by Kate Hewitt
ON RENFREW STREET
By Kate Hewitt
CHAPTER ONE
Amherst Island, Ontario, 1911
“What do you think of this one, Ellen?”
Ellen Copley watched as her friend Louisa Hopper turned this way and that to see her reflection, the confection of lace, ribbons, and a feather or two that was the latest fashion in millinery perched jauntily on top of her head.
“It’s lovely. Quite large, though. I imagine your neck will start to ache.”
“Oh, Ellen.” With a wry smile, Louisa took the hat off and tossed it carelessly onto the bed. Ellen reached for it, admiring the violet-dyed feathers before putting it back in the box. She’d never worn something so fine, but then she’d never had a need to either. Louisa was intending it as part of her trousseau, for her honeymoon in Toronto next week.
Even though Ellen had had months to get used to the idea of her friend marrying Jed Lyman, an islander and dear family friend, she still felt a little twist of sorrow at the thought.
She’d been in love with Jed for years, although no one had known, save for Jed’s brother Lucas. He’d guessed after he had declared his love for Ellen at one of Queen’s University’s ‘smokers’, the slang term for the dances undergraduates held, that he’d escorted her to last May.
Amidst the loud ragtime music and hazy swirls of cigarette smoke, she’d miserably acknowledged that she was unable to reciprocate his feelings. Lucas had told her he could wait, but Ellen didn’t think she’d ever change her mind—or her heart. Lucas was a dear friend, like a brother to her, while just looking at Jed could steal her breath and make her dizzy.
It would have been so much easier, Ellen mused now, if she’d fallen in love with Lucas rather than Jed. Lucas, shy and thoughtful, was surely more of her type than Jed, who had never left Amherst Island or his father’s farm, and whose taciturn ways bordered on surliness, if you didn’t look more deeply to the generous and genuine man underneath.
And it was Jed, with that surprising depth, the sudden glint in his gray eyes, his mouth kicking up in a wry smile, that had made her heart race and her hopes soar, not kind, quiet Lucas.
Sighing, Ellen rose from Louisa’s bed and began to pick up the clothes that her friend had carelessly tossed all over the room, despite the fact that they were expensive, newly bought from some of New York City’s best boutiques.
Louisa was the only daughter of a banker and his wife, and Ellen had met her when they’d both lived in Seaton, Vermont and gone to school together. Ellen had been living with her stern Aunt Ruth and genial Uncle Hamish. Neither of them, childless all their days, had ever seemed to know what to do with her, although they’d all come to an understanding in time, just before Ruth’s death a few months earlier.
Ellen’s mother had died back in Glasgow, when she was just twelve, and she and her father had emigrated to Vermont to join her Uncle Hamish in running the town’s general store. Da hadn’t warmed to country life and within weeks of arriving in Vermont he’d set out West, leaving Ellen with relatives she barely knew. He was now laying rails all the way to Mexico, and Ellen had only seen him once in seven years, and that only a few months ago.
For a while during those difficult years of her childhood, spoiled Louisa had made Ellen’s life a misery, bullying her and turning some of her classmates against her out of sheer spite. Ellen had persevered in being friendly, and eventually the two girls had formed an unlikely but surprisingly close friendship. Louis could be good fun, and Ellen was unswervingly loyal.
Then, several years ago, Louisa had invited herself to Amherst Island, where Ellen spent the summers with her Aunt Rose and Uncle Dyle and their happy brood of five noisy children.
The island was a true home to Ellen, and when Louisa had finagled an invitation, she’d realized she wasn’t sure she wanted to share it with her temperamental friend.
Yet Louisa had come on her own insistence, and Jed had fallen in love with her, and now, in two days’ time, they would marry.
She’d accepted all that, Ellen told herself firmly as she hung up a nightdress of gossamer silk and fragile lace. She did not like to think of Louisa wearing it. She couldn’t be jealous now; it wasn’t fair to Louisa or Jed, or even to herself.
She had her own plans now, plans she hadn’t yet shared with anyone, intending to reveal them after Jed and Louisa’s wedding, when the excitement had died down. Plans that buoyed her spirit and stirred her soul. She didn’t need to feel sad simply because Jed and Louisa were together. Besides, she’d mended her broken heart a long time ago, or so she’d convinced herself.
Louisa tried on another hat, this one with a bunch of grapes on the brim and a wide scarlet ribbon around the crown. She stared at her reflection, her lips pursed, before she took it off and tossed it aside like the others.
“I don’t suppose I’ll wear it more than once,” she said with a sigh and then a toss of her auburn curls. “No one on the island has any sense of fashion.”
“And they’ve no need to. Hats like these are hardly practical for a farming life.” Ellen thought she might topple right over if she tried to wear a hat that ridiculously large.
“Exactly,” Louisa answered, and Ellen watched as her friend’s face settled into discontented lines, just as it had so often when they were children. She’d thought Louisa had outgrown such sulks, but perhaps she hadn’t.
“You knew you’d live on Amherst Island when you agreed to marry Jed,” Ellen pointed out, as reasonably as she could. Now was not the time even to think about how unsuited Louisa seemed to farming life in a small community, or to being a farmer’s wife. Her parents had accepted the match with grudging reluctance, and only because they had always indulged their spoiled daughter, and Louisa had absolutely set her cap for Jed Lyman. “And you’ve always loved it here, Louisa.”
“It’s pretty enough,” Louisa agreed, “but I don’t intend to molder away here forever.” She tossed her head again, burnished curls bouncing against her shoulders, hazel eyes glinting with sudden defiance.
Ellen stared at her with growing unease. “But Louisa, the Lyman farm is on the island—Jed’s life is on the island. What can you mean?”
Louisa rose from her dressing table and prowled restlessly around the small bedroom she’d always used in the McCaffertys’ farmhouse, now scattered with silk and lace. “I can’t imagine being a farmer’s wife forever,” she said at last. “Surely you see that.”
“But—“
“And there’s no reason why Jed should shut himself up that way either,” she added, spinning away from Ellen to stare out the window. The sun was just beginning to lower in a deep blue sky, setting the rolling fields and pastures ablaze. In the distance Lake Ontario twinkled, and Ellen could hear the lowing of the cows in the pasture, her seven-year-old cousin Andrew’s distant laughter.
It was a beautiful view, and they were comforting sounds, all of it together making the sweetest and dearest home Ellen had ever known. She’d be sorry to leave it, as she would in just a few weeks, and she couldn’t imagine Jed ever leaving the island, or even wanting to. He’d been born here, and he’d never left. He was part of its roots and soil as much as the maples arching over Jasper Lane outside.
“Have you spoken to Jed about this?” she asked at last.
The spark of defiance that had lit Louisa’s eyes went out suddenly and she sagged onto the bed. “No, not yet. But my father’s prepared to offer him a job at the bank in Seaton. He told me when we were in New York—“
“In Seaton!” Jed as a banker, in stuffy Seaton! It was an impossible idea, an irreconcilable image. He hadn’t even finished hi
gh school, for starters, and in any case he belonged her.
When Jed had proposed a few months ago, Ellen remembered, Louisa had been full of plans about making her home on the island; she’d half-convinced Jed to buy an old homestead near the tiny hamlet of Emerald, although he’d insisted on keeping the Lyman homestead going with his father, next door to the McCaffertys’ place.
What had changed? Or had the reality of life here sunk in enough to make Louisa realize she wasn’t as enamored with the island as she’d once believed, that she didn’t know how to churn butter or make jam or darn her own stockings?
“Louisa,” she said gently, laying a hand on her friend’s arm, “can you really see Jed as a banker? He didn’t even go to high school—“
Louisa shrugged her hand away. “You’ve always been a snob about that, haven’t you?”
“That’s not fair,” Ellen answered quietly, but her cheeks burned. When she’d discovered that Jed loved Louisa and not her, despite their years of close friendship, she’d said some unkind things about Jed she’d since fiercely regretted—things that he’d unfortunately overheard. Even though she’d long since apologized and he’d forgiven her, the cruelty of her words—calling him an ignorant farmer—still cut deeply, mostly because she hadn’t meant them at all. She’d only been speaking out of her own humiliation and heartache. “I only meant that he loves the land,” she continued now, “and the Lyman farm has been in the family for decades. How could he leave it to work in a bank?”
Louisa lifted her chin, her eyes sparking once more. “He would if he loved me.”
“But you shouldn’t even ask it of him—“
“What’s it to you?” Louisa shot back, and Ellen recognized the light of malice in her friend’s eyes that had been there in childhood, and still occasionally snapped back to life. “You don’t have any say in the matter, Ellen, as much as you might have once wanted to.”
“Don’t,” Ellen said quietly. Louisa had suspected Ellen’s feelings for Jed last Christmas, but Ellen had thought, or at least hoped, that she’d put her off. And those feelings were buried deep now, best to be forgotten or at least certainly ignored. “I think you should talk to Jed about this,” Ellen said firmly, rising from the bed and beginning to tidy up Louisa’s discarded hats and fripperies. “Before the wedding, because it’s too important to leave to later. Whatever the two of you decide, you need to be honest with each other from the start—“
“Are you hoping he’ll break it off?” Louisa interrupted. “So you can have him for yourself? You’re perfectly content to stay on this poky island, aren’t you, Ellen? Especially if it were with Jed.”
Ellen tried not to show how Louisa’s fit of temper pierced her, mostly because there was a small, hidden part of her that agreed with that sentiment. Yes, she’d once dreamed of just such a life, and whatever her plans now, it was hard to let go of that dream.
She didn’t deign to answer now, fearing she’d say something she’d regret. She didn’t want to lose her temper with Louisa, not now with the wedding so close and her own future shining brightly ahead of her.
“Surely you know me better than that, Louisa,” she said finally. “I’ve been your friend for seven years, and Jed’s for even longer. Of course I want you both to be happy.”
“I know you do.” As changeable as ever, Louisa now reached for Ellen’s hands, tugging her down beside her on the bed once more. “I’m sorry, Ellen. I’m being awful, I know I am, and you must hate me for it. I must seem like a spoiled I-don’t-know-what, but the truth is, I’m so afraid.” She bit her lip, a tear sparkling like a diamond droplet on one lash. Even in her obvious misery Louisa looked lovely, Ellen thought, and always would. No wonder Jed had fallen in love with her.
“Dear Louisa.” Ellen patted her friend’s hand. “What are you afraid of?”
“I don’t know how to bake bread,” Louisa blurted.
“Bake bread? What on earth—“
“Or sew, or darn socks, or bottle fruit or—anything. I’m useless, Ellen.” Louisa rose from the bed and began to pace the room, wringing her hands like the proverbial maiden in distress. Even though Ellen recognized Louisa’s worry was genuine, she suspected her friend was enjoying the moment of drama.
“How can I be a good wife to Jed if we live here on the farm?” she demanded. “I can’t do any of the things all the farmers’ wives do round here, and I won’t be able to learn.” She whirled around to face Ellen, her tears replaced once more by a blaze of defiance. “I can’t do it. I won’t, and Jed shouldn’t ask it of me.”
Ellen suppressed a sigh. Sometimes she forgot how exhausting Louisa could be. And while she recognized that Louisa was afraid, she also suspected she didn’t want to learn any of the dull things farmers’ wives had to do. She hadn’t during her summers on the island when they’d been younger. She’d never gone berry picking with the rest of them or helped in the kitchen. One evening she’d informed Aunt Rose that she would have dinner on a tray in her room, to which Rose had replied in her kindly, brisk way, that if Louisa did not wish to eat with the rest of the family, she could fend for herself.
“You need to talk to Jed,” Ellen said again wearily. “He knew what you were like when he asked you to marry him, Louisa. He’s not expecting you to turn into something else now.” Although she doubted Jed was anticipating a call to working in a bank in Vermont.
“I don’t think he’s even realized, and why should he? He’s a man, after all. The bread just appears on the table, the socks darned in his drawer.”
“Jed’s mother died three years ago,” Ellen reminded her. “He’s been darning his own socks for quite a while. Talk to him.”
She heard Rose calling her from downstairs, and with relief she slipped from the room and hurried to the kitchen.
“And how is dear Louisa?” Rose asked, wry good humor lighting her faded blue eyes as Ellen came into the welcoming room with its scrubbed table and blackened range. She’d spent so many happy afternoons there, with the old brown teapot on the center of the table and sunlight slanting through the wide sashed windows. “Does she even have space to move up there,” Rose asked, “with all the things she’s bought for her trousseau?”
“A bit,” Ellen allowed. “But I think she’s rather in a panic.”
“Only natural. I imagine poor old Jed’s having a bit of a panic, as well!” Ellen just smiled, although again she felt that shaft of pain at the thought of them marrying. Really, she needed to stop thinking about it, and most of all, to stop minding. “And how are you, Ellen?” Rose asked, laying a hand on her arm, making Ellen wonder if she’d possibly guessed the nature of her thoughts. “It hasn’t been so very long since poor Ruth died, and you left nursing school…”
“I’m all right.” The last few months had been tumultuous, with her decision to leave nursing school tied to her aunt’s sudden death back in Seaton in the summer. Aunt Ruth had been stern and sometimes even cold, and for too many years Ellen had felt her aunt didn’t even like her, but the reconciliation on her aunt’s deathbed had made Ellen realize life was simply too short to allow such misunderstandings to continue. After Ruth’s death, she’d ended up travelling all the way to New Mexico to visit her father, and attempting to heal the hurt his abrupt departure from her life had caused.
She’d succeeded, at least somewhat, although in truth Ellen didn’t know what kind of relationship she could have with her father now. His life on the railroad, living in little more than a shack and moving from place to place, was so different to her own, and she wasn’t sure if Douglas Copley even knew how to be a father anymore. But at least she was no longer angry or hurt by his abandonment, simply saddened by the way things had turned out.
And now, with all that behind her, she needed to think of her future.
Smiling, Ellen turned away from her aunt, her mind full of what was to come, and all she hoped for.
CHAPTER TWO
Two days later Ellen sat in the second pew of Stella’s Pre
sbyterian church and watched Louisa process down the aisle, magnificent in white tulle, on the arm of her father. The Hoppers had wanted to have Louisa and Jed’s wedding at the Episcopalian church back in Seaton, but Jed’s ties to the farm—and the fact that most of the islanders would be unable to travel such a distance—made such a thing impossible.
The Hoppers had conceded the location, and would be hosting the reception afterwards, to take place at the island’s only hotel. Louisa had told Ellen they’d shipped the champagne all the way from New York, and hired their own cook to manage the canapés. Ellen had wondered how islanders would take to such fancy fare; she hoped this wouldn’t set them against Louisa, for trying to impress them with her hoity-toity ways the minute she’d got here.
Almost reluctantly Ellen’s gaze slid from Louisa to Jed, and her heart gave a familiar and painful twist. He looked so familiar, so dear, with his steel-grey eyes and dark hair still unruly despite what appeared to be a generous amount of hair pomade.
A montage of bittersweet memories tumbled through her mind: the first time she’d met Jed, when she’d been just thirteen, uncertain and afraid as she stepped from Captain Jonah’s boat onto this unfamiliar shore, everything dark around her.
Jed, surly and silent, had fetched her from the station in his old buckboard, and Ellen had not known what to think of this strange, sullen boy with the startling grey eyes. Yet within a few months they’d become unlikely friends, brought together by hardship-Ellen’s mother had died when she was only ten, and Jed’s mother was ailing and bedridden.
By the end of that first summer, Ellen had made friends with both Lucas and Jed, as well as all the McCaffertys, from excitable Peter to sensible Caro to feisty Ruth and darling Sarah and Andrew. Rose had felt like a mother to her, and Dyle, dear Dyle, a father. And Amherst Island was the first place where she’d truly felt as if she’d come home.
She recalled lazy days spent in the meadow between the Lyman and McCafferty properties, and a particularly poignant afternoon when Jed had seen her charcoal sketches for the first time. He’d teased her, of course; that’s what Jed always did, but there had been affection lurking in his eyes. And when he’d told her, both serious and sincere, that he thought they were good, Ellen’s heart had sung.