Beauty for Ashes Page 0,51
dismissed.”
“You’re not the scholarly type then.”
“Oh, I liked the classes well enough. And I made some good friends along the way. It was the rules and expectations I couldn’t abide. I like to come and go without explaining myself to anyone.”
She looked up at him, an odd light in her eyes. “What are you running away from, Griff?”
“Is that what you think?”
“It’s what it sounds like to me.”
“Well, you’re wrong about that. I want to experience as much of life as possible, so I won’t have any regrets when the candle finally burns down and flickers out. That’s easier to do when other people aren’t depending on me.”
They reached the road. He helped her inside the rig and handed her the reins. “If you promise to come back, I’ll—”
He broke off as another rig rattled along the road.
Carrie turned. “It’s Mrs. Spencer and Mariah Whiting. I wonder what they’re doing out here.”
“They’re probably wondering the same thing about you.”
Mrs. Spencer halted the rig in the road. “Carrie Daly? I thought that was you, but then I said to Mariah, surely—”
Carrie hid her mud-caked shoe beneath her skirt and straightened her hat. “Hello, Eugenie. Mariah.”
Mariah nodded, her expression wary.
“You remember Mr. Rutledge. You met him at Henry’s wedding.”
“We remember,” Eugenie said.
Griff nodded and crossed his arms, waiting as Mariah took in Carrie’s dusty skirt and hastily tied hat. “Mrs. Spencer, Mrs. Whiting. A pleasure seeing you both again.”
“Carrie,” Mariah said at last, “Do you think it’s proper, being out here alone with someone we hardly know?”
Griff didn’t wait for Carrie’s answer. He smiled at both women and said, “I don’t blame you for being concerned about your friend, but I assure you nothing untoward happened.”
Eugenie sniffed. “I don’t wish to be rude—”
“Then don’t be.” Carrie picked up the reins and smiled at Griff. “Thank you for the riding lesson, Mr. Rutledge. I quite enjoyed myself.”
SIXTEEN
The flour bin in the Verandah’s kitchen was nearly empty. Carrie sprinkled a scoop onto the wooden pastry board and made a mental note to remind Mrs. Whitcomb to buy more. After church last Sunday, Reverend Patterson had asked for volunteers to bake bread for several farm families who were having a hard time keeping food on the table, and Mrs. Whitcomb had signed her up. She finished kneading the dough and set it aside to rise. She’d have preferred being asked outright, but she was too grateful for something useful to do to make a fuss about it. Without her work at the bookstore, she felt aimless and unsettled.
At least there was plenty to do around the hotel, and she was grateful for the modest pay Mrs. Whitcomb offered. While she waited for the dough, she tidied the kitchen, filled the oil lamps, and swept and dusted the parlor. When the dough was ready, she lifted it from the yellow crockery bowl, punched it down, sprinkled on more flour, and picked up her rolling pin, Granny Bell’s voice a whisper in her ear.
“Baking bread is a lot like growing your faith in the Lord, Carrie Louise. You mix together the best ingredients you can find and wait for the mixture to mature, but it’s the heat of the oven that makes dough into something of worth and of substance. The same way the tribulations of this world mature a person’s faith.”
Carrie fitted loaves into greased pans and placed them in the oven to bake, wincing as a sore muscle protested. The morning after her ride with Griff, she had noticed a fist-sized bruise ripening on her thigh. Now it was fading, but the soreness remained. Still, the exhilaration of flying along the pasture aboard Griff’s horse, her arms wrapped around his firm middle, had been worth every bit of discomfort, even worth Mariah’s disapproval. She’d needed that brief respite from the tribulations of her own life.
She wiped her floury hands on her apron and wandered toward the front of the house, thinking of everything that had happened since Henry’s wedding. Was Granny Bell right? Could God use her hurts and disappointments to mold her into a woman of substance?
The clock in the parlor chimed. Lucy Whitcomb, hat in hand, slid down the banister and landed with a thump on the hallway carpet. She grinned at Carrie, a playful look on her face.
“It’s a trick I learned from the Grayson kids. But don’t tell Aunt Maisy. She’d have a conniption fit.” Lucy retrieved her hat from the rack in the corner. “She thinks I should behave like