Fortune is a Woman (10 page)

Francie heard Princess's joyful bark as the bolt was pulled back, then the dog leapt from the stall toward her. She flung her arms protectively around her; she could feel Princess's warm tongue on her face, licking away her salt tears. "I'll never let you kill Princess, never, never," she screamed at her father. "You can kill
me
first."

He signaled to a groom to remove her, watching as the man prized her clinging arms from the dog. Then he calmly walked over, grabbed Princess by the collar, and placed the pistol against her massive head.

"No, Papa, No. No," Francie screamed. "I'm sorry, I'll do anything you say, I'll never be wicked again, I promise... just please, please, please, don't kill her...."

Harry Harrison covered his ears as the noise of the single shot ricocheted from the stone walls of the courtyard. He watched as the big sand-colored dog sank slowly to the ground, a puzzled expression in its amber eyes. There was very little blood, but he felt sick. Still, he knew his father had been right—he had explained it all to him on board ship as they paced the decks together recrossing the Atlantic. He glanced at his sister—a sobbing heap, her arms around the dead dog—and he felt no pity for her. His father had said she deserved it and he believed him.

The Harrison servants gossiped, and it had soon became common knowledge in smart San Francisco drawing rooms that millionaire Harmon Harrison kept his daughter in a maid's room with bars on the windows; that he had shot her dog to punish her; that he beat her when she was naughty, which was often; and that he had hired a strict governess to teach her French and sewing and Bible studies, and to instill some moral principles in her.

"Every family has its cross to bear," they had whispered to each other over their teacups. "But young Harry Harrison is a different matter, so handsome like his father, such aristocratic bearing and splendid manners. He will go far —and one day he will inherit his father's millions."

Francie Harrison was soon forgotten and for the next ten years she lived in a twilight world on the fourth floor, studying French, embroidering neat flowers on traycloths that were never used and taking decorous walks each afternoon with her jailer.

Each week the governess reported on her conduct to her father, and if the demerits were too many she was summoned to his study and beaten with Princess's old lead.

Harry was sent to his father's prep school back East and she saw him occasionally when he returned for vacations. He acted rude and avoided her whenever possible. He behaved arrogantly with the servants and was as smooth as silk in society. Harry, she decided, was a worm and not worthy of her attention. He was just like his father.

A prisoner in her own home, Francie yearned for her mother and for Princess, dreaming of the days on the old ranch when she had been happy.

CHAPTER 7

Josh Aysgarth was a dreamy little lad with dark blond hair and solemn, clear gray eyes and a smile that would melt anybody's heart. He and Sammy Morris were as different as chalk and cheese; Sammy was as dark as Josh was fair and as stocky as Josh was slender. Sammy was quick-tempered, brooding, and moody, and Josh was slow to anger and saw no malice in anybody. He lived in a dream-world of his own. But Mrs. Morris always claimed Josh led Sammy into trouble at school and Annie said it was Sammy who was the bad'n. Still, she treated Sammy like Josh's own brother and gave him whatever section of her heart was left over from Josh.

That's why it was such a blow when Frank Aysgarth decided to move up in the world and built himself a foursquare, four-bedroomed redbrick house off on its own atop a leafy hill. He added a wooden front porch and a thick surround of laurel shrubs and called it Ivy Cottage, though there was not a scrap of ivy anywhere near it. He moved all their old furniture as well as a new three-piece suite upholstered in dark green velvet, a heavily carved oak sideboard with a mirrored overmantel, a matching table and six solid oak chairs into his new house along with his family.

When Josh first told him of the move Sammy was devastated. "We've lived next door to each other all our lives and now you're moving a mile away. It might as well be fifty," he raged, red-faced with the effort of keeping back his angry tears. "We'll never get to see each other again."

"Course we will," Josh said, putting a comforting arm around Sammy's shoulders. "We're best friends, ain't we? Nothing'll keep us apart."

And nothing much did, because Josh spent much of the week at Sammy's place, saving him the long walk to school in bad weather, for there were no trams up top of Ays-garth's Hill, as it came to be known. And weekends Sammy was always at Josh's house.

"Now I know he's soft in the head over him," Mrs. Morris said laughingly to Annie. "Sometimes I think if Josh said jump over the moon, Sammy would do it."

Annie smiled back, but Mrs. Morris could see she was tired. She was twenty now, small and well-rounded with lovely brown eyes and shiny, rich brown hair, but everybody said how she had no life of her own. Sometimes, of a warm Saturday, she might escape for an hour or two, but always on her own because she had no friends, having left school and become a grown-up "mother" so young. She would take the tram to the end of the line and then go for a walk out in the woods, or if she felt more adventurous and had a little more time she might take a train out to Ilkley or Knaresborough and wander around the village and have tea in one of the small bow-windowed teashops. But Annie liked it best when she took Josh and Sammy out for the day to the moors or the dales, letting them run and clamber and shout from the top of the windy crags with no one to hear them and complain.

"I don't know which I like better, Mrs. Morris," she would say when she returned Sammy home, her cheeks pink from the fresh air, her brown hair wind-tossed and her eyes asparkle. "The dales in springtime when the rivers are rushing and trees bright with young yellow leaves the way they are now. And all the new lambs kicking up their heels in the sunshine and the calves hiding under their mothers' bellies from the rainshowers, and the trout jumping in the beck at Durnsell's Fell. Aye, it's a grand sight, Mrs. Morris. But then I think of the moors in autumn and standing atop the crags with nothing for miles but gorse and heather and windy gray-blue skies thick with scudding white clouds like sailships." She stopped and smiled at Mrs. Morris over her cup of tea. "Well, enough of dreaming," she said briskly. "I've me dad's tea to think of. He'll have been all right of course, with the cold dinner I left him, but you know how fussy he is..."

"Aye, I know," Sally Morris retorted crisply. "If you ask me, Annie Aysgarth, you should spend a bit more time thinking of yourself and less of your dad. It's time you found yourself a nice young man. After all, lass, you're a 'catch,' with your rich dad and your talents as a housekeeper. And pretty with it," she added as an afterthought.

Annie smiled, embarrassed, throwing her woolen cape over her shoulders and gathering her things together. "Mebbe I will one day. When Josh is all grown up and ready for off."

"When Josh is grown up and ready for off will be too late," Mrs. Morris said bluntly. "You'll be an old maid, Annie. A spinster. On the shelf."

Annie blushed. "Mebbe that's the way it's meant to be, Mrs. Morris," she said as she hurried to the door. "It's just God's will, that's all."

Sally Morris watched her go. It was a long uphill walk to Ivy Cottage and Frank Aysgarth wouldn't dream of spending money on a pony trap for his daughter. "She's got young legs and she'd best use 'em," he always said. It was true enough, but it was also true that Annie's youth was disappearing fast under the workload he imposed on her. She was lonely and she'd bet Frank was lonely too. She'd always said he regretted the move to Ivy Cottage and if it were not for his damned stupid masculine pride he would have sold up long ago and moved them all back again into Montgomery Street where they belonged. And then Annie might have a chance of meeting someone and having a life of her own. But it was no good, everybody knew Annie would never marry now because that would mean Frank Aysgarth would lose a good housekeeper and he was too selfish to stand for that.

When Annie got home that evening, her father was sitting at the oak table, smoking his pipe, waiting for her.

"Sorry I'm late, Dad," she said, flinging her cape over the brass hook on the back of the kitchen door, hurrying to bank up the fire and put the big tin kettle on the hob to boil. "I'll have your tea ready in a jiffy though. I left a lamb hotpot to cook slow in the oven, seeing as you only had cold meats dinnertime."

"Stop chattering and sit down, Annie," he said suddenly.

She lifted her head, surprised. She stared warily at him, wondering what she had done wrong. True, she was a bit late, but he knew she'd been off to the dales so it couldn't be that, and his shirts were all clean and ironed in the drawer, his socks were darned and the house was immaculate... unless something had happened to one of the lads. "Is it our Josh?" she asked, worriedly wiping her hands on her apron and sitting opposite him.

"Nay, it's not the lads. It's Aunt Jessie. Your mother's cousin, you met her once at the funeral. She went to live up Northumberland way and now she's died and left you a small fortune. Though I can't think why she left it to you and not the lads," he added, tamping the tobacco down in his pipe and puffing out pungent jets of smoke.

"A fortune?" she repeated, stunned.

"Aye, lass. A hundred pounds she's left you. In memory of your mother. That's what it said in the will anyway. And that's a sight more than a workingman makes in a year, so you'll not go squandering it on frocks and fur tippets and fancy bits of jewelry. No, it'll go in't bank wi' the rest."

Annie's round brown eyes grew even rounder as she said slowly, "But that's my money. Aunt Jessie has left it to me."

Frank puffed consideringly on his pipe; he wasn't used to his daughter speaking up against him. "Aye, so it is," he agreed, "but lasses don't have bank accounts of their own. So it'll go along with mine, until you have good need of it, that is."

Annie met his eyes angrily. A hundred pounds was more money than she had ever dreamed of seeing and now it was hers and she desperately wanted to see it. "Aunt Jessie left it to me, Dad," she repeated. "I have the right to do what I want with it."

Frank pushed back his chair, placed his pipe carefully in the big glass ashtray and said coldly, "You don't have any rights, Annie Aysgarth, and don't you forget that. You'll do as you're told and that's that."

Annie's head drooped. She stared miserably down at her hands, red from housework, with ragged, bitten nails. "Poor Aunt Jessie," she said, blinking away tears of anger at her own helplessness. "Barely in her grave and we're quarreling over her money already."

She looked up and met her father's eyes. "Please, Dad?" she begged. "I've never asked you for anything before." She watched his set, implacable face with a sinking heart; the money had suddenly become a symbol of the freedom she might decide to buy with it one day.... When Josh was a grown man and had fallen in love with some pretty lass and left her to get married. She caught her breath as she saw a flicker of indecision on her dad's face. She sighed again as he coughed and picked up his pipe. He sat down at the table and began slowly repacking it with fresh tobacco.

"Well," he muttered, "it is in memory of your mother. Aunt Jessie said so... though you best keep it somewhere safe, Annie. I'll not be responsible if it goes missing."

She sprang to her feet, her eyes shining with gratitude. She wanted to throw her arms around him, but it was impossible, she had never embraced him in her whole life, and instead she said, "Thank you, Dad, and I'll thank our aunt Jessie in church tomorrow for remembering me. And don't worry, I'll keep the hundred pounds under my mattress, where nobody will ever find it."

She bustled excitedly about, setting the table. The lads would be home any minute, six prompt, the way their dad liked it on a Saturday, so she knew she had better be quick. But this time she hummed a little song to herself as she hurried about her tasks, telling herself that she would save her unexpected fortune for a rainy day.

***

The disastrous year that changed all their lives was 1906. Annie's Josh was nineteen and he wasn't just handsome—he was beautiful. He had dark-lashed gray eyes, a cap of thick dark-blond hair and perfect features. He was tall, lean, and well-muscled. He looked like a classical Greek statue, but it was his wide, level gaze and his gentle smile and the sweetness of his expression that made people call him "beautiful."

"Josh Aysgarth is wild," they agreed, "but he would help any lame dog, and he'd never hurt anyone." They called Josh "one of life's innocents."

Sammy Morris could remember perfectly the day he realized Josh was beautiful and he was ugly. It was the same day he knew he loved him.

They had gone walking in the dales with a crowd of other lads. Josh, tall and athletic, strode easily at the head of the group, his head held high and a little smile on his face as he stared at the wonders of nature around him. He did not need the applewood stick he swung in his hand to help him over the hills and boulders, he sprang up them like a deer. Sammy, bringing up the rear, watched jealously while the other boys crowded admiringly around him, laughing at each other's quips and slapping each other affectionately on the shoulder. He wasn't used to sharing Josh with anyone. It had always been just the two of them.

By the time they reached the river he had sunk into a sullen, tired stupor, straggling well behind the others. When he caught up they were already stripped off and skinny-dipping in a sheltered pool by the bank of the fast-flowing river. Josh was standing on top of the rock, naked as the day he was born, smilingly surveying the dark, still pool. An admiring silence fell on the merry group as he stretched his arms over his head, ready to dive, and Sammy caught his breath at the sight of his slim-hipped, tautly muscled young body and his carelessly displayed manhood. Flinging back his head Josh stood there in a moment of perfect stillness. And then in a pale, flashing arc he dived with scarcely a ripple into the chilly dark water. He rose to the surface almost instantly and climbed laughing onto the rocks, shaking his blond head with a shower of crystal droplets and throwing a friendly arm around Murphy, a brawny Irish lad who lived in the next street.