Ana Seymour - A Family For Carter Jones

Jennie literally sputtered with fury. When she could shape the words into speech she leaned close to Carter and said, “The only trouble my sister has is meddling busybodies like you who can’t leave decent people alone to live out their lives.”

“I’m trying to work out a settlement that will—”

Jennie reached to grab Carter’s hat from where he had laid it beside him on the settee and she went up on tiptoe to jam it onto his head, taking care to crush the brim in the process. Then she picked up the delicate nosegay from the table and stabbed it into his chest. “You can just take your settlement and your damn flowers and get out of here. My sister is waiting for me to help her fix dinner in our kitchen in our house, the house where she’s going to have her baby and raise him or her to be a more caring, tolerant person who will be worth more than every hypocritical member of the town council put together.”

Carter made a halfhearted attempt to straighten his hat with one hand while he held on to the mangled flowers with the other. Jennie finished her speech and, without giving him a chance to reply, whirled on her heel and stalked out of the room. As she disappeared under the doorway drapery, she fired back over her shoulder, “You may see yourself out, Mr. Jones.”

If Carter had any intention of soothing his feelings by forgetting the existence of Jennie Sheridan, he was doomed to be disappointed. For the next three days, as he awaited the ruling he’d sent for, a constant stream of visitors paraded through his office arguing the pros and cons of the sisters’ case. Even the three shaggy miners who were boarding at Sheridan House put in an appearance, shuffling and looking ill at ease among books and papers instead of their accustomed tools and rocks.

Just about the only person who didn’t show up was the one person he secretly kept hoping to see each time the creaky office door announced a new arrival. The person who’d unceremoniously thrown him out of her house at their last encounter.

This morning the advocate for the Sheridans was once again Dr. Millard, who had finally been called in to consult on Kate’s condition.

“Something’s got to be settled in this matter. And I mean, immediately,” the doctor said, his expression unusually serious.

“Unfortunately, courts don’t seem to be too good at getting things done anywhere near immediately.” Carter frowned at the number of pencils scattered around his desk and began to replace them in their appropriate trough.

“They’d better make an exception this time. The health of a young woman might depend on it.”

“Kate Sheridan’s not doing well?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss the condition of my patients, Carter. You’re a lawyer—you know that. But I’ll tell you that I’m making a professional recommendation that the Sheridans not be subjected to any more anxiety.”

Spending half his time on a dispute over a minor zoning infraction was not what Carter had envisioned when he’d taken the district attorney position. He’d been hoping for some kind of high-profile trial of the century that would have put him in the political spotlight for the entire state. Part of him wished the whole thing would go away. Another part of him wished he could yet come up with a solution that would make him a hero to the stubborn but lovely Jennie.

“I’ll send another wire to the court,” he told the doctor. “And in the meantime I could see the Sheridans and tell them that no one will be closing them down until we’ve heard on the appeal. Do you think that would help?”

Dr. Millard nodded. “It’s just not healthy for Kate to be sitting over there waiting for the sheriff to appear any moment. She needs total peace and rest.”

“A house full of men doesn’t seem too peaceful to me,” Carter observed.

“Jennie’s handling things. She won’t even let Kate make the beds anymore. Jennie does the cleaning, cooking, fetching water and cares for Kate, as well.”

Carter made no comment. He’d seen Jennie handling things. Himself, for one. But he’d also seen her turn shy and tongue-tied as a schoolgirl that night he’d taken her hand and asked her to call him Carter. Which was the real Jennie? he wondered. He wasn’t likely to find out if his last-ditch appeal on her case came back rejected, as he was almost certain it would.

Dr. Millard stood, pushing heavily on the arms of the chair. “Old bones don’t want to work some days,” he muttered. Then he looked across the desk at Carter, his eyes as piercing and sharp as any man half his age. “Go talk to them, my boy. Make up a story, if you have to. I’d wager it wouldn’t be the first time you’ve stretched the truth to tell a pretty girl what she wants to hear.”

Dr. Millard softened his accusation with a wink, and Carter grinned as he answered, “You’d win that bet, Doctor.”

He waited until the doctor had slowly made his way down the office stairs, then reached for his hat. He wasn’t sure he was ready to face Jennie Sheridan yet, but he would send that wire. At the very least, it would get him out from behind this desk.

Throughout his childhood Carter had watched the comings and goings of Philadelphia mainline society from hidden corners in laundry rooms and butler’s pantries. He’d not merely watched, he’d studied them until he could imitate the haughtiest Pennington or the most tiresome Witherspoon.

He’d learned early to keep out of their way, to allow no opportunities for the rich young offspring of the people his mother worked for to taunt him for his lack of a name. But it had been a lesson learned in heartache. His mother, Maude, had usually been too tired from her days of scrubbing floors and polishing mahogany staircases to lend comfort to the small boy who had, after all, been the result of an entirely improper upstairs-downstairs liaison that had been the one mistake in her circumspect life.

So Carter was left on his own to watch and plan. His blood was every bit as blue as these elegant men and women who passed him by each day as if he were no more than one of the marble statues currently in vogue. His father had given him the heritage, but not the name. Nor would he ever have the chance to do so. According to Maude Jones, Carter’s father had been sent off in disgrace on a grand tour of Europe after impregnating the family servant and had died in a carriage accident in Italy.

Sometimes Carter used to spin fantasies about what would have happened if his father had returned from that trip. He would have visited Maude in the tiny apartment she’d been forced to take to await the birth. There he’d have seen his son and would have been so full of fatherly pride that he would have resisted his entire family and taken Maude to wife. And Carter would be living in one of the fine stone mansions instead of lurking there in shadows, waiting for his mother to finish her endless toil.

Walking slowly down the main street of Vermillion toward the telegraph office, he wondered what had triggered his sudden reverie into the past. It had been months since he’d indulged in those memories. Months, too, since he’d written to his benefactor, a Mr. Arthur Trenton, one of his mother’s employers who had finally noticed the boy in the shadows and had seen fit to send the abnormally bright child first to prep school and then to Harvard.

Before his mother’s death, Carter had spun fantasies of Mr. Trenton falling in love with Maude and marrying her, which would finally give Carter the name he craved. But, of course, by then Maude was no longer the pretty English immigrant fresh off the boat. Years of labor had roughened her skin and dulled her bright eyes. Arthur Trenton never so much as glanced her way.