The Scandalous Mrs. Wilson Page 8

  “Breathe,” Ilsa said softly, taking the pan of potatoes from Jo’s hands and setting it on the table. She steered Jo towards the changing room. None of the miners seemed to notice, though as long as there was food on the table, they wouldn’t notice the presence of a tap-dancing elephant.

  Ilsa shut the changing room door behind them. “It’s okay,” she said. She was smiling.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that,” Jo said in the most professional tone she could muster. “It was a lapse in judgment, and it won’t happen again. I’m supposed to set the example here.”

  Ilsa’s smile was a soft, almost motherly expression. “It’s okay,” she said again. “It’s not like you’re strumping around after every man who comes past.”

  “I most certainly do not ‘strump.’ But with all that’s happening, I can’t afford a distraction. None of us can. I’m sorry. It was foolish of me.”

  Ilsa shrugged. “You’ve always had good judgment. So if you say that Mr. Wister isn’t involved, then he isn’t involved. And the more I talk to him, the more I see you’re right: he’s a terrible liar.”

  Jo smiled. “That’s certainly true.”

  “Anyhow, if you want, I’ll pretend the whole thing never happened and I never saw a thing. Certainly won’t tell a soul.”

  “Yes, I’d appreciate that,” Jo said. She hesitated. Feelings were difficult for her, expressing them even more so. “You’re such a good ... Well. We can’t keep dinner waiting. Shall we?”

  Ilsa grinned and looped her arm with Jo’s. “Let’s.”

  Chapter 13

  Owen Sterling gave precisely zero damns about what the townspeople would think of him for entering Doc Stryker’s establishment at four in the afternoon. Hell, he would polka on the place’s front porch if it meant getting a glass of liquor. He needed the burn of the raw whiskey to sear away the fog that had descended over his thoughts.

  Nils Barson was lounging in one of the battered rockers on the porch. He looked up from his book as soon as Owen reached the stairs, but his wide smile evaporated under the influence of Owen’s scowl.

  “You okay, Mr. Wister?” Nils asked. Owen paused on the threshold.

  “I will be shortly. Care to join me?” Nils shut the book and followed him in without a word.

  Doc Stryker looked up from his ledger book as they came in. Even at this odd hour, a few old-timers were hunched over cards, though they seem to be playing for wooden plugs. They were all puffing on hand-rolled cigarettes of Lord knew what provenance, and the pungent odour somehow settled Owen’s racing thoughts. In the dim daylight that sliced through the smoke, Owen could see that the bar was far smaller than he remembered. The floral wallpaper was so streaked with smoke residue that the outlines of the flowers were barely distinguishable from that of other stains. In the center of the room squatted an old potbelly stove, cold and unused because of the warm weather. No feminine touches or frippery anywhere, thank God. The bar was textured with knife cuts and carved inscriptions. Joe loves Elsie, he read. Lots of initials. A heart.

  But this was no time to think of love or hunger or what a beautiful woman’s mouth might have felt like pressed against his as her hair fell down around him. The time for reflection was over. He needed a drink.

  “What can I get you fellas?” Doc Stryker asked. “House special?”

  All the ornate bottles above the bar, he could see now, were filled with the same clear water. It would have to be the house special. “Make ’em doubles.”

  “Very good, sir,” he said with a flourish, as if Owen had just ordered fine champagne. He lifted an amber jug from behind the bar and filled two generous glasses. “And what are we drinking to this afternoon, gentlemen? Money? Health? Love? Wine, women, and song?”

  “Just toasting the end of another day,” Nils said.

  “Amen, amen to that,” Doc Stryker said. Owen was sweating, despite the coolness of the room. “Surviving another day is about all we can ask for, now isn’t it?”

  The men at the back table grumbled their assent. Owen nodded. “Indeed.”

  “To surviving,” Nils said.

  “To surviving,” the men repeated and slung back their own drinks.

  The hooch worked its good magic: burning his throat, numbing his tongue to the lingering memory of Jo’s mouth, and very likely vaporizing his nostril hairs so that they could not recall that talc and peppermint fragrance.

  “‘There cannot be good living where there is not good drinking,’” Owen quoted.

  Doc Stryker grinned. “Ben Franklin, eh? Got us a scholar up here in the wilderness. Finally, someone who reads more than adventure stories about a boy and his dog.”

  “Hey,” Nils exclaimed. “They aren’t that bad.” Owen was too distracted to feel properly insulted.

  “Consummate works of art depicting the most basic struggle of man against nature—yes, yes, I know.” He spread his hands along the bar and leaned towards them. “You know, I used to do some theatre back in my youth. Before I washed up here. Often thought I had a play or two in me to write what with my various travels, but the time gets away from you, doesn’t it?”

  “Everyone’s got a story in them. You’ve just got to write it down,” Owen said. Hypocrite again. He was, after all, fresh out of stories. What was he doing? He tapped the bar again. Time to incinerate all the introspection out of his brain.

  “How you holding up, Doc?” Nils asked.

  The little man’s theatrical air deflated. It might have been the light coming in yellow through the tobacco-streaked windows, but he looked to have aged ten years since the night before. “Oh,” he said, “we’ll see, won’t we?”

  “You heard about Wilson’s, eh?”

  Doc Stryker sighed and filled up their glasses, pouring one for himself. They drank. “If the ne’er-do-wells who busted that window weren’t most likely women, I would throw that brick right back at them. Hating me, I can understand. What with the devil’s elixir”—he poured them another drink—“and the occasional game of chance among gentlemen.” Even the miners grinned at that. “But Mrs. Wilson ...” He smiled ruefully. “‘Envy breeds unkind division,’ eh? Isn’t that Shakespeare, Mr. Professor?”

  “But she hasn’t done anything to make anyone jealous,” Owen said. “Not as far as I can see. The ladies she employs aren’t ... improper.”

  Doc smirked. “Well, you know that. And I know that. But we all know that this town has four currencies. You’ve got your timber. You’ve got your ore. You’ve got your furs. And you’ve got gossip. Now, these ladies aren’t chopping down trees, and they aren’t swinging axes or skinning foxes, so what do they have left? They started off trying to save the souls of this lot.” He swung his thumb in the direction of the old-timers. “But it didn’t quite work out the way they planned. But now they’ve found another cause to rally behind, and they’re holding on for all they can get.”

  Nils downed his second—third?—drink. “Aw, Doc. We won’t let anyone run you out.”

  Doc snorted. “Ain’t nobody running me nowhere. I’m sixty-five years old. All the running’s behind me. No, if anyone in this town wants me gone, they got to burn this place down with me in it, and that’s that.”

  The drink and the good doctor’s problems were beginning to put Owen’s afternoon into perspective.

  “It won’t come to that, Doc,” Nils said.

  “What do you think Mrs. Wilson will do if they try to run her out of town?” Owen asked. As soon as he said it, he knew that the cheap liquor had gone straight to his head. He tried to rephrase the question. “I just mean, she’s got no one, it seems. I hate to see a woman thrown out on her own like that.”

  Doc laughed. “Oh, Josephine Wilson’s more than capable of taking care of herself. Don’t you worry about her.”

  Nils seemed to be studying him. Owen looked away and tapped his fingers for another round. “Well, let’s drink to you two! To Doc Stryker and Mrs. Wilson! Long may they reign!”

  Doc poure
d the drinks. “It’s bad luck to toast yourself. Let’s just toast Mrs. Wilson.”

  “To Mrs. Wilson,” the three men exclaimed as they raised their glasses.

  Owen downed the drink. For years now, he’d done his damnedest to make his way in polite society, sipping tea at literary salons and learning to say witty things about fine wine and old brandy. So why did he still feel so comfortable downing hooch in this so-called bar, rubbing elbows with fur trappers and broken-down miners? Put him in a suit and a fine hat, and he’d still have the same rough edges. Oh well. It wouldn’t hurt to let himself go for a few more days. High society could wait.

  Chapter 14

  Even in the moment, she knew she’d never go through with it. Still, just past midnight, Jo found herself spreading the scant contents of her life on her bed and packing them into a carpet bag she’d found in the storage room. She had made a mess of everything: of the bathhouse, of her husband’s good name, of her own reputation. Best to simply hop a paddle wheeler to Vancouver and let Wilson’s Bathhouse be swallowed back up by the wilderness. She could pawn her jewelry to get by until she got on her feet again. The girls would find other jobs. Mr. Sterling would go back to his comfortable life back in Vancouver.

  She had no serious plans to leave, of course. She had committed herself to this place and to the girls, and she couldn’t just go fleeing like some silly heroine. If nothing else, merely imagining the look of satisfaction on Mrs. McSheen’s face as she declared victory over the murdering harlot was enough to keep Jo rooted. Still, the self-pity felt good.

  She gently laid the tintype of her father down on the folded dresses, then picked it up again. He’d been only twenty or twenty-one when he’d had the photo taken as a souvenir during a carnival. The painted letters of the carnival’s name had flaked away, but her father’s young, unsmiling face remained on the metal. What had possessed a young man to spend his carnival money on posing somberly while the photographer fussed with the cordite powder rather than on sweets or sideshows was a question whose answer Jo would never know. It was just a bit of fun, he’d told her when she’d asked as a child. Now, it was the only image she had left of her father, who had never indulged in such fun again.

  Strange to think that she’d never met this version of her father in person. She hadn’t been born until he was thirty-four. Jo couldn’t connect the cold, grey eyes of the young man staring, ramrod straight, off at some horizon with the portly, red-faced father who had raised her alone after her mother passed. She had no photographs of her mother, and Jo’s father had rarely spoken about her. Somehow, the absence of any personal relics made her seem like a character from a story. Just another young bride perishing in childbirth, gone before she got a chance to see her baby’s face.

  It was too late for morbid thoughts or childish escape fantasies. Jo unpacked it all: her three dresses that weren’t work costumes, the jewelry Albert had given her, the tintype. She brushed out her hair, braided it, and set the tintype of her father back on the bedside table. Maybe if she stared at the photograph long enough, she would dream of him and she could explain everything: how sorry she was, how she didn’t know what to do, how she wasn’t sure how to make the money last through the season even if she wasn’t run out on the next rail. She stared so long that the afterimage of her father’s face floated on her vision when she looked away.

  Her dreams refused to listen to her plan. Instead, Owen Sterling invaded her sleeping mind again. At first, they were back in her office. He kissed her gently. She tried to deepen the kiss, but he wouldn’t let her. His lips just brushed against hers so that the roughness of his stubble grazed her chin. He tilted her head back with one hand and kissed her chin. Then her neck. When he reached the high, ruffled collar of her dress, he unbuttoned the first button and kissed the newly exposed skin. Removed another button. Kissed the half-inch of skin he revealed. He moved so slowly, so deliberately, that she wanted to beg him to hurry.

  And then, in the strange logic of dreams, they were no longer in the office but in the empty bathhouse. The light from the vertical windows striped their bodies with sun and shade. They were both luminous with sweat from the bathhouse’s humidity. Though they were naked, she felt no shame. The door, she sensed, was locked, and only the half-ruined faces of the Greek figures on the tiles could see them. Nothing could possibly be wrong. He was straddling her, and she strained with him.

  Suddenly, she was watching the entire scene unfold as if from above. The sun stippled their naked bodies in hazy yellow light, and his back muscles tensed and relaxed as he plunged into her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and was not afraid to cry out—

  She woke suddenly. It was pre-dawn, and the light through the window was weak and pale rather than the warm gold of her dream. The sheets and quilt were tangled around her, as if she’d been twisting and turning in her sleep. She felt too relaxed to be ashamed or frustrated. Instead, she lay in bed for several long moments, enjoying the last of the sensations coursing through her.

  Maybe a titillating dream was all she needed to shake out that silliness. Owen was handsome, yes. And he was charming, absolutely. And he was a distraction: the last thing she needed right now. Invigorated, she climbed out from under the too-warm bedclothes and padded down the stairs in her robe.

  Even in the steely light streaming from the high windows, Jo knew the bathhouse by heart. She stripped off her nightgown and entered the warm water to enjoy her bath. The room lightened around her, and the bathhouse walls were tinged with pink and orange as dawn broke. She luxuriated in the warm water, feeling totally calm, completely in control again. As she washed her hair, a plan formed. There was no need for unpleasantness. She would just delay the discussion with Owen until after the meeting. She was sorry, she would say, but she had too many responsibilities for ... whatever this was.

  She would assign Annie to see to Owen, and then she’d spend the day making a public show around the town. Would a politician hide away when he was campaigning? No, of course not. So why should Jo Wilson cower in her bathhouse while the Society Ladies slandered her up and down the boardwalk? No, she would put on her church dress and go greet every scowl with a smile. Why, hello there, Mr. Evans. Haven’t seen you with us for awhile. Good morning, Mrs. McSheen. How lovely to see you today. What’s that? Why of course I would like one of your leaflets!

  She would prove that Jo Wilson was no shrinking violet, and then she would show up at the meeting with the same resolve: perfectly in control, completely focused. Owen Sterling would have to wait.

  Chapter 15

  The shriek of dozens of forks and knives against plates was not helping Owen’s hangover one bit, nor was the sight of chewed food in open mouths or crumbs in beards. Owen’s fellow diners clearly prioritized speed over elegance when it came to table manners. He looked down at his plate, trying to focus on the fact that the coffee was hot and the bacon at Wilson’s could soothe any malady, but he couldn’t seem to pull his attention away from the dozens of chewing mouths. Like cows lined up in the feedlot. With the window still blocked off, the only light seemed to come from the lamps glinting off bread-crusted teeth.

  The only cheering thought was that Jo would arrive and he would be able to apologize, an act that would calm his stomach more than the bread and bacon. After returning to the St. Alice, he’d spent an hour formulating an eloquent, sincere apology for his ungentlemanly behaviour, an apology that would mollify Jo while leaving the situation open to further kisses. Unfortunately, he’d woken up this morning with a pounding headache and not one recollection of the genius that had apparently coursed through him last night. His head throbbed so much that the edges of the room seemed to pulse along with his heartbeat.

  Across from him, two men argued about the outcome of a recent poker game, and several more shared their own opinions about what fate should befall no-good cheaters. The room was humid and fragrant with the smell of bacon grease, bread, and coffee. He’d opted to wear one of the double worsted banker
’s outfits he’d been loaned and was regretting the decision as he felt the first beads of sweat slide down between his shoulder blades.

  It seemed that all of Fraser Springs had crammed into this small, dim room for the sole purpose of arguing and chewing with their mouths open. In fact, the only person who appeared to be missing was Jo. Maybe she had slept late, as she had done before. Still, as the meal was cleared away and the patrons wandered off for treatments or work, Owen tried to figure out how to inquire about her.

  “Mr. Wister?” Ilsa asked. Having shed the name in front of Jo, Owen had forgotten that he hadn’t outed himself to the rest of Fraser Springs. “Mr. Wister?” she said again.

  “Oh, I beg your pardon. What is it?”

  “You can take your bath treatment whenever it’s convenient. Your attendant is waiting.”

  “Ah. Well, I didn’t see Mrs. Wilson here, so I thought ...”

  She gave him a thin smile. “I’m sorry, but Mrs. Wilson is indisposed today. She’s very busy with the meeting coming up, but Annie is one of our best attendants.”

  This time, it wasn’t the hangover causing his stomach to flop. His faint nausea was burned away by anger. So she wasn’t even going to let him explain? She was just going to ignore him as if he were some kind of embarrassment? Would she hole up somewhere until he left?

  Owen forced a smile. “I’m sure she’s excellent,” he said.

  Annie may have been excellent. She may have been terrible. She may have been the fabled man-beast they called the Sasquatch for all Owen noticed. He sat in the steaming bath focusing intently on the beads of sweat rolling down his forehead and neck until they joined the water as the other patrons swapped stories around him.

  Jo’s ignoring him wasn’t right, and it certainly didn’t match the picture he’d conjured of her in his mind. Last night, he’d lain awake and wondered if she, too, was unable to sleep. Perhaps her thoughts were also roiling like the fizzling waters: a melodramatic comparison generated by Doc Stryker’s hooch, he could see. Maybe those guarded grey eyes weren’t guarded at all. They were just cold, a door to nothing.