Courting Susannah Read online

  Susannah sighed. Yes, she thought sadly. The mother who left her at St. Mary’s all those years before and never looked back.

  “Little while after midnight,” Maisie went on, her voice soft with sympathy and sadness, “Mrs. Fairgrieve passed on to the next world, and the mister, well, he left the house and didn’t come back till the day they buried her. That was when I reckoned I ought to send for you, like the Missus asked me to—spoke up right after the first pain came, she did. Said I had to get you to come, no matter what.”

  Susannah struggled to retain her composure. “Well,” she replied at some length, “The message took its sweet time reaching me.”

  Maisie smiled. “You’re here,” she said. “That’s what’s important. You take this baby to Mr. Fairgrieve’s room to sleep, and then you go and rest up till supper. You look all done in.”

  Susannah stood automatically and took Victoria from Maisie’s arms. “The crib is in Mr. Fairgrieve’s room?” she asked.

  Maisie nodded, unfazed by the question or by Susannah’s bewilderment, which must have been obvious. “Big room at the front of the house,” she confirmed. “The one with the double doors.”

  Susannah climbed the stairs yet again, carrying the infant, and found her way to the master chamber. Sure enough, the crib was there, among towering, heavy furniture, so masculine in character that she knew immediately that Julia probably had never actually resided within these walls.

  A trancelike weariness overwhelmed Susannah as she placed Victoria gently in the elaborate crib, with its drapery of gossamer silk, and she lingered there for a time, forgetting her surroundings, trying to make sense of the situation, the place, the man Julia had loved, and then hated, with such passion.

  It all caught up with Susannah then, the pain of loss, the confusion, the effects of a long and difficult journey. She turned from the sleeping baby—she would return to her room and take a brief rest, as Maisie had advised—and then the floor and ceiling exchanged places. She stumbled, got as far as the bed, and lay down, her head reeling. Although she had every intention of rallying, she dropped off into a fathomless slumber instead and fell end over end into the sweet refuge of darkness.

  The next thing she knew, the room was draped in evening shadows, and a strong hand rested on her shoulder. She looked up and was startled into complete wakefulness, between one heartbeat and the next, to see Aubrey gazing down at her. Because of the relative gloom, she could not make out his expression.

  “I’m sorry,” she blurted, mortified beyond all endurance to be found lying prone on a man’s bed—particularly this man’s bed. “I must have—I don’t know what—”

  “Shh,” he said, and she heard amusement in his voice, and something more tender. “There’s no harm done.”

  Susannah bolted upright, and Aubrey stepped back, giving her plenty of room. She pressed the fingertips of both hands to her temples after setting her feet on the floor, trying desperately to reorient herself. She went immediately to the cradle and saw that the baby was gone. She panicked a little.

  “She’s downstairs with Maisie,” Aubrey said gently. Susannah had no right to be soothed by his tone, but she was. Oh, heaven help her, she was. “There’s a fine supper waiting for you in the kitchen.”

  Susannah could not face him, not then. He made light of finding her sleeping, no doubt with abandon, on his bed, but in many quarters, such an infraction, however innocent, was enough to lay even the best reputation to ruin. “Thank you,” she said, keeping her head down and hurrying toward the doorway at top speed. Thus it was that she compounded her offense by colliding with Aubrey with such momentum that she surely would have fallen had he not grasped her shoulders and held her upright.

  “Susannah,” he said, “it’s all right.”

  Oddly, she found his kindness more difficult to endure than simple annoyance would have been, or even skepticism. “Yes,” she replied, with a sort of tremulous aplomb, addressing herself as much as him. “Everything is all right.”

  He let her go then and stepped back rather quickly. For once, he was the one to sound awkward. “I’ll carry the cradle to your room,” he said. “Then I’ll see you downstairs at supper.”

  She tried to speak and could not. Nodded and fled.

  She felt his smile like a kiss on the nape of her neck.

  Chapter 2

  Susannah McKittrick was nothing like Julia, at least on the surface, Aubrey decided as he watched his uninvited houseguest trying to eat her supper slowly and with a measure of decorum. His late wife had been fashionably plump, even before her pregnancy, and never one to deny herself any sort of pleasure for the sake of appearances.

  Susannah, on the other hand, was thin, almost angular. Her perfect skin was pale, and it was obvious that she was half starved by the way her fork trembled as she raised it to her mouth. He wondered when she’d last taken a decent meal, but he had no intention of inquiring. Judging by the state of her clothing, she was practically destitute, and her pride might be all she had.

  Most likely, she wanted to take Julia’s child home to raise, though she hadn’t said so straight out. She was, if he recalled correctly, from Nantucket. Perhaps, he reflected, drawing his brows together and watching as Susannah cautiously speared a second portion of Maisie’s fried chicken, she expected a financial settlement of some sort. Provided that she was who she represented herself to be—a caring friend of Julia’s—such a bargain might be an expedient solution to the problem. But suppose she was a swindler instead? He had no real knowledge of her character. She might abandon the child—or worse—once she had the money, and he would never know the difference.

  Common decency prevented him from taking such a chance; he’d have her investigated before he made a final decision, and he knew just the man for the job.

  For the present, she was attempting, without much success, to cut the drumstick on her plate with her knife, and the pinkening of her neck indicated that she knew he was watching her.

  “Out here in the wild west,” he said, taking pity, “we eat fried chicken with our fingers.”

  She glanced at him uncertainly, as if she thought he might be mocking her, and he took up a wing with his hands, to prove his contention, and took a bite. He thought he saw a tentative smile lurking in her gray eyes, though he couldn’t be sure, for she lowered her heavy lashes right away, like a veil. But she set aside the knife and fork and nibbled at the drumstick with delicate restraint.

  He felt something stir in the depths of his belly, watching her, and shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “How long have you been traveling, Miss McKittrick?” he asked, in an effort to distract himself as well as to make conversation.

  She looked at him solemnly, as if to determine his reasons for asking even so innocent a question. “I left Nantucket ten days ago,” she said after a moment’s consideration.

  “You don’t seem to have much baggage,” he commented, refilling his wine glass. She had already refused his gestured offer to pour some for her with a shake of her head.

  She lifted her chin, and her eyes darkened to a stormy shade of charcoal. “I have very few encumbrances,” she replied flatly.

  He’d said something wrong, though he wasn’t sure what it was. Women could be very prickly creatures. “Julia owned a great many dresses,” he ventured to observe, hoping he wasn’t insulting her. “They’re in the armoire in her room. Help yourself to whatever you want.” He paused, cleared his throat. “You’ll want to alter them, I suppose. Julia was—bigger.”

  She surprised him with a wan but genuine smile that left him shaken and even more off-balance than before. He wasn’t sure he’d ever recover from the sweet, fiery shock of finding her asleep on his bed. “That is very kind, but I don’t suppose Julia’s garments would be appropriate for a child’s nurse. As I remember, her tastes ran to silks and laces.”

  Aubrey frowned, recalling without admiration how delectable Julia had looked in her elegant, costly clothes and how she had used her
singular charms to make a fool of him before the whole city of Seattle. “There might be a few more practical garments. Please—help yourself. She would want you to have her things.”

  She continued to assess him, and though there was nothing untoward in her expression, he felt increasingly unsettled, as though in some unaccountable way she might be seeing far more than he would have chosen to reveal. A splotch of color blossomed on each of her cheeks. “You and Julia didn’t—didn’t share a room?”

  He laughed, and the bitterness of the sound surprised even him. “That is an audacious question,” he remarked, provoked in a way that could not have been described as even remotely unpleasant, “for a woman who was wildly embarrassed to be found sleeping on someone else’s bed.”

  The blush intensified, then drained away, leaving pallor behind. “I have never been wed, Mr. Fairgrieve,” she said evenly, “but I am not ignorant. I know that most husbands and wives share a chamber, at least in the early years of their marriage.”

  “Julia enjoyed social engagements. She did not like to disturb my sleep, coming home at all hours of the night as she did, and so she asked for her own room. I was only too happy to oblige.”

  “I see.” She spoke coldly, her food forgotten.

  “I don’t think you do,” Aubrey answered. He pushed back his chair and stood. What the hell was happening to him? He’d always kept his own counsel, and now here he was, airing his private grievances to a stranger. “Sleep well. You might get some noise from the alley in that back bedroom, but I’m sure the mattress is comfortable enough.”

  She looked down at the half-eaten piece of chicken on her plate, longingly, he thought. “What shall I do if the baby awakens in the night?”

  He thrust a hand through his hair. “Feed her and change her diaper,” he said. “If that doesn’t work, fetch Maisie. She and the boy sleep downstairs, in the little room off the kitchen.” He let out a long breath. “Good night, Miss McKittrick,” he said, and, with that, he turned and left Susannah alone at his table.

  A door closed in the distance, and Susannah realized, with a surprising sweep of loneliness, that Mr. Fairgrieve had left the house. She sat still for a few moments, there in that grand and gleaming dining room, trying to sort through the storm of emotions that seemed to assail her whenever she was in his presence, then rose resolutely to clear the table.

  In the kitchen, working by the bluish-gold glow from the gas fixtures, she washed the few dishes left undone and put the leftovers in the wooden icebox. Maisie was apparently one of those cooks who clean up as they go along, a trait Susannah admired, and there was very little work to do. The meal had been excellent, not that she would have complained in any event. Beggars, after all, could not be choosers.

  Gratefully, Susannah turned down the lights and mounted the rear stairway. Several lamps burned in the upper corridor, and she found her way easily to the room she had chosen and looked in on the baby, who slept peacefully in her cradle, moved there by Mr. Fairgrieve, her tiny form bathed in the glow of an autumn moon.

  She kissed the tip of one finger and touched it to the tiny, furrowed forehead. “Sweet dreams, little one,” she whispered. “Shall I go on calling you Victoria? You’re not a Julia, I can plainly see that.” She frowned and shook her head. “Your mother was going to name you after me, you know. It’s just as well she didn’t, though, for you aren’t a Susannah, either.”

  The child gave a sigh as soft as a fairy’s heartbeat, and a feeling of such poignant tenderness overtook Susannah that tears came to her eyes once again. She hadn’t wept, outwardly at least, since the news of Julia’s death had reached her. She’d been too busy, first resigning her post, over vociferous protests from her elderly charge, then packing up her few belongings and settling her affairs, and finally traveling.

  She laid aside gloomy thoughts and stiffened her spine. The baby needed her to be strong, and she would not fail in this or any other duty.

  She tucked the soft blankets gently around the tiny infant, lest the night chill reach her.

  A flannel nightgown, far too fine to be her own, lay across the foot of the bed, along with a soft towel and a new cake of lavender soap, still in its painted tin. Blessing Maisie for an angel in disguise, she went to the bathing room to wash, change, and brush her teeth. While there, she admired the grand tub yet again.

  Back on Nantucket, Susannah had taken all her baths in the kitchen, setting the wash tub in the center of the floor and filling it with water laboriously heated on the cantankerous old cookstove. What a wonder it was simply to plug the drain, turn a couple of knobs, and sink into luxury.

  After inspecting everything for a second time, rapt as a country bumpkin gone to the fair, she crept back to her own room, checked on Victoria once more, and climbed into bed.

  She did not expect to sleep, after her long rest on Mr. Fairgrieve’s bed, and promptly dropped off into a world of nebulous, troubling dreams.

  She awakened before the child, deeply saddened. All her life, she had yearned for a husband, a child, a home, however modest, of her own. Julia had had those things, and yet she had not been happy. What could have happened to change her from an exuberant bride to the angry woman who had written those final letters?

  With a sigh, she got up, pulled on the borrowed wrapper, and crept down the rear stairs, intending to heat a bottle for Victoria.

  She found Maisie already there, up and dressed, her thin, flyaway hair groomed, her eyes bright with prospects all her own. Jasper sat at the table, dallying over a bowl of butter-drenched oatmeal.

  “Mornin’,” Maisie greeted her with a smile. “You look some better, I don’t mind sayin’.”

  Susannah smiled. “Thank you,” she replied, amused by the unassuming bluntness of the remark.

  “Is my sweet’ums awake yet?” Maisie asked. “I’ve got her bottle started.”

  Susannah shook her head. “She’ll be awake any moment, though. I’ll need diapers, pins—”

  “Set them right there for you,” Maisie said, pointing to a bureau near the back stairway. “Fetched them from Mr. Fairgrieve’s room just this morning.”

  “He isn’t—here?” Susannah asked, and then could have bitten off the end of her tongue.

  “Bed ain’t been slept in,” Maisie replied matter-offactly. “Here, now. Sit down and have some coffee and a bowl of this oatmeal. You’ll hear sweet’ums right enough when she wakes up.”

  Susannah hesitated, then accepted the offer. Maisie promptly brought the promised breakfast.

  “Was Mr. Fairgrieve unkind to Julia?” she dared to inquire after several minutes of silence. There were men who abused their wives, both physically and verbally. Perhaps the handsome Aubrey was such a one, for all his charms and graces.

  Maisie took a few moments weighing her answer. “They shouldn’t have married up in the first place, the two of them. They was too different, one from the other. Mrs. Fairgrieve, she liked parties and dancing and fancy clothes. As for him, well, I think he thought she was somebody else entirely from who she really was. He wanted her to be home at night, readin’ and sewin’ and waitin’ for him. It got to be a real sad situation.”

  “He seems to believe—” Susannah swallowed, started again. “He seems to believe that Julia was unfaithful. Even promiscuous.”

  “I ain’t sure what that last word means; the first one’s clear enough, though. She tended to her own business, the missus did, and I tended to mine, and we sure never talked about such as that.” Maisie made a sound that might have been a chuckle, though it held more sorrow than humor. “Oh, no. Mrs. Fairgrieve never confided in me, ’cept to ask me to send for you.” She sighed. “She was a fragile little thing, homesick for the life she knew in Boston.”

  “Did she have other companions? Women, I mean?”

  The older woman gave a forceful sigh. “Not many, truth to tell. She had a way of lookin’ down her nose at folks that didn’t win her much in the way of admiration.”

  Susannah
closed her eyes for a moment, exasperated even in her grief. Julia had always thought well of herself, or pretended to, at least, and she had never had many friends. Still, when she fell so wildly, romantically in love with Aubrey Fairgrieve one spring day and soon after eloped to Seattle, Susannah had dared to hope that her friend’s happiness would inspire her thereafter to take a more generous view of the world. Instead, something had spoiled her joy, turned her love for Aubrey to bitterness.

  Maisie lingered at the stove, raised one of the lids, stirred the embers with a poker, and added two hefty logs from the basket on the hearth. A lovely, crackling blaze rose, casting light onto the whitewashed walls. “Mind you, if you go out, take a warm cloak,” she instructed Susannah. “I’ve seen the pneumonia take them that was careless in such things.”

  Susannah nodded, touched by the woman’s concern. They were, she suspected, more alike than different, for, like Maisie, Susannah had taken care of others for the better part of her life. “I’ll be careful,” she said. She wasn’t planning to go out, at least not that day, but she would need to put up fliers soon, offering her services as a piano teacher in order to have money of her own.

  “You hurry yourself, young feller,” Maisie said to the boy. “School’ll be startin’ right quick.”

  Jasper made a face. Like his mother, he was unremarkable in appearance, but Susannah had a sense that he shared Maisie’s determined, kindly nature. Then he proceeded to finish his oatmeal, and Susannah did likewise.

  A feathery snow was just beginning to fall when Jasper and Maisie left the house, both of them bundled against the cold, and Victoria summoned Susannah with a furious shriek of hunger.

  After a number of days spent sitting upright on a noisy, filthy train, surrounded by strangers, it was utter bliss to move about a warm, clean house, attending to ordinary tasks. She hummed as she took the warm bottle from its pan next to the stove, grabbed up the diapers and pins, and hurried up the stairs. Victoria began to scream with the lust of an opera singer.