Courting Susannah by Linda Lael Miller

there’s no use in bein’ shy.”
    Susannah was weak with embarrassment, but somehow she made herself walk, smiling and dignified, out of her hiding place. She extended her hand to Mr. Hollister, and he kissed it. Merriment twinkled in his blueeyes. Don’t be frightened, they seemed to say.
You are safe with me
.
    â€œYou’ll want a warm wrap,” Hollister said as he released Susannah’s hand. “It’s crisp outside.”
    â€œWinter’s comin’ on,” Maisie put in, still relishing her part in the occasion to the fullest.
    Susannah reached for the blue cloak she’d worn to the store the day before; it was still hanging on the oak coat tree next to the door. Mr. Hollister, ever the gentleman, took the heavy garment from her and laid it gently over her shoulders.
    â€œWe’ll be home around nine o’clock,” Hollister told Maisie, opening the door and standing back to let Susannah precede him onto the porch. Even though it was early, darkness had long since fallen. She smelled salt and smoke and pine pitch in the air.
    Susannah’s instincts about Mr. Hollister proved sound over the course of that quiet, innocuous evening. His first name, he told her, was John, and he would like to be called that, if she was amenable to the idea. He had been born and raised in Missoula, Montana; he had once been married, but his wife had been gone a long time. She’d perished, with their unborn child, when their wagon overturned while crossing the Missouri River. He had a younger sister, Ruby, just back from school in San Francisco, and he beamed proudly when he spoke of her.
    â€œTell me about you,” John urged over the main course of thick steaks, each of which would have been ample fare for a whole family, let alone one person.
    Susannah knew—had known from the first—that she would never fall in love with this man, whatever Maisie’s fanciful hopes in the matter might be, but she liked and trusted him and counted those things better than reckless sentiment. Such as she was beginning to feel toward Aubrey, for instance.
    She told John about her childhood at St. Mary’s, about leaving Boston to serve as an elderly lady’s companion on Nantucket, where she had lived a worthwhile, if lonely, life. She explained her closeness with Julia and her hope that Mr. Fairgrieve would allow her to raise the child.
    John studied her, his wine glass in one hand. “But you were never even betrothed? A lovely, intelligent woman like you?”
    Although flattered, Susannah sighed inwardly. Would that love were an easy thing to control, something she could summon in the face of favorable circumstance. “I had many duties,” she said with a little shrug. “Mrs. Butterfield—my employer—wasn’t well, and giving piano lessons took up what little spare time I had.” She thought sorrowfully of her small savings, which had been spent on a train ticket to Seattle.
    â€œHmmm,” John remarked thoughtfully. “And who taught you to play piano?”
    Susannah sighed. “One of the sisters at St. Mary’s.” Suddenly, she yearned to play the dusty grand she’d glimpsed languishing in the rear parlor of Aubrey’s house. She needed to start giving lessons as soon as she could. Perhaps tomorrow, after she’d gone to see Reverend Johnstone about Victoria’s christening, she would have time to play awhile and plan a campaign to recruit a half-dozen music students.
    â€œRuby used to play a little. Perhaps you might teach her.”
    The attention made her feel warm and a bit giddy, as she had always thought champagne might do, should she ever be depraved enough to taste the stuff. “I’d like that very much,” she said. She sat up a little straighter. “How do you earn your living, Mr. Hollister, if I’m not being too forward in asking?”
    He cleared his throat, looked away, looked back.