eyes flashed fire even as her hands tightened into fists at her sides. Oh, but he was in for a tongue-lashing now. As if Ciara thought so as well, she latched on to Michael’s arm again.
“Oh, please, Maddie!” she cried. “Don’t send Michael away!”
Aiden pressed himself against Michael’s leg, face tightening with worry. “He’s our friend.”
Maddie O’Rourke drew in a deep breath. Michael knew the position in which he and the children had placed her. She was an unmarried woman, by all accounts, a laundress, Aunt Sylvie said, though no laundress Michael had ever met dressed half so well or carried herself with so much pride. But he truly didn’t want to marry her. He wanted to make sure Ciara and Aiden were safe, and he needed a job so he could pay back what he owed and find his footing on the frontier.
“Have you no other friends or family in the area, Mr. Haggerty?” she asked as if trying to determine some other solution to the problem he presented. She raised her gaze to his, and he thought the movement was at least in part a way to ignore the pitiful looks on her siblings’ faces.
“A fellow came with me on the boat,” Michael said. “But he has only enough to pay room and board until he finds employment.”
She sighed, fingers relaxing against the material of her skirts. “’Tis a difficult choice you’re giving me, Mr. Haggerty. To begin with, I’ve no idea what to do with you. A woman working off her debt might have slept upstairs with the family. I’ve no bed available for a bachelor.”
“I don’t need much,” Michael assured her. “I can make do with a blanket on the floor.”
She frowned as if she wasn’t acquainted with such humble behavior. In truth, he wasn’t used to it either. He’d been proud enough, ambitious even: working on the docks in Brooklyn, rising among the ranks to a position of authority, engaged to the prettiest lass Irishtown had ever produced.
But his pride had lasted only as long as it had taken for the Dead Rabbits gang to try to force him into becoming a liar and a thief.
“And then there’s the work,” Maddie continued. “Have you any experience with the doing of laundry?”
“In truth, I’ve never tried it,” Michael admitted. “But I’ve a strong back and a ready mind. I should be able to learn the way of it.”
She shook her head. Perhaps she thought he denigrated her work by making it seem too easy. From what he’d seen, laundresses worked harder than most for less pay.
Ciara and Aiden were glancing back and forth between the two of them, as if willing their sister to give in. Maddie looked as if she couldn’t or wouldn’t budge, even for them.
You offered me light when all was darkness, Father. Show me the way now.
Michael reached out and took Maddie’s ungloved hand in his. “Give me the opportunity to help, Miss O’Rourke.”
Maddie gazed up at him, eyes narrowed as if she thought to see inside him and determine his worth. Michael held her gaze, wishing he could see inside her instead. Ciara and Aiden had talked often about their sister Maddie, and his Aunt Sylvie had sung her praises, but he couldn’t understand her. Why would anyone leave a little brother and sister behind? Why travel halfway around the world? Had she been escaping trouble, like him? Or was she the cause of it, like Katie?
“Very well, Mr. Haggerty,” she said, pulling back her hand. “You can stay with us, but only,” she cautioned, finger in the air as Ciara cried out in delight and Aiden began jumping up and down, “until you secure a proper job. I suppose I can find some use for you.”
“I’ll do anything that needs doing, Miss O’Rourke,” he vowed, “without complaint or compromise. You’ll have no cause to regret your decision to help me.”
“So you say,” she answered, but Michael got the impression that she was regretting it already.
Maddie could see that Michael Haggerty was going to be trouble. For one thing, Aiden and Ciara looked to him rather than her for guidance. She supposed that was a natural consequence of him serving as their escort aboard ship, but she could not allow it to continue. She had enough doubts about her abilities to raise her brother and sister.
And as for Ciara’s insistence that Michael and Maddie must marry, that was nonsense. If Maddie wanted a brawny man in her life, she could have married one of the Wallin lads who were brothers to the man her good friend Catherine had married. Failing that, all Maddie had to do was whistle, and a dozen loggers and mill workers would have run to her side and dropped on bended knee to propose. Seattle was so desperate for marriageable females that she hardly needed to import a suitor all the way from New York!
Besides, why had Sylvie sent a man when Maddie had specified a woman? With her money going to pay Mr. Haggerty’s way, Maddie had nothing with which to hire the lady she’d needed. And by the size of him, he’d more than eat his weight in wages!
He was watching her now with those blue, blue eyes, as if waiting for her orders. She straightened her spine. “Set to work, then, Mr. Haggerty. Find Ciara’s and Aiden’s things. They’ll need to be carried home.”
He saluted her again. “On my way, Captain O’Rourke.”
Aiden giggled as Michael strode back toward the longboat.
Maddie drew in a breath. She could manage this. She must. In the next month, she had an opportunity to establish herself as the premier bakery in town by making all the cakes and rolls to be served at the biggest, most extravagant wedding Seattle had ever seen. Every man, woman and child would be singing her praises and lining up to purchase her products. Her future, and Ciara’s and Aiden’s futures, would be secure. She wasn’t about to jeopardize that for the likes of Michael Haggerty.
She pressed her hands into her skirts and bent closer to Ciara and Aiden. “Who’s ready to see their new home?”
“Me!” Aiden declared.
Ciara nodded eagerly.
With a smile, Maddie turned to allow them past her up the pier. “This way.”
Aiden ran ahead, darting between the waiting people and the sailors on the narrow pier. Ciara walked beside Maddie as if trying to be a lady, but Maddie could see her sister’s head turning this way and that as she took everything in.
“Seattle’s different from Five Points,” Maddie told her. “You’ll find everything smaller, except the geography.”
“Where are the tenements?” Ciara asked.
Maddie put an arm around her shoulders, realizing with a pang that she didn’t have to bend all that much to do so. Her sister’s eyes were nearly on a level with hers and pinched a bit around the corners with worry.
“Sure-n but there are no tenements here,” Maddie confided.
Ciara stopped, eyes widening. “Then where does everyone live?”
Maddie pulled back with a smile. “That depends, so it does. Some live in rooms above their shops as we will. Some share a house with many bedrooms
