by Goodman, Jo
Secured between the pages of one of the dailies were hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars that belonged in the bank's safe. At least that was how Jenny thought they were removing the money. She could not make an accusation until she was certain. If she were wrong, William and Stephen would see that she was committed again, this time for the rest of her life. There would be no second chance at escape.
Jenny was not certain when she first hit upon the idea of photographing William and Stephen in the act of stealing, but the more she thought on it, the more the scheme appealed to her. A photograph would provide incontrovertible proof of the theft. It would convince where she could not, and she became determined to see the plan through regardless of the risk.
Jenny's interest in photography dated back several years. Although the profession was dominated by men, it was the general opinion of polite society that here at last was a pastime perfectly suitable for females. It required a deft touch, a good eye, and in most cases, an abundance of patience—all of which were considered characteristics innate to the female. Of course it also involved the use of complex equipment and chemicals and demanded attention to scientific factors like exposure time and reflection density, but it was believed women could eventually master photography in spite of the scientific nature of the hobby.
Jenny Holland had never been aware that she was not supposed to learn quickly or learn well. When photography was introduced in her Paris boarding school by the headmaster, she was immediately fascinated. What was supposed to have been a pleasant pastime became something very different in her skillful hands. Touring the Continent with the other young ladies, Jenny carried more equipment in her trunks than clothes. She shocked her classmates by photographing almost everything that caught her eye and then developing the pictures in a portable darkroom that consisted of nothing more than a rack for the chemical baths covered by a large black horse blanket.
Most often when Jenny was involved in this pursuit, her classmates took great pains to avoid her. Half hidden beneath her makeshift tent, Jenny bore less resemblance to a young woman of some social consequence than she did to an ostrich with its head buried in the sand. It was scandal enough that Gilliard's Seminary for Young Ladies had accepted an American into their exclusive fold, without having to acknowledge the woman photographer was one of their entourage. Her eccentricities were tolerated only because she was vulgarly wealthy. The Seminary for Young Ladies toured Amsterdam, Venice, Athens, and Rome, but it was Jenny who gave them a permanent record of their trip. It was only when they returned to Paris that her efforts were appreciated.
Jenny reflected on the risks she had taken during that tour. She had fallen into a canal in Venice while trying to set up her tripod. Grave, solemn Monsieur Gilliard had jumped in after her while his wife fainted from sheer mortification. Madame Gilliard had been revived with smelling salts, and Jenny had saved the headmaster because the well-intentioned hero could not swim a stroke. There had also been a mishap in the Alps involving a narrow rocky ledge and a nest of baby birds. And then there was the incident in Amsterdam with the windmill when she had saved her camera but not her dignity.
It had all been high adventure then, Jenny thought. What she was doing now was not. Sometimes the enormity of what she was undertaking paralyzed her. She knew what to be afraid of now.
Looking across the street at her stepfather's office, Jenny felt the return of her earlier frustration and despair. The distance from her hotel room to the bank was greater than she had first thought. The lenses for her camera, even the ones she had specially ordered after taking the suite, were not powerful enough to see clearly into William Bennington's sanctuary. Although William's desk was set at an angle to the large, full-story window, Jenny's view was often obscured by the reflection of sunlight on the glass panes. On the occasions when she managed to coordinate light angles, exposure time, and the proper lens, the best pictures she obtained were still lacking the clarity she required. The person behind the desk could have been anyone.
There was an additional problem that Jenny had not anticipated. When Stephen and his father were together, both men tended to argue on their feet. That meant movement, and movement was the bane of Jenny's work. The exposure time required by the wet-plate process demanded that the subjects remain still. That was not difficult if the photographer's target was stationary. In all of Jenny's pictures, First Hancock Savings and Trust was beautifully detailed. The street, however, always seemed to be empty because the carriages and passersby moved too quickly to be captured on the collodion film. When William and Stephen moved around the office their images were lost to the camera's eye. The best she achieved was a blur, suggesting activity but certainly not providing the evidence she required.
Daily it was being brought home to her that she would have to get closer if she were going to achieve success. How that could be accomplished still eluded her. She was not hopeful that a solution to her problem existed, and on some days, such as today, when she was feeling particularly sorry for herself, she found it too tiring to care.
An icy blast of wind swept past the balcony and fluttered the hem of Jenny's gown. She felt the cold air trapped under her skirts and shivered violently in response. Except for possibly contracting pneumonia, there was nothing that could be accomplished out on the balcony. Jenny stepped back inside, locking the double doors behind her.
The St. Mark boasted more than the luxury of central heating. In designing the hotel, Christian Marshall had incorporated the best features of other popular guest palaces such as the Fifth Avenue Hotel and the Metropolitan. In addition to the perpendicular railway, which cautiously and sometimes crankily lifted patrons from the lobby to any one of the other seven floors, the St. Mark suites also had the convenience of private bathing rooms. To Jenny's way of thinking, it was heaven. During her tour of Europe she had seen nothing to rival the ingenuity and innovation that were the trademark of America, and no city in the country embraced comfort and convenience like New York.
She ran warm water for her bath, filling the oak-rimmed copper tub less than halfway. For Jenny, the luxury of soaking shoulder deep in scented water was still offset by the memories of the treatment room.
A dressing room adjoined the bath, and here Jenny changed her clothes, slipping into the satin wrapper that Reilly had sent in the trunk of garments. The leaf green robe, which Jenny purchased in a Paris salon at a price that had shocked her, was supposed to have been a gift for her mother. Lillian Bennington never saw it.
As soon as the first word of her mother's illness reached her, Jenny left France, but she still harbored guilt that she had not done so earlier. She had arrived in New York two weeks after her mother was buried. Standing at graveside, flanked by the stepfather and stepbrother she had only just met, Jenny convinced herself that she should never have left her mother at all. How different things might have been.
Jenny wrapped her hair in a towel, laid her robe over the back of a chair, and slid into the tub. Her fingers and toes tingled briefly as the numbing cold disappeared. She leaned back, resting her head against the rim, and remembered her mother's surprisingly practical, farsighted reaction as the first of the Southern states seceded from the Union. Anticipating war, Lillian arranged for her daughter to attend school in Paris on the eve of Lincoln's election. By the time of his inauguration Jenny was already on her way to France.
In hindsight, Jenny sometimes questioned her mother's motives in packing her off. At the time it seemed as if Lillian's anxiousness was directly related to the dangers that would necessarily accompany war. To anyone who would listen, Lillian expressed her belief that the Rebels would be parading up Fifth Avenue before Lincoln mustered an army. It was inevitable that Jenny would come to share her mother's fear. When she was placed on the boat for Europe, Jenny cried because her mother was staying, not because she was going.
Her doubts began to surface shortly after her arrival in Paris. In the second letter she received from home, her mother announced he
r intention to remarry. By the third letter, it was a fait accompli.
Jenny squeezed warm water from a sponge onto her shoulders. She smiled faintly. Fait accompli. It was a pretty expression, but it did not sweeten the bitterness Jenny felt. She was not so young then that she didn't realize her mother had been conducting an affair with William Bennington for months. Jenny had never been introduced to the man, which is why she never took account of the whisperings among the servants. She was naively confident that her mother would not be seriously interested in another man. It was less than a year since her husband's death. A social escort was sometimes required, and that was perfectly acceptable, but a husband? Jenny did not know if she would ever be reconciled to her mother choosing William Bennington. Then it had hurt deeply and terribly. Jenny felt betrayed for herself and for her father.
Lillian's marriage became the excuse Jenny never thought she would need to stay in Europe. By the time the war was over, Jenny had been on her own for more than a year. She remained in Paris against her mother's wishes, establishing her independence by renting a home and hiring a companion instead of going to live with distant relatives in Amsterdam. There was a vague threat about stopping the flow of money from New York to Paris, but Jenny knew better than to suppose it was serious. She suspected it was William Bennington's way of reminding her that until she turned twenty-one he controlled her finances. Jenny didn't think her mother would let him cut her off. Until the time of Lillian's illness, she was right.
In June, Jenny learned of her mother's heart condition from Mr. Reilly. From her family's lawyer she learned that her quarterly allowance had been stopped. She could have borrowed money to secure her passage to New York, but she was too proud and too angry. In order to return home, she sold most of her clothes and all of her photographic equipment. She gave away her collection of photographs to friends who had expressed an interest in them, not caring if she had any reminders of the years she had spent away from her mother.
All during the Atlantic crossing Jenny imagined her first meeting with William Bennington. She planned to at least figuratively spit in his eye and regretted that lost opportunity. When Jenny was greeted with the unexpected news of her mother's death, she fainted.
She despaired of ever being able to put that humiliation behind her. At the moment when she had wanted to be poised and self-assured, she had demonstrated to William and Stephen that she was emotionally fragile. They had certainly turned that to their advantage.
She rose from the tub, dried herself, and shrugged into the wrapper that had unleashed so many unhappy memories. Taking the towel off her head, Jenny shook out her hair and untangled the curling ends with her fingertips. The humidity in the bathroom caused short, dark tendrils to cling damply to the nape of her neck and her temples. She pressed the towel to her face, held it there long enough to dam the tears that welled in her eyes, and then tossed it on the floor.
The tears angered her. She hated the weepiness that had become an unwelcome companion of late. She needed to be strong. Instead she felt uncertain, vulnerable, and more often than not, helpless. Jenny was very much afraid she would fail. The treatment room of Jennings Memorial haunted her.
She firmly pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind. Padding barefoot from the dressing room, Jenny turned down the covers on her bed to warm them. She knew she was still too restless to sleep comfortably. In the last two weeks it had become necessary to thoroughly exhaust herself before she could fall asleep. Just as she had on every other night, she hoped that if she reviewed her photographs some solution would come to her. She left her bedchamber and started across the parlor, heading for her darkroom on the opposite side.
Jenny had only traveled a short distance when a movement near the fireplace caught her eye. Her head swiveled in that direction, and she stopped abruptly. Her dark eyes widened when she saw who was standing at one end of the mantel.
Surprise brought a hoarse cry to Jenny's throat.
Chapter 12
The sketchbook under Christian's arm dropped to the floor as he stepped away from the mantel. Loose papers scattered. He didn't notice. His first concern was for Jenny.
"I did not mean to frighten you," he said. His approach was hesitant, cautious. He stopped when Jenny held out her hand, palm up. "I'm, er, I'm sorry. I should not have come in. I realize that now. But there wasn't any answer at the door when I knocked and I was worried, so I used the key the clerk gave me and I... Jenny? Are you all right? Oh, God, Jenny, don't faint. Are you going to fai—"
Christian leaped forward and caught Jenny just before she hit the floor. He didn't make any attempt to carry her into the bedroom. For several minutes he simply held her, enfolding her in the circle of his arms and breathing in the fragrant scent of her hair. "I'm sorry, Jenny," he whispered, rocking her. Soft strands of her hair tickled his mouth as he spoke. "Wake up and you can damn well tell me to go straight to hell."
"Do not swear at me," she said. She couldn't help smiling when Christian's response was to hug her more tightly. Her arms crept around his neck, and she buried her face in the curve of his shoulder. "Are you really here? I'm not dreaming?"
"I am really here." He got to his feet slowly, bringing her with him. His hands supported her back, then gradually drifted to her hips. The curves of her body seemed to be made to fit the angles of his. "Did you dream of me?" he asked. The words were drawn out of him involuntarily. There was a certain awed quality to his voice that would have been understandable had he been a green youth. Christian had not been a green youth since his twelfth year when Mary McCleod invited him into the tack room. Jenny made him feel eleven. His aquamarine eyes caressed her face, finally settling on the rose curve of her lips. "Did you?" he asked again.
"Daydreams," she said. "Night dreams. I couldn't seem to help it."
Her honesty undid him. Her honesty and the tip of her tongue, which peeped out to wet her upper lip. Christian's soft groan accompanied the lowering of his head. His mouth pressed its hard outline against Jenny's mouth. He was too starved for the taste of her to begin lightly. It was all he could do to keep from devouring her.
Jenny knew she was not thinking clearly. Christian's presence was never conducive to rational thought, but his kisses turned her on her head. His lips touched the corners of her eyes. She felt him at her temples, her jaw, her neck. His tongue pushed its way into her mouth, tracing the ridge of her teeth, thrusting deeply in an erotic rhythm that drew her closer and shattered the last fragile bastion of her common sense.
She had questions for him. What was he doing here? How had he found her? It was just that at the moment she did not care about the answers.
Jenny's hunger matched Christian's. Her hands slipped beneath the coat he had unbuttoned but not bothered to remove. Her fingers fumbled with his shirt studs, plucking them out so she could feel his warm skin beneath her palms. Her head twisted beneath his and her mouth pressed kisses to the hard line of his jaw. Her teeth nipped his ear lobe, dragging a throaty growl from him that in turn started a frisson of heat in her spine. It was like that. He touched, she responded, then the act of giving and receiving reversed, and they simply reveled in shared desire.
Christian let go of Jenny long enough to shrug out of his coat. When he held her again it was to lift her in his arms. She was everything womanly, yet she was cradled against him like a trusting child. It was then that Christian knew he could not deceive her. She had a right to know exactly what he wanted from her.
Instead of carrying her to the bedroom, Christian walked across the parlor to where the sketchbook had fallen. He set Jenny on the chaise, and when she would have held him by his shirt, he kissed her quickly, hard, and then pried her fingers free. Her dazed, darkening eyes almost made him change his mind. Wanting her made him ache.
"I want you to see these," he said, raising the sketchbook and thrusting it into her hands. It was hard to talk around the tightness in his throat. He gathered the scattered sheets of paper and placed them on top
of the book. "These as well. You have to decide if they are enough for a beginning."
Jenny's hands were shaking. She knew what she held.
"It is not my best work," Christian said apologetically as Jenny began to slowly sift through the sketches. "My model... she left me and... and I had to rely on memory. I thought I knew every line and curve of her face, yet there were times—"
Jenny raised her eyes to Christian's anxious ones, cutting him off. "Your memory played you false," she said. "You've made this woman seem beautiful."
"So she is." He was looking at Jenny, not at the sketches in her hands.
"I'm not."
"Not always. But mostly... yes. Yes, you are." His eyes were not cool or dispassionate. They glistened with a transparent veil of tears. "And, Jenny, you saw my sketches from the war... somehow you sensed what they were to me. You knew I believed I would never draw anything beautiful again."
Jenny dropped her head quickly as her cheeks flushed. She continued leafing through the drawings and tried not to think of herself as the model. It was difficult. A part of her could not help but be flattered by the way Christian viewed her.
Christian's work was astonishing for its clarity. The lines were pure, each stroke of his pen deft. He captured her profile in a single line. The eye followed the curve of her face from forehead to chin in one continuous motion. The tilt of her chin suggested a regal bearing. The hint of a dimple at the corner of her mouth suggested a sly cleverness.
Jenny filled the sketchbook in a variety of poses. Christian had captured her amused and bemused. He was uncannily accurate when it came to recreating the emotions that flitted across her face. He caught uncertainty, happiness, confusion, conceit, anger, fear, passion, and joy. Sometimes she stared out from the page, her eyes bright with laughter. In other sketches Christian recalled more solemn times when her eyes expressed thoughtfulness and a certain haunted distance from the casual observer.