A Convenient Christmas Wedding

Chapter Four (#u8b659ff1-2d32-56d4-8e35-e5d4719ca913)

Nora knew she was changing their bargain. She had made it very clear to Simon that marrying her would not affect his day-to-day life. But what else was she to do but beg to come to Wallin Landing with him? Charles and Meredith were even more determined to control her than she’d feared. Her only hope was putting distance between her and them, just as she’d done when she’d left with Asa Mercer.

But first she had to convince Simon that moving out to Wallin Landing was a good idea.

As Charles and Meredith protested her decision, she focused on her husband. Simon’s eyes narrowed until she could barely see their color. His lean body was tensed, as if she had dealt him a blow and he expected another. She didn’t know the words to say, the facts to offer that would ease his mind.

She simply laid her hand on his arm and said, “Please, Simon?”

After how hard she’d worked to convince him to agree to their Christmas wedding in the first place, she hardly expected instant capitulation now. But she saw the moment he reached his decision, for the green deepened as his eyes widened, and he snapped a nod.

“Fetch your things,” he said. “We’ll leave now.”

She didn’t know whether to hug him in thanks or run to do as he bid. Of course, besides her cloak, she really didn’t have any of her things at the house.

“See here,” Charles started, his chest puffing out.

Simon ignored him, pushing past him for the door.

“Nora, you cannot do this,” Meredith cried. “You need us.”

Had her sister-in-law claimed to have needed her, guilt might have halted Nora. As it was, she fled after Simon.

“You will regret this!” Charles flung after them from the doorway as they descended the front steps. “He will not treat you as we do.”

“That’s the truth,” Simon muttered.

Nora felt it too. Whatever lay ahead for her and Simon, he would not make her feel tiny and useless. She would merely have to be careful what more she asked of him. She wanted to keep their sides of the bargain equal.

As Charles continued his threats from the safety of the porch, Simon led Nora to the wagon waiting on the street and went to untie the horses. Nora was gathering her skirts to climb up onto the bench when she felt hands on her waist. Simon lifted her effortlessly onto the seat. It was a kind gesture, convenient even. But somehow it made breathing difficult.

“I take it your clothes and other belongings are at the boardinghouse,” he said after he’d climbed up and called to the horses. They were a pair of dark-coated beauties, and she was fairly sure they belonged to his brother James.

“Yes,” she said. “If you wouldn’t mind stopping there on the way out of town, I would appreciate it. I’ll just pack a few things, and we can send for the rest later.”

“You really want to move out to Wallin Landing?” he asked, directing the horses down the hill for the boardinghouse. She could hear the wariness in his voice. “I thought you preferred to stay in Seattle because of your sewing.”

She made a face. “Being so far out of town will make that more difficult.”

“So stay at the boardinghouse,” Simon said. “Refuse to have anything more to do with your brother.”

Nora shuddered. “They’ll find me. They did when I left for Seattle.”

He cast her a glance as he eased the horses down the hill. “You stood up to me. Stand up to them.”

A sigh worked its way out of her. “You don’t understand. I stood up to you, Simon, because we have a bargain. We each contributed something to it. That’s not the case with my brother. I owe him for taking me in, for feeding and clothing me. And he knows it.”

“I would think it a brother’s duty to care for his younger siblings,” Simon said, his voice sharp with condemnation for anyone who failed to live up to such an obligation. “That’s what Drew did when our father died.”

Nora nodded. “That’s what you’re doing now by working those one hundred and sixty acres. And I’m sure your family will be grateful for your efforts. I’m grateful to Charles, but oh, how I tire of having to repay him. Have I no right or expectation of a life of my own?”

She wasn’t sure how Simon would answer. She wasn’t even sure how she would answer. She had been raised to be a dutiful daughter. Anything less felt selfish, lazy. Yet if she had stayed with Charles and Meredith one more day, her heart would have shriveled away inside her.

“Of course you have that right,” Simon said as he turned onto Second Avenue and headed for the boardinghouse. “You have won your freedom. What do you intend to do with it?”

And there lay the more important question at the moment. She could not stay in Seattle proper, yet she hated to leave the area entirely and lose the friends she’d made on the journey and the customers she’d acquired in the last six months of working. The most logical thing to do was to go out to Wallin Landing.

“I’ll have to let Mr. Kellogg and his brother know where I’ll be staying,” she said. “I work out of their store. Perhaps people could leave commissions with them, and I could come into town when you pick up the mail to see what’s needed.”

“You seem to have thought this out,” he said, slowing the horses as they approached the boardinghouse.

And she would have thought he would approve of that planning. Instead, he sounded rather miffed.

“I didn’t realize Charles and Meredith would be this difficult,” she assured him. “That is, I knew they’d be difficult. They always are. But I never thought even marriage would fail to deter them.”

He shook his head as he reined in. “I never met anyone as oblivious to logic as your brother.”

She ought to take umbrage on her brother’s behalf. Charles was a talented accountant, after all, someone to whom business leaders turned for advice. Certainly he had managed their father’s estate well, with the help of the bankers. The elderly Mr. Pomantier from the bank had come out on a regular basis to dine with them. He’d always spoken kindly to Nora but spent the bulk of his time in consultation with Charles.

Yet despite all Charles’s qualities, Simon was right.

“Charles is ever focused on his own needs,” she told him. “Meredith is worse. I simply couldn’t bear to slave for them one more moment.”

“You should be no one’s slave,” Simon said. “You are an independent woman of intellect and skill. You should be treated as such.”

Once again, the fact that he was agreeing with her left her speechless. Back in Lowell, people had been more likely to congratulate her on having such a kind, generous brother, someone willing to take her in when their parents had passed on. After all, not every family could accommodate a spinster without prospects.

Simon climbed down from the wagon, and Nora scrambled to the ground before he could come around to help her. She felt as if she were still tingling from his touch when he’d helped her up at the house. She didn’t need any distractions before she faced the boardinghouse owner. A dark-haired older woman with a narrow face and narrower opinions, Mrs. Elliott was another person who seemed to think it her duty to tell Nora what to do.

“I’ll just be a minute,” Nora promised as Simon stopped in front of the horses. Then she hurried inside.

The boardinghouse with its pink-papered walls and flowered carpet was much quieter these days. The piano in the dining room was silent, and no one loitered in the perfumed parlor. Most of the women who had journeyed with Asa Mercer had either found jobs elsewhere in Washington Territory or married and moved out. Only a few still lived in the boardinghouse, and they had either work or serious suitors that kept them in Seattle. Mrs. Elliott had been advertising for more tenants to no avail. King County still boasted few unmarried women.

The boardinghouse owner caught sight of Nora as she came in the door and hurried to meet her.

“I understand your family has arrived from the East,” she said, blocking Nora’s route to the stairs. “I certainly hope you are not planning to leave us to live with them.”

A wave of thankfulness swept over her that Simon had agreed to her request. “No,” Nora said, and she darted around the woman and started up the carpeted stairs.

Mrs. Elliott followed her, her voice almost a purr. “I’m very pleased to hear that, Miss Underhill. A young lady such as yourself can never be too careful in the company she keeps. Why, I have heard of families who foisted the worst of gentlemen upon a spinster, simply to ensure she married.”

That had not been her problem. Charles and Meredith seemed to prefer that she never speak to anyone but them. She nearly giggled remembering the look on Meredith’s face when Nora had announced she’d married Simon.

“I can promise you my family will not be marrying me off, but I fear I will be leaving you,” Nora told the woman as she opened the door to her room. Once, she’d shared the space with another Mercer Belle, but the second bed had stood empty for weeks.

Mrs. Elliott tsked as Nora went to kneel beside her iron bedstead and reach underneath. No time to fill her trunk. It would have to be the carpetbag she’d used in Olympia.

“There is no other residence for young ladies in the city,” the boardinghouse owner reminded her, crossing her thin arms over her flat chest.