Cross the Ocean

by Holly Bush

  Gert finally emerged from her room after mealtime. The letter tucked away in her pocket, unopened. She crept into the kitchen, hoping to make tea and hurry back upstairs. But Uncle Fred sat there holding a mug of coffee, apparently waiting for her to come in.

  “Sanders and Will left before daybreak,” he said.

  Gert nodded and headed to the stove to warm water. “I assumed he’d want to go as soon as possible.”

  “Will said goodbye. He was right torn about not telling ya himself. Wanted to thank you for the greatest time of his life.” Fred got no response from Gert. “Sanders wouldn’t wait.”

  “He’s worried about Melinda.”

  Fred leaned forward in his chair. “You think that’s why he tore outa here in the middle of the night?” Gert stirred her tea and Fred continued. “He left me a letter.”

  Gert turned in a hurry. “What did it say?”

  “Says he planned on depositing a whole big pile of money in Fletcher’s bank here in town. S’posed to use it for you and the baby whenever ya want. Gave me his address, too. Just in case I might need to get in touch with him.”

  Gert leaned on the sink, her massive middle weighing her down. “I never wanted his money.”

  “You don’t have to marry Luke Matson, Gert,” Fred said as he stood. “I’ll guard you and with Sanders’ money …”

  “This child will need a father. Luke’s kind, and I think he cares about me.”

  Fred spread his hands wide. “Why Gert? Why you doing this? The baby’s father wants to marry you. And you love him so much I’m plum tired of worrying about you. Marry him, Gert. A man goes to the pains of taking care of you like this, deserves better. You know he lifted Luke outa his bunk this morning with one hand. Threatened to come back and kill him ifn he ever heard Matson hurt you.”

  “I can’t,” Gert said as she withered into a chair.

  “Tell me why, Gert? Just tell me why, and I’ll leave off the questions,” Fred said as he sat down beside her to gather her hands in his.

  Tears rolled down her face. She wiped them away. Fred waited as she swallowed and stared hard at the wall. “Ma begged me as she was dying to never marry a man like my Pa. Blake isn’t poor, he’d keep food on the table, but he’d tire of me and move on.” She bowed her head and continued softly. “He’d have a mistress like he’s always done.” Gert lifted her tear stained face to her Uncle. “He doesn’t love me.”

  “What else did yer Ma say?”

  “To marry a man who’d love me and be true. Never make the mistakes she had.” Gert’s hand came to her lips and her eyes wandered. “It killed her you know.”

  “Consumption got yer mother, Gert. And I won’t believe for one second that Blake Sanders don’t love you. He might not have the words in him, but a man’s actions count more and you know it.” Fred rubbed her hands. “You know I loved yer Aunt Mavis with all a my heart.” Gert nodded and trembled a smiled. Fred dropped his head with the admission. “I never told her till the night that she died.”

  Gert shook her head in wonder. She had lived with the couple nearly all of her life. She knew Fred loved Mavis as surely as she knew she loved Blake. “All those years?” she asked.

  Fred nodded and swallowed. “All them years.” He wiped a calloused hand across his eyes. “You know what my Mavis said when I told her? Said she knew all along. Said she knew I loved her and them words you keep in yer heart don’t always need said. I go to her grave and tell her every day, though. Sure wish I’d said ‘em more when she lived.”

  “I love you, Uncle Fred.”

  “I know you do, Missy. I love you, too.”

  Gert pulled the letter from her pocket. “Blake left me this.”

  “What’d it say?”

  “I haven’t read it.” Gert turned the envelope over in her hand. “I don’t know if I’m ready.”

  “Ready for what Gert?”

  The day seemed to be made for confessions. “When I came back here, expecting, I had resigned myself to never seeing him again. Then he came,” Gert said softly. “And I let myself think, dream of what it would be like to marry him. Have a family.” She stared at the letter she held. “When I read this, I’ll know in my heart my pirate has sailed. For good.”

  “Listen to yourself, Gert. You all got yourself convinced you’ll never be happy. Convinced the man you want, never wanted you. And then going and telling him some fool nonsense about Luke Matson. That’s why Sanders left, Gert,” Fred said. “Don’t you see? He loves you enough to let you be.”

  “He’d have left anyway. Whether I married him or not,” Gert whispered.

  Fred sat back on his chair and rubbed his hand the length of his face. “You don’t know …”

  “Yes, I do,” Gert shouted as she shoved back her chair and stood. Her hair flew wildly and tears poured down her face. She was near hysterical and could not control what she said. “My father left me. Told me he’d come back and never did. What does a twelve-year-old do to make their father hate them so much?”

  Fred held his hand out to her. “Now, Missy. Settle down. You’re confusing the matter. Edgar Finch was the one wrong. Not you.”

  But Gert was too far-gone in old pain to listen. “He told me that day. That day he brought me here,” Gert whispered. “Told me I was just like Ma. Too tall already. Too tall and ugly to hold a man’s attentions for very long. That I’d convince a man somewhere along the line to get under my skirts. Then the poor fool’d have to marry me. Just what Ma did when Pa got drunk one time at a saloon.” Gert turned watery green eyes to her uncle. “I was twelve when he told me.”

  “Ah, Gert.”

  “And that’s exactly what happened. I knew when I woke up that night Blake had been drinking. He would’ve left if I hadn’t begged him to stay. I wanted him to love me so much, wanted at least to have a memory of love so badly, I trapped him. Just like Ma did to Pa,” Gert whispered.

  “You ain’t tall and ugly. That bastard done said all that to make his own self feel better. And I don’t think you trapped Sanders. I think you wanted him and loved him already. But more important than all that is that your Brit came for you. Something your Pa never did. ‘Cause he loves you. Same reason he left.”

  Gert stared at Fred, bleary eyed. “He left because he loves me?”

  Fred nodded. “Men folk are different than women, Gert. Women want to raise their children right and make ‘em a home to do it in. Want their man to love ‘em and their youngins’. Men just want their woman to be happy. Sanders proved to me he loves you when he rode out of here at dawn.”

  Gert tilted her head and held back another flood of tears, teetering on the brink of hope. “Do you really think he left because he thought it would make me happy?”

  “I know it, Gert. I know it.”

  Gert glanced nervously about the room wondering if she’d allowed the specter of Edgar Finch’s own misery taint every decision she’d ever made. Had she walked her life in a fog of unworthiness, too terrified to venture into the light? Had she allowed her father’s taunt to set her course even as she railed across the country trying to convince women to set their own path? She had. Someone cleared his throat in the room, and Gert looked up.

  “Excuse me, Miss Finch,” Benson said.

  Mary Alice flew into the room behind him a broad smile on her face. “Gertrude! Benson and I are going to marry.” She slipped her arm into the stoic servant’s crooked elbow and smiled up at him.

  “Marry?” Gert said. “You’ve just met.”

  Mary Alice shrugged. “He’s the one for me.”

  “Well then, I guess we’re right happy for you both,” Fred said.

  “We will impose on your hospitality no longer, Miss Finch. Miss Forsyth and I are off to town to find the minister and then will travel to her home in Chicago.” Benson said and smiled broadly. “But before we go, I’d like to make sure you have Miss Forsyth’s post number and that we may have yours.”

  “I would like to keep in touch with
you both,” Gert said and heaved herself from the chair to find pencil and paper.

  Benson read her address and tucked the paper in his vest pocket. “I mustn’t lose this,” he said as he tapped his chest. “The Duke of Wexford has entrusted me to keep an eye on you, and I will not fail.” His face sobered. “You must promise me, Miss Finch. If you are ever in need, you shall write. I have a great debt to the Duke to fulfill. He was most insistent yesterday. Whatever would be needed to ensure the comfort and happiness of you and your child is to be met, post-haste.”

  “He said that?” Gert asked.

  Benson nodded. “Most definitely. I’ve known the Duke nearly my whole life. And I will say he asked this of me in a fashion I’d never seen.” Benson looked Gert in the eye. “His intensity and desperation were most obvious. He has entrusted to me the guardianship of a most valued person.”

  “Sanders would feel that way about his child, Benson,” Gert said. “For all his blustering and faults, he loves his children.”

  Benson shook his head and stepped to Gert, gathering her hand in his. “Oh, it wasn’t his child he was most concerned about.” He saw Gert’s head tilt in question and he smiled. “’Twas you.”

  Gert spent the rest of the day in a fog, helping Mary Alice prepare to leave. She battled her own demons and pulled Blake’s letter from her pocket six times. Her back was sore, and her face a mess with red swollen eyes and nose. But she smiled until she finally sat in Mavis’s rocker by the window in her room. Holding the letter, turning it over in the moonlight, stealing one more moment believing he might love her. She blew a deep breath and opened the envelope.

  My Dearest Gertrude,

  I have never been one to write poetry or find words for the deepest feelings in my heart. I do not believe I have ever had cause to until now. It is imperative to me that you understand my feelings. You have changed my life in ways I am sure you are unaware of. I have been too long lost in centuries of tradition and self-importance to understand the greatest gifts I had been granted were all around me, waiting for me to see them. I would have gone to my grave believing balls and society held a candle to my children. That my horses and homes could compare to what you have surrounded yourself with. Your family of cowhands and Uncle Fred and your vast wilderness and sunsets. I only pray it is not too late for my children to understand how much I love them. I owe you a debt I am unable to repay.

  I have found recently that there is much of my life to regret. Be assured that does not include one instant in your presence. From the moment I first kissed you, to the night that we made love, to the second I saw your round stomach holding my child, I experienced a rightness I cannot begin to describe. I will cling to that rightness, to those memories, until I go to the hereafter. My heart will forever be in your keeping.

  You deserve every happiness this life has to offer. You are kind and bright and courageous and sometimes most endearingly contrary. You will make the most wonderful mother to my child. I fear, though, I will be envious of my son or daughter. He or she will look in your eyes and see love. Hold your hand and feel love. Comfort you or be comforted and be loved. Having you each minute of the day to know that love does, indeed, exist. In your laughter, in your smile and in your touch.

  You are beautiful, Gertrude. Did I ever tell you? Ah, that will most certainly be the only regret of my time spent with you. If you are still inclined to grant me one wish, I would be most eternally grateful. Be happy and well, Gertrude. As you have said on many occasions, I am selfish and high-handed. So you must give me leave to be so, once more. The privilege of loving you falls to your husband in the future. But for today, just today, allow me this. Know I love you.

  Your Servant,

  Blake Sanders

  Gert stared at the moon till it faded. And then to the sun as it peaked over the horizon. He loved her.

  Fred Hastings awoke from a sound sleep with a start. Gert was on the floor beside his bed, pulling out his battered black suitcase. She sat back on her haunches, saw his open eyes and graced him with a beautiful smile.

  “Hurry up, Uncle Fred,” she said as she pulled herself from the floor. “I’m nearly packed.”

  Fred yawned and stretched and wiped his hand down over his whiskers. “Where we going?”

  “England. Come on, get up,” Gert said as she sailed out of the room.

  Gert sat on the edge of her bed in the room and wondered if she would ever see her home again. The thought was not nearly as frightening as first imagined. Very little is, she supposed. The baby moved and rolled, and Gert smiled as her hand came to her belly.

  “Hang on, little one. We’re off to find your father, and that means we have to sail the whole way across the ocean.” And she knew as well, she might never sail back. But it hardly mattered. Blake loved her.

  At nearly eight months pregnant, the captain of the ship was not inclined to let Gert sail. She begged, cajoled and cried. Finally Uncle Fred took him aside. The captain returned white-faced, but willing to allow Gert to come aboard. She and Fred had inquired at every hotel, tavern and train station on the route to New York harbor with Blake’s description. He had perhaps taken a round-about route, Fred suggested. Gert worried her luck had run out. The voyage for Gert was uneventful. She felt fine and sat daily on the deck letting the breeze hit her face and wondered. What would Blake think of her following him? Would he be angry or ashamed? Would he regret his remarks? Would she regret showing up on his doorstep? Just as doubts filtered in, Gert would pull Blake’s letter from her pocket. It was never out of her reach. And she had read it a hundred times, if not more.

  She knew what Blake spoke of when he wrote of rightness. Gert felt it as well. For all their arguing and disagreements, she knew deep in her heart, he was meant for her. She pondered many hours, with little else to do about that feeling, that rightness. There was something mystical and magical about it, as if a fairy wand or stardust had touched them. It had nothing to do with practicality or place in the world. Nothing to do with habit or situation. Less to do with birthright. And everything to do with some force beyond her knowledge or understanding. Her heart was drawn to his without regard to location or personality. She had stopped fighting the feeling. Stopped questioning how they would live or where there home would be, because Gert knew it no longer mattered. She desperately, and for no accountable reason, needed to be near him. As the sun sought the horizon at dusk, she sought her place in this world. Beside him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Blake stood at the rail of the ship, as he did every day, letting the wind and the sun hit his face. A feeling previously foreign to him, had settled over his mind and his body. He was not angry, not afraid, nor indignant. Not feeling superior or pompous or powerful. Blake’s heart hurt and sent tremors of pain to every limb of his body. Meals at the captain’s table did not tempt him. Other passenger’s attempts at conversation found him with nothing to say. Will sat or stood beside him silently, in a mature way for his near sixteen years, allowed his father solitude while all the while within reach.

  Blake’s list of errors with Gertrude was endless. He tallied and maneuvered them by order of magnitude. He had yet to decide his greatest transgression. The worst time of the day was as he climbed into his bed, before darkness and exhaustion closed his eyes. That was when the feeling overwhelmed him. Blake counted Will’s shallow breaths in the bed beside him. Counted stars as they twinkled off the water. Anything to hold back the flood of despair that seeped into his soul.

  By the time England came into view, Blake had wrestled his pain to a deep hidden spot. He managed to smile at Will and think more of his home and children. But he was changed, and he knew it. Blake knew if by some stroke of ill fortune or perhaps luck he were to lose his title and estates, he would endure. If his town cronies witnessed him drunk and in tattered clothes, he would but shrug. If he never felt velvet or the weight of gold in his hand, never saw a priceless piece of art again, he would survive. If he shoveled manure to feed himself and
his children, it would not matter. Blake had realized with blinding clarity little on this earth mattered without love.

  Blake and William set out on horseback for Scotland. They strapped saddlebags filled with denim shirts and Levi’s across the rumps of their mounts, and slept at inns, and occasionally under the stars on their trek to the McDonald castle. For all his errors and mistakes, he would not fail his Melinda now.

  * * *

  “Gertrude,” Elizabeth shouted. “Jenkins, find my husband immediately; we have a houseguest.” She smiled broadly at Gert and held her arms. “I cannot tell you how worried I’ve been about you.”

  “I am so glad to see you, Elizabeth. And will be happier still when I can lie down. I’m exhausted.” Gert introduced Uncle Fred, and he gazed at the arch ceilings and whistled.

  Anthony came down the hall and stopped with a start. “Gertrude!”

  “That Burroughs?” Fred asked. Gert nodded and waited as he came to her and gathered her into his arms.

  “And you must be Gertrude’s uncle,” Anthony said and held out his hand.

  Fred poked Anthony in the chest. “I’ll be guessing yer the one was to be watching out for Gert while she was here.”

  Anthony stiffened and nodded.

  Fred put his hand on Gertrude’s massive stomach. “We wouldn’t be here with Gert near due if’n you’d been doing yer job.”

  “You’re quite right, Mr. Hastings,” Anthony said solemnly.

  Fred looked Anthony up and down. “Ya look like some dandified city boy compared to yer friend. S’pecting you knew Sanders was up to no good. I got my pistol in my trunk, and if this don’t work out for Gert, I’m holding you responsible. Got that?”

  Anthony indicated a door. “Let’s talk about this over brandy, Mr. Hastings.” He stopped suddenly. “I look like a dandy compared to Blake?”

  Fred ambled off and slapped Jenkins hands as the servant tried to take his coat. “Don’t need no valet like you English boys to dress me in the morning.”