“Thank you,” she managed to mutter. “I must go in now. Would you like to see Terel?”
“No, I don’t want to see your sister. Wait! Don’t go. Please, Nellie, would you sit with me a while?”
She glanced up at him when he used her first name. “All right, Mr. Montgomery, I’ll sit with you.” She sat in the swing where they’d sat so companionably earlier in the day, but Nellie didn’t say a word.
“What’s there to do in Chandler?” he asked.
“Church socials, the park, riding, not much. We’re a boring little town. Terel knows everyone, though, and she can introduce you.”
“Will you go with me to the Harvest Ball at the Taggerts’ in two weeks?”
She looked at him sharply. “Which Taggert?” she asked, stalling for time.
“Kane and his wife, Houston,” he said, as though no other Taggerts were in town.
Nellie just sat there blinking. Kane Taggert was one of the richest men in America, and he lived in a magnificent house on a hill overlooking the town. His beautiful wife, Houston, gave elegant parties for their friends, and once a year they gave a magnificent ball. Last year she and Terel had been invited, Terel had gone while Nellie stayed home, but something had happened—she wasn’t sure what—and this year they’d not received an invitation, much to Terel’s horror.
“Terel would love to go,” Nellie said. “She would love to—”
“I’m inviting you, not your sister.”
Nellie had no idea what to say to the man. When she was twenty and much slimmer than she was now she’d had a few invitations from men, but she’d rarely been able to accept. At twenty she had had the responsibility of caring for her father and a twelve-year-old sister—and her father did not like his dinner late.
“Mr. Montgomery, I—”
“Jace.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“My name is Jace.”
“I couldn’t possibly call you by your Christian name, Mr. Montgomery. I have just met you.”
“If you go with me to the ball, you’ll get to know me better.”
“I couldn’t possibly. I must…” She couldn’t think of a single reason why she couldn’t go, but she knew it was an impossibility.
“I’ll take the job your father is offering if you’ll go with me. And if you’ll call me Jace.”
Nellie knew that her father wanted this man to take the job, knew that he needed someone to help run his freight company, but none of this made sense. Why was he trying to persuade her to go somewhere with him? “I…I don’t know, Mr. Montgomery. I don’t know if my father can spare me. And Terel needs—”
“What that young lady needs is…” He didn’t finish his sentence. “I won’t take the job unless you agree to go with me. One evening, that’s all I ask.”
Nellie imagined entering the big white house on the hill on the arm of this extraordinarily handsome man, and she quite suddenly very much wanted to go. Just once she’d like to go out for an evening. “All right,” she whispered.
He smiled at her as he stood, and even in the darkness she could see his dimple. “Good,” he said. “I’m very pleased. I’ll be looking forward to it. Wear something beautiful.”
“I don’t have anything…” She didn’t finish. “I will look forward to the evening also,” she whispered.
He smiled again, put his hands in his pockets, and, whistling, left the garden.
Nellie sat where she was for a moment. What an extraordinary man, she thought. What a very unusual man.
She leaned back in the swing, smelling the sweet fragrance of the flowers. She was going to the ball with a man. And not just any man. Not the butcher’s fat son Terel was always suggesting, or the grocer’s seventeen-year-old son who sometimes looked at Nellie with big eyes, and not the sixty-year-old man her father had once introduced her to. Not the—
“Nellie! Where have you been?” Terel demanded, standing over her in the darkness. “We have been looking all over for you. Anna is destroying the kitchen, and Father wants you to watch her, and I need you to unlace my dress. We’re suffering while you sit here daydreaming. Sometimes, Nellie, I don’t think you care about anyone but yourself.”
“Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll straighten out Anna.” Reluctantly she left the swing and the garden and went back to the very real world inside the house.