Instant Frontier Family

by Regina Scott

  The thought brought his aunt’s voice to mind. Don’t you be going and judging all women like your Katie O’Doul. Not every lady sets her heart on breaking others’.

  “I’ve never held with indentured servants, sir,” Maddie informed him. “Too many of our people labored under that system.”

  Our people. The Irish. Was she one of those who valued the home country more than the country they now called home? He’d been fighting the battle of misplaced allegiances for most of his life. The only reason he was here now was because he’d lost that battle in New York and lost the woman he’d thought he’d loved at the same time.

  He wasn’t about to lose more.

  “Nevertheless, Miss O’Rourke,” he said, “I’m a man who pays my debts. And I’ve grown quite fond of Miss Ciara and Master Aiden. Until I know they’re safely settled, I’m afraid you’ll have to suffer my presence.”

  It was a bold statement, so he wasn’t surprised when her dark eyes flashed fire even as her hands tightened into fists at her sides. Oh, but he was in for a tongue-lashing now. As if Ciara thought so as well, she latched on to Michael’s arm again.

  “Oh, please, Maddie!” she cried. “Don’t send Michael away!”

  Aiden pressed himself against Michael’s leg, face tightening with worry. “He’s our friend.”

  Maddie O’Rourke drew in a deep breath. Michael knew the position in which he and the children had placed her. She was an unmarried woman, by all accounts, a laundress, Aunt Sylvie said, though no laundress Michael had ever met dressed half so well or carried herself with so much pride. But he truly didn’t want to marry her. He wanted to make sure Ciara and Aiden were safe, and he needed a job so he could pay back what he owed and find his footing on the frontier.

  “Have you no other friends or family in the area, Mr. Haggerty?” she asked as if trying to determine some other solution to the problem he presented. She raised her gaze to his, and he thought the movement was at least in part a way to ignore the pitiful looks on her siblings’ faces.

  “A fellow came with me on the boat,” Michael said. “But he has only enough to pay room and board until he finds employment.”

  She sighed, fingers relaxing against the material of her skirts. “’Tis a difficult choice you’re giving me, Mr. Haggerty. To begin with, I’ve no idea what to do with you. A woman working off her debt might have slept upstairs with the family. I’ve no bed available for a bachelor.”

  “I don’t need much,” Michael assured her. “I can make do with a blanket on the floor.”

  She frowned as if she wasn’t acquainted with such humble behavior. In truth, he wasn’t used to it either. He’d been proud enough, ambitious even: working on the docks in Brooklyn, rising among the ranks to a position of authority, engaged to the prettiest lass Irishtown had ever produced.

  But his pride had lasted only as long as it had taken for the Dead Rabbits gang to try to force him into becoming a liar and a thief.

  “And then there’s the work,” Maddie continued. “Have you any experience with the doing of laundry?”

  “In truth, I’ve never tried it,” Michael admitted. “But I’ve a strong back and a ready mind. I should be able to learn the way of it.”

  She shook her head. Perhaps she thought he denigrated her work by making it seem too easy. From what he’d seen, laundresses worked harder than most for less pay.

  Ciara and Aiden were glancing back and forth between the two of them, as if willing their sister to give in. Maddie looked as if she couldn’t or wouldn’t budge, even for them.

  You offered me light when all was darkness, Father. Show me the way now.

  Michael reached out and took Maddie’s ungloved hand in his. “Give me the opportunity to help, Miss O’Rourke.”

  Maddie gazed up at him, eyes narrowed as if she thought to see inside him and determine his worth. Michael held her gaze, wishing he could see inside her instead. Ciara and Aiden had talked often about their sister Maddie, and his Aunt Sylvie had sung her praises, but he couldn’t understand her. Why would anyone leave a little brother and sister behind? Why travel halfway around the world? Had she been escaping trouble, like him? Or was she the cause of it, like Katie?

  “Very well, Mr. Haggerty,” she said, pulling back her hand. “You can stay with us, but only,” she cautioned, finger in the air as Ciara cried out in delight and Aiden began jumping up and down, “until you secure a proper job. I suppose I can find some use for you.”

  “I’ll do anything that needs doing, Miss O’Rourke,” he vowed, “without complaint or compromise. You’ll have no cause to regret your decision to help me.”

  “So you say,” she answered, but Michael got the impression that she was regretting it already.

  Chapter Two

  Maddie could see that Michael Haggerty was going to be trouble. For one thing, Aiden and Ciara looked to him rather than her for guidance. She supposed that was a natural consequence of him serving as their escort aboard ship, but she could not allow it to continue. She had enough doubts about her abilities to raise her brother and sister.

  And as for Ciara’s insistence that Michael and Maddie must marry, that was nonsense. If Maddie wanted a brawny man in her life, she could have married one of the Wallin lads who were brothers to the man her good friend Catherine had married. Failing that, all Maddie had to do was whistle, and a dozen loggers and mill workers would have run to her side and dropped on bended knee to propose. Seattle was so desperate for marriageable females that she hardly needed to import a suitor all the way from New York!

  Besides, why had Sylvie sent a man when Maddie had specified a woman? With her money going to pay Mr. Haggerty’s way, Maddie had nothing with which to hire the lady she’d needed. And by the size of him, he’d more than eat his weight in wages!

  He was watching her now with those blue, blue eyes, as if waiting for her orders. She straightened her spine. “Set to work, then, Mr. Haggerty. Find Ciara’s and Aiden’s things. They’ll need to be carried home.”

  He saluted her again. “On my way, Captain O’Rourke.”

  Aiden giggled as Michael strode back toward the longboat.

  Maddie drew in a breath. She could manage this. She must. In the next month, she had an opportunity to establish herself as the premier bakery in town by making all the cakes and rolls to be served at the biggest, most extravagant wedding Seattle had ever seen. Every man, woman and child would be singing her praises and lining up to purchase her products. Her future, and Ciara’s and Aiden’s futures, would be secure. She wasn’t about to jeopardize that for the likes of Michael Haggerty.

  She pressed her hands into her skirts and bent closer to Ciara and Aiden. “Who’s ready to see their new home?”

  “Me!” Aiden declared.

  Ciara nodded eagerly.

  With a smile, Maddie turned to allow them past her up the pier. “This way.”

  Aiden ran ahead, darting between the waiting people and the sailors on the narrow pier. Ciara walked beside Maddie as if trying to be a lady, but Maddie could see her sister’s head turning this way and that as she took everything in.

  “Seattle’s different from Five Points,” Maddie told her. “You’ll find everything smaller, except the geography.”

  “Where are the tenements?” Ciara asked.

  Maddie put an arm around her shoulders, realizing with a pang that she didn’t have to bend all that much to do so. Her sister’s eyes were nearly on a level with hers and pinched a bit around the corners with worry.

  “Sure-n but there are no tenements here,” Maddie confided.

  Ciara stopped, eyes widening. “Then where does everyone live?”

  Maddie pulled back with a smile. “That depends, so it does. Some live in rooms above their shops as we will. Some share a house with many bedrooms in it. Others have gra
nd houses high on the hill. And some live out among the trees in cabins built of logs.”

  “Built of logs?” Now Ciara frowned. “Didn’t the coppers stop them from cutting down the trees in the park?”

  Maddie shook her head, trying not to let her sister see her amusement. “If you can believe it, the trees aren’t in any park. They live out all on their own, everywhere.”

  Ciara put her hands on the hips of her blue coat. “You’re teasing me.”

  Maddie gave her a hug. “No indeed, me darling girl. It’s a whole new world here, and we have the privilege of helping to build it.”

  Ciara’s brow cleared as Maddie released her. “We had the building of it back home too. That’s what the Dead Rabbits did.”

  A shiver went through Maddie at the name of the dreaded Irish gang that had run Five Points. “The Dead Rabbits were violent, nasty creatures who used Irish pride to further their own gains,” she told Ciara.

  Her sister shook her head. “You don’t understand. You were gone too long. The Dead Rabbits protect us, keep us safe. We need them.”

  Maddie stiffened. “Who’s been filling your head with such nonsense?”

  Ciara raised her chin. “I figured it out all by myself. I’m grown now, you know. Oh, look! What’s that?” She ran to the edge of the pier where Aiden had stopped to stare down at something in the water.

  Maddie followed more slowly. She would never be able to see the vicious gang as heroes as Ciara did, but her sister was right about one thing. Life had definitely changed since Maddie had left New York. Sylvie McNeilly, who ran the children’s home where Maddie had left Ciara and Aiden, had little use for the gang violence that brought her another orphan every month. She would never have allowed Ciara or Aiden to admire the Dead Rabbits. So who had convinced Ciara otherwise?

  If it was Michael Haggerty, he was about to find something considerably harder to deal with than sleeping on the floor.

  * * *

  Michael slung his cloth bag over his shoulder and picked up the children’s carpetbag to start up the pier. He didn’t want to lose sight of Maddie. He had a feeling she’d have liked nothing more than to leave him behind. His aunt had warned him as much.

  “Maddie is a good person,” Sylvie had assured him over the narrow table where she and all her children ate under the light of a single sputtering lamp. “You’ll not be finding a kinder heart. But she’s expecting the lass I promised her, not a big strapping lad the likes of you. See that you win her over straightaway. She can be a big help to you.”

  At the time, he’d agreed with his aunt that winning over Maddie O’Rourke would be key. He just didn’t think the winning-over part was going particularly well. Try as he might, he couldn’t understand her.

  Help me, Father. I know she isn’t Katie, but how can I be sure that she’ll be any more faithful after leaving her brother and sister behind? These children need a family, a secure future, not more heartache. I’m not their father, but I feel like their brother. Show me how to help them.

  “Hold up, me lad!”

  The familiar voice stayed Michael’s step. He had known Patrick Flannery most of his life, though they’d lost contact for the past few years as Michael worked the Brooklyn docks and Patrick remained in Five Points. Michael had been pleased to find his friend among those heading to Washington Territory. With his warm blond hair, green eyes and a spring in his step, Patrick was all things good and bright about their heritage.

  His friend craned his neck now to see up the pier, battered top hat shading his eyes. “Is that her, then, your warden?”

  “She’s not my jailer,” Michael said, starting up the pier.

  Patrick kept pace, long legs flashing in his plaid trousers. “She holds the keys to your freedom, my lad. That sounds like a jailer to me. What’s she like, then? Is she the fire-eater Ciara led us to believe?”

  Ciara had bragged that her sister could do anything, but Michael wasn’t so sure. For all her confidence, Maddie O’Rourke had a fragility about her. Perhaps, like her sister, a more tender woman dwelled inside the bold shell.

  But maybe that was just wishful thinking.

  “Give me a day or two, Pat,” Michael said as they moved up the pier, shouldering their way through the crowd. “And then I’ll be able to tell you the truth about Maddie O’Rourke.”

  “If anyone can, you can,” Patrick said. “You’re good with understanding people. Me? I just like getting things done. So, I’ll explore the place and let you know me findings.” He dropped back and allowed Michael to continue on alone.

  Michael caught up to Maddie, Ciara and Aiden at the top of the pier, where they’d stopped. Aiden was down on his knees, bent over the water and grinning at a furry face that appeared to be grinning back.

  “Ah, and here you’ve gone and made a new friend already,” Michael teased him with a nod to the seal.

  Aiden glanced up at him. “Can we bring him home?”

  Maddie chuckled, a sound as warm as the color of her hair. “No, I’m afraid not. His family would miss him.”

  Aiden nodded as if he accepted that, then climbed to his feet. “The people here probably want him for the menagerie anyway.”

  “No menagerie,” Maddie said. “All the wild animals here roam about free.”

  Aiden stared at her, and Michael couldn’t tell whether the boy thought it a grand idea or a horrible one.

  Ciara stomped one foot. “There you go again! You stop teasing us, Maddie!”

  Maddie’s smile disappeared. “It’s the honest truth.”

  Ciara turned to Michael. “She said you don’t need permission to cut down trees in the park either.”

  “What I said,” Maddie clarified, “is that the trees aren’t in a park. Here you can own your land, up to one hundred and sixty acres per lad or lass.”

  “Well, that’s a whopper,” Ciara said with a shake of her head.

  “It’s the truth,” Michael told her. “It’s from a law called the Homestead Act. I read about it. If you’ve an interest in farming and a stomach for hard work, you could go far.”

  He thought Maddie would thank him for supporting her, but she frowned at him as if she wasn’t sure what he was trying to achieve.

  Ciara’s frown eased. “Well, maybe you can farm, but that still doesn’t mean you get to cut down trees anytime you please.”

  “You have to be cutting down the trees,” Maddie told her. “Those one hundred and sixty acres you claimed most likely are covered in trees so thick you can barely squeeze through them. If you don’t cut them down, you’d have no place to be planting your vegetables.”

  “Why would they plant vegetables?” Aiden asked. “Why don’t they just buy them from the grocer?”

  “I suspect you’ll not find many green grocers just yet, my lad,” Michael told him. “Or all that many farmers either. This is the wilderness. But that just means you can be anything you want to be.”

  Even saying the words made his heart lighten. No one to tell him what he must do, whom he must support in the name of protecting Irish interests. He could be his own man, follow whichever way the Lord pointed. He drew in a deep breath, savoring the crisp, salty air.

  “I don’t want to be a farmer,” Aiden announced, heading toward the road beyond the pier with a skip. “I want to be a sailor, see the world.”

  “Now, where would you be getting that idea, I wonder?” Maddie said, following him with a sidelong look to Michael.

  “Not from me,” Michael assured her as Ciara came along as well. “I worked the docks in New York. I didn’t sail the ships. And I’d think you’d have had enough of living on a ship by now, Aiden.”

  “You’re right,” Aiden said. “It was too small. I can’t wait to run!”

  Maddie grabbed his hand as if she feared he’d dash off right the
n. “Not so fast, me lad. First you need to learn your way about.”

  With her free hand, she pointed up the steep hill in front of them. Michael had never seen anything like it. Though businesses were rising on each side, the rutted track running down the center was dark with mud. He could not imagine a wagon navigating it.

  “That’s the skid road,” Maddie explained. “Lumbermen drag their chopped-down trees to the top and skid them right down to Mr. Yesler’s mill over there, where workers cut them up for boards to make houses and ships. Some of the logs are so big across, a man looks like a wee child beside them.”

  “Now I know you’re bamming me,” Ciara said.

  This time, Michael couldn’t argue with her.

  “Be that as it may,” Maddie said, face turning stern, “it’s a dangerous place for the likes of you. The men are rough, the logs heavy and fast. You’re not to be going anywhere near it, understand?”

  Aiden nodded solemnly. Ciara looked less sure, but she nodded too.

  As if satisfied by their responses, Maddie set off walking, one hand still holding her brother’s. Ciara walked on her other side. Michael could only fall in behind. Her heavy skirts twitched with her impatient stride, and he didn’t think it was her siblings who concerned her. She didn’t like him by half. He needed to work harder if he wanted to put himself in her good graces.

  He tried to keep quiet as he followed her up the street. Humility had been a hard lesson, but nearly three months at sea had given him time to reflect. He had a chance for a future and he wasn’t going to lose it by slipping back into old habits.

  But Seattle, he saw, was even more sparsely populated than he’d supposed. He was used to tenement buildings crowding out the sunlight, masts of sailing ships so thick in the harbor he could have walked from one yardarm to another.

  Here, single-story, whitewashed houses dotted the hillside, with dusky green trees taller than any he’d ever seen rising all around them. Two-story businesses were rare. The wide roads were heavy with black mud and crowded with wagons pulled by thick-necked oxen and wiry mules. And almost everyone he saw was male.