Gossamer

by Rebecca Hagan Lee

  CRAIG CAPITAL, LIMITED, is hereby granted … Craig Capital, Limited, is hereby granted … James tossed the contracts aside and looked over at the mantel clock in disgust. He had spent the last quarter-hour reading the same sentence and he couldn’t recall any of the information contained in the sentences leading up to it. He pushed his chair away from the desk and stood up, then walked over to the fireplace, leaned against the edge of the mantel, and stared at the logs neatly stacked in the grate. He couldn’t concentrate on a railroad contract when his mind was fully occupied with thoughts of the woman upstairs.

  Elizabeth Sadler. Lovely Elizabeth Sadler. Mercurial Elizabeth Sadler. Enchanting Elizabeth Sadler. Mysterious Elizabeth Sadler. Bigoted Elizabeth Sadler. James squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose in a futile attempt to block out the memory of the way Elizabeth had looked as she backed away from the Treasures. He banged the top of the mantel with his right fist. “Damn it! Is expecting an intelligent woman to look beyond my children’s obvious differences too much to ask?” He lifted his gaze from the fireplace and looked heavenward. He was too old to be an idealist, too jaded. So, when was he going to stop expecting the people he cared about to accept the Treasures, and learn to anticipate their bigoted reactions? When was he going to stop expecting the people he cared about … James stopped suddenly, then shook his head as if to clear it. He didn’t care about Elizabeth Sadler. He didn’t value her opinions or care about her feelings. Or did he?

  I have my reasons. Her fervent admission echoed in his mind. She had her reasons. What the hell were they? What reasons could be strong enough to warrant her repulsion at the sight of the Treasures? Had she been so sheltered by her family she hadn’t known people came in differing skin tones? And if so, what the hell was she doing traveling out West alone?

  James sighed. He’d grown up in Hong Kong. He’d grown up surrounded by people whose beliefs and skin color differed from his own, where he was the minority. And his parents had often commented that growing up in Hong Kong had prepared him for anything. James snorted in derision. Anything except intolerance. Anything except life in America. Anything except how to cope with his massive frustration with, and disappointment in, Elizabeth Sadler. Christ! His mother hadn’t reacted as badly as Elizabeth when he’d announced he was marrying Mei Ling. In fact, Julia Cameron Craig had barely batted an eye as her only son announced his plans to marry the girl whose family had given her to him as a concubine. Oh, she’d argued against it later, but his announcement hadn’t really caught his mother by surprise. And although Mei Ling wasn’t the daughter-in-law Julia Cameron Craig would have chosen for him, she had done her best to secure Mei Ling’s position as James’s wife within the British community and to make her feel at home. Why couldn’t Elizabeth do the same? Why couldn’t she welcome four motherless little girls into her heart and make them feel safe and wanted and loved? James sighed. You must be patient, Jamie. Some things take time. James heard his mother’s voice speaking those words as clearly as if she were standing in his study beside him, as clearly as he had heard them back in Hong Kong when he’d complained to his mother that the wives of the men in the banking community had yet to invite Mei Ling to their afternoon teas or to acknowledge her as his wife.

  In fairness to Elizabeth, James was willing to admit that maybe all she needed was time. His mother had spent nearly thirty years in Hong Kong by the time he had brought Mei Ling into the Craig family, Julia Cameron Craig had had plenty of time to become accustomed to the looks and ways of the Chinese people.

  And given time, Elizabeth would, too. James squeezed his eyes shut again. He only hoped it wouldn’t take her thirty years. He couldn’t wait thirty years. He couldn’t wait until the Treasures were grown and gone. He needed her now. James shook his head. What was it about Elizabeth? Why hadn’t he been able to dismiss her from his mind? Why hadn’t he hired a different governess for his daughters? Why hadn’t he even tried? Why didn’t he walk back upstairs, knock on her bedroom door, and order her to be on the first train leaving Coryville in the morning? James pushed away from the mantel, walked back to his desk, and lowered himself onto his chair. He shoved the railroad contracts out of the way, then bent forward and placed his forehead against the cool oak surface of his desk. Why didn’t he escort her to the depot and put her on the train? Because no matter how disappointed or how angry he was with Elizabeth for her honest reaction to her first sight of the Treasures, he wanted her. Not just as governess to the Treasures, but for himself.

  A knock on the door startled him. James sat up and pushed his chair away from his desk. “Come in.”

  His housekeeper opened the door, and James quickly got to his feet. Mrs. G. had removed the sling she’d used to carry Diamond in from around her neck and replaced it with a starched white bibbed apron.

  “Pardon the interruption, Mr. Craig, but Delia has finished bathing the girls. They’re ready for you to come tuck them in.”

  “I’ll be right up.”

  “Fine, sir. I’ll let Delia know you’re on your way,” she replied as she stepped inside the study and began gathering up the clothes James had dropped on the chair. “Shall I take these to your bedroom, sir?”

  James started to give his approval, then remembering Elizabeth’s earlier comments, thought better of it. “No, thank you, Mrs. G. If you will, just leave them on the chair. I’ll take them when I go upstairs.”

  Helen Glenross gave her employer a curious look. “If you’re sure.”

  James smiled. “I’m sure.”

  Mrs. G. draped the garments over the arm of the leather wing chair. “One more thing, Mr. Craig …”

  “Yes, Mrs. G.?”

  “Shall I serve dinner in the dining room?”

  James met his housekeeper’s gaze. “Will I be dining there alone, Mrs. G.?”

  Helen Glenross hesitated. “Miss Sadler asked to have a tray sent up to her room.”

  James took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled it. “I suppose the staff’s already eaten.”

  His housekeeper nodded.

  “Have you?”

  Mrs. G. didn’t quite meet his gaze as she answered, “Yes, sir.”

  James knew better. Helen Glenross was nothing if not conscientious. She would never dream of having her dinner until she was certain he had eaten. But he also knew that after a life spent in household service, Helen Glenross wasn’t about to break with tradition and sit down to supper with her employer.

  “Then I’d prefer to have a tray sent here,” James said. “If it won’t be too much bother.”

  “No bother at all.”

  “Are you certain, Mrs. G.?” He hesitated, nearly stumbling over his words in an effort to show her the consideration she deserved for three years of devoted service to him. “That is … I mean to say, that I realize you’ve had extra work thrust upon you since the governess left. I know you’ve been putting in longer than usual days to take care of all your household duties and little Diamond.”

  Mrs. G. grinned, her plain face glowing with pleasure. “I’ll have your dinner ready in three-quarters of an hour. Will that give you enough time to tuck the girls into bed?”

  “Plenty,” James answered. “And, Mrs. G., thank you. For everything.”

  “WEAD THE STOWY, Daddy,” Ruby demanded imperiously, pulling a thick leather-bound volume from beneath the covers and shoving it into James’s hands.

  James took the book, lowered the bedrail, then climbed onto the bed and settled back against the headboard. Ruby climbed across his lap and burrowed into the crook of his right arm, while Garnet and Emerald leaned against his left. Diamond, the baby, lay fast asleep in the crib. He opened the book and turned to the page marked with a sky-blue ribbon. “Where were we?”

  “Sir Knight,” Ruby replied, “and Sancho Panza.”

  “ ‘To wight wongs and come to the aid of the wetched,’ ” Garnet quoted.

  “How right you are, little one,” James said as he leaned forward and planted a kis
s on Garnet’s shiny cap of black hair. “Don Quixote is on his quest to right wrongs and come to the aid of the wretched. All right, here we go,” He cleared his throat and began reading, “Chapter Twenty-two.”

  IN THE BEDROOM next door Elizabeth pushed her dinner tray to the side, untouched. Although the food smelled delicious, she couldn’t bring herself to eat it. She was too tired to eat, too tired to think about her stupidly impulsive decision to remain as governess to James Craig’s daughters. No good could come of it. She was too green, too inexperienced, too frightened. Her years at Lady Wimbley’s Female Academy had been spent first as a day student and then as a teacher to girls old enough to be sent away to boarding school. Even the youngest of the academy students had been six years of age.

  She had no practical experience with children as young as the Craig Treasures. She didn’t know how to handle them, how to talk to them or teach them, how to entertain them, or bathe and clothe them—especially the baby, Diamond. And heaven help her if they started babbling in that heathen Chinese language, because she’d be lost. Elizabeth paced the bedroom as she unbuttoned the bottom buttons on the bodice of her brown silk walking dress and removed the hatpin James had used to fasten the top of it. She took off her bodice, shook it out, and hung it on a hanger inside the massive Queen Anne armoire. She dropped the hatpin into a porcelain dish sitting atop the dressing table as she walked by, then unhooked her corset and the fasteners on her skirt, sucked in a deep breath, and let both garments fall to the floor. She’d be lost? She was already lost and completely out of her depths. What had possessed her to open her big mouth? James Craig had been about to dismiss her, to release her from her obligation to him.

  Elizabeth paced to the tall bedroom window and realized it was a door that led to the balcony overlooking the back garden. She opened the door a crack to let in the night air, then turned and retraced her steps, bending to pick up her discarded clothing along the way. What made her disregard her sense of fear of and unease about the Treasures? Elizabeth hung her skirt beside the bodice in the armoire and stuffed her corset and corset cover into a drawer. Her trunks had arrived from the depot shortly before her dinner tray, and, stripped down to her chemise and stockings, Elizabeth leaned down and began rifling through the smaller one, searching for a nightgown and robe. Finding what she needed, she pulled on a white lawn nightgown, draped a satin wrapper within easy reach on the footboard, then kicked off her shoes and climbed onto the bed. She rolled onto the center of the bed and wrapped her arms around a pillow. The answer to her questions was all around her. The faint scent of his cologne clung to the pillowslip and the sound of his voice penetrated the silk-covered walls.

  Elizabeth lay quietly listening as James Craig read to his daughters. Not some frivolous little children’s story or rhyming song, but Cervantes. She smiled at the image. He was reading Don Quixote de la Mancha to toddlers, relating the story of a dreamer who tilted at windmills and did his utmost to right incorrigible wrongs. A man, Elizabeth suspected, not as far removed from James Cameron Craig as James would have everyone believe.

  Elizabeth doused her lamps and lay in bed staring up at the half-tester canopy and listened to the accounts of Don Quixote’s adventures until James’s voice trailed off into nothingness and the soft sighs and gentle snoring told her that the story was done for the night and that the Treasures were fast asleep.

  She listened to the sound of James moving quietly around the room and was amazed that a big man could move about so silently. She imagined him going through the bedtime routine—straightening and tucking in the covers, leaning down to kiss each child good night, and blowing out the lamps. She heard the quiet click of the door as he closed it behind him and exited the nursery. And for a brief moment Elizabeth listened to the sound of his quiet tread as he paused outside her door.

  She smiled up at the darkness.

  Thirteen

  “GOOD MORNING, MRS. G.,” James said as he walked out of the master bedroom just after dawn the following morning and met the housekeeper exiting the governess’s room with a heavy silver tray in her arms. James drew his brows together in a show of irritation. Having her dinner sent up after a long eventful day was one thing, but asking Mrs. G. to bring her breakfast was quite another. Elizabeth Sadler was not the lady of the manor. She was an employee—a temporary one, perhaps—but for the time being, she had a job to do and responsibilities that did not include breakfast in bed. From now on he expected her to have the Treasures up and dressed and sitting at the dining room table to share breakfast with him. “Is this our new governess’s breakfast tray?”

  Mrs. G. shook her head. “No, sir. This is her dinner tray from last night, and she barely touched it.”

  “What?” James reached over and lifted one of the silver covers from the tray. It was identical to the one Mrs. G. had left on his study desk last night. He stared down at the cold, untouched, half of perfectly roasted Cornish hen on a bed of wild rice, then replaced the cover and lifted another one, and another. Even the slice of cherry pie was untouched. “I didn’t see her eat a thing all day yesterday. She had to have been starving, but she didn’t eat anything.”

  “I know,” Mrs. G agreed. “The tray and everything on it was still sitting where I left it last night.”

  A streak of alarm shot through James as he remembered staring at the open balcony door outside Elizabeth’s room last night while he sat smoking a cigar on his own balcony several doors down from hers. “Is she still with us? Or has she flown the coop?”

  Mrs. G. raised her eyebrows at that and frowned.

  “I had a cigar on my balcony last night and noticed her door was open,” James explained. “I thought that after the day she had yesterday, she might have changed her mind again about staying and climbed out the window while we were all asleep in our beds.”

  Mrs. G. shook her head. “She may have felt a bit overwhelmed by the long trip yesterday and the fact that the Treasures weren’t what she expected, but she’s got more grit than you think. She won’t be climbing out windows in the middle of the night or stealing the silver. If she decides to leave, she’ll tell you straight out.”

  It was James’s turn to frown. “So you knew how she reacted. I wondered.”

  “I heard most of it while I was coming up the stairs,” Mrs. Glenross admitted. “And Delia told me the rest.”

  “What do you think?” James asked. “Should we keep her because we desperately need a governess? Or shall I give Miss Sadler a train ticket out of Coryville and keep searching for a governess?”

  “We should keep her,” Mrs. G. answered firmly. “For her sake if not our own.”

  James nodded in agreement. “I think you’re right. As far as I can tell, she has no family out West. She said something the first time I met her about having a brother who lived in San Francisco, but he died before she arrived.” He wrinkled his brows in concentration. There was something else about the brother. Something that nagged at his memory, taunting him. James shook his head. “And she’s right about not being able to return to San Francisco. Her confrontation with Lo Peng has made it impossible for her to even consider it for a while.”

  Helen Glenross shuddered at the idea. “She’s had a confrontation with Lo Peng?”

  James couldn’t keep from grinning. “After only two days in San Francisco our Miss Sadler has managed to become one of Lo Peng’s most bitter enemies.”

  “How on earth did she manage that?”

  “By single-handedly wrecking his Washington Street opium den with a brown silk parasol.”

  Mrs. G. pursed her lips in thought, then turned her attention to her employer. “Well,” she said, “that explains what she did to earn Lo Peng’s enmity. The question is: What did he do to earn hers?”

  “Of course.” James stared at his housekeeper with an incredible sense of awe, the same sense of awe he would have felt if she had just created the heavens and the earth and presented it to him on the silver platter she held in her arms. It
was so simple. “A proper schoolteacher like Elizabeth Sadler would never take her brown silk parasol to an opium den without reason. And religious zeal isn’t the reason. We know what Miss Sadler did to Lo Peng. What did he do to her?” And then it came back to him—that niggling memory that had plagued him since Elizabeth Sadler had quietly and defiantly informed him that she had her reasons for disliking the Treasures. James heard the answer clearly in Sergeant Terrence Darnell’s Irish brogue: “Lo Peng’s out front swearing out a complaint, but we understand about your brother and Lo Peng’s and all. And the guys in the precinct are taking up a collection for you.” We understand about your brother and Lo Peng’s and all. There was something between Elizabeth’s brother and Lo Peng. Something so terrible Elizabeth had taken her parasol and wreaked havoc on Lo Peng’s primary place of business. It wouldn’t be hard to check the facts. A telegram to Sergeant Darnell or the desk sergeant in charge of the San Francisco City Police Precinct should net results. If he scheduled the inquiry into Elizabeth Sadler’s brother’s fate as first order of business when he reached his office this morning, he could probably have the facts in hand by late afternoon, and then he’d know what caused Elizabeth Sadler to go on her rampage at Lo Peng’s. But for the moment, he needed to know why his newly hired governess hadn’t started her work day.

  James smiled down at Mrs. G. “Then, we agree, Mrs. G. As far as we know Miss Sadler has no one to rely on and nowhere else to go. For the moment she needs us as much as we need her. As long as she does no harm to the Treasures, we’ll allow her to stay.”

  Mrs. Glenross tried hard not to smile at his high-handedness. “I don’t think you have to worry about Miss Sadler damaging the Treasures. She isn’t that sort of person.”

  “What do you mean?” James asked. “You heard how she reacted upon seeing them.”