Courting Susannah

by Linda Lael Miller

  She thought there might have been a grin lurking in the depths of those remarkable eyes of his, though there was no knowing for certain. “Do you make a habit of walking into people’s houses when nobody comes to the door, Miss—er—?”

  “McKittrick,” she reiterated. It was all she could do to hold his gaze, but she would not, could not allow herself to be intimidated. She had no acceptable option except to follow through with her grand gesture and find a way to keep her heart’s vow to Julia’s memory by tending the child. “I do not,” she said coolly. She had, of course, admitted herself to the Fairgrieve house out of desperation, not audacity; she had no friends in Seattle, no prospect of employment, and virtually no money. She would find herself in dire straits indeed if this man turned her away.

  Susannah felt fresh panic stir within her and attempted to stem the tide by biting the inside of her lower lip.

  “You say you were a friend of my wife’s,” he reflected soberly.

  Susannah let out her breath, nodded. Surely Julia must have told him about their shared childhood at St. Mary’s, and he had, after all, written to tell her when his wife passed away. For all of that, he seemed surprised by her existence, let alone her presence in the upstairs hallway of his house.

  “I’ve—I’ve taken the smallest bedroom—the one overlooking the churchyard,” she said, resisting an urge to twist her hands. Her gaze was locked on the baby; she longed to reach out, cradle the infant in her arms.

  Fairgrieve’s brows arched, and once again she thought she saw the beginnings of humor far back in his eyes, but the impression was gone as quickly as it had come to her. “I don’t guess I object, since nobody else is using it,” he allowed. “All the same, I’d still like to know what you want.”

  She ached to hold the child. “I told you,” she said, speaking as forthrightly as he had. “I’m here to take care of Julia’s daughter. What is her name?”

  He looked down at the babe with a curious frown, as though expecting to be advised in the matter, then met Susannah’s gaze again. “I don’t believe she has one,” he replied, and Susannah would have sworn he had never so much as considered the oversight before that moment, though she had to admit he held his little girl with an ease that seemed to belie some of her preconceptions where his character was concerned.

  For a few moments, Susannah was rendered speechless. When at last she found her voice, she sputtered, “No name? But the poor little thing is four months old!”

  “Yes,” Fairgrieve said, without apology. Then he held the infant out, like an offering. “Here. If you want her, take her. She’s hungry.”

  Trembling, Susannah accepted the precious child. How could an innocent baby be allowed to go four months without a proper name? The warmth of the babe brought tears springing to her eyes, and she blinked rapidly, in the hope that Fairgrieve wouldn’t see. She took a deep breath or two, in the effort to recover, all the while holding Julia’s baby close against her bosom.

  “Take her? Where?” she asked, bewildered, when she could trust herself to speak moderately.

  “Well, to the kitchen, of course. I believe she needs a bottle.”

  Susannah stared at him. “Then I can stay?”

  He answered briskly, already turning away, heading back toward the gaping doorway through which he had come. “For the time being,” he said in dismissal.

  Susannah stood there briefly, in the middle of the hallway, and then made for the stairs. She moved in cautious haste, lest Mr. Fairgrieve appear again, having changed his mind, and order her out of the house.

  She found the kitchen after some exploration and was impressed to discover that it boasted a real icebox with a crockery pitcher of cold, buttery milk inside, along with a plenitude of cheese, eggs, and other supplies.

  Ignoring her own ravenous hunger, Susannah laid the infant in a wicker bassinet set before a bay window, searched for and found a bottle and nipple in one of the cupboards, built up the fire in the cookstove, and put the baby’s meal on to heat.

  She was seated in a rocking chair, feeding the child, when Mr. Fairgrieve entered from a back stairway and stood watching for a long moment, his expression unreadable.

  “You’ve had practice with babies,” he said at some length.

  She smiled. “Yes,” she said. “There were a lot of children born at St. Mary’s, and I helped to take care of them until they were adopted.”

  He frowned. “St. Mary’s?”

  Surely Julia had told him about the school, about the nuns and the troubled young girls who often took refuge with them, and yet he seemed genuinely puzzled. “Where your wife and I met,” she added, in an attempt at clarification.

  He drew up a chair and sat down facing her, their knees almost touching. “St. Mary’s,” he repeated, as though to extract some private and elusive understanding from the phrase.

  Susannah continued to rock gently back in the chair, the baby resting warm and solid and milk-fragrant in her arms, though something had quickened within her. Julia, in her eagerness to belong, had been known to tell the occasional small and generally innocuous lie, and she could be self-serving when it suited, but she certainly must have told Aubrey about her childhood. Hadn’t she? Before Susannah could think of a response, Mr. Fairgrieve spoke again.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Exactly who was my wife?”

  Susannah was stunned. “I beg your pardon?”

  He folded his strong arms. “I’d like to hear a description—from your perspective.”

  So he had cared, despite Julia’s protestations to the contrary. Susannah’s heart softened, and she smiled, a little sadly, to remember it all again. She sighed. “Julia hated being left behind at St. Mary’s—I think she knew her mother was never coming back for her.”

  Mr. Fairgrieve leaned forward, listening intently, but said nothing.

  “She was an actress on the stage—Julia’s mother, I mean—and I suppose that’s where Julia got her termperament. She was—well—somewhat high-strung.”

  Aubrey raised his eyes briefly heavenward. “That’s an understatement.”

  Susannah felt a little defensive on her friend’s behalf. “If you’d been there—if you’d seen how she cried, how she flung herself against the iron gate and called for her mother to come back—” She closed her eyes against the image, but it was as clear as if it had happened only moments before, though, of course, nearly fourteen years had passed. “The nuns practically had to drag Julia inside. She carried on until she was sick. Finally, a doctor was summoned. He gave her a dose of laudanum to make her sleep, and she was still in such a state that they kept her in the infirmary for days.”

  Mr. Fairgrieve did not flinch. “St. Mary’s is an orphanage, then?”

  Susannah nodded. “As well as a school and a hospital.”

  He sat in silence for some time, absorbing what she had said. “And you?” he asked finally.

  “Me?” she replied, confused.

  “How did you wind up there? At this—school, I mean?”

  Susannah bit her lower lip. “I was raised there.” She looked down at the baby and rocked just a little faster in the sturdy wooden chair. Speckles of sun-washed dust twinkled in the air. “One of those children you read about in penny dreadfuls—left on the doorstep in a basket—except that I was in an old fruit box.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She bristled slightly, although there had been a note of gruff kindness in his voice. “Don’t be. I was very happy at St. Mary’s. The nuns were good to me, and I was given an education of sorts.”

  “You never married.” It might have been either a question or a statement, he spared so little inflection for the words.

  Susannah felt the old hollowness inside and quelled it quickly. The baby was asleep now, sweet and sated. “No,” she said softly, and at some length. “I worked as a companion after I left school, and there never seemed to be time for anything else.”

  He sighed heavily, shoved a hand through his lustrous
hair. “Until you left your work to come here. To Seattle.”

  Susannah wanted to weep, though she did not allow herself that release, fearing she might never stop crying. “I felt I could do nothing else. Julia’s letters—”

  “I can well imagine Julia’s letters,” he said wearily and with some disgust. He spread his hands, started to say something else, and bit back the words.

  “I won’t be a burden, Mr. Fairgrieve,” Susannah said, perhaps too quickly. She was a proud woman, but she was prepared to beg if that was what she had to do. “I can give music lessons, if you will allow me the use of Julia’s piano, and, of course, I will pay room and board.”

  “All this,” he asked, rising to his feet, “for a stranger’s child?”

  “Julia was not a stranger,” Susannah said.

  “No,” Aubrey answered. “I don’t suppose she was—to you. But I am.” He paused. “Aren’t you afraid to live under the same roof with the sort of monster Julia must have made me out to be?”

  She met his fierce gaze, held it. “I can look after myself,” she said evenly. “My concern is for this baby. I’d like to call her Victoria, if you don’t mind. She should have a name.”

  “Call her whatever you like,” Aubrey replied, his voice cool.

  “Poor Julia,” Susannah muttered aloud, quite inadvertently.

  Fairgrieve leaned forward until his nose was barely an inch from Susannah’s. “Poor Julia,” he replied with quiet mockery, “God rest her soul, cared for nothing and no one but herself. Her greatest worry, where this child was concerned, was that the pregnancy might spoil her figure. Therefore, whatever you do, please do not waste your sympathy on the likes of my late wife.”

  Susannah blinked, shocked by the cold fury of such a reply. Yes, she’d known that Julia wasn’t happy in the marriage, at least not in its latter days, but even then she had never guessed that the situation had deteriorated into such bitterness and rancor as Mr. Fairgrieve was displaying now. “I do not wish to argue the quality of my friend’s character, with you or anyone else,” she said. “But Julia looked forward to the birth, and she loved you very much, at least in the beginning. I know that from her letters.”

  Fairgrieve’s expression was one of exasperated contempt, and for all that, he was still very attractive, a contradiction that unsettled Susannah to no small degree. “Julia wouldn’t have known love from the grocer’s lame horse,” he snapped. “From the moment she knew she was pregnant, she bewailed her fate and cursed me for a rutting bull with no concern for her delicate faculties.” He let out a short, huffing breath. “As though I had anything to do with it.”

  Susannah’s eyes widened as his implication struck home, but she refused to honor such a suggestion with a response. Like everyone else, Julia had not been perfect; she had been quite shallow in some ways, and she could be childish and petulant at times, but she had many good qualities as well. If Aubrey Fairgrieve had been her husband, then he was without question the father of this child, and that, as far as Susannah was concerned, decided the matter.

  “We seem to be thinking of two different women,” she said in a reflective tone. “You knew one Julia, and I knew another.”

  “Apparently,” he ground out.

  She held the child just a little tighter, and she saw in his eyes that he understood the gesture for what it was, a declaration. She was laying claim to a place, a prominent place, in this baby’s heart and future. She also saw his tacit resistance to the idea of surrender in any shape or guise.

  Julia had been at least partially correct, it appeared, in her bitter assessment of her husband’s nature. He was bone-stubborn, a man who liked getting his own way.

  He glared at her for a long moment, without another word, and then turned and left the kitchen.

  Susannah lingered in the chair for a while, thinking, and then went back upstairs, laid the baby carefully on her bed, securing her on either side with pillows. That done, she fashioned a cradle from one of the bureau drawers, padding the bottom with a folded blanket and the sides with rolled towels. No doubt there was a nursery somewhere in the house, but for now, this arrangement would do.

  After moving a soundly sleeping Victoria to the improvised crib, she ventured out long enough to locate the splendid bathing room Julia had written her about, took a hasty bath in the giant copper tub with its tank of hot water, dried herself off, pulled on a wrapper suspended from a hook on the door, and dashed back to her own quarters.

  Victoria was snoring, and Susannah smiled, feeling restored. After unpacking her brush, fresh undergarments, and a not-too-wrinkled cotton dress, she sat on the edge of the bed, took down her hair, groomed it thoroughly, and pinned it up again. A cup of tea, she decided, would be just the thing, and some bread and butter wouldn’t hurt, either. Her hunger, in abatement after the encounter with Aubrey, was back in full force.

  She dressed, ventured down to the kitchen to set a tray for herself, and returned to eat cheese and bread and drink delicious hot orange pekoe in her room. In good time, Victoria awakened, waving her fat little arms and fussing. Feeling completely happy, despite her grief for Julia and her deep misgivings about Mr. Fairgrieve, Susannah changed the infant, using a damask towel for a diaper, washed her hands in the green and black marble sink in the bathing room, and then wrapped the child in a fresh blanket, purloined from the linen cabinet in the corridor.

  Descending the back stairway to the kitchen, Susannah found herself in the presence of a plain, plump woman, just shrugging out of a heavy woolen cloak. Maisie, no doubt.

  “Well, now,” she said, assessing Susannah with a smile of ingenuous welcome. “You came, then. Good.”

  Susannah blinked. Suddenly, though she could not have said precisely how, she knew that it had been this woman who had sent the wire that brought her to Seattle, and not Mr. Fairgrieve. “Susannah McKittrick,” she said by way of introduction, putting out one hand while holding little Victoria securely with the other.

  “Maisie,” was the reply, with no last name given. The two women shook hands, and Susannah noticed the little boy then. About three years of age, he huddled shyly in the voluminous folds of Maisie’s skirt.

  “This is my Jasper,” Maisie said proudly. “Say a proper howdy to the lady, Jasper.”

  Obediently, the boy executed a slight bow, though Susannah still had the sense that he wanted either to melt into his mother’s limbs or to bolt.

  Once she’d dispensed with her bonnet and cloak and divested Jasper of his jacket, Maisie extended competent arms for the baby. “Here, let me have the precious little critter. She must be plumb starved. I don’t know as Mr. Fairgrieve thought to give her a bottle, though mercy knows I reminded him. Got back as quick as I could.”

  Jasper took an apple from a bowl in the center of the table and made for another room.

  Susannah hesitated before giving up the baby, even though she liked and trusted Maisie already. “She’s had a bottle,” she said as the other woman took Victoria into her arms, bouncing her affectionately. “A nap, too.” Susannah blushed when Maisie uncovered the infant and spotted the fancy embossed towel tied loosely into place. “I didn’t know where to find a diaper.”

  Maisie smiled. “You did just fine. Didn’t she, sweetums?” She made a face, and Victoria gave a chortling gurgle in response. “Miss Julia said you was a resourceful type, and she was right. Now, set yourself down and tell me, how was your trip?”

  With that, Maisie took a seat herself, still holding the baby, in the rocking chair where Susannah had sat earlier, and Susannah drew up a short stool. “Long,” she said in belated reply. “Maisie, Mr. Fairgrieve—did he—well, did he know I was coming?”

  Maisie chuckled. “Nope,” she said. “I see he didn’t throw you out, though.”

  Susannah put a hand to her breastbone in a mingling of surprise, consternation, and amusement. “Then it was you who sent that wire? Why ever—?”

  “I promised Mrs. Fairgrieve,” Maisie said, and looked a
way into the distance for a long moment. “She wanted you here to look after the little one. I reckoned the mister would let you stay if you showed up.”

  “Thank heaven he did,” she replied. “I’d have nowhere to go if he’d turned me away.”

  “Oh, you’d have been all right. This is a big house. Lots of hidey-holes to tuck you away in, with Mr. Fairgrieve none the wiser. Why, me and Jasper, we rattle around in this house like two pinto beans in the bottom of a bucket and hardly ever run into another soul.”

  Susannah closed her eyes for a moment, imagining herself haunting the place like a ghost, living a shadow life, avoiding contact with “the mister” at all costs. It was enough to make her shudder, for she was a creature of sunlight and fresh air. “You and Julia—Mrs. Fairgrieve—were friends, then?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Maisie said, rocking. “She was the mistress of the house, after all, and I was here to cook and clean. Neither of us ever forgot that. All the same, I felt mighty sorry for her, especially there at the end.”

  “How—how did she die?” Susannah ventured, realizing she had been holding the question at arm’s length ever since she’d received the wire nearly two weeks ago in Nantucket.

  Maisie dashed the back of one work-reddened hand against her cheek. “It was a fever,” she said. “Came on sudden, right after this little angel here was born. She was gone, the missus was, before the baby was a day old.”

  Susannah bit her lower lip, imagining the sorrow and shock of such a thing only too clearly. At St. Mary’s, she’d seen many a mother and child perish, sometimes separately, often together. She braced herself. “Did she suffer? Julia, I mean?”

  Maisie gave Susannah a long, measuring glance. “Yes,” she said. “She was a tiny thing, wasn’t she, and she had a hard time.”

  Susannah blinked back a rush of scalding tears. “And Mr. Fairgrieve? Was he kind to her?”

  “He paced the hallway, like any daddy would do, but by the time sweet’ums here came along, Mrs. Fairgrieve had gone right out of her head. She didn’t know any of us. Kept calling for her mama.”