Lost Lady (James River Book 2)

AT FIVE O’CLOCK THE NEXT MORNING, REGAN WAS AWAKENED by someone knocking on her door. Sleepily, she rolled out of bed and pulled on her dressing gown.

Standing in the hallway was Timmie Watts, the son of one of her farm tenants. Before she could say a word, the little boy handed her a long-stemmed red rose and vanished down the hall.

Yawning, not awake, Regan looked down at the exquisite, fragrant flower. Attached to its stem was a bit of paper which she unfurled to read, “Regan, will you marry me? Travis.”

It was a full minute before her mind understood what her eyes saw, and then she gave a squeal of delight, hugged the rose to her breast, and jumped into the air three times. He hadn’t forgotten her after all!

“Mommie,” Jennifer said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Is Daddy home?”

“Almost,” Regan laughed, grabbing her daughter and waltzing her about the room. “This rose, this lovely, perfect rose, is from your daddy. He wants us to go live with him.”

“We are,” Jennifer laughed, clutching her mother as she began to get dizzy. “We can ride my pony.”

“Every single day from now on and forever!” Regan laughed. “Now let’s get dressed, because I’m sure Daddy will be here very soon.”

Before Regan settled on a gown of gold velvet, she threw everything she owned onto the bed. It was while she was in the midst of this mess that someone again knocked on her door. Flying to it, hoping to see Travis, she flung the door open.

Standing there was Sarah Watts, Timmie’s sister, and she was clutching two pink roses. Puzzled, taking the roses, Regan watched as Sarah fled down the hall.

“Was that Daddy?” Jennifer asked.

“No, but Daddy sent us two more roses.” Attached to each one was a curl of paper in Travis’s handwriting, saying, “Regan, will you marry me? Travis.”

“Is something wrong, Mommie? Why doesn’t Daddy come see us?”

Heedless of the clothes on the bed, Regan sat down. It was just a tiny, lurking suspicion, but the extra roses made her wonder what Travis was planning. With one glance at the clock, she saw that it was just after five-thirty. One rose had been delivered at five, two at five-thirty. No, she thought. It couldn’t be.

“Nothing’s wrong, sweet,” Regan said. “Would you like these roses for your room?”

“They’re from Daddy?”

“They certainly are.”

Jennifer took the flowers, holding them as if they were priceless, and carried them to her room.

At six, when Jennifer and Regan were dressed and going down to breakfast, three more roses were delivered to Regan.

“How lovely,” Brandy said, already up and cooking. Before Regan could protest, Brandy took the flowers, read the attached notes, and put the flowers in a vase. “You don’t look so happy. I thought from the way you’ve been moping for the last three days you’d be pleased to get some sign from him. Three roses with those notes attached would certainly perk me up.”

“There are five roses,” she said seriously. “One delivered at five, two at five-thirty, three at six.”

“You aren’t thinking—,” Brandy began.

“I had forgotten about it, but Travis and I did have words over courting. I made some derogatory remarks about the inability of Americans to court a woman.”

“Not a nice thing to have said,” Brandy said, feeling very American. “Five roses before breakfast shows you what we Americans can do.” With that she went back to cooking.

Feeling she’d offended her best friend, Regan went to the dining room to check that everything was ready. As she was leaving the room, the printer’s boy delivered four yellow roses to her, each with Travis’s note attached.

With an enormous sigh, Regan smiled at the roses, shaking her head. Did Travis never do anything on a small scale? She slipped the notes into her pocket and went to look for a vase.

By ten o’clock, her smile was gone. Every half-hour more roses were delivered, until by now she had a total of sixty-six. The quantity itself wouldn’t be daunting except for the interest the deliveries were exciting within the town. The druggist and his wife came to eat breakfast at the inn, something they’d never done before, and as they were leaving, they stopped to ask Regan questions, namely, who is this Travis who’d hired their three children to deliver roses every half-hour? They were very mysterious about where the children picked up the flowers or who had contacted them, and they were discreet about the notes they’d read—but curiosity was eating them alive.

At noon, a bouquet of fifteen roses, each with a note on its stem, was handed to Regan, and that’s when she began to try hiding. But the whole town seemed to be in conspiracy against her. At five minutes before the hour or half-hour, someone always found something important to say to her, something that would keep her in plain view of everyone when the next bouquet was delivered.

At four o’clock, she was presented with twenty-three roses.

“That makes two hundred and seventy-six,” the owner of the mercantile store said, chalking the number on the wall beside the bar in the taproom.

“Don’t you have any customers today?” Regan asked pointedly.

“Nary a one,” he smiled. “They’re all in here.” He looked back at the jammed taproom. “Who’ll give me money on when they’re going to stop?”

Turning away, Regan left the room, thrusting the bundle of roses into Brandy’s arms.

“Roses?” Brandy gasped. “What a wonderful surprise. Whoever sent them?”

Regan curled her lip and hissed before continuing down the hall. She wouldn’t put it past Travis to have instigated all the interest in the roses. Surely the townspeople had something better to do than sit around all day and watch her collect roses. Of course, the reason he’d hired every child in town for the deliveries was to create interest with the parents.

At seven o’clock, she received twenty-nine roses, and at eight, she got thirty-one. By nine she had received five hundred sixty-one roses, of every color a rose could create. Travis’s notes, the same thing over and over, were in her pockets, in her desk drawers, in a box on her dressing table, in a copper pan in the kitchen. For all her complaining, she couldn’t bring herself to discard even one of the notes.

By ten she was beginning to wonder if the flowers were ever going to stop. She was tired and wanted nothing more than to climb into bed and be still.

Just as she reached her door, a child thrust a bundle of thirty-five roses into her arms. Once inside, she carefully removed each note, read it, and then stored all of them in a drawer beside her underwear. “Travis,” she whispered, no longer tired. At least alone in her room she could enjoy the roses.

Someone, Brandy no doubt, had put several water-filled vases in a corner, and Regan filled one now. As she did so, she remembered the last time he’d given her flowers, on their wedding night.

She was still chuckling when thirty-six roses were delivered at ten-thirty. Roses were also delivered at eleven and eleven-thirty. At midnight, yawning, Regan answered the knock at her door to admit Reverend Wentworth from the Scarlet Springs church.

“Won’t you come in?” she asked politely.

“No, I must get home. It’s far past my bedtime. I just came to bring you this.”

He held out a long, narrow white box, and when Regan opened it, inside was a delicate rose of fine, thin, fragile, pink-tinted crystal. The stem and leaves were also glass, tinted a soft green. An engraved silver band hung gracefully down the side, reading, “Regan, will you marry me? Travis.”

Regan was speechless, afraid to touch the elusive beauty of the glass rose.

“Travis was so hoping you’d like it,” Reverend Wentworth said.

“Where did he find it? And how did he get it to Scarlet Springs?”

“That, my dear, is known only to Mr. Stanford. He merely asked if I’d deliver a gift to you at midnight tonight. Of course, when the box came and it was open, my wife and I, well…we couldn’t resist a peek. Now I really must go. Goodnight.”

She barely heard him, absently closing the door, leaning against it for a second, her eyes locked on the elegant, splendid crystal rose. Holding her breath, afraid she might break it, she put it in the little vase on her bedside table, next to the first live rose Travis had sent her. As she undressed, her eyes never left either rose, and when she went to bed the moonlight seemed to highlight each rose and she fell asleep smiling.

It was late when she awoke the next morning, already eight o’clock. After one quick look at her roses and sending all of them a radiant smile, she jumped out of bed and grabbed her dressing gown. One sleeve was twisted, and as she straightened it a blue piece of paper fell out. As it fell right-side up on the floor, she saw that it read, “Regan, will you marry me? Travis.”

Hastily, she stuck it in her pocket, thinking that she hadn’t noticed that any of the notes from yesterday were written on blue paper. She found Jennifer’s room empty. The child was often up early and in the kitchen before her mother was even awake.

Still smiling, Regan returned to her room to dress. Today she was sure Travis would show up, would come to her on bended knee and beg her to marry him. She might, just might consent. She laughed out loud.

Her laugh stopped when she found another blue note inside the bodice of her dress. Hesitating for just a moment, looking suspiciously at the note, she whirled about and began to search her wardrobe.

The blue notes were everywhere—in her shoes, in her dresses, inside her drawers, wrapped in her petticoats and camisoles, even under her pillow!

How dare he! she thought, getting angrier with each note she found. How dare he invade her privacy in such a way! If not Travis personally, then he’d hired someone to go through all her things and place the notes there. And when? Surely some of them had been put there during the night, because even the dress she’d worn yesterday had three notes in it.

Angrily, she left her apartment and went straight to her office. As far as she could tell, nothing had been disturbed in this room. Thank heavens she locked it each night.

Sitting down at her desk, she didn’t at first notice the thin bit of thread stretched across the leather blotter. Suspicious, her lips set firmly, she followed it down the front of her desk to the bottom, where it disappeared underneath. On her hands and knees, she slid down until she was flat on her back. Pinned to the bottom of her desk was a sign done in three-inch letters, “Regan, will you marry me? Travis.”

Teeth gritted, she tore it away and was tearing it into tiny pieces when Brandy entered the room with a few dozen pieces of blue paper in her hands.

“I see he’s been in here too,” Brandy said cheerfully.

“He’s really gone too far this time. This is my private office, and he has no right to come in here uninvited.”

“I don’t want to add to your anger, but have you checked your safe?”

“My—!” she began, but stopped. Only Regan had a set of the three keys it took to open the safe. The other set was locked in a bank vault a hundred miles to the south. Even Brandy never opened the inn’s safe or knew how or in what order the keys must be used; she left all that up to Regan.

Quickly, Regan went to the big safe and started the long process of opening it. As she pulled the last door, a piece of wide blue ribbon fell out. Slowly pulling it, her jaw set, her eyes angry, she saw immediately what was written on it. She didn’t bother to read it but reached in and grabbed a handful of ribbon and angrily threw it toward the trashcan.

“How did you guess?” she asked Brandy as she stood.

Brandy seemed a bit nervous and gave Regan a weak smile. “I hope you’re ready for this. It seems that while everyone in town was here yesterday and their stores were closed, somebody, or maybe it was an army of somebodies, put these little blue proposals all over town. The doctor found one in his bag and four in his office. Will, at the mercantile store, found six in his place, and”—she paused to stifle a laugh—“the blacksmith picked up a horse’s hoof and found one on blue ribbon wadded inside the horse’s shoe.”

Regan sat down. “Go on,” she whispered.

“Some of the people are taking it well, but some are fairly angry. The lawyer found one in his safe, and he’s talking about suing. But, in general, everyone is laughing, saying they want to meet this Travis.”

“I never want to see him again in my life,” Regan said with feeling.

“You don’t mean that,” Brandy smiled. “Maybe your notes are all alike, but most of the others are quite creative. There are bits of poetry, some things from Shakespeare, and Mrs. Ellison, who plays the piano, received an entire song which she says is very pretty. She’s dying to play it for you.”

Regan’s head came up. “Is she out there?”

Brandy grimaced. “Everyone feels as if they’re involved now, and…most of them are out there.”

“Who is not there?” Regan asked bleakly.

“Mrs. Ellison’s grandmother, who had the stroke last year, and Mr. Watts still had milking to do, and…,” she trailed off apologetically because she could think of no other missing townspeople.

“Mrs. Brown’s sister is visiting, came in yesterday, and she’s dying to meet you. Brought all six kids over, too.”

Regan put her arms on the desk and buried her face. “Can a person die by will, just by wishing it? How can I face all those people?” She looked up at Brandy, her face horribly distressed. “How could Travis do this to me?”

Brandy knelt beside her friend and touched her hair. “Regan, can’t you see that he just wants you so badly that he’ll do anything to get you back? You don’t know the hell he’s been through since you left. Did you know that he lost forty-five pounds when you first left him? It was a friend of his named Clay who talked him out of giving up on life.”

“Travis told you all of this?”

“In a roundabout way. I did some prying, and it took a while to piece together all the facts, but I did. Right now the man is past any sense of pride. He doesn’t care what he has to do to get you back. If he can enlist the whole town to help him, then he will. Maybe his tactics are a little…well, maybe he’s not exactly subtle, but would you rather have one rose and a man like Farrell or, what was the final count, seven hundred and forty-two roses and Travis Stanford?”

“But does he have to do all this?” Regan pleaded, flipping the thread leading to the note that had been under her desk.

“You’ve told me repeatedly how Travis never asked you anything, but only told you what to do and how to do it. If I remember correctly, at the ceremony you said no to him just because he hadn’t asked you to marry him. I don’t believe you can accuse him of not having asked you now. And, too, you said you wanted to be courted.” Brandy stood, smiling. “This courtship may go down in history.”

Regan, in spite of herself, began to smile. “All I wanted was a little champagne and a few roses.”

Eyes wide, Brandy put her fingers to her lips. “Please don’t mention champagne. You may start a flood.”

A giggle escaped Regan. “Will he ever do anything on a normal scale?”

“Don’t you hope not?” Brandy said seriously. “I’d give a lot to be in your shoes.”

“My shoes are all packed full of notes,” Regan said, deadpan.

Laughing, Brandy started toward the door. “You’d better prepare yourself. They are waiting eagerly for you.”

Brandy laughed at Regan’s heartfelt groan before leaving the room.

Taking a moment to calm herself, Regan thought about Brandy’s words. Everything about Travis was overscale, from his body to his house to his land, so why did she expect his courting to be any different?

Carefully, she retrieved the ribbon from the trash and tenderly folded it. Someday she’d show this to her grandchildren. With resolve, shoulders straight, she left her office and went toward the public rooms.

Nothing could have prepared her for what was awaiting her. The first person she saw was Mrs. Ellison’s grandmother enthroned in a chair, smiling at her with one side of her face, the other side paralyzed by her stroke.

“I’m so glad you could make it,” Regan said graciously, as if she’d issued invitations to this party.

“Seven hundred and forty-two!” a man was saying. “And the last one was made of glass, all the way from Europe.”

“Wonder how he got it here and didn’t break it?”

“And wonder how he got up to my loft? The ladder broke two days ago, and I ain’t had time to fix it. But there it was, just as pretty as you please, a ribbon around a bale of hay and asking Regan to marry him.”

There was a man painting a vine of roses on the wall behind the bar in her taproom, and beside it were numbers—5:00 A.M., 1 rose; 5:30 A.M., 2 roses, all the way down to 38 roses at 11:30 P.M. and one rose at midnight and the total at the bottom. She didn’t bother to ask who the painter was or who had given him permission to paint on her wall. She was too busy fending off questions.

“Regan, is it true this man is Jennifer’s father yet you’re not married to him?”

“We were married at the time Jennifer was born,” Regan tried to explain. “But I was underage and—.”

Someone else’s question interrupted her.

“I hear this man Travis owns half of Virginia.”

“Not quite, only about a third.” Sarcasm didn’t dull their interest.

“Regan, I don’t like this man leaving notes in my private safe. I have private documents in there, and a lawyer’s word to his clients is sacred.”

On and on they went, hour after hour, until Regan’s smile was plastered on. Only a small voice at her side made her respond. “Mommie.” She looked down to see her daughter’s small face, obviously worried about something.

“Come on,” she said, lifting her daughter and carrying her to the kitchen. “Let’s see if Brandy can fix us lunch, and we’ll go on a picnic.”

An hour later, Regan and her daughter were alone together by a little stream north of Scarlet Springs. They’d demolished a basketful of fried chicken and little cherry tarts.

“Why doesn’t Daddy come back home?” Jennifer asked. “And why doesn’t he write me letters like everybody else?”

For the first time, Regan realized that her daughter had been excluded from the notes and roses. Thinking back, she knew Jennifer’s room had been free of any marriage proposals.

She pulled her daughter to her lap. “I guess because Daddy is trying to get me to marry him, and he knows that wherever I go, you go too.”

“Daddy doesn’t want to marry me too?”

“He wants you to live with him; in fact, I think at least half of the roses are for you, to get you to come live with him too.”

“I wish he’d send me roses. Timmie Watts says Daddy only wants you, and I’ll have to stay here with Brandy when you go away.”

“That was a dreadful thing for him to say! And totally untrue! Your Daddy loves you very much. Didn’t he tell you of the pony he bought for you and the treehouse he built? And this was before he’d even met you. Just think what he’s going to do now that he knows who you are.”

“You think he’ll ask me to marry him too?”

Regan had no idea how to reply to that. “When he asks me, it means he wants you too.”

Sighing, Jennifer leaned against her mother. “I wish Daddy’d come home. I wish he’d never go away again, and I wish he’d send me roses and write me letters.”

Rocking her daughter, stroking her hair, Regan felt Jennifer’s sadness. How Travis would hate knowing he had hurt his daughter by excluding her. Perhaps tomorrow she could make up for Travis’s oversight. Maybe she could find some roses, if there were any left within the state after Travis’s harvesting of them, and give them to her daughter—from her father.

Tomorrow, she thought, and almost shuddered. What could he be planning for tomorrow?