by Kay Hooper
Julia felt a shock, and for an instant her thoughts whirled in confusion. Was that part of her reluctance to trust Cyrus? Not because she had any real suspicion he was somehow deceiving her in his kindness now, but because something deep inside her stubbornly insisted happiness wasn’t meant for her? Had Adrian twisted her emotions so badly he had convinced her she deserved to be hurt and disappointed no matter what?
She got up from the bed slowly, looking at her unexpectedly wise sister with a little smile she could feel inside her, tentative but, for the first time, hopeful. “No, I won’t do that,” she promised.
Lissa smiled at her, then went quietly from the bedroom.
Julia spent a few minutes putting clothing, hats, and shoes away—the maids had been more than thorough in getting everything she might need—and thought about herself and her emotions more carefully than she had in a very long time.
She was on the point of putting her plain dark skirt and white blouse back on when she paused, still thinking. After a moment she left the skirt and blouse lying over a chair and went to the wardrobe. She fingered several garments, finally drawing out an afternoon dress of olive green. It was elegant in design and very simple, but it was a long way from what anyone would consider a mourning dress. Julia put it on.
It fastened up the front of the bodice, and as she dealt with the tiny hooks and eyes, she couldn’t help remembering what Sarah had said when she and Cathy had returned to the house weighted down by even more boxes a couple of hours earlier. Mr. Cyrus, she’d giggled with a slight blush, had been quite adamant about corsets, and alarmingly frank in his detailed description of what he did not want them to buy.
Conscious of the relatively comfortable garment beneath her dress now, Julia had to smile. The corset in no way exaggerated her shape, nor did it constrict her waist painfully, make it impossible for her to breathe normally, or turn every movement into a torture. Julia was delighted with it.
The dress in place, she studied her reflection for a moment and nodded to herself. Like virtually everything else she had tried on, it fit perfectly. She thought both the color and simple, elegant design suited her, and she hoped she looked attractive. Not for fashion’s sake, but for Cyrus.
She left the bedroom, planning to check on Lissa, but stopped in the hall as Stork approached her.
“Mrs. Stanton has called to see you, Miss Julia,” he said in his quiet, unexpressive voice. “She’s waiting in the blue parlor.”
Julia realized suddenly that, although he’d been turning away other callers all day, the butler had twice admitted Mrs. Stanton. Because of the woman’s insistence, she wondered, or because Cyrus had left those instructions? Whatever the reason, it seemed clear she had to speak to this visitor.
“Thank you, Stork,” she murmured, changing her direction to move toward the stairs.
“Miss Julia?”
She paused and looked back at him. “Yes?” she asked, realizing something else: she had not been called Mrs. Drummond since entering this house. Cyrus’s doing?
The elderly man hesitated, some fleeting emotion crossing his stern features, then said precisely, “It’s not my place to speak, Miss Julia, but I’ve served this house more than forty years and I feel I know Mr. Cyrus as well as anyone does.”
“You went west with him, didn’t you?” Julia said, remembering what she’d heard.
“Yes, Miss.” Stork hesitated again, then said, “The tales told about him, they’re wrong.”
Considering the circumstances, Julia hardly wasted more than a fleeting thought on the impropriety of discussing Cyrus with his butler. “You mean his women?” she asked bluntly.
Stork nodded, betraying no embarrassment. “People saw, but they didn’t understand. He has a—a gift for helping others. When there’s trouble in their lives, unhappiness because of some problem they are unable to solve alone. Mr. Cyrus always seems to know that, and tries to help them. They were mostly women, perhaps because women have fewer resources when something goes wrong for them.”
Julia knew that only too well. “I see.” She felt mildly puzzled. “Why are you telling me this, Stork?”
Again the butler hesitated, and when he spoke his voice came slowly. “I’ve never seen Mr. Cyrus the way he is with you, Miss. I’ve never seen him so happy. I just wanted you to know he isn’t the rake some people say he is. He’s a good man. And he would never hurt you.” There was only the faintest emphasis on the pronoun.
Julia gazed at Stork’s impassive face, and as she looked into quiet brown eyes, she thought, He knows. The Drummond servants were staying there for the moment; had they known more than she realized and talked about it? Probably. Servants always seemed to know more than their employers realized. The odd thing was, Julia didn’t feel upset.
“Thank you, Stork,” she said softly.
“The entire staff is happy to have you and your sister here, Miss Julia.”
“Thank you,” she repeated, smiling, then turned away and continued toward the stairs. Another gentle push toward Cyrus, she thought bemusedly. First Lissa and then Stork—as well as the other Fortune servants, apparently. As she went down to greet Felice Stanton, Julia had the idea she was about to encounter another ally. Not particularly because of what Lissa had said about Felice, but because Stork had admitted her to the house…several times.
She walked into the blue parlor, a small room at the side of the house, feeling wary and uncertain. Felice, a small woman in her early thirties with dark hair and eyes, was unusually lovely. She stood near the window, holding a newspaper in one gloved hand, and when she spoke—obviously referring to Adrian—her voice was dryly ironic.
“A week ago he walked on water; now half the reporters writing about his untimely demise have the insufferable gall to claim they knew he was a lunatic all along.”
It was hardly the accepted conventional speech to a very recent widow, but the unexpected greeting, combined with Felice’s rueful smile, not only put Julia at ease but made her immediately warm toward the older woman. “It sells newspapers, I suppose,” she said.
Felice uttered a faintly disgusted sound and tossed the paper toward a chair. She came to shake hands with Julia, her grip warm and firm, and said frankly, “Custom says this is a dreadfully inappropriate time to call, but etiquette can go hang. I’ve felt uneasy about you for months, Julia, and if I’d only said something…Well, at least you would have had someone to talk to.”
“Uneasy about me?” Julia gestured toward a comfortable settee, and as they both sat down she studied Felice with a startled suspicion in her mind.
“You’ll recognize the signs from now on too,” Felice said quietly. “You won’t see it often, thank God, but you will see it. Beatings do more than leave scars on skin, no matter how well we think we can hide what we feel.”
“You?”
Felice nodded. “My first husband. That’s why I wanted to talk to you today, Julia. It took me a long time to heal, and if it hadn’t been for Noel…” Her eyes grew a little misty, then she smiled. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? How one man can heal the wounds another man inflicted?”
“I—I’m not sure that’s possible,” Julia confessed in a low voice, but her eyes were pathetically hopeful. “Is it?”
Taking the younger woman’s hand in her own and holding it strongly, Felice said, “I wasn’t sure, either, ten years ago. Then I met Noel. And I met another woman who’d been through much the same thing. You aren’t alone, Julia. We aren’t alone. And it helps to talk about it, to someone who understands. May I tell you my story?”
Her throat was so tight Julia couldn’t speak, but she nodded, and she listened. In time, she talked.
—
Cyrus asked his attorney to wait for him in his study, then addressed Stork as they stood together in the entrance hall. “Where’s Miss Julia?”
“In the blue parlor, sir, with Mrs. Stanton.” The butler’s voice was unexpressive, and few would have heard anything informative beyond the f
acts he imparted. Cyrus heard more.
“They’ve been talking?”
“For more than an hour, sir. Miss Lissa is walking in the garden with one of her young friends who called to see her. One of the new—footmen—you hired is stationed by the gate.”
“Has Lissa seen him yet?”
“I don’t believe so, sir.”
“All right.” Cyrus stood thinking for a moment, a faint frown drawing his brows together. Absently, he said, “I’ve found other employment for the Drummond servants, so they’ll be out of your way by tomorrow. And if a Mr. Stevens should call, I want to see him immediately.”
“Yes, sir. Another Pinkerton man, sir?” Stork inquired in a low voice.
Cyrus nodded. “Yes, but remember what I said—keep that information to yourself, Stork. I don’t want Julia or Lissa worried, and I see no reason why the staff should know.”
“Very well, sir.”
Cyrus crossed the entrance hall to his study and went in, closing the door behind him. His attorney, Gabriel Rushton, was seated in a comfortable chair by the desk placidly smoking a cigar. He was a silver-haired man in his fifties, very distinguished, with shrewd gray eyes and a deep, mellow voice.
That voice was a little dry now as he said, “This is highly irregular, Cy.”
Settling into his chair behind the desk, Cyrus said, “Legally, perhaps.”
Rushton looked pained. “The law is my business. Why I ever had the misfortune to accept Adrian Drummond as a client I’ll never know, but I am obligated to discharge my duties as his attorney in accordance with the law—and that hardly includes divulging any of the man’s private dealings to you.”
“Gabe, you know why I want the information. I have an enemy who’s determined to hurt Julia, and I need to know who he is.”
“Are you sure he’s your enemy? From what you’ve told me, he hasn’t struck directly at you. If it was Drummond he meant to injure, Julia should be safe now.”
Cyrus shook his head, frowning. “He was using Drummond somehow, controlling him, or just goading him. The false message that lured Julia out to the house that day wasn’t only meant to compromise her; it was also intended to focus Drummond’s attention on me as his enemy. Julia would have suffered for it if the plan had worked, and Drummond’s suspicion would have forced me to keep away from her. Don’t you see?”
The attorney puffed on his cigar for a moment, then shrugged. “No, Cy, I don’t see. All you have is supposition and a wild theory. Who’s to say one of Drummond’s enemies—who has nothing against you—might have simply meant to make mischief?”
“I say so.”
“Based on?”
“Helen Bradshaw’s murder.”
Rushton straightened in his chair, the lazy air vanishing as his expression turned grim. “They’ve found her?”
“Early this morning.” Cyrus’s voice was flat. “I hired a Pinkerton man a week ago, partly to look for the girl. Neither of us expected to find her alive. He was with the police when they found her.”
“Was she in the river?”
“No. I suppose the killer decided not to take that chance with the water so low. She was buried in a shallow grave in a vacant lot here in the city. There wasn’t much left of her, but the police think she may have been strangled. It’s impossible to know for certain when it happened; I believe she died the day she left that message for Julia.”
Rushton smoked his cigar in silence for a few moments, his eyes fixed on the younger man’s face. Finally, he said, “All right, I’ll grant there must have been a connection between the false message and that poor girl’s death; I don’t believe in coincidence. Clearly, there’s a diabolical hand involved in all this. But I still don’t see how you’ve reached the conclusion you are the ultimate target when there’s been no direct strike against you. What if it’s Julia, for some reason neither of us can fathom, who’s the target?”
Cyrus hesitated, then sighed roughly. “Gabe, I know you’re a practical man with a logical mind, and what I’m about to say fits none of your criteria in determining facts or evidence, but bear with me, all right?”
“I’ve known you a long time, Cy,” Rushton replied, his eyes unreadable now. “I won’t discount or dismiss anything you tell me without a great deal of thought.”
“Do you believe in fate?” Cyrus asked.
“Sometimes.”
“I never did.” Cyrus leaned back in his chair and shook his head wryly. “Or maybe…Hell, I don’t know anymore. But what I do know is that someone wants to destroy me. I think…I feel…it’s been going on a long time. Years. For some reason I don’t understand, he’s wary of me. Perhaps afraid of me. So much so he hasn’t been able to attack me directly.”
“So he used Drummond?”
Cyrus hesitated, struggling to bring his thoughts into focus; it was becoming easier, yet because he lacked pieces of the puzzle, the picture forming in his mind was still incomplete. “I think he saw Drummond as a tool, yes, but I believe his initial motive was to keep Julia out of my reach.”
“What?” Rushton said softly, frowning. “Why?”
“I’m…more of a threat to him since I met Julia, since I fell in love with her.”
“How could that be?”
Frustrated himself because he didn’t have all the answers he needed, Cyrus was almost angry. “Because I can’t fight him until I’m complete, and I won’t be complete without her. And he knows that somehow, he knows. Oh, hell, I realize it sounds mad. Gabe, from the moment I first saw Julia, I’ve been changing inside. I don’t mean just falling in love with her. It’s as if I were half blind until I met her, and now I’m beginning to see things I never knew were there.”
“What things?” Rushton asked quietly.
“Patterns. Patterns of fate. When I came back to Richmond, I was doing more than coming home. I was obeying an urge so strong it was a compulsion. I had to be here. The day I returned, I saw Julia walking with Drummond, and I was obsessed with her from that moment. I didn’t understand what I felt at first, but I know now it was a sense of recognition. I knew we belonged together.”
After a moment the lawyer said, “People say love at first sight’s a myth, but I felt it the moment I saw my wife. I understand—and believe—that much. Go on.”
Cyrus spoke slowly now, tentatively but with an underlying tone of absolute certainty. “She was meant to be a part of my life. We were destined to be together. And it was meant to happen this year. This summer. I know that as surely as I know my heart’s beating. It’s why I had to come home, why I had to be here.” He hesitated, then said, “But the pattern’s wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it wasn’t meant to happen the way it did. Someone or something tried to change what had to be, and they were partly successful.”
Rushton shook his head a little, frowning now. “Forgive me, Cy, but that sounds—”
“I know. But you said yourself you didn’t believe in coincidence, and I know you have a healthy skepticism regarding convenient accidents. Correct?”
“Yes to both.”
“Then I’ll give you a series of coincidences and convenient accidents. They prove nothing—but if you look at them from my point of view, there is a pattern. And if you’ll accept, for the sake of argument, that my enemy knew I needed Julia in order to be complete, and knew he would be in danger from me once I fell in love with her, the pattern becomes clearer.”
“All right, I’m listening.”
Cyrus nodded, and paused a moment to think, just as he’d been thinking for days now. “Four years ago, Julia was preparing to leave the schoolroom behind and come out into society—where I would certainly have met her. I was fixed here in Richmond, and had no plans to leave. Then Tate was murdered.”
“Murdered?”
“The longer I think about it, the more convinced I am his death wasn’t the accident it appeared to be. He’d been hunting for fifty years and wasn’t the least feeble; he wou
ldn’t have carried his gun in such a way that it would have gone off even if he’d fallen. And what happened to his dog? That animal never left his side, but it vanished when Tate was ‘accidentally’ shot.”
Rushton was frowning, in thought rather than in disbelief. “The first convenient accident?”
“I believe so. And my fault, in a way.”
“How could it have been?”
“A few weeks before Tate was killed, I was at the racetrack with a group of friends. I don’t remember how the subject came up, but I said something idly about how I’d always wanted to go west, and probably would one day. Someone—I can’t remember who—asked what was keeping me here. I said Tate. He was getting old, and I didn’t want to be away from him in his last years.”
“And someone heard?”
Cyrus nodded. “I can’t even know if it was one of the group of men I was with; we were at the rail, not in a private box, and there were people all around. Anyone could have heard what I said.”
Rushton was silent for a long moment, then said, “If someone did want you out of Richmond, I suppose killing Tate might have seemed a solution. But it’s a fiendish idea, Cy.”
“Wait.” Cyrus smiled thinly. “There’s more.”
“Julia?”
“Yes. After Tate died, I left Richmond. It wasn’t going to be permanent, everyone knew that. I just closed up this house, I didn’t sell it. Obviously, I meant to return. My enemy knew that. Even more, he knew I’d be drawn back here—this summer.”
“He knows a great deal,” Rushton muttered.
“That,” Cyrus said wryly, “is the worst of it. He’s known more than I all along. I have a distinct feeling he’s never been half blind.”
“I can certainly understand why you’d want to find him—assuming, of course, all this is true.” The qualification was more or less automatic. “So he knew you’d be back. Is this where Drummond comes into the picture?”
Cyrus nodded. “Yes. And again, I’m partly to blame for what happened. My interest in married women was well known. It wasn’t something my enemy was likely to forget. So when he chose a husband for Julia, he chose carefully.”