Yankee Wife (10 page)

Devon had seen men hurt just that badly in the woods, and he knew most of them would have chosen death over such a fate. So he took care climbing the rest of the way down the ladder, and then he stood for a long while looking over the edge of the cliff.

Maybe he'd built too close to the precipice, he reflected. There was at least a thirty-foot drop to the rocks, and the sweet-scented grass was suck under the soles of his boots.

He sighed, lifted his head and looked outward, beyond the water to the mountains. And even in his angry sorrow he was comforted by the sight of the snowy, rugged mountains out on the peninsula.

“Devon?”

His heart thudded at the sound of a soft, feminine voice. For a moment he thought Polly had come back, and he was more than prepared to welcome her magnanimously, but when he turned, he saw Lydia standing there. She looked as beleaguered as he felt, and she was holding a napkin-covered basket and a jug of coffee.

“I thought you might want something to eat,” she said, speaking with a touch of quiet defiance, as though she expected to be sent away.

Devon smiled and rubbed his stubbled chin, but he made no move to reach for the food. It held no appeal for him. “Are you still in the market for a husband, Miss McQuire?” he asked.

Color flared in her cheeks, heartening Devon for a moment, almost turning his wan smile to a laugh. “I don't know what you mean,” she said, but he could see that she did know, and very well, too.

“You were prepared to marry me in San Francisco,” he reminded her. He didn't love Lydia, but he liked her, and maybe that was better. After all, he'd fallen hard and fast for Polly, and he'd been devastated because of it. “Have you changed your mind?”

“Yes,” Lydia said firmly, fussing with the napkin covering the food in her basket. “I was desperate then.”

This time, Devon did laugh. Oh, it was a raw and raucous sound, lacking the force it might otherwise have had, but he felt better for it all the same.

Lydia reddened prettily. “I didn't mean exactly—well, I'm not saying, mind you, that a woman would have to be desperate to marry you, Devon—”

He raised one eyebrow. “Oh?”

She drew a deep breath and let it out in an anxious burst, making pale tendrils of hair dance around her forehead. “We're all wrong for each other, you and I. You need a silk-stocking sort of woman, not a woolen work sock.”

Devon leaned slightly toward her, his arms folded, looking deliberately pensive. “A woolen work sock? Come now, Lydia. Why would you think of yourself in such a homely way?”

“I didn't say I was homely,” she pointed out, her pride obviously stung. “I meant that I'm practical and warm and—and durable.” Lydia's whole face was flushed now, along with her neck and ears, and she looked poised to drop the lunch basket and run. “Whereas, you would require a soft and delicate woman.” She took another deep breath. “Like Polly.”

For a few glorious minutes Devon had been distracted from the pain of his fractured heart, but Polly's name brought back all the old melancholy feelings and some new ones besides. He started to turn away, having no destination in mind, just needing to be alone again.

“Devon,” Lydia said softly. Gently. “Go to Seattle and bring her back. Polly belongs here with you.”

Devon swallowed. He wanted to make a case for himself, but when he sorted through the words clustered in his mind, he couldn't find any that were presentable. He stiffened his back and walked away without answering at all.

That night, he moved the most essential of his belongings up the hill to the cabin that had been his original home. In those simple and incredibly difficult days, he'd shared the place with Brigham and Isabel, sleeping in the loft.

He was outside, chopping wood by the light of a single lantern, when he heard a rustling sound on the path below and Brig appeared, seeming to take his shape from the darkness itself.

Brig struck a match against the trunk of a fir tree and lit the thin cheroot clamped between his teeth. “Is the big house getting too crowded for you?” he asked after a long time.

Devon went right on chopping wood. He didn't want to sleep in his room because everything in it seemed to exude the clean, subtle scent of Polly's skin, because the place was haunted by her tender words and soft cries of pleasure. But of course he couldn't explain those things, not even to Brigham.

“You might as well know,” he said, swinging the ax, splintering a chunk of wood, putting another on the block. “I mean to court Lydia.”

He thought he saw his elder brother stiffen slightly, decided it was a trick of the moonlight and the flickering lantern. Brigham was content with the expensive whore he patronized in Seattle, and the last thing he wanted was another wife.

“Why?” Brigham asked presently.

“Why not?” Devon countered, still chopping. He was soaked with sweat, and he already had more wood than he'd need before the first snowfall, but he felt like he had to keep moving or he'd explode like gunpowder on a pancake griddle. “You don't want her, do you?”

With no warning, the ax was wrenched from Devon's hands. The blade made an ominous thumping sound as it plunged deep into the trunk of a nearby tree. Brigham gripped his brother's shirtfront and yanked him up onto the balls of his feet.

“Lydia's no whore,” he breathed. “And
by God
I won't let you use her like one, Devon.”

Devon put his hands up between his brother's forearms and freed himself from Brigham's grasp. “I said I plan to court Lydia, not use her for a whore,” he responded evenly. “I want her for a wife.”

“No.”

“What the hell gives you the authority to make a decree like that, Brig? Did somebody make you king when I wasn't paying attention?”

His brother's sigh was deep and raspy, and it told Devon a lot more than Brig had probably wanted to reveal. “If you want Lydia,” he said, “you'll have to get past me to have her.” With that, he ground out the cheroot, turned his back on Devon and strode down the hill.

“I'll be damned,” Devon said, a grin spreading slowly across his mouth. “I'll be damned, stamped, and painted blue.”

 

Lydia was eager for a trip that gloomy afternoon of the Monday following, even though she was sad because Aunt Persephone was leaving for the East. The mail boat was loaded down with so many trunks and bags that Brigham swore it would sink under the weight before they'd even left the harbor.

Charlotte and Millie were going along to see their great aunt off on the big ship that would carry her around the Horn, and they were excited because Anna Holmetz had told them there was a trained bear performing at Yesler's Hall in Seattle. For all their delight, the prospect of parting with Persephone, even for a few months, put a visible damper on their pleasure.

Only Devon was staying home, and frankly, Lydia was relieved. Ever since he'd announced his decision to court her, several days before, he'd been filling her chair at the dinner table with lilacs and generally making a fool of himself.

She tried to be tolerant, well aware that Devon was dealing with the loss of Polly in the only way he knew how, but at the same time she wished he'd just leave her alone. Lydia, as it happened, was trying to sort out some very confusing feelings of her own.

All of which were directed at Brigham, not his younger brother.

Ever since that dreadful day when she'd lost all control of her deportment and launched herself at Brigham from the back porch, like a Chinese rocket from a sarsaparilla bottle, and he'd subdued her in the grass, Lydia had been plagued by sinful and unseemly desires.

Lying in bed at night, for instance, she often imagined Brigham there with her. She felt the weight of his hands on her bare breasts, and even the
thought
of that made her nipples bud and her breath turn quick and shallow. Sometimes she even went so far as to imagine him settling between her legs, and all the rest, too.

At least, as much of the rest as she properly understood. She knew what Brigham would do to her, generally speaking, but she hadn't the vaguest idea why she wanted it so much or how giving herself to him that way could possibly satisfy the awesome need yawning inside her. She only knew she'd go insane one of these muggy summer nights if she didn't get some relief.

Lydia stood at the railing as the mail boat chugged out of port, Millie at her left side, Charlotte at her right. Millie was soon bored with standing still and began to run wildly around the deck, whooping and waving her arms.

“Why does she act like that?” Charlotte asked, with moderate disdain, tossing her lovely mane of honey-brown hair for emphasis.

“Because she's ten,” Lydia answered, with a smile. She reasoned that, if Millie wore herself out now, she'd sleep all the more soundly that night at the hotel. “Didn't you like to run and make noise when you were a little girl, Charlotte?”

Charlotte was pleased by the implication that she was no longer a child, just as Lydia had intended. “No. Well, yes. Sometimes. But I never smeared blackberry juice on my face to make war paint, and I never got myself stuck twenty feet up in a fir tree, either. Millie did that, you know. Last summer. Papa had to climb up and get her.”

Lydia smiled at the image, but at the same time she was glad she hadn't been around for the actual incident. She didn't like to think of the work Brigham did on a day-to-day basis, as it was; to see not only him but Millie in such a dangerous predicament would have terrified her.

As Millie was about to race past him, Brigham gathered Millie up in his arms and swung her up onto one shoulder. Then he came to stand at the rail beside Lydia, who would rather have avoided the encounter. She looked around, hoping Persephone was with him, but the old woman was happily settled in a special deck chair, with Charlotte as lady-in-waiting.

Brigham said nothing to Lydia; he was engaged in a dialogue with his youngest daughter. Only when Quade's Harbor was out of sight, swallowed up by the crowding trees, and Millie had scrambled down to go and bedevil Charlotte, did he speak to her.

“Will you be marrying my brother?” he asked, and although he had clearly intended to present the question in a casual manner, it had a different sort of effect on Lydia. Rather like a lamp being lit in a dark room.

“I'm not sure,” Lydia lied, tugging at the pair of gloves Aunt Persephone had given her just that morning, along with some sachets, a book of poetry, and a few pieces of jewelry she didn't expect to need in Maine. “You must admit Devon can be charming, filling my chair with flowers all the time, and writing poetry the way he does.” She'd made up that last part, but she was having too good a time to retract the statement.

“Poetry?” Brigham asked in amazement, practically choking on the word.

It was as Lydia had suspected. The idea of courting a woman in the old-fashioned, romantic way would never occur to Brigham. His method was simply to fling them down in the grass and sit on them, apparently.

Not that she really thought he wanted to court her.

Oh, no. She was certain Brigham's intentions weren't at all honorable.

Any more than hers were, regrettably.

She changed the subject, for fear Brigham would demand that she quote some of his brother's alleged poetry. That would mean making up a verse or two, and she hadn't the required talent. “Millie tells me there's a performing bear appearing at Yesler's Hall,” she said.

Brigham stared at her for a moment, as though unable to decide whether to kiss her shamelessly or throw her overboard. “If the bear gets tired of putting on a show, they could always bring Devon in as a replacement. Naturally, you would hold the leash.”

Lydia's cheeks flared. “That was a mean-spirited thing to say!”

Brigham shrugged. “You pipe the tune and he dances. Don't try to pretend you don't enjoy the attention, because I know you do.”

“Maybe I do,” Lydia replied, jutting out her chin. “What business is that of yours?”

“I'll show you,” he said. And then, right there on the deck of the mail boat, in front of God and all His angels, Brigham pulled Lydia against him and kissed her so thoroughly that her straw hat fell off and her hair came unpinned.

She stood gaping at him, like a fool, when it was over, and he bent to retrieve her hat, handing it to her with a cocky bow of his head.

“Everything about you is my business,” he said, and then he walked away and left her standing there, holding her straw cap, her hair blowing unbound in the wind.

A
FTER STANDING ON THE DECK IN SHOCK FOR A FEW
moments, Brigham's kiss still burning on her mouth, Lydia bent to gather up her scattered hairpins. When she had as many as there was rational hope of finding, she turned away from the small band of spectators over by the wheelhouse—Aunt Persephone, Charlotte, and Millie—and hastily bound her pale gold mane back into a proper knot at the back of her head. Then she put her hat on again and stood drawing slow, deep breaths at the railing until the tempest Brigham had spawned in her senses had ebbed into a cold and quiet fury.

For two hours they traveled through spectacular scenery, rich green trees crowding the mountains and standing like sentinels along the stony shores, overlooked by whitecapped peaks that gave better testimony to the majesty of God than any preacher could have done. Occasionally Lydia glimpsed squat brown Indians digging clams on the beach or fishing from their sleek canoes.

In all that time, Brigham very wisely kept his distance.

When they arrived in Seattle, however, he immediately took charge again. Aunt Persephone, Charlotte, Millie, and Lydia were all loaded into a muddy carriage, long past its prime, with the bags to be sent along later. Brigham sent the women trundling off over the rutted, stump-strewn streets, toward the Imperial Hotel, and Lydia was relieved that he didn't accompany them.

Mostly.

“Where do you suppose he's going?” she mused aloud, the words escaping her before she could weigh and measure them properly.

Aunt Persephone's smile was a knowing one, but then, it didn't take a legendary brain to recognize Lydia's attraction to Brigham. As hard as she tried to fight that attraction, and to hide it, her feelings would be plainly visible to all but the most obtuse observers.

“Brigham has business associates here in Seattle,” the older woman said. “Bankers and the like.”

Charlotte sighed dreamily. “He probably meets a mystery woman, one with long, flowing hair and a white dress.”

Millie's sigh revealed an entirely different opinion. “Stuff and nonsense,” she said, folding her arms and thumping her heels against the front of the wooden seat she shared with her sister. “He meets a woman, all right, but there's no mystery about it. She's a soiled dove and she kisses him for money.”

Aunt Persephone looked away, perhaps to hide a smile; Lydia couldn't be sure. She was too stunned by the worldly astuteness of Millie's remark, and too afraid it was true, to follow up anyone else's reaction.

Her voice shook a little when she spoke. “Honestly, Millicent, sometimes I think you're a forty-year-old midget just posing as a child. Where on earth did you get such an outrageous idea?”

“I know about these things all right,” Millie said, and the obstinance in her voice and bearing reminded Lydia sorely of Brigham. She turned her indomitable gray gaze to her flushed governess. “Papa kissed you on the boat,” she observed. “Will he give you money?”

Charlotte giggled, and Lydia's blush deepened, burning like a fever in her face and neck. She could even feel it beneath the prim calico bodice of the dress she'd selected for traveling.

“Certainly not,” she said huffily.

Persephone laughed. “I almost hate to go away,” she said, to no one in particular. “I'm probably about to miss the greatest spectacle of our century.”

Lydia definitely did not intend to be a part of any spectacle, great or otherwise. “I can't think what you mean,” she said to the older woman, in a polite but pointed tone.

“Think harder, then,” Persephone answered, without even a moment's hesitation.

Lydia said nothing else, and met no one's eyes, until the carriage stopped in front of the Imperial Hotel. Peter and Eustacia Wallace, friends of the Quade family, were waiting to collect Charlotte and Millie and take them home to spend the afternoon and evening with their daughter, Bertha.

Lydia and Persephone checked into their separate rooms, and Lydia poured the fresh water she found there into a pretty basin and refreshed herself by washing her face and hands. Then she got out her brush, took her hair down, groomed it until it crackled, plaited it neatly, and pinned it up again.

All the time, she was thinking of the way Brigham had kissed her on the deck of the mail boat, and how his tongue had done fiery battle with hers. When she imagined him doing that with another woman, for money or for free, an unreasoning jealousy made her blood simmer. She clamped down her jaw and forcibly changed the direction of her musing.

Her objective for what remained of the afternoon was to locate Polly, and she intended to follow through.

Having no idea where to start, Lydia drew herself up and left the hotel nonetheless, standing on the board sidewalk out front and gazing first in one direction, then the other.

Seattle, for all its bustle, was not a large place. Lydia soon discovered that the timberline came right down to Third Street, and the woods beyond had probably changed changed very little in centuries. There was a church in the center of the community, the interior coolness inviting, offering solace.

Lydia sat for a while on a bench at the back of the plain sanctuary, her hands folded, thinking. There was a slate board next to the altar, and neat chalk figures and letters proclaimed:
22 regular parishioners. 5 visitors. $1.78 collected
. This information was followed by a hymn number and the chapter and verse of several Bible quotations.

Polly would not have come to this place, Lydia decided. Her guilt over her past and the way she'd deceived Devon wouldn't have permitted the redemption and peace she might have found here.

Lydia frowned, shifting on the hard and splintery seat. On the other hand, Polly might have been drawn through the doorway by those very needs, or thrust inside by her own self-condemnation.

“May I help you?”

Lydia started, turned to find a well-fed woman with a kindly smile and a pox-scarred face standing in the aisle. “My name is Lydia McQuire,” she said, after a moment of silent faltering, rising from the pew to offer a hand in greeting. “I'm looking for my friend, Polly…” She paused, not knowing her friend's real surname, and used the only one she had. “Polly Quade. Do you know her?”

The woman shook her head, her gray hair, drawn back in a severely plain style, catching stray bits of sunlight from the doorway and the narrow, dusty windows. “I'm sorry, I don't.” If she recognized the name Quade, which she probably did, she made no mention of it. “Is your friend traveling somewhere? San Francisco, perhaps, or the Orient?”

Lydia sighed. “I wish I knew.”

“Is she alone?”

Lydia felt sad, remembering Polly's grief, and the

bleak expression in Devon's eyes when she'd last seen him. “Yes, I think so. She would probably try to find an inexpensive place to stay, and work, too, if she could get it.”

The other woman looked mildly inspired. “She could be cooking in the woods for one of the timber companies, or cleaning rooms at the Imperial Hotel. Or maybe she's gotten herself married, though it wasn't in this church, I can tell you that. Any time a single woman comes to Seattle, even if she's ugly and mean, or both, the men line up to propose holy matrimony.”

Lydia felt uneasy. Ever since she'd left the hotel in search of Polly, she'd felt speculative gazes following her, and she'd heard a few whistles and hopeful catcalls, too. “The Imperial would probably be too expensive. Is there a rooming house?”

“One, but no Christian woman would stay there. It's behind the States Rights Saloon, and I've heard tell the mattress tickings are crawling with vermin.”

With a shudder, Lydia ruled out the States Rights Saloon. She had absolutely no doubt that Polly had at least some money to spend, and although she didn't know Devon's bogus bride very well, she was certain her friend's habits were too fastidious for such a place. Lydia herself would have slept in a hayloft before taking a room in a questionable establishment, and she could only believe that Polly would do the same.

She thanked the lady who had tried so hard to be helpful and left the church. The last fierceness of the afternoon sun uplifted her a little, and she walked with a determined bounce in her step, even though she had no real idea where to go.

Lydia called at the desk of the Imperial Hotel, but they knew of no Polly Quade either registered as a guest or working as a housekeeper or cook.

Women are rare in Seattle, Lydia thought impatiently. Someone like Polly would not go unnoticed.

She crossed the street to the States Rights Saloon and stood hesitantly on the sidewalk, remembering her brief stint as a piano player in just that sort of enterprise, back in San Francisco. She thought of Jim, the kindly bartender who had been her only friend in that city, and how he'd known everyone for miles around, either personally or by reputation. Saloon keepers heard every whisper of gossip, every secret.

Lydia peered over the swinging doors. The place was empty, except for the burly redheaded man behind the bar, polishing glasses with his dingy apron, and a harmless-looking reveler who sat with his head on a table.

“Excuse me,” Lydia called shakily. She hadn't liked entering saloons in San Francisco, and she wasn't eager to do it now. “Mr. Saloon Keeper?”

The man behind the bar looked up. His Irish-blue eyes widened, then narrowed. “You wanting a place to stay?” he asked hopefully.

Lydia glanced up and down the sidewalk. Men and the few steely-faced women the community boasted were staring at her, scandalized. “No,” she said nervously. “Couldn't you come out here, just for a moment?”

“I've got work to do, lady. If you want to talk with Brendan O'Shaunessy without shouting so the whole town can hear, you'll just have to step over the threshold.”

Lydia drew a deep breath, let it out in a huff, pushed the doors open and went in. She gave the drunk, who had passed out at his table with his fingers still curled around an empty bottle of rye whiskey, a wide berth as she approached the crude bar. Unlike the beautifully carved teak creations in the establishments where she'd played bawdy tunes she hoped would never flow from her fingers to the keys again, this bar was constructed of old barrels with boards on top.

“I'm looking for a woman named Polly Quade,” she said.

Brendan O'Shaunessy put down the glass he'd been polishing—it still looked filthy to Lydia—and asked in a stage whisper, “That would be Devon Quade's runaway bride?”

Lydia was not surprised that word had traveled so fast; news got around in these pioneer communities, where there was little to do besides work and ponder the doings of others. “Yes,” she muttered, and saying the word was like pulling a bandage from a new wound.

“She's cooking for one of the mill crews,” Mr. O‘Shaunessy said. He ran his too-bright eyes over Lydia with dispatch. “You looking for work yourself, miss? Or a husband, maybe?”

Before answering, Lydia took a judicious step backward. The floor was covered with sawdust, slowing the motion of her feet, but she didn't look down. That would have been an indication of weakness. “No,” she said. “I have a perfectly good post, and no desire at all for a husband.” She stood as tall as she could. “Thank you for your help,” she finished, and turned to hurry out.

It was a measure of her luck, she thought, that she nearly collided with Brigham Quade in the doorway. He folded his arms and arched an eyebrow, regarding Lydia with an inscrutable expression. “I didn't know you suffered from the unholy thirst,” he said.

All Lydia could think of was how she'd felt, squashed against him that morning, how he'd conquered her with his mouth. Damn the man, he'd stirred things inside her that
still
hadn't settled. “I don't,” she said, calling on bravado to raise her chin and push back her shoulders. “I'm looking for Polly.”

“You expected her to frequent the States Rights Saloon?” Brigham inquired.

Lydia wasn't about to explain her theory that bartenders knew most everything that went on in a town. “Perhaps,” she allowed, sparing only the merest breath for the word. “Now, if you'll just let me pass.”

Brigham stepped aside and gestured politely, and Lydia swept by him, barely able to keep from lifting her skirts and breaking into a dead run. She had no more than gained the boardwalk, however, when he caught her elbow in one hand and turned her to face him.

Mr. Quade looked damnably handsome even in his cotton duck trousers, scuffed boots, suspenders, and open-throated work shirt, and for one wonderful, wicked, and utterly terrifying moment, Lydia thought he meant to kiss her again. Instead he released her arm and let go a mighty sigh.

“You shouldn't be meddling in this,” he said through his teeth. “Devon and Polly have to work it out themselves.”

Lydia leaned close to him, painfully conscious of the stares of masculine passersby, and stood on the balls of her feet to hiss, “I'm not meddling. Polly is my friend and I want to see how she is.”

Brigham reached into the pocket of his trousers, pulled out a thick packet of currency, and removed a twenty-dollar bill. “Give her this,” he said.

After looking down at the money in surprise for a moment, Lydia lifted her eyes to Brigham's concerned face, not knowing what to think.