“But I returned the engagement ring to him, so I can’t sell it.”
“You returned it because it was hideously ugly and you didn’t want it,” Gideon reminded her. “And because you’re the one who called off the engagement, you can’t sue him for breach of promise in any case.”
“Can he sue me?”
Gideon wagged his head. “Men are made of sterner stuff than that, Miss Miles. We don’t ask the courts to salve our broken hearts with financial settlements.”
“That’s enough of your nonsense,” Mrs. Bates said, although she was still smiling. “We shouldn’t be making fun of poor David. He probably did care for Elizabeth, at least a little.”
“And I’m sure Elizabeth deeply regrets tricking him into becoming engaged to her,” Gideon said.
“Yes, I do,” Elizabeth assured them. “And I never would have abused him like that except to save my life, which some people might consider selfish of me, but I considered vitally important, at least at the time.”
“We all considered it important,” Mrs. Bates assured her. “I’m sure David would, too, if he knew.”
“Perhaps we should tell him,” Gideon said.
“Perhaps we should,” Elizabeth said. “Especially if you want him to be best man at our wedding.”
* * *
• • •
IN THE END, MRS. BATES DECIDED TO GO WITH ELIZABETH TO visit Priscilla Knight that afternoon, for which Elizabeth was grateful. For all her varied life experiences, she’d never had to comfort a young widow.
“Oh, Mrs. Bates,” Priscilla said when the maid had escorted them into the parlor. “I didn’t expect to see you, too. Thank you both for coming.”
She looked even more distressed now than she had in church. Her face was pale and her eyes bloodshot, either from weeping or lack of sleep. Perhaps both. The unrelieved black of her outfit didn’t flatter her fair coloring, either.
When they were settled, Elizabeth said, “You sounded so desperate this morning, we decided we needed to come right away.”
“Desperate? Yes, I suppose I am.”
“I can’t imagine what you must be going through, to lose two husbands in such a short time,” Mrs. Bates said.
“I . . . Well, I don’t want you to think I’m grieving for Mr. Knight. I . . . Actually, I hardly knew him.”
Elizabeth and Mrs. Bates exchanged a glance. “We know you had to marry him,” Elizabeth said, “to provide for yourself and your daughters.”
Priscilla frowned. “What? Where did you get that idea?”
Elizabeth glanced at Mrs. Bates again and saw her own confusion mirrored there. “Someone said your first husband left you penniless, and that’s why . . .”
“Oh no,” Priscilla said, shaking her head vehemently. “DeForrest left us very well situated. I never would have wanted for anything.”
Could that be true?
“I know you were devastated when he died,” Mrs. Bates said tentatively.
“I was! I cried all the time, for weeks. Some days I couldn’t even get out of bed. When I look back, I don’t know how I survived, but Mrs. Honesdale was so kind to me. She visited me every day and never let me completely surrender to my grief.”
Elizabeth frowned. If that were true, Priscilla would be deeply grateful to Daisy Honesdale. Why, then, had Priscilla been so eager to escape her this morning? “She takes her position as the minister’s wife very seriously.” She tried to see how Priscilla would respond.
“Yes, she does,” Priscilla said sharply, with what looked like anger sparking in her pale blue eyes. “And after a few weeks, she took it upon herself to convince me I needed a man to look after me.”
“Why did she do that?” Mrs. Bates asked.
“Because she believes that a woman alone is in danger. Anyone might take advantage of her if she has no man to protect her.”
“Don’t you have any family?” Elizabeth asked.
“No, I . . . I was an only child and my father died years ago. My mother and I lived with an uncle, but he passed away before I married, and my mother is gone now, too. I’m quite alone.”
“So you decided you did need to remarry,” Elizabeth said.
“No, I didn’t,” Priscilla said, shocking them both. “I never decided that at all. Reverend Honesdale brought Mr. Knight to call on me a few times. I wasn’t in any condition to entertain visitors, but I didn’t object. That would have seemed churlish after all the Honesdales had done for me.”
“Then did meeting him make you change your mind about remarrying?” Elizabeth asked.
“No, I told you. I never changed my mind about that.”
“Then how . . . ?”
“How did I end up marrying him? I honestly don’t know,” Priscilla said, her voice shrill with frustration.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Mrs. Bates asked, frowning now with the same determination that had kept Elizabeth and the other women focused when they’d been jailed almost two months ago.
“I mean much of that time is . . . well, ‘foggy’ is the only word I can think to describe it. I was prostrate with grief and I wasn’t paying much attention to anything else. I just remember Mrs. Honesdale telling me how much I needed a man to look after me. Mr. Knight called here, but he hardly ever spoke to me, and I honestly have no memory of him proposing to me. All I know for sure is that one day the Honesdales and Mr. Knight arrived with another man I didn’t know and Reverend Honesdale married me to Mr. Knight.”
“How could they do that, marry you to someone against your will?” Elizabeth demanded, outraged.
“But I must have agreed,” Priscilla said. “They couldn’t . . . they wouldn’t do that unless I’d agreed, would they?”
In Elizabeth’s world, people got bamboozled all the time, but she didn’t think those things happened routinely in Gideon’s world. Maybe she was wrong about that, but Mrs. Bates looked baffled, so probably not.
“I can’t imagine anyone—and certainly not a minister—marrying someone against her will,” Mrs. Bates said, although Elizabeth could tell she wasn’t as certain as she was trying to appear.
“So you see, I must have agreed, but I felt so guilty afterward. I know people wondered why I remarried so quickly, as if I couldn’t be bothered to mourn DeForrest, who had been the love of my life.”
“No one thought that, my dear,” Mrs. Bates assured her, although Elizabeth was pretty sure she was lying. Elizabeth hadn’t known any of them then, but she knew enough about human nature to be fairly certain that if people had a reason to gossip about someone, they would.
“And apparently, people thought you needed a husband to support you,” Elizabeth added, earning a black look from Mrs. Bates. Mrs. Ordway’s book said talking about money was always frowned upon in polite society, but Elizabeth thought Priscilla would rather be thought penniless than heartless.
The grateful smile Priscilla gave her proved her right. “That would have been a justification, I suppose, although I don’t know how a rumor like that got started. I had a very nice dowry when I married DeForrest, and he was quite comfortable as well. And Mr. Knight was quite well off, too, or at least that’s what everyone thought, but now . . .”
“Now?” Elizabeth prompted.
“Now my solicitor tells me I really am penniless or nearly so.”
“What!” Mrs. Bates exclaimed.
“How could that be true?” Elizabeth asked.
“I have no idea, and even worse, it appears this house is mortgaged and I have no way of paying that, either. The girls and I will have to leave, although I don’t know where we can go.”
“There must be some mistake,” Mrs. Bates said. “Fortunes don’t disappear overnight.”
Elizabeth could have disagreed. In her experience, that’s exactly the way they disappeared, and often they disappeared into t
he hands of one of her family members. She herself had been in the midst of cheating someone out of his fortune when she’d first met Hazel Bates and her son, Gideon.
Mrs. Bates knew all about her past now, of course, so Elizabeth had no trouble at all reading her thoughts when their gazes met across Priscilla’s parlor. Could Mr. Knight have lost Priscilla’s fortune to a con artist?
“I thought it must be some mistake, too,” Priscilla was saying, oblivious to the undercurrents. “I told my banker that, but he was certain he was right.”
“Did he know what happened to your money?”
“He claims he does not, and I don’t have the slightest idea of how to find out myself. I’m sure he’s wrong or has made some terrible mistake or—and I hate to say this, but I’m sure it does happen—that he has stolen the money himself. But no matter what happened, how will I ever find out?”
“And of course you don’t want to be making such serious accusations with no basis in fact,” Mrs. Bates said, “even if you’re just accusing him of making an error.”
“I don’t care about the money for myself, you know, or the house, either,” Priscilla said. “But my girls . . . What kind of a future will they have if . . . ?”
“Now, now, don’t borrow trouble, as my dear mother used to say,” Mrs. Bates said. “We’ll get this sorted out.”
“Will we?” Priscilla asked. “I wouldn’t even know whom to ask for help or whom to trust at this point.”
“Would you trust Elizabeth?” Mrs. Bates asked, giving Elizabeth a look that made her sit up straighter.
“Elizabeth? Of course I would, but what—”
“Elizabeth has a rather unique family history that . . . Well, let’s just say she might be able to figure out what happened to your fortune and who was responsible.” Mrs. Bates’s expression asked a silent question that Elizabeth was only too qualified to answer.
“I just might at that,” Elizabeth said. “Would you allow me to look through Mr. Knight’s papers? I think that’s the logical place to begin, and I might be able to figure out something.”
“If you think you could, of course. I’d be very grateful, although I don’t know what you might find.”
Elizabeth knew, though. She also knew the questions to ask Priscilla and anyone else who might know something about Mr. Knight’s financial dealings. If Endicott Knight had been cheated out of Priscilla’s fortune, she could find out who had done it. She might even know them by name. The chances of recovering the money were slim, but at least Priscilla would know the truth, and Elizabeth might—just might—be able to prevail on someone’s conscience to help a poor widow.
“I could come tomorrow morning, if that’s convenient for you,” Elizabeth said.
“Every day is convenient for a woman in deep mourning,” Priscilla said sadly. “I can hardly ever leave the house.”
* * *
• • •
“DO YOU THINK HE COULD HAVE BEEN . . . CHEATED?” MRS. Bates asked as she and Elizabeth huddled together under the lap robe in the back of the taxicab. The winter sun was setting, and it was too cold to walk back home.
“It certainly sounds like he was,” Elizabeth said. “How long was she married to this Knight fellow?”
“Let me see . . . About nine months, I’d say. That’s not much time to dispose of a fortune in the usual way.”
“What is the usual way to dispose of a fortune?”
“Spending it, I suppose,” Mrs. Bates said, shaking her head. “I’ve never had the luxury of trying it, but I’m told it’s possible.”
“And I suppose you could do it rather quickly if you put your mind to it, but what would he have spent it on?”
“Maybe he was a gambler, although I can’t say I’ve ever heard a whiff of gossip about him. People do talk, and it doesn’t seem likely the Honesdales would pair Priscilla up with a gambler or someone with similar expensive vices.”
“Would a minister know if someone had vices?”
Mrs. Bates gave her a pitying look. “Ministers tend to know everything. People confess their shortcomings to ministers in hopes of getting help, and of course others are only too eager to tattle about their neighbors’ shortcomings.”
“So whatever Mr. Knight was doing, he managed to keep it private.”
“Which is what made me think it might be something like the way you got Oscar Thornton’s money.”
“We call it a con,” Elizabeth said sweetly. “And Knight wouldn’t necessarily even think what he was doing was illegal, so he’d have nothing to confess.”
“Exactly. Will you be able to find evidence if that’s what happened?”
“Probably, but I also probably won’t be able to get the money back, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I don’t hope for miracles, but I would like to give Priscilla some explanation for what happened.”
“What I don’t understand is why the Honesdales were so anxious to get her remarried,” Elizabeth said.
“That does seem strange, doesn’t it? Of course, some people are always deciding they know what’s best for someone else. Maybe the Honesdales really did think Priscilla needed a man to look after her and were only trying to help.”
“I wouldn’t consider it helping if someone tricked me into marrying a man I hardly knew.”
Mrs. Bates nodded. “Neither would I, especially if he squandered all my money, but of course they couldn’t have known he’d do that.”
No, they couldn’t, could they? It seemed unlikely. Still, they’d assumed a lot of authority over poor Priscilla. Elizabeth hadn’t really formed an opinion of the minister and his wife one way or the other. Her limited exposure to them hadn’t given her much opportunity. She’d have to pay more attention.
“Are you going to tell Gideon what we found out?” Elizabeth asked.
“Not yet. I was thinking you should just go straight home so he can’t ask you anything this evening, and I’ll just say it ended up being a condolence call.”
“What if we’re right and Mr. Knight was conned?”
“Then we’ll tell him, of course,” Mrs. Bates said impatiently.
But Elizabeth wasn’t fooled. She knew Mrs. Bates was trying to protect her somehow. “Gideon already knows what I am,” Elizabeth reminded her.
“And that’s why he won’t want you to get involved, so if he doesn’t know our plans, he won’t try to stop you.”
“And we won’t have an argument about it,” Elizabeth said, completing the thought.
Mrs. Bates smiled at that. “Which was my ultimate goal, yes. You also won’t have to lie to him.”
“Which is the one thing he can’t forgive, I know. I’ll never lie to Gideon, but you must accept the fact that means we’ll probably have lots of arguments.”
“I accept that fully, which is why I’m going to avoid this one by not telling him anything about this just yet.”
* * *
• • •
PRISCILLA WAS WITH HER TWO LITTLE GIRLS WHEN ELIZABETH arrived the next morning. They were, Priscilla informed her proudly, aged two and four. They were probably too young to even remember their father. They were both blonde, like their mother, and so very small and defenseless that Elizabeth had to swallow down the surge of rage that bubbled up at the thought of what had been taken from them.
After sending the children back to the nursery with their nanny, Priscilla took Elizabeth upstairs. “This was Endicott’s room,” she explained, opening one of the doors that led off the hallway. It was a bedroom, although plainly not the master bedroom, containing a double bed, dresser, washstand and wardrobe cabinet, but it also contained a desk and, oddly enough, a safe.
“He used this as his office?” Elizabeth asked. Usually, men had a study of some sort where they smoked and read their newspapers and conducted whatever business men of that social cl
ass conducted at home. A house of this size would have such a room and it would ordinarily be downstairs.
“His office and his, uh, bedroom as well.”
Elizabeth couldn’t help noticing that the room didn’t adjoin any other, the way bedrooms of married couples usually did, and Priscilla had said it was his room. “I see.”
“And to save you from asking, Mr. Knight and I did not share a bedroom,” Priscilla said, her pale cheeks pinkening.
“I wasn’t going to ask.”
“I wanted you to know, though, so you’d understand why . . . Well, why I didn’t know very much about him.”
“You did say you didn’t know him very well.”
“As I told you, we’d hardly spoken before the marriage. That night—our wedding night—he told me he would allow me my privacy—that’s how he phrased it—and he moved his things into this room. I thought . . . I suppose I assumed it would be temporary. You aren’t married, Elizabeth, but I was, and I know how much men enjoy the privileges of the marriage bed.”
Now it was Elizabeth’s turn to blush, which she did because she thought of Gideon and how very much he would enjoy those privileges. “So I understand.”
“I enjoyed them, too. With DeForrest, that is. I was relieved when Mr. Knight didn’t demand his rights immediately, though. I couldn’t imagine . . . Well, at any rate, I didn’t have to. Mr. Knight never mentioned the subject again.”
Elizabeth was starting to develop a completely new theory about Endicott Knight, but she’d keep it to herself for now. “Is this where he kept all of his papers?”
“This is where he kept everything that belonged to him. And he also kept the door locked. I don’t think he realized I have duplicate keys to all the rooms, just in case one gets lost. I never used my key while he was alive, of course, but when he died, I opened the room. I needed to get fresh clothes for him to be buried in, but I haven’t been in here since.”
“Do you know anything about Mr. Knight’s business dealings?”
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