Whiter Pastures: (Sweet and Sassy Historical) (An Icebound Tale) Read online

  Whiter Pastures

  An Icebound Tale

  Xina Marie Uhl

  XCPublishing.net

  Contents

  Other XC Publishing.net titles by Xina Marie Uhl

  Hope Bay, Antarctica, 1900

  All Mouth and No Trousers

  About the Author

  Other XC Publishing.net titles by Xina Marie Uhl

  Necropolis

  The Ruling Elite and Other Stories (with Janet Loftis)

  The Cat’s Guide to Human Behavior

  A Fairy Tail and Out of the Bag

  ISBN-10:1-930805-91-8

  ISBN-13:978-1-930805-91-0

  (c) Copyright 2017 Xina Marie Uhl

  Cover art by Cormar Covers

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written permission of the author/publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation to anyone bearing the same name or names. Any resemblance to individuals known or unknown to the author are purely coincidental.

  Join the author’s email newsletter for news of new releases, sales, and other bonuses.

  Hope Bay, Antarctica, 1900

  The coal pan in the bottom of the heater had jammed again. Florance had tried all of her usual fixes—shoving it in further and yanking it out quickly, shimmying it from side to side, and wedging the metal handle of her favorite scrub brush in it to pry it open—but nothing would work.

  "Must you make such a racket, girl?" Electa's voice somehow managed to communicate boredom, disdain, and irritation all at once. She didn't bother looking up from her typewriter but continued to pluck the keys one by one, hunting and pecking for each as if she were a particularly choosy hen searching for the perfect piece of corn.

  Florance gritted her teeth. Electa knew her name—Florance had informed her of it on at least three separate occasions—but she couldn't be bothered to call her anything other than girl. When she deigned to speak to her at all, that is.

  It vexed Florance that people insisted upon referring to her as a girl when eternal spinsterhood was drawing ever nearer at twenty-nine years of age. Florance knew the reason for it, though. She was a rather quiet person, not a stupid one. The help always had to scurry hither and thither, seen but not heard, while the decent people carried on with the important work. The ability to be invisible was the very thing that had brought her to this frozen base to begin with, after all.

  With a discordant screech, the coal pan slid free, unbalancing Florance so that she landed squarely on her bustle. Coal dust puffed up in a cloud around her. She sneezed. Electa rolled her kohl-lined, brilliantly blue eyes in exasperation.

  "Sorry, Mum," Florance mumbled before she could stop herself. She was trying not to mewl so much. It's just that her mouth sometimes functioned apart from her intentions.

  Florance patted coal dust off her once-white apron, tucked that frizzy errant piece of hair back into her bun, and slipped on her trusty leather gloves before hurrying outside to the coal bin.

  A gale had ended late last night, and this morning was clear and eye-wateringly bright, as usual. The atmosphere down here seemed thinner and drier than back in dreary old England, and she had never quite gotten used to it. Workmen hauled cordage and secured lines while scientists checked the weather station for readings and polished and oiled the delicate motors, instruments, and generators that had to be maintained at all cost. At the coal bin, she swept aside the powdery white snow covering it with a few abrupt motions. Thank heavens it came easily, unlike in the dead of winter when it was often necessary to bring a sharp iron stake and a hammer to remove the solid glistening mass.

  As she scooped coal out of the bin and into the pail, a bitch trotted by, three half-grown pups following in single file. Dunderwaffle must have left the kennel doors open again. This summation was supported by the sight of two male dogs snarling at one another mere yards away, hackles raised and eyes alight with malice. She had been in the line of fire of fighting mongrels once before and had suffered a nasty ankle bite as a result.

  "Get!" she shouted. She lobbed several good-sized chunks of coal at them. The smaller of the two danced off, ears flattened against his skull. The other, a black husky with unsettling yellow eyes, stood his ground, looking directly at her with teeth bared. Refusing to give in to the impulse to shrink back, she shouted louder and stepped toward him. "Go away!"

  His canines shone white and fierce in the sunlight, but he slunk back before turning and trotting away as if that had been his intention all along.

  "Menace," she accused under her breath.

  With an awkward swing, she hefted the heavy pail of coal and made her way back to the Commandant's office to finish loading the heater.

  She had gone no more than a dozen yards when suddenly, the weight of the pail vanished.

  "Let me help you with that, miss," said a warm, strong male voice.

  "Oh!" Florance squeaked. "Why, thank you, sir."

  A flash of white teeth and a cheerful grin. Lively brown eyes met hers.

  "My pleasure, you can be sure." He gave a slight bow. "Handy McHanagan at your service."

  Did she detect a bit of a brogue? Heavens alive! Her heart fluttered like a bird caught in a trap.

  She nodded. "Miss Florance Barton. So pleased to make your acquaintance."

  As they walked, she stole glances at him. Younger than her, most probably. A foot taller, at least. Thick, dark hair neatly combed back around a zigzagging side part, and underneath, a face that she found utterly, completely, transformatively gorgeous in all ways, amen. She tried to control her burgeoning excitement. He must have arrived on this morning's ship. Certainly, she would have recognized him otherwise.

  On the steps of the administration building, he paused, looking out at the post as men scurried about hatless and in shirtsleeves. At twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit, she was practically sweating herself.

  A vaguely troubled expression flattened his lips. "I was sure it would be different here."

  "In what way, sir?"

  His eyes flickered to hers, and he gave a rueful smile. "Greener."

  She didn't understand for a moment. Out here, green was for tinned vegetables and putrefying wounds, nothing else. Then she realized what he meant.

  "Goodness, not another one! No one told you that you were headed to Hope Bay and not Hope Cay?"

  He expelled air from his nostrils as he shook his head.

  "And that Hope Bay lay in Antarctica?"

  "Australia . . . Antarctica. They sound a bit alike."

  No, love, she thought, they most certainly don't.

  "If it's any consolation, you're not the first to have made that same mistake."

  "I'm afraid I need a bit more than consolation right now." He looked rather crestfallen about the whole situation.

  Well, he certainly wouldn't find that inside the administrative building. Quite the opposite, instead. But she kept her opinions to herself.

  "And what the bloody hell am I supposed to do with the likes of you?" boomed Commandant Gorge Elderbatch, his voice resonating off the timbers.

  The Commandant's office door latch, secured just moments earlier, released its hold on the knob and the door creaked open several inches, as it was wont to do on the best of days, which this day was most emphatically not. The room's occupants paid it no mind.

  In what she hoped was an unobtrusive manner, Florance peeked inside.

  Handy
McHanagan, Master Gardener, Ensign-at-large, stood straight-backed and chin lifted before the commandant, who grasped Handy's orders in a meaty fist as if they had personally offended him.

  "A master gardener!" The Commandant read in disbelief. "A master bloody gardener! Have the brass back home gone mad? What am I supposed to do with a master gardener in this godforsaken place?"

  Oh, please don't offer a suggestion, Florance silently pleaded with Handy.

  Handy kept silent.

  "Well, young man? Answer me!"

  Handy cleared his throat. "I believe I can find a way to become useful for the base, if you would give me leave to do that." He spoke with deliberation.

  The Commandant peered at him, assessing. Having been the victim of the Commandant's sharp gaze more than once herself, Florance knew how intimidating it could be.

  "In two weeks, I have to supervise a surveying expedition into the mainland and I haven't any time to be mucking around with the likes of you before that, you understand? This 'usefulness' you speak of. Does it involve drunkenness, sloth, or perversion?"

  "Err, no, sir. Not even one of those activities."

  "Most excellent, soldier. Do be at it."

  Handy snapped out a salute, pivoted on his heel, and marched to the door.

  Florance started and suddenly became very interested in the wainscoting near the corner, which she dusted with careful attention. Electa made a sound that, in anyone else, would have been described as a snort. In her, it was somehow, infuriatingly, elegant-sounding.

  Florance watched as Handy approached Electa's desk. Looking up through thick lashes, Electa's perfect bow-like lips pursed invitingly, the powder on her pale cheeks making them look even softer and more flawless than usual. She held out a well-manicured, spotless hand. "Your orders."

  Handy fidgeted, looking suddenly poleaxed by Electa's unrelenting gaze. With some fumbling about in his pockets, he located the sheath of papers the commandant had so recently been threatening him with and handed them over. Electa shuffled through them efficiently, located the one she wanted, and pulled out a fountain pen, which she used to sign and date in the appropriate place. She handed them back to him.

  "You're all set up now, Ensign. You may go."

  "Uh . . . Thank you, Miss . . .?"

  "Yellowsmith."

  "Yellowsmith," he repeated. Then, after a brief pause, doubtless just to say something to fill the silence, "It suits you."

  "What a relief. I've been worried that you wouldn't approve."

  "Er . . . well, then, I will see you around."

  "It is rather difficult to avoid a person on an outpost such as this," she observed tartly.

  "Yes, I suppose that is true, isn't it?" he murmured and wandered off in what appeared to Florance to be a bit of a daze.

  Florance sighed. She recognized the signs of that particular affliction, having seen it numerous times in many of the red-blooded young males of the outpost. The Electa Effect, she had dubbed it.

  "Miss Yellowsmith!" the Commandant called from his office. "Attend me at once, please."

  For a while longer, Electa arranged the papers on her desk, inspected her fingernails, straightened her crisp, well-ironed collar, and examined an eyebrow in a hand-held mirror before deigning to rise and enter the Commandant's office.

  In her absence, Florance took the opportunity to dust off Electa's desk. Making sure that she was unobserved, she flipped up the paperwork Electa had turned over to conceal them from Florance's eyes. Supply requisitions and inventory controls. How dull.

  She glanced up. The view out the triple-paned window was familiar. The dark forms of the outpost’s men—and very few women—going about their business punctuated the glare of ice. Dogs here and there fought, sniffed, and lifted their legs wherever they desired.

  Handy made his way toward the officers’ quarters, a determined spring in his step. She smiled as she watched him, so jaunty and energetic. Warmth kindled in her cheeks and breast.

  She could not help loving him just a little already.

  Antarctica! Florance had dreamed of it from her earliest days, her mind swimming with visions of majestic icebergs, windswept mountains as high as the moon, and rugged polar explorers with bright eyes, dauntless courage, and lonely hearts. The landscape itself was a living canvas. Could there be anything more incredible and inspiring?

  Yes, actually, there could.

  Built on a flat expanse of granite-hard ice, the base consisted of low-profile, stoutly built, thoroughly ugly wooden buildings and a main street colored black from a combination of dog waste, coal leavings, soot, and various other unsanitary fluids the likes of which she didn't want to contemplate too closely. Men were swathed from head to toe with eye goggles, reindeer fur jackets, and sealskin boots. Yapping, scraggly, scarred, and hardened sled dogs were everywhere, some kenneled, others chained up, and still others running free. They fought in alleyways and pissed on posts, wagons, and stacks of supply boxes or whatever else lay about.

  The ice covered the world in a cold, hard coat of paint—the mountains in the distance, the frost rimming the rigging of the ships, and the overhangs of the buildings. Icebergs jutted up from the bay, and floating frozen blocks completed the frigid picture.

  Sometimes, when the clouds cleared and the wind softened, the most glorious blue colors emerged in the sky, the sea, and the icebergs. Mostly, though, the blue hid behind one of the dozens of shades of gray Florance had catalogued since coming here—steel gray, dove gray, light gray, storm cloud gray, and so on.

  After a year of scrubbing floors, dusting corners, and washing bandages, she was quite used to the whole place. The cold, however, never stopped bothering her. Much like the dark in winter.

  She never minded her work, dull though it was, because when she finished cleaning up the mess, there was real, tangible evidence that she had made a difference.

  The smell of vomit permeated the medical ward. She set to work with her mop again. Yes, she would make a very real difference—if only in the olfactory properties of this particular establishment.

  "Florance!" proclaimed a delighted, stout Cockney voice.

  Ugh, Florance thought, then she looked up to see Henry tottering across the floor to greet her. His disheveled appearance, not to mention the pungent odor of home-brew which preceded him, told her how he had spent the morning.

  "You work too hard, woman. Come, let's sit on my bunk and talk about home and hearth and how we might become better friends, you and I." He gestured toward the unwashed, twisted blankets of his cot, hairy, gray-speckled eyebrows waggling. His smile closely resembled a grimace, revealing two broken teeth and a plug of tobacco clenched between brown-stained lips.

  Florance shuddered and attacked a particularly gruesome bloodstain on the floor. She would rather strip off all her clothes in the middle of Piccadilly Circus and sing God Save the Queen than get close enough to Henry for him to put his grimy, grasping hands on her.

  "Quiet, Henry, you randy old goat. Leave me be."

  Henry sniffed, setting off a raucous hacking cough that would probably spell the end of him in the not-too-distant future. When he settled down, he wheezed, "But then what shall I do with this, my pretty?" He held up a ragged large brown envelope with one hand and beckoned her closer with the other.

  "The postmaster specifically said I had no mail on this morning's transport!"

  "I snatched it 'afore he could see it. Clever, am I."

  "That's not the word I would use." She held out her hand, palm up. "May I have it, please?"

  "Pay for it first, sweet missy. A little peck right here will do." One overly long, grease-encrusted fingernail pointed to his lips.

  She smiled at him in a way which she hoped did not betray her utter and complete revulsion and stepped forward.

  "Right there, you say?" Her voice sounded high and as sweet as she could manage. "I could be convinced to do that . . ."

  She plucked the envelope from his fingers, then dodged hi
m entirely.

  "When hell freezes over, you old lecher!" she finished with a longshoreman-like bellow.

  He pouted. "I can't stand the tragedy of it all, dearest Florance. Such a sweet thing, and all alone."

  Florance swung her mop in his direction. An arc of dirty mop water splashed across his grizzled face. "That's what I think of your tragedy."

  Henry scowled, wiped his face off with a weather-beaten hand, and stumped out of the medical ward, grumbling about testy women.

  After reading the parcel's return address, Florance thrust the letter into her pocket and mopped away with renewed fervor, anxious to finish. She abandoned her normal meticulousness and wrung out the mop with strained, trembling fingers. Then she flung the mop water out the back door three steps away from the cook's assistant, who was perched on a wooden crate peeling potatoes as fast as his skinny red fingers would allow. Failing even to apologize, Florance scurried past him into the women's dormitory. Her bed lay at the north wall. Next to it sat her trunk of clothes and the vanity with her toiletries neatly arranged on top.

  She hurried to her bed and sat down, staring at the thick envelope in her lap. The precise, swirling handwriting on the front listed her address and as a return address A. Partridge, Barrister at Large, the vicar's rather clumsy nom de plume. Her stomach twisted in on itself.

  Oh, bollocks, she thought. This is ridiculous. She tore open the envelope to reveal a thick, lumpy sheath of stationery. A thin brown vial of pale liquid tumbled out to land in her lap. She picked it up and examined the label. Strychnine! Now why in heaven's name was the vicar sending her rodent poison?

  She scanned the letter, worried that she wouldn't remember how to decipher the code. This was only the second time she'd received communication from him, after all.

  My dearest Florance,

  This post will reach you far after the occasion of your birthday, and for that I must apologize most profusely. I think of you often, daily, as a matter of fact, but I know that you are doing what God intended you to do, using your talents and skills in a most noble endeavor at the bottom of the planet. You will perhaps have forgotten us in your little village, but if that is not the case, allow me to bring you up-to-date on the happenings of our humble neighborhood, as you requested. Each and every person.