by Diana Forbes
I fixed my mother with a stern gaze. “If his wife wishes to ride with us, then he should have the common decency to produce her so that we may all see her.”
“Fine, dear, go tell him that.” With that, she sent me scurrying to the Pink Room.
My breath felt short as I entered the room with a thousand regrets on the tip of my tongue. I could not go horseback riding because I had:
—classes to teach
—papers to grade
—garments to sew
—stray cats to save.
Besides, it had been a month of Fridays since I’d visited the children at the orphanage.
But, alas, my excuses would fall on invisible ears. He was not seated inside. Instead, a benign calling card from him lay in the silver bowl. It was the medium-sized card of a married man with his name engraved in taupe at the center and the right corner of the card turned down to signify that he’d stopped by in person. Under his name was a handwritten note, in flowery script, inviting Lydia and me to a riding party with him and his wife near the cliffs along the beach. The text was penned in a genteel hand that boasted years of steady handwriting lessons at prep school. But his signature at the bottom of the card slanted all the way to the left and appeared jagged and rushed, as if having proven his mastery of penmanship, he was impatient to be done with the communication, after all. The excursion would start at five o’clock that afternoon.
The invitation seemed legitimate, which threw me into a whole new quandary. Most rakes did not leave beautifully engraved calling cards in silver dishes to be inspected by one’s mother. Most rakes also did not invite one’s younger sister along for the ride. Finally, most rakes did not go out of their way to prove that they weren’t really rakes, after all.
Perhaps going riding with the Daggers couple would help minimize the incident from the previous night. Maybe he’d just had too much to drink—these things happened. I could not allow Mr. Daggers to intimidate me, especially when Mother felt it was essential to my future prospects to dazzle him and his wife.
Still, I demurred. He should not have kissed me in the receiving room. He should not have stirred me to womanly thoughts. Or pushed me to the brink of ecstasy with his tongue. He should not have unleashed in me a firestorm of emotions, for I had learned from Mother, Father, and even Sam that the only way to survive a Panic was to keep all feelings in check.
I did not want to encourage Mr. Daggers, but I also did not want to shrink back from him. Glancing at the card again, I saw my sister’s name. Hopefully, Lydia wouldn’t care to go. For if she refused, then I’d have no choice but to decline as well.
Thank goodness for protocol, always telling us what to do. Where would we be without it?
The door of the White Room was closed. And Edgar Daggers was proof that bad things happened behind closed doors. I charged through the door. I felt my jaw drop open.
Lydia and her so-called suitor were both in flagrant violation of Mother’s rule. Again! Seated on one of the white couches, they pored over an article in the Chicago Tribune.
“Anything in there about Father?” I asked, as breezily as I could through the dust in my throat.
“No, just about some woman named ‘Lizzie Borden,’” George Setton said, rising to greet me. “Have you heard of her?”
I hadn’t, but thought it might sound provincial to admit it. Setton must have noticed my hesitation. “You don’t live in a bubble, Missy,” he said. “It’s necessary to stay informed.”
“Oh she does,” Lydia chimed. “Penelope studies Greek. She studies Latin. She’s up on her Chaucer.”
Setton’s black, buttony eyes glinted as if laughing at a private joke that he and my sister shared.
“Lizzie Borden had an ax,” George Setton said playfully. “Gave her father forty whacks.”
Lydia giggled, delighted at his stupid rhyme, and that’s when I saw it. She was spellbound. There really was no accounting for taste, and one had to be careful with whom one passed the time just in case Cupid would decide to play a mean trick that day. I could never afford to be in the same room with Edgar Daggers again without a chaperone. What if, God forbid, I fell in love with the cad?
Straightening my spine, I pressed on. “I wonder if Lydia might be available to ride with me and Mr. and Mrs. Daggers this afternoon,” I asked, handing her the calling card.
Her face lit up like a chandelier at the Breakers. “Why, I’d love to,” she said.
George Setton glanced at me in a knowing way as he folded the paper. “Be careful of her husband,” he said.
Setton—suddenly, he was omnipresent. Worse, I worried he was omniscient.
He knows. He doesn’t know. He knows. He doesn’t know, I ruminated on the way to the stable.
But how could George Setton possibly know what had happened in the receiving room? In broad daylight, I wasn’t even sure whether it had happened. There had been no witnesses. No one had been in the receiving room. Or in the library. Therefore, no one could have seen me leave either room. Or had someone?
The stable resembled a sty. It looked out of sorts.
The hay in the stalls lay scattered on the ground rather than in the racks. My horse’s water pail was empty. Instead of the carrots that Scottie the stableman always kept on hand, celery sat on the workbench—a treat I was sure the horses would not prefer.
“Scottie?” I called. It was too early for the stableman to be at dinner and too late for his mid-afternoon break. “Scottie?”
Jesse emerged from the shadows instead. Strands of hay dangled down from his dark hair and a pair of broken stirrups hung from his sinewy neck. Jesse and his wife, Bess, had been serving our family since before I was born, and they were the only servants working in the house now, for Scottie’s duties were limited to the stable. All the other servants had left weeks ago, and Mother had been curiously dilatory about replacing them.
“Mister Scottie was reliev’d of his duties dis mornin’,” Jesse said with a sympathetic sigh. “Bess and I done tryin’ to fill in, but we don’ know anythin’ about horses.”
It was already happening—the estate was falling to pieces. I had to find a way to save it—but how?
I helped Jesse saddle the horses, then retired to the house to change. A somber riding skirt and boots seemed appropriate. Returning within the quarter hour, I was distressed to see three horses saddled rather than two. A profusion of horses coupled with an absence of stablemen to care for them was never a good sign.
Lydia and George Setton stood in the stable shyly smiling at each other. Why—when Lydia could attract any suitor—had she chosen one so disagreeable? One day, they’d become lovers unless I found a way to stop them.
I drew myself up so that Setton would know that he’d have to answer to me as the eldest daughter. “Why are you here?” I demanded of him.
He cocked his head at me, and I saw a flicker of irritation inflame his eyes. “Your sister asked me to chaperone her,” was all he said.
We directed our mounts up Bellevue Avenue toward the cliffs on Ocean Avenue. My horse, the light gray steed I’d named “Silver” in spite of Father’s misgivings about the Free Silver Movement, was fast and sleek but good-natured. I’d chosen her because she was superb at following instructions and had a firm seat for sidesaddle. Lydia, a far more proficient horsewoman than me, rode the Hanoverian, a chestnut-colored horse with an elastic gait and a floating trot. George Setton rode a whitish thoroughbred—his own, apparently.
Once we reached a clearing, Setton and Lydia tore up the road, hooves flying. It seemed they had more in common than their secret perusals through the Chicago Tribune. As the sound of their laughter played back to me in the summer breeze, I felt lonelier than ever.
“Don’t gallop ahead,” I cautioned my sister once I’d caught up to her. “It’s important that we ride with Mr. and Mrs. Daggers—not ahead.”
She nodded, golden curls lifted by the stiff breeze off the ocean, but with my sister, promises were written
on the wind—uttered with sincerity, as quickly forgotten.
“I’ll look after you both,” George Setton offered, meeting my eyes with surprising warmth; and for the first time, I understood why Lydia had developed such fondness for him. I actually felt safe when he said it.
Now if only I could protect myself from my own desires.
We met the Daggers couple in a flower-studded meadow about a mile down from the Breakers. Mrs. Daggers looked regal in her riding habit, an all-black matching jacket and long skirt that resembled the female equivalent of a tuxedo. Her dark, waist-length hair was pulled back into a long, ropey ponytail, and ladylike brunette wisps framed her oval face. There was about her an air of beauty, even if she was not beautiful by traditional standards. In her own sophisticated way, I found her even handsomer than my sister and couldn’t imagine why her husband was cursed with a wandering eye.
But cursed he was. An aura of evil clung to this dark man, sitting atop his tall, black horse. His face looked sculpted, almost as if years of riding near the beach had sanded his features into their most ideal proportions. He had a fine Roman nose, prominent, but not too large, with high cheekbones. His full, wide lips curled at me by way of greeting; and when his wife turned her horse around toward the beach, he licked his lips and winked at me. A shiver ran through me as a blush burned my cheeks. It seemed his errant behavior the night before had not been due entirely to the liquor.
“You look flushed,” he said. “You had an interesting night at the ball, I trust?”
I stroked my horse’s silky mane, refusing to meet his eyes. “It was…pleasant to dance with so many,” I replied. That’s it, I thought. I’ll bore him to death with placid conversation.
“I prefer the one-on-one dances. I don’t enjoy switching partners when one is just getting to know one’s partner. Don’t you agree, Miss Stanton?”
The silence was louder than the ocean waves crashing against the cliffs at high tide. I had nothing to say but remembered only the feel of his tongue plying my mouth. Perhaps he’d robbed my voice while he was at it.
“Hopefully you both had the opportunity to get to know each other,” his wife said lightly. I felt the blush from my cheeks travel straight through my body all the way down to my toes. Did she know that her husband was a beast?
The five of us rode into the cliffs off the ocean. Lydia and George Setton would race each other and then stop frequently, impatient for the rest of the party to catch up.
But the three of us lagged behind. My horse strode between Mr. and Mrs. Daggers’s two steeds, and we all progressed at a slow, courtly gait.
“My darling girl,” Mrs. Daggers said, prancing along my right side on her well-behaved mare. “Your cousin Sam mentioned you might be leaving Newport shortly and heading to New York.”
Clip clop. Clip clop. Even her horse had impeccable manners.
“I’d prefer to stay here,” I said as politely as I could manage. “I’m not sure why Sam would have me leave the area. It’s stunning, is it not?”
Her husband drew his horse closer to me on the left side, and the three of us stopped to admire the view. Before us a cloudless vista stretched, and the ocean seemed to touch the horizon. A lone seagull swooped to hunt for sustenance in the water. The tide rose.
“Is Sam going to New York?” he asked, a devilish glint in his eye.
“He seems conflicted...” I glanced at the gray cliffs. “He professes a love for the banking business, which would land him in New York. But his Divinity studies would steer him to Boston.” Recently, Sam had decided to raise his marks by switching his studies at Harvard from Economics, a serious major, to Divinity, which by all reports was the easiest course at the school.
“Sounds like he’s suffering a spiritual crisis,” Mr. Daggers said, with the smirk of one familiar with all sorts of moral dilemmas and who, no doubt, had stirred up a few.
His lovely wife fixed her brown gaze on the ocean beneath us. It resembled a floor of glass. “Perhaps my husband could offer Sam a start.”
“Leave me be!” Mr. Daggers yelled.
“What?” she asked crisply.
“Sorry,” he said, “I was talking to the bee.”
Mrs. Daggers and I stared at him.
“The bumble bee,” he said, pointing to one buzzing near his horse. “Leave me, bee.”
He swatted at the bee with his crop, but, perhaps sensing weakness, the bee continued to buzz around his head.
“Get it away from me!” he shouted.
“Bees adore my husband, but I’m afraid he’s deathly allergic,” his wife said with a chuckle.
Again, I wondered about their invisible tennis match. Or had their competition elevated to an all-out duel? How could she be so cavalier when he was in such obvious distress? Surely it wasn’t his fault that bees were drawn to him. Indeed, many creatures must be. As he swatted again at the lethal stinger, Mr. Daggers’s hand wrapped tightly around the riding crop, commanding it as easily as he’d guided my waist on the dance floor. If a bee sting might send him to the sickroom, shouldn’t his wife have more sympathy for him? I pictured his large hands resting on top of a hospital bed and flushed as my riding habit became all sticky and clingy inside. Mr. Daggers was having a horrific effect on my sweat glands, and I only hoped the breeze was blowing the odor away from the sparring couple rather than toward.
Fortunately, both he and his wife were too absorbed by the bee to notice my distress. Mrs. Daggers and I watched her husband and the bee fence with each other—Mr. Daggers advantaged by his crop and the bee by its special agility. Tiring of the sport, the bee finally retreated. But her husband instantly went on the offensive. “Don’t make promises for me that I can’t keep, dear,” he declared, a sharp note in his voice. “New York’s in a Panic just like everywhere else—all those idiots jumping aboard a stopped railroad car. It’s mass hysteria, and until it passes, no company will hire, not even ours.”
He was the one person not affected by the crisis in the economy. I wondered what it must be like to feel immune. I longed to ask him a great deal more about the Panic but feared he’d mistake my curiosity for passion.
“It seems contagious, doesn’t it?” I flipped my hair behind my shoulder and urged my horse into a spirited trot. “Everyone’s in a panic about the Panic.”
“With your command of language, you’d make an excellent teacher,” Mr. Daggers said, clucking at his steed to catch up to mine. “You may not enjoy teaching, but I have a feeling it agrees with you. Maybe you could stay with us in New York,” he continued, “until you find employment. We could show you around, make some introductions.”
“What do you think, Evie, dear?” he tossed out to his wife. “Could she? We certainly have enough room.” Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. Clomp.
His steed was more insistent than his wife’s. Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. Clomp.
I felt my stomach churn, giving me a sensation of unease. Was he trying to manipulate me? I would not bend. “That’s too generous. I’m staying right here—with my family.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw him grimace, and it felt good to hold a shard of power over this man. His wife, however, was not so easily dissuaded.
“Actually, we have been looking for a personal secretary to take care of Edgar’s business interests,” she mused. “I’d thought of someone even younger than you, whom he might train, since apparently these young girls need so much instruction. But—”
“That’s sweet of you, both, I’m terribly indebted, but—”
“Whoever the lucky woman is, she’d be paid well,” Mr. Daggers said, tossing a saucy glance in my direction. “I don’t believe in letting my employees starve.”
As his wife drew away from us, he adjusted himself in the saddle. I watched his legs press into the leather, recalling how they’d felt against mine. He would be a difficult man to deny. And it would be especially hard to say no to him in his own home. I felt the hair lift off the nape of my neck.
“I’d make it w
orth your while,” he murmured. “I daresay you’d find it enjoyable. I know how to please you. And I’ll teach you how to please me.”
The stolen kiss from the night before danced through my head, perspiration flowed down my neck, and I gasped for breath. It was hard to control my emotions around him, and I’m afraid I yanked rather hard on Silver’s reins to compensate. My horse balked.
Pay attention, I commanded myself. Do not fall off the horse. Dear Lord, I had grown up around horses and had never had this much trouble riding sidesaddle on the rocky cliffs before.
I forced myself to look away from him and sat up straight in the saddle. Then I urged my horse into a canter and moved as far away from the Daggers couple as possible. I needed the fresh air afforded by the ocean breeze.
Chapter 4
Betrayal
Thursday, June 1, 1893
We were in a dark stable, unfamiliar to me. He wore riding britches and carried a crop. His black steed neighed and pawed. Abruptly, Edgar Daggers left my side to brush out the horse’s mane.
“I can show you around,” Edgar said. “Make some introductions.” He put down the crop and held out his large hand. “Come.”
I crept nearer, hugging the shadows along the stable’s back wall.
“No, closer.” He wet his full lips. “Stand by me.”
I meant to hold back. I edged toward him instead.
He unbuttoned my dress until it slipped off me like a silk scarf. Then he ran his finger along the top of my corset. “You must obey me,” he said.
I nodded, terrified.
“Very good. Now, go pet the horse.”
“May I get dressed first?” I asked, docile and compliant.
He glanced at the bridles and bits lining the stable wall. “No. Go pet the horse.”
I did as he instructed. I ran my hand over the horse’s long, dark neck and stopped.
“No, keep attending to the animal until I say otherwise. You will bend to my will.”
I did as I was told. I stroked the horse over and over.