Yankee Wife

by Linda Lael Miller

  Lydia was beginning to gather her composure. The nightmare was at bay, for the time being at least, and the alcohol had warmed her blood, but in another way she was more frightened than ever. Mr. Quade's distant comfort was quite as intoxicating as opium; she realized she could come to need that comfort to live, the way she needed water and air and food.

  She set the brandy down with a shaking hand, pushed back her chair and bolted. In the doorway she turned back, watching as Mr. Quade rose slowly, gracefully to his feet.

  “Lydia,” he said, and that was all. Just her name. And yet she felt as though he had somehow reached out and caressed her; her blood thundered in the pulse points behind her ears and at the base of her throat.

  She shook her head, somewhat wildly, backing away.

  Mr. Quade did not pursue her when she fled the room.

  In the morning, Lydia awakened to a room full of summer sunshine, feeling abjectly foolish. The first thing she remembered was Brigham's handsome face, close to hers, when he'd crouched beside her chair in the dining room the night before. Looking back, she had the strange feeling that he would have listened to every ugly memory she had, and she felt a peculiar ache in her heart. Few people were strong enough to bear the true realities of war, even secondhand, and because of that, she still carried much of the burden.

  She jumped out of bed, having long since learned that action was the only remedy for melancholy thoughts, and put on one of the dresses she'd purchased in San Francisco. She looked sensibly pretty in the gray gown lined with faint pink stripes, she decided, as she unbraided her heavy hair, brushed it, and arranged the tresses in a loose knot at the back of her head. The narrow trim of lace around the cuffs and high collar of the dress added just the right touch of femininity.

  The house was very quiet when Lydia descended the stairs, and when she passed the long-case clock in the entryway, she was chagrined. It was nearly ten o'clock; Devon and Brigham had probably been about their business for hours, and there was no sign of the children, Polly, or Aunt Persephone.

  Worst of all, Lydia thought, with wry grimness, she'd missed breakfast. She'd never get these jutting bones of hers covered with womanly flesh if she didn't catch up on all the eating she'd missed in recent years.

  In the kitchen, Lydia found cold toast and eggs. She brought a plate from one of the shelves and ate, aware of the many times, during the war and after, when she would have felt dizzying gratitude for such a feast.

  Immediately after, she washed her plate and silverware. There was a cracked mirror on the wall above the pump handle, and she looked quickly to make sure she was presentable. Then Lydia hurried outside.

  The land seemed determined to redeem itself, following yesterday's rainstorm. The dense and seemingly endless multitude of trees was rich green, and the sky was a powdery shade of blue. The waters lapping at the shore reflected the heavens, seeming to harbor the light of sleeping stars in their depths, and towering mountains beyond jutted upward, rugged and heavily traced with snow.

  Lydia, who had left the house by a rear door, stood stricken on a rock walkway, staring, wondering how even a rain as fervent as yesterday's could have shrouded such beauty. It was as though God had taken a deep breath, pushed up His sleeves, and made a new Eden here, a glittering emerald of a place trimmed in the sapphire of water and sky.

  She felt as though her soul had gone soaring like some great bird, out beyond the chain of mountains. A rustling sound high in a nearby cedar tree brought her back with disturbing abruptness.

  “Excuse me,” Millie said, from somewhere in the dew-moistened leaves above, “but I wonder if you couldn't help me down, Miss McQuire? I seem to have gotten stuck.”

  Lydia calculated the distance between the treetop and the flagstone path and raised the fingers of one hand to her mouth. “Hold on very tightly,” she said, when she could manage to speak, and then she proceeded toward the tree.

  “Millicent can climb like a monkey,” a masculine voice said from behind Lydia, just as she would have hoisted her skirts and started up through the fragrant branches. She turned and saw Devon standing beside her, the sun glinting in his fair hair. “She probably intended to lure you up there and then leave you until there was no danger of being forced to work out a sum or diagram a sentence.” He moved to stand beside Lydia, looking up, his powerful arms folded, a wry twist to his mouth. “Isn't that so, Millie?”

  A defeated sigh drifted down to them, followed by an industrious rustle of leaves and motion of limbs. Small black slippers appeared first, and then the skirt of a blue calico dress. “You'd think it was a crime to have fun in this place,” Millicent complained, bringing a smile to Lydia's lips. “I declare, Uncle Devon, you're getting to be every bit as dour as Papa.”

  Devon tried to look stern, and held up his arms to receive his adventurous little niece as she made a heart-stopping leap from a perch on a branch three feet above his head. “Impossible,” he said, giving the child a brief hug before he set her on his feet and rested his hands on his hips. “Now, no more tricks, Millie-Willie. You want Miss McQuire for a friend, don't you?”

  Millie smoothed her hair, which was filled with leaves and twigs, giving her the impish charm of a wood fairy. “Charlotte says it's impossible to like one's governess.”

  Devon touched the tip of his niece's nose. “Since when do you listen to Charlotte?”

  Millie shrugged one shoulder, evidently willing to concede the point, and reached out for Lydia's hand. Her small, grubby fingers were remarkably strong. “Come along, then,” she said, with cheerful resignation. “I'll show you Quade's Harbor, what there is to see of it, at least.” With that, Millicent started down the brick driveway, pulling a beleaguered Lydia behind her.

  4

  WHO LIVES IN THESE HOUSES?” LYDIA ASKED. SHE AND Millie were standing side by side in the muddy street, their backs to the glorious, sun-splashed waters of the Sound. The pretty row of six saltboxes, with their tidily painted white trim, and walls of blue, pale yellow, or gray, stood stolidly in the aftermath of the storm.

  “No one, really,” Millie replied, sounding disinterested. “Papa had them built for families, but so far no one has come except for bachelors. They live in the camps up on the mountain.”

  Lydia felt sad. Such fine houses should have flowers growing in their yards and smoke curling from their chimneys and children climbing the maple and elm trees planted out front. Devon had been right, the community needed nothing so much as women. With female residents would come schools and churches and, eventually, lending libraries and hospitals.

  She thought of all the disappointed spinsters and lonely widows back in the East and guessed that few of them would be willing to brave the hardships of the journey west. Despite this dismal conclusion, a sense of wild elation stirred within Lydia, a hope she had not known since before the war.

  She took an involuntary step toward the white picket fence lining the street, her hands closing around two of the pointed staves.

  Millie tugged firmly at Lydia's skirt. “Come along, then, and I'll show you where Papa works when he isn't cutting timber. I vow you've never seen anything like it.”

  Lydia smiled and let the child lead her toward a nearby cove, where an ocean of tree trunks rolled and bobbed on the water. Even as they approached, a roar filled the air and an enormous tree thundered down a flume on the side of the mountain. At the bottom men were waiting with large poles to maneuver the unprocessed lumber into the logjam in the Sound.

  Lydia stopped to shade her eyes from the bright sunshine and watched as another log coursed noisily down the flume. Men shouted and mules brayed and the whistling screech of a mill blade pierced the sawdust-and-salt-scented air. Again she felt a surge of excitement and wonder, a sense of being a part of some grand scheme.

  “There's Papa's office,” Millie said, pointing out the strangest structure Lydia had ever seen. The shack was carved right out of a giant tree trunk, at least twelve feet in diameter, with its roots st
ill reaching into the ground like determined brown fingers. The roof was of weathered shingles, and there was a single narrow, rusted chimney pipe. One set-in window gave the place an impudent appearance, like a rogue winking at a lady.

  Lydia was delighted. The tree-stump house looked like something from a storybook, a place where a talking rabbit or wood rat might live.

  She was just standing there, enjoying the novelty of her thoughts, when suddenly Brigham strode out through a doorway that had obviously been shaped to accommodate his unusual height. Instantly, his gray eyes swung to Lydia and lingered, unreadable, on her face.

  Finally, he came toward her, no hint of a smile touching his well-shaped, faintly sensuous mouth. “What are you doing here?” he asked, as though Lydia had invaded sacred territory. Then, without giving her a chance to answer, he went on. “This is no place for women and children, Miss McQuire. I will thank you not to bring my daughter here again.”

  A dangerous place. Lydia thought of Gettysburg, and Second Manassas, and she would have laughed if her recollections hadn't been so grim.

  In the next instant, she recalled that Mr. Quade had sold lumber to the southern side as well as the Union, no doubt helping to prolong the conflict and thus the suffering for both Federal and Confederate soldiers. She stiffened, standing her ground only because she sensed that he expected her to turn and flee.

  “Go home, Millicent,” he said, without glancing at his daughter. Brigham's eyes, gray as General Lee's best coat, held Lydia's Union-blue ones fast.

  To Lydia's distress, the child obeyed without question, letting go of her hand and scampering away.

  Lydia swallowed, holding her shoulders so straight they ached. She'd once come face-to-face with a Confederate picket, while seeking a few minutes of peace in the woods near one of the battlegrounds, and even that nervous young sentinel hadn't frightened her the way this man did.

  “How do you expect to bring women and children to this place, the way you treat them?” she somehow found the nerve to inquire.

  Brigham—she wasn't certain when she'd begun to think of him by his given name, but she had—glowered down at her for a long interval, then startled her completely by giving a hoarse shout of laughter. “I thought the Union won because of superior numbers and better supply systems. Now I realize it was because they had you on their side.”

  Lydia flushed, but beneath her anger was a current of quiet pride. “I don't think it's wise to discuss the war, sir,” she said, raising her chin. “It is unlikely that we will ever agree.”

  He raised curved, callused fingers to within an inch of her cheek, as if meaning to caress her, even though his eyes and the set of his jaw were still full of mockery. At the last instant, probably remembering the presence of his men, Brigham let his hand fall back to his side.

  “You're right,” he said gruffly. Despite his conciliatory words, there was an unspoken challenge in his tone and his manner. He seemed to find her amusing, to look upon her with a sort of indulgence, and that was infuriating. “We'll never agree.”

  She suspected that few people, with the exceptions of his aunt and his brother, ever dared to venture an idea contrary to his own. “You should be more open to the opinions of others, Mr. Quade,” she said. “You might learn something.”

  His grin was slow and molten, and the heat of his presence reached deep inside Lydia's being to touch virgin places she'd never been aware of before that moment. “I could say the same thing to you, Miss McQuire,” he replied. “Now, take yourself back to the house, please, and read a book or sew something. I've got work to do.”

  Such a charge of anger went through Lydia that she rose onto the balls of her feet for a moment with the force of it, then she narrowed her eyes and folded her arms. “This is your property and you may certainly order me off it if you wish. However, before I go, I must say that I think you are a pompous and arrogant man, and your attitudes will certainly bring you to grief.”

  Again that lethal, knee-melting smile flashed white in his tanned face. “You are in sore need of taming, Miss McQuire,” he drawled, and even though she knew his words were designed to make her furious, she fell right into the trap.

  “Of all the nerve!”

  He laughed. “As if you lacked for gall,” he scolded mockingly. “Go home and behave yourself.”

  “I will not be dismissed like a child,” Lydia replied evenly, seething. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt such dangerous anger. “I am not your ten-year-old daughter!”

  Brigham's gaze traveled leisurely to the pulse point at the base of her throat, her well-rounded breasts, and then back to her face. “No. You are definitely not my daughter. But I run Quade's Harbor and you will find that it's best to obey me.”

  Lydia could not remain without doing bodily harm to Brigham Quade. So, turning, she lifted the skirts of her pink and gray dress above the mud and marched away, hurling intermittent looks back at him as she went.

  A shout of laughter followed her.

  Millie was waiting behind a blackberry bush, just past the last of the six empty saltbox houses, her eyes wide.

  “I've never heard anybody besides Uncle Devon talk to Papa like that,” the child said, admiration plain in her voice. “If Charlotte or I sassed him that way, we'd probably have to sit in our room for a week.”

  Lydia smiled, even though Brigham had thoroughly ignited her temper. Until she'd met him, she thought she'd never be truly angry again, and the emotion thrummed painfully beneath the veneer of numbness she'd so carefully cultivated. “You're a child, Millie,” she said, in a remarkably normal tone. “It is fitting that you and Charlotte should speak respectfully to your father.” Even if he is an insufferable ass, she added to herself.

  Millie looked up at her in honest question. “Don't you have to speak respectfully, too? Uncle Devon does, and so does Aunt Persephone.”

  Lydia automatically took Millie's hand. She'd developed a strong affection for the child already, and hoped she would somehow be able to find common ground with Charlotte as well. “I don't think I was impolite,” Lydia pointed out, and she supposed she sounded a little defensive. Brigham had ordered her back to the house, and for that very reason she would have gone to China to avoid the place. “What else is there to see in Quade's Harbor?” she asked.

  “Uncle Devon's building a mercantile,” Millie replied excitedly, her eyes shining. “He promised to have hair ribbons and peppermint sticks and storybooks. All Papa sells at the company store is dried beans and long underwear and those boots with spikes on the bottom.”

  “Pretty dull fare,” Lydia agreed.

  Millie pointed to a fenced cemetery, high on a green knoll. “There was an Indian fight right there, when Charlotte was three years old and I was just about to be born. Mama and Papa lived in a cabin, behind where the big house is now, and Papa hid Mama and Charlotte under the floor until the fighting was over. Uncle Devon has a scar on his right shoulder, where an arrow hit him.”

  Lydia wondered if Millie was making up the story, until she looked down into the child's sad, earnest face. “Aunt Persephone says Mama never got over the terror of that day. She just walked and walked alongside the water. Charlotte says Mama wanted a ship to come and take her away from here forever.”

  They rounded the base of the knoll and came to the skeleton of a building formed of newly planed lumber. Between the boards, the blue water of the harbor was visible, sparkling in the bright light of morning, and Devon straddled the high center beam, shirtless, his legs dangling.

  Lydia looked around for Polly, but there was no sign of her.

  Devon grinned down at the pair. “Hello,” he called good-naturedly, and again Lydia felt a pang. If she'd sat down at God's elbow and designed a husband for herself—provided she'd wanted a mate in the first place, of course, which she most certainly didn't—the end result might well have been Devon Quade. He was gentle and industrious, and it would probably never occur to him to boss people around the way his
brother did. Nor, she reflected, would he have been so coldly avaricious as to sell timber to each of two warring armies.

  Millie waved and called back exuberantly, “Hello!”

  Lydia seldom indulged in self-pity, at least not for more than a few moments at a time, but as she watched Devon climb nimbly down a support beam and stride toward them, she had grave doubts about her lot in life. It seemed to her then that happiness was something meant only for others.

  “Smile,” Devon said, shrugging into his shirt and then touching her chin with brotherly affection. “Have I brought you to such a bad place as all that?”

  She swallowed. Quade's Harbor could never be described in such a way; it was too beautiful, a living poem from the pen of God Himself. “No,” she said, lips trembling with the effort. “Where is Polly?”

  Before Devon could answer her question, Millie sniffed and said, “Probably still lying in bed, like Charlotte.”

  Lydia looked down at the child and spoke with gentle disapproval. “Millicent, that was a very unkind remark.”

  Millie's chin was set at an obstinate angle, making her look more like Brigham than ever. “It's the truth.”

  Devon's expression was somewhat sheepish. “Polly is…delicate,” he said.

  “See?” Millie challenged, her lower lip jutting slightly. This gesture, when coupled with the little girl's likeness to Brigham, was comical. Just imagining the imperious Mr. Quade making such a face brought a peal of laughter swelling into Lydia's throat.

  “And what of Charlotte?” Lydia asked, trying to hide her amusement. “Is she delicate, too?”

  Millie gave a snort. “No. Charlotte is just lazy. And she likes to stay up late, reading about ships and pirates and magical kingdoms. Sometimes she walks around for days, sighing a great deal and pretending she's a princess. When she read about Robin Hood, she was Maid Marian for a solid month!”