by Regina Scott
“Coming right up,” he said, scooping the coin into the palm of his hand.
“Be careful showing silver like that,” Waldo fussed as the proprietor hurried away. “Some men would do most anything for money these days.” He glanced left and right before muttering, “Except climb Mount Rainier.”
“It’s a fool’s errand,” Nathan insisted, leaning back in his chair.
“Says you. You took her in dislike afore she ever opened her mouth. I saw it.”
Nathan shrugged. “I’ve met enough like her.”
Waldo shook his head. “No, you ain’t. I’ll have you know that little girl graduated from the Puget Sound University, one of the first women to do it.”
That was impressive. He knew how rigorous college studies could be. As the son of a prominent businessman, he’d graduated from the State University in Seattle. But that had been eight long years ago. Life had changed. He’d changed.
“She rides too,” Waldo continued, as if warming to his theme. “Real good, I hear. And she’s a gem at lawn tennis.”
Nathan eyed him. “Do you even know what lawn tennis is?”
Waldo pouted. “No, but it sounded hard.”
“Miss Baxter is obviously a paragon,” Nathan said. “But that doesn’t mean I have to take her up the mountain.”
Shem hustled back with a tray, setting it down in front of them with a flourish. The battered bottom of the tin bowl was evident through the clear liquid, and Nathan could count the pieces of carrot and celery clinging desperately to the sides. The soup was accompanied by two thin slices of bread.
“How about some butter?” Waldo asked as Shem straightened.
“’Fraid not,” he said. “Had to sell the cow.”
“Maybe you should have cooked the cow,” Waldo said, poking his spoon at the vegetables.
“I’m just doing what I can to stay open,” Shem said.
Waldo pointed his spoon at the barkeep. “You saw Miss Baxter. You think she can climb a mountain?”
Shem grinned. “She’s got pluck. Rumor has it even Cash Kincaid is sniffing at her heels, but she’ll have none of it.”
“Good for her,” Waldo cheered.
She had sense and courage, then. Kincaid was ruthless, his tactics just short of illegal. If he was the man her mother intended for Miss Baxter, Nathan couldn’t think of a better fellow to receive a setdown. He only wished he could be the one to give it to him.
He pushed back his chair. “Finish my soup, Waldo. I have something I need to do.”
Waldo frowned. “Now? I thought we weren’t starting home until tomorrow. We have to pick up the supplies.”
“We may have to delay a day or two,” Nathan told him. “It all depends on how long it takes Miss Baxter to feel ready to climb a mountain.”
2
Though she was curious about what her kindhearted stepfather had said to Mr. Hardee, Cora decided not to press Winston as he joined her in the carriage.
“He still refused, I take it,” she said instead.
“For the moment,” Winston said, settling in his seat across from her.
“Alternatives?” she asked as the carriage started for home. Out on the gray waters of Commencement Bay, a white-sided steamship blew a blast as it headed for South America or Asia.
Winston shifted on the brown, padded leather bench, mouth tight below his mustache. “A few—a very few, mind you—other guides were recommended to me, but I am uncertain of their characters, particularly when it comes to escorting the fairer sex under such circumstances.”
The fairer sex. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had tried to minimize her capabilities because she was female. This idea that women were somehow less was what prevented them from winning the vote as well.
“I don’t need a guide to coddle me,” she informed him as the carriage turned onto Tenth Street, away from the warehouses and into the multistoried buildings that made up the heart of the city. “Just one who knows his way around the mountain.”
Winston glanced out the window to where the snowcapped peak dominated the skyline to the southeast. So close, as if she could walk to the base in no more than an hour when in truth it was sixty-some miles away by wagon road and trail.
“Are you certain this is prudent, dearest?” he murmured, brow puckering. “Nathan seems certain you could be harmed. Perhaps some other lady more experienced could climb.”
She’d made the same argument when her friend Mimi Carruthers and the other members of the Tacoma Women’s Suffrage Association had asked her to consider the matter. It was a tremendous honor. She gave Winston the answer they’d given her.
“Miss Fuller has already climbed it once. Doing so again would hardly make as much impact as if a lady of some social standing did it for the first time.”
“Judge Wickersham’s wife, then,” Winston said. “No one could assail her standing in society or her success at climbing.”
“Mrs. Wickersham is not a great supporter of our efforts,” Cora reminded him. “Like those in the Seattle Women’s Suffrage Association, she feels we are best served by focusing on domesticity rather than demonstration.”
He looked at her hopefully. Like her mother, Winston couldn’t accustom himself to the fact that she wasn’t afraid to demonstrate.
“It must be me,” Cora told him. “And you heard Mother. It’s climb or marry. I prefer to climb.”
Winston sighed. “I simply cannot like the risk.”
Cora smiled at him. “Funny. You’re usually the one to encourage me to take risks with the bank’s money.”
He returned her smile. “And I have acknowledged that you have a better eye for sizing up proposals than I ever had. But this is something else entirely.” His gloved hands folded over each other on the head of his walking stick. “It was one thing for you to attend college and enter the workforce. The right people will appreciate and commend you for it. This venture could well cost you your life.”
A chill went through her, even though the day was warming. “Surely not. Many people have attempted the summit in recent years. Mr. Van Trump has gone five times.”
“And more have turned back from weather, exhaustion, or the inability to find a safe route,” Winston insisted. “I want better for you.”
“So do I,” Cora promised him as the carriage turned onto C Street and paralleled the trolley tracks. “But we both know Mother has set her sights on Mr. Kincaid. Find me a guide.”
He nodded. “I’ll see what I can do, but I will hope young Nathan changes his mind. At least he was one of us.”
He began to sound like her mother. Cora arched her brows. “I saw very little evidence that Mr. Hardee ever spent time in good society.”
“His conversation certainly didn’t betray the fact,” Winston allowed, “and his manners were not what I had expected, but make no mistake. The name Hardee commanded a great deal of respect in the area when you were a girl. His late father amassed a fortune selling real estate when the Northern Pacific first arrived.”
Cora made a face. “And his son prefers to live like a fur trapper in the wilderness?”
“It was a sudden change in circumstance.” Winston tugged at his red-speckled tie as if the blue silk had tightened around his neck. “The poor fellow was found dead at his desk. Gunshot wound to the temple.”
Cora shuddered. “How awful. What of his mother?”
“She soon remarried. You recall Mrs. Quinton?”
“She’s Mr. Hardee’s mother?” The interconnections in the small community still surprised her on occasion. Mrs. Quinton was a social hostess as well regarded as Cora’s mother. Hardee had fallen indeed if he was no longer associated with her. Was it a willful choice or something in his character that made him unwelcome in society? Perhaps it was a good thing they must seek another guide.
The carriage rumbled to a stop under the porte cochère at the side of the house, and Winston climbed out to assist her in alighting. She couldn’t help glancing up at the fine h
ome her stepfather had built for her mother. Tall fluted columns held up the overhanging roof of the carriageway, while pedimented windows looked out on the street and gardens behind. The white siding, crenelated white trim, and fan window over the door and into the servants’ quarters at the top of the house added an elegance few could achieve. It was her mother’s pride and joy.
The wood-paneled side entryway opened to grand stairs down to the ballroom below and a corridor to the rest of the house. Lily, the ladies’ maid she shared with her mother, came to take her coat even as Winston went ahead of her toward his study at the back of the house.
“Where is my mother at the moment?” Cora asked the little dark-haired maid as they continued to the main entry hall, paneled in white with tall ceilings.
“In the drawing room, miss,” Lily answered, draping the fabric over her lean arm. “Answering invitations that arrived this morning.”
Good. Her mother generally received a number of invitations a day—to charity events, to balls, to evenings at the theatre. Too often they included requests for Cora’s company. Tonight, in fact, they were scheduled to attend a concert at the Tacoma Theatre. If her mother was occupied answering the requests, Cora had every opportunity to escape to her room to determine her next steps if Winston could not find them a guide. Perhaps Mimi knew someone.
But Cora had only set her foot on the polished oak stair when her mother’s call came.
“Coraline? Will you attend me, please?”
The last word was used only for propriety’s sake. There was no question Cora would obey the summons. Pasting on a smile, she stepped down and went to join her mother.
The family parlor was everything a lady of fashion could want, from the creamy walls covered in gilt-framed landscapes to the marble-tiled hearth to the emerald velvet horsehair sofa and matching chairs. The impeccable furnishings were merely more evidence as to why the woman now known as Mrs. Stephen Winston was highly regarded among those in society, or at least such society as the City of Destiny offered.
City of Destiny. What a nickname to bequeath the pioneer metropolis of fifty-two thousand people. But the Northern Pacific Railroad loved slogans. The catchy phrases fit so well on the marketing tracts they distributed by the thousands and the advertisements they placed in every major newspaper coast to coast, encouraging people to visit, via rail, of course.
Would anyone heed them in the midst of the Panic?
She shook off the dark cloud that threatened and approached her mother, who was seated at the walnut secretary near the eastern window. The frilly white curtains behind her framed her blond majesty. She offered Cora a polite smile that did not quite reach her pale blue eyes as she slipped her pen into the gilded holder.
“Judge Wickersham’s wife requested our assistance in gathering blankets and clothing for the poor farm. It seems they’ve been overrun. I thought we’d ask Mrs. Carruthers and Mimi to join us.”
Thirty years and thousands of miles could not erase the sophisticated tone that had helped make her mother the toast of Philadelphia. But at least this was one request Cora had no trouble accepting. “Certainly, Mother. When I return from the mountain.”
Her mother’s pleasant look did not waver in the slightest. “Then you were able to come to an agreement with this Mr. Hardee.”
“He declined to be employed,” Cora said, wandering closer to the hearth, bare now before autumn arrived. “But Winston assures me we have options.”
Her mother smoothed her silvery gray silk skirts, setting the tassels along the hem to fluttering. “Of course you have options. Any number of gentlemen would be delighted for you to show the least interest. Mr. Kincaid is particularly attentive.”
Cora grimaced at the familiar refrain. “I have no need of a husband, Mother. I am gainfully employed.”
For a brief moment, her mother’s face tightened, making her look far older than the few gray hairs in that elegant blond coiffure would attest. “You will be glad for a clever husband like Mr. Kincaid if these financial difficulties continue. I don’t know where we’d be now if not for dear Mr. Winston.”
That was true enough. Cora barely remembered her father, who had abandoned them when she was six, though she could not forget the rumors others had been certain her mother needed to know. Run off with the parlor maid and a sizable amount of his employer’s money, it was whispered. At least her mother had been notified of his death a year later. Too bad her choice of second husband had been worse. Cora still remembered the stench of alcohol when he’d leaned too close. After her father and her first stepfather had died, she and her mother had been evicted from their home. They had only survived because of her mother’s ability to secure a new husband.
“Winston is a paragon,” Cora agreed. “But we both know how easily marriages can go awry. I prefer to look after myself.”
Her mother set the pen more securely in its filigreed holder. “At least tell me you’ve decided against this foolhardy attempt to climb the mountain. It isn’t seemly, Coraline. I raised you to be a lady.”
A lady beholden to the men around her. No, thank you. “Ladies climb mountains, Mother. Look at Miss Fuller.”
Her mother lifted a delicate brow. “Miss Fuller writes well enough in her father’s newspaper, but she is hardly the model I wish for my daughter. And neither are these suffragettes.”
Another common argument. “Mimi is a suffragette,” Cora pointed out.
“A fact her poor mother laments every time I see her. The entire cause is spurious. Women have no need to vote. We influence politics and society through our husbands.” Her look softened. “With your beauty and intelligence, Coraline, you could marry a railroad executive, a senator, a governor! Think of the power you would wield then.”
Cora glanced around at the marble hearth and the Oriental carpet. “I don’t mind a smaller sphere, Mother, so long as it’s my own.”
“And you can achieve that sphere by marrying well,” her mother insisted.
“Which I will achieve by using my skills and wits,” Cora argued. “I don’t need a man, any man, to plan my future.”
A noise at the door made her turn. Darcy, the downstairs housemaid, bobbed a curtsy, her black skirts pooling. “Begging your pardon, Mrs. Winston, Miss Cora. There’s a fellow here to see you about climbing the mountain.”
Nathan cooled his heels on the doorstep of one of the nicest houses on the street. It hadn’t been difficult to get directions to the banker’s home, and he hadn’t been surprised to find it nestled along C Street, among others of its kind, with its back looking out over the bay and the mountain beyond. They were all showy places dripping multicolored bric-a-brac and boasting ballrooms, more than one parlor, and quarters for servants. He’d spent much of his youth living in such a house. He didn’t miss it.
But it felt odd not to be invited inside. Once no door had been closed to him. Men had wanted to befriend him, to do him favors. Young ladies had vied for his attentions. All that had vanished overnight when his father had died and the amount of his debt had become known.
At least now when someone attempted to strike up an acquaintance, he could be sure it had little to do with the size of his bank account or the reputation of his parents. Though there were still a few who thought he could be used . . .
The paneled front door opened, and the brown-haired maid peeked out as if suspecting he’d run off after her initial refusal to allow him inside.
“Mr. Hardee,” she said, nose up as if she objected to the very smell of him, “Miss Baxter and her mother will see you now.”
He nodded and followed her into the house. Even the entry hall was grand, with tall walls and a crystal chandelier lit by electricity. The stairs to the upper regions were so polished he could almost see his reflection in them as the maid led him past to the first door on the left, stepped aside, and motioned him to enter the parlor. The room was crowded with fine furnishings, including side tables covered by lace-edged doilies and vases filled with the ki
nds of flowers ladies paid to have grown for them. They still paled beside the beauty standing near the white marble hearth.
“Mr. Hardee,” Miss Baxter said, smile guarded. “What a surprise. May I introduce you to my mother, Mrs. Winston?”
He inclined his head to the regal beauty sitting as tall and straight as a fir in the chair beside the walnut secretary. It was clear where Miss Baxter got her looks. “Ma’am.”
“Mr. Hardee.” Even the two words seemed more than she wanted to give him.
“Do I take it you’ve changed your mind about guiding us up the mountain?” her daughter asked.
Before he could respond, her mother tutted. “You must forgive her, Mr. Hardee. My daughter tends to focus on her goals to the exclusion of all else. Would you care for refreshment? I suppose tea or lemonade would not be of interest, but I believe our groundskeeper may have some beer.”
Miss Baxter said nothing, but her face turned an unbecoming shade of red.
“Lemonade would be welcome,” he assured her mother.
Her mother looked to the doorway, where he realized the maid waited. She hurried off now.
“Please, won’t you sit down, Mr. Hardee?” Mrs. Winston asked. “You might find the chair by the window the most comfortable for you.”
The chair in question was polished wood and least likely to be stained by what she must imagine dusted his trousers.
Miss Baxter didn’t argue with her mother’s choice, though she seated herself on the chair’s twin on the other side of the window from him.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she pointed out. “Are you willing to guide us up the mountain?”
“I’m considering it,” Nathan said, taking a seat.
She cocked her head, and sunlight glinted on the light blond hair piled up on top. “What made you change your mind?”
He wasn’t about to go into his feelings toward Cash Kincaid. “Perhaps I simply like aiding a lady in her cause.”
“How very heroic of you,” her mother said, though the words hardly sounded like praise.