Three thousand miles from Madera, trouble blew in from across the Atlantic. It started when the Babbling Brook, more atwitter than usual, announced, “I have the most wonderful news.” For once color tinted her pale face, and a sparkle glimmered in her eyes. “Stancel Worthing-ton III is coming to Brookside from London. Dear Stancel is my very own nephew, but he has always been more like my son. He will teach dancing.”
A pleased smile crept over her face at the murmur of interest among the girls. It broadened when Gretchen van Dyke trilled, “Oh Miss Brookings, how exciting!”
Dori’s lip curled. How could anyone get excited over one of the Babbling Brook’s relatives, especially one named Stancel Worthington III? Wonder if anyone ever calls him Mr. Third, she thought. He is probably as stuffy as his name.
Stuffy didn’t begin to describe the new dancing master. The day he arrived, Dori had just checked the upper hall to make sure she was alone, then taken a glorious slide down the banister rail. She crashed into Stancel at full speed. If the huge front doors had been open, she would have knocked him out of them.
He lurched back, yet all he said when she landed in a heap on the marble floor was, “Upon my word, what have we here?”
Dori gawked at the man struggling to regain his footing. For once, she didn’t speak. She dared not. One hand flew to her open mouth to keep from laughing. She knew she looked ridiculous sprawled on the floor, but not nearly as absurd as Miss Brookings’s newly arrived nephew.
Tall and meticulously dressed in the latest men’s fashion, “dear Stancel” could have hung a lantern on his aristocratic, hooked nose. Neatly combed black hair—each strand in place—peeked out from beneath a bowler hat. He seemed at a loss but quickly regained his composure and offered Dori a flabby, pasty hand. “I say, miss, that was quite a—”
“Sorry,” Dori interrupted, scrambling to her feet. She ignored his outstretched hand and fled back up the stairs two at a time. Once in her room, she threw herself on the bed and released her bottled-up laughter. “Judged against the men and boys back home, he makes a mighty poor showing.” She wiped away tears of amusement. Then a new thought suffocated her laughter. “This…this…insipid Englishman is my dancing teacher?” Dori groaned. The thought of Mr. Worthington’s pale hand taking hers in a dance was repugnant.
Dori had dreaded the class, but Stancel’s presence made it pure torment. Give her a good, old-fashioned barn dance any day, not the mincing steps and low curtseys Mr. Worthington insisted the girls learn. She avoided him as much as possible and secretly rejoiced when he paid Gretchen marked attentions, to the obvious delight of Miss Brookings.
Alas for Dori! Her indifference evidently pricked Stancel’s pride. He began ignoring Gretchen and choosing Dori for a partner. Stumbling and stepping on his feet did no good. The more she attempted to escape the dancing master’s unwelcome attentions, the more persistent he grew. In addition, what little civility existed between Dori and “dear Gretchen” suffered a total collapse.
Things came to a head in early December, a few days after Matt summoned his sister home for his and Sarah’s wedding. He wrote:
When that scoundrel Red Fallon conspired with Sarah’s stepfather and kidnapped her, I knew she might be lost to me forever. I vowed then and there that if God would help me find and save her, I’d marry Sarah as soon as she’d set a date.
It wasn’t a surprise, but Dori still felt she’d been hit by a train. She’d long since given up the idea of rushing home to save Matt from the Andersons. But in spite of sympathy for Sarah, the thought that never again would Matt be all hers—as he had been since their father, mother, and Robbie died—hurt intolerably.
She looked out the window into a cheerless day, her spirits at their lowest ebb. “Maybe it won’t be so hard coming back to school in January after all,” she whispered. “Sarah might not want me at the ranch, even though her own precious brother, Seth, is more than welcome.”
Torn by emotion, she was in no mood for a confrontation with Gretchen van Dyke. When the fiery-eyed girl burst into Dori’s room and slammed the door behind her, Dori demanded, “Don’t you have manners enough to knock?”
Gretchen’s face mottled. “I know what you are up to.”
Dori had never seen Gretchen so distraught. “Anything I may be up to doesn’t concern you.”
“Indeed it does.” Gretchen raved. “Stancel Worthington is mine, do you hear?”
“Lower your voice or half of Boston will hear you,” Dori retorted. “I have no interest whatsoever in your property, if that’s what he is.”
“Rubbish! Miss Brookings told me Stancel is determined to turn the Spanish senorita into a lady, and marry her. Miss Brookings is outraged—and so am I,” she sputtered.
Dori sprang to her feet. She clenched her hands until the nails bit into her palms. “Not half as outraged as I am. You think I’d marry that English codfish? Never!”
Before Gretchen could answer, someone knocked at the door. “Miss Dolores?”
“Come in, Janey.”
The maid opened the door and stepped inside. Every freckle stood out on her frightened face. “Miss Brookings says you are to come to her office immediately.”
“Thank you, Janey.” Dori waited until the girl scuttled away, then rounded on Gretchen. “Now get out of my room or you’ll be sorry.”
Gretchen smirked. “You’re the one who is going to be sorry. Miss Brookings will surely put you in your place once and for all.” She flounced out.
Now what? Dori wondered. She had kept out of Miss Brookings’s way since the cat incident, and only a short time remained until she would go home for the wedding. How ironic for fate to ambush her just after she had schooled herself to come back for the spring term.
Miss Brookings sat behind her desk; her nephew lounged in a chair beside her. One look told Dori that the headmistress was loaded for bear and ready to fire.
“Of all the shameless hussies, you are the worst, Dolores Sterling. Coquetting with dear Stancel, leading him on, and brazenly attempting to weasel your way into society by underhanded means. Let me tell you this, young woman. Stancel will marry you only over my dead body.”
“I say. It’s not very cricket for you to disapprove before I have declared my intentions,” Stancel protested.
Dori’s heart slammed against her chest. She glared at her accuser and discharged both barrels of her fury. “What makes you think I would even consider being courted by a skim-milk specimen like Stancel?” she blazed. “God willing, if or when I marry, it will be to someone who is pure cream, not a whey-faced sissy like your nephew.”
“Get out,” the headmistress demanded. “Pack your clothes. You will leave immediately. Go—and never darken the door of Brookside Finishing School for Young Ladies again.”
“You couldn’t pay me to stay after this,” Dori said scornfully. “I can’t wait to tell my brother how I have been insulted. As for you”—she rounded on Stancel, who was gaping like a fish out of water—“if you were in Madera, the Diamond S hands would make quick work of you.” Dori sailed out the open door, leaving stone-cold silence behind her. But before she turned a corner, she heard Stancel say, “Jove, but she’s magnificent. It makes a man want to—”
Dori neither heard nor cared what Stancel Worthington III wanted to do. All she wanted to do was to shake the dust of Brookside Finishing School for Young Ladies from her shoes and take the first train west.
Dori’s outrage and humiliation sustained her through her final hours in Boston. If it hadn’t been for Janey, Dori’s clothing would have reached Madera in sad condition.
“Let me help you,” the little maid pleaded when Dori began tossing dresses helter-skelter into her trunks. Her eyes twinkled as she pointed to a stack of uniforms. “You’ll not be wanting these, I suspect.”
Dori glared at the garments that represented the mountain of indignities she had suffered for two years. “Keep the pinafores if you like, but tear up those ugly gray dresses and use them to scrub the floors.” Dori thought for a moment. She would soon be gone, but why not fire a parting shot? One that would echo through the halls and ensure she would not soon be forgotten. Her heart raced with anticipation. “I have a better idea,” she gleefully told Janey.
The maid cocked her head. “What are you up to, miss?”
“Deliver the dresses to Gretchen van Dyke when I’m gone.” Dori seized writing materials, quickly scribbled a note, and read it aloud. “What do you think of this? ‘Gretchen, the Bible says to do good to them that hate you. And to pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. You can have my room and my castoff uniforms. You can also have Stancel, if you aren’t too proud to take a man I don’t want any more than I want these secondhand uniforms. The Spanish senorita.’ ”
Janey went into a fit of giggles. “Miss Gretchen will have an attack of the vapors,” she predicted. “But oh, what a perfect way for you to have the last word.”
Dori exploded with delight and felt suddenly lighthearted. Miss Brookings’s untrue accusations still rankled, but knowing she had again bested “dear Gretchen” had released some of Dori’s anger and humiliation.
The girls barely finished packing before a tap came at the door. “The carriage is here to take you to the station, Miss Dolores,” Scraggs called. “And the men to carry your trunks down.”
A rush of thankfulness for the butler’s surreptitious friendship filled Dori. She flung the door open and threw her arms around his stiff, unbending frame. “I’m going to miss you,” she told him. “You and Janey.”
He coughed and smiled down at her, correct as ever but with warmth in his eyes. “And I, you, Miss Dori. I fear there will be no more incidents to liven up this rather staid place.” His droll observation sent the two girls into peals of laughter, but he quickly shushed them. Then he led the way downstairs and into a day as gray and gloomy as the one on which Dori had arrived.
Her final glimpse of the prison of her own making was of Scraggs and Janey waving to her from outside the forbidding doors.