Riverrun

by Andrews, Felicia

  Vessler seemed stunned by the question, immediately wrapping his hands around a tall stein of ale and rolling it between his palms. Melissa, frowning, shrank back into the corner of the booth and stared at Cass, the original hostility now tempered by a quizzical curiosity.

  “I don’t mean another woman, if that’s what you’re worried about. I mean a man. Rather tall, having what’s called ‘rugged good looks,’ always wears a gray suit and carries a stick with a knob as thick around as a fist. Ivory, it is. He’s well educated, or at least speaks that way, and—”

  David snapped his fingers. “Of course! Yes, yes,” and he looked at Melissa with a grin. “He comes in every week or so, I think. In fact, he was—”

  “For how long?” Cass demanded. “I mean, when did he start coming to the office?”

  David’s delight that he had pinpointed the man suddenly vanished. “Well, I don’t know if I ought—”

  “David, this is extremely important. You must tell me everything you know about him. And don’t say you don’t know anything.” She smiled to soften her temper. “I’ve known you a long time, David Vessler, and there’s little in that office you don’t get a finger on sooner or later. Come on, tell me.”

  “Well,” he said, staring into the stein with great absorption. “Well, I do try to keep up.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Davy,” Melissa said suddenly, her voice startlingly deep for the image she presented, “will you please tell the poor woman what she wants to know? Men,” she said directly to Cass, “are so insensitive, don’t you think? Like rocks. They only move when an earthquake forces them to. Come on, Davy, Mrs. Roe needs that information.”

  Cass could only smile, and chide herself for judging the young woman incorrectly on first impressions.

  “Oh, all right, Missy,” he replied softly. “I just want you both to know that I don’t make a habit of prying.”

  “It’s not prying,” Cass said. “Please, David, I haven’t much time.”

  He took a long drink of his ale, then snared a passing waitress, set his empty stein on her tray, and lifted another to take its place. After a second swallow, he took a deep breath.

  “It was just after you and Mr. Roe were married Mrs. Roe. He came in asking to see Mr. Roe, not giving his business, and since Mr. Roe wasn’t particularly busy that day, they got together. It wasn’t more than a few days later that this man came back, and it was pretty regular from then on. I thought maybe they were friends, and I know they went to New York together last August when Mr. Cavendish needed some things from the bar up there.

  “His name is Sampson, I think. I don’t know his Christian name. And I wouldn’t have thought anything about it except that there was never any work for me to do on whatever they were doing, and I thought I already knew most of Mr. Roe’s friends who drop in now and again. I mean, there were never any titles, wills, judgments, things of that nature. Of course, sometimes they like to do those things for themselves, the important matters, but at that time we were pretty busy, what with affairs to be settled now that the war was over, and I knew they hadn’t the time to do their own work. Not then, anyway.”

  He stopped, took a drink, and wiped the foam from his upper lip with a swipe from the sleeve of his worn but well-kept frock jacket. “Of course, they’ll have to learn soon if they don’t hurry up and get someone else before the weeks out. Even then, it’ll be too late, I expect.”

  Cass, trying hard to follow him, blurted, “Someone else? What in heaven’s name are you talking about, David?”

  David looked surprised. “But I’m leaving Cavendish and Roe, Mrs. Roe.”

  “What?”

  “You mean … you mean, Mr. Roe hadn’t told you?”

  Cass shook her head mutely.

  “Well, I’ll be—” He shrugged, and took Melissa’s hand again. “Well, Missy and I, we’re getting married tomorrow, you see, and—”

  “What?”

  “Mrs. Roe, doesn’t your husband tell you anything anymore?”

  “Obviously not,” she said. “Lord, David, I’m sorry. I—well, naturally I’m pleased at the news, and very happy for you, for you both. It’s just that—well, as you say, no one bothered to tell me.”

  “No matter,” he said with a shrug. “The old man doesn’t know either. I mean, I told him weeks ago, but he doesn’t believe it. See, Missy and I, Mrs. Roe, we got to thinking about things, the way they are now that the war is over and all. I watch the papers pretty closely and I keep an ear to the ground, so to speak.” He swallowed hard. “Mrs. Roe, I’m not a city boy, not really. My father knew Mr. Cavendish, and he sent me down here to study and things, and I came because I thought the city would be kind of exciting. See, my folks own a small farm on the Hudson ditch before the English came in and took most of it. I guess I didn’t much like the quiet life.” His grimace of regret was intentionally comical, and the two women laughed lightly. “Well, Missy’s from down where you’re from, that’s why I think you’d understand, Mrs. Roe. Mr. Cavendish, he sure doesn’t. It’s simple. We don’t want this kind of life for our kids. Too many rogues on the streets after dark, people looking down on you because of where you’re from, not caring what you do, too many people crammed into one place. Like what’s happening to the Irish up in New York, you see? So we’ve decided to head on out to St. Louis, then to Independence, and on to California or Oregon.”

  California. Oregon. Cass blinked rapidly. It was as though she were being told that David and his new wife were preparing to travel to the far ends of the earth. She tried to smile, managing it just barely, then wondered aloud what all of this had to do with her husband.

  “Well, it’s like this, Mrs. Roe, you—”

  “For heaven’s sake, David,” she said, though her gaze was on Melissa, “please call me Cass, or Cassandra. We’ve known each other for far too long to keep on with the formalities. Especially now. Cass, please. Leave off the Mrs. Roe, if you don’t mind.”

  “Well,” David said, obviously flattered, and unsure of the proper response. “Well, thank you, ma’am.” He paused, lifted the stein and put it down again, firmly.

  “What I’m saying is this: I don’t pay much attention to what Mr. Cavendish says these days. He can’t do anything to me, and I know enough law so that when we get out there—wherever that will be—I can hang out my shingle and do all right by myself. So one afternoon about a month ago, I was putting some papers away when I heard Mr. Roe and Mr. Sampson arguing something fierce. I listened because I thought they were coming to blows, and I was going to step into Mr. Roe’s office on some excuse or other just to stop it—”

  “He’s like that, Davy is,” Melissa said dreamily.

  “—and I heard Mr. Sampson tell your husband that he’d better pay up or there would be trouble. That the others—and I don’t know who they might be—wanted to cash in on the chits he had signed—Mr. Roe, that is. And Mr. Roe, he said he was sorry for the delay and things like this take time, and he was sorry that he had ever lived through the day he had met Mr. Sampson. And all Mr. Sampson did was laugh kind of quiet and said that Mr. Roe never did have a choice in anything about anything. He said it wasn’t your husband’s fault, but life’s like that sometimes, and he had better pay up by the end of the year or else.”

  “Is that it?” Cass said, her voice sounding a thousand miles distant.

  David nodded.

  She gripped her glass in both hands, then, and released it as quickly when she realized it would shatter if she didn’t. Somewhere behind her, a man roared with laughter, sparking off several others in a thunderous demonstration. The air grew thick and warm, and she pulled off her gloves and wiped them over her face. And then, abruptly, before she knew what she was going to do, she told David and Melissa everything.

  From the massacre at her father’s farm to the day she returned to Philadelphia to claim her inheritance; and, most importantly, the part Sampson/Forrester had played in her asking today about Kevin and his visitors. It
was difficult, and she kept her face averted most of the time, but the release she felt when she had finished was, she thought, well worth the effort. She sensed that David was a true friend, though their dealings were other than personal, and she knew too that Melissa was the kind of woman she had been looking for among the dried weeds that Kevin had been introducing her to; and when she had done with her tale, Melissa’s face had grown more pale, and David was alternately glowering and sputtering with righteous indignation. It did not take a lecture for any of them to understand that an integral part of Geoffrey Hawkins’s retaliation plot had been to destroy her husband—and it seemed apparent now that this was virtually accomplished. Forrester, immediately after the wedding, had insinuated himself into Kevin’s good graces, and had evidently introduced him to a group of men who, over the course of the past year, had slowly but inexorably taken a great deal of his money and were now pressing him hard for what they were owed. And the only way he could get that kind of money was to—

  “But he can’t!” David protested. “The papers … Mr. Cavendish … it’s impossible, Cass, it’s impossible!”

  Cass, emotionally spent, gripped the edge of the table. “Find out,” she said harshly. “Please, David, you’ve got to find out if he’s taken anything from me.”

  “Mrs. Roe—Cassandra, I don’t know if I should. I—”

  Melissa took hold of his arm, half-turned him in his seat. Her voice was lowered so that he had to lean over to hear her over the din raised by an incoming group of men from the nearby courthouse.

  “You had better do it, David Vessler,” she warned, with a wink to Cass, “or you’ll be a single man tomorrow night. And sleeping alone, I might add.”

  “But Missy—”

  “David, for heaven’s sake, where’s your sense? You’ve told me often enough how much Mrs. Roe has done for you. Now, if Mr. Roe is stealing from her, you owe it to her to find out!”

  “But what if it’s true? What do I do then?”

  “Just tell me,” Cass said. “Just tell me, David, and I’ll handle it from there.”

  David was understandably hesitant, torn between his affection for Cass and his hard-to-dismiss loyalty to a firm that had educated him far beyond anything he would have received on his father’s Hudson River farm. Finally, with a wrenching decision that visibly shifted the lines of his face, he assented. He pushed to the end of the bench seat and collared the landlord, poking at the man’s immense girth for emphasis as he ordered a lunch for the women. Then, with a rueful look to his fiancée, he excused himself and vanished into the growing crowd. Several men, noting Vessler’s departure, immediately began hovering in the vicinity of the booth; and others, noting by their dress that neither Cass nor Melissa were of the sort who frequented the tavern in the evening, smiled appreciatively at the contrast between Cass’s dark beauty and her friend’s pale fragility. They were ignored, and those who might have found the courage to introduce themselves soon drifted away in search of easier, more understandable game.

  Several moments passed in uneasy silence, until Cass could no longer tolerate the tension she had created. “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” she said, a hand to her brow, “I’m sorry, Melissa, truly I am. I didn’t realize what was happening, I didn’t know your plans. If I had, I wouldn’t have put this on you or David for the world.”

  “Nonsense,” the younger girl said flatly. “David’s a fine man. And I wasn’t just saying that before, about your helping him. I meant it. He told me how you spoke with your husband about David’s progress, and his abilities. You didn’t have to do it, you didn’t know him all that well, but you did it, and I’m grateful.” She smiled, though her eyes reflected no mirth. “He’s good, I know that, but he needs a bit of prodding now and then. That’s why I’ve told him a hundred times over that he could have been a partner if he’d only pushed himself a little. Stood up for himself now and then and made his presence felt, if you know what I mean. But he wouldn’t. He just waited for them to notice him, and now they’re going to lose him. Well …” and she shrugged. “But that’s why I love him, I guess. That’s what makes him David.”

  A barmaid, her breasts fairly spilling out of the soiled lace ruff of her dress, came up to them then and deposited on the table two large plates of chipped dark wood. Each of them was heaped with slices of dark bread, slabs of rough-cut beef swimming in thick gravy, and a mound of potatoes piled high in the middle.

  When Cass fumbled for her purse, the woman smoothed her stained apron over her stomach and grinned. “The gent’s paid, ma’am. No need to bother. You want somethin’ to drink? Bit o’wine to wash that down?”

  Cass shook her head. Melissa nodded, and as soon as the barmaid left, she began eating ravenously before suddenly looking up at Cass with her eyes wide in apology.

  “My strength,” she said wryly. “I’ve got tomorrow to look to, and then the trip. My brother—he’s a smithy at Chism’s Grain and Stable—he thinks I should be skinny. David thinks different. Anyway, we’ll be leaving fairly soon to spend the winter in St. Louis. And I hear the food there’s damned rotten. I get it where I can.”

  Cass said nothing, her answering smile barely perfunctory. She could only pray for David’s rapid return, with news she knew instinctively he would not bring. And in waiting, she could only stare at her plate, and the flies that buzzed around it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Thirty minutes passed.

  Melissa, still apologizing, cleared her plate and then, after a shy, questioning glance, began work on Cass’s. Twice, a brace of young men approached the booth to launch a campaign of small talk that would, it was clearly written on their faces, lead to other delights; and twice, Melissa paused long enough in her eating to scowl at them and send them away muttering to themselves. The barmaid brought wine. Someone in the taproom began singing. There was a minor flurry as an early drunkard was escorted none too gently out the door.

  Cass noticed none of it. Although this time the beating was of a very different sort, she felt as she had when riding in the stolen carriage from Gettysburg to Virginia; a world she had once thought safe and reasonably secure had abruptly developed cracks in its foundation, and was ready to topple the moment David brought back the proof of what she already knew. It was too late for tears and recriminations; she had relied on Kevin, and he had betrayed her. No, she told herself instantly; he had not, his weakness had. It was as though the playing cards were merely some outward manifestation of an illness within, a sign that he was not as whole as he appeared. But that he could have stolen from her— Stop it, girl, she reproved herself, you have no evidence of it. And yet there was proof enough in the belief. No matter what else occurred, her marriage to Kevin Roe was drawing rapidly to an end. And still, he loved her. Worse; he loved her, and could do nothing about it.

  She was about to ask Melissa if she wouldn’t like to take a walk in the fresh air, perhaps to meet David on the way, when a small boy darted up to the booth, his face puffy and red, his hair trailing down over his eyes and matted with perspiration.

  “You Mrs. Roe?” he asked Melissa. She shook her head and pointed at Cass, who grabbed the boy’s wrists and would not release him when he struggled.

  “What is it?” she demanded.

  “Hey, lady, I don’t—”

  She yanked, drawing the boy hard against the table. He yelped and she only pulled at him harder, his feet now off the floor and kicking. “What is it?” she repeated, spitting each word as though it were acid.

  “Mr. Vessler—that the man?—he said you were to get to the office right away. He said you were gonna give me a penny.”

  Cass fumbled through her purse, found several coins, but rather than search through them she tossed them on the table. “Find it yourself,” she snapped, slid off the bench, and waited until Melissa joined her. They fought their way through the throng to the exit, Cass stiffening but otherwise not reacting to the unmistakable pressure of hands and fingers at her waist and buttocks. Melissa
, however, squealed once and swung her fist around blindly, catching a one-eyed man solidly on the ear. They left the building amid a raucous explosion of laughter and applause.

  “You have more courage than I do,” Cass said as they rushed down the street.

  “No. I’m just too delicate to be turned black and blue by the likes of them,” Melissa grunted.

  Cass stared at her dumbly until Melissa’s grin told her of the joke, but as much as she wanted to she could not laugh.

  Within minutes they reached the mouth of the cul-de-sac and Cass, one hand on Melissa’s arm, stopped as though met by a glass wall. There was a small knot of people standing in front of the law office, mostly men, and a few day-gowned women beneath colorful parasols. They were evidently trying to see something inside, and there was someone in the recess of the entrance attempting to hold them all back. No, Cass thought with a shake of her head, but did not resist when Melissa pulled her forward, urgently. And by the time they reached the growing crowd they were nearly running, using their momentum to force their way through to the door. Thus McWilliams, his string tie askew, his waistcoat opened and his shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow, lifted a palm to stop them. Immediately he recognized Cass, however, his frown faltered, and with one hand still held up to keep back the curious, he opened the door and ushered them inside. Once there, Cass headed for the railing gate, kicked at it when it stuck, and pushed through to head for Kevin’s office. Before she was halfway across the floor, with Melissa in her shadow, David darted out from Cavendish’s office to stand in front of her, his hands gripping her arms tightly.

  “Don’t, Cass,” he said. His lips were pale, his eyes hard. “Come with me, it’ll be better.”

  She struggled but could not break free, straining to see around him. “My God, David, what’s happened? The boy … why are all those people out there?” Her voice rose to a shriek. “Kevin! Kevin, can you hear me? It’s Cassandra! Kevin, Kevin, my God, what’s going on?”