Yankee Wife (20 page)

Brigham had understood that, being of like mind himself, and his respect for the man had risen accordingly, but he'd had a crazy desire to run McCauley off like a stray dog, too. If Lydia married the doctor, she would be all around Quade's Harbor on wifely business, and he would see her everywhere.

Presently, her belly would swell with McCauley's child, and he would have to live with the knowledge that she shared another man's bed, took pleasure beneath another man's hands and mouth and hips.

Brigham didn't think he could stand that, and yet he'd be damned if he'd leave. He'd worked too hard and suffered too much to give up his holdings on account of some saucy little Yankee.

Her laugh, sudden and bright as a bell on a clear morning, jolted him out of his thoughts.

“For goodness sake, Brigham,” she scolded, standing beside him on the dirt path in front of her porch steps. “You look as grim as a thundercloud. Are you sure you're all right?”

“I'm fine,” he barked. Then he turned and strode away toward the gate.

When Brigham arrived at the house, he went immediately to his brother's room. Devon was sitting up in bed, smoking a cigar and playing poker with Jake Feeny.

It lightened Brigham's black mood a little, seeing his brother looking almost like his old self.

“I guess I'd like to have some of that raisin cake now,” Devon said to the cook, the cigar bobbing between his white teeth as he spoke.

Jake took the hint and left, with a cordial nod at Brigham.

Devon reached out and caught the neck of a whiskey bottle in his fingers and a glass in the curve of his thumb.

Brigham frowned.

“Don't say it,” Devon warned, before his brother could offer a comment on the early hour. The bottle clinked against the rim of the glass as he poured himself a double shot—not his first of the day, from the smell of him. “I need this. It controls the pain.”

Brigham eyed the liquor warily, only too aware of what it could do to a man's life once it took a stranglehold. “Maybe it's time you got out of this room, Dev,” he said quietly, pulling up the chair that usually contained Polly. “I'll have a crew finish the general store, and you can send to San Francisco for stock—”

Devon drained the glass and set it aside with an unsteady motion of his hand, bumping it against the bottle. “I won't be needing the store,” he said. “I'm leaving Quade's Harbor, Brig. For good.”

The words struck Brigham like the trunk of a three-year-old sapling swung hard at his midsection. The dream of building a decent town, a place for people to live and work, had not been his alone. Devon had shared it once.

“What?” he asked stupidly, still reeling on the inside.

“I can't stay here and watch Polly get fat with that bastard's baby,” Devon growled.

Brigham stared at him for a moment, amazed. “What bastard is that?” he asked after a long time.

Devon reached for the bottle again; Brigham got up and pulled it from his hand. For a long moment the two brothers glared at each other in fury, and Brigham knew they would have fought under any other circumstances.

“The child isn't mine,” Devon finally said, on a long, ragged breath.

Brigham slowly lowered the whiskey bottle onto the marble top of Devon's bureau. “Did she tell you that?”

“Hell, no,” Devon answered in an acid rasp. “She says I'm the father.”

Brigham struggled for patience. He hadn't been able to help hearing some of the sounds that had come from this room as he'd passed by in the hall in the days after Devon's return from San Francisco. “You probably are.”

Devon sighed, and there was something broken in the sound, for all its bitterness. “No. She lied before, and she's lying now.”

“What makes you so sure of that?” Brigham wished to God he had Devon's problem. If he'd made Lydia pregnant, she might have married him.
Might
.

His brother ran his tongue over dry, cracked lips. “I'm sure, all right. Miracles like that only happen in those storybooks of Charlotte's, and I don't believe in fairy tales anymore.”

“You're a damn fool. That baby is a Quade, Devon, you can't just turn your back!”

Devon said nothing. Nothing at all.

Brigham suppressed an urge to grip his brother by the shoulders and thump his head against the headboard until he'd pounded in some sense. Instead he made a silent decision of his own and walked out.

If Devon wouldn't take responsibility for that baby, which was as much a Quade as any of them, then he himself would. Even if it meant putting some of his own dreams aside forever.

 

Lydia dropped the potato she'd been peeling and stared at Polly, who was perched on the porch step beside her. It was twilight, the mail boat had come and gone, and the mill saw was blessedly silent, but the peace had been shattered by a few simple words.

“You're what?”

Polly wouldn't look at her. “I'm marrying Brigham. He called me into his study a little while ago and asked me. We aren't going to live together, of course, but the baby will have the Quade name, and Brigham has promised to help me get started in business as soon as the general store is finished.”

Lydia made no attempt to pick up the naked potato, which was now brown with dust from the path, even though the idea of never wasting food was ingrained in her. She was dizzy with bewilderment and shock, and the fact that Brigham and Polly didn't plan to share a bed was of no comfort at all. Brigham was a vital, healthy man, and Polly was a beautiful woman. It would only be a matter of time before Brigham claimed his rights as a husband.

“What about Devon?” Lydia asked when she could manage to speak.

Polly bent down, picked up the potato, and tried to wipe it off with her skirt. A tear rolled down her cheek and dropped off onto her bodice. “Devon is leaving Quade's Harbor. He thinks I'm lying about the baby.” She turned her head, looking so despondent that Lydia couldn't be angry with her. “I—I wouldn't have said yes to Brigham's proposal,” she added, “except that you've made it so clear you won't have him for a husband.”

Lydia was undergoing a major shift in attitude in those moments. She loved Brigham Quade, ornery and hard-headed as he was, and the rest of her life loomed long and lonely without him. She wished she'd accepted his suit, and left the winning of his more noble affections until later.

“I see,” she said.

Polly rose to leave, shaking out her skirts. “I'm not strong like you, Lydia,” she told her still-stricken friend. “I couldn't make my own way in the world, not with a baby to look after.”

Lydia couldn't speak; she could only nod. As soon as the gate closed behind Polly, and Brigham's future bride was out of sight, she let the tears come.

That night was neither happy nor restful for Lydia. She cried and paced, the worried kitten tumbling after her, trying to catch at her skirts. In the morning, voice hoarse, eyes red and swollen, Lydia taught lessons as usual, sitting with the children in the side yard.

In the afternoon, Joe McCauley arrived on the mail boat and came immediately to Lydia's door, all smiles, his arms full of packages.

She'd been able to fool the children into thinking the bright yellow Scotch broom growing all over the region irritated her nose and throat, but Joe knew the ravages of tears when he saw them. He broke his own rule of propriety and led Lydia into the house, pressing her into a chair and laying the bundles in her lap.

Then he crouched in front of her. “Brigham?”

She sniffled and then nodded. “He's going to marry Polly. So that her baby won't be illegitimate.”

Joe smoothed back a stray lock of her hair. “Has he told you that himself?”

She shook her head, fighting back a spate of fresh tears. “No, the coward. He rode off to Seattle to bring back some preacher friend of his, though. He means to go ahead with this.”

“Maybe you'd better go to Brig and tell him how you feel,” Joe said gently. It was clear that he cared for Lydia himself, and cared deeply. Apparently, her happiness mattered to him more than his own, which only made the situation that much more ironic, to Lydia's mind.

Lydia thought of how she'd turned down Brigham's proposals; in retrospect, the refusals seemed arrogant, given the fact that she'd come to love him even before he'd offered himself as a suitor. “I can't do that, Joe,” she said. “If there's one thing I know about Brigham Quade, it's that nothing can sway him from a purpose once he's made up his mind. He's going to do this thing.” She looked at her friend in an appeal for understanding. “Besides, what would Polly do? What would happen to that innocent little baby?”

Joseph reached up, caressed Lydia's chin. “There are a lot of hard choices to make in this life,” he said gruffly. Then his face lit up with a smile, and he found her hands among the bundles and squeezed them. “I've got my loan, and I'll be building a house and small surgery just down the street, in that lot on the other side of the Holmetzes.”

Lydia smiled through her tears and kissed his forehead, nearly sending her lap full of presents toppling to the floor. “That's wonderful,” she said, grateful that he wasn't pressing her to turn to him, now that she was losing Brigham forever.

“Open the packages,” he said hoarsely.

Lydia dried her eyes on her sleeve, sniffled again, and opened the first of the gifts, which were all wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. Inside was a beautiful bound book of short stories and essays. The next package contained a mirror with an ornate silver back, and the last one held a lovely shawl, delicately crocheted of turquoise silk.

“How on earth did you find such things in Seattle?” Lydia asked, awed. Even there, the merchants dealt almost entirely with lumberjacks, miners, and mill workers, and pretty trinkets were hard to find.

Joe's smile lifted her spirits. “There was a ship in port a while back—the
Enchantress
. She'd sailed to China on a trading expedition, and made a stop in San Francisco, as well. Along with some other cargo, the captain brought finery for the merchants to sell.”

Something in his tone caught Lydia's interest. Maybe she was just desperate to turn her thoughts to something besides Brigham's impending marriage for a few seconds. “What other cargo?” she asked.

The doctor's weathered face pinkened slightly around the cheekbones. “You don't want to know.”

“Yes, I do, Joseph,” Lydia said, smoothing her skirts. “That's why I asked you.”

“Women.”

Lydia didn't understand. “Women?”

Joseph went to sit opposite her, on an upturned crate. He looked everywhere but at her face. “Yes, Lydia,” he said presently. “Women—fancy ones.”

“Surely you don't think I'm so delicate that I don't know what a prostitute is, Joseph,” Lydia said, a little impatient with his hedging. What did she care if a few more soiled doves flocked to the crude brothels on Seattle's Skid Road.

He cleared his throat.

“Oh, never mind,” Lydia fussed. She hadn't been herself since Polly had brought her news of the wedding, and she couldn't think straight. Before she could come up with anything sensible to say, someone knocked hard at the front door.

Joseph shifted uncomfortably on his crate, then rose and went to answer.

Devon loomed in the doorway, leaning on his pine cane, dressed in a good gray suit with a striped vest, and wearing an elegant hat. Ignoring the doctor entirely, he strode into the room, filling it with his size and the sheer, thunderous energy of his personality.

“I'm leaving Quade's Harbor for good,” he said bluntly, removing his hat and looking straight into Lydia's wide eyes. “I'm here to ask you to go with me.”

Lydia was struck speechless. For one wild moment she considered saying yes to Devon's proposition, but all the while she knew she couldn't do such a thing. She wouldn't be able to set aside her feelings for Brigham so easily.

“I can't,” she said gently.

Devon's jawline tightened, but he accepted the pronouncement with no visible emotion. Lydia suspected he might even be a little relieved.

He bent, carefully, this good and gentle man who had brought her to Quade's Harbor in the first place, and kissed the top of her head. “Good-bye, then,” he said. And he was gone.

Just as Lydia was asking herself how Devon could travel overland in his condition, she heard the loud hoot of a freighter's horn, and her question was answered.

A
SIMPLE WEDDING CEREMONY WAS TO BE HELD IN THE SIDE
yard at the big house on the hill, with the bride and groom standing in Aunt Persephone's gazebo, and it seemed that everyone in the territory was invited. While the occasion of Brigham's marriage to Polly lacked a sense of celebration for Lydia, there was a definite buzz of excitement in the air because social events were so rare on Puget Sound. Word had spread rapidly through the area, and every day homesteaders and even Indians arrived to set up camp at the edge of town.

In the midst of all this, a flurry of building was going on. Brigham sent a crew to finish the general store, and it was common knowledge that stock had been ordered from as far away as Boston and New York. Joe McCauley's house was under construction at the end of Main Street, too, and the meeting-and-schoolhouse had been begun, as well, along with a large structure meant to be a hotel, according to Charlotte. The echoes of constant hammer blows rang out over the water, the steady rasp of saws adding to the din, and Lydia paced her little house when she wasn't busy teaching.

All the while, Lydia alternately cursed Devon for failing to return and claim his wife and child, and Brigham, for his unshakable sense of honor. It seemed remarkable now that he'd taunted
her
for her stern New England mores. Polly was the only one she held no rancor toward; on the frontier, women did what they had to do to make a place for themselves. For most, it was a matter of survival.

Lydia avoided Brigham carefully, although he tried to talk to her on several occasions. The first time, when he'd come brazenly to her door, she'd simply pretended not to be home.

Soon after, Brigham had sent Harrington in his stead, with a politely worded invitation to meet with Mr. Quade on neutral ground, at his office near the mill.

Lydia sent Mr. Harrington away with a response that turned the tops of his ears red.

Finally, Brigham even stooped so low as to ask his daughters to do his dirty work. Charlotte and Millie had come to Lydia, after lessons one afternoon, and invited her to supper at the main house.

The children were as confused as Lydia herself, and she loved them devotedly. She phrased her refusal very gently, but volunteered no explanation.

Mail boats and unscheduled freighters came and went in the harbor, and finally the dreaded day arrived.

Lydia donned her best dress, the gray one with pink stripes, and took special pains with her hair that morning. Although her preference would have been to stay home and weep, she meant to sit in the front row of chairs with her head held high and her eyes dry and defiant.

She pinned her new straw bonnet in place—like the many other things crowding the blue saltbox cottage on Main Street, it was a gift from one of her admirers—and studied her reflection in the bureau mirror. She did not look the least bit like an embittered spinster, she assured herself silently, although she certainly felt like one.

Presently, Joe McCauley came to fetch her, offering his arm in that suave way he had, and the two of them walked up the hill to Brigham's house together. Lydia felt like a lady outlaw being led out for hanging, but she had a broad smile for everyone they encountered on the way.

The preparations for the wedding were simple enough; someone had brought out every chair from the house, or close to that number, and lined them up in rows facing the gazebo. There were several big, unfrosted cakes, and red punch was being served from a tin washtub teetering on top of two sawhorses. A few forlorn flowers in fruit jars had been set at the base of the gazebo steps.

Joe seated Lydia in the front row of chairs and took his place beside her. The immediate family and close friends would be seated first, she surmised, and lumberjacks and fanners, mill workers and sailors, Indians and a few traveling peddlers, were already claiming places in the grass.

Mr. Harrington appeared, proudly escorting his missionary, the delicately pretty Esther Prophet. The rumor was that Harrington and Miss Prophet planned a ceremony of their own, one day soon.

Lydia smiled, even though her heart was weighted, almost crushed, by a furious sorrow that would not be reasoned away.

It was a sunny day, with a salty-velvet breeze blowing in from the harbor, and she heard the whistle of yet another freighter but took no real account of the sound. Holding up the facade that hid her bruised and bleeding pride took all her concentration.

Brigham appeared, looking heart-wrenchingly handsome in a dark suit and white linen shirt, and although Lydia took care not to glance in his direction after that first time, she felt the intensity of his gaze. Joe got up and went to talk with the groom, after patting Lydia's hand once in a surreptitious attempt at reassurance.

Someone played a fiddle, somewhere, and there was much talk and boisterous laughter among the guests. Finally, Elly Collier dropped heavily into a chair beside Lydia and said, with typical rough grace, “This here's the damnedest fool sitchy-ation I've ever run across. Brig should be marryin' you. Why, his eyes has been all over you ever since he stepped out of the house. If lookin' was chewin', he'd have eaten you up already.”

Lydia blushed. “He's made his decision,” she said, shifting primly in her chair. “He'll just have to live with it.”
And so will I
, she thought miserably in the next instant.

Vaguely, she heard the sounds of more arriving wagons and horses, and her charges, the Holmetz children, Elly's two boys, and Charlotte and Millie, ran wild through the festivities. At any other time Lydia would have gotten them by the ears, one by one, and given them a lecture on polite deportment. As it happened, though, she could only sit there in that chair purloined from the small parlor and wish it would all be over.

Finally, Polly came out of the house, looking lovely in an antique lace dress. Lydia knew the gown had belonged to Brigham's first wife, Isabel, and that Polly had rescued the beautiful garment from a trunk and altered it to fit. The bride was truly breathtaking, with her dark hair wound into a single thick plait, through which she'd tucked bits of baby's breath and wild tiger lilies and violets that grew in the woods.

Lydia's eyes filled with tears. Polly was a good woman who had made some errors in judgment, that was all, and even then, while her own heart splintered inside her, Lydia could not despise the other woman for what she was doing. She genuinely hoped Polly would be happy as a wife, though if she wished anything for Brigham, it was a toothache that would last until he was eighty.

The strains of the wedding march began, played not only by fiddle, but with the wavering whine of a saw blade, and the eager spectators took their places. Joe patted Lydia's hand again, then got up to move to the back of the grassy aisle between the rows of chairs and take Polly's arm. The preacher, a pleasant-looking middle-aged man with a bald spot and a homemade suit, took his place in the archway of the gazebo.

Brigham stood at the foot of the steps, facing the pastor, his broad back to the guests and ramrod stiff. Inwardly, Lydia wept, though her demeanor was proud, even haughty.

Joe and Polly went by, Polly's gown swishing softly over the grass, and as she passed, the bride met Lydia's gaze. A bittersweet emotion arched between them, and then Polly was standing beside Brigham.

The pastor began saying the holy words, eliciting the sacred vows that, as far as Lydia was concerned, bound a woman and man to each other until the end of time.

There was a stir at the back of the gathering at one point, but Lydia paid no attention. Her throat was so tightly constricted that it hurt, and it took all her determination to hold back tears.

Finally, fatefully, the pastor looked out over Polly's lace-veiled head and Brigham's dark, bent one, and asked in a clear voice, “Is there anyone here who can give just cause why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony?”

Lydia had certainly never planned to stand up, or, God forbid, to speak—but she did. She was on her feet, and the words were leaving her mouth before she could stop herself.

“I can,” she said, in chorus with a masculine voice making the same statement. Out of the corner of her eye Lydia saw Devon standing in the aisle, leaning on the top of his cane.

There was a furor, of course. The guests chattered

among themselves, and Brigham and Polly both turned to face the congregation.

Brigham was grinning brazenly at Lydia, while Polly watched Devon with an expression of mingled fear and hope.

“This marriage is a fraud,” Devon said clearly, obstinately. “I won't let my brother throw away his life this way.”

Polly stumbled toward Devon, clutching her bouquet of wildflowers, and he stiffened when she stood before him. Brigham was still watching Lydia, mouth curved, pewter eyes bright with amusement.

“I'll marry you myself first,” Devon said, without a shred of kindness or love in his voice, and Polly sagged a little.

“Wait a minute,” Brigham interrupted, stepping away from the gazebo altar to approach. “I want to hear Miss McQuire's objection to the marriage.”

Lydia's face went crimson, and she lifted her chin. “It's a simple one. Polly deserves far better than you, Mr. Quade!”

Brigham laughed, but his glance would have seared steel when he turned it on his prodigal brother. “I came here today to take myself a wife,” he said, raising another excited outcry of speculation from the guests. “And Polly hasn't stated her preference of a husband.”

Polly looked wildly from Brigham to Devon, then to Lydia.

Lydia had already gone so far that there was no point in turning back. She drew a deep breath. She'd almost let Brigham get away because of her pride before, and she wasn't going to make the same mistake again. “You proposed to me recently, Mr. Quade,” she said to him, wishing the ground would open so she could disappear. “Were you serious?”

“Yes.” Brigham answered in a clear voice, and that insufferable grin still flashed on his face.

“Then I…” She paused, swallowed hard. “I accept, if it's not too late.”

Brigham held out his hand to her. “Better late than never,” he assured her, in a gruff and surprisingly tender voice.

Lydia stepped into the aisle as a cheer rose from the crowd, and went to him. She glanced back once at Joe McCauley, who responded with a sad smile and a shrug, and let Brigham lead her to the altar.

Although later Lydia would hear varying accounts from Charlotte, Millie, Elly, and some of the others, she was aware of very little during the double ceremony that followed. Lydia married Brigham, and Polly took Devon for a husband, legally this time.

Polly and Devon disappeared soon after the vows had been exchanged, and Lydia didn't think either of them looked particularly happy.

For her part, she was in a daze of joy, and stricken with the pure brazen audacity of what she'd done. The gold band Brigham had bought for Polly was on her finger instead, and for the moment that was all that mattered. She would face the awesome ramifications of what she'd done later, when she'd found her balance.

An enterprising photographer had sailed into Quade's Harbor on a recent mail boat, having heard about the upcoming wedding while taking pictures of working men in Seattle. He posed Lydia beside Brigham, in front of the gazebo, and imprinted their sober images on magical photographic plates.

There were so many explosions and flashes of light that Lydia was nearly blinded. Finally, Brigham took her by the hand and led her away to have cake and punch.

Lydia's vision was finally clearing when Charlotte and Millie approached, one on either side of her, and caught her in an embrace. Seeing the joyous acceptance in the faces of her stepdaughters did a lot to settle Lydia's jangling nerves.

“I didn't even dare
hope
to have you for a mama!” Millie confided, after tugging at Lydia's practical skirts and gesturing for her to bend down.

Lydia planted a kiss on the child's forehead. “You're the best part of this bargain,” she whispered back, “you and Charlotte.”

Only when the girls had dashed away again, to enjoy the yard full of guests, did Brigham reveal that he'd heard his bride's remark. He arched one brow, his eyes shining like polished silver, and said, “I consider it my duty to prove to you, Mrs. Quade, that there are other things to like about this ‘bargain' of ours than my daughters.”

His words made Lydia very nervous, just as he had intended. She blushed. “I merely meant—”

Brigham cupped his hand under her chin and cut off the flow of words, gently but firmly. “Here's what
I
mean,” he said, his voice as low and intimate as a caress, audible only to her, in spite of the crowd. “You've been a sweet torment to me from the moment I laid eyes on you. Pleasuring you on that bed in the cabin, without being able to take you completely afterward, was such an exquisite torture that my nerves hummed with the strain for days. Now, my dear and lovely little Yankee, you are my wife, and I intend to keep my promise.”

Lydia swallowed hard. She felt overheated and a bit faint and it was all glorious. “Wh-What promise?” she whispered.

Brigham leaned down, tasted her mouth with his own, and then spoke close to her ear. “I'm going to make love to you so thoroughly, Mrs. Quade, that even the mountains will hear you calling my name in passion.”