Fletcher's Woman (4 page)

Mr. Wilkes was nowhere to be seen.

Rachel looked up, and saw that patches of golden sunlight were seeping through the slate gray skies to shimmer among the evergreens and giant ponderosa pines that crowded the mountain. In the other direction, beyond the waters of Puget Sound, beyond Seattle, Mt. Rainier jutted toward the heavens, her snowy slopes clad in a sheer, glowing cloak of apricot and gold.

Rachel drew strength from the sight.

A stiff, sudden wind struck the small community, and canvas snapped all around her, in a startling chorus. Chang trotted out of the big tent, through a sideflap, and emptied a basin brimming with table scraps onto the ground. He glanced in Rachel's direction, but said nothing.

Above, sea gulls circled and plunged, loudly berating the Chinaman for his late arrival. He cursed them in clipped gibberish and went back inside the tent.

Rachel squared her shoulders. She mustn't delay too long, or she would lose her firm resolve to face Mr. Wilkes and seek his pardon. Again, she looked around, hoping to see him nearby.

The neigh of a horse drew her attention to the carriage. Drawn by a matched team of coal black geldings, its leather and varnish and brass gleaming even in the sparse, glowering light, the coach surely belonged to Mr. Wilkes.

She approached warily, afraid to touch the splendid vehicle. “Excuse me,” she said, smiling up at the sullen driver hunched in the box. “Excuse me, but is this Mr. Jonas Wilkes's carriage, please?”

The driver studied Rachel with mingled derision and appetite, and his voice was a surly rumble, “Well, it don't belong to no flea-bitten lumberjack, Sweetness.”

Rachel stiffened and retreated a step, revolted by this man and the very mention of the beastly bugs that were the bane of every lumber camp within hundreds of miles. “Could you tell me where to find Mr. Wilkes—please?”

The insolent, leering man removed his soggy bowler hat with a flourish. He was unshaven, and several of his teeth were missing. Those that remained were twisted and brown with rot. “Last I seen of the boss, he was heading out of this stinkhole and off toward them cottages of his.”

Cottages?

Rachel turned and noticed the beautiful little houses for the first time. There were four of the small, brick structures, each
boasting its own whitewashed picket fence, narrow green lawn, and cozy porch. Gray smoke curled from the chimneys, and sturdy, cedar-shingled roofs kept out the rain. The Indian girl, Fawn, could be seen entering the one on the far right.

For just a moment, Rachel stood spellbound. Then, envy twisted, snakelike, in the pit of her stomach. Oh, to live in a real house, with wooden floors and a fire blazing on the hearth and a bed with sheets and blankets . . .

She caught herself, shut off the silly dreams that were flowing through her mind and heart like a sparkling mountain stream. She was the daughter of a poor man, she reminded herself, and she would eventually be the wife of yet another poor man. It was unlikely that she would ever live in any place so fine as those brick cottages.

“Pretty sight, ain't they?” drawled the driver.

“Yes,” Rachel answered tightly without looking back at him. Then, because she knew that she would run into her tent and hide there for the rest of the day if she didn't plunge straight ahead, she lifted her shabby skirts and started off at a brisk walk.

She would find Mr. Wilkes and apologize for the scene in the dining tent. That done, she would explore beyond Tent Town.

She would fix the town of Providence firmly in her mind, and walk along the shoreline, too. Perhaps she would find oysters and clams there, as she had along Seattle's beaches and tide flats.

Rachel missed Seattle, with its wood-frame buildings and its cow pastures, its orchards and its majestic view of mountains and sea. In the six weeks she and her father had lived there, boarded in the drafty home of Miss Flora Cunningham, the rambunctious country town had carved its image into her mind and heart. Leaving had been painful in every sense of the word, but one went where there was work to be had, and her father had been anxious to move on again. He'd met Mr. Wilkes in a Skid Road saloon one night, and signed on as one of his sawyers.

They had arrived in Providence during the darkest hours of the night, after jostling their way around the edges of Puget Sound in the back of one of Jonas Wilkes's supply wagons, and had seen almost nothing of the town itself or the salt waters that ebbed and flowed at its feet.

Rachel sighed inwardly and made herself walk faster. Exploring
Providence proper suddenly had lost much of its appeal.

After all, she reminded herself, one lumber town was pretty much the same as another; she knew that from long and bitter experience, for she had lived in virtually every one that lay between California and the Canadian border.

Ezra McKinnon was a hardworking, decent man, but he always seemed to get restless when they'd been in one place longer than a month or so. The drinking would start then, soon to be followed by the gambling and the fighting.

Rachel reached the lower road and crossed it, sinking to her instep in mud.

She made her way cautiously up the green, slippery hill, and her thoughts shifted, as they often did, to her mother. In her mind, she saw a flash of dark hair and lavender eyes and a pinched, frantic face.

Rebecca McKinnon had abandoned her daughter and husband more than ten years before, and Rachel seldom permitted herself to recollect that fact. When she did, it was with pain and confusion, but with understanding, too. It was hard, living in shacks and wagons and second-rate boardinghouses and never having anything pretty to wear.

Rachel reached the upper road. There was a mud-splattered buggy there, hitched to a patient-looking sorrel mare.

She paused to pat the drenched animal's muzzle in sympathy and to gather up her courage. She had no way of knowing which of the four houses Mr. Wilkes had entered, so there was nothing to do but knock at each door, if necessary, until she found him. Her heart swelling into her throat, she turned from the horse, unlatched the gate leading to the first cottage, and started up the walk.

In her mind, Rachel rehearsed one feverish apology, and then another. She had just reached the porch steps when the cottage's front door sprang open with an alarming crash and Mr. Wilkes came storming out, his face as dark as a tempestuous night sky.

Instinctively, Rachel stepped aside, and when she did, her left foot twisted beneath her, throwing her off balance and plunging her sideways into a rain-beaded sweetbrier bush.

Jonas Wilkes stopped, and the awesome anger drained out of his face. He smiled and extended a hand.

Mortified, Rachel accepted the assistance offered and let her
father's employer draw her to her feet. Color throbbed in her cheeks, and tears brimmed in her eyes, poised to slide down her muddied, thorn-scratched face. Her dress was downright filthy now, and the fabric had been snagged by the fierce nettles of the budding rosebush. Her shawl, too, was ruined.

Amusement flickered in Mr. Wilkes's shrewd, topaz eyes. “At the risk of being slapped a second time, Miss McKinnon, I must say that you are sadly in need of a hot bath.”

Rachel swallowed her tears, but her humiliation remained, causing her cheeks to flame and her eyes to deepen from orchid to purple. She forgot the planned apology and turned swiftly, to flee in embarassment.

But Mr. Wilkes caught her arm in a quick, tight grasp, and stopping her, turned her to face him. “May I call you Rachel?” he asked.

The question so surprised Rachel that she gaped at him, too stunned to speak.

He laughed, and it was a sound that reminded her of a beverage she'd tasted on a rare, prosperous Christmas—brandy mixed with thick cream and sugar.

Rachel stumbled back a step, gasping softly as Jonas Wilkes's gloved hands caught her shoulders and held them firmly.

“It was my fault that you fell and got yourself covered in mud,” he said, in a voice that was remote and yet somehow intimate, too. “Won't you come along to my house and have a bath?”

Rachel's face went scarlet, and words failed her. Had she been able to move, she would have raised her hand and, without regard for the repercussions, slapped Mr. Wilkes again.

Jonas smiled, and his eyes sparkled. Clearly, her outrage and shock amused him. “I'm not trying to seduce you, Urchin,” he said reasonably. “My housekeeper will be there, to defend your innocence.”

Rachel dared to dream of a hot bath, perhaps with scented soap and soft, fluffy towels. . . .

And then, suddenly, the slight drizzle became a pounding downpour again.

Rachel was chilled to the bone, and she was dirty and she was, of course, wet. Despite considerable qualms about going anywhere with this particular man, especially to his house, she simply could not endure the thought of trudging back to that miserable, flea-ridden tent and shivering there, wrapped in a
thin blanket, while she waited for her dress to dry. Her only other gown was a somber, ill-fitting affair made of scratchy brown wool, and wearing that seemed, at the moment, even less appealing than draping herself in a blanket.

“I promise you will be perfectly safe,” Mr. Wilkes prodded smoothly. And, in spite of the circumstances, the expression in his eyes was warm and inviting. All around them, rain dashed at the ground and danced in brimming brown puddles and made a sound like fire on the roofs of the brick cottages.

Certain that she'd gone quite mad—and just since breakfast, too—Rachel took the arm Mr. Wilkes offered and the two of them hurried down the grassy embankment to the main road. There, the magnificent carriage waited, like something stolen from someone else's sweet dream.

Mr. Wilkes wrenched open one gleaming door and helped her inside. When he sank into the cushioned leather seat across from Rachel, she thought she saw a look of veiled exasperation in his eyes.

She set aside the sodden blue shawl and trembled slightly. “This isn't proper,” she said.

Jonas Wilkes sat back, folded his arms, and extended his booted feet. “No, Urchin, I'm sure it isn't. But why should Rebecca McKinnon's daughter be bound by such a fatuous concept as propriety?”

Rachel's mouth fell open, and blood pounded in her ears, drowning out all other sounds. After a long time, she managed to rasp, “You know my mother?”

Jonas chuckled, but a note of contempt rang in his answer. “We're partners, Becky and I. Perhaps I should say, we
were
partners; we've had several serious disagreements in the past few years.”

Rachel forgot that her skirts were clinging, like clammy hands, to her thighs and ankles. She forgot that her shoes were full of water and most likely ruined. She even forgot that she had gotten into a carriage with a man she barely knew. “My mother lives here—in Tent Town?”

A look of indulgence curved the seraphic lips. “Urchin, Rebecca McKinnon would never stoop to living in a place like Tent Town. She runs a highly—er—respected establishment on the outskirts of Providence.”

Rachel's heart was flailing against her rib cage, and her mouth felt dry. “Please—take me there!”

Calmly, Jonas Wilkes shook his head and surveyed Rachel's
dripping hair and muddy dress pointedly. “Surely you don't want to be reunited with your mother looking like that, Urchin.”

Rachel felt real despair. “No.”

“Soon enough,” remarked Mr. Wilkes, half to himself and half to Rachel, as the carriage made its rattling, splashing way through the mud and rain. “Soon enough.”

Rachel was full of questions, but she could not, for the moment, articulate them. She felt gratitude when Mr. Wilkes removed his suit coat and draped it over her shoulders, and she huddled inside its soft, dampened folds. The fabric smelled pleasantly of pipe tobacco and rain and that spicy cologne she'd first noticed during the confrontation in the dining tent.

“This,” he said, gesturing toward the open carriage window on their left, “is the main street of Providence.”

Rachel looked out, and even though her mind and heart were filled to overflowing with the knowledge that her mother was somewhere nearby, she took note of the trim, painted saltbox houses facing the angry green waters of the Sound.

They had neat lawns and picket fences and lamplight glowing in the windows, and for some reason she couldn't quite fathom, they deepened the wretched loneliness she felt. She fixed her eyes on the junglelike foliage and tall trees that edged the inlet on the other side of the water. “Does my mother live in one of those houses?” she asked, as the carriage rolled on.

Jonas Wilkes did not spare so much as a glance for the lovely little structures. He drew a cheroot from his shirt pocket and struck a wooden match to light it. “No,” he said, after a discomforting delay. “No, Urchin, your mother lives more grandly than the steady, diligent sorts along Main Street. You don't mind my smoking, I hope?”

Benumbed, Rachel shook her head that she didn't. She could not imagine living more grandly than these people did. After all, they had real roofs over their heads and real floors under their feet. Rosebushes were budding in their yards, and wooden sidewalks lined the street. Most had small garden plots, where tender sprouts were beginning to break ground.

She swallowed. “What kind of woman is my mother?”

Mr. Wilkes sighed and drew thoughtfully on his cheroot. The smoke curled in the cool, misty air inside the carriage. “Rebecca is a businesswoman,” he allowed, finally.

Rachel sat back in the seat, confused and
more
than a little stricken to know that her mother had been prospering—even “living grandly”—all this time, while she and her father had
struggled, sometimes desperately, just to survive. “You are saying, Mr. Wilkes, that my mother is rich,” she ventured.

He smiled. “Not rich. Rebecca is merely well-to-do.”

Merely well-to-do.
Rachel looked down at the pointed, cramping toes of her sodden shoes. She had been wearing them for two full years already, and they pinched, and they hadn't been new in the first place. She'd bought them secondhand, from a street peddler. Her throat worked, but no words would pass it.