Darby: Bride of Oregon (American Mail-Order Bride 33) (2 page)

“Welcome, Miss McClintock.” Miss Miller greeted Darby
into her office and they both took up the pretense that three other women weren’t
sitting in the long hallway waiting their turns. The young woman’s home was a
busy place that morning. No doubt a good many desperate women in town had
perused
The Groom’s Gazette
on the weekend and were still trying to work
up their courage. Darby was just glad to have arrived early.

She put her nose in the air and strode through the
doorway like her knees were tied together beneath her skirts—which they were.
She’d been fanning herself furiously in the hall, worried the silly idea was
about to backfire on her, but the tie hadn’t fallen off…

Yet.

Unfortunately, the woman focused her complete
attention on her, so Darby couldn’t discreetly bend over and slide the silly
ribbon up higher, or better yet, take it off.

I’m Queen Victoria. I’m Queen Victoria.

It was a fact, she’d pretended to be the queen
since she’d risen from her bed that morning. It didn’t matter if the other
ladies in the boarding house had wondered if she was ill or not. She’d hardly
noticed the odd looks at breakfast, her mind had been that intent on holding
tight to the character she needed to play for the interview. And she’d been
doing such a fine job of it she’d nearly introduced herself to Miss Miller as
Victoria McClintock!

It was a lucky thing for Darby the Queen was never
in a hurry, for she was able to catch her tongue before it ruined the game.

No. Not a game
. It was her future she was
forging. But considering the grave importance of that meeting, if she didn’t
think of it as a game, she might break into tears. And McClintocks had more
pride than to trade their dignity for a good cry. Even when she’d been told
about the factory’s destruction, she hadn’t fashed. Sure, she felt sorry for
dear Roberta, who had kept her eye out for them all like a hen watching over
her chicks. And she’d felt sorry for every woman who would struggle to survive.
But the best thing she could do for them was to keep a stiff upper lip and be
bold when necessary.

It was necessary now.

Miss Miller picked up a pad of paper and a pencil.
“Let’s start with your name.”

“McClintock. Darby McClintock, lately of
Newcastle, England.”

“Lately?”

Darby lifted her brows and acted as if her eyelids
were much too heavy to open completely. “Lately, as in, prior to coming to
Massachusetts, of course. My father was a minor baron, and though it
embarrassed the family, dabbled in the coal business. All was lost after he
died, and I found myself in want of employment. Of course, the only menial
labor for which I had any experience was my stitching. I found that very few in
Lawrence were looking for a woman adept at running a household.”

Miss Miller lifted a brow. “And you have such
experience?”

Darby feigned the most subdued impression of
excitement. “Do you know of someone who requires a chatelaine without the
burden of marriage?”

The woman shook her head. “I’m sorry. No. But if
you are genuinely interested in marrying Mr. Beauregard of Portland, Oregon, I
believe you fit the bill well enough. When you told me your last name was
McClintock, I worried you were a Scot, and this gentleman has a particular
aversion to Scots. Apparently, he works with many sea captains in his office as
Commissioner, and the last thing he wants is to go home to a Scot at night, if
you can understand that.

“I’ve met the man personally, about a year ago,
and I can assure you, he is far too honorable to hold someone’s nationality
against them, but where his personal life is concerned, I can at least
understand his reasoning. Besides, he insists that I only send him someone who
can be dignified in all situations.”

“My dear, Miss Miller, I assure you I am not a
Scot, though I admit there must be a drop or two in my veins from generations
ago in order for me to have such a last name. Great Britain is a much smaller
place than you have probably guessed. Everyone is related, unfortunately, to
everyone else.”

That last bit was heartfelt. She really did deem
it unfortunate that she had as many English relatives as she did, distant
though they may be. After centuries of squabbling over minor worries—like life
and death, robbery and abuse—bitterness was an easy trait to pass down from
generation to generation. And it galled her, the need to play the part of her
eternal enemy for the time being.

But it galled her even more to hear the woman
insinuate that a Scotswoman can’t be trusted to be dignified in all situations.
In fact, with Miss Miller poised to hand over the keys to her future, Darby was
tempted to toss the offer back and spit in her eye.

“I’ll be honest,” the woman said. “I’ve been
trying to find the right woman for Mr. Beauregard for quite a while. I’d like
to offer it to you now, if you don’t mind. I suppose if I asked you for
references, you’d only have the other ladies to vouch for you?”

“I’m afraid so,” she lied. “I never would have
believed I would need references when I left England, let alone employment.”

Silently, she prayed Miss Miller wouldn’t ask for
those references. The only three who might have written something for her had
already left town. Margaret left that morning, and Violet Keating had gone to
meet her new husband in North Dakota the week before. Rachel West was still in
town, but she worried Rachel might find it difficult to lie intentionally,
especially when she knew for a fact that Darby was a Scottish lass with a
wicked temper. She’d witnessed it firsthand a time or two.

After taking down Darby’s address, the woman stood. “I’ll
take you at your word, then, Miss McClintock.” They shook hands, and as they
did so, the ribbon fell from Darby’s legs. Under the cover of her skirts, she shook
it off one foot, then the other. Then she nudged in under the chair behind her,
all while shaking the woman’s hand. If Miss Miller thought it odd to shake
hands for so long, hopefully, she would excuse it as a British habit.

Rand had just come out of one of his stupors of
guilt and brandy to find that the sun had risen without him. Portland went
about its above-board business as usual without him reigning over it from his
high window on Burnside. And he didn’t hold out hope that, while he was
otherwise engaged, the bowels of the city had cleansed themselves, and the sea
captains had decided to recruit sailors the honorable way and pay them a decent
wage to boot.

Rand told Hardy Jacobs, the driver, to take him
home. He needed a hot bath and a good meal to play the part of City
Commissioner. Shadow waited for him inside his carriage, and he dreaded what
his dark assistant would say.

Unlike Rand, Shadow’s notorious name was his own.
A son of an African slave and a plantation owner, just before the end of the
civil war, Shadow came out of his mother’s womb so late he was overcooked, he
said. Rand and Shadow had grown up along the banks of the Mississippi together
and one day, had hopped on a steamship bound for the west coast. They thought
they’d been escaping the fresh wound of slavery, but they’d been wrong.

Oh, how they’d been wrong.

And every night, as they did their part to thwart
the inhumanity of Portland’s underbelly, Rand thanked God for such a stealthy
assistant. In a carefully selected wardrobe of black, Shadow was the night
itself. He regularly moved close to some of the city’s vilest creatures and
they never knew. But most importantly, he was able to eavesdrop when those
creatures alerted the sea captains to what kind of flesh was for sale that
night. And this gave Rand time to save many before they were drugged,
purchased, and carried away.

Some days, he wished he could fill those tunnels
with dynamite and flatten Portland all together. But the devil and his minions
would always find a way to ply their trade and line their pockets. No use
taking down the city for nothing.

Besides, Rand had high hopes that one day Portland
would become a beacon of light for the west, that the law would find a way to
thwart those sea captains who created the demand for slave labor.

One day.

Unfortunately, the practice had gone on for forty
years, and it showed no signs of abating. And so, for as long as he was able,
he would wallow in the darkness with the rest of vermin kings for the sake of a
few.

“Did I miss anything?” he asked Shadow.

“You were gone for two days,” the man said by way
of answer. What he’d meant was, “Of course you missed something.”

“Tell me.”

Shadow pulled something from his pocket. “That
last one…” They never repeated the name of a victim after they were taken from
the waterfront. Ever. “He had a sister.” He handed over a note. “This was left
for him at the Drake.”

“The Drake?” Few of Rand’s victims had money
enough to stay at the Drake Hotel. “How did you know to look there?”

Shadow laid a finger alongside his nose and tapped
it twice. It was a secret he was going to keep. But suspecting the man had his
own informants at the prestigious establishment was a good thing to know. There
was no telling when it might come in handy.

Rand opened the letter and glanced through it,
then held it out while Shadow struck a match and lit the paper on fire.

“She only hopes he will come home again,” Rand
said. “She won’t come looking. I listened to the man for a good ten minutes
before…” He waved his hand to indicate all they had done to get their victim
from the saloon, into a cage, and onto that dingy. “This gal, whoever she is,
would be a fool to come looking for him. I’m sure she’ll be relieved when she
never hears from him again.”

Shadow frowned. “I hope you are right.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. You had a telegram from that Miller woman.
She has found you a bride.”

Rand grinned. The news would help him shrug off
his hangover. “She found a British woman, then?”

Shadow nodded. “Poulson will not be happy I gave
you the news.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll pretend I’ve heard nothing.
Did she give the woman’s name? Her lineage? Anything?”

“Just her name. A Miss Darby McClintock.”

The fire ate up the last of the note and bit his
fingers. “Damn it all to hell.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No. But someone will be if Miss Miller has sent
me a Scot to marry.”

“McClintock? Surely it does not mean she is family
to that crazed sea captain.”

“I hope not.” Rand’s frown lightened with an
amusing thought. “And if she turns out to be a Scot, you know what I’m going to
do?”

“Send her back?”

“No.” He shook his head and grinned. “I’ll sell
her to Captain McClintock himself. And for ten times the usual price. By the
time she wakes, they’ll be out to sea. And when he realizes what I’ve given him,
he’ll finally understand what all his victims felt.”

“Justice for them, yes?”

“Justice for them, indeed.”

In the two years since Darby entered the large
boarding house on Haverhill Street, she’d accumulated another few pounds of
clothing, a nice pair of shoes for church in the summertime, and two books with
which she would never part. This necessitated another satchel, which her
landlady provided from a large box full of things left behind by past
residents.

Darby suspected the donation was motivated less by
generosity and more from the probability that the woman was happy to be quit
with her. It was a fact, she and Mrs. Fussbudget found it difficult to
appreciate one another. The woman had a hard time differentiating between a
Scottish accent and an Irish one, and since she had a firm bias against the
Irish, she always eyed Darby with suspicion. Thus, Darby thought it best to
never linger in a room occupied by the landlady.

Unfortunately, this made mealtime a bit awkward.
If she arrived early, she had to eat quickly before Fussbudget arrived to ruin
the meal. And if she couldn’t arrive early, she was forced to wait in the
hallway for the other woman to finish eating, then rush to the table and hope
there was something left to eat.

With Margaret on hand for the past four months,
Darby’d been guaranteed to have a nice portion set aside for her. With Margaret
gone, the last week had been lean indeed. However, since she was leaving for
Portland that morning, she saw no reason to worry over Fussbudget’s whereabouts
and sashayed into the dining room without peeking around the door first.

“Good morning,” she said with a smile, greeting
the long table at large. She even held the smile a bit longer to be sure she
caught Fussbudget’s eye. The woman was seated at the head of the table and the
edges of her mouth turned up before she realized who she was greeting.

“Good morning,” she muttered.

“It’s a fine morning for changing one’s life, is
it no’?” She strode to the sideboard and filled a plate with enough breakfast
to make up for two days’ crumbs. She was tempted to pour gravy over all of it
and dig in with a small shovel, like some lumberjack, but she forbore.

At the table, she found a seat directly opposite
two other young women whom she knew to be leaving Massachusetts as mail-order
brides. The pair were close friends, and they gripped hands and stared at their
plates as if they had just been served their last meal.

At first, Darby gazed on them with pity. But she
realized pity was not what the girls needed.

She swallowed a bit of ham and pointed at the
girls with her fork. “You two.”

They flinched and gripped each other tighter.

“Ye’d best eat up, aye? No telling when yer next
meal will come, nor what ye’ll get. Now,” she pointed to their plates, “ye eat
up, ye hear? Ye’ve paid for that meal, and from now on, you must boldly take
what’s yers. It won’t matter the manner of men yer husbands turn out to be if
ye let them know, from the start, that ye’re strong lasses who can take care of
themselves. And if ye don’t feel so strong right now, then you just keep up the
pretense until it’s true.”

The pair stared at her with open mouths.

She frowned. “Do you understand?”

Hesitantly, they nodded.

Darby nodded back. “Then let go.”

The girls looked at their hands for a heartbeat or
two, then each of them pulled away and sat up a bit straighter in their chairs.

Darby rewarded them with a smile. “Ye’re going to
be just fine. Both of ye.”

After the pair finished their breakfast, thanked
her for her advice, and left the dining room, the old woman to Darby’s left
gave her a nudge.

“I certainly hope that advice doesn’t earn those
girls a beating on their first night married.”

Darby shook her head. “Sadly, a man who would beat
a confident lass would beat a timid one just as often. Perhaps more.”

Lost in thought, she was only vaguely aware when
the rest of the ladies, including Mrs. Fussbudget, left the table. She couldn’t
stop her imagination from summoning half a dozen incarnations of Mr. Beauregard
of Portland, Oregon. Would he be handsome, as Miss Miller claimed, or was it
only the very thing she said to all nervous mail-order brides?

She did say she’d met the man before.

But handsome wouldn’t matter if the man was overly
stern. She feared the chances of him being so were greater since he’d asked for
an upper-crust wife. Or would he be a man from a distinctly lower class who
wished to raise his station through the image of his bride? In either case, she
feared she would never be able to show her true self without paying dearly for
it.

She harbored the same secret dream as all the rest
of the unemployed mill workers headed off to their own mysterious weddings—that
they would be greeted by a kind, handsome prince of a man who would grow to
love her, and she him. But men like those would have little need of advertising
for a wife, since every woman from miles around would recognize such a prize
and fight to have him.

No. There had to be something wrong with the man
in order to marry a perfect stranger. She just hoped it wouldn’t be some
horrible flaw in his character. After all, a homely man could still be good and
kind. And surely, a kind man would find it in his heart to excuse a small
untruth his wife might have told at the beginning of their marriage.

Darby retrieved her bags and stepped out of Haver
House for the last time, more nervous than ever about meeting this mysterious
Mr. Beauregard. For she was convinced she would know her fate the moment she
set eyes on him. She prayed for a downright repellent man, for if he were
handsome, she was in trouble. A handsome man, with a flawed character, would
likely be unforgiving, so she could never let him know he’d been deceived.

That was it! She would simply have to take her own
advice, to keep pretending she was as refined as Queen Victoria herself…until
it was true.