A Summer Affair

by Susan Wiggs

  “Tell us what London is like,” June Li said. “I have always wanted to visit London.”

  Isabel fixed a rapturous expression on her face. The London she knew was a squalid hole where even the decent had to steal to survive. But she happily described the London of her imagination. She used to conjure up a better life for herself in such detail that she felt absolutely certain she’d seen the splendor of Hyde Park with its glass pleasure dome, the ancient wonders displayed in the natural history museum, the art treasures of the Queen’s Gallery. She convinced even herself that she’d come of age while shooting the bridges of the Thames in famous company, that she’d attended soirees that lasted until dawn.

  She used to think money and mannerly ways were the keys to perfect happiness. After escaping the workhouse, Isabel had reinvented herself entirely. Lying about her background, she’d managed to find a post as a companion for Lady Cornelia Quiller-Plowden. While in her service, she had helped herself to a number of invisible assets. Like the boldest of thieves, she’d appropriated a well-born lady’s refined way of speaking and moving and holding herself, of tilting her head this way or that to indicate interest, amusement, fascination—any number of socially useful responses. She studied the customs of the gentry, imitating their speech and mannerisms until she was no longer imitating, but had adopted the habits as her own. She learned to speak, eat, ride and shoot as though to the manner born. She appropriated every subtlety of phrase and movement a young lady of status might exhibit. When she was confident of her acquired breeding, she reinvented herself. She was Isabel Fish-Wooten, lady adventurer.

  Her first adventure had been a voyage to the Greek isles, and she’d been so successful in persuading her fellow travelers of her new identity that she had simply gone on from there, aboard trains and boats and coaches, visiting places most people only ever read about. She traveled so far and for so long that often she forgot her shameful roots and the deception she constantly practiced.

  What a jolly lot these women were, truly interested in anything Isabel had to say, and guileless enough to believe her. Oh, she was enjoying her stay here. Often she grew restless after a week or two in one location, but she had not the slightest inclination to leave this place. After all, it wasn’t every day she had the opportunity to live in a mansion with people who wore shoes and spoke properly. She had not had such excellent accommodations or such merry company in ages.

  The last time was the previous summer, soon after her arrival in America. She’d stayed at legendary Moon Lake Lodge in the Hudson Valley. She could have remained there indefinitely, but the women who ran the place did not seem interested in becoming millionaires, and that was the goal Isabel had set for herself.

  “A millionaire, is it?” said Bernadette, clearly taking Isabel’s goal seriously. “Like Mr. Carnegie or that poor Mr. Hepler with his railroad fortune. He built a castle by the sea for his wife, though the poor creature died without ever seeing it finished.”

  “I don’t imagine I’ll be building anything,” said Isabel. “I never stay in one place long enough.” But what would it be like, she wondered, to be the kind of woman a man would build a castle for?

  “Why not?” Delta asked.

  “I’ve always had a strict personal rule—I never stay in a place longer than one season.”

  “Faith, and why would you have a rule like that?” Bernadette asked.

  She hesitated, then settled for a partial truth. “There’s too much of the world to see. How could I be content to stay in one place when I’ve not seen it all?”

  “You can never see it all,” Mrs. Li pointed out. “No one can.”

  Isabel acknowledged this with a nod. “Perhaps one day I’ll find a place to settle. I’ve heard that Honolulu is a paradise beyond imagining. And the season never changes there, so perhaps I’d never feel compelled to leave.” She frowned and shifted in her chair. Delta said the itchiness of her wound was a normal stage of healing. “But then again, perhaps I’ll move on from there. I don’t know how a person can tell whether or not she’s found her proper home.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Delta declared stoutly. “I done enough traveling to last me a lifetime.”

  “Delta used to be a slave on a cotton plantation, long ago,” said June Li.

  Isabel studied Delta’s broad, ageless face, the capable hands that could change a bandage with deftness and delicacy. She tried to picture her bent over in a field, working beneath the watchful eye of a man armed with a vicious lash. Surely there was no hell worse than being owned. “How awful for you.” She hesitated, remembering Daisy, a former slave who lived at Moon Lake Lodge. She was a deeply sorrowful but powerful woman. “I confess I’m ablaze with curiosity.”

  “Sure you are, honey. I tell anybody who’ll listen, so folks don’t ever forget.” Delta studied the mahjong board in front of her, but a certain distance glazed her dark eyes with memories the others could only guess at. “I was born at a place called Royal Oaks in Natchez, Mississippi. Prettiest house you ever did see, tall white columns, trees all draped in moss, flower gardens everywhere. Fact was, the Beasleys didn’t beat us or starve us. But no matter how folks treat you, you don’t have your own self, and that’s the only thing a body ever really needs in this life. Your own self. I knew that from first I can remember. It was like I was holding my breath for fifteen years.”

  “And after fifteen years?”

  “My mama died birthing a baby. I was there, along with the granny woman. We worked a day and a night to save them, but they both died.” She spoke in a low, solemn voice, yet nothing could soften the heartbreak she must have felt, a young girl losing her mother in such a terrible manner.

  “Soon as we buried my mama and little sister,” said Delta, “I waited until everyone was asleep. Then I just plain walked away.”

  “Did no one try to stop you?”

  She offered a taut smile. “Honey, everyone tried to stop me—the overseer, the bloodhounds, the neighbors on horseback, the local militia, bounty hunters and slave catchers who swore they’d bring me back alive.”

  “There was even a song about her,” Bernadette said. “‘The Ballad of Delta Beasley.’ That’s how the story was passed among slaves everywhere. Shall I sing it for you?”

  “Maybe another time.” Isabel wanted to hear the actual story, not the legend. She was fascinated.

  “The real reason they didn’t find me is I became a soldier in the Union Army. Joined the Seventeenth Flying Ambulance Unit, and that’s where I learned nursing. By the time they figured out I was a woman, they needed me too bad to let me go.”

  “So you met Dr. Calhoun in the army.” Isabel was enjoying this immensely. She wanted to know everything about Dr. Calhoun, the people he cared about, the past that lived inside him. And she was coming to understand that Delta Beasley was an important part of that past.

  “I did, but he wasn’t a doctor yet. Just a scared young soldier bleeding to death on a muddy battlefield.”

  “So you saved him.”

  “The Lord Almighty himself gets the praise for that. But I nursed that boy through a bullet wound and an infection, and he never forgot it. When the war ended, he married his sweetheart and became a doctor. Hired me on as his nurse and we’ve been together ever since. We set up a fine practice right here, but he was restless, even after the baby came. We did another turn in the army together, out on the frontier.” She winced at an unspoken memory.

  An intriguing notion occurred to Isabel. “So you knew him before—” She stopped. There was no delicate way to put it.

  She studied the other women gathered around the gaming table and realized she didn’t have to finish. They all understood what she meant. Blue Calhoun’s life was divided into two segments, before and after. Everyone knew what the dividing line was.

  “Yes, honey, that’s a fact,” said Delta, lining up her next tile with surgical precision. “I did know him before.”

  So Isabel wasn’t the only one who had not
iced. She probably wasn’t the only one half in love with him, either. “How did it happen?” she asked. “How did she die?”

  “He took a post at a fort in Wyoming,” Delta said, her face softening with memories. “Most folks think Indians mean nothing but trouble, but out at Fort Carrington, we hardly had any trouble at all. Except that once.” The softness in her face turned to grief. “Miz Calhoun and Lucas were visiting the tribe and something went wrong. Efrena could tell you more, if she had a mind to talk about it.”

  “Efrena was there?”

  “Uh-huh. I was inside the fort. Heard the gunfire. Next thing I heard, Miz Calhoun was shot.”

  Isabel remembered her terror the night of the shooting. She could only imagine what Sancha Calhoun had felt in the midst of a battle. “Heavens,” she said. “And Lucas was there?”

  “He wasn’t but five years old. Pray to Jesus he doesn’t remember the incident.”

  It was entirely possible to remember an event from that age. Isabel had a clear memory of being abandoned at a workhouse when she was tiny. But she said nothing.

  “Turns out she was killed by a U.S. Army bullet,” Delta said. “We worked for hours to save her but…” She didn’t finish. “Anyway. He wasn’t always like this.”

  When he appeared in the doorway and walked into the room, his coattails wafting out behind him with the swiftness of his stride, Isabel wondered how much he’d heard.

  “Like what?” he demanded, his gaze thundering at Delta.

  “Like a bear that ain’t had a bite to eat in three seasons,” Delta said, unfazed by his temper as she discarded a tile.

  Bernadette swallowed a giggle, ducking her head as she pushed away from the table and stood up.

  Dr. Calhoun glared at her. “You ladies will have to excuse us. Miss Fish-Wooten is far too weak to be playing at parlor games.”

  June Li swept the tiles and racks into their bamboo box.

  “I was winning,” Isabel informed him, trying to read his expression as he sent the five of them scuttling like hens. “I had four Kongs and a pair. I believe that’s called Heavenly Joy.”

  He didn’t respond, but waited in icy silence until the door shut. She had never seen him quite like this. There was a new edge to his anger. Something deep in his eyes. A flicker of hurt, she thought.

  This business of being in love was new and not altogether pleasant, she decided. It bothered her to see him hurting and angry, and to know somehow, even before he spoke, that she was the cause.

  “Tell me one more time you didn’t shoot Officer Brolin.”

  “I didn’t shoot Officer Brolin.”

  “Now tell me why I should believe you.”

  “Tell me why you don’t.”

  “There was a witness after all. He claims that the person who shot the officer was a woman.”

  She relaxed gingerly on the bank of pillows propped against the back of her chair. “Well, that’s a relief. Now you know it wasn’t me.”

  “Weren’t you listening?”

  “Weren’t you thinking? Perhaps you’ve forgotten, but I certainly haven’t. I was dressed as a boy that night. You thought I was a lad right up until you tore my shirt off.”

  She tried not to smirk as he paused to consider this. His face changed, the edges easing just the slightest bit.

  “Who is this sterling witness?” she asked.

  “A former army officer.”

  “That’s what he formerly was. What is he now?” She held up a hand. “You needn’t explain. There is really only one type of war veteran who can be found lurking around the Barbary Coast at that time of night.” She leveled a steady glare at him. “I am not your shooter, Doctor. You know that. You know that better than ever now.”

  Sixteen

  Blue cursed himself for forgetting her disguise. He’d have to question Skinner again. Had he known the person in old trousers and battered jacket was a female?

  Stone-cold sober, Blue had not recognized her as a woman. Stirred from drunken slumber, Skinner wouldn’t have, either. He had seen something—someone—else. Blue was surprised by how much he wanted for that to be the case. He made up his mind to seek Rory’s opinion on the situation, and to get his friend to test Skinner’s weapon. But in the meantime, Blue was still stuck with his unwanted houseguest.

  “Why were you abroad at that hour, impersonating a man?” he demanded.

  “Because it’s entirely improper for a lady to go abroad at that hour.”

  He glared down at Miss Fish-Wooten. She still glowed with an elevated temperature, but he could tell by looking at her that she was not burning with the lethal brightness that signaled an infection at its peak. As usual, the combs he’d given her ornamented her hair. The dark brown curls gleamed almost as luminously as her eyes. Her lips were wide and moist, and he caught himself bending closer, drawn by a force he was trying not to acknowledge.

  He caught himself just in time and did the only thing he could think to do. Taking out his stethoscope, he listened to her heart and lungs, finding her pulse normal and her lungs clear.

  She smelled of floral soap. He wasn’t supposed to notice that. Her wrist was slender, her skin as fragile and soft as gossamer. He wasn’t supposed to notice that, either.

  He dropped her wrist and scowled at her. “You’re doing much better.”

  “And you’re so very happy about that.”

  “It means I’m doing my job.”

  “As am I. Why don’t you like me, Dr. Calhoun?”

  He barked out a rusty laugh. “Oh, let me count the ways.”

  “I’m not the gunman, and well you know it.”

  “According to your story, you are an innocent victim who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, dressed as a boy and armed to the teeth.”

  She clasped her hands. “Exactly. It’s about time you got your facts correct.”

  “Even if you were not a part of the mayhem, Miss Fish-Wooten, you are most definitely hiding something. I neither like nor trust you, and I shall use all my skill as a doctor to insure a fast recovery so you can leave. For good.”

  “Believe me, Miss Fish-Wooten,” said a familiar, teasing and wholly unwelcome voice from the doorway, “my brother is not always this charming. Sometimes he’s even more obnoxious.”

  Suppressing an inward groan, Blue put away his stethoscope and turned to greet his sister. “Belinda. Still sneaking around, listening at doorways.”

  As imposing as an anointed queen, she sailed past him in a silken swish of skirts. Blue’s sister could never be called a great beauty, but her presence was so commanding, her wit so sharp, that no one seemed to notice that she was not absolutely stunning.

  “How do you do?” she said to Isabel. “I am Belinda Calhoun, this disagreeable man’s spinster sister.”

  Though she liked to call herself a spinster, Belinda hardly resembled the prune-on-the-shelf the designation suggested. The fact was, although she was well past marrying age, her dramatic presence was matched only by her fiercely independent streak. Over the years, dozens of suitors had learned it was a terrible mistake to declare one’s feelings, for she scorned them all.

  Blue could think of only one man who had not succumbed entirely to his sister. But Rory McKnight would suffer savage torture before calling himself her suitor.

  “How do you do? I am Isabel Fish-Wooten. Also a spinster.” They beamed at one another, friends already. “How completely interesting,” she added, “to find that the good doctor has a sister.”

  “Sisters,” Belinda corrected. “You’ll meet Amanda later.” She strode about the room, clearly intrigued by the fact that Blue’s uninvited guest occupied Sancha’s domain. “My family has long since despaired of seeing me married off,” Belinda confessed. “Have yours given up on you?”

  Blue waited for her answer, listening while pretending not to.

  “Oh, yes,” she assured Belinda. “They gave up on me long, long ago.”

  Belinda aimed a teasing look at Bl
ue. “Men are such dull creatures, are they not? I’d sooner watch moss grow on a barn roof as endure a courtship.”

  Miss Fish-Wooten laughed. “I think we’re going to be fast friends.”

  Belinda said, “I think so, too. What a pity we can only stay a short while. We’ve come to the city for the annual Benevolent Aid Society Ball. It’s a charity event to raise funds for the Rescue League. Then I must go home to Cielito while the rest of my family sets out on a voyage with my uncle Ryan and aunt Dora.”

  “A voyage,” said Miss Fish-Wooten, clasping her hands together.

  Blue had never known a woman whose eyes shone quite so brightly. He turned away, pretending to ignore the conversation.

  “How lucky you are,” said Miss Fish-Wooten. “I adore travel.”

  “I don’t,” said Belinda. “It’s just as well, anyway. Someone has to look after the family business while the rest are away.” She leaned toward the mirror over Sancha’s vanity table and patted her yellow hair. “We’re all staying at the Excelsior Hotel, but I’m certain we’ll spend plenty of time right here with my dear brother. Beginning with supper tonight. I understand you’ve suffered an injury, but I hope you’ll feel well enough to come to supper with the entire Calhoun family.”

  Blue was horrified. “Absolutely not.”

  “I’d love to,” said Miss Fish-Wooten, ignoring him. “I’ve been confined to this room for days on end, taking my meals on a tray. I should be honored to join you.”

  “It’s a perfect fit. I just knew it would be.” Belinda beamed like a fairy godmother. She and her younger half sister, Amanda, had helped Isabel to dress in a somewhat outdated gown of a plain but good-quality blue serge, a chemise of white batiste and a petticoat with a satin hem. They’d brought in June Li to make the necessary alterations, and the girl’s flashing needle and clever eye for design had tailored the dress into a proper gown for dinner.

  “This belonged to his late wife, didn’t it?” Isabel said, feeling a now-familiar tingle of apprehension as Amanda fastened a row of sleeve buttons from elbow to wrist.