Her Safe Harbor: Prairie Romance (Crawford Family Book 4)

by Holly Bush

  “Yes, miss, they have,” O’Brien said with a sparkle in her eye. “I am hoping we will be able to test them out today.”

  “I imagine we will. My father is sending another packet for us to examine.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “Have you solved any of the mysteries of the Dorchester portfolio?”

  “No, I have not, but I’ve got some ideas. Perhaps there’ll be time later today for us to discuss them,” O’Brien said.

  Jennifer nodded and went to the sideboard, now being filled with trays of cakes and biscuits by a uniformed man, while O’Brien read aloud from a summary of Mr. Carter’s holdings in the Crawford Bank and other notes that someone had written about his business ventures. Mr. Carter himself arrived shortly after, and O’Brien answered the knock on the door. Jennifer poured tea and commiserated with Mr. Carter over his fragile health. Wickers came a few scant minutes later and escorted Mr. Carter to her father’s office.

  “Well,” Jennifer said as she rose. “That was quite simple today, wasn’t it, O’Brien?”

  “And quick, miss. Just as Mr. Carter was ready to explain every one of his ailments to you, Wickers came for him. A narrow escape,” she said with a smile.

  “I imagine you’re right. Let’s take a look at our new arithmetic machine, shall we?”

  “Oh, yes,” O’Brien said as she followed Jennifer into the office area. “But before we start with the new machine, I’d like to talk to you about the Dorchester portfolio while it’s fresh in my brain.”

  “Yes. Let’s begin with that. If my memory serves, Mr. Dorchester has a few outstanding loans against deposits held here at the bank and properties in the city,” Jennifer said.

  “That is correct. He has also bought a significant amount of stock certificates over the years, and as I looked at the purchases as recorded, I did some calculations and found that the percentage of the sales that the bank took was six percent, not five as we’ve seen on other occasions. Perhaps it means nothing,” O’Brien said.

  Jennifer took the green felt packet from O’Brien and untied the ribbon. She sat down at her desk and pulled out the contents. Individual packets of light yellow paper separated account tallies from stock certificates. Jennifer barely heard the click of the keys as O’Brien began testing the new adding machine as she was focused on the long column of numbers before her, and pulled out her tablet and pencil to make some calculations.

  Thank heavens, the Ramsey School for Young Ladies curriculum included extensive mathematics classes. Jennifer had excelled in those classes and had been named the top student. Her father had allowed her access to his office when he was home in the evening and she remembered many nights standing by his side as a young girl, or sitting on his lap even, and tallying long lists of numbers, learning division and multiplication. He’d declared she had “a head for numbers” even better than his own and that it was such a pity she was a girl rather than a boy. But he’d said it with a smile and a hug and Jennifer didn’t feel quite as bad as she might at what he’d said, because there was little doubt she was his favorite, even when Jillian still lived with them and was a perfect vision of beauty at a very young age.

  A school friend from Ramsey was going to attend Mount Holyoke Female Seminary to pursue a degree in literature after her years at Ramsey were completed. Jennifer had asked her father and mother at the dinner table one evening if she would be allowed to attend with her classmate to further study mathematics. Her mother had scolded her beyond anything she could have imagined. Jennifer had been humiliated, and her father had reprimanded her for even bringing such a subject up to her mother and for making the whole family subject to Jane’s tirades because of it. And indeed her mother continued to bring up the subject for years afterwards to relatives and friends, describing her daughter as having aspirations to be a spinster bluestocking to anyone who would listen.

  Jennifer’s cheeks colored with the remembrance of those grim days and what felt like constant embarrassment. But more than that, her relationship with her father, her stalwart champion and confidante, was damaged. They were no longer easy with each other in conversation and there was a coldness from him toward her after that. Jennifer was devastated. Then the influenza changed all their lives. Jolene’s son, little William, dead from the disease and her first husband Turner gone as well, and Jolene no longer interested or able to go to the bank and entertain Crawford Bank clients in the parlor lobby.

  Last year, an olive branch had been extended when her father agreed after some persuasion that she be allowed to accompany him to the bank a few days a week and continue what Jolene had begun. Then one day he’d arrived in the parlor lobby with a packet and a rather sheepish look on his face. She remembered the moment as if it were just occurring.

  “I wonder if you’d take a look at this, Jennifer,” he had said. “The bookkeepers have pored over this and none can find the errors, but it is a very complicated account.” He looked up at her and smiled. “And then I recalled you were here in the building, and if anyone can unravel a mathematical mystery it is you. You’ve always been remarkably clever with numbers, even when you were a young girl. How proud I’ve always been of you.”

  Jennifer choked back a sob at the time and anytime since that she’d let herself repeat her father’s words in her head. What a fine day that had been! She’d looked up at him and stretched out her hands to take the packet with a wide smile and glistening eyes. He’d hugged her in a loose embrace with a final pat on her back before releasing her. She’d reviewed the paperwork and saw within the first hour or so exactly what had happened and where the error had been made.

  From that day onward, her father had brought her the most complicated of the account reviews that his staff of clerks and bookkeepers were unable to balance. She was fairly certain that no one else at the bank knew she and O’Brien were doing this sort of work. Jennifer did not care, not one little bit, that she was not to receive the credit for her discoveries, and more than that, she could never describe the elation she felt when facing hundreds of pages of entries, many so small that it was difficult to read them and some sloppily written, and the challenge of untangling those rows of digits.

  Then occasionally, she would allow gloom to descend on her when faced with the reality that Jeffrey would be mortified if he ever knew she did this sort of thing, as it appeared that she actually worked for the bank, and he would never allow it if they married. This passion she felt for numbers would always transcend any passion he would elicit, even if intimate, she suspected. How lowering to feel less for the man she was intended to marry than for crinkled documents with an occasional tea stain.

  Jennifer stopped her reminiscing as she scanned the final document and began a meticulous accounting of every stock certificate transaction listed. “Just as you said, not every stock sale garnered the bank six percent. Some were five percent. How odd. Wouldn’t it make sense for the bank to charge the same percentage each time?”

  “I don’t really know,” O’Brien said. “Is there someone we can ask?”

  “My father, I suppose,” Jennifer said. She pulled the stock certificates that the bank held in collateral from the folder and compared the hand-stamped serial numbers to the ones on the lists. “These ten were charged six percent and the remaining twenty-four were charged five percent. How odd. The dates are random, as well.”

  “Who signed off on the column entry?”

  “Two of the six by two different clerks and four of them by the same clerk,” Jennifer replied. “But the initials themselves are difficult to decipher.”

  “So three different clerks. If we can match the initials to a name, could we ask them why they charged six percent? Could your father?”

  “I hesitate to ask my father before we can say something definitive. Perhaps there is a way to determine whose initials are whose,” Jennifer said. “Let us think of way, O’Brien, without revealing why.”

  Chapter Two

  “It doesn’t seem possible th
at you’ve already been here a week, Zebidiah,” Bella Moran said to her brother, seated at the dining room table in their family home in Athens, Georgia. “I will miss you more now that I have seen you again after these five years since mother’s death.”

  “I’m going to get home more often, I promise,” he replied.

  Bella turned from the buffet where she poured her tea, and arched a brow. She carried her cup to the table and sat down across from her brother. “No, you will not. You have a life of your own, a very good one, and successful one, too, that will keep you very busy. And in our country’s capital, no less, working for a United States senator.”

  “Don’t make it out to be more than it is. I wonder if this whole thing is a fool’s errand,” he said.

  “Fool’s errand? I don’t think even Father would say that to his cronies.”

  Zeb smiled ruefully. “I don’t imagine Foster Cummings had anything good to say.”

  “He asked if you would be raising the Confederate flag when you got there.”

  “Sounds like him,” Zeb said with a laugh. He looked at his sister then, all the levity and casualness gone from his face. “I should have moved back here after Mother died. I shouldn’t have left you alone here to shoulder the burden. You should marry and have your own family, Bella. Not be saddled with taking care of Father.”

  She stared at him, and her face turned pink. “What a horrible thing to say, Zebidiah,” she said with a shaking voice. “How dare you reduce my life to something pitiful and not of my own making? How dare you?”

  “So you prefer this life, do you? You can’t lie to me, Bella.”

  “Do you think I begrudge one minute, one second, of the time I spend helping Father with his work? I don’t. I’m active and useful and respected. Not all women are so fortunate.”

  “From what I’ve seen this week, you have little to do with Father’s research but have completely taken over Mother’s tasks. You manage Melly and Victor and pay the household bills. I saw you yesterday talking to Jim Shaub about the leak in the roof. You told me yourself that you’ve taken over Mother’s commitments at church, teaching Sunday School and serving on the Ladies Guild. When do you have time to do anything but manage this house?” he asked.

  Bella stood and moved hastily to the window that overlooked the side yard where buds were just beginning to show on the trees. “I don’t appreciate this, Zebidiah. Not one bit. What would you have me do?”

  “I would have you have a life of your own. And our father should not be expecting you to fill Mother’s shoes,” he said quietly. “I blame him for this.”

  “Of course you do,” Bella said without turning. “You have blamed our father for every mishap and misunderstanding in this house since you were a boy.”

  “Perhaps the blame should lie with him, Bella,” he said. “But you have always defended him regardless of his culpability.”

  “Exactly what do you suggest, Zebidiah?”

  Zeb thought about the realities of his family. At this point in Gordon Moran’s life what were the chances that he could change? Very slim, Zeb imagined. His father’s absentmindedness had been beloved by his mother. When Father couldn’t find his shoes or didn’t know the cost of beef or understand the work necessary to maintain a three-story home, Evelyn Moran had shrugged, smiled, and tenderly kissed her husband’s forehead. Father never knew why Mother was fussing over him, or handing him matching socks, or even why workmen had to be pounding their hammers during the day in the room right next to his study, interrupting his work and concentration. Zeb had wanted to shout, and he did when he was older, screaming out his frustrations.

  “I doubt it is realistic to imagine that Father would suddenly understand the realities of life. That there were things and people, his family specifically, that have needed his attention for years,” Zeb said.

  Bella seated herself across from him and looked at him with concern. “You still carry this anger with you, Zebidiah?”

  He shook his head. “No, but I am worried about you. Will you look back and be regretful that you’ve not done something else with your life?”

  “And you are certain this life,” she said and swept her hand around the room, “is not of my own making? Perhaps not what I dreamed of when I was a young girl, but we all, each one of us, make compromises. I have considerable freedom here. I come and go as I please, associate with whomever I wish, and have the house budget at my disposal. There are advantages to having a father who does not pay much attention to everyday life.”

  He chuckled. “You make it sound as though you’ve got assignations with mysterious men at each turn.”

  “Hardly.” Her face reddened and she stood quickly, turning to the buffet. She seated herself once again and put a plate of lace cookies between them. “And anyway, I’m an unmarried woman in 1893. Where exactly would I go, and how would I support myself if I left here? It is not done.”

  Bella was unnerved. That was something he’d rarely seen from his older sister. It was as if she were having assignations with mysterious men. Zeb could not contemplate that and did not wish to, in any event. She was an adult, as he’d just chided her, and he supposed she was entitled to her own secrets.

  “Why don’t you plan a trip to Washington?” he asked. “Mrs. Shelby has already sent word that she has found a house for me to rent.”

  Bella raised her brows. “Mrs. Shelby has put herself out and searched for lodgings for you? That is very kind. I gathered from your letters that she was rather coldhearted and that you were not fond of her.”

  “She is cold,” Zeb said. “I pitied Max even with all her outward perfections. But she carried a lot of burdens from Boston, and there is no doubt I would be dead in my grave if it hadn’t been for her.”

  “The influenza? Your letters led me to believe that you had rather a mild dose.”

  “That wasn’t quite true,” he said. “I didn’t want to worry you, but I was close to death’s door. She and her maid nursed me through the worst of it I understand, although I have no recollection of four full days.”

  “Four full days? Dear Lord!”

  “Mrs. Shelby’s sister was there, too,” he said and shook his head. “Nearly as contrary and as ridiculous a woman as I’ve ever met.”

  “That’s rather strong language about a woman who nursed you. Is she much like her sister the senator’s wife?”

  Zeb shrugged. He’d asked Miss Crawford to take a turn with him in the garden after having dinner at the Hacienda with Senator and Mrs. Shelby before he’d left for Georgia. He’d asked her straight out where she’d gotten the bruises he’d seen on her side the night his fever broke.

  Zeb looked away and saw in his mind’s eye what he’d seen that night from the cot in the new bunkhouse where Mrs. Shelby had nursed the sick. It was as if he’d been swimming through thick water until he finally broke the surface and opened his eyes. His throat was dry and his mouth tasted foul, but he realized he was alive and that the empty cots beside him meant others had recovered or were dead. Jennifer Crawford was standing near a glass window in a darkened corner directly in his line of sight, her face in shadows, moonlight drifting over one of her shoulders and down her side. He’d watched her remove her blouse and untie the strings of her corset. She held herself stiffly as the corset fell away and took a long, and clearly painful, deep breath. She lifted her chemise and turned, letting the moonlight illuminate her bare side. He’d concentrated at first on the outline of her breast and the shadow it cast. But then he looked at her side and the ridges of her ribs. She was covered in bruises, some black, and some fading. She touched the center of a particularly large one and hissed in pain. When she realized he watched her, she said he was “ungentlemanly,” something her sister had said about him on occasion.

  “She denied it all,” he said. “As if I had dreamed it all. I did not dream it.”

  “Dream what?” Bella asked.

  Zeb looked up and realized he’d spoken aloud. He shook his head. “
Nothing. It was nothing.”

  But he was long gone then in his recall of Jennifer Crawford. He did not notice his sister leave the room but was picturing Jennifer as she looked at him in the garden that night. She was as gorgeous a woman as he’d ever laid eyes on, contrary to his long-held notion that Southern belles were the most beautiful, charming females in the country. It wasn’t just her looks, he thought, although her green eyes and dark blond hair with just a hint of auburn were a perfect feminine combination, but rather an ethereal fragility that drew him. Outwardly she was kind and had the confident ease gained when one is well-educated and wealthy. But if the eyes truly were the window to one’s soul, then he would describe her as damaged.

  Jennifer was wary, and guarded herself, her real self, as if she were being hunted. And perhaps that is exactly what the ugly bruises on her side represented. She’d been face to face with a nemesis and not been the victor. Zeb thought about the man who laid fists on her fair skin, undoubtedly placed where few if any would see them, and considered how he would kill him.

  * * *

  “What do you think of this one, Mr. Moran?” the tailor asked.

  Bella had taken one look at the shirts he wore and the pants he gave Melly to wash and told him he was to go to Taitlinger’s immediately in order to give them enough time to make him appropriate clothing for his new employment. She would not have her brother humiliate and degrade the Moran name by showing up at the Capital in a flannel shirt and dungarees. He agreed reluctantly, and she accompanied him on his first trip and did the ordering herself.

  “It looks fine to me,” he said, turning from side to side in front of the huge mirror at the back of the shop. “How many did Miss Moran order?”

  “Eleven complete suits, shirts, undergarments . . .”

  “Eleven? What? I don’t need eleven suits!”

  “That does not count the formal wear, sir. And she insisted on the new design from New York.” The tailor paused. “The tuxedo jacket. It is the first one I have made!”