Wishes (3 page)

“This hideous old thing? Nellie, I’ve worn this half a dozen times already. Everyone has seen it.”

“Two times,” Nellie said indulgently, putting the lid on the last hatbox. “And our guest tonight has never met you, so he can’t have seen it.”

“Nellie, really! You just don’t understand how it is when you’re an attractive woman, when you’re young like I am and your whole life is ahead of you. Surely your youth wasn’t
so
long ago that you can’t remember.”

Nellie was feeling hungry again. “Terel, I am not as old as you seem to think.”

“Of course you’re not
old,
you’re just…well, Nellie, I don’t mean to be unkind, but you’re just not on the market any longer. I am, and I need to look my very best.”

Nellie ate four more pieces of candy.

At that moment there was a quick knock on the door, and the only servant in the Grayson household, Anna, appeared. Anna was young and strong, but sly, and she spent most of her limited intelligence trying to get out of work. Whenever Nellie complained that Anna didn’t help her enough Charles Grayson said he couldn’t afford a new maid or a second one and Nellie must make do.

“He’s here,” Anna said, her hair falling out of her cap.

“Who is?” Terel asked.

“The man that’s come to dinner. He’s here, and your father ain’t.”

“Isn’t,” Terel snapped. “What could the man be thinking of? He’s an hour early, I’m not even dressed yet, and—Nellie, is dinner ready?”

“Yes,” she answered. She’d spent the afternoon cooking, and now her dirty apron covered her dirty brown housedress. “Anna, show him into the parlor and tell him he’ll have to wait until we’re ready to receive him.”

“Nellie!” Terel said, horrified. “You can’t just let the man sit alone for an hour. Father would be furious. According to Father, the man saved his life, and now they’re trying to do some business together. You can’t just leave him.”

“Terel, look at me. I’m dirty. I can’t possibly receive him. But you look beautiful, as always. You go to him, and as soon as I—”

“Me?” Terel said. “Me? But I have to change and do my hair. No, Nellie, you’re the elder, you are our father’s hostess. You go talk to the man, let me change, and when I’m dressed you can change. That’s the only way it can be. Besides, what would
I
have to say to the old coot? You’re so much better with old people than I am. You can have him hold your yarn or something. Father says he’s a widower, so maybe you can talk to him about putting up jams or something. This is the way it
has
to be, Nellie, and I think you’ll agree with me if you look at it unselfishly.”

Once again, Nellie felt very, very hungry. She knew Terel was right. She
was
their father’s hostess, and she was very good with people of her father’s age, while Terel tended to yawn when in the company of older people. Nellie did not want to offend this man, as her father was trying to persuade him to manage his freight company.

“Tell him I will be down as soon as possible,” Nellie said quietly to Anna. Nellie turned to leave the room, but Terel caught her.

“You aren’t angry with me, are you?” Terel asked, hands on Nellie’s shoulders. “It doesn’t matter how you look, because everybody likes you. They’d like you even if you were the size of an elephant. Me, I always have to look my best. Please, Nellie, don’t be angry with me. I couldn’t bear it.”

“No,” Nellie said with a sigh, “I’m not angry with you. Take your time changing and make yourself pretty. I’ll take care of Father’s guest.”

Terel smiled and kissed her cheek. As Nellie started to leave the room she handed her the box of chocolates. “Don’t forget these.”

Nellie took the candy, and in the hall she stuffed six pieces into her mouth before removing her apron and starting down the stairs.

Inside her room Terel smiled and went to her wardrobe. Now, what to wear to dinner to meet her father’s guest? As she looked the idea of changing clothes bored her. Nellie was right. What she had on was perfectly all right for dinner with some old man, a man who had come not to see her but to see her father. What did it matter what she wore? He was probably too old to see anyway.

She lifted the spread from her bed, put her hand under the mattress, and pulled out the romance novel she’d hidden there. If she didn’t change, she’d have an hour or so to read before dinner.

N
ellie paused at the bottom of the stairs to take a quick look in the mirror on the wall. Her chestnut hair was straggling about her neck, there was a smudge of chocolate at the corner of her mouth, and there was a green stain—spinach, probably—on her collar. She didn’t like to look down at her old brown cotton dress, for she knew the hem was soiled and there was a permanent stain on the skirt. Terel kept telling her she needed new clothes, had even offered to help her choose them, but Nellie never seemed to have time for clothes. What with cooking, and cleaning what Anna missed, and helping Terel manage her extensive social life, Nellie didn’t seem to have much time for anything as frivolous as new clothes.

Now, on top of having to see to dinner yet, plus all the instructions she had to give Anna to try to get her to be of some help in serving tonight, their guest was an hour early. Why, she wondered.

She walked into the parlor, and he was standing with his back to her, looking out the window. She knew right away that he wasn’t an old man.

“Mr. Montgomery,” she said, walking toward him.

He turned toward her, and Nellie nearly gasped. He was a
fine
-looking man.
Very
fine-looking. Terel was going to be happily surprised when she saw him.

“I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting. I—”

“Please don’t apologize.” He had a voice to go with his face and form. He was quite tall, slim, muscular, with dark hair and eyes. “I have been insufferably rude at appearing this early, and I…” He looked down at his hands.

Nellie had always had insight about people, somehow knowing what they needed. He’s lonely, she thought, and she smiled. This very handsome man was just lonely. A handsome man come to call on her would have sent Nellie into a dither, but a lonely man, handsome or not, young or not, was something she knew how to handle. She forgot all about her dirty dress.

“We are pleased to have you, whatever time you arrive,” Nellie said, and she smiled at him, that smile that transformed her already pretty face into one of beauty. She didn’t notice that Mr. Montgomery’s expression changed. He stopped looking at her in embarrassment for having arrived an hour early and started looking at her as a woman.

Had Nellie been aware of his change of expression she still would not have known what it meant. Handsome men looked at Terel, but not at her. She continued smiling. “We have a lovely garden,” she said, “and it’s much cooler there. Perhaps you’d like to see it.”

“Very much,” he said, returning her smile. There was a dimple in his right cheek.

She led him through the parlor, down the hall, and out the side door to the garden behind the house. The garden was one of Nellie’s great pleasures. Her father thought that using any space for flowers was frivolous, but in this one matter Nellie insisted on having her own way.

The late fall sun was setting on the garden, and it was beautiful. Amid the tall corn grew marigolds, and chrysanthemums lived beside the cabbages. Poppies grew along the back fence, and in front of them were herbs that Nellie used in her cooking.

“Beautiful,” he said, and Nellie smiled in pleasure. She rarely got to show off her garden. “Did you do this yourself?”

“A boy comes twice a week to help me weed, but I take care of it mostly myself.”

“It is as lovely as its owner,” he said, looking at her.

For a moment Nellie thought she was going to blush, but then she realized he was just being polite. “Would you like to sit down?” she asked, motioning to the little swing set up under the grape arbor. She hurried forward to remove the string beans she’d been breaking when Terel had called her to help with the hats.

“Yes, thank you,” he said, taking the bowls from her. “You wouldn’t mind if I helped, would you? It would make me feel at home.

“Of course not.” She put the empty bowls between them—one for waste, one for the broken beans—and filled his lap with beans, then filled her own.

“Where is home, Mr. Montgomery?” she asked.

“Warbrooke, Maine,” he answered, and once he started talking he didn’t want to stop. He’s as lonely as I am, Nellie thought, then she corrected herself. How could she be lonely when she had Terel and her father?

He told her of his life, of growing up near the ocean, of having spent as much of his life on a sailboat as on the ground.

“I met Julie when I was twenty-five,” he said.

Nellie looked at him, at his profile, and she could see the sadness in his eyes, hear the grief in his voice. Her father had said Mr. Montgomery was a widower. “She was your wife?”

He looked at her, the pain in his eyes making her feel pain also. “Yes,” he said softly. “She died in childbirth four years ago. I lost both her and the baby two days before my thirtieth birthday.”

She reached across the bean bowls and clasped his hand. The touch seemed to startle him awake. He sat there blinking for a moment, then smiled. “I do believe, Miss Grayson, you’ve put a spell on me. I haven’t talked about Julie since she…”

“It’s the beans,” she said brightly, not wanting him to be sad. “They’re enchanted beans. Same ones Jack used to grow his beanstalk.”

“No,” he said, looking at her intently. “I believe it’s you who has bewitched me.”

Nellie felt herself blushing. “Mr. Montgomery, you are wicked, teasing an old maid like me.”

He didn’t laugh at her jest; his face grew serious again. “Who told you you’re an old maid?”

Nellie felt very confused. “No one has to tell me. I…” She didn’t know what to say. She’d never had such a divinely handsome man flirt with her before. Wait until he sees Terel, she thought. Terel, wearing one of her beautiful evening gowns, could bring a whole room full of handsome men to a halt. “My goodness, Mr. Montgomery, look what time it is. I have to finish dinner, and Father will be home soon, and Terel will be down, and I must change clothes and—”

“All right,” he said, laughing. “I know when I’m being dismissed.” He picked up the bowls, not allowing Nellie to carry them, and blocked her way on the path. “Tell me, Miss Grayson, are you as good a cook as you are beautiful?”

Nellie could feel her face turning brilliant red. “What a flirt you are, Mr. Montgomery. You’ll have half the female population of Chandler blushing.”

He took her hand in one of his and looked at it. “Actually,” he said softly, “I don’t flirt at all. In fact, I haven’t looked at another woman since Julie died.”

Nellie was speechless. Utterly without words. That this man, so handsome, a man to set any girl’s heart on fire, would pay any attention to her, a fat old maid, was one thing, but that he acted as though she were the only woman he looked at was another.

She snatched her hand from his. “I am not a fool, Mr. Montgomery,” she said. “You waste your soft words on me. Perhaps you should try tempting someone who is younger and more foolish than I am.”

She had meant to set him on his ear, but all he did was smile at her, flashing that single dimple in his cheek, “It’s good to know that I am a temptation,” he said, dark eyes twinkling.

Nellie felt herself blushing again as she turned away and hurried toward the house, Mr. Montgomery close on her heels.

Inside the house all was chaos. Her father was home, and instead of finding what he’d expected—his two daughters entertaining his guest—he’d come home to an empty house. Anna had disappeared as usual, neither Terel nor Nellie could be found, and there was no sign of his honored guest.

Nellie, looking like the hired help, walked into the house, Mr. Montgomery behind her bearing bowls of string beans, just as Terel came down the stairs wearing not evening dress, as her father had requested, but an ordinary day dress. Charles Grayson’s temper snapped.

“Look at you!” he said under his breath. “Look at the both of you! Nellie, I would fire a servant who dressed as badly as you. And have you been treating our guest as a
scullery maid?”
he asked, motioning to the bowls of beans.

Before Nellie could speak Mr. Montgomery put himself between her and her father, almost as though he meant to protect her. “Miss Grayson very kindly agreed to sit with me when I so rudely arrived quite early for dinner.”

Nellie held her breath, for there was a hard tone to Mr. Montgomery’s voice, as though he were almost daring her father.
No one
spoke to Charles Grayson in that tone.

Before her father could speak, before Mr. Montgomery could say another word, Terel came floating down the stairs, her eyes alight at the sight of the beautiful man.

“What is all the fuss?” Terel said in her best there’s-a-handsome-man-in-the-room voice as she moved toward Mr. Montgomery. “Please forgive us, sir,” she said, bowing her head demurely and looking up at him through her lashes. “We are usually not so inhospitable.” Never taking her eyes from his face, she continued, “Shame on you, Nellie, for telling no one that Mr. Montgomery had arrived. If I had known, I would have hurried back from my charity work to entertain you myself. As it was, you can see that I had no time to dress properly. May I take those?”

Terel took the bowls from him and shoved them at Nellie. “Why didn’t you tell me he was young and handsome?” she hissed. “Were you trying to keep him for yourself?”

Nellie didn’t have a chance to answer before Terel slipped her arm through Mr. Montgomery’s and began leading him toward the dining room.

Nellie turned away and went to the kitchen. So much for her afternoon’s flirtation, she thought. So much for a handsome man’s words that he wasn’t a flirt. Even as Nellie told herself that this was what she’d expected, she suddenly felt very, very hungry, as hungry as she’d ever been in her life.

On the sideboard was the jam roly-poly she’d made for dessert. It was light sponge cake filled with homemade jam, then rolled into a log. Nellie didn’t even think about what she was doing. She didn’t bother with a plate, didn’t bother getting a fork. One minute the dessert was there, and the next she had eaten it.

Afterward she stood staring at the empty plate, as much in wonder as anything.

Anna, found by Charles, came running into the kitchen. “They want dinner, and they want it now.” The maid looked from the empty plate to Nellie’s jam-smeared mouth and began to smirk. “You eat all the dessert again?”

Nellie looked away. She would
not
cry. “Go to the bakery,” she said, trying to hold back tears of shame.

“It’s closed,” Anna answered, her tone of voice telling how she was enjoying her triumph.

“Go to the back. Tell them it’s an emergency.”

“Like last time?”

“Just go,” Nellie said, almost pleading. She didn’t want to be reminded of the other times she’d eaten the dessert meant for the family meal.

Her shame at once again having eaten an entire cake made her keep her head down throughout the meal. Anna lazily and sullenly served the dinner while Charles and Terel kept up a steady stream of conversation with Mr. Montgomery.

Nellie didn’t enter into the talk because she was dreading the time when what she’d done would be discovered. Her father had specifically asked for jam roly-poly for tonight, and she knew he’d be angry when he didn’t get it. She also knew he’d know instantly what had happened. Every word he’d ever said to her over the years about her eating came back to her. Throughout the long meal she prayed that her father wouldn’t say anything in front of Mr. Montgomery.

All too soon, Anna brought in the bakery cake. There was silence from her father and Terel, and Nellie hung her head lower.

“Did it happen again, Nellie?” Charles Grayson asked.

Nellie gave a brief nod, and there was a longer silence.

“Anna,” Charles said, “you will serve the cake, but I believe my eldest daughter has had enough.”

“Nellie has a bit of a problem,” Terel said in a stage whisper to Mr. Montgomery. “She often eats whole cakes and pies. One time she—”

“Excuse me,” Nellie said as she tossed her napkin on the table and ran from the dining room. She didn’t stop until she was outside in the coolness of the garden. For a while she stood there, trying to still her pounding heart, making all her usual promises to herself. She swore she’d try in the future to control her eating, she swore she’d try to lose weight. She promised herself all the things she’d promised her father during the many talks they’d had in his study.

“Why do you have to be an embarrassment to both me and your sister?” he’d said a hundred times. “Why can’t you be someone we’d be
proud
of? We’re afraid to go anywhere with you. We’re afraid you’ll have one of your attacks and eat half a dozen pies in front of everybody. We’re—”

“Hello.”

Nellie jumped at the sound of a voice. “Oh, Mr. Montgomery. I didn’t see you. Are you looking for Terel?”

“No, I was looking for you. Actually, your family doesn’t know I’m here. I told them I had to leave. I went out the front door and came through the back gate.”

She couldn’t bear to look at him in the moonlight. He was so tall and handsome, and she’d never felt so dirty and fat before in her life.

“It was a delicious dinner,” he said.

“Thank you,” she managed to mutter. “I must go in now. Would you like to see Terel?”