Liz Ireland - Cecilia And The Stranger

“I’m sure we could have handled this better.”

Confused, Cecilia walked to her door and turned the knob. “For heaven’s sake, Dolly, you’re not making any sense. What is the matter?”

She threw wide the door and saw immediately what was wrong—her things were gone!

“What happened!” she cried, surging forward. Her trunk, her clothes, even her silver comb set that had been on the washbasin stand—all were gone.

“Now, Cecilia,” Dolly began. “You know that this is my best room. It’s always been reserved for the town’s schoolteacher. Always, even when Jubal was alive.”

Cecilia’s gaze narrowed in on the black leather valise on the floor next to the bed. It belonged to Pendergast, that snake. He’d usurped her job, and now her room.

But not for long, she vowed.

Taking a deep breath to compose herself, she turned to Dolly with a warm smile. “Of course,” she said, even managing a gay little laugh as if she didn’t care a fig about losing her prized accommodations. “How stupid of me to forget. Just tell me, Dolly, where are my things?”

Dolly looked at her anxiously, not quite trusting Cecilia’s sudden change of mood. “Well, I stowed them downstairs. I imagined you’d probably ask Buck to give you a ride home this evening.”

“Home?” Cecilia asked, blinking innocently. “With Buck? Whatever for?”

Dolly put her hands on her hips. “Cecilia,” she said sternly. “Now, you know how things are. I have three rooms to let. One to the schoolteacher, and Miss Fanny’s been here since you were in school yourself. And I couldn’t put Jubal’s cousin Lucinda out. He’d come back to haunt me for sure.”

Panic began to seize Cecilia. Home. She was being sent home, back to the ranch, when she had so much to do right here in Annsboro. If no one would believe her suspicions about Pendergast—who she was willing to bet money wasn’t a schoolteacher at all—then she needed to stay close by and gather her own evidence. In the end, the town, even Beasley, would thank her for her pains.

But there was no way to stay if Dolly didn’t help her. She wouldn’t be able to spy on Pendergast. She’d never get her job back, or her independence. She’d be trapped on the ranch to wither away until she finally gave in and married some rancher who would take her off to another patch of dirt. And then she’d still wither away, just like her poor mother.

She practically threw herself at the older woman’s feet. “Oh, Dolly, you must have a place for me somewhere! Anywhere!”

Dolly shook her head worriedly. “I can’t think of a thing. The house only has four bedrooms, Cecilia, apart from the tiny room off the kitchen for my laundry girl, and that’s no bigger than a cupboard.”

Laundry girl? Cecilia remembered Lupe, the young woman who’d been doing laundry before she’d married one of the poor farmers in the area. Her heart surged with hope. “Cupboard?” she asked excitedly. “I can sleep in a cupboard, I don’t mind!”

Dolly’s face fell. “Oh, no, Cecilia.”

“I could even have some of my things sent home—I’ll tell Buck to take my trunk this very evening!”

“Absolutely not,” Dolly said, shaking her head. “That room is for the laundry girl. I’ve always done the wash for my boarders. And if I pay the girl room and board, I don’t have to come up with as much cash money.”

She was right, Cecilia realized, her spirits plummeting fast. About the only thing to hope for now was that Buck hadn’t left the saloon yet. What a miserable day this was turning out to be!

Dolly giggled.

Annoyed by the other woman’s laugh, Cecilia lifted her head slowly and caught her doing it again. “I fail to see anything amusing about this situation,” she snapped.

Dolly shook her head and then laughed outright. “I’m sorry, Cecilia,” she said, breathing hard to hold back a chuckle, “it’s just...” A rumbling laugh exploded from her chest, cutting off her words. “Oh, it’s too silly!”

Cecilia bit her lower lip and waited for Dolly’s laughter to subside. “What is?” she asked impatiently.

The other woman wiped a tear from her eye. “Oh, Cecilia, I just had this picture in my head of you leaning over a washboard.”

Cecilia laughed along heartlessly for a moment—until she was struck, rather violently, by the obvious. She snapped her fingers and turned joyfully to Dolly. “That’s it!” she cried, circling the older woman in a playful little jig. “Dolly, you’re a genius! When can I start?”

Dolly wasn’t laughing anymore. “Oh, no, Cecilia, I was just joking you.”

“Joke or not, I’ll take the job.”

“But I can’t offer it to you,” Dolly countered firmly. “Your father would have my hide, not to mention yours, if I hired you to do the wash. Do you even know how to do wash? The idea!”

“What’s wrong with my doing a little work? Father didn’t mind me teaching!”

Dolly sent her a wry look that made it clear she wasn’t buying into that line of thinking for one second. “There’s a whopping difference between teaching and being a washerwoman.” She laughed again. “Imagine if your father found out you were rinsing out my boarders’ underclothes for a living!”

“He won’t find out,” Cecilia said, her usually merry voice dropping an octave. Having seized on this improbable solution, she was not about to budge.

Sensing that she was moments away from hiring the Summertree heiress into a position of manual labor, Dolly’s eyes widened in alarm. “There are no secrets in Annsboro, Cecilia.”

“I know,” Cecilia said, more brightly. “But Daddy doesn’t live in Annsboro, does he?”

Because her new quarters lacked the generous wardrobe of the teacher’s room, during the next few hours Cecilia weeded out what essential items she would need for the next weeks, packing the rest to send home with Buck, who was under a strict oath of secrecy. Once Pendergast was gone, and it was her intention to make sure his departure was close at hand, she would send for her things again and be comfortably reinstated into her old room.

Dolly filled her in on her other duties; apparently, the “laundry girl” was also the cook’s helper, maid and woodcutter. But Cecilia didn’t mind hard work—not that she’d had much experience in that area—as long as it had some reward. In this case, the prize was her little room behind the kitchen.

The room, which had originally been built as a pantry, consisted of a tiny bed, a table for a washbasin and a half window overlooking the privy. Despite the heat, Cecilia immediately shut the window. So much for fresh air.

By the time dinner was served, she also discovered that the situation of her room actually put her in a double bind. The kitchen’s wood stove was not ten feet away, which, without the window for ventilation, turned her bedroom into something like an oven itself. After taking only ten minutes to freshen up for the meal, Cecilia felt a kindred spirit to the baked chicken lying on the center of the table.

When all was ready, Dolly looked proudly at her spread. She’d used her best china, which had been her mother’s, and had put little cordial glasses by each plate. “For after dinner,” Dolly explained in a prim low voice. “I thought we should welcome Mr. Pendergast properly.”

“Everything looks fine,” Cecilia said without enthusiasm. Greeting this particular guest properly, to her mind, would have entailed meeting him at the door with both barrels loaded.

Steps sounded on the staircase, as well as the ker-thlump footfall of Fanny Baker and her cane coming from the parlor, where the elderly widow spent most of her days. Jubal’s spinster cousin, Lucinda, quietly made her way in, her nose wrinkling nervously at the sight of the china. Lucinda was shy.