Rebecca Hagan Lee (14 page)

“Daddy!” The trio of little girls looked up from the scatter of blocks and stuffed animals littering the carpet, recognized their father, and began shouting his name at an earsplitting volume, then hurried toward the door of the nursery clamoring for his attention.

James dropped the leather satchel he’d been carrying and bent at the waist to scoop the two oldest little girls up into his arms. “Hello, my lovelies.” He turned to Elizabeth. “This is Ruby.” He nodded toward the child cradled in his right arm. “And this is Garnet,” he said, indicating the child in his left arm. James smothered both girls with kisses, producing more squeals and high-pitched giggles, then set them on their feet. The older girls wrapped their arms around James’s legs as he lifted the youngest of the toddlers off the floor in mid-crawl. “And this is Emerald.”
He planted a kiss on Emerald’s baby-soft cheek, then gave a soft laugh when Emerald reciprocated. “I meant what I said about my daughters, Miss Sadler. I named them after precious gems. And we in the household fondly refer to the girls as the Treasures.”

“Good heavens,” Elizabeth said aloud before immediately covering her mouth with her hand. “They’re …”

“A bit overwhelming at first,” he said. “But you’ll get used to it.”

Again, Elizabeth struggled for words. “They’re …”

Something in her tone of voice alerted him, and James turned his attention away from the Treasures back to the woman he’d hired to be their governess.

Elizabeth suppressed an involuntary shiver. She couldn’t stay. She couldn’t teach these children. They were too young. Too rambunctious. Too different from what she’d expected.
Too Chinese.
There. She took a deep breath. She’d admitted it. James Cameron Craig’s daughters were Chinese. Like Lo Peng. Like the hatchet men who guarded him. Like the minions who obeyed him, like the men who had unceremoniously dumped her brother’s body into the street. One of the youngsters—the middle one with the sparkling dark brown eyes and the burgundy hair ribbons sliding through her silky baby-fine locks—loosened her hold on her father’s trouser leg and smiled shyly. Elizabeth leaned closer. The burgundy hair ribbon had lost its anchor in the child’s soft hair and was in danger of sliding away. She reached out to catch and retie it, but caught herself before she did so. Appalled by her automatic gesture, Elizabeth clenched her fist, then lowered her hand, covering it in the folds of her skirts. The little girl took a step forward. Elizabeth blanched and immediately stepped backward. The child retreated, returning to the safety of her father’s long legs, where she hid her face against the lightweight wool of his suit.

James pinned Elizabeth with a sharp gaze as he studied the array of contrasting emotions that flickered across her all-too-expressive face.

She opened her mouth, stumbled over her words, then cleared her throat and started again. “I apologize, Mr. Craig. I never expected … It’s just that …”

James let out a long frustrated sigh. “They’re Chinese. Yes, Miss Sadler, I know.” He shook his head, “Although, somehow, this time I didn’t think it would matter.” He watched Elizabeth closely, noting the way she backed away from the children, the beads of perspiration on her upper lip, and the ashen cast to her complexion.

“I have my reasons,” she murmured, embarrassed by the look of supreme disappointment she read in James Craig’s face, embarrassed by her instinctive reaction to three innocent little girls, yet not quite able to disguise or to change it. Not yet quite able to come to terms with the fact that the man who had kissed her so passionately just hours ago had a wife. A Chinese wife.

“Most people do.”

She had made a promise to Owen. She’d made a promise to herself. And she had to keep it. She wouldn’t rest as long as Owen’s death went unpunished. As long as people like Lo Peng preyed on innocent young men. People like Lo Peng. Elizabeth stared down at the faces of James Craig’s daughters, at their caps of silky jet black hair, their red and burgundy and emerald green hair ribbons, at their dark, deep chocolate, almost black almond-shaped eyes, and the soft golden cast of their skin. She couldn’t be responsible for these children because one day, they would grow up to look and think and act exactly like Lo Peng. “You don’t understand.”

“On the contrary, Miss Sadler,” James answered coolly. “I understand this rather mindless prejudice all too well.”

Elizabeth sucked in a sharp bream at his words. She had never been accused of prejudice before, quite the opposite, in fact, and the accusation stung. It stung all the more because Elizabeth was forced to admit his accusation was true.

James pretended not to notice the way his words affected her. Shocked her. “Someone told me, not long ago, that
everyone loves adorable little girls when they’re little.” He kissed Emerald again, this time on the forehead. “I foolishly hoped that statement was true even though I knew better. You see, Miss Sadler, everyone loves adorable little babies. Unless, of course, they happen to have a yellowish cast to their skin.” He gave a little snort of derision. “Or unless they happen to be female.” Holding Emerald in one arm, he bent and gently disengaged his other daughters’ arms from around his legs, then turned his back on Elizabeth. He ushered the two older girls into the center of the nursery, set Emerald down on the floor in the middle of the carpet among the wooden blocks and stuffed animals, then turned and escorted Elizabeth to the door. James stopped long enough to tug on the bellpull hanging near the door, then followed Elizabeth into the hallway and closed the door to the nursery behind them. “It’s late, Miss Sadler. You’ve had a difficult day and a long journey. I’ll have one of the maids show you to a guest room tonight and see that you get your fifty dollars and that you’re on the first train back to San Francisco in the morning.”

“I can’t go back to San Francisco.”

James shrugged his shoulders. “No, I don’t guess you can. But you have the rest of the state and the rest of the continent from which to choose a destination.”

“I apologize,” she said. “Believe me, it isn’t your daughters. I have nothing against your daughters personally … I just …” She shrugged her shoulders and glanced down at the floor, focusing on the way the hem of her skirt skimmed over the top of her slippers, a fraction of an inch above the polished wood.

“Dislike them as a matter of principle.”

His crisp, deliberate tone of voice interrupted her perusal of the floor. She looked up at him and saw the flash of emotion he tried to mask. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

James’s expression was cool, his reply even more so. “You didn’t hurt me, Miss Sadler. You disappointed me.”

His face wore a closed, shuttered expression Elizabeth
knew very well, and his words caused tears to well up in her eyes. How many times had she responded to Grandmother Sadler’s cruel, unreasonable snobbery in just the same way? How many times had she promised herself she would be different? How many times had she sworn she wouldn’t be like Grandmother Sadler? And how could she face the fact that she was behaving exactly the way her grandmother behaved, even going so far as to offer her grandmother’s feeble excuses for inexcusable behavior?

“I’m sorry,” she said, once again.

James quirked his mouth in a brief half-smile. “I suppose it’s just as well,” he told her, “that you leave before the Treasures have time to form an attachment to you—” He stopped and compressed his lips into a tight, firm line.
Before I have time to form an attachment to you.
James shook the unwanted thought away. “Besides, the Treasures have yet to have the kind of governess they deserve. A governess who sees them for the warm, loving little girls they are and appreciates the unique gifts they have to offer.”

Elizabeth opened her mouth to offer a defense, but there was nothing she could say. No defense she could give. No reason she could offer him. No comfort to take away the sting of disappointment. She had already been indicted. She’d indicted herself. She simply stood quietly and waited for James Cameron Craig to dismiss her.

He leaned toward her, and Elizabeth thought he might offer his hand, but James made no move to touch her. “Good-bye, Miss Sadler.”

“Good-bye? More like good night, don’t you think?”

James and Elizabeth turned as Helen Glenross stepped onto the second-floor landing, walked right up to Elizabeth, and offered her hand in welcome. “I’m Helen Glenross, Mr. Craig’s housekeeper. And you must be the new governess. Miss—”

“Sadler,” Elizabeth replied. “Elizabeth Sadler.” She stared at the housekeeper, taking in Mrs. Glenross’s plain, honest face, her graying hair, and her rather gaunt-looking figure.

“Nice to meet you, Miss Sadler.” Helen Glenross glanced over at her employer, noted the firm shuttered look on his face, and immediately recognized the tension flowing between Mr. Craig and the new governess. Fearing the desperately needed governess was about to slip away, Mrs. G. plunged ahead, salvaging what she could of the situation. “Miss Sadler, I can’t tell you how pleased we are to have a real honest-to-goodness teacher as governess for the Treasures. Mr. Craig and I despaired of ever finding someone suitable. The last four turned out to be disasters.”

Elizabeth shook hands with Mrs. Glenross, then glanced over the shorter woman’s head, at James. “You’ve had four governesses?”

“We’ve had four women who thought they could do the job,” Mrs. Glenross quickly replied. “But I would hardly call a faro dealer, a saloon girl, a Chinese laundress, or the ignorant widow of one of Mr. Craig’s miners governesses.”

“I’m sure you must be busy, Mrs. G.,” James interrupted his housekeeper’s flow of words. “I didn’t realize you’d have to make the trek up the stairs. I expected Annie to answer the bell.”

“Annie’s having her supper. And I didn’t see the sense in having the poor girl jump up in the middle of it. Especially since I was coming up here anyway to put this little mite”—she patted the bottom of the band of silk fabric that was looped over her neck and across one shoulder and rested against her slight bosom—“to bed and help Delia bathe the other ones. Unless, of course, Miss Sadler would like to take over …”

Elizabeth reached up and absently fingered a stray lock of her hair as she stared in fascinated silence at the small bulge in the silken sling hanging around Mrs. Glenross’s neck. All at once she remembered what James had said to her back at the jail in San Francisco when he’d explained his expert plaiting of her hair by saying,
I have four daughters. Three of them have hair.
Well, she’d been introduced to the three oldest girls—Ruby, Garnet, and Emerald—and while all of them had hair, none had hair long enough to
braid. And Elizabeth was willing to bet every penny of her remaining seventy-eight cents that this two-day-old little gem, whatever her name, had no hair at all. The tiny tyke, secured in a makeshift sling around the housekeeper’s neck, was the fourth daughter. A two-day-old infant whose mother was no doubt resting in one of the bedrooms lining the second-floor hallway, still recovering from her birth and unable to tend to her needs.
Tend to her needs.
The phrase echoed in Elizabeth’s mind. Two days ago that child had been born needing someone to tend to her needs. Two days ago Elizabeth had learned of Owen’s death. No one had tended to Owen’s needs. But Owen had been a grown man—immature, but grown just the same. While this infant and her solemn-eyed sisters were babies.

James took a deep breath before he broke the bad news to his long-suffering housekeeper, well aware that Helen Glenross’s faithful service might come to an abrupt end as soon as she learned the new governess wouldn’t be taking the job. “Unfortunately, there’s been a mistake, Mrs. G. Miss Sadler feels”—he looked over at Elizabeth, torn between exposing her prejudice to his housekeeper and protecting her feelings—“a bit overwhelmed by the situation here. I’m afraid she isn’t going to—”

“Be able to assume my duties until morning.” Elizabeth’s rush of words surprised everyone. Herself most of all. “I’ve been in ja—I’ve been traveling most of the day.” Elizabeth let go of the lock of hair and brushed at the scratch on her cheek with the back of her hand. “I need to freshen up. I couldn’t possibly touch—” She hastily corrected her wording. “Expose the Treasures, especially the little one, to the grime of the city. So, if it wouldn’t be too much to ask … If you could manage without me tonight,” she glanced back over Mrs. Glenross’s head and met James’s suspicious gaze, “I’d rather start fresh in the morning.”

“We can manage without you,” James answered un-charitably. “We’ve managed this long without you, and
I’ve no doubt that in the very near future, we’ll continue to do so.”

Mrs. Glenross gasped and glared meaningfully at her employer. She knew he expected perfection, but what was wrong with the man? What was he trying to do? Drive the woman off? Feeling overwhelmed by the responsibility of three toddlers upon first meeting them was nothing to be ashamed of—even for a competent governess. Three rambunctious little girls were enough to overwhelm anyone at first glance. And add a newborn into the mix and well … She rushed to reassure Miss Sadler before the woman decided she’d had enough of Mr. Craig’s surliness and walked out. “Of course we’ll manage. How thoughtless of me even to suggest that you start work before you’re even settled in! I suppose I’m feeling my age instead of remembering my manners. Come with me.” She took Elizabeth by the arm and steered her away from James to the next door down the hall. “I’ll show you to your room.”

“
NO
,
I’LL
SHOW
Miss Sadler to her room.” James moved forward and deliberately stepped between the two women, forcing Mrs. Glenross to let go of Elizabeth’s arm.

“If you’re sure—” The housekeeper hesitated, glancing nervously from her angry employer to the new governess.

“I’m sure,” James said. “You’re free to go about your other duties, Mrs. G. I’ll show our
guest
to her room for the night.” He emphasized Elizabeth’s temporary status as he released his housekeeper from her hostess role. James motioned toward the doorway that connected the nursery proper to the governess’s quarters and gestured for Elizabeth to precede him.