“Thank you,” Harlan said quietly.
At that Adam unbent a little and offered his hand to his mother’s future husband, and Keith followed his lead with a mumbled “Congratulations.”
Much later, when they were alone in her room, Quinn stretched out on the bed, fully dressed except for his boots, and pulled Melissa down to lie beside him. He unbuttoned her blouse and trailed his tongue along the lacy edge of her camisole.
Although they hadn’t discussed the fact, they knew that a parting was inevitable, since Melissa would want to stay for Katherine’s wedding and Quinn needed to get back to Port Riley and his work.
Melissa made a crooning sound and squirmed in shameless delight as Quinn bared one of her breasts and began a sweet farewell.
Thirteen
The stars had barely faded from the sky when Quinn kissed Melissa, crawled reluctantly out of bed, and began getting into his clothes.
It took a moment for Melissa to remember that they were in Port Hastings, rather than at home in Port Riley, and that she would be staying for her mother’s wedding while Quinn would not. “It can’t be time for you to leave,” she protested, stretching beneath the warm covers and yawning.
He smiled, but even with the early morning shadows Melissa didn’t miss the touch of sadness in his manner. “Go back to sleep,” he said gruffly. “You’re going to need your rest.”
“Are you taking the train?” Melissa hoped the question sounded cheerful rather than suspicious, but what she really wanted to know was whether or not Quinn would be riding back to Port Riley with Gillian and a fur bedspread, and both of them knew it.
Quinn chuckled. “Yes, Mrs. Rafferty,” he answered, “I am. But the car and Gillian are both gone, so I’ll have to ride in the passenger section like everybody else.”
Melissa was wildly relieved, although she gave no sign of it. “What about your horse?” she asked, to show that she was a modern woman and that she could dispense with the question of Gillian and the railroad car without harping on it.
“He’s not riding with the passengers,” Quinn replied with a straight face.
Melissa laughed and held out her arms, and Quinn came to her, if only to bend over the bed and favor her with a brief but very potent kiss. “Don’t go,” she said when he withdrew.
Quinn pretended he hadn’t heard Melissa’s plea, and she was grateful. For a moment there she’d behaved like a clinging vine, and she wanted to forget that. “When shall I send the car for you?” he asked, lingering at the door, his hand on the knob.
Melissa shook her head. “There’s no need for that. I’ll be on the first train Saturday morning.”
With a nod Quinn opened the door and went out, and Melissa felt total desolation at the prospect of being separated from him even for so short a time.
As it happened, she was so busy helping Katherine with packing and arrangements that the days flew by. Soon it was Friday evening, and the Corbin house was brimming with friends and family.
Melissa was happy for her mother, but now that it was nearly time to say goodbye—perhaps years would pass before they saw each other again—she was tearful. When she joined Katherine in the large master bedroom that would now belong to Adam and Banner she had to work at smiling.
Fancy, who had just finished buttoning Katherine’s wedding dress—a wispy creation of ice-blue silk—kissed her motherin-law’s cheek, nodded to Melissa, and left the room.
Katherine’s eyes were suspiciously bright as she took Melissa’s hands in hers. “I’ll miss you very much, my darling,” she said quietly.
Melissa embraced her. “And I’ll miss you. But I know you’re going to be happy, Mama—Harlan is a wonderful man.”
“I’m of the same opinion about Quinn,” Katherine said, and now there was an expression of stern affection in her eyes. “But you are as bullheaded as any of your brothers,” she warned, going to her now-empty bureau and taking a worn velvet box from its top. “And you could spoil your chance for a happy life if you forget that there are many, many facets to womanhood. You may want to be a business-woman, but you are also a wife, and at some point I hope you will be a mother. You must strike a balance among these roles, Melissa, and not focus yourself completely on any single one.”
Melissa nodded, thinking that she had a remarkable mother, and was surprised when Katherine handed her the velvet box.
“Your father gave me this the day after I gave birth to you. Now I’d like you to have it.”
Melissa’s throat was thick with emotion as she lifted the battered, scuffed lid. Inside was a delicate choker of diamonds and amethysts set in filigreed gold. She swallowed, too moved to speak.
Katherine kissed her forehead. “You came as quite a surprise, you know—we’d thought our family was complete. Oh, but Daniel was thrilled to have a daughter!” She paused, recollecting, and her voice was soft when she went on. “Your papa believed that you were my gift to him, and he said this necklace was a poor present by comparison, but I treasured it. As I’ve always treasured you, Melissa.”
At that Melissa wept in earnest, and so did Katherine, and it was thus that Keith found his mother and sister when he rapped briefly at the door and then let himself in.
“What’s this?” he asked with a gentle smile. He put one arm around Melissa and one around Katherine. “Shall I go down there and tell Harlan that you’ve changed your mind, Mama?”
“Don’t you dare!” Katherine cried through her tears.
“In that case, I think you’d better pull yourself together. In another moment or so you’re going to be hearing the first strains of the wedding march.”
As if on cue, the little-used pipe organ sounded ponderously in the distance.
Melissa sniffled and dried her eyes with a hankerchief, then tucked the necklace, still in its velvet box, into her brother’s coat pocket for safekeeping. The two women embraced once more, and then Melissa went out into the hallway to stand at the top of the stairs.
Being the matron of honor, Melissa led the way, followed by the bride, who would be given away by Keith. The ceremony would be performed by Father McConnell, the local priest, since everyone in the family except Keith was Catholic.
The parlor was filled with people and with love and lit only by candlelight. Harlan stood, tall and spectacularly handsome, beside the fireplace, his eyes caressing Katherine as she approached him.
The wedding itself was a blur for Melissa, and when it was over she was filled with contradictory emotions. Something grand had begun for her mother that night, but something had ended, too. As soon as she could leave without attracting undue attention Melissa fled to the kitchen.
Her efforts to escape unnoticed had not been successful, she soon found, for Adam and Jeff both soon joined her. She was sitting at the table with her chin propped despondently in her hands, and they took seats on either side of her.
“Things change, brat,” Jeff said gently, reaching out to take her hand.
“This is stupid,” Melissa lamented through her tears. “Mama’s had this wonderful thing happen to her, and I’m sitting out here blubbering away like a fool! Anyone would think that I wasn’t happy for her.”
Adam slid back his chair to go to the stove. “Anybody want a cup of coffee?” he asked.
Jeff made a face. “Good God, no,” he boomed. “That stuff is probably strong enough to raise the dead!”
Melissa laughed, feeling better. The world hadn’t changed so very much if Jeff was still Jeff and Adam still liked his coffee pungent as kerosene.
Jeff’s hand lingered on hers, and he grinned at his sister as Adam sat down at the table again, this time with a mug of day-old coffee in front of him. “The man must have paralysis of the tastebuds,” he remarked.
That made Melissa laugh again, and her eldest brother swept both her and Jeff up in a look he usually reserved for raving hypochondriacs. But Adam’s words were gentle.
“He’s not a bad sort, that husband of yours,” he conceded.
Melissa glanced at Jeff and saw that he was looking sheepish. He squeezed her hand and said, “I guess I probably didn’t make too good an impression. I’m sorry, brat.”
“I may or may not forgive you,” Melissa teased in a haughty voice.
Jeff’s tone and expression were still serious. “What kind of husband is he going to make, this Rafferty?”
“The same kind Papa was to Mama, I hope,” Melissa said dreamily, thinking of the beautiful necklace and the love that had inspired its presentation nearly twenty-three years before.
A look passed between Jeff and Adam at these words, one that stirred a vast unsettling within Melissa, but before she could ask what had prompted it, Keith came in. He took the velvet box from his pocket and extended it to his sister. “There’s somebody here to see you,” he told her.
Melissa set the box on the table and rose to her feet. “Who?”
Keith turned and pushed the kitchen door slightly, and Melissa watched Ajax come in. She was amazed at the change in his appearance since she’d seen him in Port Riley just a few days before. He looked as though he’d been falling-down drunk every moment of that time; his eyes were red-rimmed, his skin was sallow, and his clothes were rumpled.
“Melissa,” he said hoarsely.
“Do you want us to stay?” Adam asked his sister. He must have known what the answer would be because he had already risen from his chair at the kitchen table.
Melissa shook her head, feeling pity for Ajax, but certainly not love. She knew now that she’d never really loved him at all. “I’ll be fine,” she said.
Jeff looked reluctant, but he left the kitchen with Adam and Keith, and Melissa once again found herself alone with the man she’d almost married. She was fully prepared to hear him say that he was returning to Europe with his mistress.
Instead he grasped one of her hands in his and blurted out, “I cannot bear to lose you!”
Melissa was stunned. After all, she’d made her feelings clear on two separate occasions, and Ajax had never struck her as being prone to emotional displays. She retreated a step, almost wishing that she had not sent her brothers away. “Ajax, it’s too late. I’m married to someone else.”
He let her go and grasped the back of a kitchen chair so hard that his knuckles showed white through his skin. “You were rash,” he spat out furiously. “You were very rash!”
A chill swept over Melissa, even though the kitchen was warm. She hugged herself and said, “It would have been a terrible mistake for us to marry.”
“No!” Ajax protested. “We could have had a fine marriage!”
Melissa was beginning to think that she was dealing with a madman, but she wasn’t afraid because she knew that even the most halfhearted cry would bring more help than she needed. “You have a mistress,” she reminded him.
Ajax was a study in frustration. “Why does that bother you so much? Half the men I know keep mistresses—”
“I don’t care how many statistics you quote,” Melissa interrupted, shaking her head. “I won’t have a man who doesn’t love me enough to be faithful.”
The jilted bridegroom thrust splayed fingers through his hair. Melissa marveled that she’d never seen the weakness in him, the self-indulgence. “Your own brothers probably keep mistresses,” he said.
Melissa folded her arms and shook her head. “Port Hastings is a small town,” she told him. “If that were true, it would be common knowledge. I would have heard about it.”
Ajax arched one pale-gold eyebrow. “Oh? The way you heard about your father, you mean?” He spread his hands in a resigned fashion. “He was a notorious philanderer, you know.”
Melissa felt a stinging fury. “That’s a lie!”
“Is it?” taunted Ajax. “Ask your mother—or one of your noble brothers.”
“Get out!”
Again Ajax spread his hands. “You are a fool, Melissa. A spoiled, naïve little fool. And one of these days you’re going to learn that there are no fairy-tale princes in that big world out there—just ordinary, mortal men.”
Melissa started toward the inner door, but Ajax stopped her by grasping her arm in a bruising hold and wrenching her against his chest. She squirmed and struggled, too furious to cry out, but he was strong, and she could not escape him. He caught his hand in her hair and pulled her head back, subjecting her to a cruel, hurtful kiss. He smelled and tasted of liquor and of hatred.
She twisted and fought, but it wasn’t her own efforts that freed her. No, a hand closed over the front of Ajax’s neck, and he was thrust backward, striking the brick wall beside the fireplace with a force that made Melissa wince.
“I think you’d better leave now,” Keith said in a low drawl before he released his sister’s persistent suitor.
Ajax was dusting off his rumpled clothes as though he’d taken a fall, and he looked at Keith’s clerical collar with amused contempt. “I’ll hurry off to vespers,” he said.
“Good,” Keith replied. “While you’re saying your prayers, make a point of thanking the good Lord that I was the one who walked in here just now. If it had been Jeff or Adam, they’d still be working on you.”
Ajax was full of cocky bravado, but he was also pale. He nodded curtly at Melissa and strode out through the back door.
“Are you all right?” Keith asked, taking Melissa’s shoulders in his hands and bending his head to look into her eyes.
Melissa was gnawing at her lower lip. She’d been barely thirteen when Daniel Corbin drowned, and the news had shattered her. She’d loved and respected her father and had never completely stopped mourning him. Now Ajax’s implications stuck like burrs. “Y-yes,” she said.
Her brother cupped her chin in one hand. “The truth, brat,” he said gently.
“He said something awful about Papa,” she confessed. “Something really awful.”
Keith was silent, waiting.
“He said Papa was like—like him. He said he kept a mistress.”
Keith looked away for a moment, then said, “Suppose he did, Melissa? Would his memory mean any less to you than it does now?”
Melissa swallowed. It was all she could do not to put her hands over her ears like a child. “I don’t want to hear this,” she fretted. “Keith, I don’t want to know!”
He kissed her forehead. “Papa was a good man, sweetheart. He loved Mama and he loved us. Isn’t that what matters?”
Melissa’s eyes were burning with tears. She ached with disillusionment and a fury she had no way to vent. “I suppose Ajax was right about you and Adam and Jeff, too!” she cried in a stricken whisper. “You’ve all got mistresses, and you think it’s all right because you ‘love’ your wives and you ‘love’ your children—”
Keith gave her a gentle shake. “Listen to me. I can’t answer for Jeff and Adam, but I can tell you that what I have with Tess is too good to risk losing.”
Melissa let her forehead rest against her brother’s strong shoulder. “I wanted to believe that Papa was perfect,” she said sadly.
“Then you did him an injustice,” Keith replied quietly. “Now, Mama is about to drive away in a carriage with her brand-new husband. Shouldn’t we go out there and wish them well?”
Melissa nodded, dried her eyes on one of Maggie’s checkered table napkins, and followed her brother out of the kitchen.
An hour later Katherine and Harlan were off to catch the last steamer to Seattle, and Melissa was so homesick for Quinn that she wished she hadn’t refused his offer to send the railroad car for her.
Settled in her own bed, a lamp burning on her nightstand, she held the diamond and amethyst choker in her hands and remembered Daniel Corbin. He’d been a big man, like his sons, and so handsome that Melissa had been proud to point him out to her friends. He’d called her his little princess and read her stories and taken her with him when he traveled to Seattle on business, and Melissa had adored him.
To find out that he’d been a stranger, at least in part, was painful, especia
lly now, in this topsy-turvy time in her life. She was married to a man she hadn’t even known two weeks before, and wildly in love with him in the bargain. Her mother, the center and core of the family, had a new name and a future that lay in a far-off place. And then there was the situation with Jeff and Fancy.
The unchangeable was changing, and Melissa was frightened and confused. Only when the fire had burned down to embers did she sleep, and then it was to dream that Fancy had run away with a traveling salesman and taken all four of her children along.
Melissa was waiting at the depot long before the morning train was due to pull out, and her heart was already in Port Riley, with Quinn. She could barely wait to catch up with it.
Since she’d said goodbye to the family the night before, only Fancy was there to see her off, and she wasn’t very good company. Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, and there was no color at all in her cheeks.
“Last night I dreamed that you ran away with a peddler,” Melissa said, giving the words a light tone.
In the distance the train whistle gave a mournful cry.
Fancy shook her head. “I could never leave Jeff,” she said miserably. “But I’m very afraid that he’s going to leave me.”
Melissa drew a step closer, wanting to put her arms around her sister-in-law but not quite daring to do that. “Oh, Fancy, are things really that bad?”
Fancy nodded. “He’s so strong-willed, so domineering. Melissa, the very things I love about Jeff are the things that are destroying me.”
“What is it you want to do?”
Small, trim shoulders moved in a despondent shrug. “I want to be important in some way, like Katherine—and Banner and Tess—and you.”
“Me?” Melissa put her hand to her chest.
“Katherine and Banner have their cause, and Tess has her photography, and you—you have your wonderful education. You’ve traveled all over the world. All I ever did was pull a rabbit out of a hat in a carnival sideshow and have babies!”
Melissa would have laughed if she hadn’t known that Fancy was serious. “Having babies is no small matter,” she said gently, touching Fancy’s arm. “After all, half the population can’t do it!”
My Darling Melissa Page 17
