With Love from Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #2) (20 page)

Here Kerry had paused and asked her inevitable question after she had said things too wise and too wonderful for her own understanding: “How could we be in our own ears, do you think?”

“I think you mean ‘arrears,’ Kerry. That means you were behind in paying your rent.”

“Oh that,” she had answered with relief. “I thought it was something like the pink eye, only in the ears. I only had a pink eye one time, but we were often in our ears—a-rrears. It seemed to make Mrs. Peabody crabby, so I suppose it was a bad thing.”

“You won’t have to worry about things like that anymore, wee Kerry. Uncle Sebastian and Aunt Charlotte will take care of you from now on. It’s the hope of all of us that you’ll be very happy with us. We’ll be great friends, you and I.”

“I had a friend. Her name is Cordelia. She called me bad names; sometimes she called me a lumpy toad. Once it kindled my wrath, and I called her ‘ye generation of vipers.’”

That was when—on the very first day at Maxwell Manor—Franny had put her arms around the small girl and hugged her close. Remembering, Kerry’s purple-black eyes filled with tears, reminding her that Franny, seeing Kerry’s tear-filled eyes for the first time, had said they looked like “pansies in a spring shower.” Franny had brought the starving little heart love, acceptance, and understanding.

The flooding memories were too much. Sitting at the bedside of this dear one, Kerry’s eyes brimmed, and the tears—of remembrance, of happiness, of pain—ran over.

Perhaps it was her small sniff; perhaps it was because of her movement to capture a dainty handkerchief from her skirt pocket that roused the sick girl. But Kerry felt her free hand clasped in slim fingers and now, as in earlier days, a flood of warmth and protection swept over her. Franny and Maxwell Manor had been her safe haven.

“Oh, darling—you’re awake,” she responded now, blinking through tears.

“Mustn’t cry, Kerry . . . not worth it. Remember . . . remember always . . . that you’ve brought me, all of us . . . much happiness. Never change, Kerry.”

Kerry’s tears were flowing in earnest now. “Please, Franny, get well again! Just think about getting well and strong again! Please, dear. . . .”

Franny’s frail hand gave Kerry’s a little shake. “Aunt Charlotte,” she whispered. “Please get Aunt Charlotte . . . I need to see her . . . alone.”

Kerry flew to find her aunt, and for the remainder of the day, the sickroom was off limits. Kerry didn’t know what went on there, but early in the evening Gladdy came to get her, whispering, with tears, “Your aunt says you are to come. You and your uncle—I’ll go get him.” And Gladdy sped off, her hair flouncing madly and her tears flowing freely and making a path through the freckles, those that remained since childhood and would remain with her always.

At the midnight hour it was all over. Franny was at rest, forever at rest.

Gladdy helped a weeping Kerry from the room, their tears and sobs mingling. Straightening herself, supporting herself with one hand on the wall in the hallway, Kerry spoke through stiff lips:

“That man—that Connor Dougal—I’ll find him if it’s the last thing I do, and I’ll make him pay!”

It was a vow that sustained her through the next few days, through the heart-wrenching drama of the funeral, through the dark days that followed.

K
eren,” Charlotte said, and her nostrils flared and her nose tip pinked—a double . . . no, a triple whammy. Not only the flaring nostrils and the pinking nose but the use of her full name should have alerted Kerry to the opposition she was up against. And normally she would have paid strict attention to the signs of disapproval.

“Keren!” Charlotte said again, adding another powerful missile to her arsenal of weapons: It was her tone of voice—like a clap of thunder on a pleasant day, like the snap of a whip on a defenseless back, like doomsday to a condemned creature.

Not for years had Kerry heard Aunt Charlotte’s voice resound with such terrible possibilities for disfavor and discipline as it did now.

“
Keren!
You are to put such foolish nonsense out of your head
this instant!
”

And though Kerry quaked—Aunt Charlotte was a formidable opponent—she was not shaken from her position.

“Oh, Aunt Charlotte! Please see it my way! Please . . . my mind is made up, you see.”

“Well, just unmake it!” Charlotte snapped. “You are not, by any stretch of the imagination—and you’ve always had more than your share—going to this outlandish place named Bliss but probably meaning misery! If I have to lock you in your room, you’re not going, and that’s all there is to it!”

Lock her in her room indeed! Kerry—young, strong, vital—looked at Aunt Charlotte’s stooped figure, too heavy, too flaccid, too infirm to follow through on her threat, and felt that a pert “You and who else?” would be an appropriate answer.

Kerry had never been a sassy child, and she wouldn’t be a smart-aleck adult. Aunt Charlotte had been too good to her, too kind, to hurt her feelings. Kerry feared it would be upsetting, even traumatizing, to Aunt Charlotte when she realized that all her threats, her pleadings, her arguments, would make no difference in her niece’s decision.

And so she answered as gently as she could while still standing firm.

“Aunt Charlotte, I didn’t even mention it to you until all my hesitations had been settled and my mind made up. I didn’t arrive at this decision easily. But it wasn’t long after Franny’s death that I came to the awareness that I would never have any peace until I made that false wretch—that Connor Dougal—pay for what he did to her. I can’t rest until I do.”

“But that’s terrible, Kerry! It’s retaliation, it’s revenge, and you of all people should know what God thinks of that! He won’t smile on such an endeavor!”

“It’s an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth as far as I’m concerned. That’s certainly scriptural.”

“But it’s not what Jesus taught! He said if someone smites you on the cheek, turn the other cheek also!”

“Why, Aunt, you surprise me; I didn’t know you knew any Scripture.” During all the years of Kerry’s references to the Bible, no one had ever challenged her before. This wasn’t surprising, seeing that no member of the family attended church except for the traditional Easter morning service. No, Scripture quoting was the prerogative of Kerry alone. How odd to have her own method thrown back in her face.

Charlotte had the grace to flush; she was well aware that in the area of religious training she had been sadly lacking where the girls were concerned.

“That’s not to say I don’t read the Bible,” she said defensively. “And,” she added pointedly, “the New Testament is clear on loving and forgiving.”

“Are you asking me to forgive that man, Aunt Charlotte? He hasn’t even asked for forgiveness, has he? In fact, that creature doesn’t even know the damage he’s caused. Well, I’m going to see that he knows. I plan to see that he suffers for it.” Kerry was coldly steadfast in her awful purpose.

“No good can come of it, Kerry! Not to him certainly; nor to you.”

“Ah yes! It’ll do me a world of good to see that man hurt as Franny was hurt. It makes me burn whenever I think of his callousness and the unspeakable effect it has had on all of us, Franny in particular. Why should he get away with it?”

“And just how do you plan to carry out this nefarious scheme?” Aunt Charlotte asked with a sigh, capitulating like a burst bubble. She knew her Kerry; Kerry would never have brought her mad scheme this far if she didn’t intend to carry it through.

“That’s a little nebulous right now,” Kerry admitted. “But before I get there I’ll have a plan, you may be sure, and when I get to this Bliss place, I’ll put it into action.”

“Like what, Kerry? Tear his eyes out? Spit in his face? Denounce him as a rounder and a cad?”

“It’ll have to be something painful,” Kerry said decisively. “I wish I were a man in times like this! Obviously I can’t inflict physical damage. I’ll have to do it in another way. But he’ll know it when it happens, and he’ll know why.”

“And then what?” Charlotte asked quietly.

Kerry hesitated. “I don’t exactly know. I suppose I’ll come back here—if you’ll have me.”

“Silly, silly girl, even to ask. This is your home; nothing you can do will change that.”

“Thank you, Aunt Charlotte,” Kerry said a little unsteadily. “You know how I feel about you and Uncle and how much I love Maxwell Manor—it’s been a real home to me.”

“So when will you be leaving this loved home?”

Kerry sighed; it was a heavy burden she had taken upon herself. “Just as soon as all the snow is gone, and that’s not going to be long. I’ll get there at the very beginning of spring, and it will give me several months before snow flies again, when I’ll need to get out. If I don’t, I may not make it until another spring. Can you imagine a worse fate than to be stuck in a backwoods place by the ridiculous name of Bliss for an entire winter? So as soon as carriages roll freely and there’s no danger of the train being held up anywhere, I’ll be on my way.”

“Alone, Kerry? Now here I really must be adamant. It just isn’t done!”

“There are always people going West; perhaps I can latch onto some such group or family.”

The improbability of this eased Charlotte’s mind; it could take a long time. Unless, of course, Kerry, like Franny, turned to the newspaper for help.

The idea had indeed occurred to Kerry. In fact it was only a few days later as she was poring over the Personals in the various newspapers and magazines Gideon purchased for her that her solution came. And from an unexpected source.

Kerry was on the rug in her room, her dark hair escaping the pins that held it up and back and curling in cloudy wisps around her face. A face that, even in early womanhood, retained some of its early waiflike delicacy. Her eyes were blue-black in concentration; her slender body was bent in graceful abandon over the papers spread before her.

Her absorption was broken by a pair of sturdy shoes that came into her line of vision. Gladdy, feather duster under one arm, was standing beside her.

“Whatcher doin’?” Gladdy asked cheekily in the old, long-abandoned manner of speech and the result of the now-absent Miss Beery’s severe insistence on proper speech.

Kerry sat back on her heels, futilely brushing back her straying curls with one hand and giving the hem of Gladdy’s uniform a twitch with the other.

“Whatcher think?” Kerry replied, just as cheekily, happy for an interruption and the chance to change her cramped position.

With the camaraderie that marked their relationship, Gladdy folded her slim length and settled on the floor beside Kerry, duster laid aside, her eyes going to the heap of papers and the tablet that was singularly free of notations.

“No luck?” she asked, while her cornflower blue eyes swept the disarray for clues of some success in the search.

Kerry sighed. “Not yet. Maybe tomorrow’s batch. . . .”

Kerry was discouraged. If many more days passed and no chaperone was turned up, she might, in a foolhardy move, decide to start out on her own, ignoring protocol and Aunt Charlotte.

But she knew it wouldn’t be wise. Besides—
it just wasn’t done!

Except for a few seasons spent at Uncle Sebastian’s summer cottage, Toronto was her world, her safe world. And the Territories weren’t called the Wild West for nothing. Many and lurid were the stories and accounts drifting back to civilization, as alarming as they were attractive.

One woman, in an account Kerry well remembered, reported her first glimpse of the raw settlement where she would be living: “I leaned my elbows on the wooden table in the dirt hut, buried my face in my hands, and sobbed aloud, ‘My God, help me to cleave to thee.’ I could not help it. I felt so lonely, so homesick, so isolated.”

This was the life the homesteaders faced, those who dared leave the populated areas. To strike off into the endless, rolling miles of prairie and beyond took colossal courage—or ignorance. To take a wife, or expect one to follow after, was incredibly audacious. That a woman would consent to go in response to such an invitation was even more mind-numbing.

But, Kerry rationalized, Bliss can’t be all that bad. Not anymore. Surely the worst days are over. If Connor Dougal’s letters—she had read all of them, going through Franny’s things—were to be believed, his house was comfortable and attractive in its bush setting, his crops were thriving, his future was challenging. Why then should doubts nibble away at the edge of her mind?

But whatever the hardships, Kerry was determined to confront them. The trouble was confronting them alone.

And so she heard Gladdy’s next words with more excitement than surprise, though she was indeed surprised.

“I’ve been thinking—” Gladdy began casually.

“Oh, oh!”

“I’m serious! It’s this: I want to go West with you.”

“Gladdy! Don’t even suggest such a thing if you don’t mean it!”

“I mean it. I did a lot of thinking before I mentioned it. It’s like this, Kerry—my life is going nowhere. Being a maid is not my idea of the way to invest one’s time and energy. There’s only one life to live, and I don’t intend to spend all mine dusting and cleaning someone else’s house. I’m two years older than you are. That doesn’t make me ancient, but it makes me, well, troubled at times as I look around and wonder where I’m going. All my sisters were married before this. I don’t even meet any eligible fellas except maybe a delivery boy or two. This trip, with you, is the only ray of light I’ve seen on a long, dark horizon. And, Kerry, I’ve got enough money to pay my own way. I’ve saved nearly everything I’ve made for ten years. It’ll be an investment!”