Louisa Rawlings (2 page)

He shook his head, bewildered. “I thought maybe you’d marry me…”

“Marry you?” She threw back her head and laughed. “Marry you? If you’re not every way a jackass, Zeb Cary…” She realized her cruelty and softened at once. “You know there was never any chance of that, Zeb,” she said gently.

“Why?”

“Let it go.”

“Drat it, Marcy. Why?”

“Don’t make me say it.”

He grabbed her roughly by the shoulders. “
Why
?”

His fingers were painful through the thin calico of her dress. “Because you’re green as a sapling,” she snapped. “Because I want a better life than you can give me!” She saw the pain in his eyes. “Because I’m not sweet on you, Zeb,” she said softly. “Never have been. You know it.”

“You let me kiss you often enough!”

“Kisses aren’t everything.” She swept past him and threw open the barn door. The rain had almost stopped.

He gave a low growl behind her. “You let me take a walloping for you, Marcy. You owe me something for that, at least!”

She whirled in anger, hands on hips. “I don’t owe you one blamed thing, Zeb Cary! I’m remembering that you didn’t mind kissing
me
!”

“But I was waiting for more, and you know it!” he said, and lunged toward her. She sidestepped nimbly. He clutched at her, managing to catch her wrist, but she swung around and smacked him, open-handed, in the groin. Not very hard; he was still her childhood friend. He yelped in surprise and released her wrist, his hands going to his injured parts. “Darn you, Marcy!” he bellowed, standing forlornly in the doorway as she raced out of the barn and up the small rise to the cabin.

Uncle Jack turned from the window when she slammed the door behind her and leaned against it, breathing hard. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the barn. “What in tarnation was that all about?”

Crossing to a rough-hewn sideboard, Marcy tied on her apron, then pulled down a sack of beans from a shelf and measured a handful into a saucepan. She added some water from a covered pitcher, set the pot on the small cast-iron stove. “Zeb wants me to marry him.”

“And…?”

She took a slab of salt pork from a stone crock and began to dice it into little bits. “I turned him down. With no chance for a change of mind.”

“I’ll be jiggered! Are you daft, girl?”

“No. Just coming to my senses. I reckon I can do better than Zeb. A city slicker with an eye out for a wife…”

He gaped in surprise. “Why would a fancy feller want to stay in Long Lake?”

“What makes you think
I
want to stay?”

“You
are
daft! If ever a body was married, it’s you…to these mountains.”

Her chin jutted in defiance. “Well, maybe I want to be unmarried! Maybe I want more than just Zeb and Long Lake and the rest of it! Maybe I want to live in a city!”

He shook his head. “I don’t know where you get these notions. You’re the contrariest girl, when you want to be. Miss Flibbertigibbet, like your paw used to call you!”

“What’s wrong about wanting to live in a city?”

“And married to a city feller? That you don’t love? That you don’t even know yet?”

“You wouldn’t have cared if I married Zeb, and I don’t love
him
!”

“But you were suited! Tarnation, girl, do you know how hard it is to live in a city?”

She frowned in bewilderment. “What do you mean?”

“You need money, girl! Life in a city is hard without money.”

“I never thought of that. Do you really think so?” She bit her lip, feeling terribly young and untried.

“I
know
so! Bill Peterson and his wife were never the same again after they came back from New York City. It right near broke their hearts to live so mean. Give up this silly idea!”

She stirred the beans thoughtfully, then turned to him, her blue-green eyes lighting up with the innocent joy of a child. “Why then, I’ll marry a
rich
man!” She smiled in delight. It seemed such an easy solution.

“Dag nab it, girl, if you don’t beat all! Haven’t you heard what I’ve been saying?”

“Bosh! Why should I? I’ll marry a rich man, that’s all.” She resumed her task with the salt pork, her knife clicking determinedly on the cutting block.

“You’re as stubborn as your father was, once you set your mind to it. And how do you mean to bag your game, miss? Those rich fellers only stay a couple of nights at the boardinghouse before lighting out for the woods.”

“Don’t you have a group of sportsmen coming up in a couple of weeks?”

Old Jack scratched the graying stubble on his chin. “A biggish party, like as I can make out. One of the Sabattis boys is spoken for, and Amos Robinson, and Alonzo. One or two more, maybe. We’ll need four or five guide boats, I reckon.”

“Hunters?”

“Science folk, too, seems like, from their letters. A Dr. Marshall and his wife. Coming over from North Creek. They mean to set up at Clear Pond for a couple months. Use it as their base camp.”

“Hmmm. There’ll be at least one eligible bachelor in the lot, I’m sure.”

“Now, Marcy…”

She set down her chopping knife and wiped her hands on her apron. “Let me come along, Uncle Jack. I haven’t in ages. If your feller is soft and weak, you might need an extra paddle!”

“But it’s not like the old days. You’re not exactly a little girl anymore. He might not like it. And he’s paying.”

“Then I could go in Amos’s boat. Or one of the others. And it’s not as if I’d be the only woman there. Mrs. Marshall would probably take kindly to company. And if the men don’t seem like good prospects, I could always make some excuse and come back to Palmer’s or Sabattis’s and wait for the next batch.”

He scowled in disgust. “You surely shame me, Marcy, with such talk. You make it sound like a quail shoot!”

She turned toward the window, watching the last rivulets of rain course down the old panes. “Please don’t scold, Uncle Jack,” she said softly. “I don’t know what it is, but…” She turned back to him, her aquamarine eyes shimmering behind crystal tears. “I was down to North Creek last week. There was a railroad car. One of those fancy things the swells use to ride up here. All cut-glass windows, with swans and flowers scratched into them. Just for
decoration
! And polished brass and shiny wood— It even smelled special.” She sighed. “I wanted to peek inside, but old Tom at the depot shooed me away.” She looked up and blinked, and the brimming tears mimicked the rain on the windowpanes. “It wasn’t just the fanciness. It was like that car was all the things I want that I never had. That I never did. I kept thinking…that car has traveled out of the mountains. It’s seen the world. And I’ll live and die here.” She brushed the tears from her cheeks. “Help me, Uncle Jack. I’m aching. I don’t even know what it is, but I want…” Her voice trailed away on a sob.

“What? What do you want, girl?”

“I don’t know. Everything. To leave here. I don’t know… I think I’ll never be safe until I’m away from here.”

“Safe from what? This has always been your home! Safe from what?”

She buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know. I’m so mixed up inside, Uncle Jack.”

Awkwardly, he draped his arm around her shoulders. “You’re my own brother’s child. You know I’ll do whatever I can to make you happy, Marcy,” he said gruffly. “You can ride in the boat with me. And if my feller makes a fuss, I’ll hit the rapscallion with my oar!” He smiled in relief as she sniffled and giggled. Then he shook his head, his face suddenly serious. “But I think you’re going against what you are, girl. This crazy notion—to leave the mountains—I only hope it does make you happy!”

She smiled in gratitude. “I’ll never know if I don’t find out,” she said softly. “Now!” She squared her shoulders. “I reckon I’ll go down to the barn and ask Zeb to stay for supper. I ought to feed him, at least!”

“Ali ben Tibor smiled and took my hand in his. ‘Pray give me your trust, Lady,’ he murmured. I leave you, gentle Reader, to divine the joy with which my heart was filled at his words. The touch of his fingers was…”

“Did you want that book as well, Miss Bradford?”

Startled, Willough closed the slim volume with a snap, set it down, and brushed the dust from her fawn gloves. “Certainly not!” She managed to smile uneasily at the clerk, though she could still feel her heart pounding beneath the amber silk bodice of her gown. She prayed that she wouldn’t blush and make a complete fool of herself. “How can people write such foolishness?” she asked primly to hide her embarrassment.

“Mrs. Buchanan has a large following, miss,” said the clerk gently.

“I suppose there are those who find it worthwhile to read romances. As for myself…if you will arrange to have delivered to me the volumes on iron and steel production that I ordered…and Mr. Ruskin’s latest lectures, if they have arrived.”

“Certainly, ma’am. I’ll see if they’ve come in.”

Willough nodded and turned away, glad for the opportunity to compose herself. She felt like a child who’d been caught stealing cookies in the pantry. Thank heaven it had only been the clerk and not one of her father’s friends who had found her reading that frivolous book! What would Daddy have thought of her then?

She sighed. It was always the same. She never meant to look at the foolish things, so silly and romantic, with their sighing heroines forever needing to be rescued from some scrape or other. Falling helplessly into the arms of passionate and totally unreal men. As though a woman had nothing better to do with her life! That’s what Daddy would say.

And yet—and this was what was so strange—she was always drawn to the books, almost in spite of herself, the words leaping out of the pages, setting her heart to thumping and her pulse to racing madly beneath the fine kid of her wrist-length gloves. The handsome men in the romances, who loved their women with passion, still treated them with honor and respected their virtue. She smiled ruefully to herself. In all her twenty-one years, there had never been a real man who had been worth a second glance; they were all so
earthy
, the lustful animal within kept barely in check. They seemed so
possessive
, wanting…she hardly knew what. Her independence. Her freedom. And something more. Something dark and nameless that she scarcely understood—yet somehow feared. Perhaps that’s why she’d always concentrated on the future she’d mapped out for herself, one that virtually excluded men. If, by some chance, the right man should come into her life, she’d surely know it. He’d be far grander, more worthy of her pure love and respect than the callow young men who had come courting in the last few years. She knew it with a certainty! Maybe that was why the heroes of the books held such a fascination for her, despite her attempts at indifference.

The clerk had returned, bearing her order pad. “The Ruskin book has not arrived as yet, ma’am. We expect it within a day or so. Shall I have the ironworks volumes sent out to your coachman?”

“No. I shall be in the north of the state for a good part of the summer. You may send the set to me there. Miss Willough Bradford, Saratoga Springs.”

The clerk frowned, writing. “W-I-L-L-A?” she asked. “Is that how it’s spelled, Miss Bradford?”

“No. W-I-L-L-O-U-G-H.”

“What an unusual—and lovely—name!”

“Thank you.” Willough smiled. “You will notify me at my Gramercy Park address when the Ruskin arrives?” Without waiting for a reply, she swept up the pleated train of her skirt and made for the door of the bookshop. She nodded at the young man who held open the door, then waited on the stoop, surveying the noise and hustle of Fourteenth Street, while her coachman brought up her open carriage. He jumped from his seat and held out his hand to assist her. She stepped into the open carriage and sat down, smoothing her taffeta skirts.

The coachman scrambled onto his seat and turned to her. “Will you go to Lord and Taylor now, Miss Bradford?”

Willough pulled at the elastic watch fob on her bodice and snapped open the little case. Three thirty. “No,” she said, closing the watch and settling back against the leather cushions. “It’s nearly time for tea. I’ll go straight home.” She opened her parasol to shade her complexion from the strong May sun. It was surprisingly warm in New York City for this time of year. Far warmer than it had been in Chicago with cousin Hattie. Well, she’d be off to Saratoga in another two or three weeks, before the weather got too hot. And before she had become so thoroughly sick of her mother’s company that she hardly could be civil. To avoid being with her mother, she had spent very little time at home in the last six years. The years at Vassar, the tour of the Continent with the Reverend Gordon and his wife, the visits with cousin Hattie. And of course the months at a stretch when she lived with her father in his house at Saratoga.

She was startled out of her reverie. The carriage had stopped between Third and Fourth avenues, where a group of squalid urchins was fighting in the road. Willough frowned in dismay at their obvious poverty, feeling helpless, wishing she’d brought a few coins in her purse. The coachman cursed and waved the boys out of the way. Willough looked up as the carriage began to move again. Just to her right was the large red brick building of the Tammany Society, the most powerful political club in all of New York City. Even in Chicago over the winter, the papers had been filled with the accounts of Mr. Tweed’s trial for bribery, forgery, larceny, and all manner of political chicanery. The trial had ended with the jury being unable to render a verdict. A month later, fifteen new indictments had been handed down against Tweed, with the new trial scheduled to begin sometime in June.