Chapter
5
An hour later, Claire had decided that Bart and Addie Porter were ministering angels sent by God to ease her way through the cyclone of change whirling through her life. Not only did Bart have the horse and cart ready for her, but while the men were off collecting the luggage from the depot and tracking down a goat she could purchase, Addie gave Liam what Claire could not—mother’s milk. While her own six-month-old daughter rolled about on the bedroom floor, exploring table legs and sucking on blanket corners, Addie nursed Liam and freed Claire to cut the diaper cloth she had purchased into ready-to-use squares. She even had time to hem them on Addie’s Singer sewing machine.
By the time Pieter returned and stored his extra trunks and crates in a back corner of Mr. Porter’s livery, Liam was fed, changed, and fast asleep in a padded baby basket Addie had insisted on loaning them. With no other baby details to address, Claire was free to relax.
Only she couldn’t. As soon as Pieter climbed up beside her on the small, two-person cart seat, his wide shoulders and long legs taking up more than his fair share of the space, all she could think about was him. The feelings he stirred confused her, despite her efforts to maintain a practical perspective. As her feet straddled the baby basket on the floorboard, she became far too aware of his thigh pressing against hers. And his smile—hopeful, yet a tad nervous—had an unsettling effect on her pulse.
It was too much. Too familiar and comfortable. Too reminiscent of other times they’d been together. Walks home after work, church picnics where she’d sat close enough to brush his arm every time she reached for her plate. Even now she wanted to touch him, to reassure him that he had nothing to be nervous about, that she would always stand beside him. Yet it was his very failure to stand beside her that had brought them to this particular juncture.
Desperate to busy her hands and distract her mind, Claire reached into her handbag for a piece of embroidery. She always stashed a small project in her reticule, hating to be idle. She was working on a bread cover for Bertie Chandler’s birthday next month. In each corner of the linen cloth she’d fashioned stalks of wheat in golden-brown thread, waving in imaginary wind. She’d finished three of the corners already and started the fourth this morning—started but quickly abandoned. Her anxiety about her errand combined with the jostling of Ben Porter’s freight wagon had made it nearly impossible to stitch with any level of precision. Thankfully, the plodding pace Pieter had set in order to allow the goat to keep up with their cart offered more stability.
Sliding the threaded needle from the fabric, Claire eyed the base of the wheat stalk she’d started that morning. Only three back stitches tall, poor thing. Time to fill it out with some satin-stitched leaves and grain heads. Yet when she set her needle to the linen, her fingers trembled enough to require three attempts before she found the right hole. All because the man sitting next to her chose that moment to inhale in a particularly portentous manner.
She held her breath with him, not even realizing she did so until he finally exhaled and freed her to breathe on her own. Little good it did her, though, when he opened his mouth and stole her breath altogether.
The quiet words caught her so off guard, she jabbed her needle into her finger. She’d been expecting explanations, apologies, pleas for forgiveness. Not a declaration. Especially not one that made her heart weep and sing at the same time.
Pieter turned to look at her. She could feel his regard, though she kept her gaze focused on her needlework.
“I know I have much to explain,” he said, “but I wanted you to hear that truth first. I love you. Only you. I’ve never loved another.”
Claire tightened her left hand into a fist, her injured finger throbbing just as her heart throbbed with a betrayal that had never fully healed. “Then why did ye spend all of last spring escortin’ Miss Josephine Ellmore about town as if ye were courtin’ her?”
She hadn’t believed the rumors at first. The Pieter she knew would never be so shallow. So deceitful. He’d gone to Rochester to learn the workings of the dairy industry, to make business connections, to earn the funds he needed to buy his own land. For their future. He’d gone to better himself, and she’d trusted him. Even when the neighborhood girls delighted in reminding her that the best way for Pieter to better his prospects was to leave the Irish trash that persisted in clinging to his shoe in the gutter where she belonged.
Not Pieter, her soul had cried. Not steadfast, steady, dependable Pieter. His word was his bond, and he’d vowed to come back for her. To marry her. As soon as he had the money put by to provide the life they had planned.
Yet when Polly came to her, concerned about something she’d overheard Pieter’s brother Diederick saying to some friends about Pieter finally figuring out how to get ahead in life, Claire had no longer been able to sustain blind faith in her man. She’d craved validation. Vindication against the cruel taunts and salacious gossip. She’d taken half a day off work and traveled to Rochester. Wearing her best dress, her hair twisted in a fancy style that had taken Polly an hour to arrange, she’d stepped off the train and walked through town, determined to prove her man faithful.
Only to prove the opposite.
She’d found them exiting an ice cream parlor. Pieter, solid and stoic as an oak, while a vibrant butterfly clung to his arm. The beautiful blonde laughed and fluttered and leaned intimately close, her expensive blue walking gown floating about her like delicate wings. She teased and cajoled and slapped Pieter playfully on the arm, as if scolding him for being too serious. And he’d smiled. A wide, toothy grin, bigger than the paltry half-smiles he’d always bestowed on Claire.
Never had she felt so shabby. So . . . second-class. Her Sunday dress, which had filled her with confidence a few hours earlier, now seemed faded and lifeless. She swore she could feel every last one of her freckles pushing out from her skin, announcing her flaws and imperfections to the world.
And in that heartbeat of keenest vulnerability, Pieter had glanced up and seen her. The color had drained from his face, and his eyes had gone as wide as silver dollars. Fitting, since dollars were apparently what he’d had his eyes on all along.
He had called her name and taken a step toward her, but she turned her back and ran. Less than a hundred feet had separated them on the boardwalk, but it had been crowded, and she eluded him by ducking into a millinery shop with a group of giggling girls, then disappearing out the back. He hadn’t caught up to her that day. Nor any day since. Until now.
Pieter’s gaze continued searing the side of her face, willing her to look at him. She felt the heat of it. Even saw a hint of his intensity through the corner of her lashes, but she refused to give in. A girl could get lost gazing into those earnest, honey-brown eyes. She needed all the control she could muster if she hoped to keep her mind functioning at full capacity. She jabbed her needle through the fabric and ignored the knot in her midsection that matched the tangle she’d just created in her thread.
A heavy sigh was Pieter’s only response to her stubbornness. He turned away to face the road, and Claire swore the temperature of her cheek fell several degrees at his action, as if the sun had moved behind a cloud.
“I was never courting Miss Ellmore,” he finally said. A long silence stretched after that pronouncement, only the creak of wagon wheels and an occasional birdcall meeting Claire’s straining ears. Then he cleared his throat. “But I did make an effort to curry her favor.”
Claire snuck a peek at his profile. His nape had a ruddy glow to it, his head hung low, and his shoulders slumped. He must have sensed her attention, for he started to crane his neck toward her. She yanked her eyes back to her embroidery and thrust her needle into another stitch, uncaring that it wasn’t in the right place and that she hadn’t yet untangled the thread from her last attempt.
She wanted to shout at him. To accuse him. To beg him to explain how he could love her while flirting with, if not outright pursuing, another.
But she held her tongue, as much out of fear of what she might reveal as a desire to make the telling just a bit harder on him. She’d decided to listen. She hadn’t promised to pave the way with rainbows and rose petals.
“It was during my second year of apprenticeship at the Ellmore Dairy that Jo started acting odd.”
Claire cringed at the nickname. What happened to Miss Ellmore? Now she was Jo. Claire pushed her needle upward into the fabric, huffing out an impatient breath when the knot she’d created on the back side refused to allow the thread to pass through.
“At first, she just looked at me differently, smiling far too often and too . . . brightly.” The discomfort in his voice soothed her pride a bit, but the memory of his own bright smile—aimed at Jo—kept her from softening her stance. “Then she started coming by the dairy late in the afternoons, supposedly to visit her father, but it was my aid she enlisted in helping her return to the house without soiling the hem of her fine gowns. Why she wore such garments to a muck heap in the first place never made a lick of sense to me, but I couldn’t ignore her request. Especially not with her father looking on.”
Claire shook her head at Pieter’s ignorance of feminine wiles. True, she’d never been one to employ them herself, much preferring to speak her mind than play games, but even an innocent like Pieter must have caught on eventually that Josephine Ellmore had been angling for a strong arm to lean on.
“During the rainy months, it was faster just to carry her back to the house and avoid the mud altogether.”
Claire rolled her eyes as she flipped her fabric over and started picking at the knots. “Yet somehow she managed to get to the dairy without assistance,” she muttered under her breath. “Daft man.”
“Did you say something?” Pieter’s gaze warmed her cheek again.
Claire wagged her head from side to side. “Continue on with your woeful tale of carryin’ fine ladies in your arms. ’Tis surely warmin’ me heart towards ye.”
And that was why she needed to keep her mouth shut. He’d be a fool not to hear the jealousy behind the sarcasm. Then again, he’d been fool enough to fall for the Oh, I can’t possibly dirty my hem ploy.
“Well, anyway . . . it became apparent that she harbored some . . . interest in me.”
Ye think so? Claire ground her teeth together and jerked her needle. A separated thread pulled without its partners, increasing the size of the knot. Good grief. Why would this thread not cooperate? No matter how she picked at the loose ends, the tangle only grew worse.
“And her father seemed to approve, despite the fact that I had mentioned having a girl back home.”
As if that would matter. Pieter was intelligent—about most things—driven to succeed, and the hardest worker in ten counties. Ellmore would have recognized that right away. He’d no doubt been grooming Pieter to become a partner in his business. How better to solidify the future of Ellmore Dairy than to tie Pieter to it through marriage to the man’s daughter?
“Then I made the mistake of listening to my brother.”
“Diederick?” Claire’s head came around at the tightness in Pieter’s voice. His disapproval and disappointment in his sibling could not have been more evident. Yet judging by the way he lifted a hand from the reins to tug at his collar, there was some disapproval and disappointment aimed at himself as well.
Pieter nodded. “He came to see me one weekend, and we got to talking. I complained about how uncomfortable Miss Ellmore’s . . . flirtations were making me. How trapped I felt.”
Glad Jo was back to being Miss Ellmore, Claire opted to keep her gaze on Pieter’s face. The way his jaw clenched when he talked about Miss Ellmore lent authenticity to his story. Claire knew Pieter. His kind nature. He’d never rebuff a woman or fail to offer assistance. He was too much the gentleman. Maybe he had been trapped.
Claire turned back to her needlework and ordered her heart not to soften. Trapped or not, there was no excuse for what she’d witnessed at the ice cream parlor. Pieter hadn’t been carrying Josephine Ellmore’s parcels or protecting her from a runaway wagon. He’d been stepping out with her. In public. Shaming the poor Irish girl he’d left behind in the tenements of New York.
“Dirk always has an angle.” Pieter ground out the words between clenched teeth. “He said he’d overheard Jo complaining to her father about me ignoring her and being so rude as to leave a room whenever she entered. He said Ellmore was angry and threatened to send me packing without a reference.”
An outcome that could have negated all the work Pieter had done to establish a reputation for himself among the area dairymen.
“Dirk suggested I humor the girl. Pay her some attention. Take her out a few times and let nature run its course. She was bound to tire of me, boring stiff that I am.”
Claire frowned at the unflattering phrase Diederick always tossed in his brother’s face whenever Pieter attempted to rein in Dirk’s adventurous tendencies. Pieter might not be flamboyant or boisterous, but he’d never been boring. Not to her. Besides, what good was a bright red circus tent that flapped free of its moorings the first time a bit of wind kicked up? She’d much rather have a stone wall sheltering her, stalwart and dependable. If Josephine had half a brain, she’d recognized that truth, as well.
“Then, after the infatuation faded,” Pieter continued matter-of-factly, as if such a result was a foregone conclusion, which ironically stirred Claire’s temper, “I’d be free to return to you with better prospects. Perhaps even a partnership.”
He fell silent for a moment, then guided the horse to the side of the road and halted the wagon. Claire’s feet squeezed the basket on the cart floor at the unexpected change in direction, but she needn’t have worried. Liam slept on.
Pieter turned in his seat, or tried to. There was so little space that his knees simply knocked against hers as his torso twisted. He covered her hand with his own, needle and all.
“I gave in to temptation, Claire. I knew better than to listen to Dirk’s schemes, but I wanted that partnership so badly.”
She understood that drive. The same need to succeed burned in her chest, too. She just never thought he’d choose the easy way over the honest way. Diederick, yes. But Pieter? Never.
“Losing my position at Ellmore’s would have put me back at least a year, if not more, from my goal,” Pieter said. “I couldn’t bear to put off our wedding that long.”
Our wedding? Claire pulled her gaze from his hand to focus on his face. His beautiful, rugged, weather-worn face.
“The separation was already tearing my heart out. I would have done anything to speed the day that would make you mine. So I . . . I gave in. With Dirk’s idiotic promises of ‘no one will get hurt’ and ‘Claire will never even know’ scratching my itching ears, I agreed. I stopped avoiding Jo. I never sought her out, but neither did I turn down any of her requests. If she wanted me to take her to town, I took her as soon as my work at the dairy was done. I sat with her in church. Held her knitting yarn so she could roll it into a ball, and tried to look interested when she prattled on about fashion and people I knew nothing about. I even made myself smile at her with one of those ridiculous giant grins that Dirk insisted made the ladies happy.”
Claire’s heart seized before galloping away with her breath. Had . . . had she understood him correctly? He’d gone along with Diederick’s scheme not because he’d wanted to find success in business, but because he wanted to find a way to make her his wife sooner? The irony was too much. He’d danced attendance on another woman in order to be with her. Heaven preserve them.
“I was stupid, Claire. Stupid and impatient. It wasn’t fair to Jo for me to pretend an interest I didn’t feel, and it was hurtfully disloyal to you. The moment I spotted you on the street in Rochester, I recognized my error. You were everything to me. All that I’d been working for was for you. For our life together. But by using dishonorable means to achieve an honorable end, I corrupted something beautiful and made it ugly.
“That very day, I told Jo about you and apologized for not being honest with her. She was angry and hurt, but she didn’t have her father send me packing, which made me wonder if the conversation Dirk had supposedly overheard had ever really happened in the first place.
“Every weekend I returned home, praying you’d let me apologize, let me somehow put things right. But you refused to see me. Returned my letters without reading a single word. Then one weekend you were simply gone.” Pieter fell silent for a moment, then slowly pulled his hand away from hers. “After all we had meant to each other, Claire, you just gave up on me. Worse—you ran off to Texas to marry a stranger.”
The hurt in his voice made her heart bleed, but it was the betrayal shining in his eyes and the loss of his touch that cut the deepest. She hadn’t been the only one betrayed. He’d used a woman to ease his path to success, but hadn’t she done the same? Used a man to salvage her pride and escape her pain? She’d taken the easy way out, too. With disastrous results.
“Oh, Pieter,” she said softly, regret thickening her voice, “we’re a pair of fools, aren’t we?” She fiddled with her embroidery, lamenting the jumbled mess she’d made of the threads. “Our pasts are so tangled and snarled, I doubt we’ll ever be put to rights. We’ve too many knots in our way.”
Her eyes jumped to his. “Good? What d’ye mean, good? Knots are a bad thing.”
“Not to my way of thinking.” Something fierce lit Pieter’s eyes as he leaned closer to her. She backed away slightly, but he followed, bending even farther toward her. “I want to be so tangled and knotted up with you that nothing will ever pull us apart again. Not anger, nor hardship, nor hurt, nor even some dunderhead’s idiotic mistakes. No matter what comes, we stick together and work it out.”
Her stomach ached with yearning. He made it sound so easy.
It wouldn’t be.
But maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t be impossible, either.