Courting Susannah

by Linda Lael Miller

  On the morning of the fourth day, Susannah reached the conclusion that she could delay her plans no longer. Leaving Victoria in Maisie’s care, she went up to her room to collect her drawstring purse, which contained a pitifully small amount of money, along with the notices she’d already drawn up offering piano lessons, returned to the ground floor to put on the cloak, and let herself out through the front door.

  The air was clear and crisp, and the sun shone high and cold overhead. Susannah felt cheerful as she strolled downhill toward the heart of Seattle, her bag swinging in one hand, her posters under the other arm. She was not anxious to encounter Aubrey, or so she tried to convince herself. He simply unsettled her too much, but it would be a waste of time and effort to search for another mercantile just to avoid the man. She needed supplies—sheet music, stiff paper for making more signs, nails, and a small hammer with which to post them.

  When she reached the store—it looked as imposing as a Greek temple, looming against the backdrop of greenery and sky the way it did—she saw no sign of Aubrey. She bought six sheets of good paper, along with the other items, a new pen with a broad nib, and a bottle of India ink. To save herself a trip, she went into the dining room of the Washington Hotel, which she had visited twice, first in the company of Mr. Hollister, then with Ethan, and asked for a cup of China tea. While she sipped, she worked on her placards.

  PRIVATE INSTRUCTION IN PIANO, she wrote in strong, dark letters, designed to be seen at a distance. REASONABLE FEE. CONTACT MISS SUSANNAH MCKITTRiCK AT #8 CHURCH STREET.

  She had consumed three cups of tea when she finally finished her task and left the dining room, satisfied. Affixing the notices to a series of strategically chosen telegraph poles took another hour, and she had barely gotten home and hung up her cloak when her first student arrived. Her surprise at finding not a child waiting in the foyer but a grizzled man of at least seventy, well dressed but still very rough around the edges, was complete.

  “I’ve always wanted to play the pianny,” he said with enthusiasm.

  Susannah did not want to offend the man. He looked quite earnest and decent, really, for all that his polish was obviously superficial and sketchy. “I’m afraid I was expecting to teach children, Mr.—”

  “Just call me Zacharias, if you don’t mind,” he urged, looking disappointed but still hopeful. He held his hat in one hand, and his salt-and-pepper beard sprang almost straight out from his chin, as if to lead the way for the rest of him. “I ain’t heard my first name in so long, I can’t rightly recall what it is. I was sure lookin’ forward to learnin’ all about music, though, ma’am. That I was indeed.”

  Susannah’s hands were knotted together. Zacharias was a customer, and he plainly had the resources to pay for his lessons. “Have you played before?”

  Zacharias had one hand on the door knob. “No, ma’am,” he said. “It’s all new to me. I figured if I learnt the pianny, I might get me one of them fine eastern women for a wife. They like things fancified. But then, you’d know that already, bein’ such a lady your own self.”

  She was touched that this man could want genteel feminine company so much that he would undertake such an endeavor so late in life, and secretly a little amused by his compliment. She was inexperienced, that was true, but she knew when she was being charmed.

  “The lessons cost fifteen cents,” she said. “I expect my students to be diligent, so you will have to find a place to practice.”

  Zacharias was beaming as he came away from the door. “I’ll pay a quarter,” he said. “You never met a harder worker than me, if I do say so, and I got me a pianny of my own, over to the house there.” He cocked a thumb to indicate direction. “Came all the way from San Francisco, Californy.”

  Susannah swallowed. “Come in. We’ll get started right now, if that’s all right with you.”

  “It’s better’n all right, ma’am. You’ve made an old miner real happy.”

  She headed toward the rear parlor, where the piano was housed, and indicated the piano stool. Zacharias sat down, flexing his thick, arthritic fingers eagerly over the keys.

  “We’ll start with middle C,” Susannah said. A quarter was a quarter, after all. Perhaps she’d been undercharging these past few years, asking only fifteen cents for a lesson.

  One endless hour later, the miner gave up torturing that splendid instrument, paid his fee, and left. He would be back the following Tuesday, by mutual agreement, and Susannah looked forward to the experience with resignation.

  “What the devil is goin’ on?” Maisie inquired the minute Susannah entered the kitchen, craving a cup of hot, sweet tea. “Sounded like you were takin’ that there piano apart a piece at a time.”

  “You know very well that I was giving a music lesson,” she answered, busy at the task of pumping water into the kettle. “I saw you peeking around the door, Maisie, so you needn’t pretend.”

  “A music lesson, huh?” Maisie scoffed, but she was grinning broadly.

  “What else would it be?” Susannah demanded, somewhat impatient. She had not gotten a good rest the night before, and working with her first student had proved to be an unexpected ordeal.

  “I’ll tell you what else it could be,” Maisie boomed, delighted. She was still ironing, and the kitchen smelled of clean, starched linens and baking bread. “That old coot came a-courtin’. If you wasn’t so darn gullible, you’d have worked that out for yourself.”

  Susannah, busy until that moment, went still. Looking back, it seemed that Maisie might be right. Mr. Zacharias had worked industriously at his scales, but he’d tried more than once to strike up a conversation, and he’d been dressed awfully well for a miner. “Oh, dear,” she said.

  Maisie laughed. “I can’t wait to see what happens when Mr. Fairgrieve finds out about this,” she thundered, slamming the iron down onto a white sheet with great energy. “My guess is, you’re gonna have more ‘piano students’ than you know what to do with. What the dickens did you do, anyhow—put up signs?”

  The starch went out of Susannah; she sank into a chair in shock, staring blindly into space. Maisie’s question echoed in her mind, damning her for a degree of naïveté bordering on outright stupidity. “This is awful,” she said.

  The other woman shrugged. “That feller wouldn’t make such a bad husband,” she said, evidently referring to Zacharias. “He lives one street over, in a house nigh as big as this one. He was one of the first to strike it lucky up there in the north country, so he’s got a dime or two, and he behaved himself, too. I made sure of that.”

  Susannah set her elbows on the table’s edge and buried her face in her hands. She could not rightly turn her first student away, despite her belated suspicions. He had, after all, conducted himself in a gentlemanly fashion, and she needed the income from teaching if she was ever to have anything at all of her own.

  Maisie crossed the room and patted her back hard, offering rough comfort. “Now, now,” she growled, “don’t take on. If’n one of them fellers steps out of line, I’ll drop him to his knees with a skillet to the back of the head. All you gotta do is holler.”

  “I honestly thought—”

  The patting went on, gentler now. “I guess miners’ve got as much right to pound the piano as anybody else,” she philosophized. “’Sides, one of them is bound to suit you for a husband.”

  Susannah let out a despairing sigh. “He did give me twenty-five cents,” she said.

  “See there?” Maisie confirmed. “Pretty thing like you, you’ll be rich in no time at all. And it ought to make things real lively around here.” She laughed again. “Oh, lordy, but Mr. Fairgrieve is gonna have himself a fine fit when he finds out he’s in the match-makin’ business.”

  Chapter 10

  Three more piano students, all of them male and old enough to shave, vote, and use tobacco, presented themselves at the front door before suppertime, scrubbed and spruced, requesting lessons. All were beginners, and not a one balked at the price of twenty-five cents.
By the time the last one disappeared into the snow-speckled twilight, Susannah had earned one dollar, a significant sum of money by anyone’s reckoning. Back home, she would have counted herself fortunate to amass that much in a week of teaching; there she’d had to compete for every pupil and then share the proceeds with Mrs. Butterfield.

  Of course, she realized by then that Maisie had been right: her students were not really aspiring musicians; they were lonely and starved for decent female companionship, not culture. Apparently, they saw Susannah as a prospect for matrimony, although she suspected it was simply the fact of her femininity that attracted them. In her presence, they were no doubt reminded of the mothers, sisters, and sweethearts they had left behind in their wanderings.

  Of course, Susannah had no earthly intention of wedding herself to any one of these men, and that made her feel a little guilty, as though she were taking their money under false pretenses. Still, she was instructing them in music, which was all she had promised in the first place. If they had further aspirations where she was concerned, well, that simply wasn’t her fault—was it?

  Aubrey, although he’d known she planned to teach piano, probably would be less than pleased when he found that she was being courted right under his roof, but there was no turning back now. She even dared to dream that, being paid such exorbitant fees, she might soon have a studio, not to mention a piano, of her own. That would amount to the first real security she had ever known.

  Aubrey returned to the house a bit later than usual that evening—it was almost eight—and he was accompanied by several of his business friends. He seemed distracted, his mood strained and weary, and he barely spared Susannah a glance while she served the meal. She had sent a protesting Maisie to her room to put her feet up long before, and Victoria was asleep in her basket in the kitchen.

  Having taken her own supper earlier at the kitchen table, Susannah listened attentively, if inauspiciously, to the men’s discussions of politics, interest rates, timber prices, and mineral rights. The dollar in her pocket—and those she hoped would follow—was a serious responsibility, one she did not take lightly. She didn’t plan to leave Aubrey’s house, not without Victoria in any case, but without money of her own she would have no autonomy at all. She listened keenly to the conversation because she wanted to manage her funds as wisely as she could.

  She had cleared the table, washed and dried the dishes, and retired to the rear parlor to coax soft, soothing music from that much-abused piano, when she sensed Aubrey’s approach, felt him standing close behind her. Once he had asked, nay, practically commanded her not to play, and she normally wouldn’t have, knowing he was at home, but she found she couldn’t stop. She was like a desert wanderer who has come upon an oasis; she threw the whole of herself into the flowing, silvery strains of Mozart, as though they might quench her thirst.

  Even when Aubrey’s hands hovered over her shoulders—she felt them there, knew they were trembling—even when he let them come to rest at last, she played on. His touch, ordinary though it was, affected her as profoundly as the notes shimmering unseen around them. She closed her eyes against the emotions welling up from some mysterious inner source, but they consumed her nonetheless.

  Finally, Aubrey reached down and caught her wrists gently in his hands, lifting them from the keys. Silencing the storm of music. With uncommon grace, he turned Susannah around and drew her to her feet, and she found herself standing so close to him that she imagined she heard the faint echo of his heartbeat.

  “What are you doing to me, Susannah?”

  She stared at him. What was she doing to him? “I’m sorry,” she managed, “if the music disturbed you. I was merely—” Only then did she realize that he was holding her wrists again. Or had he ever let them go in the first place?

  His eyes seemed haunted, and the flickering gaslights threw shadows across the planes of his face. Beneath the callused pads of his thumbs, her pulse raced, betraying far more than she wanted him to know. “Susannah,” he said.

  She held his gaze, and it took all her courage not to look away, not to flee the room, for it was in those moments that she first knew she loved Aubrey Fairgrieve as she would never love another man. She had never cared so deeply for anyone before, had never even imagined such powerful emotions as the ones that seized her then, and that was cause for mourning as well as celebration. Aubrey would not, could not return her devotion in equal measure; he had already made that abundantly clear. Furthermore, in a strange way, he still belonged to Julia, in her mind at least.

  “Let me go,” she whispered. It was a plea.

  He released his hold on her, but she did not retreat. “Marry me, Susannah,” he said.

  She wanted nothing so much as to be his wife, but she shook her head. Somewhere she found the courage to say it. “I can’t. You were my best friend’s husband.”

  “Julia is dead. We’re not. It’s as simple—and as complicated—as that. Are we to live as though we’d been buried with her?”

  She knew he was right. Knew that Julia, even in her troubled state, would not have begrudged her Aubrey’s attentions now, when she was gone, might even have encouraged the match, for Victoria’s sake. She drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I don’t think she’d want that,” she allowed. “But there is the matter of love.” It was like leaping off a high cliff into shallow waters, saying the words she had to say. “Do you love me, Aubrey?”

  He was silent for a long time, while she hung suspended between despair and hope. Then, at last, he sighed. “No,” he said. “But I do care for you, Susannah. And God knows, I want you.”

  She wanted him, too. Desperately. But not at the expense of her self-respect, of her dreams, and she was sensible enough, even in her relative naäveté, to know that once his desire had been appeased, she would no longer interest him quite so much. Loving him could only destroy her in the end, unless he loved her in return, for he would be sure to stray. Many women were willing to share their husbands with mistresses, or at least resigned to their situations, but Susannah wanted complete fidelity, utter devotion. Would settle for nothing less.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and slipped around him to hurry toward the doorway.

  He made no move to stop her.

  Morning brought more snow and more piano students, all of them male. Every time Susannah crossed paths with Maisie, who was busy opening the longneglected ballroom for the impending party, the other woman looked at her, shook her head, and cackled with amusement. Susannah, still shaken by her encounter with Aubrey the night before in the music room, was distracted and a little irritable. She did not want to love the man—it was inconvenient, to say the least—but she seemed to have no real choice in the matter. He filled her thoughts and senses and made concentration difficult, if not impossible.

  She was overseeing the last lesson of the day when the moment she had dreaded was upon her. Aubrey arrived home unexpectedly and strode into the room, jawline set, eyes glittering. Here was another sort of passion, quite different from what he had displayed the night before.

  Zacharias, back for another session, ceased belaboring the keys and looked up at Aubrey with a goldtoothed grin. “Well, howdy, Fairgrieve,” he said affably.

  “Zach,” Aubrey responded, but he was still glaring at Susannah.

  “Mr. Zacharias was just having his piano lesson,” Susannah said, straightening her spine and raising her chin a notch.

  “So I see,” Aubrey said.

  The old man rose from the piano stool and stood between them. “Now, Aubrey, I hope you ain’t plannin’ to be cussed about this. Nothin’ improper about it. Nothin’ at all.”

  Aubrey raised one eyebrow and, in that simple motion, gave the lie to his own words. “Did I say there was?” His tone was dry, and his gaze was still fastened to Susannah’s face. A tiny muscle in his right cheek twitched once, twice.

  Zacharias remained good-natured. He pressed payment into Susannah’s palm and spoke reassuringly. “If’n this h
ere feller gets testy about your havin’ callers, you can give all your lessons over to my place,” he said. “I got a good pianny, like I told you.”

  “Thank you,” Susannah answered, although her gaze was still locked with Aubrey’s. She dropped the coin into the pocket of her skirt and flinched slightly when she heard the parlor door swing shut behind her first and favorite pupil.

  “That old coot doesn’t give a damn about playing the piano,” Aubrey said. “He’s looking for a wife, like practically every other man in Seattle.”

  Susannah folded her arms. “I’m perfectly well aware of that,” she replied. Victoria, sitting nearby on a blanket, propped up with pillows, cooed charmingly and held out her arms to her father. He bent to scoop her up, but the look he had fixed on Susannah was no friendlier than before.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  She sighed. “As of today, I have seven regular students. All of them are yearning for the company of a woman …”

  Color suffused Aubrey’s neck above his starched white collar. “What, precisely, are you selling?”

  Susannah might have struck him if he hadn’t been holding the child. “I am teaching music,” she said. “Naturally, I expect to be paid for my services.”

  “Well, I won’t tolerate it. Not under this roof.” He didn’t raise his voice, but something in his manner alarmed the baby a little; she looked into his face with wide eyes and thrust half of one tiny fist into her mouth.

  “Fine,” Susannah said, making her voice cheerful for Victoria’s sake. There seemed no point in reminding him that he’d already given her permission to teach music using his piano. “You heard Mr. Zacharias. I shall simply set up my studio at his house.” She watched with grudging admiration while Aubrey, seeing his daughter’s distress, forcibly calmed himself. He bent and set the child back on her blanket, making sure the cushions held her upright.