Yankee Wife

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Then Pa came riding home from his preaching, on that old mule that was as mean and stubborn as he was, and he caught me with Nat. He called me a Jezebel and said he never wanted to look on the likes of me again.

  “The next day, I rode out with Nat.” Polly's eyes glistened with tears, and she was silent for a long time. Finally she finished the story. “Nat isn't a good man, but he can love a woman until she's in a fever, and make her do just about anything he wants. He got us passage to San Francisco when it looked like he'd be conscripted to fight for the Union army, and for a while he worked on the docks, but he soon grew weary of that. It seemed like a lark—just an easy, harmless way to make money—when we started duping miners and sailors and others into thinking they'd married me. Now I'd give anything to go back and change it all.”

  Lydia swallowed. “Are you and Mr. Malachi married?” she asked, fearing the worst. Devon might be able to deal with finding out that he was still a bachelor, and not a bridegroom, but bigamy could be more than he could come to terms with.

  Polly gave a soft, bitter laugh. “No, thank God. When I think of how I begged that man for a wedding band…”

  Lydia closed her eyes for a moment, only to feel her relief give way to grim logic. “Will Nat come here, looking for you?”

  “He was drunk when I went to tell him about Devon,” she said. “I'm not sure he heard a word I said.”

  “Suppose he did hear?” Lydia pressed. “Suppose he comes to Quade's Harbor to find you. Imagine what that would do to Devon.”

  Polly covered her face with both hands.

  “There might even be violence,” Lydia went on. “Think how you'd feel, Polly, if something happened to Devon. Think how you would regret not warning him about Nat.”

  Slowly, Polly lowered her hands to her lap. She nodded. “You're right. I'd rather have Devon turn his back on me in contempt than see him hurt. And Nat can be as mean as Pa ever was, if he has a mind to be.” She rose stiffly from her chair. “I'm not a bad person, Lydia,” she said plaintively. “We might have been good friends, you and I.”

  Lydia touched Polly's arm. “We can still be friends,” she said. “You'll see.”

  Polly nodded again and left the room. Lydia undressed to her camisole and drawers and sat by the fire, a kerosene lamp burning at her side, to read. Occasionally she heard voices tumbling down the hallway, male and female and tangled together, but there was no shouting. She was just beginning to hope Devon had heard Polly's story and understood when a nearby door slammed with an explosive crack.

  When Lydia peered into the hallway, unable to resist investigating, she saw the broad expanse of Devon's back as he stormed toward the main staircase. Just the set of his shoulders gave eloquent testimony that the soul of this quiet man brimmed with a rage he could barely contain.

  6

  SOME INNER ALARM MADE BRIGHAM LOOK UP FROM THE paperwork spread over his desk when Devon came down the stairs and passed the study doorway. Even in the shadow-smudged light of the kerosene lamps, Brig could see that his brother's stiff composure was only a brittle shell covering some grievous injury of the spirit. He pushed back his chair and stepped into the entry hall.

  Devon. His only brother, his best friend, his partner. Although the two men never spoke of their affection for each other, Brigham would have suffered almost any sort of pain or privation if it meant sparing Devon.

  “Wait,” Brigham said, reaching the front door just as Devon descended the steps.

  The other man stopped, his backbone stiff, his head tilted slightly backward, as if to look up at the stars. Devon's voice was raw when he spoke, and broken. “I can't talk now, Brig,” he said, without turning around. And then he strode off down the walk, disappearing into the noisy darkness of a summer night.

  It would be no favor to pursue Devon, so Brigham turned to go back into the house.

  Lydia stood in the doorway, a prim corduroy wrapper clutched around her enticing figure, her hair braided into a single thick plait resting against her right shoulder. The light behind her made an aura of flyaway strands, and her blue eyes were wide and worried.

  “Aren't you going after him?”

  Brigham muttered an exclamation better suited to the lumber camps than his front porch, and thrust one hand through his hair. He had the distinct impression Lydia knew something about Devon's trouble that he didn't, and the idea irritated him.

  “No,” he snapped, running his eyes over the length of her sumptuous person with deliberate insolence. “Are you?”

  Even in the thin light making its way through the front windows, he could see her color change. “Why, no—of course not. I was simply concerned.”

  “What's going on here?” Brigham demanded, without trying to couch the words in the slightest courtesy. “Devon is not a temperamental man, and I've never seen him the way he was just now.”

  She lifted her obstinate little chin. “I would be betraying a confidence if I answered that question. You'll have to ask your brother, or Polly.”

  Brigham felt wholly distracted in those moments, and wildly frustrated. All of a sudden his very being seemed to be pulled east from west, one part wanting to go after Devon, another to stay near this woman, always. Along with her fresh-faced good looks and saucy pragmatism, she presented a multitude of intangible mysteries Brig wanted desperately to solve.

  Feeling her soft, strong body buck beneath his in the fevered abandon of pleasure was only the beginning of the things he wanted from her. Beyond that primordial yearning were other needs, for solace, for challenge, for laughter and fury. He should have been thinking about his brother, and instead he was feeling things, things he'd never imagined, let alone experienced.

  The sudden awareness of the track his thoughts were following wrenched Brigham, slammed him hard against a wall of reason. He didn't know this woman. He didn't even particularly like this woman. His brother was wandering in the darkness, bleeding from some wound of the soul. And with all of that, here he stood, his brain full of images too lurid for a dime novel.

  Crickets and frogs sang in the darkness, and he caught the scents of saltwater and pine sap on the night breeze. As always, those things were a comfort to Brig, because his soul had rooted itself in this land crowded with trees and shining with bright waters. He had long since given his heart to the place, in the same way a husband pledged himself to his wife. “Damn it, Lydia,” he said presently, in an effort to redeem himself to his own standards, “if you're keeping back something I need to know to help my brother, I'll never forgive you.”

  She touched her wild, beautiful hair self-consciously. “Good night, Mr. Quade,” she said in stiff tones. Then she turned and marched herself into the house without another word.

  “Good night,” he said tersely, long after Lydia had disappeared and he was alone with the frogs and the crickets.

  The light of the rising sun was dazzling on the water when Polly approached the framework of Devon's building the next morning. He hadn't returned to their f room in the big house the night before, after she'd told him of her deception, and she'd known he would be here.

  Sure enough, Devon had built a small campfire in the clearing beside the beginnings of his mercantile, and he was sitting next to it with his back to a large, porous rock. He sensed her approach, looked at her. The expression in his ink-blue eyes, so full of laughter and love before her confession, was flat, defiant, cold.

  “You're going,” he said, in a voice that had no inflection at all, the words comprising both a statement and a query.

  Polly's throat tightened. She heard her father's voice, in the forefront of her mind, quoting his beloved Bible. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. In this case, the truth had set only Devon free, but she might well remain its prisoner forever.

  “Do you want me to go?” she managed, after a long interval of painful, throbbing silence.

  Devon was watching the sunlight dance upon the water, and though his voice was low, and dir
ected elsewhere, Polly heard his response clearly. “I'll pay your passage back to San Francisco.”

  First her father had made all the decisions about her life, then Nat Malachi, and now Devon. Polly was weary of compliance, but she didn't know exactly what to say. She pretended, just for a moment, that she was Lydia McQuire, who struck her as bold, brave, and decisive.

  “I won't be going to San Francisco,” she said firmly, surprising herself as much as Devon. “Since it's plain that I'm not wanted here, I'll be traveling to Seattle on the next mail boat. Surely I'll be able to find myself a good husband there, since there is such a dire shortage of women.”

  She saw Devon's fists clench at his sides, and knew a moment of sweeping satisfaction. When he shot to his feet, she was both frightened and exulted.

  But Devon did not come to her, take her by the shoulders, shout that he wouldn't allow her to leave him. He restrained himself, visibly, and set his jaw in a callous, almost cruel fashion. “Go, then,” he said hoarsely. “And good riddance.”

  “Devon…”

  He turned away, his broad shoulders rigid beneath the smudged, wrinkled fabric of his shirt.

  Polly's very soul shriveled within her; she started toward him, stopped herself. Devon was her mate, despite the fraud of their marriage; with him she had discovered what it meant to love and be loved. Now, too soon, it was over, and she was waking from the dream.

  She'd wanted to have children by this man, to massage his back and rub his feet when he was weary, to laugh when he made a jest and cry when he felt pain. She would be denied those things, those sweetest of pleasures, because of her own foolishness and deceit.

  “I'm sorry,” she said, so softly that she couldn't be sure he'd heard her.

  Polly went back to the big house on the hill, encountering no one on the way, back to the room where she'd lain with Devon, transported by the fierce ecstasies she'd known with him. She pulled her gold wedding band from her finger, laid it on the bureau beside Devon's brush, and then turned to packing the few things she'd owned before meeting the man she would always think of as her husband.

  Standing before the bureau mirror, Polly did not see her own reflection, but that of the bed behind her. Never, no matter what she had to do to sustain herself, would she ever lie with another man. She wouldn't take a husband, or a lover, or sell her body for money, because she knew the touch of anyone besides Devon would drive her to screaming madness.

  The mail boat arrived at midafternoon, and Polly was waiting on the wharf when it chugged into the harbor. She had hoped, at first, that Devon would appear and ask her to stay, but there was no sign of him. In fact, in the intervals when the steam-powered saws in Brigham's mill weren't shrieking, she heard the rhythmic pounding of Devon's hammer. Unlike her, he still had a dream to pursue.

  “It's unwise to run away,” Lydia said.

  Polly was so startled that she nearly fell into the water. She hadn't heard the other woman approaching because of the ordinary noises.

  “I'm not as bold as you are,” Polly replied, with dignity. “I'm not as strong.”

  “Monkey feathers,” Lydia answered, her eyes solemn, her mouth unsmiling. “Of course you're strong. You have to be; you have no other choice.”

  “Devon doesn't want me,” Polly said, lowering her eyes. More than once, since she'd come to the wharf to wait for the mail boat, she'd considered simply jumping off into the water and letting herself drown, but some inner core of strength wouldn't allow her the easy escape. Besides, somewhere deep inside her, flickering like the light of a candle, was the fear that she might miss something tremendous by dying now, even though her life looked hopeless.

  Lydia sighed. “Stop thinking with Devon's brain, Polly,” she said. “You have a mind of your own, and it will tell you what to do if you listen.”

  Polly stared at this odd, strong, pretty woman standing before her, wondering where she'd gotten all those outlandish ideas that sprang constantly from her mouth. “You could marry him now, if you wanted,” Polly said. “Devon is free, in the eyes of God and man, and I know you find him attractive.”

  The memory of Lydia's shock when she'd discovered that Devon already had a bride, on board the ship from San Francisco, was plain between the two women, needing no further mention.

  Lydia folded her arms. “Very well,” she said, in a tone of kindly challenge. “If you truly don't want Devon, if you board this boat and sail off to Seattle, I'll make a point of consoling him.”

  A venomous pain surged through Polly's system. She loved Devon, and she was fairly certain he felt the same way about her, even though his disenchantment had blinded him to the fact. Still, Lydia was a beautiful woman, and Devon wanted a home and family so much that he had been willing to travel far and wide to bring home a bride. He would undoubtedly hurt for a while, then notice Lydia and begin to court her.

  Tears burned in Polly's eyes, blurring the raw splendor of this kingdom nestled in the palm of God's hand. “Devon deserves to be happy, and you could give him what he needs,” she said. The mail boat put into port just then, and a crewman jumped onto the dock to secure the craft with rope. A ramp slammed against the shifting boards of the wharf, and Polly leaned down and picked up her single carpet bag.

  Lydia touched her arm. “Will you write, at least?” she asked quietly.

  The other woman's concern curled against Polly's bruised heart like a warm kitten. They could have been Such good friends, if only things had worked out differently. “Yes,” Polly said. Then, unable to add a farewell, she boarded the boat and walked to the far side of the small cabin to await departure.

  Lydia felt bereft as she went back up the driveway toward the house. She knew she could probably have Devon for a husband, if she waited for his inner wounds to heal a little, then offered him gentle, steady condolences. The trouble was, her initial attraction to him had turned to the quiet regard a sister might have for her brother. It was Brigham who made her blood heat until she thought her veins would be seared through, Brigham who had stirred her fighting spirit back to life.

  The fact that the imperious Mr. Quade was quite unsuited to her personal tastes didn't seem to matter.

  Midway up the drive, she encountered Millie, who leaped out of a lilac bush, her hair full of dingy chicken feathers, her face streaked with berry juice or rouge.

  Dutifully, Lydia cried out in mock terror.

  “I'm a savage,” the child announced proudly.

  Lydia laughed and pulled Millie against her side in a brief embrace. “I think many people would agree,” she said. “But you're a very appealing savage, all things considered. Where did you get those feathers?”

  “From the floor of the henhouse,” Millie replied, pleased with herself. “They were lying all over the place, free for the taking.”

  Lydia grimaced, thinking of lice and other unsavory things. “I believe a bath would be a good idea,” she said, taking Millie's small, grubby hand, and at the same time, plucking away the feathers and tossing them aside.

  “Savages don't bathe,” Millie told her, but she didn't protest being defeathered. “Not in water, anyway.” Her small, dirty face glowed with inspiration. “Blood, maybe,” she speculated, one finger to her lips. “I heard Papa say once that some of the Indian women wash their hair with urine and fish oil.”

  Lydia sincerely hoped Brigham hadn't made such a revolting comment in casual conversation. Children were so impressionable, and they had hearing as sharp as a cat's. She didn't comment on Millie's statement because she didn't want to encourage more of the same.

  “Where is Charlotte?” she asked instead.

  “Who knows?” Millie countered, with a shrug. “Camelot, maybe. Or Sherwood Forest. Or perhaps a castle in Spain.”

  Lydia smiled. “You are very precocious for a ten-year-old,” she said as they rounded the rear of the house and started toward the back steps. “How do you know about all those places?”

  Millie preened at the interest. “I can r
ead, after all,” she pointed out importantly. “And Charlotte tells me lots of stories. She plans to be abducted by a handsome sheikh someday and carried off into the desert on the back of a camel. Charlotte says that sheikh is going to love her so much that he'll turn out his whole harem and worship at her feet.”

  A blush filled Lydia's face. In New England a young girl would not be permitted to develop such scandalous ideas. “Merciful heavens,” she said. “What does Charlotte know about harems?”

  “Quite a lot, I'm afraid,” Millie confided, in a businesslike way that was comically reminiscent of her domineering father. “A good bit of it is made up, of course.”

  “Of course,” Lydia said ruefully.

  They had gained the kitchen by then, and Lydia was relieved to see no sign of Jake. She sat Millie down at the table and began filling pots and kettles at the pump, placing these carefully atop the wood cookstove to heat. Then she fed the fire and went out to one of the sheds for a washtub she'd spotted there earlier.

  Millie chattered on while Lydia heated the water for a bath, small feet swinging, painted face animated and bright. “Does Charlotte have to take a bath, too?” she asked.

  Lydia arched an eyebrow, and in the same moment the whistle of the departing mail boat reached her ears. She felt a stinging sadness at the thought of Polly's tragedy, and Devon's. “Only if Charlotte has painted herself like a savage and spent the afternoon crawling through the underbrush, like you,” she answered.

  The washtub sat in the middle of the floor, and when the water was warm, Lydia filled it, divested Millie of her dirty clothes, and helped her into the bath.

  “Normally,” Millie said, settling in obediently, “I only bathe on Saturday evenings. And sometimes I have to use Charlotte's water.”

  The mail-boat whistle shrilled again, and Lydia closed her eyes for a moment. But then she found a bar of castile soap and began washing Millicent the Adventurous.