Yankee Wife (16 page)

“Absolutely,” Lydia said. She took her time getting dressed in one of the frocks Devon had had her buy in San Francisco, washing her face and cleaning her teeth, doing up her hair in a plain and sensible style.

When she reached the kitchen, Millie was already there, beaming in triumph. “I win!” she cried.

“Indeed you do,” Lydia conceded.

Jake had already made breakfast, leaving plates of eggs and sausage and toasted bread in the warming oven, and he'd filled the hot-water reservoir, too. Lydia dished up a meal for herself and one for Millie, and they sat down at the table to eat.

They had barely started when Brigham stumbled down the stairs, still wearing yesterday's clothes. He gave Lydia a defiantly defensive look as he passed the table to take a cup from the shelf and pour himself some coffee.

“I see you didn't take my advice,” Lydia said in a tautly sweet voice, moderating her tone only because Millie was present. If she'd been able to speak her mind outright, she'd have told Mr. Brigham Quade off good for sleeping in rain-sodden clothes after she'd warned him of the danger to his health.

“Would you like to know what advice I'd offer you, Miss McQuire?” he inquired with acid politeness.

Lydia blushed as a number of scandalous possibilities rushed into her mind. “No,” she said grudgingly.

“Good morning, Papa,” Millie chirped, in what was probably an attempt to protect the fragile peace. “Would it be all right if I went up to see Uncle Devon now, please? I'm very worried about him, and I've eaten all I can of my breakfast.”

Brigham was a big man, with an ominous bearing and the sternest possible manner, but he seemed to soften before the bright sincerity of that child. He crouched beside her chair, touched her cheek with one callused finger. “Yes, sweetheart,” he answered. He hesitated, took her small arms gently in his hands. “Uncle Devon doesn't look like himself,” he added, in a voice that pulled strangely at Lydia's heart, “and he won't know you're there. You understand that, don't you?”

Millie nodded solemnly. “Yes, Papa,” she said. And then she got out of her chair, as Brigham rose, and Lydia wanted to lunge after her, crying out,
Don't go
!

Of course she did no such thing, and the child disappeared up the back stairway, leaving Lydia alone with Brigham.

He turned before she could speak, narrowed his eyes and thrust a finger at her. “Don't you dare lecture me, woman,” he said, just as she was getting ready to point out how lucky he was he hadn't woken up with pneumonia. “I've got enough on my mind without you nagging me to drink lemon juice and wear woolly clothes!”

Lydia stiffened. Not for anything would she have admitted that he'd read her thoughts as surely as any Gypsy fortune-teller could have done. Again. “The idea didn't even cross my mind,” she lied, in a snappish tone. “Have you eaten?”

“No.” He threw the word at her, and it quivered in the ground at her feet like a battle lance.

A hurricane of emotions rose up inside Lydia. Not trusting herself to speak, she pushed past Brigham and made for the stairs.

She was not sure whether it was a relief or a disappointment when he didn't attempt to waylay her. A little of both, she guessed ruefully, as she made her way along the upper hallway toward Devon's room.

 

Like some great cosmic hammerhead, the pain struck Devon blow after bone-jarring blow. He was in some sort of a dream state, unable to reach through to the normal world, but he knew
she
was there. He felt the gentleness of her nature even when her touch brought the biting sting of a needle or the realignment of his broken arm.

Lydia.

It was Lydia who had gathered up the pieces and put him back together again, Lydia who had kept a vigil at his bedside through the horrible night, Lydia who had told him over and over again that she loved him.

He loved her as well; he realized that now. He wanted above all else to get well, to marry her, to start his firstborn child growing within the warm shelter of her body.

He tried to say her name.

“Hush,” a soft voice said, and something cool and moist touched the torn, bruised skin of his face. “Hush now, darling. I'm here, and nothing could make me leave you again.”

Darling
. The word and the voice it was spoken in draped themselves over Devon like a magic blanket, woven of the goddess Athena's cloud wool and full of healing. She loved him. She would stay with him, forever.

Lydia.

 

“You must have something to eat and get some rest,” Lydia whispered to Polly, who sat in a chair beside Devon's bed. There were great smudges of shadow under her hollow eyes, her hair was half up and half down, and her normally flawless skin had turned an alarming shade of gray. “Please.”

Polly shook her head, stiffening under Lydia's hands, which now rested on her shoulders, and did not so much as look away from Devon's face. “I won't leave him,” she said.

“You won't be any help to Devon if you destroy yourself,” Lydia reasoned, speaking softly. Millie was sitting on the hooked rug on the other side of Devon's bed, silently playing with a rag doll, keeping a child's vigil. “Please, Polly. Just go and eat something, and sleep for a while. I promise I'll stay with Devon until you return.”

Polly raised unnaturally bright eyes to Lydia's face. “You can't have him. He's mine.”

Lydia blinked back tears of sympathy, squeezed the other woman's shoulders. “Of course he is, Polly,” she said.

Although she seemed to be slightly reassured, Polly still refused to leave Devon's side. Finally Lydia was forced to go and prepare a tray of food for her.

Polly ate, rather like a person in a trance, her gaze unfocused, her awareness so centered on Devon that it appeared she might pounce on his prone form and cling to him.

When Lydia came back for the tray, she brought a bucket of steaming water with her and poured it into the basin on the bureau top. “Come, Millie,” she said to the little girl playing on the rug. “It's time to bake those cookies.”

Charlotte was in the kitchen, waiting, and the trio spent the next hour or so shaping sugary dough and baking it into tasty morsels. After the mess was cleaned up, Charlotte wandered off somewhere and Millie went into the parlor with her doll.

Lydia immediately returned to the second floor, half expecting to encounter either Brigham or Joseph McCauley in the hallway, but she met no one. In Devon's room she found that Polly had taken a sponge bath at the basin, put on one of Devon's soft chambray shirts for a nightgown, and curled up next to him on the bed. Even in sleep Polly looked ferociously protective, as though any attack on the man beside her would bring her straight up from her sound slumber, clawing and biting like an enraged tigress.

Taking a lightweight woolen blanket from the upper shelf in Devon's wardrobe, Lydia covered her friend gently. Then she took the basin of soapy water and left the room.

The rain continued.

Lydia checked on Charlotte, found her in a window seat in Brigham's study, a sketch pad in her lap. She was gazing out at the rain-shrouded water, a half smile on her lovely face.

Lydia cleared her throat softly, to let the girl know she was there, then said, “May I see what you're drawing?”

Charlotte held up a startlingly good pencil sketch of a clipper ship, sails billowing in the wind. “She's called the
Enchantress
,” she said. “Isn't that a beautiful name for a ship?”

“Yes,” Lydia agreed with a smile. “I believe Dr. McCauley came to Seattle on just that vessel.”

Turning her gaze toward the water again, Charlotte gave a tragic sigh. “When am I going to grow up, Lydia?” she pleaded. “When will my life truly begin?”

Lydia laid a light hand to the back of the girl's head, still smiling. “Don't wish your days away, Charlotte,” she counseled. “Soon enough you'll be grown and gone, and I promise you, you'll miss your father and Millicent and your Uncle Devon very much.”

Charlotte turned, looked up at Lydia with her pale amber eyes. “I'll miss you, too,” she said.

Touched by the child's openness, Lydia bent and kissed the top of her head. “Oh, and I shall miss you as well, my beautiful, adventuresome Charlotte. I have a feeling your life will be very exciting indeed.”

“Will it?” Charlotte offered the words as a hopeful plea. “Oh, Lydia, do you really think that?”

“Yes,” Lydia replied, and though she couldn't have explained why she'd come to such a conclusion, she meant what she said. She glanced down at Charlotte's sketch of the clipper ship and thought of a handsome captain, and then, unaccountably, of a distant paradise where giant flowers grew in a profusion of colors.

Her imagination, she concluded, was running away with her.

Late that afternoon, the rain let up and the sun came out, and Lydia's hopes rose. She went out for a walk, taking Charlotte and Millie with her, and, hearing the whistle, they hurried toward the harbor to watch the mail boat come in.

Joseph McCauley was there ahead of them, standing at the end of the wharf, hatless, his worn coat blowing in the moist breeze.

Lydia's heart seized up again. He was leaving.

He smiled when he turned and saw the girls chasing each other back and forth at the top of the embankment, the grass slick under their shoes, their laughter ringing through the fresh-washed air like music. Lydia approached with dignity, her heels making a lonely sound as they struck the creaking boards of the dock.

Beyond, the mail boat chugged and chortled toward them, its whistle offering intermittent toots.

Lydia managed a smile, but her voice sounded choked when she said, “You're going?”

Joseph McCauley sighed, his eyes gentle and affectionate as he looked at her. “No,” he said. “I just came down here to look at the trees and the mountains and the water. This place is beautiful, isn't it? Looks as if it has just tumbled, brand new, from the Lord's own hand.”

“It's lovely,” she agreed, sweeping the horizon with her gaze. “How is Devon this morning? Have you seen him?”

Joseph's manner was benignly indulgent. “Of course I've seen him, he's my one and only patient. He's still unconscious, and still in formidable pain, I would imagine, but there's an energy there, a stubborn will to fight. I have no doubt at all that Mr. Quade will rejoin us in the world of the living, though he may have certain—limitations.”

Lydia felt herself go pale. “You don't mean he'll be crippled?” she whispered, filled with fear, knowing somehow that Devon would rather be dead.

The doctor touched his temple with an index finger. “He's got to make that decision himself, in here.”

The whistle sounded again, and Lydia, who had no idea what Captain McCauley had meant by his words, shifted her thoughts to the arriving boat.

When the craft was tied to its pilings and the ramp had been put down, several passengers alighted.

The first was a man with bristly, blue-white hair and a full beard. He wore plain clothes and a round black hat, but his eyes kept him from being ordinary. They were a bright, pale green, and they burned in his weathered face like fire. Behind him came a big woman with coarse features, worn clothes, and two sturdy children clinging to her skirts.

“Matthew Prophet is my name,” the white-haired man announced, as though he expected either Joseph or Lydia to challenge the pronouncement. “I'm here to spread the word of God.”

“Welcome,” said Joseph, his voice filled with warmth and friendly amusement as he shook the preacher's veined hand.

Lydia slipped around him, to greet the woman.

The new arrival thrust out her chin. “Name's Elly Collier,” she told Lydia, ignoring her extended hand. “These are my boys, Jessup and Samuel. My man done took up with an Indian woman and left us on our own. I heard in Seattle there might be work here.”

Lydia liked the outspoken Mrs. Collier instantly, perhaps because of her courage and her straightforward manner. “I'll take you to meet Mr. Quade,” she said.

“He do the hirin' around here?” Mrs. Collier asked, standing stalwart in the middle of the dock, awaiting her answer.

“He owns it all,” Lydia replied.

Joseph had taken Mr. Prophet in hand, and Charlotte and Millie won the Collier boys over by promising them cookies. Lydia led the way to Brigham's office, and it seemed fitting to her that the roots of that stump he'd made into a building reached deep into the ground, holding on, immovable and strong. Like Brigham himself.

He came through the doorway as Lydia and Elly Collier approached, and his gray eyes sliced to Lydia's face and made a silent demand.

“Your brother is fine,” she assured him quickly. Then she took Elly's solid arm in both hands and thrust the woman forward. “This is Mrs. Collier,” she said. “She wants work, and if you've got a brain in your head, Brigham Quade, you'll hire her here and now.”

E
LLY
C
OLLIER STOOD PROUDLY AS SHE FACED
B
RIGHAM, A
shabbily dressed woman, squarely built, with plain brown hair and pale blue eyes that had seen much trouble. “I ain't exactly a missus,” she said, after Lydia had presented her as “Mrs. Collier.” “Zach and I never got around to sayin' the words in front of a preacher and the like.”

This announcement stirred a buzz of gossip among the few men who were either going to or coming from their jobs on the mountain and in the mill. More than one paused to assess Elly with frank interest.

Lydia was watching Brigham, holding her breath to hear Elly's fate. He smiled, and the effect was like that of the sun parting storm clouds. Lydia was unaccountably jealous, wanting even that small sign of favor for herself.

“We could use a washwoman up in camp,” he said.

He hadn't spared a second look for Lydia, but she could tell he knew she was there and was deliberately ignoring her. She reasoned that he probably had contempt for her because of the way she'd let him bare her flesh the night before, because of the way she'd moaned and pitched under his mouth and his hands.

Color rushed into her face, and the conversation became a blur, passing her ears in a hollow rush, but not entering. Lydia hugged herself tightly, recalling the rich, ferocious sensations Brigham had evoked in her on that bed in the cabin, all but reliving them.

“I've got me two boys,” Elly was saying, when the daze faded and Lydia could hear again. “I'd want them with me.”

Brigham was clearly restless now, ready to end the exchange and move on. “Fine,” he conceded. “Just make sure they stay out of the way.” At last his gaze shifted to Lydia, but it was cool, like his tone of voice. “See that the Colliers have what they need from the company store,” he said.

Lydia started to protest that she wasn't his clerk, or a household servant to be ordered about on his whims, but for once she held her tongue. She was enmeshed in the tapestry of life in Quade's Harbor, she realized with mingled joy and horror, and did not want to be sent away before she could add a few colorful stitches of her own to the pattern.

“Certainly,” she said, with a mocking little curtsy. The gesture wasn't lost on Brigham, despite his hard-headedness, for the merest smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “If you'll just tell me where this storehouse is located.” It was all she could do not to add
Your Highness
.

He tossed his head toward the office and the cluster of sheds beyond. “Back there,” he said, a satirical edge to his voice.

The “company store” turned out to be nothing more than a clapboard hovel with dusty glass windows and a dirt floor. It was crowded with barrels, bags of flour and beans, tins of coffee, and preserved fruit.

“No wonder Devon wanted to open up a mercantile,” Lydia remarked aloud, crinkling her nose in distaste as she and Elly stood in the shadowy confines, listening to invisible mice scatter for safety.

Elly's reaction, not surprisingly, was quite different. “Will you just look at all these vittles?” she marveled, her hands on her broad hips, her face shining in the dust-flecked light. “My boys will be happy to put away some of them beans.” She paused and frowned. “The boss didn't say how much I could have.”

Lydia felt generous, and she was wise enough to bide the pity that ached in her throat. “Take all you can carry,” she said. “I'll help you.”

A wagon was brought around, and Elly's two boys—they were close in age, seven or eight, Lydia guessed—reappeared, like dogs summoned with one of those soundless whistles. Lydia helped with the loading, watched as the buckboard finally lumbered up the narrow track to the timber camp, Elly beside the driver, the boys sitting happily in the back with their dusty groceries.

Lydia was aware of Brigham standing behind her, aware in every grain and fiber of her being, but she watched the wagon jostle out of sight before she turned to face him.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” she said, gesturing toward the hovel.

His straight white teeth flashed in a knee-melting grin. “I knew it,” he said. “You're not only a Yankee bluestocking, you're a reformer in the bargain. Next, you'll be wanting the vote.”

There was something about this man, despite his appeal, or maybe because of it, that made Lydia quiver with fury. “If the world were left to hard-headed tyrants like you, Mr. Quade,” she said, her anger not at all lessened by the fact that she knew she was exaggerating, “things would be in an even worse state of disarray than they are now.”

He arched an eyebrow, clearly amused by her outburst. She hoped he didn't see through the bluff, but wouldn't have wagered her supper on it. He stepped close to her, unmindful of the people around them, who were studiously going about their business and missing absolutely nothing.

“You liked me all right last night,” he said.

Such a rush of blood spilled into Lydia's cheeks that she involuntarily raised both palms to her face in an effort to cool it. She heard her own cries of passionate surrender echoing in his words as they faded, with excruciating slowness, into the pine-scented air.

“That was an error in judgment on my part,” she allowed, in a fierce hiss. “And I would appreciate it if you could somehow scrape up the good grace never to mention it again!”

Brigham's smile was slow and obnoxious; it seemed to pull Lydia toward him like a warlock's spell. He cupped his hand under her chin and spoke in a low voice that set her already-tremulous pulse thrumming. “Ah, but this is the real world, Lydia,” he drawled, “and it's not at all the way you fancy it should be, or would pretend it is. The truth is—as we both know so well, little Yankee—last night was only the beginning of whatever is happening between us. When I bed you in earnest, your cries of pleasure will echo off the mountains.”

So great was Lydia's outrage at his effrontery and arrogance—and, heaven help her, the shock of her own arousal—that she was momentarily paralyzed. Even had she been able to speak, she'd never learned an insult scathing enough to suit the occasion.

When Lydia finally regained her equilibrium, after what seemed like an eternity, she swept off toward the main house with her chin thrust high in the air. Some of the workers made a path for her, whistling and applauding as she passed, heightening her embarrassment to an almost hysterical pitch.

Not daring even to speculate on how much the men might know about her ill-advised intimacies with Brigham Quade, cocky King of the Mountain, she hurried on, her disturbing thoughts flocking ahead of her like a gaggle of geese.

As she walked, a light, misty rain began to fall, cooling her anger and the prickly heat that danced on her skin. Reaching the house that was, like everything else in and around that town, Brigham's domain, she sat on the top step.

The porch roof sheltered her, but just barely. On either side of the walk, lilacs bloomed, their sweet scent more poignant for the added, acrid scent of rain mingling with dust.

Lydia let her forehead rest on her updrawn knees, concentrating on her breathing until it slowed to a regular pace.

Then, when she was herself again, she rose and proceeded inside.

Charlotte and Millie were nowhere in sight, but that didn't trouble Lydia, because it was a big house and the children were used to entertaining themselves. She climbed the main staircase and swept along the hallway to Devon's door.

After rapping lightly, merely as a matter of good manners, she turned the knob and stepped inside.

Polly had risen from her nap beside Devon, and she was fully dressed in the fresh clothes Lydia had laid out for her earlier. She stood beside the bed, gently bathing Devon's upper body with a cloth dipped in cool water.

“How is he?” Lydia asked softly.

Polly spared her one glance, then concentrated on ministering to Devon. “He's stirred a few times,” she said. “I think he's trying to wake up.”

Lydia came and stood at the foot of the bed. “Let me sit with him for a while, Polly, while you go out and get some fresh air.”

It seemed that Polly hadn't heard the suggestion. “Dr. McCauley says Devon has the strongest heartbeat of any man he's ever tended,” she said, in a bright and brittle voice that was painful to hear.

Lydia stood still, without speaking.

A sob broke, raw and small, from Polly's throat. “He called out a little while ago. He said, ‘Lydia.'”

After swallowing, Lydia made herself reply. She just hoped she sounded matter-of-fact and practical. “Devon is confused,” she said. “You mustn't place too much stock in what he says right now. The fact that he's spoken is encouraging in itself.”

There were tears on Polly's hollow cheeks as she looked at Lydia. “Don't take him from me,” she pleaded starkly, with a strange, desperate dignity. “Promise me you won't make him love you.”

Lydia went to Polly then, put an arm around the other woman's waist. “I'm not an enchantress,” she said gently. Reasonably. “I couldn't ‘make' Devon or any other man love me, even if I wanted that. Now, go and have some time to yourself. You'll be stronger for it.”

Polly hesitated a moment, then nodded once, gave Devon a long look, full of yearning, and left the room.

“Lydia.” Devon said the name clearly, though in a raw whisper, and there was no mistaking it for any other.

Something like despair rose up inside Lydia, but then she took herself sternly in hand, told herself not to borrow trouble. “Hello, Devon,” she answered, close to his ear, as she sat down in Polly's chair. She sniffled and then smiled purposefully, even though she knew he couldn't see her. She took his good hand in both of hers. “You're getting to be quite a layabout,” she told him. “I saw that mouse nest Brigham calls a company store today. You've got to recover as fast as you can, and get back to work on your mercantile. Believe me, we need it desperately. Why, there isn't a place between here and Seattle where I could buy a skein of embroidery floss.…”

The bedroom door opened and closed again, and Lydia glanced up to see her friend, Joseph McCauley. He looked more rested than when she'd seen him last, and he was wearing fresh clothes and carrying a hopelessly battered medical kit. He smiled.

Lydia felt foolish. “I was just—”

“I know,” Joseph interrupted, in his kind, quiet way. “He wanders far from us, and you're trying to call him home. I remember hearing your voice sometimes, when I was in that Yankee hospital. It was like a shimmering strand of golden thread; I took it in both hands and followed it back to this side of the shadowy veil.”

“You talk like a poet,” Lydia remarked. It was a silly sentiment, but she'd already uttered the words before she came to that conclusion.

Joseph stood on the other side of the bed, opening his bag and taking out his stethoscope. His manner was strangely serene, given all he'd endured in his lifetime of perhaps thirty-five or forty years. “Every man is a poet,” he replied, after listening thoughtfully to Devon's heartbeat for some moments. “When the situation calls for it.”

Lydia was not a person to make wishes; after the carnage she'd seen, she couldn't make herself believe in good fairies or guardian angels. Still, for the merest fraction of a moment, she wished she could love Joseph McCauley. He would have made a wonderful husband, with his refined and gentle ways.

She looked away. Few women would have been better suited as the wife and helpmate of a frontier doctor than she herself, with all her training and experience, but it would be a cruel injustice to encourage Joseph when it was Brigham who made her blood heat.

“Lydia.”

She raised her eyes at the gentle command in Joseph's voice, met his gaze. “Yes?” she managed, overwhelmed by the variety of emotions filling that room like the notes of some great, thunderous, silent symphony. She was aware not only of her own feelings, confused and fiery, but also of Devon's angry longing to live and Joseph's search for a lasting peace.

“When I stepped into that kitchen downstairs and saw you there,” Joseph said, putting away his stethoscope, “I thought to myself, ‘Joe McCauley, heaven does take an interest in puny mortals like yourself after all.' I won't lie to you and say I don't want more, but I could content myself for all the days of my life on an occasional smile or a touch of your hand.”

Lydia lowered her eyes. “You speak very directly, sir,” she said, and her shyness, uncharacteristic as it was, was quite real.

He sighed and went to the window to stand looking out toward the mountains and the sea. “These are direct times, Lydia,” he mused, “and the West is a very forthright place.”

She remembered Elly Collier, announcing to the world in general that she and her man had never gotten around to “saying the words in front of a preacher,” and Polly, who had deluded Devon into thinking of her as his wife. And herself, lying on a narrow bed with Brigham, letting him play her body like a lyre.

Yes, she thought. The West was indeed a forthright place, with social and moral rules all its own. “I don't love you,” she said, not unkindly.