A Bed of Thorns and Roses

by Sondra Allan Carr

  She obeyed without question, listening to Garrick outline his plan while she quaffed the laudanum laced wine.

  “Perkins, I want you to hitch my horse to Mr. Nashe’s buggy.” Garrick made a brief, wry grimace by way of apology for asking him to do something outside his usual range of duties. “You’ll have to drive Mrs. Cooper to Bear’s Ford.”

  Garrick turned to Mrs. Cooper. “You’ll want to stay with your brother and his wife.” He wasn’t actually giving her a choice, but rather offered the statement out of politeness. “And Perkins, take the money from the table in the front hall. You’ll need to get a room at the inn. It will be too late for you to make the drive back tonight.”

  “Yes, sir.” Perkins accepted his orders without a qualm, already heading out the door to do as he was bid. Garrick reminded himself to give the man a raise.

  “But Dr. Garrick, what about Jenny?” Mrs. Cooper, who had slumped down in her chair, roused herself long enough to object. “If she goes home, that horrible man will still be there. And if she doesn’t go home, where will she go?”

  “Don’t worry. As soon as you’re on your way, I’ll find Jenny and see that she’s safe.” When Mrs. Cooper gave him a doubtful look, Garrick added, “I promise.”

  Though he had his own doubts, it was a promise he had every intention of keeping.

  Garrick helped Mrs. Cooper to her feet and eased her toward the door, hoping to get her safely settled in the buggy before the laudanum rendered her senseless. He pitied Perkins, having to explain this mess to her brother. The two men would probably have the devil of a time getting her out of the buggy and into bed.

  Perkins appeared and informed him that he had pulled the buggy around to the front of the house. The man was not only efficient but fast as lightning. Garrick handed Mrs. Cooper off to him, with a promise that he would look in on her the next day. She mumbled her thanks, her speech already growing sluggish.

  After they left the house, Garrick thought to take a pillow out to Mrs. Cooper. He positioned it behind her head, then tucked a blanket around her. When he’d finished, Perkins touched the buggy whip to the brim of his hat in a brief salute, then set off with a flick of the reins.

  Garrick wasted no time watching them go. He returned to the house long enough to fetch a topcoat and hat, then dashed into the street, hailing the first cab he saw. When the driver pulled to the side of the road to wait, Garrick jogged toward the rig, thinking what he would do to Tate if Jenny had suffered any harm.

  If she had, the scandal sheets would have more than a sordid sex tale to titillate their readers. They could very well have a murder to report.

  Chapter Forty two

  Jonathan sat behind the library desk, a huge block of carved mahogany typical of the imposing furnishings favored by his father. Normally he detested his father’s grandiose style, but tonight the massive desk provided a welcome barrier between him and the door.

  He was biding his time. The book that lay open before him was no more than a stage prop. He might as well have been reading a list of the elements, or a table of logarithms, for all the meaning he took from it. The cold rage had been steadily growing inside him for hours, paradoxically fed by his burning desire for Isabelle.

  Even now, knowing what he knew, he wanted her. He should have taken what she had so freely offered the night before.

  He hated this waiting, the feeling that he was trapped in an interminable entr’acte, knowing the curtain was about to rise on the final act of their pathetic drama. Idly, Jonathan picked up a pencil. “Break a leg,” he said aloud and, grasping both ends, snapped the thin wooden writing stick in half.

  How she must have laughed at his misplaced chivalry.

  There was a soft knock, then the door swung open, and Isabelle made her entrance. Jonathan lowered his fists to the desktop, still clutching the broken pencil halves. He purposely did not stand.

  She stopped in front of the desk and stood looking at him with an imploring gaze. He resolutely refused to greet her. His heart had turned so cold, he wondered it did not stop beating.

  “I wish to apologize for my behavior last night.”

  Her words were nearly inaudible. Despite his natural inclination to lean forward, the better to hear, he slouched back in his chair, endeavoring to adopt an air of insouciance.

  “Why do you think you owe me an apology?”

  She blushed at his question, letting her gaze slide from his in a convincing portrayal of chagrin. “I was—I mean—I acted immodestly.”

  She was acting even now, Jonathan thought. Last night had been a cleverly calculated act as well. But to what purpose?

  “Please, in future don’t restrain yourself.” He lowered his voice, adding an unmistakably salacious emphasis to his next words. “I daresay, I shall not.”

  Her head jerked up—a shade melodramatically, perhaps?—and when she met his eyes with an artful blend of shock and remorse, her blush deepened, traveling down her neck, even coloring her ears.

  “Have you lost all respect for me?”

  “I have lost my assumptions regarding your candor.”

  As quickly as it had risen, the color drained from her face. Jonathan marveled at her ability to control what was ordinarily an involuntary response. He stirred in his seat, of a sudden made uncomfortably aware of his own involuntary response by the tightness in his groin.

  “Then you know?” Her voice trembled. Tears came to her eyes.

  The woman should take to the stage. For his own part, he had to struggle to keep his voice free of emotion.

  “I know about Roger.”

  “Roger?” She blinked at him, frowning.

  “How long did you think it would take me to find out?”

  Isabelle shook her head, obviously confused—or, more likely, displaying a studied representation to that effect.

  “But Nellie told me no one else knew.”

  He thought a moment, wary of what was no doubt a diversionary ploy meant to confuse him. “What does Nellie have to do with the affair?”

  “Nellie? She has everything to do with it. She’s the one who’s with child.”

  Nellie? With child? Jonathan stared at Isabelle. His mind blanked, as if he’d missed his cue and forgotten his lines. The course of their conversation had been painfully clear to him until that moment. Now he felt as if he’d studied the wrong script.

  “But what about you and Roger?”

  “Me and . . . ?”

  “I saw you today.” His damaged vocal cords muted the strength of his anger. What should have been a shout erupted as a raw, rough rasp, a single word dredged up from the depths of his despair like a foul eructation, an ugly, noxious burst of accusation. “Together.”

  “You saw me and Roger?” Her eyes widened. She feigned surprise so well, he could almost allow himself to be convinced.

  “Don’t try to deny what I saw with my own eyes.”

  “Well, yes, we were together, but—”

  “Finally, the truth.” Jonathan interrupted, his tone triumphant, though he felt anything but.

  Isabelle leaned across the desk. “You think Roger and I are romantically involved?”

  Jonathan bolted to his feet, shoving his chair back violently. He had deliberately marked the distance between them. He’d be damned if he’d permit her to overstep the boundary.

  “What else am I to think?” he snapped back at her, realizing too late that his anger betrayed the fact that he cared. Neither did it help his composure that Isabelle’s dramatic move had caused her otherwise demure neckline to gape open, thus exposing a generous portion of her cleavage.

  “Oh, Jonathan.”

  When she came around the side of the desk toward him, he scuttled backward around the other side, humiliatingly aware of how foolish he must look. Their ridiculous melodrama was in danger of becoming a farce.

  “I don’t want your pity.” They were facing one another across the length of the desk now.

  Isabelle frowned, for the fir
st time revealing a spark of anger. “Is it pity to tell you when you’re dead wrong about something?”

  He matched her frown, though of course she couldn’t see it, and maintained a stubborn silence.

  “Nellie and Roger want to marry. She came to me because they want your blessing. They’re expecting a child.”

  Jonathan folded his arms across his chest and turned his back on Isabelle. He couldn’t look at her and sort out the remains of the false construct she had just succeeded in toppling. Behind him, he heard her move, and looked down to see her hand resting on his sleeve. She had taken advantage of his confusion to catch him unawares.

  “I’m flattered that you were actually jealous on my behalf,” she said softly.

  Jonathan squeezed his eyes shut and managed to transform a groan into a heavy sigh, though it was a woefully small portion of his dignity that he thus rescued. “I cannot fathom you, Isabelle. I am at my wit’s end.”

  “Fathom me?”

  Boldly, she came around to face him. He wanted to move away, but the desk blocked his retreat.

  “I ask nothing of you.” Jonathan flung the words at Isabelle in an angry, ineffectual outburst that utterly failed to disguise his defenselessness. He abandoned any pretense of strength, pleading now. “Nothing you do not want to give, except the assurance that you will stay with me. Don’t you know, if you married me, you would be the richest woman in America? Perhaps in the world, save for the queen.”

  “I told you, I won’t marry you for your money.”

  He saw it again, the flash of anger behind her eyes, hotter this time.

  “Then what will it take? What can I offer to get you to marry me?”

  “Nothing,” she shot back. “You can’t offer anything that would induce me to marry you.”

  “Why?” Jonathan reached for her arms, not knowing if he wanted to drag her against him, or shake some sense into her.

  Isabelle flattened her palms against his chest. Thinking she meant to push away from him, Jonathan immediately released her. To his surprise, she melted against him. Resting her head on his shoulder, she angled her gaze up at him.

  “Could you ever love me, Jonathan?”

  “I . . . ”

  “Don’t answer that question.” She put her fingers against his mask, pressing his lips shut.

  It was an unnecessary gesture. He was incapable of speech.

  “Because you would only love the person you think you know, not who I really am.”

  She leaned against his arm and looked up at him with a longing that raced through him like a streak of oil fed flame. Somehow, he found his voice, though the words nearly turned to ash inside his mouth. “Then tell me who you are.”

  Isabelle retreated from his arms, shaking her head as she moved away from him. “I cannot.”

  “Why? Why? For God’s sake, Isabelle, why not?”

  She clenched her fists and crushed them against her mouth, as though she feared the words would escape against her will. Jonathan gently pulled her hands away from her face.

  “Why?” he whispered.

  She backed away carefully, like someone suddenly confronted by a wild beast, then hurled her angry remark at him from a safe distance. “For the same reason you won’t show me your face.”

  Her cruel words ripped away the last thin integument that had shielded his frail hope, their injustice as sharp as the surgeon’s scalpel that had cut away his charred flesh. And yet her words contained a truth that poured over the raw wound beneath like antiseptic, a liquid agony that washed away everything but the blinding, mind numbing pain.

  “I bared myself to you. I trusted you. I ask you, Isabelle, where is your trust of me?”

  She was shaking her head, giving him a stricken look, as though he were the one at fault. Her silence was all the answer he needed.

  “Obviously, I have been a fool to expect an equal trust in return.” He turned to go, adding as he went, “I shall not trouble you again.”

  Chapter Forty three

  Garrick instructed the driver to wait for him, then descended at the head of the street and proceeded the rest of the way on foot. He didn’t want the sound of an approaching carriage to alert Tate to his presence. Belligerent drunks required cautious treatment, and he might as well use the one small advantage he held at this point—surprise.

  In all honesty, he had to admit he would welcome a physical altercation. More than likely, though, he would find Tate passed out, unable to offer any idea as to Jenny’s whereabouts.

  Garrick reached the steps leading to the front door and mounted them two at a time, grabbing the knocker the instant his feet landed on the stoop. When his vigorous knocking failed to rouse any sign of life inside the house, he started kicking at the door with his boot heel. He was ready to kick the damned thing down, if need be, or break a window to gain entrance.

  A sound of breaking glass came from somewhere deep inside the house, then a man’s heavy footfalls descending the stairs from the second floor. Garrick could hear his complaints. Though incoherent, they were peppered with enough profanities to make his meaning clear.

  “Well, ya goddamned bitch, ’sabout time ya came home.” Tate’s voice boomed out on the other side of the door just before he flung it wide.

  “I take it from your scurrilous remark that your daughter isn’t in.”

  Tate’s eyes widened comically. “Garrick, you sonofabitch.”

  Garrick thrust the head of his walking stick against Tate’s chest, forcing him back. “Whom else did you expect?”

  Garrick entered the house, continuing to prod Tate down the hall, finally backing him into the stairs. Tate’s knees buckled and he took a hard seat, gracelessly sprawling where he landed. Garrick quickly aimed his stick against Tate’s windpipe, pressing just hard enough to make him aware of his vulnerability.

  “Where is she?”

  Garrick looked down from his position of advantage, thinking how easy it would be with just one more thrust of his walking stick to rid the world of this pitiful excuse for a man.

  Tate stared back with narrowed eyes, resembling an insolent, if somewhat disoriented, rat. “Hell if I know.”

  “You must have some idea where she would go. I daresay this isn’t the first time she’s had to run from your abuse.”

  “Back to the whorehouse like her mother, for all I know.”

  With a flick of his wrist, Garrick brought the stick hard against Tate’s jaw, then whipped it back under his chin. “You did, indeed, drive her mother there, but I’m here to see Jenny does not meet the same fate.”

  Garrick watched Tate rub at his cheek, keeping a sharp eye on him in case he made a grab for the walking stick. The wretch looked back at him, too much of a coward, Garrick decided, to put up a fight.

  A spark of cunning lit Tate’s eyes, replacing the fear of a moment before. Garrick could tell he sensed an advantage and meant to play it. The fool didn’t know the meaning of playing his cards close to his chest.

  “I got to wonder just why you’re taking such an interest in my pretty little girl. I got to wonder if you’d want your high society friends knowing that you’re in the habit of taking advantage of young girls.”

  Garrick had expected this ploy, and he was prepared for it.

  “I have to wonder how long you might spend in prison for the crimes of assault and extortion.” Garrick paused to let his threat take root in Tate’s sodden brain.

  “You know, the entire police force of this town hold me in high esteem, as I’ve provided my services without charge to them and their families—oh, for the last twenty years or so. To a man, they’re grateful to me, and wouldn’t mind doing any small favor I asked.” Garrick waited to see how his words took effect, but couldn’t resist adding a small postscript to his message. “Especially if the favor entailed ridding our good town of one of its least savory vermin.”

  “Are—are you threatening me?” Tate sputtered.

  “Exactly.” Garrick favored Tate with
a sardonic smile, at the same time fixing him with a hard stare. “Now that we’ve reached an understanding, I’m going to tell you what you will do.” Garrick tapped Tate’s chin with his walking stick a couple of times for emphasis. “Tomorrow morning, at ten sharp, a carriage will arrive here, and one of my friends in uniform will accompany you to the station. He will put you on the train with a ticket to San Francisco and five bills of one hundred dollars each to give you a start in your new life on the west coast. You are never to set foot in this town or this state again, nor attempt to communicate with either one of your daughters. If you do, you will most assuredly regret the mistake. Understood?”

  Tate nodded mutely, glaring at Garrick with an ill concealed hatred that Garrick found invigorating. He concluded with a final caveat for Tate.

  “The deal is off, however, if I find that Jenny has come to any harm whatsoever. If she has, I and my friends will see to it that you wish you’d never been born.”

  Afraid he might give in to temptation and carry through with his threat that very moment, Garrick left quickly, slamming the door on his way out. Though a puerile act, it gave him a good deal of satisfaction.

  * * *

  Garrick brooded on the ride home. As satisfying as it was to think of Tate on the outbound train the next morning, his pleasure was tempered by a greater sense of failure. He still had no idea where Jenny might be.

  He checked his pocket watch as they passed under the light of a streetlamp. It was close on midnight, no time for a young girl to be wandering the streets alone. He imagined Jenny, frightened, perhaps even lost, with no money for a hotel or food, and no possessions save the clothes on her back. Where would she go under such circumstances? Where could she go? He hated the thought, but any search for Jenny would have to be postponed until daylight.

  On the off chance she might have tried to find him at his surgery, Garrick had the driver take him there. The trip proved fruitless, although he did take the time to leave Nurse Harris a note, instructing her to cancel his appointments the next day.