by Barbara Metzger, Connie Brockway, Casey Claybourne; Catherine Anderson
She scooted forward and quickly scanned the trunk, finding no clues as to its ownership. Where had it come from? Her father could not have brought it home, as she was certain he’d not been up to the attic in months. And Macgorrie most assuredly could not have hauled such a weighty piece up the stairs unassisted. Curiosity astir, Eliza lifted the lid.
“Goodness me.”
She had not known that fabric could be this rich, this lustrous. Why, it was like a moonbeam. A satiny moonbeam. Slowly she reached down and pulled it from the trunk, stretching her thin arms in front of her to better study her discovery.
She had found a gown.
A beautiful white gown.
Beneath her chilled fingers, the silken folds rustled softly.
Eliza blinked, then stared in wonder at the gown. As if from nowhere, an idea had popped into her head. An idea so wonderful, so amazingly perfect, she could not understand why she’d not thought of it before.
“Of course,” she said aloud. “Of course.” The answer to everything . . .
Chapter One
A few months later . . .
“Q uee-Queen. Of the . . .” Penelope Martin squinted hard at the letters. “Fai-Fai-Fairies.”
With a satisfied nod, she closed the moldy volume of Shakespearean works in her lap and gave the cover a hearty slap. Having just completed Much Ado About Nothing, Eliza had announced her wish to play Titania this afternoon, and Penny, hoping to surprise her, was determined to find one or two simple costumes to add to their playacting. Now what might she use for a fairy queen?
Last month, if anyone had told Penny that someday she’d be looking forward to an afternoon of Shakespeare with an eleven-year-old child, she would have accused that person of tipping one too many whiskeys. But Eliza loved acting out the plays, and her youthful enthusiasm was infectious. In fact, Eliza’s portrayal of Dogberry yesterday had made Penny laugh so hard, she’d actually split open the seams of her threadbare corset.
As she set the book aside, Penny glanced at her valise, left empty in the corner of the bedroom. It was difficult to believe that a mere three weeks earlier she had carried that valise off the steamer after a fifty-seven-day journey across two oceans.
The wind had been sharp that morning when she first set foot on the dock, her gaze sweeping over her new home. Her survey took less than two seconds. Although she’d assumed that Seattle would be small, she was still amazed that anyone might describe a smattering of clapboard houses as an honest-to-goodness city. Why, to her mind, it looked to be no more than a village. And a teeny little village at that.
Perhaps three or four dozen buildings dotted the landscape, their square silhouettes holding back the forest that hovered just beyond the hills. Sawmills lined the edge of the bay and, instead of paved streets, muddy paths smelling of ocean salt climbed up from the many wooden piers fronting the water. A buggy or two rattled through the mud, and a handful of riders on horses clustered at the end of the wharf, yet it was still quiet enough for Penny to hear the gentle slap of waves against the shore.
“Well . . .” She squared her shoulders with determination, then gave her satchel a reassuring jiggle. “Whatever it is, at least it ain’t Boston.”
A group of dockworkers lumbered past carrying a pallet of crates, and Penny hurried to step aside. As she did so, her attention was caught by two people approaching from the other end of the dock. The pair presented a curious picture: the elderly, peg-legged man wearing a harsh scowl as he thumped down the gangway and, at his side, a wisp of a girl skipping along, her grin as wide as the Pacific. Although the man sported a shabby tartan tam, the girl was bare-headed, her mass of curly blond hair unlike anything Penny had seen before. Resembling an enormous cloud of white spun cotton, the child’s hair swirled about her head, looking almost as if it were something alive, separate from the girl herself.
So taken was she by the two that Penny did not notice until the last moment that they were stopping directly in front of her.
“Miss Martin?” the child asked in a tone that reminded Penny of a librarian, although, in truth, she’d never actually known a librarian.
“Yes?”
“How do you do?” The child thrust her hand forward, forcing Penny to drop her valise so that she could return the greeting. The girl’s handshake was as self-assured as her manner.
“I am Eliza Cooper and this”—she gestured with her thumb to the man standing a pace back—“this is Macgorrie.”
The old gentleman bobbed his chin.
Penny nodded cautiously and smoothed her auburn hair with nerve-twittery fingers. Since she herself had not known which steamer she’d be taking from Port Townsend, she had not expected to be met, and she certainly had not expected to be met by this peculiar welcoming committee. After all, it had been a Mrs. Cooper who had written, offering a teaching position, and the same Mrs. Cooper had wired money to pay for the traveling expenses of train and ship. . . . So then, had Mrs. Cooper sent one of her children to fetch the new schoolteacher from the docks?
“If you can point out your trunks,” the girl prompted, waving again in her regal fashion to where the workers were setting out the freight, “Macgorrie will arrange for their delivery, and we can be on our way.”
“Ah.” Penny cast a quick glance first to the pile of trunks and then to the valise at her feet. “I brung only this.”
“Just that?” The girl blinked once, her eyes the color of wild violets, before shrugging away her surprise. “Very well. Off we go, then.”
Once settled inside the carriage—where Penny had to force herself not to stare at the luxuries of an honest-to-goodness closed carriage—a silence fell. After a lifetime spent amid the constant sound of chatter, Penny could not tolerate the quiet, particularly not when she was so nervous that her gloves were growing damp.
“I reckon Mrs. Cooper is your mother?”
Her question seemed to echo in the coach’s confines as Eliza’s lips pursed, in either deliberation or disapproval. Penny could not say which.
“Your aunt?” Penny offered.
“Mmm.” Now not only her mouth, but Eliza’s entire face, as thin and white as parchment, scrunched up. “There is something I need to tell you, Miss Martin, and since I can see no benefit in delaying the telling of it—”
Penny’s breath caught. These last weeks, she had often wondered as she leaned against the steamer’s railing, gazing out to sea, if it all had been too good to be true. She had told herself not to fret, that her luck had finally turned. She had vowed to make this opportunity work one way or the other, convincing herself that it had been nothing short of heaven-sent. But now . . .
“My mother is dead.”
The breath Penny had been holding released in short, jagged bursts. Sweet Mary . . .
“I am sorry,” she managed, even as she sensed that Eliza’s matter-of-fact declaration seemed wrong. Unnatural. Where were the grief, the tears, the evidence of loss?
“To tell you the truth, Miss Martin, my mother has been dead these past six years.”
Six years? Penny felt as if she were back aboard ship, fighting to keep her balance during rough seas.
“I-I don’t understand.”
“Allow me to explain, although it’s rather a long story. You see, Mr. Asa Mercer, who is a very important man in these parts, recently brought a group of ladies from Massachusetts to be schoolteachers here in Seattle. They arrived and everyone was delighted, since there are scarcely enough women to be teachers or to be anything, really.” Eliza’s speech came faster and faster as she spoke, her words tumbling together so that Penny had to concentrate to make sense of what she was hearing. “Well, Mr. Mercer’s idea struck me as a very fine notion indeed, so I wrote to a Mr. Shakely, who is a Boston relation of my friend the widow Murphy, and since I could not advertise for a teacher as eleven-year-old Eliza Cooper, I had to pretend to be someone older, don’t you see?”
“You sent the letter?” Penny bit her lower lip. “And the mone
y?”
“Well, of course I did have some help. You needn’t worry, however,” Eliza continued. “The money I sent you was rightfully mine to send, and I would not have brought you all this way without good cause. A teaching opportunity does await you, although perhaps it is not precisely the sort of employment you were expecting.” At this point, the child delicately cleared her throat. “The position I am offering you, Miss Martin, is that of personal governess. To me.”
Penny sank back against the banquette, undecided as to whether she was more cross than she was relieved, or more relieved than she was cross. How in the name of the saints had this wee thing, who couldn’t weigh even four stone, arranged to bring her here from a continent away? Why, the fact that the child had accomplished such a feat was remarkable. Unsettling, even.
Nevertheless, Penny knew she wasn’t in any position to be persnickety about gainful employment. Not when the most valuable item in her coin purse was the dried remains of a four-leaf clover. The truth was she’d simply had to get out of Boston, and this child had managed to make that happen. And at least the job would provide her with steady employment and room and board. Besides, she could scarcely start pointing fingers and preaching to the child about honesty and the like. Not when she herself had been less than forthcoming in this affair. As Lewis had always said, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.” And Penny was desperate, no question about it.
Even so, to work as a nanny for this little girl who gave every indication of being ten times too intelligent and a hundred times too clever for the likes of one Penelope Colleen Martin?
Yet . . . what choice did she have?
“What choice indeed?” Penny asked herself, as she rose from the chair, rubbing lightly at her forehead as though to wipe away the confusion of that day. Because once she had thought about it, she’d realized that she’d had no choice. There was nothing for her in Boston. Nothing but trouble. And she’d spent nearly two months sailing from one part of the world to the other so that she could start anew. So what else was there to do? If she could pretend to be a teacher, she could just as easily pretend to be a governess. . . . Couldn’t she?
Luckily—and Penny fervently believed in luck—she and Eliza had gotten along right from the start. Eliza had explained that because of his business, her father only visited from time to time, having placed the taciturn Macgorrie in charge of keeping the house. Eliza never did explain who was in charge of keeping her. Yet if Penny considered it an odd arrangement, she wasn’t about to say so. She didn’t know much about how rich folk lived, and it was evident that the Cooper family, with their grand house, lace curtains and Oriental rugs, were the wealthiest she’d ever met.
As a result, Penny and Eliza had arrived at an unspoken agreement over the last few weeks. They didn’t talk about the past. They didn’t ask each other many questions, instead choosing to pass the time picking blueberries, poring over catalogues, washing each other’s hair, and acting out Eliza’s beloved plays. Even when Penny’s lack of education became obvious during the first few days, Eliza made no mention of her governess’s apparent shortcomings. For this, Penny was grateful. Enormously grateful. As far as she was concerned, she had put Boston behind her, and she wasn’t looking back.
A half-hour later, after rummaging through wardrobes and closets and finding nothing suitable for Titania, Penny decided to have a look in the attic. Upon her arrival at the Cooper home, Macgorrie, who had since avoided Penny like the plague or a bothersome tax collector, had suggested that she could sleep in the garret; Eliza had overruled him and instead had moved Penny into a large, comfortable bedroom on the second floor.
Entering the attic, Penny smiled and mouthed a silent “thank you” to Eliza. Although she had inhabited less inviting quarters in her day, she was still very glad not to be sleeping among the attic’s spiders and dust.
An old rocking chair, a bassinet, a rolled-up carpet, half a dozen lanterns, a row of trunks, and various piles of crates nearly filled the drafty space. The faintest scent of rose water laced the musty dampness. Feeling like a child let loose in a candy store, Penny was wondering where to begin her search when she was drawn to one particular trunk. It was slightly more battered than the others, its leather dark with age, but its brass lock gleamed like a freshly minted coin.
As she walked toward the trunk, her pulse began beating faster. Even stranger, her fingers trembled as she unlatched the clasp. She hesitated, not sure what had caused her to pause. From her memory came the awareness that, months earlier, she had experienced this same sense of premonition when old Mr. Shakely, one of her oldest and dearest customers back in Boston, had pulled from his pocket the well-traveled letter.
Slowly, she pushed up the lid.
“Oh, my,” she whispered. “Oh, my.”
Inside the trunk was a gown. A gown made for a princess, a creation so beautiful that Penny felt the surprising prick of tears at the corners of her eyes. Like frothy mounds of freshly whipped cream, yards and yards of satin billowed and swelled, shimmering in the softest of ivory hues. Adorning the satin was lace as delicate and intricate as any that Penny might ever have imagined, much less seen.
She could not help herself. An inexplicable compulsion came over her, and she had to know what it felt like to wear such a gown. She did not question whose it might be. She did not worry that she might tear or soil it. She simply had to put it on.
With no concern for the cold, she stripped off her brown linsey dress, and pulled the ivory gown over her chemise. To her amazement, even though she wore no stays—her only corset had split yesterday—the dress fit her to absolute perfection. The skirt hung to the perfect length. The waist fit her exactly. And the décolletage molded to her bosom as though a seamstress had crafted it to her precise measurements.
So thrilled was she that she actually tingled from head to toe. She felt beautiful, wonderful, marvelous. Every girlhood dream of happily-ever-after felt possible when wearing such a gown.
Humming softly, she danced around the attic, dipping and swaying, careful to dodge the ceiling beams. If later asked, she would not have been able to say how long she pirouetted back and forth, savoring the melodious swish-swish of the silk, but it seemed scarcely a moment—yet also an eternity. Nevertheless, at some point she recognized that she could not dally in the attic all afternoon. Nor could she demean such loveliness by making use of the gown as a costume for a child’s play. With a deep sense of regret, she told herself that she must put it away. She must. She could not wear it forever. Even if it did feel like something purely magical. . . .
Chapter Two
Joshua Cooper needed a hot bath, a warm bed, and a willing woman. And not necessarily in that order. He’d been riding since well before sunrise, which meant that this was the third day in a row he’d spent fourteen hours in the saddle. On top of that, his shoulder ached like the devil, thanks to his horse having shied and tossed him earlier that morning after a run-in with an ornery trio of skunks. Although he was pretty sure he’d not broken any bones, Josh was less than pleased with the tumble he’d taken. Already sore to the bone and filthy to the core, he had been in a foul enough humor before that unforeseen roll in the mud. Now he was downright cranky.
Grimacing, he spat, the taste of dirt still clinging to his mouth and beard. This last trip, he decided, had been too long. Either that or maybe he was getting too old for this work. Sleeping on the cold, wet ground, living on moldy hardtack, and riding halfway across the Territory and back every few months were taking a toll on his body and his sanity. And what the hell for?
God knew he had enough money stashed away to live like a king for the rest of his days. So why did he keep pushing himself? By all rights, his foremen, competent and trustworthy men all, should be managing the day-to-day operations. There was certainly no need for him to be personally overseeing each facet of his business from Walla Walla to Portland. But old habits died hard, and Josh had been running full steam ahead for twelve years now. Did
he know how to slow down? Did he want to?
As he crested the hill, his property came into view, and a sense of pride pulled him a bit taller in the saddle. One of the largest houses in Seattle, it sat on the town’s outskirts on a sizable piece of land. It wasn’t overly fancy like some he’d visited in San Francisco, but it was a proper house, complete with stables, a white picket fence, and a fireplace in nearly every room. It was the kind of house that said the man who owned it was a success.
Josh rode into the stables, hopeful that Eliza had spied him from a window and begun preparations for his bath. But after rubbing down his tired mount, he limped into the back door to find the house disappointingly quiet. Macgorrie wasn’t in his room off the kitchen, and there were no kettles boiling in anticipation of a hot soak, although the lingering aroma of bacon stirred his empty stomach. His daughter, the troublesome imp, was nowhere to be found.
Feeling even more out of sorts because he was going to have to see to his own bath, Josh was kicking off his mud-caked boots when he heard the fall of footsteps from above. He turned his face skyward, realizing that the noise came not from the second floor but from the attic.
“That girl,” he muttered, scratching at his beard. Josh figured if he lived to be a hundred, he’d never understand what Eliza found so interesting about poking through piles of old junk no one had thought about in years.
Stifling a sigh, he headed up the stairs, his steps slow with fatigue, his stomach grumbling with hunger. As he approached, the sound of light footsteps was replaced by a quiet humming. At the back of his mind, Josh wondered if Eliza was suffering from a sore throat—he remembered her voice as being pleasant and musical, not this scratchy, off-tune warbling.