Love Finds You in Mackinac Island, Michigan Page 3

  Jillian stole another glance at Mama.

  Mama waved her hand. “Go.”

  Jillian didn’t hesitate this time, scurrying into the bathroom behind Elena. As Elena locked the door, Jillian collapsed on the stool beside the bathtub, tears flooding her cheeks. Elena turned the faucet on the sink, hoping the sound of running water would drown her words.

  Her mother had done her damage. Now Elena had to mop up the mess.

  Elena handed Jillian a handkerchief, and she wiped her face. “I know you didn’t take out the hairpins,” Jillian whispered.

  “You pinned it correctly.” Elena leaned back against the sink. “It was my fault for being so careless.”

  Jillian didn’t seem to hear her. “I don’t want to go back to Chicago.”

  “You’re not going to.”

  Jillian looked at her as if she were crazy. If Mama decided to terminate Jillian’s employment, they both knew there was nothing Elena could do to stop her. She would send her back to the steamy streets of Chicago where the summer air was coated with coal and the river ran red from the slaughter of cattle. All who could afford to travel fled the city during the summer months, taking their servants with them.

  “You don’t have to stay here with us,” Elena said. “There is plenty of work with other families on the island.”

  Jillian shook her head. “I don’t want to work for another family.”

  “We can still be friends, even if you work someplace else.”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  Elena turned off the running water. “We could try.”

  “It doesn’t matter who employees me. Your mother wouldn’t allow us to be friends.”

  And she was right, of course. Mama had no idea about the talks she and Jillian had in the privacy of her room or the laughter they’d shared over the three years that Jillian had worked for them. Mama would be horrified if she knew that Elena had confided in their maid, but Jillian was only a year younger than Elena and they had been friends since she was hired to assist Elena’s mother’s personal maid. When the maid retired, Jillian took over the role for both of the Bissette women.

  Jillian leaned back on the stool, and something fell from her pocket. An envelope.

  Instead of retrieving it, Jillian stared down at it as if she was scared to touch it.

  Elena bent down and swiped the envelope off the floor. Jillian’s name was written on the outside.

  Elena held out the envelope. “What’s this?”

  Jillian snatched it from her. “A note from a friend.”

  Elena tilted her head. “An admirer?”

  The tears in Jillian’s eyes dried, replaced by a look of panic. “I can’t—Just a friend.”

  Elena watched her face closely. Jillian usually shared her secrets with Elena, and Elena shared most of her secrets with her. She glanced back down at the envelope.

  Was Jillian searching for another position already, or had a man garnered her attention? If it was a man, who was writing Jillian?

  Jillian sprang from the stool. “I need to pin up your hair.”

  Elena turned toward the mirror and began twisting the strands together on her own. “It’s not necessary.”

  In the mirror, she watched one of Jillian’s eyebrows arch. “Do you want your mother to let me go?”

  Elena sighed, the pins still secure in her palm. “Of course not.”

  Jillian’s gaze traveled to the door and then she held out her hand. “We need to do it quickly, then.”

  Elena fidgeted with the pins. She didn’t want Jillian to have to fix her hair. She could do it on her own, couldn’t she?

  “Elena?” Jillian whispered.

  Reluctantly Elena handed over the pins and sat on the stool. Jillian swiftly twirled and tugged on her hair until the pins imprisoned it again, capturing it at the nape of her neck this time. Elena gently patted her finished hair.

  “You have a gift, Jillian.”

  A smile played on her friend’s lips. “Your hair looks lovely in any style.”

  Elena laughed. “Did you see it ten minutes ago?”

  “It was still lovely,” Jillian stammered. “Just a bit—a bit unusual.”

  “You’re a rotten liar.”

  Jillian’s eyebrows arched again. “You want me to improve my lying?”

  “Oh, no. You’re one of the few people in my life who actually knows how to speak the truth.”

  Elena wasn’t even certain what truth was anymore. Her mother would say that lying was a sin, yet the pretense of their lives often seemed like lying to Elena. Or maybe it was simply hiding the truth, capturing and molding it like the pins had done with her hair. Over the years Elena had become an expert on truth-hiding as well.

  “Is Jillian still in there?” Her mother pounded on the door.

  “I’m coming, ma’am.” Jillian slipped one more pin into Elena’s hair. “For safekeeping.”

  Jillian rubbed the last of her tears on the handkerchief before she handed it back to Elena.

  Elena brushed her hands over her hair again. “I’ll keep it out of the wind for the rest of the day.”

  Jillian’s hands went to her hips. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I promise.”

  “Jillian?” Her mother’s voice sounded worried.

  Elena whispered as she reached for the doorknob, “She relies on you too much to let you go.”

  When Elena unlocked the door, her friend rushed past her into the corridor. Elena again sat on the edge of the tub and looked out onto the streets where two servants were unloading the mounds of trunks. It would take days of hard work to unpack, organize, and redecorate their summer nest. Perhaps no one would notice if she locked herself in this bathroom for the rest of the day. With all the frenzy inside the house, they might not notice she was missing.

  She tapped her shoes on the tile floor and leaned her head against the plush hand towel hanging on the rack. And she prayed softly that God would give her the strength to not only make it through this day, but to make it through the summer.

  “Elena?” Her mother rapped on the door again. “Are you still in there?”

  She stood up. “Yes, Mama.”

  “We need to put away your things.”

  She sighed as she reached for the door handle. If only she could ignore her mother as her father did with such good humor. Just for once, she wished she had the courage to say no.

  “Claude!” Her mother shouted on the other side of the door. “I told you, that crate goes in the kitchen.”

  Elena sighed and stepped through the door. Servants were scurrying in both directions, hauling trunks and armloads of household items. Her mother turned Elena’s shoulders toward the staircase. “Your trunks are in your room, dear.”

  One of the women servants almost collided with her, and with a quick apology, the woman rushed around her.

  Elena moved toward the staircase and began the climb up to her room.

  Only six more hours until nightfall. And then she’d leave this madness behind.

  Chapter Three

  Most of the passengers on the Detroit and Mackinac Railway slept during the midnight hours of their journey. The train crept through the forest like an animal afraid of the dark—slow yet persistent—until the engine car emerged onto a plain of farmland. Then the train flew across the rails like a sailboat caught in a gale.

  Starlight drifted into the private railroad car and settled on the leather satchel in the chair beside Chase Darrington. His arm rested over the bag, one finger flicking the handle up and down. His parents traveled by their steam yacht, but he liked the steady rhythm of steel wheels against rails. The solitude of the night and the slow pace of the D&M was a rare opportunity for a man to use the mind God gave him. Or at least attempt to use it.

  He’d almost decided not to join his family on their summer excursion to celebrate Independence Day. In fact, he’d planned to go to Illinois this week to meet someone about an invention displayed at the C
hicago’s World Fair last year—a wooden tub that washed dishes by cranking a handle. It was one of countless innovations at the fair, one that some of his colleagues scoffed at, but the possibilities intrigued Chase. It would need improvements, of course, but that was what Chase liked to do. Improve things and then invest in their future.

  In spite of his family’s protests, he’d almost taken the train straight to Chicago, but then Richard, his assistant, had delivered this satchel to him after breakfast. The moment Chase saw the contents, he knew he would be traveling north.

  Next week he would go to Chicago.

  Chase propped his feet on the plush brown settee and laid his head back on the plump chair. In the early morning hours the train would arrive in Mackinaw City, and after breakfast, they would take a chartered yacht over to Mackinac Island. There would be little sleep for him, though. Perhaps none at all.

  His mind raced with possibilities. The world was changing rapidly, and he was trying hard to keep up with the latest inventions. He had no interest in actually doing the inventing himself. He didn’t do well at putting together the pieces of a puzzle, but once he saw the bigger picture, he liked nothing better than to usher a new invention into homes and offices across the country. He preferred things grander than dishwashers, but this was the kind of appliance that sold to the masses. The kind that made money. He didn’t do it for the money, but the successes were intoxicating.

  There had been plenty of failures too, in the ten years of working with his father. An electric iron that sporadically caught itself on fire. The bicycle pedal that locked to the rider’s shoe, more often than not refusing to release the rider from its clutches. The fruit-flavored chewing gum that sent hundreds of people running to their doctors.

  But the failures didn’t stop him from seeking out new things.

  In the dim light, Chase stood and walked toward the small kitchen at the side of the railroad car. He retrieved a bottle of apple brandy from the stocked cupboard and poured some into a glass. As he sat down, he swirled the amber liquid around in the cup. He’d sent their steward away to retire in a sliver of their private quarters a half hour ago, wanting to be alone. Sarah and her maid had gone to bed an hour ago in the larger stateroom.

  He planned to sleep right here.

  Pullman had built this palatial car, but the Darrington family had made it their own. The woodwork was polished mahogany, and the drawing room housed a settee, two chairs, and a writing table along with the kitchen. Sarah had ordered lace curtains for all the windows and secured books behind a wooden railing on shelves to make a library.

  Chase took a sip of the brandy. He wasn’t particularly thirsty, but perhaps the drink would calm his racing mind. He set the drink on a small table. The drink swayed back and forth in his glass with the steady movement of the train, but it didn’t spill.

  Propping his feet back up on the settee, he reached out and fiddled with the handle of the bag again. If he actually got tired, he’d sprawl out on the settee, but even with the brandy, he doubted sleep would steal him away anytime soon.

  Gaslight filled the room, flushing the subtle light from the stars, and he turned around to see Sarah standing in the doorway of her stateroom. Embroidered flowers covered the burgundy wrapper over her nightgown, and her hair was braided down her back.

  “Are you still coddling that thing?” she asked. His sister was almost twenty-eight, but with her hair down, she looked more like she was twelve.

  He grinned. “Don’t you look smashing?”

  She stuck out her tongue, a particularly bad habit of hers since she was about four years old. It manifested itself whenever he pestered her. She left the door cracked open, the narrow light trailing her as she crossed the room. “If you’d devote as much attention to one woman as you’ve done to that ridiculous bag, you’d be married by now.”

  He grinned. “I’m not looking to marry anytime soon.”

  She stood beside his chair, nodding at the satchel. “What’s so important in there?”

  He smiled at her as he clutched the handle. He wouldn’t put it past her to pounce. “You know I can’t tell you.”

  She sighed, clearly exasperated. “You’re hopeless, Chester.”

  In her eyes perhaps he was hopeless, but hope was what drove him. Hope and speculation for what lay ahead.

  She pointed at the chair beside him. “Are you going to let me sit down?”

  He didn’t move the satchel, but he removed his feet from the settee across from him.

  She shook her head before she sat. “You should get some sleep tonight.”

  He picked up the brandy and twirled it again. “I was trying to.”

  “Edward thinks you’re working too hard.”

  “Edward thinks I’m working too hard?” He hadn’t meant for his laugh to sound so sardonic, but his brother-in-law had developed a certain immunity to work in his middle years, preferring the rush of horse racing and high-stakes poker to the more intellectual investment work of stocks, bonds, and financing new projects that could revolutionize their world. Their father refused to put any of the Darrington money into Edward’s schemes.

  Chase took another sip of his drink. They were all chasing the wind, he supposed, but the investments of S. P. Darrington & Company were based on both speculation and fact. Edward’s form of investing was based on extremely bad guesswork.

  Sarah tucked her feet under her wrapper. “Edward says you should stop and enjoy all that you’ve worked for.”

  Chase took a long sip of the brandy. “There’s no comparing my work habits with Edward’s.”

  “He works plenty. He just knows how to play too.” She fingered the hem on her wrapper. “Play is good for the body and the soul.”

  “The soul?” He scanned the small library of books beyond the chairs until he found the large black book among them. “Where do you find that in the Good Book?”

  She waved her hand at his comment. “Even God rested on the seventh day.”

  He patted the bag. “But I’m pretty sure He worked hard during the other six.”

  She glared at the satchel like it was her archenemy. “All I’m asking is that you attend several of the parties with me. Pretend, at least, that you’re interested in the young ladies.”

  He grinned. “I don’t have to pretend. I have a great appreciation for women.”

  She grabbed a cushion from the couch and threw it at him. “One of these days, someone is going to make you care.”

  “I do care, Sarah. Just not about the things you care about.” He shifted in his chair. “How is my being on Mackinac going to benefit you?”

  She hesitated. “Edward needs to improve his connections a bit.”

  And probably his reputation, Chase thought, but he didn’t say it. It wasn’t Sarah’s fault that her husband was a louse.

  “And I want you to meet a dear friend of mine.”

  One of his eyebrows slid up. “A married friend?”

  Sarah gave a little roll of her eyes, a habit she seemed to reserve solely for him. “Her name is Gracie Frederick. She is from Philadelphia.”

  “Why is she vacationing in Michigan?”

  “Her parents have a home on Mackinac.”

  “And you think I need a new friend?”

  “You don’t need another friend, Chester. You need a good woman in your life.”

  Sarah knew he hated it when she called him Chester, but he still laughed at her words. “Between you and Mother, I have enough good women in my life.”

  She crossed her arms and spoke slowly, as if she wasn’t sure he could understand. “You need a wife.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not looking to marry Gracie or any other woman on the island.”

  Sarah sighed. “I’m not saying you should marry her, necessarily—just someone like her.”

  “I’m glad we’ve worked that out.”

  His sister leaned forward. “Gracie’s father owns the biggest lumberyard in Philadelphia, and Edward wants to partn
er with him. You know how to play up the charm without the slightest hint of a promise.”

  “Is this Miss Frederick homely?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then why does she need you to find her a husband?”

  Sarah huffed. “She doesn’t need me, nor does she need a husband. I’m only asking you to attempt to find her interesting.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then pretend.”

  He patted the bag again, sighing. “I’m not spending my few days on the island sacrificing for Edward.”

  She stood up, a smile playing on her lips. “I don’t believe you’ll consider time with Gracie to be a sacrifice.”

  Sarah walked to her stateroom, and the door closed with a soft thud. Instead of sleeping, Chase leaned back in his chair, listened to the rhythm of the wheels, and watched the stars glow in the night sky.

  Miss Frederick, he was certain, would be like the rest of the debutantes who crested the powerful ring of Detroit’s society. Their families married them off to build prestige or power, and the women themselves were willing pawns in the grand scheme of these alliances. He was busy enough, building alliances in their businesses. He didn’t want to come home every night to an alliance as well.

  He had a deep appreciation of all their hours of toil before a social event, but no matter how beautiful the woman, he didn’t plan to marry for power or prestige. In fact, he didn’t know if he would ever marry.

  He patted the satchel again.

  Only two women had captured his attention in his twenty six years of life, and both those encounters had been brief. One was a striking woman he’d met at a dinner in New York City. He’d called at her home several times and thought her interest in his investments charming until he discovered that she was the granddaughter of a man who’d been pursuing the financing of S. P. Darrington & Company for three years. She’d known who he was the entire time, feigning interest in him so he would invest in her family’s work.

  The second woman, he’d met at a gallery in London. They’d dined together several nights, laughed together, and discovered their mutual love of art. Then he discovered that not only did she know who he was, but she’d followed him to London. And she didn’t have the least bit of appreciation for art.