Regina Scott - Instant Frontier Family

“You’re a little late on my shirts, Miss Maddie.”

Maddie kept her smile polite as she turned to the older logger who stood beside her, his bushy brows furrowed in frustration. If she’d learned anything since starting work at the age of nine, sixteen years ago now, it was to never disappoint a customer. There was always another girl ready to scrub her fingers raw for a penny a shirt. And Maddie was well aware there was another bakery in Seattle.

“My deepest apologies, Mr. Porter,” she said, batting her lashes for good measure. “I’ll deliver them to the boardinghouse me own self tomorrow at the latest. I can’t be keeping my best customer waiting, now, can I?”

At her praise, Mr. Porter turned as red as the flannel sticking out of the neck of his plaid cotton shirt. Stammering his thanks, he ducked his grizzled head and turned away.

Maddie smiled after him. Gentlemen had reacted with endearing embarrassment to her teasing since she was sixteen and her scrawny body had blossomed with curves. She’d heard enough compliments over the years to know the fellows liked the rich color of her fiery hair, the twinkle they claimed resided in her dark brown eyes. Her flirting made all the gentlemen, young and old and in between, smile for a time. There was nothing wrong with that.

But this laundry delivery would be her last. The woman who was coming with Ciara and Aiden could take over the remaining laundry chores, to Maddie’s everlasting relief. Whether that lady flirted with her customers was her own choice. Maddie would be focused on making the bakery a success so she could repay entrepreneur Clay Howard every penny he’d invested in her, with interest.

Her nerves tingled again as she turned her gaze once more to the ship. The vessel was a two-masted steamer much like the one that had brought her most of the way here. That ship had been filled with women like her, seeking a better life. This one was bringing her own heart’s desire.

A longboat had been lowered over the side, filled with passengers. Were Ciara and Aiden among them? How much longer would she have to wait?

“Nice day for a stroll, eh, Miss Maddie?”

Maddie nodded to the gentleman who had been so bold as to step up to her this time. He was one of the clerks in the Kellogg brothers’ mercantile, where she’d bought her supplies for the bakery. “A fine day to be sure, Mr. Weinclef.”

He squeezed the rim of the hat in his hands so hard she thought he might strangle the blocked wool. “I’d be happy to stroll with you.”

“To the moon and back!” one of his friends called from the edge of the pier, and others laughed.

Mr. Weinclef turned a sickly white.

“Sure-n but you’re a sweet gentleman to be offering,” Maddie said with a smile designed to turn his friends green with envy. “Perhaps you’d be so kind as to sit with me in services this Sunday.”

“I...I’d be delighted, ma’am,” he said. He seized her hand and pumped it up and down so hard her hat tipped to one side on her braid. “Thank you, thank you so much!”

Maddie managed to retrieve her hand before he scurried off. Righting her hat, she turned once more to the waiting ship. She’d never lacked for gentlemanly company in New York, though she’d been careful to keep from making a commitment. Here in Seattle it was far worse, with needy bachelors falling over themselves to make her acquaintance, seek a moment of her time.

She knew some of the ladies who had come west with her were already betrothed. She’d attended several weddings, been a bridesmaid at two. But that wasn’t how she planned to lead her life. She’d seen how hard work and privation could make any marriage a struggle. Look at Da and his second wife. Look at her life with her father and her late mother in Ireland, for that matter. It seemed love between a husband and wife could not last in adversity. Why pretend otherwise? Why set herself up for more heartache?

She put up her hand to shade her eyes from the sun, already low over the Olympic Mountains across Puget Sound. Every yard the longboat bobbed closer, every wave it crested, her body tensed the more.

Oh, please, Lord. I know You have better things to be doing than to deal with the likes of me, but perhaps You could spare a few moments. I tend to speak my mind, and I’m not long on patience. Would You help me make us a family again? Ciara and Aiden deserve that.

The burly-armed sailors were putting their backs into their work as they rowed the boat toward the pier. Now she could make out a girl and a boy nestled among the other passengers, and she thought her heart might push its way out of her fitted bodice, it swelled so much. Oh, how they’d grown! Ciara’s hair, a proper brown, was past her shoulders in a thick braid, and wee Aiden’s dark head was nearly to the shoulder of his sister’s blue coat. The seven-year-old was glancing about with wide eyes as if he’d never seen such a place.

Of course, he hadn’t. How strange Seattle must look to him after being raised in Five Points, the Irish neighborhood in New York. When she’d first walked past the whitewashed houses dwarfed by towering firs all around, she’d thought she’d arrived in another world entirely.

She felt a little foreign now. Would her brother and sister talk to her as they used to, sharing their fears, their triumphs? Would they still say their prayers together at night? She couldn’t take her gaze off them as the boat bumped the pier and men surged forward to catch the lines, make the boat fast and help the passengers ashore.

Calm now. Show them what a fine lady you’ve become. Show them that allowing you to go ahead was worth them staying behind.

Her smile felt shaky as she stepped forward.

A man leaped from the boat to land on the pier. She had only a moment to register height and broad shoulders before he turned to lift first Ciara and then Aiden to the planks as if neither weighed more than a feather. His heavy dark blue coat and rough brown trousers made him look like a sailor, but instead of helping the rest of the passengers to alight as the other sailors were doing, he took Ciara’s hand in one of his and Aiden’s in the other and turned toward Maddie. The look in his eyes was more challenge than welcome. It was almost as if he was Ciara and Aiden’s father, determined to lead them into a new life and protect them from any harm.

“Maddie!” Aiden broke from the man and ran toward her. All her resolve to be a grand lady evaporated like fog burning off in the sun. She bent and caught him as he hurtled into her, hugging him close.

“Oh, me darling boy! I’ve missed you so!”

“Me too.” He pulled back and scrunched up his round face. “It took forever to get here.”

“It was two months, twenty-six days and four hours,” Ciara corrected him as she approached at a more ladylike pace. “But that was a very long time.” She glanced up at Maddie with the deep brown eyes they’d inherited from their father. “How nice to see you again, sister.”

Though Maddie had longed to hear that word from Ciara, she couldn’t help thinking that the girl was even more determined to play the lady than Maddie was. She wasn’t sure whether to tease Ciara or respond in kind. Ciara didn’t allow her time to choose. She tugged on the sailor’s hand, forcing him forward until he nearly bumped into Maddie.

“This is Mr. Michael Haggerty,” Ciara announced, gazing up at him with so much pride, Maddie might have thought her sister had sewn him together from whole cloth. “He’s come to marry you.”

Maddie’s head jerked up, and she stepped back to eye the fellow. With hair black as a crow’s wing swept back from his square-jawed face and eyes bluer than the Sound on a sunny day, he wasn’t a bad-looking sort. There was character in those solid cheekbones, determination in the firm lips. He even nodded respectfully as his gaze met hers. But no amount of good manners and handsome looks was going to win him a place in her affections.