Mary McBride - Storming Paradise

In rough wool trousers and muddy brogans, and with her cropped blond hair, nine-year-old Amanda Rowan looked exactly like a boy. And it exasperated Shula Kingsland no end.

“Why can’t you leave him…I mean…her with the Sisters of Charity where she belongs?” Shula hissed at her sister now.

Libby’s gloved hand cupped the child’s ear as she brought her close against her hip. “Because they’re letting a certain someone out of jail today, Shula. And I’ll be damned if he’s going to hurt this little girl any more than he already has.”

“Oh.” Shula’s mouth closed with a smart little snap and her ringed fingers fluttered at the frilled throat of her gown as she dropped an almost sympathetic look on the child half-hidden in Libby’s skirt.

Gently Libby urged the little girl across the threshold and into the vestibule. “Go on up to the spare room, Andy. I’ll be up soon to get you settled.”

When the child nodded, blond hair straggled across her forehead. The sight provoked an instant cluck from Shula, whose hand whisked out to push the stray locks back.

She sighed wistfully. “Maybe while you’re here, Miss Amanda Rowan,” she said, emphasizing the feminine first name, “I’ll take my curling iron to that haystack on your pretty head.”

The child shot her a wounded look before turning to flee up the stairs. Shula winced at the sound of the big brogans thudding on each step.

“And maybe I’ll take that same curling iron to your tongue, Shulamith Kingsland.” Libby pulled the front door closed and turned the bolt. “There. Her father will have to crack through that to lay a finger on her now.”

As her older sister strode down the hallway toward the kitchen, Shula regarded the locked door. Lord, how she hated being cooped up in this dismal little house. First with her tight-lipped, stiff-boned sister, and now with a little girl who was trying with all her might to be a boy. Still, she thought, it didn’t hurt one bit that Libby was now as reluctant as she was to open the front door.

Libby! She was in the kitchen where Shula had tossed the unopened mail when she’d heard the carriage pulling up. The mail these days consisted mainly of overdue bills and disgusting letters from rude and impatient creditors, none of which she was anxious for her skinflint of a sister to see. Shula grabbed up her ruffled gown and rushed down the hall in Libby’s wake.

As she pulled the pins from her hat, Libby scowled at the stack of dishes in the dry sink, noting that it had grown considerably since she’d rushed out of the house this morning. Princess Shula, no doubt, had used a clean plate every time she passed through the kitchen. Of course, it had never occurred to her to do up any of them.

Still, fair was fair, and the dishes were Libby’s domain. They had agreed to that when they decided to use part of their small inheritance from their mother to buy and share a house. Shula, because she cared about money, would see to the bills and their investments. Libby would see to everything else, which meant she was cook, laundress, parlor maid and—judging now from the tower of dirty dishes in the dry sink—scullery maid.

Right this minute it felt closer to slavery, Libby thought as she tossed. her hat onto the table before sagging into a chair. She tugged off her gloves and tossed those, too, onto the stack of mail that Shula hadn’t bothered to open. Probably too busy taking clean plates from the cupboard and putting dirty ones in the sink.

Well, she didn’t have time to worry about Shula’s laziness right now. And she wasn’t going to let her sister’s comment about frustrated maternal instincts bother her, either. Amanda Rowan needed her help. Desperately. It was as simple as that.

A constable had brought the battered child to the Sisters of Charity on Christmas Eve, the same night they had locked John Rowan up for “doing his daughter wrong,” as the grim-faced policeman had explained. The extent of that abuse was obvious, even to the sheltered Sisters of Charity who ran the or-phanage, when they saw the bruises on young Amanda’s body. And when the child took a pair of scissors and chopped off her long blond curls; when she refused to wear anything but trousers and ungainly shirts and big, clumsy shoes; when she refused to respond to any name but Andy, it became obvious that, since being a little girl had only brought her pain, Amanda Rowan was determined to change that sad fact of her brutal, young life.

Libby, who spent time with the children at the or-phanage, had been drawn to the battered child immediately. Out of compassion, certainly. Out of her need to help and comfort the bruised waif. And, perhaps as Shula continually accused, out of some frustrated maternal inclinations. She was a woman, after all. At the age of twenty-five it was only natural that she would feel such stirrings. But since she had no intention of marrying—ever—those instincts would remain just that. Vague stirrings.

As always, the thought of marriage made Libby’s mouth crimp slightly. Her smooth brow furrowed. The very idea of marrying caused her stomach to tighten and twist into a hard little knot. She was unlike her sister, who reveled in the notion and seemed to consider marriage her very reason for being. Well, a profitable marriage, anyway.

Shula had already tried it once—unsuccessfully—by running off with the Van de Voort boy when she was eighteen. They had spent, according to the bride anyway, a grand and glorious time in Rome until young Charles Van de Voort had succumbed to a fever, leaving Shula a widow before her nineteenth birthday. She couldn’t even claim widowhood, however, because the groom’s family had had the marriage annulled, along with seeing that their former daughter-in-law was persona non grata in the finer drawing rooms in Saint Louis.

As a result, Shula was having a devil of a time trying to find a wealthy beau. And she spent the major portion of that time carping about her trials and tribulations, sighing and whining and generally making Libby’s existence miserable.

“And here you sit, Libby Kingsland,” she admonished herself now in a disgusted tone of voice, “stewing about your sister who’s twenty years old and perfectly capable of taking care of herself when you ought to be worrying about a nine-year-old who can’t and whose monster of a father means to snatch her back.”

Shula wafted into the kitchen, plopping herself down in a chair directly across the table. “And if you don’t stop talking to yourself, Libby Kingsland, people are going to start looking at you peculiarly and thinking you’re an addle-brained old maid.” The redhead gave her sister a satisfied little smile as she fussed with the ruffles at her neckline.

Libby’s nose twitched. “What’s that smell?”

“My new perfume.” Shula gave her lush auburn curls a tender pat. “It’s from Paris, France. Isn’t it heavenly?”

Heavenly? It struck Libby more as something dredged up from the gutter—wet sycamore leaves, perhaps—but she knew from long experience that an honest reply would send Shula into a royal snit for the rest of the day.

“It’s fine,” she offered. Then, seeing Shula’s mouth begin to curl down at the corners, Libby added, “It smells good.”

While Shula fashioned a smile and lifted a wrist to sniff the foul fragrance, Libby once again berated herself for even considering her baby sister’s outsized, overwrought sensibilities when she had much more pressing problems. One anyway. The brutal John Rowan was getting out of jail. Today.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do about Andy,” she murmured.

Shula made a noncommittal little noise, extending an arm casually across the table, then reaching beneath one of Libby’s gloves to extract the pile of mail. There were three envelopes, two of which she immediately recognized—another notice from the bank and another “polite but firm” note from the dressmaker. She slid them toward her and surreptitiously tucked those two into the folds of her gown, all the while studying the unfamiliar envelope postmarked Texas.