Courting Susannah (39 page)

Aubrey regarded the other man with an expression of benign thoughtfulness, though Ethan looked wrathful. Susannah could empathize with that point of view, being furious herself.

“You really want me to be guilty of this,” Aubrey said, puzzled. “Why is that?”

“I can tell you why,” Ethan interceded after one hot glance at Susannah, who sat rigidly in her chair.

Without looking at Ethan, Aubrey held up one hand to stay his brother's diatribe. His gaze did not stray from Hollister's face, which was growing progressively redder. After a long moment, the former Pinkerton man rose to his feet, his glass in hand. He studiously avoided looking at Susannah.

“It is quite true,” he said with immense dignity, “that I hoped to win Mrs. Fairgrieve's affections for myself prior to your marriage, but I am not a vindictive man, and I do not allow my personal feelings to affect my work.”

Susannah was embarrassed by this declaration, and Ethan's expression revealed outright skepticism, but Aubrey seemed to feel a certain sympathy for Mr. Hollister, despite what anyone else would have viewed as a betrayal of their friendship. He patted the other man's shoulder.

“My brother and I have a plan,” he said. “If you're interested in hearing it, sit down, and I'll get you another whiskey.”

Mr. Hollister seemed undecided at first, but after a
few moments, he took his chair again, emptied his glass in a single gulp, and handed it to Aubrey. The policeman declined a drink of his own.

Aubrey turned his attention on Susannah while he poured. “I believe Maisie could use a hand with the baby,” he said, and though his tone was mild, the statement was a pointed one, and irrefutable.

The last thing Susannah wanted to do was leave the room, especially then, but Aubrey had cornered her neatly, and there was nothing else to be done. She did feel a need to look in on Victoria, even though Maisie was with her, and make sure she was all right. Too, Ellie was probably overwhelmed with the housework and would need both women's assistance.

She stood, straightened her skirts and her shoulders, and swept out of the room, favoring Ethan and Mr. Hollister with a nod as she passed them and narrowing her eyes at Fitzsimmons. The look she gave Aubrey was hardly more cordial.

Aubrey merely smiled, well aware that he'd bested her in their small, secret skirmish, and raised his glass in an impudent gesture of triumph.

Susannah closed the doors crisply behind her and made for the kitchen, where she found Ellie rolling out dough for biscuits. Jasper, quiet and well behaved, was sitting on the floor, over by the cookstove, playing with a set of wooden blocks.

Maisie, of course, would be upstairs in the nursery.

Susannah mounted the rear stairway and moved along the corridor to the door.

“Maisie?”

The answer was nearly toneless. “Come in.”

Heaving a sigh of relief, Susannah opened the door and stepped into the nursery. Maisie sat in a rocking chair, Victoria in her arms, both of them covered with a quilt. Even
in the dim light of a bleak winter day, Susannah could see that the other woman's eyes were red-rimmed.

Susannah went to stand beside Maisie's chair, laying a hand on her shoulder.

“You mean to leave Seattle,” Maisie ventured after a long time. “You and the baby here.” Susannah offered no denial.

Maisie hugged little Victoria so close that the child fidgeted. “I heard you talkin', you and Mr. Fairgrieve.” Susannah nodded. “I'm sorry, Maisie. I thought I could live with a husband who didn't love me, but—”

“Hush,” Maisie complained. “He does love you. It's just that his heart hasn't told his head the whole truth of things, that's all.”

That, Susannah thought, was too much to hope for—a lovely fantasy. She shifted her thoughts from her own problems, her own heartbreak. She was needed in this household, at least until the latest crisis had passed. She drew up a hassock and sat down near Maisie's chair. “Never mind about Aubrey and me,” she said gently. “Right now, we have to think of other matters.”

Maisie sat up a little straighter, her expression faintly hopeful as she peered through the gloom. She sniffled. “Turn up the lights, will you?”

Susannah rose and reached for the key on the nearest wall fixture. The flame leaped to life, spilling a soft glow down the wall and over the quilt, the baby, and Maisie's tear-stained face.

“You need to eat something if you can,” Susannah said. “Or at least have a cup of tea.”

The answer was a negative shake of the head. Maisie stared off into the ether, her gaze fixed, as though seeing a specter in the near distance. “She cursed us all, you know. Mrs. Fairgrieve, I mean. Lyin' there on her death bed, she damned every last
one of us to hell. Seems like she's got her way.”

The revelation startled Susannah more than a little, though she tried not to let on. “I don't believe in curses,” she said after a time with quiet conviction. “Besides, Julia must have been out of her head. She didn't know what she was saying.”

Maisie's brow was furrowed, but some of her color was coming back. “It was the medicine Mrs. Fairgrieve took,” she murmured. “It made her crazy.”

Susannah's heart raced. “Medicine?”

“Laudanum. When the doctor wouldn't give it to her no more, she'd go down to some place on the waterfront.” She met Susannah's gaze, looking ashamed. “I wanted to tell Mr. Fairgrieve. I should have. But she said she'd see me and Jasper turned out onto the street if I said anything.”

Susannah waited, barely breathing. Good God, she thought, what had become of the Julia she'd known, the sunny, feckless creature, always laughing or spinning some happy scheme?

This information gave her a place to start, though, in making sense of things, something to tell Aubrey and, of course, the police. She had no illusions, after her experience of the wharf, that she could navigate the area on her own.

“There was one feller came around to the back door with a package sometimes—real short and meanlookinŽ, he was.” Maisie shuddered slightly. “He and Mrs. Fairgrieve, they always talked real earnest like, and she would give him money.”

Susannah wondered if Maisie knew about the herbal concoction Julia had taken in an effort to bring on an abortion. After a moment's consideration, she decided to let the subject lie, at least for the time being.

“You look all done in, Maisie,” she said instead. “You go to your room and rest. I'll bring you a supper tray and some tea.”

Maisie nodded and sat back in the rocking chair, staring blindly up at the ceiling.

Within half an hour, Ellie had taken charge of Victoria, and Susannah had helped Maisie to her room, settling her gently on the bed. She served the promised tea, and Jasper, no doubt sensing his mother's sadness and exhaustion, stretched out beside her, trying to encircle her with his little arms.

Susannah kept a vigil of sorts, standing at the window and gazing outward as a new snow began to fall.

“Is that policeman still here?” Maisie asked in a hoarse whisper when some time had gone by.

“I suppose he might be,” she said, “if he hasn't taken Ethan to jail.”

Jasper stirred fitfully beside his mother but didn't awaken.

“You reckon he knows, little as he is?” Maisie asked. “What's happenin' to all of us, I mean?”

“Probably not,” Susannah answered at some length, gazing wistfully at the child. “I'm sure he senses that something is wrong, though. He'll need an extra measure of attention, I suppose—more holding, more soft words and loving touches.” When she looked at Maisie again after a long while, she was surprised to find the other woman smiling at her.

“You know a lot about motherin' for a spinster,” she said.

Susannah assumed a pose of mild offense. “I am not a spinster,” she pointed out. No, indeed, she thought, with a certain sharp grimness. She was neither an old maid nor a bride, for all that she'd entered into the folly of a loveless marriage and given herself to Aubrey with abandon. Her passion for him might well be the ruin of her entire life.

She stood and collected the tray, ready to leave.

It was plain that Maisie could see more in Susannah's
face than she had ever wanted to reveal. She smiled a little, though her countenance was one of sadness. “You're full of love, Susannah Fairgrieve,” she said. “Burstin' with it. Don't you give up on that man out there, you hear me? He's a lot of trouble, but he's good right down to the marrow in his bones, and you could look the whole world over without findin' a better husband.”

Susannah paused in the doorway. “He doesn't love me,” she said, all misery, and was immediately chagrined for bringing up such a petty problem when Ethan, or even Aubrey, might be facing imprisonment and hanging.

Maisie waved a hand, dismissing the comment. “He's like one of them trees out there,” she said, apparently referring to the far-reaching timber rising around Seattle like a green mantle. “He's been in shallow ground, without enough sunshine or water neither one. You turn some of that love on him, missy, and watch what happens.”

“Sometimes,” Susannah said, after a moment spent scrambling for her tongue, “you amaze me.”

“Turn out this here light before you go,” Maisie said, settling in for a sound sleep. “I'd do it myself, but I feel plumb tuckered.”

With a small smile, Susannah went back, set the tray on the bureau top, and reached up to turn down the gas. Maisie was snoring before she reached the door.

Leaving Maisie and Jasper's room, Susannah found that Mr. Hollister and the policeman had gone, taking Ethan with them. Aubrey was there in the kitchen, lifting pot lids and peering beneath them, evidently in search of supper. There was no sign of Ellie or of little Victoria.

She took two plates from the shelf and set them on the table, then added napkins and cutlery. The food—stewed meat of some sort, dumplings, and corn kernels from a tin—had cooled and had begun to congeal. Susannah served it exactly as it was, pots, kettles, and all.

Aubrey surveyed the repast with a sort of rueful amusement. While Susannah took the chair opposite, he remained standing, prodding at the brown, stringy meat with a fork. “What is this?” he asked, clearly mystified.

“I have no idea,” Susannah answered. “Sit down, Aubrey. I'm hungry.”

“You must be,” he retorted easily, but he sat and served himself generous portions of Ellie's cooking.

All of the sudden, she was bursting to tell him what she'd learned about the man who had sold Julia laudanum, but she knew his energies were depleted and he needed sustenance. His brother had just been arrested for the second time, he might be taken into custody himself very soon, and it had not been long, after all, since he'd sustained severe injuries.

“You look,” he observed between bites, “as if you're about to shoot out of that chair like a Chinese rocket, spilling sparks on your way to the sky. What, pray tell, is on your mind, Mrs. Fairgrieve?”

Unlike her husband, eating heartily now, she found the food unpalatable and pushed her plate away. “Maisie told me that Julia used to go to a place on the waterfront,” she confided, leaning forward slightly. “She encountered a man there—”

Aubrey's jaw tightened at this observation, but he did not interrupt. She felt like a traitor to her friend's memory, but she went on anyway. “Maisie said he came to the house several times, with—with laudanum. She described him as small and cruel-looking.”

“And?”

Susannah felt her face go warm with conviction and shame, though she couldn't quite pinpoint the source of the latter. “Don't you see? If Mr. Su was murdered because of something he knew—well, isn't it possible that he was acquainted with the people involved
in Mrs. Parker's killing as well as your beating?”

“That's quite a leap,” Aubrey remarked, pondering the unnamed meat, then opting for a second helping of dumplings instead. “I don't suppose I need to tell you what Hollister is going to say—that Ethan and I—even you, for that matter—all had viable reasons to commit the crime.”

“Well, we didn't,” Susannah said, “and that's the point. I think this man Maisie told me about might know something. Mr. Hollister has got to find him.”

“Hollister has his hands full as it is. I'll find him myself. Did Maisie have a name?” Susannah shook her head. “Ethan—Ethan's gone back to jail?”

“No,” Aubrey said, surprising her. “He's in John Hollister's custody for the time being.”

“Is he all right?” She wondered how Ethan's discovery about Su Lin would affect his tender alliance with Ruby.

Aubrey's mood darkened slightly; he looked grim and not a little discouraged. “No,” he answered with a shake of his head. “He will be, in time, I think. In the meantime, we've managed to strike an uneasy truce, he and I. Ethan has a long memory where my transgressions—be they real or imagined—are concerned.”

Susannah took a breath, let it out. “Not so long ago,” she began, “you were the one holding the grudge, remember? You thought Ethan and Julia had been intimate.”

Finished with his meal, Aubrey stood, without responding, and pushed his chair back into place with one hand. In the other, he held his plate, which he carried to the sink.

“It's time there was peace in this family,” Susannah said gently. “And happiness.”

Aubrey's eyes were solemn when he looked at her. “I agree,” he said. “Perhaps you can tell me how to achieve those worthy objectives?”

She sighed but made no answer, for she had none.

Aubrey came to her, bent, and placed a gentle kiss on top of her head. “I won't be out late,” he told her, and then, as simply as that, he was gone.

They came in the depths of the night, the men who had killed Delphinia and attacked Aubrey in his office over the store; Susannah heard them on the stairs, in the corridor. For one brief, desperate moment, she thought she was merely dreaming, but when she opened her eyes, the sounds did not stop.