The Mail-Order Brides

Chapter Four

“Aren’t you going to congratulate me, Cap’n?” Emmet asked, grinning broadly by now. “I reckon you had in mind marrying her off to James or Clarence, but I need her more than them two does.”

Slowly, his eyes never once leaving Dora’s, Grey St. Bride swung down from his horse. “Madam, I told you—”

“You told me I wouldn’t do. That I was too weak. Well, you don’t know me at all. I’ll do just fine!” Pain from all the wounds that had been inflicted over the past few months suddenly coalesced into raw anger.

Emmet patted her arm and stepped between them. “I’ve enough laid by to see to her care and feeding,” he told the other man, quiet pride lending him stature. “You’ll not be inconvenienced.”

Though his intent was clear, there was a tremor in his voice that warned Dora he was overreaching his limited resources. Fearing that he might actually challenge the younger man, she stepped forward and tucked her arm through his again. “If you’ll excuse us now, Mr. St. Bride,” she said firmly, “I’d best get started cooking our marriage dinner.”

Not waiting to see the effect of her words, she tugged Emmet toward the gate and ushered him through, wondering if she had taken leave of her senses, deliberately taunting the man that way. Among several qualities she had recently developed was a rather alarming strain of recklessness.

However, she couldn’t resist glancing over her shoulder just before she closed the front door behind them. Grey was still standing in the middle of the road, threat implicit in every inch of his tall, powerful body.

The bigger they come, the harder they fall.

Had she heard that somewhere, or only read it?

Never mind, just so long as it was true.

Emmet headed for his favorite chair and collapsed, fanning his face with his straw hat. “I reckon we set the boy in his place,” he said, looking smug despite his flushed face. “Don’t fret, Doree, Grey won’t give you a speck of trouble. He’s a fair man. Gets his dander up when things don’t go his way, but you have to remember, the boy owns near about the whole island. Him, and his father and grandfather before him.”

Which went a long way toward explaining his arrogance, she allowed grudgingly. Even so, he was too tall, too strong and entirely too male. “I don’t like him,” Dora said flatly. “I don’t care if he owns every twisted tree and every grain of sand in sight, he doesn’t own me. And he doesn’t own you—and he doesn’t own our home.”

Emmet smiled, but it seemed somewhat forced. He’s tired, Dora thought ruefully. Walking to the church, then having to stand there until that tedious, slow-talking minister finally pronounced them man and wife—it was enough to test the strength of a much younger man. And then, to be challenged on the way home by the St. Bride…!

“Let me slide your stool closer, then I’ll see what I can do about dinner.”

“To tell the truth, wife, I’m used to eating dinner in the middle of the day.”

“Oh, I know—it’s supper. I keep forgetting. You wait right here and I’ll bring you a glass of your blackberry wine.”

She brought two. Gravely they saluted their union with a silent toast, totally unaware of the brooding man gazing down at their cottage from his vantage point on the highest ridge on the island. Dora made a silent vow that Emmet would never regret marrying her and giving her a home. She would be the best wife any man could wish for, as long as she didn’t have to…

Well. At least she could see that their wedding supper was neither scorched nor underdone. She was beginning to get the hang of cooking, thanks to Sal’s recipe book and Emmet’s patient translations.

Emmet was ready for bed by the time the first few stars emerged. Dora waited until she could hear his soft snores through the closed door, then she heated water and bathed in the kitchen, put on her nightgown, blew out the lamp and sought her own narrow bed. Her last waking thought was that no matter what St. Bride had said—no matter what he thought of her, she was safe here.

In his house on the hill, Grey stared morosely at Meeks’s cottage. She was down there, laughing up her sleeve for making a fool of him. What kind of a woman would take advantage of an old man whose health was so precarious that Grey had actually been meaning to send his own housekeeper down once a day to see to the necessary?

Dammit, he should have made arrangements before he’d left for Edenton. If the woman hadn’t shown up just when she did—if he hadn’t allowed her to distract him—none of this would have happened. Mouse could have gone down each morning to see to the old man’s meals and make sure he hadn’t died of heart failure in the middle of the night. He could have brought his laundry up to the house to be done along with Grey’s.

A wife. Godalmighty, he thought as he watched the last light go off in the cottage below—if there was one thing the man didn’t need, it was a wife. He’d kill himself trying to satisfy the gold-digging little witch.

She’d done it purely out of spite, Grey thought bitterly. Because he’d told her in effect that she wasn’t worthy of being a St. Bridian. Why else would a beautiful young widow who wore fancy pink gowns and flimsy kid slippers marry a man more than twice her age? A stranger, at that.

For his property?

Hell, it was only a cottage, and not even on a fashionable resort beach like Nags Head or Cape May. However, if she thought she could talk Emmet into selling it, she was in for a surprise.

“Damned female,” he muttered. One last glance down at the dark cottage set his imagination off on a pointless and decidedly unwelcome course. Honeymoon dinner, be damned!

Just before the lights went out he’d caught a glimpse of her pink skirts swishing back and forth. From his higher vantage point he could only see the lower half of the room. But the windows were open and he’d heard drifts of laughter. Heard them and wondered what the two of them found to laugh about.

And admitted to himself that any man with a shred of decency would be glad Meeks could laugh again after so long.

“Damned woman,” he muttered. Turning away, he reached for the mail that had come in on the boat that morning. He had better things to do than visualize what was going on down the ridge. One thing for certain, though—if Emmet turned up dead after his wedding night there’d be hell to pay. Grey had made it his business to look after the old man’s health after finding him halfway to John Luther’s place back in December, his lips blue and a look of panic on his face.

He’d carried him home, called in the preacher, and between them they had stayed at his bedside until Grey could get a physician over from Portsmouth Island.

That was when he’d learned the truth—that the poor old man was not only half blind, he had a failing heart. The doctor had given him some pills for his heart, a tonic for his general health, and warned him against hard physical labor. Nothing could be done for his eyes. A lifetime spent on the water, according to the eminent Dr. Skinner, could do that to a man.

But tonic or no tonic, the last thing a man in Emmet’s condition needed was a woman like Dora Sutton, ripe for trouble and not above marrying for spite. Unfortunately, he could hardly crate her up and ship her back to where she came from now, not without upsetting Meeks.

However he would make a point of keeping a close eye on what went on down the ridge. At the first sign of any shenanigans, the lady would find herself hustled onto an outward-bound schooner before she could even slap a bonnet on her head.

The mail. He’d come back fully intending to go through the week’s mail. Already the blasted female was interfering in his business.

The first letter was from Jocephus, written before Grey had arrived for his last visit. He took some small comfort in the fact that occasionally, even with the U.S. Postal Service, things didn’t go according to plan.

“Evan, your nephew and sole heir, continues to do well at his studies. The boy takes his intelligence from me, quite obviously. Ha-ha. Evelyn mails him cookies each week, which I suspect he raffles off for spending money. She spoils the boy something fierce, but then, I suppose all mothers are the same.”

Grey was not in a position to know about all mothers, having lost his own when he was a mere lad. He did know, however, that Evelyn had doted on her only child from the day he’d come into the world, red faced and squalling fit to bust a gut.

Smiling, he refolded the letter and set it aside to be answered in the coming week. He had long since gotten over having fallen in love at the age of nineteen with the toast of Edenton, a beautiful young woman who’d been horrified at the thought of trading her comfortable life for the rugged island of St. Brides.

She had married his brother, instead, and Grey had forced himself to stand as Jo’s best man. He had returned to the island the very next morning, nursing a broken heart and a hangover. Both had quickly mended, and he’d thrown himself into planning the rebuilding of his island community. In the back of his mind there might have been some idea of showing Evelyn just what she had passed up, but somewhere along the way, his motivation had changed.

His determination, however, had not.

Over the next few weeks the pattern the newlyweds had established early on continued. The bride and bridegroom talked together, laughed together and shared tasks, with Dora taking on all those she could manage and watching carefully to see that Emmet didn’t overextend himself.

Emmet talked about places he’d been, people he’d known, triumphs and mishaps in which he’d been involved. At first Dora listened because she owed him that much and more. And then she listened because she was quickly coming to care for this frail, gentle man she had married in such haste. She listened, too, because while he was relating his own story, he couldn’t ask her about hers.

But then, one evening shortly after their wedding, Emmet paused in the middle of one of his hurricane stories. “Whatever’s troubling you, girl,” he said quietly, “I’m almost as good a listener as I am a talker.”

And perhaps because she needed to talk about it—or perhaps because not to confide would have indicated a lack of trust—Dora began hesitantly to speak of her past. Small things—games she’d played as a child. Pets she remembered. Nothing that would give rise to questions as to why she was here, married to a man she would never have considered marrying if her life hadn’t suddenly fallen apart.

“Well, you see, there was this man…”

When he simply nodded, she searched for the best way to explain what her life had once been like. Oddly enough, her past no longer seemed quite so relevant.

While it was true that her father had lost a fortune that included their very home, then shot himself rather than face ruin, Emmet had lost the wife he adored.

“I don’t suppose his name really matters,” she said wistfully.

Emmet watched the sparkle fade from her eyes, the smile from her face. He nodded for her to continue, and she did. “Henry and I were already engaged by the time my father—lost everything—and killed himself.” There, she’d gotten over the first hurdle.

As if to give her time, Emmet pushed himself up from his chair and went out to the kitchen to bring her a tumbler of water. “I take it your young man didn’t stand by you.”

“Stand by me?” Her eyes threatened to overflow, but she managed to laugh. Henry had completed the task her father had only begun, destroying any possible chance she might have had of happiness. “Hardly. You see, Henry had lost all his money by investing in the same stock scheme my father had, only neither of them realized it at the time. They’d both been told that by keeping the deal private, they stood to recoup a fortune beyond their wildest dreams—something to do with South American oil and diamonds, I think.” She spoke rapidly, as if by skating fast enough on thin ice, she could reach the other side without plunging into the freezing depths. “Evidently Henry got wind of trouble first and decided to insure his future by marrying me, Daddy’s only heir. What he didn’t realize until too late was that Daddy had mortgaged our home and invested everything he could scrape up in the same risky scheme. And then he—” She swallowed hard before she was able to continue. “Once he realized what he had done, Daddy decided that the only way to look after me was to find me a wealthy husband.”

Ironically, she had found herself a far better husband than the one her father had chosen.

“Henry was somewhere up north when the Wall Street Journal broke the news. When it came out, Daddy shot himself.”

Dora breathed deeply, like a winded runner. Somewhere nearby a whippoorwill called softly to its mate, the melancholy cry almost an intrusion. The constant sound of water lapping against the shore was like music heard from a distance, while beside her, Emmet rocked slowly in the slat-back rocker, offering her time to recover.

Now that she had put herself back in that time, that place, Dora found herself unable to go on, yet unable to stem the flow of memories.

It was the night after her father’s funeral. Everyone in town had attended, even the servants, even though, with no money to pay them, some had already left to find other positions.

Needing to be alone to make sense of all that had happened, Dora had wandered out to the summerhouse, with its chintz-covered settees and rattan tables and chairs—the place where Henry had proposed to her barely a month earlier.

Henry had not returned in time for the funeral, yet she hadn’t been particularly surprised when she’d seen him that evening, following the winding path through the magnolias and cypress trees. She’d known, of course, that he would come as quickly as he could.

She opened the door, needing more than anything in the world the undemanding comfort of his strong arms, the healing balm of his love. As if her father’s suicide hadn’t been enough of a shock, the reading of the will had left her stunned, wondering how on earth a man who had inherited wealth and accrued still more could have lost it all in less than a week.

“He’s gone,” she’d said, her voice rising to a thin wail as she rushed into the arms of her fiancé. “Oh, Henry, Daddy’s gone—everything is gone. Tell me I’ll wake up and it will all have been a dream.”

The vultures hadn’t even waited until after the funeral to descend. Strangers brought in by her father’s lawyers had been taking inventory for the past two days while the lawyer himself met with creditors in her father’s study. That was when she’d learned that her father had even sold her pearls, her diamond-and-sapphire bracelet and the gold-and-emerald broach he’d insisted on keeping in his office safe.

“Henry, tell me what to do,” she’d wept in her fiancé’s arms.

“Shh, it’ll be all right,” he’d murmured. “You still have me, sweetheart. Let me make you forget all this.”

Feeling as if her whole world had collapsed, she’d been in desperate need of comfort and security. Several times they had come close to making love, because Henry’s kisses had been so very exciting. This time when he tossed several cushions onto the floor, eased her down and began unbuttoning her bodice, she hadn’t tried to stop him.

It had ended far too quickly. She remembered the pain—remembered feeling chilled and oddly disappointed. As if she had reached for a rainbow that hadn’t been there. Henry had rolled over onto his back, his clothing awry, and stared up at the ceiling. Feeling bereft, she had waited for him to reassure her that their wedding would take place quietly, as soon as decently possible, because she needed him now more than ever.

Only he hadn’t.

When she’d asked what she should do now that her home was going to be sold out from under her, he’d looked at her as if she were a stranger.

“What to do?” Rising to stand over her, he began tucking his shirt back into his pants. “My advice to you, dear Dora, is to find yourself a paying position. There must be something you’re good at. God knows, the last thing I need if I’m going to have to start all over again is a spoiled, whining wife hanging around my neck.”

She remembered thinking it must be some horrible, tasteless joke. Only how could he possibly make jokes at such a time, when her whole world had crumbled around her? When she’d needed him more than ever?

When they had done what they had just done.

“Henry—”

“Goddammit, Dora, I’m ruined, don’t you understand? I lost every damned cent I could beg, borrow or steal! Why do you think I asked you to marry me? Because you’re so damned irresistible? Come, girl, even you can’t be that stupid. Once I got wind that things might be headed for trouble, I started looking around for a backup plan. And there you were, daddy’s precious darling, ripe for the plucking.” In the rapidly fading light, his features had twisted into those of a stranger. “So I thought, why not? The old man can’t live forever, and once he dies, I’ll be set for life.”

They were standing stiffly apart by then. Dora, her gaping gown held together by only a few buttons, felt behind her for a chair. “Th-that’s not true. You—you’ve been drinking. Besides, if you thought something was wrong, why didn’t you tell my father? Why didn’t you warn him before he—before he—?”

“Before he blew his brains all over your fancy French wallpaper? Because I didn’t know the old bastard had gone out on a limb to put everything he could scrape together into the same lousy deal I had, that’s why! It was supposed to be a private, limited opportunity!” By that time he’d been yelling, patting his pockets as if to be sure he hadn’t lost anything. “Five investors, one in each state, I was told. All names kept secret, they said. Once it paid off, we’d all be rich beyond our wildest dreams. God, I can’t believe I was so stupid! They must’ve rounded up every idiot who could scrape together a few thousand dollars and sold them the same bill of goods!”

She had stared up at him, dazed, struggling to make sense of what she was hearing after the absolute worst three days of her life. “But—but then, why did you—”

“Allow you to seduce me?” His bark of laughter had made her flesh crawl. “Why not? You landed-gentry types sure as hell owe me something for all the time I wasted in this crummy little backwater town.”

He’d started to leave, turned back and said, “Oh, yeah—I forgot this.” Lifting her limp hand, he’d kissed her fingers and then removed the diamond engagement ring she had scarcely had time to get used to wearing.

She’d still been there, numb with shame and disbelief, when her maid, one of the few servants who had stayed on, had found her. Bertola had taken one look at her face, then at the condition of her clothes, and said, “He done it to ye, didn’t he?”

The little maid was hardly more than a child, but Dora had turned to her and burst into tears. “He—he doesn’t want me,” she’d wept. “He said he—said I—we owed him…”

“Hush, honey, you come on back to the house now.” And Dora had allowed herself to be led back to the house that would soon no longer be hers. “I’ll run warm water in the tub. You might want to smear some salve down there, where—you know. So it won’t burn so much. I know it don’t seem like it now, but you’ll feel better by an’ by, Miss Dora. I’ll bring you some hot whiskey and sugar, it’ll help you sleep.”

Such wisdom and understanding from a sixteen-year-old maid. Dora had been in no condition to wonder about it at the time, and now that it occurred to her, it was too late.

She had slept that night…eventually. Slept and woken in time to say goodbye to the last of the servants. Head aching, heart numb, she had waited for her three best friends to call, as they’d promised to do after the funeral. She’d been told she could stay on until the house was sold and the new owner took possession, but she would rather not stay alone and there was no money to pay anyone to stay with her. She was warned not to think of selling any of the furnishings—as if she would.

Bertola had offered to stay on, but Dora knew she would need to find other work as quickly as possible. It was just beginning to dawn on her that without a home—without funds—people might actually starve.

Surely one of her friends, Dora had told herself, would invite her to stay with them until she could think more clearly about the future. They had all visited back and forth, she in their homes, they in hers.

So she’d continued to wait in the big old house with its familiar polished woodwork, its familiar faded murals, its tall, arch-topped windows draped in black. She’d blamed the rain when no one came to call the next day.