“I know!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together. “Tomorrow Ike’s taking me into town. I’m going to bring you back a surprise.”
He looked at her doubtfully. “What for?”
She laughed. “For fun, because you’re sick, and because I’m such a bumbler, causing you to break your toe and have coffee in your sheets.”
It would certainly make more sense to simply assuage her guilt for Roy’s troubles with a present rather than trying to wait on him, which wasn’t helping him or helping her maintain her ladylike facade. But if she gave him a small gift, perhaps she would appear gracious and they could let the whole matter drop. And she might be able to stop dreaming of being locked in a linen closet with Roy.
What could she get him, she wondered? What would she find in Paradise to offer him?
He seemed to be wondering the same thing. That glint was back in his eyes again. “I haven’t received a surprise present since I was a boy.”
She smiled, and this time managed to stay a safe distance away from him as she headed for the door. “Then I’ll have to make sure it’s an especially nice surprise, won’t I?”
Chapter Five
Ike dropped Ellie off at the mercantile in Paradise without a word of warning as to the attention she might receive. Now as she browsed through the store, curious gazes tracked her movements as closely as a cat tracking the movements of a mouse.
Apparently her arrival at the McMillan house had become widely known and raised as much speculation as she had feared. Having so many eyes focused on her made her apprehensive. In New York, strangers were the rule, not the exception. She hadn’t really deliberated on the steps required to insert herself into a smaller community; the steady stares made her realize, however, suddenly and with force, that her dreams of plopping herself into the middle of Paradise without any fuss were, like all her dreams, overly fanciful.
She sauntered along the displays as casually as she could, concentrating on the wares before her. Staring at the vast assortment of goods, however, just made her come to the depressing realization that even the simplest trinket was beyond her means. What kind of surprise could she buy Roy? In playing the part of a grand lady, she’d forgotten she still had a pauper’s pocketbook. She had so little money, and what little she had she couldn’t afford to waste.
She needed to find a direction; a job. But where in this town would she find a place for herself? As she and Ike had driven through town, she had seen no establishment that might need workers, except for the hotel, and the prospect of working there made her heart sag with dread. In her heart of hearts she had hoped to finally escape domestic servitude, but it appeared that she was even going to descend a rung on the ladder. All the years she’d worked in private homes, she’d heard derisive whispers from other servants about women who worked in hotels. According to some, it was akin to working in a brothel.
But if a position as a hotel maid was all that was open to her here, she would simply have to harden her resolve and set to it. A glare from a young blond woman behind the notions counter speeded Ellie’s exit from the store, and she hurried down the sidewalk, her head bent into the cold wind, in the direction of the hotel.
Her heart felt as heavy as a solid chunk of iron. A maid. That would be a surprise for Roy—a surprise to all of them. How was she going to explain this sudden change in her circumstances? Even after the hint of her distressed financial circumstances she’d given Roy, the descent from fine lady to chambermaid was going to be a little difficult for her to explain without revealing that she had been a liar from the moment she first put pen to paper to correspond with Parker.
Oh, why hadn’t she simply confessed her situation when she stepped off the train? Everything would have been so much simpler!
By eastern standards, the Paradise Hotel was no Waldorf-Astoria, but Ellie was impressed as she looked up at the two-story Italianate structure. Its red brick stood out from the rest of the town, which was mostly composed of wood buildings. She crossed the threshold anxiously, and found herself staring around an oak-panelled lobby in the center of which hung a large, elegant chandelier. Comfortable couches covered in plush red velvet stood next to marble-topped tables, and a large mahogany grandfather clock chimed the hour in the corner. Paradise, indeed!
For the first time, Ellie felt a little excitement at the prospect of working here. Having such fine surroundings would be a comfort, at least.
She walked up to the front desk, where a middle-aged man sat reading a newspaper—though he couldn’t have been too absorbed, because he quickly put the paper aside when she walked up.
“Help you?” he asked in a friendly voice. “Are you staying in town?”
“N-no…” She felt suddenly awkward. “I’m staying with friends.”
He squinted at her through his spectacles more critically. “I see. You’re the McMillan’s visitor.”
She nodded. “Actually, I came here to inquire after a position.”
He arched an eyebrow.
“A job,” she elaborated.
Twisting his lips, the man reached forward, slapped his palm against a bell whose abrupt jangle nearly scared Ellie out of her wits, then returned to his newspaper. “Wait right there,” he said without looking back up at her.
Ellie stood awkwardly in front of the counter, waiting for she knew not what. Then, suddenly, a tall, dark-haired woman wearing a severe black silk dress appeared before her. The woman had small eyes and a long nose, and her expression was pinched.
The man gestured toward Ellie, and the woman in black looked her up and down with such disdain that Ellie wondered how in heaven’s name she was going to get through the ordeal of speaking to this woman. “Yes?”
She had expected a few pleasantries, but since she saw there would be no beating around the bush at all, she replied simply, “I was looking for a job. I was wondering if you might need a serving girl or a maid.”
Lips that were already downturned puckered at her in further displeasure. “I’m sorry.”
Ellie took a deep breath, sorely wishing that she were a foot taller so that this steely matron couldn’t look down her pointy nose at her. “But mightn’t you need more help sometime in the future?”
“I can’t predict the future,” the clipped voice replied.
There was one good thing about being so wholeheartedly dismissed, Ellie thought as she made her way back out onto the sidewalk. At least she hadn’t had to confess to being pregnant, which she surely would have if the hotel manager had shown the slightest interest in hiring her.
But that was a cold comfort, and one that still left her with a mighty problem. How was she to earn her bread and support her child?
She was walking back to the mercantile to meet Ike when she was suddenly stopped by a friendly voice. “Oh! I was hoping to run into you!”
Startled, Ellie looked up and found herself gazing into a pair of familiar blue eyes. Only, the woman before her was completely unknown to her. “I beg your pardon?”
The woman’s lips turned up in a whimsical smile. “Yes, I forgot you wouldn’t know me at all. I’m Isabel Dotrice.”
This simple statement apparently was meant to clear up all confusion, but Ellie gaped at her in continued ignorance.
The woman laughed. “Roy and Parker’s mother.”
“Oh!” Ellie peered into the older woman’s beautiful face with renewed interest. No wonder the eyes had seemed so familiar! They were Roy and Parker’s exactly, as were her height and proud bearing. Her figure was slender and elegant, her dress tailored like something out of a French ladies’ magazine. Isabel had perfectly straight white teeth that she flashed in a beaming smile, beautiful red cheeks and dark brown hair with just a hint of gray peeping out from under her stylish hat. Ellie might have thought she was in a dream, so incongruous was Roy’s mother’s graceful appearance on the dusty windswept street. It was like meeting a swan in a chicken coop.
“I saw you at the train depot my first day here,
” Isabel explained, easing into conversation as easily as if they were old friends instead of complete strangers. “Then, through the window of the mercantile, I saw you again. My dear, what a fuss you created!”
Ellie remembered Ike telling her that Isabel herself had created quite a bit of gossip; she wondered if the woman knew that. “I just came from the store, where everyone was staring. Apparently the fuss hasn’t died down a bit.” She frowned. “And just now, at the hotel, I met the strangest woman.”
Isabel leaned closer and lowered her voice. “A pinched old crow of a woman?”
Ellie nodded. “Yes, exactly!”
Isabel laughed. “That’s Tilda Archer. Don’t pay her any mind. She’s Munsie Warner’s married sister—oh, but you wouldn’t know who Munsie is, either.” Laughter bubbled from her lips. “Well, for that matter, I barely know them myself. Only the two sisters have been here forever and are both very stern types. Tilda made the mistake of marrying and forced her husband to build the hotel to keep him occupied. But mostly it keeps her occupied, I believe. I know she disapproves of me because I’m a divorcée.”
Ellie nodded, suddenly understanding. If word had gotten out that she was a stranger staying at the McMillan farm…no telling what a town moralist might make of that situation!
Isabel laughed again. “Well it’s a small world here—these poor people have little enough to talk about. Indeed, I count myself among the curious horde now, too, because you’ve been on my mind often since I’ve taken up citizenship in Paradise.”
“Oh, goodness, I don’t see why—”
“I thought perhaps you might be engaged to one of my sons,” Isabel interrupted brusquely, “but last night Parker informed me that wasn’t the case.”
“N-no,” she stammered, blushing furiously. “Of course not!”
The older woman pursed her lips pleasantly. “Pity. Of course, a woman can’t be in any hurry to be a grandmother, but I thought you would do very well for one of my boys.”
Ellie was astonished. The woman hardly knew her! And did her comment about grandmotherhood indicate she knew about Ellie’s condition? She was flustered almost beyond speech.
How could the woman possibly know what kind of woman would “do” for either Roy or Parker, especially since she hadn’t even spoken to Roy since her return from an absence of over twenty years?
Ellie’s mind fastened on this last fact for a moment, and when she saw Ike’s wagon driving toward the mercantile, she suddenly had an idea.
Others might say that Roy was in no condition for a visit from his mother, but wouldn’t the best judge of his readiness be Roy himself?
“Are you ready for your surprise?”
Roy sat in the rocking chair by the fire in Parker’s little room and looked up with pleasure when Ellie peeked in the doorway. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold, and she hadn’t stopped long enough even to remove her scarf. For some ridiculous reason, it pleased him that she would be in such a hurry to deliver a surprise to him. Or that she had remembered her promise at all.
Heaven knows he himself had thought of little else since hearing Ike’s wagon leave after breakfast. He sat up, smiled, and nodded.
“Close your eyes.”
Releasing a long-suffering sigh, he did as told. It was silly how excited he felt; like a kid on Christmas morning.
For a moment the only sound in the room was the sound of light footsteps and the swish of skirts. Had Ellie gotten herself a new dress? That would certainly be a welcome surprise in light of those drab outfits she’d been wearing!
Suddenly, he caught a whiff of violets in the air—an extraordinarily familiar smell. Roy’s breath hitched; his heart was racing before he could realize why. Hair on the back of his neck stood on end, heat flooded him, and his eyes flew open.
“Good lord!”
The words rushed out of his mouth. He could hardly believe his eyes. But it was her; there was no doubt in his mind about that. Seeing her was disconcerting, as if she had just strolled casually out of the past. His mother: older, perhaps, but in a way even more beautiful than the boyish ideal he’d kept in his memory over the years. His mother: smiling at him as gently, as fondly, as if he were still a little boy toddling about their cavelike old soddy.
She clasped her hands together, her brow suddenly puckering in worry. “Roy, you hurt yourself! Are they taking good care of you now?”
The voice was so startling—and yet suddenly he realized that he’d seen this woman very recently. When? “Who do you mean by they?” he asked, unable to keep the petulance out of his tone. “We’ve both been taking care of ourselves for a good long while.”
She sent him a quizzical glance, jolting his memory.
“The railroad station!” he exclaimed.
She nodded and stepped closer; his scowl apparently stopped her in midstride, however. “Yes, that was me—and now I detect you’re mad at me for not saying something then. Don’t be, Roy. How could I introduce myself when you were so obviously keen on finding someone else?”
She tossed a glance back at Ellie standing silently in the doorway. Roy redirected his scowl at her now. This was her surprise? An awkward meeting with a woman he’d rather not have come in contact with for the rest of his life?
Catching his angry gaze, Ellie shrank back a step.
His mother made a tsking sound. “Roy, you always were a mopey lad. That hasn’t changed, I see.”
His head was spinning. She dared to sashay into his life after two decades’ absence and call him a mopey lad? Had she abandoned her children at tender ages only to appear twenty years later expecting a gay reunion? She’d left himself and Parker motherless and later to be raised by bachelor uncles after their bitter heartbroken wreck of a father died, and now she worried that he would be angry because she didn’t say hello to him at the station? There were so many more important things to resent this woman for, the slight at the railroad station was a mere drop in the bucket!
“It’s a wonder you’ve got nerve enough to speak to me at all,” he gritted out.
At his venomous tone, she blinked. “You’re angry, aren’t you?”
Roy thought for a moment. The woman’s blithe tone indicated she hadn’t the slightest idea what she’d done, how her leaving had affected all of them. He wanted to choose his words carefully so she would realize that if she’d come here seeking an easy absolution, she was sorely mistaken. “The word angry couldn’t possibly contain what I feel concerning what you did.”
She nodded, absorbing his words, then her lips quirked up in memory. “You were always a serious boy, Roy. Such a grave outlook is rare in children, I think.”
“Maybe I was so serious because I learned at an early age how untrustworthy people could be—especially women.”
She shook her head. “Perhaps, but you were a solemn little boy long before I left you with your father. So somber, and yet no one could help loving you as much as if you were a laughing cherubic little thing!”
Her unflappability stunned him. If he hurled accusations, called her duplicitous and uncaring, vented all the rage in his heart at her, would it matter, or would all that rage slide off her like cracked egg oozing off a slick surface? What kind of metal was her heart made of that the strongest, hottest words couldn’t make a dent in it?
“I can see you’re crippled with regret,” he bit out sarcastically.
“I certainly will be if we can’t be friends, Roy. You may think I forgot you, but I never did. Your uncle Ed surely told you that.”
Uncle Ed? His last bachelor uncle, who still lived out on the old McMillan homestead, had never mentioned his mother to him.
A cynical snort shook through him. “Friends!” he spat. “What could that word possibly mean to a woman like you?”
She cocked her head at him, making him notice the jaunty plume decorating the red velvet hat perched atop her head. “A great deal more than you realize, obviously.”
Her patient smile irritated him. Had the wom
an no shame? He looked over to the doorway, seeking confirmation that he was dealing with an impossible woman, searching for a reason to think that all women weren’t so duplicitous and callous, but Ellie had disappeared.
“Oh, Parker, I’ve made a horrible mistake!”
Parker grinned, poking the fire in the parlor aimlessly. “I was wondering how long it would take for you to figure that out.”
Mortification was too kind a word for what she felt. “I thought you all felt that Roy was merely too sick to see his mother, not that he hated her!”
Parker looked questioningly at her. “Do you think he does?”
Could there be any doubt? “Why didn’t someone say something?” Apparently Ike had been too amazed to point out she was making a huge blunder by inviting Isabel to the farm. “If I had only known…”
Parker shrugged. “What could I do? She was already here, and she seemed determined to see Roy.” In that one unflappable gesture, Ellie could see that despite the years of separation, he was still his mother’s son.
Hotheaded Roy, however, must have been cut from an entirely different bolt of cloth. “If you could have seen them together—it would have broken your heart!”
His dark blond brows raised in interest. “Don’t tell me they had a tearful reunion.”
“Just the opposite!” she exclaimed. “Roy was so brittle, and as for your mother—well! She didn’t express a drop of remorse about having left you all. I could have cried. Roy was so unforgiving, and yet she didn’t seem inclined to say one thing that would sway him, or express the tiniest morsel of regret.”
He nodded, but looked a little puzzled. “What could she say?”
“She could tell him she was sorry!”
“And that would make up for two decades’ absence?”
Ellie felt as if she were battering her head against a stone wall. “It might have been a start.” Roy clearly needed that humbling expression of regret from her, and she didn’t seem willing to give it. Ellie felt so for Roy, the whole situation made her want to scream.
Liz Ireland Page 7
