back at him. He certainly didn’t want her to accuse him of eavesdropping.
At the mention of Bret McGowan, Gabrielle waved the men away and turned to him. “Oh, Father. Timothy and Liam are terrible. You mustn’t allow them to talk about Bret anymore and you must forbid me to listen if they do.”
Arley sighed. He could no more do that than he could prevent the spreading hollow in his heart, which each year seemed to make it weaker without the solid center of purpose and authority he had carried as a younger, happily married husband and father.
The approaching snap and click of quick-step boots made everyone turn. A local regiment, preceded by its captain on horseback, paraded in two columns down the street. Sunlight glittered on the brass buttons of their blue coats and the varnished, black leather of their boots as the colors fluttered by proudly in the wind.
Arley paused to watch. How Melissa had enjoyed watching him march. A warm, passionate kiss always awaited a twenty-one-year-old rowdy without a stitch of sense in his britches or a five-cent piece to match. Arley had savored those embraces when he marched through Cooke County toward Gainesville in the bitter fall of ’62. The worst of a bad situation beyond anyone’s control and best forgotten by all who are still fool enough to remember.
Arley saluted the flag, wincing from the stiffness in his joints. What would Melissa think of him now? He followed the procession until they turned a corner and disappeared. Arley put a fresh pinch of tobacco in his pipe and struck a match.
Gabrielle strolled up and took his arm. “Father, please. If I hear another word about Bret.”
Timothy stepped briskly to Arley’s other side. “As I was telling Gabrielle, sir, Bret spent an entire week in bed when he first returned.”
Liam tried to squeeze in at Gabrielle’s side. “Yes sir. He was in a sickbed with God knows what. Sent his man, Philip, rushing around town for medicine. Still looks paler than a flounder’s belly to me.”
Arley sighed. “Sometimes I think my bones are hardening into granite. My right knee hardly bends these days.”
“I read about some sort of rare metal ring,” Timothy said. “Conducts the body’s natural electricity. Good for rheumatism I believe.”
Arley gazed out into the water. “Sounds like a spare part for Bret’s infernal contraption. We’re men, not machines.”
“Exactly, sir,” Liam said in his ingratiating manner. “That’s precisely what Doctor Hellreich reported in the Daily News. I’m looking forward to attending his next lectures. They’re quite entertaining and educational from what I’ve heard.”
“Oh Father, you must let me attend the next lecture too,” Gabrielle said, twirling her pink parasol. “I hear he favors giving women the vote. He sounds like a very practical man with more common sense than many I’ve heard.” She frowned at Timothy and Liam.
Arley considered both young men. He couldn’t decide which fool he pitied and which idiot he despised. They didn’t have a clue about the doctor’s deeper principles and theories. Part of a generation of sheep without a shepherd. What would they ever know about how a man must change to survive in a cruel and unforgiving world? And who will miss them when the wolf comes to thin the flock?
A spasm of irritation crossed Arley’s face and he turned away to watch an old schooner breaking waves across the Gulf. He glanced back at his daughter’s two suitors. How were pampered and perfumed men like these entitled to inherit the fortunes created from the blood, sweat and tears of a tougher breed? Sheepish grins flickered across the young men’s faces then each turned their attention back toward the water.
“Please father,” Gabrielle pleaded. “Won’t you introduce me?”
Arley looked at his daughter again. “I suppose your mother would have found talk of woman’s suffrage amusing. One of my greatest regrets is not being able to hear her laughter with yours.”
Gabrielle glared at him. “Father if you won’t then I’m quite capable of—”
Arley raised his hand. “All right, Gabrielle, since you insist.”
Gabrielle covered her mischievous grin with her fan, turned and strolled back along the sidewalk toward the parked surrey and horses, resting her open parasol on her shoulder.
“She’ll be fine, gentlemen,” Arley assured them. “Sometimes her opinions get the best of her prudence.”
“Certainly, Mr. Caldwell,” Liam said. “Lord knows we’ve all had quite an earful lately about women’s so-called rights.”
Timothy nodded. “What kind of world would it be if a woman’s intuition was thought to be more useful than a