My Darling Melissa

by Linda Lael Miller

  “I haven’t seen Gillian since yesterday afternoon,” he said when at last he faced Melissa again. “After the gracious way you informed her of our marriage, I’ll probably never see her again.”

  “Isn’t that a pity?” Melissa crooned, hugging her shoes and her calico dress to her bosom.

  Quinn gave her a scalding look and then stormed over to one of the armoires and wrenched out clean trousers, a linen shirt, and a jacket. “I don’t have to put up with this!” he bellowed. “This is my house, damn it, and you’re my wife!”

  Melissa would have dodged into the bathroom, but he got to it before she did. She dressed hastily, braided her hair, and wound it atop her head in a coronet, then hurried out. She didn’t have the strength for another nonsensical argument with Quinn.

  On the stairs she encountered a maid carrying a tray of food. A folded newspaper lay beside a covered plate, and Melissa appropriated it without a word of explanation.

  Downstairs she slipped into a large room filled with books and brass and the scent of pipe smoke, curled up in a chair, and opened the newspaper eagerly.

  A drawing of her own face stared at her from the front page of the Seattle Times. Beneath it was a lurid headline .. .

  HEIRESS FLEES WEDDING, LEAVES HEARTBROKEN GROOM BEHIND

  Melissa gave a cry of annoyance and read on. According to the reporter who had written the story, the Corbin family was desperate to find their “little lost lamb” and willing to pay a reward for her safe return. Jeff was quoted as saying that he and his brothers would leave no stone unturned until they found their sister. Of course, Ajax had had to put his two cents in, too. He attributed his bride’s defection to nerves and feminine instability in general.

  Still simmering, Melissa wadded the newspaper into a huge ball and hurled it across the room. They’d made her sound like an utter idiot, the family had, and in front of half the state, too.

  She thrust herself out of her chair and began to pace. She had to send a wire to Port Hastings immediately, and that would take money. She’d left the small sum she’d withdrawn from the bank in Seattle aboard Quinn’s railroad car, hidden away under the mattress.

  Resolutely, Melissa snatched up her shawl, walked out of the house, and started off in the direction of the railroad depot. When she reached it she found that the train had gone, but Quinn’s car had been shunted off onto a side rail. Melissa strode over to it, climbed up on the platform, and tried the door.

  It was soundly locked.

  “Damn,” she whispered, lowering her head for a moment.

  “Is there a problem, Mrs. Rafferty?” The unfamiliar masculine voice made Melissa draw in a deep breath and gather her dignity about her. She looked down and saw a tall, handsome man standing nearby. He had fair hair, like Ajax’s, and his eyes were a dancing, merry blue.

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Everyone does,” the man answered with a sideways grin. “You’re famous now, ma’am.” In that moment he remembered his manners and moved toward Melissa with one hand extended in greeting. “Forgive me—my name is Mitchell Williams, and I’m your husband’s friend as well as his attorney.”

  Melissa thought the name sounded vaguely familiar, but she didn’t linger on the fact. She had other things on her mind. “I’ve got sixty-four dollars and seventy-two cents hidden in this railroad car, and I can’t get in to fetch it,” she complained after shaking Mr. Williams’s hand.

  If the lawyer wondered at this odd turn of events, he gave no indication of it. “That’s easy,” he said, taking his wallet from the inside pocket of his suit coat. “I’ll advance you the money now, and you can repay me later.”

  Melissa hesitated—she certainly wasn’t in the habit of taking money from strange men. On the other hand, this situation called for extraordinary measures. “Well. ..”

  Mr. Williams had already counted out sixty-five dollars, and he was extending the money to Melissa. With great reluctance she accepted it.

  “Thank you,” she said, averting her eyes. Then, after a moment, she made her way down the platform steps to the ground, assisted by the very gentlemanly Mr. Williams.

  He touched the brim of his hat. “No trouble, Mrs. Rafferty,” he said, with just the hint of a smile touching his lips. “Out to do some shopping, are you?”

  Melissa drew a deep breath and let it out again. “Actually, I was going to send a wire to my family. Is there a Western Union office in town?”

  Mr. Williams held out his arm. “Right down the street,” he said smoothly. “Please allow me to escort you.”

  Melissa reflected that Quinn could learn a few things from his friend about manners and the proper way to acquit oneself with a lady. She took the offered arm and smiled. “I’m looking for work, too,” she announced.

  The lawyer looked surprised, but only for a moment. “Work?” he echoed.

  Melissa leaned a little closer to confide, “Mr. Rafferty and I have an agreement, you see.”

  His blue eyes twinkled. “Do you, now? I don’t mind telling you, I can’t see Quinn sending his wife out to hold down a job.”

  “Oh, he’s firmly opposed,” Melissa replied. “But we made a bargain, and he has to honor it.”

  Mr. Williams cleared his throat and looked away for a moment. They had reached the Western Union office, but he hesitated outside, forcing Melissa to linger, too.

  “The cannery’s down that way,” he said, gesturing toward the shore. “They’re usually looking for help.”

  “Thank you,” Melissa said warmly, letting go of his arm. “For everything.”

  There was a gentle expression in his eyes when he looked at Melissa again. “Go home to your brothers, little one,” he said softly. “You don’t have the first idea what you’re letting yourself in for.”

  Melissa gaped at him for a moment, then demanded, “What do you mean? What am I letting myself in for?”

  Williams only shook his head, touched Melissa’s cheek briefly with one hand, and walked away.

  Melissa went into the telegraph office, took up a pad and pencil, and began composing her message to her family. It proved to be a far more difficult task than she’d expected. The things she’d planned to say sounded silly or too verbose.

  In the end she wrote:

  NO NEED TO WORRY ABOUT ME. I’M NO LONGER A SPINSTER. I’M DISCOVERING LIFE. LOVE, MRS. QUINN RAFFERTY (MELISSA).

  She directed the wire to Keith, considering him the most charitable of her brothers, paid for the service, and left the office.

  The walk to the cannery was longer than Melissa had expected, and it led past several of the seventeen saloons Quinn had bragged about, as well as a suspiciously ornate rooming house or two.

  Melissa was relieved when she finally reached the noisy factory on the waterfront. After asking directions of a man who stared at her and repeatedly cleared his sinuses, she picked her way through discarded oyster shells and cigar butts to a little office building that stood separate from the cannery itself.

  Her knock brought a brusque summons, and she opened the door and went in.

  A small man with a rim of bright red hair ringing his balding pate sat behind a desk, half-buried in papers and all but hidden by a fog of cigar smoke. He smelled of rancid sweat, and Melissa was instantly repelled.

  “Yes, yes, what is it?” the little man sputtered as Melissa hovered in the doorway, ready to flee.

  “I’m looking for a job,” she said politely.

  “What do you do?” was the impatient retort.

  “A great deal, or nothing at all,” Melissa replied bluntly. “It all depends on your point of view.”

  The fellow behind the desk looked her over and made a harumph sound. “Ever shuck oysters?” he asked, and it was clear from the way he put the question that he expected her to say no.

  “Yes,” lied Melissa. “Many times.”

  “Let me see your hands.”

  Melissa stepped gingerly into the messy, close little room and held o
ut both her hands.

  “You’ve never done any real work with those mitts, lady.” There was a small sign, nearly buried in the litter that covered his desk, that indicated his name was John Roberts.

  Melissa bit her lower lip and kept her peace. She had no idea what to say now that she’d been caught out as a liar.

  Mr. Roberts gave a sort of snuffling chuckle, a sound filled with amusement, indulgence, and no small measure of contempt. He slapped the newspaper that lay in the middle of his desk with one palm. “You’re the pretty little piece those Corbin people over Port Hastings way are advertising for, aren’t you, miss? I could get a nickel or two for telling them where you are.”

  Melissa squared her shoulders. “They know where I am, Mr. Roberts. I sent them a wire.”

  He looked disappointed. “Oh.” Like quicksilver, the flow of the conversation changed. “Shucking oysters is miserable work, young lady. They got hard, hoary shells, sharp as razors. I’ve seen grown men that couldn’t handle the job.”

  “All I’m asking for,” Melissa said bravely, “is a chance.”

  Mr. Roberts thrust himself backwards in his chair, regarding Melissa in a way that made her most uncomfortable. “Don’t say old John wasn’t kind to you, missy. Don’t you ever say that.”

  Melissa suppressed a shudder. “Does that mean I’m hired?”

  Roberts scrawled something on a piece of paper and shoved it at her. “See this fella. He’ll give you a knife and bucket.”

  So began Melissa’s first day of employment.

  Five

  Never in her wildest imaginings had Melissa suspected that physical work could be so grindingly hard.

  She sat where she was told to sit, beside a bin full of oysters in a noisy, ill-lit room, crowded between two other women. She was given a bucket of water and a tool, and soon she was busily prying at rock-hard shells.

  After an hour her right hand ached so badly that she had to work with her left. She was awkward and slow, and often the knife slipped, gouging her. Saltwater from the bins got into the cuts on her hands and set them afire.

  “You’d better hurry it up,” commented the woman on her right, along about noon, “or they’ll show you the road.”

  Melissa looked longingly at her coworker’s leather gloves, wishing that she’d known enough to purchase a pair. She tried to pick up her pace and promptly punctured herself again.

  A deafening whistle shrilled, and all labor suddenly stopped. The worker on Melissa’s left, an Indian woman of indeterminate age, smiled at her, revealing several missing teeth. “Dinner time,” she said.

  Her friendliness encouraged Melissa a little. She returned the smile. “How long do we have?”

  “If I were you,” announced the other woman, with the gloves, “I wouldn’t be worryin’ about no dinner hour. You’ll be lucky if you still got a job once old Rimley sees that you can’t handle the work.”

  “Leave the girl alone, Flo,” interceded the Indian. “You weren’t doing so much better on your first day—remember?”

  Flo, a plain woman with blond hair and a strong jaw, rose, pulling at her gloves as she moved. She made a harumphing sound, fetched her dinner pail from beneath the long bench where the shuckers sat, and walked away.

  “I’m Rowina Brown,” said the woman who remained, holding out a friendly hand. Like Flo, she wore gloves.

  “Happy to meet you,” Melissa said, and inwardly she was laughing at herself. She’d sounded like a guest at a tea party in somebody’s rose garden. “My name is Melissa.” She flinched at Rowina’s grip on her sore hand.

  Gentle curiosity flickered in Rowina’s dark eyes, but she didn’t ask any questions. She retrieved her own pail, still bearing the label of a lard company, from under the bench and stood up. “Come along then, Melissa. I’ll be happy to share what I have with you.”

  Melissa felt shame at having to accept a part of this poor woman’s meal, but she was desperately hungry, since she hadn’t bothered with breakfast or thought to bring along a sandwich or a piece of fruit. She put aside her pride and nodded. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  Rowina led the way out of the shucking shed and down the beach. It was mild for a March day, and the two women sat down on a gnarled, whitened log to enjoy the weather and a meal of cold meat and plain barley bread.

  “That’s rabbit,” Rowina said pleasantly, with a nod toward the meat Melissa was holding in one hand. “My boy Charlie shot it just yesterday.”

  Melissa thought of Hershel, the rabbit her sister-in-law Fancy had once used in her magic act, and gulped. The creature had escaped into the woods behind the family home in Port Hastings a few years before; perhaps this was one of his descendants.

  “Is something wrong?” Rowina inquired.

  In that moment Melissa decided that Hershel’s progeny would have to fend for themselves. “Oh, no, of course not,” she answered quickly, taking a firm bite. The rest of their short respite from work was tinged with homesickness, though, because Melissa kept thinking of her family. She adored them all, even though a few members—three, to be exact—could be completely impossible on occasion.

  “You can get good gloves at Kruger’s Mercantile for seventy-five cents,” Rowina said as they began their afternoon’s work.

  Melissa made a mental note to stop at Kruger’s directly after she left the cannery, provided she had the strength for such an errand. She was praying for the sound of the whistle long before it blew.

  Port Hastings

  Katherine Corbin, a blond woman with indigo-blue eyes and a trim figure, surveyed the sullen crew gathered in her study for a meeting.

  Adam, her eldest, was as big a man as his father had been, broad in the shoulders and possessed of a lethal intelligence. His hair was dark, as Daniel’s had been, but he had Katherine’s blue eyes. At the moment he was pacing in front of the bay window overlooking the rose garden. His wife, Banner, a doctor just as he was, and a red-haired, green-eyed beauty who had long since won Katherine’s admiration, watched him serenely from a chair near the fireplace.

  Jeff, Katherine’s second son, was as tall and blue-eyed as Adam, but he had his mother’s fair hair. He was bent over a map he’d rolled out on a nearby table, studying it and occasionally shoving one hand through his hair. His annoyance and frustration were evident in every line of his body. His wife, Fancy, was at home on that chilly spring night, recovering from the recent birth of their fourth child.

  Katherine was secretly worried about Jeff and Fancy; although they tried to put an encouraging face on matters, there was a certain strain between them. Something was very wrong.

  Catching herself up short, Katherine redirected her attention to the matter at hand: Melissa’s disappearance. Although she was, of course, very concerned about her youngest child, she was not nearly as upset as her sons were. Melissa was twenty-two years old, after all, and she’d been to college and traveled in Europe as well as the United States. Although Katherine knew that her daughter could be impulsive—her flight from the church on Saturday had been evidence enough of that—she was also convinced of Melissa’s native good sense.

  The door of the study opened, and Keith came in. Katherine gave her youngest son a fond look. Here was her handsome diplomat, her soft-spoken peacemaker. She’d ceased making comments like that aloud long ago, for Adam and Jeff had invariably looked at her askance and remarked that their little brother had a hell of a right hook for a parson.

  At his entrance there was a brief silence and then an eruption of energy.

  Adam stopped his pacing, and Jeff let the map roll shut, forgotten. Banner sat up a little straighter in her chair and exchanged a beleaguered look with Katherine.

  Keith had called this meeting, and he was taking his sweet time in explaining why. He took off his plain black hat, revealing a head of glossy light brown hair, and then removed his coat and gloves. All the while a smile lurked on his lips.

  “Melissa’s fine,” he finally announced. “Just like
I said she would be.” He took a folded piece of yellow paper from his coat. “When I got home this wire was waiting for me.”

  Keith carried the missive across the room and laid it on the surface of Katherine’s desk. She opened it immediately and read aloud, “‘No need to worry about me. I’m no longer a spinster. I’m discovering life. Love, Mrs. Quinn Rafferty (Melissa).’”

  “Mrs.—?” Adam bit out, glaring at Banner as though all of this were somehow his wife’s fault. “Who the hell is Quinn Rafferty?”

  “I’ll tell you who he is,” Jeff boomed out, fairly shaking the light fixtures with the force of his fury. “He lives in Port Riley and runs a piss-ant sawmill!”

  Both Katherine and Banner flinched slightly.

  “And he married my sister!” Jeff raved on. “The bastard—I’ll break his knees! I’ll use his eyeballs for marbles!”

  “Shut up,” Keith said gently. His eyes met with his mother’s for a moment, twinkling. He was enjoying this.

  Personally, Katherine thought that this Rafferty fellow couldn’t be any worse than Ajax, but she kept her opinion to herself.

  Banner got out of her chair. “I think I’ll go over and look in on Fancy,” she said, by way of excusing herself. She gave Jeff a tentative, questioning look as she passed him but went out without another word.

  Adam had snatched up the wire the moment his mother laid it down, scanning it as though he thought she’d made some mistake in reading it the first time. “What else do you know about this Rafferty?” he asked Jeff.

  “I know he’ll soon be walking with his feet pointing in the same direction as his ass” was Jeff’s immediate response.

  Keith grinned at that image and gave his mother a reassuring wink. He perched comfortably on the edge of her desk and folded his hands. “Now, if everybody has expressed his shock and concern, maybe we can talk about what we’re going to do.”

  Katherine wondered what any of them could do, if Melissa was actually married to this man, but she spoke up. “I won’t know a moment’s peace until I’m satisfied that Melissa is safe,” she said.

  Adam waved the wire in a delayed fit of agitation. “What the devil does she mean, ‘I’m discovering life’?”