Fletcher's Woman Read Online Free PDF

when Mr. Wilkes removed his suit coat and draped it over her shoulders, and she huddled inside its soft, dampened folds. The fabric smelled pleasantly of pipe tobacco and rain and that spicy cologne she’d first noticed during the confrontation in the dining tent.
    â€œThis,” he said, gesturing toward the open carriage window on their left, “is the main street of Providence.”
    Rachel looked out, and even though her mind and heart were filled to overflowing with the knowledge that her mother was somewhere nearby, she took note of the trim, painted saltbox houses facing the angry green waters of the Sound.
    They had neat lawns and picket fences and lamplight glowing in the windows, and for some reason she couldn’t quite fathom, they deepened the wretched loneliness she felt. She fixed her eyes on the junglelike foliage and tall trees that edged the inlet on the other side of the water. “Does my mother live in one of those houses?” she asked, as the carriage rolled on.
    Jonas Wilkes did not spare so much as a glance for the lovely little structures. He drew a cheroot from his shirt pocket and struck a wooden match to light it. “No,” he said, after a discomforting delay. “No, Urchin, your mother lives more grandly than the steady, diligent sorts along Main Street. You don’t mind my smoking, I hope?”
    Benumbed, Rachel shook her head that she didn’t. She could not imagine living more grandly than these people did. After all, they had real roofs over their heads and real floors under their feet. Rosebushes were budding in their yards, and wooden sidewalks lined the street. Most had small garden plots, where tender sprouts were beginning to break ground.
    She swallowed. “What kind of woman is my mother?”
    Mr. Wilkes sighed and drew thoughtfully on his cheroot. The smoke curled in the cool, misty air inside the carriage. “Rebecca is a businesswoman,” he allowed, finally.
    Rachel sat back in the seat, confused and more than a little stricken to know that her mother had been prospering—even “living grandly”—all this time, while she and her father hadstruggled, sometimes desperately, just to survive. “You are saying, Mr. Wilkes, that my mother is rich,” she ventured.
    He smiled. “Not rich. Rebecca is merely well-to-do.”
    Merely well-to-do. Rachel looked down at the pointed, cramping toes of her sodden shoes. She had been wearing them for two full years already, and they pinched, and they hadn’t been new in the first place. She’d bought them secondhand, from a street peddler. Her throat worked, but no words would pass it.
    Unexpectedly, Mr. Wilkes reached out and closed his hand over both of hers. “I gather that you and your father haven’t been quite so prosperous,” he said softly.
    Tears trembled in Rachel’s eyes as she looked at him. “No,” she answered brokenly. “No, we haven’t.”
    He tossed the cheroot out, through the open window. “Your fortunes are about to change, Urchin. Believe me.”
    Rachel stared at him, all too aware of the hopelessness of her situation in life. “I hardly think so, Mr. Wilkes,” she replied. “My father is a lumberjack and my husband, when I find one, will no doubt be a lumberjack, too.”
    The brown eyes were speculative now, and slightly guarded. “Perhaps not,” he said.
    But Rachel’s mind had shifted back, to the misery and lacks she’d experienced in Tent Town and all its many counterparts in all the other timber towns. Once, she had viewed such places with resignation; now, knowing how different her life might have been, had her mother cared for her, she felt aching resentment.
    She pulled Mr. Wilkes’s coat more tightly around her shoulders and sank into a comer of the carriage seat, closing her eyes. A sudden desire to sleep overwhelmed her, and she gave in.
    Jonas forced himself to