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.Kimble owned.“If you can’t call me by my given name, please call me Dell.You asked me to call you Jack, and if the offer is still open, I shall agree.I understand if you’re not comfortable with that level of intimacy, considering our situation, but it might make life just a touch more pleasant.”“Fine.No amount of blackmail is gonna make me know how to run this dag-blamed machine…Dell.”It sounded just as hateful to her ears as Miss Priss, but at least it was a step in the right direction.“This is similar to the press my father’s paper used when I was a little girl but I was never allowed to touch it.I did watch a lot when I visited, but I’m afraid my knowledge would be limited to setting the type.Everything else is a mystery.”Jack threw his hands up in the air and laughed.“Well, there ya go! Oh, well, we did our best but there’s nothin’ for it.I’ll just pay you the gold you lost, like I promised, and I’ll sell this place off.”His chipper attitude grated on her nerves and she wasn’t about to let him off the hook so easy.“Surely, you know someone who could help us.Maybe your friend from Mr.Kimble’s shop? What was his name, Allan?”“Aidan,” he mumbled, suddenly crestfallen.She must have unwittingly hit a nerve.Working it until he conceded seemed like the best course of action.“Oh yes, Aidan.Silly of me to forget.”She wandered around the shop, casually trailing her fingers through dust.Jack stood at the window staring out.“He seems like such a sweet fellow, so kind.You know he actually gave me encouraging words when Mr.Kimble was a wretch to me? I can certainly see why you’re so fond of him.I wonder if he would be interested in leaving the employ of Mr.Kimble.”Delilah kept her eyes on Jack the entire time she wandered around, pretending to inspect the place.Instead she was inspecting him.The broad set of his shoulders drooped a little more with each word she spoke.Kimble was a horrid man, so it made sense that anyone working for him would be miserable.And Aidan’s infirmary made him ill-suited for manual labor, so she took a guess that he might have complained to Jack about his situation.More than anything, Jack liked to be the biggest toad in the puddle.Since he rolled into town with a wagon full of gold, he’d been showing off to everyone.His first night at Sam’s, he paid for a week’s worth of lodging for every man there.He often bragged about buying rounds of liquor for the entire saloon.And Delilah had seen him around town on occasion buying pretty gifts for even prettier girls.A twinge of annoyance colored her cheeks at the thought of the last.He’d done so much for others but persisted in calling her names and teasing her.Of course, that wasn’t completely true.He had taken a chance to gamble for her gold.It would have been just as easy for him to walk out of that saloon and let her get her comeuppance.But he didn’t do that.Gratitude tugged at her heart.As much as she talked big, Jack could have walked away from this whole mess, leaving her destitute.She almost felt guilty for manipulating him in such a blatant manner.Almost.“You can stop now, Dell,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at her, a smile playing at his lips.“I know what you’re doing and there’s no need.I can see now that I got no choice in this so might as well make the best of it.Can’t do no better’n Aidan.I’ll be back.”With a wink and a wave, he swept out the door.The smells from the old press brought back a flood of memories from her childhood.Her father didn’t often take her to the newspaper’s offices, but she loved being there.The smell of the ink and paper, the cacophony of men in grimy, stained aprons with equally grimy, stained hands setting type and pulling levers, turning out sheet after sheet of newsprint.It had always been her most favorite place in the world and those warm feelings returned now, even though the entire shop was still.She spent the next hour tidying up — dusting, sweeping and organizing boxes of type into some logical order.It was like coming home.That had been the only thing her father would allow her to touch.She delighted in spelling out words on the rough wooden floor of his tiny office as the men worked outside, pretending she was setting up her own newspaper.As she grew older, she even had the opportunity to set up type plates from time to time, though not as a real job, as much as she would have liked that.No, as much as she persisted in asking, her father denied her the chance to actually be employed at the paper.“It’s no place for a lady,” he’d always say.“No man of good character will want a wife with stained fingers.Besides, my men wouldn’t like having to mind their Ps and Qs around a young lady.Now go practice your knitting with your mother.”Ps and Qs.She plucked one of each letter from an ink-blackened box and lightly traced their outlines with the tip of her forefinger.She’d had to mind her own for so long but now she was going to mind them in the way they were meant to be minded.Moving quickly, she dug around in the box and pulled out all the letters she needed.Arranging them on the composing table to set up the masthead, she spelled out the name of her newspaper and smiled.The Nuptial News~*~*~Delilah was just wondering if Jack was ever coming back when she heard a commotion from the street.Shouts and the cries of a terrified horse were right outside her door.A horse was rearing, threatening to tip over the wagon it was pulling.She watched helplessly from the doorway as the woman and child on the buckboard held on for dear life while the horse whinnied wild-eyed and tried to throw its bonds.A figure darted out of the shadows and into the street, heading right for the horse.Before her brain could make sense of what her eyes were seeing, Jack was standing in front of the crazed horse, hands held up and murmuring something too low for her to hear.For a brief moment, her heart stopped.Jack was going to get trampled by that horse and leave her alone.Alone to run this newspaper, her brain quickly added.But that’s not what happened [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]