Pique carried Annie through heating water and preparing a tray for Imogen. High-and-mighty Nick Kennedy. See if she ever thanked him again. She threw teaspoons onto the tray more forcefully than she’d intended.
Still, it had been a little funny. Annie shook her head, smiling. The oatmeal had been truly awful. And the bacon … well, the bacon was best forgotten.
She carried the tray up the stairs, glancing out the window on the landing. Nick stood at the base of Clyde’s ladder, speaking up to him. Interest and indignation battled within her.
“Come in,” Imogen answered Annie’s knock.
Annie backed into the room, trying to keep the tray steady. “Good morning. Mr. Batson thought you might like a cup of tea.”
The room lay in dusk, light forcing its way around the edges of the dark shade. Imogen struggled up onto her elbows, her white hair lying over her shoulder in a narrow braid. “Aren’t you a dear?” She patted her nightcap and tweaked the covers. Imogen’s voice trembled a bit, sounding exhausted, though she’d lain in bed most of the morning.
“Here, let me help you.” Annie propped pillows behind Imogen’s head and shoulders. Annie set the tray before Imogen then turned to open the blinds on the east-facing windows.
Morning sun illuminated the room. Bold colors galloped across the bed in cheerful blocks of quilt fabric. An overstuffed chair draped with a crocheted afghan in bright granny squares sat on a braided rag rug beside a square oak dresser.
Imogen poured her tea then held the cup to her nose, breathing in the wisps of steam rising from the fragrant liquid. She blinked in the bright light, her forehead screwed up. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be downstairs to help with your first meal here. My head, you see. Sometimes the pain just wears me down.”
“Oh, does it still hurt? Should I close the blinds?” Annie twisted her hands in her apron.
“That’s all right, dear. Ezra brought me a headache powder early this morning. That usually pushes the pain down enough to be bearable.”
Annie stood still for a moment then remembered her place in the household. She gave a quick nod to the mistress and started for the door.
Imogen’s voice halted her. “I know you’re busy, but please, sit down and visit with me a moment. There are a few things we need to talk about.”
Apprehension quickened Annie’s breathing. Had Imogen learned of the breakfast debacle? The guilt of her subterfuge—she balked at calling it outright lying—weighed in her chest like a lump of her own oatmeal. When she tried to perch on the edge of the upholstered chair, the squishy cushion gave way until she feared she might be swallowed.
Imogen set her teacup on the tray and regarded Annie with sober, dark eyes. She had such a look of patient strength, of serenity hard won through adversity, of total honesty, Annie wanted to squirm. “Tell me about yourself. I’m curious how you came to be in the Lighthouse Board’s employ.”
Surprised at not being chastised, Annie smiled. Then she realized what a giant pit yawned in front of her. Time to choose her words carefully. She didn’t want to mislead this kind woman any more than she already had, especially when she was obviously suffering, but Annie also couldn’t afford for the truth to come out. The Lighthouse Board would fire her and promptly pack her back to her father.
She cleared her throat, her mind racing. “My father works the mines up on the Mesabi mostly, though sometimes on the Vermillion.” Well, that was true enough. He did own three mines, two on the Mesabi Iron Range and a smaller one on the Vermillion Range. “My mother passed away when I was young.”
“So you grew up in a mining camp?” Imogen smoothed the edge of the blanket. “You’ve got very refined manners for being brought up by a miner. Or did your father remarry?” The question hung in the air between them.
Annie frowned. She’d never even seen one of the mining camps. Her father refused to take her up onto the range. She’d only be in his way. And the range was no place for a proper young lady. “My father never remarried. He left me in the care of a kind woman in Duluth. Now that I’m grown up, I need to be making my own way in the world. I saw an advertisement in the Duluth papers for a housekeeper and companion and applied.” She kept her head down, her eyes on her hands in her lap. “The Lighthouse Board notified me by telegram that I had obtained the position, and here I am.” She shrugged.
“Was there no young man set on winning your affection? Surely a girl as pretty as you would have her pick of suitors in Duluth?”
Annie heard again the muffled voices of her father and that old man in the wheelchair, plotting, arguing, and ultimately putting a price on her future, building a matrimonial cage around her bar by bar. An uprush of honesty propelled the words from her throat. “My father had someone in mind, but I’m not ready to get married, especially to my father’s idea of a good husband. I want to be free to choose my own way. If I get married, it will be to someone who has nothing in common with my father. I want someone who will love me enough to stay with me, not to be racing off to his job, putting money ahead of his family. I want someone who will understand that people make mistakes, that they deserve forgiveness and second chances. I want someone who will love me first, last, and always. I won’t be someone’s second best.”
She stopped, shocked at how much had poured out. She took a ragged breath and tried to smile to lessen the force of her words. “I’m sorry. I got a little carried away.”
Imogen nodded, her lips twitching. “Ezra wasn’t my father’s pick for me either. Papa had me paired up with a stuffy banker back in Detroit. But I knew my future lay with Ezra from the moment I first saw him.”
Annie tried to picture a young Ezra and Imogen falling in love. One look at Imogen’s face made the picture easy to see. Love shone in every wrinkle, line, and tremble of the older woman’s face. Her eyes, so dark in her pale face, glowed. Even with the headache dragging at her, she looked the part of a bride in love. Annie wondered if she would ever look that way when she spoke of a man.
“I have to ask how breakfast went. I thought I caught the scent of scorched bacon drifting up the stairs this morning. Was the stove giving you trouble? It can be such a beast sometimes.”
Annie closed her eyes and lifted her chin. There was no way she could hide her lack of experience from this kind woman. “The stove was the least of my worries. Breakfast was a disaster. I burned two batches of bacon, and something happened to the oatmeal to make it suitable for chinking a log cabin. The truth is I haven’t a clue how to cook. I can just about boil water for tea, but that’s it.” Her shoulders drooped, and a lump formed in her throat, cutting off her words. She was about to be fired, and she hadn’t even held this job for twenty-four hours.
Imogen’s soft laughter made Annie look up, blinking the moisture from her eyes. “Oh, Annie, I think you and I are going to get along just fine. When Ezra and I took our first lighthouse appointment, I couldn’t cook either.” The tray shook. “I burned a batch of biscuits so bad they turned to ash when I touched them. Took me a week to get the smoke smell out of the kitchen.”
Tensed muscles relaxed, and Annie sagged against the back of the chair. She joined in the laughter weakly, strength drained from her for the moment. She never knew how exhausting relief could be.
Imogen put her hands on the sides of the tray to lift it away, but Annie struggled up from the chair. “Let me.”
Imogen smiled up at her. “Don’t you worry. I’ll help. We’ll have you as proficient as a sea cook in no time.”
Before Annie could thank Imogen, a strange sound, like the buzzing of a hornet, filled the room.
“Oh no.” Imogen halted halfway out of bed. “That’s the Marigold’s ship horn. The inspector is on his way.”