The Paper Marriage

“Bess, you’re going to have to help me with this,” Matt muttered to the cold, damp night. Unable to sleep, he stood on a wooded ridge overlooking the Pamlico Sound, watching the moon sink behind a cloud bank. “God knows, you’re not my idea of a nursemaid, but I don’t know where else to turn.” He didn’t consider it praying, but the same heartfelt sentiment was there.

Watching a shooting star arc across the sky, he wondered how the death of anything in the universe could be so beautiful. So far he’d seen only the ugliness of death. If he’d been of a mystical turn of mind, he might have taken the shooting star for an omen, but Matt was a realist. Always had been. The second generation of Powers men to have been raised at sea, he’d learned from his father, who had learned from his own father, that a fair wind, a sound ship and a good crew were all a man needed to make his own luck.

Rose watched as Bess Powers poured two cups of tea, then added a dose of medicinal brandy to her own. She’d been invited for the afternoon to discuss her plans for the future, a future that was beginning to look increasingly dismal.

She stirred sugar into her tea, which was stronger than she liked, but hot and fortifying. “I should have worked harder on my art and music. Mama warned me I’d live to regret it. The trouble is, I have no sense of rhythm, and as for my watercolors—well, the less said, the better. Bess, how can I even teach a girl to walk properly when I’m apt to trip over my own feet?” Extending her limbs, she gazed dolefully down at her long, narrow kid slippers.

Bess snorted. “Woman your height would look damned silly with feet no bigger than mine.”

“Who wants a governess who can’t dance, can’t play the piano, can’t paint and—”

“I heard from Matt again today. Poor boy, he’s in sad shape. That’s the third letter in two weeks.”

“Did you know that no one will even consider hiring a woman accountant? I’m smart as a whip when it comes to figures.”

“Didn’t do poor Gussy much good, did it?”

Rose looked up quickly, a stricken expression on her face. “I’m afraid not,” she admitted. Given a chance, she might have been able to salvage something, but before she could even go through the accounts, it was already far too late.

“Sorry, child, you didn’t deserve that.”

Perhaps she did, but this was no time to pile guilt onto a feeling of inadequacy. If she could just keep her head level, her feet on the ground and her spirits high, she would come through this just fine.

“I interviewed for a companion’s position yesterday. The pay is barely enough to keep a mouse in cheese, and I’d be expected to sleep in an attic room. The ceiling slopes so that I can’t even stand up, but there’s a lovely view of the garden.”

“Like I said, poor Matt’s in desperate straits.”

Rose surrendered gracefully. She had gone on and on about her own slender prospects while Bess listened; it was only fair that she return the favor.

“You remember I told you about my nephew?”

Rose knew all about Captain Powers, his land-locked crew and his inherited baby. Bess was a gifted storyteller who never missed an opportunity to practice her art. “Can’t he send off to one of the employment agencies? I’m sure they can find someone suitable, there are so many women looking for respectable work.”

“And some not so respectable, I shouldn’t wonder. Would you take the job if it was offered?”

As tempting as it might sound, Rose wasn’t about to leap out of the frying pan into the fire. One thing she’d learned was that she was no good at making quick choices. Another was that positions that sounded lovely on paper weren’t always so lovely in fact.

Besides, while her heart might ache for any motherless infant, she wasn’t at all certain she wanted to get involved with one of Bess’s relatives. “I haven’t given up. Just because the ideal opening hasn’t presented itself yet, that doesn’t mean something won’t turn up tomorrow.”

“Thought I’d ask. If it’d been a married couple needing help with a baby, I’d have talked you into it, but I can’t see sending a decent young woman into an all-male household. ’T’wouldn’t be seemly.”

“He’s your nephew. Couldn’t you do your writing there as well as here, and look after the baby, too?”

The older woman emptied her teacup and refilled it from the decanter, not bothering to add fresh tea. “I’m a spinster, a traveler and a writer. I have neither the time nor the desire to be a nursemaid. Still, the poor little wretch deserves better than a handful of rough seamen to look after her. Know ’em all, and they’re as fine a lot as you’d want to meet, but still…”

Bess had relayed the tale to Rose as it had been told to her by her nephew, about a shooting that had involved three adults. She’d lay odds there was more to it than she’d been told. “Tragic, tragic,” she murmured, now frowning at her teacup, which was empty again. She fully intended to sniff out every juicy detail of the whole sordid mess, but that could wait. When it came to plotting a story, she never liked to be hampered by too many facts. Not all the travel pieces she wrote were entirely factual, although most had a basis of truth.

“And there’s no family at all on either side?” Rose persisted.

“Not a speck. Matt said he beat the bushes without flushing out so much as a shirttail cousin. Poor Billy. Sweetest boy you’d ever hope to meet, but then, you never know….” She shrugged her plump, silk-clad shoulders. “Billy begged on his deathbed for Matt to look after his daughter, and Matt, bless his tender heart, gave his word. Takes after me, Matt does. My own brother’s child, don’t you know?”

Rose sighed. “Oh. Well, I guess that settles it, then.”

Bess stroked her knee and cursed the weather, which was wet and cold, even for early March. “Settles nothing. Being a man of his word is all very well, but it don’t do that poor helpless infant much good.”

Now why do I have the feeling I’m being manipulated?

Rose answered her own unspoken question. Because she’d been blindly running in circles for so long.

Bess wouldn’t do that…would she?

During all the months she’d been burdened with the constant care of her demanding tyrant of a grand-mother, Rose’s grief for her own lost child had been pushed aside. Now it was back, as fresh and painful as if it had happened only two days ago instead of two years. Was it better, she wondered now, to have held a child in one’s arms and then lost it, or never to have held it at all?

There were no answers, only the familiar aching emptiness.

“I’ve been thinking,” Bess announced, a glint in her eye that Rose was beginning to recognize. “Now, if you were to—”

Suddenly wary for no real reason unless exhaustion and discouragement could be blamed, Rose stood and began collecting her purse and gloves. “Bess, could it possibly wait? If you don’t mind, I believe I’d better be getting back to my room. I’ve an early interview tomorrow.”

“Not the housekeeping job?”

“Well, yes. It doesn’t pay very well, but it’s either that or the attic. I understand the housekeeping position includes a lovely set of rooms off the kitchen.”

“Bed in the pantry, no doubt, complete with lecherous butler lurking outside the door.”

There were times, Rose told herself, when Bess’s creative mind went too far. “I’m sure no respectable butler would dream of—”

“Butlers are male, aren’t they? Like I said, I’ve been thinking of a possible solution. Let me talk it over with Horace and see if it’s legal.”

See if it’s legal?

Rose closed her eyes. She didn’t even want to know, she really didn’t. It was late and she was tired, and she still had her best black twill to sponge and press before she went to bed.

That evening, Bess presented her case to her long-time friend over brandy and cigars. If they’d been half a century younger, she might have thought of him as a beau, but they weren’t, and so she didn’t.

“Here’s the problem as I see it. It started with the boy’s mother, a flighty female if ever there was one. The Powers men have all been steady as a rock, but not a one of them ever had a lick of sense when it came to women. First the useless bit of fluff my brother married, then that hussy who trolled her bait in front of Matt, set her hook, landed her fish and then left him there high and dry.”

“I take it you mean the young lady who talked your nephew into selling his ship. Shady dealings, if you ask me, her and her father alike. I believe questions are being raised in certain circles about the source of their funding.”

“That’s as may be, but right now what that boy needs is a decent, respectable woman with some grit in her craw. Strikes me, Gussy’s girl just might fill the bill. Don’t have much to say for herself, but she took good care of Gussy. I’ll lay you odds she’d do the same thing for Matt’s baby. Might not look like much, but buried underneath those meek manners of hers, the girl’s got grit.”

“Oh, she’s not bad to look at, just not in the usual style. Five men, you say?” Horace savored his cigar, his gaze resting gently on the small, plump woman seated across from him.

“Four, now that Billy’s gone.”

“Still, an older woman might be better.”

“Don’t look at me, Horace Bagby, baby-tending is a full time job. I’ve got commitments. Papa’s crew spent half their time keeping me from climbing the ratlines, and me barely out of the cradle. Many’s the time he had to send a man overboard to fish me out. I liked to walk the pinrail, to prove I could do it. Tripped on a pin or two and went over the side more times than I can remember.”