Beth sighed as she and John turned for the livery stable, where their wagon and team were waiting. “I’ve made a mess of things, haven’t I?”
“Yes,” John agreed. “You meant well, Beth, but I wish you would have consulted me first.”
“You would only have tried to dissuade me,” she said, her chin coming up as they passed the mercantiles on Second Avenue. “You persist in seeing me as your little sister, John, for all I’m a grown woman.”
She was wrong there. John and all his brothers knew she was grown. So did the gentlemen they were passing. Their smiles were appreciative as they tipped their hats in her direction. Beth paid them no heed whatsoever.
“Maybe you should think about your own wedding,” John suggested with a smile, “instead of mine.”
Beth’s lips thinned. “My wedding is years off, if I even consent to marry. You, however, have been pining away. Oh, but I could shake Caroline Crawford!”
“She is entitled to marry a man she can love and respect,” John said, finding his strides lengthening. “I am not that man.”
“Then she is foolish and temperamental,” Beth declared, scurrying to keep up.
Caroline hadn’t seemed so to him. Indeed, when she and her parents had first moved out near Wallin Landing, John had thought he’d at last met the perfect wife for him. Petite, delicate, with great gray eyes, sleek raven tresses and a slender figure, Caroline Crawford had hung on every word of advice she requested from him after driving with him into Seattle for church services each Sunday for a month, her parents in a wagon just behind. Her attentiveness and bright smile had made him begin to hope for a future together.
But when he’d emboldened himself to propose, on bended knee in the moonlight no less, she’d refused.
“Oh, I could never marry a man like you, John,” she’d said, as if surprised he’d think otherwise. “You have no gumption.”
No gumption. No drive. No willingness to claw his way to ever greater achievements. He had built a farm from the wilderness, managed it well, assisted his brothers and Beth where he could, helped his neighbors, tithed to the church and supported the school, but apparently that was not enough.
Heroes did more.
Heroes put their own needs aside to raise their fatherless siblings, as Drew had done when Pa had died. Heroes protected ladies across wilderness areas as James had done for his bride, Rina. Heroes fought off dastardly relatives as Simon had done for his wife, Nora. Heroes braved the next frontier, like Levi.
A hero did not sit safely at home, reading adventure novels and the latest scientific and engineering theories while his cat purred in his lap before the hearth.
Yet that seemed to be his role in the family—the scholar, the peacemaker. When Pa had died, John had been all of ten, old enough to feel the loss, to recognize the pain in others. Drew had assumed leadership as Pa had directed him with his dying breath, but Simon and James hadn’t sat well under it. Watching his brothers argue had just made John want to curl in on himself. And Ma had seemed so sad when her children didn’t get along, as if it was somehow her fault she was raising them all alone.
Surrounded by sorrow and strife, John had done everything he could to make sure everyone got along. He encouraged the best in his brothers, helped them through the worst. He pointed out things that made Drew think about how James must be feeling, pushed James to see things from Simon’s more logical perspective, reminded Simon that following Drew was what Pa wanted and tried to be an example to little Levi. Keeping things peaceable was how he contributed.
The trait was still with him. Now when John saw a problem, he was more likely to find a way to solve it quietly than to leap into the fray. He was the one who suggested compromises rather than demanding capitulation. A shame that habit kept him from living up to his image of a hero. Mrs. Tyrrell must have recognized that he lacked certain qualities, for she’d not held him to Beth’s promise to wed. He had no need to drag his bruised heart out of hiding.
Still, he seemed to hear it whispering encouragement as he and Beth reached the livery stable. It would take more than a pretty mail-order bride to get him to listen.
Dottie climbed the stairs to her second-floor hotel room, feeling heavy. How could she have let this happen? Why had she believed what Beth Wallin had written to her? Had she learned nothing from her terrible experience with Frank?
Of course, none of the letters Beth had sent her or the conversation with John had been anything like talking with Frank. A salesman for a manufacturing firm in Cincinnati, with clients all over the state, he’d had a way of making people feel important. She’d needed that fifteen months ago when she’d first met him.
Her uncle, who worked for the same firm, had brought Frank home for dinner to meet Dottie. Frank hadn’t been the first fellow foisted upon her that way. Uncle Henry and Aunt Harriot lived in a manner her parents had found worrisome—drinking with friends most nights, holding their own riotous parties at least twice a month, saying vulgar words upon occasion and never attending church.
Though she tried not to complain, she could not bring herself to act the way they did, causing her uncle to dub her “Dottie Do-Gooder.” By word and action, they had made it very clear they wanted her out of the house as soon as possible. Only by doing all the cooking and cleaning had she convinced them to allow her to stay past her sixteenth birthday.
Every other man they had brought home to meet her had been just like them, favoring cheap cigars and alcohol. Frank had seemed different—polished, polite, friendly. Small wonder she’d begun to fancy she had found love. Frank had known just what to say, how to act, to get her to go along with his wishes and feel terribly happy about it as well.
Beth had also said all the right things, promising a kind, considerate husband well able to provide for Dottie’s needs. That part hadn’t been a lie. If anything, John Wallin was an even better man than his sister had described, if the way he had responded to Beth’s interference was any indication. Yet what sort of man needed a sister to fetch him a bride?
John seemed neither stupid nor lazy. He was not crippled, and he appeared to be in good health. If he was intent on building a library, surely he wasn’t the illiterate Dottie had feared. Most women would account him handsome. Even in Seattle, where there were far more men than women, he would likely be considered a catch.
So why did he lack a wife? Had he some flaw she hadn’t noticed on first meeting?
She was still wondering as she let herself into the narrow hotel room with its single window looking down toward Puget Sound. Mrs. Gustafson rose from the chair as Dottie shut the door behind her. A heavy woman with button-brown eyes and a wide mouth, she exuded motherly warmth, even in the somewhat Spartan conditions of the hotel room.
“A little darling he was,” she proclaimed in her thick German accent, looking fondly at the blanket spread on the floor. “Never once did he cry.”
Dottie’s son gurgled at her as she kneeled beside the blanket. He waved pudgy arms and begged to be picked up. She obliged, cuddling him close and feeling the soft tufts of his white-blond hair against her chin.
This was why she must stay strong. This was why she could not give up.
“Thank you for watching him,” she told the older woman.
Mrs. Gustafson waved a beefy hand. “Ach, he is no trouble. And your young man, how did you like him?”
Dottie had confided her purpose in coming to Seattle, though she had let Mrs. Gustafson, like Beth, think she was a widow instead of a woman shamed. Now she considered how to answer. In truth, had she met John Wallin