Bella's Vineyard Read online

  Vance smiled. “You’re in pancake heaven now. And yes, I’d love some thank you, ma’am.”

  “Please stop calling me ma’am. It makes me feel like an elderly woman. I think after what we’ve been through we can consider ourselves friends, and my friends call me Bella.”

  “Okay. Bella.” The way he said her name in his resonant tone sent a small flame of pleasure down her spine.

  As Bella led him to the kitchen, she almost tripped over a box on the floor. She picked it up and put it on the table. It had air holes in the top, and a wire mesh door at one end.

  “Is that a rabbit?” asked Vance.

  “Yes, I’m going to cook it for supper,” said Bella.

  “I think they’re supposed to be dead.”

  “Well, obviously. But I thought I’d eat breakfast before I started cutting its throat.”

  The rabbit looked up at them both with big eyes.

  “It looks to me like it knows it’s been caught,” said Vance.

  “I did intend skinning it without its knowledge, but it took me an hour to catch it. We were both a little exhausted by the time I’d put him in the trap.”

  Vance laughed. “So you’re really gonna kill this little man? Assuming it is a male. I can’t tell from here.”

  Bella blushed. “Of course. May says I need to toughen up after I refused to choose the cow for our steak last night. Call me squeamish but it’s hard to eat something I’ve looked in the eye. I’m used to a butcher sorting all that out for me.”

  “This rabbit has looked you in the eye.”

  “I’m not going to let that bother me anymore. If you don’t believe me, come by for dinner and we’ll share our rabbit stew with you, won’t we May?”

  May and Vance exchanged knowing glances and a conspiratorial smile.

  “I think I know who’s won this battle,” said Vance, throwing his hat onto the table and sitting down.

  “Do you want bacon and eggs? I can rustle up some grits?” May asked, bustling around Vance five minutes later, as he sat with Bella in the kitchen. They sipped on coffee, and made small talk.

  “Grits?” Bella mouthed to Vance whilst May’s back was turned.

  “I’ll explain later,” he said. “Don’t worry, you won’t have to kill anything.” He turned to May. “No, thank you, Miss Tucker. These pancakes will do just fine.”

  “May, come and sit down,” said Bella. “You’ve done enough this morning.” Bella felt guilty that May had fallen so quickly back into the role of housekeeper. Bella was also very aware that the food they ate had been supplied by May. She would have to check her own money, which was stowed safely away in the bottom of her trunk out of Andrew’s reach, and pay May back.

  “I got cleaning to do. Besides, you two young ‘uns don’t want an old woman hanging around you.”

  “May, you don’t have to …” May was gone before Bella had even finished her sentence. “I wish I could pay her a wage,” she said to Vance.

  “I gather she’s okay for money,” said Vance. “Her father was one of the early prospectors. Did better out of the mines than most men who came later. Pretty shrewd with his money too, I hear.”

  “You wouldn’t think it looking at Bill Tucker.” Bella wondered why May worked as a housekeeper when she had money. “Oh, did you know? The older man we met on the coach is her brother.”

  “No, I didn’t know that. Well, that makes me worry a little less. He’ll probably leave you alone now.”

  “You don’t have to worry about me,” said Bella, secretly thinking that there was so much obvious bad blood between May and Bill there was no guarantee of any security in the connection.

  “You’re not in England anymore, Bella. Everyone out here lives in relative isolation, so help is often a long time coming. It mightn’t hurt if you could get a guy up here to keep watch.”

  “Andrew will come soon,” said Bella, sounding doubtful even to herself.

  “Your brother is not the sort of man I’m thinking of,” said Vance. “I mean someone who’s handy with a gun, and who can maybe help you out around the place.”

  “I’ve been talking to May about getting the vineyard up and running,” said Bella. “She says it might take a couple of years before we can grow decent crops again, but she knows some of the Chinese men who used to work here, before Griffiths and his people chased them off. She’s going to approach them and ask if they’ll be willing to work in return for some of the profits.”

  “That’s not a bad idea. How can she be sure they’ll come back?”

  “She thinks things have changed. The other landowners are starting to resent Griffiths, whereas before they all fell into place behind him. Apart from Aunt Bella. She knew all along he was a bad man.”

  “You know he wants to buy this place off your brother.”

  Bella was silent for a moment. “I had a feeling that’s why he wanted to talk to Andrew. He’s wasting his time. The vineyard isn’t for sale.”

  “Your brother might have other ideas.”

  “I don’t care. It’s not for sale. I gave up everything to come here. I’m not about to turn around and go back again.”

  “Well…” Vance looked at her for such a long time that she began to feel self-conscious. She knew her hair was not as neat as it could have been and she was wearing an old blue gingham dress of her aunt’s, having been too exhausted to unpack clean clothes the night before. “You were right about English women, weren’t you?”

  Bella smiled. “I told you not to underestimate us.”

  “I don’t, Bella. But you shouldn’t underestimate Griffiths and what he’s willing to do to win this place. Men like him don’t have the same sense of fair play that most decent folk do. He’s building an empire and he doesn’t care who he buries under its foundations.”

  Bella shivered, feeling for a moment as if the sun had gone in. “Let’s talk about happier things,” she said. “When will we meet Gloria? I was thinking last night that … well … if she needed somewhere to stay, I mean if she came to visit you, she’d be very welcome here.” Bella had thought no such thing, and could not comprehend why she suddenly blurted out the offer. Later, when she began to dread Gloria’s imminent arrival, she would wonder what on earth possessed her.

  Vance stayed for a little while longer, and then started back for the town.

  “You did good catching that rabbit,” he said, when he was sitting on his horse ready to go. “But it was a bad idea not to kill it immediately. They sense weakness. Whatever you do, don’t let him talk you into giving him a name between now and supper time.” He winked at her and rode away.

  Bella watched him, and found she still looked for him when he was far out of sight.

  She turned and went back into the house, thinking that it was time she unpacked. But first she went to the rabbit in the kitchen. She gently lifted him out of the box and held him close, feeling his velvety soft fur against her cheek. “Because you fought so valiantly, I’m going to call you Hector.”

  “I’m just going out to talk to Shen,” said May, coming downstairs wearing her riding jacket as Bella was on her way upstairs to unpack. “I hear he’s working at one of the gold mines.”

  “Will Shen want to come here if there’s gold to be found in the mines?” asked Bella.

  “Ain’t much gold left, honey. Most of the prospectors have taken it. It’s just penny ante stuff nowadays. Enough to buy a man a meal a day and a room above the saloon.”

  “But it’s still more than I can pay,” said Bella.

  “Viticulture is in Shen’s blood,” said May. “I think he’ll come back just for the pleasure of doing something he’s good at.”

  “Well if you think he will, then ask. Make sure the terms are fair, May. I don’t agree with slavery. Which reminds me, before you go, let me give you some money for the food and a couple of week’s wages. I can’t pay you beyond that but perhaps something will turn up by then. I could find work in the town.”

  “T
here’s only one type of work for a young lady in Milton and even if I couldn’t stop you I reckon that handsome marshal would have something to say about it. I don’t want anything. Your aunt took care of me when…”

  Ignoring May’s protestations, Bella skipped up the stairs to her bedroom, taking the key to her trunk from the chain she had around her neck. Five minutes later, she sat on the floor, frantically searched the trunk, throwing clothes all over the room, shaking out undergarments and dresses, hoping to see what she was looking for fall to the floor. “It’s here, I know it’s here,” she said, fighting back the tears that threatened to flow.

  “What, honey? What’s wrong?” said May from the door.

  “My money. It was in my trunk. I last had it in…” Bella stopped and sat back on her heels, remembering the chain of events. “The night before last in the saloon. I must have left the key in the lock after I took out my nightclothes. I only went downstairs to get some water, and when I came back, Andrew was in my room. He’s taken it, May. The only money I had – we had - in the world and he’s taken it.” Bella burst into tears.

  May knelt next to her and put her arm around her shoulder. “We’ll work it out, honey, don’t you worry. I can loan you some until…”

  “No,” said Bella. “I can’t do that. I barely know you, and already I owe you more than I can possibly repay.”

  “Your aunt was my friend. She was like a … sister to me. Which kinda makes you family.”

  “May, that’s really sweet, but…”

  “Thirty years ago,” said May, emphatically ignoring Bella, “my daddy turned me out of the house. I had nothing then and nowhere to go. It was your aunt who took me in. I only came into money when my father died, and then it was because my Mama insisted he left me something for all those years I used to help him work the mine. So I owe your family much more than you could ever owe me.”

  “I will pay you back,” said Bella some time later. She had spent half an hour with her back against the wardrobe, thinking about what to do, whilst May set about tidying away the discarded clothes. She saw no other way than to accept May’s charity. She couldn’t go back to England because she did not have the money, but she could at least try to go forward. “We’ll get the vineyard working together, you and I, and we’ll share the profits.”

  “If that’s what you insist, then that’s the way we’ll do it. Darn it,” said May, her bright eyes shining with unshed tears, “you’re so much like your aunt. You’ve got that same determined little chin. She never let anyone or anything beat her.”

  “I’m sure that’s because she had you as a friend,” said Bella.

  Andrew finally arrived at the vineyard late that evening, smelling of alcohol, and swaying on his feet. Bella flew at him as he walked through the door.

  “You stole my money, Andrew.”

  “Bella, dearest, listen to me. I had a winning hand. I could have…”

  “Could have? Could have? But you didn’t, did you? You’ve lost it all and now I have to rely on the charity of a woman I only met yesterday.” Bella hated how shrewish she sounded. For a long time she had felt more like Andrew’s mother than his younger sister.

  “God forbid that you should have to ask anyone for anything,” said Andrew, his voice rising, becoming hollow and ugly as it did. “The perfectly wonderful Bella, who never does anything wrong.”

  “Oh, I do things wrong,” said Bella. “I was wrong to ever believe that I could change you by coming here. I should have made you face your problems.”

  “Good lord, Bella, you’re not my wife. Now stop nagging me and get me some food. I’m starving.”

  “You don’t speak to your sister like that, young man.”

  “Who are you and what in damnation has it got to do with you?” asked Andrew, his eyes widening at the sight of the woman dressed in men’s clothes standing in the kitchen doorway.

  “This is May Tucker,” said Bella. “She’s aunt Bella’s friend and at the moment she’s taking care of us, despite the fact we are not her problem. So I suggest you treat her with a little more respect.”

  Andrew paused near the foot of the stairs, sizing May Tucker up. His high-pitched tones became soft and contrite, and Bella knew by his eyes that he was already working out how he could bring May onto his side. “Bella, dearest I’m sorry, I’m very tired. Miss Tucker, please accept my apologies for my rudeness.” He tipped his hat to her. “Any friend of our aunt’s is a friend of ours, and I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “Just don’t let me hear you talk to Miss Bella like that again.”

  “No, of course I won’t. It’s been a long trip, as I’m sure Bella will have told you. Unfortunately I managed to leave my manners somewhere along the way, for which I apologise. Now if you ladies will point me in the direction of a bedroom, I’ll keep out of your way until I’ve regained them.”

  “He soon changed his mood,” said May, once Andrew was upstairs fast asleep. The two women sat on the porch together, as fireflies danced around them. May had found a bottle of wine in the cellar, a deep red that tasted to Bella of raspberries and the earthy flavour of fresh vegetables. Along with the gentle sway of the porch swing, it calmed her nerves. It would be too easy to let go, and allow the wine to ease her into oblivion. But one of her family had to be strong, and even though Bella sometimes felt her back would break under the strain, she was determined to be the one.

  “That’s Andrew’s way, I’m afraid,” said Bella. “My father said that my mother indulged him too much when he was younger, and he’d throw these awful tantrums one moment, then when he realised he was in the wrong, he’d suddenly become contrite and boyish. My mother fell for it every time. As have many of the women he’s managed to persuade to give him money.”

  “And you?”

  “Not anymore,” said Bella. She thought of Vance Eagleson. How self-assured and calm he was. That, to her, was how a man should behave. With courage and dignity. If only her brother Andrew could develop some of the maturity her father used to promise he would achieve one day. “Anyway,” said Bella, taking another fortifying sip of wine, “let’s forget him for a while. We’ll have his hangover to deal with in the morning. Did you manage to speak to Shen?”

  “Yes, and he’s agreed to our terms. I offered him and his men the bunkhouse. They can eat with us in the kitchen, if you have no objections.”

  “None at all. It will be nice to know that your pile of pancakes won’t be wasted in future. How many workers will we have?”

  “About ten to start with. There’s Shen, his two sons, a few brothers or brothers-in-law. Or both. They’re a tightly knit group and I forget how they’re related to each other. Then there’s me, you and your brother.”

  “I think … I think it will just be me and you,” said Bella. “But I’ll pay you back for whatever Andrew has.”

  “Miss Bella, you’re a kind, proud girl, but don’t you think you should let your brother stand on his own two feet? You say you don’t give in to his bad mood, which is fine, but you do seem to forgive him for all his other transgressions. One day, you’ll meet a man you want to marry and your brother will have to sort his own problems out.”

  “He’s family, May. I can’t leave him to his own devices. But I will be more careful in future. There’s a bank in Milton, yes?”

  “That’s right.”

  “We’ll put all the money we earn in there. We won’t keep anything in the house, and Andrew will just get an allowance. How he spends it is up to him. He’ll just have food and a roof over his head. But I can’t turn him out. You should understand that, better than anyone.”

  May reached over and patted Bella’s shoulder. “Okay, we’ll do it your way, but I ain’t gonna tread on eggshells around him.”

  Bella turned her head to May and smiled. “I’m glad to hear it. It will do him good to realise he’s not the apple of everyone’s eye.”

  “And what about that good-looking marshal? Is he going to be t
he apple of your eye?”

  “I’ve told you, May, he’s spoken for. I do not steal other women’s fiancés.”

  “She’s a long way away in Chicago, and you’re here, Miss Bella. Last night he said he wouldn’t see you for a few days, yet this morning he turns up again.”

  “I think he feels responsible for us,” said Bella. “Because of what happened on the coach. I’m sure he was only being kind.”

  “You’re a very smart young woman, honey, but I don’t think you’ve much experience of men. I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

  “Now stop it,” said Bella, smiling sadly. “If I dare to hope, I’ll just get my heart broken.”

  “So you have thought about him.”

  “How could I not?” said Bella. “There are handsome men in England, of course there are. But there’s something about him. A presence I’ve never seen in a man before. Whatever happens, I don’t think I’ll ever forget how he stood up to Tom and Bill on the coach. He was absolutely fearless. The same with Mr Griffiths today.” She put her glass down on the floor with a loud thump. “Oh, look at me, half a glass of wine and I’m talking like a silly schoolgirl.”

  “That ain’t the wine talking,” said May.

  Chapter Four

  The days that followed kept Bella too busy to worry about Andrew. He came and went as he pleased – she did not like to ask where he got the money from - whilst other landowners called to welcome them to Milton. Many promises were made about continuing to allow the water to keep flowing and cattle to graze on the parts of the land that were not given over to viticulture. Those landowners involved in the same business as Bella advised her of how to ensure her crops could be rejuvenated, and begin to bear fruit as quickly as possible.

  “We all help each other out here,” said one landowner, Ike Peterson. He had arrived at the vineyard one morning with his wife, Henrietta. They sat around the table on the porch, drinking lemonade. “We’d like to start by inviting you to our daughter’s engagement party next Sunday.”