City of Promise (13 page)

What if she was too old to get pregnant? Spinsters who somehow managed to find a husband late in life seldom became mothers.

“Late in life as in their forties,” Eileen said on the single occasion when she and her niece discussed the subject. “Women marrying elderly widowers who want a housekeeper without having to pay a wage. Nothing to do with you, Mollie.”

“But you always said I’d be a spinster after twenty.”

“Seen as such. Not actually dried up and past your prime. For heaven’s sake, Mollie. Use the brains God gave you. You’re twenty-two. How many women stop having babies at that age? Most go on adding to their broods until they’re over thirty. Otherwise Brannigan’s might not have been such a success.” This last with a sigh for things that had been and were now lost.

A number of things, however, remained as once they were. Eileen, for example, still refused to say anything more about Teddy Paisley and his grudge. A spurned lover, Mollie thought. Probably someone
she’d tossed aside to marry Brian Brannigan. Though Mr. Paisley had certainly taken it hard if he was seeking vengeance after all these years. As for Eileen’s keeping her own counsel in the matter, that was less of a surprise than her continued refusal to have anything but open fires and to burn only the finest applewood. Mollie suggested it might be sensible to consider installing a coal furnace, which would prove cheaper in the long run. “It could be put in over the summer when no heat’s needed, Auntie Eileen. And centrally heating the whole house involves so much less effort and mess it’s bound to pay for itself in no time. You won’t need a maid living in. Just one to come and clean a few days a week perhaps. Hatty can see to things between times.”

“I can’t abide heat from radiators. They dry out the air and that’s bad for the complexion. I shall economize, of course. Just not in that way.”

Her aunt had negotiated a lower monthly payment to Tammany Hall; Mollie noted it when she did the books. And certainly the payments to the butcher and the grocer and such like were less with six fewer mouths to feed. But other than the fact that the clients were gone along with the whores, little changed in Eileen Brannigan’s life. Tiffany’s even delivered the sapphire bracelet she’d ordered on the fateful visit to the grand opening of their Union Square store. “I’ve already paid for it,” Eileen said, waving away her niece’s offer to take the piece back to the jeweler. “And it’s a lovely bracelet, don’t you agree?”

“It’s beautiful, Auntie Eileen. I just thought . . .”

“I know what you thought, dear child. But you needn’t think it. Nor worry about the expense of your wedding. And don’t look like that. I’m not considering a return to dipping. All those years, Mollie. All those remarkable men coming here over and over . . . I had no lack of investment advice, and I was not shy about taking it. Now, have you decided about where this marriage is to take place?”

It was a worrying question. Both the O’Hallorans and the Brannigans were Catholics, but neither family had ever taken the matter as seriously as some among the Irish. Mollie had inherited no
religious fervor. Nonetheless, Josh suggested she might like to be married in St. Ann’s Catholic Church over on Eighth Street. “All the same to me,” he said, “as long as you’re my wife at the end of it.”

The pastor was not so sanguine. Mollie went to see him and produced her certificate of baptism, but it seemed there were more documents required and she had none of them. Proof of First Holy Communion for one, and Confirmation for another. And a note from some religious authority attesting to her regular attendance at Holy Mass. “And since you insist on marrying a non-Catholic,” the priest said, “we can’t of course allow the ceremony to take place in the church itself. Unless your husband-to-be would like to convert. Have you suggested that, Miss Brannigan?”

Mollie didn’t mind the thought of catching up on the rituals she’d missed, but she refused to tell Josh he wasn’t considered good enough as he was. So a Catholic church was apparently not an option.

Sunshine Hill, the remote home of Josh’s parents, was. Carolina Turner made the suggestion when Josh brought Mollie to meet his parents. “Nick and I were married in the rose garden on that bluff over there,” she said, pointing to a spot on a cliff overlooking the East River. “If you and Josh would like to have your wedding in the same spot it would be our pleasure.”

Two days later Carolina took to her bed with what Dr. Turner pronounced a weakness of the heart, something he explained that likely had been coming on for many years and had nothing to do with Josh’s upcoming marriage. The notion of a wedding at Sunshine Hill, however, had to be dropped.

“There’s always City Hall,” Josh said cheerfully. “Or any Protestant church as takes your fancy.”

Mollie could not imagine arriving in City Hall wearing her lovely blush-pink, ruffled-and-bowed wedding dress, and her veil trimmed with orange blossoms. But she didn’t think it likely any Protestant church would welcome Eileen Brannigan’s now infamous niece as the bride, or Auntie Eileen herself as an honored guest.

“You’re not allowing for the influence of my brother Zac,” Josh said. “Would Grace Church over on Broadway do?”

Which is how it happened that on the third day of August in the year of Our Lord 1871, Mollie Brannigan became Mrs. Joshua Turner in perhaps the most fashionable Episcopalian church in New York.

They went directly from the ceremony and reception to what was to be their first home together, Zachary Devrey’s spacious, if no longer fashionable, brownstone on Grand Street. Zac had kept the house because it was easy walking distance to what everyone called the Devrey Building on Broadway and Canal, a marble palace celebrating the accomplishments of better than two centuries of the city’s mightiest merchant fleet. These days, after the fearsome pounding American commercial shipping took in the war, Zac spent much time in England, seeking new alliances, and ways to win back lost business. He was off to Liverpool immediately after the wedding for what promised to be an extended stay. “Have the house, Josh, for as long as you need. I travel so much the place gets little use. When I’m home I’ve everything I require at the Devrey Building. I won’t be in the least inconvenienced.”

“Your brother never married?” Mollie asked as Josh closed the front door behind them.

“Never. There was talk of his having met a woman he cared for in England years ago, but she was promised to someone with a title and a fortune, and he was apparently the underbidder.”

He was behind her, helping her out of the dove gray capelet that was part of the elegant traveling costume she’d changed into after the wedding. She felt a touch on her neck as he spoke and thought at first it was his hand, then became aware of the warmth of his breath and judged the gentle caress to have been delivered with his mouth. An opinion confirmed when he dropped his hands to her waist and turned her toward him and kissed her. He’d done so a number of times
in the two months since they became betrothed. But not like this. This kiss was not in any way restrained. It asked something of her, rather than merely making a promise, like those before. Mollie sensed the question, but had no idea of the reply. She stiffened.

Josh lifted his head. “Kiss me back,” he said. “You did for a moment once a few weeks ago. In your aunt’s sitting room,” he added.

She did not need reminding. She had on that occasion been nearly overcome with her feelings for him and gone limp in his arms. Only the sound of Auntie Eileen returning with the picture she’d gone to fetch—a sketch of Mollie at age five—had brought her back to her proper senses. But such senses were no longer appropriate; she was Mrs. Joshua Turner and her husband had rights and she duties. But it was not duty making bubbles seem to rise from her toes, as if she’d downed an entire bottle of champagne and it was fizzing inside her. Mollie turned her head to look over her shoulder. “The servants . . .”

“There are none. Zac has a woman who comes to clean a few days each week, but she’s not here now. You will have to see about a cook, but not tonight, my sweet Mollie. Tonight we’re entirely alone. Please kiss me the way you did.”

She did not need to summon limpness in any conscious way. The bubbles bursting inside took care of it. And when she felt the demands his lips were making, hers opened almost of their own accord. “So soft,” Josh said when he at last lifted his head. He traced her mouth with his finger, taking its measure as if it was a gateway to all the rest of her. Not just her body, Mollie realized. Her new husband was seeking that interior she had revealed to no one. Her secret self. It was a demand she had not expected, at least not consciously, and she trembled.

“Look,” he said, aware that for all the extraordinary truths of her background, and her being, at least in years, not a girl but a woman, he was making her afraid, which was certainly not his intention, “as I said, there’s no cook, but I believe some provisions have been laid in. Are you hungry? We can probably find some supper.”

“I’m not in the least hungry,” Mollie said. “But if you are . . .”

Josh shook his head.

“Then,” she said, “perhaps we should go upstairs. At least,” not able to prevent a fierce blush, “I presume the—” She could not make herself say bedroom, though that was what she meant, and having just promised before God to love, honor, and obey Joshua Turner, he was her master and she belonged in his bedroom whenever he wished her to be there. But he hadn’t made the suggestion, she had. She blushed a second time, more fiercely than before.

“Yes,” Josh said. “We should go upstairs.”

She had become so accustomed to his injury she barely thought about it. Now she was acutely aware of the tapping of his wooden leg, and the asymmetric sound he made climbing behind her up the stairs to their bridal bed. Did he sleep with the peg? And how was it involved in this activity, which after all was neither passive nor, she imagined, particularly restful?

Mollie paused at the top of the stairs, not knowing which way to go. “Right,” Josh said, passing in front of her to lead the way. “In here.” He opened the door to a large bedchamber overlooking the street. The bed, a four-poster with tied-back, dark, and heavy velvet curtains, dominated the room. Her cases, she saw, had already been brought upstairs, delivered no doubt during the interval of what they called the wedding breakfast, though it had been an elaborate luncheon served at three in the afternoon in the elegant Metropolitan Hotel on Broadway and Prince Street. “I’ll leave you for a moment, shall I?” Josh said.

Mollie nodded and he started to go, then turned back to her. “Look . . . It’s been a mad sort of day for you. All the excitement . . . I can sleep down the hall if you like. We’ve plenty of time, Mollie.”

“No, Josh.” All those years and all those men who came to Brannigan’s because their wives were unavailable. She meant to begin as she would go on, not establish a pattern of behavior that would drive him to seek elsewhere for what she did not give. “Allow me fifteen minutes, then come to sleep in here.”

“Right,” he said and let himself out, closing the door softly behind him.

One of her cases was on the folding luggage stand and Mollie remembered it as the one in which she’d packed the elaborate satin nightdress she had embroidered with the roses she’d abandoned for her wedding dress. Sure enough, it was folded carefully on the top. Mollie lost no time in stripping off her gray traveling frock, and her corset, and finally her chemise and pantaloons. Then, standing in the altogether as the Brannigan’s women called it, she changed her mind. She left the exquisite nightdress where it was and climbed into the bed as naked as a newborn babe.

At the last minute, when she could hear the tap of his peg signaling Josh’s return, she remembered that her hair was still up and she quickly pulled out the pins and put them on the night stand and shook her head so her curls tumbled free, and scooted back under the sheets just as he opened the door.

“All right?” he inquired.

“Entirely all right.”

Some of the remaining daylight of the August evening seeped through the bedroom curtains. Enough for her to see his face as, having obtained her permission, he came further into the room. He looked grave, and somehow older. Purposeful she thought. Prepared to do his duty. Suddenly she wanted to giggle, though of course she did no such thing.