A Matter of Marriage Read online

  A Matter

  of Marriage

  ANN COLLINS

  Compass Point Press

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue have come from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  A MATTER OF MARRIAGE. Copyright © 2013 by Ann Collins. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations for reviews. Copying and distributing this book without the author’s permission is an infringement of the author’s copyright.

  For permissions and information, email Compass Point Press at [email protected] or go to Compass Point Press.

  ISBN: 978-0-9636558-1-3

  Cover design by Ann Collins.

  Body of woman photo © Oleksandr Shevchenko - Dreamstime.com

  Woman’s head © coloroftime - istockphoto

  All other photos © Ann Collins

  Tall ship Californian, Maritime Museum of San Diego

  This book is dedicated to all the people who have cared for and kept alive historic sites across the United States, including the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, California.

  Acknowledgments

  Writing fiction is not an easy or solitary process for me. Alex and Julia’s story has been a long time coming, and many people have helped me along the way with my historical research and storytelling. They know who they are, and I am grateful to all of them. Special thanks go to Janet Wellington and Cheryl Howe for their insights.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Historic American Buildings Survey Sketch by E. S. Moore, Crocker and Company, Lithographers 1888 LITHOGRAPH OF CORONADO. Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

  Prologue

  San Diego, California

  November 1897

  Julia Fairbanks swallowed hard and buried her hands in the folds of her black mourning skirt. What wasn’t Mr. Byrnes telling her?

  The lawyer sat across from her, behind his expansive oak desk. As he continued avoiding her gaze, a sheen of perspiration broke out over his balding head. He nudged his spectacles higher on his ruddy nose.

  Julia’s heart thudded. As her father’s only living child and heir, she had expected the reading of his will to be nothing more than a formality, something to endure while she coped with her grief. But this meeting was not going as expected.

  “What are you keeping from me, Mr. Byrnes?”

  He patted his folded handkerchief against his head. Outside the office window, a wagon clattered by on the San Diego street.

  “Nothing, Miss Fairbanks. I suspect you already know your father updated his will last year, after the death of your stepmother.”

  Julia drew a quivery breath and tried not to think about her stepmother’s passing. Harriet had suffered for months, wasting away. After she passed, an emptiness had spread through Julia, almost as vast as the desolation she had felt when she lost her mother years earlier. Now, her father was gone, too.

  “No,” she managed to say. “I did not know.” She also didn’t know why her father would have changed his will. Or what the changes would have been.

  “Oh, well, not that it matters, I suppose.” He shuffled through several loose papers. “Let me just say again how sorry I am for the loss of your father. I know it must have been a shock, his heart suddenly giving out like that.”

  “Yes, it was,” she whispered. He had seemed so robust. One minute he was demanding she leave hotel matters to him, and the next, he had dropped to the lobby floor, never to move again.

  Julia blinked at the scalding tears in her eyes. Would her father still be alive if she hadn’t been so determined to help him run the hotel?

  Mr. Byrnes cleared his throat. “Uh, why don’t I just get to it. The final wishes of Lloyd Alwin Fairbanks are as follows.” He started reading, outlining what would happen to the four-hundred-room Hotel Grand Victoria—her home.

  She tried to listen, but her mind drifted back in time to her happiest memories. As a fifteen-year-old girl, Julia had watched the resort hotel grow from a sandy patch of scrub-covered land on Coronado Island to a fairy-tale castle of red-roofed turrets and towers.

  The interior had been her mother’s domain. Lillian Fairbanks’ tasteful touch was everywhere, from the framed hunting pictures in the Men’s Smoking Room to the silk draperies in the Ladies’ Billiard Room. Julia always felt pride in the final choices because she had helped make them. She and her mother had spent countless cherished hours together as they looked over sample fabrics and wallpapers.

  “We will be sharing our home with the world, sweetheart,” her mother had said, “and we want it to look its best.” Two years later, having become pregnant against doctor’s orders, her mother had died the day after giving birth. She had never stopped trying to give her husband what he wanted most—a son. She had disappointed him again, though, her final effort having produced another girl. Lloyd Fairbanks had shown no interest in his newest child, and little regret when she passed.

  As the lawyer droned on, Julia struggled to subdue a sob. Despite having lost her entire family, she told herself she wasn’t truly alone. She still had the Hotel Grand Victoria.

  “Did you hear me, Miss Fairbanks?”

  She glanced up to find Mr. Byrnes finally looking her in the eye. “I’m sorry. What were you saying?”

  He pursed his lips and laid the papers on the blotter. “I will speak as plainly as I can. Despite your being his only surviving family, your father placed a condition on your inheritance. In order to obtain legal ownership of the Hotel Grand Victoria, you must marry within the next six months. Five months and twenty-eight days, to be precise.”

  She stared at him. A highly inappropriate and unexpected laugh bubbled up her throat. She tamped it down. “Excuse me?”

  He sniffed. “I believe I was clear. You must wed in order to inherit the hotel.”

  His serious manner and words penetrated her disbelief. “Mr. Byrnes, there is obviously a mistake. I have no wish to marry. My father knew that.” As a girl, she had dreamed of marriage, dreamed of being loved and having a family, but after witnessing the heart-wrenching, harsh realities of childbearing, losing her mother first and then her baby sister, Julia had grown up. She had also realized how much power the husband wielded in the marriage relationship. She preferred to hold the reins of her own life.

  “Yes, he did know,” Mr. Byrnes said. “Hence, the stipulation. Due to his wives’ failure to provide him with a male heir, he has bequeathed that duty to you. There is no mistake.”

  “But—” She jumped up from the cowhide chair. “No! This is wrong. How could he do this?” And yet, Julia knew it was just like him. Even dead, Lloyd Fairbanks was brandishing his power like a king lording it over his subjects. He intended to use her, just as he had used her mother and stepmother in his quest for a male heir who would one day rule the Hotel Grand Victoria in his place.

  Mr. B
yrnes tucked his head into his shoulders, having the grace to look abashed. He said nothing though.

  “What happens if I don’t comply with the stipulation?”

  “The hotel will be sold at auction. The proceeds will pay off the mortgage, and the remaining money will be placed in a trust fund for any male offspring you may eventually produce.”

  She whirled away from the desk. A hollowness opened inside her, painful enough that Julia gasped for air. To Lloyd Fairbanks, she was a means to an end. Nothing more. As hard as she had tried to earn her father’s approval, she had never been good enough for him. He hadn’t wanted a daughter, even one who had learned everything she could about running a world-class hotel. What a fool she’d been! As big a fool as her mother had been to keep trying to give him a son.

  “Miss Fairbanks, please calm yourself and sit down.”

  “I don’t want to sit.” She could not let her father’s final maneuver pin her in place. Why had she never let herself see the truth that had always been in front of her?

  She sighed, knowing the answer. He was her father, and she loved him no matter what.

  “I know this is difficult for you,” Mr. Byrnes said. “To be honest, I don’t approve of your father’s methods, but he was my client and I had to do as he wished. If you don’t marry within the specified period, you will be left penniless and homeless.”

  And the Hotel Grand Victoria would be left to the whims of a new owner, someone who cared more for profits than the constant care the enormous wooden structure needed. And what about the employees? Many of them had shown her father nothing but loyalty since the hotel’s opening nine years ago. A new owner might dismiss them, bringing in different staff. Julia had to stop this, but how?

  She paced in front of the window, ignoring the buggies and people passing outside. No one cared more for the Hotel Grand Victoria than she, but her father had dismissed her feelings until now, when they suited his purposes. She imagined him laughing, utterly pleased with himself for having the last word, manipulating her from his grave in order to get a grandson. Her shoulders sagged with her disappointment in her father. He knew she could never bear to leave the hotel. He also knew that her greatest fear was to lose a child.

  Julia felt herself caught up in a breaking wave, the ocean’s power tumbling her in the foam and depriving her of air. She desperately needed to find the sandy bottom and spring to the surface, saving herself. “I’ll contest the will.”

  Mr. Byrnes sighed as she kept pacing. “I am sorry. At your father’s explicit request, I made sure there were no loopholes. Any attempt to circumvent his will would only be a waste of precious time. Miss Fairbanks, you need to begin your search for a husband immediately.”

  A husband she didn’t love and who didn’t love her. A man who would have charge of her and the Hotel Grand Victoria. He would have the right to consummate their marriage.

  Julia shuddered. Marriage meant pregnancy and all its inherent risks. Coming to a stop, she stared at her reflection in the window. Under the brim of her black hat, a lock of her ash-blond hair had come loose. She let it be, looking beyond herself to the scene outside. A young woman pushing a baby carriage strolled by. Tiny feet peeked out, batting aside a blanket. The woman smiled and stopped. Leaning down, she tucked the blanket back into place.

  Julia felt her stomach twist as her buried dream of having a child of her own rose from deep inside her, but then she remembered the pain of losing Lily, her baby sister. Her fears crowded back in, along with thoughts of her father’s scheme.

  As the woman and baby continued along the street, an idea struck Julia, a possible way out of her predicament.

  She pushed the stray lock of hair behind her ear and stepped back from the window. “Mr. Byrnes, did my father’s will say anything about the marriage being consummated?”

  “Not specifically, just that you must marry within the next six months.”

  “So nothing about me producing an heir?”

  “Well, no.”

  Her father had not been as smart as he thought. He assumed that once she married, the children would come. But what if she married a man who conveniently abandoned her after the ceremony? She would have satisfied the will’s stipulation, and the Hotel Grand Victoria would be hers. No one could ever take it from her, and she would never have to worry about losing a child because she would never have one.

  Mr. Byrnes picked up his fountain pen. “Miss Fairbanks, I know this is a lot to take in, but there are several other matters that need our attention. First and foremost, a manager must be hired to take your father’s place.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Byrnes. I will be taking over as manager.”

  His jaw dropped. “But women don’t operate businesses the size of the Hotel Grand Victoria.”

  She fought an urge to roll her eyes. Mr. Byrnes was no different than every other man who believed women incapable of doing more than keeping house. Well, her house just happened to be a lot larger than the average home. “Then I shall be the first. I love the Hotel Grand Victoria, and I will care for it with everything that is in me.”

  Mr. Byrnes removed his spectacles and rubbed his fingers against his temples. “This is not what your father had in mind when he made you his beneficiary.”

  “I am sure it wasn’t. Is there any stipulation prohibiting me from being manager?”

  “No. There is, however, a matter of marriage to settle.”

  “Rest assured, Mr. Byrnes, before the seventh of next May, my name will no longer be Fairbanks.” She ignored the dissenting voice in her heart that urged her to think hard about what she would be giving up. If she followed through on her plan, she would never be able to marry for love.

  Chapter One

  Coronado Island, San Diego County

  May 5, 1898

  As the sun descended in the western sky, it dappled San Diego’s harbor with a bright glow. Alex MacLean picked up his battered leather traveling bag and hurried away from the ferry terminal.

  He was glad to leave behind the awkward stares of his fellow passengers. He hated feeling like an object on display. Even after three and a half years, he still hadn’t gotten used to the looks he received—some of pity, some of revulsion, and some of curiosity.

  He probably never would.

  Alex headed for the Hotel Grand Victoria, his destination. Inside the pocket of his faded blue work shirt was the job advertisement he had torn from a Los Angeles newspaper.

  Down to his last few dollars, he needed this job, but he hadn’t come all this way just for the work. Alex wanted to see the hotel. The sepia picture postcard he’d come across up north had whet his interest. Besides, there had been nothing and no one to keep him in Los Angeles.

  He wished there had been someone. Anyone.

  Fifteen minutes later, Alex turned into a wide carriage drive and whistled softly. Cone-shaped towers covered with red shingles topped a white gingerbread-style castle adorned with balconies, verandas, and decorative railings.

  He could almost imagine himself entering a storybook instead of a hotel. The architecture was exquisite, Queen Anne style at its best. Though such whimsical detail had never matched his aesthetic, he admired the workmanship and felt the strangest sense of belonging, as if he was supposed to be here. He shook off the odd feeling and wondered who had designed the structure. Undoubtedly he would have recognized the name.

  Shoes crunching against a drive laid with broken shells, Alex continued his appreciative perusal. He wandered past a manicured lawn, meticulously pruned shrubbery, bright-colored flowers, fancy metal hitching posts, and a gurgling, splashing fountain.

  Near the hotel’s front entrance, he stopped to admire the façade and its myriad paned windows, some of them of stained glass. On a balcony above the entrance, someone shifted terracotta flowerpots inside a box that brimmed with red geraniums. To the far right, behind one of the windows, a little boy pressed his palms against the glass, looked out, and grinned.

 
; Alex froze, his gaze fixed on the boy. Memories surged forward, pummeling him with the image of his four-year-old son the last time Alex had seen him.

  Danny had also been standing at a window, but he had not been smiling like this boy. Between smoke-filled breaths and deep coughs, his only child had been crying out for help. “Daddy! Daddy!” His little hands beat at the unyielding glass on the third floor of their home.

  “Sir?” a female voice called out. “Are you all right?”

  The voice broke into Alex’s agonizing reverie and released him. Sick at heart, his stomach in knots, he still stared at the window. It was empty now, the boy gone. He had disappeared as Danny had, though not forever, not like Danny.

  “Sir?”

  Alex gave his head a shake and forced all thoughts of his son back into the dark cave inside his soul.

  Shading his eyes, he could make out three women standing on the hotel’s front veranda. One started toward him down the short staircase. When she emerged from beneath the portico into the waning sunlight, he felt as if the earth’s rotation had come to a halt and knocked him off balance.

  She was Aphrodite’s twin. A loosely pinned knot of ash-blond hair crowned a flawless face set with eyes as blue and brilliant as the California sky. Alex tried to study her dispassionately, like a sculptor examining a statue, but this was no statue and he was no sculptor.

  Running a hand over the back of his head and dark, untrimmed hair, purposely keeping the undamaged side of his face to her, he found enough air to whistle under his breath. She was even more beautiful than his deceased wife, who had been a beauty in her own right. And yet, this woman showed concern for him, acting nothing like Elizabeth, who had expected the world to bow at her feet.

  Alex’s heart gave an odd lurch as the woman closed on him, moving with a natural grace. He imagined long, lean legs beneath the light gray skirt that swayed with each of her steps. A matching, lace-trimmed jacket accentuated the smooth curve of her neck and angled in to a slender waist. Lord Almighty, he hadn’t bargained on ever feeling this way again.