Yankee Wife (3 page)

Lydia was filled with trepidation and joy. On the one hand, she was very frightened, for she was taking a bold step, as dangerous in some ways as braving Confederate cannon fire to help her father perform surgery. On the other, she sensed that an adventure was beginning.
You will have need of your great strength
, the Gypsy had told her, while staring solemnly into Lydia's palm.
You have already suffered much. Now, you must face an even greater challenge: learning passion and true joy
.

The ship they boarded looked sturdy enough, though it wasn't as large as the one that had carried Lydia around Cape Horn with poor Mrs. Hallingsworth. There were two black smokestacks, and the color had been swabbed out of the wooden decks. Lydia tried not to think about the way the craft would roll and pitch once it left San Francisco Bay for the open sea. She had seen every conceivable horror in wartime surgery tents without folding up, but a few swells in the ocean could send her scrambling for the rail.

Perhaps, she reflected, she would become Devon's wife there, aboard the ship, with the captain officiating.

Mr. Quade made no mention of the event. He simply escorted Lydia to a small stateroom, which contained a narrow bed, a wardrobe very cleverly built into the wall, a washstand and commode. She took her new dresses from the carpet bag she'd purchased the day before and hung them up on a peg, then went out to walk the decks and get her bearings.

The craft was chugging away from the wharf when she came around to the stern and saw Devon standing at the rail. Beside him was a tall, beautiful dark-haired woman, finely dressed, her arm linked with his in a rather familiar fashion.

A cold feeling washed over Lydia's heart, followed immediately by a parching rage. It seemed Mr. Devon Quade would prove to be a scoundrel after all.

She might have jumped overboard and swum back to shore were it not for the fact that Jim the bartender had told her there were hungry sharks in the bay. Summoning up all the dignity she possessed, Lydia joined the twosome and looked up at the man who'd promised to marry her.

Devon beamed, as though nothing were amiss. “Ah, Miss McQuire,” he said, patting the kid-gloved hand of the woman beside him, which was resting in the crook of his right arm. “May I introduce Mrs. Polly Quade—my wife?”

D
EVON
Q
UADE ALREADY HAD A WIFE
.

Lydia reached out and grasped the railing for support. “You will excuse my presumption, Mr. Quade,” she said, with hard-won moderation, “but I did have the impression that I—that we—” She felt herself redden and fell silent, full of humiliation and, yes, relief too.

Devon was the very embodiment of chagrin. He glanced at the lovely Polly, who watched the unfolding drama with neither smugness nor concern. The blood drained away beneath his tanned cheeks, with their high, prominent bones, and he muttered, “Great Zeus, I
did
give that impression, didn't I?”

Lydia enjoyed a brief fantasy, during which she slapped Mr. Devon Quade square across the face. “Yes,” she replied simply, tightening her grasp on the ship's railing. Gulls were following after them, squawking and soaring against an untroubled, glacier-blue sky, and Lydia wondered if the captain would turn his vessel back toward shore if he were so bidden.

It didn't seem likely.

Devon sighed, gently disengaged himself from his true bride, and laid his hands lightly on Lydia's shoulders. For some reason, she did not flinch or attempt to pull away.

“I thought I'd explained it all properly,” he said, in a hoarse and very earnest tone of voice. “The man I referred to in the handbill is my brother, Brigham. He'll be a fine husband to you, Lydia, once he gets used to the idea of having a wife again.…”

Lydia, who had assisted in the amputation of men's limbs without swooning, nearly sank to the deck in a dead faint. “
Once he gets used to the idea
?” she whispered, her horror compounding like interest on a rich man's money. It was bad enough to learn she'd contracted her entire future to someone she'd never met, but the discovery that Brigham Quade wasn't even expecting her made her reconsider the idea of jumping overboard. “How could you do something so…so presumptuous and underhanded?”

“That's what I'd like to know,” put in Polly. Lydia thought distractedly that the other woman had shown amazing restraint by waiting so long to enter the conversation. “How could you, Devon?”

Mr. Quade let go of Lydia's shoulders to run one hand through his windblown, butterscotch hair. He sighed gravely. “I thought I'd made the situation plain,” he reiterated, and to her own great amazement, Lydia believed him. “I'm sorry. You'd be a fine companion to Brigham's children, and you're a handsome woman in the bargain. I'm certain it will only be a matter of time before my brother recognizes your many fine qualities and asks you to marry him.”

Lydia nodded woodenly, turned and groped her way a little distance down the railing. Her thoughts were spinning around her like so many chattering birds, and it was a moment before she could settle her mind enough to think.

Soon, for Lydia was no stranger to crisis, she was able to examine the situation calmly. She did not love Devon Quade, though there was no denying that he was a spectacular-looking man with exceedingly fine prospects. She would not be required to pledge eternal loyalty and obedience to him, nor to share his bed.

Furthermore, since Devon's brother wasn't expecting a potential wife to be delivered to his doorstep, he wouldn't be waiting at the base of the wharf with a preacher and a handful of wildflowers. Lydia had been given a reprieve, uncertain as it was, and perhaps Mr. Brigham Quade would hire her as a governess to his children and expect nothing more of her.

Lydia drew in a deep, restorative breath, watching San Francisco recede from sight, feeling the sea roll beneath her like some great, undulating beast.

Lydia had become expert at adjusting herself to reality, however harsh. For the next few days, she kept to herself, contemplating the adventure that lay before her. She ate, though very lightly, walked along the decks, and was civil to Devon whenever he dared to address her. Which wasn't often.

Seattle turned out to be a ramshackle town, just a few unpainted frame buildings clinging to impossibly steep hills and flanked by dense, primordial forest. Here and there the stump of some ancient evergreen rose in the middle of a muddy street, and piles of clay-streaked dirt, sawdust, and scrap lumber attested to great personal industry on the part of certain citizens. The beer halls, doing a rousing business in those drizzly morning hours, gave raucous comment on the habits of still others. Mill saws screamed and the misty air was thick with the smells of newly sawed wood, fir sap, smoke, and horse manure.

Lydia felt a vague stirring in the depths of her heart, a heart she'd deliberately rendered numb long since, when she'd looked upon her first wounded soldier.

A tendril of hair danced against her cheek, and the wind brought a taste of saltwater to her lips, faintly reminiscent of tears. Lydia could not remember the last time she'd really cried; perhaps it had been at her mother's funeral, when she was a small child.

She stood a bit straighter in her accustomed place at the railing of the steamer
San Francisco
, and even managed a smile for Polly, who beamed upon the crude little country town as though it were Paris.

Apparently, the new bride had found marriage to a complete stranger to be all she'd hoped for. Polly had formed a habit of humming cheery little tunes under her breath, and there was a pinkish glow to her cheeks and a bright shine to her eyes.

The small party transferred to another boat at Seattle's busy harbor, and the last leg of the journey began. In an hour, Devon had told the ladies, they would reach Quade's Harbor, across the Sound.

 

“
You brought me what
?” Brigham Quade would have bellowed the words, but shock had knocked the breath from his lungs, and a furious rasp was all he'd been able to manage. He stared at his brother in horrified disbelief, praying he'd misunderstood.

Devon was perched on the edge of Brigham's enormous cherrywood desk, a valuable piece that had come from China aboard a trade ship. “I brought you a wife,” he said placidly. “Believe me, Brig, you're going to like Lydia.” He held out one hand, palm downward. “She's about this high, with purple eyes and yellow hair, and she's healthy.”

“Next you'll be telling me she has good teeth!” Brigham burst out, nearly upsetting his chair when he stood. “Good God, Devon, you make this woman sound like prize breeding stock!”

His younger brother, generous to a fault but often misguided, shrugged. “Lydia is no brood mare, of course,” he allowed, “but she
would
produce strong children. I have no doubt of that.”

Brigham rounded the desk. “I already
have
children, Devon,” he pointed out. “Two. Or has that fact escaped you?”

Devon's eyes were clear of any guilt or guile. “Charlotte and Millie are girls,” he reasoned. “They'll marry and set up households of their own. You need sons to take over the timber business when you get old and—”

“Devon,” Brigham broke in quietly. It seemed to him a miraculous thing that he hadn't strangled his brother already. “I've still got a few good years left to me, believe it or not.” Beyond the windows of his study a soft summer rain shrouded the view of the snowy mountains, the dark indigo water, the thick, seemingly endless carpet of evergreen trees spilling over the land to the horizon. He stood looking out at the spectacle, which was beautiful to him even in that gloomy weather. “We built the company together, you and I,” he said finally. “And we'll run it together.”

He heard Devon's sigh behind him, knew what was coming next.

“
We
didn't build this business, Brig—that was your doing. My only contribution was some fetching and carrying, and we both know it. I want something of my own.”

Brigham's disappointment came out as impatience. “A general store,” he said, with a touch of mockery to his tone, as he turned to glare at his brother.

Devon was the one man he'd never been able to intimidate, and it was plain that nothing had changed in that respect. “A general store,” Devon confirmed, raising one eyebrow.

“Damn it, Quade's Harbor has no need of a mercantile,” Brigham insisted, shoving a hand through his dark hair in frustration. “There's a company store!”

“Afraid of a little competition?” Devon asked, grinning now.

God in heaven but the man had balls, Brigham reflected—walking away from a half interest in one of the largest timber outfits in the territory, starting up a business no one would patronize, bringing a strange woman home for a wife and another to foist off on his unsuspecting brother.

Brigham swore, stormed over to the teakwood liquor cabinet he'd had sent up from San Francisco a few months earlier, and poured himself a brandy. “Competition,” he spat. “The company store has everything a man could want. What will you sell, Devon? Tell me that.”

“Maybe some things a
woman
could want,” Devon replied, still unruffled, gesturing toward the mountain where Brigham's crews were even then cutting timber. “The Northwest is a lonely place, Brig. Those workers of yours need wives. Women will be arriving from the East—there's a shortage of marriageable men back there because of the war, you know—and from San Francisco, too. They'll want dress goods and flower seeds and paint for picket fences.”

Brigham sighed. He couldn't deny his brother's reasoning, much as he would have liked to do just that. The Puget Sound country was changing, day by day, and the few hearty men who were willing to work in the mountains yearned for the comforts of female companionship. Devon himself had spent the winter pacing and drinking, restless as a tomcat closed up in a hatbox, and now there was a woman upstairs, a bargain bride.

This Polly-person was of no consequence to Brig, though; such things were private matters, and if Devon wanted to give a stranger his name, that was his business. The other woman, however, the one Devon had so thoughtfully brought home for him, like a souvenir from some exotic attraction, was most definitely his concern.

Isabel, his first wife and the mother of his daughters, had permanently cured him of all misconceptions about wedded bliss. Her death from pneumonia, nine years before, had been a tragic one, and even though he and Isabel had never loved each other, he'd grieved for her. Even after all that time, however, he still felt anger whenever he thought of Isabel, because he knew she'd willed her passing. She'd given up, thrown off her life like a garment no longer needed, forsaken her children and husband without even attempting to survive.

He shook off a swarm of troubling memories and took another sip of his brandy. “The other one—Lydia, I think you called her—will have to go back. That is, unless you're planning to start a harem.”

Devon rose from the edge of the desk, at last, and went to pour a drink for himself. His motions were pointed, meant to highlight Brigham's rudeness in failing to offer him a brandy when he got his own. “Lydia
is
beautiful enough to spawn such thoughts in a man's mind,” he conceded. Holding a snifter in his right hand, he turned to face Brig, his blue gaze slightly narrowed. “Open your eyes and look at your life, Brig. You're in dire need of a wife, and your children want for a mother.”

Brigham had returned to his desk. He set aside his snifter with a thump and reached for a stack of papers. “Aunt Persephone provides all the female guidance and companionship Charlotte and Millie require.”

Devon swirled his glass, gazing down at the eddy of amber liquid in its bottom as though it could explain some personal mystery that troubled him greatly. “That still leaves the other. And don't say the whores in Seattle are enough, because that's a load of horse shit and we both know it. Lydia is a beautiful and very feminine woman,” he said slowly, after a long interval of further consideration.

“If she's such a paragon,” Brigham growled, bracing himself against the inner side of the desk with both hands, “why the hell didn't
you
marry her?”

His brother was thoughtful, unmoved, as usual, by Brigham's quiet rage. “She's very strong, both mentally and physically. To tell you the truth, I wanted someone who would lean on me just a little. I think Lydia's been taking care of herself for most of her life.”

Giving another sigh, Brigham gathered up some documents and slapped the shiny surface of the desk with them. Why any man would want some wilted violet clinging to the back of his collar with clenched fingers, choking him, was beyond his imagining. It seemed to Brigham that a wife should be a partner of sorts, as well as a bedmate. Which wasn't to say he found the militantly self-reliant types all that attractive, either. If there was one thing he couldn't tolerate, it was a horse-faced bluestocking ranting about her rights.

He decided Lydia McQuire probably fell into the militant category and shuddered. He'd just as soon encounter the ghost of Hamlet's father in an upstairs hallway.

Devon, who had been able to read Brig's thoughts since they were boys, or so it sometimes seemed, laughed aloud. “You'll be pleasantly surprised when you finally see her,” he said. Then he set his empty snifter on the liquor cabinet and left the study.

Brigham might have worked happily over his ledgers for the rest of the afternoon if it hadn't been for the encounter with his brother, and for the troubling knowledge that there was a woman upstairs who no doubt expected to become Mrs. Brigham Quade before the week was out.