Courting Susannah (21 page)

T
hree more piano students, all of them male and old enough to shave, vote, and use tobacco, presented themselves at the front door before suppertime, scrubbed and spruced, requesting lessons. All were beginners, and not a one balked at the price of twenty-five cents. By the time the last one disappeared into the snow-speckled twilight, Susannah had earned one dollar, a significant sum of money by anyone's reckoning. Back home, she would have counted herself fortunate to amass that much in a week of teaching; there she'd had to compete for every pupil and then share the proceeds with Mrs. Butterfield.

Of course, she realized by then that Maisie had been right: her students were not really aspiring musicians; they were lonely and starved for decent female companionship, not culture. Apparently, they saw Susannah as a prospect for matrimony, although she suspected it was simply the fact of her femininity that attracted them. In her presence, they were no doubt reminded of the mothers, sisters, and sweethearts they had left behind in their wanderings.

Of course, Susannah had no earthly intention of wedding herself to any one of these men, and that made her feel a little guilty, as though she were taking their money under false pretenses. Still, she
was
instructing them in music, which was all she had promised in the first place. If they had further aspirations where she was concerned, well, that simply wasn't her fault—was it?

Aubrey, although he'd known she planned to teach piano, probably would be less than pleased when he found that she was being courted right under his roof, but there was no turning back now. She even dared to dream that, being paid such exorbitant fees, she might soon have a studio, not to mention a piano, of her own. That would amount to the first real security she had ever known.

Aubrey returned to the house a bit later than usual that evening—it was almost eight—and he was accompanied by several of his business friends. He seemed distracted, his mood strained and weary, and he barely spared Susannah a glance while she served the meal. She had sent a protesting Maisie to her room to put her feet up long before, and Victoria was asleep in her basket in the kitchen.

Having taken her own supper earlier at the kitchen table, Susannah listened attentively, if inauspiciously, to the men's discussions of politics, interest rates, timber prices, and mineral rights. The dollar in her pocket—and those she hoped would follow—was a serious responsibility, one she did not take lightly. She didn't plan to leave Aubrey's house, not without Victoria in any case, but without money of her own she would have no autonomy at all. She listened keenly to the conversation because she wanted to manage her funds as wisely as she could.

She had cleared the table, washed and dried the dishes, and retired to the rear parlor to coax soft, soothing music from that much-abused piano, when she sensed Aubrey's approach, felt him standing close behind her. Once he had asked, nay, practically commanded
her not to play, and she normally wouldn't have, knowing he was at home, but she found she couldn't stop. She was like a desert wanderer who has come upon an oasis; she threw the whole of herself into the flowing, silvery strains of Mozart, as though they might quench her thirst.

Even when Aubrey's hands hovered over her shoulders—she felt them there, knew they were trembling—even when he let them come to rest at last, she played on. His touch, ordinary though it was, affected her as profoundly as the notes shimmering unseen around them. She closed her eyes against the emotions welling up from some mysterious inner source, but they consumed her nonetheless.

Finally, Aubrey reached down and caught her wrists gently in his hands, lifting them from the keys. Silencing the storm of music. With uncommon grace, he turned Susannah around and drew her to her feet, and she found herself standing so close to him that she imagined she heard the faint echo of his heartbeat.

“What are you doing to me, Susannah?”

She stared at him. What was
she
doing to
him?
“I'm sorry,” she managed, “if the music disturbed you. I was merely—” Only then did she realize that he was holding her wrists again. Or had he ever let them go in the first place?

His eyes seemed haunted, and the flickering gaslights threw shadows across the planes of his face. Beneath the callused pads of his thumbs, her pulse raced, betraying far more than she wanted him to know. “Susannah,” he said.

She held his gaze, and it took all her courage not to look away, not to flee the room, for it was in those moments that she first knew she loved Aubrey Fairgrieve as she would never love another man. She had never cared so deeply for anyone before, had never even imagined
such powerful emotions as the ones that seized her then, and that was cause for mourning as well as celebration. Aubrey would not, could not return her devotion in equal measure; he had already made that abundantly clear. Furthermore, in a strange way, he still belonged to Julia, in her mind at least.

“Let me go,” she whispered. It was a plea.

He released his hold on her, but she did not retreat. “Marry me, Susannah,” he said.

She wanted nothing so much as to be his wife, but she shook her head. Somewhere she found the courage to say it. “I can't. You were my best friend's husband.”

“Julia is dead. We're not. It's as simple—and as complicated—as that. Are we to live as though we'd been buried with her?”

She knew he was right. Knew that Julia, even in her troubled state, would not have begrudged her Aubrey's attentions now, when she was gone, might even have encouraged the match, for Victoria's sake. She drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I don't think she'd want that,” she allowed. “But there is the matter of love.” It was like leaping off a high cliff into shallow waters, saying the words she had to say. “Do you love me, Aubrey?”

He was silent for a long time, while she hung suspended between despair and hope. Then, at last, he sighed. “No,” he said. “But I
do
care for you, Susannah. And God knows, I want you.”

She wanted him, too. Desperately. But not at the expense of her self-respect, of her dreams, and she was sensible enough, even in her relative naäveté, to know that once his desire had been appeased, she would no longer interest him quite so much. Loving him could only destroy her in the end, unless he loved her in return, for he would be sure to stray. Many women were willing to share their husbands with mistresses, or at
least resigned to their situations, but Susannah wanted complete fidelity, utter devotion. Would settle for nothing less.

“I'm sorry,” she said, and slipped around him to hurry toward the doorway.

He made no move to stop her.

Morning brought more snow and more piano students, all of them male. Every time Susannah crossed paths with Maisie, who was busy opening the longneglected ballroom for the impending party, the other woman looked at her, shook her head, and cackled with amusement. Susannah, still shaken by her encounter with Aubrey the night before in the music room, was distracted and a little irritable. She did not want to love the man—it was inconvenient, to say the least—but she seemed to have no real choice in the matter. He filled her thoughts and senses and made concentration difficult, if not impossible.

She was overseeing the last lesson of the day when the moment she had dreaded was upon her. Aubrey arrived home unexpectedly and strode into the room, jawline set, eyes glittering. Here was another sort of passion, quite different from what he had displayed the night before.

Zacharias, back for another session, ceased belaboring the keys and looked up at Aubrey with a goldtoothed grin. “Well, howdy, Fairgrieve,” he said affably.

“Zach,” Aubrey responded, but he was still glaring at Susannah.

“Mr. Zacharias was just having his piano lesson,” Susannah said, straightening her spine and raising her chin a notch.

“So I see,” Aubrey said.

The old man rose from the piano stool and stood between them. “Now, Aubrey, I hope you ain't plannin' to
be cussed about this. Nothin' improper about it. Nothin' at all.”

Aubrey raised one eyebrow and, in that simple motion, gave the lie to his own words. “Did I say there was?” His tone was dry, and his gaze was still fastened to Susannah's face. A tiny muscle in his right cheek twitched once, twice.

Zacharias remained good-natured. He pressed payment into Susannah's palm and spoke reassuringly. “If'n this here feller gets testy about your havin' callers, you can give all your lessons over to my place,” he said. “I got a good pianny, like I told you.”

“Thank you,” Susannah answered, although her gaze was still locked with Aubrey's. She dropped the coin into the pocket of her skirt and flinched slightly when she heard the parlor door swing shut behind her first and favorite pupil.

“That old coot doesn't give a damn about playing the piano,” Aubrey said. “He's looking for a wife, like practically every other man in Seattle.”

Susannah folded her arms. “I'm perfectly well aware of that,” she replied. Victoria, sitting nearby on a blanket, propped up with pillows, cooed charmingly and held out her arms to her father. He bent to scoop her up, but the look he had fixed on Susannah was no friendlier than before.

“I beg your pardon?”

She sighed. “As of today, I have seven regular students. All of them are yearning for the company of a woman …”

Color suffused Aubrey's neck above his starched white collar. “What, precisely, are you selling?”

Susannah might have struck him if he hadn't been holding the child. “I am
teaching music,”
she said. “Naturally, I expect to be paid for my services.”

“Well, I won't tolerate it. Not under this roof.” He didn't raise his voice, but something in his manner alarmed the baby a little; she looked into his face with wide eyes and thrust half of one tiny fist into her mouth.

“Fine,” Susannah said, making her voice cheerful for Victoria's sake. There seemed no point in reminding him that he'd already given her permission to teach music using his piano. “You heard Mr. Zacharias. I shall simply set up my studio at his house.” She watched with grudging admiration while Aubrey, seeing his daughter's distress, forcibly calmed himself. He bent and set the child back on her blanket, making sure the cushions held her upright.

“Perhaps,” he said pleasantly, smiling a wolfs smile, “you should just move into Zach's mansion and be done with it.”

“Can't you two stop your bickerin' long enough to figger out that you're meant to be together?” Maisie interrupted, startling them both with her presence as well as her outlandish words. Neither Susannah nor Aubrey had heard the woman come in, but Victoria had; she gurgled in gleeful recognition and held out her chubby little arms to the new arrival. Maisie lifted the child to her shoulder.

Aubrey tugged at the cuffs of his shirt and straightened his shoulders. “Miss McKittrick,” he said, “is not interested in being married. At least, not to me.” With that, he turned around and stalked out of the room.

“Well, I'll be jiggered,” Maisie marveled, and cackled the way she'd been doing all day, like an old hen. “That man's smitten with you, Susannah. Imagine—him bein' jealous of old Zach! I ain't never seen anythin' like it.”

“Nonsense,” Susannah scoffed, afraid to hope that Maisie was right. That somewhere inside Aubrey Fairgrieve lurked a tender feeling, a seed of sweet regard that might one day grow into love. “He may be jealous,
but if he is, it's because Julia betrayed him, not because he cares for me.”

“Give things time,” Maisie said, with a gentleness so unexpected that it brought tears springing to Susannah's eyes. “He was bad hurt, Mr. Fairgrieve was. But he's a good man.” She chucked Victoria beneath the chin. “Why, just look at the way he holds this little mite. He ain't scairt to pick up a baby, like most men would be.”

“You're forgetting,” Susannah said quietly, rubbing both temples with the tips of her fingers, “that he didn't believe Victoria was his child until he had things out with Ethan. He didn't even bother to name her.”

“I reckon he considered her his all along, whether he believed he was the father or not,” Maisie insisted, bouncing the delighted infant on her ample hip. “He thought he could keep himself from lovin' her, that's all, so's she couldn't break his heart for him. He tried, and he failed at it.”

Susannah sat down hard on the piano stool. The next day was Saturday, and the party Aubrey insisted on giving would be held in the evening, thus forcing her to face a houseful of curious guests. And Sunday morning meant braving the disapproval of the Ladies' Christian Benevolence Society to attend church. The members viewed her as a scarlet woman and would continue to do so until she married respectably, left Seattle, or died of old age. No one, she knew, could be quite so unbending as the devoutly religious.

“There, now,” Maisie said, laying a hand to Susannah's shoulder. “You look a mite frazzled. Why don't you bundle up and have yourself a nice walk, whilst I tend to the babe here?”

Susannah welcomed the offer. Although it was surely cold outside, and great flakes of snow were drifting past the windows, there was still enough light for a quick
stroll. She thanked Maisie and hurried into the entryway to collect her cloak from the hall tree.

Curiosity drew her past Mr. Zacharias's residence, a great stone edifice with many windows, a gabled roof, stables, and a carriage house. She stood at the gate, looking up at the structure and wishing she could somehow cause herself to care deeply for the man inside. He was a kindly sort, she knew, and clearly generous as well. His rough exterior hid a romantic nature, and he would make someone a fine husband.

She was about to turn away and return to Aubrey's house and her duties there when the front door of the mansion swung open, and Zacharias appeared in the chasm.