The Scandalous Mrs. Wilson

by Laine Ferndale

  But maybe she was just running an errand. She probably didn’t trust herself to act naturally around him in the company of others and so was waiting for a time when they could speak in private. It seemed likely. Alone in the treatment room, she would be standoffish at first, but before long ... Well, she’d kissed him back, hadn’t she? He’d been surprised at her passionate response; at the way she’d gripped his collar.

  The scent of mint in the bathhouse was a constant reminder of her.

  Annie inquired if there was anything else she could help him with. As politely as he could, he informed her that there was not. Her white dress made her look like a ghost, and she moved spectrally at the edge of his vision, folding towels and fussing after other clients. He was being unkind to her, he knew, but between the headache and Jo’s absence, he couldn’t help but be standoffish.

  After the bath, he wandered to the treatment room, trying to patch together a workable monologue, but the words became a jumble of clichés and maudlin phrases that one of the characters in his books might say. My boldness was misguided, but my intentions were pure. No. That sounded like something a politician would say. I got caught up in the moment and I thought— No, that made it seem like a mistake when it wasn’t.

  He removed his shirt, lay down on the enameled tin table, and pressed his head against the cool metal, which soothed his hangover. The window was open, and a faint breeze stirred against the sweat on his back. I hope I didn’t startle you, but I, for one, greatly enjoyed what transpired between us, and I hope ... No, it was all wrong. He would just have to take his cue from Jo when she arrived.

  But when the door opened, it was Annie again. The disappointment on his face must have been apparent, because the girl looked as if she might cry. She was only a girl. She was trying her best. He was being unkind.

  “Have I upset you somehow, Mr. Wister?” she asked. “I’m so sorry if I have.”

  “No, no, of course not. I was lost in thought, and you startled me.” He offered her a smile. “I look forward to our treatment.”

  Annie’s small, callused hands tried hard to trace down the source of his tension, but it was clear that either she did not have the hand strength, or the source of his tension could simply not be remedied by massage. It was out there, somewhere in Fraser Springs, hiding from him.

  He’d blown it. Or she’d blown it. What was her plan? To run this place into the ground until the St. Alice swallowed up all the remaining business, the mines ran dry, and the clients went elsewhere? And then what?

  The muscles in his neck were taut with aggravation now, no matter how Annie’s little hands worked. His headache grew. The thing was—the thing that Jo just didn’t understand—was that she could only hide from her problems for so long. Eventually, she’d have to face them head on. And Owen wasn’t even a problem, for God’s sake. If a man falling for her was a problem, well, then she’d had a pretty charmed life.

  Falling for her. The massage had ended without Owen’s noticing, and he was suddenly alone in the room. Was he falling for her? It was far too soon for that kind of foolishness. He wasn’t some swooning romantic to go moon-eyed for a lady on two days’ acquaintance. Hell, he’d always been the kind to cut and run when things showed signs of getting serious. And what, exactly, did he want to get out of this? Well, none of it mattered now. She’d cut him off in one, ice-cold swoop. She didn’t want to even talk to him about what happened.

  No, she was certainly not being fair to him. He washed off the oil in the bathing room, dried off, and dressed. As he walked back to the St. Alice, the humidity instantly slickened his skin. Why should Jo be the only one who had a say in all this? He would track her down tonight, and they’d have it out. Chances were good that she would never want to see him again, but at least he would know. Better that than this agony of waiting.

  Nothing was going according to plan. For years, he had told himself that he would settle down after his career was established: when he was not just a popular children’s writer, but a success. Success, then marriage. He’d courted a few women in his time, of course. But after a certain point, he’d always sensed that they liked him even though. Even though he didn’t come from an old family. Even though his permanent address was a boarding house. Even though he’d had to buy his typewriter on credit. They’d never said as much, but once those suspicions had crept in, the connection had never seemed to last.

  At least Jo had an established business to her name. What did he have beyond decent looks and a monthly royalty check that rose and fell unpredictably? No, he wasn’t going to make any promises to a woman until he had something solid to offer her. It hurt his pride to admit it, but Jo might be right to keep him at arm’s length.

  Chapter 16

  There was no need for armour when you had a perfectly pressed and starched dress. Not to mention the tortoiseshell comb, the brilliantly shined shoes, the modest neckline secured with a cameo brooch, the drop of rosewater behind the ears. Would carrying a Bible be too much? Yes. She didn’t need to hide behind anything.

  The town of Fraser Springs was built on a hill sloping down towards the water, so all the houses seemed to be peering their noses down at the people walking along the town’s main boardwalk. Jo loved the sound her feet made on the planks. Confident. Purposeful. The calls of the seabirds, the sloshing of the water against the wharf: it all combined in a soothing rhythm she’d grown to love during the past five years.

  Even at this early morning hour, townspeople were going about their business. Today was Thursday, and that meant the SS Minto would be docking soon, dropping off passengers and crates and collecting letters and goods bound for market in Vancouver. Already, a crowd of people milled by the long wharf, waiting for whatever news the boat would bring.

  Jo slipped inside the general store. Ilsa usually did the shopping, so it had been more than a month since she’d smelled its familiar mélange of dust and nutmeg, dried fish, and licorice. Jo’s eyes adjusted to the light as she surveyed the barrels of dry goods, the long ropes of garlic hanging from the ceiling and swaying in the thick air, the bolts of fabric, the glass cases selling everything from boiled sweets to liver tonic to spectacles. When she’d first moved to Fraser Springs, she had taken her father to the store, and they’d made a game of trying to identify the strangest thing in the shop and guess who might buy it. She’d won with elbow-length work gloves made from a pair of bear paws.

  “I don’t know,” her father had said, grinning. “Maybe some American fellow is very serious about his right to ‘bear arms.’”

  Even now, Jo groaned at her father’s joke. She looked up to find the clerk’s helper staring at her. He was a lanky teenaged boy who she didn’t recognize.

  “How would I go about getting some plate glass shipped in?” she asked him.

  “Oh, I don’t ... uh... I don’t—” the assistant stammered. Either he was utterly green, or her reputation had preceded her.

  Jo gave her best, most patient smile. “Could you ask your employer? My front window broke, and I need to replace it.”

  “If you didn’t have those miners horsing around at all hours, you wouldn’t have so much damage,” said a clerk, coming out from the storeroom behind the counter. He was a wiry little man with a moustache so well groomed it looked drawn on.

  Again, Jo forced the smile and the calm voice. “Oh, it wasn’t the miners’ fault. Someone was merely trying to deliver me a message and missed my letterbox.” She smiled. “Accidents happen, you know.”

  The clerk and his assistant both reddened.

  “That kind of shipment’s a special order, ma’am, I’m not sure we could manage it,” the clerk said.

  “I’ve placed special orders here previously. Have you discontinued the practice?”

  The clerk looked down at the glass cases. Up at her. “Well, it’s just that we only allow special orders for... distinguished creditors, such as your late husband.” He composed himself enough to meet her gaze. “A small establishment
such as ours can’t afford to place a special order and then have payment default. It would ruin us. And a breakable item like glass? Well, it just can’t be done.” The clerk was in full form now: his posture was ramrod straight, as was his moustache. “No, I’m sorry, ma’am, but it just cannot be managed.”

  She stared evenly at him. “How would you recommend I go about getting the glass to fix my window?”

  The clerk’s mouth twitched at the corner. “My advice, ma’am? You wait to see the results of the meeting. No sense worrying yourself trying to place an order if you don’t plan to stay out the season.”

  Jo channeled her anger into a posture rigid enough to match his and took a breath. “You’ve received some incorrect information, sir. I fully intend on staying out the season, and all the seasons after. Although, come to think of it, I will be taking a day trip to Nelson after this meeting to speak with the special constable there about the unfortunate number of window breakages my business has been suffering. I’ve also got some letters he may want to take a look at.” She did not wait to see the clerk’s reaction. Instead, she gave his underling a winning smile and headed for the door.

  “Have a good day, ma’am,” the clerk called after her. “I’m sure I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Normally, a confrontation like that would leave Jo with a pounding heart, but all she felt was a cool, deep calm. She was beyond anger now. Just twenty-four more hours of smiling sweetly and she would have a chance to defend herself. She headed towards the dock, where the SS Minto was coming in. Usually, she loved to watch the big boat glide into the harbour, loved the way the paddlewheel churned waves that slapped rhythmically against the dock, loved all the hopeful people awaiting visitors, parcels, and mail. Today, however, she felt only the same calm chill through her body.

  “Hello,” she said, greeting each person she recognized in the crowd. “Good morning.”

  A hushed murmur rippled through the townspeople as she approached, but she maintained her decorum and her posture.

  “Looking to get on the next boat out of here?” someone jeered.

  “No, actually. Just enjoying the view.” She turned to give the person who spoke a smile, but whoever it was had melted back into the crowd. “And reminding disembarking passengers that I’m offering a sale this weekend. All spa treatments for two cents.”

  “Two cents is all your girls are worth.” Another female voice.

  Though she felt the ligaments in her neck might snap from all the forced smiling, she was fully prepared to do this all day. “My girls are very well trained, and I’m proud of their work.” She sounded like a brochure, but it was good to have a script at times like this. “You’re welcome to come and try our services to see if you agree.”

  That seemed to quiet them. Out of insults, they made a point of ignoring her. Jo glimpsed Mrs. McSheen in the crowd, consulting with her fellow Society Ladies. “How do you do, Mrs. McSheen,” she called out, waving merrily at them. The SS Minto gave a long, low hoot to signal its arrival. “And hello Mrs. Campbell and Mrs. Gunnerson and Mrs. Avery.” The group of women looked up like startled birds.

  “It’s so good to see you,” Jo said. “Such lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

  The women reddened, trapped by their social obligation to make polite small talk. “We’ll see you at the meeting,” Mrs. McSheen finally managed, and the women huffed off to dissect the encounter over tea in the St. Alice.

  And so it went. All morning and well into the late afternoon, her posture so straight it would make a deportment teacher proud, her voice calm and sweet, her neck and shoulders tense from the effort of maintaining her facade. Well, at least she had shown that she wasn’t afraid. And though she could have been imagining it, some of the townspeople did seem to soften towards her. It was, after all, easier to hate a faceless harlot who never left her den of iniquity than it was to hate the lady politely inquiring about the price of your cabbages or asking whether your baby was over his croup.

  Jo followed the wooden boardwalk back to the bathhouse but veered off before she got to the front door. Winding her way along a barely perceptible path past the miners’ cabins and down a rocky outcropping, she eventually arrived at the one safe, private place she had in the town.

  She had discovered the grotto in her first few months in Fraser Springs. It was a sanctuary she had never shared with anyone: not her father, not Albert, not the girls. The townspeople must be too busy building hotels up towards the sky to bother looking down, or they would flock to this place. Even in the humidity, the small grotto was cool; its water was never as hot as the main springs. In the evenings, the last light of the day flooded in from fissures in the rock, spangling across the white limestone. All around her, pale rock whorled in frozen waves and twisting spires, like a cathedral shaped by God’s own hands. It smelled of moss and wet stone, its mineral waters steaming gently into the cooling air of dusk. Had she chosen to speak, her voice would have echoed hugely, but she preferred silence in the grotto. The water burbling and tapping against the stone was the only sound she needed.

  Jo unpinned her hair and let it fall down her back. She placed the comb and the brooch on a little ledge formed by the rock, then struck life into a mismatched assortment of half-melted candles and wax stubs she kept there in anticipation of the darkness that would arrive in an hour or so. She unbuttoned her shirtwaist, skirt, and petticoats, and slid out of them. After days spent buttoned into stifling wool, the chilled air was delightful. On the hottest days, she sometimes imagined that the limestone grotto was an ice palace or a snow castle. Freed of the skirt’s weight, her chemise ruffled against her legs.

  Jo brushed the leaves and burrs from her skirt and placed her clothes carefully on the limestone shelf. She had no fear of anyone seeing her in her underthings. In five years, no one had ever ventured down to the grotto, though the paintings of handprints and men chasing horses she found when she explored farther into the cave’s depths suggested that the place had known visitors in the past. She loved the fluid lines of the images, the way the horses and men seemed to bend around the limestone’s curves.

  Jo slipped into the water. Steam curled in little eddies across the surface, and the contrast of the hot water with the chill on her face and neck soon relaxed her. The limestone had been worn smooth by the almost imperceptible current of water and felt like ceramic against her bare skin.

  Although the water here lacked the potency of what they piped through the bathhouse, it still fizzled faintly against her body. She closed her eyes, listening to the pat, pat, pat of the water droplets echoing across the grotto’s hollows. Her heartbeat slowed to the droplets’ cadence. Pat, pat, pat. Her mind felt as blank and white as the limestone walls. Owen Sterling, Mrs. McSheen, the rude clerk ... they all drifted away.

  As the water lapped against her body, however, thoughts of Owen crept insistently into the stillness. She couldn’t imagine what he must think of her right now. It had surely been terribly rude of her to simply vanish without any explanation, but there was nothing to be gained from allowing herself to be distracted from her commitment to Wilson’s. This was not the time to behave like a silly girl whose head had been turned by a handsome face and a single kiss.

  Running the bathhouse was difficult, especially with the recent groundswell of malicious gossip, but it was the one place where she truly felt in control. It had taken her years to learn the business, but now her bookkeeping was tidy, her staff was well trained, and her clientele was small but fiercely loyal. The issue of the broken window was tricky, but she would figure something out. At Wilson’s Bathhouse, problems always seemed to have an answer. Every day, she choreographed three huge and flawless meal services, played peacemaker to spats between the girls, healed a half-dozen aching bodies, repaired loose boards and frayed towels and leaking washtubs with her own hands, and then went to bed with the satisfaction of a job well done.

  Then again, she always went to bed alone. For the first time since Albert�
��s passing, she was beginning to suspect that might be a problem as well. She wouldn’t have responded to Owen Sterling with such intensity if she were truly satisfied with a life of virtuous celibacy. But Owen was not the solution to that problem; he was an entire barrel of new problems. Nevertheless, her stomach clenched at the idea that he might be angry with her. He’d been so kind, and now he was probably packing, cursing himself for getting involved with such a capricious woman. She’d likely never see him again.

  Chapter 17

  He looked for her in the bathhouse, at the general store, at the wharf, even at Doc Stryker’s bar, but Jo Wilson seemed to have vanished into the mists. It was doubtful that she was cowering in her bedroom, but it seemed the only logical explanation. Perhaps he’d read her wrong. Perhaps her spitfire boldness only applied to her business affairs.

  It was only by chance that he finally saw her. He happened to be outside, walking along the lakeshore to clear his thoughts: sulking, if he was being truly honest. Jo strode right past him, seeming completely lost in thought. He was about to call out to her, when she turned sharply left, into the bushes. What in heaven’s name was she doing tromping through the underbrush?

  He watched as she wove her way past the miners’ cabins behind the bathhouse and into the trees, following a path even a deer couldn’t have deciphered. Suddenly, she dropped out of sight, as if the earth had simply swallowed her. For a long moment, he hesitated at the edge of the woods. Mosquitos droned all around him. He was certainly not going to go charging after the woman, crashing through the undergrowth, just to demand an apology. All the same ... He swore under his breath as he pushed into the trees. This damned town and this damned woman would make a fool of him yet.

  The humidity intensified the fragrance of sage and sap-swollen fir trees. As he walked in the general direction Jo had gone, he saw trees, so big that two men couldn’t have gotten their arms around them, clinging crazily to rocky outcroppings and gnarling their roots around half-exposed boulders. He’d have to come back with better shoes to explore, maybe do a few rough sketches of the geography for a future novel. Not that he intended to write another one, of course. But being out at the edge of the wilderness made him imagine all sorts of convenient calamities that could befall a hero. He could be climbing and slip on a mossy rock. A freak blizzard could blow through, and he’d have to cleave to one of these massive trees for shelter. He could—