” He held her attention riveted to his face by the sheer force of his steady blue eyes and menacing tone. He enunciated his words in quiet, deliberate syllables, with no outward rancor, yet Jessamyn sensed a volcano of fury just beneath the surface. His demeanor frightened her.
“We live by a code here in Wildwood Valley,” he continued. “Any lady who is a lady stays at home in the evening. She doesn’t come into town after dark unless it’s to attend a dance or a social, and even then she doesn’t go about alone.”
His voice dropped even lower. “And she certainly does not work, alone, late at night, smelling of whiskey and—” he sniffed the air “—some flowery-smelling perfume, even if she owns the whole building! Now, go—”
“I wasn’t alone!” Jessamyn blurted. “Jeremiah was here, helping—”
“Of course he was, you damn fool. Jeremiah’s a good man. He wasn’t going to leave you to your own devices here at night, all by yourself. He did what any deputy worth half his salt would do—he stood guard over a rattlepated woman who doesn’t know which end of the horse to mount.”
Stung, Jessamyn raised her chin and straightened her spine. “This ‘rattlepated woman,’ as you so quaintly put it, is now the owner and publisher of the Wildwood Times. As such, I expect to work late, and alone, many nights. That’s what printing a newspaper requires—hard days gathering information and long nights writing stories and setting type. As a taxpaying citizen—” she bit her tongue at the exaggeration “—I expect support, not criticism. So, if you have nothing constructive to offer, Sheriff Kearney, I will bid you good-night.”
Ben sighed. Arguing wasn’t going to solve the problem. Someone as stubborn as Thad Whittaker’s daughter would have to be shown. God almighty, he’d give his right arm if she’d just climb back on the morning stage and go back to Boston where she belonged.
Ben took a step forward and studied her. To think Jeremiah had wasted an entire evening with this prickly, overstarched Northerner. He must be ready to chew nails by now. His deputy had hit the truth for sure; women were definitely troublous creatures.
He shook his head. “Troublous” didn’t half describe Jessamyn