Chapter Two
The Ridge Hotel had been dressed for the brides, and Charlotte Bellamy loved it before she had taken three steps into the parlor.
It was too much, which made it perfect.
Red, white, and blue bunting hung along the walls, even though the Fourth of July was still weeks away.
A crooked banner over the mantel read WELCOME brIDES in letters which could not agree on size.
Cakes crowded the long table by the window.
Pine boughs had been arranged along the mantel, likely because someone had mistaken abundance for taste.
Nobody in Wild Rose Ridge had the heart to correct the women who decorated everything.
Lottie adored every inch.
The room smelled of coffee, cake, lamp oil, damp wool, and men who had made a serious effort at soap.
The men stood along the edge of the parlor in clean shirts, pretending interest in the wallpaper while looking very much at the brides.
Several wives from town hovered near the hearth, smiling to welcome the strangers and inspect them thoroughly at the same time.
Beside Lottie, Delly took one look at the room and lowered her voice.
“This is organized meddling.”
“It’s a reception.”
Lottie pressed her freshly rescued Tennyson against her middle and tried not to smile too broadly. The book was dry now, mostly. She held it as a security blanket between her and the rest of the room.
Mr. Peterson. The thought made her glance toward the doorway. She had looked for him the whole short walk from the dock to the hotel, then again when they entered the parlor, then once more after someone pushed a plate of cake into her hands and told her she looked thin.
He was here.
Of course, he was. He stood near the back of the room, half in the hall’s shadow, with his hat in his left hand and his right hand tucked inside his coat, which was much too warm for the cooler June evening.
He didn’t stare at the brides like the other men.
Instead, he watched the room as if someone might ask something of him at any moment, and he intended to be ready to refuse.
Lottie’s heart, foolish organ that it was, warmed anyway. He had picked up Tennyson from the dock boards. A man who did such a thing could scowl in corners as much as he pleased. Lottie was prepared to allow a great deal for Tennyson.
Before she could consider whether marching straight across the room would be bold or improper, three women bore down upon the cluster of brides.
The first carried a list. The second wore a hat with cranberry feathers, and the third looked as though she had opinions filed alphabetically and meant to use them.
Val Sutton appeared beside Delly with two cups of tea and an expression suggesting she had seen this campaign before and survived it narrowly.
“Those three,” Val murmured, “are the Busy Bees. Mrs. Schulte has the spectacles and the list. Mrs. Beck has the feathers and the bank. Mrs. Hanford has the opinions.”
“That sounds like an alarming distribution of power,” Delly said.
“It is.” Val smiled. “They mean well, which makes them far more dangerous.”
Lottie leaned closer. “Are they kind?”
“Oh, very,” Val said. “That’s why there’s no escaping them.”
Mrs. Schulte reached them first, arms open, and her list held high enough to look official.
“Our brides! There you are. Now, we have a great deal to settle and very little time to settle it, so we shall be organized.”
Delly made a small sound. Lottie tapped her elbow lightly against her sister’s side.
“Behave,” she whispered.
“I am observing.”
“That is how trouble starts with you.”
Mrs. Schulte turned directly to Lottie. “You must be Charlotte. The one with the books.”
Several nearby men looked at her with fresh respect or possibly fear.
“Yes, ma’am,” Lottie said. “Though everyone calls me Lottie.”
“Lottie, then. Our library bride.” Mrs. Schulte consulted her list, though she did not appear to need it. “You are spoken for already. Mr. Peterson, of course. Tall, quiet, difficult to draw into conversation, but steady.”
Lottie felt the heat climb onto her cheeks.
Across the room, Mr. Peterson looked down at his hat.
She wondered if he had heard.
She hoped he had and hoped he didn’t.
Mrs. Beck clasped her hands together. “We are so pleased. A reader will be good for him.”
Mrs. Hanford cleared her throat. “Beatrice.”
“What? I only mean a quiet girl may suit a quiet man.”
“I am not especially quiet,” Lottie said.
Mrs. Beck blinked as Delly took a sip of tea.
Lottie tried again. “I can be quiet, of course. When called upon. In libraries, sickrooms, and during sermons. Unless, of course, the sermon is very confusing.”
Mrs. Hanford gave her a long look. “Well, we shall hope Mr. Peterson is prepared for variety.”
“I like variety,” Lottie said.
Delly coughed into her tea.
Mrs. Schulte moved on, sorting out the remaining brides with brisk confidence. “Margot. Goldie. Then we have…” She stopped before Delly. Her smile stayed fixed, but her eyes sharpened. “And the extra.”
Lottie closed her eyes.
So soon, Lord?
“The extra?” Delly asked.
“Josephine wrote there would be an additional young woman traveling with the brides. A companion, I believe.”
“I traveled with my sister,” Delly said, “but I am here as a bride. Not a companion. A bride.”
“Delly, hush.” Lottie leaned near her. “Don’t upset the apple cart. Please.”
“There is already a cart,” Delly said. “I am merely pointing out it lacks a wheel.”
The Bees took this in with the fascinated horror of women who had spent years arranging everyone’s affairs and had just been handed a fresh problem wrapped in a gray traveling dress.
Lottie risked a glance toward Mr. Peterson.
He was looking at her now.
Not Delly. Not the Bees. Her.
The look lasted only a moment before he turned his attention to the windows, but it was enough to put all of Lottie’s thoughts out of order. His eyes were darker than she had expected. Or perhaps the corner was poorly lit. Either way, the glance did not feel indifferent.
That was something.
Then Delly took out her notebook. Lottie’s stomach dropped harder than it had at the dock.
When Odelia Bellamy took out her notebook in public, reasonable people moved away as quickly as possible. However, no one moved because they weren’t yet privy to what her sister could do with paper and pencil.
Delly opened the book and lifted the pencil with a smile on her face.
“Can you tell me which unmarried men have steady work and which ones are seasonal hands likely to drift off by fall?” Delly asked.
“Are there men who keep the Sabbath, and those only keeping it because people can see? What common injuries should a logger’s wife expect?
Finally, because no household arrangement can be properly assessed without the question, do husbands in Wild Rose Ridge expect pie, and if so, how often? ”
The parlor went quiet enough to hear the kettle sigh.
Mrs. Hanford pressed one hand to her bodice. “My dear girl. That is not how a young lady selects a husband.”
“It seems more reliable than sentiment,” Delly said. “Pie is not a trifling matter.”
Lottie looked at the ceiling and considered asking God whether sisters could be gently, temporarily silenced by Providence.
A brief laugh sounded near the doorway.
The man with the leather satchel from the dock stood there, cleaned up now, with the blood gone from his cuffs and his dark beard combed. Jebediah Simms, Delly had told her on the walk up. Camp man for blood and bones. Such as it was, and mostly blood.
His gaze rested on Delly’s notebook.
Lottie forgot, for a moment, to worry about Peterson. Delly turned toward Mr. Simms with the exact expression she used when a ledger refused to balance. Mr. Simms looked as though he might enjoy himself despite considerable effort not to.
Mrs. Schulte seized upon him with alarming speed.
“How fortunate you arrived, Mr. Simms. Miss Bellamy here needs a sensible husband.”
“I did not say I was in need,” Delly said. “I said I was conducting inquiries.”
Mr. Simms’s face went still, but not cold. “Then I wish you success with them.”
“Oh dear,” Lottie whispered.
Val, standing close enough to hear, smiled into her teacup. “Oh, yes. It boggles the mind, doesn’t it?”
Lottie looked from her sister to the camp healer and felt a strange little shift in the evening. Delly had come west to stand between Lottie and every danger. Yet here she was, notebook in hand, asking a large, bearded man how often he came home with blood on him.
This did not feel like protection. This felt like the beginning of its own disaster. Possibly a good one.
The Bees drew closer around Delly and Mr. Simms, and half the room did the same. Lottie might have listened if Mr. Peterson had not chosen that moment to step back toward the hall.
He was leaving.
No.
She moved before she could argue herself out of it and scurried across the room.
“Mr. Peterson?”
He stopped at the edge of the hallway. The nearest men found sudden reasons to examine the floorboards. She kept going anyway.
“Please don’t go on my account,” she said.
His brows drew together. “I wasn’t.”
That was not especially encouraging.
“Oh. Well. That is better, I suppose.” She shifted the book in her arm.
“Unless you were going on your own account, which is no better. I mean, it is entirely your right to leave a hotel parlor when you like, only we have barely spoken, and I thought perhaps we ought to try it once properly before deciding we are both impossible.”
His mouth moved beneath his beard. “Miss Bellamy.”
“Lottie, please.”
He looked toward the parlor, then back to her. “Miss Bellamy.”
She sighed inwardly. Not Lottie, then.
A lesser woman might have been wounded beyond speech. Lottie was wounded, but not beyond speech, which was fortunate since speech was one of her steadier talents.
“I wanted to thank you for my book,” she said, lifting the Tennyson slightly. “On the dock. You saved it from a very undignified end.”
“A book ought not be left in the wet.”