Trouble Cove

by Nancy Lindley-Gauthier

  “If it’s true.”

  “Likely is. I’m surprised we haven’t had her father or someone here kicking up a fuss.” She looked straight at me. “Gambling, boozing. Avery’s behavior with you. I guess I’ve seen enough. I don’t know what I am going to do next, but I have to do something.”

  “Do?”

  Ariel leaned across the great stone counter as she said, “My sister Genevieve is a sweet, sweet person. She adores him. I can’t exactly tell her he’s a cad. She won’t want to believe it. We must break it up. You will help me, won’t you Elizabeth? You aren’t fooled by him. I have to do something soon.”

  “I can’t see how I can help.” I busied myself with the tea tray, unaccountably anxious about what she might stir up.

  “We can tell Avery we know all about Siobhan. We’ll threaten to ruin him in society.” Ariel crossed her arms with finality.

  “We don’t know if it’s true.” I kept my gaze fixed upon the pattern on the teapot.

  “If the threat scares him, we’ll know it is true,” she insisted. “He’s to break it off with Gen. He can tell her how he has suddenly fallen for someone else. Whatever.”

  “He won’t tell Gen anything of the kind,” I protested. “He’s been trying to impress her since back in the summer.”

  “Yes. Quite suddenly, he became quite attentive, didn’t he? His mother became positively friendly, too.” She leaned back, hands on hips. “As they both seemed disinclined to begin with, it makes me suspicious.”

  “Everything makes you suspicious, Ariel.” I felt I had to point out. “But, if he actually likes her, he might admit more than you would want, when he breaks it off. Admit we are forcing him.”

  “Then he can just go. I’ll tell her that he left. He won’t want to be ruined in society.” She shrugged. “Why are you arguing? If he stays, he’s going to make sure you are dismissed. I mean, for you it’s only a job, but for Gen this matters.”

  A job might seem like a minor thing to Ariel, with who knew what inheritance, but it was no small matter for me. I’d have to go home and take up the roll of a wallflower again. My fingers clenched at the thought. All those town ladies with nothing to do but gossip. My mum was no better than any of her neighbors, either. She’d love to have both daughters married to men that let her gloat. Oh, I did not want to return home.

  I’d not seen Daro again.

  My heart skipped a beat at the thought. Even after all of it; the storm and the danger and unpleasantness, I hated the idea of leaving Cape Breton Island: Cape Breton, and the one man who was most definitely ‘better.’

  Ariel set off, determined. As for me; I could only await my fate.

  Chapter Seven

  McClellan Harbor

  No deliveries were expected on Tuesday and I sadly poked around in the chilly front rooms. A fine dusting of snow had settled over the porch, the road, and a thicker line of snow sat out along the high-tide mark on the beach. It looked as if winter had arrived overnight.

  It felt like the end. I had reached the end of my time in this, the most beautiful place on earth, and an end to seeing Daro.

  My Daro.

  Silly. I tried to dismiss the thought. I couldn’t allow myself these foolish notions. For one thing, my parents’ views would only echo Cook’s. For another, the man himself was hardly beating a path to the door, was he? I had drummed up this great affection out of nothing. I had to stop kidding myself.

  I wound the grandfather clock in the hallway. The heavy tick-tock swelled to fill the silence. I stood there in the emptiness. I could see no way to avoid departure.

  I waited to hear Avery’s footsteps on the front stairs. Immediate dismissal seemed likely, given yesterday’s events. In fact, I anticipated a nasty scene. I should have packed before I came downstairs. Even if I could somehow smooth things over, the hotel was obviously not prepared for winter. Oceanside’s days had to be numbered, regardless.

  I tugged my sweater down over my arms as a draft worked its way through the gaps in the wood over the front windows. No one had ordered replacement windows yet. The boards were unsightly and the draft made the room cold. Proper wool drapes would make the world of difference.

  Ariel had mentioned the seamstress in McLellan’s Harbor.

  Drapes! Yes, in fact, why not? I was still employed, at least, for the moment. I could go out on an errand to order drapes. I might find this seamstress lady in the village where Daro’s family lived. Perhaps I would run into Daro?

  I so wanted the chance for some final word.

  I estimated measurements by eye and slid the pretty, butter-soft cashmere from Ariel over my best everyday dress, took some time get my hair perfect and set off pretending I was on an ordinary errand. I wasted no time cadging a ride in George’s lovely automobile to the village at McLellan’s harbor. I could hardly suppose the seamstress’ shop would be open this early, but I could wait. I would dawdle about the little town and see who I happened into.

  Fog stretched in layers above the sea, sank into troughs between waves, and wove in and out through the rocks near shore. The red dawn of the morning sky had not yet completely faded.

  George dropped me at the base of the hill. “I’m due back at Oceanside to pick up Mrs. Brookeson after breakfast time.” George rolled his eyes. “The complaints I get, if I am one minute late.”

  “Not to worry, I can find my way from here,” I said as I set off up the narrow lane. McLellan’s was not particularly familiar, though I’d traveled through a few times. It sprang up, like many a seaside village, overlooking a useful, mostly natural harbor.

  Small, much-weathered homes crowded up the side of a hill. All their front windows looked out over the sea. Their lighthouse sat on a curving point of rock, and fishing boats dotted the waters. Men were busy about the docks, but few other people were about in the fresh, cold morning.

  Southward, a plump cloud bank sank down and squashed into the horizon. Our hotel artist would have set up canvas right there, had he one look at the scene; he often talked about ‘capturing the atmosphere.’

  I would paint the village if I had the skill of an artist. Never mind the curling waves or dramatic clouds stretched across the opalescent sky. I’d paint this first cottage, with its beach roses all faded and dusted with snow. I’d catch the arched doorway of the next house, made from the hull of a rowboat. I would somehow share the charm.

  I meandered up the lane, peering into people’s snowy front gardens and wondering about their lives here. I quite forgot to keep an eye out for the seamstress. A twist in the lane led me up a slight rise and I walked around a corner practically right into my Daro. Mr. Michelson. He was stacking crates onto a wagon.

  I stumbled to a stop and felt my cheeks flush with embarrassment. All good and well to imagine ‘happening’ into him, quite another to do it! If he hadn’t already seen me, I think I might have turned and run. This visit could never be mistaken for happenstance.

  “Captain.” He straightened up slowly. The array of wooden boxes attested to how early he set into his workday. It was surely still early and he looked at me curiously.

  “I’m running some errands, Mr. Michelson,” I said hastily. I wished I had something in my hands—curtains to repair, anything to give some evidence of my errand.

  He grinned. “Have they sent you after fish this morning?”

  “Drapes,” I said. “I’m to order drapes.”

  Daro abruptly set aside the box in his hands. “Drapes?”

  “Yes. Heavy wool drapes.”

  “They can’t be thinking of staying longer? Drapes now.” His deep, rumbling voice might have come from the depths of the ocean, and indeed, all I could think of was how he had stood by me, so sure, aboard the Thistle. He frowned as he stared to the south. “It was intended as a summer place. They never intended to heat it! I’ll speak to one of the town fathers. Someone must convince the Brookesons of the danger. The hotel was never meant to house folks all winter. It will likely be cut off…”<
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  He paused just then, and, not quite looking at me, said, “You’ll not be going yourself, I mean, not ’til they close?”

  “I hope to stay.” As I spoke I realized my comment must seem terribly forward! “Until close, I mean.”

  Daro reached out to grasp my hand, hesitated. “Wrist?”

  “It’s okay.”

  He grasped my fingers as if I were as delicate as a doll.

  I held perfectly still.

  We stood hand-in-hand, not quite looking at one another. My heart was racing and my mouth was so ridiculously dry, I couldn’t utter a word.

  We remained right there, hand-in-hand, in the middle of this little lane, in front of any who cared to look, for what length of time I could scarcely say. I can only guess he felt as surprised as I.

  “Seamstress, then?” Daro suddenly asked.

  With particularly brilliant eloquence, I nodded.

  Daro started to turn and point, as I tucked my hand around his elbow, thinking he meant to escort me. He paused. Realizing my mistake, I started to step away. We were completely at cross-purposes, but he stepped off and placed a hand over mine, as if he’d intended to walk with me from the first.

  We were both blushing madly. Quite madly! Oh, my goodness, I wanted to laugh but wished he would, before I.

  He paced off down the lane quietly though. “If only winter weren’t so close,” he said at last.

  With my hand tucked in his arm, I scarcely heard him. I am not at all sure my feet touched the ground. The perfect pearly clouds above took on the shape of swans adrift and the surf might have been music.

  “Drapes now,” he muttered.

  I managed to pull myself together. “The house feels chilly, but Mr. Osten has ordered another lot of firewood and I’m sure we can make the front rooms snug.”

  “It isn’t full winter yet.”

  We arrived at a small wooden sign for Eleanor Dobbs Fine Stitchery. No tracks lead up the dressmaker’s front walk. It was really too early to call. Few tracks marked even the main road. Fewer yet were the tracks along this lane. I stopped short and gazed at her still-shaded windows.

  I regretted the end of our walk, though Daro made no move to step away. I kept my hand tucked in at his elbow.

  “It won’t be snug,” he growled, returning to his concern about Oceanside. “It won’t be safe.”

  Oceanside, enchantingly, had been built right on the beach itself. Yet, compared to the many tiny homes here, it seemed utterly impervious to weather. Oh, we might suffer the odd broken window, but what more could possibly trouble the great building?

  “This whole village lives here all winter long,” I pointed out.

  A red-trimmed punt wallowed in waves not three meters off from the dock at the lighthouse. A fellow in a knit hat bent over the stern, dipping his hands in the freezing cold Atlantic. It might as easily have been Daro out there, hauling nets.

  “Look at the bluff and at the rocks and the shape of the barrier shoals,” Daro pointed. “Look. The land here protects the village. The old folks knew what they were about when they first built their homes here. On the other hand, those clever fellows from away south set Oceanside right on an open beach at a particularly low point. It’s lovely in summer. Winter is another story. In bad storms, we’ve seen waves come right up over the road along there. Oceanside might have more than broken windows, next time.”

  I looked up and down the village streets, which all lined the hillside, with the protection of the natural breakwater before them.

  “The cold presents a challenge,” he continued. “The builders should have known what they were doing, but for some reason, built the whole place as inexpensively as possible. Sure it looks grand.”

  Grand? Oceanside looked enormous. I could hardly point out how frail all these little box houses appeared by comparison. It didn’t seem polite. I felt perfectly confident in the great structure, even if I had less confidence in its inhabitants.

  “Real waves. I’m not talking about the bit of spray like last time,” Daro said. “Waves could roll right up on that fancy house’s porch. And, the place would crumble.”

  I watched the glitter of the Sun reflecting on the waves in front of me. Oceanside seemed far, far away. “If braving winter storms is the only way for me to stay, why then.” I shrugged.

  “I’ll see you out in plenty of time, if there’s any danger,” Daro said. “I can always see weather coming in.”

  My heart leapt. If I had my wits about me, I might have said something romantic. I should have murmured a sweet little ‘I’ll trust you to save me, Daro.’ Instead, I stood and gawked up at him, in a completely besotted fashion. He likely found me impossibly silly.

  He smiled back down at me, a tremendous, good-hearted bear of a man.

  So we stood, not speaking, not knowing what more to say, or what more we should say, and unmindful of the village waking around us. We both clung to this as a most precious moment. At least, I assumed he was speechless for the same reason as I.

  Eventually, doors slammed and it occurred to me that people might be looking. I pulled myself together. “Do show me around the village?”

  Daro raised his eyebrows, but nodded, and we set off. Then I remembered about the seamstress, as we strolled away from her door! Oh, well. He’d already seen through my little subterfuge, without a doubt.

  We went down the long lane and along the waterfront. Daro gazed intently southward again. The wind swirled the fog into elaborate patterns up from the breakers, over the jagged line of granite and up almost to our feet.

  I felt plenty warm enough, though the wind off the sea brought a shower of fine freezing droplets mixed with snowflakes. We puttered along the village road, under the clock sign where we were better protected from the sea spray.

  “My friend Ariel is dead-set on breaking up her sister and Avery Brookeson,” I said, mostly for conversation.

  “Bit heartless?”

  “She means well,” I tried to explain. “Avery and Gen. I don’t know what to say. Gen; she’s a lovely, friendly person but gullible. You know what I mean? Ariel, the sister, so wants Gen to meet someone pleasant, someone kind.”

  “Isn’t that what anyone would want?”

  “Yes, yes, I suppose so.” I felt I explained it all poorly. Avery no more cared for Gen than he did about old Thistle; great to show off and worth a good bit of dough, but when it came to it, replaceable.

  Gen most certainly came with ‘a good bit of dough.’ Their marriage would be a disaster though. I could see, as Ariel so plainly could, down the road to a time when Gen would be at best ignored or made miserable, while Avery went on with the lifestyle of a rake. She was a patriot, too, and had no grasp of how Avery belittled his home country.

  I was hard pressed to explain why I even cared. A society gal marrying someone in her own class and the two making such a lovely couple, wouldn’t it be what they both deserved?

  “You’re better off out of it,” Daro advised.

  “I am out of it, or will be, soon,” I admitted. Likely, I’d be fired the moment Avery saw me. I recalled how this was likely my last chance, my last visit with Daro. I suppose I held his hand all the tighter as we went. I wondered if it would be ridiculous to promise to write, after so brief an acquaintance.

  I puzzled over the finer points of such etiquette as we came by the very recognizable Trumbull house. The dusting of snow sat particularly elegantly there, with ice crystals dangling from the picket fence and all along the edges of the famous Trumbull widow’s walk.

  The widow Trumbull herself shuffled down her walk and stood stock-still at her gate.

  “Morning, Mrs. Trumbull,” Daro said.

  “Daro Michelson,” she said, in her best, retired-now schoolmarm manner. I could see her in front of a classroom easy as pie. She’d probably been Daro’s schoolmarm, those short years he’d spent in a classroom.

  “Do you need something, Mrs. Trumbull?”

  She pulled a scarf a
round tighter against the biting wind. “Look what’s happened to my lantern.” She nodded to the high lantern on the post at the end of her walk. Several of the small square panes in the shaped lantern were gone. They were not smashed. They were simply missing.

  Daro frowned as he studied it and the snow around the base. At length, he picked a shard of glass from the back panel. “This pane was broken, but the glass chimney inside for the flame is gone. That didn’t break.” He stood on tiptoe to peer into the inner workings. “The entire oil reservoir is gone, jar and all. Pried right out of there.”

  “I lit the candle last evening. Perfectly usual.” Mrs. Trumbull twisted a handkerchief about in her hands. Since her husband was lost at sea half-a-century ago Mrs. Trumbull had, rather famously, kept her home alight. Lights atop the widow’s walk shone at any hour, and her front lantern burned from sundown to sun up, without fail.

  “It can’t have broken? We’ve had some fierce wind gusts.”

  Daro shook his head, still looking around the yard. “There are indents here, not-quite covered tracks.” His gaze followed the unclear marks in her front garden.

  “I came down just now, to douse the light.”

  “There are faint tracks right up your porch steps.”

  The woman motioned toward the porch. “I keep a big jar of oil right back of the column post there.”

  We all trudged up the stairs to look. Sure enough, the spare oil jar was also gone.

  “Who would do such a thing? They ruined the lamp, besides.” The woman stood shivering in her indoor-shawl, staring about the porch as if this missing glass jar might suddenly emerge.

  “I’m sure we can fix the lantern,” I said. “Hadn’t you better go inside? It is so cold.”

  The incredibly dignified woman straightened and looked me up and down as if I had only then leapt up out of a hole in the ground. “You’re from this new resort?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked rather pointedly back at Daro.

  I could read her, plain as plain. I folded my hands together and said, “I’m staff.”

  “From away.” She sniffed. She could take up where Cook’s comments left off, easily enough. Even If I wasn’t as inappropriate as ‘a society gal,’ still, I did not belong with the likes of Daro.