Eternity Read online

  “Ranleigh went with me,” Carrie said, looking down, her lower lip protruding just a bit. “But then Ranleigh isn’t afraid of anything. Maybe you’re afraid because you’re my second-most handsome brother, and, too, maybe Ranleigh has more self-confidence than you do. Maybe Ranleigh—”

  “You win,” Jamie said, throwing up his hands in defeat. “I’ll go, but only if you swear you’ll not try to match me up with one of your unwanted women.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said as though appalled at the very idea. “Besides, who’d want you after they’d seen Ranleigh?”

  Jamie grinned wickedly. “About half of China,” he said, leaning forward to cluck her under the chin, then looked down at the dog when it sneezed again. “What are you going to name him?”

  “Choo-choo,” Carrie answered brightly, making Jamie groan at the infantile name, just as she knew he would.

  “Give him a name with a little dignity.”

  “Tell me about the women in China and I’ll call him Duke,” she said eagerly.

  Pulling out his pocket watch and looking at it, he said, “I will give you one hour to dress and for every ten minutes of that hour that you don’t make me wait for you, I’ll tell you a story about China.”

  Carrie grimaced. “About the scenery? About the roads and the storms at sea?”

  “About the girls who danced for the emperor.” He lowered his voice. “And…they danced for me. In private.”

  In a flurry of silk and flying pillows, Carrie was out of the bed in a flash. “Thirty minutes. If I can get dressed in thirty minutes, how many stories will that earn me?”

  “Three.”

  “They’d better be good stories and worth all the rush,” she said in warning, “because if they’re boring, I’ll invite Euphonia to dinner every night you’re home.”

  “Cruel. You are cruel.” Again looking at his pocket watch, he said, “Time starts…NOW!”

  Running from the bedroom, Carrie made a dash for her dressing room, Choo-choo in her arms.

  “Thirty minutes,” Jamie said, half in anger, half in exasperation. “You said you’d be ready within thirty minutes. Not an hour and thirty minutes, but thirty minutes flat.”

  Carrie yawned, not in the least disturbed by his tone. Jamie was all bark and no bite. “I was sleepy. Now tell me another story. You owe me two more.”

  As he flicked the reins of the horse harnessed to the little carriage, Jamie looked down at her. He knew that he complained to his brothers about how they spoiled their little sister, and he knew that now he should be firm and deny her the promised stories, but then he saw the way she looked up at him, with her big blue eyes full of love and adoration, and he cursed under his breath. There wasn’t a member of his family who could deny her anything. “Maybe just one more story,” he said. “But you don’t deserve it.”

  Smiling, she hugged his arm. “You know, I think that as you get older you get better looking, and in another year or two, you might surpass Ranleigh in looks.”

  Jamie tried to hide his smile then gave up and grinned. “Imp!” he said and winked at her. “Like the dog, do you?”

  She hugged Choo-choo. “By far my favorite present,” she said, and this time she was sincere. “Now tell me more about the dancing girls.”

  When Carrie, with the little white dog tucked under her arm, walked into the parlor of the old house on her brother’s arm, the entire room came to a halt. All six of the young women, who had been Carrie’s friends for all of her life, looked up in unison. At first they merely halted their actions, then their eyes widened, then they gave a sigh that came from deep within each woman. For all that Carrie teased her brother that he wasn’t as good-looking as her brother Ranleigh, Jamie was handsome enough to cause women to make genuine fools of themselves.

  Smiling in pride as she looked at the women who were frozen like statues, Carrie bent a bit and blew out the match that Euphonia had just lit before it burned her fingers.

  “All of you know my brother, Jamie, don’t you?” Carrie said, acting as though she hadn’t noticed the women’s standstill. Glancing up at Jamie, she saw that, even though he was pretending he was embarrassed, she knew him well enough to see that he was actually flattered by the reaction of the young women.

  Taking his arm possessively in hers, she pulled him forward. Their movement made the women come to life as they began to clear their throats and try to cover their awkwardness.

  “How was your voyage, Captain Montgomery?” Helen tried to sound normal, but her voice came out in a rather curious-sounding squeak.

  “Fine,” Jamie half snapped, wishing he hadn’t agreed to accompany his sister.

  Carrie pulled him toward the far wall of the room where twenty-five photographs of men were pinned. The men ranged in age from a boy who didn’t look much more than about fourteen to an old geezer with a gray beard halfway down the middle of his chest. “These are the men,” Carrie said unnecessarily.

  Nervously running his finger around his collar, Jamie looked at the board, but didn’t see much. All the women were behind him now, and he could feel their eyes upon him, maybe even feel their collective hot breaths on his neck.

  “Have there been any new arrivals today?” Carrie asked as she turned away from the board. She turned rather quickly, just in time to see Helen do something rather odd: She slipped something under a book lying on a table. Carrie pretended she had seen nothing.

  “A few,” one of the women answered. “But nothing promising. We have about twice as many men as women. You wouldn’t like to put your picture on the board, would you, Captain?” She was doing her best to sound nonchalant, but there was just a touch of desperation and yearning in her voice.

  Jamie gave the woman a weak smile. “Carrie, my love, I think I’d better go. I have to—” He couldn’t think of what he needed to do except get out of there because the women were making him feel like something in a zoo. After giving his sister a quick kiss on the cheek and a look that said, I’ll get you for this, he was gone.

  For a moment the room was silent, then the women emitted a second combined sigh before turning back to their stacks of letters and photographs. Carrie stood where she was for a moment, then set Choo-choo to the floor, pointed him toward Helen, and gave him a little push.

  “Catch him!” Carrie cried to Helen. “He’ll run away.”

  Helen began to chase the little dog, leaving the table she had been standing by as though guarding it. Choo-choo decided he didn’t want to be caught and within seconds all the women in the room were chasing him—all of them except Carrie, that is. She used the commotion to cover her movements as she went to Helen’s table, lifted the book, and took what was hidden from under it.

  Carrie pulled what was, by now, a very familiar-looking envelope from under the book. It was the type of envelope that held the photograph and letter from a man desiring a bride.

  While the others were busy chasing the dog about the room, Carrie opened the letter, pulled out the photo, and looked at it. The picture was of a young man standing behind two badly dressed children, and it was the children Carrie examined first. There was a tall boy of about nine or ten and a girl of four or five. The clothes the children wore were clean but fitted them badly, as though they had been given whatever the local charity office had without consideration for fit.

  But far more important than their clothes was the sadness in the eyes of the children, a kind of sad loneliness that said that there was very little laughter in their lives.

  When Carrie looked up from the faces of the children, she gasped, for she saw the face of what she thought was the handsomest man in the world. Oh, maybe he wasn’t actually as good-looking as her brothers, for there was an altogether different look about him, and this man had a look of melancholy about him that no Montgomery had ever had.

  Helen snatched the photograph from Carrie. “That wasn’t very nice of you to snoop like that. This is mine.”

  Carrie didn’t answer bu