Chapter 3

C HAPTER 3

Virtue has never been as respectable as money.

—Mark Twain

The letters from relatives began to arrive in droves—so many that Marigold began to suspect Messrs. Ropes, Grey and Loring had invented relations to query.

Marigold eyed the pile with something more than distaste.

"The sooner you get it over with, darling, the sooner you can put all this nonsense about leaving from your mind," Isabella advised.

"On the contrary, I've decided that all I need is a room where I can write a comprehensive collection of translations of the Greek myths and fables—that old bowdlerizer Mr. Bulfinch's attempts to do so fall far short of academic standards. It shouldn't be too hard to find such a situation," Marigold predicted before steeling herself to read the letters, one by one, to Isabella. And one by one, reject them.

"Too dreary," was Isabella's opinion of Uncle Wooburn's aches and woes in Wellfleet.

"Far too folksy," Marigold objected to Aunt Parthenia and Uncle Orman and their too-numerous-to-name offspring on their sad farm in Swampscott. "I fear I couldn't bring myself to share a room. Even as a pauper, one has one's standards."

"Quite right," Isabella agreed as Marigold put Swampscott in the no pile.

"What have we here?" Marigold picked up a particularly battered specimen. "From Great Misery Island?"

"Great Misery? How positively Gothic." Isabella turned up her nose. "I've never heard of such a place. And one can barely read the writing, so ill is the penmanship. You know how you feel about penmanship, darling."

While Marigold acknowledged that her feelings on the subject of penmanship were quite strict, she was also curious. "Do you have an atlas?" She slit open the letter. "Why, it is from a person who claims to be my mother's cousin, Sophronia Sedgwick Hatchet—my mother was a Sedgwick, you see. But just listen to this: Be you Esmie Warren Sedgwick and Henry Minot Manners's daughter at long last? I've been expecting your letter these twenty years past.

"Imagine that," Marigold wondered. "I'm only twenty-one years old—she should hardly have expected me to write before the age of at least four or five. I will admit to being a precocious child, but that does seem to be pushing the boat out a bit far from the shore."

"Very strange—and not in a good way," Isabella warned.

" You will know by now that my man once did your mother, Esmie Manners as was, a great and godless wrong. She keeps spelling my mother's name wrong," Marigold observed, before she continued. " I am obliged to invite you to come to us and if you will, I will do my level best to make it right in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of God, though time has compounded the grievousness of the sin. "

"Grievous sin?" Isabella asked in astonishment. "Whatever could it be?"

"I have absolutely no idea," Marigold admitted. "I've never heard of either this person or this place, nor this ‘wrong' before. But I must know now!"

She read on. " But if you do come to take up your rights, girl, be warned—we are a queer lot out here away from the world on our Great Misery, best left to ourselves and our own odd, peculiar ways. The decision be yours. On your shoulders alone will this wearisome burden rest, for I can carry it no longer. "

"How appalling," cried Isabella. "Not to mention dangerous."

"Nonsense. She is my mother's flesh and blood, and she says I have rights. She is a Sedgwick born and bred, despite all this queer great-misery nonsense, which I fancy is just a ruse to put me off claiming my due."

"I don't care what she is," Isabella objected. "I don't like it at all. You had much rather stay here and be comfortable and safe with me."

"Isabella," Marigold warned in a tone that indicated she was not going to be drawn in by the trap of comfort. She turned the envelope over—and was disappointed. "It's postmarked Salem." That was just up the coast of Massachusetts—hardly the wilderness. "Why, this island is right on the North Shore, opposite Pride's Crossing." Marigold mentioned the fashionable, old-money enclave to discourage any further dramatics from Isabella. "You can hardly object to me visiting a private island estate off the North Shore with the likes of the Searses and Spaldings and Fricks as neighbors."

"The Fricks are New Yorkers," Isabella sniffed.

"They hail from Pittsburgh, actually."

"That's worse."

This deficit Marigold would not acknowledge. "You're always saying that sea air is reputed to be a great benefit to health."

"Your health is just fine."

"Then there is no danger." Marigold had to smile at the ease of proving her point. "What harm could come of a summer visit to such a place amongst such a set of people?" Mansions of all sizes and styles gilded the coast from Marblehead to Manchester. "And think of how such a setting will be just the thing to recover myself by"—she borrowed her next argument from the poet Mr. Whitman—"experiencing the untrammel'd play of primitive Nature along the coast."

"Hearken primitive , darling, denotes a lack of plumbing."

"I'm quite sure that in this modern day and age, indoor plumbing will be found along the North Shore. It will be the perfect setting for me to write my Greek mythology." Marigold could already imagine herself in the estate's cool, cocooning library. "And I am vastly curious of all this talk of their queer and peculiar ways and righting wrongs done to my mother—who never hurt a fly but herself."

"Is there nothing I can say to stop you?" Isabella asked. "What would Cab say?"

Whether Marigold was surprised by the mention of his name or the involuntary pang that accompanied the mention of said name, she refused to decide.

"I see that blush you are trying to hide." Isabella was happy to prove a point of her own. "I noticed he took a very particular interest in you at the boathouse the other night."

"He is a very distant cousin, and your dire accounts had put the wind up him that I might be angling for an invitation to live at the Oaks with his mother," Marigold scolded. "It is a wonder you didn't frighten the poor man to run away to sea."

"He didn't look frightened from where I sat. He looked, if I may say so, like he was extraordinarily taken with you."

"Nonsense—he's merely a gentleman, so you may not say so." Marigold tried to dismiss any thought of Cab, or being taken , from her mind. "And I must go—how else am I to reclaim what is rightfully mine? I have enough money to get me that far. And if it isn't Kefalonia, it is at least an island where I can work on my mythology until I figure out a way to resume my academic career. It will be a grand little adventure—see if it isn't."

Marigold felt all the pleasure of decisiveness. "I have nothing else to do now but write them back, repack my trunks I had ready for Kefalonia, and consult the train schedules."

Isabella sighed unhappily. "Then I suppose it falls to me to make sure you have something suitable to pack. Whatever does one wear on a Great Misery Island?"

Marigold laughed, relieved to have it settled between them at last. "The same as for my fieldwork, I should think. Something practical. And waterproof."

"Good twill it is."

"Just so. Thank you, dear Isabella."

Isabella shook her head. "Don't thank me yet."

Marigold had sworn to be ruled only by the archaeological principles of logic and practical necessity. And the two trunks and four cases of luggage were absolute necessities. Not to mention the boxed crates carrying her books and bicycle—if she was to maintain any independence at all in the hinterland, she would need her steel-made safety bicycle.

Clad in one of Isabella's brilliantly tailored traveling suits of practical, charcoal herringbone tweed—discreetly trimmed with black velvet in deference to her mourning—Marigold felt herself almost equal to the day of departure. Almost.

Because now that the time had come to make the leap from the platform to the train, Marigold was uncharacteristically hesitant. Her normal decisiveness had vanished, leaving her palms damp inside her gloves.

Isabella mistook her unease for vanity. "You look a treat, darling." She patted Marigold's arm in comfort and consolation. "Though I wish you weren't going."

"But I am, so we'll say no more." Indeed, if she said any more, Marigold might think better of independence and primitive adventure, and that would never do.

"You might say no more," Isabella groused, "but I'll regret not speaking up if you think you can't come straight back home at any time."

"Thank you, my dearest friend." Marigold clasped Isabella's hand in gratitude. "That means the world to me. As does your purchase of my parlor car ticket."

Isabella could not resign herself to Marigold's newly budget-conscious state. "We can't have you crossing the countryside in a third-class rail car—that would never do. And neither will my weeping like a maiden aunt upon the platform." Isabella shook her head briskly to ward away her tears. "Promise you'll write. Or better yet, wire me, and I'll send anything you might need."

"I'm only going twenty-five miles north, Isabella, not across the ocean. But thank you, and I promise, I will." But before Marigold could climb the steps to the plush parlor car, a deep baritone voice called her name.

"Marigold!" Cab Cox came striding down the platform as if she had conjured him from her overworked imagination, perfection in a dark wool overcoat and smart houndstooth lounge suit, bearing an equally perfect bouquet of hothouse flowers. "I hoped I wouldn't arrive too late."

"Cab." That she had not allowed herself to expect him was no defense against the flutter in her veins. "What's all this?" she asked to cover the sudden irrational heat in her cheeks.

"I thought you deserved to be seen off in style." He pressed a paper-wrapped bouquet of blushing blossoms into her arms and a kiss to her cheek.

She fumbled the flowers—peonies, her favorites—as her heart made a rather riotous, entirely unauthorized cartwheel inside her chest.

"I hope you've come to stop her," Isabella put in.

An unreasonable, unrestrained hope burst into Marigold's brain before she could stop it.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Cab returned. "Just what a modern gal like our Marigold needs to do—what we all need to do—go out and meet our fates."

"Oh, Cab." Marigold could only overcome her bout of unseemly sentiment with a laugh. It was almost too much—and far too late—for such extraordinary understanding. "Thank you."

"Bon voyage, Marigold." He gripped her hand and looked serious, and for one moment that irrational hope rekindled in her chest. "I hope you know—"

"All aboard!" the conductor called.

"Well then. I'm off." There was no time for anything more private.

Cab gave her one of his blinding smiles and handed up the last of her bags as Marigold climbed aboard. "All the best!" he called.

She blew him a first and last kiss. "You are a lamb."

"Remember that," he called over the clamorous hiss and clank of the train. "Always."

Always? He said always as she was leaving?

Marigold knuckled the hot splash of tears out of her eyes and covered her awkwardness with another laugh. "I'll write!" she promised over the grinding roar of the engine straining to life. "As often as I might."

"Remember," Isabella cried as she waved, "you can always come home!"

And for just one moment Marigold truly wished she had a real home to come "home" to.

But then she forced herself to be logically unsentimental and face the uncertainty ahead with a cheerful, confident attitude. She was the independent, incomparable Miss Manners—she had best act like it.