Eleanor tightened her sister’s corset strings. Eleanor, by herself, was considered a pretty woman, but when Jessica was present, she was overshadowed—as was every other woman in town. “You have to go because the Montgomery family has been very good to us. Get down from there, Sally!” she said to her four-year-old sister.
The Taggert house was little more than a shack, small and only as clean as two women with full-time employment and the responsibility of taking care of seven young brothers and sisters could make it. The house was on the edge of town, set back in a tiny cove, with no close neighbors; not because the family chose to be so isolated, but because eighteen years ago when the fifth loud, dirty Taggert had entered the world and there didn’t seem to be an end to their numbers in sight, people stopped building near them.
“Nathaniel!” Jessica shouted to her nine-year-old brother who was dangling three, fat, angry spiders on a string in front of his little sister’s face. “If I have to come over there you’ll be sorry.”
“At least you wouldn’t have to see Alexander,” Nathaniel taunted before wisely scurrying from the house just after he tossed the spiders onto his sister.
“Hold still, Jess,” Eleanor said. “How do you expect me to lace you into this dress if you’re wiggling about?”
“I don’t particularly want you to lace me into it. I really don’t see why I have to go. We don’t need charity from the likes of Alexander Montgomery.”
Eleanor gave a heartfelt sigh. “You haven’t seen him since you were both children. Maybe he
’s changed.”
“Hah!” Jess said, moving away from her sister and lifting the infant, Samuel, off the floor where he was trying to eat some unidentifiable substance. She saw he had one of Nathaniel’s spiders in his fat, dirty little hand. “No one as bad as Alexander changes. He was a pompous know-it-all ten years ago and I’m sure he hasn’t changed. If Marianna was going to get one of her brothers to come and help her get away from that man she was fool enough to marry, why couldn’t she have asked one of the older boys? One of the good Montgomerys?”
“I think she wrote each of them and Alex received his letter first. Sit still while I get some of the tangles out of your hair.” Eleanor took her sister’s hair in her hands and couldn’t help feeling a little jealous. Other women spent many hours trying to do what they could with their hair to make it look good, while Jessica exposed hers to sun, salt air, sea water and her own sweat—and it was more beautiful than anyone else’s. It was a thick, soft blonde that shone in the sunlight.
“Oh, Jess, if you just tried, you could get any man—”
Her sister cut her off. “Please don’t start on me again. Why don’t you get a husband? A rich one who’ll support us and all the kids?”
“From this town?” Eleanor sniffed. “From a town that’s afraid of one man? From a town that lets a man like Pitman run it?”
Jessica stood and pulled her hair back from her face. There were few women pretty enough to be able to scrape their hair back that tightly and still be beautiful, but Jessica succeeded. “I don’t want one of those cowards any more than you do.” She put baby Samuel down on the floor again. “But at least I’m not fool enough to think that one man, especially somebody like Alexander, is going to save us. I think all of you remember the Montgomerys as a group, not as individuals. I couldn’t agree more that there was never a more magnificent group of men than Sayer and his two oldest sons and I cried as hard as any of you when the boys went off to sea—but I didn’t cry when Alexander left.”
“Jessica, I don’t think you’re being fair. What in the world did Alex do to you that’s made you dislike him so much? And you can’t count the schoolboy pranks he pulled. If they counted, Nathaniel would have been hanged four years ago.”
“It’s his attitude. He always thought he was so much better than anyone else. His brothers and father would work with everyone else, but Alexander thought of himself as too good. His family was the richest one in town, but he was the only one who was aware of it.”
“Are you talking about the charity? The time you threw the lobsters he’d brought us in his face? I never understood that since the whole town was always giving us things.”
“Well, they don’t now!” Jessica spat in anger. “Yes, I mean the charity, living from hand to mouth every day, never having anything, always wanting. And Pa coming home every nine months, just in time to get Mother—” She paused to calm down. “Alexander was the worst. The way he smirked every time he brought a bag of cornmeal. The superior way he looked at all of us each time he saw us. He used to wipe his breeches every time a Taggert baby got near him.”
Eleanor smiled. “Jess, it was necessary to wipe your breeches—or your skirt or your hair—every time a Taggert baby got near you. I don’t think you’re being fair. Alexander was no better or worse than the other men in his family. It’s just that you two are only two years apart in age and therefore you felt more kinship with him.”
“I’d rather be kin to a shark than to him.”
Eleanor rolled her eyes. “He did help Patrick get the post as cabin boy on the Fair Maiden.”
“He would have done anything to get rid of one more Taggert. Are you ready to go?”
“I have been for some time. I’ll make a deal with you. If Alexander turns out to be the pompous spendthrift you seem to think he is, I’ll bake you three apple pies next week.”
“I’ll win this without trying. With his arrogance, he’ll probably be expecting us to kiss his hand. I hear he was in Italy. Probably met the Pope and learned some things from him. Think he’ll wear scented lace underwear?”
Eleanor ignored her sister. “If I win, you have to wear a dress all week and be nice to Mr. Clymer.”
“That old fish-breath? Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. I’m going to win. This town’s going to see that, when Alexander is alone and not surrounded by his brothers and father, he’s a lazy, vain, condescending, pompous—” She stopped because Eleanor was pushing her out the door.
“And, Nathaniel, if you don’t watch after those kids, you’ll hear from me,” Eleanor called over her shoulder.
By the time they got to the dock, Eleanor was having to drag Jessica. Jess kept enumerating all the things that needed doing: the fishing nets that needed repairing, the sails that had to be mended.
“Well, Jessica,” said Abigail Wentworth as the Taggert sisters stepped onto the dock, “I see that you couldn’t wait to see Alexander again.”
Jessica was torn between wanting to smack the woman and turning to leave the dock. Abigail was the second prettiest girl in town, and she hated being second to Jessica’s first. Therefore, she loved to remind Jessica that she was a ripe and ready sixteen while Jess was drying on the vine at the grand old age of twenty-two.