Courting Susannah (37 page)

Susannah lifted both hands and rested them gently against either side of his face. “Not Ethan?” she asked, barely breathing the words.

He shook his head. “Not Ethan,” he answered. “She made it all up, Susannah. There were no other men. She believed I was unfaithful and wanted to torment me for it. Inventing a flock of lovers must have seemed a viable means of revenge to her.” His eyes were dark with remembered pain as he looked down at Susannah. “Because of that, I broke vows made before God and man, Susannah. I made her accusations true.”

She put her arms around his waist, careful not to put pressure on his mending ribs. “There is no changing any of that now,” she reasoned quietly. “Let it go, Aubrey.”

“Why didn't I see how unhappy she was? Why didn't I think, even once, that she might need my help?”

Although Aubrey's words were laudable, they were painful to hear. After all, if Julia had lived, and the two of them had built a happy life together, Susannah would still be a lonely spinster with only the sea, her music, and books for company. She looked deep into her own heart and found guilt festering there, along with sorrow and a vast, endless love for the man standing now in her embrace. Was it also a hopeless love?

He did not give her time to reply but instead hooked a finger under her chin and raised her face for his kiss. “Let us return to our marriage bed, Mrs. Fairgrieve,” he said hoarsely. “I have need of your singular comforts.”

She stepped back, her earlier vow to shed no more tears forgotten as her vision blurred. “Do you pretend that I am Julia? When we—we lie together?”

He looked as stunned as if she'd drawn back her hand and slapped him. “Good God, Susannah,” he rasped. “No.” He buried his fingers in her hair, which fell loose around her shoulders and breasts to tumble past her waist.
“No,”
he repeated.

She freed herself, an easy matter, since he did not attempt to restrain her. “I can't do this,” she whispered, awash in misery. “I thought I could—I thought it was enough that I love you—”

He took hold of her shoulders when she would have fled. “Susannah, what are you talking about?”

She gave an inelegant sniffle and wiped her face with one sleeve of her wrapper. “I love you,” she repeated, with more force and more desolation than before. “I thought I could live as your wife—give myself to you—that my loving you would be enough—”

“You're not making sense.” He spoke gently, even tenderly.

“That's the very worst of it. All my life, everything I've done has been sensible. Julia was the flighty one, the pretty one, the one men fell in love with and wanted to marry. I can't live out the rest of my years as her substitute, Aubrey. That's what I'm trying to say. Let me take Victoria. Let me leave Seattle.”

“And me?” The question was almost inaudible.

“Can you say that you love me? Truthfully, I mean?”

He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Susannah—”

“Don't say anything more,” she interrupted. Now that she had begun, she could not seem to stop the torrent of words spilling from her broken heart.
“Don't
say you don't believe in love. You adored Julia, at first, anyway, and you care very deeply for Victoria and for Ethan, as well. I was a fool—
such
a fool—to think you would ever change, ever come to feel devotion toward me.”

He encircled her loosely in his arms. “Susannah. Stop this. I—”

She jerked away, half wild with humiliation and regret. Why, why had she put herself in this position, when she'd known his truest feelings all along? He'd made no secret of his philosophy where human emotions were concerned. He wanted a companion, a partner, a mother for his children, and Susannah longed to be those things to him, but it simply wasn't enough. Since she'd seen the way Ethan and Ruby looked at each other, she'd known that, God help her, it wasn't enough.

She needed passion from Aubrey, fire and frenzy. She wanted to be loved, wildly and richly and without reservation, she wanted to be cherished. And she would rather live without those things than merely pretend to have them.

“What do you want?” he demanded. His eyes glittered, and the taut flesh along his jawline grew pale.

“You know,” she told him, squaring her shoulders and raising her chin. If he didn't let her take Victoria, she would have nothing and no one in all the world, all the more reason to hold on to the last shreds of her pride.

“A lie, Susannah? Is that what you want? Shall I tell you a pretty lie? Good God, you are too smart, too fine to live like that!”

“I want Victoria, and a reasonable living allowance,” she said. “That's all.”

“My daughter? You expect me to let you take my
daughter
from this house? Have you forgotten, Mrs. Fairgrieve, that you are legally my wife and therefore subject to my command?”

She barely kept herself from kicking him, and the immediate regret she saw in his eyes did nothing to stem her indignation. “Your
command?
You are no sort of king, Mr. Fairgrieve, and I am most certainly not yours to govern! It was a mistake, our marriage, one we can still rectify—”

“You're not going anywhere,” he interrupted. “And neither is Victoria.”

“You cannot force me to stay!”

“I
can
force you to stay. I won't force you to share my bed, however. Oh, no, Mrs. Fairgrieve. When you want my tender attentions—and you will—you will have to ask for them!”

She stared up at him in outraged amazement. “We would do better,” she found the breath to say, “discussing this in the morning. Good night, Aubrey.” Having delivered this tart farewell, she turned and started toward the doors, but he immediately took an inescapable hold on her arm and pulled her back. They collided briefly, from the force of it, but there was no pain. Not the physical sort, at least.

“Not so fast,” he said, fingers encircling her wrist. “I want to know what brought this on. Just yesterday—even
this evening—we understood each other. Now, all of the sudden, marriage to me doesn't suit you. What happened, Susannah?”

She swallowed a healthy chunk of her pride. “I didn't listen to my own instincts, and I've come to regret it. That's what happened.”

At long last, he released her. “Sleep well, Susannah,” he said. “I assure you, I shall not.”

“You may have your bed,” she said, with what dignity she had managed to hold on to. “I'll use my old room.”

“Do as you like,” he said with icy dispatch.

She said nothing in reply, merely turned from him, walked away and out of that room, across the broad entryway, and mounted the stairs a different person from the one who had descended them only minutes before. Yes, she still loved Aubrey, and yes, what remained of her life looked bleak indeed without him in it, but she was strong in her resolution to find a place for herself, put down roots, and thrive. For Victoria's sake, for her own, she would only get stronger.

She did not sleep that night but instead sat upright in the chair in Julia's old room, where the baby slumbered contentedly, blessedly oblivious to all that had transpired, and was still transpiring, in that household. When she heard Aubrey stirring about, she stood, smoothed her nightgown, and made for the wardrobe in the spare room, where she had hung a few of Julia's simpler dresses. That day, she felt no reticence about wearing one of her friend's gowns; she chose an un-Julia-like frock of indigo woolen, piped with silk of an even darker blue, and was waiting in the kitchen when Aubrey came down in search of coffee.

As his gaze fell on Susannah, she saw his eyes widen slightly; she marked the reaction down to the dress being one he remembered, although he'd given no indication that he'd noticed it. In one hand, he carried the
familiar volume, Julia's journal; he needed barbering, and his suit looked to be the same one he'd worn the day before.

“Here,” he said, thrusting the volume toward her. “Here's a little remembrance of your beloved childhood friend. Should scatter a few illusions—I know it did that for me.”

Susannah wanted to defy him, but her hand reached out for the journal of its own accord. Anything she might have said was shut away behind the hard dryness at the back of her throat.

Maisie was upstairs by then, looking after Victoria, but Ellie was there in the kitchen, casting sidelong glances at “the mister.” Certainly, he must look odd to her, in this unkempt state, as he did to Susannah, for it was not like him to take so little care with his appearance.

“You be wantin' any breakfast, either one of you?” Ellie asked. She looked ready to bolt and run when the first note of discord sounded.

Susannah merely shook her head in answer to the question; Aubrey made a raspy sound, no doubt intended as a chuckle.

“No, thank you,” he said.

Ellie looked from one to the other of them again and made for the back stairs. “I'll just see if Maisie's needin' any help, then,” she said, and was soon gone.

“Did you think I would go to the police without you?” Aubrey asked, at last letting his gaze drift over her clothing. He looked ghastly, like a man striving without hope to assimilate some deadly poison of the soul.

Susannah merely nodded. Julia's journal felt heavy in her hands; for a moment, she wanted only to stuff it into the cookstove and let it burn. She might have done that, if she'd thought the past described therein might
be consumed with it, in the hungry heat of those frosted-morning flames.

“Well,” he said, “you were wrong. I've asked one of the stable hands to hitch up the coach and bring it around. They ought to be out in front right about now, waiting.” He made a gesture with one hand, a sweeping motion inviting her to precede him, which she did, pausing only to collect her cloak. He took the garment from her, secured it around her shoulders, and opened the front door.

Mr. Hollister, as it happened, had taken a small office in one of several rabbit holes above the jailhouse; every surface in the place was piled high with books, various bills advertising for stolen horses, wagons, wives, and daughters, wanted posters from all over the United States, and handwritten reports. He did not look surprised to see the Fairgrieves, although Susannah thought his eyes narrowed slightly upon their entrance and concluded that he had guessed what the situation was between herself and Aubrey. Perhaps it was obvious, though, requiring no particular discernment on the part of an intelligent observer.

“Well,” he said, and rose from his chair, executing a half bow in Susannah's honor before putting out a hand to Aubrey, who shook it firmly. “How may I help you this cold morning?” To emphasize his question, he shivered a little and went to the potbellied stove in the corner of the room to feed in a chunk of wood. A comforting, snapping sound ensued, entwined with the pleasant scent of burning cedar.

“Susannah has a theory,” Aubrey announced, clearing a chair for his wife but remaining on his feet. “Would you like to explain it, my dear?”

In the bright light of day, the idea that Su Lin's father had had some part in Delphinia Parker's death seemed less feasible than it had in the night, when she'd wandered endlessly among the fragments of her shattered
heart. Beneath her doubts, however, intuition pulsed like another heartbeat, insistent and sure.

Briefly, she outlined what she knew of Ethan's involvement with Su Lin and the lasting fury their ill-fated association had engendered in the girl's father. “Seeing the man on the waterfront must have triggered the idea in my mind. There's more to Su Lin's story than Ethan knows, I'm sure of it. And I believe the beating Aubrey suffered led up to Mrs. Parker's murder somehow.”

Hollister sat back in his chair, tenting his fingers and regarding Susannah as though she were some ancient slate that must be deciphered. Then he put the question she dreaded. “Have you any proof to present, Mrs. Fairgrieve?”

She ran her teeth over her lower lip. “As much as the police had when they charged my brother-in-law with murder,” she replied.

Hollister leaned forward, causing the chair to creak, and glanced up at Aubrey before meeting Susannah's unwavering gaze again. The air in the small room was beginning to feel hot and close; she imagined opening the single window and drew a modicum of consolation from that. Smiled at the mental image of papers fluttering about like confused birds.

“I'll find the man if I can,” he said. “Talk with him. That's all I can promise, of course.”

“That's all I'm asking,” Susannah replied, and rose stiffly from her chair. “Good day to you, Mr. Hollister, and thank you for your time.”

The former detective stood, nodding confirmation to Susannah, but he looked puzzled, and his gaze kept straying to Aubrey, who had remained silent and still throughout most of the interview.

“This Su Wong—what do you know about him? Anything?”

Aubrey thrust his hands into the pockets of his coat,
which needed pressing. “Just that he was Su Lin's father and that he works on the waterfront.”

“I'll ask the police to put a man on him, find out what we can,” Hollister said, and it irritated Susannah to no small degree that he directed these remarks to Aubrey. She had been the one, after all, to steer the inquiry in this new direction.

She bristled but said nothing, and when Aubrey offered her his arm, she took it with only the briefest hesitation. Whatever her regrets, whatever her plans for the future, he was still her husband, and it wasn't entirely his fault that he didn't,
couldn't
love her. He had never misled her, never declared himself, and she had gone into the marriage with open eyes, thinking his feelings would change in time.

Fool,
she chided herself.

He escorted her out of Hollister's office and down a staircase crowded with policemen and criminals alike, with a few newspaper reporters added in for good measure. Two of the writers pursued them, calling out questions about Ethan and about Mrs. Parker, but the carriage was waiting nearby, and they were inside before any of the journalists could catch up with them.