Newcomer

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  She was, of course. She simply couldn’t help thinking how awful it was going to be to have to endure others’ pity, especially when her parents would expect her to hand over the goldfinch to Rose.

  It’s only a thing, she reminded herself. It was a piece of glass. An old and beautiful piece of glass.

  With a whole lot of meaning behind it—love and constancy, sacrifice and the strength of knowing one was not alone.

  But she was alone now and didn’t deserve the bird. She hadn’t been able to keep her fiancé interested in her. She was better off without him. He didn’t have a constant heart. But her heart ached with emptiness. Where now would she find someone she could marry, so she wouldn’t end up a spinster living with her parents even more years than she had already, watching Rose so happy and raising children?

  A tray of hot coffee in her hands, Marigold returned to the library, to Gordon Chambers, a man who needed to learn he shouldn’t be alone.

  Ten

  Gordon didn’t know how to tell Marigold to stop working on the ledgers. The grandfather clock in the foyer had long since chimed eleven o’clock. Mrs. Cromwell nodded in the chair she had settled by the door so she could chaperone. And Gordon could scarcely see numbers for the grit in his eyes.

  Marigold, on the other hand, chewed on the end of a pencil while working out numbers on one of several sheets of paper, her face intent behind curls that had escaped their pins hours ago. She seemed impervious to the hour or the fact that she’d been working over the books for three hours without so much as moving from her chair.

  More loudly than necessary, Gordon rose, stretched, and gathered up the tray of hot chocolate Mrs. Cromwell had made for them an hour earlier. With a flick of his finger, he sent a spoon cascading onto the marble hearth. It landed with a ring of fine silver on stone.

  Marigold jumped and looked up. “Oh, yes, let me help with that.” She set the books aside and reached for the spoon.

  Gordon reached for the spoon.

  Their heads collided.

  “I think we’ve done this before.” He rubbed his scalp.

  She pressed a hand to her head. “I am so sorry. Are you all right?”

  “I am. You have a great deal of padding on your head.”

  “I have what?” She stared at him with wide, green eyes.

  He grinned despite his fatigue and did what he’d wanted to do for weeks—pull one of her curls. “Your hair cushioned the blow.”

  “Oh, this.” She grimaced. “Do you know a hundred years ago women cut their hair short? I think that would have been wonderfully freeing.”

  “I like it as it is.”

  He hadn’t intended to say anything. He thought he considered her hair a disaster. Yet it was so vibrant, so full of energy and life—like her—he couldn’t imagine her with sleek, obedient tresses.

  He tucked his hands behind his back to stop himself from touching one of those silky curls again, burying his fingers in it and drawing her face to his, kissing her—

  A man who wanted open space and peace didn’t find himself attracted to a female who was anything but peaceful. A man who feared the harm he brought those with whom he grew close, those he loved, didn’t dare take a wife, start a family.

  Care for his orphaned nieces.

  Yet leaving seemed more difficult with every person he met, every moment he spent with the girls, every time he looked at Marigold.

  He scrambled to his feet. “It’s late. Mrs. Cromwell needs her rest, even if you don’t.”

  “Of course.” She masked it quickly, but he caught the flash of hurt on her face. “I can finish up this work in the next two days, before I leave.” She bowed her head and scrambled to her feet. “I am sorry, Mrs. Cromwell. Why don’t you stay in bed and sleep late tomorrow? I’ll make breakfast.”

  “Can you make a decent breakfast, too?” Gordon asked.

  “Of course.” Marigold picked up the serving tray and trotted from the room.

  Gordon went to the housekeeper and took her hands. “Let me help you up, madam.”

  “Watch out for that young lady.” She smiled as she stood, her joints popping. “She’s trying to impress you for a reason.”

  “She knows better than to set her cap for me. She just doesn’t want to go home without a fiancé. Rather humiliating, I’d think.”

  “Even more so if you knew what her sister looks like.”

  “Pretty?”

  “Plain as skim milk, but she has the sweetest nature a body can possess this side of heaven. And her fiancé is one of the best-looking young men these old eyes have ever seen.” She chuckled.

  Gordon frowned. “You know the family?”

  “Her sister came down to introduce Marigold to her fiancé last September.”

  “So my brother knew Marigold—I mean, Miss McCorkle—when he hired her?”

  “Not Marigold, but her father.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Marigold asked me not to.” Mrs. Cromwell stifled a yawn. “As to why Gerald hired her, you’ll have to ask her.”

  No, he didn’t. The less he knew of her the better. In fact, avoiding her until she departed would be an excellent idea.

  An idea he carried out over the next two days. He knew she worked on the ledgers when not with the girls, so he stayed away. He went fishing one day and climbed to the top of the lighthouse another morning. One day he simply walked, pausing at the derelict structure that had been a man’s dream of entertainment—the wood and tin elephant. Standing seventy feet high, it had allowed people to climb inside the huge legs and sit down to enjoy ice cream. One could climb to the top and look out to sea. Now it was an eyesore, a blot on the lovely city, and someone had been commissioned to tear it down.

  He’d gained his love for being alone at the top of that elephant. He would pay a dime for the privilege of standing on the elephant’s back, above most people, and gaze out to sea, dreaming of what lay beyond the horizon.

  He’d taken Louisa there once on her afternoon off. She’d been so pretty; even her plain dress looked finer than those of the society ladies around them. Was she still pretty, or had those fine looks and that sweet nature gotten her further in life? She’d wanted so much more than she had, and he—

  “Why are you staring at that, Uncle Gordon?” Ruby asked beside him.

  Gordon glanced down. If they’d greeted him, he hadn’t heard. “I liked to climb up there when I was a young man.”

  “It’s ugly,” Beryl pronounced. “Why would you want to climb it?”

  “It wasn’t ugly then. Well. . .” He grinned. “I suppose it was, but it has steps inside, and one can see a long way from the top. There was even an ice cream parlor inside.”

  “I wish there was now.” Ruby stuck her fingers in her mouth.

  In silence, Marigold tugged them out again. She looked tired, with shadows beneath her eyes and a pallor to her skin.

  “Isn’t it late in the day for one of your walks?” he asked.

  “We need new shoes,” Ruby said.

  “I need new shoes.” Beryl grimaced at her tiny black boots. “These are getting too small, but Ruby can wear them. They’re hardly worn at all.”

  “I want new shoes, not your old ones. Mommy doesn’t make me have old shoes.”

  “Mommy isn’t here anymore, and Miss Marigold likes to practice economies.” Beryl cast Marigold an approving glance. “We probably aren’t as rich as we used to be.”

  “You are quite well off,” Gordon said, “but that doesn’t mean you should spend irresponsibly. There are a lot of people in this world who need things.”

  “Like Miss Marigold.” Ruby stuck her fingers in her mouth then took them out again before continuing. “She needs a husband.”

  “I think it’s time to go.” Marigold clasped Ruby’s hand. “Come along, Beryl.”

  The girls protested. Gordon told them to go. Marigold didn’t look at him.

  Go, indeed. Having her around, knowing she was in his
house under what amounted to false pretenses, made him too uncomfortable.

  He stayed away for several more hours, wandering along the beach. When the sun began to vanish behind the houses, he returned via the backstreets.

  And found his nieces playing with the kitten in the yard.

  “Shouldn’t you be ready for bed by now?” he asked.

  “Miss Marigold sent us outside to play.” Ruby stuck her fingers in her mouth.

  Beryl gave her a reproachful look. “You and the cat were getting in her way while she was fixing dinner.”

  “Why is she fixing dinner?” Gordon glanced to the house just as a billow of smoke sailed out the back door. “Stay here,” he commanded.

  He raced for the house. Smoke filled the kitchen, so thick he could scarcely see. Instantly, he began to cough. The kitchen reeked of burning chicken and onions.

  Covering his nose and mouth with one arm, he darted to the stove. No flames on the top, only a pan smoking enough to send signals to Philadelphia. It snapped and sizzled and glowed like metal in a forge.

  He snatched up a dish towel and wrapped it around his hand. Holding his breath, he carried the smoking and hissing mess outside. “Stay out of my way, girls,” he called, unable to see them through the steam rising before him.

  He carried the pan to the gravel of the alley and set it down where it could do no harm, except cause a bit of stink.

  “Eeew.” Beryl appeared beside him, holding her nose. “That’s awful. What is it?”

  “Dinner, I’m afraid.” Gordon spun on his heel and headed for the house. “Where’s Mrs. Cromwell—and Marigold?”

  Mrs. Cromwell was nowhere in sight, but now that the smoke had cleared a bit, Gordon noticed Marigold sitting at the kitchen table, her head down on her folded arms.

  He touched her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  She didn’t respond or budge.

  “Marigold?” His heart began to race until he felt breathless. “Marigold.” He shook her.

  She jumped. Her head slammed back against his belt buckle. “Ouch.” She rubbed the back of her head. “What did you hit me with?”

  “You hit your head on me.” Still feeling as though he’d run a race, Gordon backed away from her. “You fell asleep and burned dinner.”

  “I did?” She blinked up at him then glanced around. Her nose wrinkled. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.” Rubbing her eyes, she stumbled to her feet. “So very sorry. I’ll think up something else to make.”

  “Where’s Mrs. Cromwell?” Gordon averted his gaze from the sight of Marigold’s tumbled hair and sleep-misty eyes.

  In that moment, she appeared too soft and pretty for his comfort.

  “She’s visiting her sister,” Marigold said, “to try to persuade her to stay here a bit longer, so I offered to make dinner. But I was up late with the ledgers. They’re almost done—and—”

  “You’re done with them. I shouldn’t be allowing you to do my work for me.”

  “But I love numbers.”

  “Then do numbers for your father. My business affairs are my concern.” Realizing his tone and words were too harsh, he added, “I am grateful for all the work you’ve done, Miss McCorkle, and it’s past time you left for Hudson City and home. Surely your family wants you.”

  “Yes, but. . .” She bowed her head. “I’ll go pack my things after dinner.”

  “You can go now. I’ll take the girls to a restaurant. They’re both old enough to behave in public.”

  “But they’ll need their dresses changed and—no, I’ll make dinner. I–I’m supposed to be a maidservant. And I need—” She gazed at him with pleading eyes. “I need to come back, Mr. Chambers. I can’t stay home, and you need me here.”

  “You’ll be gone for a week.” Gordon made himself speak with an authoritative edge to his voice. “By the end of that time, I’ll have hired someone to replace you.”

  “I see. Then I’ll pack all my things.”

  If she’d cried, he might not have cared so much that his harshness hurt her. Females used tears too recklessly. He’d been duped by feminine tears as a young man, lured by the sympathy they evoked in him into being foolish and hurtful to others.

  He wanted to reach out to her, assure her that he appreciated the work she’d done for him. Before he found the right words, she had slipped out of the kitchen and headed up the back stairs. Her footfalls echoed on the bare, wooden treads.

  The next day, when she had taken a carriage to the train station, he still heard the echo of her flying heels beating against the steps. Each beat slammed into his heart, echoing in the hollowness there.

  He wondered why he’d let her go and how he could get her back.

  ❧

  Marigold walked into a household of organized chaos. Gifts filled every available surface in the front parlor. The aromas of roasting meats and baking cakes wafted from the kitchen, and bits of ribbon and fabric created a silky layer to the carpet of hallway and steps. From the second floor, laughter drifted like the fall of ribbon scraps. Laughter overflowing with joy. Rose, ecstatic with her future settled and her wedding in two days’ time.

  Her luggage resting where the driver of the carriage from the train station had left it, in a meager pile in the foyer, Marigold began to gather up ribbons as she mounted the steps toward the laughter, toward the joy, toward the acknowledgment that she was not the one to star in this performance.

  Not only that, she wasn’t welcome back to Cape May. Gordon had made that clear. He didn’t need her. For all her sleepless nights, she couldn’t reconcile the two sets of ledgers in any way that said Randall and his clerks had done anything wrong but change employees and keep a sloppy set of books. Dennis Tripp must have been mistaken or was trying to get even with the man who had dismissed him, a fact which saddened Marigold. She’d thought Mr. Tripp was a good, Christian man, who wouldn’t indulge in petty revenge.

  Yet why would a man try to take revenge in a way that could so easily be proven wrong?

  Simply because it couldn’t easily be proven right or wrong. For all her skill as a bookkeeper, she had found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing.

  Marigold paused at the top of the steps to gather up a scrap of veiling. Bridal veiling. Rose would be so pretty behind the gauzy fabric, her freckles dimmed, her pale lashes unimportant, her hair, even more orange red than Marigold’s, hidden. Her sweet smile would shine through, and Adam would only see the beautiful person Rose was inside her skin, not the plain and painfully shy girl with the ability to paint birds in such detail they looked like they would fly off the page.

  Birds like the goldfinch.

  Marigold swiveled on her heel to change course from her trajectory toward the laughter to plod toward her own room. It would be ready for her, aired and cleaned, as she would share it with cousins visiting from out West for the wedding. Before she announced to her sister that she was home, Marigold needed to collect the family heirloom that now belonged to Rose, the sister no one thought would marry.

  The door to Marigold’s room stood open. Grass green carpet shone with recent cleaning, and a window stood open to catch the breezes off the river. Scents of late roses and recently cut grass floated through the window like welcome guests at the door, the summer smells she’d grown up with, had inhaled while holding the goldfinch and dreaming of the man she would marry.

  Lucian fulfilled all her childish imaginings—tall and handsome, ambitious and skilled, and professing a faith in the Lord. Now that she was home for good, perhaps she could change his mind, renew their relationship. She had no other commitments in her life. She’d loved Lucian for years, prayed for several to have him notice her among all other girls. Finally he had—until she was no longer in sight. So now that she was, though, he was in Salem County working except for a few visits home. This wedding, when he would be home for the celebration of his friend, was her only chance to convince him he’d made a mistake in breaking things off with her. He was simply piqued at her long abs
ence, her change of plans. She would humble herself and be compliant now. But even if she were successful in restoring her love life, it was too late for her to keep the goldfinch. By rights, Rose should already have it in her room.

  Marigold paused before her dressing table and lifted the goldfinch bottle from its secure resting place before the mirror. Hands shaking only a little, she held up the ornament. Afternoon sunshine gleamed in the fragile amber glass, depicting each fine detail Colin Grassick had etched in hot glass ninety years earlier, a gift for the lady he loved. His son had given it to the lady he loved, and his son would have done likewise, but he’d made mistakes as a young man and lost the goldfinch. It came into the hands of Marigold’s grandfather. Daire Grassick had told her grandfather, a poor Irish immigrant, to keep the goldfinch.

  For Marigold’s grandfather, the bird symbolized generosity and trust. He and Daire Grassick became friends. Through that friendship, the McCorkles prospered.

  To Marigold, the goldfinch symbolized how far a body could change, from her grandparents being so poor they lived in one room to her and Rose growing up in a house, which, if not a mansion, was larger than four people needed, and attending private schools and college. She and Lucian should be living in a fine house in Salem County near the glassworks, where she would have displayed the goldfinch on the parlor mantel, letting everyone know how she was connected to the Grassicks from many years back. The Grassicks, after all, displayed photographs of the goldfinch in their house and the glassworks. She, Marigold McCorkle—

  She located the special box for the goldfinch and tucked the glass bird into its layers of cotton wool. She’d been so proud of her family for owning this bit of glass that she wanted to be the one to carry it on to her own children.

  Maybe if she could win Lucian back, no one would expect her to give up the glass. After all, she’d postponed her wedding for a noble cause. But she would make the gesture of giving it to Rose. Their parents would be proud of their elder daughter for understanding the new tradition they began when they’d only produced daughters.