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"Yes ma'am."
"When they get home, you show them this. Trust me, they're going to be real proud of you. Real proud."
His face twists up a little. "You sure?"
"Sure, I'm sure," she says. She gives another smile. "Give that another shot. Take care to get your letters nice and round, alright? Like an oval." She makes a mark to show him. "But it doesn't have to be perfect. Just do your best."
He nods and his face drops to the table. His pencil starts moving and she takes another stock of the room.
Looking around gave her a very good opportunity to notice that someone had, in fact, showed up at the edge of the room. The flash of skin, for a fragment of an instant, almost had her greeting them as a new student.
Then her brain caught up with her eyes, and the words died in her mouth.
"Can I help you?"
Christopher Broadmoor fills the doorway completely, and shifts awkwardly from one foot to the other as she speaks.
"I'm sorry if I'm interrupting, ma'am, I can wait until you've got a minute."
His eyes shift from her face to the floor. The way he holds his hat twisted up in his hands is almost sweet. A bigger part of her than she wants to admit wouldn't mind having him look at her a little longer. The rest of her body, sensing the tiny rebellion, mounts a violent defense.
"What is it? It's more of an interruption to have all the children looking over at you."
She's not exaggerating, she sees. Every eye is on him. Most of them eyeing the pistol on his hip curiously. From the houses she's been in, most have a rifle hanging on the wall, but a pistol, hanging like that where it can be drawn at an instant's notice—that's unusual.
"I just had a message, ma'am. From Mr. Maxim."
Marie looks around the room. "Back to work."
Her voice is firm but not angry, hopefully a good balance. A dozen eyes drop back to the desks in front of them, pencils picked back up where they've rolled away. Marie follows the bartender out the door.
"What's the message?"
"I'm real sorry about this," he says. The way he looks at her isn't at all apologetic, though. It sends a shiver down Marie's spine in spite of herself.
"Just tell me what you came here to tell me."
"Zella came to tell me, to tell you, there's a problem with your room. Gonna have to get a room over at the hotel. It's their fault, so they'll put up board until they can get you back up in your own bed."
"And she couldn't have delivered the message herself?"
"I asked her the same thing."
He doesn't say anything more, but she doesn't need him to. He didn't get an answer. She could easily have come herself, but she'd sent Chris instead.
Marie didn't know whether to be upset or to buy the woman a drink. More than likely, it would be both, and in that order.
Four
Christopher Broadmoor shifted his hips as he waited for the ale to pour into the tall glass. He couldn't get the thought out of his mind that he ought to have known better than going over there. Have Zella do it her damn self; the restaurant wasn't so busy that she couldn't spare a few minutes' walk over.
It wasn't as if she were so sly that he couldn't see what she was doing. What he couldn't see was why. He'd never heard Zella say a negative word toward him, but that was no reason to go trying to play matchmaker between him and a schoolteacher from back east.
Miss Bainbridge didn't need a man with a past like his mucking up her personal affairs, and she sure enough didn't seem like she wanted it in spite of what was good for her.
He shook his head and set the beer on the wide bar. A man with a broad country-boy smile nodded his head. Just someone passing through, it seemed—he wasn't familiar, certainly not a regular. He didn't wear a gun, so it was easy to ignore him.
Chris would learn, a little later, the mistake he'd made in writing the young guy off. But in the first moments, he hadn't noticed any of it. The boy walked off, and the big bartender turned to the next patron to come up, with thoughts of a pretty young woman with an eastern accent running heavy through his mind.
