Forget-Me-Not Bride (2 page)

Her refusal to retaliate to his goading enraged Herbert to near apoplexy. ‘I want you out of this house today!' he shouted, slamming his fist down hard on the top of his desk. ‘I've no legal obligation towards you, and your insolent behaviour has ensured I have no moral obligation either!'

The very idea of Herbert Mosley feeling bound by moral obligations of any sort was so farcical that under other circumstances, Lilli would have hooted with laughter. Instead, knowing how difficult he would make it for her to return for Lottie and Leo if she once left without them, she said tautly, ‘It's unreasonable to expect me to leave the house when I have no employment and nowhere to go.'

Satisfaction flared across Herbert's face. ‘So you've realized your predicament at last, have you? You should have thought of it much earlier, young lady!'

Lilli's stomach lurched sickeningly. Dear Lord, how low was she going to have to sink in order to gain herself time? Time to find employment; time to find a home for herself and Lottie and Leo; time to think of a way of achieving both without Herbert being able to trace them.

With her hands behind her back, her fingers crossed so the deceit wouldn't stain her soul she said, struggling to sound suitably contrite, ‘I've already apologised once for what you perceived as my insolence and I apologise again.'

Her uncle wasn't fooled for a moment.

‘You can apologise until the Second Coming!' he snapped viciously. ‘And while you're doing so, you can search
The Examiner's
“Domestics Wanted” column for a suitable situation.'

Striding from around his desk he snatched a copy of the local newspaper from its surface and thrust it into her unwilling hands. ‘I want you out of here by the time I return home this evening. Is that understood?'

He was so near to her that she could smell his tobacco-tainted breath. It was clear now, that her uncle had made up his mind as to what the outcome of their interview was going to be and she was wasting her time trying to placate him. Abandoning pretence she held his eyes unflinchingly, letting all her contempt for him show.

‘And you needn't think you can take Charlotte and Leopold with you,' he said, falling back a step beneath the force of her gaze. ‘No-one will employ you as a live-in maid if you have two brats in tow.'

‘What makes you so sure I'll be looking for employment in the “Domestics Wanted” column?' she retorted tartly. She was rewarded by seeing a flash of doubt flare through her uncle's eyes. It disappeared almost immediately.

He gave a bark of laughter. ‘How stupid of me! I'd forgotten about your grandiose education. You'll no doubt get employment as a school-mistress or a book-keeper. I only hope your superior salary will be enough to enable you to rent a house and provide a nurse for Leopold,' and, chuckling to himself, he turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

Lilli remained, standing a foot or so before his desk. His amusement was quite justified. Any chance of her finding employment other than that of domestic work was extremely unlikely and, even if she were lucky enough to do so, who would then care for Lottie and Leo?

Dimly, from the direction of the breakfast room, she could hear Aunt Gussie's voice raised in protest. No doubt her husband was informing her of the action he had just taken. Her aunt would be devastated, but it would be a devastation that would count for very little.

She hugged her arms, trying to fight down her rising sense of panic. What on earth was she going to do? She couldn't possibly leave Lottie and Leo in Herbert Mosley's care, yet neither could she see a way in which she could take them with her. And even if she could take them with her, where was she to go?

No more vain protests could be heard coming from the direction of the breakfast room. Instead, there came the sound of muffled weeping. Lilli drew in a deep, steadying breath. In the few months she had been living in the house, there had been many occasions when her aunt had turned to her for comfort, but with the best will in the world she felt no inclination to offer it now.

There came the sound of the front door slamming, and a feeling of palpable relief settled over the house. Herbert was gone, attending to his many business affairs, hopefully until early evening.

‘
Lilli! Lilli
!' Lottie shouted, hurtling out of the breakfast room, and running across the hall towards the study. ‘
Lilli, are you all right
?'

She rocketed into the room, tears streaming down her face. ‘You're not going to leave us, are you, Lilli?' she demanded, flinging her arms around Lilli's waist. ‘Tell me Uncle Herbert didn't mean it when he said you were to leave the house! Tell me he was only being bullying and beastly and trying to frighten us!'

Lilli's arms folded around her. ‘I'm not going to leave you, sweetheart,' she promised, her eyes burning with fierce resolve.

Lottie's hiccupping sobs began to ease but she made no attempt to let go of her big sister. Instead, still hugging her, she said passionately, ‘I
hate
Uncle Herbert. He doesn't like you or me. He only likes Leo and I don't think he truly likes Leo, because if he did he wouldn't upset him by telling him he'd told you to leave the house.'

‘He was telling Leo the truth,' Lilli said wryly, stroking the top of Lottie's neatly braided hair. ‘But I'm going to find a way for us
all
to leave this loveless heap of stones. Pa would never have wanted us to stay here, not if he'd known what it was like, and he never legally gave any of us into Uncle Herbert's and Aunt Gussie's guardianship. Pa's lawyer only sent us here because Aunt Gussie is our next of kin and it never occurred to him that we might not be wanted.'

‘Leave?' Lottie turned her face to Lilli's, her eyes widening, hope shining so strong that Lilli's heart tightened. ‘Oh, Lilli! Can we? Can we really? Will Uncle Herbert allow it?'

Lilli's face was grim. ‘Uncle Herbert is going to have no say in the matter. From now on we're going to make our own decisions.'

As Lottie sighed in ecstasy Lilli looked around the study. Normally it was a sacred sanctum that no-one entered unless commanded to do so. That her uncle had walked out of it leaving her behind him, alone in it, was evidence of how intently his mind had been focussed on the prospect of ridding himself of her.

‘I'm going to have to visit lots of employment agencies,' she said to Lottie, taking hold of one of the hands clasped tightly around her waist. ‘I want you to look after Leo and to collect all your clothes and belongings together. I don't know where Aunt Gussie has put the bags we brought with us. They're probably in an attic somewhere.'

‘Do you want me to look for them?' Lottie's voice was eager. ‘I've always wanted to go into the attics and …'

‘No.' With one hand holding the newspaper and the other hand still clasping Lottie's, Lilli began to walk out of the room. ‘Goodness only knows how many attics this house has. You could be days looking for them. I'm simply going to tell Aunt Gussie that I'm taking the two of you with me and that I need our travel-bags.'

‘She won't like it,' Lottie said prophetically. ‘She likes our being here. It stops her from being lonely.'

As they began to walk across the hall and back into the breaskfast room Lilli felt a stab of guilt. What Lottie said was true. Their aunt
did
like them being there. Ineffectual though she was, her affection for all three of them was sincere, and when Herbert discovered he had been robbed of Leo it would be her aunt who would suffer the consequences. For the merest fraction of a second Lilli's resolve faltered. Then she remembered her uncle's intention of changing Leo's name from Stullen to Mosley. With steely determination she entered the breakfast room.

Her aunt was still seated at the table, one arm comfortingly around a bewildered Leo, the other clutching a tear-damp handkerchief.

‘Oh, my dear Lilli!' she said in distress, rising clumsily to her feet. ‘What on earth are we to do? Once your uncle makes up his mind about something nothing will change it! Oh, if only you hadn't antagonised him so!'

Lilli suppressed a surge of exasperation. Her antagonising her uncle had had very little to do with his decision to order her from the house. It had merely served as an excuse for an action he had long wanted to take, and it was typical of her aunt that she should fail to see that. The large hand on the grandfather-clock in the corner of the room was coming up to half-past-nine, and she was acutely aware of how much she had to accomplish, in such little time, if Leo and Lottie, as well as herself, were to be out of the house by the time her uncle returned to it. She certainly had no time to waste in comforting her aunt.

‘If you could ask one of the maids to hunt down our travel-bags I'd be very grateful, Aunt Gussie,' she said practically.

It wasn't the reaction her aunt had anticipated and her eyes flew wide. ‘But where will you go?' she protested. ‘What will you do?'

There were times when Lilli found it near impossible to believe that her much-loved dead mother had been her Aunt Gussie's younger sister. Her mother hadn't possessed an impractical bone in her body. It had been her Irish husband who had been the day-dreamer and the incurable romantic. Only physical resemblance had borne witness to the blood relationship between the two sisters. Even now, in her late forties, Gussie Mosley was still a stunningly pretty woman. Her blue eyes were wide-set and thick-lashed, her heart-shaped face delicately boned. It was bone structure Lottie and Lilli had also inherited, but where their aunt's finely modelled chin betrayed weakness, their chins bore more than a trace of Irish pugnaciousness.

‘I don't know,' Lilli answered truthfully. ‘But wherever I go and whatever I do I shall take …'

It was Lottie who squeezed her hand, silencing her in mid-sentence.

Their aunt still had one arm protectively around Leo.

Lilli sucked in her breath sharply. Because of her aunt's basic good nature and kindness she had forgotten that she, too, was as eager as her husband to rear Leo as her own son. So eager, that if she knew Leo was about to be taken away it was possible she would send a message to Herbert demanding that he return to the house to deal with the situation. Certainly there was more than mere protectiveness in the way she was holding Leo so closely against her. There was flagrant ownership.

‘… all my belongings,' she finished adroitly.

‘
You're not to go
!
You're not to go
!' Leo burst out, anguished. Twisting himself away from his aunt's hold, he flung himself into Lilli's arms. ‘Pa's ghost will haunt you and haunt you if you leave us!'

Lilli's heart tightened in her chest as she gently took hold of his hands and removed them from around her waist. ‘I'm not going to do anything that isn't for the best for all us,' she said gently, offering him as much comfort as she could without awakening her aunt's suspicions.

Lottie's eyes met hers in complicit understanding. ‘Don't be such a baby, Leo,' she said in mock exasperation. ‘Let's begin packing Lilli's clothes for her. And do stop blubbing. You're only making a rotten situation even worse.'

Thirty minutes later, with a short navy box-coat over her striped pink shirtwaist and cream serge skirt and with her thick cloud of smoke-dark hair piled high in a loose twist on top of her head, Lilli boarded a cable car en route for the commercial heart of the city. It was not a part of the city she was familiar with. The Mosley home, high on Nob Hill, was situated in a superior residential enclave far removed from the rumbustiousness of the areas adjacent to the waterfront.

‘Curve!' the cable car conductor yelled. ‘Hang on tight!'

Lilli, a novice where cable car riding was concerned, took his advice as the cable car turned a steeply sloping corner almost at a right-angle.

Unnerving though the journey was, it was also exhilarating. She could see Telegraph Hill, its slopes thick with the low, balconied houses of Mexican immigrants, while to the right, Russian Hill towered even higher. Far below, in front of her, lay the glorious spread of the Bay, the early summer sunshine glinting on hundreds of masts and sheening the water to a glittering sapphire.

With a surge of wanderlust she wondered where the many great ships at anchor had sailed from. No doubt many of them had struggled around the roaring hell of Cape Horn while others had probably crossed the Pacific, heavy with spices from the Orient. There were gaunt whaling ships and gaily painted Neapolitan fishing-boats and an armada of private yachts. A smile touched the corners of her mouth. Her father would have loved San Francisco. It possessed a raw edge of excitement that would have deeply appealed to his adventurous spirit.

As the cable car swooped and dipped over other cable car lines, creaking nearer and nearer to the city's harbour adjacent heart, she removed the newspaper from beneath her arm and shook it open at its front page.

There was a report from Kroonstad, South Africa, on the progress of the war taking place between Great Britain and the Boers. Nearer to home there was a report of a speech President McKinley had made to a Republican gathering in New York. On the first inside page there was a photograph of a bride and groom under the headline,
‘Bride who shopped for a groom returns to City'
.

Mildly interested, Lilli read on.

‘Thirty-year-old spinster, Harriet Dutton, transformed her life a year ago when, via the Peabody Marriage Bureau, she answered gold-miner, Daniel Berton's, advertisement for a wife. Six months ago Mr Berton struck gold in Nome, Alaska and the couple have now returned to the city where Mr Berton intends investing his new-found riches in San Franciscan real estate.'

The groom, heavily moustached and looking awkward in an ill-fitting frock-coat, was smiling sheepishly, one of the bride's net-gloved hands tucked shyly into the crook of his arm. He had the face of an upright, honourable man and Lilli hoped he and his wife would continue to be happy together. There was nothing else of interest on the page and she turned to the Classified Advertisement column. All the employment agencies in the city were listed. All seemed to be clustered south of Market Street, between Eighth Street and the waterfront.