Читать книгу The Mail-Order Brides - Bronwyn Williams - Страница 10

Once she had brewed a pot of strong tea, which more or less exhausted her culinary talents, Dora looked about for her valise and remembered that she’d left it out in the yard. She would tell someone at the docks—that nice red-haired man, perhaps—about Mr. Meeks’s ankle. Surely he would see to sending someone along to do whatever needed doing.

“So you’re one of Grey’s brides,” Meeks repeated. “Who’re you going to marry?”

Who? Well, no one, it seemed. Dora sat back down and stared at the man reclining on an old-fashioned settee in the tiny parlor. Pride alone kept her from telling him she’d been found wanting. He’d thought she was too pretty? Absurd, she told herself, feeling a rising inner heat that had to be anger. “Well…that remains to be seen, doesn’t it?”

“My Sal was the first,” Emmet confided wistfully. “Grey ordered her out special for me. Couldn’t have done better if I’d picked her out myself, and that’s the Lord’s truth. St. Bride deeded me an acre of land and the lumber to build us this home. Helped build it with his own hands, he did.” It was as if once the man began to talk, he couldn’t seem to stem the flow. “He builds one-room cabins for the single men, but he don’t deed ’em over until six months after they marry. So far, none of ’em that’s married has stayed that long. That makes me the only man on the island besides St. Bride to own so much as a grain of sand.” Pride was evident in his pale face.

But beneath the pride, there was loneliness. Dora understood grief and loneliness all too well. Somewhat to her surprise, she was tempted to pour out her own tale. What would it matter? He was a stranger, someone she would never meet again after today.

But telling wouldn’t change anything, it would only open the wounds again. The time for grieving was past. She had her future to secure now.

“Mr. Meeks, I really do need to leave now if I’m to catch the boat. I promise, though, I’ll send someone back to look after you.”

In a younger man, his smile might have been called teasing. “Call me Emmet. Been a while since I heard a lady speak my name.”

“Then, Emmet, I’d better hurry. It’s been—well, of course, the circumstances weren’t the best, but I’m truly glad I met you. Perhaps one of these days…”

What could she offer? Not friendship—there wasn’t time. “Perhaps Mr. St. Bride will find you another wife. Not to take the place of your first wife,” she added hurriedly. “I know no one could do that, but someone—a companion…”

“A companion,” he echoed wistfully. “Should’ve thought to tell him before he left.”

Before he left?

“Is Mr. St. Bride leaving, too?” If his high-and-mightiness was sailing on the same boat she was, she just might end up shoving him overboard to see if he could walk on water.

“Gone a’ready. Saw him set off across the ridge while you were helpin’ me to the house. Probably all the way out past Pelican Shoal by now, with the wind where it is.”

“He’s gone?” Dora didn’t know whether to rejoice or despair. At least he wouldn’t be sharing the cramped passenger cabin with her all the way across the Sound.

“Then I’d better—”

“Settle down, child. If you were fixin’ to sail with Cap’n Dozier you’re too late. He’s halfway out the channel by now, won’t come about for nobody, so you might’s well settle yourself in for a spell of waiting. Mail boat’s due in day after tomorrow. You could catch a ride out then if you’re still set on leaving. Dozier’ll be back the day after that.”

Settle herself in how? Where? She would like to think she’d begun to mature in spite of her father’s indulgences—the events of the past six weeks had surely hastened the process. But panic was her first reaction. What was she supposed to do, build herself a sand castle? Throw herself on the mercy of the first friendly face she came across?

Hardly. Foremost among the hard lessons she’d been forced to learn was that the world did not revolve around the Suttons. If she was to survive, it would be up to her to find a way.

“The—Mr. St. Bride, that is—um, happened to mention that my passage was paid on the Bessie Mae & Annie. What about the mail boat? Is it very expensive? Where would be her next port of call?”

“Well now, as to that, Grey owns the Bessie Mae. Mail boat’s a different matter—she don’t have much room for passengers. Won’t cost you much for deck space, but if I was you, I’d wait.”

Wait for what? Dora thought with the first fine edge of panic. Wait to be sent back to Bath, where women she’d known all her life would turn away and even cross the street to avoid embarrassment when they saw her coming? Where the men would look her up and down with a certain speculative gleam in their eyes that made her feel as if she’d wandered outside in her drawers and corselet?

No, thank you.

Where she would have too much pride to beg and too few resources to keep from starving?

No, thank you indeed!

“I don’t suppose there’s a—um, a boardinghouse here?” Where she could wash dishes to earn her keep until she could think of something better to do.

Emmet shook his head. “No need for one. There’s a longhouse for the pilots up at North End. Been inlet pilots here long’s there’s been a good inlet, ready to go out and meet incoming traffic, guide ’em across the shoals. Come August, there’s mullet fishermen, but now we got more of a permanent population. Like I said, St. Bride built cabins for them that don’t stay in the barracks.”

“What about the—the women? Where do they stay?” Surely she could find someplace to shelter until she could get off St. Bride’s blasted island.

“When Sal was here, we took one of ’em in. Didn’t stay long, poor woman. Lit out on the mail boat two days after she come. Since then, if the circuit preacher’s not here, they stay at the parsonage. If he’s here, he moves up to Grey’s house, let’s ’em have his place until things is settled one way or the other. Like I said, so far none of ’em’s stuck more’n a month or two, ’ceptin’ for my Sal.”

“Do you suppose—?” She hardly dared voice the question. If it involved the cooperation of Grey St. Bride, she knew in advance the answer. Having ordered her to leave, he would expect her to be gone. Instead she’d stopped to help someone in need and missed the boat. He could hardly blame her for that…could he?

“Now, if you was to want to stay here until the Bessie Mae gets back” Emmet said thoughtfully, “reckon there’s not much Grey could say about it, seein’s he deeded this place to me, fair and square.”

Dora looked about the small cottage. There appeared to be several rooms, including the kitchen off the back. There was also a narrow, steep stairway leading to what must be more rooms or an attic. Altogether, compared to Sutton Hall, Emmet’s cottage was scarcely larger than the servants’ quarters out behind their carriage house.

Odd that it should feel so…safe. Did she dare stay here long enough to plan her next move? No matter how despotic he might be, St. Bride could hardly chase her off his island as long as she remained on the part of it that Emmet owned.

Stalling for time until she could weigh her options, Dora said, “Would you like more tea? Perhaps I could—” Cook his dinner?

Hardly. She wouldn’t know how to start. She’d been no more truthful in her application when she had claimed to be a capable woman than she had when she’d called herself a widow.

Heaven help her if she had actually married St. Bride, as she had naively expected to, and he’d discovered the extent of her lies.

Fortunately, Emmet seemed more interested in talking than in dining. “Did I tell you about Sal? I buried her out by the fig trees. Sal used to race out there of a morning to beat the mockingbirds to the ripe figs.” His smile was for another woman, another time. Dora started to speak, but he continued, and so she leaned back in the uncomfortable spindle-backed chair, determined to be the audience he so obviously needed. She might be shockingly inadequate in most respects, but she could certainly listen for as long as he wanted to talk.

“Now’n again I haul a chair out there by her grave and study on the way things turn out in a man’s life. Planning don’t do much good, not when there’s a Master Planner up there with his own notions of how things is going to turn out.”

“Fate,” Dora murmured. She knew all about the way life’s chessboard could tilt with no warning, sending all the pieces crashing to the floor.

He nodded. “Some calls it luck—some might call it fate when a young woman happens by an old man’s house just when his sand’s about to run out. Does she stop and help when the old fool climbs up a ladder and takes a fall, or does she walk on by?”

Inside her flimsy kid slippers, Dora’s toes curled. What was he trying to say? That fate had directed her to his gate just as another door slammed shut in her face? Whatever it was he suggesting, could she afford not to listen? If she’d already missed the boat, what choice did she have?

“St. Bride, he signed up the circuit preacher before he sent for the first brace o’women. My Sal was one of ’em. With our own preacher on the line, we could send for him whenever there was any splicin’ that needed doing without having to sail o’er and hitch up on the mainland.”

Dora waited. She had a feeling he was leading up to something, only she couldn’t imagine what it could be. Surely he wasn’t about to ask her to marry him.

“Works out real good. Course, there’s not a lot for a preacher to do here less’n there’s a marrying. Not much sinnin’ to preach at, not like some of his other charges where they have saloons and wild women. Grey won’t tolerate sinnin’ on St. Brides—says if he allows sinnin’, first thing you know he’ll have to bring in a sawbones and a sheriff.”

Most of the color had returned to his weathered face. Dora murmured something to the effect that a doctor might be useful, but Emmet, now that his initial discomfort had lessened, seemed more inclined to talk than to listen.

“Now, Preacher Filmore, he’s a good man. Give you the shirt off’n his back if you need it. The Lord sort of slowed up his talking so folks wouldn’t miss any of his words. Trouble is, I listen a whole lot faster than he talks, and besides that, he don’t even play checkers. Not even for black-eyed peas. Calls it gambling, and gambling’s a sin in his book. So you can see the fix I’m in.”

She couldn’t, but she was beginning to see where the conversation might be headed. Evidently, the slow-talking minister would be expected to take care of Mr. Meeks and keep him entertained until he was on his feet again.

And just as evidently, Mr. Meeks’s patience would be sorely tested.

“Now Grey, he’s a meddler, for all he means well. Long as they’re living here on his island, a man don’t have no choice but to go ’long with his notions, ’specially since they generally turn out right good. I reckon he told you about the plans he has to pair up the single men with wives and start raising younguns?”

She wasn’t about to admit that she’d come here believing St. Bride meant to marry her himself.

“Used to be families living out here back in his pa’s day. Storms run most of ’em off. Shoreside washed in near half a mile. Since then, sand covered up just about everything left standing. He tell you about that?”

She shook her head. The man had told her little except that life on his island was hard, and that she would never be able to survive here. He could hardly know she had survived far worse than wild winds and raging seas.

He had also told her she was pretty. No one had ever told her that before—at least, not without wanting something from her.

“Won’t be easy, finding a schoolteacher. Finding the preacher and getting him to take on another charge was hard enough. Poor man can’t hardly keep up with things as it is. Like I said, he talks so slow it takes him two hours to get through a one-hour sermon.” He chuckled, and Dora felt some of the tension that had gripped her ever since she had recklessly answered the advertisement begin to ease.

“Licensed to marry folks, though, that’s mainly what he’s here for. Married Sal and me, right and proper. We was older than some, but when Sal came out, St. Bride, he thought we’d suit, set a good example, he said.” Nodding, he added, “Said words over her grave when I buried her.” He paused as if, satisfied with his summary, he was searching for his next topic. He had told her several times over about his wonderful Sal. The poor man was obviously starved for companionship.

So much for the wonderful Mr. St. Bride.

Dora leaned to one side to peer through a window, wishing she could see the docks from where she sat. What if Emmet was wrong and the Bessie Mae & Annie hadn’t actually sailed yet?

But even if by some miracle she mananged to catch the boat before it left, would she be any better off? There were few jobs available for women who’d been coddled all their lives. When the time came, no matter what their personal inclinations, they were expected to marry men of their fathers’ choosing—men who would continue to pamper them. As far as Dora was concerned, even that door had been closed.

From her rocking chair—Sal’s rocker, according to Emmet—all she could see was that towering monstrosity of a house on the dunes. Castle St. Bride.

Fortress St. Bride, she amended bitterly.

“So I said to myself,” Emmet Meeks went on, and Dora turned her attention back to her elderly host, wondering if she’d missed something. “Either she will or she won’t. Don’t do no harm to ask.”

“To ask?”

“Don’t take offense, Miss Sutton, but the fact that you come here in answer to St. Bride’s piece in the paper means you’ve run plumb out of luck over on the mainland.” She opened her mouth and closed it again. It was no less than the truth. “Happens, I’m alone in the world but for a dog that lives with me,” he went on. “After my wife died I went over to the mainland for a spell. Saw a doctor, thinking maybe I could get me a pair of spectacles—it was getting so I couldn’t even see the channel markers, let alone the shoals. Doc said I had clouds in my eyes—said the best specs in the world couldn’t clear ’em away.” He stirred his tea, sipped it and continued to speak, thoughtfully peering into his teacup. “Saw another doc while I was there. Told me my heart was tired.”

“Oh, no…” she murmured.

“Said if I was lucky, I still had a few good years left before it gave up the ghost.” His clouded blue eyes captured and held her clear gray-green ones. “What I’m trying to say, Miss Dora, is that I’d as soon not live ’em alone. I’ve got my dog, but Salty, she’s not much of a one for conversation.”

Dora was aghast. What could she say under the circumstances? Was he asking her to marry him? Was he daft?

More to the point, was she?

Because she actually found herself considering it. Seriously considering marriage to a man she’d known less than an hour.

Yet, was it any worse than marrying one she’d never even met? That was what she’d been prepared to do until she’d been rejected.

“I’d not ask much of you, Miss Dora. If you’ll agree to stay on as my companion—as my friend—I can’t pay you much, but I promise to deed you my house and my land and bless you with my dying breath for your kindness.”

Grey made it as far north as Long Point and dropped anchor in Wysocking Bay. He’d have liked to get farther, but sailing alone in his 30 foot sloop, he preferred to lay over until daylight. Too much was depending on him to take any foolish risks.

Damn it all, why had the woman showed up just as he had to leave? It would be several days—possibly as much as a week—before he could get back, and then he’d have to start all over again.

There had to be a way to word his advertisements so that only the right sort of woman would apply. Not too young, not too old, like poor Sal. Not too pretty, but not plain as a mud fence, either. Sturdy women, not given to fancy pink dresses and flimsy pink slippers.

Going below, he unwrapped the supper his housekeeper, a giant of a man named Mouse, had provided. Cheese, cold cornbread and smoked fish, with a handful of dried apples to follow. Back up on deck, he consumed the lot without tasting any of it and thought about the woman. Dora Sutton.

Who the devil was she? Why would a woman with her looks bother to answer his advertisement? While he might not be up on the latest fashions, he knew quality when he saw it. That fancy pink frock of hers, in spite of the stains and wrinkles, was quality.

She hadn’t taken his money, which meant she was not entirely without resources. Otherwise his conscience would never let him rest until he’d tracked her down and seen to his own satisfaction that she was all right. He’d been called a martinet—his own brother had once jokingly called him a tinhorn dictator—but he would never willingly allow anyone to suffer as long as he had the means to prevent it.

Thank God she was no longer his problem. She was the kind of woman who set a man’s sap to rising—his own, included. Being married wouldn’t change that fact. All she would have to do was stroll down to the landing on a busy day and every tongue between North End and Shallow Gut would be dragging on the ground. Next thing, there’d be fights among his men, demands that he find them a pretty, yellow-haired wife with high breasts and a hand-span waist.

Did they think he could simply sail across the sound, pick out a few likely candidates, knock them over the head with a club and drag them back to the island? Matchmaking required patience and careful planning. It took guts, tact and finesse, not to mention the ability to handle large amounts of frustration.

Any way you looked at it, turning a rough crew of transients and watermen into a settled, civilized community was damned hard work.

Thank God he had what it took to do the job.

With a million stars reflected in the black water all around him and Dora Sutton stuck in his mind like a peck of sandspurs, Grey allowed himself the rare indulgence of reliving a Chapter from his past. Back when he’d first fallen in love with her, Evelyn had been almost as beautiful as the widow Sutton. A tall woman, she’d had auburn hair and an imperious way he’d found amusing…at least for the first few months.

The years that had given her more generous proportions and darkened her hair had done little to lessen her loveliness. Lately, though, he’d noticed a few lines of dissatisfaction on her face. Come to think of it, even her voice was beginning to sound more querulous than melodious.

But that was Jocephus’s problem, not his. Thank God. One thing about having once fallen hard for the wrong woman, Grey told himself—it lent a man insulation. Taught him what qualities to look for in a wife, as well as which ones to avoid like the plague.

Back on St. Brides, Miss Adora Sutton, the once-popular but now-disgraced daughter of one of Beaufort County’s most prominent citizens, challenged her host to a game of checkers after a modest supper of cold biscuits and molasses, served with dried fruit and tinned tomatoes. Not too long ago she would have turned up her nose at such a crude repast, but having had nothing at all to eat since the ship’s biscuit and brandy Captain Dozier had offered to settle her stomach, she’d scraped her plate clean, going so far as to lick the molasses from her fingertips.

When the last rays of daylight dimmed, she lit a lamp and plumped a pillow to support Emmet’s ankle. They had played a game of checkers, and fading vision or not, the man was a wizard. “One more game?” he teased.

“All right, one more,” she agreed, “but only if you promise to keep your foot up on that stool.” Dora tried to imagine what it must be like to be alone in the world, with both a failing heart and blindness a distinct possibility. The poor man was so lonely he was reduced to talking to a dog, a pen full of chickens and one old gander. He insisted that his ankle wasn’t bothering him, but she knew the swelling alone must be uncomfortable.

They played two more games, and then she insisted on helping him to his bedroom. It had been decided after she had agreed to stay on as his companion that she would sleep in the parlor for now, on a pallet made up of quilts his wife had brought with her. Tomorrow, with Emmet’s permission, she might clear away the clutter in the back. If he objected, she could always see if the attic was at all habitable. It would be hot as blazes, but at least it would be private.

I’ll do my best to look after him for you, Sal, she thought as she snuggled down on her hard bed and stared up at the ceiling. He’s really a dear man. He misses you terribly.

The snug frame house was a far cry from Sutton Hall, but for the first time since her world had come crashing down, Dora felt a measure of peace. Of hope. And oddly enough, of security.

Sooner or later she would have to face Grey St. Bride again, but not tomorrow. Emmet assured her that whenever he sailed north to Edenton to visit his brother, he was usually gone for several days.

Meanwhile, she had much to learn, and Emmet promised to begin teaching her first thing tomorrow. She had confessed when she’d agreed to stay on that she was willing to learn—eager, in fact—but that at the moment, her domestic skills were limited to making tea and boiling eggs.

Emmet had smiled in a way that hinted at the handsome, charming scamp he must have been in his youth. He was only fifty-eight, but looked much older. “I reckon until I’m steady on my pins again, I’ll have to take my chances.”

“Do you really think you can teach me to cook?” The playful challenge was not without a degree of desperation. She had her work cut out for her if she ever intended to be self-sufficient.

“I’m a right fair hand at plain cooking. Sal left a book of recipes. I made out a few things, but like I said, my eyes aren’t what they used to be.”

“Then I’ll read and you can interpret,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t ask why a woman who lacked even the most basic skills had come here to marry a simple workingman.

The last thought on her mind as she closed her eyes, rolled onto her side and tucked her fist against her chin was of a tall, dark-haired man with an incongruous dimple in his chin. A man who had told her she wasn’t suitable—that she was neither wanted nor needed here. That she was, of all things, too pretty!

You and your blooming island can go take a flying leap, Lord St. Bride. I’m here, and I’m staying, and that’s the end of that!