Courting Susannah Page 6

  After fifteen minutes or so, the last guest arrived. This one looked more like a cowboy than a businessman, and Susannah liked him immediately. His eyes were a mischievous blue, his fair hair sun-streaked and slightly too long, lending him a rakish appearance. He presented himself to her without waiting for Aubrey to do the honors. “I’m Ethan Fairgrieve,” he said, taking her hand briefly. “My brother probably hasn’t mentioned me.”

  “No,” Susannah said, almost stammering the word. Julia had, of course, but it didn’t seem like a good time to bring that up. There were a lot of undercurrents flowing through that house, too many for her comfort. “I’m Susannah McKittrick—Julia and I were at school together. It’s—it’s good to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” Ethan replied, his eyes twinkling with a merriment that made Susannah want to know him better. “If I weren’t already taken, I swear I’d come courting you, Miss Susannah.” He glanced at his brother, who was taking in every word of the conversation and, at the same time, doing his best to look disinterested. “My Rosa,” Ethan went on with mock solemnity, “weighs three hundred pounds and packs a pistol. If I dared to stray, she’d have my hide nailed to the barn door quicker than you can say so long.”

  Susannah laughed. “And where is Rosa tonight? I would like to meet her.”

  “She’s keeping the home fires burning. I’m only here because word got back to me that Julia’s favorite correspondent had arrived. I wanted a look at you.”

  “What was your mother’s name?” Susannah whispered, leaning close.

  Ethan barely missed a beat, though it was plain that the question had caught him off-guard. “Jenny,” he said. “Why?”

  “Jenny,” Susannah repeated, savoring the name. “That’s lovely.”

  Just then, Maisie rang the fancy supper bell, and Aubrey started toward Susannah. Before he reached her, however, Ethan offered his arm, and she took it, allowing him to escort her into the dining room.

  Maisie was a gifted cook, and the meal was one to savor. Susannah said very little but listened instead, sorting and assimilating what she heard. It soon became obvious that Ethan and Aubrey were not on the best of terms, brothers or not. Every time Ethan flung one of his taunting grins in Aubrey’s direction, Aubrey glared as though he’d been formally insulted.

  The bankers were Aubrey’s business associates rather than his friends, Susannah quickly discerned, but Mr. Hollister was harder to place. Despite his remarks about the baby going unnamed for so long—that certainly indicated some degree of familiarity on both his part and Aubrey’s—he didn’t quite fit into the pattern of things. While the conversation swirled around him, he ate sparingly and watched Susannah whenever he thought she wouldn’t notice. Because his manner was thoughtful and not unfriendly, she was not troubled but rather intrigued.

  The meal ended, and the gentlemen retired to Aubrey’s study, ostensibly to smoke cigars and drink brandy. Susannah was tremendously relieved when Maisie bustled into the dining room and began to clear the table.

  “You didn’t tell me Aubrey and his brother were barely speaking,” she challenged.

  Maisie gave her a level look. “I don’t tell everythin’ I know,” she retorted. “And put down them dishes. You ain’t dressed for clearing up.”

  “Nonsense,” Susannah protested, scraping and stacking plates.

  “Mr. Fairgrieve won’t like it if he sees you doing that.”

  “He doesn’t mind my changing diapers. I hardly think it would disturb him to find me helping you with a routine household task. I’m only a nurse, after all.” A maiden aunt, she added to herself. A poor relation who wasn’t really even a relation. “Frankly, I don’t even know why he wanted me to join him for dinner tonight. He didn’t say one word to me.”

  Maisie smiled. “But his visitors had plenty to say, didn’t they? Especially young Ethan. Did he tell you his wife weighs three hundred pounds and carries a pistol?”

  “Yes,” Susannah said.

  That time, Maisie laughed outright. “Well, he ain’t changed since he was here last, anyhow.”

  “What’s wrong between those two?” Susannah ventured, heading toward the kitchen door with an armload of plates and silverware. “Ethan was cordial enough, but Mr. Fairgrieve was downright bristly. If he didn’t want him here, why issue the invitation?”

  “I doubt that he did,” Maisie said. “They’ve had their differences, Aubrey and Ethan,” she went on when the two of them were standing side by side in front of the sink. Maisie elbowed Susannah deftly aside, poured steaming water from the kettle on the stove over the soiled dishes, and pushed up her sleeves. “Now that Miss Julia’s gone, God rest her soul, I reckon they might just start in to mendin’ fences.”

  Susannah sat down, suddenly weary. “What did Julia have to do with it?”

  Maisie turned and looked at her over one sturdy shoulder. “You want to know that,” she said, “you’re gonna have to ask either Mr. Fairgrieve or his brother. It ain’t my place to say.”

  Susannah felt a sick sensation in the pit of her stomach, recalling parts of Julia’s letters, parts in which she’d described Ethan as a gentleman with the heart of a poet. She’d recounted buggy rides in the country with Ethan and picnics by a lake, though at the time the interludes had sounded innocent. Julia had merely said that Aubrey was too busy with his store—he’d gotten rich selling picks and shovels to miners headed north, she liked to boast—and Ethan had “taken pity” on her.

  She let out a long sigh.

  Maisie set a cup of tea in front of her. “Don’t be frettin’ about what can’t be changed now,” she said. “That makes a body crazy.”

  Chapter 4

  “Your brother is quite charming,” Susannah remarked to Aubrey the next morning, when by accident rather than design they endedup in the kitchen at the same time. Perhaps it was because she was unprepared for the encounter that she spoke without thinkingfirst.

  Seated in Maisie’s chair near the stove, the sleeping child resting against her shoulder, she watched as his jawline tightened.Resentment flashed fierce in his eyes, like lightning striking in some far-off and inaccessible place, and was quickly quelled.

  For her part, Susannah was utterly content, there in the warmth of the fire, the child warm and sweet-smelling in her arms.

  Aubrey went to the stove, coffee mug in hand, and poured a full cup. “My brother,” he answered in his own good time, “hasa way of barging in where he doesn’t belong.”

  While Aubrey was absorbed in the task, Susannah took the opportunity to admire the fine muscled breadth of his shoulders,the way his powerful back tapered to a lean waist. All of this was highlighted rather than hidden by the crisp fabric of hiswhite linen shirt. In addition, he wore suspenders, tweed trousers, and highly polished boots and no doubt would don a proper coat before leavingthe house.

  Guilt struck her with the impact of a charging bull. Whatever their problems might have been, Aubrey had been her best friend’shusband. What had possessed her to think such untoward thoughts?

  She tried to make light conversation. “Do you have other family?”

  Aubrey turned after a moment’s hesitation and regarded her over the rim of his cup. His expression revealed precisely nothing,and so did his tone of voice. “You are a meddlesome creature,” he said, and suddenly she glimpsed that light kindling in hiseyes again, just before he smiled. “Why should you care whether I have one relative or a tribe of them?”

  “I was merely attempting to be pleasant,” Susannah said in a stiff tone. His rebuff, framed in good humor though it was, hadstung her, for all that she should have expected it, and she could only hope the hot ache in her face was not accompaniedby a vivid blush. “You needn’t be so rude, Mr. Fairgrieve.”

  He raised the coffee cup in a sort of mocking salute. Susannah wondered just then why Julia had never picked up a gun andshot him. “Not rude, Miss McKittrick,” he countered. “Blunt. There is a difference.”

  “If you say so,” Su
sannah allowed ungenerously. Then she sighed and stroked the tiny, flannel-covered back with one hand asthe child stirred fitfully against her bosom, perhaps sensing the discord. It seemed only prudent to change the subject. “Thereare things I need for little Victoria,” she said. “I should like to visit the store later today, if that is convenient.”

  “Nothing in my life is convenient these days,” he replied, “but I’ll send a carriage for you around ten o’clock. Of course, you may select whatever you feel little Victoria requires.”

  “Thank you,” Susannah replied primly. What she felt was nothing so noble as gratitude, and she suspected Aubrey knew that,but there was no use in their jibing at each other. What was needed was some sort of arrangement between them. “I believewe can—tolerate each other, Mr. Fairgrieve, if we simply make a civilized effort toward that end.”

  She thought she saw a smile dancing in his eyes again, however briefly, though it did not reach his mouth. “A civilized effort,is it?” he retorted, straightening his string tie. “I must say I thought I was already doing that, simply by not showing youthe road.” He set his empty cup in the iron sink and headed back toward the inner door. “Good day, Miss McKittrick. I’ll letthe clerks know you’ll be visiting the store later.”

  With that, he was gone.

  Half an hour later, Maisie came in, cheeks reddened from the brisk autumn air. She’d walked Jasper to school, then gone downto the pier to buy fresh fish for the evening meal. She kicked the door shut behind her with one heel and set her marketingbasket on the counter.

  Susannah had been reading—or attempting to read—but proper concentration had eluded her. Her mind kept straying to AubreyFairgrieve and the enigma he represented. He spoke so brusquely, when he spoke at all, and yet she’d seen him show uncommontenderness toward Victoria. He disliked his brother, and yet he was willing to suffer the presence of a virtual stranger inhis household, a woman he had not invited and could have turned away without being blamed.

  “There’ll be a carriage coming for me at ten,” she told her friend. “Can you look after Victoria while I’m gone?”

  “Sure.” Maisie beamed, bending to pat the baby, who lay in a bassinet at Susannah’s side, gurgling and kicking. “We’re thebest of friends, aren’t we, sweet’ums?”

  “Tell me about Ethan,” Susannah urged. She was on her feet—the carriage would arrive in a short while, and she wanted to changeher clothes before venturing into the heart of Seattle—but curiosity restrained her.

  Maisie was bustling about the kitchen, building up the fire in the cookstove, pumping water into the tea kettle, emptyingand rinsing out the coffee pot. She seemed, to Susannah, to be everywhere at once, moving and doing and being. “He’s Mr. Fairgrieve’syounger brother, but then you knew that. Lives outside Seattle, on land of his own.”

  “And his wife? What is she really like?”

  Maisie laughed fondly. “He don’t have one. He just likes to stir things up a little now and then. We’ve missed him aroundhere, Jasper and me, I mean.” Her expression became solemn. “It don’t seem that Mr. Fairgrieve has, though. I don’t believethey’d been in the same room, the pair of them, since Mrs. Fairgrieve’s funeral, until dinner last night. And even on theday they buried that poor woman, there was some harsh words and some door slamming afore it was all over.”

  The distant buzzing clang of the doorbell interrupted the discussion before Susannah could think of a way to extract moreinformation from Maisie. “I’ll answer it,” Susannah said, because her friend was still flashing about the kitchen, movingwith a strange, hasty grace between one task and the next.

  She had expected to find the carriage driver waiting on the porch when she peered through the glass oval in the front door,but instead Mr. Hollister was there, wearing a practical suit, a bowler hat, and a polite, slightly pensive smile.

  Susannah admitted him. “Good morning, Mr. Hollister,” she said. “I’m afraid Mr. Fairgrieve is out—”

  Hollister took the knob gently in hand and closed the door, removing his hat in almost the same smooth motion. “I’m not hereto see Fairgrieve,” he told her. Westerners, Susannah was fast learning, could be very frank, despite their stubborn propensityfor guarding their privacy. “Forgive me, Miss McKittrick. I shouldn’t have come uninvited like this.”

  Susannah was embarrassed for the man and touched his arm lightly, hoping to reassure him somehow. The face of the long caseclock dominating the entryway loomed behind his right shoulder, like a numbered moon, ticking away the time she’d allottedto putting on another dress and making sure her heavy hair would not come tumbling down around her shoulders the first timethe carriage struck a rut.

  “Do come in,” she said, for the mores of the day afforded little other choice, and, besides, she liked Mr. Hoilister, forall that she knew almost nothing about him.

  Hollister stood fast. “Oh, no, I can’t stay,” he said. Color surged past his tight collar to pulse in his neck. “I was hopingthat—well—you might consent to join me for dinner one night soon. Tomorrow, for instance?”

  Susannah was taken aback and not a little flattered. She had lived her life as a spinster and had never been invited to dance,let alone to go out in a gentleman’s company. “Why, Mr. Hollister, I don’t know what to say,” she confessed, placing one handto her chest.

  He shifted his feet, almost imperceptibly. “Say yes,” he urged. “Unless I was mistaken in concluding that you are—unattached?”

  Susannah caught her breath. “But I don’t even know you.”

  “I’m trying to remedy that,” he replied. His smile was benign and wry and quite winning, and if he wasn’t as compellingly handsome as Aubrey, well, that was probably a good thing.Like Ethan, Mr. Hollister had a charm entirely his own.

  She smiled. Julia had always been the sought-after one. It felt good to be wanted, even desired. “Yes,” she said. “I mean,yes, I’ll have dinner with you.”

  He regarded her appreciatively for a long moment. “Splendid,” he said. “I’ll come for you around seven o’clock, then.”

  Susannah nodded, a little dazed. Her life had changed so quickly, from a dull procession of days to an adventure of sorts,and she would need a little time to adjust gracefully. “Seven o’clock,” she affirmed with another nod, and then Mr. Hollistertook his leave. Only after he’d gone did she realize that she did not even know what he did for a living.

  Susannah stood in the entryway so long, pondering the turn her fortunes had taken, that she was barely ready when the carriagearrived, a sleek, imposing thing, shining in the fall sunlight.

  Clad in one of her own dresses, over which she wore a blue woolen cape purloined from Julia’s wardrobe, her hair plaited andpinned up into a bright coronet at her nape, Susannah allowed herself to be handed into the costly vehicle. The scent of someflowery cologne lingered amidst the smells of leather and cigar smoke, and she began to wonder, uncharitably, if this wasMrs. Parker’s carriage, temporarily conscripted for the transport of an otherwise indigent and wholly self-appointed nurse.

  She straightened her spine as the coach jostled and pitched over the rutted streets leading down one of Seattle’s steep, raw-bonedhills, already feeling defensive. When the driver brought the team to a halt in front of an imposing structure with an elaboratebrick facade, bearing the legend A. Fairgrieve, Proprietor and Founder in giant brass letters, she was downright uncomfortable.

  She got out of the carriage without waiting for the driver to climb down from the box and open the door for her. She was nomore important than anyone in Aubrey’s employ, and it wouldn’t do for people to go treating her as though she were.

  She could not help being aware of glances from passersby as she mounted the wooden steps to the sidewalk, crossed the splintery,weathered boards, and pushed open the door. A bell chimed overhead, in stalwart brass notes, and she paused on the thresholdfor a few seconds, assessing her surroundings and charting her course before shutting out the cool wind that swept uphillfrom the
waters of the sound.

  The store was even larger than it looked from outside, and there was so much merchandise that she was, for a moment, dazzled.Besides the inevitable picks and shovels—Julia had written that Aubrey owed his fortune mainly to the seemingly endless processionof miners streaming north in search of gold—there was a whole wall of fabric and ribbon, another of books and periodicals.The establishment offered patent medicines of all sorts, as well as farm equipment and tools, ready-made garments, boots andshoes, and a surprisingly comprehensive array of toys. The aromas of fine tobacco, rich coffee beans, and fresh tea filledthe air, along with a twinge of smoke from the large metal stove in one corner.

  A clerk came forward immediately, smiling. “Miss McKittrick?” he inquired. “We’ve been expecting you. Please—come in.”

  Mercifully, the spell was broken, and Susannah managed a faltering smile. She wanted desperately to appear confident, butin fact she had never been in such an emporium before. At St. Mary’s, there had been no cause and certainly no funds. Nantucket boasted only a few small shops, and islanders grew what vegetables they could, ate thefruits of the sea, and bartered for the goods they could not supply for themselves.

  “I should like to look at baby things, please,” she said, squaring her shoulders a little and raising her chin.

  The clerk smiled. “Indeed. Mr. Fairgrieve said you might want some personal items for yourself, as well. You are to selectwhatever you need—books, linens, toiletries, the like—without consideration of cost.”

  Susannah lowered her eyes for an instant, absorbing the self-evident fact that Aubrey saw her as a pauper, then met the youngman’s pleasant gaze again. “Thank you,” she said. “The baby things?”

  He led her into the midst of a bewildering selection of tiny gowns, bonnets, booties, and blankets and left her to choosewhat was needed. She took her time picking out an extensive wardrobe for the child, including a beautifully made christeninggown of snowy white cotton and Irish lace. Where Julia’s baby—and Aubrey’s, she was sure—was concerned, she had no compunctionabout spending lavishly.