My Darling Melissa (14 page)

The woman was now standing beside the window, admiring the gown along with Melissa. She looked as proud and pleased as if she’d made the lovely garment herself.

“It’s you,” she said decisively. “It’s really you.”

Melissa was inclined to agree. In her mind’s eye she could see herself wearing that wonderful gown, whirling around and around the ballroom of the new hotel—in Quinn’s arms.

Melissa’s sweet revelry was interrupted by another announcement. “I’m Dana Morgan—Mr. Kruger’s niece.”

Remembering her manners at last, Melissa turned, offering her hand in greeting. “Melissa Cor—Rafferty,” she replied with a smile.

Dana’s eyes were twinkling with merriment. “I confess that I already knew who you were. Do come in for a few minutes,” she pleaded. “We’ll have some soda water and talk.”

Melissa’s eyes strayed back to the dress in the window. To buy it would be an extravagance, but she couldn’t go to the grand opening of the hotel in tattered calico… .

Maybe, she thought miserably, Quinn didn’t mean to invite her to the party anyway. Maybe he and Gillian were planning to share the evening.

While Dana went to the fountain and drew flavored
seltzer water from the taps Melissa stood admiring the dress. “Do you think it would fit?” she asked.

“Try it on,” Dana responded practically. “Here, I’ll get it out of the window.”

Melissa slipped into the back room to change out of her calico and into the wondrous frock of silk.

The fit was perfect, and it was a delight to enjoy the familiar sensation of silk brushing against her skin again.

Mentally Melissa counted what remained of the sixty-odd dollars she had to spend. If she purchased the dress, she would need slippers, an ornament for her hair, and a petticoat. Fully a third of her funds would be gone.

She ought to have her head examined for thinking she could start a business without tapping her trust fund, but she still persisted in thinking exactly that.

She sighed as she came out of the back room wearing her calico again and feeling as Cinderella must have the day after the ball. Dana was waiting on a customer, but she approached Melissa as soon as she could.

“Well? What do you think?”

“It’s very expensive,” Melissa replied. It was so strange to worry about money.

Dana seemed to notice the disreputable dress Melissa wore for the first time. “But your husband is rich,” she marveled. “Besides,” she went on after a brief pause, “he has an account here. I’ll just write down what you spend, and that will be all there is to it.”

The mention of Quinn had swayed Melissa in one way: She would have the gown because she wanted him to see her in it. But she would never charge so much as a postage stamp to his account. “I can pay for the dress myself,” she said.

Dana gave her no further argument. “Come and drink your soda,” she said, setting the dress aside on the counter. “I haven’t made a single friend since I arrived in this town, and I’m absolutely perishing for a nice, sociable chat.”

Melissa joined Dana at the soda fountain counter and took a sip of the orange drink that had been drawn for her. She was realizing that her own chums were all either
terminally married or off traveling somewhere. Like Dana, she’d missed the company of women her own age.

Dana related that she had come to Port Riley to teach, having just completed normal school in Seattle, but the position had fallen through at the last minute. She’d been forced to depend upon the kindness of her aunt and uncle, who had given her a place to stay and work to do.

“What happened to the job?” Melissa asked.

With a sigh, Dana answered bleakly, “They found a man and hired him instead. The school board felt that he’d be better able to control the children than I would.”

Melissa’s strong sense of justice was outraged. She muttered a word that widened Dana’s eyes and then made her giggle.

“What about you, Melissa?” she asked after a few moments. “What brought you to Port Riley?”

Melissa didn’t feel up to relating the whole grisly story, so she simply said, with a shrug, “I married Mr. Rafferty.”

Once again Dana’s eyes took in Melissa’s old dress. “I surely never took him for a cheapskate,” she said.

Melissa flushed and averted her eyes. Even though Quinn had hurt her, and badly, she couldn’t let Dana’s misconception stand. “I want to provide for myself,” she told her friend.

Dana looked at her as though she’d gone mad, but she kept her opinion to herself. She helped Melissa choose a petticoat and slippers to go with the dress and was ringing up the sale when inspiration struck her customer.

Seeing a stack of paper tablets nearby, Melissa grabbed up ten, along with a pen and a bottle of ink. She would start writing another book that very day, and if her publishers bought it, there would soon be a small sum of money due her. In her spare time she would look for a building to house her newspaper and try to find a secondhand printing press.

Melissa stopped off at Quinn’s railroad car to leave all but one of the notebooks, then hurried home with the rest of her purchases.

She hung the dress in the armoire and was about to settle
herself at the desk and make notes of the story ideas that were brewing in her mind when Quinn suddenly walked in and spoiled everything.

To Melissa’s utter and complete surprise, he was furious. “Don’t you ever do anything like that again!” he shouted.

Melissa was taken aback, but only for a moment. “Anything like what?” she asked haughtily, raising her chin.

Quinn flung his arms wide of his body in a gesture of the purest agitation. “Anything like leaving!”

The memory of Gillian draping herself all over Quinn stung like venom, but she spoke in an even tone. “It seemed to me that my presence was quite superfluous, Mr. Rafferty.”

A muscle in Quinn’s jawline bunched. He muttered a swear word and strode across the room to the liquor cabinet. This time he did not resist temptation but poured himself a generous portion of brandy. It was when he turned to face Melissa, his mouth open to speak, that he saw the lavender dress through the half-closed door of the armoire.

He closed his mouth and crossed the room to touch the silken gown. “What’s this?”

“It’s a dress, Mr. Rafferty,” Melissa said with disdainful patience. She hoped he wouldn’t notice the writing materials she’d placed on the desk.

“Damn it, I know what it is,” he snapped, and he was near again; Melissa could feel him directly behind her, and she grew flushed at the heat of his body so near.

She wouldn’t have faced him, but he came around, looking at her quizzically, the brandy forgotten in his hand.

“You bought a dress,” he mused, as though some great mystery was afoot. “Could it be, Mrs. Rafferty, that you want to go to the party at the hotel next week?”

Melissa blushed. “I certainly wouldn’t intrude. I wasn’t invited, you know.”

The expression in Quinn’s dark eyes was one of gentle amusement. “Of course you’re invited. You’re my wife.”

She stepped back because Quinn was standing so close, and she knew what could happen when he did that. “I had
no way of knowing that I was to be included, since ours is not a proper marriage.”

Quinn remembered the brandy and set it aside. “We could make it proper,” he suggested huskily.

Melissa retreated another step and nervously thrust her hand into the pocket of her skirt. When she did, she found the money that Mitch Williams had refused to take from her that morning.

She reached underneath the mattress and brought out enough cash to make up for what she’d spent at the mercantile, then held it out to Quinn. “Here,” she said.

Quinn was clearly baffled. “What—?”

“This is yours,” she told him calmly. “When I tried to repay Mr. Williams this morning he told me that you had already taken care of the matter.”

Quinn scowled at the money, making no move to accept it. His whim to make their marriage “proper” had evidently passed, for he looked furious again rather than amorous. “When and if you need money in the future, my dearest darling, I’ll thank you to approach me and not my friends!”

Melissa stared at him. “Is that what Mr. Williams told you? That I walked up to him and asked for money?”

When Quinn ignored the bills she was holding out, Melissa flung the money into the air.

“He’s a liar!” she cried.

Quinn gave her a scalding look that said it wasn’t Mitch Williams he suspected of dishonesty and walked out.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Melissa cried, following after him at such a quick pace that she had to hold her skirts in her hands. “You’re not going to walk out of here before this fight is over, Quinn Rafferty!”

Quinn wouldn’t so much as look at her. He was placidly adjusting his collar as he went down the stairway, behaving just as though Melissa were invisible and mute. The maid, Helga, was standing at the bottom of the steps, all ears and eyes.

“I’ll be right behind you no matter where you go!” Melissa insisted as Helga pressed herself against the wall
like someone faced with a lighted stick of dynamite. “So you might as well stay here!”

Quinn had reached the entryway and was just about to open the door when Melissa darted around in front of him and barred his way, her arms outspread.

“I won’t be called a liar,” she said. “Not by you or anyone else.”

Quinn sighed. “Melissa …”

Melissa stood her ground.

There was a gentling in Quinn’s manner, and he slowly lifted his hands to brush Melissa’s cheeks with the sides of his thumbs. “All right, I believe you. Now will you let me pass? I have some things to look into at the mill.”

His touch had affected Melissa sorely, but she wasn’t about to let Quinn know that. It would only make him more arrogant and cocksure. “Will you be home for supper?” she asked, as any wife would have done.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Things haven’t been going well in the lumber camp lately. I might have to go back up the mountain.”

The idea made Melissa feel strangely bereft. “You’d be gone all night?” she asked.

“Maybe for several days.” Quinn grinned wickedly. “If I’m away that long, Mrs. Rafferty, will you miss me?”

Melissa opened the door and held out one arm in a sweeping gesture of dismissal. The man had such brass!

“Not for a moment, Mr. Rafferty,” she replied.

Quinn laughed, shook his head, and left the house, his doting wife briskly shutting the door behind him.

Melissa watched from a window until Quinn was out of sight and then went back upstairs.

Although her mind was full of ideas for the new novel she meant to write, she felt too restive to sit down to her notes. Realizing that she had seen only one room on the entire second floor—Quinn’s—she decided to do a bit of exploring.

There were three other bedrooms, Melissa discovered. One still held the scent of her mother’s perfume, though
there was no other sign that anyone had slept there the night before, and Helga was putting fresh sheets on the bed in the next.

The plain little maid gave Melissa a cautious look, as though she expected her to do something outrageous.

Melissa smiled and let herself out.

The next room brought her up short, for it was so obviously fitted out for a woman. The comforter on the bed was of pink satin, and there was a vanity table with a skirt that matched the bedspread.

Chairs covered in rose chintz faced a small ivory fireplace, and a delicate pair of slippers rested on the hearth.

Melissa knew that both Helga and Mrs. Wright slept downstairs in rooms behind the kitchen, and they were the only other people living in the house.

An uneasy sensation stirred in the pit of Melissa’s stomach, but she was determined not to jump to conclusions. It seemed unlikely that the room had been Gillian’s; she would have shared Quinn’s quarters.

Practically on tiptoe, Melissa crossed the room and opened a lovely, wide armoire of honey-colored oak. It was filled with luscious evening gowns, day dresses, and wrappers.

Melissa stepped back, feeling as though she’d intruded on something very private. She carefully closed the doors of the armoire and crept out of the room. In the hallway her natural valor returned, and she went immediately in search of the housekeeper.

Mrs. Wright was in the kitchen, paring turnips for a stew. She looked up with her usual expression of polite alarm when Melissa entered her territory.

“That pink wrapper you lent me the other day—where did it come from?”

The woman sighed. “I think you know where it came from, Mrs. Rafferty,” she hedged in a weary tone.

Melissa nodded. “I’d like you to tell me who uses that room, please,” she said.

Mrs. Wright finished paring the turnip and reached for
another. “You’d best ask your husband, missus,” she replied, not unkindly.

If she was going to succeed as a reporter and the editor and publisher of a bold, innovative newspaper, Melissa reasoned, she would have to learn to be dogged in pursuing a point. She’d need the instincts, persistence, and initiative of a Nellie Bly.

She clasped her hands together behind her back and began to pace. Her gaze was intense, and it did seem to intimidate the housekeeper just a little.

“My husband,” Melissa said, after this tense little interval had passed, “is away, possibly for several days. Who sleeps in that room, if you please?”

Mrs. Wright sighed again, sounding forlorn. “Very well,” she answered, at length. “Mr. Rafferty’s sister Mary stays there when she’s home from school.”

Melissa was intrigued. “I don’t see why I should have had to drag that out of you that way. It’s not as if he were keeping a mistress!”

The older woman flushed with indignation, probably offended by the suggestion that the saintly Mr. Rafferty might stoop to keeping a paramour. “Miss Mary is real special, and her brother is choosy about how she’s treated.”

“It’s odd that he didn’t mention her,” Melissa said speculatively. “Especially when you consider that I’ve told him more than he wanted to know about my brothers.”

Mrs. Wright broke down and smiled at that. “It takes time, Mrs. Rafferty, for a man and woman to get to know each other well,” she said gently. “There’s a lot your husband hasn’t told you, and a lot you still need to say to him. You might be a lifetime getting around to all of it.”