Regina Scott - The Bride Ship

The trip back to the hotel had been mercifully short, for all Clay’s emotions ran higher than the horses on the hired coach. He’d been throwing his things back in his satchel when the bellman came to tell him that a Mrs. Howard was waiting for him downstairs.

Immediately his mind had gone to Allegra, and he pushed past the fellow in his rush to see her. But the woman who perched on one of the scarlet upholstered chairs in the hotel’s ornate parlor was gray haired, her bearing cool, composed in her silver-colored gown trimmed in black lace and jet beads.

“Mother,” he said, going to her.

Gillian Howard’s thin lips trembled, but she did not offer her pale cheek for his kiss. “Clayton. I thought that was you when I looked out the window. You came home.”

Was he mad to hear hope behind the words? “I wanted to talk to you,” he confirmed, sinking onto a chair beside her. “I wanted to see Allegra.”

Before he could continue, she reached out and clutched his arm, fingers tight against his sleeve.

“That’s why I’m here, son,” she said, calm voice belying her hold on him. “Allegra is missing, and you’re the only one who can bring her home.”

She’d gone on to explain her daughter-in-law’s fascination with Asa Mercer’s story about struggling Seattle and the chance of making it a paradise on earth.

“It’s the same ridiculous pie-in-the-sky tale that sent you west,” she’d lamented, dabbing at her eyes with a lace-edged handkerchief. “You came back...you must know the truth. Tell her this hope in Seattle is a lie. Convince her to come home. Please, Clay, she’s all I have left!”

Her pain had touched him just as Allegra’s had today, yet some part of him hurt that his mother could not consider him part of the family. “I thought Gerald was taking care of everything for you,” he couldn’t help commenting.

She’d lowered her gaze even as she tucked her handkerchief into her reticule. “Gerald has been a great blessing to me. He is very good about seeing that the family carries on. I cannot ask this of him.”

But she could ask it of him. Gerald was a gentleman; Clay had thrown off the label. His cousin might not be willing to do all it would take to retrieve Allegra. His mother obviously believed Clay had fewer scruples. Though Clay liked to think he was still an honorable man for all he’d chosen a different path than the one his parents had picked out for him, he could not argue that he was his mother’s best tool for the job. He was more than ready to do Allegra a service, particularly if it meant saving her from the mistakes he’d made.

Now he snorted. And wasn’t he doing a jolly good job of saving Allegra? Instead of sending her home to Boston, he’d aided and abetted her in running away! Shaking his head at his own behavior, he entered the lower salon. Those passengers who had not yet been assigned staterooms were clustered around a hatch at the end of the room. Allegra and her daughter were looking on, but he couldn’t tell whether they were curious or concerned. He pushed himself to the center, where a pretty, petite blonde was struggling with a brass latch embedded in the floor.

On seeing him, she put on a winsome smile. “Please, sir,” she said sweetly, “would you mind helping me with this?”

The others made room for him, their gazes expectant, as if he were about to open a fabled treasure cave. Clay was more suspicious.

“What is this?” he asked, positioning himself over the hatch.

“Access to the coal bin, sir,” she replied. “I was told by Mr. Mercer to open it immediately when we set sail out of quarantine. He said it was very important.”

Clay couldn’t understand why anyone needed to see into a dark, dusty coal bin, but he had to admit to curiosity as to why Mercer had thought it so important. He bent to haul on the ring, and the hatch opened. People leaned around his arm, peering into the gloom. He could see Allegra and her redheaded friend exchanging frowning glances.

“It’s safe now, Mr. Mercer,” the blonde called into the void. “You can come out.”

Allegra stiffened in obvious shock, while others put their hands to their mouths. Coal-dusted fingers waved above the edge of the hole, and Clay bent to tug Asa Mercer to the floor of the salon. He was a slender man, not yet thirty, with a solemn face and a brisk manner. Now his curly reddish hair and whiskers were speckled with black, his long face striped with grime. He tugged down on his paisley waistcoat and beamed at those around him.

“The coal is well stored and sufficient for the first leg of our journey,” he reported as if he’d merely climbed into the bin to inspect it. “It appears we are under way. I look forward to a fine voyage, a very fine voyage.”

Allegra stared at him a moment, then turned her gaze to Clay’s. Very likely, they’d reached the same conclusion.

She had no one to rely on but him, and she had every right to be concerned.

* * *

It was not the most auspicious start to their journey. While many of the women welcomed their benefactor, Allie couldn’t shake the image of Mr. Mercer rising from the coal bin. This was the man in whom they’d placed their trust?

Catherine evidently had similar concerns. “I’m greatly disappointed in him,” she confessed as they all went to find their staterooms. “He paid his own passage, but it seems as if he promised space to anyone who asked. When it became clear not everyone would be allowed aboard, he hid to avoid telling them the truth.”

Allie glanced into one of the rooms they were passing. “I don’t understand it. There can’t be more than one hundred passengers aboard, and there seems to be room for at least three times that. What happened to the other people?”

“Perhaps they saw those wretched reports in the papers,” Catherine mused. “The ones claiming we’d be eaten by bears or enslaved by savages.”

Perhaps. The editorial articles had nearly made Allie change her mind. But Mr. Mercer had seemed so earnest, his vision of a settled Seattle so clear. She knew she wasn’t the only woman who’d put her faith in him. Was he actually a coward? And what about the money she’d paid him? Was he a terrible cheat and liar as well? Or was it the mismanagement of the steamship company that was to blame? She’d read stories in the Boston papers about how ruthless Ben Holladay could be in business dealings.

“I don’t care how many rooms he has on this great tub,” Maddie proclaimed, “so long as we each get a bed.”

Catherine smiled at her. “I’m sure we’ll each have a bed, even though we’ll likely have to share a room. I’m just glad you and I could produce our tickets, Madeleine.”

Maddie stopped at a door at the end of the lower salon and grinned at Allie. “And would you lookie here now! It seems you and me will be together in this room, Allegra, my dear.”

“You and I,” Catherine corrected her, pausing to peer inside the room, then at the number on the door. “Number thirty-five. As I am number fifteen, I must be on the upper deck. Shall we meet for supper?”

Maddie wiggled her fingers at Catherine. “La-di-da—do you think those of us on the lower floor will be welcomed above our stations?”

Catherine tsked. “I cannot imagine anywhere you would not be welcomed, Madeleine dear.” She bent to kiss Gillian on the cheek, then straightened. “I shall see you all shortly.”

Maddie sighed as Catherine strolled away. “Not an unkind bone in her body, so there isn’t. But she’s mad to think I’ll be welcomed at her table.”

As they’d waited for the ship to sail, Allie had learned a great deal about both her friends. Catherine came from a small town outside Boston, the daughter of a prominent physician. Maddie had been quieter about her background, but Allie knew she had journeyed from Ireland as a child with her father, only to meet prejudice on America’s shores. She seemed to expect it now wherever she went.