Mercer Girls Read online

  OTHER BOOKS BY LIBBIE HAWKER

  Tidewater

  Daughter of Sand and Stone

  Baptism for the Dead

  The Sekhmet Bed

  The Crook and Flail

  Sovereign of Stars

  The Bull of Min

  House of Rejoicing

  Storm in the Sky

  Eater of Hearts

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 Libbie Hawker

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503951976

  ISBN-10: 1503951979

  Cover design by Laura Klynstra

  For the toughest, smartest, truest women in all of Seattle: Emily, Devin, and Kelsey.

  And for Paul, who introduced me to Seattle’s vibrant history.

  CONTENTS

  PART 1

  CHAPTER ONE: DESPERATE MEASURES

  CHAPTER TWO: A WORKING GIRL

  CHAPTER THREE: TRUE WOMEN ONLY

  CHAPTER FOUR: A FRIEND IN NEED

  CHAPTER FIVE: SECRETS AND INCITEMENTS

  CHAPTER SIX: CHRISTIAN DUTY

  CHAPTER SEVEN: ASPINWALL

  CHAPTER EIGHT: THE GOOD WORK

  CHAPTER NINE: TROUBLED WATERS

  CHAPTER TEN: DOCKSIDE TRYST

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: THINK OF THE DEVIL

  CHAPTER TWELVE: A PERILOUS REUNION

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: A FINE HELLO

  PART 2

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE RECEPTION

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: AN AMBITION BORN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: A SUITOR CALLS

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: NOBODY’S WIFE

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: A FORCED HAND

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: WHAT PASSES FOR MOONLIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY: A WIDE SHOT AND A BULL’S-EYE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: AN HONEST WOMAN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: SWEETS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: THE HOUR OF REST

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: CONFESSIONS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: THE WEIGHT OF DUTY

  PART 3

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: THE NEW NORTHWEST

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: STRONG CONVICTIONS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: A NEW MAN IN TOWN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: CAPITAL

  CHAPTER THIRTY: SILVER DOLLARS

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: BREAK NEW GROUND

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: WORTH THE REWARD

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: A CHANGED WOMAN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: HER OWN DETERMINATION

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: VICE OR PREFERENCE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: SANCTUARY LOST

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: AN URGENT MESSAGE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: SILK RIBBONS

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: PROPER

  CHAPTER FORTY: IF IT SUITS

  HISTORICAL NOTE AND AUTHOR’S REMARKS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PART 1

  MARCH–MAY 1864

  CHAPTER ONE

  DESPERATE MEASURES

  The thaw had come early to Massachusetts. That was one piece of good news and cause enough for gladness, even if the war still lumbered on. The great rebellion was, by now, a fact—a truth sinking grim and cold into the nation’s bones. War rolled across the hearts of every woman and man in the States: towering, dark, inescapable as a thunderhead. It cast a shadow black enough to dim the brightest light and left a chill on the skin that neither fires nor furs could entirely chase away.

  But in spite of the rebellion’s stoic onward march, the first touch of spring was kindly to the town of Lowell. The early warmth had nearly cleared the gray-brown patches of snow from the shoulders of wide streets. Winter’s bleakness was melting off, running in tiny rivers between the cracks of the cobblestones. Noon light glimmered among the cobbles, netting the street in silver. The bright sky reflected from the roadway with an energetic bounce, a dancing flash—with something close to cheer.

  That stir of silver light seemed a good omen to Josephine. Or at least, it seemed as if it ought to represent some intentional good, some deliberate act of kindness from the Lord. As she rounded the corner of one of the great redbrick millhouses and headed toward the river, she made up her mind to take the morning’s delicate beauty as a sign from God—or from one of His lesser angels, at least—that all would be well. Her luck would soon change, even if Lowell and the war dragged on forever in their present courses, grinding toward some dim, ignominious fate.

  The lace of sunlight along the cobbles might have been enough to make Josephine smile—truly smile, with no determination necessary—if she hadn’t been so twisted up inside with anxiety. Even if the sparkle and flash of light and thaw were indisputable signs from God, Josephine felt ill at ease. Just being in that place made her shiver. Amid the long, drab avenues of the industrial district, with the silent, soot-darkened facades of the textile mills rearing above, she was insignificant and weak—a small, furtive thing. She was a mouse picking its way along the floor of a vast canyon that still echoed with the whispers of ghosts. Josephine had had her fill of being a mouse—of being silent and small. Yet even now, as she reached out to grasp her future—her last frayed shred of hope—she couldn’t help but cringe and wish for a safe place to hide. The eerie stillness of the mill district was enough by itself to give anyone the whim-whams. But Josephine’s predicament was worse than mere jitters. If anyone recognized her—if she were spotted here, wearing her best dress (such as it was), making her way over the cobblestones toward Merrimack Street, where she certainly had no good excuse to be … A cascade of images tumbled through her head, all the possible consequences that might result from this mad, desperate folly. None of them were pretty.

  “Make way, Miss, if you please!” Josephine gave a jump at the gruff shout from the road behind her. The man’s tone was thick and harsh—just the kind that always made her fearful—but she yielded the street at once, swinging aside with a natural, businesslike efficiency, as if walking through the great, stifling ravines of Lowell’s shuttered textile mills was all in a day’s routine. She pressed against a long redbrick building to let the wagon pass, and the driver raised his hat in thanks. He was ruddy-faced, and the hard, deep lines of his skin were darkened by Lowell’s soot. His horses were haggard and down-headed, but they pulled their burden with apparent ease, and although Josephine couldn’t see into the wagon’s bed as it trundled by, its loud, loose-jointed rattle told her plainly enough that it was empty.

  The rough brick of the building seemed to press right back against her. It leaned its cold, hard weight into her flesh, willing her to feel its hollowness and stillness—the vast, echoing fact of its inutility. It was, like virtually all the silent hulks along this avenue, a textile mill. Almost every large building in Lowell housed a mill, where raw cotton was spun into thread, and thread was woven and dyed into uncountable yards of fabric—broadcloth and calico; poplin and lawn; gingham and muslin and fine, light organdy. Lowell was an empire of cotton mills, and the Good Lord knew there were not a few of them. But since the rebellion, most mills, like most wagons, were empty.

  When the wagon had passed, Josephine breathed as deeply as her stays would allow and stepped gratefully away from the building’s palpable barrenness. She peered up at the sky—a w
ash of pale, wintery blue running in a straight line between two high rows of unrelieved brick, an avenue of well-shined silver stretching all the way down to the river. The day’s brightness made her squint and tickled her nose with the threat of a sneeze. The sky was without its customary haze of coal smoke, the ever-present, grimy, orange-brown fog that Lowell wore as proudly as a lady wears a flower-trimmed hat. Of late there were far more clear days than hazy; more than half the mills in Lowell had closed, for the South kept a firm grip on its cotton, and no one could say when the factories might return to life—or if they ever would.

  This dismal place is making me grim, Josephine reflected. It won’t do to greet Mr. Mercer with a scowl on my face. The sooner I’m away, the better.

  She lifted the hem of her skirt with care and hurried across the cobblestones. The crinoline beneath her skirt was old—a castoff from an elderly aunt—and had to be handled just so, or it would buckle on one side and bang against her thigh. It was far too stiff for current fashions, thanks to the real horsehair worked into its weave. But Josephine had never troubled herself much over keeping current with her dress. She had long since decided that she simply didn’t care if she were outmoded. An old crinoline could do its job just as well as a fancy new one, with boning and flounces and soft, machine-made fabric. And besides, who ever laid eyes on a crinoline, save for the woman who wore it? Ruffles and pin tucks were superfluities, and nothing to which an honest undergarment ought to aspire. Josephine bolstered herself with a scornful sniff as she made her way toward the river. Her stiff underskirt swung, bell-like, around quick-stepping feet. If the stylish ladies of Lowell only knew what dwelt beneath Josephine’s petticoats, the scandal of it all might actually transport a few straight into their graves. The horsehair crinoline was nothing beside her dreadfully dated drawers. Those would certainly send the fashion-plate brigade into fits!

  But what did it matter, after all? Unless they left the dying textile town for cities with broader prospects—Boston, New York, or the capital—the most persnickety dressers in Lowell would soon be wearing horsehair and Grandmama’s woolen drawers, too. The war against the southern states showed no signs of ending. The supply of cotton had dwindled to a trickle and would further slow to a desultory drip. Even in Lowell, a city built by spinning jennies and the flying shuttles of industrial looms—a town where spindles of milled yarn outnumbered even the smokestacks in the sky—current fashion was a luxury not many women could afford. Not for much longer, at any rate.

  At last, Josephine left the eerie stillness of the avenue and turned onto Merrimack Street. The city came to life around her with a vigorous bustle, a bold, deliberate defiance of the disused mills and the empty riverside wharves where ships once waited, their holds laden with great cream-white, sun-scented bales of cotton. Wagons plodded along the road, and here and there smart carriages with teams of four went darting between the slower conveyances, their drivers shouting to make way. The rumble of wheels and the clatter of hooves on stone rang out in a ceaseless din. The noise echoed from the high walls of the great brick buildings, a boisterous redoubling of sound. The sheer noise of the town made Josephine’s head ache and her heart pound. Here on Merrimack Street, she felt more hopelessly exposed than she had in Lowell’s silent canyons, as if all the eyes of the city would turn to her at any moment—as if the entirety of Lowell would know at a glance exactly what she was up to.

  Two women paused to greet one another outside the shoemaker’s shop, each carrying a pair of button boots in need of resoling. They nodded to Josephine as she made her way past. She scarcely returned the courtesy but kept her eyes fixed on the road at her feet, fearful that she would recognize the women from church society and that she would soon become the subject of their gossip. She passed a carpenter’s workshop, which emitted the pungent, burnt-hair odor of hot glue, and somewhere in the shop’s interior a mallet thumped hard and fast, mirroring the racing of her heart. A newspaper boy made his way up the street, shouting over the hubbub, “Ulys’z Grant now Lieutenant General! ’Spected to take command of all forces! Read it here first, read it here!” The boy eyed Josephine eagerly, hoping for two pennies for his paper. But she shook her head curtly, and with a sullen shrug, he moved on.

  As she crossed in front of a long, narrow alley, a commotion of thrashing and snarls erupted at her feet. Josephine stifled a shriek as two small dogs burst from the alley, tangled in a fight, so intent in their fury that they nearly threw themselves beneath a wagon’s wheels. The surprise left an unpleasant, tingling sensation racing along her limbs and a coppery taste on her tongue.

  To calm herself, she reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out a folded bit of newsprint. She had torn it carefully from a recent edition of the New York Times. The scrap featured a letter—a rebuttal to a rather critical and insinuating article, which the Times had printed a week before, questioning the motives and morals of one Mr. A. S. Mercer, who had recently arrived in Lowell from the far West on what was, Josephine had to admit, a rather peculiar errand. As she walked, she read the letter—not for the first time. She took in Mercer’s elegant phrases with mingled hope and excitement, though in truth she knew it so well by now that she could have recited its contents by heart.

  In accordance with your request and to satisfy many inquiring minds, I make a statement of the reasons why I have spent so much time and money in the endeavor to introduce a female migration into Washington Territory.

  The territory, so the letter explained, had been settled by young men from the eastern states—educated and principled, men of great quality who had found small prospects for either home or fortune in the crowded, war-ravaged East. And so those enterprising men had ventured west, carving a new land of promise from the richly forested hills where the frontier met the sea.

  Churches and schoolhouses there are, but the great elevating, refining, and moralizing element—true women—are wanting. Not that the ladies of Washington Territory are less pure or high minded than those of any other land, but the limited number of them leave the good work greater than they can perform.

  Josephine skimmed down to Mercer’s final lines, though even before she had found them, the memorized words were already ringing in her head, a hopeful echo that straightened her spine and injected a lively spring into her step.

  Those who accompany me must not expect to occupy a flower garden, or live upon sweet perfume, but must calculate that they are going into the vineyard to labor, and that their labor will be rewarded. Hoping that this rough sketch may answer to satisfy those who would know my motive, I am, very truly, your obedient servant.

  A. S. MERCER

  Beside the name, Josephine had marked down an address in pencil—an address that she had carefully ferreted out through feigned casual conversation with her neighbors and the ladies of her church society. Uncovering the whereabouts of A. S. Mercer had been a long and delicate task. Some women had flatly refused to speak of the man, believing his intentions to be questionable at the very best. Those who would discuss him did so behind fluttering hands, their eyes popping over the delightful scandal of it all. Imagine, they had said, a stranger from Washington Territory—or so he claims as his origin, if you can believe him—standing up at a podium in the square and exhorting young ladies to leave their homes, their fathers, their beaus, and travel with him—actually travel with him—out into the West! Oh, he says he wants teachers, but let us be frank. Any man who proposes to traipse off with unaccompanied ladies in tow can only be after a particular sort of lady. Teachers, indeed! Josephine, you should have seen it!

  Never before had Lowell soared to such happy heights of turpitude. Mr. Mercer was both devil and saint, for even as he proposed to spirit the city’s young ladies off to the far West like some villain from a fairy story, he had provided Lowell with a distraction. In these dark times, with so many men off to war, an equal number already killed, and half of those left in the city unemployed, cooling their heels in bars and gutters, there was no
thing Lowell needed more than a distraction. And so Josephine had pried with a delicate touch, sifting through the ample gossip to discern the exact location of Mr. A. S. Mercer, without—she hoped and prayed—arousing the slightest bit of suspicion.

  She checked the address once more. Many small offices and shops lined Merrimack Street, and each had numbers stenciled on their doorframes. Josephine noted the addresses as she walked. Narrow, dusty windows crowded beside heavy doors, and in the shadows of the brick mill buildings, the glass of each window looked as dark green and murky as pond water, concealing rather than revealing whatever lay within. This was not a well-to-do avenue. It hadn’t been, even during Lowell’s best days. If Josephine had indeed discovered the correct address, then Mr. Mercer—in fact, all of Washington Territory—must have exceedingly tight purse strings. This dingy avenue made for a dubious base of operations.

  It doesn’t matter, Josephine told herself. Even if I consign myself to life in a hovel, with wolves howling around my door, it will be preferable to my present situation.

  To keep her spirits up as she searched for Mercer’s office, Josephine recited her favorite lines from his letter to the New York Times. These, of all his elegant words, filled her with the greatest hope. In fact, she admitted with some surprise, they seemed to have imprinted themselves upon her soul. These words were the very same that had inspired Josephine to this fit of reckless and uncharacteristic bravery.