by Gina Welborn
The pain of losing her paled in that moment. “Malia, look at me.”
She did.
“You’ve had twenty-five years of being taught one thing about your grandfather. He isn’t going to change your mind—” he pointed over his shoulder “—the moment you walk in that door. Just give him the benefit of the doubt like you gave me. Please.”
Malia’s eyes teared up, but she stepped out of the carriage. “Thank you. For everything.” She walked past without the customary handshake as though she, too, could not bear to touch him, knowing it would be the breaking point.
Norma shook her head, an exasperated look on her face, and took Malia’s spot inside the carriage.
Frank looked over his shoulder for one final glance of Malia wrapped in her grandfather’s arms. He’d done it. He’d kept her safe. He had returned her home stronger than she was when he found her. They’d said their goodbyes, and he managed not to fall to his knee and profess his undying love. He was a marshal, she a witness. He’d done the right and honorable thing. And it felt as if his heart was being chipped away like ice.
It was time for him to go.
“Tweed Courthouse,” he said to the driver before climbing into the carriage. He settled in the seat across from Norma.
She turned the page in the book. “You okay?”
“Yes,” he said as the carriage started into motion.
“Did you tell her you love her?”
“What?”
“Did you kiss her?”
“No, why do you even ask that?” he bit off. He rested his head against the back wall. “She was in protective custody. My custody. To kiss her would have crossed the lines of propriety.” Although the amount of time he had spent imagining kissing her had to have crossed the lines of propriety too. “While Malia is probably all a man could want in a wife—”
“You mean you,” Norma cut in. He must have been glaring because she held her hands up defensively. “It’s not offensive to call something what it is.”
“She is also the sister of a criminal,” he continued his argument. “She has no future in New York. Mine is here. We could never have a life together.”
Norma shrugged. “You’re a good man, Frank.”
“Thank you.”
She gave him a peeved look.
“So that’s not a compliment?” The normal teasing between them reset his equilibrium. He could do this. He could go back to being Frank Louden, deputy marshal, soon to be chief marshal of the Southern District.
Norma returned her attention to her book. “I can’t decide if you are more noble than I thought or more stupid.”
Chapter 14
So long as Romance exists...love at first sight and marriage in a week is within the boundaries of possibility. But usually (and certainly more wisely) a young man is for some time attentive to a young woman before dreaming of marriage.
—Emily Price Post, Etiquette
Broad Street Station
Philadelphia
A month later
Malia stared in awe at the bas-relief sculpture in the station lobby. While at Vassar, she had seen photographs of Karl Bitter’s The Spirit of Transportation, but the photos did not do justice to the artistic procession of modes of transportation from covered wagons to a child holding a model of an airplane. Grandfather drew up beside her. She glanced over at him, but his attention was on the sculpture. In his three-piece suit, and with a ruddy face and white hair (what there was of it) and mustache, he was as distinguished-looking as a British colonel of the old school.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” he said.
“For the craft of the sculptor alone,” she answered, “but the artistry...well, this is quite visionary for work created only six years ago.”
He handed her a ticket stub. “Are you sure this is where you want to go?”
Malia slid the ticket into her clutch. With Giovanni transferred to McNeil Island, Washington State and its rain forests, stately mountains, Puget Sound and lack of flying monkeys was the closest she could get to Oz. Having donated her inheritance to the Museum of Art, she had limited funds (though, not if Grandfather had his say), no means of employment and only a letter of reference from the Grahames. Yet her toes literally itched in her shoes in desire to run to the private coach Grandfather had secured. Living in Seattle would be an adventure.
The only thing that could make it better would be having Frank experience it with her.
“Yes, it is,” she finally said. “I want to feel the breeze on my face after it’s skipped across the waters, and I want to forget all I’ve left behind in New York. Save you, of course.”
He stared at her. “Are you in love with him?”
Malia felt the blood drain from her face. “Who?”
“The marshal. The one to whose family you’ve been writing letters.” Before he gave her a chance to admit or deny it, he said, “Yes, I know about them. I spoke to the Grahames at the opera.” The very one she wanted to attend last week but did not dare. “They enjoyed having you visit.”
She plucked at the black-braided trim on her royal blue traveling jacket, unable to think of a plausible denial. They had vowed to be honest with each other. And since she would never see Frank again, she confessed, “I thought my feelings would have ended by now.”
“Can a person fall out of love quickly?” His words were gentle. “Give it time.”
She grinned. “Time? Oh, Grandfather, have you not heard? Out west there is an elixir for it. Granted it is green, tastes like a dog’s bathwater and gives one spots, but I would think those are inconsequential to being cured.”
He tapped the tip of her nose. “You are too much like your mother.” He wrapped her arm around his, and they fell into step, maneuvering around the crowded and noisy station.
“You don’t have to come with me,” she offered.
“I do.” As he had been doing much of since she arrived at his house a month ago, he smiled broadly. “I have five grandsons and one granddaughter. Let me dote on her.”
Tuxedo Park
Mid-June
“Golf requires two things—” Grandfather lined his club up to the ball on the tee “—courage and the ability to keep your eye on the ball.” He swung and sent his ball sailing...way left. His new golf knickers clearly weren’t his good-luck charm. Not that the pair he’d insisted Frank wear were any luckier for him. He was just off his game.
Frank handed his club to his caddy, a son of one of the villagers. “Is this supposed to encourage me to improve my game? ’Cause your score is ten points higher than Katie’s and four worse than mine.”
“Hmmph,” Katie murmured, yet if he didn’t know better, he’d swear she was smiling. While she had vocalized her refusal to join Grandfather and Frank in a golf match, her competitive streak overcame her abhorrence at being within three feet of Frank. Or she just wanted the new Oldsmobile Grandfather promised to buy the winner. In her sweeping tweed skirt, blue-and-white-striped shirt and straw boater, she looked every bit the faux enthusiast.
What he hadn’t counted on was her actual skill. His sister had an Olympic swing.
Grandfather gave his club to his young caddy George, who, like Frank’s and Katie’s caddies (strangely also named George), had volunteered at the first offer of a quarter. Grandfather accepted his proffered cane then took off in the direction of his ball. Frank and Katie followed suit.
“He had the drawing Miss Vaccarelli did framed,” Katie said, her arms clasped behind her back as they walked. “It’s in the library, if you haven’t seen it.”
Frank hadn’t. He’d been conscripted into the golf match within an hour of his arrival for the “reunion weekend” his grandmother insisted on having now that his parents had returned from Paris and Worthing was engaged and wanted to introduce his fiancée to the family. Katie�
��s husband, Augustus, declined to attend. Katie didn’t seem bothered, but rarely did Katie share her pain with the family.
A breeze blew across the lawn, fluttering Katie’s skirt. Sun overhead, sky bright with an occasional white puff of cloud, and the scent of evergreen in the air—it was another beautiful day in the park, albeit a bit muggy. With most Tuxedo-ites in Europe for the summer, they had the golf course to themselves.
“Is Malia’s drawing the one of us flying kites when we were children?” he asked, trying to remember what he’d seen in Worthing’s old sketchbook that their grandfather had given her to use.
She nodded.
“I think that was the only time we didn’t fight.”
Katie nodded again. Then she sighed. “I’ve heard them speak more praises of Miss Vaccarelli than they ever did of me. I should be jealous, but—” She shrugged. “Have you seen her since?”
Since he left her at her grandfather’s? Frank shook his head. “I can’t see her.”
She stopped him in the middle of the lawn. “Can’t? Or won’t?” She motioned to their caddies to continue on.
Frank lifted his flat cap and ran a hand through his hair. “It’s complicated.”
Her gaze shifted to where Grandfather was standing in a bunker and talking to his caddy. “He sat me down in the library last night and lectured me for an hour. He says I’m miserable and it’s my own fault, not yours, not Augustus’s.”
Frank put his cap back on his head. “What happened to you was my fault. I didn’t protect you like a brother should.”
Her jaw shifted. “I’m tired of being angry all the time. I’m tired of being a disappointment to everyone. I am so tired of hating you.”
He rested the back of his hand against her palm, enough of a touch to have that connection but not too much to make her uncomfortable. “I want the best for your life, and I would do whatever I need to help you. Nothing you do will ever lessen my love for you.”
Her fingers tightened around his. “What about you? Do you want the best for your life?”
Her question jolted him. Of course, he wanted that.
“During Grandfather’s lecture,” she went on, “he told me goals are a good thing, but in light of doors God opens, I needed to stop being someone who spat in the face of God and said no, I have my own agenda. He said you needed to do that, too. Is becoming chief marshal something you want, or is it something you think you need to prove something to yourself? And to Dad?”
Frank looked over her shoulder to the trees framing the course. He needed to earn the promotion to prove he was the best marshal he could be. Every morning he went to work, did his job and came home to an empty apartment. He wasn’t lonely...when he was working.
“Katie, I need to know something.”
She looked at him expectantly.
“What do you want to come home to at the end of the day?”
Her eyes held a haunted longing. “Someone who loves me.”
“What if that meant giving up your life here?”
“Having someone to love and protect me is all I’ve ever wanted.” Then as if embarrassed at her honesty, she resumed walking to Grandfather, and Frank fell into step. “What about you? What do you want to come home to at the end of the day?”
“Malia.”
“Then I suppose you have to decide if loving a woman and being a husband and a father fills the void in your life that you think being chief marshal of New York will.”
DeWitt Conservatory
Manhattan Island
Late June
Frank sipped his coffee and patiently waited for Gulian DeWitt to pose the next question. Every evening for the past eight days, he’d arrived at precisely 7:00 p.m. for dinner. They would eat, and then precisely at 8:00 p.m., they would retire to the glass-ceiling conservatory for coffee. After explaining what had occurred while Malia was in his protective custody, Frank had talked about his job and his wish to marry. Malia’s name hadn’t been mentioned then. In the past three days, alone, her name hadn’t been mentioned at all. If DeWitt suspected Frank’s intentions, he had yet to say anything.
The sounds of the water spilling from the Grecian fountain echoed across the marble tile, the only light in the room provided by the chandelier over the seating area. The potted palms and wicker furniture seemed more suited for a lady’s tea time than two men evaluating each other’s worth. Although in the cool of the evening, the moderate temperature in the room was a welcome relief after a sweltering afternoon.
DeWitt sat on the sofa next to Frank’s chair. He relaxed against the back, one leg crossed over the other. “So you want to marry my granddaughter,” DeWitt said without fanfare.
So much for thinking the man didn’t suspect Frank’s motives.
Frank set his cup on the matching wicker coffee table. “Yes, sir, I do.”
“Have you told your parents and grandparents of the seriousness of your intentions?”
“I have.”
DeWitt sipped his coffee, his appraising gaze never leaving Frank. He looked nothing like Malia, for which Frank was glad. “Go on.”
“Sir, while my grandparents have given their approval, my parents don’t feel this is the wisest course of action, considering they have not had the pleasure of meeting your granddaughter, and, to be candid, they feel my decision is emotion-driven.”
“Is it?”
“Yes, sir.” Frank shifted in the wicker chair that no one in his right mind would find comfortable. He suspected that was DeWitt’s reason for choosing this room for their after-dinner conversations. “However, my father said that if I could convince you that my feelings are sincere, then they would reconsider.”
DeWitt rested his arm, the one holding his cup, on the sofa’s armrest. “Are you willing to leave your family and your life here and start a new life wherever she is without even knowing if she reciprocates your feelings?”
Despite the man’s attempts to make him second-guess his decision, Frank didn’t waver. “I’ve never prayed for more wisdom and direction from God. I’ve discussed ways and means with my father and grandfather and how I could support a wife. My financials are sound. I am willing to share them if you would like.”
“What will you do if I don’t give my consent?”
Frank went still. He loved Malia. But he would not ask her to marry him without consent. He would not ask her to dishonor her grandfather like her mother had.
“Sir,” he began slowly, “if you refuse, then I will try, through proof of stability, seriousness and good character, to win your approval.” He absently picked at a piece of lint on the black trousers of his three-piece suit as he waited for Malia’s grandfather to speak.
DeWitt leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his cup on the palm of his hand. He smirked. “And how is that different from what you’ve been doing these past eight days?”
Frank grinned. “I’ve never been good with stealth. It’s one of my flaws.”
“I expect you will need to know where you’re headed.”
“That would be convenient.”
DeWitt stretched out his arm and firmly shook Frank’s hand. “Our girl is in Seattle.”
The Bon Marché
The corner of Second Avenue and Pike Street
Seattle, Washington
Independence Day
“I like your work, Miss Carr.” Mrs. Nordhoff wrote something on the notepad on her desk, giving Malia a prime view of the jeweled hair combs given to the widow by her fiancée upon their engagement. “Your window displays were unlike anything we’ve seen in Seattle. Sales are up in every department.”
Malia held her smile as she sat in one of the chairs in front of the department store owner’s desk. “Thank you, ma’am.”
The woman who couldn’t be but a few years older than Malia w
as nodding. She continued writing.
The rickety bamboo fan overhead added a comfortable breeze to the office. Over breakfast, Malia had read in the Seattle dailies that New York was experiencing a hot spell. The heavy air bearing down on the streets, simmering with heat, proved fatal. In the past week alone, seven hundred people and one thousand horses in the city had died. Thankfully, she had not received any word of personal loss. Still, once work ended for the day, she would place a call to Grandfather, Irene and the Grahames, to see if any had news about Frank, on how he was doing. Wherever that elixir was for curing love’s affliction, she had yet to find it.
Malia smoothed the lap of her black skirt.
Mrs. Nordhoff put down her pencil. She glanced up, her gaze seeking Malia’s. “Not only did those displays attract shoppers, but I’ve received calls from The Leader and Frederick & Nelson wanting to know who designed them.”
Malia stiffened. Two other department stores wanted to know about her? She swallowed the lump of panic in her throat. “Did you give them my name?”
Mrs. Nordhoff’s head tilted as she studied Malia. “That would have benefited neither of us, don’t you think?”
Malia released the breath she was holding. She nodded. “I am honored you took a chance and hired me considering my only employment experience is as a governess. Have you had a chance to review my Christmas display proposal?”
There was a glint in her eyes. “Mr. McDermott and I discussed you with my brother-in-law, Rudolph. We examined your proposal for the Christmas displays and agree it is impressive. We’d like you to begin work on it immediately.”
“You would?”
Mrs. Nordhoff’s lips twitched with amusement.
“We were so impressed with you volunteering to decorate our window displays for Independence Day, in addition to fulfilling your normal duties, we’d like to promote you to director of displays.”
Malia gave her a dubious look. “I didn’t know that was a position.”
“It wasn’t. You showed us we need to have one.”
