Courting Susannah (16 page)

“Everybody knows I'd never take up with the likes of you,” Maisie shot back, but she was grinning her gapped, mischievious grin. “Now, Miss Susannah, well, I do believe she's sweet on you. Shell make a fine wife.”

Aubrey said nothing but simply watched his friend and housekeeper through the thickening haze of cheroot smoke.

“I reckon what I want to say is this,” Maisie went on, as he'd known she would if he gave her adequate space. “You've got a lot of bitterness in you. If this weddin' is some kind of joke to you, then you better just leave that young woman alone. There's plenty of other men wantin' to make her acquaintance—I've got 'em comin' to both doors all the day long, just hopin' for a look at her. She deserves to be happy, and if you get in the way of that, you and me, we won't be friends no more.”

It was no rash pledge; Maisie wasn't capable of an idle promise. What she said was precisely what she
meant, whatever the subject. And Aubrey felt a pang of sorrow at the prospect of losing her regard. “You don't have much confidence in me, do you?” he countered.

She frowned. “Truth is, I don't know
what
to think. When you found Miss Susannah here, you were civil enough, but you sure weren't friendly. You ain't had but a few kind words to say to her from that day to this. And now, all of the sudden, because a bunch of old bats came in here beatin' on the Good Book and prophesyin' a rain of hellfire, you ask her to marry you! Sounds a little too much like dallyin' to me.”

Aubrey was touched by Maisie's devotion to Susannah, and a little envious of it in the bargain. “If Miss McKittrick keeps her part of the agreement, I will keep mine. Was I such a bad husband to Julia?”

Maisie sighed. “She was troubled, that one. You judged her harshlike. When you come right down to it, I believe you think ever'body's out to do you in, 'cause of your pa and Miss Julia and all.”

Aubrey lowered his feet to the floor and sat forward. “What do you know about my family?”

“What Ethan told me,” Maisie said staunchly. “That your pa was a mean-spirited man, and your mama lit out when the pair of you were hardly bigger'n my Jasper.”

He was quietly furious that Ethan had betrayed a family secret the likes of that one, but then, he shouldn't have been surprised. With his brother, betrayal was a way of life. “You'd better get yourself to bed,” he said, rising. “Morning will come around early.”

Maisie got up. “Don't you hurt Miss Susannah. That's all I'm sayin'. Don't you hurt that girl. She's had pain aplenty in her life, and she's gone on despite it, and I won't see you punishin' her for some other woman's sins.” She jabbed at his chest with one index finger. “You hear me?”

“Very clearly” Aubrey replied, ready to retire himself, before the drinking made him any more sober than he already was. “No doubt, the neighbors did, too.”

Maisie harrumphed and trundled out of the study without replying.

Aubrey followed her as far as the kitchen, where he drew himself a glass of water to take upstairs, and she hesitated on the threshold of the small room she shared with her son.

“You're a good man,” she said when he simply waited for her to speak, “but you got demons chasin' you. You gotta stop runnin', turn around, and face 'em down.”

With that, Maisie turned and disappeared, closing her door behind her.

Aubrey stood there in his kitchen for a long moment, looking inside himself and not particularly liking what he saw.

Finally, he climbed the rear stairs and stood in the hallway looking toward Susannah's faraway door. He wanted to make peace with her, to tell her that he truly wanted to marry her, and that he wanted that marriage to work, but every time they spoke, he just seemed to make matters worse.

He didn't sleep at all well that night, and the first thing in the morning, he had Hawkins send for Hollister.

Hawkins went to do his bidding right away. It was a quality Aubrey appreciated in other people, and it was all too rare these days, if you asked him.

He had barely settled down to go over a contract with a wholesale merchant in San Francisco—the negotiations had been the reason for his trip down the coast, and his interests had not been served in the matter—when Hollister burst in without even waiting to be announced.

“I'm off the case,” he said.

Aubrey laid down his pen and looked up at the other man, who was chomping at the bit and red in the face. In fact, the skin above his tight celluloid collar looked as though it were going to burst. “What?”

“I want to court Susannah McKittrick,” Hollister said. He made no move to sit down, and Aubrey neither rose nor offered the visitor a chair. “I can't do that, in good conscience, if I am prying into her past.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I think you heard me,” Hollister blustered. “I don't care if she's an ax murderer or a typhoid carrier. Susannah is a very special woman.”

“Very true,” Aubrey agreed. “What do you think her opinion of you will be after she finds out that you're a Pinkerton, hired expressly to investigate her?”

Hollister wavered slightly, then got hold of himself. “No doubt she will be disturbed. I should think her reaction to the news that you were the one to hire me in the first place would be equally interesting.”

Aubrey had already thought of that. He'd been up half the night; he'd already thought of most everything. “Susannah knows I'm a son-of-a-bitch. As for you, well, she thought you were a gentleman.”

“Damnation,” Hollister muttered. Aubrey almost felt sorry for him. Almost, but not quite. The Pinkerton gathered himself together and braced up. “I'll just have to go to her and make a clean breast of things,” he said. Then he flushed purple.

Had they been discussing any other woman on earth, Aubrey would have laughed. As it was, he found himself grappling with a ridiculous urge to work violence on a man he considered a close associate, even a friend. At last, he did Hollister the courtesy of standing. “You're fired,” he said evenly.

“I quit,” Hollister replied.

“I've asked Susannah to be my wife.”

That news got through to Hollister as nothing else had. His eyes bulged a little, and his neck turned a shade of mingled lavender and pink. Aubrey wondered if he should summon a doctor.

“And her response?” the detective asked quietly. For all the discoloration of his flesh, he held himself with manly dignity.

“She hasn't given one,” Aubrey said with a sigh he had not meant to release. He sat down again, suddenly weary. “But she'll agree, Hollister, if only because that's the only way she can stay with the child. Sit down. You look as if your jugular is about to rupture.”

Hollister hesitated a few moments, then dragged over a chair and sat. Only then did he think of removing his bowler hat, which he held in both hands, turning it round and round by the narrow brim. “You
are
a son-ofa-bitch,” he said, “if you'd use that little baby to get the woman you want.”

“I generally get what I want,” Aubrey answered, but he sounded rueful, even in his own ears. Oddly enough, he'd never been so serious about any enterprise as he was about taking Susannah to wife. “And I should tell you that the Ladies' Christian Benevolence Society is on my side.”

At last, Hollister laughed, though the look in his eyes held nothing of humor. He'd been done an injury—he truly cared for Susannah—and Aubrey was sorry that it had come to this. On the other hand, it wasn't his fault that the other man had developed tender sentiments for a woman he was supposed to be investigating. Come to think of it, it was downright unprofessional.

“If she hasn't agreed,” the Pinkerton said at some length, “that means I still have a chance to win her. I do
not intend to give up until the lady herself tells me there is no hope.”

Aubrey spread his hands in acquiescence and tried to look unconcerned, but deep down he wasn't at all certain that Susannah wouldn't choose Hollister over him. She had to know that he wouldn't really keep her from seeing little Victoria—didn't she? That was a bluff, the only ace in his hand. He made a steeple of his fingers and rested his chin on it. “Fair enough,” he said.

“Do you love her?” It was a personal question, even coming from a detective, and Aubrey bristled a little.

“I think love is a fatuous concept. Susannah is well aware of my opinion in the matter.”

Hollister stood again and reached across the desk. The two men shook hands, in the way of duelists about to turn back to back and walk their ten paces before firing at each other, and then the detective left the room.

Aubrey was immediately on his feet. “Hawkins!” he yelled, fussing with his string tie.

The young man burst into the room. He was a scrawny fellow, too prissy for the timber camps and too smart to go running off to the Alaskan Territory looking for gold. “Yes, sir?”

“We're having a party. Start planning it.”

Hawkins swallowed visibly. “A-a party, sir?”

“You know,” Aubrey replied impatiently, “one of those affairs where people dance and eat fancy food.”

“Where would we hold this festivity, sir?”

“Stop calling me ‘sir.' At my house, of course. What do you think I built it for?”

“I didn't exactly know why you built it, s—Mr. Fairgrieve. Surely you don't expect me to arrange—?”

“Never mind,” Aubrey snapped. “Maisie will handle
it. Just pay the bills when they come in, and make sure everybody who should get an invitation does. Can you manage that?”

“Yes, s—er—yes.” Hawkins looked earnest and straightened his own tie. “Do I understand you to say that money is no object?”

“That,” said Aubrey, his hand on the door knob, “is exactly what I'm saying.”

Chapter 8

S
he sat propped up on her bed, fat pillows plumped at her back, reading while baby Victoria slept nearby in the cradle. Snowflakes wafted past the high, narrow window, light as a fall of fairies' wings, but Susannah, who loved extreme weather of any sort, spared them only the occasional glance. She was immersed in Ethan's poetry, ostensibly composed in tribute to Julia, and while certain passages caused her to blush, she could not bring herself to put the book aside before the last page.

What must it be like, to be loved so powerfully, so well?

She sighed. It wasn't so much that the verses were explicit in any unseemly way; they weren't, and yet by their very intimacy, by their startling honesty, they conveyed a passion of truly mythical proportions. Were a man—especially one so winsome as Ethan Fairgrieve—to woo her with such chivalrous words and images, under other circumstances, of course, she might not be able to resist temptation. Had that been Julia's dilemma? Honor an empty, foundering marriage, or give in to the raw, unrestrained adoration of a lover?

But he'd loved a woman named Su Lin; he'd told her so himself. Furthermore, he'd said Su Lin was the
only
woman he'd ever loved.

A tap at the door interrupted her musings. “Yes?” she asked, and wished she'd cleared her throat first, because the word came out sounding hoarse.

Maisie put her head inside the room, beaming. “There's gonna be a party,” she said, as breathless as if she were announcing the arrival of a prince bearing a glass slipper in just Susannah's size. “Right here. Next Saturday night.”

“Here?” Susannah asked.

“Well, not in your room, ninny,” Maisie replied with good-natured scorn. “Downstairs, in that part of the house that's been closed off since the missus passed on. I can spend whatever I like for food and gewgaws, too. Hawkins says I've got 'cart blank.'”

Susannah suppressed a smile, set Ethan's book aside, and stood, straightening her skirts. “I'll be glad to help, of course.”

Maisie peered down the corridor, then slipped stealthily into the bedroom and shut the door behind her. “I'll bet my garters that Mr. Fairgrieve means to give you an engagement ring that night. He's had poor Hawkins runnin' all day, sendin' wires from here to Sunday breakfast. The man's near tuckered out—like to meet himself comin' or goin'.”

Susannah had hoped that Aubrey would forget his decree regarding their marriage, but at the same time she was ridiculously pleased to know he hadn't. “But I haven't accepted Mr. Fairgrieve's proposal,” she said.

“You'd be a fool if you said no to an offer like that,” Maisie retorted. “It ain't delicate to say, you bein' a beautiful woman and all, but you're gettin' a little long in the tooth. There'll be bids comin' in right along, I
reckon, but the fellers are bound to get uglier and poorer with every passin' day.”

Susannah erupted with soft laughter, careful not to awaken Victoria. “Maisie, you are no diplomat,” she said.