Chapter Two #2
“No. It oughtn’t.” She smiled. “I thought the same thing, which means we agree on one point already. That seems promising.”
He looked at the book instead of at her. “You brought a powerful lot of them.”
“I did.”
“For a western town on the edge of civilization.”
“I find Wild Rose Ridge immensely civilized. In fact, I already adore it.”
His gaze lifted then.
Lottie wished he hadn’t, because being looked at by Mr. Peterson was not a simple matter.
His eyes did not pass over her the way other men had since the boat docked.
They stopped. They noticed. For one breath, Lottie had the terrible feeling he could see the hope she had carried all the way from Chicago and did not know what to do with it.
“I mean to start a lending library,” she said, because she needed something to do with the sudden flutter beneath her ribs.
“Only a small one at first. A table, perhaps. A ledger if Delly is allowed within ten feet of it, which she certainly will be, because no power on earth can keep my sister from a ledger. One day I should like proper shelves, a sign, and a place where any person in town may borrow a book without feeling foolish for wanting one.”
His left hand tightened around the brim of his hat.
His right remained hidden.
Lottie saw it. She tried not to look too long.
“That so?” he said.
“Yes. Does Wild Rose Ridge have many readers?”
“Some.”
“Are you one of them?”
The question had leaped ahead of her manners. She knew it by the way his face closed.
“I get by.”
It was the sort of answer that shut a gate and leaned a board against it. Lottie, being Lottie, looked for a latch.
“You read the page on the dock.”
His gaze snapped to hers.
“I saw you,” she said gently. “Only for a moment. You looked at the line before you closed the book.”
“I was making sure it wasn’t torn.”
“That is not how one looks for torn pages.”
“How would you know?”
“My father mended books. Then I helped catalog a professor’s library for his widow. I know the difference between a man checking paper and a man reading words.”
He said nothing.
Lottie looked down at the Tennyson and ran one thumb over the wrinkled corner.
“The line was from ‘Tears, Idle Tears.’ Not the happiest poem to arrive on a dock, I admit. Had I known it intended to fall open at your feet, I would have chosen something livelier. Perhaps Shakespeare. Though Shakespeare falling at a person’s feet seems like a warning. ”
That earned a sound, small as it was. Mr. Peterson had nearly laughed.
Lottie’s bruised hope rose from the corner of her heart. He seemed to regret snickering at once.
“You shouldn’t build too much on a man picking up a book.”
“I haven’t built anything yet.”
His eyes moved to her face again. She felt the look clear down to her toes.
“I consider it a foundation,” she admitted.
“Don’t.”
Lottie held still. Behind them, Delly said something about not wishing to marry furniture, and several women made shocked little sounds. Mr. Simms laughed again, low and unwilling. The parlor had found its entertainment for the evening.
In the hallway, everything narrowed to Mr. Peterson’s face.
“Don’t?” Lottie asked.
He looked down at his hat. “Mrs. Schulte and the others mean well.”
“Yes. I gathered that from the way everyone looks slightly afraid of them.”
This time his mouth moved slightly.
“Meaning well is not the same as knowing,” he said. “They chose me because I’m steady. Quiet. Been here long enough not to run off before winter. That may be enough for a roof beam. It isn’t enough for a husband.”
Lottie’s fingers tightened around the cake plate. “You wrote for a bride. The sisters had the letters.” She didn’t want to share they had provided her with the letters after the first round of brides were delivered to Wild Rose Ridge.
“That was before.”
“Before what?” Lottie stepped closer.
He did not answer, but his right hand shifted inside his coat.
There it was again. The hidden thing. The question he would not let her ask.
“Before I came?” she asked.
“Before I understood some matters better.”
“That is a very inconvenient sentence, Mr. Peterson. It sounds important while explaining nothing.”
His gaze returned to her with something almost like surprise.
“I am accustomed to inconvenient sentences,” she said. “Delly raised me on them.”
That almost-smile threatened again and lost its nerve.
“You ought to enjoy the evening,” he said. “Eat your cake. Meet the others.”
“I am meeting you.”
“No,” he said, not unkindly. “You are meeting what the Bees arranged. Those are not always the same article.”
The words landed harder than she had expected. For the first time all evening, Lottie did not know what to say. Mr. Peterson seemed to take her silence as agreement. He stepped back, but he did not leave. Not quite yet.
She looked at him, really looked at him, the way she had learned to look at a damaged book before deciding whether the spine could be saved.
He was not old, though weather and beard made him seem older from a distance.
There were fine lines near his eyes, not from laughter, she thought, but from squinting into the weather.
One cheek bore a faint scar or pale mark near the jaw, something the beard did not fully hide.
His coat was clean and brushed, but old on the cuffs.
His boots had been polished for the evening by a man who rarely polished boots and had done the work thoroughly once he started.
There was care in him. There was fear, too.
That combination made no sense to her, which made it very hard to leave alone.
“What does the C stand for?” she asked.