It amused Matt to watch his crew vie for Annie’s favor. If she preferred one over the other, she didn’t let on. Bess could sort it all out, if she ever showed up. He had lost his temper and called her a meddling old busybody the last time she’d poked her nose into his personal affairs, but sooner or later she’d be back. Out of curiosity, if nothing else. And once she was here, he could concentrate all his efforts on regaining his ship.
His ship…
Looking back, Matt marveled at the depths of stupidity to which an otherwise intelligent man could sink. Four years ago, at the behest of an old friend of his father’s, he’d reluctantly agreed to attend a ball being held to raise funds for the Old Seamen’s Retirement Home.
It was there that he’d met Gloria Timmons, daughter of one of the sponsors. She had stood in the receiving line looking like one of those Christmas-tree angels, all white and gold and sparkling.
A large man, used to towering over all women and most men, Matt had been flat-out terror-stricken when she’d placed her small, soft hand in his, gazed up at him with eyes the color of a summer sky, and fanned her eyelashes. With his free hand he’d tugged at his collar. He’d had to clear his throat several times, and she must’ve felt sorry for him because she’d given him a smile that would melt a cannonball.
Matt could readily hold his own in the company of men, but he was a fish out of water when it came to women. The truth was, he’d never really trusted one, not since his mother had decided she’d rather live ashore than aboard her husband’s ship, even if it meant leaving her eight-year-old son behind with his father.
Not that he hadn’t enjoyed his share of doxies, but respectable women—especially young, beautiful, dainty, respectable women with soft voices, soft faces and soft hands—those were his downfall.
It had all started that night. Matt had never bothered to learn how to dance. With Gloria, he’d scarcely been able to string two words together without stuttering, but somehow she had made him feel like a regular Prince Charming. By the time that first evening was over, he’d been heart-stricken in the worst way.
They’d spent every day together the entire time his ship was in port. Neglecting appointments with custom officers, shipping agents, brokers and consigners, over the course of seven days he had listened to more music, drunk more tea and sat through more dull lectures than any man should have to endure in one lifetime.
He hadn’t uttered a word of complaint. If Gloria had asked him, he would have crawled over a bed of live coals.
The night before he’d sailed she had allowed him to kiss her. Scared stiff he would break her, or at the very least, terrify her by either his size or his tightly leashed passion, he’d been shaking too hard to do the job justice.
“If only you didn’t have to leave,” she’d whispered after that brief hard, dry kiss. “I could never marry a man who would go off and leave me by myself for months at a time. I would simply die of loneliness.”
He hadn’t realized it at the time, but she’d hit him in the one place where he was vulnerable. It had been years since he’d last seen his mother. As an adult, he’d seldom even thought about her. The last time they’d met had been at his father’s funeral where, like the strangers they were, they had made polite conversation. She’d told him she would be marrying again and moving to Chicago; he’d told her he was off to Honduras at week’s end and they’d parted still strangers. Since then she had rarely crossed his mind, but evidently the old scars were still there.
Oh, yeah, he’d been broadsided, all right. By the time he’d left Gloria that last night in port he had promised to finish one last run, then put his ship up for sale and invest the proceeds in her father’s ship-building firm in exchange for a seat on the board of directors.
In the end, he got exactly what he deserved. After delivering a cargo of dyewood, mahogany and bananas to Boston only three days behind schedule, he had contracted with a broker to sell the Black Swan. With his head still in the clouds, he had bought the biggest diamond ring he could find and headed south with marriage on his mind, only to be informed that Miss Timmons was visiting a friend in West Virginia. Five days later, having partially regained his senses, he’d taken a train to Boston, intent on pulling his ship off the market.
He’d been three days too late. She’d just been sold.
So he’d headed south again, determined to make the best of a bad situation. If he could no longer be captain of the finest three-masted schooner afloat, he would be the finest husband, and make a stab at being a damned good director of Timmons Shipbuilding. He was not without business experience, after all.
That was when he’d discovered that the woman who had stolen his heart was too busy reeling in another poor sucker to spare him more than a rueful smile. “But darling, I never actually said I’d marry you, did I? I’m sure I didn’t. I’m having far too much fun to settle down yet, but Daddy’s still saving you that seat on the board as soon as you’ve sold your ship.”
For the first time in years he had gone out and gotten howling drunk. Two and a half days later he’d wakened up in a Newport News flophouse with a fistful of busted knuckles and a head the size of New Zealand, both his pockets and his belly turned wrong-side out.
Dammit, he wanted her back.
The Black Swan, not Gloria. God knows, any romantic nonsense had been purged from his heart.
After four years, the broker was still working on getting his ship back. The new owner, a consortium of dry-land sailors, was intent on playing games with him, their latest demand, relayed by the broker, being a five-percent cut of the captain’s share of the profits for five years and a sale price well above the original purchase price.
He’d been in the process of negotiating for a two-year split and a lower sale price when all hell had broken loose and he’d found himself with a problem no broker could solve.
Annie.
With the tip of his big, booted foot, Matt rocked the cradle Peg had fashioned from a rum barrel and padded with goose down. If Bess didn’t soon come through for him, he was going to have to broaden his search. He could hardly take an infant to sea with him.
If she’d been a boy, he might have considered it, but she wasn’t. All he had to do was look at Bess to see what that kind of a life would do to a girl. Bossy, meddlesome, conniving, his aunt drank like a man and cursed like a man, and got all huffy when a man did the same thing in her presence.
He sighed and then he swore. He’d done more of both in the short time since he’d become a surrogate father than in all his thirty-one years put together.
Yeah, Annie needed a woman. And so, unfortunately, did he. The trouble with a small, insular village was that everyone knew everything that went on. Without a decent whorehouse, a man could get into serious trouble, a tragic lesson they’d all learned the hard way.
Crank, in his Bible-quoting mode, claimed it was better to marry than to burn, but Matt wasn’t about to commit that particular folly. He was old enough that he could wait until he went to the mainland.
It wasn’t so easy for a younger man. The first time Luther had ridden in for supplies after the shooting he had come back with his jaw dragging. “Hell sakes, Cap’n, all the girls has disappeared.”
They hadn’t disappeared, they’d been hidden away, forbidden to associate with the men from Powers Point. Considering what had happened, Matt couldn’t much blame any man for trying to protect his womenfolk, but dammit, Annie wasn’t at fault. She’d come into this world an innocent victim. Matt refused to allow her to suffer for the sins of her parents, if he had to give up the sea forever.
But it might not come to that. Things were gradually beginning to thaw. The first time Crank had ridden in to lay in a supply of tinned milk, one or two of the older women had offered advice about bringing up a baby’s wind in the middle of her dinner, and using lard to clean her tail instead of lye soap.
Another woman had offered them the loan of one of her milk goats, but for the most part, the men of Po
wers Point had been left alone with a task not a one of them was equipped to handle.
“Bess, you’re going to have to help me with this,” Matt muttered to the cold, damp night. Unable to sleep, he stood on a wooded ridge overlooking the Pamlico Sound, watching the moon sink behind a cloud bank. “God knows, you’re not my idea of a nursemaid, but I don’t know where else to turn.” He didn’t consider it praying, but the same heartfelt sentiment was there.
Watching a shooting star arc across the sky, he wondered how the death of anything in the universe could be so beautiful. So far he’d seen only the ugliness of death. If he’d been of a mystical turn of mind, he might have taken the shooting star for an omen, but Matt was a realist. Always had been. The second generation of Powers men to have been raised at sea, he’d learned from his father, who had learned from his own father, that a fair wind, a sound ship and a good crew were all a man needed to make his own luck.
Rose watched as Bess Powers poured two cups of tea, then added a dose of medicinal brandy to her own. She’d been invited for the afternoon to discuss her plans for the future, a future that was beginning to look increasingly dismal.
She stirred sugar into her tea, which was stronger than she liked, but hot and fortifying. “I should have worked harder on my art and music. Mama warned me I’d live to regret it. The trouble is, I have no sense of rhythm, and as for my watercolors—well, the less said, the better. Bess, how can I even teach a girl to walk properly when I’m apt to trip over my own feet?” Extending her limbs, she gazed dolefully down at her long, narrow kid slippers.
Bess snorted. “Woman your height would look damned silly with feet no bigger than mine.”
“Who wants a governess who can’t dance, can’t play the piano, can’t paint and—”
“I heard from Matt again today. Poor boy, he’s in sad shape. That’s the third letter in two weeks.”
“Did you know that no one will even consider hiring a woman accountant? I’m smart as a whip when it comes to figures.”
“Didn’t do poor Gussy much good, did it?”
Rose looked up quickly, a stricken expression on her face. “I’m afraid not,” she admitted. Given a chance, she might have been able to salvage something, but before she could even go through the accounts, it was already far too late.
“Sorry, child, you didn’t deserve that.”
Perhaps she did, but this was no time to pile guilt onto a feeling of inadequacy. If she could just keep her head level, her feet on the ground and her spirits high, she would come through this just fine.
“I interviewed for a companion’s position yesterday. The pay is barely enough to keep a mouse in cheese, and I’d be expected to sleep in an attic room. The ceiling slopes so that I can’t even stand up, but there’s a lovely view of the garden.”
“Like I said, poor Matt’s in desperate straits.”
Rose surrendered gracefully. She had gone on and on about her own slender prospects while Bess listened; it was only fair that she return the favor.
“You remember I told you about my nephew?”
Rose knew all about Captain Powers, his land-locked crew and his inherited baby. Bess was a gifted storyteller who never missed an opportunity to practice her art. “Can’t he send off to one of the employment agencies? I’m sure they can find someone suitable, there are so many women looking for respectable work.”
“And some not so respectable, I shouldn’t wonder. Would you take the job if it was offered?”
As tempting as it might sound, Rose wasn’t about to leap out of the frying pan into the fire. One thing she’d learned was that she was no good at making quick choices. Another was that positions that sounded lovely on paper weren’t always so lovely in fact.
Besides, while her heart might ache for any motherless infant, she wasn’t at all certain she wanted to get involved with one of Bess’s relatives. “I haven’t given up. Just because the ideal opening hasn’t presented itself yet, that doesn’t mean something won’t turn up tomorrow.”
“Thought I’d ask. If it’d been a married couple needing help with a baby, I’d have talked you into it, but I can’t see sending a decent young woman into an all-male household. ’T’wouldn’t be seemly.”
“He’s your nephew. Couldn’t you do your writing there as well as here, and look after the baby, too?”
The older woman emptied her teacup and refilled it from the decanter, not bothering to add fresh tea. “I’m a spinster, a traveler and a writer. I have neither the time nor the desire to be a nursemaid. Still, the poor little wretch deserves better than a handful of rough seamen to look after her. Know ’em all, and they’re as fine a lot as you’d want to meet, but still…”
Bess had relayed the tale to Rose as it had been told to her by her nephew, about a shooting that had involved three adults. She’d lay odds there was more to it than she’d been told. “Tragic, tragic,” she murmured, now frowning at her teacup, which was empty again. She fully intended to sniff out every juicy detail of the whole sordid mess, but that could wait. When it came to plotting a story, she never liked to be hampered by too many facts. Not all the travel pieces she wrote were entirely factual, although most had a basis of truth.
“And there’s no family at all on either side?” Rose persisted.
“Not a speck. Matt said he beat the bushes without flushing out so much as a shirttail cousin. Poor Billy. Sweetest boy you’d ever hope to meet, but then, you never know….” She shrugged her plump, silk-clad shoulders. “Billy begged on his deathbed for Matt to look after his daughter, and Matt, bless his tender heart, gave his word. Takes after me, Matt does. My own brother’s child, don’t you know?”
Rose sighed. “Oh. Well, I guess that settles it, then.”
Bess stroked her knee and cursed the weather, which was wet and cold, even for early March. “Settles nothing. Being a man of his word is all very well, but it don’t do that poor helpless infant much good.”
Now why do I have the feeling I’m being manipulated?
Rose answered her own unspoken question. Because she’d been blindly running in circles for so long.
Bess wouldn’t do that…would she?
During all the months she’d been burdened with the constant care of her demanding tyrant of a grand-mother, Rose’s grief for her own lost child had been pushed aside. Now it was back, as fresh and painful as if it had happened only two days ago instead of two years. Was it better, she wondered now, to have held a child in one’s arms and then lost it, or never to have held it at all?
There were no answers, only the familiar aching emptiness.
“I’ve been thinking,” Bess announced, a glint in her eye that Rose was beginning to recognize. “Now, if you were to—”
Suddenly wary for no real reason unless exhaustion and discouragement could be blamed, Rose stood and began collecting her purse and gloves. “Bess, could it possibly wait? If you don’t mind, I believe I’d better be getting back to my room. I’ve an early interview tomorrow.”
“Not the housekeeping job?”
“Well, yes. It doesn’t pay very well, but it’s either that or the attic. I understand the housekeeping position includes a lovely set of rooms off the kitchen.”
“Bed in the pantry, no doubt, complete with lecherous butler lurking outside the door.”
There were times, Rose told herself, when Bess’s creative mind went too far. “I’m sure no respectable butler would dream of—”
“Butlers are male, aren’t they? Like I said, I’ve been thinking of a possible solution. Let me talk it over with Horace and see if it’s legal.”
See if it’s legal?
Rose closed her eyes. She didn’t even want to know, she really didn’t. It was late and she was tired, and she still had her best black twill to sponge and press before she went to bed.
That evening, Bess presented her case to her long-time friend over brandy and cigars. If they’d been half a century younger, she might have thought of him as a be
au, but they weren’t, and so she didn’t.
“Here’s the problem as I see it. It started with the boy’s mother, a flighty female if ever there was one. The Powers men have all been steady as a rock, but not a one of them ever had a lick of sense when it came to women. First the useless bit of fluff my brother married, then that hussy who trolled her bait in front of Matt, set her hook, landed her fish and then left him there high and dry.”
“I take it you mean the young lady who talked your nephew into selling his ship. Shady dealings, if you ask me, her and her father alike. I believe questions are being raised in certain circles about the source of their funding.”
“That’s as may be, but right now what that boy needs is a decent, respectable woman with some grit in her craw. Strikes me, Gussy’s girl just might fill the bill. Don’t have much to say for herself, but she took good care of Gussy. I’ll lay you odds she’d do the same thing for Matt’s baby. Might not look like much, but buried underneath those meek manners of hers, the girl’s got grit.”
“Oh, she’s not bad to look at, just not in the usual style. Five men, you say?” Horace savored his cigar, his gaze resting gently on the small, plump woman seated across from him.
“Four, now that Billy’s gone.”
“Still, an older woman might be better.”
“Don’t look at me, Horace Bagby, baby-tending is a full time job. I’ve got commitments. Papa’s crew spent half their time keeping me from climbing the ratlines, and me barely out of the cradle. Many’s the time he had to send a man overboard to fish me out. I liked to walk the pinrail, to prove I could do it. Tripped on a pin or two and went over the side more times than I can remember.”
Horace’s smile was indulgent. He had known Bess for half a century. “Still proving yourself, too, aren’t you? You’ve not changed all that much, Bessy my girl.”
“Ballocks. Now, back to what I was saying—a woman with my responsibilities don’t have time, and a young one, leastwise a decent one, can’t be expected to go live among a houseful of men. ’T’wouldn’t be seemly. So here’s what I have in mind.”
The Paper Marriage Page 3
