Liz Ireland Read Online Free PDF Page A

how things are. I have three rooms to let. One to the schoolteacher, and Miss Fanny’s been here since you were in school yourself. And I couldn’t put Jubal’s cousin Lucinda out. He’d come back to haunt me for sure.”
    Panic began to seize Cecilia. Home. She was being sent home, back to the ranch, when she had so much to do right here in Annsboro. If no one would believe her suspicions about Pendergast—who she was willing to bet money wasn’t a schoolteacher at all—then she needed to stay close by and gather her own evidence. In the end, the town, even Beasley, would thank her for her pains.
    But there was no way to stay if Dolly didn’t help her. She wouldn’t be able to spy on Pendergast. She’d never get her job back, or her independence. She’d be trapped on the ranch to wither away until she finally gave in and married some rancher who would take her off to another patch of dirt. And then she’d still wither away, just like her poor mother.
    She practically threw herself at the older woman’s feet. “Oh, Dolly, you must have a place for me somewhere! Anywhere!”
    Dolly shook her head worriedly. “I can’t think of a thing. The house only has four bedrooms, Cecilia, apart from the tiny room off the kitchen for my laundry girl, and that’s no bigger than a cupboard.”
    Laundry girl? Cecilia remembered Lupe, the young woman who’d been doing laundry before she’d married one of the poor farmers in the area. Her heart surged with hope. “Cupboard?” she asked excitedly. “I can sleep in a cupboard, I don’t mind!”
    Dolly’s face fell. “Oh, no, Cecilia.”
    “I could even have some of my things sent home—I’ll tell Buck to take my trunk this very evening!”
    “Absolutely not,” Dolly said, shaking her head. “That room is for the laundry girl. I’ve always done the wash for my boarders. And if I pay the girl room and board, I don’t have to come up with as much cash money.”
    She was right, Cecilia realized, her spirits plummeting fast. About the only thing to hope for now was that Buck hadn’t left the saloon yet. What a miserable day this was turning out to be!
    Dolly giggled.
    Annoyed by the other woman’s laugh, Cecilia lifted her head slowly and caught her doing it again. “I fail to see anything amusing about this situation,” she snapped.
    Dolly shook her head and then laughed outright. “I’m sorry, Cecilia,” she said, breathing hard to hold back a chuckle, “it’s just...” A rumbling laugh exploded from her chest, cutting off her words. “Oh, it’s too silly!”
    Cecilia bit her lower lip and waited for Dolly’s laughter to subside. “What is?” she asked impatiently.
    The other woman wiped a tear from her eye. “Oh, Cecilia, I just had this picture in my head of you leaning over a washboard.”
    Cecilia laughed along heartlessly for a moment—until she was struck, rather violently, by the obvious. She snapped her fingers and turned joyfully to Dolly. “That’s it!” she cried, circling the older woman in a playful little jig. “Dolly, you’re a genius! When can I start?”
    Dolly wasn’t laughing anymore. “Oh, no, Cecilia, I was just joking you.”
    “Joke or not, I’ll take the job.”
    “But I can’t offer it to you,” Dolly countered firmly. “Your father would have my hide, not to mention yours, if I hired you to do the wash. Do you even know how to do wash? The idea!”
    “What’s wrong with my doing a little work? Father didn’t mind me teaching!”
    Dolly sent her a wry look that made it clear she wasn’t buying into that line of thinking for one second. “There’s a whopping difference between teaching and being a washerwoman.” She laughed again. “Imagine if your father found out you were rinsing out my boarders’ underclothes for a living!”
    “He won’t find out,” Cecilia said, her usually merry voice dropping an octave. Having seized on this improbable solution, she was not about to budge.
    Sensing that she was