A/N: The week of 9/18—9/22 I wrote/added new sections to the previously published Ch. 3, sections not included in its original Aug. 31 upload. (An OOPS on my part.) If you haven't already read the new Ch. 3 sections, it might be a good idea before embarking on Ch. 4, especially for understanding the sequence of story events and even the characters themselves. Ch. 3's all new except for the last two recognizable portions. So you're actually getting one and a half new chapters today . . . you just have to backtrack for the "half," LOL.
My heartfelt thanks for your wonderful support. Picking this story up after a 3 year hiatus, I honestly wasn't sure anyone would still be interested. I was humbled by the open-armed welcome you gave it. Your reviews/faves/follows made me smile on a night I really needed some light.
• Fiona was seen deep in the pages of a book, reading at her switchboard, at least twice in the first two episodes of S6 alone, subtly establishing her as a reader/literature appreciator . . . just like Lucas. I found that interesting.
• This site's been glitchy since a server crash on 9/15. I really hope this chapter shows up for everyone (and you received notifications about its upload.)
• With what I'm hearing about Hallmark/WCTH finally, unbelievably righting the ship (it seems) in S10, I'm crossing my fingers and toes that my Lucona miiiiiiight become canon in S11 now that L is single. Time will tell. The cutting cruelties, lies, betrayals (onscreen and off), and general "huh?" of S8-9 will always be with me, but I'm following word of developments to see if they go the necessary lengths further and have real apologies and honorable movement forward that vindicate truth and render justice—for TN and N&E. Lemme stop myself there, haha. :D Yes, I have strong thoughts on things, and nope, not sorry for 'em. :D Let's see what happens tonight in the finale.
Thanks for reading this long A/N; apparently, I had a lot to say. :p
— Chapter 4 —
Subterfuge
HER ANKLES WERE going numb from lack of movement.
Uncrossing them with a sigh, Fiona drummed her heels on the floorboards for a moment to try and restore circulation before putting her reading down and cautiously standing up to stretch, arching her back and lifting her arms in a loop over her head. She was relieved when her pin-needle ankles held her up.
It was getting late. She was tired and the lure of bedtime was strong. Her bed at Mrs. Yun's Boarding House for Single Ladies on the edge of town was comfortable, her pillow fluffy, the linens crisp and clean, and at the moment she could think of no greater pleasure than sinking into them after a warm bath to soak away the day's weariness.
She eyed the clock, quietly ticking away the hours on the wall.
Twenty-three more minutes.
The evening shift couldn't end soon enough.
Much as she enjoyed her job, she couldn't deny she was eager to find and train a replacement. Having someone to split shifts with would be a godsend. It would also free up more time to explore the area—one of the many perks this traveling position with the telephone company allowed her, and her personal favorite of the bunch. Travel, seeing the North American continent, meeting new people; she found all of it fascinating, bubbling her blood with new possibilities and horizons—and there was so much more of it she had yet to do.
Her extension rang, jarringly loud in the empty mercantile, lit only by a gas lamp on her desk and another on the wall, the shop long since closed for the day. Stretching forgotten, she reached for the buzzing implement. Her mind leaped.
Who in this sleepy little town would be calling her at this time of the night? And what could have happened? It was well past suppertime.
"You've reached the switchboard operator," she spoke into the receiver.
There was a pause, then a voice she recognized. "Miss Miller, this is Bill Avery over at the jail."
Recognition lit. "Sheriff Avery. How can I assist?" Her heartbeat sped a little faster. Was this about the Lucas Bouchard situation?
"You recall that telephone number you gave me this afternoon? The one the new saloon man"—she could hear his distaste dripping—"put a call through to chat about shipping a package? In French?"
"Of course." How could she forget? It wasn't every day something of this scale presented itself through her switchboard.
"I think it's time I tried that number myself."
Good call, she thought but refrained from speaking it aloud. She was rather liking the crotchety sheriff but wasn't sure he would take kindly to a relatively unknown personage, and a civilian no less, proffering approval of his actions. "I'll connect you immediately."
"Don't you need me to read off the number to you? You gave me the paper it was written down on."
"I kept a copy." Fiona believed in crossing her t's and dotting her i's.
"Ah." There was grudging respect in his tone. "Well, go on then."
She smothered a grin at his refusal to compliment her foresight. "Will do, sheriff."
There was a sound almost like a click as she inserted the phone plug. "Your call is connected," she informed him. "Go ahead, please."
"Hello, is this Cape Fullerton?" Bill demanded more circumspectly than she would have thought him capable. Briefly, she wondered what anyone else who might be in the jail thought of this conversation.
"Who is this?" A woman's voice on the other end coolly demanded back in unaccented English, but with an no-nonsense edge.
Bill smoothly responded, "This is a friend of Lucas Bouchard's."
The falsehood came so naturally that Fiona blinked. This sheriff was a surprise.
Click.
Fiona bit her lip to hold back her reaction to the woman's abrupt action. "Sheriff, she hung up. Do you want me to place the call again?"
Bill's voice turned heavy, a bit grim. "No. Her actions speak louder than words."
"They did indeed." Curiouser and curiouser. "I was not expecting that."
"Nor I." He cleared his throat and she heard chair legs scrape back on a floor. "I'll take it from here, Miss Miller. Good night."
She blinked at the sudden end to their pleasantries, but a quick smile formed as she shook her head and reached for the phone plug. "Good night, sheriff. I'll keep my ears open and let you know if I hear anything else."
He just grunted and hung up, which only served to widen her smile as she replaced the receiver. Scooting her chair back, she retrieved her purse and a light jacket against the cool evening air before dousing the lamps on her way out. As she locked the door to the mercantile behind her, quietly relishing the ability to actually hear nature's night sounds in this sleepy little town, she couldn't help but glance at the jail.
The light was still on, glowing dimly from behind drawn curtains. North West Mounted Police Regional Office the sign above it read. She knew a smaller sign tacked up next to the door stated it was also the home of the local sheriff.
She wondered if Bill Avery was alone in the jail, or if he and the new NWMP Constable were sharing the lone desk to complete their respective final paperwork of the day. She'd heard about their desk arrangement. The younger ladies of the town whispered and giggled in the mercantile about the new Mountie on a daily basis, their eyes glowy above their whisper-shielding hands.
A real dish, she'd heard a bolder one tally him.
Tall. A reserved mien. Possessing piercing eyes that sent the girls into flutters as soon as he looked away. Though it seemed he was both too busy and too quiet to offer more than a polite greeting when anyone passed him on the street—or so word had it. Thus far, she'd not had a chance to witness it herself.
She'd seen a huge dark gelding in NWMP livery tied to the hitching post outside the jail on more than one occasion, black mane and tail flowing across a sleek, muscled coat, but she'd yet to lay eyes on his rider.
Or the town schoolteacher.
There was a tragedy there.
Her heart hurt for the unknown woman. Losing a newlywed Mountie husband, beloved to the town, less than a year prior; carrying his child alone—it was a painful road to walk for any woman.
And now there was a new Mountie in town. Wearing the red serge last seen on the widow Thornton's husband. Using his old office. Walking the boardwalks he had walked, patrolling the territory he used to—all in knee-high Mountie boots that bore their taller owner with his longer stride in rugged style.
She couldn't begin to imagine how Elizabeth Thornton felt.
Or how she would react when she finally met the new Mountie, which, according to gossip—always dropping to hushed, sorrowed tones when the speaker mentioned it—had yet to happen. The Mountie widow had made herself scarce in town since he had arrived.
But no meeting could be put off forever.
·oOo·
Fisting her hands at the small of her back to ease the knot forming there, Fiona stretched in her chair and stifled the yawn struggling to break free.
Despite her weariness, the walk home in the cool air the night before had re-awakened her and she'd stayed up far too late reading deeper into a thick volume on the art of business—a rare imprudence for which she was now paying the price. Barely ten o'clock in the morning, two cups of hot coffee in her already, and yet she was finding it hard not to succumb to the siren-call temptation that coaxed her to lay her head down for just . . . five . . . minutes . . .
"Mr. Yost, good morning!" A voice she now recognized rang out.
She huffed in disbelief, but her senses alerted.
Lucas Bouchard had a way of marring her days, like an ink smudge on an previously spotless sheet of virgin paper. It was only morning yet and already he'd spoiled her daydream of a luxurious little catnap while the switchboard was quiet.
What was he doing here now? She straightened and released the fists at her back, looking out to find he had popped his head in the front door, looking rather too energetic for the comfort of her sleep-deprived grumpiness.
"May I hire your wagon to pick up an item arriving at the train depot this afternoon?" he was asking Ned.
Fiona froze, suddenly wide awake as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice on her head. The morning train from Cape Fullerton, and the package he'd told his telephone "chère" to send on it . . .
"Another one?" Ned looked surprised, and a touch reluctant.
Lucas smiled with a brevity that gave away nothing while maintaining the appearance of frankness. "This one requires special handling."
Fiona tilted her head as a slow roll of suspicion pursed her lips. Special handling?
Ned's mild opposition, however, melted away at Lucas's response and he smiled accommodatingly at the saloon proprietor. "Certainly."
The smile visible under the beard deepened and despite herself, Fiona acknowledged that it looked genuine. But then, gamblers were actors, skilled at showing what they wanted and hiding what they did not.
"Thank you," he directed at Ned, voice sounding as genuine as his smile, and backed out the way he'd entered, closing the door behind his starched and ironed figure. A well set-up starched and iron figure, she couldn't help but notice.
Ned shook his head in some bemusement and returned to restocking the peppermint sticks, each candy thunking with dull musicality into the bottom of the glass display jar.
Fiona's hands were already in motion at the switchboard, connecting her to the one line she knew would want to hear this. "Sheriff Avery? That package we talked about . . . "
·oOo·
That afternoon . . .
A HEAVY CRATE thumped onto the road in front of his saloon, creating a puff of dust. It was all Lucas Bouchard could do to bite back a sharp exclamation. They could break any of the other crates in the wagon they wanted. But not this one.
If it should split open . . .
"Gentlemen," he said with a calm he didn't feel, "please be careful. We wouldn't want the contents spilled all over the street."
Wouldn't that cause a stir, he thought somewhat grimly.
"Sorry, boss." The two workmen in neat, if rough, clothes hopped down from the borrowed delivery wagon and hoisted the crate. In bold lettering, it was stamped Imported from New Orleans on one side and Standard Railroad Container on the other.
Their hold, he was gratified to see, was decidedly more careful this time as they started up the shallow step onto the boardwalk to carry it past him into the saloon doors.
"Thank you, gentlemen," he said. "If you wouldn't mind bringing it into the kitchen."
Dead ahead, Bill Avery approached on the boardwalk, intent written in every step. "Afternoon," he hailed Lucas, carefully watching the crate being carted across his path.
"Sheriff Avery," Lucas returned equitably, smoothly adding somewhat wryly, "always a pleasure."
Ignoring him, the sheriff demanded abruptly, with a point of his index finger, "What's in the box?"
The workmen paused uncertainly. They knew who the vest-wearing man was.
Lucas slid his hands into his pockets, the sides of his suit jacket falling aside as he looked at the big wooden crate. "Just supplies for tonight." The grand opening was hours away and there was much to be done.
Bill gave him a narrow look. "Mind if I take a look?"
Lucas's lips smiled. His eyes did not. "I do, actually."
"Why is that?"
His lips maintained their humored tilt, but he looked at the man at least a little like he was a particular breed of obtuse. "It's a surprise."
Bill held his gaze, didn't blink or back down, and reiterated with soft force, "I'd really like to take a look." The star on the Sheriff's vest gleamed dully in the sunlight.
Holding onto his smile but not amused, Lucas bit back a challenge. "Why?"
"Because I'm the sheriff. And you're the guy that comes from nowhere—"
Lucas huffed a tiny unamused exhale.
"—does nothing in particular, yet shows up in my town like he owns it."
The smile wiped from Lucas's face. "Not the town," he said with pointed steeliness. "Just the saloon."
Battle entered their locked gazes.
A brief, silent war of wills played out, neither one backing down, each one gauging the other as an unspoken how-far-will-he-take-this ran its course.
Deliberately, Lucas broke their look. Glancing to the wagon, he lifted his shoulders in a seemingly careless shrug. "Alright."
He knew the strategic value of letting someone feel like they'd won.
Stepping back as if to give Bill room and curtailing the irked urge to rub his neck, he gave a little swirl of his hand, giving the the go-ahead to the waiting workmen. One grabbed a metal crowbar and shimmied open the wooden slat-top lid. The nails released their hold in the wood with a metallic groan and several dull pops.
Gunmetal scales glistened in the sunlight.
A slight odor filled the air.
Whole fish, tucked in and around ice chips, lay on a bed of oilskin a few inches from the top rim of the two-foot deep crate, staring up at them with flat eyes.
A prickle crept across the back of his neck suddenly and Lucas felt something in his chest tighten at the unexpected but unmistakable awareness—born from the honing of years—that someone was watching him. Someone not on the boardwalk.
Firmly pushing the prickly feeling aside, he stepped forward to forestall any examination attempt by the sheriff, although the man had yet to move toward the crate. He grabbed one of the large fish by the tail and hoisted it up, bits of ice tinkling off to land against the boardwalk underfoot.
"We are featuring Salmon Almondine tonight." He tossed the fish back on the ice, gestured at the men to continue indoors with the crate. "Now, if you don't mind"—he whipped out a folded white kerchief from of his inner suit pocket—"we need to get the fish back inside before the ice melts."
Without waiting for a response, he strode past the sheriff, snapping open the folded kerchief to wipe his hands, curt body language showing irritation even as his lips made an effort at polite vocabulary.
He'd almost gotten to the doors when Bill's voice sounded.
"I talked to the New Orleans Police Department."
The words dropped like lightning between them.
Arrested, Lucas paused, his face instantly stiffening. Then with alacrity, he half-turned back, eyes darting up to Bill—alarmed, alert, on guard.
Easy, Bouchard. Easy. Play it cool.
"They've never heard of you." The sheriff's eyes were heavy with meaning, searching his keenly.
Something in him unclenched. But only minutely. Poker face.
His eyes dropped, a queer flicker of humor touching his mouth at Bill's statement that the New Orleans police had never heard of him. His hands fiddled with his kerchief. "New Orleans is big and memory's are short," he murmured, looking at his hands but not really seeing them as he appeared to busy himself wiping them.
"Flashy guy like you"—Bill's mouth flattened as he shook his head, calmly disbelieving Lucas's words—"with money?" Still calm, but the distrust unveiled now. "Who are you, Bouchard? What do you want here?"
Lucas smiled as if amused by the suspicion. He wasn't. He tucked his kerchief back into his pocket, precisely re-folded. "All I want is to open the Queen of Hearts with the best party Hope Valley has ever seen."
With a fixed little smile, he deliberately lifted his eyes beyond Bill and across the street to the open side door of Ned Yost's mercantile.
The cause of his earlier prickling feeling stood there, framed just inside the doorway, where bright sunlight faded to dim indoors. Fiona Miller, arms folded and accusatory energy clear in every line of her slim figure, was unabashedly watching his confrontation with the sheriff.
She gave him a challenging return look and without missing a beat, turned away from the door in a smooth swirl, a few tendrils of curly dark hair falling onto the sleek black tie draped around the collar of her blouse, whose silky whiteness disappeared into the interior.
"Spying on me, Sheriff?" he quizzed flatly.
Bill glanced off, turning his head slightly toward his shoulder in the direction of the mercantile. His expression was ambiguous, if slightly challenging, but he made no response. The sheriff had a poker face of his own, it seemed.
"Not very sporting," Lucas determined softly, smiling without amusement as he raised his eyebrows at the sheriff and backed into the saloon.
He could feel Bill watching him disappear inside, eyes narrowed with disdainful suspicion.
·oOo·
A DUSTY ROAD.
A splash of sunlight across the road between them.
Across the distance, the girl in the doorway watched him, sleek dark hair and intelligent eyes leveling a suspicious look at him, then turned away with a toss and a spin as their narrowed eyes met.
Got you.
The unspoken words echoed between them, as clear as if she'd tossed them across the road from her tight lips.
And in his face, a sheriff, more suspicions, and a barrage of questions.
He dodged. Poker had taught him how to keep an impassive face. He used it.
The gamble paid off.
His gambler's instinct flared red-hot as he looked once again at the doorway where the girl from San Francisco had stood.
Still empty.
She was still gone.
Lucas ran an idle finger around the rim of his bourbon glass. His mind was preoccupied with an abbreviated memory from the day, one that kept slipping into his mind, unbidden, when he least expected it. Pert hair like black velvet in that shadowed doorway. What was it about that girl from California? That she was spying on him for the sheriff both maddened and reluctantly intrigued him. But the truth was, she'd crossed his thoughts even before today.
It was that forthright way she approached life, approached him. And those frank, clear eyes whose lashes seemed to go on for miles, with a tiny lift at the corners—
He shook his head, hand tightening around the glass of amber liquid. Enough. This was no time to get distracted. Especially not by a shrewd beauty who hailed from San Francisco. Of all the places in all the world, she had to hail from that one. Life sometimes had a perverse sense of humor.
He wheeled about in his thoughts to the latest interrogation Sheriff Bill Avery had subjected him to. It could be argued it was the man's job, but something about it felt almost personal. But then, the sheriff appeared to take this town very personally.
Self-proclaimed tumbleweed that he was, Lucas was used to getting the side-eye when he blew into new locations. But this dot-on-the-map town and this sheriff seemed different. Ear to the ground as usual, he'd heard the sheriff was working with the local Mountie—newly assigned to the town, but skilled and rumored to be the best tracker in the territory, among other talents. Neither were opponents he desired. But if need be, he'd handle them.
He ran through the conversation with Sheriff Avery in his head, looking for slip-ups.
But a pair of female eyes inserted themselves before him again, this time flat with grave suspicion, just as they'd looked at him hours earlier across the afternoon street, and with an exclamation of frustration, he tossed back the rest of his drink and got to his feet, thunking the empty glass down on the bar top.
Blast that woman, anyway.
·oOo·
ACROSS TOWN, FIONA was having issues of her own as she tried to focus on brushing out her hair for the night. Her bed was pulled down and lay invitingly behind her, but she couldn't seem to get her thoughts to settle; they kept replaying the unsettling moment when Lucas Bouchard's eyes had met hers from across the expanse of road.
Even more unsettling was the spark of challenge she'd recognized in his eyes. A challenge which leaped back from her own.
She'd felt the oddest urge to stare him down, but the buzzing of the switchboard recalled her to duty and, with a reluctant spin, she returned to her duties, but her thoughts were tangled around that dark-eyed gaze she'd held across the road for the rest of the day.
It seemed the night would be no different.
·oOo·
A/N II: That opening scene and conversation, the silent scene across the road, Bill's "fish" conversation w/L all happened in S6 canon, with most of the lines taken directly, but not all. I'm deliberately messing w/the timeline a little though and the sequence of some other canon events. I LOVED S6 Fiona. Her quick, spirited attitude and refusal to back down or take guff was wonderful. That sass! That feisty heart! Maybe that's what I should have called this story. Feisty Heart. ;p
User "BoycottBrianBird": this is the only way I can contact guest reviewers, sorry, but yes, that was "Henrigail" you spotted in Ch. 3. Good eye! As far as pairings for Henry or Abigail go, they're my OTP. I never saw anyone else I liked for Henry. As for Abigail, one man you'll never see me write her with is Bill. I *adore* Bill—just not for Abigail. I did, to my surprise, quite like her with Frank though. :)