and a few chairs?”
Lewis knew that he should go and help the poor carter, but he was mildly intrigued by the woman’s requests, and so he remained standing in the hall to see how his brother-in-law would respond.
“That’s no problem, ma’am,” Daniel said with barely a moment’s hesitation. “We can prepare rooms to your specification if you give us but half an hour. Perhaps you would like to take tea in the dining room while we make it ready?” He shot Lewis a glance, as if to tell him to get busy with the luggage, and then he almost bowed as he showed the woman the way to the dining room. “And of course we’ll ensure that the rooms are adjoining, although I must inform you that there will be an extra charge for it.”
“That would be lovely,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Thank you.”
Daniel reappeared gleefully a short time later, just as Lewis set the last of the luggage down in the hall.
“I was able to charge that woman more for two rooms than we normally get in a month for the whole lot,” he said in a low voice. “She didn’t bat an eye when I told her how much it would be.”
“Who is she?” Lewis asked.
“She’s Nathan Elliot’s wife. She says her first name is Clementine. I don’t recall ever meeting a Clementine before, but then she’s American, and they do have strange ways, don’t they?”
As a veteran of both the War of 1812 and the more recent Patriot Hunter invasions, Lewis had to agree. Still, he wondered why Nathan Elliott’s wife and, presumably, his son, would choose to stay at a hotel instead of at the Elliott farm.
“I wonder why she didn’t come with her husband in the first place,” Lewis said as they carried a large trunk up the stairs.
“Hiram Elliott wasn’t expected to last nearly this long,” Daniel replied. “I expect Nate thought he could just skip up here, pay his last respects, collect his inheritance, and then skip back home again. Apparently, it’s the first time he’s been to visit his father in twenty years. I hear it was always Reuben who danced to the old man’s tune.”
“Well, everyone must be regretting the visit now,” Lewis remarked. “Poor woman. It’s a desperate reason for a visit.”
Susannah was busy in the kitchen making the tea that had been promised and was unable to supervise the preparation of the rooms, so she had given Daniel strict instructions about what needed to be done.
“Apparently, we need to turn the bed,” Daniel said as they stood in the large front room he had chosen for their guest.
“Why?” Lewis asked. “No one’s slept in it for weeks.” But he took one side of the floppy feather mattress and helped Daniel flip it over.
Fresh linens were necessary, as well, apparently, and after a struggle the two men managed to make the bed adequately, although the coverlet refused to hang straight.
“Should I find some extra blankets?” Daniel asked. “They won’t be used to the cold nights.”
“Do it later,” Lewis said. “We’ve got to move the beds out of the other room and find a table and some chairs to move into it. And there are still bags and boxes that need to be brought up.”
They went through the connecting door between the front bedroom and the smaller one beside it. The latter held two small beds. They moved one of them into the big room for the boy. The other they heaved out into the hall for the time being. They then brought up a small table and some chairs from the dining room. When they had finished, Daniel surveyed their handiwork.
“Well, I don’t expect it’s what she’s used to, but it’s the best we can do on short notice.”
Lewis carried the rest of the luggage up the stairs while Daniel went to inform their new patron that her accommodation had been prepared. There were three heavy valises and a number of bandboxes, besides the trunk he and Daniel had already deposited in the bedroom. Rather a lot of luggage for what Lewis assumed would be a fairly short visit, but then what did he know of city ladies and their sartorial needs? She probably changed her dress every day. He could only hope that it wouldn’t be he and Daniel who would be expected to do her laundry.
Clementine wafted into the room just as the two men had delivered the last bag. “Oh, this is lovely,” she said, and again Lewis found himself slightly irritated by the timbre of her voice. She turned and smiled at Daniel. “Thank you so much for going to such trouble.”
Daniel reddened, and stammered in return, “You’re most welcome, ma’am. And now I’ll leave you to get settled.”
Obviously he found her high-pitched drawl of no concern. It was obvious, to Lewis at least, that he found Clementine Elliott quite charming.
Chapter Three
Over the next few days, Mrs. Elliott appeared to charm nearly everyone else in Wellington, too. As a widow, or at least a presumed widow, she was the subject of a great deal of sympathy.
“I expect we’ll find her husband’s body in the spring,” was Susannah’s opinion. Unlike her husband, Lewis’s sister generally took no delight in idle gossip. She did seem, however, quite willing to report on Clementine Elliott, as the community’s sympathy turned to curiosity and then, in certain circles anyway, admiration.
“The men fall over themselves to cross her path so they can tip their hats,” Susannah said. “I don’t see what the attraction is myself.” At which point Lewis noticed that Daniel blushed. At least he had the good sense not to make any comment.
She went on. “The only topic of conversation amongst Wellington women is the cut of her dress and the amount of ribbon used to trim it. Meribeth Scully says they’ve been bought right out of satin.”
The Scullys ran the local dry goods store, and although they carried a large selection of cloth and bobbins of thread, their supply of ribbon was limited to the plainer types required by local housewives and the two tailors in the village, mostly grosgrain in black or a dignified brown. This did not amount to a great deal of ribbon in a year, especially as there were so many Quakers in the area, and they, of course, used no ribbon at all.
Lewis knew from their sidelong glances that Daniel and Susannah were expecting him to launch into a diatribe about the folly of letting personal vanity occupy the attention that should rightly go to spiritual concerns — it was what was expected from a Methodist minister — yet he found that he could quite understand the interest in this display of exotic female finery.
In all the years of their marriage there were few ribbons that had ever come Betsy’s way, yet there had been one time when he had been paid for a christening with a few yards of cloth. It had been a pretty calico print, with a blue background and a scattering of pink and yellow flowers. He should have taken the bolt to the nearest town and traded it with some storekeeper for flour or sugar or even a few coins, but something had held him back. Instead, he had taken it home and suggested to Betsy that it was time for a new summer dress. Her eyes had lit up when she saw the cloth and he chided himself for not thinking of her more often. Even then, she had said something about their daughter’s wardrobe, but he had insisted that she use it for herself.
Women needed things like pretty clothes once in a while to offset the harshness of their lives in this hard place, to take the edge off their constant round of looking after houses
