In Need of a Good Wife Read Online Free PDF Page B

clanking together in the cupboards all night long. So he threw them out in the snow in the front yard. Marguerite, the housekeeper who had practically raised Rowena, got on the first ferry up the Hudson on her way back to Montreal when Mr. Blair had dumped his full chamber pot on her head while screaming that her hair was on fire.
    Hattie had assessed the situation in the kindest way possible when Rowena asked her to come over to see with her own eyes what was going on, to help Rowena decide what she should do. “Miz Moore,” Hattie said, putting her rough hand over Rowena’s and patting it like a small child’s head. “Your father’s still sewing, but his needle don’t got no thread.”
    Rowena had no idea of the extent of her father’s financial troubles until the bank stated its intention to take back the Blair family home. She had believed her parents owned it outright, but it seemed her father had borrowed a great sum of money against it, which he proceeded to burn in a bonfire.
    “Why?” Rowena screamed at him as she hurried around the side of the house and slapped his hands away from the flames. “ Why are you doing this?”
    “My dear, that money was filthy, filthy, filthy. You should be thanking me .”
    “What do you mean, ‘filthy’?”
    “Infested. Diseased. That money could have made all of us sick.”
    She knew then, knew what she would have to do with him, and she felt her heart crack open and slide down the back of her sternum like an egg.
    “Papa,” she’d said. “Oh, Papa.”
    Clarity flashed briefly across his face as he recognized Rowena’s expression—the very same expression he had directed toward his own father many years ago—and that was when he bellowed for the first time in his life, long and low. “Nooooo.” He repeated the word three times, like a tugboat’s plaintive warning in a fog.
    He was blessed, in a way, Rowena thought. A new hospital had just opened on Wards Island, a place for people like him, with nurses who combed his hair and comfortable clean beds. There was even a little stretch of beach where he could sit on a bench and watch the ocean steamers coming into the harbor, full of immigrants hoping to start anew in America.
    Rowena felt something sour rising in the back of her throat. Blessed. That was a word she had used to make herself feel better. What a terrible lie. No man was blessed who couldn’t be left alone in a room without the risk that he might use his wife’s sewing shears to cut holes in all the drapery. The hospital’s existence made Rowena the fortunate one, she knew, for now she could rest easy, knowing her lunatic father was hidden safely away from the eyes of Mrs. Channing and her friends, whose little black hearts pumped liquid gossip instead of blood.
    There was only one problem: Rowena had spent nearly every penny Richard had left her when he died, and there hadn’t been so very many pennies as she would have expected. She owed the draper money, along with the grocer and the carpenter who had fixed her front steps. But, worst of all, she owed the asylum money, a good deal of money, and she didn’t have a clue how she was going to continue to pay for her father’s care.
    She was almost to the ferry dock when she saw the poster, nailed to the trunk of a tree.
    Weary of the Miasmas of Manhattan City?
    Miss Bixby seeks spinsters or widows with no children, of attractive appearance and good character, to consider travel and potential marriage to men of good standing in Destination, Nebraska, God’s own country. No cost to you—all travel expenses paid. Find out more at our community meeting, Friday, November 2, 6:30 p.m. in the sitting room above Rathbone’s Tavern.
     

The room was crowded with forty or so women by the time Elsa arrived. Women gathered in groups of three or four on chairs and sofas in the large sitting room, and Elsa recognized two of the girls from the Channing laundry. All week the girls had spoken in urgent