Harper's Bride by Alexis Harrington

agape and buckteeth
well displayed. "N-no, I see that. No disrespect intended, Dylan,"
he mumbled, his face tomato red. "Hell, nobody around here heard
that you took a wife."
    "Now you know."
    In that moment Dylan thought that maybe
everyone else should know it, too. Melissa might get the sign she
had talked about, after all. It would put a damned quick end to
notions like Ned Tanner's.
    Mrs. Harper’s Laundry
    *~*~*

    "Good afternoon, Mrs. Harper."
    Melissa looked up from the blue work shirt on
her scrub board to find Rafe Dubois standing there.
    "Mr. Dubois, how nice to see you." She had a
special fondness for the lawyer, especially since he'd liberated
her from Coy. Further, she enjoyed his elegant manners and turn of
phrase. They were so different from what she was accustomed to. Coy
would have made some derisive remark about his "ten-dollar words,"
given the chance to express his opinion.
    "I must admit that I'm a bit surprised you've
undertaken this venture."
    "I'm not sure you should be," she replied,
taking up the shirt again. "Women have always worked. I've always
worked. This time I'd like to be paid for it."
    Rafe lowered himself to an upended packing
crate that served as her guest chair, moving as if his every joint
ached. Then considering her for a moment, he nodded and chuckled.
"I suppose you're right. You must forgive me—I'm from a part of the
world where women do indeed work hard, sometimes from morning until
long after sunset. But custom prevents them from allowing it to
show. In fact, they would be considered unladylike if they did.
Rather, they are to be viewed as delicate flowers who tire easily,
faint with little provocation, and must be sheltered from the
world. They retire to shuttered porches and sitting rooms in the
heat of the day, to do fine needlework or sip tea." He laughed
again. "I was stunned to discover just how strong many of the fair
gender can be."
    She wasn't surprised by his veiled objection
to her laundry business. She'd sensed his disapproval yesterday.
Plunging the shirt into clear rinse water, she laughed. "Mr.
Dubois, if women sat on their tuffets like Miss Muffett, sewing a
fine seam and drinking tea, not much would get done. There would be
no clothes washed or meals cooked or children reared." Wringing out
the shirt, she flung it over the clothesline and groped in her
pocket for clothespins.
    Rafe gestured at the crowd moving in both
directions on Front Street. "But in a frontier mining town, the
public location of your business might create a problem for
you."
    She took a clothespin out of her mouth. "Mr.
Dubois, I hope you know how much I appreciate everything you and
Dylan have done for Jenny and me. I don't know what might have
happened to us if not for you both. But I don't want to have to
depend on anyone except myself." She faltered a moment, hating the
little catch she heard in her voice. "Dylan has plans for his
future that don't have anything to do with us. He's told me that
he'll leave here when he's had enough of it. Where will that leave
us if I don't do something now? To be alone in the world with a
child to care for, and no way to do it . . ." She couldn't finish
the sentence.
    Rafe glanced at Jenny, sleeping in her little
nook, then rose stiffly from his seat. "I certainly see your point,
dear madam." He patted her arm, then turned to leave. "I see your
point."
    *~*~*
    By the end of the day the front of Melissa's
dress was wet from waist to knees, her back ached as if it would
snap, and her hands were chapped. Except for quick breaks to tend
the baby and have lunch herself, she had worked twelve hours.
    At seven in the evening, under a sun as
bright as midafternoon back home, she trudged upstairs with Dylan's
clothes and a bundle of ironing in one arm, and Jenny in the other.
She felt almost as weary as she had the day she'd crossed Chilkoot
Pass on the journey up here. The muscles in her shoulders and arms
ached from the scrubbing and wringing, and her hands