The Lightkeeper's Bride (12 page)

She stepped into the back room. Wooden counters and a sewing machine for alterations sat as though waiting for the tailor. If the store closed, what would happen to the people her father employed? It would be hard to find work with the depression. She touched the smooth, cool surface of the Singer sewing machine. Soon dust would gather on its surface. Wandering along the shelves and counters, she remembered the days when workers crammed the place. Those days would never come again. Now garment factories churned out ready-to-wear. Her gaze fell on the shelves that hid the safe. What if her father had more money than they knew of? It might help them weather the stormy days ahead. She knew the combination.

She dug her glasses out of her bag and perched them on her nose before shoving away the stacks of wool and cotton to reveal the safe. Her hand touched the dial. It had been years since she had opened it. The safe refused to unlock on the first try. She ran through the sequence again and it popped open. She pushed the door as far as it would go and peered inside. Stacks of paper lay inside along with a money pouch. Hope surged until she picked up the pouch and found it too light. Sure enough, it was empty. She dropped it onto a shelf and lifted out the papers in the back of the safe. She glanced through them. Contracts, invoices, and receipts were all she found.

She stopped at a note that read:
Ship will dock an hour early. Have men waiting
.

The second directly under it read:
Operation perfectly executed. Booty more than expected. Will transmit location tomorrow
.

Booty? Her throat closed. Mr. Jesperson thought her father was involved in the piracy of the ships. She couldn’t bear to admit to herself that he might be right.

T
HIRTEEN

W
ITH HIS SKIN
raw from scrubbing as hard as he could in the hot, soapy water of the bath, Will dressed then washed down everything he’d touched. With a twinge of regret, he tossed a match to the clothing he’d thrown into the fire pit outside and dashed back to the horse and buckboard. An hour had passed since he left Miss Russell in town with the baby and he wanted to get them as far away from the pestilence as possible. He urged the horse to a trot.

Bluebirds sang from the berry bushes along the side of the road, and he watched the clouds building in the west over the water as the buckboard bounced along the rough road. With Miss Bulmer missing, he wasn’t sure where to look for the next link. But it wasn’t his problem. His brother could handle his own case. He had enough to handle.

He scanned the hillside, blanketed with some kind of blue wildflowers. Pretty place, this northern coast, but a little more tame than he was used to. He normally strode city streets and dodged clanging streetcars and rearing horses. This was exactly what he had been longing for.

As he looked around, he noticed two men atop a hill in a cypress grove. One man wore dungarees and a floppy hat. The other appeared to be a businessman dressed in a suit and bowler. They hadn’t seen him yet. He reined in the horse in the shadow of a large tree and watched them a moment. Taken at a casual glance, there was no real reason for his unease. A landowner might have been giving direction to one of his hands, but something about the way the men talked seemed furtive. That alone made Will’s senses go to alert. He wished he were close enough to overhear. He watched the man in the bowler point out to sea, toward where the point jutted into the bay.

Where the pirates had overrun the ship.

He told himself not to jump to conclusions. There could be any number of reasons to gesture to the point. He watched the suited man count out paper money and hand it to the worker. The man in dungarees tipped his straw hat then walked off. The businessman saw Will and scowled before he turned and strode away.

When both men were out of sight, Will started back toward town. He took out a notepad and jotted down descriptions of the men and of the incident. It was probably nothing, but he wanted the criminals brought to justice after seeing what they had done to the sailors. If these men had anything to do with it, he didn’t want to miss any details to report to his brother.

He reached Mercy Falls and saw that the streets were deserted. Blockades declaring quarantines closed several roads, and he saw more signs on doors. There was no problem finding a spot to park the buckboard outside Russell’s Haberdashery. Most businesses were open but had few clients.

There was a C
LOSED
sign in the window of the haberdashery. He turned the knob and found the door unlocked. The bell jingled when he stepped into the shop. Jennie stirred from a makeshift bed on the floor then turned her head and went back to sleep. Rather than calling for Miss Russell, Will walked through the store to the back room where he found the woman peering into a safe.

“Are you all right, Miss Russell?” he asked.

She jumped and turned at the sound of his voice. He caught a glimpse of her blue eyes behind her glasses before she snatched off the spectacles. “You startled me.” She shut the door to the safe and locked it. “I believe Jennie is still sleeping.”

“She is. She barely stirred when I came in.” He watched her thrust a paper into her bag along with her glasses. It was none of his business. He followed her toward the front of the store. “Do you know who lives out by the lighthouse? I saw a fellow in a tweed suit and bowler talking to another man in that cypress grove. The one atop the hill with all those wildflowers?”

She stopped and turned to face him with a puzzled frown on her face. “No one lives there. It’s part of a conservatory area. The only people I’ve seen there are gardeners.”

“One might have been a gardener. The other was clearly not.”

Her expression sharpened to keen interest. “Can you describe him?”

He grinned. “You really
do
like to be kept up on everything, don’t you?” When pink touched her cheeks, he held up his hand before she could answer. “Please don’t think I’m being critical. I can see you’re the one I should bring any questions to.”

“What kinds of questions? And why would you care, Mr. Jesperson? It hardly concerns you. The constable won’t take kindly to interference.”

“He wouldn’t care for your involvement either,” he pointed out, hiding another smile when she blushed again. The current trend of simpering beauties who were only interested in parties and fripperies made her intelligence rather appealing. Though she barely reached his chest in height, he’d begun to admire the way she barreled through any problem in front of her.

Whimpering noises came through the doorway. “The baby is awake,” she said, turning on her heel.

He followed her swishing skirt into the storefront. Jennie had crawled from her makeshift bed and sat in the middle of the floor, rubbing her eyes and working up to a wail. Miss Russell scooped her up and nestled her close. “There, there,” she said.

The baby quieted, staring at Will with inquisitive eyes. She waved an index finger his way. “Eh, eh?” Jennie said with a question at the end of her nonsensical syllables.

“That’s Mr. Jesperson,” Miss Russell said.

“You think she’s really asking who I am?” he asked.

“Of course. She’s very smart. You can see it in her eyes.”

Will let the baby grip his finger. “Uncle Will,” he said, touching his chest with his other hand. “I’m Uncle Will. I think I am anyway.”

“She needs her diaper changed.” Miss Russell pressed her lips together then plopped the baby back on the bedding and dug in the satchel for a fresh square of flannel.

He watched while she removed the sodden diaper that hung loosely around the baby’s waist. She finished changing the baby and allowed Jennie to stand then toddle over to explore the base of the coatrack. Miss Russell stepped to the window and peered into the empty street.

“No one is moving about much,” he told her. “I saw quarantine signs on some houses as I passed. I should get Jennie out of the threat of contamination.”

Her cheeks were pale when she turned back to face him. “Yes, indeed!”

“Did you reach your mother?”

“I talked to our maid. Mama was too ill to come to the phone.”

“Ill?” he asked. “Not smallpox?”

She bit her lip and nodded. “So the doctor said. Our maid forbade me to come home and said she would care for my mother, but my place is with her. I only waited so you could take Jennie. I didn’t want to expose her.”

“If she’s been quarantined already, you won’t be allowed to enter the home.”

“Oh dear. I hadn’t thought of that,” she said. Her gaze wandered to the baby, who had managed to pull herself up on the coat stand.

“Perhaps I could sneak in.”

“And then what? You’d be sick, too, unable to get out and wondering what was happening on the outside.”

“My mother needs me.”

“I have a feeling you’d be a most impatient nurse,” he said.

Her black lashes lowered to her cheeks as if to mask her feelings. “You don’t even know me.”

But somehow he did. “I know more than you think. You like to know what’s going on and that indicates you like control. You abhor the unexpected. You can’t
make
your mother get well any sooner by hovering over her.” Her lids raised to reveal eyes bluer than any he’d ever seen. Like a summer sky just before dusk. A frown crouched between her eyes, and she turned her gaze away. He could tell his assessment had been spot on. And she didn’t like it.

“Addie and John left today for their trip to Europe. I should telephone Addie’s mother and see if I can stay there. I’ll do that now.” She went to the telephone and rang Central, then asked for the Carrington residence.

He listened to her instruct the operator to call her friend’s home. From what he gathered from the conversation on this end, the Norths, Lady Carrington’s daughter and son-in-law, had left town just before the disease had broken out, and several servants had already fallen ill at their residence. Jennie crawled to him and pulled herself up on his pants leg. She studied him with alert eyes and lifted her arms.

“You want me to pick you up?” He lifted her as Miss Russell rang off. “I would assume staying at the Norths’ is not an option?”

“There is illness at the big house,” she said. “And Lady Carrington has no spare room in her tiny cottage. Besides, I’m still quite determined to sneak home and care for Mama.”

The phone rang and she jumped. “No one knows I’m here but Lady Carrington.” She picked up the earpiece and held it to her ear. “This is Katie,” she said into the mouthpiece. “Oh, Mr. Daniels, Nell must have told you where I am.” She listened a moment. “I see. I’ll have to get back to you. I’m going to try to get home.” She listened, and her expression fell. “Oh, I see. Very well. Once I arrange for lodging, I’ll call you back.” She rang off and turned toward him with a frown on her face.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“That was Mr. Daniels, owner of the Mercy Falls Telephone Company. With the illness raging through town, he doesn’t want to run the risk of having no operators. He was going to arrange to have a switchboard brought to my house, but he’s informed me that roadblocks are set up to enforce the quarantine. He doesn’t believe I’ll be able to get home. Once I find a place to stay, he’ll make arrangements for a switchboard, and I can work from there instead of going into the telephone building.”

“Any idea where you could stay?” Will had an idea that just might work.

“I have other friends. The Fosters would be happy to have me, but they would be most disapproving of having a switchboard set up in their home.”

There was plenty of room at the lighthouse. He’d barely gotten any sleep this morning. Caring for the child while he worked every night hadn’t been a good situation either. He could use some help with the baby, but he didn’t like admitting he felt inadequate to the task ahead of him. He could hardly ask her to stay at the lighthouse without a chaperone, though. There did not seem to be a respectable answer to the dilemma here.

“You’re frowning,” she said. “Is something else wrong?”

“I’m quite exhausted,” he admitted. “After being up all night, a lightkeeper must sleep for a few hours after dawn. Caring for a sick baby has made that difficult. An ideal solution would be for you to stay at the lighthouse, away from the pestilence, and help with Jennie.

There is adequate room for the switchboard as well.”

She blushed again. “Without a chaperone? That’s hardly suitable, Mr. Jesperson.”

“That’s a problem,” he agreed. “One I’m not sure how to solve.”

She said nothing for a long moment. “I have an idea,” she said finally. “Lady Carrington is alone at her cottage. Her nurse fell ill and has not come in to work, and Mr. Carrington left this morning on a business trip before he realized she would be left alone. The housekeeper was unsure what to do to help. I could ask Lady Carrington to chaperone. Then I could help her and care for the baby as well.”

“What’s wrong with Lady Carrington?”

“She is recovering from a fall she took on her horse two weeks ago. Her right arm was sprained, and she needs some assistance in dressing and preparing meals. Very light work.”

“She has no family to help her?”

“Her sister Clara lives in town but she went with the Norths’ to help care for Edward on the trip.”

This young woman was a take-charge sort. He had to admire that. She didn’t wait for his answer but went to the telephone and rang up Central again, repeating her request to be connected to the Carrington residence. He listened to her persuasive tones as she talked to the woman on the other end of the line. He had no doubt she could talk a seaman into buying a house in the desert.

She hung up the earpiece. “It’s all settled. We shall stop to pick her up on our way out of town. Addie left a few things there I can borrow to wear. I do dislike not caring for my mother though.”

“You have no choice,” he said.

“There is always a choice,” she said.

He smiled. “You can’t control everything, Miss Russell.”

She thrust out her small, pointed chin. “I can try. In fact, before I agree to this for sure, I want to try to get home.”