Angel-Seeker

  “I’m not sure I can be that forward.”

  “Well, you have to be a little forward if you want someone to notice you,” Faith said sagely. “And you could also—I know! You could launder someone’s shirt and then pin a romantic note inside the collar. That would get his attention, I promise you.”

  “What if he just took the note out and threw it away? Once he saw my name and realized who I was?”

  Faith shrugged. “Then you’re no worse off than you were before.”

  “It would be so humiliating!”

  “Angels expect that kind of attention. They don’t think much of it. It’s not just girls like us who throw themselves at the angels, it’s Manadavvi heiresses and the daughters of rich landowners. Except they expect a promise of marriage, and we’ll settle for—well, a little less. But they’re all the same. Every girl wants to be next to an angel.”

  Elizabeth sighed. “It all seems so calculating. I guess I just hoped I could meet an angel who would fall in love with me.”

  “And so he might. Why shouldn’t he? But first he has to meet you. First he has to realize you’re interested in him. Now. Who exactly lives at your dorm? Let’s see what your potential is.”

  So Elizabeth outlined for Faith the ten angels who resided in the nondescript three-story building, just mentioning the women but going into some detail about the men. Faith had a comment to offer about each of them: “Yes, he’s good-looking but he keeps to himself”—“Oh, he’s got a terrible temper, or so I’ve been told”—“Shiloh spent three weeks trying to catch his attention and he never even looked at her. But Shiloh is a nasty girl, and he was probably smart enough to see that, no matter how pretty her face is. He might like you better, because you’re so much nicer.”

  None of this was particularly helpful, as they both realized by the end of the discussion. “Is there someone there you particularly like?” Faith asked at last. “Maybe you should concentrate on him first.”

  “I’ve only really talked to one or two of them. There was a new man, he arrived a few days ago, called Obadiah.”

  Faith shook her head. “I don’t know him. Where’s he from?”

  “The Eyrie, someone said. But he’s going to be living here from now on. Blond and blue-eyed. Really beautiful. But, I don’t know, he didn’t seem—”

  “Didn’t seem—?”

  Elizabeth made a gesture with her hands. “Like the kind of man who would consort with an angel-seeker.”

  “Let me tell you, the best of men will consort with an angel-seeker. Don’t have any illusions about that.”

  “Not Nathan,” Elizabeth said.

  “Not Nathan.” Faith sighed. “But most angels aren’t like Nathan.”

  “And there was another one. David. He’s got these beautiful dark eyes and a sort of brooding expression, and his wings—do you know him? His wings are sort of shadowy, like they’ve been sprayed with bronze paint. He’s very striking, I thought.”

  Faith was nodding. “Yes. I know who you mean. Somebody said that he was seeing one of the girls who lived in the other part of town—I think she was a shopkeeper’s daughter—but nothing came of it. Well, she was gone for a couple of months, so maybe something did come of it, but nothing important, if you know what I mean.”

  “So, I kind of like him. I like the way he looks, anyway.”

  “Good! That’s where we’ll start then,” Faith said briskly. “You’ll just have to find a way to put yourself in his path.” She thought of something. “And once he’s noticed you—once you’re alone with him—do you know what to do next? With a man?”

  Elizabeth hesitated before answering. Twice in her life, on James’s farm, she had found herself in the arms of an attractive man whom she had thought might really come to love her. Both had been the sons of Jordana landowners, young men traveling with their fathers and staying at the farm for a few days. Each time, Elizabeth had been excited and hopeful, sure that now, finally, she had found the route back to happiness and prosperity. Each time, she had been wrong.

  “I’m not a virgin,” she said at last.

  “Good,” Faith said again. “Then—let’s see—how can we make sure someone in the dorm notices you?”

  They sat up late, concocting ridiculous schemes and laughing a little more hilariously as the evening wore on. When the market clock struck midnight, Faith gave a little shriek and dived under the covers.

  “Sweet Jovah singing, I have to be at the bakery in four hours! Turn out the light and don’t say another word! I’ll think about it some more tomorrow and see if I come up with any more good ideas.”

  In the morning when Elizabeth woke up, Faith was gone. She quickly washed and dressed, and had a light breakfast in the kitchen. Tola provided dinners for all her boarders, but not a morning or noontime meal; anyone who was home at those hours could forage for herself, as long as she made sure the kitchen was tidy again before she left. Tola had kicked out boarders who were too sloppy to clean up after themselves. Not a mistake Elizabeth intended to make. She knew she was lucky to be here, and she planned to stay until she had figured out the best way to achieve her goal.

  Life with an angel . . .

  The laundry room seemed particularly full of piled sheets and crumpled shirts and soggy towels this morning, and Elizabeth eyed the mounds of work without much enthusiasm. She’d only gotten three steps into the foggy room when Doris met her, a bundle of sheets piled high in her arms. Doris was the scrawny, acerbic, impatient woman who was in charge of the laundry room. She looked ninety but could carry twice the weight that Elizabeth could and moved like a flickering ghost through the heavy atmosphere of the room.

  “Here—I’ve just got a tub started over in the corner,” Doris said, transferring her armload to Elizabeth’s hands and jerking her head in the appropriate direction. “Dump those in and then start stirring.”

  “You’ve already put the soap in?”

  “Yes, and set the temperature. Just stir.”

  The women looked nothing alike, but Doris reminded Elizabeth of Tola: blunt, gruff, competent, and unemotional. But both had been kind to Elizabeth in small ways, and she liked both of them better than she had ever liked her cousin-in-law Angeletta, and so she made some effort to please them.

  “All right,” she said now. “I can stir the neighbor pot, too, if you like.”

  “Good. I’ll set Helen onto scrubbing the shirts.”

  So the first hour of the day was consumed with the tedious labor of washing and rinsing and rerinsing the two big cauldrons of bed linens. The second hour, devoted to towels, was not much better. The third hour was at least enlivened by voices at the door—those of a man and two women, or so it sounded to Elizabeth.

  “More shirts,” Doris commented, carrying the soiled items back to Elizabeth. “Are you about done with those towels?”

  “Yes, in a minute. Who dropped off the clothes?”

  “Let’s see. Calah and Myra. Oh, and David, but he was just with them, I think. Not bringing in anything to be cleaned.”

  “David?” Elizabeth said, looking up quickly.

  Doris’s sharp eyes fixed for a moment on Elizabeth’s face. “Yes, the good-looking one with the ginger wings. Is he the one you’ve settled on?”

  Elizabeth felt her face burn with embarrassment. At Tola’s house, such things were commonly discussed, of course, but she had not realized her thoughts and her motives were so transparent to Doris. She might as well carry a sign around attached to her head, shouting out, Angel-Seeker Here! All Inquiries Welcome.

  “I—I’ve only seen him a few times—he isn’t—”

  Doris grunted and began picking through the shirts to see which ones might need extra attention. “Oh, don’t fuss about it. Pretty girl like you comes to a town like Cedar Hills, there’s only one thing to expect. But you work hard, and I like that. And if you want to spend your free time chasing after angels—well, that’s your choice. Maybe not such a bad choice if things work out right.”
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  “I’ve never even talked to him.”

  “Well, maybe we can do something about that,” Doris said, still inspecting the collars and the sleeves. “Damn! Will you look at this? Wine on the cuff. I don’t know if we’ll ever get this out, and she’s got a temper when her clothes don’t come back just right. You get to the rest of this lot, and I’ll see what I can do about Miss Picky’s stained shirt.”

  That was the only conversation they had on the topic that day, but Elizabeth worked with extra energy, trying to prove to Doris that she wasn’t just a flighty girl, looking for liaisons. In the evening, she joined four others from the boardinghouse who went on a little shopping spree before the main shops closed for the night. She’d gotten her first salary the week before and had been delighted at how much was left over after she paid Tola her rent. But then, she’d been used to working at least this hard on her cousin’s farm and not receiving a copper for her efforts. No wonder she felt glamorously affluent now.

  Still, the shops in Cedar Hills sold merchandise at a shockingly dear price. Elizabeth saw maybe a dozen things she would have liked to buy, but each would have consumed the entire portion of her salary that was left or, in some cases, required a loan from the sum she would get next month. She might be a giddy farm girl, excited to be in the angel hold at last, but she was also a product of a hard life, and she was not about to squander everything in her purse on a beaded scarf or a pair of fabulous, fabulous, pink silk shoes.

  But her attention was caught by a small dress shop on an unfashionable corner of the city, and Elizabeth headed there when the other girls stopped at a cafe for refreshments. A tired young woman was working behind the counter and gave Elizabeth a halfhearted smile. “We close in about fifteen minutes,” she said. “But maybe you’ll find something you like before then.”

  And, indeed, she did—a dark green dress in a sleeveless style, with clingy fabric that made Elizabeth remember she did not always look like a lumpy laundress. The rich color brought out the red highlights in her auburn hair and made her green eyes look deep and compelling.

  “I have to have this,” Elizabeth said. “I hope I can afford it.”

  She could, and they completed the transaction with both of them happy. She might never have an occasion or a place to wear this dress, but if circumstances ever conspired to make her need to appear beautiful, she was ready. That, she was beginning to learn, was the secret to being an angel-seeker or a sojourner or any kind of adventuress: being prepared for the next eventuality, even if you could not guess what it might be.

  The next day did not offer anything so exciting as a chance to dress up for the night, but it did provide an opportunity even more rewarding: her first conversation with the angel David.

  It happened midmorning. Doris had been sorting the clean, folded laundry by floor and by room, and she handed Elizabeth a stack of shirts and trousers.

  “Third floor,” Doris said. “You can come back and get the sheets on your next trip.”

  It was something of a privilege to be allowed to deliver laundry instead of merely cleaning it, and Elizabeth was smiling to herself as she skipped up the back stairs. She still hadn’t had much occasion to go exploring through the dorm. In fact, she had only delivered laundry once, and that was fresh towels to the cedar closet on the second floor, so she wasn’t sure which angels were situated where. Although at this time of day, most of them were likely to be gone already.

  And indeed, the first three rooms she entered were deserted, though it was clear they were occupied most of the time. Such disarray these angels lived in! Shoes and boots strewn across the room, clothes balled up in corners, beds half-made, water rooms damp and messy. Elizabeth herself couldn’t abide disorder, and she had been relieved to discover that Faith was as tidy as she was.

  The fourth room Elizabeth walked into was occupied.

  The angel David stepped out of the water room, clad only in a towel and his great glimmering wings. “Yes?” he said. “Oh, it’s the laundry. I didn’t hear you knock.”

  Elizabeth gaped at him, turning all shades of red, unable to look away. He had a magnificent body, still wet and glistening, and his muscled chest was covered with dark curls. His damp hair was smoothed back from his heavy-boned face; there was a sleepiness to his gray eyes that made her think he had barely climbed out of bed. Out all night on some important mission, no doubt, praying to Jovah for rain or medicine over some desperate hill farm in the northern Caitanas . . .

  “I’m—I’m so sorry, angelo, I didn’t knock,” she stammered. “I did not realize—I just brought in your shirts.”

  He shrugged and gave her a grin. “Well, you almost got a better look than you bargained for,” he said. “Ten minutes earlier—”

  She blushed even more deeply. She was willing to be forward, as Faith had told her she must be, but it was still embarrassing to be perceived as being so bold. “No, I didn’t realize—everyone else has been—their rooms have been empty—”

  He yawned widely and scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “Everyone else no doubt didn’t have a headache from drinking too many bottles of wine last night,” he said. “If I’d been better behaved, I might have climbed out of bed at a more reasonable hour, too.”

  “I’m sorry, angelo,” she said, finally able to tear her eyes away from him and cast her gaze to the floor. “Next time I will most certainly knock.”

  He laughed. “Next time? So you’re going to become my personal laundress, are you?”

  “No, I—I just meant that the next time—if I’m sent to your room with clothes or towels—”

  He strode forward a few paces, his bare feet making light slapping noises on the wood floor. She heard the sibilant glide of his wings trailing behind him, an eerie and chilling sound. Her skin prickled into goose bumps. “I was just teasing,” he said softly, coming to a halt directly in front of her. “You look so little and scared.”

  She glanced up quickly, to see him smiling down at her. This close to him, she could see a faint pocking across his cheekbones, a harshness to his skin that she somehow found appealing. Along with his weary eyes and air of exhaustion, the scarred skin made him look weathered but enduring, an indomitable creature who had withstood much and emerged strong. “I’m not scared,” she said in a faint voice.

  He laughed and continued to smile down at her. “No, don’t you just look like the bravest girl! Cowering here in my doorway. What do you expect me to do? Shout at you for bringing me clean clothes? Beat you about the head? It was an honest mistake, that’s all. You thought you were stepping into an empty room. And instead you got—me.”

  “I didn’t mean to disturb you, angelo,” she said.

  “What makes you think I’m disturbed?”

  She risked another look up at him and saw him waiting for her reply. She wished briefly for Faith to be standing beside her, whispering encouragement in her ear. All she could think to say was, “I just arrived in Cedar Hills a few weeks ago, angelo. I am not entirely sure what might—disturb—an angel and what might not.”

  At that, he actually flung his head back and laughed even louder, to the point that Elizabeth hoped no one was in the room next door, hearing the sound and wondering what in Jovah’s name might be so amusing at this hour of the day. “No, you certainly haven’t learned much in your few weeks here if you haven’t figured that part out yet,” he said at last. “I could show you a thing or two about disturbing men, but I’ll bet you’ve learned some of those on your own.”

  “Angelo?” she said, not sure what to reply to that.

  He opened his mouth as if to explain, but there was a rough knock on the door. “Hey! David! If you’re not still asleep, you lazy dog, get out here and come have breakfast with us. Or lunch, more like it.”

  “In a minute!” David called back. “I have to dress.”

  “Quickly, then. We’ll be in Lael’s room.”

  Elizabeth proffered the shirts with a formal gesture. “Your clean clothes, angelo
,” she said.

  He lifted them negligently from her arms. “Thanks for your service, kind lady,” he said. “Will I see you tomorrow?”

  “Will you—well, I’m here most days, down in the laundry—”

  He smiled. “Will I see you—somewhere else? Up here, perhaps, delivering more clean clothes?”

  “If you have something that needs to be washed, certainly I’ll make sure it’s returned to you.”

  “I should be here tomorrow afternoon,” he said, turning away and heading back toward the water room. “Bored, no doubt. I’ll answer the door myself—” He looked back at her over one bare shoulder and one arched wing. “That is, if you bother to knock.”

  She made a little bobbing motion with her head, signifying compliance or respect or remorse, even she wasn’t sure. “Yes, angelo. Tomorrow, angelo. Just bring your dirty clothes down to the laundry room on your way out today, and they’ll be ready for you tomorrow.”

  He was still laughing when she let herself out of the room and stood there in the hallway a moment, trembling. But, remembering that friends of his were awaiting him down the hall and that he might come bursting out of his own room any moment, she hurried back downstairs as quickly as her dancing feet could take her. She spent the rest of the day dreaming of love and adoration amid the sultry, oppressive fumes of starch and linen.

  But David was not in his room the following day.

  Elizabeth stood outside his doorway a good ten minutes, knocking at intervals, an armload of towels and trousers held carefully before her. He might be in the water room; he might be (unlikely at this hour) sleeping. She waited another few moments and knocked again.

  No answer.

  So she unlocked the door and stepped cautiously into the room, to find it completely untenanted and extraordinarily disorganized. Her heart grew both heavy and bulky in her chest, cumbersome with disappointment, and she moved clumsily across the room as if searching for the missing occupant. But he was clearly not here. Had forgotten the assignation, it seemed, or had remembered it but been forced to abandon it—when he was sent out this morning by Nathan, perhaps, to pray for sun over a river city. In any case, he was not here. She smoothed a neat place into the coverlet on his bed and laid the clean clothes there.