A Distant Shore (2 page)

“It’s not because it’s my money,” she said quietly, slipping her hands from his. “I already said I wished to use it to support your research. No, it’s because it comes from my uncle, isn’t it? James Riddell.”

Ian said nothing, for he knew he could not deny it. How could he, when the fact that he’d once accepted anything from that man cut so deeply, a wound that had been made twenty years ago and festered still? Nineteen years ago, when Ian had been a mere boy, Sir James had swindled him out of his family farm back on the island of Mull. Bitterness and a desire for revenge had driven Ian for far too long, yet he’d relinquished those vengeful dreams when he’d met and married Caroline, Riddell’s niece and ward. She’d helped him forgive, if not quite forget, and that was as far as grace had taken him. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, “but I cannot countenance taking a penny from that man.”

Caroline let out a trembling laugh. “Ian, this house is from that man. This gown—”

Fury burned in his chest that she would throw such things in his face. “”Pray do not remind me.”

She stared at him, her eyes widening with shocked comprehension. “You resent even this?” she whispered. One hand fluttered at the neck of her gown, her fingers touching the lace of her fichu. “Why did you not tell me? If it angers you so much—”

“I do not resent anything you wish to do with your inheritance,” Ian cut across her words shortly. “It is your money, to do with as you see fit, and I will not stop you from using it as you wish.” Even though it cost him to know they were only living in this style because of the man he’d hated for so long. He might have let go of that hatred, yet the knowledge still rankled. Deeply.

“And if I wish to use it for your research?” Caroline asked, her eyes flashing, her lips pressed together.

Ian shook his head, the refusal rising up inside him, impossible to suppress. “Caroline, the research is…
mine
. I could not bear the thought of Riddell’s money being involved in any way—” Caroline let out a soft sound of hurt and Ian tried to reach for her hands again. He hated the thought that he was hurting her, that Riddell could come between them even now, yet he knew he could not—would not—change his mind. Not about this. “Caroline—”

“And I thought
I
was yours,” she said quietly. A peal of feminine laughter sounded from the salon and shaking her head, she slipped from the terrace, leaving Ian alone, and more frustrated and restless than before.

Isobel Moore straightened a pile of battered primers as the late afternoon sunshine slanted across the floor of the First School. The desks were empty now, dust motes dancing in the still air, and wearily she suppressed a sigh.

As much as she loved her work at the First School, days like today tried both her patience and her good will. Two of the older boys had scrapped and been sent home with a black eye and a bloody nose each; one of her youngest pupils, sweet Katie Rose, was home ill with what was feared to be dysentery. And one of her star pupils, Eileen O’Shaugnessy, had told her this would be her last day of school for she was joining her Ma and her older sisters sewing piecework in the dark, dank room they called home. Her eyesight, Isobel thought with a grim desolation, would be ruined by the time she was thirty.

Sometimes Isobel wondered if this school did more good than harm, to give children the hope to dream, only to snatch it away again. It felt, she thought bleakly, as if she were educating them in all they couldn’t have. Opportunities this world refused to give them, even with a little book learning behind them. Lack of money, hygiene, social graces, plus the hindrance of an Irish accent—these children had no chance in this world. No real chance to better themselves.

Sighing wearily, Isobel glanced around the room with its rickety desks and battered primers, knowing there was no reason to stay in the shabby little schoolhouse on North Square, mere blocks away from Boston’s notorious Murder District.

Yet while her pupils fought off the despair of their upbringing and poverty, Isobel battled a despair of her own: the staid, predictable life of a labeled spinster and bluestocking.

Compared to her pupils, Isobel knew she had little to complain about. She was healthy, fed, warmly and well dressed, and able to occupy herself with worthwhile tasks. Yet the thought of returning home, to the stuffy confines of her parents’ house on Beacon Hill, made her spirit wilt. She envisioned the dinner that Cook would have prepared: boiled ham, pigeon pie, and potatoes, followed by Washington cake or gingerbread and cream, all delicious and yet so predictable, and accompanied by the equally predictable conversation between her and her parents as they all struggled to cover the awkwardness of having a nearly thirty-year-old daughter, unmarried and without any prospects, still living at home.

It seemed quite incredible to think she’d once been the belle of Boston society, poised to marry an up and coming doctor—oh, the dreams she’d cherished! She’d envisioned herself as Ian Campbell’s wife, hoped to elevate him into society, to stand proudly by his side... as Caroline Reid—now Campbell—was doing.

It was Caroline whom Ian loved... pretty, vain, spoiled,
silly
Caroline Campbell. At least she had been so when Ian had first fallen in love with her. Caroline, Isobel acknowledged reluctantly yet fairly, seemed to have grown up, matured into a lovely young woman who held her head high in society. When they met socially, Isobel was able to smile and chat and act for all the world as if her heart hadn’t been broken by the man Caroline called her husband.

Despite his love for Caroline, Ian had behaved like a gentleman over five years ago now, and offered to marry Isobel. Society had expected it; they’d appeared together so many times, although Isobel had later painfully learned that Ian had seen those pleasant evenings as nothing more than time spent with an affectionate little sister.

When he realized the error he’d made, he’d proposed, but it was an offer Isobel had refused to accept. She hadn’t wanted a proposal made out of pity, and she wouldn’t relegate herself to such an unhappy role as the wife of a man who married out of duty, not love.

Isobel knew it had been the right choice, if an incredibly painful one, and in the last five years she’d thrown herself into the First School, teaching and organizing the classroom, drawing the pupils—the children she would never have—close to her heart. The other two teachers had left for their own more domestic pursuits. Margaret Moore, the wife of her brother Henry, had given up teaching when she’d had a child, and Ian’s sister, Eleanor, now married to Margaret’s brother, Rupert MacDougall, had headed West, where Rupert had been appointed a U.S. Marshal.

Most of the time Isobel could ignore the pangs of longing she felt when she saw couples in society, or the loneliness when she sat against the wall with the other matrons and spinsters at a tea dance or ball. She reminded herself of how blessed she was, to be intelligent and independent, with a calling as high as that of wife and mother. She told herself she would rather have her freedom than a husband or child. She told herself, but in moments such as these, when the day had been thankless and difficult and she felt so very alone, she didn’t believe it. She struggled to keep her spirits from flagging; the temptation to wallow in bitterness and self-pity could become overwhelming.

“Ready, Miss?”

Isobel looked up to see her brother Henry’s man, John Caber, standing at the door. He was there as a precaution, for the streets around North Square were not safe for a woman alone, or sometime even for a man. John was well over six feet tall, and built like a mountain. He also, Isobel knew, carried a flintlock pistol in the pocket of his greatcoat.

Even with Caber’s protection, Isobel knew her parents were not always comfortable with having her spending her days with the denizens and dregs of Boston. It was only because Margaret had started the school as a pet charity project that she was really able to teach here at all.

“Yes, John. Thank you.” Turning from the empty room, Isobel gathered her mantelet and bonnet and headed with Caber into the chilly spring afternoon. The sun was beginning its descent behind the worn brick buildings of the square and already the streets were emptying, a cool breeze from the harbor bringing with it the sharp tang of brine and fish. In the hurrying crowds Isobel caught fragments of the Irish brogue that had become common in the North End, as ship after immigrant ship poured hundreds of desperate souls into the city. Not, Isobel reflected, that they’d received a warm welcome; most shops had placards in their windows reading “Irish Need Not Apply”.

Lost in her thoughts, with Caber like a dark shadow at her elbow, Isobel almost bumped into the man handing out tracts in front of the Seaman’s Bethel.

“Good afternoon, Miss Moore!” Edward Taylor’s voice was deep and melodious, only one of the reasons his vigorous sermons had dubbed him the finest orator in all of Boston. Yet Taylor was not a man of circumstance or stature; his work was amongst the poorest and roughest, here in the North End, where he’d started his seaman’s mission ten years ago.

Now he smiled, his eyes stern yet bright under his shock of dark hair, and he thrust a tract at Isobel, who had no choice but to accepted the printed pamphlet with surprised grace.

“Adoniram Judson is back in America, after thirty-three years in Burma,” he said in that stentorian voice that possessed the power to make Isobel straighten her spine even there on the street corner. “An inspiring man, and a wonderful preacher. He’s speaking at the Bowdoin Street Church this Tuesday next. You would consider yourself most blessed to hear of his travails, Miss Moore.”

“I’m sure I would.” Isobel smiled faintly, the pamphlet still clutched in her gloved fist. “Thank you for availing me of such an opportunity, Father Taylor. Good day to you.” If she’d kept her voice brisk to remind him of the distance between their social positions, he did not acknowledge it. He merely smiled, his eyes all too shrewd and knowing under his shaggy brows, and turned to the next passerby, a worn looking woman in a threadbare shawl and patched dress.

Father Taylor was known to treat all alike, whether it was an Irish mill worker or a lady of some social standing as herself. It gave her only a moment of pique, and even that was softened by her own rueful acknowledgement of her vanity. After five years teaching the dregs of society, she still had pretensions to snobbery.

She stuffed the pamphlet in her reticule, and urged on by Caber, mounted the carriage.

The carriage rumbled down Washington Street, away from the warehouses and tenements huddled by the harbor, past the pavilioned Quincy Market, only twenty years old and yet already on the fringes of a slum, and finally to the more prosperous Beacon Hill.

Caber helped her from the carriage and Isobel swept into the house on Charles Street she’d always called her home. The marble-tiled foyer was quiet, although Isobel heard a faint rustling from her father’s study. She peeked past the half-opened door to see her father frowning down at a pile of papers, his half-moon spectacles perched on the rim of his nose.

Isobel watched him, noticing the worry lines drawn deeply from nose to mouth. She knew the Panic last year had affected her father’s business interests, as it had any of the businessmen involved in speculation. More than one of Boston’s well-to-do families had suddenly found themselves in desperate straits, selling the family furniture and hiring their children out as governesses or tutors, or worse, living in pitiful dignity dependent on the charity of relatives.

Isobel had not given more than a flicker of thought for her only family’s circumstances, she realized guiltily. The house on Charles Street was her only home, and as much as its comforting confines sometimes seemed like a prison, she could not imagine living anywhere else—or in more reduced circumstances.