Fletcher's Woman (20 page)

Rachel drew a deep breath, a breath filled with the scents of salt and kelp and kerosene, then opened her eyes resolutely. She would see Miss Cunningham first, and secure a room in that lady's boardinghouse if she could. She would eat, no matter how repugnant the prospect now seemed, and hide the thick roll of bills Mamie had turned over to her in Providence.

After that, she would summon up what strength she had left and invade the imposing Skid Road. Even if her father wasn't there now, the chances were good that someone in one of those notorious establishments would have word of him.

As the
Statehood
drew neatly alongside a wharf and was made fast to the pilings by adroit, loud-voiced crewmen, Rachel steeled herself for the new life that awaited her here.

Other passengers were met by smiling families with buckboards
and buggies, and Rachel felt a deep, stabbing sense of loneliness as she made her way up the wharf. Her suitcase was heavy, and her ancient high-button shoes pinched her toes beneath the hem of her smart, gray linen traveling suit. Not for the first time, she wondered about the lady, surely a friend of Jonas's, who had worn this clothing before.

Where the land and the groaning wooden wharf converged, an outrageously ugly Indian woman offered to read Rachel's fortune from an array of colored clam shells. Rachel shook her head and, with a rueful smile, pressed on, crossing the wide plank street and advancing up the hill, toward the modest residential section where Miss Flora Cunningham rented rooms.

She had forgotten the boisterous song Seattle sang, with its steam whistles shrilling from the lumber mills and from the harbor, the clanging bells of horse-drawn trolley cars, the raucous debauchery of the Skid Road.

Setting aside all the sweet fantasies she'd entertained of living in this city, Rachel longed inconsolably for the peaceful, sauntering pace of Providence. There, the saws in Jonas Wilkes's mill were only a distant hum, and the whistles of steamers passing on the canal had seemed hauntingly melodic.

Rachel raised her chin and continued the climb, wishing that the pain in her heart would turn to numbness, as had the pounding ache in her feet.

She'd been a joke in Providence, she reminded herself sternly—the lumberman's daughter daring to dally with the likes of Jonas Wilkes and Griffin Fletcher. What wicked merriment she must have provided, not only for those two worldly men, but for the women who poured tea in cozy parlors and tended soft pink roses in fenced gardens.

Tears burned in Rachel's eyes.
Fool!
she chided herself, with a cruelty she would not have leveled at any other living creature,
Now you know why Pa warned you about laying down with a man—now you know. And you'll be tainted by what you've done for the rest of your life; no good man will want you.

But beneath the stylish lines of her traveling suit, Rachel's breasts remembered the sheer delight of Griffin Fletcher's touch, the ecstasy of his mouth tugging at her hardened nipples. The ghost of his passion, still entwined with her own, throbbed in her midsection.

The hand-painted sign hanging from the cherry tree in Flora
Cunningham's dooryard brought Rachel's mind back to practical matters. Rooms to Let, it read. F. Cunningham, Prop.

Rachel opened the whitewashed wooden gate and marched purposefully up the pine-board walk to turn the bell knob. There were lilies etched in the oval glass window of the front door, and Rachel admired their intricacy anew as she waited.

Miss Cunningham, a small, nervous woman with wispy gray hair and quick blue eyes, opened the door herself. “Why, Rachel McKinnon!” she chimed, frankly assessing the girl's upgraded wardrobe, suitcase, and beaded handbag.

She's wondering what I've been up to,
Rachel thought with wistful humor.
And she'd perish if she knew.
“I've come to take a room,” she said out loud.

Miss Cunningham looked like a delighted little wren, peering out of its nest. Then, suddenly, an almost comical shadow of disappointment fell across the avid, narrow face. “There's just you, is there? And where is your father?”

Rachel was tired, miserable, and more than a little irritated by the mention of Ezra McKinnon. “My pa and I have parted ways,” she said simply. “But I have money, and I mean to find a position as soon as I can.”

The spinster eyed Rachel's costly garments once more and stepped back to admit her.

The quarters she offered Rachel consisted of a dim, hastily constructed nook under the stairway. It contained a narrow, lumpy-looking bed, a washstand with a cracked toilet set on its warped wooden surface, and a series of pegs, aligned along the inside of the door, to serve as a wardrobe.

The alarm in Miss Cunningham's eyes was a source of carefully subdued amusement to Rachel.
She thinks I'll be too grand now, in my fine clothes, for such a room as this.

“Is this the only room you have?” she asked aloud, knowing full well that the enterprising lady would have offered the finest room in the house if it had been available.

Anxiously, the woman nodded. “The whole upper floor's been taken by a single gentleman—Captain Douglas Frazier of the
China Drifter.”

Rachel summoned a look of imperious discontent to her face, though she actually cared nothing about Captain Frazier or his ship. She only longed to pull off her shoes, wash her face and hands, and collapse for an hour or two on that singularly uninviting cot stretched beneath the slant of the stairway. “I do
hope he's quiet and well mannered,” she said, because something within her required that she be contrary.

Miss Cunningham was nodding again; this time, the motion was almost feverish with sincerity. “Oh, yes, he's a gentleman—no question about that. And, of course, once the
Drifter
sails, you may have your choice of the upstairs rooms.”

Rachel offered the smallest bill she had in payment of two weeks' board and room, and was, once again, mildly amused by her landlady's surprise.

“I can't make change for that!” cried Miss Cunningham, her thin hands flexing and unflexing in their need to grasp the strip of currency.

“Then surely you won't mind if I pay you tomorrow, after I've been to the bank?” asked Rachel, with the air of one who has conducted many lofty transactions.

You're
going
to look a fool,
taunted a practical voice in her mind,
if you can't find work and all that money gets spent. Then you won't be carrying on like you're something more than a lumber brat.

After great deliberation, Miss Cunningham agreed to be paid in the morning, scrounged up a bulky brass key, and left Rachel to settle in.

She did not settle in—at least, not immediately. Once the door was locked behind her, Rachel pried off the hateful shoes—whatever other pleasures she might forego, she would buy new shoes first thing in the morning—and began to scour the cramped little room for a sensible place to hide her money.

After an extensive search, she chose an open nook in the framework of the wall behind her bed. Any accomplished thief would find it in minutes, simply by lifting the faded patchwork quilt and looking beneath the bed, but Rachel was too tired and heartsick to lend the project further effort. Her feet were sore and swollen, now that she'd freed them from the horrible confines of her shoes, and she doubted that she would be able to manage the walk downtown to the Skid Road that evening.

She took off her bonnet, the beloved linen suit, and the soft lawn blouse beneath it, and washed fiercely in the tepid water awaiting her on the washstand. Then, clad only in her muslin drawers and camisole, she lay down on the cot and closed her eyes. Immediately, the face of Griffin Fletcher filled the dark void behind her lids.

Rachel wrenched her eyes open, determined not to think of
him, and the way he'd used her, until she felt strong enough to withstand the inevitable onslaught of contradictory emotions.

Oh, but she was tired—dismally tired. Soon her eyes would close of their own accord. Stubbornly, she stared up at the slanted ceiling inches above her head and waited.

After a while, she slept and dreams overtook her. She was back on that musty straw bed, high on the mountain looming above Providence, and Griffin Fletcher was making love to her.

When the hammering of boots climbing the stairs above her ceiling awakened Rachel with a cruel start, the little room in Flora Cunningham's house was pitch-dark. All the same, Rachel dashed the tears from her face, in fierce pride, and ordered herself to be strong.

She might have hidden there, alone and broken, like a wounded creature cowering in its den, if Miss Cunningham hadn't rapped on her door and chirped companionably that supper was getting cold.

Stricken though she was, Rachel was hungry. And she knew that she would need strength in the hours and days and weeks ahead, she would need all her faculties if she was to find work, seek out her father—or at least some word of him—and gather the scattered pieces of her hopes.

•   •   •

Captain Douglas Frazier rose from his chair at the dining-room table with accomplished grace when the sea nymph entered the room. She wore a pretty gown of sprigged cambric, along with a brave, if slightly dazed, smile. Her hair, brushed to a high, sable shine and plaited into a single thick braid, lay like a beautiful rope on her right shoulder.

He'd never seen, in all his years on land and sea, a more enchanting creature than this one. And if she was wearing her broken heart like a banner, well, there were things that could be done to improve matters.

“How do you do?” he asked, in what he hoped was a steady voice. “I'm Captain Douglas Frazier.”

The stricken, purple eyes assessed him frankly, but the captain wasn't worried by that. He was, at thirty-seven, a fine figure of a man, with auburn hair aplenty, a stylish and manly mustache, and blue eyes that laughed even when his mouth didn't. “This is Miss Rachel McKinnon,” chattered Flora Cunningham, in a pleased, motherly fashion.

Douglas nodded politely. “Miss McKinnon.”

The girl blushed and sat down in the chair assigned to her. “Captain Frazier,” she acknowledged, before turning her attention to the bowl of oyster stew steaming on the crocheted tablecloth before her.

Broken heart or none, in Douglas Frazier's opinion that one had the appetite of a deckhand. He wondered, as he sank back into his own chair, who the wastrel was who had crushed her spirit in such a way that there were wild, writhing shadows in her eyes.

Douglas sat down again. He would take Miss Rachel McKinnon to the finest restaurant this bumbling frontier town had to offer, and soon, he decided. After that, they would see a performance at the Opera House.

Yes. A little fun might mend her, and make her fit for the purpose he had in mind.

•   •   •

Rachel liked Captain Frazier well enough, though she had no wish to know him any better. She volunteered nothing about herself during dinner, even though he plied her with skillfully framed, refined questions.

Undaunted, the handsome, redheaded man began telling stories of his experiences at sea and in foreign ports. He spoke of faraway, mystical China and of the natives of Hawaii, who dressed themselves in the multicolored feathers of tropical birds when they celebrated their pagan holidays.

In spite of her weariness and her heartbreak and the nagging suspicion that she would never see her father again, no matter how much she searched, Rachel was enthralled. Captain Frazier's words were vivid and softly spoken; it was as though she were seeing the beautiful, brown-skinned people of Hawaii, bedecked in their feathered finery, with her own eyes.

“Surely there are cities there,” she said in wonder, as she ladled a second helping of stew into her bowl.

“Villages,” allowed the suave sea captain. “But one day there will be cities, more's the pity. The islanders will become strangers in their own land, just as the red man has here.”

Rachel thought of the spirited, beautiful Fawn Nighthorse, and ached. “I hope not,” she mourned.

“It is inevitable, my dear,” replied the captain, succinctly.

Rachel supposed that he was right, and the conviction saddened her further. She could empathize with those who lived between two worlds, fitting into neither.

•   •   •

Jonas and his men waited more than two hours, by his watch, at the base of the mountain. Someone, somehow, had warned Griffin—that was clear.

Jonas's rage was a searing, tearing thing, but he kept it to himself. There was no need to let the men know.

“What do you think, Boss?” McKay asked, clasping his saddle horn with both hands and leaning forward to study Jonas's carefully masked expression.

“I think we'll have to take this matter up with Dr. Fletcher another time,” he said, couching his fury in a tone of weary resignation. “Perhaps after dark.”

McKay smiled his foolish, rotted smile.

He likes doing this kind of work in the dark,
thought Jonas, with only slight disgust. Griffin would be expecting that; retaliation shrouded in the night.

He raised one hand to signal a retreat and smiled to himself. Mustn't be too predictable.

Boldly, McKay brought his horse into step with Jonas's Arabian gelding, while the other men followed behind. “We can't take him if he stays holed up in that house—can we?”

“That's the advantage of dealing with a man like Griffin Fletcher, McKay,” Jonas answered. “He's too proud and too stubborn to ‘hole up' anywhere. No, he'll ride right out into the open, once he's sure we won't catch him with the girl.”

McKay ruminated for a while. “We gonna kill him?” he asked finally.

Jonas glanced heavenward in impatience and shot a fierce, quelling look in McKay's direction. “Hell, no, we're not going to kill him.”