Taking the High Road

by Morris Fenris

  “You can imagine the shock my wonderful Josiah gave me,” continued the lady, inexorable as a steamship, “when he announced that, out of the blue, he had asked for your hand in marriage. He assured me, however, that you were exactly the woman he wanted for a wife, and that I would agree wholeheartedly with him once you’d come here as my guest.”

  Oh, put a tack in it! she longed to shout. But didn’t, of course. Combine an unbridled tongue with a complete lack of respect, and you had trouble in the brewing. She certainly didn’t want to make an enemy of her future mother-in-law, barely introduced.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Kingsley,” said Cecelia meekly, while, to her left, Josiah simpered. His determined pursuit of her was, quite probably, the one and only exploit in which he had ever dared oppose his mother. “Josiah’s very kindness shows in the honor he has done me.”

  There. Was that mealy-mouthed enough?

  “Indeed it does.” Small and dark, with black hair piled high and the expression of someone forced to suck on a lemon, the woman oozed malcontent. Even, possibly…malevolence. “Now, please, my dear, do tell me a little about yourself. Josiah,” she smiled tenderly at her baby boy, “has given me so few details.”

  “Um. Well.” Quickly she sketched in the background of her education in Switzerland, the sudden death of her parents, the transfer west, the settlement in a new land and the beginning of a new lifestyle.

  “Yes, Josiah has mentioned the loss you sustained last year, prompting your move west. My sympathies, I’m sure. But you inherited a—well, a rather substantial estate, I’m told?”

  Even for this unpleasant person, that was nearly beyond the pale. Cecelia stiffened, shot a look at Josiah that should have crisped his thinning hair—just how and where had he acquired that little nugget of information?—and managed a faint reply.

  “And you traveled all that way—from Boston, I believe you said—to our lovely city of San Francisco, by yourself? How unutterably brave of you, my dear. I should have been absolutely petrified with fear!”

  “No,” said Cecelia between her teeth. “I traveled with my lady’s maid, who is also my dear companion. Along with my guardian and mentor.” Who, sad to say, wasn’t here with her right now. He’d have had this old witch petrified, all right. She would have been shivering in her boots.

  “Oh, how reassuring!” Mrs. Kingsley’s right hand flopped limply against her almost nonexistent breast. Probably an almost nonexistent heart palpitated under it. “I must say, I wasn’t quite sure of the propriety involved…and this friend of yours, he—uh—he shares your living quarters?”

  God give her strength. “He does. Or, rather, I share his. Along with my maid, and my housekeeper. As you know, there are more demands for lodging in this city than there are places available. We were lucky to find rooms in a boarding house when we first arrived, until we could locate a builder and design a home. Since Gabe is like a father to me, at the time, it made perfect sense for us to live all in one place.”

  “Why, certainly, perfect sense, as you say. But, there, you strike me as quite a capable young lady. And in business, besides?”

  Another grit of the teeth. At this rate, she would need to visit a dentist. Soon. “If you can consider teaching a business, Mrs. Kingsley.” She flashed her prettiest smile. “I happen to believe education is extremely important, and I’m willing to do what I can to advance my cause.”

  Mrs. Kingsley poured another cup of tea—weak and watery now, with too few leaves used and too many portions taken from it—and sipped daintily from the bone china. “Only to a certain level, I hope you realize.” That was said with unusual firmness. “And to only a select—uh—few—of our population, don’t you agree?”

  Despite Josiah’s warning glance, Cecelia said with equal firmness, “No, I don’t agree. It is exactly the disadvantaged who need that education. And I shall do my best to see they have it.”

  The older woman demurred. It was her house, after all; her drawing room; her tea. “Very well, if you must continue for now, during the betrothal, I suppose one cannot protest,” she sighed. “However, after you and my dear Josiah are married, that will change. San Francisco society simply will not accept what you are proposing, Miss Powell.”

  San Francisco society could jolly well lump it. Another retort bit back and hastily swallowed. Now, besides a visit to the dentist, she would need to see a physician, as well, for the unaccustomed roiling of her stomach under stress.

  “Well, we’ll see.” Another quick look at Josiah that gave notice of some heated conversations in the very near future. He might have prepared her!

  “Of course, my dear. Meanwhile, we haven’t even begun to discuss an engagement party for the two of you. Let’s see about a time and a place, shall we? And the invitations—oh, I have such a list of the bon ton to include!”

  Josiah, who, up to this point had said barely a word, finally managed a response. “Mother, you seem to be quite excited about such an affair,” he pointed out, noting the faint color that had risen in her sallow cheeks.

  She laughed and fluttered like a girl. “Of course I am, Josiah. My goodness, it isn’t every day that a woman is able to introduce her son’s future wife to society, now, is it? Miss Powell, I do hope you will have something made for this event that will be slightly more—um—fashionable that what you have on now?”

  “You mean, with a lot of fuss and feathers?” Cecelia said coldly. “Bugles and beads? Flights of fancy and foorarah? I’m sure I can come up with suggestions for my dressmaker, Mrs. Kingsley. Any particular style you prefer, or hue?”

  A casual flip of the hand. “Oh, no, I will leave that decision up to you. Something not quite so—uh—bright, perhaps…a quieter shade, since you have such—oh, my, you do have very vivid coloring yourself, do you not?”

  It was a long afternoon. One demanding great endurance and hardihood. Both of which she possessed, fortunately, in copious amounts.

  When at last it was over, and Cecelia could finally escape into the carriage Josiah had waiting for her, she begged only to be taken home to deal with the terrible headache that had come upon her.

  Josiah’s sympathy was tinged with his mother’s asperity. “I do hope headaches aren’t a usual thing for you, Cecelia. You seem to be such a vigorous young lady otherwise. Giving in to a minor physical ailment, however, seems to me an unseemly weakness.”

  She’d show him a weakness. But not until later. Much later, when this blinding, nauseating pain had disappeared and she would be able to return to good health. For now, she merely groaned, sank back against the seat, and allowed herself to be carted away.

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

  “Cecie, what in the world were you thinkin’, to accept this man’s proposal?” Gabe, completely baffled, asked once this story of meeting the dread Mrs. Kingsley had been recounted. “I’ve checked around here, with some of my contacts, and Josiah Kingsley isn’t that well thought of, a’tall.”

  “It does seem,” Bridget, invited to join the conversation, was putting in her own two cents’ worth of opinion, “that he may not be the one you really want to be with. Are you havin’ second thoughts?”

  “Ohhhhh…second thoughts. Maybe third thoughts.” Cecelia sighed.

  They were gathered, the three of them, in the airy, fresh-scented parlor the next night after Mrs. Kingsley’s command performance. Cecelia wanted to tell her side of the introduction and the visit, and to ask advice.

  “Doesn’t sound like he was very supportive,” grumped Gabe. With a cigar in one hand and a glass of his favorite bourbon in the other, he was stretched out comfortably on the chintz settee, feet crossed at the ankles atop an ottoman. “Gossip has it, Josiah is a mama’s boy.”

  “Gossip? Gabe, you old phony, you. Since when do you listen to gossip?”

  “Why, ev’time I get a chance, sugar. Gotta keep my ear to the ground, y’know. With this town, just like Boston, you need to be aware of what’s goin’ on around you.”


  Bridget was so used to being busy that she found it almost impossible to sit still, even in a semi-sociable setting. She rose now to light several of the kerosene lamps, twitched shut draperies over windows facing the street, smacked two pillows into shape and moved another entirely. “Did you not get to know this man enough before you said yes to him?” she asked curiously.

  “Perhaps not.” Pushing aside a book on the little table beside her chair, Cecelia took a skip from her glass of lemonade. “We’d had only a few engagements, just for carriage rides or a picnic, once attendance at his church—that sort of thing. I might have been so surprised by his proposal that I—well, I wasn’t sure how to turn him down.”

  Bridget sniffed. “Well, I’d say he’s showin’ his true colors now. And as for that witch of a mother of his—well! In the Old Country we’d’a put her out on the front stoop in the middle of winter and locked the door behind her.”

  “Bridge!” Cecelia was torn between horror and laughter.

  “She’s not so far wrong,” Gabe twinkled. “Well, Cecie, looks t’me like you got yourself a big decision to come to. Think you can make a man out of Josiah Kingsley, put some backbone into him? Or you gonna chuck the whole thing, and show him up as a laughingstock?”

  “Oh, I don’t think his heart would be broken if I returned his ring.”

  “Likely his pride, though,” guessed her mentor shrewdly. “If enough people know about it.”

  She shrugged and rose. “Not even that, Gabe. But you’re right—I do have a decision to come to. And that requires some consideration. Meanwhile, it’s past time for me to consult with Mrs. Liang about next week’s menus.”

  III

  Something didn’t add up. All these figures, listed correctly on the page, and something simply didn’t add up. What had gone wrong, and where?

  Frustrated and fuming, Noah Harper scrolled once more through the columns, without any luck at solving the mystery. Pushing the ledgers aside, he began searching front to back and back to front of various file folders. “Damn it to hell,” he muttered. Then, raising his voice, he shouted for help. “Jenkins, get in here!”

  A brief pause, then the answer, “Right away, sir!”

  When the secretary entered the main, sumptuous office of Harper Hazard and Company, Noah was peering over his paperwork, all the while grumbling to himself. Thrusting his fingers through short curly brown hair, he looked up with a glare. “Took you long enough.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the young man apologized. “Was there something I can help with?”

  “I hope so, Jenkins. For months now I’ve been trying to track down the distribution of shares in a gold mine conglomerate that have disappeared. Simply damn well disappeared. Any idea what might have happened?”

  “I’m sorry, sir.” Another apology. Beholding Jenkins’ nervous mannerisms and timid appearance, one gathered that he spent a good deal of time apologizing to Mr. Harper. “I’m afraid I have no idea. But I’ll be happy to look through your records, if you like. Have you consulted your attorney?”

  Noah frowned. He was a well-set-up young man, in his late twenties, with light gray eyes whose emotional range ran the gamut from cool to frosty to drop-dead-frozen, depending on circumstances. “This was one of my father’s deals, Jenkins. Something he worked out with that shyster Mick, Gabriel Finnegan. Gone these past eight months to California.”

  “Ah. I see. So…perhaps another set of records somewhere?” The secretary paused delicately. His boss possessed a hair-trigger temper, and it was anyone’s guess what might come along to spark an uproar. Office staff trod carefully when Noah Harper prowled the halls.

  “Might be. This will warrant further searching. All right, Jenkins, that’s all. You may go.”

  A slight bow, and poor Jenkins could thankfully escape.

  Further searching, indeed. Noah decided that finding out more information would entail a long, loving discussion with his esteemed parent.

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

  “Why would you expect me to know anything about your father’s business concerns?”

  “It’s perfectly logical, Mother. After all, you were married to the man for thirty years.”

  Noah had cornered her in the small drawing room, so beautifully decorated in white and cream and yellow. Bowls of hothouse roses lent color and fragrance; lightly patterned rugs crisscrossed the floor to lie like clouds beneath the feet, and soaring windows opened onto a luxurious expanse of neatly clipped lawn. If he were to choose one area in the three-story mansion as his favorite, he supposed it might have been this.

  “That doesn’t mean he ever confided in me.” Serenelym Elvira Rockingham Harper, of the famous Back Bay Rockinghams, went on opening her mail with a sterling cutter. Much like herself, that cutter: slender, expensive, and potentially deadly.

  Impatient, Noah threw himself down upon the damask loveseat. “Who the hell else would Father have confided in?” he demanded. “You must have had some idea of his financial affairs.”

  Elvira looked up, gray eyes as cool and intent as the silver dagger in her hand. “Some of his affairs, certainly.”

  “Well, then, tell me—” he broke off as the significance of her words sank in. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, I think you know exactly what I mean.”

  “I’m asking about his damned money, Mother. Specifically, what happened to his majority shares of a gold mining conglomerate? And you’re telling me—”

  She put aside envelopes, magazines, and local advertisements, dusted the skirt of her afternoon tea gown, and reached for the cup of tea honeyed and creamed beside her chair. “You’re an adult, Noah. If you can sit there in my house and swear like a dock worker, surely you can understand simple English.”

  “So my father had affairs.”

  “Singular, I do believe. One, in particular.”

  “Why?” He spread his hands, perplexed. “Everything seemed fine between you two. I never heard an argument, or shouting, never saw anything that might have led me to question your marriage.”

  She slightly lifted one thin shoulder. In a lesser individual, the movement might have been considered a shrug; in Elvira, it passed as a faux pas. “There were no arguments because we were rarely together long enough to share conversation, let alone anything else. After you were born, I wanted no more to do with—that—the bedroom side of life. Your father expected it. I refused.”

  An expression of distaste darkened those wintry gray eyes. Ice chips, now. Even the atmosphere in the sunny room seemed chill.

  “I’m sorry, Mother. I had no idea.”

  “Oh, he was discreet, I’ll give him that much. As for the occasional whisper here and there in my social circles…well, other men were just as guilty. It seems that taking a—a paramour is perfectly acceptable, it’s just something that is done.” Some emotion finally escaped that tightly controlled façade: bitterness.

  Noah, raised by a succession of wet nurses, nannies, and tutors, had had little contact with either parent from babyhood on. Small wonder now that, grown to manhood, any suggestion of sympathy or compassion for a possibly hurting parent would not come easily, if at all.

  “At any rate,” his mother continued, after a silent moment, “your lost and gone shares have very likely made their way to California.”

  “California? Of course, I realize the conglomerate is headquartered in San Francisco. The Catherine Syndicate, according to some information I found. But, still—”

  “Her mother’s name was Marla Powell,” Elvira said. Another sip of cooling tea, another dusting of the immaculate skirt that needed no dusting. Other than an “Out, damned spot!” kind of moment. “Marla owned The Bostonian Gentlemen’s Club.”

  “What?” Noah stared. The revelations were coming fast and furious, almost too much for him to hear, absorb, and understand. “The place is still in existence. I’ve seen it—”

  “Of course you have.” His mother sounded impatient. “My understanding i
s that it was sold, and the proceeds given to her.”

  “Her who?”

  “The daughter. Marla’s daughter.” Time for the killing blow. “Your half-sister.”

  Noah surged to his feet with a great scraping of table legs across the wooden floor. “The hell you say!” he gasped.

  “I say indeed. Your father’s doxy gave birth to a girl, when you were about eight years old.”

  “My father. Extra-marital hanky-panky. A half-sister. Good God.” Noah’s head was spinning.

  Another slight shrug. “Her name is Cecelia Powell. If you look far enough, I daresay you’ll find that’s where your missing shares have disappeared to. Your father deeded them to her in his will.”

  “He did what? Jesus Christ!”

  “Noah, I will not have that sort of talk in my drawing room,” Elvira sharply reprimanded her son as if he were still five years old. “Now, I realize you may be extremely disappointed at hearing all this, but it isn’t as if—”

  “California, you said?”

  “San Francisco, to be exact. I have been told that was the destination of the girl and your father’s friend—that pathetic drunken excuse for an attorney.” She sniffed. “I hired my own, thank you very much. After your father was killed in the carriage accident—along with his harlot, I might mention—I needed someone I could trust.”

  Fueled by fury and disbelief, Noah had been pacing from one end of the room to the other. Now, suddenly, he halted short. “Why now, Mother?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. You’ve held onto this little secret for thirty years. Why did you decide to disclose it to me now?”

  Surprised, Elvira stared up at him. “Why, so you can resolve the situation, of course.” As if he was too dense to realize the ramifications. “Or do you think we should let the conniving little hussy get away with this?”

  “Ah-hah. I see. My revenge will serve as your revenge.” Another silent moment to digest possibilities and probabilities. Then, “Thank you, Mother, you’ve been quite helpful.”