by Naomi Finley
I had never intended to stay away for so long, abandoning Knox with no answers or certainty. I’d gotten too caught up in Aunt Em’s showering of luxuries and the warmth of her love and acceptance, which had filled the void for a time.
Sharing in her life, my days and evenings were occupied with the theater, luncheons, traveling, and social engagements—all activities I’d dreaded in Charleston. It proved no different in Paris, London, or New York. Our outings left me more miserable and confused than before I’d left the quietude of my homestead and the simple life I shared with my husband, and I began to wonder if the source of my dissatisfaction lay within me.
The twins no longer needed me. With Jack gone and Kimie’s time occupied with Parker and Livingston, I’d been left to question what purpose life held for me. My whole existence had been based on raising my siblings when, in truth, I’d never regarded them as my brother and sister, but as though they were my own children. Except I’d forgone the dreadful birthing process, and I was grateful for it. I shivered at the thought.
A trip to New York would alleviate the melancholy, Aunt Em had insisted, but as pleasant as our time had been together, my thoughts turned toward home. The pull had changed as of late—becoming more pressing, almost daunting, like a weighted shawl I couldn’t shed.
“Shall we try the hatters before finding a coffeehouse to warm our bones?” Aunt Em suggested, pulling me from my thoughts.
“I appreciate everything you’ve done. But honestly, Aunt Em, I can’t accept anymore. I’m a grown woman and can purchase my own things.” I withheld the truth that I could hardly afford the cashmere shawl, and with Knox’s silence and my extended time away, I’d run out of funds.
“Very well, let us duck in here and sit for a spell.” She gestured at a coffeehouse, and her eyes sparkled as she said, “Perhaps a coffee will stop the chattering of your teeth.”
Oh, how I loved her. As a child, she had been my savior and the last piece of my mother I’d clung to, but as an adult, she was my confidant, friend, and a soft place to fall. As I wrapped my arm around her frail shoulders, my throat thickened as I recognized her fragility. She was a woman energetic with spirit and life, but age had started to pursue. One day death would take her from me, and I didn’t know if…
Shaking such troubling thoughts away, I feigned a smile and peered down at her to see admiration mirrored in her eyes.
Inside, we found a seat at the back and settled next to a window. After ordering, I regarded Aunt Em as she sat studying me. “What?”
“Let us speak about what troubles you.”
“It’s nothing—”
She scoffed and shook her head. “You can’t fool me, so you may as well not try. You’ve been present in body, but your mind is far removed.”
I played with the crystal sugar bowl. “You know me too well.”
“That I do.”
Certain she would get to the bottom of my problems or we’d turn to corpses where we sat, I sighed. “I thought by coming to stay with you, I’d finally feel better, that time with you was what I needed to fill the void. But it hasn’t.” I sat back as the waiter placed a black coffee before me. I inhaled its heavenly aroma, and it soothed me for a moment. Lifting a spoon, I scooped sugar into my coffee and stirred. “Why can’t I just be happy with what life has given me? I have a husband who works hard, is kind and funny, and loves me. Everything a woman could dream of in a husband. I tried to be a good wife; honestly, I did. And I was happy for the most part, but with the twins no longer needing me, it left me, well, questioning where I go from here.”
Her warm hand covered mine where it lay on the white table linen. “Perhaps children of your own. You are so young.”
I held her gaze. “No, that isn’t for me. Knox knew this when I married him. I did what needed to be done for Kimie and Jack, but I do not wish to be a mother. All women aren’t destined to be mothers. Look at you. You never married.”
She lowered her gaze. “But it’s not that I didn’t wish for those things.”
I frowned. She’d never mentioned a desire to have a family or a husband.
“To get to my age and be alone is not something I wish for you.” She brushed a tear streaking her pale flesh and looked at me. The emotions I read in her eyes clotted my throat. “What is it you wish for, my dear?” she asked.
“To be happy.”
“Happiness is not obtained by a chase. It comes from within.”
I threw my hands in the air. “Yes, yes. I’ve heard such babble before.”
She lifted a brow.
I calmed my antics and, pressing my elbows on the table, leaned forward. “Be clear, Auntie Em. What does it mean?”
She eyed my elbows with a stern look, and I removed them from the table and sat back, resting my hands in my lap. Her chin bobbed with approval.
“It means that no amount of time spent with me will make you happy, nor will the twins or Knox. Until you fill the gap and look inward, you will continue looking for happiness in all the wrong places.”
“The gap as in the loneliness?”
“As in what was broken inside you years ago.”
“And how does one do that?” I pulled for answers, desiring to feel whole.
“By being conscious and embracing the pain.”
She had lost her mind. I knew she meant well, but memories of the past were best left there.
Sensing my unease, she turned the conversation to pleasant matters, and soon we were laughing.
“I’ve enjoyed our time together,” I said.
“As have I, dear.” She dabbed at tears spent on laughter, and her expression grew serious. “I’ll miss you dearly, but you’ve been gone too long from your husband’s side, and I think it’s best you return home. Maybe this time away will have stilled the mind’s pondering of what lies beyond your homestead.”
“But I don’t know if I have a home to return to.”
Wrinkles pleated her brow. “Whatever do you mean?”
I glanced down to avoid her stare and twirled the spoon on the tablecloth. “I’ve written to Knox several times, but he doesn’t reply. I fear he is very cross with me.”
“He may be, but it is something he may get over if you return to waiting arms.”
“I don’t know…”
“You, Whitney Tucker, are no coward. You are boisterous, and at times crude, but you’ve got more backbone and grit than most. If your heart pulls for home, then you’d better pay heed.”
A shadow fell over us, and we glanced up to find a red-haired woman clad in silks and furs. The woman’s gaze shifted to the door and back, and worry dipped her brows as she looked from me to Aunt Em. “Whitney Tucker?”
Aunt Em nudged me.
“Who is asking?” I straightened and regarded the enticing creature before me. Her glorious mane lay in precise, lustrous ringlets beneath a velvet winter bonnet. Rouge highlighted dewy flesh and high cheekbones, and her perfume had a lure of its own. Men at nearby tables had stopped conversations to admire the woman. I, too, sat intoxicated.
“My name is Amelie Laclaire. I must ask you, do you know a Willow Armstrong?”
I tensed. “I do.”
She gulped, and fear appeared on her face. “I-I have reason to believe she may be in grave danger. If you wish to help your friend, meet me at the corner of Baxter and Park Street.”
A lump lodged in my throat and adrenaline raced through my veins as I started to rise, but she lifted a hand to stop me.
“Please don’t cause a scene.” Again, her troubled gaze turned to the door. “I feel what I have to say is most urgent. If you care for this Willow, you will meet me at the named spot at seven.” She whirled and hurried to the door.
I searched for her through the window, but she had vanished as quickly as she’d arrived. The hairs stood up on my neck. I looked back at Aunt Em, whose eyes revealed concern.
“It’s dangerous to go to the Five Points in broad daylight, let alone at night,” she told me
. “It isn’t safe. Besides, how would that strange woman know anything to do with Willow? And moreover, how did she know you’re an acquaintance of hers?”
I trembled from the encounter, and I sat numbly, taken off guard by the woman. “I don’t know, but I can’t ignore a claim that Willow is in danger. She is my dearest friend, and I would not see harm come to her.”
She sighed. “Then, if you must, I will see you’re accompanied.”
“What are you referring to?”
“Hired help.”
The stubbornness that had steered me wrong before told me I didn’t require help, but Willow’s and Ruby’s stories of Five Points left me nodding my head. Again I’d be indebted to Aunt Em with no means to pay her back, but at the moment, Willow’s well-being was all that mattered.
Amelie—Thirty minutes prior
IN THE LOBBY OF THE lawyer’s office, I glanced over my shoulder and caught a flash of Oliver darting through traffic to cross the street. My pulse raced with the chance of him discovering my lie, but his actions and the words he’d spoken in the hatter’s shop had snatched the breath from me: “No, the time isn’t right. Soon enough, Willow will die, and all she loves.” He had stood as though in a trance.
His strange behavior and his obsession with the woman had amplified over time, and his reaction to the two women he’d spied on from the hatter’s shop left me frightened yet inquisitive. His response resurrected the memory of a night soon after I’d overheard him and his friend, Michael, in the study. Gasping, I’d awakened, clawing at the restriction around my neck, to find Oliver’s hands clutching my throat, his teeth bared, eyes feverish but unseeing. “You must die. I will end the curse and take my revenge,” he had said.
In recent months, it was as though he’d become possessed—during conversations, he fell into tangential rants that held no rhyme or reason. Then there were moments when he addressed me, but as though he was speaking to someone else. Other times I would catch him alone but holding a discussion as though someone was in the room.
As he continued to unravel, my wariness intensified. All was not as it seemed with him. The man I’d known had been calculating and brilliant to the point of genius. I’d attributed his intelligence to the infinite encyclopedias and documents analyzing army strategies and battles he feasted on, and the hours spent staring at a chessboard before making a single move. I’d decided that his parents had purchased the best education money could buy—an assumption, because he never divulged anything about his family or his past.
One afternoon, I’d turned onto the street to his townhouse as a private carriage pulled up out front, and Michael stepped out. The eerie man of inadequate stature sent shivers through me whenever I encountered him in his visits over the years. Each time, he disrobed me with a single glance and left me feeling defiled and handled without lifting a finger. When I broached the subject to Oliver one evening, he’d laughed and stated that a woman like me should be used to the lust of a man, and then went on to say that he posed no threat.
On that particular day, Michael turned and yanked a black man from the carriage who appeared to have been roughed up. I darted out of sight and observed the struggle between the pair, quickly recognizing the black man, as he had been summoned to the townhouse before.
The men climbed the stairs, the black man limping, and Michael pounded the brass knocker and stepped back to wait, never releasing his grip on the man. Soon the door opened, and Oliver ducked his head out and looked around before gesturing the men inside.
I raced to the back alley and entered the home from the back door, making sure not to draw attention to my arrival. Slipping off my shoes, I crept down the hallway and into the parlor, where a painting of me in a navy silk gown hung. My nerves vibrating, I carefully removed the painting and set it down without a sound. Behind the painting was a peephole I had carved into the wall while Oliver had been in Maryland on business—an act that could mean my life if he found out, but as my mistrust rose, so did my anxieties about the secret I’d carelessly revealed to him. The murder I’d committed as a young girl. A deed a man like him, I’d come to believe, would use to see me rot in a prison cell before I hung from the gallows if it suited him.
I rebuked myself for the senseless way I had allowed myself to soften my heart for the man, believing I loved him. The thought soured my stomach with self-disgust.
Rising on my toes I peered through the hole, which provided a clear view of the study.
Michael shoved the black man forward, and he fell to his knees. “It took me a while to find him. He went into hiding after Armstrong put him on a steamer back here. My sources managed to locate him, and after a well-deserved thrashing, he admitted to trying to find his woman instead of coming to us with information. It gave me great pleasure to take my anger at his disobedience out on his pretty wife’s voluptuous backside.” He thrust his hips forward as if in final release inside a woman’s warmth. “Ain’t that right, Burrell?”
A harrowing moan came from the black man referred to as Burrell.
I trembled with memories of the men of my adolescence, who’d used my body without my consent. Big John’s gift had never been far removed from my flesh, and my fingers pressed against the dagger strapped to my inner thigh under my gown. The urge to slit Michael’s throat where he stood nearly overwhelmed me. His type, who found pleasure in taking what wasn’t theirs for the taking, fed my hatred for men.
“It is as we thought, the Armstrongs are neck-deep in aiding niggers. The plantation is a facade to hide their operations.” Michael looked as though someone had handed him a goldmine rich with glimmering veins.
Burrell’s shoulders slumped further as Michael shared this information.
Oliver circled the desk to loom over him. “Is this so?” he asked in an emotionless tone.
Burrell didn’t answer, and Michael stepped forward and struck him on the temple. “Answer, you black demon, or I’ll be sure your wife pays for your failures.”
Fury reared in me. And I’ll see your guts unravel.
“She has unjustly paid for my shortcomings. I beg of you, let her go,” Burrell sobbed.
Emotion clotted my chest at the agony in his voice and the injustice of what the couple had suffered.
“But I’ve become rather fond of her. The depths of her warmth have proven to be quite exhilarating.” Michael patted Burrell’s cheek.
“Very well, you have done as requested, and you shall be rewarded with her release,” Oliver said.
Michael’s head snapped up. “But—”
Oliver held up his hand to silence Michael’s protest, and Burrell fell forward and kissed his shoes. “Thank you.” He wept shamelessly.
Tingles chased up my spine as Oliver craned his neck side to side and stared blankly, the way he had the night he tried to strangle me.
“Tie him down,” Oliver said in a heavily accented voice that was neither his nor any I recognized.
With his derangement exposed, my heart pounded in my ears, and I fought the urge to flee. What the hell was wrong with him? I frowned and pressed my face tight against the wall to get a better look.
“We will see to it he never speaks of this,” Oliver said.
Burrell blubbered in panic. “I swear I won’t say a word. You don’t have to do this!”
No!
“Gag him,” Oliver said.
Michael regarded him as though uncertain of his sanity. “Are you sure this is the place? Someone may hear.”
“Amelie isn’t due to visit until tonight, and I sent the staff on errands, mindful that we might need to take care of matters here and now,” Oliver said in his own voice.
I peered from one madman to the other. Michael never blinked at Oliver’s bizarre behavior, but did as instructed. He gagged Burrell and threw him into a chair and bound him with ropes.
Oliver retrieved a saw lying on the desk and held it up for inspection. Burrell’s eyes widened with terror. Oliver ran his finger along the teeth of the saw,
then quickly pulled it away and placed it to his lips, sucking the blood drawn by the saw. A sinister smile twisted his handsome face.
Fear strummed in my chest, and I stumbled backward, perspiration dampening my flesh. I couldn’t let this happen. I had to stop them! But, as the screams rose, understanding filled me. If I barged into the room, I too would become a victim to the animals within. I replaced the painting and crept back down the corridor and slipped on my shoes before exiting the townhouse. Gathering the sides of my gown, I raced down the alley, putting distance between me and the horrors happening inside. As I ran, I felt invisible fingers pulling at my dress, seeking to expose my knowledge of the atrocities inflicted upon Burrell.
Several minutes later, I stopped as my stomach revolted and spewed its contents into a nearby honeysuckle bush. Swiping the back of my hand across my mouth, I paced the alley, keeping my eyes keen for the men’s appearance. Guilt and remorse washed over me as I realized the depths of the monster I’d bedded, believing he’d brought me happiness. I was such a fool. I anchored a hand on my waist and rested another on my forehead. What could I do? I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. But I couldn’t risk the men identifying me as a spectator to their depravity.
After lengthy consideration, I returned to the townhouse to wait for Michael to leave. If by chance Burrell still lived, I’d figure out what to do then. From the shelter of a parked private carriage, I watched the townhouse, and an hour later, Michael and Oliver hauled an unconscious, bloody Burrell out and put him in a coach. The fact that he yet breathed filled me with determination, and after the carriage moved down the street, I hailed a hansom cab and instructed the driver to follow before climbing inside.