And while Sam was determined that Maribelle May Austin would marry the man she loved at the time she wished, there was nothing in his life with May that he would change, except perhaps that she had been in his life all along.
Bestselling author Kathleen Y’Barbo is a multiple Carol Award and RITA nominee of more than sixty novels with almost two million copies of her books in print in the United States and abroad. A tenth-generation Texan and certified paralegal, she has been nominated for a Career Achievement Award as well as a Reader’s Choice Award and several Top Picks by Romantic Times magazine. She is celebrating her fifteenth year as a published author by receiving the Romantic Times Inspirational Romance Book of the Year Award for her historical romantic suspense Sadie’s Secret, a novel from The Secret Lives of Will Tucker series. To find out more about Kathleen or connect with her through social media, check out her website at www.kathleenybarbo.com.
For Richer or Poorer
by Natalie Monk
Dedication
To my generous Redeemer.
And to Momma, my first cheerleader, who filled my head with publishing dreams and whose homeschooling gave me more time to read.
You kind of started something.
Acknowledgments
I thank God for allowing me this ministry. And I thank you, Daddy, Momma, Tony, and Bethany. Your endless love and sacrifice inspires me and gives me hours in the writing cave.
Special thanks to:
My agent Tamela Hancock Murray of the Steve Laube Agency, Gabrielle Meyer and the ladies in this collection, and the editors at Barbour—you all made my dream reality
My critique partner Janette Foreman—your beautifying fingerprints are all over this story, and the world lacks sufficient chocolate for proper thanks
Granny, for asking when my next book will be ready
My youngest beta reader, Annalisa Laudadio, who loved my writing when I lacked the courage—miss you, sweet girl
My ever-supportive C. P. Courtney Ballinger, my VIP Book Launch Team, Aunt Linda and other friends and family who prayed for and encouraged me, and my writer-hero Karen Witemeyer, for sharing wisdom and making me feel like one of the gals
ACFW, Seekerville, and Tina Radcliffe, who mentored me and saw the writer I could be
Finally, Ms. Caroline Wallmark, whose parents’ immigration story sparked this tale.
Historical note: needing a confessional for one scene’s antics, I took creative license and changed the Old First Presbyterian Church on Broad Street to a “cathedral.”
Chapter One
Newark, New Jersey April, 1885
If you get caught in this dress”—Ella whispered to herself—“there’ll be the devil to pay.”
But the consequences didn’t scare her as much as losing her loved ones to starvation. If she, Marcella Elena Lipski, had to don her employer’s discarded gowns and search tourist locations for a husband—a rich husband who would bring her family to America—so be it.
Her first target area: Walsh’s ice cream parlor.
Breathless, Ella leaned forward in the wire-frame chair beside the window as a rich-looking couple approached on the sidewalk outside. When the frowning woman glanced up and confirmed she was not Mistress Theodore, a sigh escaped Ella, her heart beating at double speed.
The couple did stop in for ice cream, however. Three scoops each.
The parlor’s sugary scents—unlike anything Ella had ever smelled before—commenced her stomach to growling, and she licked her lips before she caught herself. What a wonderful thing, to be so rich.
Carrying their desserts, the man led his companion from the long counter to the table across from Ella’s. Her pulse clogged her throat as she attempted a graceful smile.
They didn’t spare her a glance, consumed in their clipped discussion.
Of all the ill-mannered … Ella rearranged the unfamiliar metal hoops under her skirt and sat straighter. Hiding her chafed face behind a menu, she sneaked glimpses of the couple. While their English conversation tripped and stumbled on her Polish-born ears, the few hissed words she interpreted revealed nothing. But their scowls and untouched dessert spoke a universal language.
Finally, the gentleman—the suave sort Mama intended for her to meet and marry—threw his napkin on his ice cream and stood. Storming from his companion, he approached Ella, who clutched her collar. Mumbling something in bitter tones, the man tossed a small card onto her table before heading out the door. Ella’s eyes stretched wide.
As the lady companion left in a huff, heading a different direction than the man, Ella flipped over the card and caught her breath.
A ticket to Mrs. Theodore’s spring ball.
One of the two hundred tickets she and her fellow housemaids had stuffed into invitations this very morning.
Floating to her feet, Ella tucked the slip of paper inside the tight cuff of her gossamer sleeve, which she pressed against her waist until she reached the walkway outside.
God bless that miserable, beautiful couple. Their fight must have been significant for the gentleman to chuck such a valuable ticket.
She crossed the street in the twilight air, weaving through the masses, peddlers, and newsboys calling out on every corner. People milled by on foot, drove past in carriages, some glancing her way. Did they suspect? Did it show on her face—that she’d come by a coveted treasure she had no business possessing?
Wait until she wrote Mama of her good fortune—the poor thing would faint, right there in the wicked Baron Zimmer’s potato fields. Ella’s lips curved upward.
When Tata—father—discovered the husband-hunting plan, though … he would explode. Mama’s hand had trembled when slipping Ella her orders in a letter before Ella left for America.
Clattering wheels and a dog’s barks drew Ella’s attention to a horse and cart thundering around the corner toward her.
The drayman laid his weight against the horses’ pull of the reins, roaring something in English.
Ella lurched forward. Her narrow hoopskirt minced her stride, and when the cart’s wheel caught her skirt tail, she twisted, cried out, and fell to her hands and knees on the unforgiving cobblestones. Deep pinching warned of coming bruises, but she wasn’t run over, thank heavens.
Propped on one palm, Ella checked her sleeve for the ticket, reassured when the stiff card brushed her fingertips. She gingerly gathered her skirt in preparation to stand, incidentally promoting her back end—oh dear.
The slow clop of horse hooves stopped near her. A breath later, strong hands helped her rise and face the drayman, whose fine dark eyes made her lungs ache just looking at him. The same drayman who doffed his low top hat to her every morning as she walked to work.
Now, he swiped off the curvy brimmed hat and checked her over for injuries, a frown rumpling his forehead. His dark hair, brim-creased and soft-looking at his temples, set off those keen eyes. Well-trimmed whiskers blended down past his cheekbones and grew darker in the center of his chin, lending a dangerous air.
Not that she was looking. She couldn’t afford to stand and admire a humble drayman while an invisible dumpling stuck in her throat. No. She was just being … observant.
His voice rustled over several English words. He took in her dumbstruck silence and tried again, “Przepraszam—I’m sorry. You all right, miss? Dog scared the horse.”
While his heavily accented Polski words sunk in, his grip warmed her upper arms and logical thought flew from her head like so many ill-fated lovebirds. He smelled of fresh straw—no doubt from his wagon crates—and leather … and lemon drops? She tried to put space between them, but the pain in her knees forced her to grasp his elbows—she must wrap these bruises and put her feet up tonight to survive work tomorrow.
“Please, I will take you to my home.” His stubborn-little-boy expression might have been endearing had his words not shocked her cold.
“No, you will not!” Heat blazed from her collar to her ears.
He drew back. “Nie rozumiem
—I don’t understand.”
Was the man an abductor … or bungling her language? “You will take me to my home.”
When understanding dawned in his gaze, he chuffed a laugh. “I beg your pardon. My Polish customers, they are always chiding me for pronoun errors.”
She chuckled and massaged her temples then slid her fingers into her poufy, American-style pompadour—a fashion she’d modeled to resemble one of Mrs. Theodore’s uppity coiffures. This morning, after the woman instructed her to discard a pile of perfectly good dresses, Ella envisioned herself wearing the gowns to seize conversations with dapper gentlemen—not a scruffy, too-handsome cart driver.
“What address, please?” he asked.
Puffing a red-blond strand from her view, she straightened. “Harper Street—number 219?”
After a quick nod, he lifted her onto the high wagon seat with more grace than she’d thought possible for a drayman, then vaulted up next to her. His proud, easy bearing didn’t belong to a cart driver. Had he been a butler, perhaps? No, too young for that.
He offered his hand. “Woody Harris, cart driver and deliveryman, at your service. Free conveyance for a week for the trouble I bring you.”
While her traitorous heart fluttered at the prospect of riding alongside this man every day for a whole week, she placed her hand in his. The world tilted, then righted under his candid appraisal. “I’m Ella. Thank you, Mr. Harris, that would be helpful.”
“Call me Woody.” Mr. Harris sat there, painted by evening shadows, studying her until her blush heated up again—were Americans always so bold?—then he urged the horse forward. “Good then, Miss Ella. I’m late for one stop on the way, please.” He winked. “No dogs, this time.”
Down by Morris Canal, the scents of rotting wood and rust lay heavy on the wind while a dark alley loomed to the left. Chills skittered over Ella’s arms. She clutched her collar and swallowed hard. Despite this man’s endearing qualities, she didn’t know him from anyone. He could be some murderer luring her who knows where.
Jumping off and gimping away might be the most prudent choice.
Her companion stopped the horse outside the alley, where blackened silhouettes approached. This “Woody” turned toward her, and Ella’s throat closed until he reached past her to lift a crate from the loaded cart, engulfing her with homey scents of yeast and crust. The alley figures grew closer in the darkness, but never taller…. Children? With smudged faces, they crowded the wagon and pinned expectant stares on Mr. Harris—er, Woody. Balancing the box on one knee, he took out a giant loaf of chlebem, or bread, and broke off chunks into their waiting hands, then did the same with a block of cheese.
Where did all these kids come from?
As each received their bread, Ella recognized the German danke and English, “Thanks, Woody.” But most spoke the Polski word dziękuję.
When the banter rose, she grasped the rhythm of Woody’s broken Polski and worked to make more sense of his word combinations. Still amazed he spoke her language, she at last untangled his hodgepodge of accents. With the recent deportation of Poles from much of Europe, thousands to America, he would have encountered many dialects on his freight route no doubt.
“Where’s Musty?” Woody asked.
“It’s Marciszewski!”
All the boys laughed, then two youngsters the drayman called “Newsie” and “Shoe Shine” pushed forward the runt—a chubby-cheeked thing dressed in short pants and shoes, but nothing else. Why, he was just a baby.
“Yeah, yeah … Musty.” Woody helped the child scamper up into his lap and roughed his hair, earning a begrudging grin. “Listen, fellas, I can’t stay long. I need to take Miss … Miss Ella home.”
A hush fell over the rowdy group as all eyes turned to her. She waved.
“What’re you doing with some ole girl, anyway?” This, in perfect Polski, came from an oil-spattered boy.
“Freckles.” Voicing his surprise, the drayman thumbed his hat back from his forehead. “Is that any way to talk to a lady?”
Vulnerability lurked beneath the kid’s stubborn features. After the boy shuffled his feet, Woody dipped in his coat pocket and pulled out a paper cone of candy—the lemon drops she’d smelled? “Here. Make sure everyone gets some.”
Freckles caught the candy with a nod, then Woody jounced the little tyke slumped in his lap. “Where’s your shirt, buddy?”
Musty shrugged and mumbled in Polish, “Almost summertime.”
When Woody passed the reeking child to Ella, she covered her wince—both from the odor and knee pain—and shifted the boy’s weight from her bruises to her upper legs.
“Musty” lifted worried eyes, and her heart trembled at the familiar signs of poverty. The same empty gaze as Eryk. Her lungs seized as she remembered her brother’s desperate coughs the night he succumbed to fever and malnutrition.
Musty blinked at her. How long since this poor child bathed? Since he satisfied his stomach? Since his mama held him?
Was his mother living?
Beside Ella, Woody shrugged out of his coat, vest—good heavens, and his shirtsleeves—leaving his undershirt. His new state of dress did nothing for her recent blushing malady. Though her brows rose, so did her regard for the man as he buttoned Musty into the too-big shirtwaist and retrieved a small length of rope from his cart to cinch the middle. “Every boy needs a shirt, no matter the season. There. Down you go.”
His movements drew her attention to a leather string at his throat, bearing a small ring. At her stare, he replaced his outerwear and tucked the necklace away.
With a few parting words, they left the boys and the alley behind, a tiny piece of Ella’s heart staying with them. There was much more to this Woody Harris than first met the eye.
“So, Ella of 219 Harper Street …” Her driver continued to speak in Polish as he studied her. “Just Ella?”
Pursing her lips, Ella folded her hands in her lap. Would he think less of her when she told him she wasn’t rich? Then again, what did it matter? He’d drive her home tonight and maybe to work next week. End of story. “Marcella Lipski, Austrian-Polish immigrant and housemaid. I came to America two weeks ago.”
His frank gaze skimmed her dress. Should she have given him her address? He’d been kind to the children, though. Surely he wouldn’t harm—
“Fancy dress for a housemaid. Did you steal it?”
“What? Of course not,” she huffed. Only borrowed. From the trash. Her eyebrow reared. “Did you steal the bread?”
“No.” The serious line of his lips quirked, then he snickered before focusing on the road again and mumbling, “Touché.” When he offered her a lemon drop, she refused.
“My employer told me to get rid of her old wardrobe, so I did. I needed dresses—other than my maid uniform.” Ella had ceased worrying about her fancy garb, since chances were slim she’d be recognized on this side of town. Better conditions than her family endured, though. They needed relief soon. Her sister Ina especially, always sick and the most at risk. Ella was their sole hope.
“The children are lucky to have you to bring them food. It’s kind of you.”
He gave a humorless laugh. “Precious little kindness. I’m afraid sometimes it only delays the inevitable.”
“Perhaps that’s more of a kindness than you know.” She silently dared him to contradict her.
After a sigh, he considered her, elbows on his knees. “Maybe.”
She dropped her attention to the curious scars on his hands, hands that dealt gently with the boys. A pat here, a ruffling of hair there, all the while he assessed their well-being, missing nothing. Did he, too, feel guilt for being unable to do more for those he loved? “I suppose everyone wishes they were richer so they could help others in need.”
His mouth pinched. “How many rich people you know are that generous?”
At the morose thought, she searched for a transition to happier subjects. “Surely, sometime in your life, you’ve wished to be someone you’re not.”
The startled frown he gave her killed the conversation. She stiffened, straightened her filmy skirts. Strange, the loss she felt at his silence. Had she stumbled onto a subject taboo for Americans? If he kept his promise and drove her to work tomorrow, she’d have to remember not to make the same mistake.
Escorting her to her door, Woody took one look at her closet of an apartment, then retrieved a half-loaf of bread from his cart and pressed it into her hands with the last of the cheese. Food he’d no doubt set aside for his own sustenance.
After he lit his guide-lantern and drove off into the night, she set the bread aside and plucked the ticket from her sleeve. So she had an inroad to society’s most popular event of the season. Now what? She knew no English, nothing of American customs, and the evening gowns she possessed were the hostess’s castoffs. Provided she could get into the ballroom at all, without alerting the head housekeeper who hired her.
Hungry and frazzled, Ella prepared her supper of bread, cheese, salad greens she’d gathered, and a hot cup of water—the best she could do without tea. She shoveled in the food before worry could steal her appetite.
If she were caught in one of Claudia Theodore’s ball gowns … she’d be dismissed and left without references. Minus her income, her precious family was as good as left without hope.
With a fresh shirt on, Woody let himself in the service entrance of Pierce’s sprawling three-story brownstone then nodded to Cook as he passed. His fingers eased off the loan payment in his pocket. He’d be too late for his usual Friday supper with the Pierces, but would feel better getting the funds into the right hands.
Thank God for a friend who trusted Woody enough to loan the money to start his livery. For three years, he’d made his bread and butter from the combined livestock, smithy, and freight business. Hauling the cart didn’t pay much, since most businesses hired their own deliverymen, but the freight route made a good cover for his finding more street children to help. Lord willing, Pierce’s trust had deepened enough for Woody to ask the question burning in his mind of late. His boys’ reaction to Miss Lipski only stoked the flames.
Of Rags and Riches Romance Collection Page 21