The Paper Marriage
At thirteen Rose had been tall and painfully shy. At eighteen she’d still been shy, and even taller, but she could walk without tripping over her feet. She’d even learned to dance so that on those rare occasions when some poor boy had been forced to do his duty, she wouldn’t disgrace herself.
“No, you’re not much to look at,” she told her mirror image. Given the choice between beauty and backbone, she would have chosen beauty, which just went to show she still hadn’t learned anything.
Fortunately, the choice wasn’t hers to make. She’d been stuck with backbone, which was a good thing, because backbone was just what she would need until she could find a position and establish herself in a decent neighborhood.
With the house empty and her luggage stacked beside her, Rose sat on one of the delicate chairs that flanked the inlaid hall table and waited for her grand-mother’s friend, Bess Powers, who had located a suitable rooming house and offered to drive her there, as her grandmother’s horse and buggy had already been claimed by a creditor.
Limp with exhaustion, she was afraid to relax for fear she might fall asleep. Afraid the few dollars in her purse would not be enough. Perhaps she should have kept back part of the proceeds from the sale of her jewelry in case the landlord insisted on being paid in advance.
What if she couldn’t find a position right away?
And even if she could, it would be weeks, perhaps months, before she could expect to be paid.
Choices. It came down to making the right one. Unfortunately, women were rarely given a chance to learn, their choices being made for them, first by parents and then by husbands. The first time she’d had to make a choice, she’d made a disastrous one. After suffering the consequences, she’d had no choice but to turn to her grandmother.
This time she was fresh out of relatives. It was a criminal shame, she told herself, that well-bred young women were never trained to be self-supporting.
Bess arrived on the dot of four. “There you are,” she declared, as if she’d been searching everywhere. Parking her umbrella in the stand, she stood before the mirror and re-skewered her hat atop her freshly hennaed hair with a lethal-looking hatpin. “Shame about the house, but I’ve been telling Gussy for years that this was too much house for one lone woman. Don’t be possessed by your possessions, I always say.”
Which was all very well, Rose thought, as long as one possessed a roof over one’s head. A bed in hand was worth two in the bush.
Giddy, that’s what you are. Good thing your feet are as long as they are, my girl, because you’re going to have to stand on them from now on. “Grand-mother’s housekeeper gave me the name of a reliable agency where I might look for work.”
“What kind of work can you do?” Bess didn’t believe in mincing words. As a woman who supported herself with words, she valued them too highly. “Can you take shorthand? Can you cook? Not that I’d recommend it, but better to lord it over a kitchen than to have to wait on every oaf with the price of a meal.”
Rose had never even considered serving as a waitress, but it might well come to that. “I’ve never tried it, but I’m sure I could learn. I’m good with invalids, too.”
“You want to be a doormat all your life? I haven’t known you long, child, because I’ve been away so much these past few years, but we both know Gussy was no invalid. What she was, poor soul, was crazy as a bedbug, not to put too fine a point on it. Now, don’t tell me you want to go to work in one of those asylums, you wouldn’t last out a day.”
Rose knew the woman meant well. And after all, she was one of those rare creatures, a truly independent woman. “All right, then what do you suggest? Governess? Companion? Surely I could qualify for either of those positions.”
“I thought about hiring you as a secretary-companion.”
Rose waited for the catch. She was certain there would be one.
“Trouble is, I couldn’t afford to pay you enough to live on. My publisher pays my expenses when I’m traveling, but I doubt if he’d pay for a secretary.”
On her good days, her grandmother used to talk about her friend, Bess Powers, who was considered a minor celebrity after the diaries she had written while growing up aboard her father’s ship had been published. Rose envied Miss Powers her freedom and independence but, celebrity or not, she wasn’t at all sure she could abide the woman for any length of time.
“I’m afraid I don’t take shorthand. I’m sure I could learn, though, and my penmanship is excellent.”
“’T’wouldn’t work. I’ve traveled in single harness too long. As it happens, though, I have another problem on my hands. You might be just the one to tackle it. I don’t suppose you’ve got a drop of brandy in the house, do you? This miserable weather goes right to my knees.”
“I’m sorry. Knowing I’d be leaving today, I let the servants take home all the food and drink, but I’m sure there’s some tea left in the caddy.”
“Never mind. Now, where was I? Oh, yes, Matt. My nephew. Poor boy, he was desperate enough to write to me for help, which means he’s at his wit’s end. Last time I saw him he called me a meddling old busybody.” She chuckled. “I’ll not deny it, either.”
Rose murmured a polite disclaimer. She scarcely knew the woman, after all, but if she had indeed spent her formative years at sea in a man’s world, as she claimed to have done, then it was no wonder she tended to be outspoken.
Rose appreciated plain speaking. It saved time in the long run, even if the truth did happen to tread on a few tender toes.
“Well anyhow, as I told Horace, you’re a tad on the scrawny side, but then Gussy was always frail, too. Still, it takes a strong woman to look after a child.”
“A child?” Rose repeated, frowning. Perhaps she was more like her grandmother than she’d thought, for she was having trouble following the conversation. “I’m sorry—did I miss something?”
“Child, baby, I’m not sure of her age, but I do know I’m too old to tackle the job, even if I had the time. Still, I expect you’re stronger than you look, else you’d never have been able to put up with Gussy. I know, I know, she was my dearest friend, even though we didn’t see much of one another once I started traveling professionally, so to speak. But Gussy was always a bit light under the bonnet, if you take my meaning. Old age struck me in the knees. It struck Gussy’s head. I guess it hits us all in our weakest parts.”
Rose couldn’t think of a single word to say. If this tale had a logical conclusion, she couldn’t imagine what it would be.
“Still, it’d be killing two birds with one stone, wouldn’t it?”
That night, as was their habit, Bess and Horace shared tea, brandy, cigars and an assessment of the day’s events. They’d lived for years in the same neighborhood, three blocks apart. “So you see,” Bess was saying, “if Rose agrees to it, Matt won’t have much choice, he’ll have to go along. By this time he’ll be too desperate to stand on his high horse.”
“What if he’s found someone from the village to take the baby off his hands?”
“If he could’ve, he would’ve by now.”
“Speaking of Rose, how is she settling in?”
“I put her in that women’s boarding place just off Dominion. The rooms are small, but it’s clean, decent and cheap.”
“She’ll be out first thing tomorrow looking for work,” Horace reminded her. “If she finds it, what happens to your plan to pair her up with your nephew?”
“Finding work won’t be easy. She’s feeling her way right now, but she’s got pride and backbone. Women wanting a maid or a governess won’t like it, it throws off the natural pecking order.”
“What makes you think your nephew will hire her?”
“Like I said, the boy’s got no choice. If he did, he’d never have asked for my help.” She chuckled. Lifting her left foot to the ottoman, she gently massaged her knee through layers of serge, taffeta and muslin. “Can you picture me with a leaky, squalling babe in my lap? The good Lord knew what He was doing when He gave babies to young folks. We old folks don’t have the patience, much less the energy.”
Horace nursed his brandy and stared into the fireplace. “Now why,” he mused, “do I get the feeling you’re up to something more than just finding a nursemaid for young Captain Powers?”
Chapter Two
They called her Annie, after Billy’s mother. At the moment she was shrieking, stinking and kicking. For all of ten seconds Matt stood in the doorway and thought about walking away. Walking until he could no longer smell the stench or hear the ear-splitting wails.
“You write to that aunt of yours again?” Crankshaw Higgins, the eldest member of the unorthodox household, set down the half-empty nursing bottle. With a harried look, he handed over the baby, along with a clean huck towel.
“Third letter went out last week,” Matt replied.
“She going to take her off your hands?”
“Hasn’t said yet.”
Crank swore. A ship’s cook by trade, he had better things to do, but like the rest, he valiantly stood his watch.
Could the captain do any less?
Resigned to his fate, Matt poured water from the kettle into a basin, dropped in a bar of lye soap and prepared to do his duty.
Some thirty minutes later, his sleeves and the front of his shirt soaked, he stood back and admired his handiwork. “There now, you’re all squared away, mate. You know, you’re not all that homely with your mouth shut.”
The infant gazed up at him, her large blue eyes slightly unfocused. She was bald as an egg, but at least she had some heft to her now. She’d been little more than skin and bones when he’d inherited her, but these last few weeks, thanks largely to Crank’s efforts, she had begun to flesh out.
“Yeah, you heard me right,” he murmured softly in a voice that none of his men would have recognized. The cords of tension that recently had tightened his shoulders until he could scarce turn his head from east to west were beginning to ease off now that he was getting used to handling something this fragile.
Luther poked his head into the room, his beardless cheeks reddened by the cold northwest wind. He’d been out fishing the net, dressing the catch and salting down those fish not needed for the day’s meals. “Let me clean up first and I’ll stand the next watch. Think she’ll be sleeping by then?”
“More likely she’ll be squalling again.”
Because his grandfather had been one of them, Matt had been guardedly accepted by the villagers when, along with the two youngest and the two eldest members of his crew, he had returned to Powers Point, the land his grandfather had purchased soon after he’d sold his ship and retired. After standing empty for years, most of the buildings had been storm-damaged, a few of them washed clean away, but the main house was still sound. With the help of Peg, his ship’s carpenter, and a few of the local builders, they had brought it up to standard, adding on whatever rooms were deemed necessary.
In Matt’s estimation, it was as fine a place as any man could want, still he counted the days until he could leave. Crank and Peg would stay on as caretakers once he got his ship back. Neither of them was young or nimble enough to return to their old way of life.
The five men had quickly settled into a comfortable routine, fishing, repairing the outbuildings, working with the half-wild horses they’d bought on the mainland and had shipped across the sound—riding into the village for supplies or to meet the mail-boat.
Billy and Luther had quickly made friends, especially among the young women. The first few times they’d ridden south, Matt had cautioned them as a matter of course against drinking, gambling, fighting and fornicating. “A village like this is different from a port city. If either one of you oversteps the boundaries here, we’ll all pay the price.”
“I ain’t heard no complaints, have you, Lute?” Billy had grinned in the infectious way that had made him a favorite of all, male and female, young and old. Remembering what it had been like to be young and full of juice, Matt hadn’t kept too tight a line on them.
Now Billy was lying under six feet of sand.
Not a one of them doubted he’d done what he’d been accused of doing. Luther had as much as admitted he’d suspected what was going on. Evidently, half the village had suspected, but as the woman in question was from away and her much older husband had a reputation for meanness, they had chosen to mind their own affairs.
Hearing the sound of Peg’s hammer as he nailed another rafter in place, Matt slowly shook his head. Using wrack collected along the shore, the old man had insisted on building another room for Annie, as if they didn’t have rooms going unused in the old two-story frame house.
But then, it made as much sense as Luther’s wanting to buy and train a pony for her, and her not even two months old. Crank had even mentioned getting her a puppy.
It amused Matt to watch his crew vie for Annie’s favor. If she preferred one over the other, she didn’t let on. Bess could sort it all out, if she ever showed up. He had lost his temper and called her a meddling old busybody the last time she’d poked her nose into his personal affairs, but sooner or later she’d be back. Out of curiosity, if nothing else. And once she was here, he could concentrate all his efforts on regaining his ship.
His ship…
Looking back, Matt marveled at the depths of stupidity to which an otherwise intelligent man could sink. Four years ago, at the behest of an old friend of his father’s, he’d reluctantly agreed to attend a ball being held to raise funds for the Old Seamen’s Retirement Home.
It was there that he’d met Gloria Timmons, daughter of one of the sponsors. She had stood in the receiving line looking like one of those Christmas-tree angels, all white and gold and sparkling.
A large man, used to towering over all women and most men, Matt had been flat-out terror-stricken when she’d placed her small, soft hand in his, gazed up at him with eyes the color of a summer sky, and fanned her eyelashes. With his free hand he’d tugged at his collar. He’d had to clear his throat several times, and she must’ve felt sorry for him because she’d given him a smile that would melt a cannonball.
Matt could readily hold his own in the company of men, but he was a fish out of water when it came to women. The truth was, he’d never really trusted one, not since his mother had decided she’d rather live ashore than aboard her husband’s ship, even if it meant leaving her eight-year-old son behind with his father.
Not that he hadn’t enjoyed his share of doxies, but respectable women—especially young, beautiful, dainty, respectable women with soft voices, soft faces and soft hands—those were his downfall.
It had all started that night. Matt had never bothered to learn how to dance. With Gloria, he’d scarcely been able to string two words together without stuttering, but somehow she had made him feel like a regular Prince Charming. By the time that first evening was over, he’d been heart-stricken in the worst way.
They’d spent every day together the entire time his ship was in port. Neglecting appointments with custom officers, shipping agents, brokers and consigners, over the course of seven days he had listened to more music, drunk more tea and sat through more dull lectures than any man should have to endure in one lifetime.
He hadn’t uttered a word of complaint. If Gloria had asked him, he would have crawled over a bed of live coals.
The night before he’d sailed she had allowed him to kiss her. Scared stiff he would break her, or at the very least, terrify her by either his size or his tightly leashed passion, he’d been shaking too hard to do the job justice.
“If only you didn’t have to leave,” she’d whispered after that brief hard, dry kiss. “I could never marry a man who would go off and leave me by myself for months at a time. I would simply die of loneliness.”
He hadn’t realized it at the time, but she’d hit him in the one place where he was vulnerable. It had been years since he’d last seen his mother. As an adult, he’d seldom even thought about her. The last time they’d met had been at his father’s funeral where, like the strangers they were, they had made polite conversation. She’d told him she would be marrying again and moving to Chicago; he’d told her he was off to Honduras at week’s end and they’d parted still strangers. Since then she had rarely crossed his mind, but evidently the old scars were still there.
Oh, yeah, he’d been broadsided, all right. By the time he’d left Gloria that last night in port he had promised to finish one last run, then put his ship up for sale and invest the proceeds in her father’s ship-building firm in exchange for a seat on the board of directors.
In the end, he got exactly what he deserved. After delivering a cargo of dyewood, mahogany and bananas to Boston only three days behind schedule, he had contracted with a broker to sell the Black Swan. With his head still in the clouds, he had bought the biggest diamond ring he could find and headed south with marriage on his mind, only to be informed that Miss Timmons was visiting a friend in West Virginia. Five days later, having partially regained his senses, he’d taken a train to Boston, intent on pulling his ship off the market.
He’d been three days too late. She’d just been sold.
So he’d headed south again, determined to make the best of a bad situation. If he could no longer be captain of the finest three-masted schooner afloat, he would be the finest husband, and make a stab at being a damned good director of Timmons Shipbuilding. He was not without business experience, after all.
That was when he’d discovered that the woman who had stolen his heart was too busy reeling in another poor sucker to spare him more than a rueful smile. “But darling, I never actually said I’d marry you, did I? I’m sure I didn’t. I’m having far too much fun to settle down yet, but Daddy’s still saving you that seat on the board as soon as you’ve sold your ship.”
For the first time in years he had gone out and gotten howling drunk. Two and a half days later he’d wakened up in a Newport News flophouse with a fistful of busted knuckles and a head the size of New Zealand, both his pockets and his belly turned wrong-side out.
Dammit, he wanted her back.
The Black Swan, not Gloria. God knows, any romantic nonsense had been purged from his heart.
After four years, the broker was still working on getting his ship back. The new owner, a consortium of dry-land sailors, was intent on playing games with him, their latest demand, relayed by the broker, being a five-percent cut of the captain’s share of the profits for five years and a sale price well above the original purchase price.
He’d been in the process of negotiating for a two-year split and a lower sale price when all hell had broken loose and he’d found himself with a problem no broker could solve.
Annie.
With the tip of his big, booted foot, Matt rocked the cradle Peg had fashioned from a rum barrel and padded with goose down. If Bess didn’t soon come through for him, he was going to have to broaden his search. He could hardly take an infant to sea with him.
If she’d been a boy, he might have considered it, but she wasn’t. All he had to do was look at Bess to see what that kind of a life would do to a girl. Bossy, meddlesome, conniving, his aunt drank like a man and cursed like a man, and got all huffy when a man did the same thing in her presence.
He sighed and then he swore. He’d done more of both in the short time since he’d become a surrogate father than in all his thirty-one years put together.
Yeah, Annie needed a woman. And so, unfortunately, did he. The trouble with a small, insular village was that everyone knew everything that went on. Without a decent whorehouse, a man could get into serious trouble, a tragic lesson they’d all learned the hard way.
Crank, in his Bible-quoting mode, claimed it was better to marry than to burn, but Matt wasn’t about to commit that particular folly. He was old enough that he could wait until he went to the mainland.
It wasn’t so easy for a younger man. The first time Luther had ridden in for supplies after the shooting he had come back with his jaw dragging. “Hell sakes, Cap’n, all the girls has disappeared.”
They hadn’t disappeared, they’d been hidden away, forbidden to associate with the men from Powers Point. Considering what had happened, Matt couldn’t much blame any man for trying to protect his womenfolk, but dammit, Annie wasn’t at fault. She’d come into this world an innocent victim. Matt refused to allow her to suffer for the sins of her parents, if he had to give up the sea forever.
But it might not come to that. Things were gradually beginning to thaw. The first time Crank had ridden in to lay in a supply of tinned milk, one or two of the older women had offered advice about bringing up a baby’s wind in the middle of her dinner, and using lard to clean her tail instead of lye soap.
Another woman had offered them the loan of one of her milk goats, but for the most part, the men of Powers Point had been left alone with a task not a one of them was equipped to handle.
“Bess, you’re going to have to help me with this,” Matt muttered to the cold, damp night. Unable to sleep, he stood on a wooded ridge overlooking the Pamlico Sound, watching the moon sink behind a cloud bank. “God knows, you’re not my idea of a nursemaid, but I don’t know where else to turn.” He didn’t consider it praying, but the same heartfelt sentiment was there.
Watching a shooting star arc across the sky, he wondered how the death of anything in the universe could be so beautiful. So far he’d seen only the ugliness of death. If he’d been of a mystical turn of mind, he might have taken the shooting star for an omen, but Matt was a realist. Always had been. The second generation of Powers men to have been raised at sea, he’d learned from his father, who had learned from his own father, that a fair wind, a sound ship and a good crew were all a man needed to make his own luck.
Rose watched as Bess Powers poured two cups of tea, then added a dose of medicinal brandy to her own. She’d been invited for the afternoon to discuss her plans for the future, a future that was beginning to look increasingly dismal.
She stirred sugar into her tea, which was stronger than she liked, but hot and fortifying. “I should have worked harder on my art and music. Mama warned me I’d live to regret it. The trouble is, I have no sense of rhythm, and as for my watercolors—well, the less said, the better. Bess, how can I even teach a girl to walk properly when I’m apt to trip over my own feet?” Extending her limbs, she gazed dolefully down at her long, narrow kid slippers.
Bess snorted. “Woman your height would look damned silly with feet no bigger than mine.”
“Who wants a governess who can’t dance, can’t play the piano, can’t paint and—”
“I heard from Matt again today. Poor boy, he’s in sad shape. That’s the third letter in two weeks.”
“Did you know that no one will even consider hiring a woman accountant? I’m smart as a whip when it comes to figures.”
“Didn’t do poor Gussy much good, did it?”
Rose looked up quickly, a stricken expression on her face. “I’m afraid not,” she admitted. Given a chance, she might have been able to salvage something, but before she could even go through the accounts, it was already far too late.
“Sorry, child, you didn’t deserve that.”
Perhaps she did, but this was no time to pile guilt onto a feeling of inadequacy. If she could just keep her head level, her feet on the ground and her spirits high, she would come through this just fine.
“I interviewed for a companion’s position yesterday. The pay is barely enough to keep a mouse in cheese, and I’d be expected to sleep in an attic room. The ceiling slopes so that I can’t even stand up, but there’s a lovely view of the garden.”
“Like I said, poor Matt’s in desperate straits.”