Reckless Destiny by Teresa Southwick Page B

feeling she could go to school for the rest of her life and still not understand this one.

4
    Two days after the disturbance
in her classroom, Cady waited for Kane to take her to the reception. She was nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. It was because she was meeting the parents of her students, some of them for the first time, she told herself. But, nonetheless, it would be a room full of people, most of them strangers. Except Kane.
    Tension and excitement rippled through her. Was
he
the reason she was so on edge? He was part of it. But the whys didn’t matter; she had to pull herself together. As she tried to harness the butterflies in her stomach, she leaned back against the pine dresser in her living quarters. The place was small, but it had everything she needed, including a fireplace on the wall opposite the door that she used for cooking her meals.
    She hoped the evening would cool off some. She was nervous enough without worrying about fainting from the heat. “It
might
have pushed me to the edge of myendurance, but it was definitely the heat that sent me into a swoon,” she told herself.
    But that was in the past. For tonight, she was wearing her long-sleeved white cotton dress trimmed with pink rosettes at the neck and cuffs. Her hair was woven into two braids and pinned in a sort of circle on the back of her head. Wisps of curls that refused to stay back tickled her forehead and temples. She patted her hair and decided it was neat and dignified.
    She figured she was as ready for the reception as she would ever be, except for checking her face in a mirror. She’d been afraid to look, hoping her eye had improved from that morning when it had been a vivid black and blue on the upper lid and just below, too. No matter what dress she wore, or how sedately she arranged her hair, it was difficult to look dignified with a black eye.
    “Purple would be more accurate,” she said, braving a look in her hand mirror. For her last birthday, her twenty-first, Jack had sent her the intricately carved silver mirror. She had loved to use it, until now. She touched her temple and winced. “Oh, Lord. Still puffy and purple.” How could she face meeting everyone looking like this? What would they think? She was afraid she already knew. They’d think Miss Cady Tanner couldn’t keep order in a classroom.
    Annoyance coursed through her again as she remembered Kane’s part. She wasn’t sure what she was more angry about, the fact that he was escorting her tonight because he’d been ordered to, or that he had interfered in her classroom and possibly undermined her authority irreparably.
    The whole incident had surely confirmed Kane’s suspicions that she had no business here at Fort McDowell. Or anywhere else in the Arizona Territory, for that matter. Did the other people here at the fortshare his opinion? she wondered. If they did, would they tell her to her face? If so, she didn’t think she could bear to see Kane’s smirk of satisfaction.
    She walked to the table beside the fireplace where she kept her cooking supplies. One person didn’t need a lot, and from the fort sutler she’d purchased an iron frying pan, a coffeepot, and two plates with two sets of eating utensils, just in case she had company. Beside that she’d arranged her staples: spices, sugar, flour, and coffee.
    Opening the canvas bag of flour, she dipped in two fingers and pulled them out, the tips covered with white. She patted a small amount on her upper eyelid, and blended the rest on the purple stain just beneath.
    She held up her mirror again, blotted off the excess, and smoothed it as best she could. It was better, but it wouldn’t hold up to intense scrutiny.
    There was a knock. Her stomach jumped nervously as she glanced at the door and imagined the tall captain on the other side. Then she looked back at her reflection. “This is it, Cady. Remember what Father always says: If you can’t dazzle them with perfection,