Words Spoken True: A Novel

by Ann H. Gabhart

  As Adriane silently watched Lucilla go out the door, she wondered why she’d even bothered to ask the question. Lucilla would not be leaving if she loved Adriane’s father.

  Adriane was halfway up the steps when she heard the front door open again, quietly, softly. Thinking it might be Duff, she turned on the stairs and went back down.

  But it was not Duff. Instead when she stepped back out into the hall, she almost bumped into Stanley, who was standing in front of the hall mirror checking his hair as she’d seen him do dozens of times when he came to pick her up for a social event. She gasped and stepped back quickly.

  “Adriane, my dearest,” he said, showing not the least bit of surprise at her sudden appearance beside him. “The very person I wished to see.”

  Adriane took a deep breath to regain her composure, and when she spoke, it was coldly. “What are you doing here?”

  “I wanted you to know how very sorry my father and I both are about your father. It’s so unfortunate that he had to be the victim of such random and unreasoned violence.”

  Adriane stared at him, trying to see through his polished exterior to the truth underneath. He met her eyes as though welcoming her study and even smiled a bit. Suddenly Adriane did see, and her heart began to pound. Stanley’s smile grew wider, and she knew he was not only aware of her fear but relishing it.

  “You’re despicable,” she said.

  “At last, my dearest, you are beginning to understand me.” He stepped closer to her.

  Adriane wanted to run up the stairs away from him, but she forced her feet to stay planted on the floor as she pointed toward the door. “I must ask you to leave. You are not welcome in this house.”

  “But Adriane, my dearest, it is probably more my house than yours.” His smile didn’t waver as he moved away from her to peer into the pressroom and wave his hand toward the presses. “We the same as own all of this, you know. Unlike my own father, your father unfortunately has never had much of a head for business, and now he has failed to deliver the promised payment.” Stanley looked directly at her again, his eyes traveling slowly up and down her body.

  She crossed her arms in front of her in a vain attempt to hide from his eyes. “Whatever debt is owed your father will be repaid. You can tell him that.”

  “I don’t think it will be that easy.” Stanley casually picked up one of the papers and scanned the print on the first page. “I see another poor Irish girl was murdered last night. What a shame, but I must say I am surprised to see the report on the front page with so much other news to report. But then your new editor seems to enjoy stories of young women coming to a bad end.” Stanley looked up at her, and his eyes were chilling. “Has he told you about Eloise Vandemere?”

  “What he has or has not told me is no concern of yours.”

  “Oh, my dearest Adriane, you couldn’t be more wrong. I still care deeply for you in spite of the heartless way you have spurned me, and while I certainly don’t mean to upset you unduly at such a time, I would be remiss in my duty to you as a loving friend if I did not warn you to be careful of our Mr. Garrett. I believe Miss Vandemere’s father owned a newspaper as well.”

  “Get out, Stanley,” Adriane said as forcefully as she could without raising her voice. “You and I no longer have anything to say to one another.”

  “Oh, I have to disagree, my dearest. I believe you are quite wrong on that count. We have a great deal yet to say to each other, and a great deal yet to do, you and I.”

  He grabbed her, moving so quickly that he had her pinned up against the wall just inside the pressroom before she could much more than gasp. She kicked at his legs and tried to twist loose of his hold, but he only smiled and pushed her harder against the wall. His fingers dug into her upper arms as he pressed his body against hers. “So soft,” he whispered as he touched her cheek with his lips.

  She couldn’t fight him. He was too strong. She stood perfectly still then as she demanded, “Let go of me, Stanley.”

  “Oh, I’ll turn you loose.” His laugh sent chills of fear up her back. “When I’m through with you. And not one second before.”

  “Turn loose of me now,” Adriane hissed through clenched teeth.

  “Or what?” He looked amused. “Do you think Blake Garrett can protect you? Is that why you married him?”

  Adriane stared at him coldly without answering.

  “But where is he?” Without loosening his hold on her, Stanley made a pretense of looking around. “I don’t see him.” He looked back at her. “If I were you, my dear, I wouldn’t count too much on Mr. Garrett. Women have counted on him before and ended up dead.”

  Suddenly Beck was calling to her from the top of the stairs, “Addie! Addie.”

  At the same time the front door swung open with a bang. Stanley loosened his grip on her arms the slightest bit, and with a sudden, sharp twist, she scrambled away from him. She grabbed the first thing her hands touched, Beck’s stool, and held it out between them as Stan reached for her again.

  Then Blake was in the doorway. When he saw them, he dropped the boxes he was carrying. Papers with blackened edges spilled out. “What are you doing here, Jimson?” He kicked the papers out of his way as he came into the room.

  Stanley straightened his jacket coolly and looked around at Blake. “I might ask you the same question. After all, Adriane was my betrothed yesterday.”

  Blake’s eyes went from Stanley to Adriane still holding up the stool, and a dark angry red appeared in his cheeks. “That was yesterday, Jimson. Today she is my wife.”

  “So it appears.” Stanley casually picked up one of the day’s newspapers and studied the masthead. “And it also appears you managed to find a way to publish your version of the news in spite of the unfortunate fire that destroyed your presses last evening.”

  When Blake took another menacing step toward Stanley as though he might try to squash him like a pesky bug, Adriane dropped the stool and swiftly moved in front of Blake. “Stanley was just leaving,” she said.

  “Was I?” Stanley asked with a smile, then answered his own question. “Perhaps I was. But you and I, Adriane my dearest, will see one another again.” He reached out and touched her cheek as his eyes swept up and down her body again.

  Blake moved Adriane aside as if she were no more than a feather to grab Stanley by his coat lapels and propel him out into the hall. “Don’t you ever touch my wife again, Jimson,” Blake said as he shoved Stanley toward the door.

  Stanley stumbled a bit before he caught his balance and looked at Blake coldly. “And you too, my good man, should be extremely careful whom you touch.” He straightened his jacket once more, carefully brushing off his arms.

  “You don’t scare me, Jimson. You’re just a little boy playing in his daddy’s shadow.”

  Anger blazed in Stanley’s eyes, then as quickly disappeared as he laughed. “You may discover I have my own shadow. One you’d best be careful to not let fall over you or yours.” Again Stanley lazily took in Adriane, who had followed them out into the hallway.

  Blake’s hands curled into fists as he took a step toward Stanley. “You ever so much as lay a finger on Adriane again, I’ll kill you.”

  “Why, Mr. Garrett, that sounds decidedly like a threat,” Stanley said with yet another laugh.

  “No threat,” Blake said flatly. “A promise.”

  “Oh, I am frightened,” Stanley said. Still smiling, he turned his gaze toward Adriane once more. “Do take care, my dearest. Things are not always as they seem.”

  With that, he plucked his hat off the hall table and went out the door as though nothing the least untoward had taken place. Adriane looked at Blake, but only met his eyes briefly before she stared down at the floor.

  “Did he hurt you?” Blake’s voice was gruff.

  “No,” Adriane lied.

  “You shouldn’t have let him in.” His voice was hard and angry.

  Adriane jerked up her head to stare at Blake. “Let him in?” Blood rushed to
her face as she felt ready to blow into a thousand pieces. “You think I let him in?”

  “He was in here.” Blake glared back at her.

  Beck appeared at the bottom of the stairs and frowned at the two of them. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but Addie, you’d best come along. The boss is sinking fast.”

  24

  Blake wasn’t sure Adriane wanted him beside her, but he followed her up the stairs anyway. He was going to be there when she needed him. And she was going to need him. She might never admit it. She might even fight against it, but she was going to need him. She already had. Just moments ago.

  When he’d come in and seen her with Stanley Jimson, Blake had been surprised. Not because Stanley was there. Blake had expected trouble from the Jimsons when they heard about the merging of the Tribune and Herald. What he hadn’t expected was the look on Adriane’s face. It was almost as if she’d been afraid, even though Blake couldn’t imagine anyone being afraid of Stanley Jimson, who had to be the most useless man ever born. Then when she’d stepped in front of Blake to protect Stanley from him, he’d felt as if a hand had hold of his heart squeezing it.

  Even so, he shouldn’t have yelled at her. Not when what he really wanted to do was take her into his arms to protect her and shield her from hurt.

  Of course, he couldn’t. Even now sorrow was barreling down on her with absolutely no way for him to stop it. He could only stand back and watch as Adriane cried and clung to her father’s hands while the dying man gasped for breath. The memory of watching his own father struggling to hold on to life stabbed through him sharp and fresh. As if in a dream, he saw Beck put his hand on Adriane’s shoulder and say, “Let him go, Addie.”

  She kept her eyes on her father’s face. “I can’t.”

  “You have to,” Beck said gently. “It’s his time.”

  Beck’s words echoed in Blake’s mind. His stepmother had said the same thing when his own father lay on his deathbed, but it hadn’t been his father’s time. Somebody had stolen his life from him. It had taken Blake years to accept the fact he could do nothing to change that. His father had gotten shot. His father had died.

  It was the same with Wade Darcy. It wasn’t his time. He had simply fallen victim to the riot that had raged through the city the night before. No amount of tears or regret could change that now. Blake pulled himself away from his memories to kneel beside Adriane. He put his arm firmly around her in case she tried to pull away, but she didn’t.

  Instead she looked over at him with a hopeless expression on her face. “I shouldn’t have left him to go downstairs with Lucilla.”

  “You’re here with him now, Adriane.” Blake tightened his arm around her. “Talk to him.”

  “It’s too late,” Adriane said.

  “No, you still have time. Tell him he was a good father. Tell him how much you love him.” Blake looked at the man on the bed. “Make his leaving good.”

  Haltingly at first, she did as he said.

  Darcy’s breath stopped coming in gasps, and then it stopped coming at all as the man seemed to slip away from them like a raft pulling loose from a tree to slide away down the river.

  Adriane jerked away from Blake, threw herself across her father’s chest, and cried, “Oh Father, I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault. I should have done what you wanted me to do.”

  Blake began to feel as if he’d come in during the middle of a play and didn’t know what was going on as he watched Beck grab Adriane’s shoulders and pull her up until she was looking directly at his face. “Ain’t none of this your fault, Addie. You didn’t shoot the boss.”

  “I could’ve kept it from happening, Beck.” Adriane’s face was bleak as she stared at the old man. “You know that.”

  “Hush now, Addie.” Beck gently stroked her hair back from her face. “There ain’t no going back and doing things over. You can’t bring him back. He’s in the good Lord’s hands now.”

  Long after Beck pulled the sheet up over Wade Darcy’s face, Blake wondered about their words, but this was not the time for questions about why Darcy died, even if he’d known what questions to ask.

  An undertaker came and managed to politely refuse to deliver a coffin until Blake gave the man nearly every bit of money he had left. He’d have to find a way to pay the hands and buy more newsprint later.

  The undertaker had taken Wade Darcy’s measurements and was leaving when an old black woman named Mary showed up, saying Mrs. Elmore had sent her to help care for the sick. When the woman saw the undertaker, she shook her head sadly and told Adriane, “Now don’t you be worryin’, child. I knows how to take care of them that have gone on too. I’ll help you lay him out proper.”

  After the black woman went to the kitchen to heat water, a heavy silence fell over the three of them gathered around Wade Darcy’s body. Adriane sat like a statue in the chair next to the bed, her face nearly as white as the sheet covering her father’s body. She looked so lost and alone Blake wanted to scoop her up out of the chair and carry her away from this pain.

  But when he suggested she might want to lie down and rest a few moments, she didn’t even look at him as she said, “I have to take care of Father first.”

  Blake started to tell her that this woman, Mary, could get the body ready without Adriane’s help, but he knew she did not want to be spared this last painful task. So he only said, “Somebody will have to write his obituary.”

  “There’s one on file downstairs.” Adriane’s voice was flat and controlled. “Father wrote a fresh copy every January on his birthday. He said an editor had to be prepared for any eventuality and that it was a foolish man who counted on someone else to tell the truth about his life.” Adriane looked down at her hands tightly clasped in her lap before she went on. “I don’t know whether Father told the truth or not, but Beck can read it and make whatever corrections might need to be made.”

  “Addie, you should do that,” Beck said softly.

  “No, I won’t be able to help with the paper today.”

  “We surely won’t be putting out no paper today,” Beck said.

  “The readers expect a paper every day,” Adriane said. “No matter what happens.”

  Blake spoke up. “We’ll do one page, bordered in black. We’ll split the page, print Wade Darcy’s obituary on one side, John Chesnut’s on the other as the headline stories. I owe that much to Chesnut, at the very least. We can fill in the rest of the space with reports on last night’s damage.”

  “Put in something about Duff’s sister.” Adriane raised her eyes to stare at a spot on the wall somewhere above her father’s body. “You promised him we’d find a way to catch the murderer.”

  “Ain’t nobody going to be too interested in that right now with all this other madness going on,” Beck said.

  “The murderer might be.” Adriane’s eyes came away from the spot on the wall to look not at Beck, but at Blake.

  “What do you mean?” Blake asked.

  A bit of color was inching back into her cheeks. “You could print a report that somebody saw Lila with a man last night before she was murdered.”

  “How do you know somebody saw them, Addie?” Beck asked.

  “I don’t,” Adriane said.

  “But somebody might have. There were a lot of people on the streets.” Blake’s eyes locked on hers as he considered her words.

  Beck was forgotten, something that didn’t seem to upset him as he said, “I reckon I’ll leave the two of you to figure out what lies we aim to print and go get the presses ready.”

  “It could be dangerous for Duff,” Blake said after Beck went downstairs.

  “You mean because the murderer might know Lila was Duff’s sister?” Adriane said.

  “And that he works for the Tribune.”

  “What do you think the murderer would do if he thought somebody might be able to identify him?”

  “He might go into hiding for a while. He might leave town and go to some other city and prey on the girl
s there.” Blake’s eyes burned into Adriane’s. “Or he might try to kill whoever he thought might have seen him.”

  All the color drained from Adriane’s face again. Finally she asked, “Do you think we could protect Duff?”

  “Nobody is needing to protect me.” Duff spoke up from the doorway. “I can be taking care of me self.”

  The boy’s face was as pale with grief as Adriane’s. Yet he grew even paler as he looked at the sheet covered form on the bed and twisted his hat in his hands. “Beck told me about the boss. I come up here to tell you how sorry I am, Miss Adriane.”

  “Did Beck tell you what else we were talking about?” Blake asked.

  “He said you were trying to figure a way to be bringing the slasher out in the open by printing some story about there being a witness who saw me sister with the murderer.” Duff stared first at Adriane then Blake. “There weren’t none, were there?”

  “Not that we know of,” Blake said. “But if we were to print a story that there was and the murderer knew who Lila was, he might think it was you.”

  “He’d know it was. All the folks down my way are always saying they can’t even spit without me noticing and writing it up in the paper.”

  “It’s too risky.” Adriane spoke up with her eyes on Duff.

  Before Blake could agree, Duff said, “It’s me what will be taking the risk, Miss Adriane, and I’m wanting to do it. I ain’t sure it might not even be true. I might be knowing the killer if I saw him.”

  Blake looked at him sharply. “You think you might have really seen him then?”

  “I didn’t say that, sir. I said I think I’d be knowing him if I saw him now with me sister’s blood staining his hands. It won’t matter how much he scrubs his hands, I’ll see it.”

  So Blake wrote the story even though he feared Duff was too young to understand the dangers. The boy only knew his need for revenge.

  Blake understood. He’d felt the same way after his father died. Like Duff, he’d been consumed with the need to find the man who had shot his father. He couldn’t sleep at night for thinking about how he would confront and kill the man. During the days, he walked the streets, sure somehow that if he saw the man face-to-face, he’d know he was the one who had shot his father. Before long, he found reasons to suspect every man he met. If his stepmother hadn’t packed him off to New York to work for one of his father’s friends, Blake wasn’t sure what might have happened.