Corbin's Fancy

by Linda Lael Miller

  THE CLATTER OF CHINA AND JEFF’S BELLOWS OF OUTRAGE were audible even from the lawn. In the deepening twilight, Keith Corbin lifted a washtub-sized bowl of leftover baked beans into both arms and grinned. Thank you, he said silently to the God who lived beyond the distant skies and yet walked beside him always.

  When Keith reached the kitchen, his lips still stretched into a smile, Fancy was there. Stars brighter than those stitched to her dress snapped in the depths of her purple eyes and her fine cheekbones glowed with righteous wrath.

  “I’ll pay for the broken dishes out of my wages,” she said, furiously.

  “No need,” said Keith, exchanging a triumphant look with Mrs. Thompkins, the housekeeper. The two of them had been trying to reach Jeff for months, and this little snippet had managed it in a single evening!

  Fancy was rolling up the sleeves of her frayed dress. “Then I’ll help carry in the food,” she insisted, and she proved an industrious worker, though perhaps her energy was fed by her ire.

  When the leavings of the picnic had been dealt with, and night had settled, gentle and black, over the Wenatchee Valley, Keith urged Fancy to retire to her room, knowing that the next day would be a difficult one for her.

  The tired amethyst eyes widened. “Mercy,” breathed Fancy, putting one hand to her throat. “I forgot all about Hershel!”

  The rabbit. Keith laughed. “I imagine he’s hungry.”

  Mrs. Thompkins promptly supplied a bowl of green salad left from the picnic. “See you keep that critter out of my vegetable garden,” she warned, but her attempt at sternness didn’t fool anyone.

  “We can put him in the barn for tonight,” Keith said. “Tomorrow, I’ll build a hutch for him.”

  Fancy smiled with a weary sort of relief, and Keith was touched. She did, for all her earlier annoyance, love that uncooperative rabbit. “Thank you,” she said.

  * * *

  Fancy’s room, situated off the kitchen like Mrs. Thompkins’s quarters, was very spacious. She immediately opened the window and the sweet scent of a million apple blossoms wafted in to settle her spinning mind. The vague hum of the Columbia River met her ears and, somehow, comforted her.

  She slipped thankfully out of her star-speckled dress and into the long flannel nightgown that had been laid out on the bed. It was pretty, if modest, boasting bits of lace around the sleeves and collar, with embroidered doves on the bodice. Silently, Fancy blessed Mrs. Thompkins for providing it.

  Barefooted now, Fancy unpinned her hair, heavy and scented of the outdoors, and let it fall to her waist. Then she emptied her carpet bag, which contained everything she owned except for Hershel and the few props she used in her act, and thought how badly she needed a new dress. Besides the gown she wore to perform, she had one grim frock of calico and one of heavy gray wool.

  Biting her lower lip, she fought down an old desire for pretty clothes of lace and lawn and silk. Such things were for wealthy women, not for the likes of herself.

  There was a soft rap at the door just then, and Fancy started, jolting out of thoughts leaning dangerously toward self-pity. “Yes?” she said, alarmed even though she knew she was safe in this gracious house.

  “It’s Alva,” chimed the housekeeper.

  Fancy swallowed—some part of her had expected that obnoxious Captain Corbin—and lunged to open the door.

  Alva Thompkins stood in the shadowy hallway, her arms burdened with garments of every color. Fancy spotted a pretty sprigged cambric morning dress, a soft pink wrapper, and a velvet gown of deep gold. “See if these fit you,” the woman said matter-of-factly.

  Fancy stepped back in amazement, one hand to her throat. “I—what—” she stammered.

  Alva smiled and strode to the bed, where she dumped the lovely garments right on top of Fancy’s pitiable wardrobe. “These things belonged to Miss Melissa,” the woman announced. “That’s the reverend’s young sister, you know. Whenever she leaves after one of her visits, there’s things in her room that she don’t want no more. Usually, the reverend and I give them to the church, but, well, it would be my guess that you could use them, Miss Fancy.”

  Fancy was all but overwhelmed. It seemed incredible that one could just think of a lack and immediately have it remedied—such a thing had never happened to her before.

  “Try this on,” urged Alva, holding up a day dress of lavender cotton and assessing it with speculative eyes. “I’d say you could use a bit more room in the bosom, but we could fix that easy like.”

  Fancy fairly snatched the lovely garment from Alva’s work-reddened hands, her eyes wide at the prospect of owning such a thing of splendor.

  Alva chuckled on her way to the door. “You come on out into the kitchen when you’ve got that on,” she said. “I’ll see what it needs and we’ll have a cup of chocolate together, you and me.”

  Her heart feeling warm and full, Fancy nodded quickly. The moment she was alone, she tore off her nightgown—probably it, too, had belonged to the fortunate Melissa, she reflected—and pulled on the lavender dress.

  As Alva had predicted, it was a little too small in the bodice, though it fit everywhere else. The crisp cotton whispered and rustled as Fancy moved and, in her looking glass, she saw a person transformed.

  Presently, she stopped admiring herself and hurried into the kitchen, where the kindly housekeeper waited. “That looks right nice,” the woman said, rising from her chair at the table to take a closer look.

  Fancy was filled with sudden despair. “The buttons barely meet—” she mourned, indicating the bodice with one nervous hand. Never in her life had she worn, let alone owned, such a dress. If it couldn’t be made to fit, the disappointment was going to be all out of proportion to good sense.

  “I can fix it,” said Alva, with confidence. “Sure—I can let the darts out. You go and take that off and bring it back to me.”

  Hopeful again, Fancy scurried off to obey. When she returned minutes later, carrying the dress and wearing the soft pink wrapper, Alva had fetched her sewing basket and lit several more lamps.

  The two tired women sat at the table, enjoying their hot chocolate and talking. Except when she paused to take a sip from her cup, Alva’s strong fingers worked without ceasing, the dress a billow of lavender glory in her lap.

  “How’s a snip of a girl like you come to be traveling with somebody like that Shibble feller?” the housekeeper demanded with good-natured disapproval. “Ain’t seemly.”

  Fancy shrugged. With another person she might have felt defensive, but she knew that Alva was only curious. “It was a job,” she replied.

  “A body’d think you’d have a husband,” persisted the older woman, her silver needle catching and flinging bits of light as it went in and out of the lavender fabric. “Pretty thing such as you and all.”

  Fancy’s sigh seemed to come from the very depths of her. “I could have married, I guess, if I’d wanted to stay in Newcastle.” And be like Mama, added a voice in her mind.

  “Where’s Newcastle?” asked the intrepid Alva. “I don’t believe I’ve heard of that place.”

  “It’s north of Seattle,” reflected Fancy, idly turning her china cup round and round in its delicate saucer. “There’s a coal mine there.”

  Alva nodded, not looking up from her work. “Right hard life, I reckon, diggin’ for coal. That what your daddy does?”

  It was Fancy’s turn to nod. And though her body was sitting with Alva, in that cozy kitchen, her mind had wandered back to the poverty and discouragement of her earlier life in Newcastle. Lord knew, she was still poor, but she was free as her mother and others like her could never be.

  “Pretty poor, your folks?” urged Alva, making a slight slurping sound as she took a draft of her cocoa.

  “Yes,” said Fancy directly. Though she was far away from Newcastle and had no desire to go back, she still grieved for her family. They were caught in the trap of debt and illness, forever trapped. “Papa is sick, but he still keeps working in that mine.”


  “Don’t reckon he has much choice,” observed Alva. “A body’s got to eat.”

  “They barely manage that,” mourned Fancy, her eyes distant. “The mine owner pays his workers in company scrip, which can only be spent at his store, of course. People always owe more than they can ever hope to earn.”

  “But you speak like a lady,” Alva pointed out after biting off a thread with strong, sure teeth. “How’d that come to be? And how’d you ever learn to work magic?”

  Fancy smiled. “As soon as I left, I got myself a job as a lady’s maid in Seattle. I listened to her and I read books when I wasn’t working, and pretty soon I came to speak the way Mrs. Evanston did. Her son studied magic as a sort of an avocation, and he taught me as much as he could.”

  Remembering Tim Evanston made Fancy smile, though somewhat bitterly. He’d wanted to teach her more than magic, that was a fact. In the end, he’d been the reason she’d left her job and struck out on her own, armed only with a rabbit caught in the woods behind the Evanston house, a hand-lettered sign optimistically listing her talents, and an old hat discarded by the senior Mr. Evanston.

  “You been sendin’ most of what you make back to your folks, ain’t you?” Alva guessed, with uncanny accuracy.

  “How did you know that?” asked Fancy, honestly surprised.

  “Easy. A girl as pretty as you, she’ll usually spend every nickel she can get on hair ribbons and geegaws. You ain’t got nothin’ but that fat rabbit and what you carry in your handbag.”

  Fancy blushed, embarrassed. It wasn’t that she didn’t want nice things—God knew, she ached for them sometimes—but there would have been no joy in spending money that was so desperately needed at home. “Like you said, people have to eat.”

  “Don’t they now?” commented Alva, handing over the lovely dress she had just altered.

  Fancy thanked her profusely and the two women parted, both exhausted, both filled with the joy of finding a new friend.

  * * *

  “Are you going to dump that all over me, or do I get to eat this time?” demanded Jeff Corbin sourly, his ink-blue eyes filled with residual rage.

  Fancy stood proudly in her new dress, her chin high, her hair neat, the tray clasped firmly in both hands. “To my mind, Captain,” she said, “you shouldn’t be getting trays carried to you at all. You’re not an invalid, you know.”

  “Why did you bring it up here, then?” snapped the surly man with the archangel face, not bothering to rise from his chair near the window.

  “Because I knew Alva would have to do it if I didn’t,” replied Fancy, setting the tray down on a small side table within his reach. “She has enough to do without waiting on the likes of you.”

  A grin pushed aside the scowl on Jeff’s face, reluctant though it was. “The likes of me, is it? Do you really think I’m that awful, Frances?”

  “Do not call me ‘Frances’!” ordered Fancy. “I despise it!”

  The grin became a smirk and Fancy knew that she’d made a serious mistake in revealing her aversion to the name. This man would certainly latch on to any method of annoying her that was offered. “Would you rather we were formal? I could call you ‘Miss Jordan.’ But, then, that isn’t really your name, either, is it?”

  Fancy colored, full of fury and some other disquieting emotion that she couldn’t quite set a name to. “No,” she admitted, without knowing why. “My last name is Gordon.”

  He laughed, the wretch, as he uncovered the dishes on his tray and began to consume fried eggs, bacon, and riced potatoes, with alarming appetite. “Frances Gordon. I love it!” He paused, chewing what amounted to a shovelful of food, his indigo eyes snapping with life and mirth and challenge. “It’s dull,” he finally went on, “but at least it doesn’t make you sound like a kept woman.”

  “A kept woman?!” Fancy half shrieked, ready to pounce on her “patient” and tear his ears off.

  “Have patience with me,” he urged, speaking around a bite of honeyed toast. “After all, I’m an invalid.”

  “You’re healthier than I am!” cried Fancy, falling neatly into his trap.

  The impossibly blue eyes danced. “I’m healthy, all right. One of these days—or nights—I’ll prove it to your satisfaction. But let’s not tell my brother, all right? He might make you go away and if that happens, I guarantee you, I’ll be unsalvageable.”

  Fancy kept her distance, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to leave the room. Or, more specifically, the man. Drat it all, what was it about him that drew her to him, even as it repelled her? “You’re already unsalvageable,” she retorted. “How a man as nice as Keith could have a brother like you is beyond me!”

  Unwittingly, she had nettled him. He flashed her a quick, attentive look, then pushed away the plate he had raided so voraciously only moments before. “‘Keith,’ is it? You’re on very informal terms with my brother, it would seem.”

  “We’re friends,” said Fancy, understanding but wishing that she didn’t. Keith Corbin was practically the first man she’d encountered, since her father, who liked her for herself, and she valued that.

  “He’d be quite a catch,” reflected Jeff. “Lots of money, all this land. And he’s a solid citizen in the bargain. Too bad he’s taken.”

  Fancy was so outraged that she couldn’t speak.

  “I, on the other hand, am quite free. And I’m no pauper,” Jeff went on.

  “And no ‘solid citizen,’ either, I’ll wager,” sputtered Fancy, again possessed of a need to slap this man silly.

  Jeff laughed, rubbing his strong, recently shaven chin with one hand. “Unfortunately, you’re right about that. But you’re not exactly respectable yourself, are you?”

  Fancy was stung, and worse, she was suddenly certain that he remembered her from Port Hastings. “W–What makes you say that?” she countered.

  “It’s just a guess,” he said, his eyes averted.

  “No, it isn’t. You know me, don’t you?”

  “Should I?”

  Fancy bit her lip, unable to answer.

  Jeff sat back in his chair, crossing his long legs at the ankles, his magnificent face reflective and far away. “‘Fancy Jordan,’” he mused, again rubbing his chin. “‘She sings. She dances. She does magic.’”

  Fancy was now not only unable to speak but unable to move. She waited, in horror, her hands gripping each other in white-knuckled dread.

  “Let’s hear you sing,” said Jeff, stunning her anew. “Better yet, why don’t you sing and dance?”

  “H–Here?”

  “Why not?”

  “I couldn’t. I–I won’t.”

  “Why not?” he asked again.

  “I wasn’t hired to do that.”

  “What exactly were you hired to do?”

  “Why, to t–take care of you!”

  “Take care of me, then. Right now, a song, a dance, or a bit of magic seems crucial to my recovery.”

  Fancy trembled, certain that he had recognized her and yet unable to believe that he could have. She couldn’t have sung then if her life had depended upon it, and dancing, under the circumstances, would be ludicrous. Still shaking a little, she approached Jeff, reached out, and drew a half-dollar from behind his right ear.

  “A parlor trick,” he said derisively, his blue gaze boring into Fancy now, hurting.

  Tears burned in Fancy’s eyes, threatening to spill over. “What is it that you want from me?” she whispered.

  “I want you to get out,” he breathed, with incredible cruelty. “Leave me alone. Now.”

  Wildly confused and injured in the bargain, Fancy turned with dignity and marched out of the room, closing the door behind her. In the hallway, however, she sank against the wall and wept into both hands, overcome by his rancor and by the awful possibility that he knew her, that he remembered.

  * * *

  Temple Royce’s woman. Hellfire and spit, it was just his luck! With a flailing motion of one arm, Jeff sent the tray and all its
contents hurtling off the side table to clatter on the floor.

  The door of his bedroom opened again, almost immediately, and he lifted his head, expecting Fancy, ready with a fresh spate of scathing invective. But instead of his “nurse,” he was met with the furious azure gaze of his younger brother.

  “What the devil did you say to Fancy?” Keith demanded in an undertone reminiscent of the days before his ordination as a Methodist minister.

  Jeff ached for a fight, but, given his brother’s inclination toward turning the other cheek, there didn’t seem to be much chance of that. If only Adam were around! Jeff’s fists clenched and unclenched. “Fancy,” he bit out contemptuously.

  “Yes, Fancy!” snapped Keith, his jawline tight. “I just found her sobbing her heart out!”

  “A physical impossibility. The slut has no heart.”

  Keith’s effort at control was visible. Perhaps there was hope of a good brawl after all. “Don’t call her that again, Jeff,” he ordered through clenched teeth. “Fancy is a nice young woman trying to get by, like the rest of us. According to Mrs. Thompkins, she sends practically every cent she earns to her family—”

  “How noble!” rasped Jeff. And he thought of Fancy lying, prone and lush, in Temple Royce’s bed. The image made him ill. “I want that bitch out of this house, Keith—now.”

  Keith folded his arms across his chest and cocked his head to one side. “This house is mine,” he reminded his brother in even, yet dangerous, tones. “Fancy stays. However, big brother, if you think you can override my decision, you do it.”

  Jeff rose slowly to his feet. “Is that a challenge—little brother?”

  “It’s whatever you want to make it. Fancy needs this job and she stays.”

  “Let’s discuss this outside,” suggested Jeff, a peculiar euphoria sweeping through his system at the prospect of battle.

  “Let’s do. Since Mama isn’t here to break it up with her buggy whip, maybe we’ll get it settled,” replied Keith, gesturing suavely toward the open doorway. “After you.”

  The two brothers walked down the steep stairway single file, both grim with anger. In the kitchen, Mrs. Thompkins smiled, looking pleased and surprised. “Why—” she began, only to fall silent when Keith pushed open the back door with a sharp crack of his right palm and strode out onto the screened porch.