Newcomer

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  Gordon skidded to a halt and glared at the man. “I’d be careful about spouting that kind of nonsense, Mr. Tripp. If you drive business away, you can expect serious legal trouble.”

  “It’s worth the risk.” Tripp clasped his hands before him as though he were praying. “I worked for the Chambers Excursion and Sailing Company until a month ago. When I discovered Randall and his minions were dishonest and confronted him, he dismissed me.”

  A disgruntled employee.

  With a sigh, Gordon stopped. “All right, let’s have this out here and now. Randall dismissed you, so you want to get even with him.”

  “No, sir. He’s a nice man and a fair manager.” Tripp’s gray eyes looked straight into Gordon’s. “But he’s dishonest, sir. He shows expenses for boats being repaired, but there haven’t been any repairs made on those boats all season.”

  Five

  Marigold decided to let Gordon see to the girls’ dinner. Though he’d tried to hide it, she’d noticed the softening of his hard features in response to Ruby’s eagerness and Beryl’s condescension. He had even smiled once or twice, and little gold lights, rather like trapped sunbeams, had danced in his eyes. If the girls won him over, perhaps he wouldn’t leave.

  “And you can?” She scowled at her reflection in a silver bowl that stood on the foyer table.

  When the Chamberses had been alive, that bowl overflowed with invitations to dinners and picnics, fishing excursions for Mr. Chambers, and shopping outings for Mrs. Chambers. Now its spotless surface, gleaming without so much as a speck of paper, let alone a letter from Lucian in response to the three letters a week she’d been sending him, left a lump of lead deep in Marigold’s belly. A house that once rang with laughter was now far too quiet.

  “Yes,” she whispered, “I can leave.”

  But to what? She’d told Gordon Chambers she had somewhere to go. She did. At least she had a home with loving parents and a sister she got along with like a cherished friend. That sister, however, was getting married in two—

  “Yoicks.” Marigold’s hands flew to her hair, pressing it flat.

  She needed to tell Gordon Chambers immediately that she would have to be gone for a few days. Well. Perhaps she should stay home then, mend her fences with Lucian, force Gordon Chambers to stay with his nieces.

  Mending matters with her fiancé should be a priority. She supposed he had reason to be distraught, when she’d made the girls her priority and postponed her wedding from the end of June until the beginning of October. She was distraught. She wouldn’t be the first McCorkle daughter to marry. She wouldn’t get to keep the family heirloom that was still hers, since she was the first sister to become engaged—if she could still consider herself engaged. Thanks to her father’s machinations in sending her off to be a servant for a year—to remind her of her family roots, to remind her she was not the gilded social princess she’d been acting like, much to her shame—and now her loyalty to Ruby and Beryl, she had probably lost that privilege unless something changed between her and Lucian soon—like receiving a letter from him saying he regretted his harsh words back in June—Marigold’s plain, shy sister Rose would bear the honor of displaying the goldfinch bottle in her home.

  Thanks to Gordon Chambers, too.

  Hearing him in the library, Marigold continued through the foyer and down the short hall leading to the book-lined room. The door stood half open, framing him in an oblong of dark wood, with a backdrop of light from the windows. His back was to her—a long, straight back topped by broad, sturdy shoulders. At that moment, those shoulders were bent just a little, as though they bore a burden too heavy even for them, and his head was bowed, either in prayer or over some object he held.

  As quietly as she could, Marigold slipped away. She could wait to tell him she was leaving for home in two weeks. If ever a man appeared as though he needed a few minutes alone, Gordon Chambers did in that glimpse through the half-open door.

  For the first time since Gordon Chambers walked into his brother’s house, Marigold considered his feelings in all of this. He’d lost his only brother, his twin. He had the responsibility of two little girls, though he was a bachelor who had lived on ships or in mining camps for nearly twelve years, and his personal plans had been interrupted. Even if he didn’t intend to stow the girls in a boarding school like horses kept along a family’s travel routes then ride off for the far-flung wilds of Alaska, his burdens must be numerous. He had to take care of the business for one thing. Surely he knew nothing of ledgers and balance sheets, supplies and boat repairs.

  Well, maybe he knew about boats. But the rest? Marigold expected she knew more of accounting than Gordon Chambers did. She’d helped her father in their business during her summers away from school. She could add numbers faster in her head than someone with one of those new adding machines.

  And as for his knowledge of children? Of course he had little. Yet he possessed something better than experience in taking care of little ones.

  Kindness.

  The way he’d treated his nieces since his arrival demonstrated that, for all his neglect of the past three months, the man’s heart held tenderness for the little girls he’d never seen before.

  “So how could he abandon them so abruptly?” Marigold slapped her fist into the palm of her other hand and headed up the steps.

  At that moment, she was abandoning the girls for too long. She’d come downstairs to fetch Beryl’s book left in the front parlor and gotten distracted by the lack of mail. That wouldn’t do. The girls needed to keep up with their lessons, even if they weren’t in school. Beryl sailed through her arithmetic, but Ruby needed a great deal of assistance with learning addition and subtraction, especially subtraction.

  Gathering up the skirt of the gray gown she detested every morning she donned it to play nursemaid, as it made her skin too pale, Marigold raced up the steps to the schoolroom. Her feet pounded a little too loudly on the treads, and both girls greeted her in the corridor with censorious expressions.

  “You aren’t supposed to run in the house, Miss Marigold,” Ruby chided.

  “Do you have to write an essay about not running in the house?” Beryl asked. “You made me do that the last time I ran up the steps.”

  “You’re right, I did.” Marigold rested a hand on each girl’s shoulder and turned them to their work. “And I will do so, too.”

  “Why were you gone for so long?” Ruby plopped down in her miniature chair before the low table. “I thought maybe you got lost.”

  “She wouldn’t get lost in the house.” Beryl remained standing, her hands on her nonexistent hips. “Where’s my book?”

  Marigold caught her breath. “Your book. I forgot it.”

  Beryl sighed.

  “I’ll get it for you when we go downstairs for lunch.” Marigold gestured to the other small chair at the table. “Sit down. We need to finish the math.”

  “I finished mine.” Ruby held up her slate. “Beryl says I got two of them wrong, but I don’t think so.”

  “Of course you don’t think so.” Beryl settled onto her chair and took Ruby’s slate. “You wouldn’t put down wrong answers if you thought they were wrong.”

  Marigold couldn’t argue with that logic. But she couldn’t let Beryl ridicule her younger sister, whose lower lip was trembling.

  “Beryl, I will be the judge of Ruby’s work. You need to be a little older to teach school.”

  “And get your answers all right all the time,” Ruby added.

  “No one is perfect.” Marigold perched on the edge of an adult-sized chair and suppressed a sigh.

  Perhaps she didn’t know any more about children than did Gordon Chambers.

  “Except for Jesus,” she pointed out. “He was perfect.”

  “Can we read another Bible story after arithmetic?” Ruby asked.

  “Yes.” Marigold balanced Ruby’s slate on her knees and examined the sums.

  She did indeed have two problems wrong. The same kind of prob
lems.

  She was transposing numbers, writing eighteen instead of eighty-one and seventy-two instead of twenty-seven. The problem of nine. Too difficult for her, or a common difficulty with numbers that flipped around too easily?

  Her grip tightened on the slate, and her jaw ached. She wasn’t a teacher. She never intended to be a teacher. She wanted to be a wife, a mother, an artist good enough to draw designs for her husband’s glasswork.

  Instead, she was sitting in a stifling schoolroom smelling of chalk dust and cleaning polish. She was teaching two little girls who weren’t her own, however much she cared about them. She’d stayed because their uncle couldn’t be bothered to come home in a timely manner, demonstrating he didn’t care about them, no matter how kind he’d been that morning.

  “Miss Marigold?” Ruby’s squeaky voice cut through Marigold’s anger. “Are you going to cry?”

  “Not now.” Marigold made herself smile as she erased the two wrong numbers. “Let’s start over with these two numbers. Beryl, you may go get your book and read until we’re finished.”

  “May I sit on the window seat?” Beryl asked.

  “Yes, you may.” Marigold slipped to her knees so she was eye level with Ruby. “I think if you write down every number, you can keep them straight. . . .”

  She and Ruby worked through the math problems until the child got all her answers right. Then the three of them went onto the back porch, where a cool breeze off the ocean rustled through the leaves of the sycamores shading the backyard. Marigold read from the book of Acts of the Apostles, where Paul is shipwrecked. She loved these times of reading scripture to the children. Ruby listened without sucking on her fingers, and Beryl made no derisive comments.

  After a few minutes, Mrs. Cromwell joined them. When Marigold finished reading, they enjoyed lunch in the kitchen then returned to the schoolroom for reading lessons. Both girls liked books and read well according to their ages, and the time passed quickly.

  Free to help Mrs. Cromwell with housework while the children played, Marigold allowed herself a sigh of relief, took the back steps two at a time, and missed the last step.

  ❧

  Gordon caught the nursemaid’s shoulders an instant before she slammed into him. Her nose connected with his chest, despite his efforts, and she reared back, one hand cupping the appendage.

  “So solly,” she mumbled from behind her hand. “I never expected—I shouldn’t have been going so fast.”

  “Are you all right?” He tugged at her wrist to remove her hand and inspect the damage.

  A slightly red, tip-tilted nose emerged. For a heartbeat, he experienced an odd urge to kiss it and make it better. But she was his nieces’ governess, not one of them. A man didn’t kiss the nose of a serving maid, even if she neither acted like nor, come to that, looked like anyone who had previously worked in the Chambers household.

  Except for one, dear, sweet Louisa—

  He jerked his hand away. “No blood, no damage.”

  “No, sir.” She tucked her hair behind her ears, dislodging a pin. “Oh, dear.” She stooped to retrieve it.

  He stooped to retrieve it.

  Their heads collided.

  “I’m so sorry.” She dropped onto the top step and buried her face in her hands. Her ridiculous hair tumbled and bobbed around her face. Her shoulders shook.

  Gordon rocked back on his heels. “You aren’t. . .” He cleared his throat. “This is nothing to cry about, Miss McCorkle.”

  “Not crying.” She lifted her head. Although tears starred her lashes, her eyes danced with merriment. “I didn’t know butting heads was literal.”

  “Nor I.” Gordon’s lips twitched into a full smile. His cheeks felt stiff and unnatural, bunched up and creased from the grin. Yet how did a body look at the absurd excuse for a governess or nursemaid and not come close to laughing aloud? “But what are we about to butt heads on, miss?”

  Marigold sobered. “I was intending to speak to you about the girls sometime today, but this is when I usually help Mrs. Cromwell clean the house.”

  “Clean? What needs to be cleaned?” Gordon stood and offered Marigold his hand to help her rise.

  She possessed rather elegant hands, slim and narrow with long, straight fingers. They were hands that should gleam white and feel as smooth as silk, but they held a hint of redness in their rough texture. Perhaps the abrasiveness against his own work-hardened hands explained the odd tingle he experienced as she rested her fingers in his palm and surged to her feet. A tingle and warmth. His mind conjured a fuse smoldering before it burst into flame and ignited the gunpowder that would blast another pile of rock apart to expose the precious metal inside.

  He jerked away from her. “I have an appointment with the banker and my brother’s attorney in a few minutes.” He spoke with too much sharpness to dispel the ludicrous image from his brain. “We’ll have to talk about the girls tomorrow. I’ll know more of their financial situation at that time.”

  “But I want you to start overseeing their dinner instead of me.” Marigold looked directly into his eyes. “They need to be with family now that they have one.”

  “I am hardly family.” The image had exploded inside him, leaving the familiar hole that talk of family opened in his heart.

  “You’re their uncle.”

  “My brother was complicit in our father turning me out. That isn’t family to me.”

  “Your brother made you their guardian in his will.”

  “He had little choice.”

  “He could have—” She snapped her lips shut like a clamshell closing around its inhabitant.

  Gordon narrowed his eyes. “Who else?”

  “No one is better than family. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s laundry to do.” She started to push past him.

  He stepped in front of the door to the kitchen. “You didn’t answer my question, Miss McCorkle.”

  “No, sir.” She lowered her gaze to somewhere below his chin, as he was used to servants doing. “What Mr. Gerald Chambers decided to do with his daughters upon his and his wife’s death is none of my concern. But I do need to tell you that I must be gone for several days in two weeks’ time.” Her words tumbled out in a rush as though she expected him to interrupt her. “My sister is getting married, and I am in the wedding, so you cannot leave then. I will send the girls down to dinner at six o’clock.” Speech delivered, she stepped around him and slipped into the kitchen full of the aroma of roasting chicken.

  “I’m not sure I’ll be back—” The door swung shut on his protest.

  He knew he should open the door again and dismiss her on the spot. If she wanted to be at her sister’s wedding, he would give her plenty of time to get there.

  But of course he wouldn’t do that. No, he couldn’t do that. He needed her here and she knew it. She knew it enough to take advantage of the truth and say whatever she liked, daring him to send her packing, as she deserved.

  He supposed he could find another female to look after the girls, perhaps not keep them up with their schoolwork, if they even needed to in August, but make certain they were looked after and dressed neatly and washed behind their ears, all those minute details of children’s lives, whatever they were. But he needed someone to care for them in a different way, the way Miss Marigold McCorkle cared for them—with love. He certainly wasn’t capable of doing so to these offspring of his brother, who now possessed the inheritance that should have been at least half his.

  All right, he would give Marigold her way. He would oversee the girls’ dinner. He would stay until after she returned from her sister’s wedding. He would stay until after the business sold.

  If the business sold.

  Thoughts of Dennis Tripp and his accusations replaced thoughts of Marigold McCorkle, keeping Gordon’s mind occupied all the way to the bank.

  The attorney met him there. With a clerk writing notes and dispensing various documents, Gordon spent two hours in the overcrowded office, with too much furnitu
re and a ceiling fan that moved the air too slowly to do more than waft the odor of the macassar oil slicking back the banker’s thinning hair into Gordon’s face. He found himself growing drowsy as the attorney droned on, then the banker took his turn, then the attorney again. In the end, he learned exactly what he expected to learn—his brother had done well. Despite the financial panic of a half-dozen years earlier, his brother had grown their father’s investments. The excursion boat company prospered in the months it was open, even managing to take a few tours out in finer weather throughout the year. Gerald had expanded the boats to making emergency runs across Delaware Bay to Philadelphia, for another profit source.

  “Have you heard anything about a man named Dennis Tripp?” Gordon asked.

  Both men shook their heads.

  “He seems to be a disgruntled employee—former employee,” Gordon explained. “He accosted me on the boardwalk this morning and told me that the manager is cheating the business by making false accounting entries about repairs.”

  “I wouldn’t believe Tripp,” the attorney said. “Lawrence Randall has been a faithful employee for nearly eight years.”

  “But feel free to look into the matter yourself, if you like,” the banker added. “I can arrange to hire some accountants.”

  “No, thank you, I’ll do it myself.” Gordon noted the time. “I need to leave soon, but first, is it all right if I sell the boating business? And invest the money for the girls, of course.”

  The banker and attorney exchanged glances.

  The latter cleared his throat. “I must not have made myself clear, Mr. Chambers. You can do whatever you like with the boating business. Your brother left it to you.”

  Six

  Marigold set her only good hat atop hair she had pomaded into submission and began to tilt the brim first one way then the other.

  “Miss Marigold,” Beryl called from the doorway, “we’re going to be late for church if you don’t hurry.”