Wishes (Montgomery/Taggert 14)

“I’m afraid to tell you. Oh, Papa, I hope our good name can overcome the scandal.”

“Scandal? What is this?” He half pushed Terel into the dusty parlor. “Now tell me everything. Hold nothing back.”

Terel, while giving a good show of weeping, told him all she knew and then some. “They were embracing on top of the wall! And everyone in town saw them. I wouldn’t be surprised if people canceled their contracts with you after this. Nellie cares nothing about us, only about herself. There is no dinner prepared, and upstairs is a mess.”

Charles’s eyes widened, then he left the room to go upstairs. It was some minutes before he came down again. In spite of Terel’s theatrics, Charles understood the problem very well. He wasn’t concerned about Nellie’s scandalous behavior causing him a loss of business, for if that were possible, Terel’s behavior would have hurt his company years ago.

It was the unpolished shoes that caused him concern. Two years ago when Nellie had wanted to marry he had persuaded her not to. He’d known what his life would be like without Nellie. If Nellie left, he’d be alone to deal with Terel’s laziness, with her refusal to do anything that didn’t directly benefit herself.

When Charles had first met Jace Montgomery he’d known who he was. A year before someone had pointed him out as the son of the owner of Warbrooke Shipping. Charles had tried to get an introduction to him, but the man had left town before they could meet. A year later Charles had blessed his luck that, out of the blue, the man appeared and saved him from ruffians.

Immediately Charles had started planning. What a catch he’d be for a son-in-law! Jace would connect the Grayson family with Warbrooke Shipping. Charles imagined a vast land and sea company named Grayson-Warbrooke. So Charles had started talking about his beautiful daughter and had, after hours of talk, persuaded Jace to come to dinner.

Then everything had gone awry. Terel, as usual, hadn’t listened when Charles had told her how important Montgomery was, and so she’d turned the man over to Nellie. Heaven only knew why he was interested in Nellie, but he had been from the first.

He can have Terel, Charles thought, but not Nellie. Or at least he couldn’t have her until Terel was married and gone. Charles wasn’t going to be left alone with his spoiled younger daughter.

“Fool man!” Charles muttered. What in the world did he see in Nellie? Nellie was to Terel as an old plow horse to a sleek racing filly.

He stepped back into the parlor. “I will send men out to look for her,” he said to Terel. “I do not believe our family can stand this scandal. I will forbid her to see Montgomery again.” He gave Terel a piercing gaze. “Perhaps you could see that the man is introduced to Chandler society.”

“I will do my best,” Terel said solemnly. “You know, Papa, that I am always willing to help you.”

Chapter Five

Nellie had been eating for three days. She couldn’t seem to stop. She baked three pies and ate one of them. At the bakery she’d order four cakes and eat a whole one herself. She baked six dozen cookies and ate two dozen before they’d cooled. Every time she remembered the evening of the day she’d spent with Mr. Montgomery, she became ravenous.

The horror of that night—Terel crying, her father’s disappointment in her—had haunted her every minute of every day since then. For three days now she’d lived in fear of people canceling their freight contracts because of Nellie’s scandalous behavior. Her father had painted a bleak picture of the three of them being cast into the street with no food, having to survive a Colorado winter in the open because Nellie was too selfish to care about anyone but herself.

That Nellie’s behavior had been outrageous was verified by the many invitations that began arriving in her name.

“They believe you to be a woman of loose morals,” Charles had said, throwing the invitations into the fire.

Part of Nellie wanted to point out that Terel received invitations yet wasn’t considered a lewd woman. As though reading her thoughts, Terel had said that she hadn’t been seen by the entire town embracing a man. She hadn’t spent most of a night alone with a man in a park.

Nellie had tried to defend herself by pointing out that she’d been home by eight-thirty, but she’d burst into tears when her father asked if there was a chance she would bear the man’s bastard.

Terel had talked to Nellie about how a worldly man like Mr. Montgomery only wanted Nellie because she was so innocent and he could get anything he wanted from her. “Look at yourself, Nellie. Why else would he want you?” Terel had said. “Men like him take advantage of women like you, women who will stay out all night with them, and then they marry respectable women. If he had any respect for you, he wouldn’t have come to the back of the house and asked you to sneak away with him. A man who respects a woman treats her with respect.”

Neither her father nor Terel let up on Nellie. They talked and talked and talked. And Nellie ate and ate and ate.

She was sure they were right. She knew she had caused them great embarrassment, but sometimes, often late at night, she remembered the way Mr. Montgomery had looked at her. Nobody knew that he’d put his head in her lap, and Nellie was sure that if they did, they wouldn’t hold out any hope that she could be saved; but sometimes she remembered the feel of his hair on her fingertips. She remembered how he’d asked her about what she liked to do in life. She remembered the tears on his cheeks when he’d sung the hymn.

In all her memories she could think of nothing that made him seem like the devious seducer that Terel seemed to think he was. Her father said that he flirted with all the pretty women who chanced to come into the freight office. And Terel said that in church on Sunday Mr. Montgomery sat between Mae and Louisa. Charles had said it was better for Nellie not to go to church that day, that she shouldn’t be seen in public yet. He hoped her absence would help the gossip of her scandalous behavior die down. So on Sunday Nellie had remained home, and after Terel told her about Jace sitting with the other pretty, thin, younger women she’d eaten half a dozen cupcakes.

Now she was alone in the house, her father at his office, Terel at her dressmakers, and Anna sent off to the market. She was scouring pans from the previous night’s dinner.

“Hello.”

She turned to see him standing there, and the memories of that wonderful afternoon and evening together came back. She smiled at him before she remembered the last three days, then she frowned.

“You have to leave,” she said, and she turned back to the dishes.

Jace put his bouquet of flowers on the table, went to her, took her shoulders, and turned her around. “Nellie, what’s wrong? I haven’t seen you in days. I’ve been by every evening, but your father said you were indisposed. You aren’t ill, are you?”

No one had told her he’d come by. She moved away from him. “I am perfectly all right, and you have to leave. You cannot be alone with me. It isn’t proper.”

“Proper?” he asked, puzzled. If she hadn’t been ill, then maybe she hadn’t seen him because she didn’t want to. “Nellie, have I done something to offend you?” He straightened. “Maybe at choir practice I…” He trailed off.