My Darling Melissa

by Linda Lael Miller

  Melissa slid her arm through the crook of her husband’s. Their baggage was being carried outside and loaded into the boot of a carriage, and in the distance she could hear the sad drone of half a dozen steam whistles. “Maybe Mary will want to come back to Port Riley when the term is over.”

  Quinn not only failed to answer, he seemed so preoccupied that Melissa didn’t say another word until they’d reached the wharf. Their baggage was being hauled aboard the steamer, and Quinn had just paid the carriage driver.

  “Still wishing we didn’t have to go back home?” Melissa inquired as her husband escorted her along the creaky wharf toward the boarding ramp.

  At last Quinn seemed to really see Melissa, and to hear her. He smiled and squeezed her hand. “No, Calico, I’m not sorry. With you beside me I can handle anything.”

  Melissa was both pleased and flattered, even though she knew that men often said such things just to distract a woman from a subject they didn’t want to discuss. “I can’t wait to start my newspaper,” she said happily.

  Quinn laughed and steered her into the salon, but they didn’t remain in that spacious room for long, because the weather was too beautiful. It was only when Seattle was far behind and the midday meal was being served that Quinn and Melissa returned to seat themselves at a table.

  Melissa opened her newspaper, the one she’d been given that morning after her brief tour, and immediately a piece midway down the front page caught her eye: “Fraud Uncovered in Seattle Justice System.”

  A peculiar feeling of dread niggled in the pit of Melissa’s stomach as she scanned the short article, as mysterious as the force that had drawn her attention to that particular item in the first place.

  “What is it?” Quinn asked, reaching across the table to close one hand over Melissa’s wrist. “You’re white as snow.”

  Melissa pulled free of him to rest one hand at the base of her throat. Her heart was hammering there, fit to choke her. “Dear God,” she whispered. “Oh, dear God!”

  “Melissa!”

  She laid the newspaper down slowly on the table, gazing at Quinn and wondering how he could have said such pretty words and made such tender love to her when all the while his heart had been black and shriveled and evil within him. She tried to speak but couldn’t, and some calm part of her mind reflected that that was probably a good thing, since there were people around.

  Quinn snatched the newspaper up and scoured its front with smoldering brown eyes. “What the—?”

  “What a good pretender you are,” Melissa managed to get out. Her eyes were brimming with tears now. “When all the time you knew. God in heaven, I don’t know how you can live with yourself!”

  Quinn looked so explosively frustrated that Melissa stabbed at the headline in question with one finger and half sobbed, “There!”

  As Quinn read the piece he looked honestly shocked. What an actor he is! she thought.

  “The justice of the peace who married us was a fraud,” he said when he looked up, and he sounded like a man talking in his sleep.

  Melissa was shaking her head slowly from side to side in an utter agony of the soul. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know,” she pleaded. “I remember how you talked with that man—you called him by his first name, you were friends! Quinn Rafferty, you had to have known that any marriage he performed would be invalid!”

  “Melissa,” Quinn whispered raggedly, furiously, “you can’t believe that!”

  Melissa did believe it, and she had initials carved in trees for proof—Quinn’s initials, and Gillian’s. She had his own admission that he wanted the borrowing power a link with her family could give him. Lastly, there was his first reaction to her suspicion that she was pregnant. He’d been patently horrified.

  As he looked at her something changed in Quinn’s face. She saw the eagerness to convince her fade away, heard him say with resignation, “I suppose you’ll want to get off the steamer in Port Hastings.”

  Melissa shook her head. “I have no intention of making things so easy for you,” she said coldly. “I’m going on to Port Riley, where I intend to publish a newspaper.”

  His face was drawn, and in that moment Quinn looked far older than his thirty-three years. “I think we’ve got more important things to discuss than your harebrained ideas about cranking out local gossip on that decrepit old press,” he said. Ignoring the angry color blooming in Melissa’s face, he went on. “You’re so anxious to believe that I deceived you. Why is that, Melissa? Is it because you’ve decided that being married isn’t what you want after all—even though you’re probably carrying my baby?”

  Melissa had never been more confused or more tormented. The shock of finding herself still a spinster when she’d thought she was a wife left her in a terrible muddle. “This is my baby,” she said belatedly, resting both hands on her stomach. “Not yours.”

  The rest of the journey seemed interminable. When the steamer docked temporarily at Port Hastings Melissa felt a wild urge to run home to her brothers and sob out her sad story. She knew they would take her side and probably even avenge her, but when the ship chugged onward toward Port Riley she was still aboard it.

  Quinn had avoided her insofar as he could since their confrontation over the newspaper article. When the ship docked that evening, however, he insisted on escorting her down the ramp and then ordered her things loaded into the waiting wagon.

  Melissa was furious, but she was too weary to make a scene in front of the town. She grasped Quinn’s arm and whispered, “What do you think you’re doing? I certainly have no intention of going home with you, Mr. Rafferty.”

  “I wouldn’t have you,” Quinn replied brusquely, his eyes cold. His gaze shifted to the stable hand who had brought the wagon. “Take Mrs.—Miss Corbin to the State Hotel,” he finished.

  Melissa felt as though he’d slapped her, but she didn’t let on that she was hurt. She was far too proud for that. And when Quinn didn’t join her in the wagon box but turned and strode off in another direction, she didn’t look to see where he might be going.

  The telegram trembled in Fancy’s hands. The noise of the rally was ringing in her ears, and she couldn’t be sure that she’d read the words correctly. She drew a deep breath and started over again.

  JEFF AND THE CHILDREN STRICKEN WITH CHICKEN POX. MY HANDS FULL. PLEASE COME HOME. LOVE, TESS.

  Although Fancy was worried, she couldn’t suppress a little giggle at the thought of Jeff covered from head to foot with calamine lotion. She searched through the crowds of suffrage workers gathered in the Seattle Hotel until she found Banner.

  “I’m going back to Port Hastings as soon as I can,” she informed her sister-in-law, holding out the telegram.

  Banner’s green eyes widened. “Thunderation,” she said. “I’m going, too—Adam must be working twenty-four hours a day!”

  By the time the two women had packed and traveled to the wharf it was dark outside, and the last steamer had sailed. Not to be deterred, Fancy and Banner found a salmon-boat skipper who looked sober and seemed trustworthy and hired him to take them home.

  Melissa tried to eat supper in her small, lonely hotel room, but she couldn’t get so much as a bite past her constricted throat. If only Quinn had taken her into his arms, she thought mournfully, and insisted that they make right the error and be properly married right away. Instead he’d sent her off to the State Hotel.

  It hurt savagely to think Quinn could have rid himself of her so peremptorily after all they’d been to each other. Apparently he was able to pretend that she’d never been a part of his life.

  Melissa let out a long, quavering sigh. Quinn was probably with Gillian at that very moment. No doubt the two of them were drinking champagne in their fancy resort hotel and toasting the neat disposal of one used wife.

  There was a knock at the door, and Melissa intended to ignore it—until she heard her friend Dana Morgan’s voice calling to her from the other side.

  “I know you’re in there, Melissa
Rafferty, so let me in!”

  Melissa pulled open the door, and Dana took one look at her and embraced her with a little cry of despair. “Good heavens, what’s happened?” she blurted out.

  Careful to close the door and to keep her voice low, Melissa countered with a question of her own. “How did you find out I was here?”

  Dana dropped her gaze, and her cheeks were flushed pink. “You might as well know that everyone is talking—the whole town saw you brought here in that wagon without Mr. Rafferty.”

  “And Quinn?” Melissa dared to ask. “Have you heard anything about him?”

  Glumly, Dana nodded. “He’s in one of the saloons out by the cannery—bent on getting himself drunk.”

  Melissa suppressed an urge to go and find Quinn. If a man was so stupid as to make a public spectacle, then that was his business and not her own. “I guess he must feel guilty about what he did,” she said, but she took little satisfaction in the knowledge.

  “What did he do?”

  “He made me think we were married when we weren’t.”

  Dana sucked in a horrified breath and fanned herself with one hand. “You’re not married! Oh, Melissa, this is terrible! You’ll be ruined!”

  Melissa was weary to the very marrow of her bones, and she surely didn’t need anyone to tell her that she was ruined. She knew that all too well. “Maybe Quinn was right,” she reflected. “Maybe I should just go back to Port Hastings and forget I ever saw this town.”

  “You could go to California and live with your mother,” Dana suggested sympathetically.

  Melissa shook her head. “No. Mama’s just starting a new life—she doesn’t need a woebegone, pregnant daughter underfoot.”

  Dana’s eyes went impossibly wide, and she slapped one hand over her mouth. “Pregnant? Dear heaven, Melissa, you’re pregnant?!”

  Melissa nodded. “I think so.”

  “Does Mr. Rafferty know?” Dana demanded, and she looked so upset that Melissa was afraid she might faint.

  “He knows,” Melissa answered miserably, remembering with a stab of pain how dismayed Quinn had been at the prospect, although he’d insisted that was because of his fears for her and the child.

  Dana sank into a chair and cried, “I’m going to faint!”

  Melissa was quick to say, “Put your head down between your knees!”

  It was when Dana had done this and managed to hold onto consciousness that Melissa began to laugh, grimly amused that her friend was near swooning when she was the one who was carrying a child. Only the laughter kept coming. Melissa was gasping for breath, tears streaming down her face, and still she couldn’t stop.

  Alarmed, Dana rallied herself enough to go downstairs and ask for help.

  Melissa was curled into a little ball on the bed, quiet at last, when the doctor arrived. He was a dark-haired, blue-eyed man who resembled her eldest brother Adam, and she was comforted by his presence.

  He drew a chair up beside the bed and took her hand in his. “Your friend tells me that you’ve had quite an upset today,” he said gently.

  Melissa could only nod; words might start that torrent of tears flowing again.

  “I’m going to give you a dose of laudanum,” the doctor said after a brief examination. “A good night’s sleep is what you need; things will look better in the morning.”

  Melissa didn’t believe that for a moment, but she took the laudanum, and presently she slept. When she awakened things looked no better at all. It was raining outside, and a cold, blustery wind was blowing, and the one dream that remained to her seemed impossible to achieve.

  She walked to Quinn’s house and knocked at the back door, praying he wouldn’t be in the kitchen.

  It was Helga who answered, and her eyes were as red and puffy as Melissa’s own. “Oh, missus,” she blurted out, “it’s you! You’ve come back!”

  “I’m only here to get some of my things,” Melissa said quietly. “Is Mr. Rafferty at home?”

  Helga sniffled. “Yes, missus.”

  “Then I’ll try again later,” Melissa said, starting to back out the door.

  Helga caught her hand, shaking her head. “Don’t go, please,” she pleaded. “The master can’t do any harm—he’s laid up sick.”

  Melissa sighed. “Some of my notebooks are upstairs in the master bedroom. Could you bring them to me, please, and have the rest of my things sent to the State Hotel?”

  Helga’s eyes pleaded with Melissa. “Please. Mr. Rafferty’s sorry for whatever it is he did—if you’d only see him.”

  “I couldn’t bear to,” Melissa confessed.

  The maid dragged her to the table and seated her there. “Then you’ll have a cup of tea, yes?”

  Melissa had to smile. “Yes,” she conceded.

  Helga put loose tea leaves into a crockery pot, added boiling water, and left the stuff to brew while she went upstairs to fetch Melissa’s notebooks.

  When she returned her hands were empty, and she was trembling. “Mr. Rafferty says you’re to come up to the room,” she said. “That’s the only way you’re going to get those tablets.”

  With a sigh, Melissa got out of her chair and made her way up the rear stairway and along the hall to the master bedroom. When she let herself in Quinn was sitting up in the mammoth bed. He did indeed look like a man who had dedicated the night to getting himself drunk; he was pale, and there were shadows under his eyes.

  Doing her best to ignore him, Melissa edged over to the desk and grabbed up her notebooks. The rest were in the railroad car, and she planned to get them after leaving Quinn’s house.

  She was scanning the pages of prose she had written when her illicit lover finally spoke.

  “It’s all there, Melissa. Did you think I would destroy your work?”

  Melissa swallowed hard and shook her head. She wanted her novel-in-progress because she needed to take solace in it, not because she’d thought Quinn would burn the pages or rip them up.

  Quinn gave a broken sigh. How endearingly decadent he looked, she thought, with his hair rumpled and his beard growing in.

  “Before you walk out of here, Calico, I want to say one thing—I didn’t know Henry didn’t have the authority to marry us. I swear to God I didn’t.”

  Melissa lowered her eyes. “Suppose I believed you, Quinn? What would happen then?”

  He was silent for a long time. “I don’t know,” he finally said.

  “I see,” Melissa said with soft despondency. She turned and started toward the door, holding her notebooks tightly in her arms. Even as she stepped over the threshold, moved along the hallway, descended the stairs, she hoped in vain that Quinn would call her back.

  All he had to do was offer her a real, bona fide marriage, and she would forgive and forget.

  But he clearly wasn’t about to do that.

  Reaching the kitchen, Melissa saw that Helga was waiting to pour her tea. She couldn’t bring herself to sit and sip orange pekoe when the universe was crumbling all around her, so she shook her head solemnly and went out.

  She had collected her pen and ink and the remainder of the tablets from the railroad car and was on her way back to her room at the State Hotel to write when she encountered Mitch Williams on the street. He tipped his hat to her, but Melissa was too busy staring at his companion to appreciate the gesture.

  Standing beside the lawyer, large as life, was Sir Ajax Morewell Hampton. He was smiling happily, and his fair hair glinted, despite the gloomy weather. He took Melissa’s hand and lifted it to his lips. “So you are mine again,” he said in a throaty voice. “Imagine my joy at arriving in Port Riley and hearing such news.”

  Melissa pulled back her hand. She was humiliated, and, suspecting that Mitch had been the one to tell Ajax of her shame, she gave him a cutting look. “I am not yours,” she said to her former fiancé. “I never was, and I never will be. Good day.”

  When Melissa started around Ajax he stopped her, grasping her arm and ushering her along the sidewalk, and the
n into the relative privacy of a gap between the druggist’s shop and the Chinese laundry.

  “You don’t understand,” Ajax said urgently, his smile a little fixed. “I’ve sent Elke back to Europe for good, Melissa. I’m going to stay in this town until I’ve won you back.”

  Melissa wrenched her arm free and nearly dropped her many notebooks in the process. “You’re wasting your time!” She spat out the words, furious at his presumption and his persistence. “For the hundredth time, Ajax, I don’t love you!”

  Ajax looked wounded. “How can you say that? You were willing to marry me not a month ago!” His look of injury became one of maddening pity. “Is it because you’ve given yourself to that man that you are afraid to start over again with me? Little one, we’ll simply pretend that you were never so indiscreet.”

  That was it. Melissa had reached the end of her tether; her patience was exhausted. She let her writing materials tumble to the ground and slapped Ajax so hard that the imprint of her hand was emblazoned on his cheek.

  For a moment Melissa was afraid, for she saw his fist clench at his side, but then Mitch reappeared and pushed past Ajax to begin picking up the fallen tablets. With her own heartbeat pounding in her ears, Melissa knelt down to help.

  Nineteen

  Frank Crowley, the banker, was obviously trying to contain his excitement, but his pencil-line mustache kept wriggling, and he couldn’t seem to sit still in his chair. His catlike eyes flickered over Melissa’s simple sprigged cambric dress. “If you don’t mind my mentioning the fact, Mrs. Rafferty,” he ventured to say, “it does seem strange that your husband is not present.”

  Melissa bristled and shifted in her chair. It had been a full week since she had even seen Quinn; during that time she had done all she could to expunge his memory from her mind. She had found a building to house her fledgling newspaper, with rooms above where she could live, and now she wanted to go on with her life.

  “Please do not address me as ‘Mrs. Rafferty.’ You must know, as the rest of Port Riley seems to, that Quinn Rafferty and I were never actually married. I was deceived.”

  Mr. Crowley looked avidly curious, but it must have crossed his mind that he was jeopardizing an opportunity to harbor Melissa’s formidable trust fund in his bank, for he immediately sobered. He made a clucking sound to show that he was in sympathy with Melissa’s position and then leaned forward in his chair, smiling at her. “How may I help you?”