Forget-Me-Not Bride Page 2

  ‘No.’ With one hand holding the newspaper and the other hand still clasping Lottie’s, Lilli began to walk out of the room. ‘Goodness only knows how many attics this house has. You could be days looking for them. I’m simply going to tell Aunt Gussie that I’m taking the two of you with me and that I need our travel-bags.’

  ‘She won’t like it,’ Lottie said prophetically. ‘She likes our being here. It stops her from being lonely.’

  As they began to walk across the hall and back into the breaskfast room Lilli felt a stab of guilt. What Lottie said was true. Their aunt did like them being there. Ineffectual though she was, her affection for all three of them was sincere, and when Herbert discovered he had been robbed of Leo it would be her aunt who would suffer the consequences. For the merest fraction of a second Lilli’s resolve faltered. Then she remembered her uncle’s intention of changing Leo’s name from Stullen to Mosley. With steely determination she entered the breakfast room.

  Her aunt was still seated at the table, one arm comfortingly around a bewildered Leo, the other clutching a tear-damp handkerchief.

  ‘Oh, my dear Lilli!’ she said in distress, rising clumsily to her feet. ‘What on earth are we to do? Once your uncle makes up his mind about something nothing will change it! Oh, if only you hadn’t antagonised him so!’

  Lilli suppressed a surge of exasperation. Her antagonising her uncle had had very little to do with his decision to order her from the house. It had merely served as an excuse for an action he had long wanted to take, and it was typical of her aunt that she should fail to see that. The large hand on the grandfather-clock in the corner of the room was coming up to half-past-nine, and she was acutely aware of how much she had to accomplish, in such little time, if Leo and Lottie, as well as herself, were to be out of the house by the time her uncle returned to it. She certainly had no time to waste in comforting her aunt.

  ‘If you could ask one of the maids to hunt down our travel-bags I’d be very grateful, Aunt Gussie,’ she said practically.

  It wasn’t the reaction her aunt had anticipated and her eyes flew wide. ‘But where will you go?’ she protested. ‘What will you do?’

  There were times when Lilli found it near impossible to believe that her much-loved dead mother had been her Aunt Gussie’s younger sister. Her mother hadn’t possessed an impractical bone in her body. It had been her Irish husband who had been the day-dreamer and the incurable romantic. Only physical resemblance had borne witness to the blood relationship between the two sisters. Even now, in her late forties, Gussie Mosley was still a stunningly pretty woman. Her blue eyes were wide-set and thick-lashed, her heart-shaped face delicately boned. It was bone structure Lottie and Lilli had also inherited, but where their aunt’s finely modelled chin betrayed weakness, their chins bore more than a trace of Irish pugnaciousness.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lilli answered truthfully. ‘But wherever I go and whatever I do I shall take …’

  It was Lottie who squeezed her hand, silencing her in mid-sentence.

  Their aunt still had one arm protectively around Leo.

  Lilli sucked in her breath sharply. Because of her aunt’s basic good nature and kindness she had forgotten that she, too, was as eager as her husband to rear Leo as her own son. So eager, that if she knew Leo was about to be taken away it was possible she would send a message to Herbert demanding that he return to the house to deal with the situation. Certainly there was more than mere protectiveness in the way she was holding Leo so closely against her. There was flagrant ownership.

  ‘… all my belongings,’ she finished adroitly.

  ‘You’re not to go! You’re not to go!’ Leo burst out, anguished. Twisting himself away from his aunt’s hold, he flung himself into Lilli’s arms. ‘Pa’s ghost will haunt you and haunt you if you leave us!’

  Lilli’s heart tightened in her chest as she gently took hold of his hands and removed them from around her waist. ‘I’m not going to do anything that isn’t for the best for all us,’ she said gently, offering him as much comfort as she could without awakening her aunt’s suspicions.

  Lottie’s eyes met hers in complicit understanding. ‘Don’t be such a baby, Leo,’ she said in mock exasperation. ‘Let’s begin packing Lilli’s clothes for her. And do stop blubbing. You’re only making a rotten situation even worse.’

  Thirty minutes later, with a short navy box-coat over her striped pink shirtwaist and cream serge skirt and with her thick cloud of smoke-dark hair piled high in a loose twist on top of her head, Lilli boarded a cable car en route for the commercial heart of the city. It was not a part of the city she was familiar with. The Mosley home, high on Nob Hill, was situated in a superior residential enclave far removed from the rumbustiousness of the areas adjacent to the waterfront.

  ‘Curve!’ the cable car conductor yelled. ‘Hang on tight!’

  Lilli, a novice where cable car riding was concerned, took his advice as the cable car turned a steeply sloping corner almost at a right-angle.

  Unnerving though the journey was, it was also exhilarating. She could see Telegraph Hill, its slopes thick with the low, balconied houses of Mexican immigrants, while to the right, Russian Hill towered even higher. Far below, in front of her, lay the glorious spread of the Bay, the early summer sunshine glinting on hundreds of masts and sheening the water to a glittering sapphire.

  With a surge of wanderlust she wondered where the many great ships at anchor had sailed from. No doubt many of them had struggled around the roaring hell of Cape Horn while others had probably crossed the Pacific, heavy with spices from the Orient. There were gaunt whaling ships and gaily painted Neapolitan fishing-boats and an armada of private yachts. A smile touched the corners of her mouth. Her father would have loved San Francisco. It possessed a raw edge of excitement that would have deeply appealed to his adventurous spirit.

  As the cable car swooped and dipped over other cable car lines, creaking nearer and nearer to the city’s harbour adjacent heart, she removed the newspaper from beneath her arm and shook it open at its front page.

  There was a report from Kroonstad, South Africa, on the progress of the war taking place between Great Britain and the Boers. Nearer to home there was a report of a speech President McKinley had made to a Republican gathering in New York. On the first inside page there was a photograph of a bride and groom under the headline, ‘Bride who shopped for a groom returns to City’.

  Mildly interested, Lilli read on.

  ‘Thirty-year-old spinster, Harriet Dutton, transformed her life a year ago when, via the Peabody Marriage Bureau, she answered gold-miner, Daniel Berton’s, advertisement for a wife. Six months ago Mr Berton struck gold in Nome, Alaska and the couple have now returned to the city where Mr Berton intends investing his new-found riches in San Franciscan real estate.’

  The groom, heavily moustached and looking awkward in an ill-fitting frock-coat, was smiling sheepishly, one of the bride’s net-gloved hands tucked shyly into the crook of his arm. He had the face of an upright, honourable man and Lilli hoped he and his wife would continue to be happy together. There was nothing else of interest on the page and she turned to the Classified Advertisement column. All the employment agencies in the city were listed. All seemed to be clustered south of Market Street, between Eighth Street and the waterfront.

  ‘City Hall!’ the conductor yelled as the cable car approached the junction of Market and Larkin Street. ‘City Hall!’

  Hastily folding the Examiner and tucking it once more under her arm, Lilli stepped off the cable car into the busy street. Heads turned in her direction as she did so. Her Celtic colouring of smoke-dark hair, pale creamy skin and deep blue, thick-lashed eyes was a stunning combination and she attracted many appreciative male stares as she walked at a brisk pace towards the nearest of the employment agencies listed in the Examiner.

  ‘All the book-keepers we place are required to have previous experience and references,’ a thin-lipped, bespectacled woman said to her primly. ‘As f
or a position as a school-mistress …’ Her rimless spectacles slid down her bony nose. ‘No-one under the age of twenty-five is ever considered, no matter how impressive their qualifications. And your qualifications, Miss Stullen, are non-existent.’

  She met with a similar response at the next, and then the next, employment agency she visited. Gritting her teeth she then tried her luck at an agency that dealt only with domestic and catering staff.

  ‘And where were you last employed as a chamber-maid, Miss Stullen?’ a whey-faced young man inquired.

  ‘I’ve never been previously employed, but I’m intelligent, quick to learn, hard-working, honest …’

  The young man looked at her with condescending pity. ‘This is a very selective employment agency, Miss Stullen. Applicants for positions are required to have experience and …’

  ‘I’m looking for a placement as a chamber-maid, not a chef!’ Lilli protested frustratedly.

  A shutter came down over the young man’s palely freckled face. ‘Whatever the placement you are looking for, you won’t find a placement via this agency,’ he said, distaste in his voice. ‘Domestic staff are required to be polite and respectful, to be seen but not heard …’

  Lilli didn’t wait for him to finish. With her skirt swirling around her ankles she headed for the door, allowing it to swing noisily shut behind her.

  Once out in the street she fought down the panic bubbling in her throat. It was way past lunch-time and she had achieved absolutely nothing. Not only that, she now knew with stomach-churning certainty that her chances of ever achieving the kind of employment she needed, were practically nil. Sick at heart she paused at the street corner, shaking the Examiner open yet again, studying the general classified advertisements in the hope that there might be something there:

  YOUNG lady, good figure, wants to pose for artist; references exchanged; positively no triflers …

  ANY person knowing of impending business failures or having any other valuable information can make big money by communicating with smart lawyer …

  A GENTLEMAN would like to make the acquaintance of a young lady bicyclist matrimonially inclined …

  CRAFTSMAN desires suitable employment. Urgent …

  Whoever the last advertiser was, Lilli sympathised with him. She, too, desired suitable employment urgently. The day had become hot and muggy and her head ached. Wryly she wondered what kind of a response she would meet with if she placed an advertisement of her own in the Examiner, perhaps,

  Young woman (18), penniless, quick-tempered, often accused of being impolite, two young siblings to care for, seeks kind-hearted husband and home …

  The very ridiculousness of the idea marginally restored her sense of humour. Stuffing the Examiner once more beneath her arm she squared her shoulders. She had known before she had set out that her task wasn’t going to be easy. Becoming dejected before she had exhausted every possibility was pointless. There were department stores to approach, for department stores were bound to be constantly employing young lady sales assistants. There were other options, too, she hadn’t yet explored, such as laundries, hospitals, factories. With renewed resolution she stepped off the sidewalk, intent on crossing the busy street in order to head in the general direction of the great shopping emporiums.

  The horse, in the shafts of a hackney cab, skittered as it veered out of her way. Lilli screamed, standing absolutely motionless, unable to believe she hadn’t been trampled to the ground.

  ‘Of all the stupid, idiotic, senseless …’ she could hear a male voice expostulating furiously.

  Lilli pressed a hand to her palpitating heart. Dear Lord! Another inch and she would have been beneath the horse’s hooves! Trembling violently she stepped back upon the sidewalk. The horse, thank heaven, hadn’t run amok or injured himself. Though he was still whinnying and tossing his head his driver had regained control of him and had reined him in.

  As the fear that had flooded through her ebbed, a feeling of foolishness replaced it. How on earth could she have been so stupid as to have stepped off the sidewalk without looking to see what was approaching? Even more baffling, how could she have been so deep in thought that she hadn’t even heard the trotting hooves?

  She was aware that the gentleman being conveyed in the carriage had jumped down from it and was striding thunderously towards her. He was perhaps ten years her senior and flamboyantly dressed in a dove-grey lounge suit with pearl-grey facings. There was no customary gold watch-chain looped across his matching chamois vest but his high-collared white linen shirt was worn open at the throat and was as frilled as a woman’s.

  There was nothing, however, effeminate about the man. He was above average height and as broad-shouldered as a prize fighter. Beneath his Homburg hat his hair was dark blond, cut long and swept back to curl at the collar of his jacket. As he came to a halt, a foot or so away from her, she saw that his eyes were brown and, though she couldn’t be absolutely sure, she was almost certain they were gold-flecked. Tanned by the sun and the wind, smelling ever so faintly of lemon cologne, and with a thick, neat moustache, a shade darker than his hair, he was the handsomest man she had ever laid eyes on.

  ‘Are you both blind and deaf?’ he demanded, winged eyebrows drawn together satanically.

  Under the circumstances, Lilli felt it was a reasonable enough enquiry.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, trying to collect her scattered wits. ‘I was thinking about something and …’

  ‘The only thing you should have been employed thinking about was whether the street was safe to cross!’

  He hadn’t bothered to lift his hat, and his rudeness and use of the word ‘employed’grated on Lilli’s already fraught nerves. It was because she had been pondering where next to seek employment that she had been so careless in the first place. Aware that he couldn’t know that she checked the tart reply that had risen to her lips and said instead, ‘I’m sorry if I frightened the horse.’

  The unexpectedness of her response checked his anger, as did the realization that she had eyes so true a blue they were almost azure, and a mouth tantalizingly full and soft. A flicker of amusement, and something else, entered his eyes. ‘Don’t worry about the horse. Such incidents are all in a day’s work for a hackney. He didn’t make contact with you, did he? You’re not hurt?’

  It was a rather belated enquiry and she said stiffly, ‘No. I merely gave myself a bad scare.’

  ‘You gave me a bad scare.’ he said wryly, his mouth tugging into a smile.

  Lilli felt her stomach somersault. If he had been handsome before, when angry, he looked like a Greek god now that he was smiling.

  ‘Hey mister!’ the hackney cab driver shouted across to him. ‘Do you still want taking to the Barbary Coast?’

  The Greek god signalled assent and then, manners showing for the first time, inclined his head slightly towards her. ‘Goodbye, ma’am,’ he said, the amusement and admiration in his eyes now naked, ‘and take a little more care crossing city streets. San Francisco isn’t the Emerald Isle, you know.’

  Lilli sucked in her breath, colour rushing to her cheeks. Thanks to her father, her speech occasionally betrayed a slight Irish lilt, but as her mother had been English, and she had been born in England, she never thought of herself as being Irish, and she certainly never thought of herself as having just stepped off a boat from Cork!

  ‘I’ve never even been to Ireland …’ she began indignantly, but she was wasting her breath. He had already turned away from her.

  Dazedly she watched as he strode back across the busy street and sprang agilely into the hackney. Had that been a small gold earring she had glimpsed when he had bent his head slightly and bidden her goodbye? And was he really going to the notoriously lawless waterfront area known as the Barbary Coast?

  She remained standing on the corner of the street, watching until the hackney was swallowed up in a maelstrom of other carriages and carts. An earring! Did that indicate that despite his superbly tailored attire, he was a
sailor? His skin had been sun and wind-tanned enough. Or was he perhaps one of the Barbary Coast’s many saloon-keepers? She had never met a saloon-keeper but she found it hard to imagine that they dressed so elegantly.

  Someone squeezing past on the crowded sidewalk behind her, jarred her, nearly sending her once more precipitately into the street. She tucked her copy of the Examiner more securely beneath her arm. She had far more important things to do than stand staring after a man whose name she didn’t know, and whom she was unlikely ever to see again. Somehow she had to secure herself a sales position in one of the city’s department stores, and, at a salary that would enable her to rent somewhere for herself, and Leo and Lottie, to live.

  As the hours crept by and the sun began to creep further and further westwards, it became increasingly obvious that she hadn’t a hope of ever doing so. Sales positions were offered to her, but always the salary was totally inadequate for her needs.

  ‘How much rent do you say you can afford?’ landlords and landladies asked jeeringly. ‘Do me a favour, lady. You couldn’t rent a parrot’s perch for that!’

  Hot, hungry and exhausted she trailed up and down street after street, trawling the city from Howard Street in the south to Lombard Street in the north, from Montgomery Street in the east to Alamo Square in the west. Nor was money, or the lack of it, her only problem.

  ‘Two children and no husband?’ she was asked, eyes quickly flying to Lilli’s ringless left hand. ‘I can imagine your profession, lady. And it ain’t wanted round here!’

  Door after door was closed in Lilli’s face.

  By the time she heard a distant clock striking five, tears of desperation were burning the backs of her eyes. What, in God’s name, was she going to do? She couldn’t, couldn’t, leave the house on Nob Hill without taking Lottie and Leo with her. She had given Lottie her most solemn promise that she wouldn’t do so, and if she didn’t keep that promise she would never be able to live with herself.