A Family For Carter Jones

* * *

“I thought I told you that you would need reinforcements when you came back here, Mr. Jones.”

Jennie Sheridan’s voice was even frostier than it had been that morning, but Carter was concentrating more on the way the neck of her maroon silk evening dress scooped out a circle of creamy white skin. The sight made the air stick in his throat. He’d tried to hold on to the idea that his interest in the Sheridan case was all in the name of justice and fair play. But standing here in the doorway looking at her, he had to admit that his motives were at a baser level.

Simply put, the diminutive, curvaceous Miss Sheridan made the blood race through his veins.

“I didn’t come to put you out of your home,” he said when he could trust himself to speak. “I came to offer my help.”

Jennie looked skeptical. “Your help?”

Carter looked up and down the darkened street. The new street lanterns had not yet been placed in this part of town. “Is it too late to invite me in?”

She bit her lower lip, drawing Carter’s eyes to her full mouth. “I guess not”

She looked down at his hands as if expecting to see the papers he’d brought earlier. He held them out, palms up. “No concealed weapons,” he said lightly.

The smile she returned was slight, but it was enough to restore the confidence that had slipped a notch when he’d felt the visceral effect of seeing her in that dress. She was, after all, a woman. And if there was one thing Carter had always been able to handle, at least since the time he’d graduated to long pants, it was women.

“I suppose you can come into the parlor for a few minutes,” she said, holding the door open for him to enter. “Our board…our guests are there playing cards.”

He followed her inside and placed his hat on the hall table. “And your sister…?” he asked as she started toward the curtained archway that evidently led to the parlor.

She whirled to face him. “What about my sister?”

He held up a peacemaking hand again. “I just wondered if I would meet her, too. I was talking earlier tonight with a friend of hers who seemed concerned about her welfare.”

“What friend?”

“Lyle Wentworth.”

Jennie made a face. “He used to be sweet on Kate.”

“Still is, if you ask me.”

Jennie ignored his comment as she led the way under the drapes into the cozy room where three men sat around a small round table covered with playing cards. A fire burned cheerily behind the grate of the painted brick fireplace. “Mr. Jones, I’d like you to meet Dennis Kelly, Brad Connors and Humphrey Smith.”

The men looked up from their game in acknowledgment of the introduction, but did not stand and offered no words of greeting. The one she’d called Mr. Kelly was a heavyset blonde with muttonchop whiskers. He said to Jennie, “Is he bothering you with those papers again, Miss Jennie?”

“Mr. Jones says he’s come here to help, Dennis,” she told him with a smile.

“Why can’t the town just leave these girls alone?” Kelly asked, turning his gaze on Carter. “Ain’t they got enough problems?” The other two men at the table nodded their agreement.

Still more defenders for the Sheridans, Carter noted. “That’s what I came to talk over with Miss Sheridan. I’d like to help her and her sister out of this dilemma.”

The three men didn’t reply, but sat staring at Jennie and Carter, making no move to resume their game. After a couple minutes of awkward silence, Jennie said, “Why don’t we go in the kitchen, Mr. Jones? I’ll pour you a glass of cider.”

Carter nodded and after a distracted “Nice to meet you” to the boarders, he followed her to the back of the house, relieved that he didn’t have to talk with her in front of such a partisan audience.

“So it’s the presence of those three men that’s causing all this ruckus?” he asked her as he sat on the stool she indicated.

She stood with her back to him, filling two glasses from a clay pitcher. “Yes. But, of course, they’re not the real reason.”

“They’re not?” She turned back and offered him one of the glasses. He took it, trying to keep his eyes off the way her slender white arm disappeared into a ruffle of maroon silk.

She perched on a stool on the opposite side of the table. “It’s Kate who’s the problem,” she said. “She’s going to have a baby.”

Carter was a little taken aback at her bluntness, but he recovered quickly, saying, “It’s not illegal to have a baby.”

“Well, you wouldn’t know it to talk to the people in this town. They’d just as soon lock her up and throw away the key.”

Carter knew a lot about bitterness, but it was hard to hear it coming from Jennie Sheridan’s beautiful lips. “I’ve met a passel of nice people in this town in the few months I’ve been here. I find it hard to believe they’re as vindictive as you say. In fact, besides Lyle Wentworth, I had another person offer support for you two today—Dr. Millard.”

Jennie’s expression softened. “Dr. Millard’s a good man. A lot of the people in town are. But then there are the ones like Henrietta Billingsley. I’d thought she was my mother’s friend. Now she comes around here and tries to blame Kate for my parents’ deaths.”

Jennie took a big swallow of cider and Carter could see that her hands were shaking. Unlike his own bitterness, which had been long-standing and coldly calculated, Jennie’s was raw, sharply edged with hurt. “I had heard that your parents died of the influenza last spring,” he said gently.

“They did. Kate’s condition had absolutely nothing to do with it—the very idea is absurd. They didn’t…know about it before they died. Kate didn’t even know then.”

“People say cruel things sometimes without thinking.”

“Oh, Henrietta thinks about them, all right. Then she goes ahead and says them, taking joy in the process.”

She held herself stiffly erect on the stool, and Carter had an almost uncontrollable impulse to walk around the table and pull her off the stool into his arms. He’d met the woman only today, but he was already feeling as if some invisible thread had wrapped itself around the two of them, tangling up her feelings with his own.

“You’ll have to learn to ignore her, then,” he said instead. “Just deal with the people who are worth your attention—people like Dr. Millard.”

His comment was rewarded with another half smile. “Yes, we do have some friends left.”

Carter started to extend his hand toward where hers rested on the table across from him but changed his mind. He had the feeling that Jennie Sheridan would have to be gentled more cautiously than a wild young mare. He withdrew his hand. “I’d like to be counted as one of those friends,” he said simply.

She smiled again, this time with a rueful twist to her mouth. “Aren’t you the one who’s supposed to be shutting us down?”

“I’m an officer of the court, and there’s a court order shutting you down.”

The smile disappeared. “So there you have it,” she said softly.

“Which is why I spent a great portion of my afternoon going through law books trying to find a way out for you.”

He could see the sweep of her long lashes all the way across the table as she blinked in astonishment. “You did?”

He nodded. “I told you, I’d like to help.”

She cocked her head to one side. “Why?”

It was a logical question, he supposed, but he hadn’t expected it. And he had no idea what to answer. It didn’t seem that it would advance his case with her any to say, “Because you made my entire body come alive this morning when I saw you walking down the street toward me.” It was a woefully inadequate answer, even to himself.

“I don’t like injustices,” he said finally.