Page 16 of May I Kiss the Bride

ONE

“HARRIET, YOU MUST COME AT once,” Vivian said.

Nearly two months ago. And she’d been healthy.

“You’re going to miss it,” Vivian said.

Harriet rose from the rough-hewn deck chair, then made her way to where Vivian was leaning a bit too far over the railing of the Torrant, the sailing vessel they were now on to make the final leg of the journey to Seattle.

Because of a delay in the Panama Canal, they’d missed their steamer connection at San Francisco.

So Mr. Mercer had booked this smaller lumber bark that was on its way to Puget Sound in the Washington Territory.

“There,” Vivian said, pointing with a proud finger.

Harriet leaned over the rail, tamping down the increased nausea, and peered into the dark, churning water below.

“Do you see it?” Vivian asked.

At first, Harriet only saw the endless water that she’d been seeing for weeks now. And then . . . a dorsal fin crested from one of the waves. She gasped. “A dolphin!”

“Yes,” Vivian said in a triumphant voice. “Mr. Mercer told us we might see dolphins, but you were skeptical.”

Harriet wasn’t listening. She was utterly fascinated with the creature moving in and out of the water. The dark tumult of the water must be freezing. It was a true wonder of nature anything could actually live in the ocean. Beneath all that cold water.

The dolphin seemed to be following their vessel.

“What is it doing?” Harriet asked.

“I don’t know,” Vivian said. “I’m going to fetch the others. They’ll be fascinated.”

It wasn’t long before they were surrounded by other spectators, exclaiming over the single dolphin. Harriet glanced over at Mr. Mercer, who was explaining in detail about the patterns and habits of sea life. He really was an impressive man, full of knowledge on all sorts of topics.

When Harriet had read an article about Mr. Mercer in the newspaper back home in Philadelphia, she’d been immediately intrigued.

The wild West was no longer wild but in desperate need of teachers for its schoolhouses.

Another sentence in the article had caught her attention: “The West, especially Seattle, is filled with young, hardworking men who are on the brink of settling down and starting families.”

Mercer had made no secret of the fact that he was interested in aiding the young women joining the voyage in finding a suitable husband in Seattle.

But, he’d also given the caveat that the women were perfectly free to determine their own future.

This opportunity was not one of the mail-order bride ventures.

Harriet was twenty-six, past the typical age for marrying, and all of her friends had done just that.

Married with babies, some with more than one.

It didn’t bother Harriet, not really. There were plenty of women who married later in life.

Not that she knew any, but she’d read many books of older heroines .

. . though she couldn’t remember a single one at the moment.

The crowd that had gathered to watch the dolphin was now exclaiming about something else. Harriet looked toward the shoreline they’d been skimming for several hours. “We’ll stop over in Teekalet,” Mr. Mercer said to the women. “Then tomorrow we’ll arrive in Seattle.”

A place to settle down at last, and it couldn’t be a moment too soon for Harriet.

She would not miss a thing about Philadelphia.

Not the dances, where only the men over fifty asked her to dance, not Mrs. Raphael, who asked her every time she came into the bakery if she was engaged yet.

Not her twin brother Harry, who spent more time drinking than working nowadays.

Yes, the deaths of their parents five years ago had been impossibly hard.

But Harry had inherited the house and property and their father’s accounting business.

She had inherited dependency. And she was tired of being dependent.

She wanted to make her own way in the world, live her own life, make her own decisions.

They were nearly to the harbor now, and the women of the Mercer’s Belles group had all left to finish packing their belongings.

Harriet was already packed, so she remained on deck, watching the bustle of the approaching harbor. Dock workers milled about, and several of them were unloading carts behind impatient horses. When the vessel docked, Harriet joined the others and walked down the gang plank.

A couple of men were at the end of the plank, giving a gentlemanly hand to the ladies stepping onto land.

A nice gesture, especially since the women’s skirts were long and heavy.

Harriet took her turn behind Vivian, who was prattling on about something or other.

It was hard to keep up with the woman’s conversation.

The seagulls soared in the air about them, their screeches an odd, welcoming cadence. A child started to cry ahead of her. One of the passengers. He’d dropped the red ball he always carried around on deck, and now it bounced on the gangplank right before Harriet.

If it weren’t for her long skirts and rather fitted shirtwaist, she might have been able to bend more gracefully and snatch the ball before it fell into the water. But that wasn’t the case, and as Harriet attempted to rescue the ball, she missed.

And lost her balance.

Then fell.

Into the cold, dark water.