My Darling Melissa (23 page)

Melissa glanced at Jeff and saw that he was looking sheepish. He squeezed her hand and said, “I guess I probably didn’t make too good an impression. I’m sorry, brat.”

“I may or may not forgive you,” Melissa teased in a haughty voice.

Jeff’s tone and expression were still serious. “What kind of husband is he going to make, this Rafferty?”

“The same kind Papa was to Mama, I hope,” Melissa said dreamily, thinking of the beautiful necklace and the love that had inspired its presentation nearly twenty-three years before.

A look passed between Jeff and Adam at these words, one that stirred a vast unsettling within Melissa, but before she could ask what had prompted it, Keith came in. He took the velvet box from his pocket and extended it to his sister. “There’s somebody here to see you,” he told her.

Melissa set the box on the table and rose to her feet. “Who?”

Keith turned and pushed the kitchen door slightly, and Melissa watched Ajax come in. She was amazed at the change in his appearance since she’d seen him in Port Riley just a few days before. He looked as though he’d been falling-down drunk every moment of that time; his eyes were red-rimmed, his skin was sallow, and his clothes were rumpled.

“Melissa,” he said hoarsely.

“Do you want us to stay?” Adam asked his sister. He must
have known what the answer would be because he had already risen from his chair at the kitchen table.

Melissa shook her head, feeling pity for Ajax, but certainly not love. She knew now that she’d never really loved him at all. “I’ll be fine,” she said.

Jeff looked reluctant, but he left the kitchen with Adam and Keith, and Melissa once again found herself alone with the man she’d almost married. She was fully prepared to hear him say that he was returning to Europe with his mistress.

Instead he grasped one of her hands in his and blurted out, “I cannot bear to lose you!”

Melissa was stunned. After all, she’d made her feelings clear on two separate occasions, and Ajax had never struck her as being prone to emotional displays. She retreated a step, almost wishing that she had not sent her brothers away. “Ajax, it’s too late. I’m married to someone else.”

He let her go and grasped the back of a kitchen chair so hard that his knuckles showed white through his skin. “You were rash,” he spat out furiously. “You were very rash!”

A chill swept over Melissa, even though the kitchen was warm. She hugged herself and said, “It would have been a terrible mistake for us to marry.”

“No!” Ajax protested. “We could have had a fine marriage!”

Melissa was beginning to think that she was dealing with a madman, but she wasn’t afraid because she knew that even the most halfhearted cry would bring more help than she needed. “You have a mistress,” she reminded him.

Ajax was a study in frustration. “Why does that bother you so much? Half the men I know keep mistresses—”

“I don’t care how many statistics you quote,” Melissa interrupted, shaking her head. “I won’t have a man who doesn’t love me enough to be faithful.”

The jilted bridegroom thrust splayed fingers through his hair. Melissa marveled that she’d never seen the weakness in him, the self-indulgence. “Your own brothers probably keep mistresses,” he said.

Melissa folded her arms and shook her head. “Port
Hastings is a small town,” she told him. “If that were true, it would be common knowledge. I would have heard about it.”

Ajax arched one pale-gold eyebrow. “Oh? The way you heard about your father, you mean?” He spread his hands in a resigned fashion. “He was a notorious philanderer, you know.”

Melissa felt a stinging fury. “That’s a lie!”

“Is it?” taunted Ajax. “Ask your mother—or one of your noble brothers.”

“Get out!”

Again Ajax spread his hands. “You are a fool, Melissa. A spoiled, naïve little fool. And one of these days you’re going to learn that there are no fairy-tale princes in that big world out there—just ordinary, mortal men.”

Melissa started toward the inner door, but Ajax stopped her by grasping her arm in a bruising hold and wrenching her against his chest. She squirmed and struggled, too furious to cry out, but he was strong, and she could not escape him. He caught his hand in her hair and pulled her head back, subjecting her to a cruel, hurtful kiss. He smelled and tasted of liquor and of hatred.

She twisted and fought, but it wasn’t her own efforts that freed her. No, a hand closed over the front of Ajax’s neck, and he was thrust backward, striking the brick wall beside the fireplace with a force that made Melissa wince.

“I think you’d better leave now,” Keith said in a low drawl before he released his sister’s persistent suitor.

Ajax was dusting off his rumpled clothes as though he’d taken a fall, and he looked at Keith’s clerical collar with amused contempt. “I’ll hurry off to vespers,” he said.

“Good,” Keith replied. “While you’re saying your prayers, make a point of thanking the good Lord that I was the one who walked in here just now. If it had been Jeff or Adam, they’d still be working on you.”

Ajax was full of cocky bravado, but he was also pale. He nodded curtly at Melissa and strode out through the back door.

“Are you all right?” Keith asked, taking Melissa’s shoulders in his hands and bending his head to look into her eyes.

Melissa was gnawing at her lower lip. She’d been barely thirteen when Daniel Corbin drowned, and the news had shattered her. She’d loved and respected her father and had never completely stopped mourning him. Now Ajax’s implications stuck like burrs. “Y-yes,” she said.

Her brother cupped her chin in one hand. “The truth, brat,” he said gently.

“He said something awful about Papa,” she confessed. “Something really awful.”

Keith was silent, waiting.

“He said Papa was like—like him. He said he kept a mistress.”

Keith looked away for a moment, then said, “Suppose he did, Melissa? Would his memory mean any less to you than it does now?”

Melissa swallowed. It was all she could do not to put her hands over her ears like a child. “I don’t want to hear this,” she fretted. “Keith, I don’t want to know!”

He kissed her forehead. “Papa was a good man, sweetheart. He loved Mama and he loved us. Isn’t that what matters?”

Melissa’s eyes were burning with tears. She ached with disillusionment and a fury she had no way to vent. “I suppose Ajax was right about you and Adam and Jeff, too!” she cried in a stricken whisper. “You’ve all got mistresses, and you think it’s all right because you ‘love’ your wives and you ‘love’ your children—”

Keith gave her a gentle shake. “Listen to me. I can’t answer for Jeff and Adam, but I can tell you that what I have with Tess is too good to risk losing.”

Melissa let her forehead rest against her brother’s strong shoulder. “I wanted to believe that Papa was perfect,” she said sadly.

“Then you did him an injustice,” Keith replied quietly. “Now, Mama is about to drive away in a carriage with her brand-new husband. Shouldn’t we go out there and wish them well?”

Melissa nodded, dried her eyes on one of Maggie’s
checkered table napkins, and followed her brother out of the kitchen.

An hour later Katherine and Harlan were off to catch the last steamer to Seattle, and Melissa was so homesick for Quinn that she wished she hadn’t refused his offer to send the railroad car for her.

Settled in her own bed, a lamp burning on her nightstand, she held the diamond and amethyst choker in her hands and remembered Daniel Corbin. He’d been a big man, like his sons, and so handsome that Melissa had been proud to point him out to her friends. He’d called her his little princess and read her stories and taken her with him when he traveled to Seattle on business, and Melissa had adored him.

To find out that he’d been a stranger, at least in part, was painful, especially now, in this topsy-turvy time in her life. She was married to a man she hadn’t even known two weeks before, and wildly in love with him in the bargain. Her mother, the center and core of the family, had a new name and a future that lay in a far-off place. And then there was the situation with Jeff and Fancy.

The unchangeable was changing, and Melissa was frightened and confused. Only when the fire had burned down to embers did she sleep, and then it was to dream that Fancy had run away with a traveling salesman and taken all four of her children along.

Melissa was waiting at the depot long before the morning train was due to pull out, and her heart was already in Port Riley, with Quinn. She could barely wait to catch up with it.

Since she’d said good-bye to the family the night before, only Fancy was there to see her off, and she wasn’t very good company. Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, and there was no color at all in her cheeks.

“Last night I dreamed that you ran away with a peddler,” Melissa said, giving the words a light tone.

In the distance the train whistle gave a mournful cry.

Fancy shook her head. “I could never leave Jeff,” she said miserably. “But I’m very afraid that he’s going to leave me.”

Melissa drew a step closer, wanting to put her arms around her sister-in-law but not quite daring to do that. “Oh, Fancy, are things really that bad?”

Fancy nodded. “He’s so strong-willed, so domineering. Melissa, the very things I love about Jeff are the things that are destroying me.”

“What is it you want to do?”

Small, trim shoulders moved in a despondent shrug. “I want to be important in some way, like Katherine—and Banner and Tess—and you.”

“Me?” Melissa put her hand to her chest.

“Katherine and Banner have their cause, and Tess has her photography, and you—you have your wonderful education. You’ve traveled all over the world. All I ever did was pull a rabbit out of a hat in a carnival sideshow and have babies!”

Melissa would have laughed if she hadn’t known that Fancy was serious. “Having babies is no small matter,” she said gently, touching Fancy’s arm. “After all, half the population can’t do it!”

Fancy smiled tentatively at that, but her expression was soon sober again. She looked down at her feet. “Jeff is already talking about wanting another daughter,” she said in a small voice. “But there aren’t going to be any more babies. There was damage when Caroline was born.”

Melissa was beginning to understand. “Doesn’t Jeff know that?”

Fancy’s eyes were wide and full of disquiet when she looked at Melissa and shook her head. “No, and I can’t bear for him to find out. He’ll be so disappointed in me.”

“Only if that was all he wanted you for,” Melissa replied, annoyed. “And I know you mean far more to Jeff than some kind of baby machine!”

The conversation had to end then, for the train had arrived, and the noise was horrific. Melissa and Fancy exchanged a hug and parted.

The passenger section of the train was crowded with people on their way to Port Riley for the grand opening of Quinn’s hotel—Melissa rarely allowed herself to dwell on
the fact that the enterprise also belonged to Gillian—and she was lucky to find a seat.

The car was cramped and poorly ventilated, and the first thing Melissa did when she got off the train was hurry around to one side of the building and throw up in the tall grass.

A friendly woman in a calico dress had spotted her, although Melissa had prayed that no one would witness her humiliation. The stranger brought a dipperful of cold, clean water from inside the depot, and she held it out with a warm smile.

“Is this your first?” she asked as Melissa rinsed her mouth and spat unceremoniously.

“My first what?” she wanted to know.

“Baby, of course,” the Samaritan answered.

“No!” Melissa cried, shaken. “I mean, yes!” She paused, drew a deep breath, let it out again. “I mean, I’m not—not in the family way.”

The woman only smiled smugly, shrugged, and moved away, taking the dipper with her.

Melissa walked home in a daze, leaving her baggage to be picked up later. She couldn’t be pregnant, she thought. She just couldn’t. It would spoil all her plans for starting up the newspaper, and besides, she and Quinn didn’t know each other well enough to have a child together.

By the time she’d arrived at the house she now thought of as home, Melissa had a pounding headache. She greeted Helga and Mrs. Wright in a disconcerted manner, climbed the stairs, entered the master suite, and collapsed face down on the bed.

To her amazement, she slept, and very soundly. It must have been nearly suppertime, judging by the thinning light at the windows, when she was awakened by a gentle but insistent hand on her shoulder.

“Mrs. Rafferty? Mrs. Rafferty!”

Melissa rolled over and sat up, staring sightlessly at the intruder until Helga’s face came into focus. “Where is my husband?”

“He sent word that he wants you to join him at the new
hotel for dinner,” Helga announced, apparently seeing some romance in the situation that eluded her mistress.

Melissa wanted to cry. She hadn’t seen that man in three days, and he couldn’t even be bothered to come home and greet her. It only went to show how little he cared.

Helga had brought a service cart along with her, and its delicate contents rattled expensively as she wheeled it closer and poured Melissa a cup of tea. “There now, that’ll make you feel better. You can’t go to the party looking peaky!”

Melissa sighed. She felt like staying home and hiding under the covers, but she wasn’t going to miss that party. It was too important to her, and to Quinn. She took a cautious sip of the tea and waited to see if it would stay down.

“Are you all right, Mrs. Rafferty?” Helga persisted, peering at Melissa and frowning.

“I’m perfectly fine,” Melissa insisted. “It’s just that the past few days have been—well, rigorous, that’s all.”

Helga was beaming. “Mr. Rafferty told us that your mother was being married. She’s a beautiful woman, if you don’t mind my saying so, and I loved laying out her clothes for her.”

Melissa smiled. “Mama was a lovely bride,” she said, and Helga looked so eager that she felt honor bound to describe the entire wedding, right down to the cake and the candlelight and Katherine’s ice-blue gown of whispering silk.