"Uh… yes… thank you," Mary stuttered, glancing over her shoulder at Lee, who raked his fingers through his thick blond hair and put on a big show of yawning and stretching for Lou's benefit. "A good night's sleep works wonders."
"You look a little flushed," Louisa commented as she placed the breakfast tray on the night table. "Are you sure you're feeling all right?"
Mary pressed her palms to her cheeks, then gently touched her puffed and reddened lips. "I'm fine," she assured Lou. "More than fine. Really." Mary turned her attention to the breakfast tray. "Breakfast smells wonderful, Lou. Thank you so much. But you shouldn't have gone to all this trouble for us."
"It's no trouble," Lou said. "Besides, you missed supper last night. I figured you must be starving."
"I am," Mary assured her. "It's just that…"
"What my wife is trying to say," Lee interrupted, "is that it's a bit early in the morning for her breakfast. She wakes up early, but she likes to linger in bed awhile, sleep in a bit longer, and breakfast later. Especially when I'm home," he added in a huskier tone of voice.
"So you see," Mary broke in breathlessly before Lee could embarrass her further, "while we truly appreciate your thoughtfulness in bringing us breakfast in bed this morning, it won't be necessary for you to continue to do so. We'll go downstairs for our morning meal, just like everyone else."
"And if we're a little late," Lee added, "we'll settle for whatever is left over or wait until later."
"You will not," Louisa responded indignantly. "Nobody in this house goes without food unless they choose to do so, especially the owners. Not while there's a breath left in my body. Do you think I would let you"—she shot a glance at Lee—"or your sweet wife go without a meal when she agreed just yesterday that the two of you would continue feeding my family? Continue Tabitha's practice of feeding just about everybody in the whole town? Why, I'll fix meals for you no matter what time of day or night it is. Or how long you two honeymooners linger in bed."
Lee was genuinely touched by Louisa's dedication and loyalty. "Thank you, Louisa, for breakfast and for your understanding."
"Oh, I understand, all right," Lou told him. "I'm not so old that I don't remember whiling away the hours in bed with my man." She turned to Mary. "Now, you just hop into that bed and let me put this tray over your lap."
"But…" Mary protested.
"No buts," Lou told her. "I intend to see that you get this breakfast in bed. We'll worry about future breakfasts later."
She turned to Lee as Mary climbed into the bed as bidden. Louisa placed the tray in Mary's lap, poured two cups of tea, one for each of them, then gave them a friendly smile and a wave. "Just put the tray outside the door when you've finished," she said. "Birdie or Nan can pick it up later. Oh, and since you're not coming down, I'll have Rolf come up to see if Mr. Crane needs any help. Don't worry about a thing, and enjoy your breakfast."
"We need to talk," Mary said as soon as Louisa left the room.
Lee popped a piece of bacon into her mouth. "After we eat," he said.
Maddy woke up and toddled into the bedroom as Mary and Lee were eating. "Go pretty," she announced, flinging Mama up onto the bed beside Lee. "Maddy go pretty."
Mary handed the tray to Lee, slipped out of bed, then took Madeline by the hand and led her to the pink and white wall-papered water closet.
When they returned a few minutes later. Lee was pouring a second cup of tea into Mary's cup.
Mary lifted Maddy onto the bed and the little girl quickly scrambled over the mound of covers to sit beside Lee. She curled her little body close to his, then reached for Lee's plate. "Bidcut," she said, as she pointed to emphasize her request.
Lee grinned. "Would you like butter with your biscuit or strawberry jam?"
Maddy nodded.
"Butter?"
Maddy nodded again.
Lee sliced through the fluffy center of the biscuit, coated the bread with butter, then wrapped it in a napkin and handed the biscuit to Maddy.
Madeline handed it back. '"Berry zham," she instructed.
Lee chuckled as he added a teaspoonful of strawberry jam to the buttery biscuit. "It appears Maddy has very definite ideas about her likes and dislikes." He handed the bread back to the child and watched as she took a big bite.
Mary pulled the chair up next to the bed, sat down on it, took the breakfast tray from Lee and set it on the night table, then picked up her plate to finish eating. "Madeline is very smart and very strong-minded. She's definitely her own person."
"You sound as if you like that."
"I do," Mary admitted. "I'm pleased to see she's an outgoing child. I know from personal experience that shyness and timidity can be a burden." She set her plate aside.
"Personal experience?" Lee reached around Maddy and handed Mary her cup of tea. "There isn't a shy or timid bone in your body."
Mary sipped her tea, remembering. "I was a tomboy growing up. I followed Reese and David around and tried to do everything they did until I was ten or so," Mary told him. "Then I changed—" She blushed, then continued on matter-of-factly. "I guess you could say I matured early."
"I'd say you matured nicely," Lee replied in his deep husky tone of voice. "Very nicely."
Mary blushed more furiously. "Anyway, after that, I became very shy and withdrawn. I began to keep to myself. I didn't know myself anymore. So, I began to read and study more, to help with the women's work, and stayed as far away from men as possible."
"When did you start carrying the derringer?" Lee asked.
"I got it as a present for my fifteenth birthday. A year or so before we left the Indian Territory for Wyoming."
A gun as a birthday present for a fifteen-year-old girl? Unusual to say the least. Unless, Lee thought, the fifteen-year-old girl was part Cherokee Indian and living in a territory where all too many men considered Indian women, and most especially half-breed Indian women, as theirs for the taking. And white men weren't the only men who posed a threat. The territory was full of outlaws, mixed bloods, and Indians who felt the same way. "Who gave you the gun as a gift?"
"Uncle Benjamin," Mary smiled at the memory. "Reese's father. He gave me the gun, then asked my mother to make sure that, in the future, all my skirts had pockets on the right side. He taught me how to shoot and made me promise to keep it loaded and carry it with me at all times."
"What prompted your uncle to give you a gun?"
"I don't know," Mary answered quickly. Too quickly.
"Yes, you do," Lee insisted.
Mary took a deep breath. "I decided I wanted to continue my education so I could become a teacher. The family talked it over and decided that I should attend a very expensive, very exclusive girl's school back east in Boston. I didn't want to go to school that far away from home, even though I knew Reese and David were attending Harvard University nearby, so Uncle Benjamin suggested I attend a school in St. Louis. He had a friend there who operated an exclusive school of higher education for girls."
"I agreed, and Uncle Benjamin traveled with me to St. Louis. He was going to Washington on business and promised to stop by and see how I was getting along on his way home. Everything was difficult at first." She took a deeper drink of tea, then cradled the cup in her hands. "Oh, there were the usual adjustments, I suppose. It took a while for the other girls to become accustomed to sharing space with me. I knew I was different."
"I understood that most of the girls had never seen an Indian and had heard all the horrible stories about Indians— how we massacre and mutilate innocent men, women, and children in their beds. But after the third month, I thought everyone was adjusting. Unfortunately, I didn't realize the other girls hadn't adjusted to my presence at all. They had simply schemed to get rid of me at the end of the term. I never realized girls could be so vicious."
"What did they do?" Lee asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
"The school held an end-of-term social the last week of April—a dance. And young men from one of the
area military academies were invited to be our escorts. After the dance," Mary recited the story in a flat unemotional voice that told Lee more about the trauma she had suffered than an avalanche of tears. "I went upstairs to bed, full of high spirits, because the social was my first real dance. After I fell asleep, someone sneaked two of the young men from the academy into my room."
Lee's breath caught in his throat, and he could barely get the words out of his mouth. "What happened?"
"I don't think they meant to hurt me," Mary answered. "The plan was for me to be caught with a man in my room so I'd be sent home in disgrace. But the young men had other ideas. I woke up to find one of the boys standing over me. He held me down while the other one tried to…" She took a breath.
"Did he?"
Mary shook her head. "No. One of the girls, one I had helped tutor, got scared. She knew about the plan to teach the 'Injun girl' a lesson. She ran to the headmistress who arrived in time to prevent it. The next morning, the headmistress wrote a letter to Uncle Benjamin requesting that he come to take me home. I was being expelled from school for lewd behavior."
"What about the other girls or the boys?" Lee demanded. "What happened to them?"
"I don't know. Nothing more was said about the incident to me. I was expelled for having men in my room." Mary swallowed hard. "After all, rules were rules, and I had broken them. My uncle came to St. Louis and rescued me. I think Uncle Benjamin could have bought my way back into the school, but I didn't want to return. I just wanted to go home. The following year, I did attend a school in Philadelphia, but I never forgot what happened. Since the day of my fifteenth birthday, I've always carried my derringer in my pocket and kept a lamp burning in my room so I never have to wake up in the dark and worry that someone might be there."
Lee thought it was a measure of just how exhausted Mary had been, that he had been able to enter her room and carry her from her bed to his without waking her, or having her shoot him, in the process.
"Bidcut," Maddy interrupted, pointing to the biscuit left on Mary's plate.
Mary handed her biscuit to Lee, who spread it with butter and jam and gave it to Maddy, whose nightgown was covered with crumbs and whose face was smeared with butter and jam as well.
"She's getting crumbs in your bed," Mary commented.
"That's okay," Lee said. "I don't think I'll be needing it for a while."
"What?"
"I did a lot of thinking last night, Mary, and I don't see how either one of us can plan for the future until I get some of Tabitha's demands out of the way."
"You're leaving me," Mary said flatly.
"I'm leaving town later this afternoon," Lee explained. "But I'm not leaving you. I'm coming back to Utopia, but for now, I have to return to Chicago."
"I don't understand."
"I telegraphed William Pinkerton last night after supper, and I received a reply from him around midnight. He said that if I planned to resign, I had to do so in person. He wouldn't accept anything else." Unable to sit still any longer, Lee rolled out of bed and, barefooted and shirtless, began to pace the width of the room. "So I'm returning to Chicago."
"You can't resign from the Agency."
"I can't do anything else," Lee reminded her. "It's not as if Tabitha left me with a lot of choices. If I want to keep Maddy, I must resign from the Agency."
"Within ninety days of Tabitha's death," Mary reminded him. "She's only been dead eleven days. You still have almost three months before you have to make a decision."
"I've already made the decision. And I would like to be able to give the Agency as much time as possible to find a replacement for me. They'll need every moment to brief a new operative on the status of my cases."
"What about the status of your cases? What about Tessa and David? What about the promise you made to them? What will happen to their case if you resign now? Who will replace you on that case? Who will continue the search for Lily Catherine if you don't?"
"I'll find someone," Lee said. "I promise you that. I'll find a good man to continue the search."
"But you won't be there to make sure he's good enough, or works hard enough—that he leaves no stone unturned."
Lee raked his fingers through his hair in exasperation. "Dammit, Mary, do you think I want to leave the Agency this way? It's been my life. I'm thirty-three years old. Do you think I look forward to starting over in a new career?"
"No, I don't," she said softly. "I think you're trying very hard to do the right thing by Tabitha and by Maddy. But if you resign from the Agency before you locate Lily Catherine, you'll be trading one child for another."
"The search for Lily Catherine will go on," he promised again. "I'll find someone to continue it and I'll get William Pinkerton's word on it. Besides, I told Tessa when she asked me to search that finding Lily would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. I've been looking for the past four months and I've come up with more questions than answers."
"Then you're prepared to jeopardize your long-standing friendship with my brother and with Tessa?"
Lee leveled his gray-eyed stare at Mary. "They'll understand."
Mary nodded. "David might, but not Tessa. She'll never understand why you chose to honor some other woman's promise and not the one you made to her."
"Hell, Mary! Who are we talking about here? You or Tessa? How many times do I have to explain that Tabitha Gray was my partner?"
"Tessa's brother was your partner as well. You made a promise to him, too. You promised to look after his sister."
Lee stopped. "Actually, I promised to marry her," he reminded Mary with an ironic little laugh. "Fortunately, Tessa had the good sense to turn me down and marry someone who loved her."
"Unlike me." Mary's voice was a barely audible whisper, but Lee heard her.
"I didn't mean it that way."
"But you don't deny it."
Lee couldn't take his eyes off his wife. Suddenly, he understood just how much Tabitha had asked of him. If he abandoned the search for Lily Catherine, Tessa would never forgive him, but more importantly, Mary would never forgive him. He could live with Tessa's disappointment if it meant keeping Madeline, but Lee realized he would never be able to live with the knowledge of having failed Mary. "Suppose I use the time I have left to look for Lily Catherine. Suppose I hold my resignation until the last possible moment and still am unable to find Lily; are you willing to risk losing Madeline"—he glanced down at the dark-haired, blue-eyed moppet busily wiping her sticky hands on the sheets—"if it comes to that? Are you willing to lose Maddy and Lily Catherine?"
Mary shook her head.
Lee barely managed to contain his explosion as his frustration mounted. There was simply no pleasing the woman. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. "Dammit, Mary, what do you expect me to do?"
Mary smiled serenely at her husband. "I expect you to find Lily for David and Tessa and resign from the Pinkerton Agency before the time limit expires so we don't run the risk of losing Madeline."
"You expect a miracle," Lee told her.
Mary got up from her chair, then bent and lifted Madeline from the center of Lee's bed and headed toward the water closet. "Yes," she said, "1 guess I do." She turned back to fix her gaze on Lee. "But then, I believe in miracles."
"Believing that miracles exist doesn't guarantee you'll get one when you need it," Lee warned.
"Then I'll just believe in you." Mary smiled sweetly. "And trust that you'll be able to create the miracle I need."
* * *
Chapter Seventeen
Mary put on a good front later that afternoon as she, Judah, and Maddy all lined up at the front door to see Lee off. Judah wore a black suit, brocade waistcoat, and silver watch, while Madeline wore a dress of robin's-egg blue and a sparkling white pinafore, white ribbed tights, and shiny black patent leather shoes. Maddy held her doll in the crook of her elbow as she sucked her thumb. And Lee noticed that someone, probably Mary, had tied a matching blue ribbon around Mama
's curls while Madeline's dark baby-fine curls remained ribbonless.
In his traveling suit and canvas duster, Lee felt positively underdressed. He smiled at the picture Judah and Madeline made in their best Sunday clothes. But Mary… Mary simply took his breath away. She wore a red day dress. The neckline was heart-shaped, which emphasized the elegant lines of her slender neck. And the front of the dress molded against her, accentuating her willowy figure and the length of her legs. In the back, the fabric covered a small bustle, then cascaded, like a waterfall, into layers of ruby red down to the floor.
"You look lovely, Mary," Lee breathed at last. "What's the occasion? My leaving?"
"No." She shook her head. "We're dressed in our best clothes, and lined up on parade, to cheer our hero in one last adventure.'" She nodded toward the stained-glass panels above and beside the front door depicting a jousting tournament. "As we live in a castle," she said, trying very hard to show Lee that she really didn't mind his leaving her alone on their honeymoon, "and are surrounded by images of Excalibur, Merlin, Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere, it somehow seemed appropriate."
Lee followed her gaze to the stained glass, then turned his attention back to his wife and raised his right eyebrow in question, "Are we surrounded by reminders of Camelot?"
"In every room," she told him.
"Then I guess it only fitting that I ask for favors from my two ladies."
Mary leaned over and whispered into Maddy's ear. "Give Papa his favor."
Maddy held out her hand to Lee, then opened her palm to show him a blue hair ribbon.
Lee took the ribbon and handed it to Mary. "Would you tie it on for me?" He turned so that Mary could tie the blue ribbon around his upper arm over the canvas duster.
Maddy clapped her hands together and giggled in delight.
"I have something for you, too," Mary said.
Lee watched as she reached into the pocket of her skirt. "That reminds me." He searched the inside breast pocket of his suit coat until he located Mary's little silver derringer. He pulled it out and offer it to her. "Don't forget about this. I won't be needing it just yet." He grinned at her. "I think it would be better if you kept it while I'm gone. In your skirt pocket where it belongs."