Diana Palmer - Magnolia

1900

THE STREETS OF ATLANTA WERE MUDDY FROM the recent rain, and the poor carriage horses seemed lacking in spirit as they strained to pull their burdens along Peachtree Street. Claire Lang watched them, wishing she had the money to hire a ride back to her home, a good five miles away. The stupid buggy had hit a rock and broken an axle, adding to the financial worries that had plagued her for months. Will Lang had been so impatient for the motorcar part hed ordered from Detroit that Claire had taken the buggy up to Atlanta to get the small part for her uncle from the railway agent. The buggy was old and in bad shape, but, instead of watching the road, shed been looking for early signs of autumn in the gorgeous maple and poplar trees.

Shed have to get to her friend Kennys clothing store the best way she couldand then hope that he could spare the time to drive her down to Colbyville, where her uncle lived. She looked at the caked mud on her high-topped shoes and the filthy hem of her skirts and grimaced. The dress, navy blue with a lacy white bodice and collar, was brand-new. Her cloak and parasol had protected the rest of her from the rain, and her hat had shielded her brown hair in its bun, but no amount of lifting had spared her skirts. She could imagine what Gertie would say about that! She was always untidy, anyway, puttering around in her uncles shed, helping him keep his new motorcar running. Nobody else in Colbyville had one of the exotic modern inventions. In fact, only a handful of people anywhere in the country owned motorcars, and most of theirs were electric or steam. Uncle Wills device was fueled by gasoline, which he purchased from the local drugstore.

Motorcars were so rare that when one went past, people would run out onto their porches to watch. They were objects of both fascination and fear, because the loud noise they made spooked horses. But most people looked at the motorcar as a fad that would quickly die out. Claire didnt. She saw it as the future form of transportation, and she was thrilled to be her uncles mechanic.

She smiled wistfully. How fortunate her life had been since shed come here to live with her uncle. Her parents had died of cholera ten years past, leaving their only child without a relative in the world except Uncle Will. He was a bachelor, too, with only his African housekeeper, Gertie, and a handyman, Gerties husband, Harry, to help run the big house where he lived. Since shed grown up, Claire had done her share of cooking and housework, but her greatest joy was helping to work on that automobile! It was a spanking new Oldsmobile with a curved dash, and just looking at it gave her goose bumps. At the end of last year Uncle Will had ordered it in Michigan; it had been shipped by rail to Colbyville as soon as it was built. Like most motorcars, it occasionally choked and coughed and smoked and rattled, and from time to time its thin rubber tires went flat on the rough, deeply rutted dirt roads that circled Colbyville.

The townspeople had prayed for deliverance from what they said had to be an invention of the devil, and horses took to the fields as if driven by ghosts. The town council had paid a visit to her uncle the day after his motorcar arrived: Uncle Will had smiled tolerantly and promised to keep the elegant little vehicle out of the way of the carriage trade. He loved his toy, which had all but bankrupted him, and he spent all his spare time working on it. Claire shared his fascination. Hed finally given in and stopped chasing her out of the garage so that bit by bit, shed learned about boilers and gears and bearings and spark plugs and pistons. Now she knew almost as much as he. Her hands were slender and dexterous and she wasnt afraid of the occasional bite she got when she touched the wrong part of the small combustion engine. The one real drawback was the grease. In order to work properly, the bearings had to be continually bathed in grease, which got on everythingincluding Claire.

Suddenly a carriage appeared on the street and Claire watched it draw near. When it was in front of her, it went through a puddlesplattering mud all over her skirts. She let out a groan and looked so forlorn that the driver stopped.

The carriage door opened and impatient dark eyes glared out at her. For Gods sake! Get in before youre even more soaked than you already are, you silly child!

The voice, deep and familiar, had the power to turn her heart over. Not that he knew. Claire was careful to keep her feelings for her uncles banker very close to her heart.

Thank you, Mr. Hawthorn, she replied politely, smiling. She tried to make a ladylike entrance into his nice clean carriage as she folded the parasol and hiked up her skirts to the top of her shoes. But she tripped over the wet hem and landed in a heap on the seat, flushing because John Hawthorn made her so nervous.

Very dignified in his dark-vested city suit, he moved over to give her plenty of room, then rapped on the top of the carriage with his cane, signaling his driver to go ahead. Honest to Pete, Claire! You attract mud like oats attract a horse! He looked mildly exasperated as he surveyed the damage. I have to get to the bank by opening time, but Ill have my driver take you down to Colbyville, he said, his dark eyes narrowing in his lean, handsome face. He had an innate fastidiousness, almost a coldness, with most women, as if he knew he was attractive to them and to maintain his distance. It had been the first thing that drew Claires attention to him, a challenge to a womans ego. But he wasnt cold with her. He alternately teased and indulged her, the way he would a very young girl. It hadnt bothered her so much two years ago. Now it did.

Shed first become acquainted with him when he took a job at the bank owned by Eli Calverson. Hed already worked his way up to being a loan officer the year before the Spanish-American War broke out, and John, with an educated guess as to where Cuban-American relations were going, had left the bank in 1897 to serve briefly in the army. Because his early education had been at the Citadel, a military college in South Carolina, he was able to go in with an officers commission.