“I don’t want any of them!” she said with force. “All they want from me is…is what Mr. Clymer wants. I can’t go off and leave the children. Who will support Eleanor and the babies? All those men want me alone, not the kids. They want their own children, not someone else’s.”
“I’ll take the kids,” Alex said softly. “I have room for them at my house.”
She paused, smiled at him and squeezed his hand. “That’s kind of you, but I couldn’t do that. What if the Raider is the captain of a ship? I’d be sailing with him and you’d have the care of all those children. I couldn’t even help support them.”
He held her hand in his tightly. “I want you to come with the children.”
She gave him a blank look. “The Raider and me and the kids to live with you? That’s real generous of you, Alex, but—” She stopped, her eyes wide. “You couldn’t mean…”
“You could marry me, Jess,” he said solemnly. “I’ll take care of you and Eleanor and the children.”
Jess began to smile, then her laughter bubbled out. “You!” she gasped. “Oh, Alex, what a joke. I want the Raider, and I get offered a weak-spined, blue-and-orange piece of seaweed. You’ve certainly lightened my day. And old Mr. Clymer thought—” She stopped when she saw Alex’s face. Never had she seen such anger on a human face before.
He rose from the log.
“Alex,” she said, “you were kidding, weren’t you?”
He turned his back on her and made his way up the steep hill.
“Alex,” she called after him, but he didn’t look back. She kicked at the rocks and shells on the beach, sending many snails flying. She hadn’t meant to hurt Alex’s feelings—again, she thought. Eleanor was right, he’d been good to her and her family and they owed him a great deal. She should have turned him down gently, or at least without calling him a…She didn’t like to remember what she’d called him. She put her scarf back in the top of her dress, gathered her nets and catch and started home.
Jessica had no sooner made her way through the tidal wave of suitors—accepting gifts of food along the way, for she was nobody’s fool—than Eleanor started in on her.
“Mr. Clymer came by here and he was very angry.”
“I think this is ham,” Jess said, inspecting her bundles. “And here’s candy for all of you.”
“I hope they always want to marry you, Jessica,” Molly said, putting the maple sugar man in her mouth.
“But you don’t have always,” Eleanor said. “Oh, Jess, you have to make up your mind.”
“I know which man I want.”
Eleanor ignored that remark. They’d already had a long discussion about the Raider, with Eleanor saying Jess had to be practical rather than romantic. “There’s that man who owns the Molly D,” Eleanor said.
“How many of the kids will he take with him when he sails?” Jess asked as she sat down and began sucking on a piece of candy. “And, besides, he has a wart on his chin.”
Eleanor named several men, but Jessica found fault with each of them.
Eleanor sat down at the table, her head in her hands. “That’s all of them. You’ve refused every man I know.”
“Even Alex,” Jess said, remembering his anger.
“Alex?” Eleanor’s head came up. “Alex asked you to marry him?”
“I think so. He offered to take on all the kids but he wanted me to go with them.”
“What did you say to him, Jessica?” Eleanor asked, her voice very, very calm.
Jess grimaced. “I didn’t know he was serious. I’m afraid I laughed at him. Tomorrow I’ll apologize. I’ll turn him down in a much nicer way and I’ll—”
Eleanor leaped up from the table and leaned over Jess. “You what?!” she yelled. “You turned down Alexander Montgomery? You laughed at his proposal of marriage?”
“I told you I thought he was kidding. I had no idea he was serious until I saw his face.”
Eleanor grabbed Jess’s arm and pulled her up from the table. “Watch the kids, Nate,” she called. Jess protested as Eleanor dragged her through the men camped outside their house, through the town and then up the hill to the Montgomery house.
Alex was in his bedroom, a book open in front of him. He didn’t rise when Eleanor burst into the room, nor did he look at Jessica.