Now she was nothing but a passably pretty spinster with no prospects.
Her gut tightened. Her chest tightened. She felt as though someone had lit Independence Day fireworks inside her, and they were about to blow up.
She wanted to rush upstairs and start packing. If she slipped away early enough, she could catch the train without seeing Gordon Chambers another time. He could send her wages to her. Perhaps, if she went quietly, he would write her a reference so she could find other work, perhaps work that would take her west to someplace out of the way.
Like Gordon Chambers wanted?
For the first time since hearing of the prodigal Chambers brother, Marigold understood the lure of open spaces without man to interfere in one’s life. It would be refreshing, not in the least judgmental—
Lonely.
The fireworks exploded, leaving Marigold hollow inside; a gaping wound of loneliness filled in the space where her heart had been at the notion of going day after day without people around her to love and need her. She was so fond of the girls.
She loved the girls so much; she couldn’t run away from them. She couldn’t leave them at all. Yes, she had to go to her sister’s wedding, endure the stares, the whispers, the pitying glances, but she must return, must persuade Gordon that he couldn’t do without her.
She must make herself indispensable yet again.
During a restless night, in which she slept little and paced her room a great deal, she figured out a small action she could take to help him.
He needed to be certain that Lawrence Randall was honest, despite that single warning by the former employee. He had good reason to wonder. Dennis Tripp was a Christian man. Quiet and devout, he never missed church, praised God for having a purpose even after he lost his position, always helped those in need despite his own meager income.
She would take a page from his book, so to speak, and would go over the ledgers she’d seen on Gordon’s desk. He might have been a supercargo for a merchantman, but Marigold could wave her degree and course work in math from Vassar and all the accounting she had done for her father’s business interests.
Before dawn on Monday morning, she washed, dressed, and slipped downstairs. With a cup of tea at her elbow, she began to go through the ledgers. The oldest one lay open on Gordon’s desk. A glance said it was all right and that his calculations added up with the numbers in the book. Marigold decided to recheck his calculations. And he was correct. Everything added up. The only odd thing she noticed, something Gordon couldn’t know, was a number of names of employees she didn’t recognize. Not that she would know everyone in Cape May with so many people coming to the town for the summer work. Still, apparently Dennis Tripp wasn’t the only employee who had lost his position soon after Gerald Chambers’ death. She should point this out to Gordon: How many names had been rubbed out and added in elsewhere so that following the thread of who worked when grew bewildering, even for her. First, she would look into it herself.
She rose from the desk, slipped upstairs to ensure that the girls still slept and to collect her hat, then left the house. The back gate led her into the alley. From there, she cut through other backstreets to keep her off the boardwalk as long as possible. In minutes, she stood outside the boathouse ready to pounce upon—or at the least, enter with—the first employee to reach the office and unlock the door.
She leaned against the portal and studied the boats bobbing on the ebb tide. Mist blurred their outlines, making them look like crafts floating out of dreams. Despite the warmth of the morning, Marigold shivered. On just such a day, the Chamberses went for a sail and returned on the tide after a sudden, violent storm, their boat wrecked, their bodies battered and bruised.
Marigold prayed the fog didn’t portend another storm but merely a rain shower later that might break the stale humidity of the air. If the fog continued, the excursions would be canceled and the boathouse empty of all but employees.
And if Dennis Tripp was correct, she could be in danger.
“Ha,” Marigold laughed aloud. She was being fanciful, ridiculous. Nonetheless, she wondered if she should leave, point out the changed employees to Gordon, and go about the business for which she had been hired—tending to the girls.
Hands tucked under her arms, she turned from the doorway. A shadow moved across the sand, his features indistinct in the murky light. He headed straight for the office. Keys already jingled in his hand. She couldn’t leave without him seeing her. So she waited, waited until he drew near enough for her to recognize him as one of the clerks. Good. Mr. Randall would be harder to persuade.
“I’ve come to find out about the influx of new employees here—for Mr. Chambers, of course.” She spoke a little too loudly, quickly, to take the man by surprise. “You have records on these men, of course.”
He jumped and dropped the keys.
Marigold retrieved them. “Allow me, sir.” She fitted the brass key into the lock. It turned as though recently oiled—without sound or hitch.
“Miss, I can’t allow you—” The clerk snatched for the keys.
“Of course you can.” Marigold pushed open the door. “I’m on an errand for Mr. Chambers, the owner.” She scanned the room that never seemed to change. Dusty ledgers, inkstand desks, boxes of tickets. “Where can I find the most recent list of employees and when it changed?”
“You can’t until Mr. Randall returns.” The clerk wrung his hands. “Please, no one is supposed to be in here. I could lose my position.”
“I won’t tell, if you don’t. Where’s Mr. Randall?”
“Sleeping, like decent folks still are.”
Marigold raised her eyebrows. “Are you saying you’re not decent? If so, perhaps Mr. Chambers shouldn’t employ you.”
“Of course I’m decent.” The clerk’s flush glowed even in the dim light. “I am at work, as some of us should be.”
“I’m working, too.” Marigold smiled. “For Mr. Chambers. Those lists, please.”
She tucked the keys into her pocket and held out her hand.
“Miss, er—I don’t know of any lists or change of employees, Miss McCorkle.”
“Of course you do, Mr. Pollock. You’ve worked here for twenty years, I understand. Where are the lists? Or don’t you keep clear records of who works here and who doesn’t?”
“Of course we have clear records of employees. They’re in Mr. Randall’s office. So you see, I can’t get them for you.”
“Huh.” Marigold sidled past him and approached Randall’s office door.
Pollock scampered behind. “You cannot—”
Marigold twisted the knob. Locked. She drew out the keys. Pollock snatched for them.
“You wouldn’t harm a lady, would you, Mr. Pollock?”
“You’re a maid, not a lady.”
“Mr. Chambers would disagree with you on that score.” She fitted another key into the lock. Nothing. She tried a third key.
Click.
“Very good.” She pushed open the door.
Air smelling of tobacco and spirits smacked her in the face. She wrinkled her nose and headed for the dim shadow of the desk. Six books lay upon it.
Mr. Pollock charged forward and set himself between Marigold and the desk. “You cannot. We could both lose our positions.”
“I have nothing to lose, so do, please, step aside.” She strode around him, certain he wouldn’t outright lay hands on her. “And I’ll ensure that if Mr. Randall dismisses you that Mr. Chambers hires you back, unless you’re up to skulduggery here, of course.”
“Nothing of the kind, Miss McCorkle.”
The clerk’s lower lip stuck out and quivered like a child’s.
Marigold nearly backed down, but the man’s odd actions set the hairs on the back of her neck to prickling. She slipped around the desk and flipped open the top ledger at random, then she ruffled through some pages while the clerk spluttered and backed away. It didn’t look the same as the ones in Gordon’s office. It was far neater.
/> She snatched up both stacks of books. “Good day, Mr. Pollock. If Mr. Randall has any questions, he can come to the Chambers house.” Before the man decided to tackle her for the heavy volumes, Marigold trotted out the door.
“Miss,” Pollock called after her. “The keys.”
“Send someone for them,” she shouted back. “My hands are full.”
By the time she was halfway back to the Chambers house, her conscience pricked her as badly as her hackles. She shouldn’t have taken advantage of the old man, if he was innocent of any wrongdoing. He probably did need his position, and Randall was likely to dismiss him. Somehow, though, she would make things right. Gordon would make things right. He was the owner of the business, not Lawrence Randall. As for the keys, Pollock wouldn’t need them for a while. She would take them back later.
Despite telling herself nothing permanently bad would happen from her actions, she lugged her burden with a heavy heart. Perhaps this wasn’t the kind of “indispensable” Gordon would like. Perhaps he would prefer to see to matters himself.
Except he hadn’t seen to them very well himself.
Mouth set, mind prepared for any kind of argument from Gordon Chambers, Marigold strode into the house.
Mrs. Cromwell stood at the stove frying eggs. She gasped at sight of Marigold. “What are you doing with those books this early and in this fog?”
“I got them for Mr. Chambers.” Marigold continued through the kitchen and into the library.
To her relief, Gordon was nowhere around. She set the ledgers on the desk then raced upstairs. Though beginning to stir, the girls still slept. Marigold removed her hat and washed dust from the ledgers off her hands before she returned to the girls’ room and touched their shoulders to wake them up.
“No walk today,” she explained. “It’s too foggy and may rain soon.”
“Can we draw pictures?” Ruby asked.
“May we? Yes.”
“Big ones.” Beryl sat up, rubbing her eyes. “I want to draw big pictures if we can’t go outside.”
So Marigold worked out how they could create large pictures. After the girls ate breakfast, she glued several sheets of drawing paper together and hung them on the schoolroom wall low enough for Ruby to reach the top edge. Armed with colored chalks, the girls set to work. Marigold slipped downstairs in time to find Gordon entering the library. She paused in the doorway, not certain if she should tell him about the ledgers or let him discover them himself.
He could hardly miss them. They took up half the desk. Still, he didn’t go to the desk immediately. He drew back the draperies from the windows to reveal rain-streaked glass. For a moment, he bowed his head, his shoulders slumped. Not a good time to intrude on his privacy.
Marigold started to turn away.
“Wait!” he called to her.
She waited.
“Where are the girls?” he asked.
“In the schoolroom, drawing.”
“They’re all right alone?”
Marigold laughed. “Of course. They’re six and nine years old, not six and nine months old.”
“I didn’t know. . .” He sighed. “Please come in.”
Slowly, Marigold faced him. His eyes looked shadowed. Lines radiated from the corners of his mouth, and his jaw sported a lump of bunched muscle.
So he hadn’t been sleeping any better than she had.
“Miss McCorkle. Please sit down. We need to talk about replacing you.”
Marigold remained standing. “I won’t talk about replacing me. If you insist on doing so, then you will do so, but you’ve already told me to go, so I have nothing to lose by disobeying you.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I feel like a fool for not realizing all along you weren’t a regular serving girl. You have too much pride.”
“That’s precisely why I’m a serving girl. My father thought I needed to be humbled a bit.”
“It didn’t work, apparently,” came his dry response.
A reluctant smile tugged at her lips. “Not particularly. But right now—” Her throat closed. Her eyes blurred.
“Are you all right?” He took a step toward her.
She nodded.
“Good.” He strolled across the room and started around the desk. “After your sister’s wedding—what’s this?” He looked down at the ledgers.
“The ledgers Mr. Randall should have given you.”
Marigold’s tone held a hard edge that kept the tears at bay. “You didn’t notice because you started with the oldest ones, but these are newer.”
Gordon stared at her. “Dare I ask how you got these?”
“I walked in and took them. It’s not Mr. Pollock’s fault if Randall dismisses him.”
“I see.” He flipped open the first book. “Why did you bring these?”
“You need them. If Mr. Tripp is telling lies about the business, then he needs to be proven wrong, or he’ll ruin it. If Mr. Randall is in the wrong, then he needs to be stopped.”
“Yes, that’s why I’m going through the books, but why did you. . .involve yourself?”
“I like numbers.” She squared her shoulders. “I worked for my father for years and often found errors—” She lowered her gaze. “I’m boasting, aren’t I?”
“Yes.” He coughed. “And it may have gotten you into a pickle. If you like numbers so much, then perhaps you should be the one going through the ledgers, not I.”
“I already have. The names of employees—skippers on the boats, deckhands, and so on—confused me, so I got these from Randall.”
“He gave them to you?” Gordon looked dubious.
Marigold shrugged. “No one stopped me from taking them.”
“I see.” He tightened the corners of his lips, but one corner twitched suspiciously. “You don’t want to continue with dusty old books, though.”
“It’s such a rainy day, and the temperature is dropping, so going through books is a perfect way to pass the time when the girls don’t need me.”
“I thought females read novels on cold, rainy days.”
“No, sir, I’d rather read Adam Smith.”
“Wealth of Nations?” He shuddered. “I think I’d prefer to read a novel.” He smiled.
Marigold smiled. “Let me see if the girls are all right, then I’ll get to work.”
The girls were happily coloring in leaves on the trees they’d drawn leaning so far over a body of water they looked about to topple into the stream at any moment.
“You should make their reflection in the water,” Marigold suggested. “Now, if you need me, I’ll be in the library.”
The girls scarcely acknowledged her presence as they proceeded to discuss and squabble, in a friendly way, whether the trees’ reflection would show in their water.
Marigold returned to the library, pulled a ledger from the stack, and settled in front of the hearth. When the air grew chilly and damp, Gordon built a fire. Mrs. Cromwell brought in hot tea and cookies. Marigold thought as she drank her tea and nibbled the cinnamon and sugar pastries. She focused on her work, seeking discrepancies. She hoped she would find them. One more way she would be indispensable. Gordon would tell her to return after the wedding. If things didn’t work out with Lucian, she could tell everyone that she was needed on Cape May, needed for two orphaned girls whose uncle didn’t care enough to stay among civilized people—
She stopped thinking in that direction. Numbers first. Numbers that worked out with revolting accuracy and neatness throughout the day—with one exception.
“It’s odd that Leonard Pollock’s name never appears in here,” she told Gordon. “I know he works there. I talked to him when I took the rest of the ledgers.”
“Do you recognize any of the names?” he asked.
Marigold shook her head. “I’ve never heard of any of these people, and you’d think that I would have after a year in Cape May. For local people, it’s a small town.”
“Could my brother have brought in outsiders?”
“Ye–es.” Marigold began to ponder the name differences, but when Ruby called for her, she spent the rest of the afternoon helping the girls finish their drawing and then practicing the piano.
At dinnertime, she went into the kitchen and helped Mrs. Cromwell prepare the meal and set the table.
“You shouldn’t be in the library alone with Mr. Gordon,” the older woman admonished. “It doesn’t look right.”
“He hasn’t been in there a great deal of the time,” Marigold pointed out. “But he might be this evening.”
“Then you should go up to the schoolroom.”
“I’d rather keep working.”
“So Mr. Gordon can leave us sooner?”
“So I can find something wrong, and he’ll have to stay.” The instant she spoke, Marigold wished she had bitten off her tongue rather than speak. “I mean. . . I didn’t intend. . .”
“You spoke your mind.” Mrs. Cromwell patted her arm. “That’s all right. None of us wants him to leave these little girls.”
“But you want to leave.”
Mrs. Cromwell sighed. “No, I don’t want to. I’ll worry about them every day, if I don’t pray hard for them, and even then probably will, but I need to retire, child. I’m getting too old to handle this much work, and the winters are hard on my old bones.”
“I understand. My great-grandmother had to move down to Georgia a few years ago for the same reason. I miss her.”
“Then you go down and visit her. Family is important.”
“I know. But right now. . .” Marigold twisted the dish towel so hard it began to tear.
Not even to this dear lady could she admit that her family only reminded her of how she wasn’t going to have a husband and children of her own. She was expected to stand up there with the other bridesmaids and smile and pretend she was happy for Rose.
Newcomer Page 10
