Chapter 30

C HAPTER 30

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what you want and

the other is getting it.

—Oscar Wilde

The evening ended late. With Daisy and Tad so loath to be parted and Seviah completely engrossed in conversation with Mr. Keith, it was the wee small hours of the morning before they returned to Bessie Dove's, only to find an anxious-looking Wilbert sitting on Bessie's front porch in wait.

"It's Granny," he told his siblings without any further ado. "She's fit to be tied. Wanted an accounting of us all out of the blue."

"Oh, no," said Daisy at the same time that Marigold asked, "What's an accounting?" What had happened to the each to fend for themselves ethos?

Seviah whistled sharply. "Damn. How does she always know?"

"Don't matter how she knows, just that she does," Wilbert answered. "We got to fetch back to the island right quick."

Bessie already had their things bundled up and ready to go, so there was nothing to do but thank her and assure her they would all be all right. "I worry about you all," she fretted. "And my girl too, out there with Miz Alva fit to be tied."

"Don't worry, Momma." Lucy emerged from the dark boardwalk into the light of the porch. "I didn't like being out there either, so once I saw Wilbert going, I decided to pack up and get home while the getting was good."

"Did you bring everything?" Bessie's question was sharp with anxiousness.

"Not everything," Lucy admitted. "I'll get back when things … settle down. But I locked the place up good."

"All right then." Bessie's relief was only momentary. "If I were you all, I wouldn't go," she counseled the others. "Y'all can stay here—you already paid for the rooms," she argued. "I got a bad feeling about this."

Marigold was more than ready to bow to Bessie's wisdom—both her baser instincts for peace and preservation and her higher, more logical sense urged her to follow Lucy's lead. "Perhaps it would be best to return in the morning, when everyone has had some rest?"

But Wilbert was adamant. "We got to go. We got to get home now. No two ways about it."

And where Wilbert went, Daisy would loyally follow. "He's right—like you said to me before, Marigold, we can't turn tail now. But you'll come with me?" Daisy reached for her hand. "Won't you?"

"Naturally," Marigold said with far more assurance than she felt. "I'm sure everything will be fine," she said to bolster her own confidence as much as theirs. "We're in for a tongue-lashing, I suppose, but if that is the cost of an absolutely wonderful evening, then so be it. She can't take the experience away from us."

"She'll try," muttered Wilbert.

Cab took hold of her elbow in that gently insistent way of his. "Are you sure, Marigold? You don't have to go with them—I'm happy to have you stay with me." He seemed to realize what he had said. "I mean, as Bessie said, she would be happy to put you up here, where you'll be safe and I can"—he searched for the correct thing to say—"be of some assistance to you, should the need arise."

"Thank you, Cab. You're very kind to offer, but I need to stand by my cousins. We'll weather whatever storm might come for attending the party together. It's not as if we snuck ourselves out to a roadhouse, after all—we were at a perfectly acceptable, socially elevated ball," she said, to convince herself as much as him. "I'm sure there is nothing to worry about."

"Somehow, with you, Marigold, there's always something to worry about. Wait here," he admonished before he bolted into the boardinghouse. It was only a moment before he was back, pressing a small, unmistakably shaped object into her hand.

"Cab!" she gasped, half in jest, half in dawning terror as she palmed the gun.

"Do you know how to use it?"

"Yes, but—"

"Then take it. Like I said, there are larger forces at play here."

The seriousness of the situation pulled at her like a weight at her hems. "Then I will certainly look out for them—and defend my cousins if need be."

"Good." He nodded in grim satisfaction. "But promise me you will take care of yourself, Marigold."

"I promise." She gave his arm a squeeze before she kissed his cheek. "Thank you for the loveliest night."

"Remember that. Always."

Wilbert silently rowed the loaded dory across the darkened sound. Seviah sat in the bow, twisting forward to mark their way, while Marigold and Daisy sat together in the stern. Marigold kept up her purposefully cheerful, willfully positive demeanor despite the misgivings swirling around in her stomach like one of Cleon's fish stews until they finally fetched up in the slanted moonlight of North Cove.

"Gird your loins," was Seviah's advice as he handed them onto the beach. "Don't tell her nothing if you can help it."

"Seviah, there is no reason for anyone to conceal or lie," Marigold said as together the four of them dragged the dory high on the sand. "We did nothing wrong! I, for one, am exceptionally proud of you both."

"Thank you, Marigold." Daisy squeezed her hand. "That means the world to me."

"Why don't you let me take the blame?" Marigold suggested. "I'm sure I don't mind."

"No." Daisy was sure. "Like you said, we got into this together, and we'll get out of it by sticking together."

And stick together they did, until they reached the farmyard.

"Is that you, Daisy girl?" A querulous voice crept out of the ruined house like a fog. "Come here, child. I've been waiting forever for you."

"Coming, Granny," Daisy answered. "Stay with me, Marigold."

"Of course I will." But something about the eerie tension in the air had Marigold reaching into her pocket to check the small, steely, pearl-handled revolver—it was fully loaded.

Trust Cab to be thorough.

Marigold stuffed the uncocked gun back into the pocket of her evening cape before she took Daisy's cold hand and followed her into the dim kitchen. Except it wasn't dim at all but lit with oil lamps on the table and candles on the walls, illuminating a tiny old woman who sat like a queen in an ornate but tatty upholstered armchair of the last era.

Here at last was Great-Aunt Alva.

Marigold was decidedly underwhelmed. The woman who had loomed so large in her imagination was nothing more than a latter-day Miss Havisham, Charles Dickens's embittered character, fading away with the ages, down to her white hair and white gown, which upon closer inspection was not a wedding dress but a nightgown, buttoned up to its tattered lace neck.

This fragile old doily of a woman could not possibly be the malevolent presence Marigold had imagined her to be.

"Where have you been?" the old woman said to them in a soft, little-girlish voice. "Why were you not here when I called you to come to me?"

"We're all here now, Granny," said Wilbert as he took an empty chair.

And they all were. Marigold could see Ellery and Cleon seated around the table, while Sophronia hung back in the shadows near the stove.

"Indeed you are," the old woman said with sighing satisfaction. "Where you should be, for this is where Hatchets belong. This is our place, out here, away from the sinful turmoil of the world, close to God." Her little-girl voice gained some small strength as she continued. "But who is that?" She pointed to Marigold with arthritic, shaking fingers. "Who is she, who is not family?"

"I told you, Mother Hatch—" Sophronia began.

"I'm Marigold Manners, ma'am." Despite the late hour, Marigold was in full possession of her senses and preferred to speak for herself. "I'm Esm é Sedgwick Manners and Harry Minot Manners's daughter, as I think you know, for I told you so myself, at your door. I came two weeks ago at Mrs. Sophronia Hatchet's invitation." She extended her hand. "I'm pleased to finally meet you."

Great-Aunt Alva drew herself back. "I know who you are, Esmie's girl." She pinched up her mouth and face as if she'd discovered a particularly distressing smell—the very picture of offended sensibility.

But Marigold was unafraid to ruffle antiquated feathers. "Then why did you ask?"

Alva Hatchet's eyes flared at her audacity. "Because I expect to be answered," she quavered, all querulous hurt. "Mind your tongue, girl."

"I'll mind mine if you mind yours. My mother's name was Esm é ." Marigold corrected her pronunciation. "As well you know, for you were, I understand from my mother, present at her christening to hear it spoken correctly."

"Well, don't you seem to know a lot of things that are none of your business?" The old woman retreated into pettishness. "Like encouraging your cousins into dangerous and foolish behavior, going across the water and cavorting in the town. Look at them, all dudded up in indecent glad rags."

"I think I look dashed fine, if I do say so myself," said Seviah, while Daisy made bold enough to say, "Not cavorting , Granny. Really."

"You may not say so yourself," Alva contradicted her grandson before she turned to her granddaughter. "And what do you think you were doing if it wasn't cavorting about in such indecent clothes? Why, I can see your arms ," she said with outraged primness.

"We were at a dance—a lovely society party that we were invited to." Daisy's voice gained quiet confidence. "At Rock Ledge in Pride's Crossing, which is a lovely home, all beautiful and elegant and spacious. You were wrong about the town, Granny. Nobody was mean to us. We had a lovely, lovely time without a single moment of cavorting ."

"Indeed." Marigold moved closer to support Daisy.

"You"—this time, Alva Hatchet shook her cane at Marigold—"will speak only when spoken to. And you two"—she returned her complaint to her grandchildren—"going over the water, letting yourselves go out amongst those people, disporting yourselves for their amusement and censure. Letting them make a mockery of you."

"There was no mockery," Daisy asserted. "We were most warmly received. In fact, the evening turned into a grand celebration of the fact that I am now engaged to be married to Mr. Thaddeus Endicott."

There was a lovely fraction of a second of silence before all hell broke loose.

"That will set the cat amongst the pigeons," said Sophronia, with what Marigold could have sworn was the beginnings of a smile, while Wilbert muttered, "Now we're in for it." Beside him, Seviah said, "Here we go," before he threw himself into a chair as if he were a character in a melodramatic play.

"No!" Alva's soft voice somehow cut through the din. She drew herself up like a displeased monarch. "I will not allow you to tell such an obvious falsehood, Daisy. How could this not be a lie? You were forbidden such contact with the town and the pernicious Endicotts. Forbidden to leave this island."

" I never promised," Daisy said with some spirit.

Alva gaped at her audacity. "Tell her again, Ellery." She turned to her son for support. "Tell her you won't allow it. Tell her you forbid it!"

Ellery Hatchet, who normally seemed ready to spit fire, was rather more subdued in his response. Though he said, "You'll marry that spawn of Satan over my dead body," his words lacked their usual bite.

"So be it," Daisy cried, and in the blink of an eye, she had pulled her own little gun from the pocket of her evening cloak and had it pointed at her father. "I will marry Tad Endicott, even if I have to do it over your dead body." And when Ellery Hatchet rose from his seat in astonishment, she raised her pistol with him, cool as any desperado. "Not a single step. Or I swear to heaven, I'll shoot your eye out."