Chapter 8: Secrets of the Past

~Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs; Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes; Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers’ tears.~ —William Shakespeare

Jake watched Dannie bury the dried forget-me-nots in the ashes with eyebrows raised in surprise. She seemed pretty angry at those petals.

“You’d think those flowers were from a man who did you wrong,” he joked.

Dannie frowned at him. “I have to say, Jake, that you are terribly good at guessing things.”

“Oh, so you were wronged?” Jake asked with a laugh.

“Yes, actually, I was.”

“You were—what?” Jake stopped laughing and looked over at Dannie.

“If you must know, I was engaged.”

“But?”

“Obviously not anymore. If I were engaged, do you think I would be stuck with you in the middle of nowhere?”

“Oh.” For some reason, Jake wanted to know more, but he didn’t feel comfortable asking.

Dannie, of course, wasn’t going to volunteer the information, and busied herself with putting her carpetbag in the wagon and climbing up front. Jake climbed up next to her, and soon they were back on the road.

“So…Mr. Jake, have you lived in Hopewing long?”

“Why is the Mr. Jake back?” Jake growled.

“Why do you have such a problem with it?”

“Why do you have a problem being called missy?”

“Because it is disrespectful,” Dannie answered. “When you call me that it makes me feel cheap.”

“Yeah, well, ~mister~ is my late father.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, my condolences.”

“It was a long time ago.” Jake shrugged. “And no,” he quickly added just as Dannie opened her mouth, “I don’t want to talk about it! You were askin’ me about Hopewing.”

“I just wanted to know if you could tell me something about the town I find myself quite unexpectedly traveling to.”

“It’s all right, I suppose, if you like town life. It’s a small town, tiny compared to Clearbrook. No train station, but it’s quaint in its own way.”

“I see. Mist—”

Jake glared at her.

“Jake,” Dannie hastily switched, “what is your full name?”

Jake was taken aback by the question. “You already asked me that. Like I said before, I’m a private man. I don’t go bandying my name around.”

“But it would be so handy to know,” she said. “Next time I get very mad at you and want to call you something terrible, I could just switch to your full name and save myself from having to say something nasty.”

“No way, Miss Preston, there is no way I am giving you my name so you can use it as a substitute for profane language.”

“Oh, that is not how I meant it. I never use profane language. Is it really so hard to tell me your full name? I’ll give you mine. It’s Danielle Frances Preston.”

“Frances huh?” An amused smile appeared on Jake’s face.

“What’s so funny?” Dannie became indignant.

“Danielle Frances, so for short you would be Danny Fanny?”

“Jake!” The color rushed to her face. “How wretched of you!”

He chuckled at her embarrassment. “I’m warnin’ ya, Miss Preston, the men out here are rough, and many of them ain’t educated. You’d better get used to crude language. But don’t worry, Reverend Simmens is a good man. He’ll look after ya.”

“Thank you for the comfort,” she said with a small smile.

He shrugged in reply.

“Do you have any family, Jake?”

“I don’t talk about the past, Miss Preston, so please stop askin’.”

“Why not?” Dannie was taken aback at his forceful statement.

“Just because.”

“All right.” Dannie frowned and said no more.

***

They spent the better part of the day, and in the late afternoon they drove up to a small wooden building. “Why are we stopping?” Dannie asked in surprise as Jake pulled the horses to a halt.

“This is a trading post, and I need to do some business. Wait here till I come out.” Before Dannie could protest, he hopped down from the wagon and reached over to pull out some supplies to trade.

“Damn it,” Jake growled when his finger caught on a loose nail. He expected to hear a loud reprimand from Dannie on the subject of swearing, but he only heard a quick gasp. Looking over at her, he saw that she had turned away.

“Somethin’ wrong, Miss Preston,” he asked, not quite understanding her reaction to his bad language.

“I’m sorry, Jake,” Dannie mumbled, keeping her face averted, “but I cannot stand the sight of blood.”

“Oh, but this is just a little cut,” Jake said, reaching out his hand to show her it was nothing serious.

“Don’t show it to me,” Dannie gasped. “I get nauseous just from the thought of it. Here.” She handed him her handkerchief without looking his way. “Wrap it up, please.”

Jake shrugged and, grabbing the hankie, bound up the little cut. “You’d make a terrible nurse, you know,” he said.

“Oh, I know.” Dannie peeked to make sure the cut was truly bound up, then turned her pale face back to Jake. “My fear of blood was the only reason I didn’t go to study nursing.”

Trying to hide just how amused he was by her squeamishness, Jake grabbed his supplies and stepped inside the little door.

Dannie waited nervously for him to come back out, praying nonstop all the while that nothing terrible would happen to her. After what seemed like forever, Jake finally came out with a couple of blankets in his hands.

“Indian blankets,” he explained to Dannie. “This here is an Indian trading post.”

“Oh?”

“Yup, at the moment we are on an Indian reservation, but we’re nearly at the end of it, so don’t go getting all scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“You’re not afraid of the Indians?”

“Should I be?”

Jake shrugged. “Most everyone out here is.”

“I would have thought you’d noticed by now that I’m not like ~most everyone out here~.”

“Good point,” Jake chuckled as he tickled the horses into motion with the reins.

“What took you so long?”

“Had to bargain these here, and to top it off, the little fellow there didn’t know a word of English. Only Apache and Spanish, and I don’t know neither language. You don’t happen to know Spanish by any chance, do you?”

“No, sorry, only French and Italian.”

Jake shook his head. “Where did you learn them? I thought you said you never traveled.”

“I never traveled. My mother used to be a governess, and I learned French from her. As for Italian, my father was a vicar in the Church of England. One of the women in Papa’s parish, a Mrs. Lancer, had two daughters, and she was bringing them up in the way of fashion.

“Three times a week, I would go to the Lancers and act as companion to Mrs. Lancer’s invalid mother-in-law. Instead of Mrs. Lancer paying me for all the time I spent reading and playing music to the old lady, Mamma arranged that I should also be tutored in Italian with the young Miss Lancers. Hence I know both languages.”

“Seems like your momma was a very prudent woman.”

“She was.” Dannie sighed and fought to keep the tears away. “It’s hard to believe she’s gone. Deep down, I’m waiting for her to come running after me, asking if I’ve completely lost my mind—and if I remember anything she ever taught me about looking before you leap.”

“Was her death very unexpected?” Jake felt stupid for asking the question.

“Papa got sick with scarlet fever,” Dannie said softly, staring out at the barren landscape. “None of us had had it before, and Mamma sent me away so I wouldn’t get it. But she herself stayed to look after father—and she caught the fever.

“The two of them died on the same day. Mamma even went before Papa. I buried them together. That really was the beginning of the end…”

Dannie’s voice broke, but she fought to keep her composure.

“Can I ask how long since they died?”

“Almost two months.”

He had figured someone in her family had died due to her mourning attire, but he hadn’t realized it was people so close to her, and so recent. No wonder she wept at night.

“I’m sorry, Miss Preston, I shouldn’t have brought it up.” Jake felt bad about prying into a subject that was obviously still very hard for Dannie to talk about.

For the first time since he had met her, Jake found himself feeling something other than dislike for Miss Preston. Suddenly, his hostility was diluted by a large measure of pity.

And, also, a touch of admiration.

How many women, or men even, could hold themselves together so well after so much personal tragedy and upheaval?