The Infamous Miss Ilsa Page 4

  “Deal,” he replied without hesitation. She sat down on the edge of the bed and reset the checker pieces.

  Two minutes and eleven seconds later, Ilsa captured his last piece.

  “You cheated!” he whined. “They must teach you all sorts of gypsy tricks in that orphanage.”

  Ilsa shrugged. “I’m not even that good.” In the girls’ home, they’d played checkers with all manner of boards and pieces: lines of chalk in the barren yard, with leaves and stones, bits of paper stored carefully under someone’s bed. A kid who was really good at checkers never went hungry.

  “Tell me how you did it,” Theo said. “You must have a trick. My tutor has never beaten me.”

  Ilsa sighed. Theo picked up the little toy horse, clutching it tightly in his fist. Her absence had probably already been noted by Cook. “I have to go.”

  “Will you come tomorrow?”

  “Only if you give me the horse, welsher.”

  He smiled again, challenge flaring in his big green eyes. “Best two out of three.”

  A door slammed somewhere in the bathhouse, startling Ilsa out of her reverie. How long had she been standing here, staring at the desiccated rows of peas and wax beans without really seeing them?

  Theo had cost her too much then, and he certainly wasn’t worth troubling herself over now, especially when she was so close to realizing her plans. The reappearance of someone from her past was a shock, yes, and now that the shock was over, it was time to compose herself. No more blushing. No more pointless regrets. She was too old for that nonsense.

  She would give Theo Whitacre a wide berth. And he would probably go on calling her Miss Pendergast and pretending to have never met her. Fraser Springs was small, but not so small that she couldn’t avoid a person if she set her mind to it. And besides, the society ladies wouldn’t be able to resist a handsome doctor for long, limping or otherwise. The local daughters of privilege would be strolling arm in arm with him along the boardwalk in no time. Ilsa had her world and Theo had his, and that was simply the way it was going to be.

  • • •

  Theo couldn’t get back to the hotel fast enough. He ordered some sandwiches to his room, then stretched out on the bed. Mrs. McSheen was angry with him. The whole of Fraser Springs hated him as a joyless spoilsport. But right now, he didn’t care.

  He pulled the newspaper clipping out of his wallet and studied it. He had never really believed that Ilsa was the woman in the photo; the caption beneath the image had read “Mrs. Josephine Wilson, Rescued From Fire.” But it had looked so much like his memory of Ilsa—the loosely curling fair hair; the large, pale eyes; the proud tilt of her chin—he hadn’t been able to resist cutting it out and keeping it.

  Yes, of course it was her. It had been her all along. Mrs. Josephine Wilson must be the “call me Jo” of Wilson’s Bathhouse. Ilsa worked there. Somehow, the newspaper must have gotten the names mixed up.

  He munched on a sandwich. This was bad news, even though it didn’t feel like it. He’d spent six years turning what had happened with Ilsa over and over in his mind until he could no longer separate fact from fiction.

  They had played checkers together: that was true. And it was true, also, that one day she’d curled up beside him in his bed, rested her head on his shoulder. They’d kissed. That was true. That had happened.

  He could remember that moment in crystalline detail. He hadn’t meant to spend so much time with Ilsa. But then his mother went away on a three-month visit to her sister’s family, and his father wouldn’t have cared if his son played checkers with the devil himself. Checkers led to chess. Neither of them knew how to play chess, but they cobbled together the rules using a book that Theo’s tutor had brought and their own imaginations. They bickered over every move, each accusing the other of cheating, and sometimes Ilsa would swat him on the arm.

  And then it turned out that though Ilsa could read, she only read from grocery lists. So Theo pulled down book after book and taught her the words she didn’t know. They would sit together on his bed when Ilsa could sneak away from her work for a half hour, and he’d read to her, and then she’d read to him.

  Theo had always hated the adventure novels with which his mother stocked his shelves, because they might as well have been called Adventures Theo Would Never Have. Or It’s Very Fun to Be a Young Man If You Can Walk Properly. But in Ilsa’s telling, the stories came alive. Her reactions were half the fun. After a dramatic scene, she’d stop and say, “That didn’t happen. That would never happen! Would that ever happen?”

  A few days before his mother returned, Ilsa fell asleep with her head against his shoulder as he read to her. He reached down and swept away a curl stuck against her cheek. The gesture sent a shiver down into his stomach, but before he had time to process the sensation, her eyes opened and she blinked at him sleepily. Her mouth was parted, just slightly.

  “I fell asleep,” she murmured.

  “You did,” he whispered.

  “You must have been boring,” she said.

  “Very boring,” he agreed.

  And that was when she tilted her face up and kissed him. Or he kissed her. It was hard to say. Their touch was tentative at first, but his body, which he had been told for years was wrong and feeble, felt completely whole—completely right—when pressed against hers. His hand skimmed her cheek. She placed her palms on his chest and that, too, felt right.

  Finally, she pulled away. “I should go.”

  He tried to pull words out of the fog of his brain. “Yes. Of course. I’m sorry I . . . ”

  Ilsa kissed him again. “This was nice,” she whispered.

  After she left, he looked around the bedroom that had been his world for so long. He was surrounded by storybooks and games, by distractions of all kinds. His room looked like a nursery, not a place for a man on the brink of adulthood. Even though she beat him at nearly every game they played, he felt powerful around Ilsa. She didn’t talk to him in a baby voice. She didn’t call him “Teddy.” There was no pity in her expression. The way she had looked at him, half asleep, her blond curls all askew . . . He wanted to be the type of person who deserved to be looked at like that.

  He’d spent six years after that perfect afternoon listening to his mother tell him that Ilsa had been just trying to get a piece of the Whitacre fortune. She’d been the help, not a friend: a little urchin looking out for herself. Maybe Theo had seen what he wanted to see.

  He had already interfered too much in Ilsa’s life and he needed to focus on his own work.

  The sandwiches had improved Theo’s mood considerably. The morning may have been a complete loss, but there were plenty of productive ways to spend the rest of the day. He should find Dr. Greyson and start settling into the practice. He should probably also speak to the hotel management to clarify the responsibilities that came with the post. The old doctor might be happy to operate on a handshake and his good word, but getting something in writing would undoubtedly be for the best.

  Theo’s lower back cramped, so he lay on his side and twisted to try to stretch the tense muscles. His doctors had always expected that his weak left leg would give him all the trouble, but it was his good leg and his lower back that pained him the most, since they took on the additional strain of compensating for his weakness.

  He began a checklist in his head as he turned over and stretched the other side. Dr. Greyson, then hotel management, then supper, then finish unpacking. He would not think of Ilsa. Who was a bathhouse attendant now. It might not be the most respectable occupation, but it was better than . . . No, he needed to get out of this room and talk to someone who didn’t have either a ridiculous hat or a mess of blond curls fringing her heart-shaped face and startlingly blue eyes.

  He cleared his mind again with great effort. Dr. Greyson, then hotel management, then supper, then finish unpacking. He could do this. The only thing worse than being marooned in Fraser Springs would be crawling back in defeat to the big empty house in the West End, with
his tail between his legs, after less than twenty-four hours. He would have to make a success of this.

  Chapter 3

  Between the return of old ghosts and her racing thoughts, Ilsa had slept terribly. In the morning, she’d turned too quickly in the kitchen and slid an entire batch of raw biscuits from the pan onto the floor and then burned her hand on the oven door for good measure. She’d had to backtrack for forgotten towels, pitchers of water, and bowls of massage oil at least four times already. It was as if her head had been attached to a different body in the night.

  By lunchtime, Jo noticed her foul humour, took over her appointments, and sent her out of the bathhouse under the pretence of running errands. Ilsa sighed. The situation must have been truly dire for Jo to rearrange the schedule. It wasn’t fair to give her boss an extra burden, but maybe a long walk was just what she needed.

  She tried to make the best of the unexpected reprieve as she strolled along the boardwalk. She had even changed into her favourite skirt, whose cornflower blue fabric had been laundered a hundred times until it was buttery soft and draped like silk. People nodded to her and smiled as she passed them, and she smiled back with every appearance of good cheer. The sun was shining, the breeze was brisk and refreshing, the leaves were brilliant reds and oranges, and she was determined to enjoy herself.

  And yet, from the moment she’d stepped off the front porch of Wilson’s Bathhouse, she’d been flinching at every man who passed her line of sight. When she entered the post office, the sight of a slim, dark-haired man standing with his back to her had made her stomach flop. And yet, when he turned out to be the assistant bank manager, she felt almost . . . disappointed. Was she avoiding Theodore “I don’t believe we’ve met” Whitacre or was she trying to run into him? And would doing so make her feel better, or so much worse?

  Maybe she should give in to the extravagance of taking tea at the St. Alice. Theo was here to work with Dr. Greyson, and Dr. Greyson kept an office and an examining room in the hotel. She’d have to pass by the door twice on her way in and out of the lobby, so it would only be natural to poke her head in to say hello.

  And then what? Sit down and have a long heart-to-heart, maybe catch up on all the thrilling events in her life between being his housemaid and running errands for a bathhouse? She could ask after his mother’s health. “Doing well, I hope. And are you still wrapped around her bony finger, or have you grown a spine of some sort? Delightful! Yes, the weather is lovely today. I do hope the rain holds off, don’t you?”

  By the time she arrived back at the bathhouse, the sun was just beginning to set, and the last of the afternoon clients were drifting out the front door. After two more turns up and down the boardwalk, her roiling emotions had settled down to a dull, dissatisfied ache. Theo had no reason to seek her out, and she had nothing to say to him that he’d welcome hearing.

  She went straight up the stairs to Jo’s office. At this time of day, it was the most likely place to find the Sterlings: Jo would be tallying up the weekly accounts, and she could already hear Jo’s husband Owen clattering away on his typewriter. The door stood open, so she simply knocked once on the doorframe on her way in.

  “Mail delivery for Wilson’s Bathhouse,” she announced. Jo looked up from behind the wide oak desk and smiled.

  “I’ll take everything except the bills and the letters of complaint. Those are all Owen’s.”

  Ilsa tossed most of the bundle down on the blotter in front of Jo, keeping back the two catalogues of notions and ready-to-wear clothing for herself. “Not falling for it. He only gets fan letters on pretty pink stationery.” Mr. Sterling wrote popular novels, so he did get a fair number of letters from admirers. And a fair number of those letter writers knew him from his brief reign as Most Eligible Bachelor in Vancouver.

  Behind her, Owen snorted and pushed back from his writing table on the other side of the room. “Untrue.” She shot him a sceptical look as he strolled over to flip through the pile of envelopes. “I also get fan letters on pretty lavender stationery. From time to time.”

  “He suffers so much for his art, Ilsa,” Jo said. “The poor dear.” Owen grinned and leaned over to plant a kiss on his wife’s smiling lips.

  Ilsa slid her gaze away to the view of the lake beyond the office window. It wasn’t that she was uncomfortable with displays of intimacy—she’d walked in on this very couple in a far more compromising position when they’d first been courting, and she hadn’t turned a hair. But this casual physical affection between two happily married people was embarrassing, somehow. Her own parents had certainly never kissed and cuddled in front of her on the rare occasions that her pa had been home from the fishing fleet. And every other husband and wife she’d seen had been coolly distant. At least in public: perhaps they were all more like Owen and Jo behind closed doors.

  “Did the walk help?” Jo asked, calling her attention back from the window.

  “A bit,” Ilsa replied. Jo either didn’t notice the unusually vague reply or chose not to push at it.

  “You missed all the excitement. Mrs. McSheen paid me a call.”

  “Oh good Lord. What have we done wrong this time?”

  “Nothing, yet. It seems that Mrs. McSheen has heard rumours that His Honour the Mayor”—she rolled her eyes towards her husband, who was now half sitting on her desk—“has given his blessing for a dance to be held on the premises of Wilson’s, and she required his direct assurance that the event would be properly . . . I believe the word she used was ‘chaste’?”

  “Decorous,” Owen volunteered. “And I assured her everything would be thoroughly decorous, and she sailed back out of here in high spirits.”

  “Wait,” Ilsa said. “We’re hosting a dance? When did that happen?”

  Jo shrugged. “I mentioned the possibility of hosting something to make up for that damp squib of a welcome party for the new doctor. And then Owen said something about the idea to Doc at the saloon, and now it seems that the entire town is expecting a dance come next Saturday.”

  “And I’ve given the event my blessing, so we can’t back out now,” Owen said. “That’s just bad manners.”

  “It would be easy enough to clear out the dining room,” Ilsa said, thinking out loud. “And there’s all the bunting from Victoria Day. But we’d have to order in some of the food, because I don’t know when we’d have time to . . . ”

  “Slow down, General!” Jo laughed, holding up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I was going to ask if you’d mind putting something together, but you’re clearly three steps ahead of me.”

  “I have a pretty new dress and dancing shoes that’ve barely been out of my room. I’ll organize everything. You can spend the rest of the week vomiting and making Owen fetch things for you.”

  “She hasn’t vomited at all this week,” Owen noted cheerfully.

  “Good. And get those ankles un-swollen by next Saturday, ma’am. Because we’re going to be doing a lot of dancing.”

  She could still hear the low murmur of Owen and Jo’s banter coming through the grate as she sat on her bed and opened the first of the catalogues. After a quick skim, she began re-reading the pages she’d dog-eared, circling items of interest in red grease pen. There was a sale on cash registers at Woodward’s. Now that was something she hadn’t considered. Did you really need a cash register to start, or could you make do with an accounts ledger? You wouldn’t want a line of customers out the door while you tried to add the numbers by hand, but was it wishful thinking that customers would be beating down her door? And a proper cash register would make the whole shop seem more legitimate. She sighed. Cash register? she wrote in the catalogue margin.

  She was so close. She’d met her savings goal last month: a full year’s wages. In a moment of bravery she had planned a trip down to Vancouver around this time, but, with Jo so heavily pregnant, she’d cancelled it before she’d mailed a letter to a single broker. True, Jo would have given her the time off without hesitating, but the idea of leav
ing her friend with a newborn and a business to run in order to seek her own fortune made her stomach twist. She loved Jo, and Jo had more than earned her loyalty as both a friend and as an employee, so how could she explain that for the past three years she’d spent every free moment meticulously planning her escape? Would Jo understand that it was nothing personal? That she was a good boss, but she was still a boss, and Ilsa didn’t want to take orders from anyone?

  And now there was this dance to think about. She flipped to the blank page at the back of the catalogue and began making a list. A good punch could make or break a party. Something with wine and rum. Perhaps some spices would be appropriate: were they out of cinnamon? If they used cinnamon, some floating apple rings or cranberries would make the punch look festive. Food was more difficult, especially on short notice. Perhaps that salted ham hock in the cellar could find its way into some pastry. Would the St. Alice sell their tea menu at a reduced price if she ordered enough? And where had they stored the bunting after the Victoria Day celebrations?

  It was always something. Jo’s pregnancy. Theo’s arrival. This dance. She was never going to see her own name painted in gold on a storefront sign if she didn’t focus. She’d already missed getting the store up and running for the Christmas season. Perhaps it was better to aim for a March opening, right as ladies were considering their Easter dresses and their spring and summer wardrobes. At this rate, she’d still be planning dances in Fraser Springs next summer, then next fall, then Christmas again, and the summer after that.

  No, she was ready. All her plans were falling into place, and nothing was going to hold her back. Not Jo, not this dance, and especially not Theo Whitacre.

  • • •

  Dr. Greyson’s office in the St. Alice Hotel smelled strangely familiar: the melange of pipe smoke, liniment, and wood polish had been the background to many tedious hours of Theo’s youth. In fact, it looked as if someone had chiselled the old office out of the Vancouver medical building and set it back down in Fraser Springs. The same amber apothecary jars lettered with gold script. The same framed anatomical lithographs. The same overstuffed chair and long desk strewn with papers. Even the skeleton, which Dr. Greyson had once used to demonstrate to Theo exactly what parts of his body had gone wrong, still stood in the corner of the room. It was yellowed now, the ribs slightly askew and the pelvis twisted, so that it seemed to have aged along with Dr. Greyson.