Yankee Wife (22 page)

She replaced a few of the pins holding her hair in its soft, loose knot, then got out her satchel and began packing her smaller belongings. She had not been at the task long when someone knocked at the front door.

“It's only me!” Polly called, letting herself in. A few moments later she stood in the doorway of Lydia's room.

There were still shadows under Polly's eyes, and her skin had a disconcerting pallor to it, for all her feeble attempts to look and sound normal.

“Congratulations, Mrs. Quade,” Polly said gently. “You have the look of a happy woman.”

Lydia flushed, taking a camisole from her satchel, refolding the garment, putting it back. She was happy, she realized, both emotionally and physically. “There are no hard feelings, then?”

Polly laughed, but the sound had a hollow note. “No, of course not.” She sighed, and Lydia saw that her sister-in-law was leaning against the doorjamb, her arms folded. “I think Brigham was hoping you would speak up when the preacher asked for objections to the marriage.”

“I doubt that,” Lydia said, dismissing the idea. She wanted to know about Polly. “How are you and Devon getting along?” she asked, even though she dreaded the answer.

“We're not,” Polly answered, with a disconsolate breeziness that pulled at Lydia's heart. “My husband left again, not long after the wedding. I thought you knew.”

Lydia had known, of course, that Devon and Polly's problems hadn't been solved by his insistence on marriage, but she'd hoped it meant Devon was willing to make an effort. “Oh, Polly,” she whispered, moving toward the other woman and taking her forearms in her hands, “that's dreadful!”

She saw Polly's broken heart in her eyes, in her one-shoulder shrug. “At least the baby will have its proper name, and there's the general store to provide a future for us. I'm better off than most women in my position, I should think.”

“Still—”

“I don't want you worrying about me, Lydia,” Polly broke in. “It's time I rolled up my sleeves and made something of my life anyhow. Who knows? Maybe Devon's leaving was the best thing that could have happened to me.”

Lydia embraced her. “If you need anything, you'll let me know, won't you?”

Polly sniffled and then nodded. “I've always wanted a sister,” she said, with a shaky smile.

“So have I,” Lydia replied. “Now, let's sit down and have a cup of tea. I want to know what you're planning for the store.”

Taking the kitten along in her pocket, Lydia went to the wood box for kindling and built up a fire. Then, leaving the back door open so some of the heat would escape, she carried the teakettle out and worked the pump handle until it was filled with water.

“Have you been over to look at the boardinghouse?” she asked, setting the kettle on the stove to begin heating, and reaching for the tin of tea leaves.

It was only happenstance that Lydia glanced in Polly's direction a moment after she'd spoken, and saw her go even paler than before.

“B-Boardinghouse?” Polly echoed, sounding distinctly uncomfortable.

Lydia stood still, the china teapot in one hand, the canister in the other. “Yes. That big building around on the other side of the mill.”

Polly ran her tongue over her lips. “You're not teasing, are you?”

“Teasing?” Lydia was mystified. “Why on earth would I do that?”

Polly rolled her eyes and sighed heavily. “Dear God, you're serious,” she decided in dismay. “Lydia, that isn't a boardinghouse. It's a saloon and brothel.”

Lydia's mouth dropped open. She'd been around her share of saloons, even played piano in them for her supper, down in San Francisco, and she was well aware of the seedy establishments on the sawdust-covered ground of Seattle's Skid Road. But this was plain, simple, isolated Quade's Harbor. Having a brothel and saloon there was like putting up a privy in heaven.

“Does Brigham know about this?” she asked in an urgent tone after several moments had passed.

Polly stared at her. “Does he know? Lydia, Brigham owns Quade's Harbor. He imported the women from Seattle himself, and he's backing the saloon financially.”

After dragging a chair back from the table, Lydia sank into it. She felt a little dizzy. “I don't believe it,” she marveled. “It's like giving his own men poison!”

Now it was Polly's turn to be sympathetic. She reached out and covered Lydia's hand with hers. “I'm the last person who would disagree with you,” she said. “But men do see things from a different perspective, you know.”

Lydia imagined poor Magna Holmetz, as an example, waiting at home, pregnant, friendless, unable to speak the language, while her husband spent his hard-earned wages on whiskey, cards, and women. From there it was easy to picture the drinking disease spreading, until children were going without shoes and coats and even food, all because of personal vice.

“Lydia?” Polly gave her hand a little shake.

But Lydia was still caught up in her thoughts. Her own father had been too fond of whiskey, and perhaps women and gambling, as well. Because of that, she'd grown up with holes in her stockings and a perennial gnawing in her stomach, which didn't abate until she'd gone to war and had access to the United States Army's mess tents.

“He can't do this,” she said, pushing back her chair and rising.

“He can't do what?” Polly countered anxiously, standing, too. “Lydia, your husband can do just about anything, short of murder. This is his town, and every one here depends on him, one way or the other.”

Trembling, Lydia raised her hands to her cheeks in a vain attempt to cool them. She was distracted, started in one direction, then the other, then stopped in furious confusion.

She'd been such a fool.

“Lydia?” Polly pleaded, worried.

Lydia sorted out the back door from the front and headed toward the latter, setting the kitten down before she went out. She condemned herself as naive and stupid as she walked toward the gate, Polly scrambling after her.

If Brigham was building that saloon, if he'd brought the fancy women in himself, he was surely planning to patronize the place in the bargain. The thought was absolutely unbearable to Lydia, even though she knew, on a practical level, that most prosperous men kept mistresses and went uncondemned for it, even by their wives.

Just as they passed the site of Joseph's future home, Polly caught up to Lydia and stopped her, gripping her arm with surprising strength. “Listen to me!” she hissed. “You can't go to Brigham now, in this state of mind. You've got to wait until you can think rationally.”

Lydia could barely stand still; she was filled with quiet hysteria. She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I'm such an idiot!” she blurted, near tears.

Polly gave her an affectionate shake. “Nonsense. Now, come back to the cottage, Lydia. You and I are going to have our tea.”

Although she was still chafing to find Brigham and confront him with all the restraint of a chicken tossed into a washtub full of hot water, she knew Polly was right. She would not do her cause any good by approaching her husband in a scalding rage.

She returned to the cottage, or more properly Polly towed her there, and methodically finished brewing the tea. She even got out the box of chocolates hidden in her bureau; there were still four pieces left, even though the children had eaten most of the candy as rewards for diligence at their lessons.

Lydia forced herself to sit at the table, facing her sister-in-law, repeatedly drawing deep breaths and letting them out slowly. After a time, when the tea had steeped and she and Polly had finished off the chocolates, she began to feel calmer.

Slightly
calmer.

They drank their tea, like ladies of the manor, and talked of inconsequential things, such as the fabrics Polly planned to carry in the store. She meant to have chocolates, as well, she said, and books. There was more to life than meat and potatoes, after all, and the finer items shouldn't be dismissed as luxuries. Some things were staples to the spirit, she maintained, like flour and beans were to the body.

After an hour Polly reluctantly took her leave. There was a crew working on the store, and she wanted to make sure they were implementing the substantial changes she'd made in the building's interior design.

“You will be calm,” Lydia murmured to herself as she cleared away the tea things. “You
will
be calm.”

Finally, when the place was as tidy as if she and Polly had never been there at all, she put the last of the cream in a saucer for Ophelia and went out.

Lydia found her husband in the mill, pulling lumber off a steam-powered conveyer as it came from the saw. He was soaked in sweat and covered with plain dirt and sawdust, and his bride felt her sentiments soften just a little. Brigham was an intelligent man, if stubborn, and he would surely see the brothel-saloon issue rationally once she explained it.

Despite the tender way he had initiated her into marriage the night before, and the way he'd looked at her that morning, making her feel as lovely as Aphrodite, he did not seem pleased to see her.

In fact, after shouting to another man to take over for him—and one was forced to yell in order to be heard over the screech of the huge mill saw—he took Lydia's elbow in a firm grasp. He marched her over the floor, which was covered in fragrant sawdust, and through the great open archway that served as a door. The din was only slightly less irritating there.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

Lydia bridled, pulled her arm from his hand. “There's no need to be rude. I'm your wife, after all, or have you forgotten?”
Already
, she added in the privacy of her mind, thinking of those bawdy women and their “boardinghouse.”

A grin split his filthy face. “Not a chance,” he replied. “Have you moved your things into my room?”

Lydia folded her arms, feeling a need to brace herself against his damnable charm. “No, and I won't until we've settled the question of that saloon,” she whispered in a hiss, only too aware of the curious stares from passing mill workers. “What are they looking at?”

Brigham's grin had become a frown of bewildered irritation. “You. Women don't come to the mill, as a general rule. It isn't safe.” He placed his hands on his hips and leaned close to her, smelling gloriously of sweat, raw timber, and man. “Now, about the saloon.”

She retreated a step. “Yes,” she said. “I'm afraid I'm going to have to demand an explanation.”

Brigham threw his head back and gave one raucous burst of laughter, and his silvery eyes glittered when he looked at her again. “You
demand
an explanation?” he inquired, folding his arms now and closing the distance she'd managed to put between them a moment before.

“Forgive me, Mrs. Quade, but I'm the head of this family, and if anybody does any demanding, it will be me.”

Lydia flushed hotly. The proud, rebellious blood of her ancestors, who had acquitted themselves well in the Revolution, and again in the War of 1812, stirred like sediment in the bottom of her heart and surged into her veins.

“If that's the way you're going to talk to me,
Mister
Quade,” she seethed, “then I'll thank you not to speak to me at all! Furthermore, I will have an explanation, and I will have it now!”

Brigham took her arm again, held it fast when she tried to pull away, and thrust her toward his tree-stump office. They surprised Mr. Harrington and Esther in the middle of a chaste kiss, and Brigham barked, “Go do your sparking somewhere else, Harrington!”

Poor Esther looked mortified.

“That was very rude!” Lydia spat at her husband when the hapless lovers had made their hasty retreat.

Brigham glared at her for a long moment, then relaxed his clamped jaw and turned away to ladle a drink from the water bucket. She could see the powerful play of muscles in his back and shoulders as he lifted the dipper to his mouth, even through the shirt he wore.

Lydia struggled to regain a hold on her temper. Polly had said angry words would get her nowhere, with Brigham Quade at least, and she knew her friend was right.

“Do you understand that those women will sleep with men for money?” she whispered, awed. “Don't you know there will be drinking, and gambling, and carousing?”

Brigham turned to face his wife at last, his eyes dancing with an amusement that infuriated her. He feigned a look of astonished chagrin, a mockery of the sincere one Esther had worn when she'd been caught kissing Mr. Harrington a few minutes before. “You can't be serious, Mrs. Quade!”

Lydia's temper was rising again. “I am quite serious, Mr. Quade,” she countered. “I want you to close that saloon down and send those awful women away. Now. Today!”

Her husband placed his hands against the edge of his desk and leaned toward her, his eyebrows about to disappear into the shock of dusty dark hair that had fallen across his forehead. “The saloon stays,” he said evenly, “and so do the women. And that's final.”