by Joanna Shupe
“Are you not feeling well?”
Cora sighed heavily. “I’m fine. Don’t let me spoil the day. I’m sure I’ll perk up once I’m surrounded by all those glittering gemstones.”
“Diamonds tend to do wonders for a woman’s disposition.”
The side of Cora’s mouth hitched slightly, as if a true smile were too much effort. “Lily, how did you bear it when you saw Calvin’s name in the paper with all those other women?”
Oh. Pieces began to fall into place. The question deserved a thoughtful answer, but Lily first had to ask, “Who is he?”
“I won’t tell you, so don’t bother badgering me. Not that it matters because he hardly knows I’m alive. And every time I see his name in the paper with another woman . . . I want to hit something. Or someone, more specifically.”
Lily’s heart ached for her cousin, this sweet girl who deserved the kindest, smartest, and best man in all of New York. Apparently, a terrible preference in men ran in the family.
Cora’s soulful gaze stayed trained on Lily, awaiting her reply, so Lily said, “At first I didn’t believe it. But when they kept appearing, I cried each time. I didn’t want to care. He’d moved on, forgotten about me, so why couldn’t I do the same? That’s when I left New York. Only time and distance will cure heartbreak, I’m afraid.”
“You took over the mine when your father died. Did that help as well?”
“Yes. Not that I wouldn’t want Daddy back, but having the business to focus on saved me.”
“Is Tom stepping up to run things?”
“He claims to be ready, but he’s yet to actually do so. The other day he suggested we sell the mine. Can you believe it?”
“It’s not such a terrible idea.” Cora pursed her lips. “You certainly don’t need the money. If managing it all doesn’t make you happy, why do it?”
“Because my father would have wanted Tom in charge. That company meant everything to Daddy. I’ve only been running it until Tom was ready to assume responsibility.”
“What if he’s never ready?”
The possibility had occurred to Lily, but she didn’t care to dwell on it. How could she run the business and start a family? It wasn’t fair to put her life on hold while waiting for her brother to mature, especially when that effort might prove futile. Most women her age were married and settled. Secure. Not running off to board meetings and studying financial reports. Monty wanted to travel, have children, and attend more social events.
Lily wanted all that, too . . . didn’t she?
The carriage stopped. Lily and Cora descended to the sidewalk, where they quickly navigated the crowds. Tiffany & Company occupied a large space on the west side of the square, its painted cast-iron façade unique amongst the other nearby buildings. The inside was equally impressive, a glittering feast for the eyes. Long rows of black wooden cases lined the interior, each filled with gleaming treasures, such as opera glasses, fans, watches, rings, candlesticks, and bracelets. Gold, silver, enamel, and cloisonné beckoned each way one turned. For a woman who loved pretty things, the urge to buy everything in sight was hard to resist.
Lily’s eyes landed on a tall man leaning against one of the counters. “Isn’t that John Drexel?” she asked her cousin.
Cora stumbled, and Lily reached out to steady the girl. “I’m fine,” Cora mumbled, her face gone the color of a ruby. “Yes, that does appear to be Mr. Drexel.”
Lily strode over to her brother’s friend. There were a number of necklaces spread out in front of him, all very expensive looking. This was a gift meant to impress. “Hello, John.”
His head swiveled and his gaze performed a full body sweep of them both. “Ladies.” He turned back to the salesman. “I think the pink amethysts. And wrap them, please.” The man behind the counter nodded, removed the necklaces, and disappeared.
“Allow me to guess,” Lily said dryly. “Purchasing a necklace for your mother? Sister? Oh, wait. You don’t have a sister.”
He grinned and held up his hands. “We do what we must to keep the females in our lives happy.”
“Especially mistresses, apparently,” Cora muttered under her breath.
Lily smothered a laugh and asked, “Have you seen my brother since he returned to the city?”
“Tom is back in New York?” The corners of his mouth turned down into a handsome frown. “No, I haven’t seen him. He hasn’t been at the clubs.”
That didn’t sound like Tom. Why hadn’t he resumed his usual social schedule since they’d returned from Newport?
Her brother had been acting awfully strange. Ever since three nights earlier, when the intruder had entered the house, Tom had been staying out more often than not. She only saw him at breakfast before he dashed out the door each day. True, Calvin had again hired a Pinkerton to watch over Lily, but wasn’t her brother worried over her well-being, too?
“I’ll stop by the house when I leave, see if I can’t coax him out for a night of debauchery,” Drexel said, waggling his dark brows. “Speaking of debauchery, the news about Fields certainly was a surprise. I don’t think anyone saw that coming.”
Lily tensed. “What story?”
“You, ah, haven’t seen the afternoon edition of the Mercury, I take it.”
Oh no. What had Calvin done now? After the story about the annulment broke, she’d avoided reading Calvin’s papers whenever possible. And now he’d written a story about Monty? One that dealt with debauchery? She never would’ve thought Monty to possess a debauched bone in his body.
“No, I haven’t read it. What did it say?”
“Lily, I shouldn’t have—”
“Spit it out, John,” Cora snapped, her green eyes shooting fire at Drexel. “Tell Lily what the paper said.” If Lily weren’t so preoccupied with the crisis at hand, she might have been impressed with her cousin’s display of backbone.
Drexel seemed equally taken aback by Cora’s words. His expression held a mixture of surprise and grudging admiration. “Fine,” he said, facing Lily. “Though I never would have brought it up if I’d known—”
“We understand. You’re a paragon of consideration,” Lily said, waving her gloved hand for him to get on with it. “What did the paper say?”
“Fields has a secret love nest over on Twenty-Fourth Street. Mirrored walls. Velvet couches. A trapeze hung from the ceiling, because his current . . . friend was once a circus performer.”
Lily’s jaw fell open. That did not sound like Monty at all. She’d known him for a long time and never would’ve guessed that he’d been hiding something like this. Monty would be humiliated. Why would Calvin publish something so sordid?
There had to be a mistake. Monty was not some cad, entertaining a parade of women. Calvin was lying. He’d been so jealous the other night, telling her she couldn’t marry Monty. This was Calvin’s attempt to control Lily’s life—by ruining Monty’s.
And if it were true, why hadn’t he shared this information with her first?
Anger engulfed her, her fists clenching tightly, nails digging through the cloth of her gloves and into her palms. “John, will you see Cora home? I must run an important errand downtown.”
“That errand wouldn’t be on Park Row, would it?” John teased. Lily stared at him, too furious to answer, and he instantly sobered. “Of course. I’d be happy to see Miss Hampton home.”
Lily turned to go, but Cora put a hand on her arm, stopping her. Her cousin’s green eyes were clouded with apprehension. “Lily, wait. I’ll come with you.”
“No, I’d rather do this alone.” Better to have no witnesses when she committed murder. “Mr. Drexel will see you home.”
* * *
A newspaper office was never, ever quiet. So when a hush fell over the Mercury staff late that afternoon, Calvin noted the change right away.
He was halfway out of his chair when his office door flew open. A familiar statuesque, blond-haired vixen stormed in, her brown eyes shooting sparks in Calvin’s direction. Considering the
intensity of her ire, he should have been incinerated on the spot. She stomped toward his desk, her hips swinging angrily.
“Sir, I apologize,” Miss Robbs was saying from the threshold. “I tried to stop her.”
“It’s fine,” he told his secretary, though his gaze remained on the beautiful woman before him. Christ only knew what she might do, as furious as Lily appeared at that moment. Because he didn’t want to lose either his first—or second—favorite body part, self-preservation demanded he keep her within sight. “I’ll see Miss Davies now. Close the door, won’t you?”
The latch clicked shut, leaving the two of them alone. “I hadn’t expected you to come all the way down to Park Row.” He shoved his hands in his pockets instead of reaching for her. It had been too long since he’d touched her and the past few nights, alone, had been hell. Not to mention Lily’s antagonism only ramped him up, like a crank on a hand wheel. Seeing her peeved only had him craving her more.
“I assumed you’d rather spend your last minutes on earth inside your precious office.”
“My last minutes, you say?”
“Yes. I plan on strangling you.” She tossed a copy of the afternoon Mercury on the desk. “How could you, Calvin? How could you do something so despicable?”
“Despicable? You’re about to marry a depraved cad and you’re angry with me?”
“Monty is not depraved! And you are ten times the cad that man is. You’re doing this to hurt him and, by extension, hurt me!”
Calvin clenched his jaw. Of course she would defend her precious Monty. Jesus, that name. “Everything in that story is true, Lily. Every word. And I never wanted to hurt you. I published this to help you.”
“Help me!” A high, slightly hysterical laugh escaped her mouth. “If you truly wanted to help me, you would have brought this information to me privately. Instead, you chose to put it in your newspaper, where this salaciousness would be seen by all of New York.”
“And most of New Jersey,” he couldn’t help but put in.
She growled deep in her throat. “What in the name of St. Peter is wrong with you? How is this story even news?”
“The news is whatever I say it is, sweetheart.” He pointed to the paper on his desk. “And this man thinking to marry you? I had to do it. I had to dig into his life and see what I could find. I had to make sure he was good enough for you.”
“That is not your role, Calvin. That is not within the bounds of our friendship.”
The last word grated across his nerves like the scrape of metal over ice. “Friendship?” He stalked around the desk and drew closer to her. “Is that what we are now? Friends?”
She did not back down, even angled toward him slightly. “Don’t worry. After today we are not even that. You have overstepped. You have humiliated me and my good friend. All because you are jealous!” She threw up her hands and stalked to the window.
He wanted to deny it, but the words would be a lie. Even a coldhearted bastard like him could not hide from the truth. He could spin it, however. “I’m practical. Isn’t it better to know what Fields is like before it’s too late? Don’t you want to know everything about a person before you marry him?”
“That is ironic, considering I married you without knowing anything about you.”
“And look how that turned out.” A hot, bright flame that had burned them both. “Don’t you want to learn from your mistakes?”
“What I want to do is strangle you with my bare hands. Do you have any idea of what you’ve done? You’ve ruined a man’s life—all because he might propose marriage to me.”
“Oh, he was planning to propose. He bought the ring.” A paltry stone, not nearly worthy of Lily’s finger. “You should be grateful I prevented you from making a mistake.”
“A mistake? Because he has an apartment where he meets a mistress?” Her voice gained in volume. “You and I both know that almost every wealthy man in New York operates in the same fashion. Montgomery is no different.”
“Wrong. Take my word for it. He is different.”
“I don’t believe you. I know him.”
“You don’t, Lily. Truly, you don’t know him. I saw that apartment. We couldn’t print even half of what we discovered in there.”
“High-minded words coming from the man who visits prostitutes and opium dens.”
“Well, at least I’m not seducing and photographing naked thirteen- and fourteen-year-old boys on a regular basis,” he snapped.
Her face paled and she deflated, her anger momentarily stolen by shock. He instantly felt contrite. Perhaps that news could have been broken a bit more gently. “Lily, I—”
She raised a hand, cutting him off. “Stop talking. Just stop. Obviously I am relieved to have the connection severed, if what you say is true. However, you should have brought that news to me—not published it. No matter how you try to justify your actions, they were inexcusable. Reprehensible and cruel. All because someone else had the courage to love me. You are like a child who doesn’t want his toy but doesn’t want anyone else to have it either!”
“You think I don’t want you?” How could she fucking doubt it? His body roared to life whenever she was in the vicinity, the sight and smell of her like a fever in his blood. Even now, he was considering stripping her and bending her over his desk.
“Oh, yes.” She clasped her hands in front of her. “Let’s discuss how much you wanted me. Like how, instead of telling me what my father discovered about you, you signed the annulment and walked away.”
Calvin shoved his hands in his trousers and stared at his shoes. “We’ve been over this, Lily.” Many times, in fact, and his answer could not change. Not yet.
“No, what we’ve done is avoid it. So I decided to circumvent you to get answers.”
His head snapped up and he pinned her with a stare. “Circumvent me?”
“I had a long talk with Hugo this morning.”
Calvin’s breath caught. Oh Christ. Why hadn’t Hugo told him? He pinched the bridge of his nose. How much had Hugo revealed?
“I can see you are not relieved by that news,” Lily said. “That I learned about Hugo’s wife and my father’s threat to reveal you as a bigamist.”
Hell. “I’m not upset that you know, but I wanted to be the one to tell you.”
“Then why didn’t you? It’s not as if there weren’t plenty of opportunities to trust me.”
“It had nothing to do with trust. It wasn’t my secret to tell. I promised Hugo I wouldn’t say anything because if the wrong people found out the truth, she would be killed.”
“And I am ‘the wrong people.’” Hurt flashed over her face before she let out a bitter laugh. “God above, Calvin. Just admit you didn’t trust me.”
“I trusted you—I loved you, for God’s sake. But I couldn’t risk your father exposing me as a bigamist and I couldn’t tell him the truth. The stakes were too high. What was I supposed to tell Hugo? ‘Sorry your wife will be murdered, old friend. I know you saved my life and I promised to help you, but I’d rather stay married to Lily and live in poverty.’”
“We never would have lived in poverty.”
“I know that now!” he roared, then dragged a hand through his hair. “You think any of that was easy for me? That I happily signed the annulment and forgot about you? Christ, I nearly drank and smoked myself to death—” He shut his mouth and folded his arms across his chest. She didn’t need to learn how dark that period had become.
“Yes, the frequent parties with beautiful women must have been quite the hardship. The ink hadn’t even dried on our annulment before you were gallivanting about the city.”
If only it had been that easy. “There were no frequent parties, no gallivanting, at least not right after we split. I left my position at the Bugle and grew fairly self-destructive for a few months.”
Her brows drew together. “I don’t understand. The papers reported on your comings and goings. You were busier than an organ grinder’s monkey.”
&
nbsp; “Lily, think,” he said with a sigh. “I was of no consequence in those days. I hadn’t even bought the Bugle yet. Why would the papers report on my whereabouts, an unknown beat reporter from a tiny newspaper?”
“Because you asked them to,” she said slowly, her eyes widening in sudden recognition. “Dear God. I cannot believe all this time . . . Why on earth would you want to hurt me like that? Do you have any idea what it did to me to read those pieces?”
“I didn’t want to hurt you, but I know you. You wouldn’t have given up unless you’d believed I moved on. You’re stubborn, like me. And I needed you to stop waiting for me.” He sat on the edge of the desk. “I needed for at least one of us to be happy.”
She rubbed her forehead, her pretty mouth turned into a frown. “This is all so confusing. You are the most difficult man, Calvin.”
Yes, she was likely correct on that score. And she obviously hadn’t learned of Lee’s daughter just yet, which meant there was one more secret she would hate him for. He prayed she never learned of it, or at least learned of it through him. Years from now. After he’d married her again.
He was not going to give her up. Whatever he had to do, whatever he had to say, he was keeping her happy for as long as he possibly could. He’d tried to let her go once and it had nearly killed him. This time he would not fail.
“So why did my father offer you money? If he had enough to force you to sign the annulment, why give you a check?”
“He needed to give you a reason, I suspect. Having proof of the check would make his story more plausible, that I was a fortune hunter.”
“Well, at least you made good use of the money.” Her hand swept his office and she almost looked proud of him.
He drew in a deep breath and gave her the truth. “I never took your father’s check to the bank.”
Chapter Eighteen
Lily gaped at the handsome yet infuriating man across the room from her. “You . . . what? Why would you not use the money?”