The Paper Marriage

Rose surrendered gracefully. She had gone on and on about her own slender prospects while Bess listened; it was only fair that she return the favor.

“You remember I told you about my nephew?”

Rose knew all about Captain Powers, his land-locked crew and his inherited baby. Bess was a gifted storyteller who never missed an opportunity to practice her art. “Can’t he send off to one of the employment agencies? I’m sure they can find someone suitable, there are so many women looking for respectable work.”

“And some not so respectable, I shouldn’t wonder. Would you take the job if it was offered?”

As tempting as it might sound, Rose wasn’t about to leap out of the frying pan into the fire. One thing she’d learned was that she was no good at making quick choices. Another was that positions that sounded lovely on paper weren’t always so lovely in fact.

Besides, while her heart might ache for any motherless infant, she wasn’t at all certain she wanted to get involved with one of Bess’s relatives. “I haven’t given up. Just because the ideal opening hasn’t presented itself yet, that doesn’t mean something won’t turn up tomorrow.”

“Thought I’d ask. If it’d been a married couple needing help with a baby, I’d have talked you into it, but I can’t see sending a decent young woman into an all-male household. ’T’wouldn’t be seemly.”

“He’s your nephew. Couldn’t you do your writing there as well as here, and look after the baby, too?”

The older woman emptied her teacup and refilled it from the decanter, not bothering to add fresh tea. “I’m a spinster, a traveler and a writer. I have neither the time nor the desire to be a nursemaid. Still, the poor little wretch deserves better than a handful of rough seamen to look after her. Know ’em all, and they’re as fine a lot as you’d want to meet, but still…”

Bess had relayed the tale to Rose as it had been told to her by her nephew, about a shooting that had involved three adults. She’d lay odds there was more to it than she’d been told. “Tragic, tragic,” she murmured, now frowning at her teacup, which was empty again. She fully intended to sniff out every juicy detail of the whole sordid mess, but that could wait. When it came to plotting a story, she never liked to be hampered by too many facts. Not all the travel pieces she wrote were entirely factual, although most had a basis of truth.

“And there’s no family at all on either side?” Rose persisted.

“Not a speck. Matt said he beat the bushes without flushing out so much as a shirttail cousin. Poor Billy. Sweetest boy you’d ever hope to meet, but then, you never know….” She shrugged her plump, silk-clad shoulders. “Billy begged on his deathbed for Matt to look after his daughter, and Matt, bless his tender heart, gave his word. Takes after me, Matt does. My own brother’s child, don’t you know?”

Rose sighed. “Oh. Well, I guess that settles it, then.”

Bess stroked her knee and cursed the weather, which was wet and cold, even for early March. “Settles nothing. Being a man of his word is all very well, but it don’t do that poor helpless infant much good.”

Now why do I have the feeling I’m being manipulated?

Rose answered her own unspoken question. Because she’d been blindly running in circles for so long.

Bess wouldn’t do that…would she?

During all the months she’d been burdened with the constant care of her demanding tyrant of a grand-mother, Rose’s grief for her own lost child had been pushed aside. Now it was back, as fresh and painful as if it had happened only two days ago instead of two years. Was it better, she wondered now, to have held a child in one’s arms and then lost it, or never to have held it at all?

There were no answers, only the familiar aching emptiness.

“I’ve been thinking,” Bess announced, a glint in her eye that Rose was beginning to recognize. “Now, if you were to—”

Suddenly wary for no real reason unless exhaustion and discouragement could be blamed, Rose stood and began collecting her purse and gloves. “Bess, could it possibly wait? If you don’t mind, I believe I’d better be getting back to my room. I’ve an early interview tomorrow.”

“Not the housekeeping job?”

“Well, yes. It doesn’t pay very well, but it’s either that or the attic. I understand the housekeeping position includes a lovely set of rooms off the kitchen.”

“Bed in the pantry, no doubt, complete with lecherous butler lurking outside the door.”

There were times, Rose told herself, when Bess’s creative mind went too far. “I’m sure no respectable butler would dream of—”

“Butlers are male, aren’t they? Like I said, I’ve been thinking of a possible solution. Let me talk it over with Horace and see if it’s legal.”

See if it’s legal?

Rose closed her eyes. She didn’t even want to know, she really didn’t. It was late and she was tired, and she still had her best black twill to sponge and press before she went to bed.

That evening, Bess presented her case to her long-time friend over brandy and cigars. If they’d been half a century younger, she might have thought of him as a beau, but they weren’t, and so she didn’t.

“Here’s the problem as I see it. It started with the boy’s mother, a flighty female if ever there was one. The Powers men have all been steady as a rock, but not a one of them ever had a lick of sense when it came to women. First the useless bit of fluff my brother married, then that hussy who trolled her bait in front of Matt, set her hook, landed her fish and then left him there high and dry.”

“I take it you mean the young lady who talked your nephew into selling his ship. Shady dealings, if you ask me, her and her father alike. I believe questions are being raised in certain circles about the source of their funding.”

“That’s as may be, but right now what that boy needs is a decent, respectable woman with some grit in her craw. Strikes me, Gussy’s girl just might fill the bill. Don’t have much to say for herself, but she took good care of Gussy. I’ll lay you odds she’d do the same thing for Matt’s baby. Might not look like much, but buried underneath those meek manners of hers, the girl’s got grit.”

“Oh, she’s not bad to look at, just not in the usual style. Five men, you say?” Horace savored his cigar, his gaze resting gently on the small, plump woman seated across from him.

“Four, now that Billy’s gone.”

“Still, an older woman might be better.”

“Don’t look at me, Horace Bagby, baby-tending is a full time job. I’ve got commitments. Papa’s crew spent half their time keeping me from climbing the ratlines, and me barely out of the cradle. Many’s the time he had to send a man overboard to fish me out. I liked to walk the pinrail, to prove I could do it. Tripped on a pin or two and went over the side more times than I can remember.”

Horace’s smile was indulgent. He had known Bess for half a century. “Still proving yourself, too, aren’t you? You’ve not changed all that much, Bessy my girl.”

“Ballocks. Now, back to what I was saying—a woman with my responsibilities don’t have time, and a young one, leastwise a decent one, can’t be expected to go live among a houseful of men. ’T’wouldn’t be seemly. So here’s what I have in mind.”

Five minutes later, Horace shook his head admiringly. “It’s legal, all right, but I doubt if your nephew would agree to it.”

“You leave Matt to me. If a man’s drowning, he’ll grab aholt of the first thing that floats past.”

It took three weeks and any number of wires and letters. In the first letter, Bess laid out the bare bones of her plan. She knew of a young widow, a hard worker, clean, decent, sound of limb and meek of disposition, who stood in desperate need of a home. And while Bess couldn’t very well send a respectable young woman to live in an all-male household, if Matt would be willing to marry her for the sake of the baby, his troubles would be over.

Matt would not, he wrote back immediately, with appropriate emphasis.

To which Bess replied that in that case, neither she nor her friend Horace Bagby, the lawyer who represented the young woman in question, could recommend the position to her, which was a shame as she was capable, trustworthy, honest as the day is long, and an excellent hand with children and infants.

“If you can’t take over Annie’s care yourself, try to find me someone else,” Matt wrote back. “I’m not taking on a wife.”

Meanwhile, nearing the age of three months, Annie was given her first taste of solid food against the advice of the goat owner, who said a child couldn’t take real food until it was at least a year old.

Annie took to what Crank called burgoo, a thin oatmeal mush, like a cat to raw fish. She had a few wisps of colorless hair and had learned to smile. Luther took credit for the smile, said he’d taught her how, but to Matt’s way of thinking, her smile was Billy, all over again.

It made him sad. Which was some better than being angry and frustrated, but not a great deal.

Bess wrote that the only women she’d found willing to move so far from civilization were either too decrepit to get a job on the mainland or else they were running away from trouble. She added that she was sorry not to be of any more help.

“Dammit, Bess,” Matt wrote back. They had long since dispensed with the formalities, as Bess didn’t fit anyone’s notion of a maiden aunt, and he detested being called “boy.” “Help me out here. It’s on your conscience that Annie’s stuck here with no proper care.”

“Don’t see what I can do. You say you don’t want a wife. My friend don’t want another husband, either, so a proxy wedding would satisfy propriety without committing either of you to more than you’re wanting to take on.”

Reading Matt’s answer to Horace, Bess broke into a broad grin. “There, I told you it’d work. Sneak up on ’em, one step at a time, then spring the trap.”

“Bess Powers, you’re a wicked woman,” Horace said admiringly. “You should’ve been a lawyer.”

“All it takes is a creative mind to come up with the plot and a lawyer to work out the details.”

“We’re a pair, all right. Now, all we have to do is convince Rose.”

Convincing Rose wasn’t as difficult as it might’ve been a month earlier, when Bess had first told her about the motherless infant left in the care of four rough seamen. Rose had been able to see it all too clearly—the barren island, the weathered shack, a helpless infant left to the tender mercies of four rough men who cursed and scratched and bathed once a year, if at all.

Although Bess had mentioned visiting the place a few times….

But then, Bess had also written about crocodile-infested rivers and dugout canoes paddled by men dressed in feather headdresses and small straw baskets to cover their private parts.

Still, the place wasn’t all that far away. She’d heard of a few fishermen who lived there with their families. Presumably, they fared well enough.

Probably better than she did at the moment, here in civilized Virginia. Of her two most recent situations, neither had lasted more than a few days. First she had found a position as assistant housekeeper in a girls’ boarding school. After wheezing and sneezing for two days she’d discovered she was highly allergic to chalk dust.

Her luck seemed to have changed when she had taken the job of governess to seven children between the ages of five months and eleven years, until the night the children’s father had come to her room wearing a silk bathrobe and suggested it was time they had a quiet conference.

Rose had shut the door in his face, packed her bags and left.

After that, she’d been forced to lower her expectations. Hunger did that to a body. Even so, her last job—she no longer thought of them as positions—had lasted less than four hours. Having had her bottom pinched black and blue and her bosom, modest as it was, loudly admired by an oaf who called himself a chef, she had finally whipped off her apron and marched out of the town’s finest dining establishment.

She was getting better at making choices.

And now, having reluctantly been forced to borrow funds for her room and board from Bess, she had no choice but to sit quietly and listen as Bess and Mr. Bagby presented their proposal.

She had heard it before. Her answer the first time had been a flat refusal. “Thank you, but I’m not looking for another husband. Things may be a bit discouraging at the moment, but that’s only because so many people are looking for work at the same time. I read that in a newspaper recently.”

That was yesterday. Today she had agreed to hear the proposition again. Not that she expected to change her mind, because one husband had been more than enough, but Bess had been kind, and she owed her more than she could easily repay.

“It’s merely a business arrangement for your own protection,” Horace explained. Rose sensed that Bess had the poor man twisted around her little finger.

She opened her mouth to reply, but Bess broke in. “You see, Matt doesn’t want marriage any more than you do, but by now, he’s desperate enough to wed the devil. That’s what makes it so perfect.”

Rose, wondering if she’d just been insulted, tried again. This time it was Horace who shut off her objections before she could voice them. “Happens all the time, this kind of arrangement. Just a convenience, like I said before, done by proxy and properly witnessed, it’s as legal as any other contract, which is not to say the whole thing can’t be dissolved at the behest of either party.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Rose said hesitantly.

Bess carefully avoided looking at Horace, but they both knew the battle was won.

And what a story it would make, Bess thought gleefully. Of course, she would have to allow a decent interval to pass before she could set it to paper. By then she’d have learned all the gory details of that so-called accident. And naturally she would change the names of all parties involved.

Rose’s courage held up until nearly the end. It was when she looked down and saw her own shaky signature, Augusta R. L. Magruder, on the marriage certificate, that her knees threatened to buckle and her breakfast threatened to return on her.

Except that she hadn’t had any breakfast. She’d been too nervous to eat a bite.

“Oh, my, this is a mistake,” she whispered.

“You look lovely, my dear,” Horace said, beaming as if it had been a real marriage instead of the mockery it was.

She didn’t look lovely, she looked green. Given a choice, she’d prefer even sallow to green.

“Captain Powers will be pleased, I’m sure. You’ve made a good choice, for Bess assures me that your husband is a man of some substance. I’ve, uh—taken the liberty of looking into his—”

“No.” As they went right on talking, she said it again. “No!”

Three people in the room turned to stare at her. Bess, who had already started celebrating, Horace, who’d worn a rosebud in his lapel in honor of the occasion; and the dentist from the office down the hall, who had stood proxy for her absent bridegroom.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t do this. You said I could behest myself out of it. How do I start?”

“Now, Rose,” Bess soothed.

“He won’t like me. I have a sour disposition, no social graces whatsoever, I’m too tall, and I don’t know the first thing about babies.”

“Matt’s built like a lodgepole pine, he wouldn’t know a social grace if it reared up and bit him on the behind, and everybody’s tall to a baby. As to your disposition, that’s just worry. It’ll sweeten up once you quit fretting, and he’ll like you just fine. If he don’t, he’s a fool.”

“What if I don’t like him?”

“’T’wont make a speck of difference, he’ll be gone soon’s he sees you settled. Boy’s been chafing at the bit to get back to sea ever since he sold his ship.”

Seeing the determined glint in Rose’s eye, Bess spoke up quickly. “As it happens, however, I just had another excellent idea.”

Rose wasn’t sure she could survive another of Bess’s excellent ideas, but at the moment she was too weak to do more than sit and listen.

Chapter Three

The last piece of trim had been nailed onto Annie’s room just that morning. As Peg had been determined to build it for her, Matt had directed him to add it onto the bedroom at the far end of the hall, privately designating that as Mrs. Powers’s room. He had no intention of sharing his own quarters with the woman.

Bess and her companion could work it out between them. Bess had her own favorite room with a corner exposure. He seriously doubted she’d do him much good with Annie. As for her friend, if the woman would fill in until his wife showed up, he’d be forever grateful.

Wife. Some helpmeet she’d turned out to be, Matt told himself bitterly. He’d had her for nearly two weeks now, and had yet to set eyes on the woman, much less benefit from the alliance. According to Bess, she’d been called out of town just after the wedding to look after a sick relative.

And now, instead of one, he had two women to contend with. Bess hadn’t come right out and said so, but if he knew his aunt, it would be the Widow Littlefield who got stuck with the job of playing nursemaid. Fancying herself a famous writer, Bess could twist words until plain old black and white might mean any of a hundred shades of gray.

“Mailboat’s headed into the channel, Cap’n, want me to hitch up the cart?” Crank had been baking all morning. One thing about it, with company on board, they’d all eat better. Matt, for one, had had his fill of beans, fish and cornbread.

“Tell Luther to see to it.” The crew had long since stood down from shipboard protocol, but they still looked to the captain for direction.

Matt returned to the reports he’d been studying all morning. The Swan was losing money with every haul. The captain signed on by the consortium that had bought her was obviously an incompetent fool with no more business sense than a slab of bacon. According to Matt’s source at the Port Authority’s office, the Swan had lost cargo from improper stowage, lost money by being consistently late delivering consignments, and suffered considerable damage in a hard blow off Barbados. Damage that hadn’t been properly repaired before the turnaround.

Matt swore. The first ship he’d ever owned, the Black Swan had been his pride and joy. At the rate she was going, by the time he reclaimed her she’d be fit for little more than hauling coal. He’d be damned before he’d do that to her. He’d give her a decent sea burial himself before he would lower her pride any further.

Briefly, he had even considered buying one of the small, fast schooners and taking up the coastal trade. It would ease the tedium of waiting to get his own ship back. With any luck, on a regular run from Maine to Savannah, he’d not have to see his wife—when and if she ever showed up—more than once or twice a year.

But the proceeds of selling the Swan were earmarked for buying her back. As long as he kept his focus on that end, he could wait as long as it took. For better or worse, the Black Swan was the one true love of his life, and by damn, he was going to have her back.

“And then you, Mrs. Powers, wherever you are,” he said softly, “can have Powers Point with my blessing.”

Rose lay on her side on a filthy pad on a bunk that had obviously been built for someone half her length, her eyes tightly shut as she fought down a fresh surge of nausea. Bess had given her gingerroot to chew on, which had helped somewhat, but by the time the miserable little mailboat had wallowed her way in and out of every tiny village with so much as a two-plank wharf, she was praying only to die quickly.

As for Matthew Powers and his baby, she fervently wished she had never heard of either of them.

Bess popped her head through the doorway. “Time to spruce up,” she announced cheerfully. A seasoned traveler, she had spent the entire journey in the pilothouse, swapping tales and taking notes.

“Just leave me to die in peace,” Rose begged without opening her eyes. She was as spruced as she would ever be. They could dig a hole and bury her at the next stop for all she cared, just so long as she never had to set foot on a boat again.

“Folks don’t die of the seasickness.”

“They only wish they could,” Rose said. Bracing herself against the constant rolling motion, she waited a moment to see if she would need the bucket again, then struggled to her feet. “You might as well know, I’m never going back. Not unless someone discovers a land route to the Outer Banks.”

“Here, chew on this, it’ll make you feel fresher.” Bess handed her a sprig of wilted mint. “Now, pinch your cheeks and do something with your hair, you don’t want your bridegroom to see you looking like the scarecrow’s ghost.”

“He’s not my bridegroom until I say he’s my bridegroom,” Rose grumbled.

“That can wait. You’re here to get the lay of the land before you commit to anything more permanent, remember?”

How could she forget? She didn’t know which was more preposterous, marrying a man she’d never met or pretending now that she hadn’t. For years she had railed at not being allowed to make her own choices, yet every time she’d been given a choice, she’d made the wrong one. This time she intended to be patient, to look at the situation from all angles and think carefully before reaching a decision.

Using a sliver of her favorite lilac soap, she washed her face, then smoothed her damp palms over her hair. She had taken down her braids because it hurt to sleep on them. Now her hair resembled old, unraveled rope. Her mother had once lamented the fact that everything about her was the color of dead grass, from her hair that was too dark to be called blond and too fair to be called brown, to her eyes that were the color of unpolished brass, to her sallow complexion.

Thank goodness, she rationalized, he won’t know who I am. He couldn’t possibly care what his aunt’s secretary-companion looked like.

Anonymity was small comfort, however, as she stood on the deck a short while later, still rocking and reeling. Warily, she gazed out over the small crowd, searching for someone who looked like Bess—someone short, stout and redheaded, with a stubborn jaw and snapping dark eyes. No matter how unattractive the poor man appeared at first glance, she vowed to withhold judgment. To be thoughtful and deliberate before making a final choice. She could only hope he would be as forbearing.

Bess bustled about cheerfully, gathering up her hand luggage, which consisted mostly of books, notebooks and writing material, while the young mate toted their trunks ashore. If it hadn’t required too much energy, Rose could have hated anyone who looked so chipper after enduring an endless journey through the bowels of hell.

“There’s Luther come to drive us to the Point.” Waving her furled umbrella, Bess marched surefootedly down the narrow bouncing plank. Rose followed cautiously, trying not to look down at the expanse of dark, choppy water between wharf and deck.

The wind caught her hat, which had been anchored, with the only hatpin she could find, onto hastily reconstructed braids. She slapped one hand on top of her head and with the other held down her blowing skirts.

Luther, a handsome young man whose eyes belied his obvious youth, offered her a shy smile as he handed her up onto a crude bench seat. “Welcome, Miss Bess, ma’am.”

“Poor Billy. I know you miss him.” And without pausing for breath, Bess went on to say, “I thought Matt was going to get a proper cart horse. Don’t he know the difference between a mare and a mule?”

“Yes’m, this here’s Angel. She swum ashore off’n a barge that went aground back in January. Nobody else wanted her, so we kept her. Even for a mule, she’s not real smart, but she took to the harness right off.” He turned to grin at Rose. “We got some nice horses if you like to ride.”

Rose had never ridden a horse in her life. She’d driven her own gig and ridden behind any number of coachmen, but a mule cart was a new experience.

I can’t believe I agreed to this mad scheme, she thought again as they set out along a deeply rutted sand trail for a place called Powers Point. She should’ve applied for a position at the asylum, it was obviously where she belonged.