Susannah nearly laughed but managed to restrain herself. “Oh?” she asked, with as much innocence as she could summon up.
“It is sinful,” Mrs. Shimclad pressed, “for you to reside, unchaperoned, in this house.”
Unfortunately, Maisie entered the room at that precise moment, a tray full of tea and crockery rattling in her hands. “Don’t see ’em out lookin’ after those poor women that’s been left behind by their miner husbands to starve, do you?” she muttered, but loudly enough for everyone to hear.
Susannah suppressed another smile, and among the Benevolence Society, there was much harrumphing, and well-I-nevering.
“It is our responsibility to set standards for the benefit of the community,” Mrs. Shimclad insisted after tossing Maisie a look that would have cured leather. The former would serve the Lord whether he required her able assistance or not, that much was clear. In point of fact, Susannah doubted that he had any real say in the matter. “If you wish to become a member of our church, you will have to do something about these scurrilous circumstances, Miss McKittrick.”
Maisie stomped out, still muttering, and Susannah found that her own amusement had abated a considerable degree. “Scurrilous?” she repeated. “I have done nothing wrong, and neither has Mr. Fairgrieve.”
The Society exchanged glances, but they helped themselves to tea and to the plate of cookies—no doubt baked for Jasper and Aubrey—that Maisie had added to the tray.
“We must think of appearances,” Mrs. Shimclad said loftily.
“Why?” Susannah asked.
“—like that woman from Boston—” she heard someone murmur.
“—better if she weren’t so pretty—” put in another visitor.
Mrs. Shimclad set aside her tea cup with a righteous clatter, though she did not, Susannah noted, forsake her cookie. “I have already explained our position in the community, Miss McKittrick.”
“Mrs. Shimclad,” Susannah said with labored patience, “I am a nurse to the child. That’s all.”
Mrs. Shimclad might have been deaf for all the note she took of Susannah’s statement. “We must insist that you either marry Mr. Fairgrieve, move out of this house, or cease attending our church!”
“That’s a fine idea,” Aubrey put in cheerfully from just inside the parlor doors, thoroughly startling everyone, including Susannah, who had thought him well away, occupied with the business of running his store. “Will you marry me, Susannah? That way, we can have all the pleasures of sin without incurring the wrath of these fine ladies.”
Susannah’s heart began to pound against her breastbone, while, at one and the same time, she had to stay herself from flying at Aubrey in a temper for making such an ill-advised and audacious remark. These women didn’t have a sense of humor among the lot of them; they did not know that he was merely joking.
They began to buzz, like so many plump bumblebees caught in a jelly jar.
“Well?” Aubrey prompted, spreading his hands and beaming.
Susannah was red from her toenails to the roots of her hair. “This is hardly the time or place—” she protested.
“Is there a better time?” Aubrey asked expansively, bending over Mrs. Shimclad as if putting the question to her. “A better place?” he demanded of another woman.
Mrs. Shimclad actually simpered. “I think it’s a very romantic notion,” she said.
Susannah stared at her in confoundment and felt her heart soften a little, though she would have preferred to keep it hard. “I think it is insane,” she said. “Mr. Fairgrieve and I barely know each other, and we have not made an especially auspicious beginning.”
Aubrey looked like the hero of a tragic road show. He even went so far as to press one hand to his heart as he declaimed. “See?” he asked of Mrs. Shimclad and the others. “No matter how fervently I declare my passion, this is how it’s received.”
The women sighed.
“That,” Susannah said through her teeth, “will be enough. I mean it, Aubrey.”
He crossed the room and wrenched her to his bosom. “You drive me mad with desire,” he declared, and the ladies, chilled to the bone only moments before, began to fan themselves and chirp out a chorus of oh mys. “I can’t stand it any longer. Say you’ll be my wife before I’m forced to carry you off over one shoulder like spoils after a battle!”
Susannah was speechless with mortification, while Aubrey’s hazel eyes twinkled with mischief as he watched her reaction to his performance.
“I shoulda sold tickets,” Maisie commented from the doorway that led to the dining room and the kitchen beyond. “This here is better than that fella who could play ‘Clementine’ on a crosscut saw. You remember that, Mr. Fairgrieve? He had a mangy old bear, too, trained to dance to the music.”
Aubrey’s eyes never left Susannah’s. It was as though they were locked together in some private challenge, one that no one else was privy to, for all the witnesses and all the tomfoolery that had gone on in their presence.
“I remember,” he said.
Susannah swallowed hard, found her voice at last. She would deal with Aubrey later, when she could speak to him alone. In the meantime, she fixed her attention on the Benevolence Society, sweeping them up, one by one, with her gaze.
“You must all have a great many things to do,” she said evenly. “Being the gatekeepers of the city’s conscience cannot be an easy task. And then there is the matter of those destitute women Maisie mentioned earlier. I’m certain you will all want to go straight out and take charge of the situation, good Christian ladies that you are.”
There were, to their credit, a few blushes among the members of the Society. They finished their tea with hasty slurps and their cookies with quick nibbling and rose to depart.
Maisie saw them out, leaving Susannah and Aubrey standing in the center of the main parlor, staring at each other.
“Are you mad?” Susannah burst out in a furious whisper. “I don’t want to marry you, and you don’t want to marry me. Why in heaven’s name would you suggest such a thing?”
For the first time since his entrance, Aubrey’s expression was serious. “Am I? Mad, I mean?” he asked quietly. “I need a wife, if for no other reason than to entertain my business associates and offer me a place of refuge at the end of a long day. You need a husband, to support that child you are so determined to raise.”
Susannah took a step toward him, hands resting on her hips. “That child,” she pointed out, “has a name. It’s Victoria. And she is your daughter.”
“Whatever you say,” he answered. “I’ll accept her as my own if you’ll marry me.”
She felt her eyes widen, and not for anything in the world would she have admitted to the strange, dizzying sense of hope welling up inside her. “That is very noble of you, Mr. Fairgrieve, considering that she is your own.”
“Stop hedging,” he said. “I require an answer.”
“You came home to ask me to marry you?” She was incredulous.
“No,” he answered in his forthright way. “I came home because I forgot some important papers when I left the house this morning. Finding you directly in the pathway of a band of Christian soldiers, bearing torches and on the march, I decided to come to your rescue with a proposal. Take it or leave it.”
“Suppose I leave it?”
“Then you might as well leave the baby—Victoria—too. The good ladies who’ve just graced us with their presence will make life intolerable for you—and for me—if you stay after they’ve warned you. Worse, they’ll eventually shun Victoria as well.” He paused to let the pronouncement sink in. “In the eyes of the law, if not of God and creation, Victoria is indeed my child. I’ll keep her here until she’s five or so, then send her hack east to boarding school.”
“You wouldn’t do such a callous thing!” She cried. But she knew he would. He did not hate Victoria, but he did not love her, either. Never lacking for anything material, she might nonetheless be raised by strangers, utterly without
the more tender affections.
“Marry me,” he said flatly.
Susannah was once again stricken to silence. It was a long time before she could speak again. “Would you—would I—?”
“We would,” Aubrey confirmed.
Heat surged into Susannah’s face, and for an awful moment, she thought she might actually swoon into the parlor chair now pressing against the backs of her knees. Oddly enough, the sensation wasn’t entirely unpleasant. “What—what about Mr. Hollister?” she asked. Although the other man had not declared himself, he had intimated that his intentions toward her were serious ones.
“He won’t,” Aubrey said with a grin. “Not with you, anyway.”
She collapsed into the chair recently occupied by Mrs. Shimclad, which was still warm from that good woman’s ample bottom. She ought to leave, Susannah thought, just pack up her belongings and go, before she made some irretrievable mistake, but Aubrey would never let her take Victoria, and she could not leave her behind.
“This is merely some whim,” she accused.
Aubrey came to stand before her. Bending down, he gripped either arm of her chair and looked straight into her face. He smelled pleasantly of soap and salt air, and the very proximity of him caused an aching heat inside her. “It is no whim, Susannah,” he replied. “Believe me. I’ve been pacing my study half the night, thinking about it.”
“But it would be a loveless marriage.”
“I have told you what I think of love,” Aubrey answered. “It’s a fable, for fools to break themselves to pieces upon. Our union would be practical, serving both our purposes. Think of it, Susannah. You would be the mistress of this house. You would have all the money you ever wanted. And when you’ve given me a son or two, you may feel free to do as you like—travel the world, take up a separate residence in New York or London or San Francisco, wherever you like.”
He had not moved, and Susannah felt paralyzed by his nearness, rather like a mouse faced with a snake, although, strangely and much to her surprise, she wasn’t the least bit frightened. “Would you be faithful?” she asked. It was the first chink in her armor, and he knew that, damn him, and smiled.
“If you were,” he countered, not unpleasantly. “God help you, though, if you make a cuckold of me the way Julia did.”
Susannah wet her lips nervously with the tip of her tongue. It scared her how much she wanted to agree, and shamed her a little, too. Aubrey had been Julia’s husband, after all. “But you would swear not to take a mistress?”
He raised one hand, though he still loomed over her, strong, coatless, and hard-muscled in his crisply ironed, starch-scented shirt. “I swear,” he replied.
“Julia was my—my friend—”
“You were hers. She was no one’s. Susannah, don’t you see? By giving her daughter the best possible life, you’ll be settling any debt to Julia, real or imagined.”
She hesitated for a long time. “I must think this through,” she murmured, at last, and left the room.
Aubrey tried his damnedest to get drunk that night, but the more whiskey he consumed, the more clear-headed he became. The stuff affected him like day-old coffee, souring his stomach and giving him more energy than any man in his right mind could ever need.
Not that he was in his right mind. He hadn’t been able to make that particular claim since the day he found Susannah McKittrick standing in the upper hallway of his house, looking at him as though he were the intruder. When, precisely, had she descended upon him like the plagues of Egypt? It seemed to him that he had known her longer than Julia, longer even than Ethan …
Idiocy. That’s what it was.
He slammed his glass down onto the surface of his desk, and the sound drew Maisie—she stood peering around the edge of the study door, bristly eyebrows wriggling.
“Congratulations,” she said.
Aubrey glared at her. “None are in order.”
She approached him, undaunted. She glanced from the half-empty bottle to the glass in his hand and shook her head. “It ain’t natural. You could soak in that stuff for a month, and it wouldn’t even wrinkle your skin.”
In spite of his gloomy mood, Aubrey laughed. “I trust there is some reason for this interview?” he said.
Maisie drew up a chair and sat down. “You’re doin’ a smart thing by gettin’ yourself hitched up with Susannah. She’s about ten times too good for you—might mean your salvation, if you play your cards right.”
Aubrey leaned back in his chair. “My salvation, is it? Have you taken up with the Benevolence Society, Maisie?” She was, in point of fact, the best representation of Christian dedication he had ever known, but he didn’t tell her that because she wouldn’t have listened.
She gave a gruff chuckle. “They’ll irrigate the devil’s back forty and plant corn afore that happens.”
“I don’t suppose you’d care to join me in a drink? Merely for purposes of celebration, of course.”
“You know I don’t take spirits,” Maisie answered with a sniff. “What do you think they use to keep them fires of hell burnin’ so hot?”
He took a cheroot from his shirt pocket, held it in his teeth, and lighted it with a wooden match. Watching Maisie through the smoke, he raised one foot onto the surface of the desk, then another. “What brings you in here at this hour?” he asked, ignoring her rhetorical question. He drew out his watch, flipped open the lid, and frowned at it. “Great Scot, it’s after midnight. Think of your reputation.”
“Everybody knows I’d never take up with the likes of you,” Maisie shot back, but she was grinning her gapped, mischievious grin. “Now, Miss Susannah, well, I do believe she’s sweet on you. Shell make a fine wife.”
Aubrey said nothing but simply watched his friend and housekeeper through the thickening haze of cheroot smoke.
“I reckon what I want to say is this,” Maisie went on, as he’d known she would if he gave her adequate space. “You’ve got a lot of bitterness in you. If this weddin’ is some kind of joke to you, then you better just leave that young woman alone. There’s plenty of other men wantin’ to make her acquaintance—I’ve got ’em comin’ to both doors all the day long, just hopin’ for a look at her. She deserves to be happy, and if you get in the way of that, you and me, we won’t be friends no more.”
It was no rash pledge; Maisie wasn’t capable of an idle promise. What she said was precisely what she meant, whatever the subject. And Aubrey felt a pang of sorrow at the prospect of losing her regard. “You don’t have much confidence in me, do you?” he countered.
She frowned. “Truth is, I don’t know what to think. When you found Miss Susannah here, you were civil enough, but you sure weren’t friendly. You ain’t had but a few kind words to say to her from that day to this. And now, all of the sudden, because a bunch of old bats came in here beatin’ on the Good Book and prophesyin’ a rain of hellfire, you ask her to marry you! Sounds a little too much like dallyin’ to me.”
Aubrey was touched by Maisie’s devotion to Susannah, and a little envious of it in the bargain. “If Miss McKittrick keeps her part of the agreement, I will keep mine. Was I such a bad husband to Julia?”
Maisie sighed. “She was troubled, that one. You judged her harshlike. When you come right down to it, I believe you think ever’body’s out to do you in, ’cause of your pa and Miss Julia and all.”
Aubrey lowered his feet to the floor and sat forward. “What do you know about my family?”
“What Ethan told me,” Maisie said staunchly. “That your pa was a mean-spirited man, and your mama lit out when the pair of you were hardly bigger’n my Jasper.”
He was quietly furious that Ethan had betrayed a family secret the likes of that one, but then, he shouldn’t have been surprised. With his brother, betrayal was a way of life. “You’d better get yourself to bed,” he said, rising. “Morning will come around early.”
Maisie got up. “Don’t you hurt Miss Susannah. That’s all I’m sayin’. Don’t you hurt that gir
l. She’s had pain aplenty in her life, and she’s gone on despite it, and I won’t see you punishin’ her for some other woman’s sins.” She jabbed at his chest with one index finger. “You hear me?”
“Very clearly” Aubrey replied, ready to retire himself, before the drinking made him any more sober than he already was. “No doubt, the neighbors did, too.”
Maisie harrumphed and trundled out of the study without replying.
Aubrey followed her as far as the kitchen, where he drew himself a glass of water to take upstairs, and she hesitated on the threshold of the small room she shared with her son.
“You’re a good man,” she said when he simply waited for her to speak, “but you got demons chasin’ you. You gotta stop runnin’, turn around, and face ’em down.”
With that, Maisie turned and disappeared, closing her door behind her.
Aubrey stood there in his kitchen for a long moment, looking inside himself and not particularly liking what he saw.
Finally, he climbed the rear stairs and stood in the hallway looking toward Susannah’s faraway door. He wanted to make peace with her, to tell her that he truly wanted to marry her, and that he wanted that marriage to work, but every time they spoke, he just seemed to make matters worse.
He didn’t sleep at all well that night, and the first thing in the morning, he had Hawkins send for Hollister.
Hawkins went to do his bidding right away. It was a quality Aubrey appreciated in other people, and it was all too rare these days, if you asked him.
He had barely settled down to go over a contract with a wholesale merchant in San Francisco—the negotiations had been the reason for his trip down the coast, and his interests had not been served in the matter—when Hollister burst in without even waiting to be announced.
“I’m off the case,” he said.
Aubrey laid down his pen and looked up at the other man, who was chomping at the bit and red in the face. In fact, the skin above his tight celluloid collar looked as though it were going to burst. “What?”
Courting Susannah Page 11