Magnolia. Diana Palmer

she opened her mouth?

      He saw her gripping her purse with both hands. While he disliked her intrusion into his privacy, she was just a sweet child whose observations shouldn’t upset him. He indulged her more than any woman he’d ever known. He’d have thrown a man out of his carriage for less than what she’d just said to him. But she had a kind heart and she cared about him. It was difficult to be angry about that. She kindled protective feelings in him, too.

      If it hadn’t been for Diane, he could well have cherished this child. He leaned closer as the carriage began to slow down. “Well, Claire,” he persisted in a deep drawl, “are you besieged with tender feelings for me?”

      “The only feeling I have right now is a consuming desire to lay an iron pipe across your skull,” she said under her breath.

      “Miss Lang!” he said with mock outrage, and made it worse by chuckling.

      She turned and glared at him, her gray eyes sparkling with temper. “Ridicule me, then. You make me ashamed that I was ever worried for you,” she said flatly. “Ruin your life, sir. I will never concern myself with it again.”

      She banged against the ceiling with the handle of her parasol and was out of the carriage before he could do anything more than call her name.

      She fumbled the parasol open and got onto the wooden sidewalk, which was a relief from the mud, at least. In front of the bank, which was about to open, she spotted Kenny Blake, a friend of hers from school days, and ran to greet him.

      “Oh, Kenny! Thank goodness I found you! Can you give me a ride home? Our buggy’s axle broke.”

      “You’re not hurt?” he asked.

      She shook her head. “Just a little shaken, that’s all.” She laughed. “Fortunately, it was very near the blacksmith’s shop and the livery stable. I was able to get help, but they were so crowded that nobody could spare the time to drive me home.”

      “You could have hired a coach.”

      She shook her head with a rueful smile. “I haven’t any money,” she said honestly. “Uncle spent the last little bit we had on new spark plugs for the motorcar, and until his pension comes, we have to be very careful.”

      “I can make you a loan,” he offered. And he could have, because Kenny had a very good job managing a men’s clothing shop in town.

      “No, you can’t. Just give me a ride.”

      He grinned, and his plain face lit up. He was medium height, blond, blue-eyed, and very shy. But he and Claire got along well, and he wasn’t shy with her. She brought out all the best in him.

      “Wait until I finish my business in here, and I certainly shall,” he assured her.

      She let go of his arm, feeling cold eyes on her back. She glanced around at John Hawthorn in his expensive suit and bowler hat, his silver-headed cane in one hand as he leaned elegantly on its length and waited for Mr. Calverson to unlock the door from the inside. Calverson trusted no one except himself with that key. He was very possessive about things he owned—something that John would have done well to have remembered, Claire thought.

      At the stroke of nine, Mr. Calverson opened the huge oak doors and stood aside to let the others enter. His eyes were on his gold pocket watch, which was suspended from a thick gold-link chain. He nodded as he closed the case and stuck it back in the watch pocket of his vest. He looked rather comical to Claire, the short, stout little man with his flowing blond-and-silver mustache and his bald head. She really couldn’t imagine any woman finding him attractive, much less a beauty like Diane. But then, only John thought she’d married old man Calverson for love. Everyone else in Atlanta knew that Diane had expensive tastes—and that her family’s ruined fortunes had left her, at the age of twenty-two, with no tangible assets save her beauty. She had to marry well to keep her sisters and her mother in fancy clothes and insure that the elegant mansion on Ponce de León kept running smoothly. But Mr. Calverson had more money than she could ever spend. So why was she risking it all for a fling with her old flame John?

      “The bank isn’t in trouble, is it?” she asked when she and Kenny were in his buggy on the way to Claire’s home.

      “What? Why, certainly not,” he said, shocked. “Why do you ask?”

      She shrugged. “No reason. I just wondered if it was solvent, that’s all.”

      “Mr. Calverson has managed it quite well since he came here a few years past,” he reminded her. “He’s prosperous…anyone can see that.”

      So he seemed to be. But it was a little strange that a man who came from farming stock should amass such a fortune in so short a time. Of course, he did have access to investment advice, and he foreclosed on land and houses and such.

      “Our Mr. Hawthorn was glaring at you,” Kenny remarked.

      “He gave me a ride and insulted me.”

      His hands jerked on the reins and the horse protested loudly. “I shall speak to him!”

      “No, Kenny, dear. Not that sort of insult. Mr. Hawthorn wouldn’t soil his hands by putting them on me. I meant that we had a sort of disagreement, that’s all.”

      “About what?”

      “I’m not at liberty to discuss it,” she said stiffly.

      “Well, it’s not hard to guess about what,” he remarked. “Everyone knows he’s panting after the bank president’s wife. You’d think the man would have more pride.”

      “People in love seem to lose it rather easily, and she was engaged to him before she married Mr. Calverson.”

      “If she’s risking her little nest to see John behind her husband’s back, maybe there is some worry about money,” he remarked. “That young woman doesn’t miss a step.”

      “If John loves her…”

      “A scandal would ruin him in Atlanta. Not to mention her good name. Her people were always mercenary, but there was never a breath of scandal about them.”

      She remembered John coming home wounded to find Diane comfortably married. John had been in a terrible state at the time, stoic and unapproachable in his recovery. Claire had gone with Uncle Will to see him in the hospital, having heard the gossip about his badly broken engagement. At eighteen, Claire had felt the first stirrings of love for the wounded soldier who bore his pain with such courage and had even won a medal for bravery.

      “It must be terrible to lose someone you love that much,” she remarked, and thought of herself, because she’d loved John for almost two years…

      “There’s a circus coming to town very soon,” Kenny said. “Would you care to go with me to see it on Saturday?”

      She smiled. “I should like that very much, Kenny.”

      “I’ll ask your uncle for his permission,” he said, beaming.

      She didn’t tell him that her uncle was much too modern for such things, or that she didn’t feel that she needed permission to do what she liked. Kenny was nice and uncomplicated, and he took her mind off John. Anything that could accomplish that made the day worthwhile.

      UNCLE WILL JUST HAD finished fixing a leaky radiator. Kenny said his piece and left while Claire was changing into a clean skirt and blouse and shoes. Grimacing, she gave the dress to Gertie.

      Gertie sighed. “Miss Claire, you have a gift for soiling clothes,” she remarked, a twinkle in her eyes.

      “I do try to stay clean,” she told the older woman. “It’s simply that fate is after me with a broom.”

      Gertie chuckled. “It seems so. I’ll do what I can with this. Oh, and I won’t be here on Sunday. I’m going to meet my father at the station and go with him to a family reunion.”

      “How is he?” Gordon Mills Jackson was a