Chapter Three
Three
Henry Middlebrook’s house was a brick monstrosity, reminiscent of the town bank— his bank—which he’d taken care to point out as they’d passed it minutes before, in his surrey.
Lizbet stared at the imposing structure, noticing that, except for a servant woman, who came out onto the elaborate whitewashed veranda to greet them, circumspect and clad in a black bombazine dress, there wasn’t another living soul in evidence—no wife, no grown sons or daughters, not even a gardener.
The handsome barn, set at some distance from the mansion, seemed strangely empty as well, giving off the kind of soundless echo one felt rather than heard.
Even more unsettled than before, Lizbet turned her attention back to the housekeeper.
She was middle-aged, with dark hair, streaked at the temples with gray.
Over that funereal dress, she wore an immaculate white cap with ruffles around the brim and a matching apron so crisp that it must have been starched.
When the woman executed a half curtsy for Mr. Middlebrook, Lizbet actually recoiled, outwardly as well as in wardly, because William drew close to her and growled her name in a tone of clear warning.
Deliberately, he proceeded to unpeel Frankie and Jubal from Lizbet’s sides and dragged them toward the house.
Marietta, Lizbet noted, at the periphery of her vision, was gazing at the grand house with a kind of speculative wonder, perhaps regretting that she was legally bound to William and could not pursue Mr. Middlebrook instead.
She was at least twenty years William’s junior, and the age gap between her and the banker was even wider.
Such trifles meant little to Marietta.
When Middlebrook waited to walk behind Lizbet, she quickened her step and caught up with her stepfather and the children.
The housekeeper stood to one side, there on the wide brick steps, watching— assessing , it seemed to Lizbet—as the visitors passed into the entryway.
Her given name, Lizbet would soon learn, was Ruth, though she preferred to be addressed as Mrs. Harriman. She was a widow, thin-lipped and proper, and it was her job to oversee domestic activities in that vast, echoing house.
The place made Lizbet think of the whitewashed sepulcher mentioned in the Bible, full of dry bones. If one were able to pick that house up and shake it, she reflected fancifully, it would definitely rattle.
Despite William’s promise of weeks’ duration that they would stay at the Statehood Hotel, it soon became apparent that that wasn’t going to happen. At least, not that first night.
Mrs. Harriman was quick to announce that she had prepared rooms for everyone.
While Mr. Middlebrook and William retreated into what was probably the old man’s study, the former closing the double doors behind them, the housekeeper led the others up an ornate, curving staircase.
On the landing, which was large enough to hold a grandfather clock, two chairs and a settee, Mrs. Harriman turned to Marietta and smiled obsequiously.
“The guest suite will be yours and your husband’s, Mrs. Keller,” she told Marietta, whose expression relayed quite clearly that she wouldn’t have expected anything less.
With her nose in the air, Marietta sailed down the long corridor behind the housekeeper, reminding Lizbet of a figurehead on a ship.
Lizbet and the children waited outside in the hallway while Marietta was shown her quarters. The pleasure in Marietta’s voice was indication enough that she was more than appreciative.
She remained in the suite to await delivery of her trunks and cases, and, of course, William.
“And now for the children’s rooms,” Mrs. Harriman said, her expression unreadable, her jawline strangely edged in white.
Seeing that there was, for the moment, no way out of this enforced hospitality, Lizbet straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin and said, “I would prefer to share my room with the children.”
Mrs. Harriman narrowed her nearly black eyes and studied Lizbet as though she had just sprung from a nest of vermin and might deliver a stinging bite at any moment. “That won’t be necessary—” she began, but fell silent when both Jubal and Frankie snapped to Lizbet’s sides as though magnetized.
“I want to stay with Lizbet,” Jubal insisted, stubbornness gathering in his little face like a summer storm.
“Me, too,” Frankie said.
“Come now, children,” Mrs. Harriman said, at last recovering, at least partially, from her bout of stunned disapproval. “You’re not babies anymore. You can’t expect to be with Miss Fontaine every moment!”
Lizbet made up her mind in that precise moment that if the housekeeper persisted in this vein, she would take her brother and sister and march straight to Mrs. Ornetta Parkin’s boarding house, across the street from the general store.
The walk would be a long one, but that would not deter her, weary as she was.
She had money—not a lot—but enough, some in her valise, some carefully stitched into the hem of her velvet coat.
Retrieving the latter, of course, would require both privacy and access to her clothing trunk, neither of which were options just then.
But still.
She waited.
Mrs. Harriman waited.
Frankie and Jubal clung to Lizbet, like monkeys gripping the trunk of a banana tree.
Finally, the housekeeper flung out her work-reddened hands and huffed out a concession. “Very well,” she nearly spat. “If you want to sleep crowded together like a pack of stray dogs, so be it!”
With that, the woman turned and walked down the hallway to fling open another door.
“Here,” she said tersely. “Make yourselves at home!”
“This isn’t our home,” said Frankie. “We don’t live here.”
Mrs. Harriman rested her hands on her hips and glared down at the child.
Frankie was not intimidated.
“Just go,” Mrs. Harriman ordered tersely, with another brisk gesture.
The get-out-of-my-sight part went without saying.
“Why are we here?” Frankie asked quietly, once the three of them had entered the room they were to share for that night, at least. “Father said we would be staying at the Statehood Hotel while we were here.”
Lizbet shook her head, looking around. “I really don’t know.”
The room was—well, there was only one word for it: prissy.
Practically everything in it boasted at least one ruffle—the spread and pillow covers and the canopy on the four-poster bed, the lace curtains covering the windows, the scatter rugs, the lampshades.
There was an interior door, near the bed, and Lizbet, frowning, crossed to it, tried the knob.
It was locked, possibly from the other side, and she found that disquieting.
A second interior door, however, led to a full bathroom, with a real bathtub, a wooden commode with a pull chain for flushing and a pedestal sink with gleaming brass spigots.
Frankie, who had followed Lizbet into the room, flipped a switch on the wall next to the entrance.
Light spilled from a bulb dangling so high overhead that Lizbet hadn’t noticed it.
“Electricity,” Frankie marveled. “Just like we had in St. Louis.”
William had filled both children’s heads with wild stories about the Great American West during the long journey, and they’d probably been expecting to stay in log cabins or, if captured, native teepees.
Lizbet made no comment. She wasn’t surprised, having seen the lamps in the other room, so she merely nodded at Frankie, giving a silent order, as she often did with both children.
Frankie switched off the power.
It was late afternoon, but there was still plenty of light.
A workman brought up some of the baggage about half an hour after Mrs. Harriman had deposited Lizbet and the children in the frilly, fussy room.
Lizbet had nothing against feminine decor, but there was something almost obscene about this room. It was like a nest, carefully feathered.
Or a lethal trap, hidden from sight under billows of silk and ribbon and lace.
Her glance moved to the door next to the bed.
“Where does that lead?” she asked the young, muscular man who had just brought in their bags, indicating the locked door that made her so uneasy.
The man, whose name was Tom, ran a sweaty hand through his mouse-colored hair, which could have done with a washing.
“Can’t say as I know for sure, Miss,” he ventured, after some thought, “but my guess would be, given where it is in relation to the rest of the house, I mean, that this room adjoins Mr. Middlebrook’s.
He’s got the whole front of the place, according to Mrs. Harriman.
” Once again, Tom shoved his hand through his hair, then added, apropos of nothing, as far as Lizbet could deter mine, “Wants me and Joe to wash all six of the second-floor windows before we get any deeper into the fall. That on top of all we got to do looking after the horses and the yard.”
A tremor of real alarm had raced along the tops of Lizbet’s arms, raising the small hairs as it went, at the first mention of a door leading from Mr. Middlebrook’s room to this one.
She felt like a sparrow perched on the nose of a jackal. A very hungry one.
Tom said his goodbyes and left.
Lizbet looked around the room, found a plain wooden chair almost hidden in one corner and half carried, half dragged the heavy thing over to the interior door, tilted it onto two legs and wedged the high back beneath the doorknob.
Frankie and Jubal watched with crumpled foreheads as she turned from the task and dusted her hands together. It was a figurative gesture, given that she hadn’t dirtied them.
“No questions,” she said, damming the stream she saw headed her way. “Who’s taking the first bath?”
“I am,” Frankie said.
“I don’t want a bath,” Jubal said.
“Jubal Keller,” Lizbet replied, gently stern, “you will have a bath, and that puts paid to the matter.”
Jubal seemed to sag a little, inside his dusty clothes. He sat down on one of the rugs, folded his arms and jutted out his lower lip, but he didn’t argue.
He knew when he was beaten.