My Heart Belongs in Niagara Falls, New York

by Barratt, Amanda;

  The outing had been her idea and, he grimaced to think it, her treat. An afternoon to renew their friendship and see a part of the Falls she hadn’t yet viewed. Of course, Drew could never have afforded such a trip for the two of them—the fare for the public horse car service and the entrance fees at the Falls. A hundred years ago, the view before them would’ve cost no more than the effort required to get to it. Today, no sight of the Falls was free. There might as well have been dollar bills floating down the rapids instead of water.

  “The American Falls aren’t nearly as large.” The wind had practically chased her bonnet from her head. So she’d taken it off, holding it in one hand. Now her hair, rich brown swirls of it, blew freely in the strong breeze.

  Drew couldn’t tell which mesmerized him more: the thundering water or those renegade strands of hair dancing around Adele’s face.

  “Not nearly.” Prospect Point couldn’t have fit many more people upon its vantage point had they packed them in like tinned sardines. Of course, it was the height of the summer vacation season, families on holiday, couples on honeymoon.

  His gaze fell on Adele’s lace-gloved hand, secure atop his arm. Any casual observer could have easily mistaken them for such a couple, rather than two friends from opposite social spheres who had tossed aside convention to spend the day together.

  Adele particularly had behaved in an unconventional manner, sneaking away from the Osbournes, telling them she had an engagement with friends. Had her esteemed relatives known what sort of friend their niece consorted with, they’d have locked Adele in a cage like some rare bird to be viewed only by specially chosen people. Case in point: not Drew.

  “When we were on the Maid of the Mist, Millie and Dorothea attempted to impart some history of the Falls, but I daresay they weren’t accurate on all of their points.”

  “So that’s why you invited me. You wanted a history lesson. I knew there had to be a catch.” He grinned at her, relishing the way her cheeks pinked with a blush.

  “We English never do anything without benefiting ourselves.” She matched his teasing tone, her expression one of carefree abandon. Leaving the confines of both of their worlds—her society one, and his Canal Street—had released something inside them both. Given them the freedom to laugh and revel, both in the Falls and the renewal of their friendship. It was a rare sensation, one to be embraced while it lasted.

  “All right then. Come with me.” Cupping her elbow, he made his way through the crowd, nudging aside pedestrians until they gained the edge of the stone wall providing a protective guardrail against overzealous visitors.

  He positioned her in front of him, keeping one hand on her arm. Though she’d provided the monetary part of their day, nothing could induce him to surrender his role, as a gentleman, to protect her.

  Near her ear, his lips brushed the swirling strands of hair framing her face, as he whispered, “Close your eyes.”

  She turned, angling her face to give him an incredulous stare. “You’re teaching history by telling me to close my eyes?”

  He smiled. “I’m teaching history by telling you to close your eyes.”

  Satisfied that her eyes were well and truly shut, he fixed his gaze on the Falls, letting their music mesmerize him. “Imagine. The year is 1678. A Franciscan priest named Louis Hennepin, along with his fellow explorer, is on a journey to a land unknown to most Europeans. The journey has been long, arduous. Sometimes even terrifying. Hennepin is weary. And then…they come upon it.” Drew stopped, caught up in the tale. It was a popular story, most tourists were told of it. Yet the marvel and magic of being on the cusp of such a discovery read like the best of adventure novels.

  “Upon what?” Breathlessness tinged Adele’s tone.

  “Open your eyes.”

  She did.

  “He saw…Niagara. The great Falls in all their spectacle and glory. The exhaustion was worth it, the rigors of the journey all but forgotten. For here was a creation only God could have designed. One that took Hennepin’s breath away and continues to take people’s breath away ever since. There’s no magic about God’s creation, but it is a magical sight.” He exhaled, the story ended, the scene transforming from 1678 and untouched wilderness to 1870 and a mass of eager sightseers.

  “And then history continued?” She met his gaze. “With more explorers and tourists and men of daring like one Drew Dawson?”

  He shook his head. He shouldn’t have told Adele that story. It only made him remember his own part in it all, and how base it seemed when compared with the dignity of explorers like Hennepin.

  “No.” He shook his head. “I’m not part of Niagara’s story. Not a very worthy part, anyway.”

  “Does it bother you?” If she hadn’t leaned toward him, the clamor of the onlookers and roar of the Falls would’ve drowned her quiet words.

  “What?” He took a step back, shielding Adele from a trio of over-eager adolescents who fairly barreled past them to be closer to the edge.

  “You know. Being here today?” This time, she kept her face toward the waterfall and he had to focus on her lips to catch each word. Full, slightly parted lips, the color of strawberries. Had any man ever felt their softness? For soft they surely must be. Soft and sweet and—

  Stop the thought train, Dawson. Stop it. Right. Now.

  “Why should it bother me?” The gloom of a moment ago lifted. Why should anything bother him today? He was with a woman who made him smile, who’d forgiven all past offenses, and who looked so darn pretty in that pale green dress of hers.

  Tomorrow, things would bother him plenty. Things like spending today for his own pleasure, letting a woman pay his fare when it should have been the other way around. Things like thinking too much on the way Adele looked every second of the afternoon.

  “Because of what will happen here.” Her eyes rivaled the swirling green at the top of the Falls, before it plunged into foaming white. “Does it not trouble you to think of it?”

  He drew in a breath that tasted of fresh air and anticipation, and the stale cigar smoke on the jacket of the man standing nearest. This time, it wasn’t Hope asking. With Hope, there had always been the need to shield, to attempt to keep from her as much as he could, the harsh realities of the world they lived in, though oftentimes he didn’t succeed. With Adele, there was a measure of that too. But Adele was older. Knew more of the world as evidenced from her handling of her family’s financial issues. And he’d promised never again to give Adele anything but the truth.

  “I’m not thinking about it right now. Right now, I’m thinking about how beautiful the Falls are, how nice it is to see your smile.” Adding one of his own, he was rewarded by seeing hers deepen. “And how hungry, looking at that ice cream seller on the way here made me.”

  There, she laughed. Though he could scarce hear it above the noise around them, it sent a warmth into his heart that had nothing to do with the sunshine.

  “But yes, when I think about it, it does bother me. Some. When I was up on the tightrope last time, my only thought was to make it across in one piece. I’m not like Blondin. He took on Niagara because he wanted to conquer it. I only want to make enough for me and my sister to have a better life.”

  “And there’s no other way?” As if by unspoken agreement, they made their way through the press of the crowd and away from the viewing area.

  “Not where someone like me could make money, lots of it, as quickly as I need it. I guess there might be. But most everything that comes to mind is either illegal or immoral.” The farther they walked, the fainter the rushing of the Falls became and the easier it was to move without being elbowed.

  “So you risk your life?” Her cultured English voice held notes of concern.

  “I do risk. But I don’t fear. I figure the Lord will go with me up on that rope, and His plans will ultimately prevail. I could just as easily die crossing a crowded street.” They passed few on the path away from the Falls, and those they did paid them little heed.


  “You trust God that much?” Her eyes registered astonishment. Doubt. Halting, she faced him.

  “You don’t?”

  “I don’t know.” She resumed her walk, though not her hand on his arm. Overhead, a bird chirped, perched in a tree, trilling as if to say the tree was his and he had no fear of losing it. “Life is so difficult sometimes, it makes one wonder. Usually, it seems better to do for oneself, rather than trust in some divine hand from on high. But I suppose you are right. Trusting can bring comfort.”

  “Is that what this trip to America was? Doing for yourself?” He still didn’t understand why she was here, when her family lived in England and obviously needed her. Did she hope for some aid from the Osbournes?

  At first, she said nothing. Her shoulders, usually so regal and erect, seemed to slump a little. He strode beside her, keeping pace, waiting for her to speak. But only the rush of the river, waves and rapids—a prelude to the symphony of the Falls, met his ears.

  “Yes. And I fear if I go on, you’ll accuse me of the same untruths I found you guilty of.” She looked at him, the same flash of vulnerability in her eyes as when he’d found her in the cathedral, face in her hands as if to quell unwanted tears. The same melding of fragility with strength that had drawn him so that night when he’d found her crying, and even before that, when he’d glimpsed a lone woman standing at the rail of the Maid of the Mist.

  “What do you mean by untruths? Don’t tell me you are scheming to thrill the crowds and make the Falls your circus?” He’d meant it as a joke, ill timed though it was. He didn’t expect her chin to tilt, the emerald in her eyes to turn as tumultuous as Niagara during a storm.

  Finally, her chest lifted in a sigh filled with more weight than a load of bricks. “No. But I am scheming, as you put it.”

  “How?” What had begun as a laughter-filled excursion was turning into a web knotted with intrigue.

  What part Adele played in weaving that web and what cords it was spun with, had yet to be determined.

  If one had secrets to tell, a coffeehouse scarcely bigger than a closet and occupied with as many cobwebs as patrons, made an ideal location.

  Still, as Adele faced Drew over steaming cups of coffee and a plate of ham and cheese sandwiches, she wondered what had possessed her to think she had any secrets to share with him in the first place. She owed him nothing…except the truth. Did she even owe him that much? Was that why the words had tumbled from her lips with as much forethought as leaves going over the Whirlpool Rapids?

  Or was it the way Drew had looked at her, standing side by side like a courting couple? Not with a simple friendly glance, but as if, with his eyes, he plundered the recesses of her heart. It wasn’t a way she’d been looked at before, and she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted it done to her again. Somehow, it scared her.

  But since she’d taken herself this far, she had no choice but to continue with her plan of telling him. She focused on the contents of her cup, watching tendrils of steam waft upward from the pungent liquid.

  “You’re starting to scare me.” Though she hadn’t touched a bite, Drew had already finished half a cup of coffee and several mouthfuls of sandwich. He placed the half-eaten piece down and looked at her with that probing brown-eyed gaze again.

  “With the amount of food you’re eating, one wouldn’t know it.” Not that she thought him ungentlemanly. He was paying, after all. Insisted on it, in a manner that brooked no refusal. “Do you always do that when you’re worried?” Stalling. That’s all she was doing. Rather pleasantly though, as Drew’s face reddened to a shade matching the faded burgundy tablecloth.

  “Sorry.” He’d been about to pick up another piece of sandwich, but stopped, his hand in mid-air. “The fresh air made me hungry, I guess.”

  “Don’t apologize.” She smiled, both at the notion she’d made him blush and the loosening of tension in the back of her neck. “Eat away. It’ll keep your eyes off me as I talk.”

  He picked up the chunk of sandwich, held it as if making a toast. “Talk then.”

  Filling her lungs with a gulp of air, she traced one finger across the tablecloth. “I didn’t come to America to see my relations. Not totally.”

  He swallowed a bite, washing it down with a sip of his drink. “Why are you here then?”

  “To marry.” There. She’d said it. Her secret, the one she hadn’t breathed to a single person, in England, or America. No warning bells blared, no thunderclap from above struck her down. Nothing dreadful happened in the seconds after winging two simple words onto the air.

  But Drew did set down his cup with a clatter that jangled his saucer.

  “Marry?”

  She nodded. “And not just any sort of marriage, to any sort of man. I need someone who is rich—”

  “Someone who has enough spare cash to share with you.” Just as she’d feared, it did sound base, out in the open. Like a yellowed gown that one could imagine as lovely held up in a darkened room. But when the gown was brought into harsh sunlight, stains and wrinkles became glaringly visible for all to see.

  “Yes. But it’s not for me. My family is desperate.” She cupped her hands around the cooling mug to keep them from making a wreckage of her skirt.

  “Aren’t there any rich Englishmen?” Drew Dawson was a better person than she. When she’d discovered his plan, she’d been quick to criticize. To find fault and be angry. Though Drew’s words were direct, his tone held kindness.

  Her stomach knotted over how she’d behaved toward him.

  “A few. But in England, people know us. Our family situation and…our family.” Her brother. Her father. What the latter had done and what the former was now doing. Such goings-on could be overlooked in the rich and prosperous. In the declining and struggling? Well, little mercy was shown. Telling Drew about that would mean bringing her father into the picture. And friend though Drew was, she wasn’t ready to talk about that. Never would be, if she had her way.

  “They know you’re struggling and would see your marriage as a desperate plea to escape your circumstances?” Whether he’d sated his appetite or her words had made him lose it, he wasn’t eating anymore. Just sitting across from her, hands clasped loose on the table, murky shadows making his eyes darker, the stubble on his jaw more pronounced.

  “Probably. You see, we are not so different after all. Unlike you—a man who has the freedom to stride into the world and make his fortune by whatever means he can—a woman has no such possibilities. Marriage is the only way she can acquire anything of value. In fact, marriage is the only way a woman can do anything of worth at all. Without a husband, she has no voice. And even with one, she has little property to call her own.” There wasn’t a single man she’d feel easy about sharing such revolutionary thoughts with, save him. Men seeking wives wanted malleable, dependent sorts. Not women who realized their own trapped position and even dared chafe against it. But Drew was a friend, not a man seeking her as wife. So she could tell him such things and trust that, whatever stance he took, he held no power over her.

  “Reminds me of when I lived at the orphanage.” He rubbed a hand across his jaw. “They were forever telling us how dependent we were on their kindness and how we ought to be prostrate in gratitude. Stupid, really, when we were lucky to get two square meals a day and a mattress without a blanket to sleep upon.”

  “But you escaped that, didn’t you?”

  A serving girl, wearing an apron more grease than cloth, slapped plates full of food in front of an elderly couple. Good thing the girl was thin or else she’d be hard-pressed to squeeze between the two tables.

  “Not without a price.” Drew’s eyes turned darker still, as if the memories still held the power to pain him. “But this conversation isn’t about me. What will you do, once you marry? If the man is an American, don’t you think he’ll want to continue living in America?”

  Her hands found the folds of her skirt and began to twist. She hadn’t considered that when making her plans. She’d always
envisioned a life at her family’s estate. Not here, in this country with its people and their funny way of speaking and lack of real elegance. Not here, when home, her home, lay across the ocean in a land beautiful in its familiarity.

  She’d tried not to think that a husband might feel differently, want a wife who would live in America with him. It was too painful a thought, but too real a possibility.

  “Perhaps. But my family’s home is a wonderful place. I’d hope to spend at least some time there.”

  A smile edged his mouth. “You don’t have to convince me. I’m not the moneyed man you seek.” The question hung unspoken in the air between them, thicker than the smoke curling above the head of the bespectacled man at the table across from theirs: But who is?

  Why didn’t Drew, her friend, ask it?

  Whatever the reason, she would supply him with the answer. “But Franklin Conway is.” If the original telling was a nasty taste souring her mouth, the four words she’d just voiced were a flame, burning her tongue and leaving a blister in its wake.

  “Franklin Conway?” The narrow ridge of his brows knit together. “As your husband?”

  “No, as my footman.” A laugh, unexpected and short, bubbled forth. How ridiculous it seemed, talking marriage prospects with a man who had no part in the union. Like discussing a political campaign with a person who could not even vote.

  “Is he serious? Has he laid out his intentions?” Drew didn’t take up her thread of humor. Seemed almost irritated by it, as he pushed aside his cup and leaned forward.

  Perhaps it was a good thing. For the quick flash in his eyes laid a fistful of stones atop the wall of her defenses. She’d already told him more than she’d intended. And it was enough for today. “That’s not for me to say.” Purposefully, she kept her words blank as a fresh page, not a line of emotion written upon them.

  “Oh.” At that moment, the serving girl appeared, probably vexed they’d taken up the table for so long. Drew pulled some bills from his pocket and handed them to her. The girl’s face brightened, more than was warranted by a simple paying of expenses. Why would Drew, little though he had, give the girl extra? Had he sensed something about her, a sign of poverty Adele had missed? Of course she wasn’t attuned to such things. The poverty of her family was a different sort.