“The hell with Temple,” he muttered.
Fancy’s throat ached with the effort not to cry. “W–What kind of house would we build?” she managed.
“Whatever kind you want,” Jeff answered, and it was obvious from his tone that his thoughts were on something else, now—probably the design for his new ship.
“I want one with a widow’s walk,” she said, turning to look at her husband through blurred and stinging eyes.
He was, as she had expected, bent over the plans. She didn’t need to see his face to know how absorbed he was in them. “Fine,” he said, and Fancy knew that he had not really heard her.
She crept out of the study, bruised to the core of her spirit. Outside on the brick street fronting the house, a carriage was coming to a stop.
Unable to face a round with Meredith Whittaker or any of the other socialites who had been calling diligently all week, Fancy bunched her skirts in her hands and scrambled up the stairs. She could not take refuge in the master bedroom—Jeff might find her there and then there would be no hiding her devastation.
In desperation, she wrenched open a door at random and hurried inside. The room was shadowy and cool and it offered what Fancy needed most—privacy to assemble her thoughts and her dignity again.
She flung herself down on a neatly made bed, smaller than the one in the room she and Jeff shared, and cried until her supply of tears was exhausted. That took considerable time, given her state of total despondency, and when Fancy finally sat up again, her eyes were puffy and her throat was raw.
She could risk going into the room across the hall now, having recovered some composure. There, she splashed her throbbing face with cold water until she was almost herself again.
The door opened as she was drying her cheeks with a soft towel. “Fancy?”
The gentle concern in Jeff’s voice almost undid her again; it was a long moment before she could turn and face him with a smile on her face. A questioning smile that took the place of words she could not quite trust herself to utter.
“Are you all right?” Jeff was frowning, tilting his head in order to look into her eyes.
“I–I just had a headache,” Fancy lied. The smile on her face was an aching mockery now, almost impossible to sustain. “Do we have company?”
Jeff grinned, though some of the curiosity lingered in his eyes. “We sure do. Why don’t you come and say hello?”
“If—if it’s Meredith, I—”
Jeff chuckled. “It isn’t Meredith,” he assured her, extending one hand.
Because she so often did this man’s bidding without thinking first, Fancy accepted the hand. Having done that, there was no going back, for Jeff pulled her good-naturedly out of the bedroom, into the hallway, and down the stairs.
Phineas Pryor was sitting in the study, looking wan but essentially himself. He rose from his chair facing Jeff’s desk and executed a courtly half bow, his eyes twinkling. “Mrs. Corbin,” he said in cordial greeting.
Fancy gave a cry of delight—there was a measure of relief there, too—and flung herself unceremoniously into her friend’s arms. “You’re better!” she exalted.
He hugged her and then shrugged. “My sister is an angel of mercy,” he said. “These few days of her tender care have restored me.”
Fancy recalled her abrupt departure in the runaway balloon and felt guilty. “We didn’t mean to leave you that way—”
Phineas laughed and, after Fancy had taken a chair near his, sat down again. “Didn’t appear you had all that much choice. When I heard what happened, I figured old Phineas would just have to look after himself and I got up and drove my wagon here.” He paused, indicating a stack of items beside his chair. “Brought your things, too—your signboard, your props, all that.”
Fancy thanked him; she had worried over her belongings, especially the gifts Jeff had given her.
Jeff was perched on the edge of his desk, his arms folded. “We had to leave the balloon with a friend of mine,” he said.
Phineas chuckled. “Ran out of hydrogen, did you? I reckoned that would happen. I’ve been worrying that that Royce fellow and his men might have caught up to you.”
Jeff’s jawline tightened. “I’ll deal with Temple,” he said, more to himself than Phineas or Fancy.
Fancy felt a new dread, unrelated to Jeff’s impending return to sea. “You don’t mean you’d actually seek him out, do you? He hasn’t bothered us—why not let sleeping dogs lie?”
“Sleeping rattlesnakes are another matter,” replied Jeff, and that distance was in his eyes again.
Fancy was nearly frantic, though she held her emotions in careful check. Thunderation, it was agony to think of Jeff sailing away and not returning for weeks or even months, but the idea of his facing so vicious an enemy as Temple was infinitely worse. Why, Temple would kill him, and do it gladly! “Jeff, you can’t!”
The same man who had loved her with such tender ferocity a short time before was now harsh and cold. “Enough,” he said, silencing her with a look.
Phineas shifted uncomfortably in his chair and then thrust the conversation off in another direction with a cheerful, “You going back for the balloon, Jeff?”
Jeff replied in the affirmative and Fancy heard little of the ensuing conversation. Too many disturbing pictures were whirling through her mind.
At Jeff’s invitation, Phineas stayed to dinner, and Fancy was hardly more attentive then. She listened when Jeff told Phineas that they were traveling to Wenatchee to attend a wedding at the end of the week, then settled back into her own uncomfortable reflections.
After Phineas had taken his leave, promising to return the day after with the spare tanks of hydrogen gas stored at his sister’s house, Jeff turned, grinning, from the front door.
“Phineas is living, as he put it, ‘high on the hog,’” he remarked.
Fancy was distracted. “Wh–What?”
“Didn’t you see that carriage? He rented it just to come calling.”
“Oh,” Fancy said witlessly. How could she be expected to think of Phineas’s hired carriage with so many other things on her mind?
* * *
The next morning, bright and early, the hired carriage appeared again. This time, however, the passenger was not Phineas but a slender young lady with copper-brown hair and great, chocolate-colored eyes. Her name, she informed Fancy, was Bethany Pryor and she was Phineas’s sister.
Fancy was taken aback; she had expected an entirely different sort of woman—a fusty old maid, for instance. But Bethany was hardly that.
“I’ve brought the hydrogen,” she said matter-of-factly as she stood on the porch, indicating the carriage with a gesture of one hand. “Phineas wasn’t feeling very well today.”
Fancy forced herself to stop staring and absorb what the young woman had said. “Is he very ill?” she asked.
Bethany stated emphatically that he was not. Then, as Fancy escorted her into the parlor, she burst out laughing. “You’re perplexed, aren’t you, Mrs. Corbin?”
Fancy gulped. “Well—”
“Phineas is old enough to be my father,” chimed Bethany, “but he really is my brother. Honest.”
“I believe you,” Fancy said quickly.
Bethany laughed again. “Good,” she said, sitting down on the parlor settee with a heartfelt sigh. “I do hope you’ll come and visit us, even though Phineas is not at death’s door, Mrs. Corbin.”
Fancy sat down in a chair nearby, liking Phineas’s young sister and wishing that she would not have to go away so soon. After attending the wedding in Wenatchee, she and Jeff were going on to Port Hastings to see to the building of their house. Probably, they would not be back in Spokane for a very long time, if ever. “Please, call me Fancy,” she said quickly, halting her wandering thoughts before they could progress to the two matters that bothered her most—Jeff’s upcoming confrontation with Temple Royce and the construction of the clippership that would take him away.
“And you�
�re to call me Beth,” responded the buoyant visitor, fussing with her gloves. “I’m afraid I can’t stay very long—as soon as the driver unloads those infernal hydrogen tanks, I’ve got to be off on my errands.”
Fancy wished that she had errands—Jeff had been away from the house since breakfast and she was bored. Alas, Miriam’s sister, Evelyn, was due at any moment to fit more of Fancy’s new clothes. With the trip to Wenatchee and then the coast only days away, the sewing, measuring and pinning had increased to a frenetic pace.
“I’ve told Phineas that I could do his patent medicine route,” Bethany went merrily on. “I know the business as well as he does and he does need to rest. I do get weary of teaching. Why, I could drive his wagon and sell the merchandise as well as any man, and I could fly that infernal balloon, too.”
Fancy bit back a giggle. “I’m sure you could,” she said.
“I could indeed,” insisted Bethany. And then she stood up before Miriam could get near with the tray of cookies and the pot of tea she had probably hurried to prepare. “Well, I’ll be going now. I hope we meet again sometime.”
Fancy felt bereft at the thought of her going. “Couldn’t you just stay for a cup of tea?”
“Oh, no,” trilled Bethany pleasantly and then she was gone. The hydrogen tanks were stacked on the porch in neat array.
“Well!” huffed Miriam, looking put out. “This is the finest orange pekoe, too!”
Fancy chuckled, but somewhat sadly. It was going to be hard to leave Miriam, as it had been hard to leave Isabella and Keith’s housekeeper, Alva Thompkins. “Don’t be offended, Miriam,” she said. “I don’t think Bethany stays in any one place for very long.”
“Reminds me of a mouse in a mitten,” complained Miriam, trudging off toward the kitchen again.
Alone—Fancy was in a melancholy mood and it seemed to her then that she was always alone—she went back into the parlor to take a solitary cup of tea. When that was gone she consumed two large sugar cookies out of sheer self-pity.
“Many more of those,” reprimanded Evelyn, staggering under a load of yard goods, “and I’ll have to let out the seams in all these new dresses!”
Startled and properly chagrined, Fancy put her third cookie back on the plate. Evelyn had brought two assistants along and soon the mistress of the house was standing on a hassock while they all pulled at her skirts, tugged at her bodice, and stabbed her with pins. By the time it was over, which wasn’t until midafternoon, Fancy was so undone that she fled upstairs, put on her old dress with the stars stitched to it, and went outside in search of Hershel.
She found him in a covered hutch in the back yard, fatter than ever and very content in his prosperity. It was obvious that Walter, Miriam’s husband, had devoted much time to his comfort.
Needing the reassurance of something familiar, in much the way she had needed to wear the starred dress again, Fancy cautiously opened the hutch door and reached inside to pet Hershel. “We’re getting spoiled, you and I,” she said. “If we ever have to stand on our own two feet again—pardon me, I know you have four feet to stand on—we’ll be in trouble.”
Hershel’s pink nose twitched and he looked largely unconcerned.
“Furthermore,” Fancy went on, knowing that she was prattling but needing that, too, “you’re entirely too fat for any top hat I’ve ever seen.”
At that moment, another carriage came to a rattling halt on the brick street and Fancy turned her head to see who was calling now. She prayed that it wasn’t Meredith Whittaker.
Hershel took advantage of her distraction and leaped out of the hutch, heading straight for Miriam’s cherished vegetable garden. Fancy, after a second of recovery, gave immediate chase.
She caught Hershel in a row of new parsnips, but only after tripping on the hem of her dress and landing full out in the loamy dirt.
Looking upward in dread, she saw Jeff standing before her, with a stunningly handsome dark-haired man. “Frances,” he said, his eyes dancing with mirth, “I would like you to meet my brother Adam. Adam, my wife.”
Flushing, Fancy clambered to her feet and offered a hand in greeting—a very muddy hand.
It was the measure of Dr. Adam Corbin that he accepted that hand without a moment’s hesitation.
Chapter Fourteen
JEFF STOOD AT THE SIDEBOARD, POURING BRANDY INTO two snifters. It was clear to Adam that the barrier between his brother and himself remained, and yet there were changes in the man, too. Subtle variances that could probably be ascribed to that lovely little nymph in the star-spangled dress.
Jeff’s broad shoulders stiffened beneath his shirt, and it was a long moment before he finally turned around, drinks in hand. “What are you doing here, Adam?” he asked evenly, quietly.
Adam did his best to look nonchalant. He shrugged and sat back in the chair facing Jeff’s desk, lifting one booted foot to rest on the opposite knee. “Are things so bad between us that I need an excuse?” he countered.
Jeff handed Adam a glass and took the chair behind the desk, setting his own brandy aside. “I didn’t think anything could get you away from Banner and that hospital of yours,” he said.
Adam sighed. He’d been working harder than ever lately and the train trip had been a long one. “We’re going to talk, Jeff, and reasonably. About Papa and why I didn’t tell you he was alive until—”
“Until it was too late,” Jeff broke in, his eyes dark with pain.
The elder brother ignored the interruption. “First, I want to tell you that I think your wife is beautiful.”
A grin tugged at the corner of Jeff’s mouth. “Mud and all?” he drawled.
“Mud, stars, and all,” confirmed Adam, grinning. “I’ve always had confidence in your good taste, brother, but she exceeds all expectation.”
“She does, doesn’t she?” mused Jeff in tender tones that betrayed much. “The odd thing is that Fancy feels inferior to almost everybody. I think the prospect of meeting Mama and the rest of you has her terrified.”
“We’ll try not to be too overwhelming,” Adam promised, with a quick grin. “Though I can’t speak for O’Brien.”
Jeff shook his head. “Still referring to your wife as ‘O’Brien,’ are you? My God, you’re romantic.”
Adam shrugged. “She answers to it,” he said.
There was a softening in Jeff’s face; he sat back in his chair and looked thoughtful. “How is Banner, Adam?”
“Bone mean and breathtakingly beautiful, as always.” Adam paused; despite Jeff’s obvious feelings for his own wife, he couldn’t be sure how he would take the news. “She’s expecting again,” he said, finally.
To Adam’s relief, Jeff grinned. “Congratulations. Do you think you’ll get another set of twins?”
Adam rolled his eyes, though the thought of Danny and Bridget, his children, filled him with pride and a need to go home. “God forbid,” he said.
Jeff laughed and Adam felt the old closeness to his brother, just briefly. He prayed they could regain it again permanently.
* * *
Humiliated almost beyond bearing, Fancy thrust Hershel back into his hutch and firmly locked the door. Trust that miserable rabbit to get her into trouble and just when she would have liked to have made a good impression, too.
Of course, that had probably been a foolish hope in the first place—she had never done anything that could be expected to impress someone like Dr. Adam Corbin. No doubt he would go home to Port Hastings and tell the family that Jeff had married a mud-streaked hoyden.
Because she knew Miriam would be working in the kitchen, Fancy risked going in the front door. The low hum of masculine voices told her that Jeff and Adam were shut away in the study.
Not for a moment did she consider intruding. Determined not to cry, she marched up the stairs and into the master bedroom. What she saw in the bureau mirror nearly dissolved her, however—her hair was falling down, her cheeks were smudged with wet garden dirt, and there was a leaf clinging to the peak of
her right breast.
With a sad sort of self-mockery, Fancy stood up very straight and said, “May I present, ladies and gentlemen of the upper classes, Mrs. Jeffrey Corbin?”
A soblike laugh caught in her throat and she turned away before her face could crumble. Resolutely, she prepared for a much-needed bath.
The combination of hot water and scented bath salts was a soothing one, and by the time Fancy had soaked awhile, and then scrubbed, she felt better. She even began to see the humor in chasing a rabbit through the vegetable garden and falling flat on her face in the process.
She got out of the bathtub, opened the drain, and dried herself quickly. Then, dressed only in satiny drawers and a matching lace-trimmed camisole of soft ivory, she chose a fresh dress with great care. Perhaps, if she looked especially nice and behaved with some degree of propriety, she might be able to redeem herself.
An hour later, when Fancy went downstairs again, it appeared that she had done just that. Adam and Jeff were out of the study now, and they both took in her carefully coiffed hair and whispering lavender silk dress with admiring eyes.
“Hello, again,” Adam greeted her, with a brotherly smile that eased a great many of Fancy’s apprehensions. Then, before Jeff could make a move, he offered a gentlemanly arm. “I believe dinner is about to be served. May I?”
Fancy did not even look at Jeff—she returned Adam’s smile and took his arm. “Thank you,” she said.
Miriam had set the table and, after everyone had been seated, she began serving. She was obviously pleased that Adam was there, and she worked with a lilt in her step and a twinkle in her eyes.
Jeff watched her with wounded amusement and then commented, “I do believe Miriam likes you better than me, Adam.”
“Doesn’t everybody?” grinned Adam, lifting his wineglass.
There was an uncomfortable moment in which, Fancy was sure, everyone at the table was thinking of one Banner O’Brien, who had indeed cared more for Adam than Jeff.
“I understand that your mother is active in the Woman Suffrage movement,” Fancy put in quickly, hoping to change the subject.
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