The Paper Marriage

Seeing the determined glint in Rose’s eye, Bess spoke up quickly. “As it happens, however, I just had another excellent idea.”

Rose wasn’t sure she could survive another of Bess’s excellent ideas, but at the moment she was too weak to do more than sit and listen.

Chapter Three

The last piece of trim had been nailed onto Annie’s room just that morning. As Peg had been determined to build it for her, Matt had directed him to add it onto the bedroom at the far end of the hall, privately designating that as Mrs. Powers’s room. He had no intention of sharing his own quarters with the woman.

Bess and her companion could work it out between them. Bess had her own favorite room with a corner exposure. He seriously doubted she’d do him much good with Annie. As for her friend, if the woman would fill in until his wife showed up, he’d be forever grateful.

Wife. Some helpmeet she’d turned out to be, Matt told himself bitterly. He’d had her for nearly two weeks now, and had yet to set eyes on the woman, much less benefit from the alliance. According to Bess, she’d been called out of town just after the wedding to look after a sick relative.

And now, instead of one, he had two women to contend with. Bess hadn’t come right out and said so, but if he knew his aunt, it would be the Widow Littlefield who got stuck with the job of playing nursemaid. Fancying herself a famous writer, Bess could twist words until plain old black and white might mean any of a hundred shades of gray.

“Mailboat’s headed into the channel, Cap’n, want me to hitch up the cart?” Crank had been baking all morning. One thing about it, with company on board, they’d all eat better. Matt, for one, had had his fill of beans, fish and cornbread.

“Tell Luther to see to it.” The crew had long since stood down from shipboard protocol, but they still looked to the captain for direction.

Matt returned to the reports he’d been studying all morning. The Swan was losing money with every haul. The captain signed on by the consortium that had bought her was obviously an incompetent fool with no more business sense than a slab of bacon. According to Matt’s source at the Port Authority’s office, the Swan had lost cargo from improper stowage, lost money by being consistently late delivering consignments, and suffered considerable damage in a hard blow off Barbados. Damage that hadn’t been properly repaired before the turnaround.

Matt swore. The first ship he’d ever owned, the Black Swan had been his pride and joy. At the rate she was going, by the time he reclaimed her she’d be fit for little more than hauling coal. He’d be damned before he’d do that to her. He’d give her a decent sea burial himself before he would lower her pride any further.

Briefly, he had even considered buying one of the small, fast schooners and taking up the coastal trade. It would ease the tedium of waiting to get his own ship back. With any luck, on a regular run from Maine to Savannah, he’d not have to see his wife—when and if she ever showed up—more than once or twice a year.

But the proceeds of selling the Swan were earmarked for buying her back. As long as he kept his focus on that end, he could wait as long as it took. For better or worse, the Black Swan was the one true love of his life, and by damn, he was going to have her back.

“And then you, Mrs. Powers, wherever you are,” he said softly, “can have Powers Point with my blessing.”

Rose lay on her side on a filthy pad on a bunk that had obviously been built for someone half her length, her eyes tightly shut as she fought down a fresh surge of nausea. Bess had given her gingerroot to chew on, which had helped somewhat, but by the time the miserable little mailboat had wallowed her way in and out of every tiny village with so much as a two-plank wharf, she was praying only to die quickly.

As for Matthew Powers and his baby, she fervently wished she had never heard of either of them.

Bess popped her head through the doorway. “Time to spruce up,” she announced cheerfully. A seasoned traveler, she had spent the entire journey in the pilothouse, swapping tales and taking notes.

“Just leave me to die in peace,” Rose begged without opening her eyes. She was as spruced as she would ever be. They could dig a hole and bury her at the next stop for all she cared, just so long as she never had to set foot on a boat again.

“Folks don’t die of the seasickness.”

“They only wish they could,” Rose said. Bracing herself against the constant rolling motion, she waited a moment to see if she would need the bucket again, then struggled to her feet. “You might as well know, I’m never going back. Not unless someone discovers a land route to the Outer Banks.”

“Here, chew on this, it’ll make you feel fresher.” Bess handed her a sprig of wilted mint. “Now, pinch your cheeks and do something with your hair, you don’t want your bridegroom to see you looking like the scarecrow’s ghost.”

“He’s not my bridegroom until I say he’s my bridegroom,” Rose grumbled.

“That can wait. You’re here to get the lay of the land before you commit to anything more permanent, remember?”

How could she forget? She didn’t know which was more preposterous, marrying a man she’d never met or pretending now that she hadn’t. For years she had railed at not being allowed to make her own choices, yet every time she’d been given a choice, she’d made the wrong one. This time she intended to be patient, to look at the situation from all angles and think carefully before reaching a decision.

Using a sliver of her favorite lilac soap, she washed her face, then smoothed her damp palms over her hair. She had taken down her braids because it hurt to sleep on them. Now her hair resembled old, unraveled rope. Her mother had once lamented the fact that everything about her was the color of dead grass, from her hair that was too dark to be called blond and too fair to be called brown, to her eyes that were the color of unpolished brass, to her sallow complexion.

Thank goodness, she rationalized, he won’t know who I am. He couldn’t possibly care what his aunt’s secretary-companion looked like.

Anonymity was small comfort, however, as she stood on the deck a short while later, still rocking and reeling. Warily, she gazed out over the small crowd, searching for someone who looked like Bess—someone short, stout and redheaded, with a stubborn jaw and snapping dark eyes. No matter how unattractive the poor man appeared at first glance, she vowed to withhold judgment. To be thoughtful and deliberate before making a final choice. She could only hope he would be as forbearing.

Bess bustled about cheerfully, gathering up her hand luggage, which consisted mostly of books, notebooks and writing material, while the young mate toted their trunks ashore. If it hadn’t required too much energy, Rose could have hated anyone who looked so chipper after enduring an endless journey through the bowels of hell.

“There’s Luther come to drive us to the Point.” Waving her furled umbrella, Bess marched surefootedly down the narrow bouncing plank. Rose followed cautiously, trying not to look down at the expanse of dark, choppy water between wharf and deck.

The wind caught her hat, which had been anchored, with the only hatpin she could find, onto hastily reconstructed braids. She slapped one hand on top of her head and with the other held down her blowing skirts.

Luther, a handsome young man whose eyes belied his obvious youth, offered her a shy smile as he handed her up onto a crude bench seat. “Welcome, Miss Bess, ma’am.”

“Poor Billy. I know you miss him.” And without pausing for breath, Bess went on to say, “I thought Matt was going to get a proper cart horse. Don’t he know the difference between a mare and a mule?”

“Yes’m, this here’s Angel. She swum ashore off’n a barge that went aground back in January. Nobody else wanted her, so we kept her. Even for a mule, she’s not real smart, but she took to the harness right off.” He turned to grin at Rose. “We got some nice horses if you like to ride.”

Rose had never ridden a horse in her life. She’d driven her own gig and ridden behind any number of coachmen, but a mule cart was a new experience.

I can’t believe I agreed to this mad scheme, she thought again as they set out along a deeply rutted sand trail for a place called Powers Point. She should’ve applied for a position at the asylum, it was obviously where she belonged.

Luther asked Bess if there was any news of the captain’s bride, and Rose felt her face grow warm.

“She’ll turn up directly,” Bess replied calmly. “How’s Peg mending?” Briefly, she explained to Rose that the ship’s carpenter had broken several bones when the jolly boat had fallen on him in the storm of ’91, and still suffered for it whenever the weather changed.

“Same’s always. Don’t slow him down much. He built on a new room for Annie, so you and Miz Littlefield can take your pick of the rest.”

Mrs. Littlefield. Merciful heavens, that’s me. Not Augusta Rose, not Mrs. Robert Magruder, I’m Rose Littlefield again.

The young driver made a noise with tongue and teeth and slapped the reins across the mule’s thick hide. “Git on home, Angel, we’ve not got all day. I reckon maybe Miz Powers’ll have some say in who sleeps where, but so far, she’s not showed up.”

“Oh, we’ll leave as soon as Matt’s bride shows up. One woman in a household is aplenty, I always say,” Bess chirped.

Do you? I’ve never heard you say that, but then you say so many things….

Rose knew she was being uncharitable and promised to think kinder thoughts if she ever recovered from this awful journey. Keeping her eyes firmly fixed on her own knotted fingers, she waited cautiously to see if mule travel would affect her the same way boat travel did.

Evidently not. Her head was still reeling, but her stomach no longer threatened rebellion.

Gradually she began to take more notice of her surroundings, reminding herself that she was stuck here until she made up her mind whether or not to accept her paper marriage. Or until she could bring herself to board that awful little mailboat for the journey back home.

Wherever home was.

Her sole impression, once they left the wooded village, was emptiness. Sand, a strip of marsh grass to the left, a single rutted cart track, and a few wind-twisted, vine-covered shrubs.

And water. With the Atlantic on one side, Pamlico Sound on the other and, according to Bess, an inlet on either end, she was completely surrounded, held captive, by water.

She was familiar with Cape Cod and Cape May, having vacationed at both places with her parents. Robert had wanted to build on Cape Cod, but the best he’d been able to do was a small cottage on Smith Creek, on the outskirts of Norfolk.

This barren place had nothing whatsoever in common with either of those fashionable watering holes except for the water. Even the village consisted only of a few unpainted houses scattered haphazardly under enormous, moss-hung live oak trees. No streets, no shops, only the weathered cottages, a few tomb-stones, a few boats at various stages of repair, and nets strung between sprawling live oaks like giant spiderwebs.