Back Roads to Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #6): A Novel (15 page)

“There’s more?”

“Oh, yes, one yard of wigan; and I can tell by the look on your face you don’t know what that is. Right?”

“Right,” Parker answered cheerfully, certain he would soon be informed.

“Wigan is a stiff, plain-weave cotton fabric used for interlining.”

Lining, interlining, binding—how complicated to be a modern woman!

“One card of hooks and eyes—the hump kind.”

“Hump kind?”

“They have . . . um, a
hump
to them. They’re not your flat eye, in other words. Easier to get the hook into.”

Parker silently considered hump versus flat eyes.

“And that’s all. Oh, wait—four yards of velveteen skirt binding.”

Parker was speechless, more overwhelmed than anything. “You find all that excessive, perhaps?” Molly asked, worried. “Not at all, not at all,” Parker reassured. “I was just thinking—how am I going to find my girl in all of that folderol? You
will
be in there somewhere, I presume.”

Molly’s laugh rang out across the bush—a happy promise.

T
he wilds of Canada—the back of beyond; remittance men—the dregs of British society. Allison struggled to make sense of it. Standing in a well-appointed room in a solid stone house set in the English countryside, with every advantage known to modern man her daily privilege, cosseted, gently reared, innocent of life beyond the four walls of Middleton Grange, she could have no understanding of either threat mentioned by her father—Canadian wilds or remittance men.

She may not have understood—but her mother did.

“Quincy!” she gasped. Not the best, the most involved, the most caring of mothers, still she quailed at what her husband had said. “You can’t mean it!”

“Oh, I mean it,” Quincy said firmly. And neither his wife nor his daughter doubted it.

Letitia half rose from her chair, her face shocked, unbelieving. This ultimatum, even from Quincy, was beyond grasping.

“Sit, my dear,” Quincy ordered, and Letitia sank back as though collapsing.

Her mother’s reaction, coming on top of her own ignorance of what her father had meant, shot a bolt of fear through Allison’s heart. There was something dreadful, obviously, about the Canadian wilds, about remittance men. About her father’s decision.

Quincy’s attention swung to his daughter. Seeing what he interpreted as unconcern on her face but what was in reality the blankness of incomprehension and being dissatisfied with it, he took it upon himself to add fuel to the fire.

“Remittance men,” he said. “In case you haven’t heard the term, remittance men are a group of uncontrollable young men who are
an embarrassment to their families
—” Quincy’s emphasis and his glare spoke of the intensity of his feelings.

“Papa—”

“An embarrassment, I say,” Quincy continued bitterly. “For whatever reason—gambling, carousing, drinking, wasting the family fortune in some way and destroying the family name—”

“Papa—”

“Whatever the reason, the solution is the same: They are sent off to a far corner of the British Empire. Here they continue to receive a scheduled remittance or allowance from their families. If they choose to continue in their dissolute lifestyle, they hurt no one but themselves; the family is happily ignorant of their escapades. As we shall be of yours.”

“Quincy—no!” Letitia said at last, gripping the arm of the chair and speaking beseechingly. “Not Canada. We shall never see her . . . rarely hear from her . . . not know how she’s faring—”

“That’s the general idea,” Quincy said coldly. “There will be no more disgraceful actions to bring shame on the family. If that’s the route she’s chosen for herself, we simply won’t know of it. Oh, never fear, I’ll send financial support. But not enough,” he added firmly, “to keep her in the style to which she has been accustomed. And which she was so willing to leave, may I add, to share the fortunes—misfortunes—of one Stephen Lusk. If that’s the way you want to live, my girl,” he said smoothly, speaking to Allison, “impoverished—”

“Impoverished!” squeaked Letitia. “But you said—”

“I said there would be an allowance,” Quincy confirmed. “What do you think I am—a callous beast? But as I also said, it won’t be lavish by any means. Why should I send my hard-earned money across the ocean to be frittered away in riotous living? If she chooses to support every Tom, Dick, and Harry, that’s her decision. There will be no Papa to come running to for more; there will be no Grandmama sending gifts. There will be,” he said, fixing his wife with a stern glance, “no Mother supplying secret funds.”

Letitia knew he meant it; Allison was certain of it.

“When . . . how . . .” she managed into the silence that fell. “I’ve been working on it. There are still some details to finalize, such as the ship’s sailing date—”

Letitia’s eyes glazed; she moaned.

Quincy’s voice was a whiplash: “Give over, Letitia! Stop that foolish whimpering! We’ll have no vapors, if you please!”

Regardless, Letitia’s tears began to flow. Silently, as from an artesian well, unaccompanied by sniveling, sighing, wiping of eyes, or sound of any sort, they welled, ran over, streamed down the sagging cheeks, splashed onto the bosom of her gown.

Instantly Allison was at her mother’s side, was kneeling at her knee. “Hush, Mama, hush, hush,” she whispered.

With the situation more or less out of hand, certainly not what he wanted or even expected, Quincy rolled his eyes, put his fingertips together, leaned back in his comfortable chair, and waited grimly for the little drama to conclude.

“I’m sorry, Mama, I’m sorry!”

And at last, finally, Allison was sorry. The intensity of her father’s anger had not been out of character, and though it stung, it affected her very little; like rain off an umbrella, she bent under the deluge of his words but hardly allowed them to touch her. But the anguish of her mother took her by complete surprise. That they were tears of self-accusation Allison never knew.

Letitia was reaping—in one desolate moment—the results of a lifetime of careless mothering. Her abandoned weeping—interpreted by her daughter as grief and despair over the harsh sentence—filled Allison with a regret over her rash actions that she had not experienced before. She had, in fact, enjoyed a certain glow of satisfaction over her daring escapade and coddled a smidgen of pleasure over her few hours of independence. But now, in response to her mother’s supposed pain, Allison was guiltily regretful.

“Don’t, Mama,” she urged now, wishing with all her heart there was something she could do, say, to ease the pain. “Everything will be all right . . .”

And then her mother raised her soggy, somewhat bloated face and said drearily, “It’s too late, you silly girl! How many times have I warned you against your impulsiveness, your heedless behavior! Now look what you’ve done!”

If a viper had risen up and struck at her, Allison couldn’t have been more stunned. Recoiling as though from an injection of poison, Allison rose to her feet, slowly backed away, her eyes on her mother. Letitia had gone back to her soundless weeping.

With a colorless face Allison turned toward her father. “Be so kind,” she said in little more than a whisper, “as to tell me what you have in mind . . . for me.”

“Don’t think I take any pleasure in this,” Quincy said with calmness, apparently feeling some explanation was necessary. “I would much rather be planning your birthday ball; I would much prefer putting money into that. I would much rather think ahead, with anticipation and satisfaction, to your wedding. All that and more you have disqualified yourself for. Remember, if you are tempted to think hardly of me—the way of the transgressor is hard.”

“My punishment, Papa. What exactly do you have in mind? The wilds of Canada, you said—”

“If you are going to behave like a savage, you might as well live among them. Like the remittance men, you will be shipped to that distant, wild, untamed frontier. However,” he said,
qualifying his assessment a little, “I understand the eastern provinces are more or less civilized.”

Allison, ignorant of Canada east, west, north, or south, waited.

“Yes?” she said quietly.

Quincy lifted a slip of paper from his desk. “You have a relative in Ontario,” he said, tapping the paper. “A third or fourth cousin who would welcome a little extra income. According to her family she married some ne’er-do-well adventurer years ago; I’m getting in touch with her about the entire matter. As soon as a ship can be located and a berth arranged for, you will set sail.”

“Before you hear from her?” Letitia asked, raising her head and looking at her husband with horrified eyes.

“That depends. If the sailing date comes before then, off she goes. Suitably chaperoned, of course. We have the address of this relative—”

“Who is it, Quincy?
Who is it?
”

Quincy’s eyebrows raised, but he replied calmly enough, “Her name is Maybelle Dickey.”

“I’ve never heard of her. Why haven’t I ever heard of her?”

“As I said,” Quincy continued, more than a little nettled now, “she is a
distant
relative.”

“How distant? What’s the family connection?”

Quincy tipped his head back, frowned, and figured it out. “Maybelle is the daughter of my Aunt Mildred’s husband’s cousin.”

Frowning with concentration, Letitia tried to figure out the relationship. Finding it all too convoluted and too vague, she said, “That’s
too
distant, Quincy. She’s not really a relative by blood, just some in-law connection.”

Quincy rose from his chair, tapping his fingers on the desk’s polished surface, having given as much time as he wanted to, and more, to this tommyrot. “You’ll have to leave it in my hands,” he said impatiently. “I’ll do what’s best for the girl,
you may be sure of that. She’ll arrive on Canadian shores safely enough.”

“But—alone, Quincy?” Letitia quavered. “Surely not alone!”

“Of course not alone, foolish woman!”

“You’ll go with her? Or perhaps all of us—”

“Not at all; she’ll go without her family. That’s final!”

“Who then? Who will accompany her?”

“There are people who do this sort of thing . . . chaperones.”

Letitia could do nothing but shake her head and moan.

Allison drew a deep breath. Not understanding most of it, she understood some of it. Remittance men and their fate, or fame, were an unknown factor to her. Apparently her father compared her future to theirs. So be it.

Banishment. This was to be her personal fate. Banishment to a distant shore. Banishment from a land that was as old as history itself to a land only lately discovered, recently settled. She had no thought of escape; the ultimatum, like iron bands, coiled itself around her inflexibly. Other than death itself, nothing would stop her father’s will and wishes.

But now, having heard the worst and finding it not only bearable but interesting, and being young and vigorous and, yes, adventurous, she couldn’t help but feel a small flicker of excitement rising in her spirit.

Allison lowered her eyes lest her father see and suspect her reaction and be robbed of the satisfaction he was obviously feeling in regard to carrying out his parental duties.

Canada! New horizons! Challenges! Never in a million years would such an opportunity have presented itself to her under normal circumstances. Any mention of leaving the fair shores of England for the new, raw land of Canada would have met with instant refusal and a severe reprimand for even mentioning such foolishness.

Banishment, what her father meant as punishment. Much, much worse, she thought with a gust of pure relief, if she were to be kept locked away endlessly in her room, followed doggedly everywhere she went, her every move monitored, her
decisions made for her, including an eventual marriage of convenience. Such a possibility, such prospects, were daunting indeed. Canada seemed, at the moment, like a way of escape. Her father, thinking to punish her for her escape to Gretna Green, was opening the door, thrusting her into the adventure of a lifetime.
And paying for it!

“May I go now, Papa?” she asked politely, hiding her exultation.

“You may,” he nodded. “It’s probably too soon to begin packing, but you might like to consider what you will take and what you will leave behind. Remember, insofar as we can see now, this is a long-term assignment. Hopefully someday you may return to us, a dignified lady.”

Allison’s head was bowed in pseudo humility. Her passage to the door was accompanied by her mother’s sudden wail.

Her mother’s wail, and her father’s pious summation of the entire matter: “Where no oxen are, the crib is clean.”