Courting Susannah

by Linda Lael Miller

  When the little one was properly outfitted—Susannah added a few items for Jasper before she was finished—she chose three muslincamisoles for herself, along with matching drawers and a petticoat. She was admiring the books, not quite daring to take onedown from the shelf and hold it in her hands, when another sudden rush of chilly air filled the store, heralded by the nowangry clamor of the bell over the door.

  “Where is he?” a feminine voice demanded, imperious as a queen’s.

  Susannah, like the other customers and the clerks, turned to see a slender, dark-haired woman, dressed in green velvet fromhead to foot. Her garments were wondrous, trimmed in gold braid and fitted precisely to her figure, and the fabric matched the color of her eyes precisely.She was, beyond a doubt, the loveliest creature Susannah had ever seen, for all that her manner and expression were venomous.

  No one needed to tell her that this was Delphinia, Aubrey’s mistress. A paramour. A kept woman. Susannah, impressed, couldnot help goggling a little.

  “I said where is he?” Mrs. Parker cried. Except for the sounds of wood crumbling to embers inside the stove and the inevitable noises from thestreet, the store was quiet as a tomb.

  Then there came the echo of boot heels on the stairs, and Aubrey appeared. His countenance suggested bleak annoyance, andhis face was like granite. Susannah wondered, with a sorrowing heart, if he had ever turned that soul-withering look uponJulia.

  “Delphinia,” he said with a small inclination of his head. “We’ve settled everything there is to settle. We’re through.” Hepaused. “I don’t suppose it will do any good to tell you that this is neither the time nor the place for the sort of sceneyou clearly have in mind?”

  The breathtaking creature raged toward him, like a small, scented storm. The air crackled around her, and Susannah lookedon in helpless fascination, feeling admiration for the other woman, as well as pity and a number of other, less easily identifiedthings into the bargain.

  “How dare you?” Delphinia simmered, standing at the foot of the stairs and glaring up at her lover. Her temper made heat,but his anger was cold enough to freeze the rest of the room; all, including Susannah, stood unmoving, unspeaking, withoutbothering to pretend they weren’t listening.

  “We’ll discuss this in private,” Aubrey said in a voice that probably wouldn’t thaw before spring. With that, he closed the distance between them, took Delphinia’s arm, and “escorted” her up to the second floor. Only when a door slammed,probably that of his office, did the customers and clerks begin to stir, like so many statues coming to life in an enchantedgarden. There was much clearing of throats and straightening of neckties, and the old men gathered around the stove to whittleand gossip chuckled among themselves and reminisced in low tones. An angry discussion ensued upstairs, like distant cannonfire.

  Susannah completed her shopping and made haste for the carriage, still waiting in the street. Very possibly, it had been thepresence of that coach that had drawn Delphinia’s attention in the first place, and Susannah did not want the woman’s furyto turn in her direction.

  Upon her return to the Fairgrieve house, looming against an overcast sky like a stone fortress, Susannah had nothing to dobut find places for all her selections, since the baby was sound asleep. The task was a pleasant, homey one, and by the timeshe went downstairs for a cup of tea, she had forgotten the tempestuous scene at the general store.

  Maisie was snoozing in her rocking chair, and Jasper was still at school.

  Moving as quietly as she could, Susannah brewed a pot of orange pekoe, smiling softly to herself, and was on her way to themain parlor, which afforded a view of the mountains and the blue-gray waters, when the front door burst open and Aubrey blewin, like a great rush of wind. The door crashed shut behind him.

  “Please be quiet,” Susannah said moderately. “Your daughter is asleep.”

  Aubrey thrust a hand through his hair and emitted a heavy sigh. To Susannah’s great surprise, he actually looked chagrined.“I’m sorry,” he said, amazing her further. There was a beleaguered expression in his eyes that aroused a tenderness she did not wish to feel—was not entitled to feel. “You were there?” he asked briskly. It was plain that he was referring to that morning’s drama and already knewthe answer.

  Susannah held her tea cup with both hands, for the sake of steadiness. “Yes,” she said.

  “It wasn’t the way she made it sound.”

  Opposed to the use of ardent spirits all her life, Susannah suddenly wished with all her heart that her cup contained whiskeyinstead of tea. She could have used some bracing up. “There’s no need to explain, Mr. Fairgrieve. Not to me.”

  “Aubrey, damn it,” came the growled response. “When you call me Mr. Fairgrieve like that, it makes me feel like my own grandfather.”

  Susannah was bewildered—and secretly a little pleased—by this confession. She liked knowing that she could make this man feelsomething, anything. Was she turning into a loose woman?

  “If you’ll excuse me—” She started toward the main staircase. She had, after all, selected one book from the shelves at Aubrey’sstore, paid for out of her own scant funds, just as her more personal purchases had been, and planned to put her feet up andread a few pages before the baby awakened.

  He stopped her with a firm but painless grasp on her arm. “Susannah, about Hollister—”

  She summoned up a shy smile. “He’s a very nice man,” she said sincerely. “And he’s invited me to have dinner with him tomorrownight. I accepted, of course.”

  Aubrey frowned. “Of course,” he repeated, looking distracted. “What do you know about him?”

  Susannah wanted to laugh, perhaps hysterically, though she could not have said why. “Why, nothing, except that he is wellmannered and makes pleasant company. I assumed he was a friend of yours, since you entertained him at your table.”

  Aubrey was still distracted and rubbed his chin between thumb and fingers. “So I did,” he muttered. Then, with no furtherelaboration, he wandered off into his study, like a somnambulist, and closed the door softly behind him.

  “Damn it,” he snapped, glowering at Hollister over the green felt gaming table in the back room of one of Seattle’s best gamblingestablishments. “I told you to investigate Miss McKittrick’s past, not make a conquest of her.”

  Hollister had been winning all evening, and from the cool way he assessed the cards in his hand, it appeared that his luckwas holding. “Getting to know her seemed like a good idea,” he mused. His eyes flashed with humor as he looked at Aubrey.“And it’s not unpleasant work. Not at all.”

  Aubrey leaned forward in his chair. “By God, Hollister, it had better not get too pleasant.”

  The Pinkerton man laughed and slid a stack of chips into the center of the table. “Taken with her, are you? Now, that’s interesting.Though not surprising, I must admit. Ante up, or lay down your cards.”

  Aubrey tossed yet another worthless hand onto the table, galled. “I am not ’taken’ with anyone,” he said. “I merely want toknow whether or not Susannah McKittrick is a fit guardian for the child.”

  “Why don’t you use the child’s name?” Hollister asked mildly. “Or do you begrudge the poor little creature even that much?”

  There was an ominous pause, during which Aubrey felt both fury and shame. While it was true that he had closed himself offfrom Julia’s daughter—indeed, he had not dared to open his heart—there was very little he would have denied her. Wasn’t she the whole reason he was putting up with Susannah McKittrick and all her interference?Why, if it wasn’t for that woman, his arrangement with Delphinia might not have turned sour quite so soon.

  “The child is well looked after,” he said at great length. “You needn’t concern yourself with her well-being.”

  Hollister cleared his throat, then leaned forward and scooped up a considerable pile of poker chips. He had lit a cigar, andit was clamped between his teeth as he pondered his winnings. “What, precisely, am I supposed to tell Miss Mc
Kittrick aboutmyself? She’s bound to ask how I earn my living, for instance, and I’m not comfortable with lying to her.”

  “Tell her as little as possible,” Aubrey warned. There was a stir at the other end of the room, and he saw with a pang ofirritation that Ethan had just come in.

  “She’s a proper female, our Susannah, and none too experienced in the ways of men and women,” Hollister observed, followingAubrey’s gaze across the span of crowded card tables to Ethan, who was now moving toward them. “She’ll want to know my history.”

  It figured that after the scene with Delphinia at the store and heavy losses at cards, he would have to deal with his youngerbrother, too. Some days, it just didn’t pay to put on pants and leave the house.

  Ethan stood tableside, easy in his skin. “Losing, I hope?” he asked with an amicable smile.

  Hollister finished gathering his chips. “Hullo, Ethan,” he said. “My sister Ruby is home from school. Why don’t you stop inand say howdy?”

  Ethan grinned. “How is little Ruby?” he asked.

  Hollister grinned back. “Not so little,” he said. “What was she the last time you saw her, thirteen or so?”

  Ethan nodded, held one hand roughly at the height of a sawhorse. “She was about that tall,” he said. “All eyeballs, knees, and freckles.”

  Hollister laughed. “Times change,” he said. Then he spared a nod of farewell for Aubrey, got up, and left, trailing cigarsmoke as he walked away. Ethan swung one leg over the back of a chair and sat down, reaching for the scattered cards and deftlyshuffling them. He had spent more than his share of time in saloons and gambling halls, although he was not yet thirty yearsold.

  “What do you want?” Aubrey asked bluntly. No sense in pretending brotherly affection when he didn’t feel any.

  Ethan dealt, arranged his hand, and pondered the cards therein before replying. “An answer,” he said, meeting Aubrey’s gazesquarely. “You like straight talk, brother, so here it is. It’s all over Seattle that you and Delphinia have split the sheets.I guess what I want to know is, precisely what do you have in mind for Susannah?”

  Aubrey sorted his own cards and tossed a chip into the pot, for all that his luck seemed to be worthless that night. Wheneverhe and Ethan tried to talk—and the effort was rare enough—they both had to be doing something else, whether playing cards,saddling or grooming a horse, or slinging their fists at each other.

  “If you want to know Susannah’s plans,” Aubrey reasoned, “why don’t you ask her yourself?”

  “I don’t need to,” Ethan answered evenly, frowning at his cards. That probably meant he had a royal flush or a straight withaces high. “It’s clear enough that Susannah wants to look after the little girl. I asked about your intentions, Aubrey, nothers.”

  Aubrey leaned forward in his chair. “My intentions are none of your damn business.”

  “Susannah is a lady, Aubrey. Don’t get her mixed up with Delphinia and the others.”

  “Others?” Aubrey echoed furiously. He resented the implication that he had been that much of a rounder. He’d been a faithful husband to Julia, until several months after she’dbarred him from her bed.

  Ethan forced out a sigh and closed his eyes for a moment in plain exasperation. “All right,” he said. “Let’s forget our differencesfor a little while and talk like grown men, shall we? I know you, Aubrey. If you showed Delphinia the road, it means you haveyour eye on someone else. It doesn’t take a scholar to figure out that it’s Susannah you want.”

  Aubrey couldn’t quite bring himself to deny that he wanted Susannah, but at the same time, he wasn’t ready to admit it, evenin the privacy of his own mind. It outraged him that Ethan thought he would stoop to seducing an innocent like his presenthouseguest. Assuming she was innocent, of course. He’d thought Julia was a delicate flower, and look how she’d fooled him.

  “If you came here to deliver a lecture on morality,” he said, “I’d advise you to take to the road before I knock your teethdown your throat.”

  Ethan threw down his cards and glared across the table. He was making an effort to restrain his temper, that was clear bythe bulging vein in his neck, but they were probably attracting attention anyway. Their feud was well known in Seattle, which,for all its rambunctious, bounding growth, was still a small town in most ways.

  “Damn you, you pig-headed son of a—” He paused, began again. “I didn’t sleep with your wife. I don’t have plans to take Susannahto bed, either. For God’s sake, I’m your brother.”

  Aubrey felt a rush of emotions, savage in their force—rage, grief, and wild hope, all entangled with one another. Then heremembered Julia’s taunts, her derisive laughter. And he considered the baby’s fair hair and blue eyes—eyes like Ethan’s.

  “Exactly,” he snapped. “I trusted you. I trusted her. What a damn fool I was.” With that, Aubrey pushed to his feet, turned,and strode away. He needed fresh air and open space.

  Ethan didn’t follow.

  When he reached the house on the hill minutes later, Aubrey turned his horse over to a stable hand and stood for a while inthe cold, damp night air, looking up at the darkened windows on the second floor. He imagined Susannah in her small room atthe back, perhaps brushing her hair, or reading a book, or holding the baby.

  A painful lump filled his throat, and a sense of loneliness seized him, greater than any he had ever known. His right handknotted into a fist, and only by the power of his formidable will was he able to open his fingers. He swore under his breath,pushed open the gate, and strode up the walk.

  Susannah heard footsteps in the hall, heard them pause outside her door.

  Her heart pounded, not from fear, she concluded with some mortification, but with a sort of sweet, breathless anticipation.She waited there at the vanity table, hair brush in hand, clad only in a flannel nightgown. After a few moments, she heardthe footsteps again, retreating slowly down the corridor.

  Unaccountable tears filled her eyes; she blinked them back, unsure whether she was relieved or disappointed. She did not knowif she would have welcomed Aubrey or turned him away, and the mystery was difficult to live with. It made Susannah feel asthough she were a stranger to herself. And what about Julia? Susannah had been a loyal friend to her, and she would be justas loyal to her memory.

  In her cradle near the hearth, Julia’s child gave a small, whimpering cry, and Susannah, grateful for the distraction, hurried over to her. Victoria looked up at her, so resemblingAubrey that it nearly took her breath away.

  How could he distance himself from this child? How?

  Susannah held out a hand, and the baby gripped one of her fingers, chortling with the pleasure of accomplishment and holdingon tightly.

  “Whatever happens,” she promised Victoria in a whisper, “I’ll look after you.”

  The baby laughed again and kicked her tiny feet.

  Susannah’s eyes burned, but she laughed, too. Then she sang softly until Julia’s daughter drifted back to sleep.

  “Good night, little one,” she whispered, but her thoughts had strayed to the opposite end of the corridor, in search of Aubrey.

  Chapter 5

  Mr. Hollister arrived promptly at the stroke of seven the following evening, at the reins of a smart buggy drawn by a dapple gray gelding, both brought to a smooth and graceful stop within the glow of a street lamp. Peering at her gentleman caller through the lacy curtains of the front parlor, Susannah felt serious trepidation, and not for the first time since she had agreed to join him for dinner. She had no earthly idea what sort of man he was; he might well be a rounder and a rascal, promised to someone or even married.

  She laid splayed fingers to her bosom in silent consternation.

  “Oh, stop your frettin’,” Maisie scolded. She was standing beside Susannah, taking as much pleasure in the evening’s engagement as if it were her own. In those moments, Susannah wished that were the case. She’d have been more than content to stay home with the baby and a book and let Maisie do the soci
alizing. “He’s fine to look at, and it ain’t every day a gal gets an invite to eat somebody else’s cookin’. Just smile at everything he says, no matter how stupid it might be, and make sure he don’t press you for a kiss afore you’re good and ready.”

  “Here I am,” Susannah lamented in a whisper, “twenty-four years old, and I’ve never had a man come to call. I don’t have the first idea what to say or how to behave.”

  “I just told you,” Maisie answered, underscoring her assertion with a light jab of her elbow. “You just listen like he’s smarter than Solomon, and he’ll fall in love with you. If he ain’t already done as much, that is.”

  Susannah was horrified. “But I don’t want him to fall in love with me!” she protested in an anxious whisper.

  Mr. Hollister had gained the porch by then, and the bell rang forcefully. After giving Susannah a rather smug look, Maisie swept out into the entryway and answered the door with all the dignified flourish of an English housekeeper presiding over the gates of some grand manor.

  “Hello, Mr. Hollister,” she said, and from her gruff exuberance, Susannah concluded that her friend liked this visitor very much, though she did not seem to know him personally. “Miss Susannah’s all ready, and she looks mighty pretty, too. A body’d never know she was a spinster to look at her.”

  Susannah, lurking behind the parlor door, blushed and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. As much as she liked Mr. Hollister, she would have given anything just then to pass the evening at home, perhaps sitting by the fire, while Aubrey read his newspaper nearby …

  “Come on out here,” Maisie all but brayed. “The man ain’t got all night, and besides, there’s no use in bein’ shy.”

  Susannah was weak with embarrassment, but somehow she made herself walk, smiling and dignified, out of her hiding place. She extended her hand to Mr. Hollister, and he kissed it. Merriment twinkled in his blue eyes. Don’t be frightened, they seemed to say. You are safe with me.