by Jill Barnett
He jerked his hand out from between them, pulled his mouth away, and covered her mouth with his hand. “Be quiet, George. Hell, you know I wouldn’t force you.”
She bit his hand.
“Ouch! Dammit!” He sat up, shaking his hand and scowling at her the whole time.
“Just stay away from me.” She pulled her corset laces off his other hand and jerked them so tightly she almost fainted again. She knotted them off and began to button up her clothes. “Just stay away. This whole thing is your fault!”
“Now, George . . . ”
“Go away.” She tried to scoot out of the wagon, but he was in the way, so she jammed an elbow into his ribs. “Go back to your foggy wet island and your children and leave me alone. I don’t ever want to see you again. Do you understand?”
He didn’t say anything. He just stared at her from a face that showed no emotion. For just one second she thought he looked angry. He had no right to be angry. His life wasn’t ruined.
She crawled past him and jumped to the ground. She grabbed her hat with a sharp jerk and jammed it on her head. Then she just turned and walked away.
An hour later she was walking down the road to her home. He never followed her. She half expected him to, but he didn’t.
As she walked there was no wagon, no horse, no carriage anywhere on the road. The homes here were summer places. By now the summer crowd would have returned to their city houses.
They must know, every single one of them must know about her situation. She stumbled slightly and had to balance herself on a tree trunk. She stood there, her back pressed to the trunk for a moment, staring down the road. She had no idea what she was going to do.
From here she could see the house. The stone walls and the peaked roofline. She could see the tops of the trees and the ivy that grew over the back fence. She could see the bougainvillea that climbed up the side of the house and covered all that chipping paint and wood rot in the eaves.
Every summer for every year that she could remember back, Georgina had spent in that house. It had been the last thing to go, perhaps that was why she fought so hard to keep it. She shoved away from the tree and moved on.
It wasn’t as hard to get inside this time. She used a tree limb to get over the wall and went straight for the cellar window. For a while she wandered through the house. She moved some of the furniture back into its proper place and took some of the dust cloths off certain pieces.
She sat in chairs in every room, rooms that held memories for her. Her family memories might not have been wonderful, but they were all the memories she had.
For the longest time she sat in the clock room and looked at each and every Bayard clock. She wound them herself and watched them mark time that had no meaning to her anymore.
Time only mattered if you had some place to go. She almost laughed. She didn’t have anything, not even the few things she’d saved in those valises, which she’d left in the wagon. She didn’t have anything, not even a place to go.
As the sky grew darker and the sun set, she made her way upstairs. She slipped off her shoes and jacket and crawled into her bed.
In less time than it took to say good night, she was sound asleep. So sound asleep that she didn’t hear anything, not the opening of the front door, not the footsteps up the stairs. She didn’t even hear her bedroom door open.
She heard nothing until a constable with a gun and a billy club woke her up and arrested her for trespassing and vagrancy.
Chapter 37
No man can be happy without a friend, nor sure of a friend until he’s unhappy.
—Scottish proverb
Georgina sent notes to every person she knew. No one came to bail her out of jail. Not even those who hadn’t left for town yet. Not one person who had danced to music played in the Bayard ballroom. Not one person who had drunk their fill of champagne or eaten food paid for by Bayard money.
Not one person whom she had known for years, some of them all her life. Not one came. Even the servants. The police told her they had been the ones to ransack the place, taking valuables in place of their wages.
So she sat on a dusty bunk covered with a moth-eaten blanket and plenty of fleas. Her hands were shaking, shaking the way they had when she was lost in the park so many years ago. She was that same little girl again, the one who was lost in the crowded park, the one who sat on a sand dune all alone and so very scared inside. She propped her elbows on her knees and pressed the heels of her hands into her burning eyes. For the first time in her life, she didn’t know if she could survive.
A door squeaked open and she could hear her jailer walking down to the cell, his keys jangling too loudly in the emptiness.
“Yep, that’s George.”
Eachann?
Georgina’s head shot up and relief washed over her with such a strong force that she felt too lightheaded to even stand up. But the feeling didn’t last long.
She was up and clinging to the bars. “Get me out of here.”
He looked at the jailer. “What do I need to do?”
“Pay her bail of ten dollars and sign an affidavit accepting full responsibility for her.”
“Sign it, Eachann.”
The officer looked from her to Eachann, then said, “She can’t go back to that house for any reason. It and all of its contents belong to the bank.”
Eachann watched her thoughtfully.
If he makes me beg, I’ll kill him.
“You’ll go back to the island with me?” He didn’t say a word about begging.
“Yes.”
“Willingly?”
“Yes. Just sign that thing and get me out of here.”
Five minutes later, she left the jail in the custody of Eachann MacLachlan, the man who had kidnapped her.
Chapter 38
The old man laughed and sang a song
As they rocked in wooden shoe;
And the wind that sped them all night long
Ruffled the waves of dew;
The little stars were herring-fish
That live in the beautiful sea;
“Now cast your nets wherever you wish
Never feared are we!”
So cried the stars to the fishermen three,
Wynken, Blynken and Nod.
—Eugene Field
His brother and the coaster had long since left for Bath, so Eachann had paid a herring boat that was going out that night to take them back to the island. Georgina kept to herself at first, sitting alone in a spot and not talking to anyone. She spent most of her time watching Eachann.
He stood in the aft and his hair was wild in the breeze, as wild as the man himself. He was so tall standing there, looking like some god who lorded over the sea and sky.
She didn’t have to look at him to know he was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. His features were strong and chiseled. Superbly masculine. He wasn’t bald and short.
He wasn’t rich either.
But he was something to see standing there like that. She rested her chin in her hand and decided it would suit her just fine if she could spend the rest of her life looking at him.
As long as he never opened his mouth.
Georgina remembered back to that party and how she had thought Eachann would look all dressed up in white tie. Watching him here on the sea at night was more striking a scene than white tie and tails, than any clothing could ever make him look.
Eachann MacLachlan was as wild and rough as the island where he lived. They seemed to fit together. All that hard weathered granite that could withstand the strength of the sea and the hardheaded man who didn’t care what she said or did or who she was. He was like that granite island. Immovable.
He spoke easily with the man he hired, an old fellow, the kind of Maine talker who had a saying for everything. He’d assumed they were husband and wife and Eachann hadn’t said anything different.
As they left the harbor the old man had chattered about the storms he’d seen and how “they bl
owed a fit enough to make rabbit cry.” He busied his two sons with taking the boat out while he looked at Georgina. “You from Boston?”
She nodded.
“Yep. Can always tell you Boston folk. Hits you right between the face and eyes.”
Eachann laughed.
“Did you know them Pilgrims didn’t land at Plymouth?” The old man unwrapped a tangled fishing net as he spoke. “The Pilgrims, they first landed on Monhegan island. Got themselves some good cod, they did. So the story goes, one morning a fisherman’s wife looks out her window and sees the Mayflower hove in for some handlining. She turns to her husband and says, “Who do you suppose that is?” Her husband looks out the window. “It’s got to be the Pilgrims. They’ve come at last!”
It was a silly story, but even Georgina had to laugh. All those women she knew, her so-called friends, prided themselves on being descended from Mayflower dames, and as such, the daughters of the first Americans.
The laughter was cut short when one of the sons caught sight of a school of herring. A moment later they were turning the boat and tossing nets in the water.
“George? Come over here.”
She glanced at Eachann, then got up and joined him at the railing in the aft.
“Have you ever seen the herring run?”
She laughed. “Not hardly.”
“Look there.” He nodded out at the sea.
The moon was behind a big fat cloud but its light still spilled on the water, making it glisten and shine with a cool and quiet light.
Then suddenly the water was sparkling and twinkling as if lightning bugs were trapped in the sea. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of sparkling flashes spilling and flashing all over the water.
She laughed, because she’d never seen anything like it. It was magical and eerie and new. She could feel Eachann looking at her. He was leaning with his back against the railing.
He wasn’t watching the fish. He was watching her. She wondered what he was thinking. What he saw when he looked at her. Which then made her wonder what she was going to be. What her life was going to be like. Marriage to this man was her only choice.
She wondered why he was the only one in the world who seemed to know or care that she existed. She supposed Amy cared and would have come, but no one knew where Amelia Emerson was. And Amy had been adamant when she told her she would not go back. She wondered if Amy was as lost as she was, or if she was doing what she had suggested and was working a little female magic on Calum MacLachlan.
The fishermen had released their nets and they began to pull in the herring.
Georgina felt uncomfortable with the way Eachann looked at her and what those looks of his made her feel. She had that instinctive urge to lash out at him, but, to tell the truth, she was tired of fighting and she couldn’t fight him anymore anyway. He was the only future she had.
She felt a horrid sense of loss standing there watching the men haul up the fish. They spilled them all over the deck where the herring flopped and flipped their beautiful silver bodies all around the deck in a desperate attempt to get back into their home in the sea.
“I want to throw them all back,” she said, without looking at Eachann.
“It wouldn’t do any good. Someone else will just catch them.”
“Would they? You can’t know for certain. Look at them fight. Perhaps they could get away and swim far out to sea.”
“And get eaten by sea lions or other fish.”
He was right, but she didn’t feel any better for it. She excused herself and walked back to sit and watch. She felt like those herring flopping around on the deck.
At one moment when everyone was too busy and no one was paying attention, she stood and kicked a few of them overboard. It was stupid. But for some idiotic reason it made her feel better.
Chapter 39
He knows not the pleasures of plenty
who never felt the pains of poverty.
—Scottish proverb
By the time they reached the island and were in Eachann’s house, Georgina had resigned herself to her future. She had no other place to live. She couldn’t do anything to support herself. She had no choice but to marry Eachann.
He was building a fire in the fireplace while she sat in a chair and looked around the room. It wasn’t clean and organized like Calum’s part of the house.
She shook her head. “This is a hovel.”
He turned back and looked at her. “It’s lived in.”
“I guess I have no choice anyway.”
“No choice about what?”
“I have no place to go. I have nothing left. I guess this will have to be my home, especially if I’m going to be forced to take your offer.”
He didn’t say anything but straightened and leaned against the mantel.
“I suppose we can get along amicably, if you’ll just be reasonable for part of the time. We can treat this like a . . . well, like a business alliance.”
He gave her a long intense stare. Then he began, to slowly nod his head. “Fine” was all he said.
“Then you agree?”
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s settled.”
“Good.” She exhaled a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.
“The way I figure it, with room and board and expenses, I should be able to pay you—”
“Pay me?”
“Aye. I have you to thank for this idea, George. You were the one who told me that I didn’t need a wife. You said all I really need is a nursemaid. You’re right.” He straightened, drove his hand through his hair, and laughed a nervous and shaky laugh, the kind that sounded as if he had just escaped all the pains of hell. “To tell you the truth, it’s a relief. We don’t exactly see eye to eye. It would have made for one hell of a difficult marriage.”
He let loose a big sigh and looked directly at her. “So now, let’s come to an agreement, Let me think about this for a second . . . ” He was tapping one finger against his chin while he mouthed and grunted something that sounded like a pig doing arithmetic. “I’ve got it. Here’s my offer. I’ll pay you twenty-five dollars a month.”
“Are you really that stupid?”
“Okay.” He grinned, then gave her a knowing wink. “Can’t blame a fellow for trying.”
She relaxed. “Well, I should say so.” She shook out her skirt with a couple of sharp snaps, then raised her chin.
He was grinning at her.
She certainly wasn’t above a little humorous jest. But really. The very idea. It was so ludicrous. Georgina Bayard as a nursemaid. She gave in and laughed with him. When her laughter finally faded she shook her head at the silliness of it all. “That was, without a doubt, the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
“You’re right, George. You Bayards are just too sharp for me.”
She was still laughing.
“I’ll double my offer. Fifty dollars a month and you can have Sundays off.”
Her laughter stopped as abruptly as a train wreck. Was he really that stupid? She examined his expression, searched it for a long time to see if he was doing this to goad her. His usual approach.
“Of course you’ll want me to deduct your bail from the first month’s pay. I know how proud you Bayards are, George. You wouldn’t want to owe me anything.” He looked at her as if he had just given her the best gift in the world. He stuck out his hand.
She stared at it as if it were a dead herring.
“Now, George. Don’t get sly. I can’t go any higher on your salary, so don’t think you can wheedle more money out of me. After all, I’m being very generous.”
Wheedle? She just sat there staring at his outstretched hand and wishing she had an axe.
It took her a very long time to find a calm and controlled voice. “You want to pay me fifty dollars a month to be a nursemaid to your children.”
“Aye.” He walked over and gave her a hard slap on the back. “That makes for the perfect business alliance.”
That m
akes me a slave.
“Get up now so we can get to bed.” He paused, then added in a pointed rush, “In separate rooms. I don’t want you to get confused like Amy did. You’ll not have to worry about your virtue now that our relationship is master and servant. You know . . . all business.”
Servant? He all but dragged her out of the chair and up the stairs. He stopped in front of a room and opened the door. She looked inside.
It was the size of her closet. Her two valises sat on the floor and covered most of it. The floor appeared bare from what she could see of it and the room was musty and smelled old and unused.
“I’ll need to get up early and ride over to the other side of the island. I have to get Fergus to bring Kirsty and Graham back first thing in the morning. The sooner the better.”
She looked up. Besides breathing, looking up was the only thing she could manage at the moment. Her feet were lead, her arms numb, and her jaw felt as if it were locked together.
“You’ll need to keep a sharp eye on those little devils of mine. Especially on their schooling. I’m certain you Bayards had the best education all that money you used to have could buy. That’s a real good thing too, because I can’t hire a tutor for them until at least spring.” Then he turned around and sauntered away whistling.
Chapter 40
If you want something more than anything,
be prepared to stake everything.
—Georgina Bayard’s advice
What the hell are you doing in there?”
