Love Inspired Historical November 2014 (33 page)

Several people nodded; others exchanged glances as if they weren't sure what to believe.

“I'm here to tell you that you have to start from a different perspective,” Clay said, resting one hip against the chest of life preservers near the funnel. “Living among the Indians isn't so very different from the way you lived back home. Chances are, wherever you're from, you found all kinds of people—Swedes, the Irish, Germans and more.”

“We came from a town with a fine set of Christians,” one woman remarked. She glanced at Maddie and put her nose in the air.

Allie stiffened at the slight to her friend. She knew some people distrusted the Irish, acting as if they were some sort of brutes, but she'd always considered such prejudice ridiculous.

“They may have been fine Christians,” Clay put in smoothly, “but they probably didn't all attend the same church.”

More voices sprang up, extolling the virtues of this group over that. Clay's frown was growing, and Allie feared his patience was fading in direct correlation. She set Gillian on the deck beside her chair and stood.

“Friends! Friends!” she called, raising her hands above her head to get their attention. “Let Mr. Howard speak, if you please. I believe he's trying to make a point.”

Clay nodded his thanks to her intervention. “Indeed I am. You wouldn't look at a town of people and think them all identical to each other, yet many people make the mistake of looking at the Indians in the area and thinking they're all the same. They aren't. There are peaceful tribes who hunt and fish and even farm like the next man.”

“They farm?” Catherine asked, pale brows high.

“Indeed they do,” Clay assured her. “There's a fleshy root called the camas they cultivate and harvest just like a potato.”

“They must have learned that from an Irishman,” Maddie put in with a triumphant glance at the woman who had nettled her.

Allie hid her smile. “Go on, Mr. Howard,” she encouraged Clay.

His smile seemed to raise the temperature under the shade sail. “However they learned it, Ms. O'Rourke, it's part of their traditions. Other tribes have other traditions. Some are warriors who pride themselves on what they can take from weaker tribes. Some live off trade, some prefer to be self-sufficient and some are insulted if you try to barter. You have to know who you're dealing with.”

Allie glanced around the group and found many nodding or looking thoughtful.
Thank You, Lord, that they're willing to listen!

Then she noticed that one member of their group was turning redder by the moment. Mr. Mercer pushed his way to the front.

“This nonsense must stop, sir,” he said, shaking a bony finger at Clay. “These ladies will have no call to deal with savages. You will frighten them.”

Allie drew herself up. “Better that we know the truth, sir, before we embark on your so-called blessed shores.”

“Mrs. Howard,” he scolded, speaking slowly, as if she would have difficulty comprehending him should he speak at a normal pace. “You have no need for concern.” He turned to the others, putting his back to Clay. “Indeed, none of you have any reason for concern. You must not listen to such stories. They will only damage your delicate sensibilities.”

Allie's temper rose with each word. She tapped him on the shoulder, forcing him to turn once more and face her. “Perhaps we aren't the shrinking violets you think us, Mr. Mercer. I, for one, would like to be prepared for the dangers I might face in Seattle.”

“Dangers?” Mercer spread his hands with a laugh. “There are no dangers in Seattle, dear lady, unless you count the danger of losing your heart to a charming gentleman.”

“And if you believe that,” Clay said, straightening to tower over their benefactor, “then you probably believe that bilge water tastes like lemonade. I wouldn't advise drinking it any time soon.”

Mr. Mercer's long face darkened above his whiskers. “You may not have entered Seattle before the Indian Wars, Mr. Howard, but it is well known where your sympathies lie. A man who would forsake his own people to champion an immoral band of lazy heathens does not deserve to teach impressionable young ladies, in my book.”

Forsake his own people? What was Mercer talking about? Did he know Clay had left his family behind in Boston? Or was this something else?

Clay dropped his chin and gazed at Mercer from under his brows. His voice was no less powerful for its quiet. “And a man who lies to further his own gain has no business teaching at all.”

Mercer tilted back his head to meet Clay's gaze. Whatever he saw there made him pale. He took a step back and tugged down on his waistcoat before turning to the other passengers, who were watching wide-eyed.

“I cannot, of course, keep you from speaking,” he said, though he did not look at Clay. “I can, however, insist that the ladies under my escort spend no more time in your questionable company. Come along, my dears.”

He raised his head so that the breeze ruffled his reddish curls and marched back through the company. What a humbug! Surely the others would see through his posturing.

But, to Allie's dismay, several of the women gathered their things and rose to follow him.

“Stop them,” she begged Clay, putting a hand on his arm.

His muscles were tight under her hand. “Let them go, Allegra. They have no interest in the truth.”

“And that's precisely why we must insist that they hear it,” Catherine said, rising to join Allie at Clay's side and bringing Gillian with her. Maddie stuck out her tongue at Mercer's retreating back before doing the same.

“You're making a mistake,” Allie called as several more fell into step behind their leader. “We need to be prepared.”

Mercer turned and raised one finger above his head. “Mark my words, Mrs. Howard. You are the one who is making a mistake, by aligning yourself with this naysayer. I only hope you don't live to regret it.”

Chapter Ten

T
hat day marked a rift in the company of the good ship
Continental
. Clay wasn't sure whether to feel grateful for the reprieve of having to deal with Mercer directly or guilty for his part in the problem. His mission from the first had been to protect Allegra and Gillian. Surely helping Allegra and her friends understand what they would face in Seattle would protect them more than the ignorance Mercer seemed so set on. Clay couldn't regret that some of the women had chosen to listen to him instead of their so-called leader.

He could be sorry they were tarred with the same brush of prejudice.

“His mind has the depth of a teaspoon,” Allegra said, shaking her head and drawing in a deep breath as if to still her temper as she watched Mercer and his band leave the hurricane deck.

“Aren't you the kind one to be thinking he has any mind at all,” Ms. O'Rourke murmured beside her.

Catherine Stanway was regarding Clay with head cocked. “And what did he mean, Mr. Howard, that you had forsaken your own kind?”

Clay drew himself up, but to his surprise, Allegra pushed between him and her friend. “His own kind? For shame, Catherine! Are we not all God's children?”

Catherine colored and dropped her gaze. “Of course we are, Allegra. Please forgive me.” She peered up at him through golden lashes. “And please forgive me as well, Mr. Howard. I didn't mean to imply that...well, I don't know what I meant!”

“It's all right, Ms. Stanway,” Clay assured her. He glanced around at the few women who had stayed. “You all have a right to know. The Indian Wars of ten years ago may have been over when I joined the citizenry of Seattle, but their effects still linger. Those who push beyond the boundaries are deemed visionaries or fools.”

Maddie shivered. “Is it so very wild there, then?”

“It can be,” Clay told her.

“But surely there are treaties,” Catherine protested, “reservations.”

“Oh, the territorial government negotiated treaties and arranged reservations for many of the tribes,” Clay agreed, “but less than two in ten of the natives in most cases have moved to the new lands. Would you leave your home because a government you didn't recognize told you that you had to?”

“Some of us did just that, so we did,” Maddie murmured, gaze going off into the middle distance.

“Then you'll understand why those of us who can see both sides of the question are sometimes dubbed Indian lovers,” Clay told her.

Allegra shook her head. “But how unfair! They call you names on the one hand but come to you for funding on the other.”

Catherine put her nose in the air. “We won't behave so uncivilly, will we, ladies?”

They all assured him they thought quite highly of him indeed. He knew he shouldn't care what they thought. His ability to ignore the slurs to his reputation and sanity had stood him in good stead over the years. Yet when Allegra laid her hand on his arm and gazed up at him, he felt as if he'd grown another foot taller.

“We want to hear what you have to say, Clay,” she said, voice firm with conviction. “Please don't listen to Mr. Mercer.”

Though he could see her friends nodding fervently and Gillian gazing up at him expectantly, somehow Allegra's look was the brightest. Clay smiled and put his hand over hers. “I haven't listened to the likes of Mercer for most of my life. I wouldn't want to set a precedent now.”

And so the classes continued. The much smaller group met on the hurricane deck each morning. The ladies brought out their parasols against the stray bit of sunlight that managed to skip under the sail stretched above them. Even the ship's officers found a moment or two from their duties to lounge on the deck and listen.

Though they were always respectful to any passenger, the officers had told Clay enough that he knew they bore Mercer little love. They couldn't understand why the emigration agent had forbidden his charges from interacting with any member of the crew, including them. Of course, Mercer's edict hadn't stopped the ladies from flirting, just as it didn't stop some of them from attending Clay's classes.

Mercer, however, was not content to merely protest. The women who approved of his approach clustered around him on the main deck, promenading or strolling. Some made sure to stand just below the hurricane deck and talk loudly, as if trying to drown out anything Clay had to say. He'd never been more pleased with his deep voice, for it wasn't hard to top the higher-pitched voices floating up from below.

At the dinner table, those supporters of Mercer who dined in the lower salon sat at one end, and Clay's students sat at the other. He pitied the people like Matt Kelley who sat in the middle, for they bore the brunt of hostility from both sides.

“This is ridiculous,” Clay told Mercer when he came upon the fellow one afternoon on his constitutional. “Do you really think I'd harm any of these women by telling them the truth about Seattle?”

Mercer clasped his hands behind his coat and raised his head to meet Clay's gaze. “If you were telling the truth, sir, I would be the first to endorse you. As it is, I can only reiterate my demands that you cease immediately.”

Clay shook his head. Mercer and his cronies seemed to have a vision for the future of Seattle—fine clapboard houses, Sunday services in a whitewashed chapel, promenades up Main Street. That might be Seattle someday, but they didn't much want to hear it wasn't Seattle today.

“They remind me of the early pioneers,” Clay told Allegra. “They originally named the city New York Alki, meaning New York by and by. But Mercer isn't willing to admit that the by and by isn't the here and now.”

Allegra met with Clay each night after dinner to plan the next lesson. They sat under a lantern at a little table along one wall of the lower salon while Catherine or Maddie kept an eye on Gillian. Clay would have preferred to simply teach about whatever was foremost on his mind that day, but Allegra had a more strategic point of view.

“Edibles,” she said at one point, tapping her pen to her lips as she studied the latest notes his students had submitted to her. “There's an excellent topic.” She glanced up at him, dark brows drawn down over her nose. “Exactly which plants native to the area are edible and which should be considered poisonous? I think if we were to arrange them by seasonal availability, that would be most useful.”

“Most useful to whom?” he couldn't help teasing. “I'll have you know, Mrs. Howard, that all plants in Seattle are edible and grow every day of the year. They even pull themselves from the ground, wash themselves and present themselves to your table precisely at dinnertime.”

Gillian had been sitting on Allie's lap that evening. Now she regarded him with wide eyes. “Really?”

Allegra smiled at Clay over her daughter's head. “Your uncle is teasing us, Gillian. He thinks that's something Mr. Mercer would say about the plants in Seattle.”

“Mr. Mercer is silly,” Gillian said as if that was the worst complaint she could imagine.

Clay chuckled. “There's something to be said for silliness, Captain Howard. But I'll write down a list of plants in season if that pleases your mother.”

By the way Allegra smiled, that pleased her very much indeed.

He couldn't help thinking, however, that she'd be far less pleased if she knew the primary reason he continued teaching the class. He liked Maddie's baking well enough, and he knew he was helping the other women prepare for their new home. But the truth of the matter was that Allegra didn't fight him so much when he was teaching. Standing on the hurricane deck pontificating was the perfect way to watch over her and Gillian.

He realized Allegra would balk if she knew. When had she grown so fiercely independent? Frank couldn't have been such a miserable husband that she felt she had to do everything herself.

He was fairly sure she wouldn't answer him if he asked a third time why she'd chosen to leave Boston. So he decided to ask someone else instead.

“Ms. O'Rourke,” he said as class was ending one day. “A moment of your time.”

Allegra raised her midnight black brows at him as she herded Gillian toward the stairs. Clay tried to ignore her as well as the warmth that was rising in his cheeks. Her friend strolled up to him, put her hands on the hips of her green wool dress and tilted back her head to look up at him. Those brown eyes sparked brighter than the waves around them.

“I did my lessons neat as you please, teacher,” she said. “Please don't go rapping my knuckles.”

Clay shook his head. “I have no reason to treat you so shabbily, Ms. O'Rourke.”

She rolled her eyes. “And haven't we known each other long enough that you could call me Maddie?”

Clay felt himself grinning. “I suppose we have, Maddie. Feel free to call me Clay.”

She giggled. “And wouldn't Mrs. Howard think poorly of me if I did, you and her being related and all?”

“You think Allegra would mind if you called me by my first name?” Why did that thought so please him?

She slapped at his arm. “Well, of course she would! She's told me the story. You were her affianced at one time.”

“But she married my brother,” Clay reminded her. He glanced over the top of her to make sure Allegra had gone down the stairs, then took her arm and drew her closer to the stack from the boiler, where their words were more likely to be hidden under the engine's throb.

“As you know the story,” Clay said to Maddie, “Tell me, was Frank cruel to Allegra?”

Her reddish brows shot up, then she giggled again. “My, but you sound like me, Clay. Most folks would have tiptoed up to a question like that.”

Clay shrugged. “Maybe I've been eating too much of your baking, Maddie.” He glanced over the edge of the deck in time to see Allegra gazing up at them, a frown on her fair face. He shuffled back a few steps and focused on her friend again.

The redhead was regarding him out of the corners of her eyes. “You needn't worry yourself about Mrs. Howard and your brother. From what I've heard, he loved her true.”

That didn't surprise him. Who wouldn't love Allegra? “Then why did she leave Boston?” he demanded. “She had everything a woman could need.”

Maddie shrugged. “I suppose that depends on the woman, so it does. From the sound of it, she had a fine home, only it wasn't truly her own. She had gowns and shawls, but someone else had the choosing of them. She helped the poor and attended events, but only when she was allowed. Sure'n it was a fine life.”

Clay frowned. “You make her sound like a prisoner.”

Maddie beamed at him. “And haven't I always said what a clever man you are! Perhaps that's why you ran away from Boston, too.”

“I didn't run.” He felt himself stiffening at the slur and forced himself to relax. “I told my father my concerns. He had a future planned for me that suited me not at all. Had I done what he wanted I would have been an abject failure. He wouldn't bend, I couldn't stay.”

She peered up at him. “And that's why you and Allegra rub against each other sometimes. You're too much alike!”

Clay opened his mouth to protest, then shut it again. If his family's dictates had driven Allegra out of Boston, she did have a lot in common with him. But Maddie was wrong when she said they were too much alike. Allegra was fixed on her future. He couldn't forget his past.

* * *

What was he doing? Allie stood on her tiptoes on the main deck, but all she could see was the very top of Clay's head, the salty breeze fingering his red-gold hair. With the noise from the engine, she couldn't catch a word of what he and Maddie were discussing.

“I wouldn't worry,” Catherine said beside her. “Very likely he's just putting in his next order for sweets.”

“Of course,” Allie said, feeling foolish. And really, Clay could speak to whomever he liked. Maddie wasn't the first one to cast a glance in his direction, and she wouldn't be the last.

Allie was merely glad he was willing to keep teaching. Every day his words opened up a new world, challenging her vision. When she'd first heard Mr. Mercer extol Seattle's virtues, she'd been sure of God's leading and her own ability to take care of her and Gillian with her sewing. Many a woman in Boston had supported herself or family that way. She'd met several who had sewed for her mother or the Howards over the years.

Now she could only wonder. From what Clay said, there would be little call for fine sewing in Seattle, and nearly every woman aboard was skilled in that area. She'd seen the embroidery and tiny stitches they put onto their clothes as they whiled away the time on deck most afternoons. They wouldn't need to pay for such services.

So what else could Allie do? She supposed she could teach, but several women already had experience and stellar references in that area, and by all accounts there were few children. She didn't have the money to start her own store; she wasn't suited to be a logger or fur trapper.

There must be some job she could take to keep her from having to marry!

She was still considering the matter when she brought Gillian to play the piano in the upper salon that afternoon. Clay and some of the other men had fixed it onto its legs at last, and now it was seldom silent as the ladies took turns entertaining. Gillian had learned the rudiments in Boston, and now Allie showed her how to play some simple songs.

“That man is utterly contemptible,” Catherine declared, coming to stand beside the piano with a mutinous look in her eyes.

Gillian regarded her with a frown, but Allie ran her fingers up the keys to distract her daughter. “And who has earned your wrath this time?” she asked her friend.

“Mr. Mercer, who else?” Catherine sat on a chair near the piano. Though her color was high, her back did not so much as slump as she folded her hands properly in the lap of her gray gown. “A New York publisher donated an entire library of books for our enjoyment on this trip, and Mr. Mercer has appropriated the best of them—Chaucer, Milton, Shakespeare, Everard. He says we will only damage them. He seems to think we do nothing but sit around and drool all day!”