Chapter 18
“Ah, you’ve come to join our festivities!”
Miss Jessie, wearing a beautiful dress of pale gray silk, her hair dressed elegantly, opened the door wider for Maggie to come into the parlor house, her smile a little cool but hopefully genuine. It was the middle of January, the day of Jenny’s wedding.
Maggie was wearing a dress fashioned from the green silk the Browns had given her, and while she’d felt smart, she knew she paled in comparison to the parlor house madam’s loveliness.
Her stomach squirmed with a jealousy she knew she had no right to feel.
She’d left this world behind, Brendan included, when she’d chosen to train as a nurse.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she told Miss Jessie.
In truth, it had been difficult to get the afternoon off.
She’d had to switch with another trainee nurse, Marybeth, and agree to roll several dozen bandages that Marybeth had been tasked with.
She was also behind in laundry and mending as well as her own studies, and could have used the afternoon to catch up, but she wanted to see Jenny… and Brendan.
It was perverse, Maggie had reflected, how she could not seem to get the man out of her mind.
When everything was meant to be settled between them, when she’d made it so, her heart, contrary vessel that it was, suddenly decided to feel all sorts of inconvenient things, including this corrosive jealousy.
She smiled at Miss Jessie as they walked together in the drawing room, which now sported all the sofas and chairs in the place arranged into rows for the ceremony.
“How have you been, Jessamine?” she asked. She realized she didn’t want to call her Miss Jessie like she was her employee, because she wasn’t anymore.
“Very well, Maggie, and you? Nursing suits you?”
“It does.” Much to her relief, Maggie had graduated from probation and would now, all things being well, get her certificate in a year and a half.
Three nurses had been asked to leave the program, including poor Gladys, who had gone with mingled despair and relief.
The studying had simply been too hard for her.
“Miss Maggie!”
Jenny appeared at the top of the stairs, her hair in sausage-like ringlets, her face painted, but still wearing her robe. “You must come help me put my dress on!”
“Of course,” Maggie replied, smiling, and started up the stairs.
Jenny’s bedroom looked like a whirlwind had gone through it, with petticoats and peignoirs, gowns and slippers, all thrown around. Draped over the bed was Jenny’s wedding dress—made of pale blue satin, with deeper blue flounces on a full three feet of hem.
“Miss Jessie had it made special,” Jenny told her proudly. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“It is,” Maggie assured her. While far less garish than some of the gowns the girls wore, it was still far fussier than anything Maggie—or even Miss Jessie—would have worn.
“I asked for the flounces,” Jenny confided as she slipped off her robe. “Miss Jessie said plainer was best, but who wants to get married in something that makes ’em look like a maid?”
“You would never look like a maid in this, Jenny,” Maggie told her. “You’ll look like a lady.”
“And I’ll be a lady,” Jenny told her, her eyes like stars. “Mr. Grayson, he owns a whole lumber mill up near Sacramento. We’re going to honeymoon at Palace Hotel right here in San Francisco, can you believe it? It’s only the fanciest place there ever was!”
“I’m so happy for you,” Maggie told her sincerely. In Jenny’s world, she’d grabbed the shiniest brass ring, the dream every girl in a parlor house or cow yard or crib cherished—that a man would not just notice and love her but marry her. Jenny was fortunate indeed.
“I can’t believe it,” Jenny murmured to herself as she looked in the mirror, one hand twisting one of her curls. “I can’t believe I’m going to be a married woman.”
She was, Maggie knew, just one month past her fifteenth birthday.
It was hardly unheard of for a girl to be wed that young, and considering Jenny’s past, it was just as well, but as truly pleased as Maggie was for the girl, part of her still felt sad.
She had never so much as glimpsed Mr. Grayson, but she hoped he treated Jenny well, and also that he truly loved her.
“Let’s get your dress on,” she suggested, and reached for the skirt to help Jenny into it.
Half an hour later, Maggie was seated in the front room with the other girls and Miss Jessie, as well as Danny and Da, everyone in their Sunday best. She had yet to see Brendan, but Miss Jessie had informed her that he was going to walk Jenny down the aisle, which seemed particularly fitting, and made Maggie glad for both Jenny and Brendan. He really was the girls’ protector.
“Isn’t this a grand time?” her da whispered as he leaned across to her. “Our Jenny getting married! And look, there’s the groom!”
Maggie turned to take in the sight of Mr. Grayson for the first time—an unprepossessing man with a thin fringe of graying hair made up for by an enormous set of lambchop whiskers that quite overwhelmed his face.
He was well over forty. He smiled at them all rather nervously before taking his place at the front of the room.
At the sight of him, Maggie had to hide her instinctive dismay. This was not the groom she would have chosen for fifteen-year-old Jenny, but at least he would be a good provider, she hoped, and he must truly love her, to propose.
Emma Mae, playing the piano, started a rousing rendition of “Here Comes the Bride”.
A second later, Jenny turned the corner, on Brendan’s arm.
She was beaming, a vision of innocent loveliness in her pale blue silk, even with the extra flounces.
Next to her, Brendan looked particularly dashing in a new gray suit, a pocket watch at his waist, his light brown hair swept back from his forehead with pomade.
As they started down the aisle between the rows of chairs, his gaze moved to Maggie, and then quickly away again, before she could so much as smile.
When he’d deposited Jenny next to her groom, he went to take his place in the first row, next to Jessamine, who bent her head to whisper something to him.
Maggie saw Brendan smile and nod before she quickly looked away.
It shouldn’t hurt, she told herself fiercely. She shouldn’t let it hurt. And, in any case, today was about Jenny.
The service started, the minister from a local mission clearing his throat to begin. Just a few minutes later, they were wed, the new Mr. and Mrs. Grayson. Jenny looked ebullient, her husband shyly proud. Maggie felt suddenly quite teary at the sight of them both.
“And now to celebrate!” Miss Jessie exclaimed, kissing Jenny’s cheek before she gestured to Evie and Mrs. Adams to bring in the trays of oysters and champagne.
Emma Mae began playing the piano again, and all of Miss Jessie’s girls went to embrace Jenny, who was both laughing and crying while her husband put a protective arm around her.
“I think they’ll do well together, don’t you?” Brendan murmured, dropping into the seat next to Maggie. She tensed, breathing in the scent of his aftershave—something unfamiliar and new. Had Miss Jessie picked it for him?
Why was she letting herself think this way?
“I think so, too,” she agreed shakily. She laughed as she dabbed her eyes. “At least I hope so. This whole thing has made me rather absurdly emotional.”
“Not absurd,” Brendan replied. “It’s good to cry at weddings. They’re momentous events. And sometimes unlikely couples make the best ones,” he added with a nod to the Graysons.
“Yes…” Maggie agreed hesitantly. Was he talking about Jenny and her new husband, or him and Jessamine, or the two of them? Except, of course, they’d never been a couple. “Excuse me,” Maggie murmured, and rose from her chair.
She made pleasantries with various people for the better part of an hour, barely aware of what she was saying, or even what she was feeling.
She was achingly conscious of Brendan—moving around the room, his dry chuckle, the way Jessamine came naturally to his side, her crystalline laugh chiming with his.
It was all so painful, so ridiculously painful, because Maggie knew she really should be past feeling this way.
This ache of longing, of sorrow, of regret.
She was annoyed with it, with herself for feeling it, for the fact that even now some part of her could not resist tracking Brendan around the room.
She had no right to him, she knew. No right at all.
He and Jessamine looked well together, Jessamine so tall and willowy, Brendan so solid and affable, and meanwhile Maggie herself had been kissed by another man—a handsome, kind and charming man—except Philip had not spoken to her since.
This was the first afternoon off Maggie had had since that brief kiss before they’d gone in to dinner, and it felt like it might as well have not happened.
Maggie watched as Jessamine, laughing, laid a hand on Brendan’s arm and then she turned away, her stomach churning. After an hour and two coupes of champagne, she couldn’t bear anymore and she slipped out to the back porch for some fresh air.
The night was clear and cool, the first stars starting to glimmer on the horizon. Maggie leaned against the porch post and took several deep lungfuls of air. It was only a few moments before the back door opened again, and Maggie knew who would be standing there.
“Had enough of the party?” Brendan asked, stepping out onto the porch and closing the door behind him.
“No, just tired,” Maggie said as she kept staring at the sky. She wished he hadn’t come out to find her, and yet at the same time she was glad he had. It was, she thought wearily, ever thus.
“They work you too hard at that hospital,” Brendan said as he took a step closer.
“Not too hard,” Maggie replied. She was conscious, achingly so, of his nearness, but she kept her gaze on the distant stars. “But hard enough.”
Brendan was silent for a long moment, and Maggie didn’t dare look at him. “You don’t seem as settled as you did before,” he finally remarked quietly.
Maggie let out a trembling laugh that sounded almost wild. “Don’t I?”
“No,” Brendan replied, and took a step closer. “You don’t.”
She shook her head, still not looking at him. “I suppose I’ve realized how complicated things are,” she said after a moment.
“What is complicated, Maggie?” She heard a tenderness in his voice that made her both angry and glad.
“Everything.”
She thought of Miss Jessie and the girls, and how they both feared and loved her, and perhaps Miss Jessamine had similarly confused feelings for them. Were they her business assets or were they her daughters?
She thought of Jenny getting married to a man three times her age who had bought her service as a prostitute, been willing to use a fourteen-year-old girl as a whore… whom he now loved.
And then she thought of Philip kissing her and then saying nothing about it, not one word, while she could not decide how she felt about the whole matter.
As much as she liked Philip, she didn’t think she held that sort of affection for him…
and yet perhaps she could, if he’d showed even a modest amount of interest. So far, he hadn’t.
And then there was the Browns’ kindness that was genuine yet clearly touched by pity, because how could it not be.
And Brendan standing beside her right now, close enough that she could hear him breathe, and yet moments ago Jessamine had been laughing and touching his arm.
“Everything,” she said again.
She thought also of Danny and her father, how utterly exasperating they were, utterly feckless and reckless and charming and hurtfully indifferent, and how she knew—she knew—they would never change, and yet she still loved them.
She loved them so much it hurt, the only family she had, the only people anchoring her to who she’d been, as well as who she was, whom she wanted to be.
“Everything is complicated,” Brendan agreed. He lifted his hand as if to touch her arm, and then dropped it again.
“I think I used to believe things were simple,” Maggie said slowly. She still couldn’t look at him. “Black or white, right or wrong. I was sure about so many things… and I’m not anymore. I’m not sure about anything.”
Brendan chuckled softly. “Well, then, it sounds like you’re wise.”
Maggie sighed. “I’d rather feel sure.”
Brendan shifted where he stood. “Even if you were wrong?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, and this time he did touch her arm.
“Maggie—” he began, but then the back door opened, and Jessamine stepped out onto the porch.
“Brendan?” she asked, her voice light, musical. Maggie instinctively stepped away, and Brendan’s arm dropped to his side. “They’re about to start the toasts.”
“Well, I can’t miss that,” Brendan said on a laugh, and he walked away from Maggie, leaving her alone on the porch.
As the door swung shut behind him, Maggie let out a breath. Always, always she was hoping for something that wasn’t going to happen, that shouldn’t happen. Always waiting for Brendan, even when she convinced herself she wasn’t.
From inside the parlor house, Maggie heard the clink of crystal and then Jessamine’s voice. “And now a toast…”
The rest was lost among laughter and chatter, as outside the wind whispered through the branches.
It was time to move on, Maggie decided. Move on from her past and her regret and indecision.
It was clear Brendan had made a life for himself here—and so had her father and brother.
Her life at the hospital was what was important, and she needed to focus on it.
On becoming the nurse she knew she could be.
Taking a deep breath, Maggie turned away from the star-scattered sky and went back inside.
She slipped past the front room where Brendan was toasting the bride and groom, his voice a pleasing rumble, and headed out the front door into the night, for the long walk back to the nurses’ residence, alone.