The Sugar Queen

by Tess Thompson

  “No, thank you, lord.”

  For fifteen years, Jasper had been a steady force in my life and home. Through all the heartbreak with Ida, he’d never faltered or wavered in his devotion to me or the children. That said, he would never consider loosening his grasp on the ways of our old world. A world in which a butler would never have a drink with his employer.

  When I’d given up everything to my brother and we’d come to America, Jasper had refused to call me anything other than Lord. He’d called me that since we were small. I figured it didn’t matter much. In America, no one cared that I would not be called that if we were still at home. Keeping with some of our old traditions gave Jasper a sense of security.

  Lately, though, Jasper changed. Subtly, of course. His movements seemed heavier, more labored. It was as if something had snatched the joy from him, leaving him flat and stiff. Something troubled him. I was certain of that. The reasons for his sadness, I couldn’t fathom.

  “Jasper, are you feeling well?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  I searched his placid, unreadable features for hints. “Has something happened?”

  “Yes, sir. It appears that Nanny Foster has given her notice.”

  “Notice?”

  “She’s going back home to live with her sister. Something about frigid winters, spoiled children, and tea.”

  “Tea?”

  “I’m sorry, lord. She didn’t elaborate.” He cleared his throat. “She’s leaving in the morning.”

  “But she’s only been here six months.” I said this knowing Jasper was quite aware of how long this latest nanny had been employed. We should have known better than to hire her in the summer when the skies were a brilliant blue and birds sang from trees and everything smelled of pine needles and wildflowers.

  “I’ll contact the agency back east to see if we can find someone suitable,” Jasper said.

  “Yes. I suppose that’s our only option.” I rubbed my forehead, hoping this wasn’t a foreshadowing of what would happen with Miss Cooper. Would she be able to withstand the winter and such a difficult assignment? Would she miss city life in Boston? I had already seen the sadness on her face when she talked of her family.

  “Lizzie and Merry have both offered to help with the children,” Jasper said. “But with a new houseguest, they’ll be stretched a little thin.”

  “It’s kind of them, but I agree. Are you sure there’s no one in town who would be qualified?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  I smiled at his horrified expression. Jasper was alternately appalled and fascinated by the lives of the women of ill repute and the rough men who closed down the saloon every night. He wanted me to round them all up and send them away. I’d tried many times to explain to Jasper that I was not allowed to dictate the lives of others, regardless of how much money I had.

  “Jasper, do you think the children are spoiled? Is this the problem with the nannies?”

  Jasper’s brows lifted. “Absolutely not. They’re precious children. Nanny Foster doesn’t seem to understand that children have a need for exercise and games, not just sitting still for hours looking pretty.”

  “All right then.” Jasper’s quick defense and loyalty to my children never ceased to both amaze and warm me. “I worry. Since Ida…” I trailed off, unable to explain and knowing Jasper understood anyway.

  “The children will be fine,” Jasper said. “They’ll be going to school now that Miss Cooper’s come. All but Fiona, who can keep Lizzie company in the kitchen.”

  “Speaking of Miss Cooper. She’s agreed to teaching a night school several evenings a week.”

  Jasper frowned. “May I speak frankly, sir?”

  “Of course.”

  Jasper coughed before speaking. “Given her appearance, I’m worried about this idea. Will she be safe?”

  “I share your concern. One of us or Harley will have to accompany her.”

  He nodded, obviously satisfied by my answer. “Will you need anything else, sir? I’ve prepared your room.”

  “No, thank you. That’ll be all for the night.”

  “Good night, my lord.”

  It was nearly nine. Time for my nightly habit of checking on my offspring. I’m not sure what it was, but I liked to see them snuggled into their beds. I took a lantern and walked up the stairs. As was my routine, I checked on the girls first, setting the lantern on the table by the door so I could get a good look at them. They slept in twin beds lined up in a row. Cymbeline slept on her stomach with her arms flung out to the sides. She’d managed to kick off her quilt. I tucked that around her as best I could without waking her. If she woke, it might be hours before she fell back to sleep. My tempestuous, sassy Cymbeline, as turbulent and untamed as the mountains that rose above us. She was as tough as any boy and her competitiveness unparalleled, other than in her brother Flynn. They could make a game out of any situation and then try as hard as they could to win. Like Flynn, she seemed made of this place.

  Fiona, with her dark lashes splayed against her full cheeks, slept on her back with her arms around Teddy. My baby. The only child of mine who had not known her mother. Ironically, given what had almost happened, she was the only one undamaged by Ida simply because she never knew her.

  I kissed Fiona’s forehead and stayed for a moment, begging my memory to remember her exactly this way. What I knew about fatherhood could be boiled down to two things. My heart was forever changed the moment I first held baby Josephine in my arms, and their childhoods went way too fast. The passage of time for a bachelor sifted through fingers like sand. Shoes and clothes outgrown, fat baby cheeks that turned into cheekbones, first words that became sentences and then paragraphs, made the constant movement of time impossible to ignore.

  Next, I knelt by Josephine’s bed. She was asleep with a book open on her chest. I took it from her, ever so gently, but my eldest had a sixth sense when anyone tried to pry her away from a book. Her eyes fluttered open. “Hi, Papa.”

  “Hello there. I’m sorry to wake you,” I whispered, conscious of the other two.

  “It’s all right.” Her green eyes stared at me with her usual intensity. “Has Miss Cooper gone?”

  “No, I’ve invited her to stay. I didn’t think the boardinghouse was the best place for her. She’s in the guest room on the other side of the bathroom.”

  “Will she live here all the time?” Josephine asked.

  “For the winter, most likely,” I said. “Until she can find a suitable place. A young lady isn’t safe on her own.”

  “She’s pretty, isn’t she, Papa?”

  “I hadn’t noticed, really.”

  She looked up at me with widened eyes and a hint of a smile. “It seemed you did—the way you couldn’t stop looking at her.”

  My daughter had sensed my attraction to Miss Cooper. Well, I’ve never been accused of being a subtle man. “I wasn’t staring at her, you little goose.” I tweaked her nose, knowing full well she was onto me.

  “It would be all right if you liked her,” Josephine said. “We’d like to have a mother.”

  “You would?” This struck me in the middle of my throat, as if someone had punched me. They’d never once said anything about a new mother.

  She nodded. “We all discussed it. I don’t really need one, but the others do.”

  I smiled despite the pang in my chest. My sweet Josephine needed a mother most of all the children. I’d spent the last several years watching her try to step in as a mother to the little ones when she should have been enjoying her own childhood.

  “Is it true that Nanny Foster is leaving?” Josephine asked.

  “You know about that?” Surprised, I inched backward to get a better look at her.

  “I heard her talking to Jasper. She was very rude to him, and she said horrible things about Cymbeline and Flynn. She called them wild animals.”

  “That was very rude,” I said. Damn that woman. Jasper’s assessment was correct. She had no idea of how to look
after children. Yes, they were untamed, but only because they’d grown out of the earth. The forests and meadows had mothered them, taught them their ways. Fresh air and exercise had made them robust and strong.

  “We all hated her anyway,” Josephine said.

  “Darling, that’s not nice to say.” I felt something akin to hatred toward Nanny Foster, too, but kept that to myself.

  “Sorry, Papa.” Josephine pressed her lips together as if it were a great sacrifice to hold her tongue.

  “Good night, my love. No more reading.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  I kissed her on the forehead and unfolded my long legs to stand. At the doorway, I picked up the lantern to take one more look. Josephine had curled onto her side and closed her eyes. She looked young and vulnerable there in the flickering light, and I wished for the millionth time that she had less of a burden.

  The boys’ room was across the hallway. They slept in twin beds pushed just inches apart, preferring to mimic what it must have been like in the womb. Each morning, Nanny moved the beds farther apart. Somehow, they were back together by the time the boys fell asleep. Tonight, their hands touched. I had no idea if they started this way or if they naturally gravitated to each other in sleep. They were quite different in temperament and interests, yet their bond was more profound than any discrepancies of personality. This was another understanding that had come from fatherhood. Love was both immense and simple, mysterious yet clear.

  I pulled the covers up from where they had fallen to the twins’ mid-chest, then kissed them both on the forehead and crept silently from the room.

  I passed by Miss Cooper’s room. The space between the door and floor was dark. Hopefully she was warm and able to rest. I hesitated for a brief time, fighting the urge to stand guard at her door. Miss Cooper didn’t need my protection here in my home, yet I felt responsible for her.

  In my room, I undressed and put on my wool pajamas. The nights this time of year were frigid. Without my wife to warm my bed, I often woke cold, having thrashed about and knocked off my quilt.

  I blew out the lantern and lay on my back. The fire shed some light into the room, enough that I could make out objects. So many nights I lay awake, wishing for sleep that never came and watching the fire die down slowly until it was nothing but red embers.

  Tonight, I could sense the presence of another person in my home. It sounds odd, but I could almost hear Miss Cooper’s breathing. I turned on my side and fluffed my pillow under my cheek. Never mind that, I told myself. Miss Cooper was here to teach, not fall in love with me. I was too old for her. She would want a young man. One without five children. Surely, she’d want her own children—not all the work of someone else’s without the love. Even if I were younger and handsome, the burden of five children wouldn’t be appealing to a woman like Miss Cooper. The sooner I got that through my head, the better.

  I’d just drifted to sleep when a tap on the door followed by Jasper’s voice brought me fully awake.

  “My lord, I need you downstairs.”

  Alarmed by the high-pitched, panicked tone of his voice, I leapt from bed and grabbed my robe from the end of the bed.

  “What is it?” I whispered to Jasper as we sprinted down the hallway.

  “It’s Mrs. Cole. Something’s happened.”

  We reached the stairway. Rachel Cole, her dress covered in blood, stood inside my foyer. Her brown skin, which normally glowed from health, appeared sallow. She had her arms wrapped around her slim waist and was hunched over as if in pain. This was not the straight-backed, unflappable woman married to my neighbor and friend Samuel.

  I rushed down the stairs. “Are you hurt?” I asked, fearing the worst. In the light I could now see that the entire front of her dress was covered with blood.

  “It’s Samuel. He’s dead,” she said. “Someone shot him.”

  A chill started from the pit of my stomach and spread throughout my body. Gunshots close to their place had startled the horses.

  Rachel leaned against Jasper as if her legs wouldn’t hold her. “I tried to save him but there was just so much blood.”

  “How?” I asked. “Who?”

  “I don’t know. He’d gone outside to bring in more firewood. I heard two shots near the house. I thought, no, it can’t be anything to do with us.” She choked as tears streamed from her eyes. “But it was. Someone shot him dead.”

  “Come sit.” I was numb and operating outside of my body, as if I were dreaming the scene instead of living it. Samuel Cole, larger than life, broad-chested and built like a lumberjack. He relied on no one but his own strength and intellect, hunting and trapping most of their food even though he was a wealthy man. I’d once seen him fell a twelve-inch trunk of a pine with three swings of his ax. It was impossible to imagine him as anything but fully, loudly alive.

  Jasper helped Rachel into the library and eased her into the chair closest to the fire. I added logs to the dying embers as he poured her a tumbler of whiskey and set it in her hands. “I went out to the woodshed. He was sprawled on the snow. Covered in blood. His chest ripped open.”

  Eight years ago, he’d gone to Chicago to conduct some business. His father had been one of the first men to find gold in these mountains. Gold had made him a rich man. Clever investments had made him richer. As the only heir, when his father died, everything went to Samuel. Thus, once or twice a year, he took a trip to the city to conduct business, returning months later. This time, he brought a woman with him. Rachel.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if his choice of a wife had gotten him killed.

  I remembered the summer day I first learned of Rachel as if it were yesterday. I’d been outside with the twins and Josephine, watching them run in our meadow of wildflowers, when I spotted Samuel traipsing across the meadow. He’d been in Chicago for a few months. I knew he’d have good stories of his antics: drunken brawls, women of the night, and various other scrapes. The fact that I’d never participate in such activities did not diminish my enjoyment of his tales of debauchery.

  Thus, I was not prepared for what he said next.

  “I’ve brought a wife home with me,” he said.

  “What’s this? I thought you were a sworn bachelor.”

  “I saw her, and I knew.” He grinned. “I’m a married man.”

  “I thought a rake like you would never succumb to a domestic life. Who will I live vicariously through now?”

  He laughed and tugged at his long beard. “It’s a damn shame, but love sure smacked me upside the head.”

  “You’ll have to bring her by,” I said. “Ida’s not well right now, but hopefully soon she’ll feel up to visitors.”

  “Sorry to hear,” he said.

  He knew nothing of Ida’s real problems. No one outside of my household knew of the weeks she could not get out of bed or the cycle of mania where she would be up for night after night. Samuel thought she was merely sickly.

  “There’s something you should know about Rachel.” He looked up at the sky, hesitating before he spoke. “Rachel’s the granddaughter of slaves.”

  I stared at him as the significance of what he said made its way into my mind. The granddaughter of slaves. My heart thudded between my ears. He’d brought home a black woman.

  “We can’t marry under the law. But I sure as hell will do what I want in my own home and on my own property. My father left me this land so I could live free, and you can bet your ass that’s what I’m going to do.”

  I took my hat off and slicked back my hair, buying time to formulate a response. There are few moments in life that are as perilous as the one I found myself in just then. My words would shape our relationship for years to come.

  “Barnes, what say you?” he asked, softly.

  I’d never seen him vulnerable before, and it scared the bloody hell out of me. “You’re my friend. Nothing will ever change that. And you know I could care less about the color of anyone’s skin. I’m not sure about the rest of the town. Am I afraid for
you? A little, yes.”

  He shoved me in the shoulder. “Nah. Nothing to be afraid of. You know folks are scared of me. The wild mountain man and all that. Most people aren’t even tough enough to get here, let alone mess with me. No one can hurt us here in Emerson Pass.”

  I’d last seen him a few weeks ago when he’d shown up unexpectedly at my door. Over a whiskey, he asked for a favor so unusual it left me speechless. “I need you to agree to handle the finances for Rachel if something should happen to me.”

  Rachel wouldn’t have the right to own property. Instead, he would have to leave all assets and money to me. “I trust you to keep it safe for her to use as she wants,” he’d said. “She knows everything about our finances. You’ll own it all in name only.” I’d agreed, somewhat reluctantly. It was a big responsibility. However, no one had ever seemed less likely to die than Samuel Cole.

  “You’re too much of a scalawag to die,” I said.

  Had he sensed his own death? I wished I’d asked him.

  And now, here I was, standing before his wife with his blood all over her. My friend gone. Someone from within this community I was so proud of had killed. Was it because of Rachel? Or was it something else? There had been hints of trouble over the years, but we’d always been able to quash it. Samuel, with his frightening presence, had only to look crossways at someone and they backed down. But this was a sneak attack after dark. Someone had lain in wait for him.

  “I dragged him into the barn,” Rachel said. “I didn’t want the children to see him.”

  The children. Oh God, the children. Two little sons and a daughter. All under eight.

  “Are they at home?” I asked.

  “Yes. With Susan.” Susan was their longtime housekeeper. She’d been with the Cole family for forty years. “They don’t know yet.” Rachel folded in half, weeping over the whiskey glass.

  Jasper and I exchanged glances. “Get Sheriff Lancaster out of bed,” I said to Jasper. “Bring him out to the house.”

  “The sheriff?” Fear replaced grief in Rachel’s eyes. “Is that necessary?”

  “Your husband’s been murdered,” I said. “The sheriff needs to know so he can find out who did this.”