Faithfully Yours

“But we only walked through the land right next door,” she told him wide-eyed. “Surely we don’t need a permission slip for a little nature walk.”

“I take it that you didn’t bother to procure the signatures then,” he bit out, shaking his head angrily. “Miss Langford, you cannot keep ignoring the rules that are part of the function of this school.”

“Oh, but surely for a little nature walk…”

“Your little walk may have engendered a lawsuit,” he rasped, standing straight and tall before her.

“What?” Gillian stared at him, half-amused. “Why would anyone sue the school?”

“What if Jed’s cut becomes infected and requires further treatment? What if one of the children had been badly hurt? What if you were injured and they were without a leader?” His eyes were icy as they glared at her.

Gillian shook her head. “We didn’t go to Siberia,” she said softly, peering up at him in confusion. “We walked not fifty feet beyond the school property. Any one of them could have made it back safely, without trouble.”

“Deidre Hall couldn’t,” he said angrily, standing directly in front of her. “What about her?”

Gillian thought about the young girl in the wheelchair whom she’d pushed through the undergrowth. She shrugged. “All right, Deidre needed my help. And I was there. Nothing happened. No big deal.”

“Not this time, no.” His jacket was unbuttoned, and Gillian could see the missing button on his vest as his hands planted themselves firmly on his hips. For some reason that lost button gave her encouragement; maybe Jeremy Nivens was human after all.

“Fine,” she murmured softly, staring up into his stern face. “I admit I should have checked with you first. I’m sorry I didn’t advise you of my plans or get the childrens’ parents to sign permission slips. I’ll ensure that it doesn’t happen again.” Gillian smiled placatingly. “Is that all right?”

“I don’t think it is. You have perverse ideas on teaching that seem to dictate constantly removing the children from the classroom. I cannot condone that. The classroom is where they should be doing their learning, not in the woods.”

Gillian tried to control the surge of rage that flooded through her at his words. How dare he criticize her efforts! She was a good teacher, darned good. And she focused her attention on teaching children to learn in whatever situation they found themselves.

“My students,” she began angrily, “are learning to be aware of the things around them, whether or not they are in the classroom. Today they experienced all five of the sensory perceptions of fall. They saw things in a different way than they would have looking out the window at the woods.”

“Five senses?” He jumped on her statement immediately, his voice full of dismay. “What did they eat?”

“We peeled the outer shell off acorns and tried to crunch the centers. They tasted the flavor of the woods,” she told him proudly.

If it was possible, Jeremy Nivens’s body grew even tauter as he stood glaring down at her. His hands clenched at his sides, and his jaw tightened.

“They’ll probably all get sick,” he muttered angrily. His voice was cold and hard. “Why can’t you learn to just follow the rules?” he demanded angrily.

“Why can’t you learn to live with a few less rules and a lot more feeling in your life?” she flung at him. “This isn’t a prison. It’s a school—a place of learning and experimentation meant to prepare the children for the future. If you constantly deny them the right to find things out for themselves, how will they solve the problems of their world? You can’t keep them under lock and key.”

He stood there fuming, his anger palpable between them. Gillian could feel the tension crackling in the air and tried not to wince when his hard, bitter, exasperated tones stabbed at her.

“In the future you will okay all field trips with me, whether the students go fifty feet or fifty miles. Do you understand, Miss Langford?”

Gillian stifled the urged to bend over at the waist and salaam to him. He would find nothing funny in such an action, she knew.

“Yes, Mr. Nivens,” she murmured softly. “I understand completely.” Her voice held a nasty undertone that she did not attempt to disguise. “Would you also like to sit in on my classes and make sure I’m not teaching my students political activism or the making of pipe bombs?”

He turned to leave, stopping by the door for a moment His eyes glittered with something strange as he smiled dryly at her. “Thank you, Miss Langford,” he murmured slyly. “I may yet find it necessary to do that.”

She could have kicked herself for offering, and spent the next hour mentally booting herself around the room for falling into his little trap. “Odious manipulator,” she mumbled, checking her daybook for the plans she had made. “As if I’d let him in here to check up on me. No way.” Of course there was really nothing she could do to stop him, Gillian knew. And if he decided she wasn’t doing her job, he could call for a review on her work.

Why did Michael have to die? she asked God for the zillionth time. If he were alive, they would be married, and she would be in her happy, carefree position at St. Anne’s, blissfully oblivious to the presence of Mr. Jeremy Nivens and his immense book of rules.

But there was nothing to be gained by going down that road. She would just have to learn to accept it and get on with living. The past was no place to dwell, and time was flying by.

Gillian laid out the work she had planned for the next day and checked to see there were enough copies of the Thanksgiving turkey she planned to begin in art class next week. At least she had the children, she consoled herself. She would never have Michael’s child, but she had twenty-eight needy ones in her classroom every day, and she intended to see to it that they got the best education she could offer.

Gillian was about two blocks from her aunt’s house and dreaming of relaxing for the weekend when she saw the smoke. Thick, billowing, dark gray clouds of smoke rolling out the window of a house. Gillian raced across the street and dashed inside the open front door. This was Faith Rempel’s home, she was pretty sure. And if she remembered her aunt’s description correctly, Mrs. Rempel lived alone.

Gillian found the woman in her kitchen, slumped over a counter, the smoking remains of a pan with something resembling cherries bubbling blackly on the stove. She snatched a dish towel and grabbed the pan, dumping the entire contents into the sink and pouring water over it. Steam and smoke combined to cover her in a cloud of acrid odors.

“Mrs. Rempel? I’m Hope’s niece. Are you all right?” Gillian checked the elderly woman’s pulse and was relieved to find it seemed strong and healthy. When the green eyes opened, they stared at Gillian blankly. “Come on, Mrs. Rempel. We’ll have to get you out of this smoke.”

“Yes, thank you, dear. That would be lovely. I’m afraid my cherries jubilee didn’t quite turn out. Such a pity.” Faith Rempel’s English accent was pronounced as she rose from the table with alacrity and waved her apron back and forth briskly, whooshing the air as she walked.

“Cherries jubilee?” Gillian couldn’t believe her ears. Who made cherries jubilee at four-thirty on a Friday afternoon, for goodness sake? And wasn’t the sauce supposed to be set on fire when the dish was served, not hours before?

She left Mrs. Rempel sitting on a patio chair outside and checked for further damage in the kitchen before opening all the windows and doors. Thankfully the light, afternoon breeze soon whisked the smelly fumes and billows of blue-black smoke away.

“I’ve brought you a glass of water, Mrs. Rempel. Are you sure you’re all right?” The puffy lines in the woman’s face had been there before, Gillian decided, checking her patient once more.

“Of course, dear. I’m perfectly fine.” Faith’s green eyes stared into hers. “Do I know you?” she asked curiously.

She grinned. “I’m Hope’s niece, Gillian. I’m here teaching school.”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Rempel smiled brightly. “You’re Jeremy’s new girlfriend. You two make the sweetest couple.” She stood suddenly and moved briskly to the back door. “I’ll have to clean this mess up before he gets here. Jeremy hates a mess.”

“I’ll help you,” Gillian offered, remembering that this woman, according to her aunt, had slight lapses in memory. That would account for her erroneous linking of their names. How strange that such a lovely woman should be old sourpuss’s aunt.

“Does he come every day?” she asked curiously. It seemed odd to think of her boss checking up on his aunt. More likely he came for a free meal so he wouldn’t have to dirty his own kitchen, she decided, still fuming at his biting remarks.

“Almost every evening. We have dinner together. I was hoping to surprise him with a new dessert Piffle,” she grunted, glaring at the charred remains of the cherries. “Should have turned the heat down sooner.”

Gillian grinned. So Jeremy Nivens came for a free dinner every night. Somehow she had known human kindness wasn’t the reason for Jerry’s visits. She wondered what he’d think of his aunt’s messy kitchen right now.

“You know,” she told Faith, smiling as she wiped down the counters and stove. “In our family we had a standing joke whenever Mom burned something. We always said she thought we must be little gods because she was serving us burnt offerings.”

Faith giggled appreciatively.

“Underneath all this smoke, something sure smells good,” Gillian told her seriously. She opened the oven door and sniffed appreciatively. “What is that?”

The older woman blushed, her salt-and-pepper head bending forward shyly.

“Oh, just a little rouladin. Jeremy loves beef, you know. I imagine you’ll be cooking it often after you’re married, dear.” She scurried about, putting the last of the now-dry dishes away. “I just need to get a salad together and check the potatoes.”

“Uh, Mrs. Rempel, Jeremy and I aren’t getting…”

“Oh, silly me. Of course you aren’t announcing it right away. I can understand that. You both being so new to the community and all,” Faith twittered happily as she rinsed the lettuce and set it carefully in a colander to dry. She grasped Gillian’s hand in her own and glanced at her finger. “Oh, you haven’t found a ring yet?”

“No, we haven’t,” Gillian searched for the right words, but she needn’t have bothered. Jeremy Nivens’s aunt was lost in a world of her own, green eyes sparkling with happiness as she stared at her own rings.