Softly Falling Read online

  “Yes, please, Miss Carteret,” Jack teased.

  At least you don’t look so down in the dumps, Lily thought, even as she felt her face grow warm. “Since I must . . .” Lily carefully pulled up her shirt to reveal her sturdiest pair of shoes, the kind for standing on all day in front of a classroom.

  “Smart and practical,” Jack said.

  “No, not these old things,” she said. Wondering at the wisdom of this, she pulled her skirt a little higher to show off her new blue and white striped stockings. She had coveted them in the ladies’ emporium in Bristol, and they were her first purchase with her miniscule quarterly allowance that Uncle Carteret parceled out with an eyedropper.

  Chantal sighed with pleasure. Jack turned away, his shoulders shaking. Even her father smiled.

  He was still smiling as they left the cookshack. Amelie handed Lily a waxed paper packet with bread and butter for her lunch, and a handful of dried apricots twisted into a clean handkerchief.

  Chantal and Amelie skipped along ahead of her toward the school, their brother trailing along behind, his hands deep in his pockets, head down, sentenced to a term of school. Papa had tucked her arm through his again, maybe to steady himself, or maybe just because he wanted to. Lily preferred to think it was the latter.

  “Tell me, Papa, why did you name me Lily?” she asked. “I’m going to ask my students about their names, because we are going to learn to write them today.”

  A cloud seemed to cross his face, but it passed so quickly she might have imagined it. “Your mother loved flowers, and her first choice was Lily.”

  “I’ve always liked Lily Carteret,” she said.

  Clarence sighed, as he often did, when owning a deficiency. “You probably don’t even know that your middle name is Rose. I thought you were as pretty as an English rose.”

  She tugged him to a stop, her arm through his, and kissed his cheek. “That’s quite the loveliest story ever.”

  “I should have told you sooner,” he said, and she heard the regret.

  “Now is good, Papa. Wish me luck today.”

  “I have, every day of your life,” he said simply, and he gave her a small salute as he squared his shoulders and mounted the steps to his office in the Buxton house.

  She stood there, transfixed, hoping for some childish reason that he would turn around before he went inside. When he did, her already full heart overflowed.

  The day was easily ordered. Luella sat by herself on the back row, so the Sansevers lined up in the first row. Lily had fashioned a roster out of a partly used ledger from the Bar Dot, Cheyenne Land & Cattle Company, courtesy of Clarence Carteret, and called roll, which made even Nicholas smile.

  “There are only four of us, Miss Carteret,” he said. “Can’t you just look and see?”

  “We’re forming good, regular habits,” she answered. “Who knows? Someday you may be sitting in a large lecture hall at a great university, where you will be required to answer with a resounding ‘In attendance!’ Let’s begin it here.”

  No one had any objections, not even Nick. Maybe the idea of a university lecture hall appealed even to beginning cowhands.

  Remembering Miss Tilton’s pattern, she followed roll with a psalm. “Once we learn to read, we can take turns choosing a verse or two from the Bible.”

  Luella raised her hand. “I can read right now,” she declared and looked around, pleased with herself.

  “Then I will enlist your aid in helping me with the alphabet, our building block to Great Things,” Lily said.

  She handed each child a slate, slate pencil, and a cleaning rag. “We will be learning our alphabet and numbers on our slates, which we can erase, as needs be,” she explained. “We will save true greatness for paper and pencil.”

  “I like true greatness,” Chantal said softly.

  “So do I,” Lily said. She looked around her homely little classroom, with maps on one wall and a Lakota winter count on the other. True to Madeleine’s promise, the starched letters looked alert and sharp, thumbtacked just above the blackboard, which someone had sanded to an amazing smoothness and then repainted. She suspected Preacher, but it could just as easily have been Jack or even Pierre Fontaine. Maybe everyone was going to become invested in her modest temple of education here in the middle of nowhere.

  They worked diligently toward true greatness until eleven o’clock, when Lily quietly dismissed the Sansever children to help their mother. Nick left with a whoop and on a dead run, while his sisters followed. She watched them a moment, touched when the sisters joined hands and started skipping. A sister would have been nice, she thought. She turned to face Luella, who looked vaguely dissatisfied.

  “Well now, it is the two of us until noon, when I believe Fothering plans to escort you home for luncheon. Shall we go over some simple words, since I know you are farther along than the others?”

  “Nothing too strenuous,” the child said. “Mama says I am delicate.”

  And I’m the czar of Russia, Lily thought, hiding her smile. “Let me put a few letters on my slate, and you see how many three-letter words you can make.”

  “That shouldn’t wear me out,” Luella said with that matter-of-fact simplicity Lily was coming to enjoy. “Mama said she would have Cook prepare a fortifying luncheon for me with time to lie down.”

  “Excellent,” Lily said, thinking of Amelie and Chantal setting the tables and mashing potatoes and washing dishes, hurrying to keep up and finish, so they could pursue true greatness.

  While Luella worked, Lily printed “TRUE GREATNESS” on some cardboard that Preacher had brought to the school last week. She outlined the letters and got out the one box of Franklin Colors that Jack had been able to afford. The children could take turns filling in the letters when they returned.

  Luella outdid herself, creating three-letter words until she ran out of room on her slate. There was no mistaking her glow of pride when she handed over the slate with a little flourish.

  “This is fine work, indeed,” Lily praised her.

  Luella leaned toward her and whispered, “I’m really not fragile, but Mama thinks I am.”

  “Your mama is concerned for your well-being,” Lily said, wondering how a child like Luella could ever thrive in the hot house environment on the Buxton’s second floor. Then she remembered her own upbringing and knew anything was possible.

  When Fothering arrived to escort Luella to luncheon, he left her a slice of bread fried in bacon fat for Freak. “This should prove well-nigh irresistible to that miserable beast,” he said with all the dignity of his office.

  “You needn’t support Freak’s bad habits if you don’t wish to,” Lily said as she followed them out to put the offering on the rock.

  “He amuses me,” Fothering said in his top-lofty way, but ruined it with a Sam Foster wink.

  Pleased, Lily sat at her desk and ate her bread and butter, finishing it off with a dipper of water from the pail inside the door, and the apricots. The snow had long melted and the air was brisk but warming. She would probably leave the door open for afternoon class.

  As she sat at her desk, looking over the afternoon schedule, she heard the smallest of sounds and looked up to see Freak edging his way into the classroom. She sat still, almost holding her breath as the cat made a circuit of the room, flattening himself against the walls, as though he dared her to notice him. When he finished, he stalked out with as much majesty as a cat with chewed up ears and one eye could.

  “That was unexpected, Freak,” she said as he sauntered away. “Do you hanker after true greatness yourself?”

  She tackled numbers after the children returned, using twenty more or less even sticks that Pierre Fontaine had left for her at the table where she and her father usually ate. His note—The Bos told me to mak thees—in a careful hand, told her about his own skill level. What made them special were the little beads he had strung together and attached to each stick with a thumbtack.

  Nick had done his best all morning t
o look bored, but the beaded sticks caught his attention. The sticks quickly became numbers on his slate as he copied the numbers she wrote on the board. After only the barest instruction, he leaned over to help Amelie. Well, well, Lily thought.

  Then it was back to letters. She wrote their names on the blackboard in chalk and turned to face the class. “I will give you paper and pencils to trace your name. Tonight I want you to ask your mothers why you were named Luella, Chantal, Amelie, and Nicholas,” she said, pointing to each child.

  The children wrote their names, with Amelie taking out her pink pearl eraser to erase and start over.

  “I have one of those too,” Luella said and took hers out of the colorful pencil box she had set so conspicuously on her desk.

  Amelie nodded. Lily hid her smile when Chantal pouted, because she didn’t have one.

  Better deflect a mutiny. “When you finish with your names, Chantal will hand out a color of your choice and we will make ‘True Greatness’ our motto. Preacher found us this cardboard.”

  “Motto?” Amelie asked.

  “Something that inspires you to do your best,” Lily explained. “We’ll find a tall person to tack this over the blackboard and leave it there all year.”

  “Could we add other mottoes when we learn to read?” she asked.

  “As many as we want.” She glanced at her watch on her shirtwaist. “We had better hurry with your names so we can color.”

  Chantal raised her hand next. “Miss Carteret, would you write your name on the board too? Maybe your father would like to see your name tonight.”

  “I believe I will do that,” Lily said and wrote Lily Rose on the blackboard. “There now.”

  They worked quietly and then selected one color from Chantal’s fistful of Franklin Colors. Since her desk was the largest, Lily moved her books and spread out “TRUE GREATNESS.” They efficiently colored in the words she had outlined.

  “If we border it with black around each letter, they will stand out more,” Nick suggested.

  “Excellent idea,” Lily said, and she smiled when Nick flashed a grin her way, pleased with himself.

  Where did the time go? Lily looked up to see Fothering standing in the door. She gestured him in. “See what we have done? Children, hold up our motto.”

  They did. Hand to his chin, the butler studied it, stepping back for a better view.

  “Superior,” he pronounced, which brought out more smiles. “You are tall, but I am taller. Miss Carteret, might you wish me to affix it to a conspicuous place in your classroom?”

  “The more conspicuous, the better.”

  “Here, then,” he said, pointing to the middle of the room, directly over the blackboard.

  Pierre Fontaine had left a nail yesterday, after attaching the winter count. Chantal giggled when Fothering took off his shoe, stood on Lily’s chair, and nailed the motto to the wall.

  “That is a motto to be proud of,” he said with a sweep of his hand. The gesture turned into an elaborate bow, which made even quiet Amelie put her hand to her mouth. “Miss Carteret, you are to be commended.”

  She laughed and dismissed the children. “Take your names home and remember what I said: Find out why you were named thus.”

  “My goodness, what a day,” Lily said under her breath as the children, all of them guided by Fothering, walked down the hill, that improving walk that had convinced Mrs. Buxton to put the school such a distance from the other buildings. At least she built a school, Lily reasoned.

  She looked around. Freak was nowhere in sight, but she already knew he wasn’t impressed with crowds. She heard a horse coming from the north and stepped around the corner of the school to see who it was.

  Jack Sinclair tipped his hat to her. He looked considerably more pleasant than he had that morning. The snow was gone, and she already knew he was the sort of man who couldn’t sit idle for long.

  “Have a moment?” she called.

  He did, dismounting and coming into the classroom. His eyes went to the school motto.

  “True Greatness,” she said, touched to see how his eyes followed the two words he could not read. “It’s our motto for the year. We have plans to learn to read and cipher and explore whatever else we happen onto.”

  “Is it going to work, Lily?”

  “It is,” she said with a nod.

  He looked at the desks with their slates set just so, as she had requested. He pointed to Chantal’s slate. “Nice flowers.”

  “They were supposed to wipe them off before they . . .” She stopped and put her hand to her cheek. Chantal had carefully printed Lily Rose on her slate and drawn two flowers. She doubted Chantal had ever seen a lily or a rose, but she knew zinnias, lined up against the cookshack like prisoners waiting to be shot and bent double by the wind, but zinnias nevertheless.

  “It’s my whole name,” she said, her voice soft. “Papa told me this morning that my middle name is Rose.” She looked at the foreman. “Is Jack your only name?”

  “It’s John James Sinclair. I was part of a twin that died. He was going to be James, so I got both names when they figured I was going to live.”

  She had been on the Bar Dot long enough to learn a few things. “Tell me, do you have a brand for Bismarck?”

  “I do, indeed.” He picked up the clean slate from Amelie’s desk and drew a circle, with two Js back to back. “Circle Double J. Ind . . . Pierre did it for me. I registered it last spring in Cheyenne. Some folks call my place the Double J, but I like Sinclair Ranch.”

  She took a piece of paper and printed his name. “There you are: John James Sinclair, and Jack underneath.” She drew the brand too.

  He took the paper from her and studied it; then he looked at her with that level gaze that allowed no wiggle room. He swallowed, but his gaze never wavered. “You know I can’t read, don’t you?”

  “Do you want to learn?” she asked quietly.

  “More than just about anything.”

  “Maybe instead of Ivanhoe, I could teach you,” she said.

  “Maybe both?”

  “You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Sinclair,” she said. Lily went to the apple crate that Fothering had tacked up to hold her paltry supplies and took out the extra slate. She handed it to him.

  “Amelie told me that you bought one too many.”

  “I did it on purpose,” he told her. “I just didn’t know how to ask you. I’m too old for school.” He took the slate pencil she handed him and stuck it behind his ear. The slate went under his arm. He went to the door and looked back, his eyes going to the motto.

  “Here’s a down-home, straight-from-Georgia expression for you, Lily: ‘Chile, if you don’t just beat all.’”

  “What does it mean?”

  “True Greatness, what else? See you tonight.”

  CHAPTER 18

  School was new to all of them. They settled into a routine that felt strange at first—Nick still dragged his feet into class—but grew into a comfort that Lily felt in her bones. As her simple lessons gave structure to the four children in her charge, they gave Lily a purpose too. After the second day, when her students returned with stories of how they got their names, and even Nick seemed animated, she knew she would succeed.

  Then came the third day, when the whole thing fell apart.

  The morning began as the others: a reading of a psalm, and then the opportunity for class members to report on whatever interested them. Since she had been routinely ignored at Miss Tilton’s and never close to her classmates, Lily wanted to make up that deficiency in the Bar Dot School.

  True greatness struggled that third morning after Amelie had shyly mentioned she had found two yolks in one of the eggs she cracked for flapjacks.

  “That is interesting, Amelie. Next time you get one of those, show me, will you?” Lily said. She looked around. “Any other events of note?”

  Some red flag in her brain made her suddenly want to overlook the thundercloud that had settled on Luella’s face. Were her brai
ds finally too tight? Lily could not ignore the upraised hand. “Yes, my dear?”

  Her lips pinched as tight as her braids, she looked at the others. “One of you has purloined my Pink Pearl Eraser,” she declared.

  Her announcement was met with stares. Nick spoke up. “What on earth does that mean?”

  Luella gave a put-upon sigh of indignation. “One of you ignorant Indians, or French, or whatever you are has stolen my Pink Pearl Eraser! I left it here on my desk and it is gone.”

  The stares turned into frowns. Lily knew she had to intervene.

  “Luella, you must have misplaced it. No one would . . .”

  “Chantal stole it,” Luella interrupted. “She is envious that I have an eraser.”

  Chantal’s mouth opened in shock, and her face drained of color.

  “See? I told you!” Luella said. “That is the look of guilt!”

  Chantal put her head down on her desk and sobbed.

  Lily leaped to her feet. “Luella, that is quite enough,” she said, struggling to keep her voice low when she wanted to grab the girl and shake her. “Chantal would never steal anything.”

  Sublimely confident, Luella folded her arms and stared hard at the sobbing child. “I stand by my accusation. If she will produce the eraser, I will consider the matter closed. I am being supremely magnanimous.”

  You’re being a cruel little prig, Lily thought, at a loss. “That will be entirely enough, Luella,” she said. She put her arm around Chantal. “You would never do such a thing.”

  Chantal shook her head, but the sobs continued.

  “A thief and a liar,” Luella said, digging a deeper rut through the previous calm of the little classroom. “I will tell my father and he will turn off Madeleine Sansever immediately.”

  Amelie gasped and turned as white as her little sister. Nick leaped to his feet, his fists balled.

  Lily grabbed him, but he was strong. Using all her own strength, she pinned his arms at his sides. “Stop, Nick! The eraser has merely been misplaced and we will find it. Luella, one more word and you will leave this classroom. Chantal, dry your tears.”