by Jody Hedlund
But during the past several years, she’d had little time to think about marriage. Since her father’s death, she’d decided she couldn’t leave her siblings. She’d never abandon them for a man. And she couldn’t ever ask a man to shoulder the responsibility of caring for her family.
She hadn’t expected that any man would ever want to take on such a heavy load, which was one of the reasons she knew she had to seriously consider Arnie Simmons’s offer of marriage. Even if he acted somewhat like a child, he was nearing thirty, had a steady job, and could provide her a home. What more did she need at this point?
“Esther, please.” Caroline latched on to her friend’s arm to keep her from charging to wherever she was going next with her basket of flyers. “Please tell me what you think I should do.”
Esther finally came to an abrupt halt and turned her flashing eyes upon Caroline. “Okay. I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. You’re going to stay out at the light. That’s what.”
“But Mr. Finick won’t let me—”
“He’s discriminating against you based upon your gender, and we won’t stand for it. We just fought a war to end slavery against our black brothers and sisters. Now it’s time to fight the war to end oppression against women.”
Caroline gave an exasperated sigh. She was used to Esther’s political tirades, but that wasn’t what she needed now. “How can we stop him, though? The Lighthouse Board has given him the power to hire and fire.”
“We’ll find a way.” Esther patted her arm firmly. “I’ll talk with my husband, and we’ll think of something.”
“But I need to have a backup plan,” Caroline insisted. “I can’t afford to be homeless and without a job, not with Sarah’s condition.”
“You said yourself that the new keeper is willing to let you stay on. And if that doesn’t work, you know you can always stay with Paul and me.”
Caroline glanced at Esther’s bungalow across from the courthouse. With a fresh coat of white paint, it was pretty from the outside, but Caroline had been inside often enough to know it was tiny, having only two bedrooms. With the baby on the way, Caroline knew she couldn’t impose on her friend, at least for very long.
“I need to find another job, Esther.”
Esther pursed her lips and glanced around Main Street to the smattering of little shops and businesses—the smithy, the tailor, the butcher, and others. They were all largely family-owned and operated. They wouldn’t need help from a young woman like Caroline. And even if they did, she doubted they’d be able to pay her what she’d need to support her siblings.
As if drawing the same conclusion, Esther patted her arm again. “We’ll think of something. But in the meantime, you dig in your feet and stay at the light. It’s your home and your job. And no one has any right to take it away from you because you’re a woman.”
Caroline nodded and pushed down the growing frustration. She’d come to town hoping Esther would offer her a viable solution. But Esther was apparently just as helpless as she was.
Was her only solution to travel down to Detroit and hope she could find a job in one of the factories there?
She loathed the idea of having to move her family into the squalor of the rentals. It certainly wouldn’t be a healthy environment for Sarah or a proper place to raise the twins. She could only imagine the trouble they’d get themselves into running loose in the slums reserved for factory workers.
Esther handed Caroline a stack of flyers from the basket. “Now, you can help me distribute these flyers to raise support for a new library.”
Caroline sighed and took the papers.
“Don’t worry, Caroline,” Esther said over her shoulder as she started toward the men gathered in front of the general store.
Telling her not to worry was like telling a rain cloud not to release any rain.
“And remember to come back to town on Saturday for my protest rally against cockfighting,” Esther called. “If four other states can outlaw such barbarism, then we can outlaw it here in Michigan.”
Caroline only nodded. She hadn’t told Esther about Arnie’s proposal. She knew Esther would scold her for considering it. Esther detested Mr. Simmons and made no secret over how much she opposed not only the cockfighting but also the sale of liquor at his establishment.
Though Caroline didn’t approve of Mr. Simmons’s activities either, she’d been trying to convince herself that Arnie was different. He wouldn’t hurt a soul. He was one of the kindest men she knew. In light of her current situation, he was still her best option.
Even so, she couldn’t make herself ride out to the inn and accept his proposal . . . not quite yet.
Chapter 9
Ryan scraped the razor down a fraction and flinched as the blade nicked his skin again. He pulled back and was tempted to toss the steel down into the grass and trample it in frustration.
He peered into the broken triangle of glass, which was all that remained of his shaving-kit mirror. He’d shaved less than half his cheek, and it was so shredded he looked as if he’d been showered with shrapnel.
The slap of a door closing told him one of the women had stepped outside the house.
He hunkered closer to the small mirror leaning against the outer sill of the boathouse window and pretended to be busy. He wished he hadn’t decided to act upon the unusual urge to shave. He’d gotten by without shaving for many months. Why had he felt the need to start again today?
He gripped the razor with his good hand and smoothed the shaving soap with the other. Now that he’d started, he would have to finish. He certainly couldn’t walk around with half of his face shaved smooth and the other half hairy. Although he wasn’t sure which was worse, the half shave or a cut-up face that resembled Frankenstein’s monster.
“We missed you at dinner last night” came a voice from behind him.
He angled the piece of mirror so that he caught a glimpse of Caroline’s reflection. Her hair was tied into the usual knot she wore at the back of her head. For a fleeting second he remembered the way it had flowed down her shoulders and back the first day he’d met her, when she’d been full of fire and horror at finding him in her bed.
The memory brought a swift smile to his lips.
“Did you find the plate that Tessa left for you?”
“Aye,” he answered. “Many thanks for the delicious food.” When he’d awoken from his medicated sleep that morning, he’d found the food waiting for him outside the boathouse door. It was cold and covered with ants, but once he’d picked off the insects, he’d enjoyed every bite.
After all, he’d grown up in Ireland during the potato famine. His mother had died of starvation, giving up her portions of food to save him and his sister. Even though those days were a distant memory, he’d never forgotten the hunger spasms, the weakness, and the frantic need for food.
The war hadn’t been nearly as bad. He’d even been grateful for the pieces of hardtack that were full of weevils and maggots. Aye, he’d had a constant ache in his stomach day in and day out during some of their toughest campaigns. But no matter how hungry they’d been, they shouldn’t have stolen from the civilians.
The admonition burned through him as it had a hundred times since the war. Of course, at the time, he and the others in his regiment had justified their pillaging by saying they were taking from their enemies. The Southerners were the reason for their hunger in the first place. If only they hadn’t started the war, then he and his buddies wouldn’t have been so hungry and so far from their homes.
Maybe they’d been able to make excuses for taking the food, but Ryan knew there was no justification for what they’d done that fateful night.
He blinked hard and started to sink beneath a crashing wave of despair.
“The boys told me you got the well filled about halfway.” Caroline’s voice pulled him back to the surface.
Ryan nodded and dragged in a breath. “They’re hard workers.” In the several hours he’d shoveled dirt and rocks into the
well with the twins, they hadn’t once complained. They’d worked steadily and followed his instructions without question. “They’re good boys,” he added. “They just need a firm hand once in a while.”
He’d dreaded spending time alone with them, expecting memories of the dead boy to taunt him. But surprisingly he’d found himself enjoying the twins’ presence and listening to their conversation.
While he’d spared his injured hand the brunt of the shoveling and lifting, he’d come back to the lighthouse with so much pain in his arm that he’d been unable to do anything but collapse onto his bedroll and swallow a couple of pills.
He was ashamed that he’d been incapacitated through dinner. Even worse, he hated that he’d failed once again to attend to the lighthouse. He’d resolved then to stop being so useless and make some effort to do his keeper duties.
Maybe that was why he’d wanted to shave—to give himself a fresh start.
But it was a feeble attempt, and he’d only managed to mangle his face. Was that the way it would be with everything he tried to do?
Her footsteps on the gravelly path crunched closer, until she stood next to him and he caught the whiff of something sweet, like flowers. The fresh scent wafted around her. She picked up the half bar of shaving soap he’d left near the broken piece of mirror.
She wiped off the lather he’d made and ran her finger over the coarse grains of the soap. She glanced to his cheeks and then to the blade he gripped with ever-whitening fingers.
He tensed as he waited for her to say something about his useless arm, his failed shaving attempt, and how inept he was at everything. He deserved it.
“Your soap’s no good,” she said matter-of-factly. “It isn’t lathering well.”
They both knew the soap wasn’t the problem, but he appreciated that she wasn’t making him feel more inadequate than he already did.
“I have a bar of my father’s soap inside that you can use,” she offered. “In fact, I used to shave my father’s beard, and I’m quite accomplished at it. Or at least I used to be.”
Was she offering to give him a shave? He wasn’t sure whether to be mortified or flattered.
They made eye contact but only for a second or two. Her summery blue eyes reflected only shyness and not the pity he’d grown accustomed to.
“I’d be obliged,” he said. “Maybe you can save me from skinning myself alive.”
He tried to form his lips into a smile but only managed a twitch. But she’d already spun away from him and was walking toward the keeper’s cottage.
“I have a few minutes now,” she called over her shoulder, “while I wait for my laundry water to boil.”
He watched her retreat, her movements graceful even though each step was firm. Caroline Taylor was a strong woman. He could see it in the stiffness of her back and in the way she held her shoulders. She’d weathered his coming and losing her job with much more decorum than he would have.
Even after all the frustration and uncertainty his coming had caused her, she was kind to him—kinder than anyone had been in a long time, maybe even since the last time he’d visited his sister at Presque Isle before he’d enlisted.
He watched Caroline until she disappeared into the house. His heart welled with gratefulness. She was being considerate toward him, though she had no reason to.
The steam from the kettle rose in the air, and the heat from the wood-burning stove radiated throughout the kitchen. Even with the window open, letting in the cool fall breeze, the room felt hot and humid.
The back of Caroline’s dress stuck between her shoulder blades, and a loose piece of hair was plastered against her neck. But she swirled the brush in circular motions vigorously anyway, working it around the shaving soap to create a thick lather.
She’d laid out her father’s shaving supplies on the worktable near the window—the tin and the soap made from goat’s milk, the four-inch stainless steel blade, like new still, and the badger-bristle shaving brush. She’d even found a bottle of the lotion he applied after a fresh shave, but she wasn’t sure she had the nerve to uncork it. One whiff of the spicy, woodsy scent would only send her into a lapse of melancholy.
It was better not to think too much about losing her father and the repercussions that were now coming as a result.
At a creak of a floorboard in the other room, she knew it was Ryan entering the house and crossing the front room. His footsteps were hesitant, and when he reached the doorway of the kitchen he stopped, his brow raised, showing the uncertainty in his eyes.
She nodded toward the chair she’d placed directly under the window so that she could have the maximum amount of light to aid her efforts. “Have a seat. I promise I won’t cut you.”
“You can’t cut me any worse than I’ve already done myself,” he said wryly.
“True.” She offered him a small smile of encouragement.
He plodded to the chair and lowered himself, leaning back and stretching his long legs in front of him. He kept his injured hand in his pocket as usual.
His presence in the kitchen seemed to make the heat rise a degree or two. He wasn’t an overly large man, but his masculinity seemed to fill the space around the large center table and attune her to the knowledge that he was a handsome man, and she a naive young woman, just as naive as Tessa.
Except for her father, she’d never touched another man before. What had made her believe she could touch Ryan with such familiarity?
A tremor of nervous anticipation rippled through her. She reached for a hot towel she’d hung above the steaming pot, and then she forced herself to approach him.
When she stood above him and he looked up at her with his brown eyes so full of trust and gratefulness, she tried to ignore the whispers of warning about being too friendly. Maybe if she tried to picture her father sitting in the chair instead of Ryan?
She laid the warm, moist towel over his face, covering all but his eyes, which followed her every move with bright interest.
“Tell me about your family” came his muffled voice from behind the towel. “Where are you from? How long have you been light keeping?”
She pressed the linen firmly against his skin, cleaning it and blotting away the blood from his earlier attempts. While answering his questions distracted her a bit as she prepared for his shave, her stomach still did strange flips every time she briefly touched him.
After she removed the towel, he answered her questions freely in return about his past. She learned that at ten he’d emigrated from Ireland with his older sister and father in order to flee from the famine. Once they arrived, he’d never lived in any place for very long but had spent most of his years before the war fishing in northern Michigan and then in the Detroit area.
“So you’re a man of the sea,” she said as she scooped the lather onto the end of the brush and then transferred it into her cupped palm.
“Aye. It’s been in my blood since I was a lad, fishing with my dad back in Ireland.”
She wanted to ask if he’d ever return to fishing, but at the sadness in his tone she held back her question. Instead she rubbed her hands together to mix the cream and create an even richer lather, and she turned the direction of the conversation to something safer. “With your seafaring background, you’ll make a good keeper.”
She supposed that was one of the reasons Mr. Finick had hired Ryan, even though he obviously didn’t know much about lighthouses.
“Do you think so?” Ryan asked, his voice hopeful.
“I’ll show you everything you need to know,” she assured him. If she had to move out of the lighthouse, then at least she could make sure she left it in capable hands. “I promise.”
“You’re an angel,” he said softly, and the intensity of his gaze burned into her.
The creamy texture of the soap finally felt full enough for application. She bent over his face and raised a hand, but then hesitated. Before she lost courage, she slipped her fingers over his scruffy skin, smoothing the soap in gentle wav
es across his cheek.
He stiffened and closed his eyes.
She halted. “Am I hurting you?”
“Not at all,” he said, his voice somewhat strained.
After another moment’s hesitation, she continued lathering his face. His Adam’s apple rose up and down, and his fingers splayed across his thigh tightly.
“Are you sure I’m not hurting you?” she asked.
His lips curved into a grin, and his eyes flashed open to meet hers. “Rest assured, Caroline, the last thing you’re doing is hurting me.”
There was something in his eyes that sent a wave of heat pulsing through her middle and up into her face. She quickly averted her eyes and hoped she wasn’t blushing as much on the outside as she was within. And she prayed that Tessa would stay in Sarah’s room awhile longer. She didn’t want her sister seeing her flustered and flushed as she shaved Ryan’s face.
Besides, she didn’t want to give Tessa the impression that she’d overstepped the bounds of propriety. Certainly there was nothing improper about her helping Ryan by giving him a shave. But she didn’t want Tessa thinking she could take such liberties.
Willing her fingers not to shake, Caroline began the careful process of sliding the razor down Ryan’s cheek, inch by inch. The scraping of the blade against bristle was the only sound save the pounding of her heart.
When she finished the first half, she released a long, slow breath and realized that he did the same. Her touch was obviously having an effect upon him too, although she couldn’t be sure what sort of effect.
If it wasn’t pain, was it pleasure? The thought only made her insides heat all the more.
She worked carefully around his lips, trying not to touch them with each upward stroke. When the pad of her thumb accidently brushed against his upper lip, he hissed in a quick breath.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, but she found she couldn’t tear her attention away from his strong mouth; she was mesmerized by both the firmness and the infinite softness of his lip.
