The Paper Marriage. Bronwyn Williams

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ