Courting Susannah Page 4

  She was changing the baby’s diapers, amidst the din, a difficult proposition when she did not dare uncover the infant to the chill, when an impatient knock sounded at her half-open door and Mr. Fairgrieve stuck his rumpled head into the room. He was fully dressed, though in need of a shave, and Susannah wondered where, he’d passed the night, recalling that Maisie had said he hadn’t slept in his bed.

  “Is that kid dying or what?” he demanded. “For God’s sake, do something before she raises the dead.”

  “She’s hungry,” Susannah said, somewhat testily. Victoria was in fine form, wriggling and kicking both feet. “I’ll attend to that as soon as I’ve finished with the diapers.”

  He thrust out a martyr’s sigh. “Well, hurry it up. I’m getting a headache.”

  “Perhaps,” Susannah pointed out, irritated not, oddly enough, because he was behaving impatiently but because he had been out all night, “if you went elsewhere, the noise wouldn’t bother you so much.”

  The baby continued to kick and flail and scream at the top of her tiny lungs, as if to put in her two cents’ worth. Muttering, Aubrey closed the door. Susannah finished with the diaper, made a quick trip to the bathroom to wash her hands, and returned to give Victoria the bottle.

  Fifteen minutes later, sated at last, Victoria nodded off to sleep again. Smiling, Susannah kissed her smooth little forehead and laid her gently in the crib. Then she simply stood there, watching the baby sleep; the sight was infinitely beautiful to Susannah, and she was filled with a kind of joy she had never known before. Victoria was not hers, she had no illusions on that score, and yet, in the brief interval since her arrival in the household, Susannah had formed an enduring attachment to the child.

  She went to the chair near the window, sat down, and leaned forward slightly, resting her forehead on her palms while she struggled to rein in her emotions. She was normally level-headed; it was not like her to feel so deeply, and she was frightened.

  Maisie found her there minutes later. Although she had shed her cloak, her cheeks were bright from the cold outside. “Here now,” she said in a gruff whisper. “The little mite’s dropped off to sleep. Let’s you and me head downstairs and have ourselves some tea.”

  Gratefully, Susannah nodded and rose to follow Maisie out of the room and down to the kitchen.

  “That Jasper,” Maisie remarked fondly, setting the kettle on to heat with a clunk of metal against metal. “He don’t much care for school.”

  Only then, in the warmth of that spacious kitchen, with snow drifting past the windows, did Susannah recall her first impression of Jasper—that he was three or four years of age. Surely he was too young for school.

  “How old is Jasper?” she asked.

  “Six,” Maisie answered. Her gaze was discerning, though she was obviously a woman of simple means and background. “He’s a bit small for his age. Smart, though. Smart as a whip.”

  Susannah smiled and nodded. “Have you any other children, Maisie?”

  Maisie’s strong, plain features teetered on the brink of something, then assembled themselves into a stalwart expression. “Nope. No husband, neither. It’s just me and my Jasper.”

  Susannah devoutly hoped Maisie wasn’t feeling defensive; it was nothing new for a woman to be left alone with a child. “How long have you worked for Mr. Fairgrieve?”

  “Nigh onto a year,” Maisie said, spooning dried tea leaves into a crockery pot while the kettle chortled on the range. “My man done got himself sent off to prison, over yonder in Montana somewheres, and me and Jasper wound up here in Seattle after knockin’ around this way and that for a spell. The mister hired me to do for his new wife.” She assessed Susannah. “What about you? You ever been married?”

  Susannah had always kept her hopes and dreams to herself, for all were fragile as butterfly wings, not to be shared with the other students at St. Mary’s, with the nuns, or with Mrs. Butterfield, her crotchety employer. Somehow, though, in the presence of this unassuming woman, it was easier to let down her guard. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve never had a husband, or a child.”

  “Are you plannin’ to stay on here?” Maisie asked, meeting Susannah’s gaze squarely in the snow-dampened morning light. The fire made the room warm, fogged the windows with steam. “That baby needs you. Mr. Fairgrieve, he cares for the child right enough, whatever he’d like folks to think, but he’s a man, and they don’t know chicken scratch about raisin’ up a little one.”

  Susannah spoke moderately. “I came to Seattle to look after Julia’s baby, and I mean to stay.”

  “And the mister?”

  “What about him?” Susannah retorted, wary.

  “He’s a good man, miss. He can look after himself out there in the world, and better’n most, I’d say, but when he comes back here, he needs to have somebody waitin’ for him. He didn’t build this here house just for himself, you know. I reckon he was powerful lonesome. And the reason there’s lots of bedrooms is because he hopes to have lots of babies to fill them up.”

  Susannah hoped the hot blush rising around her cheekbones wasn’t visible on the outside. “I’m sure there are many women who would marry such an attractive—such a prosperous man,” she said stiffly.

  “Not out here there ain’t,” Maisie countered. “Oh, there’s the tawdry ones, down on Water Street and thereabouts—he don’t hold with such as them, but they say he’s got himself a fancy lady down at the Pacific Hotel. Thing is, a mistress ain’t the same thing as a wife. Ain’t the same thing at all.”

  It nettled Susannah mightily—for poor Julia’s sake, of course—to think of Aubrey Fairgrieve keeping such a woman. Why was Maisie telling her all this? “Perhaps he is the sort who expects to have both,” she said uncharitably. “Wife and mistress, I mean.”

  But Maisie laughed, rattling stove lids again. “He’s the sort that wants a woman, all right. That’s normal, ain’t it? But he never strayed from his promises until Mrs. Fairgrieve turned him out of her bed.”

  Susannah could make no reply to that. Beyond the basic mechanics of intercourse, she had no idea what would be considered normal. She bit down hard on her lower lip and dropped her voice to a scandalized whisper.

  “Why are you saying these things?”

  “I reckon I want you to understand Mr. Fairgrieve better’n you most likely do. Mrs. Fairgrieve, too, for that matter. You know one side of her, I think, and the mister, well, he knows another.”

  “It’s hardly necessary for me to ‘understand’ Mr. Fairgrieve, and I knew Julia very well, thank you. Probably better than anyone.” But had she? Although her experience with people was limited indeed, Susannah knew people had many different facets to their natures and presented varying faces to varying friends, relations, and acquaintances.

  “Don’t get all tetchy now,” Maisie said good-naturedly. “Things ain’t always what they seem. That’s all I’m tryin’ to say.”

  Susannah nodded. “I’m sorry. It’s just—it’s just that Julia seemed so very unhappy.”

  “And you can’t help thinkin’ that was the mister’s fault?”

  She hesitated, nodded again. Something about this woman, something about the cozy warmth of the kitchen and the snow falling beyond the windows, made Susannah feel safe. “I’ve heard,” she ventured, then stopped and started again. “I’ve heard that it hurts terribly, what men and women do together. Maybe Julia just couldn’t bear it.”

  Maisie’s eyes held a sort of pitying humor as she watched Susannah. She served the tea. “There’s some hollerin’ that goes on, I’ll grant you that,” she said, “but I don’t reckon it’s pain that makes a woman cry out. Not with a man like Mr. Fairgrieve.”

  Susannah was fascinated; she felt her eyes go wide. “She—she cried out?”

  Maisie merely smiled and served the tea.

  After they’d shared the tea, and a confidence or two, they set out to accomplish the housework. Although Mrs. Butterfield had referred to Susannah as a companion, she
had, in effect, served as housekeeper and cook into the bargain. She found a welcome distraction in dusting, sweeping, making up beds, and doing dishes.

  By mid-morning, the work was done. She returned to her room, and to Victoria, who was still sleeping. Although Susannah was not one to place great store in her appearance, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above her bureau, and she was nonetheless pleased to note the silver-blond shimmer of her hair, the stormy, changeable gray of her eyes, the trim agility of her figure.

  No, she was not beautiful as Julia had been beautiful, but she was pleasing to look upon, a person of distinction and value. She could make a difference in Victoria’s life.

  She got out a book and sat down to read.

  Luncheon was served in the kitchen, and Maisie was there, seated in the rocker close by the stove, a pile of knitting in her lap. “There’s my sweet’ums!” she cried, catching sight of the baby as soon as Susannah carried her into the room. “Let me have that darlin’ thing.”

  To Susannah’s surprise, Aubrey was at the table, looking considerably more cheerful than he had earlier, when he’d complained about the noise Victoria was making. He had already pushed away his plate, but there was a cup of coffee steaming in his hand, and he seemed in no hurry to finish it.

  He was dressed for business—high time, Susannah thought uncharitably—in a well-cut tweed suit with a waistcoat, now draped over the back of an extra chair. His brown hair gleamed, still damp from brushing, and his eyes showed a brief flicker of amused admiration before he forced a frown into them.

  “Good morning, Miss McKittrick,” he said, rising momentarily out of simple good manners.

  She took a plate from the table and went to the stove to fill it. There was corned beef hash in a skillet and baking powder biscuits in the warming oven. “Hullo, Mr. Fairgrieve,” she answered, pointedly omitting the expected “good morning.” It was, after all, nearly twelve-thirty.

  “I would like you to call me Aubrey,” he announced.

  She joined him at the table. “I would like you to call me Miss McKittrick,” she replied.

  He laughed. “What makes you so prickly?”

  “What makes you so bold?” she countered.

  He grinned.

  “You want me to fetch you more tea, Miss McKittrick?” Maisie put in.

  “Call me Susannah,” she answered, and Aubrey laughed again. He had a wonderful laugh, low and masculine and yet somehow innocent. She could picture him as a mischievous boy, even though he was unquestionably a man.

  He stood and carried his plate, utensils, and cup to the iron sink, a gesture that intrigued Susannah. She had never once seen a man clear away after himself, but then, she hadn’t dined with many. Only Mrs. Butterfield’s two fussbudget sons, who had visited from Boston on rare occasions and expected to be waited upon. “I’d better get to the store,” he said. “If there’s anything you need, Miss McKittrick, make a list. And have a second helping of that hash. You’ve got all the substance of a sparrow, and you look pale enough to swoon.”

  Susannah, buoyantly cheerful only minutes before, took the remark to heart and was deflated. She had thought she looked, well, almost pretty. “A pram would be nice,” she said. “If there isn’t one in the house.”

  Her injured feelings must have shown. “What did I say?” Aubrey asked, frowning.

  “Susannah looks right pretty this mornin’, if you ask me,” Maisie put in helpfully, laying Victoria to her shoulder and patting her little back.

  “I didn’t ask you,” Aubrey said. “Make that list,” he added for Susannah’s benefit. Then, after giving her one last look, half bafflement and half annoyance, he got up, put on his coat, and pulled a gold pocket watch from an inside breast pocket. Flipping open the case, he frowned again, and then he was gone, slamming out the back door into the cold, shifting fog of a snowy Puget Sound morning.

  “There’s a pram up in the attic,” Maisie said into the echoing silence that followed his departure. “Mr. Fairgrieve’s brother Ethan gave it to the missus for a baby gift. When she died, the mister made me put it away, out of sight.”

  Susannah’s attention was caught. She remembered Ethan from Julia’s letters, though she hadn’t thought of him even once since her arrival. Over the last six months of her life, in fact, it had seemed to Susannah that Julia had had more to say about him than about her husband. “She liked Ethan very much.”

  “You could say that,” Maisie allowed, and while the remark had a point to it, there was no malice in her words.

  Susannah backed off, mentally at least, unprepared to explore the subject of Mr. Fairgrieve’s younger brother any further. She already had a great deal to assimilate as it was, and she had not begun to align her thoughts into any sensible order, at least where the affairs of that household were concerned.

  “You sure you won’t have more tea?” Maisie persisted.

  “Thank you, no,” she said, struck once again by sorrow, and crossed the room to collect the baby, so that Maisie, who had worked hard all morning, might have a moment’s peace.

  She’d find that pram, she decided. When the weather warmed up a little, she and Victoria would go out and take some air.

  Chapter 3

  The store was full, as usual, when Aubrey reached it, but he didn’t pause to slap the shoulders of his roughhewn customers or to consult with the sales clerks as he normally would have done. His mind was elsewhere; specifically, with Miss Susannah McKittrick, his late wife’s friend and the newest member of his household. She had not, in fact, been out of his thoughts since her unexpected appearance in the upper corridor of his house the day before, though he had tried mightily to dismiss her.

  She was not classically beautiful, not in the way Julia had been, and yet her face, her shape, her manner and movements were all etched into his memory as effectively, as inexorably, as if he had always known her. At the same time, she was an intriguing mystery; he sensed that there were unfathomable depths of intelligence, indeed whole worlds to explore, hidden behind those large gray eyes. He wanted to learn her every secret, even those she had kept from herself, but it seemed unlikely that he would attain this objective. Susannah was a universe unto herself, and even a lifetime would not be long enough to unfold the many layers of her mind and heart and spirit.

  A lifetime. Halfway up the stairs that led to his office, Aubrey stopped, shaken. After Julia, he had sworn never to think in such terms again, where a woman was concerned, at least, yet here he was, a mere four months after burying the wife he’d thought he loved, pondering the claiming and charting of Susannah McKittrick’s soul. Such fancies would not do; far better to confine himself to the shallow but artful Delphinia, awaiting his pleasure in her suite at the Pacific Hotel.

  He’d fully intended to go to her the night before; instead, he’d spent the night upstairs in his office, brooding.

  He was scowling as he gained the upper floor and strode past Jim Hawkins, his bespectacled secretary, toward the open door beyond. Until the day before, he’d enjoyed a consuming passion where Delphinia was concerned, but suddenly, without warning, and just since Miss McKittrick’s invasion of his home and his thoughts, he had lost interest in the woman as well as the affair.

  Crossing the threshold into his private domain, he slammed the door behind him, no doubt causing Hawkins and the bookkeeper to start in their chairs. Hellfire and damnation, he thought, why hadn’t Susannah stayed on Nantucket where she belonged? Just by showing up that way, by falling asleep on his bed, she’d spoiled a perfectly tenable arrangement for him. In one corner of his mind, he was already calculating what it would cost to pay off his mistress and send her packing.

  He remembered his resolve to make sure Susannah was who she seemed, went back to the door, and wrenched it open. “Hawkins!” he barked.

  The clerk jumped to his feet, nearly overturning his wooden swivel chair in the process. “Yes, sir?”

  “Get me a Pinkerton man.”

  Hawki
ns swallowed. The autumn sunlight pouring in through the windows struck his spectacles in a dazzling flash. “A Pinkerton man, sir?”

  Aubrey had no intention of explaining his request further. “Damn it, Hawkins,” he said, “you heard me!” With that, he slammed the door again and strode to his desk. Of course, he assured himself, that was the thing to do. Hire a detective. If Miss McKittrick was indeed the dear friend Julia had been corresponding with all during their brief, tempestuous marriage, as she now claimed, and a fit guardian for the child, he would settle an ample sum of money on her and ship the pair of them straight to Massachusetts. The whole problem would be solved, leaving him with a clear conscience. For the most part, anyway.

  The pram was hidden away in the attic, where Maisie said it would be, as shrouded with dust as if it had been there for years. It seemed a sad summation of Mr. Fairgrieve’s basic attitude toward both his wife and his child.

  With a sigh, Susannah began to brush off the pretty wicker carriage as best she could, before bumping it carefully, awkwardly, down the steep folding staircase. Maisie was waiting at the bottom, looking fretful, with the baby at her shoulder and little Jasper beside her, home from school, slate clasped in both arms.

  “I don’t know that you ought to take her out afore spring,” the older woman said. “Suppose she takes a cold?”

  Susannah smiled. The snow had stopped, and the sun was out, however briefly. “Of course, I’ll bundle her up warmly,” she said. “And we won’t be out for long.” With that, she wheeled the pram down the rear staircase, through the kitchen, and out into the backyard, where buckets of hot, soapy water awaited. While Maisie gave the infant another bottle in the rocker beside the stove, Susannah scrubbed and rinsed the carriage until it had been restored to its former glory.

  When that was done, she dried it carefully with strips of flannel Maisie had provided, then went back inside for a fluffy blanket, which she folded carefully and placed in the bottom of the pram to serve as a mattress. Maisie surrendered her charge somewhat reluctantly when Susannah went back inside, and, after wrapping Victoria carefully, Susannah laid her in the carriage. The air was starch-crisp that afternoon, like a fine linen sheet. The snow hadn’t stuck, and the sunlight, though cool, brightened Susannah’s spirits considerably.