Courting Susannah

by Linda Lael Miller

  Although the little bit of Seattle she’d seen upon her arrival had seemed downright unprepossessing, there were wooden sidewalks in Aubrey’s neighborhood and trees growing behind whitewashed fences. The sky cast ice-blue reflections onto the sparkling waters of the sound, and beyond them loomed the snowy mountains of the Olympic Peninsula. Now and then, a buggy clattered by, or a well-made carriage, and Susannah returned neighborly waves with a nod of greeting, while pretending not to notice the curious looks she inspired. She continued her stroll, intending to follow the sidewalk around the block, and hummed softly to reassure the baby.

  Perhaps not by accident, though she hadn’t consciously made the choice, she found herself at the gateway of the large church that stood on the lot behind Aubrey’s mansion. She stopped, admiring the simple stained-glass windows and bell tower, the well-kept grounds and enormous arched doors. Several minutes passed before she allowed her attention to stray to the cemetery, with its crop of crosses and monuments. She had known it was there, of course, having glimpsed it from her bedroom window the day before, but actually confronting the place was another matter.

  Julia was buried there.

  Something tightened in her throat. Julia’s grave. She felt compelled to find her friend’s final resting place, if only to ascribe it a place in her mind. She fumbled with the gate latch and finally pushed the pram through the opening.

  An elderly pastor came out of the church, one hand extended. “Welcome,” he said. His blue eyes were wise and merry, his thin hair white and flyaway. “I’m Reverend Johnstone,” he said. “And you would be—?”

  “Susannah McKittrick,” Susannah answered. She indicated the Fairgrieve house with an inclination of her head. “Julia was my closest friend.” My only friend. “I’d like to pay my respects.”

  Reverend Johnstone’s smile was gentle. “Certainly,” he said. “Pity you missed the funeral. It was very sad indeed. Come, I’ll show you to the grave, not that you’d have much trouble finding it.” With that, he led Susannah along a stone pathway, between simple headstones and elaborate ones, bringing her to a grand tomb of pink marble, overseen at head and foot by enormous alabaster angels. Here, then, was the place where Julia lay.

  Tears burned in Susannah’s eyes, and she sniffled, fumbling for her handkerchief. The reverend waited in easy silence until she had recovered herself a little. JULIA, proclaimed a bronze plaque, set into the ground, though there were no dates, no words of mourning or even farewell.

  “Was Mrs. Fairgrieve a parishioner here?” She had never known Julia to be religious, but perhaps in her unhappiness she had found comfort within the walls of Reverend Johnstone’s church. Susannah devoutly hoped so.

  The holy man hesitated only for a moment, but it was long enough. “No,” he said quietly. “Regretfully, no.” He bent over the pram and peered benignly down at the well-wrapped baby. “I suppose this would be her child?”

  “Yes,” Susannah replied. She was still thinking about the expensive monument marking Julia’s grave, undeniably beautiful yet strangely sterile, meaninglessness, even in all its grandeur. It was as though no one had truly grieved for her, not here, at least.

  “A girl, I’m told. What is her name?”

  Susannah averted her eyes, then met the pastor’s kindly gaze again. “I’m afraid she doesn’t have one, officially, at least. I’ve been calling her Victoria.”

  “Then she has not been christened.” There was no judgment in the reverend’s tone, no reprimand. It was merely a concerned observation of the sort one might expect from a man who had spent his life overseeing such details.

  “No,” Susannah admitted.

  The pastor raised feathery white eyebrows as a soft breeze played in his hair. “Mr. Fairgrieve has approved this choice, I assume. The name, I mean?”

  Again, Susannah sighed. Then she shook her head. “I don’t believe he’s interested—” Color suffused her face, and misery thickened in her throat. “I don’t think he believes the child is his.”

  Reverend Johnstone placed a tender hand on Susannah’s shoulder. “Aubrey is a good man, Miss McKittrick. I feel certain of that. But like the rest of us, he has demons all his own.”

  The wind was taking on a chill, and Susannah was concerned about keeping the baby out too long. She cast a final, sorrowful glance at Julia’s resting place and turned the carriage back toward the gate. “Thank you, reverend,” she said quietly. “Might I come and speak with you again?”

  “Of course, child,” came the response, accompanied by a tender smile. “Our Sunday services begin at eleven.”

  Susannah nodded and hurried away. She would return soon, she promised herself, and alone, to sit on the stone bench near Julia’s grave and say a proper farewell. In the meantime, it seemed imperative to give the child a formal name and, therefore, an existence. An identity.

  “What do you think of Victoria?” she asked half an hour later in Maisie’s kitchen, her cheeks still pink with cold, a cup of strong tea steaming before her. The baby was sleeping peacefully in a basket within the warm radius of the stove.

  “Victoria who?” Maisie asked with a frown. She was up to her elbows in bread dough, and the front of her plain calico dress was covered with flour.

  Susannah smiled and took a sip of the savory tea, generously laced with milk and sugar. She was sure she’d mentioned the name to Maisie, even referred to the child by it, but maybe she’d only used it in her own head. “That’s what I think we should call the baby.”

  “That’s a lot of name,” Maisie reflected solemnly, “for such a little scrap of a thing. I reckon it’s as good as any other, though. Pretty, too. I always thought if I ever had a girl-child, I’d call her Bertha, for my ma.”

  Susannah was careful not to let her expression change. “That’s an idea,” she said gamely. “Julia’s mother’s name was—” She paused, trying to remember. “Lilith, I think.”

  Maisie’s distaste was plain. “Weren’t she a bad woman, that Lilith, mentioned in the Good Book someplace?”

  Susannah hid her amusement behind the rim of her tea cup. “She might be in the Bible, but I think she’s more a creature of legend. Supposedly, she was Adam’s mate, before Eve came along.”

  “Oh,” Maisie said, still nonplussed. She gave the bread dough a punch that would have felled an ox.

  “What about Mr. Fairgrieve’s mother? What was she called?”

  “You’d have to ask him that,” was the answer. “I don’t know much about the boss. He’s a private man, Mr. Fairgrieve is.”

  “But he keeps a fancy woman?” Susannah prompted, lowering her voice, remembering what Maisie had told her the day before. For some reason, the idea stung.

  Maisie looked disgusted. “Delphinia Parker,” she said. “Used to be an actress. That’s how Mr. Fairgrieve took up with her. She got herself left behind, here in Seattle, after one of them travelin’ shows passed through,”

  “You certainly seem to know a lot about her,” Susannah observed moderately. “Surely, if Aubrey—Mr. Fairgrieve—won’t speak of his family, he wouldn’t talk about his lover, either.”

  “Everybody knows about Delphinia,” Maisie said. “She don’t make no secret about where she got that shiny new carriage she rides around in, or all them French gowns made out of velvet and silk, either. She’s got more jewelry than that queen you want to name the baby after.”

  Susannah felt a combination of intrigue and fury. “I suppose he was carrying on with Miss Parker while Julia was still living?”

  It was then that the door to the dining room swung open, and Aubrey appeared in the chasm. “If you have questions about my mistress—and it’s Mrs. Parker, by the way—why don’t you ask me directly?”

  Maisie reddened and gave the bread dough a pummeling but said nothing. Susannah, caught in gossip, a pursuit she had always abhorred, was mortified. Only bravado kept her from dissolving. “Very well,” she said, “I will. Did you betray Julia with this woman?”

  A
muscle leaped in Aubrey’s jawline, and his left temple pulsed ever so slightly. “No,” he growled. “Not that it’s any of your damned business. I will ask you, Miss McKittrick, to confine your efforts to looking after the child from now on. I’m quite capable, I assure you, of tending to my own affairs.”

  Susannah’s blood was pounding, but she wouldn’t allow herself to look away from Aubrey’s face; it was a point of honor. “I’m sure you are,” she answered, leaving him to take whatever meaning from those words that he wished.

  He glared at her for a long moment, then his gaze sliced to Maisie, who looked as though she wanted the floor to open up beneath her feet and swallow her whole. “I’ll be bringing guests home for dinner,” he said calmly, though there was still an edge to his voice. “If you’d rather not cook for them, I can have something sent over from the hotel.”

  Maisie was beginning to recover herself, wiping her hands on her apron. “There’s a smoked ham in the pantry. I can serve that, along with some potatoes and the like. How many places should I lay out?”

  “Six,” Aubrey said, glancing only briefly toward Susannah. The way he spoke, she might not even have been in the room. “Including Miss McKittrick. See that she has something decent to wear.”

  Susannah was on her feet. “I don’t want—” she began, but he was gone before she could finish the sentence.

  “Best do as the boss says, if there’s to be any peace around here,” Maisie put in sagely.

  “I don’t care to have supper with strangers,” Susannah argued. Nor did she care to dress herself up in Julia’s clothes, which would certainly be all wrong for her. “Besides, I’m not a houseguest. I’m a nurse. Why on earth does he insist—?”

  “This town is his home, miss. The baby’s, too. And you were the missus’s good friend, which makes you more than a nurse. If you’re goin’ to look after that little smidgen, then you got to make a place for yourself right here in Seattle.”

  Maisie was right; for the time being, at least, she must make every reasonable effort to belong. Meeting Aubrey Fairgrieve’s friends and associates was apparently a part of that process, whether she liked the idea or not. Susannah finished her tea in a reflective silence, then, leaving the baby in Maisie’s charge, went upstairs to assess her wardrobe.

  The four worn, unfashionable frocks she and Maisie had hung in the armoire the day before had undergone no magical changes in the interim. They were still drab and unsuitable for any formal occasion, and the sight of them filled Susannah with a kind of grief that bore no relationship at all to the loss of her friend. As a young girl, she had dreamed of dances and fetes and eventually marriage, and if she was no great beauty, she was attractive in her own way. She was intelligent and quite accomplished—she had read virtually every book in the library at St. Mary’s, and then in Mrs. Butterfield’s considerable collection, and she played piano well enough to teach—and yet somehow she had been left standing on the sidelines, on onlooker instead of a participant.

  She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. Then, for the child, she sought out Julia’s sumptuously furnished bedchamber, which adjoined Aubrey’s. Upon entering, Susannah was surprised to find her friend’s things laid out on the vanity and bureaus, as though she had just stepped out and would surely return at any moment. The place was neatly kept, and the faint scent of Julia’s perfume lingered in the air, like the last shadowy remnants of a vivid dream. An open book rested spine-up on the nightstand, and Susannah traced the title with the tip of one index finger, frowning slightly. She had never known Julia to read for pleasure; she had always been too impatient, too restless to concentrate. Yet here was the latest of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, half read.

  Along the far wall were two enormous, intricately carved armoires, stuffed with a profusion of gowns. Straightening her backbone, Susannah examined the lovely frocks one by one, finding the rich, colorful fabrics and exquisite designs much more appealing than she cared to admit. These were the garments of a princess in a fairy tale, not a mortal woman.

  Holding her breath, she drew a sedate black velvet from its padded hanger, went to the mirror, and held the dress up in front of her. Although simple, the gown was also dramatic, trimmed at the high collar and cuffs with tiny white pearls.

  She turned to one side, then the other, imagining herself clad in such a garment. It wouldn’t fit, of course, for Julia had been plumper and not so tall, but with a few judicious nips and tucks, it could be made to suit her.

  Even as she longed to wear the dress, Susannah found her pride, always her besetting sin, rebelled against the idea. She had loved her friend, her “blood sister,” and she would cherish Julia’s child as her own, but it galled her to take the other woman’s castoffs, however attractive they might be.

  In the end, however, she was left with no choice. She cared nothing for Aubrey Fairgrieve or his friends, but the baby had already claimed her heart. She would do whatever she had to do to protect the little one’s interests.

  After both Jasper and the baby had had their early suppers and been tucked into their beds, Susannah donned the black dress, and Maisie pinned it to fit. The bosom and waist had to be taken in, the hemline lowered, but Susannah had done her share of sewing, both at St. Mary’s and with Mrs. Butterfield, and she made short work of the alterations. When, after a leisurely bath, Susannah put on the gown again, it looked as though it had been made expressly for her. With her hair swept up and the high color of shyness and indignation in her cheeks, she looked almost, well, pretty. Emboldened, she returned to Julia’s room and helped herself to a delicate pair of pearl-drop earrings.

  When she descended the main staircase, of necessity leaving the child in Maisie’s care again, she encountered Aubrey, who was just coming through the doorway of his study. He stopped at the sight of her, and she saw something glitter in his eyes, though whether it was bitter exasperation or admiration she could not tell. She assumed it was the former.

  “Well,” he said. His voice sounded hoarse, and he hadn’t moved from the threshold of the study. Indeed, he seemed to be frozen there. “Well,” he repeated.

  Susannah was secretly pleased to know that she had unsettled him so. “You did tell me to wear one of Julia’s dresses,” she reminded him.

  He nodded, swallowed. “Yes.”

  “I’ve been giving some thought to the child—”

  Aubrey managed, at last, to break whatever inertia had overtaken him. He frowned. “And what conclusion have you reached?”

  “She must have a name. We can’t keep calling her ‘she’ and ‘the baby’ and ‘the child.’ She should be properly christened in any case. I’ve spoken to Reverend Johnstone, and—”

  The frown intensified to a glare. “Do as you like,” he snapped, and started past her, moving toward the dining room, where Maisie had laid a spectacular table, complete with silver candlesticks, fine china, and sterling utensils.

  “But you are her father,” Susannah persisted, following close on his heels. “You should be the one to decide—”

  “Call her anything you like. Except Julia, of course.”

  Susannah felt a stab of pain. “Did you hate her so much?” she asked quietly.

  “Yes,” he replied without hesitation or kindness. “I did hate her. And kindly remove those earrings. They were a gift from one of her lovers, and I can’t stand the sight of them.”

  “If you hated Julia,” Susannah pressed, pulling off the ear bobs at the same time, “why do you care if she took lovers?”

  “Because I loved her once,” came the answer.

  Susannah was silenced by his admission, though only briefly. When the doorbell chimed, she followed Aubrey across the entry hall. She couldn’t resist a little barb. After all, it wasn’t as though he had been a model husband to Julia. “Perhaps we could name your baby—let’s see—Delphinia?” she chimed.

  “I would advise you not to plague me, Miss McKittrick,” he warned in a harsh whisper. “I am not a patient man.” With tha
t, he wrenched open the door, and in those few seconds, his aspect changed from one of anger to one of smiling good humor.

  A handsome gentleman with chestnut-colored hair and a waxed mustache stood on the porch, bowler hat in hand. It seemed to Susannah that the visitor’s eyes narrowed slightly when Aubrey made his introductions. Clearly, John Hollister was as curious about her as the neighbors had been during her walk earlier that day, even though Aubrey had already explained that she was his late wife’s childhood friend, come from far-off Nantucket to look after the child.

  “We’re considering names,” Susannah said cheerfully as the three of them retired to the parlor to await the other guests and Maisie’s eventual signal that supper was ready. “For the baby, I mean. I suggested Delphinia.”

  Aubrey sliced another warning glance in her direction, and Mr. Hollister smiled almost imperceptibly. It was obvious that he knew about Aubrey’s illicit affair with Mrs. Parker—no doubt the whole city was enjoying the scandal. On Julia’s behalf, Susannah felt a flash of fury. She was behaving shamelessly, she knew, and yet she couldn’t seem to help herself. The whole concept of Mr. Fairgrieve keeping a mistress galled her.

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t named the poor little mite after all this time,” Hollister scolded. Aubrey had given him a snifter of brandy, and he gestured with the glass as he spoke. “I declare, Fairgrieve, that’s downright negligent of you. Personally, I’ve always favored Elisabeth. That was my mother’s name.”

  The doorbell chimed again, and Aubrey hurried off to answer it. When he returned, he was accompanied by two more gentlemen, both older, with balding heads, large bellies, and heavy gold watch chains. Susannah guessed before the introductions were made that they were bankers. No doubt both of them had names to suggest, but the topic had changed to the situation in the gold fields and the “Chinese problem,” whatever that was.