Nathalie (Sweet Land of Liberty Brides 2)

by Lorena Dove

“My mind is made up—I’m going to write to Mr. Isadore X. Maduro—and I’m going to make that store into something my grandfather would be proud of. Hang Silas Jacobson, I’ve had enough of him trying to ruin my life!”

  “Nathalie, don’t say such things!” Sylvia cried, but she grasped her friend’s hand. If you’re going, then take me with you. You know I can help in the store.”

  “No, I can’t agree to that, much as I would like to have you with me,” Nathalie said. “I can’t guarantee any sort of pay for you. I’ll recommend you for a new position here in the city. I’m sure one of Luxe’s competitors will snap you up. There now, don’t be sad. I’m going to make this right—for all of us.”

  Chapter Two | Sliver of Hope

  Along the banks of the upper Big Sioux River, Isadore Maduro slumbered under a tree. His top hat beside him, a stack of books for a pillow, and his right leg crossed at right angles over his bent left knee, Isadore’s snoring would have awakened the neighbors if any had been around. As it was, he was wholly alone on this stretch of sweet grass in the shade of the sycamore tree.

  The days spent at his father’s dry goods store and nights spent reading for the law had taken their toll on the energetic young man. His dreams were a strange mixture of paying bills, making speeches before a jury, and a loud buzz that just wouldn’t be made quiet….

  Bzzz bzzz bzzz! Isadore swatted at his ear to clear the ringing and was rewarded with a sharp sting on his pinkie finger. With a great yowl he leaped up, hopping and swatting at the bees he had disturbed as they furiously began to swarm around him. With nowhere to go, Isadore leaped fully dressed into the water, raising his head every few seconds and plunging back under until the bees gave up and went back to their hive in the tree.

  Finally, rising up with water streaming off him like a Roman statue in a fountain, Isadore made his way back to the river bank to the sound of raucous laughter rolling at him across the water.

  “Ho ho! Ha ha ha! Well I’d’a never believed it if’n’ I hadn’t seen it!” Joe Blackburn sat atop his wagon slapping his knees and pointing at Isadore. “What’re you gonna tell your Ma about ruinin’ another suit?”

  “Well, the truth seems good enough this time,” Isadore hollered back with a grin. He shook his stung hand and put his finger to his mouth to suck on the sting. “Hang on there, Joe! If you can stop laughing long enough, give me a lift to the store, wouldja?”

  Isadore picked up his hat and pushed it down over his soggy hair. The wetness had smoothed his wavy black locks into ringlets that dripped water down his neck under the collar of his formerly starched shirt. He gathered his books and the flowers he had picked that must have attracted the bees. His mother would put them in a vase after scolding his carelessness at muddying his one good suit.

  Joe flicked the reigns as Isadore climbed up beside him, and the two set off to Springvale. The dirt road wound along the river, past two-room shacks that dotted the land, some abandoned, others barely habitable; signs of toil, hopes, hardship and just plain stubbornness of the people that had come to claim land on the vast prairie.

  Isadore admired them, and needed them, as most folks for 20 miles around were his customers at the store. Problem was, he just couldn’t handle keeping the store up like it should, with studying, writing and caring for his Ma taking up most of his time.

  “Aren’t ya goin’ to ask me what I’ve got back there?” Joe asked with a head nod toward the back of the wagon. “You might be a bit curious every so often, you know.”

  “Oh? I thought what a man carried in his cart was his own business,” Isadore chuckled.

  “Maybe, I should say, lack of attention. You don’t catch on to much goin’ on around ya, like that swarm of bees creeping up on ya.”

  Joe was right. Isadore had been told his whole life to wake up, get his mind out of the clouds, pay attention. He didn’t try to ignore things and people around him, it was just his imagination was always taking his mind to more interesting places….

  “You got me there. Ok, what are you carrying today?”

  “Well, I got some of that cornmeal the missus likes so she can keep me in cornbread and fried rabbit for a month,” Joe said proudly. “Got extry for you if you want it for the store. Plus 4 dozen eggs fresh this morning.”

  “That’s great, Joe! I’ll take all you can bring me. I know I’m low on coffee and sugar too.”

  “Well, that’ll have to wait until next week. I’m not likely to go back to Sioux Falls until then,” Joe said.

  The horse pulled them through the outskirts of the little town that consisted of houses a little closer together, until they finally crossed the train tracks and made their way down Main Street. Joe pulled to a halt in front of the store and the two hopped down on opposite sides.

  Isadore hurried into the store, startling young Pete Stokes in the process. The leaning chair he was sleeping in clattered to the floor as Pete jumped to his feet when the door opened.

  “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Maduro – I’m sorry, I had just now sat down,” Pete stumbled through his apology. “I done everything you asked: swept, rotated the canned goods, waited on a customer…”

  “A customer?” Isadore interrupted. “Just one customer all day?”

  “Yes sir, Mr. Maduro, sir. Mrs. Jensen came in looking for flour. She took the last two sacks and I put it on Mr. Jensen’s account like she asked.”

  Isadore sighed and walked behind the counter to check the ledger entry. Pete was still learning his sums, and he had carefully added the price of the two sacks of flour together in the margin before putting the total on the line for Mr. Jensen.

  “Good work, Pete,” Isadore said, and looked up smiling. “I’ll make a merchant of you yet.”

  A broad grin spread across Pete’s face. “Do you really think so, Mr. Maduro? I can help you again tomorrow if you need me.”

  “We’ll see. Without much to sell and so few customers, I may be keeping limited hours until I can get stocked back up.”

  The crestfallen look on Pete’s face had an immediate effect on Isadore. “But don’t worry,” Isadore said. “Here’s two nickels for your time today. I’ll send for you if I need you tomorrow.”

  The boy reached out a dirty hand and quickly transferred the coins into his pocket. “Thanks, Mr. Maduro. See you ’round!” And with that, Pete disappeared out the back door.

  Isadore walked to the front and held the door open as Joe brought in the sacks of cornmeal. When he had left, Isadore slid the black metal bolt through the lock on the door. He turned and leaned against it, his damp shirt leaving a mark where his muscular back pressed against the unpainted wood. The irritation of his wet socks inside his boots grew too much, and he bent down to pull off one sticky boot and then the other. He carried them to the sink in the backroom and poured the rest of the muddy water out into the sink, then put each one over an empty bottle to dry.

  Next he peeled off his wet socks and laid them over the edge of the metal basin. Going out the back door, he walked across the dirt yard to his mother’s house in his bare feet.

  The sun shone low through the curtains as he quietly turned the handle and crept into the front room. Placing one foot gently on the bottom step, he silently lifted his other foot to the second stair, thinking he was home-free.

  “Isadore? Isadore! Is that you?” A quiet voice came from the darkened corner. “I’ve been worried since you didn’t come home for dinner. I left you a plate on the stove.”

  “Yes, Mother, it’s me.” Isadore abandoned the staircase and came nearer his mother in her rocking chair by the side window.

  “Come closer, Isadore, you know I can’t see as well in the fading light.”

  He slid a bit closer and the stench of his wet, muddy clothes followed him. His mother’s nose rose in the air and he could see her nostrils flare.

  “Well, I never—Isadore, you’ve been swimming again? And in your only suit, too.”

  “Yes ma’am, I mean, no, I wasn’t swimming. Go
t surrounded by some darn bees and had to get away as quickly as I could.”

  “I see. Well, you just take those clothes off right here and march into the kitchen. I’ll get some water a’boilin so we can soak them and rinse the mud out before they dry stiff.”

  Isadore opened his mouth to protest. Mrs. Maduro rose from the chair and used her hand to steady herself against the wall as she found her way to the kitchen. It didn’t matter a bit if he undressed right there. She couldn’t see at all.

  ***

  Isadore made four trips to the pump to fill water for a bath and enough to soak his clothes. He heated the water just to lukewarm before stepping in to the copper tub.

  “You have everything you need, now just take a good soak,” Mrs. Maduro called from the living room where she had retreated out of habit. She might not be able to see any more, but she wasn’t going to sit and talk to a man while he took his bath. “There’s some mail here for you on your desk when you’re done.”

  Isadore tried to slide lower in the water, but his tall frame could only scrunch down so far. He grabbed a cup and poured the water over his head, once, twice—heck it felt good—three times to rinse his hair and clear his head.

  I’ve got to keep my mind on the store, he thought. Ma’s going to need help when I go back to take my exams, and food isn’t going to appear out of nowhere. He felt overwhelmed by the schedule he’d have to keep if he was going to finish his law exams in a few months. Judge Arnold Sinclair, an old friend of his father’s, had been supervising his reading the law for the past three years. He’d spent the time helping him one week a month in his office in Minnesota and reading through the law books from the Judge’s own collection and others he could borrow. A bit more now and he could close the store for good and hang out his shingle as an attorney.

  Close the store. His father’s last wish was that he wouldn’t close the store. “This town’s growing, son,” he had told Isadore those last few days as he grew weaker after a fall from his horse. “A growing town’s gotta eat, and have tools to build with and homes to set up. This store here will one day be just as fine as your uncle’s in Louisville….”

  Isadore knew the story. The Maduros had been merchants for generations, making their way more than a hundred years ago as one of the last remaining Jewish families out of Spain, settling briefly in the Rhineland before sailing to the West Indies and setting up trade. From there, his grandfather had set up stores in New York, and his father and brothers, after receiving advanced degrees from Yale and Harvard, went into the family business and spread out to towns west. Of his father’s four brothers, two owned successful dry goods’ business, and another was the family lawyer. Only the youngest brother, Uncle Raphael, had taken after his grandmother and become a painter.

  Isadore sighed again at the thought. His own artistic nature was at constant war with his father’s expectations of him in both business and the law. Isadore could spend hours reading great literature and writing poetry, and in fact, did so even when he should have been going over accounts or finishing a law assignment. He preferred the law to working in the store—one client at a time versus 20 a day suited his quiet temperament better and left him more time to read and write.

  He shivered suddenly as the temperature in the room dropped with the passing of the sun behind the horizon. Rising dripping wet from the tub, he stepped out and toweled off before putting on the clean shirt and trousers his mother had laid out on a chair.

  “Ahh, that’s much better, Mother.” He strode across the parlor to his desk against the wall. He scratched a flame from a match and set it to the oil lamp, adjusted the wick down and replaced the glass before sitting down.

  “What’s the news, son?” Mrs. Maduro asked. “I’ve been wonderin’ all day who the letters are from.”

  “Just a minute and I’ll read them to you,” Isadore said. He looked at the mail and shuffled through the small pile.

  Picking up one of the two envelopes on top of the stack of papers on his desk, Isadore scrutinized the writing and the return address. “The first one’s from New York. Probably something about the store.”

  Isadore set it to the side, and picked up the second letter. This one was also from New York, but written in a flowery style that was not at all businesslike. He stood turning it over in his hands, and saw a return address on the back. N.S. Luxe read the name. Isadore was about to put this letter away in his front shirt pocket to read apart from his mother, but the quick intake of breath that passed through his lips didn’t escape the enhanced hearing of Mrs. Maduro.

  “What’s wrong, Issa?” she said, a note of concern and curiosity in her voice. “Who’s it from?”

  Isadore was too curious to try putting her off. He’d been waiting for word from New York ever since he wrote to the bank’s attorney asking him for more time to make the payment on his store note.

  “One is from the bank, and the other is from someone I don’t know. Either one could be good news or bad news, so I can’t offer you the choice of hearing the bad new first.”

  “I’ll take my chances the bank letter will offer the bad,” Mrs. Maduro said. “Let’s hear that first and maybe our hearts will be cheered by the second.”

  Isadore set about opening the first letter and read it aloud:

  Dear Mr. Maduro,

  We are in receipt of your partial payment and your request to delay full payment on the note for six months. While we appreciate your business and the present circumstances, our policy and priority is to our esteemed shareholders who have invested in you. Accordingly, please be advised that your request is denied and the next payment on your note is due in full in 60 days’ time. Also, the partial payment renders your account in delinquent status. As such, it can be foreclosed at any time if our shareholders conclude the payment in 60 days is in jeopardy.

  I trust this letter finds you well in all other regards.

  Silas Jacobson, Esq.

  “Hmmph,” Mrs. Maduro grunted. “This Silas fellow is a peach.”

  “I agree his delivery leaves a bit to be desired. But apparently he’s a man of business first.”

  “I think you should write your uncles for advice and even help to bring the note up to date. Blood is thicker than water, your father always said. They have an obligation to step in.”

  Isadore sat silently for a moment pondering the repeated suggestion. “Mother, you know I can’t. I owe Uncle Jacob money for the cost of my books and travel to Judge Sinclair for my law supervision. I owe Uncle Daniel for the cost of last month’s inventory in the store, which I expected to pay back with this month’s receipts. That is why I needed the extension on the note. Uncle Nathan’s law firm has fiduciary responsibilities that would make investing in me a conflict of interest, and Uncle Raphael—well, we both know a painter doesn’t have two nickels to rub together. No, it’s up to me to make this right.”

  Mrs. Maduro shivered audibly in her chair. Isadore got up and brought a warm blanket to wrap around her and cover her lap. She smiled up at him and patted his hand.

  “Let’s hear the second letter; it may not cheer us, but can be no worse than the first.”

  Isadore sat in the chair across from her. Adjusting the lamp and his reading glasses, he opened the second letter and began to read.

  To the Honorable Isadore Maduro…

  “This sounds better already!”

  “Ahem. Shall I continue?”

  “Yes, yes, get on with it.”

  To the Honorable Isadore Maduro,

  I take the chance to write on the assumption your need expressed to me by one Silas Jacobson, Esq., is still unfilled. I understand you have a store that is presently undercapitalized and in need of restoration. My experience and current circumstances would allow my participation in your venture to bring the store to profit.

  As to your second request, of introduction to a suitable marriage partner, I will just state that I am unmarried but would not presume to agree to a marriage arrangement as if
it were a business contract.

  If you would still be interested in a business partner, albeit female, I request the favour of your reply.

  Kind regards,

  Nathalie Luxe

  “Now she sounds promising,” Mrs. Maduro said quickly before Isadore could protest. “You must write to her at once!”

  “I’m not sure I have any choice, given Mr. Jacobson’s deadline. We’ll need the capital sooner than later. Do you suppose she’s an ugly and harsh old thing and that’s why she’s not married or even interested?” Isadore’s sense of imagination started to take over, and in his mind’s eye, he imagined a stern, stiff matron of means who would spend her days bossing him around the store. Well, she could have at it; anything to be rid of the chore.

  “Isadore! I imagine no such thing. In any case, beggars can’t be choosers in love or money, eh? If nothing else, we’ll have a few days’ entertainment by her visit. If she invests in the store, we’ll stave off the wolves for a few more weeks at least. And if she’s pretty….”

  “Yes, if she’s pretty, life could be grand indeed, couldn’t it?” Isadore stood and pulled his mother gently to her feet by her hands. “Care to take a turn about the room with a beggar of little means but improving prospects?” He laughed and put a hand on her waist.

  “I never refuse a gentleman a dance!” she said, putting her hand on his shoulder.

  Isadore swung her smoothly around the room in a gliding waltz, proclaiming “ONE-two-three, ONE-two three!” as his mother smiled and laughed.

  Chapter Three | A Country Store

  Nathalie kept her eyes peeled out the train window as it rolled through Iowa, her cheeks stained with dried tears, a sad reminder of her farewells to Gadsen and Sylvia.

  “You’ll write to me as soon as you arrive, yes?” Gadsen had said. “I won’t rest easy until I know you’ve made it safely.”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll be fine on the train; I’ve journeyed by myself before,” Nathalie said.

  “But never alone, my dear girl. Never without old Gadsen to look out for you.”

  “That’s true and I’ll miss you terribly for the company, but I’m quite sure I’ll be able to look after myself. If nothing else, I have my grandfather’s knack for sizing up a stranger. Although why he didn’t realize that horrible Silas Jacobson had it in mind to sell the store, I’ll never know.”