While plausible since no life had been lost in the fire, it did seem too grim a time to be having a party.
He swallowed hard. Being in the city was distasteful enough without being subjected to a bunch of women congregated in a small room fawning over a baby. He nearly marched right back to his carriage.
But he did want to ask about Virginia, at least to see how she was doing after her great loss. So when the door opened—after a second knock—he squared his shoulders and asked to see John.
The girl who received the question was dressed in an ill-fitting cotton gown, one that was obviously meant for someone a good deal older than this person’s perhaps dozen years. Nonetheless both the gown and she were clean, hair neatly brushed and gathered with a matching ribbon.
“Oh, Mr. Turnbridge hasn’t come home yet. But I can tell him you visited if you like.”
“I am also a Mr. Turnbridge, the brother of the owner of this home. I’ll wait. Will you let Mrs. Turnbridge know that I’m here?”
“Thank you, Mossie,” said a voice from the staircase that ended not three feet from the front door. “I’ll let Mrs. Turnbridge know her brother-in-law has arrived.”
Paul looked at the woman on the stairs with some relief, though he was surprised at the quality of her clothing. If she was a servant, she dressed extraordinarily well even for a housekeeper. She finished her descent, crossed the few steps between them, then greeted him with what he could only call a stiff smile.
“Good afternoon … Paul. Sarah is upstairs resting with the baby, but John should be home soon. I’m afraid there aren’t many quiet places to be found around here, except perhaps John’s office. I’m sure you know the way … don’t you?”
What was this? Paul? Sarah? John? Who was this housekeeper, that she would address the family with such familiarity—even if she had said his name with a definite edge of awkwardness?
She led the way he barely remembered, not having visited his brother’s house since John had purchased it shortly after his marriage to Sarah some three years ago. He passed by the archway connecting the parlor to the foyer, seeing a few girls as the fountain from which the majority of the house noise originated.
John’s office was at the back of the house, opposite the kitchen and behind the dining room. It was, as this woman had suggested, somewhat quieter here, although he could still hear the muffled voices from the parlor and a sporadically opened water pipe from the kitchen. If he wasn’t mistaken, the baby was crying from somewhere above.
He was surprised when the woman closed the door with herself inside the room along with him. Looking at her for the first time, he found a touch of pleasure accompanying his surprise. While he was in no way a philandering man, he was fully human and appreciated the wide eyes, graceful movement, and full lips that blessed this woman with something not far short of absolute beauty.
Then, noticing her hair was the exact color of the woman he’d married the previous spring, he felt his heart lurch and his jaw drop. “You—you’re Virginia?”
Her brows lifted, first in surprise he guessed, then with a slight dip of disappointment and perhaps even a bit of hurt. He couldn’t blame her there. After all, it wasn’t often that a man didn’t recognize his own wife.
“As you can tell by the number of houseguests, your brother was kind enough to take in a number of us after the fire two days ago.”
Reflexively he stepped closer, taking her hand in his as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And wasn’t it? Shouldn’t it be?
“I’m so sorry to hear of your loss, Virginia,” he said softly. His heart swelled with compassion as other words he hadn’t quite expected came to his tongue. “It’s been quite a year for you, hasn’t it? First losing your father, forced to comply with a will you obviously would have contested if possible, and now losing both your home and business. I’m sorry. Truly sorry.”
When she raised her eyes, he might have been alarmed to see tears welling at the rims, but it was as if some mysterious force filled him, making him unexpectedly unvexed around this woman who was obviously about to cry. If Mrs. Higgins could see him now, as he prepared to gather up this woman for a good cry on his shoulder, she would likely accuse him of having lost the wits that usually restrained him.
Chapter 8
Virginia could hardly believe she was being held in a man’s arms, a handsome man’s arms—and incredibly, this man comforting her was her husband! Some weak voice in the back of her mind called out a warning, inspired no doubt from years of schooling and attempts at fitting into the social set. You barely know him! He doesn’t know you at all! How can you allow yourself to be so vulnerable when the agreement was clear? He owed her nothing, and she owed him the same.
And yet she couldn’t remember having so little control over her tears. She had cried when her parents died, first her mother then her father. They were quite a bit older than most of the parents she knew from schoolmates or other friends, and so their deaths were neither untimely nor unexpected, especially her father’s. It was, she’d been told by every wise person or pastor who had spoken to her after their funerals, the natural cycle of life. Children bury their parents; it’s only really difficult when it’s the other way around.
But now every corner of her being was filled with grief, not just for the fire and the loss of every single belonging she’d ever owned, every finished and unfinished bonnet. More than that, it was the loss of each irreplaceable photograph she had of her parents, every trinket or letter they’d ever left to her. She found herself immersed in the grief of losing her mother and father all over again. In spite of having been taken in by Sarah, her would-be sister, and her generous husband, Virginia had never felt so utterly alone.
“I–I’m sorry,” she whispered at last, forcing herself to take control of her tears if not her hidden emotions. “I suppose I wasn’t expecting your sympathy, given that we barely know one another. And the circumstances are … well, awkward at best. Scandalous at worst.”
He pulled what appeared to be a freshly cleaned and ironed handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her, offering her his crooked smile as well. “Scandalous? That a man should comfort his wife? Technically speaking, it would only be a scandal if I didn’t.”
Wiping away her tears, she tried to meet his smile with one of her own. “But the nature of our marriage. I’m sure if your Reverend DeWeis knew the details, he’d have refused to let his services be so manipulated. And for purely monetary reasons.”
“You make it sound much less sensible than it was,” he said, leading her to the leather settee that sat along the side of the room. “As I understand it, neither greed nor selfishness had anything to do with it. That cousin of yours, though I don’t know so much as his name, had no right to inherit the shop you and your father built. I suppose your father knew you would feel that way, and guessed you would accept one of no doubt many proposals you’ve received over the years.”
As she took a seat with him on the small sofa, she nearly laughed at his words. Only fear stopped her, fear that he might question her sanity if she went from one emotional extreme to the other. Many proposals, indeed. She was amazed he would say such a thing, particularly the way she must look now with puffy eyes and a red nose.
The quiet between them lengthened, since she had no idea what to say. Perhaps her lack of conversational prowess would speak for itself as to why those proposals hadn’t been forthcoming.
“Do you know how long it will be before they start to rebuild your shop and home?” he asked, filling the silence. “I assume your insurance will cover the expense?”
She nodded, grateful to have something less personal to talk about. “John is meeting yet again with someone from the insurance company this afternoon. I’m surprised he’s so late, but he did say the insurance company was quite busy these days. Evidently it’s a large company, with insured clients from as far as both Chicago and Peshtigo.”
Paul frowned. “Let’s hope it’s large
enough to absorb the losses then. Or that only a small percentage of their other clients were affected by the tragedies that happened in those places, too.”
She hadn’t thought of that, thankful only that John had chosen a company so large it undoubtedly had many customers—and their fees—to cover both their losses.
“And now, I have a question that has plagued me since receiving John’s note earlier today. He says I’m an uncle, and I can only faintly hear the occasional cry from upstairs. But what sort of child did they have? A boy or a girl?”
Paul stared at the sleeping face of the infant in Virginia’s arms. A boy. Elijah Turnbridge. Not for the first time, he envied his little brother even as he rejoiced in the knowledge that the Turnbridge name wouldn’t stop with them.
Virginia had eagerly agreed to retrieve the baby, even though Sarah was still confined to her recovery. He’d waited in the office with the door open, hearing her light footsteps on the stairs. He couldn’t imagine carrying a baby down a flight of stairs, but evidently it didn’t bother his wife. He’d gauged her continued progress down the hall by the ooohs and aaahs of the other houseguests, although who those young women were exactly he had no idea.
“Would you like to hold him?”
“Positively not,” Paul said quickly. Whatever gift he’d received from above to handle her tears a moment ago now abandoned him. A baby was even further outside his realm of comfort than holding a sobbing woman in his arms. “But I’m glad to meet him.”
“I promised Sarah I would bring him right back, although I’m hoping she might take the opportunity to nap. This little guy demands her attention often enough during the night, if last night was any indication.”
She disappeared once again, and suddenly the quiet room felt too empty. A surge of laughter burst from the parlor, and first he hoped they hadn’t awakened the sleeping infant. Then he reminded himself such an intrusion on his thoughts was exactly why he preferred the solitude found on the farm.
Something tugged at his mood with the realization that Virginia had gone to what anyone would call extreme measures to hold on to a business dependent upon city life. She must be happy here, living and working among so many people.
Likely she could never call a place like his quiet solitude home, either.
It was time to remind himself that the kindness he felt toward her could be nothing more than that, even if he had every legal—and spiritual—right to do something silly like fall in love with her. Truth was, anything but their marriage in name only would undoubtedly lead to heartache, with each of them so devoted to different parts of Wisconsin.
Instead of sitting on the settee again, Paul chose to wait on one of the chairs that rested opposite John’s desk for Virginia’s return. Let her have the settee alone; sitting too close might stir the temptation to touch her again, to give whatever comfort he could in case the grief she must be suffering revisited.
But it wasn’t Virginia who opened the door. It was John, and his face was etched in such a deep frown that for a moment he looked older than Paul himself.
“Ah, Paul,” he greeted but barely looked at him. Another sign something was amiss. He laid a file on his desk then tugged at the tie that was already loose. “I’m glad you’ve come.”
“You look tired, young man,” Paul said, watching his brother nearly fall into the chair on the other side of his desk. “Is it the baby keeping you up—congratulations, by the way—or all this mess figuring out how to reclaim the losses? Or that your home has suddenly become a hotel?”
“All of that,” John said, scrubbing his face with his hands. Then he looked at Paul squarely. “And more. It’s the insurance company holding our accounts. Mine, and Virginia’s. The losses in Peshtigo already filed from the fire there have bankrupted them. They’re out of business. Broke.”
Paul leaned forward, his gaze intently settled on his brother. “I was afraid of that when Virginia told me the company had holdings there. What do you plan to do? Is there any other recourse?”
“We can try a few avenues of lawsuits, I suppose. But frankly, there isn’t a thing we can do that’s likely to be successful. Insurance companies are closing all over Wisconsin and Illinois, between the fire up north and in Chicago. The need for help is simply too great for many of them to handle.”
“Surely there is another way to find help. The federal government, Wisconsin itself. The church?”
John leaned on his elbows, his face hanging. “I’ll be all right, in time. I’ll still have my clients, and by the grace of God some of my most important papers were in the safe, which melted a bit but didn’t burn through. Between what I have filed here and what I can salvage, my work will be interrupted, but that’s all. It’s Virginia, Paul. I was the one who recommended to her father which insurance company to use.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“No, but that doesn’t make me feel less guilty.”
“She’s young; she has good business sense, doesn’t she? Ran her own hat shop? She’ll need to rebuild, but like your business, this is only an interruption.”
“An interruption? What kind of interruption?”
Paul wished he’d heard her coming, but he’d been too focused on John to register her soft, feminine footfall. He stood, going to her and leading her back to the settee. He knew he would have to tell her; John looked as though he might crack under the weight of his grief for her.
“The insurance company holding your account has gone bankrupt, Virginia.”
“Bankrupt …” Her voice was little more than a whisper. “Well,” she started, more brightly than the situation demanded, “companies do that sometimes, don’t they? And then sometimes … start again? Is that the kind of interruption you were talking about when I came in? The insurance company’s service will be interrupted, but it’ll start again, won’t it? Just as mine will start again, too.”
Paul started to nod slowly, though he couldn’t force a hopeful glint to his eye, no matter how hard he tried. Then he stopped his insincere nodding and shook his head. “No, Virginia. The insurance company has no money left, and they’ll likely face a long line of suing creditors. I doubt you’ll see a penny of what you were expecting.”
“But—but they can’t do that!” She looked at John at last. “Can they? I’ve paid my premiums. Faithfully, every last one. They signed a contract. Surely they can do … something?”
Like Paul himself, John only shook his head.
If she was going to cry again, Paul was fully prepared to take her back into his arms, even in front of John—who likely wouldn’t expect such a gesture coming from his hermit of a brother. Although one tear did glisten at the corner of Virginia’s eye, it did not dare to fall. The look on her face was too grim for that.
“This is more than just my livelihood. It’s my whole life.”
Paul took both of her hands in his.
“And you’ll have it again. I will pay for the rebuilding myself.”
Chapter 9
If Virginia hadn’t just fought a second wave of tears, perhaps she might have won this third battle. But she felt a few tears roll, hot and wet, all the way down what felt like fever-ridden cheeks. “I cannot accept such an offer, Paul. Not when I already owe you so much.”
“What do you owe me?”
“A favor, at the very least. And at most, that I still own the business—or did until the fire.”
“Then we’re agreed I have a vested interest in the matter. Let me do this.”
Her heart pounded so hard she was afraid it might burst, or crack through the thin casing of her body. As much as she wanted to throw her arms around Paul and offer her eternal gratitude and loyalty, she knew she could not. She’d stretched God’s laws already when it came to this man, and now that she knew him to be both kind and generous, she couldn’t imagine letting him do so much for her.
“The only way I would consider such a thing is if it’s done as a loan.” Her gaze shot to John. “Legally. Papers
and all. I will borrow the money, but Paul must agree to fair terms of repayment.”
Paul and John exchanged what looked like perplexed glances. “Virginia,” John said, “have you forgotten? Paul is your legal husband. His money is already yours. I can’t draw up papers between a man and wife. It’s simply not done, at least not in my office.”
Virginia stood, going to John’s desk. “A blank piece of paper then, please?”
With a lifted shoulder and look of interested capitulation, John glanced first at Paul then handed to her what she’d asked. She reached for the pen, dipped it in the inkwell, and wrote hurriedly yet with determination. Then she handed both the paper and the pen to John.
“If you’ll sign this as witness?”
He read what she’d written. Although her penmanship might be a bit uneven because even now her hands trembled, she knew the meaning was clear enough. Simply stated, it was a declaration of repayment of a yet-to-be-determined amount of money, on loan from Paul Turnbridge and to be reimbursed with no less than 7 percent interest by Virginia Haversack.
To her consternation, John handed it back. “That’s no longer your legal name, Virginia. You can call yourself—and expect others to call you—whatever you like. But Haversack hasn’t been your name for more than five months now.”
Exasperated over such a minor point, she took back the paper, scratched out one name and replaced it with the other. When John received it this second time, he winked. “Welcome to the family.”
Then he tore the paper into pieces.
Paul came up behind his brother, patting him on the back. “Well done, John. Now, is it too late to get things started? Had you a builder in mind once the insurance funds came through?”
The Convenient Bride Collection: 9 Romances Grow from Marriage Partnerships Formed Out of Necessity Page 29