Her Safe Harbor: Prairie Romance (Crawford Family Book 4) (2 page)

“Good morning, McAtee! It is a lovely morning, even with
this wretched snow.”

“Let me hold my umbrella over you so you don’t get wet,” a
young man shouted, and received laughter in reply from the men around him.

“Thank you, but I’m almost inside,” she said, and tossed her
dark blond curls over her shoulder as she smiled brightly at the man holding
his umbrella out to her like an offering.

Jennifer entered the bank with a nod to the doorman.

“She smiled at you, boyo,” another man said to the man
holding the umbrella. “Lucky dog, you.”

“She did,” he replied, still staring at the now closed bank
door. “She did.”

“I time my mornings to be just here when she arrives,” the
man said. “’Twas a dreadful stretch when she was away. I thought I’d right died
when she come back.”

* * *

“I’ll take your wrap, miss,” O’Brien
said.

“Thank you,” Jennifer replied to the young red-haired woman
her father had assigned to her as a companion while she was at the bank. He
could hardly have designated a secretary, since he would not have liked having
a man so close to her and the secretary most certainly would not like working
for or with a woman. So a compromise was reached for when Jennifer was at the
bank, ostensively as a bright, lovely decoration meant to greet and converse
with important customers of her family’s bank.

“Who is scheduled for today, O’Brien?” she asked when she
was seated behind the desk in the small anteroom off of the parlor lobby, as it
was known. A private side entrance for important customers, near the one her
father had entered, led directly to this room. Jennifer would serve tea and
coffee and inquire after the customer’s and his family’s health, much like any
lady would do when entertaining in her own home, before her father or one of
her father’s employees took the customer to their office.

Jennifer knew that her sister Jolene had done her share of
this sort of thing during the time she was married, while her first husband,
Turner, worked just two floors above, near his father-in-law’s offices. Her
father was not enamored of the idea of her continuing on with what Jolene had
started, however, as she was unmarried. Jennifer argued that O’Brien was always
with her and that her assistant was the daughter of Thomas O’Brien, who managed
their family stables, whom her father had known since his youth, when the then
young, fabled horseman from Ireland had landed in the States, and whom he had
trusted and employed for all of their adult lives. But her father was won over
when Jennifer confessed she could not abide being at Willow Tree for days on
end with only Jane Crawford as a companion.

“Just a Mr. Carter, Miss Crawford,” O’Brien replied as she
glanced at the list she held in her hand. “Your sister’s notes indicate he had
a sickly child the last time he was here, almost three years ago. But I cannot
tell if the child was sick with a passing fever or cold or sickly with some
long-term ailment.”

“I will have to see how the conversation goes,” Jennifer
said. “What other information did Jolene leave us? Wife’s name? Where exactly
is Mr. Carter from?”

“Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Miss Crawford,” O’Brien replied.
“But he does have business interests here in Boston.”

“I understand that our new Burroughs adding machines have
been delivered,” Jennifer said as she set about sending messages to the small
kitchen for cakes, coffee, and hot water for brewing her tea.

“Yes, miss, they have,” O’Brien said with a sparkle in her
eye. “I am hoping we will be able to test them out today.”

“I imagine we will. My father is sending another packet for
us to examine.”

“Yes, miss.”

“Have you solved any of the mysteries of the Dorchester
portfolio?”

“No, I have not, but I’ve got some ideas. Perhaps there’ll
be time later today for us to discuss them,” O’Brien said.

Jennifer nodded and went to the sideboard, now being filled
with trays of cakes and biscuits by a uniformed man, while O’Brien read aloud
from a summary of Mr. Carter’s holdings in the Crawford Bank and other notes
that someone had written about his business ventures. Mr. Carter himself arrived
shortly after, and O’Brien answered the knock on the door. Jennifer poured tea
and commiserated with Mr. Carter over his fragile health. Wickers came a few
scant minutes later and escorted Mr. Carter to her father’s office.

“Well,” Jennifer said as she rose. “That was quite simple
today, wasn’t it, O’Brien?”

“And quick, miss. Just as Mr. Carter was ready to explain
every one of his ailments to you, Wickers came for him. A narrow escape,” she
said with a smile.

“I imagine you’re right. Let’s take a look at our new
arithmetic machine, shall we?”

“Oh, yes,” O’Brien said as she followed Jennifer into the
office area. “But before we start with the new machine, I’d like to talk to you
about the Dorchester portfolio while it’s fresh in my brain.”

“Yes. Let’s begin with that. If my memory serves, Mr.
Dorchester has a few outstanding loans against deposits held here at the bank
and properties in the city,” Jennifer said.

“That is correct. He has also bought a significant amount of
stock certificates over the years, and as I looked at the purchases as
recorded, I did some calculations and found that the percentage of the sales
that the bank took was six percent, not five as we’ve seen on other occasions.
Perhaps it means nothing,” O’Brien said.

Jennifer took the green felt packet from O’Brien and untied
the ribbon. She sat down at her desk and pulled out the contents. Individual
packets of light yellow paper separated account tallies from stock
certificates. Jennifer barely heard the click of the keys as O’Brien began
testing the new adding machine as she was focused on the long column of numbers
before her, and pulled out her tablet and pencil to make some calculations.

Thank heavens, the Ramsey School for Young Ladies
curriculum included extensive mathematics classes.
Jennifer had excelled in
those classes and had been named the top student. Her father had allowed her
access to his office when he was home in the evening and she remembered many
nights standing by his side as a young girl, or sitting on his lap even, and
tallying long lists of numbers, learning division and multiplication. He’d
declared she had “a head for numbers” even better than his own and that it was
such a pity she was a girl rather than a boy. But he’d said it with a smile and
a hug and Jennifer didn’t feel quite as bad as she might at what he’d said,
because there was little doubt she was his favorite, even when Jillian still
lived with them and was a perfect vision of beauty at a very young age.

A school friend from Ramsey was going to attend Mount
Holyoke Female Seminary to pursue a degree in literature after her years at
Ramsey were completed. Jennifer had asked her father and mother at the dinner
table one evening if she would be allowed to attend with her classmate to
further study mathematics. Her mother had scolded her beyond anything she could
have imagined. Jennifer had been humiliated, and her father had reprimanded her
for even bringing such a subject up to her mother and for making the whole
family subject to Jane’s tirades because of it. And indeed her mother continued
to bring up the subject for years afterwards to relatives and friends,
describing her daughter as having aspirations to be a spinster bluestocking to
anyone who would listen.

Jennifer’s cheeks colored with the remembrance of those grim
days and what felt like constant embarrassment. But more than that, her
relationship with her father, her stalwart champion and confidante, was
damaged. They were no longer easy with each other in conversation and there was
a coldness from him toward her after that. Jennifer was devastated. Then the
influenza changed all their lives. Jolene’s son, little William, dead from the
disease and her first husband Turner gone as well, and Jolene no longer
interested or able to go to the bank and entertain Crawford Bank clients in the
parlor lobby.

Last year, an olive branch had been extended when her father
agreed after some persuasion that she be allowed to accompany him to the bank a
few days a week and continue what Jolene had begun. Then one day he’d arrived
in the parlor lobby with a packet and a rather sheepish look on his face. She
remembered the moment as if it were just occurring.

“I wonder if you’d take a look at this, Jennifer,” he had
said. “The bookkeepers have pored over this and none can find the errors, but
it is a very complicated account.” He looked up at her and smiled. “And then I
recalled you were here in the building, and if anyone can unravel a
mathematical mystery it is you. You’ve always been remarkably clever with
numbers, even when you were a young girl. How proud I’ve always been of you.”

Jennifer choked back a sob at the time and anytime since
that she’d let herself repeat her father’s words in her head. What a fine day
that had been! She’d looked up at him and stretched out her hands to take the
packet with a wide smile and glistening eyes. He’d hugged her in a loose
embrace with a final pat on her back before releasing her. She’d reviewed the
paperwork and saw within the first hour or so exactly what had happened and where
the error had been made.

From that day onward, her father had brought her the most
complicated of the account reviews that his staff of clerks and bookkeepers
were unable to balance. She was fairly certain that no one else at the bank
knew she and O’Brien were doing this sort of work. Jennifer did not care, not
one little bit, that she was not to receive the credit for her discoveries, and
more than that, she could never describe the elation she felt when facing
hundreds of pages of entries, many so small that it was difficult to read them
and some sloppily written, and the challenge of untangling those rows of
digits.

Then occasionally, she would allow gloom to descend on her
when faced with the reality that Jeffrey would be mortified if he ever knew she
did this sort of thing, as it appeared that she actually worked for the bank,
and he would never allow it if they married. This passion she felt for numbers
would always transcend any passion he would elicit, even if intimate, she
suspected. How lowering to feel less for the man she was intended to marry than
for crinkled documents with an occasional tea stain.

Jennifer stopped her reminiscing as she scanned the final
document and began a meticulous accounting of every stock certificate
transaction listed. “Just as you said, not every stock sale garnered the bank
six percent. Some were five percent. How odd. Wouldn’t it make sense for the
bank to charge the same percentage each time?”

“I don’t really know,” O’Brien said. “Is there someone we
can ask?”

“My father, I suppose,” Jennifer said. She pulled the stock
certificates that the bank held in collateral from the folder and compared the
hand-stamped serial numbers to the ones on the lists. “These ten were charged
six percent and the remaining twenty-four were charged five percent. How odd.
The dates are random, as well.”

“Who signed off on the column entry?”

“Two of the six by two different clerks and four of them by
the same clerk,” Jennifer replied. “But the initials themselves are difficult
to decipher.”

“So three different clerks. If we can match the initials to
a name, could we ask them why they charged six percent? Could your father?”

“I hesitate to ask my father before we can say something
definitive. Perhaps there is a way to determine whose initials are whose,”
Jennifer said. “Let us think of way, O’Brien, without revealing why.”

Chapter Two

“It doesn’t seem possible that
you’ve already been here a week, Zebidiah,” Bella Moran said to her brother,
seated at the dining room table in their family home in Athens, Georgia. “I
will miss you more now that I have seen you again after these five years since
mother’s death.”

“I’m going to get home more often, I promise,” he replied.

Bella turned from the buffet where she poured her tea, and
arched a brow. She carried her cup to the table and sat down across from her
brother. “No, you will not. You have a life of your own, a very good one, and
successful one, too, that will keep you very busy. And in our country’s
capital, no less, working for a United States senator.”

“Don’t make it out to be more than it is. I wonder if this
whole thing is a fool’s errand,” he said.

“Fool’s errand? I don’t think even Father would say that to
his cronies.”

Zeb smiled ruefully. “I don’t imagine Foster Cummings had
anything good to say.”

“He asked if you would be raising the Confederate flag when
you got there.”

“Sounds like him,” Zeb said with a laugh. He looked at his
sister then, all the levity and casualness gone from his face. “I should have
moved back here after Mother died. I shouldn’t have left you alone here to
shoulder the burden. You should marry and have your own family, Bella. Not be
saddled with taking care of Father.”

She stared at him, and her face turned pink. “What a
horrible thing to say, Zebidiah,” she said with a shaking voice. “How dare you
reduce my life to something pitiful and not of my own making? How dare you?”

“So you prefer this life, do you? You can’t lie to me,
Bella.”

“Do you think I begrudge one minute, one second, of the time
I spend helping Father with his work? I don’t. I’m active and useful and
respected. Not all women are so fortunate.”

“From what I’ve seen this week, you have little to do with
Father’s research but have completely taken over Mother’s tasks. You manage
Melly and Victor and pay the household bills. I saw you yesterday talking to
Jim Shaub about the leak in the roof. You told me yourself that you’ve taken
over Mother’s commitments at church, teaching Sunday School and serving on the
Ladies Guild. When do you have time to do anything but manage this house?” he
asked.

Bella stood and moved hastily to the window that overlooked
the side yard where buds were just beginning to show on the trees. “I don’t
appreciate this, Zebidiah. Not one bit. What would you have me do?”

“I would have you have a life of your own. And our father
should not be expecting you to fill Mother’s shoes,” he said quietly. “I blame
him for this.”

“Of course you do,” Bella said without turning. “You have
blamed our father for every mishap and misunderstanding in this house since you
were a boy.”

“Perhaps the blame should lie with him, Bella,” he said.
“But you have always defended him regardless of his culpability.”

“Exactly what do you suggest, Zebidiah?”

Zeb thought about the realities of his family. At this point
in Gordon Moran’s life what were the chances that he could change? Very slim,
Zeb imagined. His father’s absentmindedness had been beloved by his mother.
When Father couldn’t find his shoes or didn’t know the cost of beef or
understand the work necessary to maintain a three-story home, Evelyn Moran had
shrugged, smiled, and tenderly kissed her husband’s forehead. Father never knew
why Mother was fussing over him, or handing him matching socks, or even why
workmen had to be pounding their hammers during the day in the room right next
to his study, interrupting his work and concentration. Zeb had wanted to shout,
and he did when he was older, screaming out his frustrations.

“I doubt it is realistic to imagine that Father would
suddenly understand the realities of life. That there were things and people,
his family specifically, that have needed his attention for years,” Zeb said.

Bella seated herself across from him and looked at him with
concern. “You still carry this anger with you, Zebidiah?”

He shook his head. “No, but I am worried about you. Will you
look back and be regretful that you’ve not done something else with your life?”

“And you are certain this life,” she said and swept her hand
around the room, “is not of my own making? Perhaps not what I dreamed of when I
was a young girl, but we all, each one of us, make compromises. I have
considerable freedom here. I come and go as I please, associate with whomever I
wish, and have the house budget at my disposal. There are advantages to having
a father who does not pay much attention to everyday life.”

He chuckled. “You make it sound as though you’ve got
assignations with mysterious men at each turn.”

“Hardly.” Her face reddened and she stood quickly, turning
to the buffet. She seated herself once again and put a plate of lace cookies
between them. “And anyway, I’m an unmarried woman in 1893. Where exactly would
I go, and how would I support myself if I left here? It is not done.”

Bella was unnerved. That was something he’d rarely seen from
his older sister. It was as if she
were
having assignations with
mysterious men. Zeb could not contemplate that and did not wish to, in any
event. She was an adult, as he’d just chided her, and he supposed she was
entitled to her own secrets.

“Why don’t you plan a trip to Washington?” he asked. “Mrs.
Shelby has already sent word that she has found a house for me to rent.”

Bella raised her brows. “Mrs. Shelby has put herself out and
searched for lodgings for you? That is very kind. I gathered from your letters
that she was rather coldhearted and that you were not fond of her.”

“She is cold,” Zeb said. “I pitied Max even with all her
outward perfections. But she carried a lot of burdens from Boston, and there is
no doubt I would be dead in my grave if it hadn’t been for her.”

“The influenza? Your letters led me to believe that you had
rather a mild dose.”

“That wasn’t quite true,” he said. “I didn’t want to worry
you, but I was close to death’s door. She and her maid nursed me through the
worst of it I understand, although I have no recollection of four full days.”

“Four full days? Dear Lord!”

“Mrs. Shelby’s sister was there, too,” he said and shook his
head. “Nearly as contrary and as ridiculous a woman as I’ve ever met.”

“That’s rather strong language about a woman who nursed you.
Is she much like her sister the senator’s wife?”

Zeb shrugged. He’d asked Miss Crawford to take a turn with
him in the garden after having dinner at the Hacienda with Senator and Mrs.
Shelby before he’d left for Georgia. He’d asked her straight out where she’d
gotten the bruises he’d seen on her side the night his fever broke.

Zeb looked away and saw in his mind’s eye what he’d seen
that night from the cot in the new bunkhouse where Mrs. Shelby had nursed the
sick. It was as if he’d been swimming through thick water until he finally
broke the surface and opened his eyes. His throat was dry and his mouth tasted
foul, but he realized he was alive and that the empty cots beside him meant
others had recovered or were dead. Jennifer Crawford was standing near a glass
window in a darkened corner directly in his line of sight, her face in shadows,
moonlight drifting over one of her shoulders and down her side. He’d watched
her remove her blouse and untie the strings of her corset. She held herself
stiffly as the corset fell away and took a long, and clearly painful, deep
breath. She lifted her chemise and turned, letting the moonlight illuminate her
bare side. He’d concentrated at first on the outline of her breast and the
shadow it cast. But then he looked at her side and the ridges of her ribs. She
was covered in bruises, some black, and some fading. She touched the center of
a particularly large one and hissed in pain. When she realized he watched her,
she said he was “ungentlemanly,” something her sister had said about him on
occasion.

“She denied it all,” he said. “As if I had dreamed it all. I
did not dream it.”

“Dream what?” Bella asked.

Zeb looked up and realized he’d spoken aloud. He shook his
head. “Nothing. It was nothing.”

But he was long gone then in his recall of Jennifer
Crawford. He did not notice his sister leave the room but was picturing
Jennifer as she looked at him in the garden that night. She was as gorgeous a
woman as he’d ever laid eyes on, contrary to his long-held notion that Southern
belles were the most beautiful, charming females in the country. It wasn’t just
her looks, he thought, although her green eyes and dark blond hair with just a
hint of auburn were a perfect feminine combination, but rather an ethereal
fragility that drew him. Outwardly she was kind and had the confident ease
gained when one is well-educated and wealthy. But if the eyes truly were the
window to one’s soul, then he would describe her as damaged.

Jennifer was wary, and guarded herself, her real self, as if
she were being hunted. And perhaps that is exactly what the ugly bruises on her
side represented. She’d been face to face with a nemesis and not been the
victor. Zeb thought about the man who laid fists on her fair skin, undoubtedly
placed where few if any would see them, and considered how he would kill him.

* * *

“What do you think of this one, Mr.
Moran?” the tailor asked.

Bella had taken one look at the shirts he wore and the pants
he gave Melly to wash and told him he was to go to Taitlinger’s immediately in order
to give them enough time to make him appropriate clothing for his new
employment. She would not have her brother humiliate and degrade the Moran name
by showing up at the Capital in a flannel shirt and dungarees. He agreed
reluctantly, and she accompanied him on his first trip and did the ordering
herself.

“It looks fine to me,” he said, turning from side to side in
front of the huge mirror at the back of the shop. “How many did Miss Moran
order?”

“Eleven complete suits, shirts, undergarments . . .”

“Eleven? What? I don’t need eleven suits!”

“That does not count the formal wear, sir. And she insisted
on the new design from New York.” The tailor paused. “The tuxedo jacket. It is
the first one I have made!”

“How am I going to get all this stuff to Washington?” Zeb
asked.

“Miss Moran told me that you are to be working for a U.S.
senator, sir, and instructed me to purchase a trunk and pack all but the
light-colored suit since it would be appropriate for travel.”

“Did she really?”

“Yes, and the shoemaker has some ready-to-wear shoes that he
will be bringing by shortly for you to try on.”

Zeb shook his head. “No. That’s it. I’m not giving up my
boots. I don’t care what anyone thinks.”

The tailor nodded. “Miss Moran said you’d say that and
instructed me to have the cobbler bring dark boots for you to try on since the
only pair she’s seen of yours are light-colored and those would look ridiculous
with evening wear. Her words, not mine.”

“I’m not surprised,” Zeb said. “I suppose I should get a
haircut and a trim, too?”

“Miss Moran told me to mention that there was a barber just
a few doors down.”

“What did Miss Moran have to say about what all this stuff’s
going to cost?” Zeb asked.

“She said you had plenty enough money to begin dressing like
a gentleman.”

“She would say that.” Zeb sucked in a breath at the amount
on the tally sheet the tailor handed him. It seemed like a huge waste, but then
what did he know? He certainly did not want to embarrass Max, and it was better
that his sister admonished him than Mrs. Shelby, who would do the same thing
that Bella had if she did not think what he was wearing was appropriate.

* * *

“You’ll want to get that breath of
air now, Jennifer,” Jeffrey Rothchild said as he stood up from his chair in the
Crawford Bank’s box at the Boston Theatre. He held his hand out to help her
stand.

Jennifer looked at his hand and then his face. She had not
mentioned wanting to leave her seat and was actually quite comfortable as they
waited for the second act to begin. She was wary but then chided herself for
being suspect of an apparently innocent request. Maybe she had mentioned
earlier that she would like to mingle with other guests at some point. Maybe he
was trying to make her happy. She placed her gloved hand in his and stood up.

“Thank you, Jeffrey,” she said. “It is somewhat stuffy.”

They walked down the wide circular hallway, greeting those
they knew. Suddenly, Jeffrey grabbed her upper arm, lifting her nearly off of
her feet, and pushed her through a doorway into a small closet. There was
little light except the glow of a gas lamp through the window, and she smelled
the odor of cleaning solutions.

“Jeffrey!” she said. “You are hurting my arm. Please!”

He twisted her roughly to face him and held her tightly with
his left hand. “Your mother let me know that you are still planning this trip
to Washington. I thought we’d settled that.”

“Well,” she said, and swallowed, “Father did say he would
make my excuses . . .
aaahh
.” Jeffrey slammed a closed fist into her
ribs, just below her breast on the same side he pummeled before her trip to
Texas. She reeled but he held her upright in his embrace.

He stroked her face and she flinched. “There is no need to
put yourself through all this pain, my dear.”

“I did not . . . I mean I . . .” she said between gasps.

“You meant to tell me that you won’t be going to Washington,
isn’t that right, dear?”

Jennifer closed her eyes and nodded, breathing through her
nose, and concentrated on not vomiting.

“Good,” he said, and smiled. He opened the door to the
closet and looked at her. “Your hair is mussed, Jennifer. It looks like I’ve
just stolen a kiss.”