Leslie LaFoy

by Jacksons Way

  Lindsay nodded. It had been the ham. Mrs. Kowalski had seen the ham and the culinary prospects before her and decided to take her chances in the wider world. It was probably for the best.

  “While at breakfast,” Abigail went on as Lindsay ate, “Mr. Rutherford received a note from Mr. Tipton, asking him to return to work, if at all possible. He left immediately.”

  Yes, Ben probably needed another set of hands at the office. Jack had requested the gathering of a great deal of information. The task would be accomplished more quickly with Jeb's assistance. “Anything else?”

  The housekeeper took a deep breath. “Mr. Vanderhagen is in the parlor, clutching this morning's edition of the Herald and trying to wear a rut in your mother's Persian rug.”

  God love her, Abigail had certainly saved the best for last. Maybe. If Vanderhagen had seen the news story, he wasn't the only one. Lindsay took a sip of coffee before she broached the worst possibility. “Any sign of Agatha or Henry?”

  “Not yet. Your sister apparently spent the night at your brother's. Thank God.”

  Lindsay nodded, remembering the ugly scene with her sister the night before and grateful that a reprisal of it would, apparently, be delayed for a while yet. She managed a smile for her housekeeper and said, “If you'll show Mr. Vanderhagen into the dining room, I'll deal with the first of today's fire-breathing dragons.”

  “Once I do that,” the older woman said, heading for the door, “I'll be in the kitchen with a full bucket of water. Call if you need assistance in putting him out. It would be my pleasure.”

  “Thank you, Abigail,” Lindsay replied, laughing and wondering how Abagail could manage, with one arm, to throw the contents of a bucket with any force. “If you hear the crash of the coffeepot followed by a particularly loud bellow of outrage, that'll be your signal to bring the bucket in. I'll take the assault from there.”

  “He's not worth the cost of a new coffeepot,” the housekeeper pronounced as she disappeared from sight.

  Lindsay quickly ate her eggs and ham, determined to be done with breakfast before Otis Vanderhagen steamed into the dining room.

  “Why did you tell them all this? What were you thinking?”

  Lindsay didn't bother to look at the bellowing blob of attorney as he crossed from the doorway to the table. Instead, she laid down her fork, blotted her lips with her napkin, then reached for the coffeepot and freshened her cup. With all the serenity she could muster, she said, “I believe that honesty is always the best approach. Sooner or later the truth is bound to come out anyway. Being truthful from the first spares one embarrassment later.”

  The paper hit the table beside her. Vanderhagen jabbed at the newsprint with a stubby finger as he yelled, “You should have sent the reporter to me and let me issue any statements to be made!”

  “It wasn't Lindsay's decision; it was mine and I take full responsibility for it.”

  Jack. Gallant Jack. Interfering Jack. Lindsay met his gaze squarely. “I don't need to be defended, Jack. My actions were reasonable. I can take care of myself in the present situation.”

  “We covered the difference between ‘can’ and ‘should’ yesterday,” he countered, settling into a chair. His gaze met hers and she saw anger flash in his dark eyes. “If we need to go over it again, I'd be happy to.”

  It was a challenge, clear and unmistakable. She bristled, but before she could utter a word, Vanderhagen made a snorting sound and barked at Jack, “You can't be honest in this town. They'll eat you alive!” Then he pointed a stubby finger at Lindsay and bellowed, “You of all people should have known that. Need I remind you of—”

  “Tell me how all this is going to affect the legality of Billy's second Will,” Jackson interrupted, ignoring the man's ire and pouring himself a cup of coffee.

  “It's not,” Vanderhagen admitted petulantly.

  Lindsay momentarily set aside her irritation with Jack. Now wasn't the time. “Ham, scrambled eggs, and toast,” she supplied as she lifted the silver dome from his plate. “Mine was quite good. Let me know if yours has gotten cold and I'll have it heated for you.”

  He nodded his thanks for the offer and, putting his napkin across his lap, said, “Tell me, Vanderhagen, just how the truth's going to affect the operations of the company.”

  “There will be assumptions that the company's approach will change. People won't know what to expect, how to read your actions. They won't know your long-term objectives and what positions to take in reacting.”

  “And how is any of that bad?”

  Otis Vanderhagen was quick and empathic. “It creates uncertainty and uncertainty creates volatility and volatility always leads to chaos.”

  “And out of chaos frequently comes opportunity and advantage,” Jackson countered calmly just before he took a bite of eggs and ham.

  “Or disaster,” Vanderhagen shot back, pulling his handkercief out of his pocket and mopping his brow.

  Lindsay watched as Jack slowly chewed, swallowed, and took a sip of his coffee. “You're thinking that things can actually get worse than they already are. They can't.” He looked over at her and said, “It's all a little cool, but still edible. Coffee's nice and hot, though.”

  “And this!” Vanderhagen said, snatching the folded paper from the table and shaking it at her. “Lindsay, you are far too valuable to the company to be blithely running into burning buildings and pulling out injured men!”

  Appreciating the manner in which Jack was dealing with the man, she copied him. “I did not run blithely,” she corrected, serenely pulling the crust from her toast. “I gave it considerable thought. And since the alternative was Mr. Stennett's certain death, there was no other choice. If the situation were to occur again, I would make the same decision.” She popped the bit of toast in her mouth as though she had nothing other than eating on her mind.

  At the edge of her vision she saw Vanderhagen look between her and Jack, open his mouth, and then promptly snap it shut. He looked again, stuffed the newspaper under his arm, and asked, “How is Richard this morning?”

  Jack replied before she could. “Much the same as yesterday and the day before.”

  “I'll go up and see him before I leave,” Vanderhagen declared, turning on his heel. At the doorway he turned back. “As the company attorney, I am strongly advising both of you to issue no further statements to the press.”

  Jack's rebuttal was quiet, but nothing less than final. “I'll do as I damn well please and think necessary. I'm not going to hide behind your skirts.”

  “Educate him, Lindsay! Before he brings the house down around your ears!”

  Lindsay listened to him storm through the foyer and up the main stairs, her gaze fastened on the gold-fringed, navy brocade draperies framing the doors that led from the dining room to the back terrace and the formal gardens beyond. “In all honesty, I wouldn't mind if this house did fall in on itself,” she said. “I've always felt as though I'm living in a shrine to pretension.”

  “Why haven't you changed it?” Jackson asked, forking up the last of his eggs and ham. “Make it into something you like being in?”

  “It was my mother's home until she died and so it wasn't mine to change,” she explained with a shrug. “Since her death, I haven't had the money necessary to gut it and start over.”

  “Do you like these curtains?” he asked.

  “No,” she admitted, reaching for her coffee cup. “They're too heavy and too dark. They make the room feel like a cave.”

  He made a contemplative sound, put his napkin beside his plate, and rose from his seat. Lindsay watched as he stepped across the room, lifted a side panel, and peered up under the yardage. “What are you doing, Jack?”

  He didn't say a word, but stepped back, took the fabric in both hands, and yanked. Lindsay heard herself gasp over the sound of straining wood and cracking plaster. The draperies came down as one massive wall of blue, landing on the floor at Jack's feet in an embarrassingly substantial cloud of dust. Brilliant sunl
ight flooded the room. The gardens beyond had never seemed so large or beckoning.

  Jack turned to face her, his smile broad and his eyes just as bright as the morning. “And it didn't cost a dime.”

  Her bedroom draperies faced the garden, too. If one hard pull was all it took … The plaster could be repaired easily enough. No. She needed to be practical. One just didn't run around the house pulling the draperies off the windows on a mere whim. “What do you intend to replace them with that will be equally inexpensive?”

  “I don't see that they need to be replaced,” he supplied, coming back to the table and picking up his coffee cup. He turned back to the doors, took a sip, and then said, “No one's out in the garden trying to peer in.”

  “There is the gardener to consider,” she felt compelled to remind him.

  Jack looked at her over his shoulder. “And does he rou- tinely try to peer in your windows?” he asked, his smile quirked.

  Lindsay laughed. “I don't suppose it would make much difference if he did. Proctor's almost blind. I doubt that he can see anything that's more than a foot beyond the end of his nose.”

  “Your next objection, then?”

  She didn't have one. At least not one that wasn't founded on a hidebound devotion to living in a fashionably decorated tomb. “I suppose I could exist with it for a few days and see how I feel about it.”

  “There you go,” he pronounced, saluting her with his coffee cup. “And when you decide you like it, you just point to the next set of curtains and I'll pull them down, too.”

  The ones in my bedroom. The thought of actually inviting Jack into her room sent her pulse skittering; not with trepidation, but with anticipation. Startled by the realization, she instinctively sought refuge in putting some distance between them. “Speaking of deciding …”

  “Have you?”

  She nodded and took a sip of her coffee. “I understand the difference between ‘can’ and ‘should’ very clearly, Jack. I think our association will run much more smoothly if you'll bear in mind that I'm not only quite capable of taking care of myself, but accustomed to doing so. I appreciate the fact that you're motivated to protect me by a sense of gallantry. But, however kind your intentions, the effort isn't necessary. I'm not a child and I'm certainly not helpless. I don't like being treated as though I am.”

  “I didn't mean to imply that you are. If I somehow did, I'm sorry.”

  She nodded in gracious acceptance of his apology. “I gave the present situation some thought last night and it occurred to me that a reorganization of the company and personal assets is necessary regardless of anyone's secondary motives. Since I've never taken on a task of this magnitude and scale, and since Richard isn't able to advise me in the process, I'm willing to accept your counsel. I think we'll be a good partnership.”

  The single word reverberated in his mind. Partnership.

  Every partnership he'd ever entered into had ended with his being alone. Everyone had died. He didn't want Lindsay dead, too. Neither did he want her holding any expectations he didn't want or couldn't meet.

  “It's just temporary, you know,” he said, watching her face, looking for the slightest sign that she didn't understand the nature of things. “When it's over and done, I'll head back to where I belong and I won't so much as glance over my shoulder. You'll be on your own once I leave. What I parcel out goes without any strings of any sort.”

  “I understand completely,” she answered swiftly and surely. “But in the meantime, I still think we'd make good partners.”

  Just what kind of partners do you have in mind? he wanted to ask. Just business? God, he wanted to ask, wanted to know. And he knew better. “You're comfortable with the idea of making Henry and Agatha responsible for themselves?” he asked instead.

  “Yes. Absolutely.”

  Crisp and certain. In a way it was an answer to his other questions; Lindsay's mind was clearly focused on the business aspects of their association. His needed to remain there. “Speaking of your brother and sister, if Vanderhagen had time to read the paper and get here to lamblast us, I'm wondering what's keeping the other shoe from dropping.”

  “You should be counting your blessings. I suggest we go about our day as we normally would and make them wait until dinner this evening.”

  “Our normal day isn't exactly something I'd like to have another of right away,” he countered with a chuckle. “So far we've had a surprise Last Will and Testament and a stroke, followed by a fire and a household turned upside down. If it's all the same to you, I'd just as soon have an oddly uneventful day today.”

  “And how do you propose to accomplish this?” She grinned, her eyes sparkling with a merriment that made him ache to hold her, to kiss her as he had the night before.

  “We'll just keep moving,” he answered resolutely, setting his coffee cup down in its saucer with a solid clink. “Trouble will have to hunt us down and catch us.”

  “My bonnet and gloves are on the foyer table.” She tucked her napkin beside her plate and rose, adding, “I'll get them as we tear past.”

  Jackson followed, thinking that if he had any real choice in how to spend the day, he'd go upstairs, tear down the door between their rooms, and then see where that bit of absolute insanity might take them. Thank God Lindsay wasn't going to give him the opportunity to find out. At least not today, anyway. Down the road, though … He remembered the way she'd licked his fingertip the night before and his blood heated.

  The truth was plain and simple; Lindsay didn't have much more resistance to temptation than he did. Their relationship would likely be a glorious, breathless, memorable affair. A short, glorious, breathless, memorable affair. It was the likely end of it that could prove to be ugly, though. Lindsay needed to know that he wasn't going to offer her anything beyond the moment. If he could be certain that they could come together with a mutual understanding and then part amiably, he'd be willing to take the ride.

  Which meant that there was another plain and simple truth; sooner or later he and Lindsay needed to have a blunt conversation about where they were headed. Jesus. He never learned.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  LINDSAY WATCHED THE WORLD passing outside the carriage window and pretended that she didn't know that Jack's knee brushed against hers every time the wheels rolled over a rough patch of paving stone. The first time it had happened, it had occurred to her that she could—and probably should for the sake of propriety—turn on the seat and avoid the contact as she had the very first time they'd shared the carriage. She remained just as she was seated, however; largely because Jack knew that they were touching and made no move to end the contact, either. Instead, he watched her with a knowing smile, giving their contact an element of danger that she found so exhilarating, it was irresistible.

  At what point in her life had she become such a wanton? Lindsay wondered. Her mother's instruction on the art of seducing a man had been embarrassingly direct, but Lindsay had proven herself so inept at implementing the principles that her mother had finally declared her utterly hopeless and ceased trying to educate her. Apparently the lessons had been stored somewhere in the deepest recesses of her brain, though. They'd surged to the fore, unbidden, last night when Jack had traced her lip with his whiskey-coated fingertip. And now she was alone in the carriage with him and brazenly welcoming the touch of his leg against hers.

  There was only one thing that Jack could reasonably think: that she was agreeable to his physical advances. Oddly enough, given her romantic misadventure of the past, she did indeed enjoy Jack Stennett's touch. She liked the way it made her heart race, and the sense of daring that came with inviting it. It hadn't been at all like this before. As for the almost certain consequence of being so bold with Jack … Lindsay was very well aware of where it would lead. She was also well aware that she'd reached the point where she either needed to stop flirting with him or quit pleading propriety and let matters progress as they would. It wasn't fair to give Jack contradictory messages.
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  What to do? Withdrawing behind the facade of a prim and proper lady was a safe course. It was also lonely and allowed no room for pleasure of any sort. More than anything else, it was false. She wasn't prim and proper by nature. It took conscious effort to remember how she was supposed to behave. On those occasions when she chose to ignore social convention, she always felt a wonderful sense of being both liberated and honestly herself.

  She hadn't felt anything like that with Charles, of course. Every step she'd taken with him had been a duty, an obligation, and very much a calculated surrender. There had been no sense of being free, of daring exhilaration; just a nagging hope that her performance would meet his expectations so that she could accomplish her mother's business goals. She'd failed miserably on every count and vowed never again to subject herself to such humiliation.

  But it was all very different with Jack. There was an undeniably powerful quality to being with him, to his advances. For the first time since the debacle with Charles Martens, she was tempted to risk her pride. But what if it turned out this time just as it had before? She certainly didn't want to experience such a humbling again. Once had been quite enough.

  What a dithering little ninny she'd become, Lindsay silently groused. It wasn't like her at all. She was quite accustomed to lining up the advantages and disadvantages of any situation, and then making a clear and definitive decision on the action to be taken. Her mother had fervently maintained that the physical relationship between a man and a woman was merely a business one, and should be approached with the calm rationality one used in negotiating interest rates with a banker. One should consider the merits of the association, negotiate for concessions greater than your own—typically in the form of expensive gifts—and then honor the agreement with a dutiful and silent surrender.