That Other Katherine

by Linda Lael Miller

  "I, too, would like to see him, but he lives with my people now."

  Katherine, who had been eager to eat, lowered her fork back to the tray, her food forgotten. "You mean they took your baby away from you?"

  "I gave him to them; his father is the chief's son. It is best."

  Katherine forced herself to take a bite of her meal. "I couldn't bear to be away from Christopher," she said.

  A glance in Maria's direction revealed that the woman was looking at her in confusion now. Perhaps she'd known that the mistress of the house planned to run away with a lover and leave her child behind for others to raise. Perhaps Maria had even hoped to fill the void in her heart by caring for the Winslow baby once Katherine was gone.

  "I'll share him with you," Katherine said gently.

  Maria blinked, looked away, then met Katherine's gaze again. "You've changed," she said. "And it seems there is much you don't remember."

  Katherine nodded. "I have changed," she agreed. "I've changed more than anyone in the world would ever believe. And you're right—there's a lot I don't remember. Did Mrs.—did I keep diaries, Maria? Did I save the letters I received?"

  Christopher had fallen asleep at Maria's breast. She laid him ever so gently in her lap, rebuttoned the front of her dress, and then raised the contented infant to her shoulder to be burped.

  "There are papers," Maria said. "I will bring them after Dr. Winslow goes to the hospital for rounds."

  "Thank you," Katherine replied.

  As it happened, Gavin visited Katherine's room before he left the house. She would almost have preferred his scathing temper to the cool distance of his manner.

  "I'm sending you to the island house for the rest of the summer," he announced.

  Katherine was dismayed. She didn't know what island house Gavin was talking about, for one thing. For another, she hated leaving him in Seattle with the likes of Caroline Raynes. "Do I have a choice?" she asked.

  The concept obviously caught Gavin by surprise. "A choice?"

  Katherine nodded. These nineteenth-century men were something else. "Suppose I said I didn't want to go anywhere, that I preferred to stay in Seattle with you?"

  Gavin gave a long-suffering sigh. "I would reply that your preferences don't carry a great deal of weight," he responded evenly.

  Once again he'd used words to slap Katherine, and the blow hurt as much as the back of his hand would have.

  "Bastard," she said, angry not only because of the pain he'd inflicted but because tears had sprung to her eyes, and she hadn't wanted him to see her cry over something he'd said or done.

  He came to her bedside and bent to kiss her forehead. "I love you, too, my cherished darling," he responded with theatrical politeness. "Good night."

  Finally Katherine noticed his formal clothing. "You're going out!" she accused, picturing him dancing with one beautiful woman after another in some elegant ballroom. The next picture she had was of Gavin and the oh-so-proper Miss Raynes, chatting while they ate an elegant dinner, then clinking their wineglasses together in a toast that excluded the rest of the world.

  "Yes," he responded.

  Katherine started to protest, then stopped herself. She couldn't ask him not to socialize, especially with the track record the other Katherine had chalked up. "Gavin…" She ran her tongue over dry lips. "I don't suppose… well… would it help if I told you I was sorry for all the things that happened before?"

  She sensed his withdrawal long moments before he actually drew back from her bedside. "No," he answered flatly. "It's too late for that."

  He turned to the cradle then, and Katherine wished she could read the expression on his face as he looked down at the baby, but the gas lamps and the fire had not been lit, and the room was dim.

  "I suppose you've noticed that he looks exactly like you," she dared to say.

  Gavin raised his eyes to her face then, and the coldness in them pinned Katherine to the headboard as surely as an Indian's arrow would have done. "Christopher is my son," he conceded, "but that is a happy accident. He could just as well have been sired by Beecham or the man who delivers coal. As far as you and I are concerned, the fact that I'm acknowledging this child changes nothing."

  The lump aching in Katherine's throat made speech impossible for the moment, and her mind was reeling anyway. She would not have been able to think of a response scathing enough to match Gavin's words.

  That night the house seemed to buzz with activity, but Katherine was still too stricken by her encounter with Gavin to wonder what was going on.

  In the morning she found out.

  "We're going to the island," Marianne announced, her face aglow. "I can hardly wait to walk on the beach again."

  Katherine loved the beach, and the prospect of spending time in a waterfront house would have thrilled her in her other life, but now she only felt forlorn. Obviously, Gavin wanted his wife and sister out of the house so he could bring his mistress around with impunity.

  Katherine and Marianne left for the wharf area at the head of a virtual caravan of carriages. They were followed by Maria and Christopher in another coach, and beyond that was a wagon loaded down with trunks.

  Reaching Elliott Bay, where a small boat, part of the mosquito fleet, would take them to Vashon Island, Katherine forgot some of her heartache. There were creaking wharves and shouting sailors and clanging bells everywhere, and the scene was so different from its counterpart in modern-day Seattle that she was amazed. She wanted to remember every sight and sound.

  After the passengers and their baggage had been loaded onto the boat, the captain tooted his whistle and the craft slipped bravely out into the harbor. Katherine stood at the railing, watching the land retreat.

  The city was so like the one she knew, and so different.

  Gavin didn't trouble himself to see them off, and Katherine wondered if he'd ever returned from his dinner party the night before. She hadn't seen him since his visit to her room, or caught the sound of his voice in the hallway.

  "I brought the letters and the diaries," Maria said, standing beside heron the deck. At Katherine's immediate frown, the Indian girl smiled and added, "Don't worry. Christopher is with his aunt, being badly spoiled."

  Katherine sighed. "Thank you for helping me, Maria— and for not automatically deciding that I'm crazy."

  The girl's ageless brown eyes studied Katherine's face placidly. "You are not mad," she avowed. "And you are not Katherine Winslow."

  Chapter 6

  Katherine looked into Maria's pensive brown eyes and recognized a friend. She was not ready to explain her helter-skelter arrival in this time and place; indeed, she didn't understand the situation herself. Still, it was a comfort to know there was one person who might be receptive to such a strange confidence.

  After that both women watched the shore as the steam-powered boat chugged out into the bay, headed toward Vashon Island. White gulls as well as gray swooped and chattered alongside, and the waters looked like india ink under the relentless blue of the summer sky.

  Katherine was entranced by the sight of the receding city. There was no evidence of the towering steel-and-glass skyline of her day, and wagons and carriages moved in the streets instead of automobiles.

  She smiled. "It's like a movie," she said.

  Maria frowned. "What?"

  Katherine patted Maria's hand. "I'll explain some other time," she promised.

  After an hour's journey, the boat docked at Vashon Island. There, another carriage awaited the Winslow party, along with a buckboard for hauling trunks and valises.

  Katherine was just as fascinated by the island as she had been by the city. As they drove through a small cluster of buildings she spotted a mercantile, a blacksmith's shop, and a lovely lighthouse formed of natural stone. For her, the world had become one big hands-on museum.

  The Winslows' summer house, which overlooked the water, turned out to be almost as impressive as the mansion in the city.

  It was an enormous
white frame house with lots of balconies and porches, and a few feet below the point of the highest gable, an octagon-shaped stained-glass window glowed with captured sunlight. There were rose bushes everywhere, along with arbors and benches and fountains, and two rows of graceful weeping willows towered like an honor guard on either side of the gravel driveway.

  Although Katherine was not happy to be exiled to the island, she could not help being charmed by the magnificent house. Just looking at the place gave her a feeling of homecoming so profound that tears came to her eyes.

  She sniffled. "It's lovely," she said.

  Marianne hadn't even glanced out the carriage window. "You've been behaving so oddly of late, Katherine. You speak as though you've never seen the Haven, and you were married here!"

  Katherine glanced helplessly at her sister-in-law, then bit her lip and ignored Marianne's remark. There was simply nothing she could say that wouldn't eventually land her in some grim nineteenth-century asylum.

  If Marianne only knew how many things she didn't "remember," Katherine thought. What had happened to Gavin and Marianne's parents? For that matter, what had happened to her own? Had the other Katherine been raised in a happy home, with brothers and sisters, or as an only child? Why wasn't a pretty young woman like Marianne married?

  The questions were practically never-ending, and Katherine hoped the letters and diaries Maria had brought along would answer at least a few of them.

  As the carriage wheels rattled on the brick cobblestone driveway, Christopher stirred in Maria's arms and began to fuss. Katherine reached for him, astonished at the depth of love she felt. He was another woman's child, conceived and nurtured by the light of a stranger's soul, and yet she could not have been more devoted to him if he'd been her own.

  "There now," she said softly, holding the infant against her shoulder and patting his tiny, flannel-swaddled back. "We're home."

  The inside of the house was as splendid as the outside, and of the same gracious design. The rooms were all large and bright, filled with solid beautifully constructed furniture, but the pieces didn't loom oppressively over Katherine's head the way some of their counterparts at the mansion did.

  There was a screened sunporch overlooking the orchard and, beyond that, the indigo water. Katherine intended to spend a great deal of her time in that quiet, sheltered place, working things through in her mind.

  Her trunks were carried to the master suite, which turned out to be the chamber boasting the eight-sided stained-glass window. The suite offered both sitting and dressing rooms, and the floor was of bare wood, polished to a high shine. There was a small fireplace, fronted in gray and white marble, and the mantelpiece was fashioned of a wood so shiny and dark that it resembled ebony.

  "There's been a mistake," Katherine confided anxiously to Marianne. Christopher had been fed, and Maria had taken him to the nursery across the hall, and Marianne was supervising the placement of Katherine's trunks.

  "What kind of mistake?" Marianne asked as George, the caretaker, and Walter, his helper from the stables, left the room.

  Katherine went to close the door, and the color was high in her cheeks when she replied, "This is surely Gavin's room. You know he and I don't share quarters…"

  "More's the pity," Marianne reflected. "It would be better for both of you."

  Katherine was impatient. "I think I should move to another room at once."

  "Poppycock," Marianne returned airily. "Gavin is not God, however he may protest to the contrary; he has no right to hand down decrees. Besides, we probably won't see him until we return to Seattle in September anyway."

  "September?" Katherine loved the island, as little as she'd seen of it, but the idea of not having so much as a glimpse of Gavin for three long months was practically unbearable.

  Marianne sighed, spread her hands for a moment, then let them fall back to her sides. "You've finally fallen in love with your husband, haven't you?" she demanded with kindly frankness. "Forgive me for asking, Katherine, but what took you so long? Couldn't you have recognized your tender feelings before you humiliated the man in front of half the city of Seattle?"

  Katherine detected no hostility in Marianne's words, only honest puzzlement. "I can't explain," she said, stepping through the French doors that opened onto a balcony. "At least, not yet. But yes, heaven help me, I think I have fallen in love with Gavin. I would do practically anything to win him back."

  Marianne stood beside her at the railing of the balcony, and the two of them watched the sunlight dancing on the sound and the pale gulls soaring over the tops of the apple trees in the orchard. "I would like to see that happen," she said with gentle foreboding, "for your sake, and Christopher's, and especially for Gavin's. But the way you flaunted your—flirtation—with Jeffrey Beecham, well, that kind of disgrace isn't easy for a man to live down."

  Katherine swallowed, and she didn't look at Marianne when she went on. She didn't dare. "Suppose I told you I didn't remember anything that happened to me before Christopher was born? No wedding, no adultery, no anything. Would you believe me?"

  "I would be very concerned," Marianne replied gently.

  Katherine met Marianne's gaze and knew she could not tell her more, not then. "You're so lovely, Marianne. Why haven't you married and started a family of your own?"

  Marianne's flawless skin paled slightly, and her mouth tightened almost imperceptibly—not with anger, Katherine thought, but with pain. "You really don't remember," she said. "Katherine, I was engaged to Timothy Waynewright, the vice president of the Merchants' Bank. He was shot and killed in a robbery two days before our wedding."

  "Dear God," Katherine whispered, sagging against the railing for a moment. "Marianne, I'm so sorry."

  Marianne looked more concerned with Katherine's state of health than her own tragedy. She took her sister-in-law's arm and escorted her firmly back inside the house.

  "Gavin should be told about this—this memory lapse of yours. It might make a lot of difference." As she spoke, Marianne was maneuvering Katherine onto the big bed and covering her with a creamy cashmere throw.

  Katherine shook her head. "None at all," she said. "He would think I was only pretending, in an effort to escape the consequences of Kath—of my mistakes."

  Marianne left then, and Katherine slept for several hours. When she awakened, a lavender hatbox had materialized on her nightstand, like something left by Santa or the Easter Bunny. Katherine sat up, smoothed her hair, and set the box on her lap.

  It was filled with scented vellum letters, and there were sepia photographs and two thick leather-bound journals as well.

  Katherine started with the letters, which were mostly from school friends and family members back East. From the collection of mail, she learned that the other Katherine had been raised by a wealthy maiden aunt in Maine. She'd gone to boarding school in Connecticut from the first grade through the twelfth, then attended a Boston finishing school.

  The photographs showed Katherine standing with Gavin, smiling brightly, and the two of them looked so happy. How could things have gone so terribly wrong?

  Katherine leaned back against the carved mahogany headboard for a long time, staring at the empty fireplace and assimilating what she'd garnered from the first dozen letters. Only after Mrs. Hawkins, the housekeeper, had brought her tea and fresh strawberries did she tackle the rest.

  It was strange, examining the images of another person's life, seeing her hopes and dreams reflected back in the handwriting of an elderly aunt, an understanding friend, a cousin. Even though Katherine learned a lot about the other Katherine in those leisurely hours of reading, the questions multiplied even faster than the answers.

  The journals awaited her, promising the most intimate insights of all, but Katherine's mind was already spinning with details. She would save the diaries for another day.

  At dinner that night Katherine was preoccupied, pretty much letting Marianne carry the conversation. Her predecessor had been a flighty and so
mewhat selfish creature, and very spoiled despite her isolation from her family. She must have been a lonely child, though privileged, starved for love and attention.

  The next morning Katherine rose very early. She saw to Christopher's needs, then left him with Maria and went out for a walk, carrying one of the journals with her. Following a winding path down through the orchard, she heard the low, summery murmur of the tide, and the sound stirred some long-dormant hope within her.

  Katherine walked along the shoreline for a time, delighting in the sights and sounds and smells, the wet, rocky sand, the water-beaten pilings and swaying boat docks. She came upon a bed of oysters, stopping to speculate, one hand shading her eyes from the morning sun, as to whether any of the hoary shells contained a pearl.

  When she began to feel tired she returned to the orchard, found a tree with a low, sturdy branch and a clear view of the water, and climbed up. Once settled, her cumbersome skirts tucked in around her, she pulled the first journal from her pocket and started to read.

  The diary's author, whom Katherine now thought of as Katherine the First, had visited Seattle after sailing from San Francisco to Hong Kong and back again. She'd met Dr. Gavin Winslow at a party and deemed him "handsome, if dreadfully serious." She'd also recorded that he'd inherited a fortune from his father, who'd been among the first timber barons in the area, a fact that apparently redeemed him a little for practicing the humble profession of medicine.

  As Katherine read, her legs dangling from the tree branch, one shoulder resting against its trunk, she confirmed her earlier suspicions. Gavin's young bride had not been a wicked vamp, bent on shaming her husband in the eyes of the world, but a confused, lonely child. She'd needed everyone's love and attention, not just her husband's. When people failed to notice her, she'd written, she felt as though she were invisible and sometimes even began to doubt her existence. Often, she'd sunk into "black melancholia" and sincerely wished she'd never been born.

  Her name came tumbling toward her on the warm, salty breeze.