Cinders to Satin

by Fern Michaels

  As he walked around the back of the house, he was reminded of the house on Todt Hill with the ivy growing up the east wall and trailing between the diamond-shaped window panes. In summer it appeared cool and welcoming. He longed for the house on the hill and for the carefree days of youth. Rossiter nearly laughed aloud at the thought. His youth? When had he come to feel so old, so used?

  Rounding the back of the house and climbing the steps to the service porch, he saw the door suddenly swing open. “Master Rossiter!” Lena’s eyes registered shock as she faced him.

  He smiled engagingly. “It’s cold out here, Lena. Can I come in for a cup of your coffee?”

  Inside the warm kitchen, Rossiter wrapped Lena in his embrace. He didn’t think it possible, but she squeezed him harder than he squeezed her. She seemed so happy to see him. She fussed over him, taking his coat and brown beaver hat, hanging it on the hook behind the pantry door. Motioning for him to sit at her table, she set out a jug of cream and a server of sugar, along with a plate of freshly baked cookies. The coffee was hot and freshly brewed.

  When the social amenities were over, the inquiries about everyone’s health and regrets about little Mary, Rossiter leaned back, a large sugar cookie in his hand. Would Lena bring up the subject of Callie, or should he? While he debated his question, he let his eyes stray around the homey kitchen. Lena’s influence in the room brought a familiar feeling of security. A cheery fire snapped and crackled, and a yellow cat dozed on Lena’s own high-backed rocker. The wooden service table was polished to a high sheen and held jars of preserves and pungent carrots from the root cellar together with rough-skinned potatoes and fragrant bunches of herbs. Lena must be planning a hearty stew, he thought, his mouth watering when he remembered her tasty dish. Even though it was early in the day, she had already made a rhubarb pie. The window sills and shelves over the tabletops held pots of herbs and spices and green-leafed plants. “I see you’ve brought the plants from Todt Hill,” Rossiter said, striving to break the silence.

  “They were mine, all grown from seedlings. I brought them with me,” Lena said defensively.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know you didn’t, Master Rossiter, and I shouldn’t have snapped like that. I do like some of my own things about me. You know the feeling, I’m sure. Something to call your own.”

  Rossiter nodded, sipping from his cup. When he replaced it on the tabletop, he faced her directly. “Lena, do you know where Callie is?”

  There it was, the question she’d been dreading ever since Rossiter appeared at the door. There he was, sitting at her table, munching his cookie, just the way he did back on the hill. But they weren’t on the hill anymore. Time had passed and so had water under the bridge. Things were changed, even Rossiter himself was different. Oh, he looked like the boy she remembered, handsome and strong and golden, but there was an emptiness in his eyes that Lena didn’t like, a kind of listlessness. Or was it defeat? She didn’t like the anxious expression he wore or the way he kept kneading his fists. What right did he have coming back now to find Callie? An imp of Satan perched on her shoulder and whispered in her ear. Perhaps if Callie and Rossiter found each other, old MacDuff would come back to rub her back at night. Angrily Lena shook her gray head. She didn’t need the likes of MacDuff cluttering up her life at this late date. All she needed was her yellow cat who purred in her arms as she rocked with her cuppa tea and the few drops of brandy she alloted herself each. evening.

  “Is something wrong, Lena? It’s as though I just told you the house was on fire.”

  “Is it now?” Lena hedged. There was no help for it; she had to answer the young man. She might as well do it and get it over with. She couldn’t lie; she wouldn’t.

  “You know, Master Rossiter, you should have written to the girl. It was a terrible thing you did, going off and leaving her without so much as a wave of your hand. She wrote you, I happen to know, and you should have answered.”

  “Lena, I never received a letter from Callie. I know I should have written, but Mamán had me . . . it isn’t important. I’m to blame. I’ll never forgive myself for not being here for Mary’s funeral, but it was weeks before I learned about her death. Mamán and Papá had already separated.”

  How miserable the boy looked. That was the problem, he was still a boy. His long absence had only aged him in years and had nothing to do with maturity. “Well, I don’t know why you didn’t receive a letter. I myself saw Callie walk to the mailbox and raise the flag to hail the postman.”

  “I was moving around quite a lot—Boston, Chicago, and Minnesota—”

  “I suppose that would explain it.” Lena’s tone was doubtful. She wouldn’t have put it past Anne Powers to have waylaid the letter, though none of them had thought about it at the time.

  Rossiter’s expression brightened for the first time since entering the kitchen. “It’s nice to know Callie took the time to write me. Where is she, Lena? I’d like to see her.”

  “What if she doesn’t want to see you? Have you thought of that? Callie has made a life for herself now, and do you think it’s wise for you to disturb her?”

  Rossiter was stunned. “Why wouldn’t she want to see me?” he asked incredulously. “What new life? Housemaids don’t make new lives. They simply continue to work. Their lives belong to the people who sponsor them.”

  If Lena had bit into a lemon, her words couldn’t have been more sour. “Is that the way you see it, Master Rossiter?”

  “Yes, that’s the way I see it. Callie will want to see me. I know she will. I also know you know where she is, so will you please tell me?”

  Lena narrowed her eyes. “The last I heard she was living in a furnished apartment on Fulton Street in the city. I know she moved, and I don’t have the address.”

  “Why was she living in a rooming house, and why did she move? I know you know, Lena.”

  “I heard it was because her husband couldn’t pay the rent, and they were evicted.”

  “What husband?” Rossiter was stunned. Callie couldn’t be married. It was a joke, a cruel joke. “Evicted? Only petty crooks and drunkards get evicted from their lodgings. Callie is none of those. Good God, you aren’t telling me she married a drunken thief, are you?”

  Lena said nothing.

  “Who did she marry, Lena?”

  “Hugh MacDuff.”

  Rossiter gasped. “That’s impossible. Callie would never marry that old man. You were supposed to marry him. Why didn’t you?” he shouted as he banged his fist on the wooden table. “Why?”

  “Because your mother tossed her out on her ear when she found out she was going to have your baby. That’s why, Master Rossiter.”

  Rossiter ran his fingers around the neck of his shirt and tie. It was hard to breathe. Surely he hadn’t heard what Lena said. Surely it was all a bad dream, and he would wake any minute now in his room that was floor-to-ceiling with canvases. It had to be a bad dream. “Baby? You said Callie was going to have my baby? How do you know that it—”

  “Don’t be saying it, Master Rossiter, not if you want to walk out of here on your own two feet. You asked me, and I told you. If you don’t like my answers, you shouldn’t have come here to ask me. There’s no reason for me to lie to you. What would you have the girl do? Where could she go? Your own mother tossed her out like trash on a Saturday morning. How was she to survive?”

  Rossiter dropped his head into his hands. He wanted to cry. Callie couldn’t have had a baby. Lord, she was little more than a child herself. Oh, God, what had he done?

  “Are you sure you don’t know where she is?” Rossiter asked.

  “I have no idea. New York would be my guess. I think I would have heard from Callie or Hugh if they’d stayed around here. None of the men mention Hugh at all. He did the girl a favor, Master Rossiter. There was no one else to take care of her, to help her. You remember that.”

  “I have to find her. The baby, where was it born? How old is it?”

  “The bab
e should be about a year old by now. I have no idea if it was a boy or a girl. I told you I lost track of them when they left the island. Best to leave things alone, Master Rossiter. Callie doesn’t need your kind of trouble.”

  “What exactly is my kind of trouble, Lena?” Rossiter snarled.

  Lena didn’t lower her eyes but stared at him till he dropped his gaze.

  “Thank you for the coffee and cookies,” Rossiter intoned, retrieving his own hat and coat from behind the pantry door. “When I find her, I’ll be sure to give her your regards.”

  “You do that, young man.” Lena’s voice was tight and clipped. She brushed fitfully at a tear that gathered in her eye. Damn Rossiter Powers. Damn him to hell. Quickly she blessed herself and began hacking at a bunch of carrots. It wasn’t until she was finished that she realized what she’d done. Each time the knife had come down, she’d leaned on it, smashing the orange rounds. She stared at the mess and then brushed it into the waste pail. Men were such rotters. Just to prove the point, she stuck out her foot and gave the yellow cat a not-too-gentle kick. “Snoring and lazing all the day. Get on with catching mice for your dinner because I’m not about to feed you!”

  The yellow tomcat let out a yowl and scuttled off for his secondary sleeping place. Lena’s bed.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Outside in the biting cold, Rossiter leaned against the newel post at the end of the drive. He felt as though he’d been kicked in the belly. Callie married. Callie with his baby. Callie with Hugh MacDuff. How was he to find her? To find his child? Byrch Kenyon might know. Like hell, he thought. It would be a cold day in hell before he asked Kenyon for anything that included the time of day. By God, he would find Callie on his own if it meant searching day and night, twenty-three hours out of every twenty-four.

  Early the next morning, Rossiter left his hotel and took a hansom to Fulton Street, a shabby neighborhood by any standards. All night long he had thought of Callie, remembering the light of adoration in her eyes each time she looked at him. He needed that now, that love, that approval. He needed to be back in her life; he wanted to see his child.

  Starting at the corner of Trinity Place and working his way toward South Street, Rossiter knocked on every door, inquiring after the McDuffs. It was a long, tiring day, and Rossiter had just about given up hope when he decided he would try one more tenement house before calling it a day. Knocking on the basement apartment door, Rossiter waited. A burly man answered, a grizzled beard growing on thick jowls.

  “What is it? What d’you want?”

  Rossiter made his explanations.

  “Yeah, I know ’em, all right. Skipped out on the rent, they did, and took half the furniture with ’em. MacDuff was a drunk, and that little wife of his was big with child and worked her fingers to the bone to keep the old man in liquor. I was on the point of evicting them, hadn’t paid their rent. You let one get away with it and all the others try the same thing,” the landlord complained. “I’m a business man, not a charitable organization. You want charity, go to church, I always says:”

  “How much did they owe you?” Rossiter asked through clenched teeth.

  Smelling the money in the gentleman’s pocket, the sour-faced landlord turned crafty. “Twenty dollars.”

  “More like ten, and that’s nine dollars too much for this sty.” Rossiter handed over the crisp bills. “There’s ten more like it if you can tell me where they went. If you’re thinking of lying to me, I’ll come back and beat it out of you.”

  The man shook his head. “They just left one evening. I wasn’t home, else I’d have saved my furniture. Decent, hard-working people don’t skip on their rent. I liked the wife. She was a hard worker. Doing all that ironing and him drinking up her wages. It was a sin is what it was. I ain’t seen nor heard a word about ’em since. If you’ve a mind to part with that ten spot, I could be telling you where you might try looking. I ain’t saying there’s where you’ll find them, mind you. But it’ll give you a place to start. When you’re scraping the bottom the way those two were, the only place left is Shantytown.” Rossiter handed over the bill and watched it disappear as quickly as the first.

  For days Rossiter walked the streets, asking questions. In the rabbit warren of Shantytown he soon gave up after his first try. If anyone did know anything of the MacDuffs, they were keeping it to themselves. This handsome lad with his fancy clothes had no business asking questions about one of their own. One old woman took a broom to his back, shouting and screaming that she would set the dogs on him if he ever showed his face again. Callie couldn’t be living in this pig sty. Not his Callie. The stench made him retch as he ran up the narrow, winding lanes. It wasn’t long before he was lost and unable to get his bearings. He was going to have to to throw away his fine leather boots when he got back to his hotel. God alone knew what he had been stepping in. Eventually he made his way out of the dim labyrinth of crooked alleys. He heaved a sigh of relief. He was certain that no matter how poor Callie was, no matter how desperate, she would never consent to live in such a hovel. Somehow, some way, she would find something better than this rat trap.

  Days went by as Rossiter searched out neighborhoods, describing Callie and Hugh to anyone who would listen. It wasn’t until he stopped by a green grocer’s shop and spoke to one Dillis McGovern that he felt he was close to finding the answer he wanted. It wasn’t what the man said but what he didn’t say that convinced Rossiter he was right. McGovern denied any knowledge of the MacDuffs. His eyes narrowed, and he seemed to be holding his breath, waiting for Rossiter’s next question. “MacDuff’s wife is my sister,” Rossiter lied. “I have to find her. My mother is very ill and wants to see her.” From there he concocted a story that would have made men stronger than McGovern cry. But the man held firm, denying that he knew anything about the MacDuffs.

  Goddamn Irish clods. They stuck together like glue, Rossiter thought nastily. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was getting closer to Callie. If McGovern did indeed know Callie and Hugh, it might behoove him to concentrate his efforts in the immediate vicinity. Sooner or later someone would lead him in the right direction.

  Another week passed with Rossiter canvassing the neighborhoods from morning to dark. He had never realized what a closemouthed lot the Irish were. Not one of them bought his story about Callie being his sister. Eventually he discarded the myth and said he was from a lawyer’s office searching for Callie in order to bestow a small inheritance. He didn’t do any better with that story and soon gave it up. He then switched tactics and started asking around for Hugh MacDuff, saying he needed a handyman and he had heard that MacDuff was available. He got snorts and smirks for his efforts. So much for the Irish looking for work.

  He wasn’t going to give up. Sooner or later he would find Callie. Sooner or later she was going to be there when he least expected it.

  It was late in the afternoon when Rossiter was walking down the street, peering into windows and generally paying no mind to anything except his deep, dark thoughts. If a group of running, laughing children hadn’t forced him off the sidewalk, he wouldn’t have fallen against the doorway of Sylvia Levy’s Tea Room. Callie was just leaving for the day, her apron folded neatly over her arm. Her thoughts were just as dark and deep as Rossiter’s as she remembered all the washing and ironing she still had to do when she got back to the shanty. If she was lucky, she might be able to spend a few minutes with little Rory before it was time to put him to bed. Lord, she was tired. She had been on her feet all day, and she still had a good seven hours to go before she could fall exhausted into a light sleep. With Rory’s cough she had to remain alert so he didn’t choke while sleeping. All the medicine and all the warm tea and honey didn’t seem to be helping.

  Callie suddenly looked up, expecting an apology from the stranger who had nearly knocked her off her feet. In that instant she felt as though the breath had been driven from her body. The neatly folded apron fell to the ground unnoticed. It couldn’t be, not after all this time.
But it was. “Rossiter!” was all she could manage to choke. It seemed the world had tilted sideways, leaving her dangling somewhere in space. The two years that had passed evaporated like the mists over the harbor.

  His arms reached out to her, holding her steady, drawing her into his embrace. Callie felt her cheek fall against his shoulder. Her thoughts whirled, and her heart fluttered wildly. She felt as though she had finally come to a safe harbor. “Callie, Callie! You don’t know how I’ve searched for you. How much you mean to me!” His words were fast, urgent; she could feel the pounding of his heart beneath his greatcoat. “Callie, Lena told me about the child. I didn’t know, I swear it! No one knew where you’d gone, but now I’ve found you again.”

  Callie tried to speak but the words wouldn’t come. He was here, at last. He was telling her things, offering explanations. All her dreams, her prayers, were answered. All the hard work, all the grief and worry would come to an end. Or would it? Callie tilted her chin, looking into Rossiter’s eyes. He was the same, his eyes were the same. In his face she saw the face of her son, his son, Rory. “You have a son, Rossiter. I’ve christened him Rory.”

  Rossiter drew a deep breath, holding her tight, so tightly he thought he could make her a part of himself. He couldn’t lose her again. “Callie, where have you been? How could I have lost you?”

  Confusion pounded through Callie’s brain. This was her dream, finding Rossiter again, telling him about his son. But somehow the script was all wrong. He was asking her questions that had plagued her for nearly two years, but they didn’t seem important any longer. What was wrong with her? Was it just the shock of seeing him again? She had dreamed about finding him this way; she had thought she would fly into his arms. Instead she found herself pulling away, avoiding his eyes.