Forget-Me-Not Bride (3 page)

‘City Hall!' the conductor yelled as the cable car approached the junction of Market and Larkin Street. ‘City Hall!'

Hastily folding the
Examiner
and tucking it once more under her arm, Lilli stepped off the cable car into the busy street. Heads turned in her direction as she did so. Her Celtic colouring of smoke-dark hair, pale creamy skin and deep blue, thick-lashed eyes was a stunning combination and she attracted many appreciative male stares as she walked at a brisk pace towards the nearest of the employment agencies listed in the
Examiner
.

‘All the book-keepers we place are required to have previous experience and references,' a thin-lipped, bespectacled woman said to her primly. ‘As for a position as a school-mistress …' Her rimless spectacles slid down her bony nose. ‘No-one under the age of twenty-five is ever considered, no matter how impressive their qualifications. And your qualifications, Miss Stullen, are non-existent.'

She met with a similar response at the next, and then the next, employment agency she visited. Gritting her teeth she then tried her luck at an agency that dealt only with domestic and catering staff.

‘And where were you last employed as a chamber-maid, Miss Stullen?' a whey-faced young man inquired.

‘I've never been previously employed, but I'm intelligent, quick to learn, hard-working, honest …'

The young man looked at her with condescending pity. ‘This is a very
selective
employment agency, Miss Stullen. Applicants for positions are required to have experience and …'

‘I'm looking for a placement as a chamber-maid, not a chef!' Lilli protested frustratedly.

A shutter came down over the young man's palely freckled face. ‘Whatever the placement you are looking for, you won't find a placement via
this
agency,' he said, distaste in his voice. ‘Domestic staff are required to be polite and respectful, to be seen but not heard …'

Lilli didn't wait for him to finish. With her skirt swirling around her ankles she headed for the door, allowing it to swing noisily shut behind her.

Once out in the street she fought down the panic bubbling in her throat. It was way past lunch-time and she had achieved absolutely nothing. Not only that, she now knew with stomach-churning certainty that her chances of ever achieving the kind of employment she needed, were practically nil. Sick at heart she paused at the street corner, shaking the
Examiner
open yet again, studying the general classified advertisements in the hope that there might be something there:

YOUNG lady, good figure, wants to pose for artist; references exchanged; positively no triflers …

ANY person knowing of impending business failures or having any other valuable information can make big money by communicating with smart lawyer …

A GENTLEMAN would like to make the acquaintance of a young lady bicyclist matrimonially inclined …

CRAFTSMAN desires suitable employment. Urgent …

Whoever the last advertiser was, Lilli sympathised with him. She, too, desired suitable employment urgently. The day had become hot and muggy and her head ached. Wryly she wondered what kind of a response she would meet with if she placed an advertisement of her own in the
Examiner
, perhaps,

Young woman (18), penniless, quick-tempered, often accused of being impolite, two young siblings to care for, seeks kind-hearted husband and home …

The very ridiculousness of the idea marginally restored her sense of humour. Stuffing the
Examiner
once more beneath her arm she squared her shoulders. She had known before she had set out that her task wasn't going to be easy. Becoming dejected before she had exhausted every possibility was pointless. There were department stores to approach, for department stores were bound to be constantly employing young lady sales assistants. There were other options, too, she hadn't yet explored, such as laundries, hospitals, factories. With renewed resolution she stepped off the sidewalk, intent on crossing the busy street in order to head in the general direction of the great shopping emporiums.

The horse, in the shafts of a hackney cab, skittered as it veered out of her way. Lilli screamed, standing absolutely motionless, unable to believe she hadn't been trampled to the ground.

‘
Of all the stupid, idiotic, senseless
…' she could hear a male voice expostulating furiously.

Lilli pressed a hand to her palpitating heart. Dear Lord! Another inch and she would have been beneath the horse's hooves! Trembling violently she stepped back upon the sidewalk. The horse, thank heaven, hadn't run amok or injured himself. Though he was still whinnying and tossing his head his driver had regained control of him and had reined him in.

As the fear that had flooded through her ebbed, a feeling of foolishness replaced it. How on earth could she have been so stupid as to have stepped off the sidewalk without looking to see what was approaching? Even more baffling, how could she have been so deep in thought that she hadn't even heard the trotting hooves?

She was aware that the gentleman being conveyed in the carriage had jumped down from it and was striding thunderously towards her. He was perhaps ten years her senior and flamboyantly dressed in a dove-grey lounge suit with pearl-grey facings. There was no customary gold watch-chain looped across his matching chamois vest but his high-collared white linen shirt was worn open at the throat and was as frilled as a woman's.

There was nothing, however, effeminate about the man. He was above average height and as broad-shouldered as a prize fighter. Beneath his Homburg hat his hair was dark blond, cut long and swept back to curl at the collar of his jacket. As he came to a halt, a foot or so away from her, she saw that his eyes were brown and, though she couldn't be absolutely sure, she was almost certain they were gold-flecked. Tanned by the sun and the wind, smelling ever so faintly of lemon cologne, and with a thick, neat moustache, a shade darker than his hair, he was the handsomest man she had ever laid eyes on.

‘Are you both blind and deaf?' he demanded, winged eyebrows drawn together satanically.

Under the circumstances, Lilli felt it was a reasonable enough enquiry.

‘I'm sorry,' she said, trying to collect her scattered wits. ‘I was thinking about something and …'

‘The only thing you should have been employed thinking about was whether the street was safe to cross!'

He hadn't bothered to lift his hat, and his rudeness and use of the word ‘employed'grated on Lilli's already fraught nerves. It was because she had been pondering where next to seek employment that she had been so careless in the first place. Aware that he couldn't know that she checked the tart reply that had risen to her lips and said instead, ‘I'm sorry if I frightened the horse.'

The unexpectedness of her response checked his anger, as did the realization that she had eyes so true a blue they were almost azure, and a mouth tantalizingly full and soft. A flicker of amusement, and something else, entered his eyes. ‘Don't worry about the horse. Such incidents are all in a day's work for a hackney. He didn't make contact with you, did he? You're not hurt?'

It was a rather belated enquiry and she said stiffly, ‘No. I merely gave myself a bad scare.'

‘You gave
me
a bad scare.' he said wryly, his mouth tugging into a smile.

Lilli felt her stomach somersault. If he had been handsome before, when angry, he looked like a Greek god now that he was smiling.

‘Hey mister!' the hackney cab driver shouted across to him. ‘Do you still want taking to the Barbary Coast?'

The Greek god signalled assent and then, manners showing for the first time, inclined his head slightly towards her. ‘Goodbye, ma'am,' he said, the amusement and admiration in his eyes now naked, ‘and take a little more care crossing city streets. San Francisco isn't the Emerald Isle, you know.'

Lilli sucked in her breath, colour rushing to her cheeks. Thanks to her father, her speech occasionally betrayed a slight Irish lilt, but as her mother had been English, and she had been born in England, she never thought of herself as being Irish, and she certainly never thought of herself as having just stepped off a boat from Cork!

‘I've never even been to Ireland …' she began indignantly, but she was wasting her breath. He had already turned away from her.

Dazedly she watched as he strode back across the busy street and sprang agilely into the hackney. Had that been a small gold earring she had glimpsed when he had bent his head slightly and bidden her goodbye? And was he really going to the notoriously lawless waterfront area known as the Barbary Coast?

She remained standing on the corner of the street, watching until the hackney was swallowed up in a maelstrom of other carriages and carts. An earring! Did that indicate that despite his superbly tailored attire, he was a sailor? His skin had been sun and wind-tanned enough. Or was he perhaps one of the Barbary Coast's many saloon-keepers? She had never met a saloon-keeper but she found it hard to imagine that they dressed so elegantly.

Someone squeezing past on the crowded sidewalk behind her, jarred her, nearly sending her once more precipitately into the street. She tucked her copy of the
Examiner
more securely beneath her arm. She had far more important things to do than stand staring after a man whose name she didn't know, and whom she was unlikely ever to see again. Somehow she had to secure herself a sales position in one of the city's department stores, and, at a salary that would enable her to rent somewhere for herself, and Leo and Lottie, to live.

As the hours crept by and the sun began to creep further and further westwards, it became increasingly obvious that she hadn't a hope of ever doing so. Sales positions were offered to her, but always the salary was totally inadequate for her needs.

‘How much rent do you say you can afford?' landlords and landladies asked jeeringly. ‘Do me a favour, lady. You couldn't rent a parrot's perch for that!'

Hot, hungry and exhausted she trailed up and down street after street, trawling the city from Howard Street in the south to Lombard Street in the north, from Montgomery Street in the east to Alamo Square in the west. Nor was money, or the lack of it, her only problem.

‘Two children and no husband?' she was asked, eyes quickly flying to Lilli's ringless left hand. ‘I can imagine your profession, lady. And it ain't wanted round here!'

Door after door was closed in Lilli's face.

By the time she heard a distant clock striking five, tears of desperation were burning the backs of her eyes. What, in God's name, was she going to do? She couldn't,
couldn't
, leave the house on Nob Hill without taking Lottie and Leo with her. She had given Lottie her most solemn promise that she wouldn't do so, and if she didn't keep that promise she would never be able to live with herself.

Wearily she began to climb yet another of San Francisco's interminable hills. The employment agency she was seeking wasn't one advertised in the
Examiner
, but was one that had been suggested to her by another employment agency manager. It was her last hope. Time was fast running out for, once her uncle returned home, her chances of leaving the house with Leo would be nil. The very thought of her uncle, and his intentions where Leo was concerned, sent shivers down her spine. She would not allow Leo to be brought up and to be known as Herbert Mosley's child.

‘I will
not
,' she said tautly, beneath her breath.

A middle-aged woman walking a few feet behind her eyed her uneasily.

Lilli's hands clenched into fists. ‘I will not, I will not!' she vowed with increasing passion.

Preferring to be safe, rather than sorry, the woman hastily crossed the street.

‘The Golden Gate Hotel is looking for chamber-maids,' the greasy-haired middle-aged man at the agency said to her uninterestedly, not bothering to remove a cheroot from his mouth. ‘Other than that we have laundry-work, bar-work, domestic cleaning …'

‘At what kinds of salary?' Lilli asked, tucking a stray strand of hair into the loose knot on top of her head, not caring what the work was if only it would pay her enough to be able to provide for Leo and Lottie.

The man rolled his cheroot to the other side of his mouth and told her. For the first time in her life Lilli felt hysteria bubble up in her throat. No wonder her uncle had laughed when she had intimated she could find an adequately paid job. He had known how impossible it would be. He had known she would never be able to remove Leo and Lottie from his care.

Sick at heart she walked out of the office wondering how other women managed to earn a reasonable and respectable living when employers paid female workers a pittance, and when the choice of work available to them was so limited. She remembered some of the advertisements in the classified column of the
Examiner
and her mouth tightened. The answer was, of course, that the vast majority of women, through no fault of their own, never did manage to fend for themselves; instead they turned to the only alternative there was. Marriage.

She stood on the sidewalk engulfed in despair, not knowing which direction to take next, knowing only that she had let down the two people she loved most in the world; the two people who trusted her implicitly.

On the far side of the street a brass name-plaque gleamed dully in the late afternoon sunshine. The name engraved on it was clearly visible. It was The Peabody Marriage Bureau.

Lilli stared at it, remembering the article she had read in the
Examiner
. As the letters danced before her eyes her heart began to beat in slow, slamming strokes.

She remembered how happy the bride had looked; she remembered Lottie saying how, if he hadn't been ill, their father would have taken them to Alaska, panning for gold; she remembered how excited Leo had been at the very mention of the word ‘gold-miner'; she remembered how far Alaska was from California and how Herbert Mosley would never be able to trace them if they went there.