My Heart's Desire

by Jo Goodman

  Downstairs, when the fury and thunder ceased, Jarret turned to Mrs. Cavanaugh. "She'll probably sleep for a little while," he said. "She hasn't even had breakfast yet. Perhaps you could take her something later."

  The cook nodded. "It's no problem."

  "She has the only key to the room. You'll have to get it from her to get in, and you'll need it back when you go. I can't keep chasing her down, Mrs. Cavanaugh. She has to be locked in. Can you do that?"

  "I've never seen the like before," she said, raising her eyes heavenward.

  "Can you do it?" Jarret asked again.

  "If you think it's for the best."

  "I do."

  "Then, I can do it."

  * * *

  Rennie spent four days in her bedchamber. It didn't matter that her suite of rooms was bigger than the apartment her sister enjoyed at the St. Mark; Rennie felt caged. Mrs. Cavanaugh came and went, bringing food, fresh linens, and taking the trays. She always locked the door, sliding the key back before she left, and short of doing the cook harm, Rennie couldn't think of any means of stopping her or escaping. Rennie made halfhearted attempts to work on the Queen's Point project, but it was increasingly difficult to concentrate.

  In truth, she didn't feel like doing much of anything. It was a chore to comb her hair or wash. She didn't bother making her bed or keeping things neat. The room was littered with books from the library and office work, none of which held her attention. The items on her vanity were scattered haphazardly. Oils and perfumes were left unattended. Fingerprints dotted a dusting of face powder.

  Dressing was of no particular interest. Rennie abandoned her corset and wore only a chemise and underskirt, sometimes not bothering with her silk wrapper at all. She either sat for hours in a straight-backed chair by the window, watching the traffic on Broadway, never attracting attention to herself, or napped intermittently. She drifted from her bedchamber to the connecting rooms like a wraith, her face nearly expressionless, her mind almost devoid of conscious thought.

  "I'm worried about her," Mrs. Cavanaugh said to Jarret. "It's not natural, I'm telling you. She occupies those rooms as though she's haunting them. She doesn't say more than a few words to me comin' or goin'. The mister sees the same thing when he takes up a tray. And she's not even shamed by her state of dress."

  Jarret was worried, too, but he didn't have any answers. Mrs. Cavanaugh had made similar complaints the day before. He couldn't let Rennie go on as she was. "Has she asked to see Hollis?"

  "Not a word about him."

  "I'll let her out as soon as it's safe. I haven't heard anything in days. I don't know what's happening at the St. Mark any more than the rest of you." He sat down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs. Mrs. Cavanaugh pushed a mug of hot coffee toward him. "Maybe I should go over there."

  "Wouldn't Marshal Stone send for you?"

  Jarret had been asking himself the same question. What if Ethan was too sick to ask for assistance? Would Michael call on him for help or would she want him to protect her sister? He was used to taking the initiative, not waiting for direction. He was as uncomfortable as Rennie when it came to being holed up in the house. The only difference between them was the size of the hole. "Perhaps we should send your husband to bring Dr. Turner here. He can look after Rennie, and I can hear first hand what's happening to Ethan." Jarret raised his mug and smiled at the cook. It sounded like a plan with merit.

  * * *

  It was late that same evening when Jarret knocked at Rennie's room. The key was pushed under the door a few seconds later. By the time Jarret entered, Rennie was once again sitting on the marble apron of the fireplace, drying her hair near the small fire she'd laid there. She gave no indication that she was surprised by his appearance in her room. Her fingers wove in and out of her auburn hair, separating copper strands so that they curled individually in the orange light behind her.

  "I've brought you some dinner," he said, raising the tray in front of him. "Mrs. Cavanaugh warmed your meal before she went to the carriage house. She said you didn't eat anything earlier." In fact, he'd been told she hadn't eaten all day. It was a damned Irish rebellion, that's what it was. She was going to starve herself. "Is that right?" he asked.

  Rennie didn't answer.

  "Where do you want me to put it?"

  She didn't acknowledge his presence either by looking at him or responding.

  Jarret approached and set the tray beside her on the apron. Her naked white shoulders reflected the flames at her back. Color caressed her skin while her fingers continued to sift languidly through her hair. The plain white underskirt she was wearing revealed bare feet and calves and bones that were somehow more prominent than they'd been a week ago. Her wrapper lay discarded over the back of the armchair. Jarret picked it up and tossed it at her. She made no move to catch it, and when part of the sleeve fell into the fire she let it burn.

  Jarret yanked it out, took it to the adjoining bathing room and doused the smoldering sleeve in cold water. He laid it across the straight-backed chair to dry when he returned. "Your lunatic act doesn't inspire any sympathy," he said, sitting down in the armchair. He stretched his legs toward the fire and folded his hands on his lap. The heat was welcome; there was a damp chill in the night air that had already pervaded the room. "You may have fooled Mrs. Cavanaugh with your antics, but now that I see them myself, I'm not impressed."

  "You may think as you like, Mr. Sullivan. You always do."

  He was encouraged more by her second sentence than her first. The dull flatness of her voice was worrisome, but the little gibe showed signs of a certain liveliness. "I was going to send for Dr. Turner today," he said. "But a little over an hour ago his wife came 'round again. She'll have the doctor visit you tomorrow if I think it's necessary. I told her I'd let her know."

  Rennie's fingers stilled in her hair. "Is there news of Ethan? Michael?"

  "Your sister was ill the other night, but she's completely recovered now. Apparently she was struck down by the same thing that leveled Ethan."

  It was impossible to quell her interest. "Oh?"

  Jarret leaned his head against the curved back of the chair. He studied the array of photographs on the mantel. Most were formed portraits of the entire family, including Jay Mac. Some showed Rennie with her sisters, a few were of Rennie and Michael together. There was only one of Rennie alone. The quality of the most recent photographs was especially good. In contrast to Rennie's solemn expression, her fair skin was luminescent, her eyes radiant.

  He pointed to it. "Was that taken to commemorate any special occasion?"

  She followed the direction of his eyes and hand. "My engagement to Hollis. Jenny Marshall took it."

  "Logan's wife? I thought her name was Katy."

  "His sister-in-law. Christian's wife."

  "Christian Marshall the painter?"

  "I think he'd prefer the term artist," she said dryly, "but, yes, the very same."

  "He's another of your neighbors?" Jarret realized he could cover a hundred square miles west of the Mississippi and never meet anyone with a pedigree. They rubbed shoulders with each other in Manhattan. He and Rennie really did come from different worlds. "Did we tramp through his yard the other night?"

  Rennie tilted her head to one side and gently rubbed the damp, curling ends of her hair with a towel. "I'm not discussing this with you any longer."

  Jarret realized he was too long at playing his hand. He was losing her. "Ethan was being poisoned," he said. "It may have been meant for Michael. No one's really sure. She only ingested a little of it. That's when she got sick, taking it in her tea. Afterward she complained to Dr. Turner that she was craving a cigarette. That's what tipped him off."

  Agitated that he would not come straight to the point or fill in all the details at once, Rennie's feathery brows came together. "Tipped him how?"

  "The poison was nicotine, in doses large enough to cause Ethan's cramping and retching. Michael got some in her tea. Enough to make her ill but
with no long-range effects except for the desire to start smoking again."

  "That's what," Rennie said. "Now tell me who."

  "It appears as if we've been concentrating too hard on coming face-to-face with Houston, and haven't given enough thought to Detra. It's been rumored for years that Dee Kelly used drugs to kill her first husband. Her father owned a medicine shop in St. Louis. She grew up around powders and poisons."

  "She's been caught, then? The danger's past?"

  He shook his head. "No. Nothing's certain. She's probably working as an employee at the hotel. That's the only way she could be managing to poison the food that goes to their suite. Dr. and Mrs. Turner are going to dine at the St. Mark tomorrow. If Dee's there, they'll be able to identify her now that they have a description."

  "And have her arrested."

  "No. Only identify her. If we show our cards too early, we'll miss Houston. She can lead us to him, but only if she doesn't know we're watching. She'd never give him up willingly."

  "How did she locate Michael?"

  "From the newspaper. Someone gave out her address at the St. Mark before the order was given to the contrary."

  Rennie came to her feet. Suddenly she regretted she hadn't put on the wrapper. She took an afghan from the foot of her bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. "You'll be going, then," she said. "There's no danger here. Houston and Kelly found the right targets after all."

  "They may have found the right targets, but I don't trust you not to get in the way. Neither does your sister. She wasn't even certain that I should be telling you any of this."

  "I don't believe you. Michael wouldn't want this kept from me."

  Jarret sighed. "Your sister is far more aware of the danger than you are. She spent weeks as Houston and Dee's prisoner. They tried to kill her and Ethan once before and very nearly succeeded. This isn't an adventure where any of us know the outcome. Detra hasn't been positively identified, and there's still the matter of finding Houston. I'm afraid that nothing's really changed as far as you're concerned, though you may want to consider cleaning this room and wearing more clothes than a two-dollar whore."

  He came to his feet, glanced around her bedchamber, and shook his head in disgust. "It's a sty, Rennie." For once she didn't try staring him down. It would have been a pathetic gesture given the fact she was crying. She turned away and stared out the French doors as she had on so many other occasions recently. Her vision was too blurred to see anything on the street below or Jarret's reflection in the glass in front of her. She gave a little start as his arms circled her, but she didn't try to move away.

  His chin rested in the crown of her hair. It was silky against his skin, fragrant with the lingering scent of lavender soap. "Nothing's been going your way since you met me."

  She closed her eyes, trying to stem the flow of tears, and shook her head slowly in agreement.

  "I don't expect that's going to change any time soon," he said.

  Rennie brushed impatiently at her eyes as she was turned in his arms. The afghan slipped to the floor. She thought he might kiss her, but it was only his breath that stirred the hair at the temples, not his mouth. He held her in just that manner for a long time, absorbing her shudders, stilling her trembling, and when she was quiet he put her to bed and sat with her until she fell asleep. She never missed the photograph he took on his way out.

  * * *

  Four days later Nathaniel Houston was dead, killed not by Ethan or Jarret, but by Rennie's twin.

  Chapter 5

  Rennie sat with Ethan in the parlor of Michael's suite of rooms at the St. Mark. Their attempts at conversation were awkward. The only thing they had in common was their concern for the woman giving birth in the adjoining room.

  Rennie's eyes periodically strayed to the bloodstains on the carpet. Three hours ago Nate Houston had been killed in the chair where she was sitting now. A porter from the hotel had delivered Ethan's hastily scrawled, nearly illegible, message to Jarret and Rennie. For once Rennie was glad for Jarret's terse commands and unflappable nature. Her own thoughts were like a shower of shooting stars, coming to her so fast and furious that grasping a coherent one was beyond her. She depended on Jarret's cool control for direction.

  But that was then. Her head had been clear since Jarret had removed Houston's body from the suite and gone after Dee Kelly. That had left Rennie to see to her sister and Ethan. Dr. Turner was with Michael now; that left her with the marshal. She would have rather been with Michael.

  "It's too early for the baby," Ethan said. His voice was drawn, haunted.

  Rennie wanted to accuse, not comfort, but she also needed to reassure herself. "She was only a few days shy of carrying eight months," she said. "I know a number of women who have given birth at eight months, even seven months. Everything was fine for them and the baby."

  Ethan wasn't convinced. Too many times a full-term child was delivered seven months after the wedding. By that same reckoning Michael was giving birth to a child she had only carried two weeks.

  Rennie read the drift of his thoughts. "All right," she said. "Some of the women were altering dates to avoid moral judgments, but that wasn't always the case." Rennie turned white then as Michael screamed. She saw that Ethan's hands were shaking. She served him a whiskey from the sideboard and took a sherry for herself.

  "Why did you have to leave her alone?" she blurted out. "Mr. Sullivan wouldn't let me out of the house, sometimes not out of my room, for the last two weeks. And you just go off by yourself, leave Michael here, even after you knew the danger was imminent."

  The pads of Ethan's fingers turned white against his tumbler. His head was bent as he studied the bloodstained carpet at his feet.

  "I'm sorry," she said quietly, sighing. "I promised myself I wouldn't do that."

  "It's all right." He glanced up and gave her a jerky little self-mocking grin as he raised his glass. "You're not asking me anything I haven't asked myself."

  "I don't think I was asking anything," she said. "Not really. I was blaming."

  He took a large swallow of his drink and felt it burn the whole way down. "So was I."

  Rennie sat down again, this time next to Ethan on the loveseat. "Michael will be so disappointed in us," she said. "She loves us both, and she won't find any pleasure in us not being friends. I know that whatever you did tonight, you had your reasons. You relied on your best judgment."

  "You know that?" he asked bitterly. "You can't know that. You don't know me at all. I almost got Michael killed tonight. She begged to come with me, but I thought it was too dangerous. I should have listened to her."

  Rennie recognized that Ethan Stone was a man who needed to talk, to purge himself of the events of the evening. In the next room Michael's moan rose to an anguished wail. Rennie could hear Dr. Turner's steady, comforting encouragement, the words indistinguishable from one another, but reassuring in their tone and cadence. "I really don't know what happened this evening," she said. "Mr. Sullivan wasn't very forthcoming."

  Ethan was able to shrug off a little tension at Rennie's remark. He permitted himself a small, genuine smile. "Jarret rarely is."

  "Well, I don't want to talk about him."

  Ethan flinched as Michael's keening cry drifted in from the other room. He began speaking in part because it would cover the sound of his wife's pain, and in part because he needed Rennie to understand. "I decided I was recovered enough to follow Dee this evening when she left work. The Turners had identified her working in the dining room a few days ago."

  Rennie nodded. "Jarret told me that was the plan."

  "I needed to see where Dee was going to determine if she was working alone or with Houston. There wasn't enough time to send anyone from the hotel to get Jarret, so I decided to do it myself. It never entered my mind that Houston might come here without Detra. I would have never left Michael alone if I'd thought that."

  "I believe you," Rennie said. And she did. She wasn't merely mouthing the words because they sounded ri
ght or because she thought Ethan needed to hear them. In the end it only mattered what Ethan believed himself.

  Ethan shook his head slightly, clearing it. He drained his tumbler but held on to it. "I wasn't gone long at all. I followed Detra into the Bowery, saw the clapboarded dwelling where she was living, and stayed long enough to ask a few questions of the neighbors. They were suspicious, but I was able to learn that she was living with someone... a man. One drunk let slip that the man had some kind of leg injury. As soon as I heard that, I knew I had Houston, too. I left immediately and came back here."

  He stood, went to the sideboard, and splashed his tumbler with whiskey. "Michael was ten minutes into her labor, and Houston dead just as long."

  Rennie hugged herself. It was chilling to imagine her sister alone with Nate Houston, but impossible to imagine that Michael had killed the outlaw.

  "He came here to confront Michael," Ethan continued. "He meant to kill her and her child if she refused to leave with him."

  "He wanted her?" Rennie asked. The thought raised more gooseflesh. "But what about Detra?"

  "Houston always wanted your sister. He was fascinated by her, repelled and attracted. He couldn't help himself from coming here." Ethan sipped his drink. "Because of his injured leg Houston was using a walking stick. It had a spring-action knife concealed in the tip, just the sort of thing Houston would have prized. Michael didn't know it was there; he hadn't threatened her with it."

  "Then how...?"

  "He riled her," Ethan said as if he still couldn't believe it. "Do you and your sister share the same temper?"