14 
14 First thing the next morning, Meg entered Plunkett’s mercantile with a dollar and change in hand. There was no help for sneaking her way into the store. She needed Hildegarde to buy her something and she didn’t want to be seen making the purchase.
After gliding into the store unnoticed behind a customer, Meg hid in back of a coal oil can display.
“Pst,” she whispered from the dark corner.
Hildegarde stood at the counter sampling a saltwater taffy from one of the jars.
At Meg’s call, Hildegarde lifted her chin and stopped chewing.
Meg dared to lean forward and wave her hand for Hildegarde to come over.
Once in front of her, Hildegarde said in a too loud voice, “What are you doing hiding?”
“Shh!” Meg dragged the girl into the dim slash of gray created by the cans. “I need your help.”
Hildegarde instantly adjusted her smile. “Did you finish that jar of breast cream already?” Then she lowered her gaze to Meg’s bosom. “It sure isn’t fast acting.”
Meg frowned. “Never mind about the bust cream. I need you to buy me a theatrical beard. Not the kind you glue on, but the kind that hooks over your ears. A really full and bushy one. In auburn.”
“What do you need that for?”
Not wanting to go into an explanation, Meg simply said, “Just buy it for me, and whatever you do, don’t let your father see you taking it from the case. He’s busy helping Mr. Addison so he won’t notice if you do it now. Hurry up.”
Prodded into action, Hildegarde moved with sneaky purpose behind the item counter.
Moments later, Meg departed the mercantile, package beneath her arm. She retrieved her suitcase, which she’d hidden in the dense growth of alder brush at the corner-post of the store.
She now had everything she needed to check herself into the hotel.
* * *
Gage stood on the quaint porch of the Brooks House Hotel, arms folded over his chest, with his fishing tackle at his feet. He scanned the length of Birch Avenue and looked for Meg. Not a sign of her. The hour was exactly nine o’clock.
He’d thought about Meg most of the night. It had taken nerve for her to come to his room and talk with him. He had assumed she’d either turn him down flat or, if she did agree to help him, she’d tell him in a public place like the lobby or passing him by on the street.
She must have been one hundred percent sure her brother was innocent or else she wouldn’t have agreed to help him. Gage hoped for her sake that she was right.
And now there was Ham Beauregarde, who could figure into this. Gage didn’t want to bring up Ham’s name to Meg. Not until he knew more about the traveling man. There were only four days before the contest. Precious time was ticking by.
But on the other hand, Gage wanted the clock to slow down.
Four days.
Alone with Meg.
Last night when he’d laid restlessly on his bed after she’d gone, he’d thought about the times he’d kissed her and held her. He hadn’t been able to pull her image from his head as he stayed awake until nearly dawn.
When he’d opened the door after stepping out of the shower bath, he never expected to find her there. She’d stood in the hallway with confidence and pluck. She looked different, acted different. Although subtle, the changes were evident. But the Meg that showed up last night was a risk taker. A woman of her own mind, a free-spirit.
The new Meg appealed to him more than ever.
But she would rather roast him over hot coals than give him her smile. He could tell that she wasn’t going to like having to help him; she said as much by the way the corners of her mouth turned down. She was sacrificing many unpleasant hours with Matthew Gage to help Wayne Brooks.
Gage didn’t like how her obvious reasoning made him feel.
Behind him, one of the hotel doors opened. He gave the gentleman stepping out a brief glance, then returned to looking up the street wondering when Meg was going to show up.
“Are you ready?” came Meg’s voice beside him.
Turning, Gage lifted his brows as he tried to make sense of the sight before him. Dressed from head to toe in man’s attire, Meg sported a pine-ridge scout hat, her hair tucked in the crown—which must have been quite a feat because she had thick hair—a linen shirt and ill-fitting coat with a badly tied neck scarf; and on her feet were a pair of rubber storm shoes that came to her knees.
But what surprised him the most was her beard. A bushy reddish-brown thing with a mustache to boot that came down to her collar.
“What’s the matter?” she asked casually beneath his stare—as if it were every day she met him rigged in men’s clothing.
“I wasn’t expecting this.”
“You didn’t think I’d go off with a married man, did you? Mr. Calhoon has to know Mr. Wilberforce is married. Or if he hasn’t put two and two together from the real Mr. Wilberforce’s letters, he will soon.”
He barely followed her logic. More because his gaze had automatically fallen to her mouth, which was enveloped by a fringe of theatrical hair, than because of the words she spoke. Those soft lips that he had kissed were covered with a wiry artificialness that looked real at a distance, but obvious up close. The fakery of it made him want to laugh, but he held himself in check.
“I’m not married,” Gage said, feeling cheated by not being able to enjoy her face.
“So you told me. But Mr. Wilberforce is. Right now, Mr. Calhoon isn’t aware of that. However,” she added with a serious note, drawing Gage from his perusal of her outlandish get up, “if he were to find out, my reputation would be ruined. I know it’s a very marginal chance that he’d ever really know who Mrs. Vernon Wilberforce is, but I can’t risk it.”
“But we’ve been off alone together before.”
“You needn’t remind me,” she returned with a sourness to her tone. “That was different. I didn’t know who you were. And everybody thought you were somebody else. In a small town, things have a way of coming to the surface. If anyone ever asks you who Mrs. Vernon Wilberforce is, say she’s your mother.”
Gage scowled. “It seems like a hell of a lot to go through when nobody is ever going to find out.”
“I beg to differ.” She held her shoulders erect. “I found out who you were.”
Inasmuch as Gage could understand Meg’s desire to disguise herself, he had a hard time looking at her without frowning his disappointment.
Now he wouldn’t be able to watch how she fussed with her hair, adjusting the pins all the time and poking the knot of burnished apricot tendrils on her head this way and that to get the coif just so. All that luscious red hair was hidden beneath a man’s hat. So was her figure. Behind ridiculous clothes.
He wondered where she got the outfit. Then assumed the clothing belonged to her brother.
Meg lowered her eyes. “I see you have all your things, so we might as well go and get this over with.”
She made it sound as painful and about as pleasant as a visit to the dentist to get a tooth pulled.
His male ego became slightly bruised and his tone showed as much through his cool tone. “I know the way.”
He bent and picked up his gear.
They walked the fifteen minutes to the creek in silence. Fine with Gage. He didn’t feel like talking with a woman whose shapely backside was hidden in a pair of pants a size too large.
Meg made every effort to keep the lead for most of the walk, but Gage had longer legs than her and overtook her every time she trudged in front of him.
They reached a section of Evergreen Creek that was farther to the north of the town than the spot they’d rowed to on the lake. Here, a dainty copse of Rocky Mountain ash grew in abundance with willows and berry thickets.
The shore at the water’s edge came up to them in a sandy slope. From above, warblers sang; a marsh bird of some kind swooped down, dragged its feet over the bubbling water’s surface, then soared upward, disappearing into the boughs.
Depositing her fishing tackle around her, Meg drew up to the water’s edge and seemed to size the area. Gage followed, looking into the clear stream and moss-covered rocks, then beyond to the muddy-looking pool.
He saw nothing. His gaze slipped to Meg.
She saw something.
Beneath the brim of her soldier hat, her eyes narrowed. He watched, fascinated, as she studied; she observed.
After a moment, she shook her head. “Wrong sound. I don’t like it.” She backed away and snatched her things. “We have to go that way. Downstream just a bit more.”
Gage fell in line behind her, letting her lead the way as he had no idea where to go. A short minute later, they came upon another section of the stream. She stopped and listened, this time nodding.
“This is where we’ll start.”
Dropping his gear to the ground, Gage shrugged. “What was wrong with that other spot?”
“The water flowed too wide. It had a hiss to it. Too powerful for your first lesson. This is better. Here the water gurgles and there’s an alder tunnel.” She pointed to the dense foliage that plunged part of the stream into deep shadows.
Gage didn’t see the significance of an alder tunnel, but he took her word for it.
Meg went to the water’s edge and stood very still. She positioned herself in a way so that her reflection didn’t hit the surface. Gage kept back and watched her. In the slash of shade her hat brim made, he observed her gaze skimming the water. From where he remained, he didn’t see a thing.
“Water pennies have hatched. There’s one.”
Drawing closer, Gage looked. Barely discernable was a bug that looked like a spider gliding across the water’s surface.
To his right, came a plop. A fish had just surfaced and snagged something for its meal. Gage folded his arms across his chest, feeling pretty damn smart. “We’ll use water penny flies.”
“No.”
Her reply stabbed Gage’s self-esteem. “Why not? That’s the kind of bug that’s on the water. I read you use what insect is hatching.”
“If the fish are biting that particular insect. But they aren’t.” Meg turned and walked to where she’d put her tackle.
Gage felt like knocking her hat off. “Well that fish didn’t just jump out and take a bite of air.”
“It was a cutthroat and it ate an ant that dropped off one of those alder leaves.”
“How in the hell did you see that?”
“I was watching.”
“So was I. I didn’t see a thing.”
“You weren’t looking right.” She lowered herself onto the ground and sat in a crossed-leg fashion—a mannish position made possible only because she wore trousers. He sensed she preferred sitting like this to a more ladylike pose.
Rifling through her tackle, she took out a fly box much like Ollie Stratton’s. “We’ll use terrestrials. Not exactly a fly. A terrestrial is an insect that falls, drops, jumps, hops, or is windblown from shore onto the water where they can be eaten by trout.”
She poked around and came up with a small fussy thing no bigger than the head of a fourpenny nail. Lifting it for him to see, she said, “Black fur ant.” She tilted the ant so he could look at the underside. “There’s the hook.”
“Christ, how did that lure get so small?”
“I made it.”
“You did?”
“A long time ago with my brother.”
Her brother.
The reminder served to sober him.
“Sit down and see if Mr. Wilberforce has anything in his tackle that looks like this ant.”
As he did so, she talked while she arranged her line and pole. “There’s more to fly-fishing than baiting a hook and swinging it over the water. A lot of what you do is felt inside your gut. For a lack of better description, I’ll use the one my father told me about fly-fishing.”
Gage caught a glance of her; her slender fingers as they poked around in her tackle and sorted flies and threads. That god-awful beard drove him crazy. Its full bushiness obscured most of her face. The man’s facial hair seemed a ridiculous companion to her feminine voice as she spoke. “Starting to fly-fish for trout is like falling in love. Keep in mind that my opinion of this emotion is no longer important because I’m no longer of the opinion that this emotion is worth its trouble.”
Her analogy caught him by surprise. “Is that so?”
Her hands stilled. “I was expecting you to say ‘Indeed’ or some such word.”
“I don’t talk like that. That was Wilberforce. Or rather, Louis Platt.”
“Who’s Louis Platt?”
“An editor I once had. He was as stuffy as an old moth-eaten shirt.”
They exchanged a lengthy and silent stare.
Meg broke the silence, her voice quiet. “I don’t know who you are.”
“No, you don’t.”
Studying him, she asked, “Did you make up stories about your parents? Your sister? Or was that real?”
Gage held her gaze. “It was the truth.”
Their eyes held a long while.
Then Meg went back to the trappings that lay littered around her, adjusting this and that, and continued her explanation as if nothing had passed between them. “In the early stages of fly fishing, your feelings are heady and decidedly unscientific. They exist of the moment and for the moment. And that’s enough.” She blew a puff of air between her lips, the mustache hair fluttering. She must have been hot beneath the bushy hair covering half her face.
“Take it off,” Gage heard himself say without thought.
She glowered at him. “I beg your pardon?”
“Take that damn beard off. No one is around for miles. Who’s going to see you? And if somebody comes, you can put it back on.”
She laid both hands on her knees in contemplation. A few taps of her fingers on her inseams said she was thinking it over.
Should she or shouldn’t she?
To his immense pleasure, she unhitched the beard from behind her ears. “I can’t breathe very well in this. The mustache whiskers are too long.” With a toss, she discarded the theatrical piece onto the top of her tackle basket. “That’s the only reason I’m taking it off. Not because you suggested that I do so.”
“Of course not.” Gage cracked a half-smile at her, then forgot what he was supposed to be doing. All he could do was look at the woman who sat across from him.
She may have been dressed in a lumpy jacket and trousers, and sitting in the fashion of a longshoreman, but he found her utterly captivating. The way the sunlight cast its golden glow over her, the way a butterfly flickered close to her shoulder, the way she went through the process of readying a line for casting. Then she brought out a length of superfine silk line and cut a piece to her specifications with the sharp edge of a blade.
Mesmerized, Gage didn’t readily follow her next words.
“But sooner or later,” she went on with her fly-fishing philosophy without missing a beat in her method of preparation, “things calm down a little, and as the infatuation continues, you want to know more about the sport. In the end, you become hooked. Just like love can hook a person without them least expecting it.” A melancholy frown flitted across her features. “Or so my father told me.”
Gage felt a foreign trip in his heart. Then he scoffed himself. He doubted he would ever be hooked by the inclination to fly-fish, much less fall in love without his being aware of it.
Standing, Meg held her pole and looked at his. He’d attempted to tie a leader on his tippet and run the silk gut through the loops and make a decent knot for the fly and hook. He had a few tangles in places, but other than that, not half bad.
“You know all that material you read in that book?” she asked, one hand on her hip.
“What about it?”
“Forget every word. You’ve botched your line in the worst way I’ve ever seen.”
Gage hated to admit failure; a part of him wondered if she was just saying that to make him feel like an ass. “Have I really?”
“Quite.”
Rising to his feet, Gage didn’t bother to bring his rod with him. “You could at least smile when you tell me I’ve made a blundering idiot of myself.”
“I’m saving my smiles for when I get to watch you cast,” she quipped, her tone making it clear that those smiles wouldn’t be of encouragement; they’d be blatant guffaws.
They spent the next quarter hour revamping Gage’s line and Meg instructing him on how to hold his arm when he aimed the pole over the water.
Once they stood on the water’s edge, she gave him some last-minute hints. “The object in casting is to extend the fly line, leader, and the fly in a straight path from you to the fish.” She pointed to the rod in his hand. “That fly rod can multiply the motion of your arm, so be ready for it to travel a lot farther than you think. I’ll show you what I mean.”
Gracefully, she drew her arm back and released the line. It floated like a thread of gossamer over the still water in a distant pool, then snapped right off the surface just about as quick as she reeled in the line.
“See? Now you do that.”
Gage tried. And bungled it.
His line ended up tangled in the brush because he’d overshot his mark.
Meg reprimanded him. “I told you not to flick your wrist so hard. That line is going to move way out there.”
Gritting his teeth, Gage talked between his clenched jaw. “I know that. Do you think I did it on purpose?”
She disregarded his quip. “Beginners need to relax. Mr. Gage, you’re more wound up than a watch coil. I can see tension written over every inch of you. It’s in the way you stand and the way you frown at me—like I’m enjoying this.”
“Aren’t you?”
She said nothing for a long moment. When she spoke, she ignored his question. “You need to slow your casting stroke timing and let the rod do the work. It can’t make a cast by itself any more than a baseball bat can hit a home run. Try it again.”
Gage disguised his frustration and tried again.
And again.
After a couple of hours, Gage got the wrist motion right to where he could cast without having to think through every move he made.
At noon, Meg sat down and opened the lid on a small lunch tin. Without so much as an offer to him, she began to eat.
Gage hadn’t thought to bring a meal. He’d been too anxious packing his tackle and anticipating spending the day with Meg to think about food. But now that he saw her nibbling on a sandwich, his stomach grumbled.
But he’d be damned if he’d ask her to share.
Setting down his fly rod, Gage sat next to Meg and took a load off his feet.
“Why do you think Wayne cheated?” Meg asked out of the blue. “What are your hard facts?”
They’d spent hours together and she hadn’t mentioned his story once. Now he could read the purpose in her eyes and knew that she wanted details. Some of his opinions she would think were unfair. Others, she would dismiss as unfounded. Perhaps she might agree with him on a few points, although he doubted it. In any case, he didn’t feel like arguing with her.
“A newspaper reporter doesn’t always have to have hard facts,” Gage finally said. “Sometimes there’s an aroma about a story that stinks. If something smells, it’s usually corrupt.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Why, exactly, does Wayne’s win—as you put it—stink?”
He gave her every theory he had, going down the list of the people he’d talked to and what he’d found out. He omitted Ham Beauregarde. “It doesn’t add up that your brother draws the best spot, doesn’t show up at the kick off party at the saloon, and catches nearly all brown trout when that creek supports mostly rainbows.”
“Coincidence,” she stated firmly, “all of it. Luck was on his side when he drew the lottery and won the best spot—he couldn’t possibly have trifled with that, and he’s never been an overindulger of liquor so that’s probably why he didn’t go to the saloon, and lastly, there is no evidence to prove that those brown trout didn’t have an established school in that creek. They are known to be in these waters. If he’d pulled out lobsters, I’d say you had a good point. But he didn’t and you don’t. All your theories are just speculation, Mr. Gage.”
Gage felt a muscle twitch at his jaw.
Dammit, but she sounded convincing. Gage trusted his own instincts for truth but also recognized that those instincts had to be borne out in the facts of a story. Her facts and his differed on every level. Maybe this was the first time Gage was wrong. Blinded by worn-out inclination.
“I don’t care for big city newspapers and their lies.” Meg crumpled the waxed paper her sandwich had been wrapped in, and selected an apple from her tin. “It’s awfully shabby of them to slander people in their scorched headlines on the front page. I don’t know how you can live with yourself.”
Tension worked through Gage until his joints felt like cement, hard and tight and unyielding. She didn’t know a thing about his job and the demands that came with it. If she did, she’d know that he was always on the side of fairness. “I can live with myself because I know that what I write is the truth.”
“Where’s your compassion? I’ve yet to read a stunt column with compassion.”
“There’s no room for compassion in my columns. My words are buttressed by a disarming bluntness that makes reading me appealing. I produce colorful, compelling copy.”
“My Grandma Nettie could write a more compelling argument on one of her flyers than you could in your column.” She took a bite out of her apple; a slice of ruby red skin disappeared between her white teeth. He couldn’t help watching as she delicately chewed, swallowed, then hammered him into the ground once more.
“And do you know why?” she asked.
He had no comment, so she answered for him.
“Because she cares about people. About rights and fairness. She’s not out to hurt anyone. She’s out to help women. To make them open their eyes to the Cause.”
“I could write a column and sway women to take up the Cause, and I’ll bet you I’d get at least two dozen recruits.”
“Not very likely.” She took another bite of apple, thought a moment while the sweet smell of fruit caught the current and wafted to him, then she remarked, “You analyze things too much. I’ve noticed that about you.”
Narrowing his eyes with immediate censure, Gage opened his mouth to denounce her assumption, then closed it.
Christ almighty, but she was a loaded pistol today.
He would have given himself over to a wry laugh if she hadn’t been so close to the truth. Conceding his opponent was right had never been one of his traits, but he found himself muttering, “I’ve been this way too long to change.”
“You could try.” She turned the apple, which was now little more than a core. “Pretend you really are a Bissell salesman. You have the perfect opportunity.”
Meg went to her feet, then hesitated. She looked from the apple core to Gage. “Oh my, did you want some? Oops.” Then she tossed the apple into the tin, and picked up her rod once more with a satisfied smack.
She moved to the shore and began to cast. She’d caught and released a half a dozen trout this morning. He’d caught none.
Hell and damnation.
Stretching his legs out in front of him, Gage leaned back on his elbows to discredit her suggestion about acting like a real Bissell man. A legitimate carpet sweeper salesman wouldn’t know a hawk from a handsaw. The world of traveling men revolved around sales and people. Talking up their products—not putting their customers under a magnifying glass to find out what made them tick. Gage usually had somebody’s number within five minutes of observing their body language. A Bissell man would merely write up his order and be on his way.
In Gage’s mind, he was ruined. He could never enter a room and not size the whole of it up.
Exhaling, he rose and picked up his bamboo rod. Positioning himself next to Meg, he cast and promptly overshot his aim and landed in a clump of weeds. He swore. Giving her a sidelong glance, he yanked the silk line until it broke.
“Trouble?” she queried sweetly.
He ground out, “Looks like it.”
“Hmm. It sure does. Weren’t you listening when I told you to conserve your arm motion?”
“I was listening. But in fly-fishing, listening doesn’t have a whole lot to do with things, now does it?”
“I suppose not.”
Gage sat and rifled through his tackle box to get another tippet for the end of his line. Meg stood in place, staring out at the water. Then furrowed her brow. “I want you to know,” she began not meeting his gaze, “that what I said the other night—I didn’t really mean it.”
It took him a moment to comprehend what she was getting at. I love you, Vernon.
Pausing with the spindle of silk gut in his grasp, Gage couldn’t help saying, “What if that’s what I had wanted to say to you? You never let me finish.”
She grew still, startled. Flustered. A flicker of hopefulness contouring her profile . . . then disbelief. It shouldn’t have mattered what she thought of him, but it did.
“I wouldn’t have cared what it was as long as you’d been honest. And as long as you’d meant whatever it was.” Lifting her chin and giving him a stern frown over her shoulder, she added, “Which we now know you never meant anything sentimental you ever said to me so we can just go right on and forget about past history, Mr. Gage.”
Staring ahead once more, she murmured, “I told you, I don’t believe in love anymore.”