Mercer Girls Read online

  Her body shook violently, with exertion as much as fear, and the air was fiercely cold against her sweat-beaded brow. But she could still feel the burn of her father’s palm against her cheek, and her mind was good and made up. She would go down the sheets, or straight to Hell—anywhere but back inside that sad, empty home. She pulled hard on the ladder, throwing as much of her weight against it as she could. The window frame creaked, but the knots held. With one frantic prayer for mercy, Dovey lowered herself over the edge.

  Almost at once, gravity seized her, dragging with a ferocious weight. The heavy pillowcase tore from her teeth and fell into the dark yard below. Dovey clung to the highest knot, a foot or more below the edge of the roof, paralyzed, squeaking like a kitten on a thin, wind-whipped bough. Her arms burned until she thought they might snap clean away from her body; it was all she could do to hold still, stiff and wide-eyed, rotating slowly on her slapdash rope.

  I can’t do it, she thought frantically. I’ll let go in a moment and fall! I’ll break both my legs—or my neck! She told herself she ought to clamber back up onto the roof—but when she looked up at its black edge, it seemed higher above than the vaults of Heaven, and she knew she couldn’t haul herself up to safety any more than she could lower herself down.

  The windowsill creaked again—much louder than before. The knot she clung to gave an alarming lurch, dropping Dovey a fraction of an inch before it caught and held again.

  “Oh, Lord of mercy, spare me!” Dovey whispered.

  She forced her white-knuckled fists to loosen, and her groping feet found another knot some inches below. Her hands skittered frantically down the sheet as she eased her feet lower down still. Linen slid through her fists, burning her skin, and Dovey nearly hollered in pain and fear—but her hands clenched reflexively around another knot, and she lowered herself again, faster this time, and faster still as she learned the trick and rhythm of it.

  Her hard-soled boots clamped around the last knot. The ground was still some four feet below—and might as well have been a mile down, for all Dovey felt able to reach it. She sent out another prayer in a rapid, breathless mutter, then willed her hands to open. She fell through darkness into the yard. The impact of her body against the earth was so sudden and hard that she couldn’t tell which part of her had struck the ground first—feet, knees, bottom, or shoulder. She pressed her face into the wet, muddy grass to smother a cry of pain. After a long moment, when the shock of her fall ebbed, leaving a fit of trembling in its wake, Dovey stood with care, testing her weight on her ankles. All her parts seemed to be in good working order, thank God, even if she was as quivery as an aspic, all fumbles and nerves.

  She located her pillowcase bundle in the darkness, hiked up her torn skirt and petticoats, and hurried toward the street. At first, corset and fear conspired to restrict Dovey to a fast but unsteady walk. When she reached the empty sidewalk, however, Dovey ran as fast as her shallow breaths would allow, impelled by a fantastic rush of hot, prickling energy that whipped along her veins like the white bolts of a lightning storm.

  She knew where she must go, and only prayed she was not too late. She darted down one street, then another, closing on the shopping district as quickly as she could manage. Sweat soaked her chemise, and the hard edges of her corset chafed the tender skin below her armpits, but she did not slow. Nor did she slow when the backs of her heels began to blister inside her boots. Time was running out—it may have expired already. She couldn’t coddle her sore feet when her future might slip away at any moment.

  Finally, Dovey rounded the corner of the great clock tower and looked out over the avenue of high-class shops—the ones she and Mother used to frequent, before everything in life had turned sour. The sidewalks here were empty, too, and most of the shops’ windows were already dark, though a few lamps still burned through the painted panes of display windows.

  Dovey’s chest heaved as she struggled to catch her breath. She glanced around desperately, trying to recall whether the jeweler’s shop was north of here, or south … and then she saw it, half a block away. Mr. Fredericks, the shop’s suave, quietly assessing keeper, stood with his back to the street, his head bowed over the door handle—locking up for the night.

  “Wait!” Dovey cried.

  Mr. Fredericks looked up. The orange glow of a nearby streetlight glinted off his spectacles, and for a moment, the reflected light danced like the candle flame in Dovey’s bedroom. She hurried toward him, letting her skirts fall so she could wave to him in frantic appeal. “Wait! Please! Don’t close yet!”

  The jeweler watched, curious and still, as Dovey rushed toward him. By the time she reached the shop front, she was so faint from her panting and exertion that she could only lean against the brick of the building, patting her damp forehead with a trembling hand.

  “Miss?” Mr. Fredericks took her gently by the elbow. “Are you well? Do you need some assistance?” Then he recognized her face, though it had been nearly a year since her family had last patronized his business. “I declare—you’re Doreen Mason!”

  Breathless, Dovey could only nod.

  “Has something happened, Miss Doreen? Tell me—should I call for the police?”

  Dovey shook her head violently. “No!” she gasped. “No, please.”

  Mr. Fredericks eyed her mud-stained dress, the heavy pillowcase dangling from her hand, and the ripped hem of her skirt. His thin, rather prim mouth tightened in worry. “Miss Doreen—”

  “I’m all right,” she insisted. Recovered enough to speak on, she reached into her pocket and withdrew the knotted square of linen. “I have jewelry to sell.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Doreen, but I’ve closed for the evening.”

  “Please,” she said, her voice going thick with fear, almost strangling on the word. She had come so close! Could fate be so cruel, to snatch her future away when she stood on the raw edge of freedom?

  Mr. Fredericks hesitated, struck by her frantic state, and Dovey took advantage of the moment. She dropped her pillowcase on the damp sidewalk and picked apart the knot in her little bundle. It opened in her palm. The lamplight raised a flicker of fire from the diamond bracelet, and the jeweler’s mouth worked in a soundless exclamation. He reached tentatively for one emerald earring, then held it up to the brassy glow of the streetlight, squinting at the glittering teardrop with one sharp, assessing eye. Then he turned to Dovey with a searching look.

  “Two hundred and fifty,” she said, her insides cold with fear. “Please—can you give me two hundred and fifty for the whole lot?”

  Mr. Fredericks stroked his chin as he pondered the gems in Dovey’s hands. Then he reached into his pocket and withdrew the shop’s key. “You’d better come inside,” he said, “and we’ll see what we can do.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A FRIEND IN NEED

  The weak winter sun could scarcely assert itself through the gray-shrouded sky. Dawn spilled low and halfhearted along the horizon, a smear of pale light like thin cream slopped from the edge of a bowl. Even as Josephine’s hired carriage rolled nearer to the rail depot, the pallor of early-morning light made the little wood-sided building seem cool and distant, a destination she might never reach. But at last, the carriage came to a rather lurching stop beside the curb.

  Josephine glanced nervously over her shoulder before she left the confines of the cab. Lowell still slept. Only a few sounds of early industry carried through the morning mist—men’s voices drifting faintly from the piers; the rumbling of a laden wagon; the snorting of its horses; and far off, from the direction of Merrimack Street, a repetitive, heavy clanging, the waking of some great, cold piece of machinery, the noise dampened by distance.

  There was a time, not many months ago, when the morning would already be cacophonous, and the streets bustling with the vigor of early risers and hopeful men. Those days were past—forever, Josephine suspected. She drew a deep breath, tasting one last time the coal-smoke bitterness, the river-damp taste of Lowell.

&n
bsp; She was glad to leave—grateful the Lord had provided an egress. Lowell’s expiration by degrees—the quiet, hopeless moan of its fading—left Josephine feeling confined and depressed. She could scarcely bear the sensation of watching a city die slowly. She would much rather watch a city being born. Births, at least, were as full and flush with hope as they were pain, mess, and uncertainty. Seattle was Josephine’s hope now—her future, her bright new dawn.

  The driver of the hired carriage gave a tremendous yawn—an unsubtle hint, Josephine assumed, that she ought to be on her way. She climbed down quickly without waiting for the driver to secure his reins and offer a hand. Unused to the particulars of hiring cabs, Josephine feared that if she accepted the driver’s help, she would be bound by some obscure point of etiquette to tip him above the fare she had already paid—and every cent was precious to her now. She stamped her feet against the cold, surreptitiously patting her pocket to be sure the worn leather purse was still there.

  Even through the thick wool of her navy-blue dress, the purse felt fat and heavy. Its weight simultaneously reassured Josephine and increased the tension in her gut, that fast, tight thrum of anxiety that had not left her since she’d first made her way to A. S. Mercer’s office. She hadn’t realized how much money two hundred and fifty dollars was until she’d acquired the necessary fare—and a few paltry dollars more to see to unexpected needs—and spread the banknotes and coins across her bed. The sight of so much money had astonished her, and made her deeds and misdirections seem all the more terrible. The money was an accounting of her failures, her wrongdoings—a tally of all the risks she ran, the gambles on which her life depended. The weight of her purse dragged at her like the weight of sin. She only hoped her conscience would lighten when she handed the fare over to Asa Mercer and left Lowell behind forever.

  Josephine reached for the long, low travel trunk she had placed on the floor of the cab. The driver attempted—slowly—to clamber down from his seat and assist her with it, but she seized its nearest handle and dragged it out of the carriage before he could stir himself too far. The trunk wasn’t especially large or laden, but it was heavier than she’d thought, and as she lifted the modest cedar chest to her hip, Josephine grunted in surprise at its weight. How could it be so difficult to carry? She had packed only one change of clothing, her sewing kit for practical purposes, and the provisions Mr. Mercer had suggested.

  “Won’t you let me carry that trunk for you, missus?” the driver asked.

  Josephine shook her head. “Thank you, no. It’s no difficulty.”

  She made her way to the curb slowly, hoping her deliberate steps masked her stagger. She set the thing on the sidewalk and straightened, stifling the urge to puff from the effort. Josephine pulled the agreed-upon sum from her purse and counted it into the driver’s palm. With one more narrow-eyed glance at her trunk, the man straightened in his seat, clucked to his horse, and was gone in a rattle of wheels.

  Josephine watched the carriage until it rounded a turn and vanished into the soft blue shadows of early morning. Then she scowled down at her trunk and sourly eyed the distance to the depot.

  A few women were already gathered on the faded wood of the platform, milling and chatting in the pale wash of morning light. Even from the curb, Josephine could tell the other women were fresh and full of pluck, their youth evident in their slender figures and sprightly, eager movements. They laughed gaily together, or embraced their loved ones in farewell, and their buoyant, optimistic energy sent a stab of uneasiness through Josephine’s chest. I am nothing like them, she thought bitterly. Life has worn me down, cowed and silenced me. She watched the young women gather on their perch above the black lines of the train tracks. The colors of their traveling dresses, muted yet still cheerful, seemed to Josephine like the plumage of birds—flocking together, all of a kind—and a species to which she did not belong.

  Despite her sense of otherness—the bleak certainty that she would be an outsider among these bright, cheerful girls, so hopeful of becoming brides—Josephine knew she must go on. Seattle was her salvation, her sanctuary. No other hope existed for her between Lowell and Washington Territory.

  There’s nothing for it, she told herself stoutly. With a sharp inhalation to steady her nerves, Josephine squatted awkwardly and hoisted the trunk onto her hip. She crossed the depot’s yard and climbed the steps to the train platform, then picked her way carefully through the assembled women. Somehow it seemed wrong—almost sacrilegious—to brush the hems of their skirts with her own, and each time Josephine made inadvertent contact with one of Mercer’s volunteer brides, a little shiver of guilt raced up her spine, and she feared her very nearness might corrupt that woman’s joy or tarnish her happy future with the soil of Josephine’s long-borne sorrows.

  She was relieved when she made it through the crowd of women without speaking to anyone. Weariness was already pressing down upon her, and not only from the weight of the trunk. She had slept little the night before, caught between her need to prepare for the journey and fear that somehow she would be stopped before she could steal away. Her back ached with the need to sit, to rest. A few wooden freight boxes stood beside an unoccupied bench, and Josephine made her way to the bench as quickly as she could, then thumped her travel trunk down onto the crate with a sigh of deep relief. She fell onto the bench, panting and dabbing at her brow with an old patched kerchief.

  Josephine glanced around the platform, taking in each of the younger women in turn—their smartly tailored but practical dresses; their glossy, upswept hair crowned by hats of felt or straw, modest enough for travel yet still of the latest style; their air of lively expectation. All of them were so very young—none older than her middle twenties, Josephine guessed, and most closer to eighteen or nineteen. Their eager smiles and straight-backed confidence seemed a mockery to Josephine. Inadequacy rose once more in her gut like a bubble of thick black tar. She worked to swallow it down. Teacher or bride, every one of them will find an easier time in Seattle than I. Youth is always so resilient, so hopeful. And I have no hope left—only desperation.

  She sighed and turned her face away from the chipper crowd. It was only then that Josephine noticed one woman alone, seated on a splintery crate at the far edge of the platform, dressed in parrot-green wool with a skirt that lay limp across her thighs. The woman’s very stillness and isolation amid the bustling excitement on the platform made her so conspicuous that Josephine blinked in surprise and wondered how she hadn’t taken note of this woman right away.

  Josephine squinted, analyzing the woman in green with a more pointed air. A thick tumble of natural coffee-brown curls framed a rather sweet, heart-shaped face, with cheeks as round and smooth as a girl’s. Josephine assessed her clothing. The green skirt lay so flat, it seemed, because it was devoid of its crinoline, and the hem was rough and frayed—perhaps torn. The young woman’s dirty boots swung gently, rhythmically—kicking against the crate in a rather childish gesture that added to her youthful air. There was something curious about her posture—a straightness of the spine that was just a mite too straight, a lift of the chin that was too ostentatious—that spoke of insecurity and fear. Josephine tapped her chin, wondering why the girl in green, alone of all the assembled save Josephine herself, was without a sister or a friend to bid her farewell.

  The puzzle of it made a welcome distraction from Josephine’s fears, and so she resolved to find out. Something about the young woman’s unusual appearance—her obvious lack of a crinoline, her mussed hair—drew Josephine in like a moth to a candle. And, Josephine reasoned practically, if she and the lone woman in green spoke to one another, neither of them would seem so conspicuous amid the happy chatter and well-wishing of the rest of Mercer’s girls. She left her trunk sitting on the freight boxes and picked her way once more across the platform.

  As Josephine approached, the girl in green seemed to shake off a clinging haze of distraction or exhaustion. She perked up like a spaniel, charming and alert, and flashed
an impish smile at Josephine, all rosy cheeks and deep, beguiling dimples. Josephine couldn’t help smiling back, but her brows jumped in surprise. The stranger didn’t simply have a girlish face—she was a girl in truth.

  “Hello,” the girl said. She stifled a yawn as she spoke, but Josephine could tell that her voice was melodious and sweet. At close range, she could see how red and puffy the girl’s eyes were, and that many of her rich, brown curls had worked free of her hairpins. A faint suggestion of mud grayed the front of her dress, as if she had been wet and stained hours before but had brushed the dirt away. The hem of her skirt and petticoats, Josephine could now see, were ragged and ripped away.

  “Have you come to travel with Mr. Mercer?” Josephine asked.

  Surely not, she told herself sensibly. The girl was pretty as a picture in spite of her dirt and disarray, but even so, she looked more beggar than would-be bride.

  “Yes,” the girl said eagerly. She gestured to an overstuffed pillowcase leaning against the freight box. “I’m all packed … I think.”

  Josephine looked down at the pillowcase in some surprise. The girl couldn’t be older than sixteen, if even that. She yawned again, and gave a slow, heavy blink, and Josephine frowned at her red-rimmed eyes. Had she waited at the depot all the night through? Her mud-stained, ragged appearance now gave the impression not of a beggar but of a runaway—which the bulging, hastily packed pillowcase seemed to confirm.

  Somebody ought to march this wayward child back to her parents’ home, Josephine thought grimly. But she recalled with a shiver her own troubles, the dense, dark shadow of despair that hovered over Lowell. Somebody ought to take this girl home, but that somebody won’t be me. Besides, the poor thing must have her reasons for escaping this town. The Lord knows I have reasons of my own.