Chapter Four
The next morning, Beauwhistled as he left Dawson’s Diner. This little town was beginning to grow on him. The people were friendly enough, and the breakfast he’d just put away ensured he wouldn’t be hungry again until dark. He thought he might finally pay a visit to the tailor to order a better-fitting suit. And then . . . He smiled at the post and telegraph office across the street.
Then he’d pay another visit to Faith.
If he’d been taken with her words in the letters she’d written, that was nothing compared to how much space she’d occupied in his mind since he finally met her. She’d been clear in her letters that her husband’s death had been hard on her. Perhaps that was why she was so reticent to get to know him better.
And yet she’d written to him. Letter after letter after letter. Something about him interested her. And Beau was determined to wait as long as it took before she remembered that.
He stepped away from the diner, thinking vaguely that the tailor was in the direction of the church, toward the west. It was a beautiful day, with fluffy white clouds sliding slowly across a bright blue sky. It was already warm, which meant it was likely to grow hot by the height of the day. Yet hot here was nothing compared to the heat of New Orleans. The heat here warmed your bones instead of melting them.
He strode along the town’s Main Street, giving friendly nods and greetings to those he passed and wondering what it might be like to settle here. He’d run the post and telegraph office, of course. Faith could teach him all he needed to know. They’d operate the business together, he’d hold a place of standing in this town, have a purpose. That purpose was what he lacked back at home, he knew now.
He’d never been cut out to be a newspaperman, and selling that business was in his—and his mother’s—best interest. But the problem he hadn’t yet discerned at that point was what he’d do with himself afterward. Without acting as his father’s assistant, he had no real purpose in his life.
And so he’d fallen into the wrong sorts of amusements.
Beau shuddered as that night that had changed everything ran through his mind again. That was what had finally woken him up from the drifting life he’d led. He’d made a terrible, necessary decision that night. And that decision had driven him right out of Louisiana and into this new life.
And he was determined to make the best of it, starting with Faith.
As he grew closer to the end of Main Street, the church and the nearby tailor’s storefront came into sight—along with a sight Beau surely would never grow tired of.
Faith.
She stood in front of the park across the road from the undertaker and the tailor, and she was speaking with . . . Beau squinted as he attempted to make out the man’s face. It was the preacher, he thought. The same one who’d eyed him with undisguised curiosity yesterday. Well, he ought to make the man’s acquaintance, given that he was planning to live here.
Beau crossed the road, a friendly smile already in place, until he grew close enough to hear what the man was saying to Faith.
“. . . I worry about all of my flock, including you, Mrs. Thornton.”
“I assure you, Pastor, I’m doing just fine. I have thoughtful friends to provide me with company and help when I need it with my work. You needn’t worry about me.” Faith’s words were polite, but her voice held a slight edge. Beau immediately had the feeling that she’d had this conversation with the preacher before.
The pastor folded his hands together in front of him, almost as if he were about to begin praying right there on the dirt road in front of the park. “That isn’t enough, my dear. You need a husband. This is no place—”
“For a lady alone. Yes, Pastor, I remember.” Faith dug a hand into her skirts, and her voice went from the edge of polite to testy. “However—”
