Mr. Austin rose abruptly to walk around the desk. “Miss Bolen, at the moment your reputation is the least of your concerns. Let’s give the man his office back.”
Sam wasn’t sure the Bolen woman would cooperate, so when she did, he didn’t waste any time getting her out of the building. They’d reached the street before she did as he expected and stalled.
He placed his palm at the small of her back and urged her gently forward. “Miss Bolen, I do not care if you decline or accept my invitation to relocate our meeting. It’s not me who stands to lose everything.”
“Point taken,” she said in a voice that made him regret his harsh tone. “Where do you propose we go?”
Waving away the liveried driver with the Bolen Shipping crest on his lapel, Sam offered Miss Bolen his arm. “Not far.”
After a short walk, he halted in front of the Bolen Shipping offices. “After you,” he said as he held open one of the ornate double doors with the company emblem carved into them.
This time she seemed more frozen in place than reluctant.
“You’ll have to lead the way,” he told her. “I’ve never been here.”
She looked up at him, tears shimmering. “Neither have I.”
The pain in her voice threatened to stall him right there in the fancy lobby. Instead, he took hold of her elbow and led her across the marble floor to an ornate staircase trimmed in gold. Though he’d spent his life in much less grand circumstances, it didn’t take a rich man to figure out the boss’s office was most likely on the topmost floor.
So he kept walking up those stairs, his grip on the Bolen woman’s elbow just firm enough to keep her moving, until he ran out of stairs. From there, he followed the fancy carpet all the way to the end of the hall where it stopped at a pair of double doors that were a scaled-down version of the ones they’d come through to enter the building.
The Bolen woman shrugged out of his grip to step closer to the doors. Reaching up to rest her palm on the doorknob, she closed her eyes.
“Miss Bolen,” he said. “I rarely ask this question of a woman, but I wonder what you’re thinking.”
“I’m trying not to,” was her whispered reply.
Sam gently moved her aside and opened the double doors. Though he had few memories of the mansion on Royal Street where he’d been born, he could recollect his father’s office at the shipping company. In comparison, this room—which took up fully half of the upper floor of the building—looked as if it belonged to European royalty rather than a man of commerce.
Anything that could be covered in gold or intricately carved had been, from the chairs scattered around the room to the chandeliers overhead. The walls were so crowded with framed paintings that appeared to be Old Masters that the gilded wallpaper beneath could barely be seen. Swags of crimson velvet drapes trimmed with golden fringe blocked out the sunshine and cast the room in a gloomy light.
Without a word, Miss Bolen walked over to that window and pulled the drapes back to flood the office with sunlight. After turning to face him, she gasped.
“What?” he demanded.
Rather than respond, she continued to look at something behind him. Turning slowly, Sam let out a low whistle.
Filling the wall was a larger-than-life portrait, predictably framed in the same gold-painted wood as the others in the room. Unlike the Old Masters paintings elsewhere in the office, judging from the subject matter, this one was painted recently.
“It’s me,” Miss Bolen whispered.
And it was, although Miss Bolen was only one of the dozen figures that appeared to be frozen in time while attending some sort of fancy ball. However, while everyone else was captured from a distance and appearing to be in motion, the Bolen woman stood perfectly still, her smiling face peering around her dancing partner to look directly at the artist.
Her hair was elaborately done up with what looked like pearl combs, and she wore strands of pearls around her neck and encircling the arm that reached around to grasp her escort’s shoulder. Very little of her dress was visible, but what could be seen was white.
The subject of the painting brushed past him to stand before her image. Slowly she reached out to press her palm against the canvas.
“I don’t understand,” she said to Sam when he moved to stand beside her. “I haven’t seen my father since I was a child. How could he …?” Her voice faded away as her hand dropped to her side.
Sam shrugged. “Perhaps a gift from your mother?”
Her laugh held no humor. “I doubt that. There was little love left between them when they parted. I doubt she would consider doing this or, for that matter, allow it to be done.”
“So you did not pose for this?”
Miss Bolen looked up at him, unshed tears shimmering in her eyes. “I’ve never seen that ballroom in my life nor worn those pearls or that dress, so no, I can safely say I did not.”
Just as he’d done at the attorney’s office, Sam grasped her elbow and led her away from the painting and toward a pair of chairs situated in front of her father’s desk. Once she’d settled there, Sam considered the chair behind the desk but chose the place across from Miss Bolen instead.
“So here we are,” he said.
“Yes,” she responded, her voice shaky. “Here we are.”
“I know you have questions about the situation we’re in, and so do I,” Sam said. “But I don’t think either of us—”
The door flew open and an older woman, willowy thin and nearly as tall as Sam, stepped inside. “Who are you?” she demanded as she crossed the room at a surprisingly swift pace. “Oh,” came out as a soft cry when she stopped in front of Miss Bolen. “It’s you.”
“I’m sorry,” Sam said as he stood. “Who are you?”
“I’m Roselyn Gallier, Miss Bolen, your father’s business partner.”
Sam’s surprise must have shown, because the older woman turned to him. “I am left to assume you are Mr. Austin.”
“I am,” he said as he shook her hand. “Breaux did not mention he had a business partner.”
“Well, no, I don’t suppose he would have. Thomas bought out my part of the business a few months before he died with the request that I stay on until the transition was complete.”
“Transition,” Miss Bolen said. “That’s an interesting way to put it.”
“An accurate one, I do believe; but in any case, I’m going to be your new best friend,” she said with a chuckle, “because I know where all his important papers are as well as where he kept the key to the safe and the home on Chartres Street. But if you’re here, well, you probably already know all of these things.”
“I know none of these,” Miss Bolen admitted. “I’ve been staying at a hotel. I wasn’t certain what the arrangements would be so …”
She reached over to pat Miss Bolen on the shoulder. “You let those tears out now,” she said. “Losing a papa, it doesn’t ever come easy no matter the situation. Just know that he loved you very much.”
“I don’t know that at all,” she snapped. “In fact, I am appalled at his treatment of me in his will and completely confused as to why he has a portrait of me that I never posed for. I am also appalled that you would think you knew how he felt about someone with whom he never made the attempt to know.”
“Your father was a complicated man. Stubborn as a man could be and yet the Lord got hold of him anyway. He told me before he died that his greatest wish was to go back in time and fix what he’d broken in his life.”
“A convenient response considering,” Miss Bolen said.
Her eyes narrowed. “I’d say it was most inconvenient, what with the two biggest regrets in his life being how he conducted his business and how little time he spent with his only child.”
“Yes, well, I have your word to take for it because I certainly heard nothing of the kind from him. However, I will have that key to my father’s home. As I am apparently going to be destitute soon, staying at the Hotel Monteleone seems like an unnecess
ary expense.”
“Yes, of course. You’ll find the staff is paid through next month, so there shouldn’t be any inconveniences for you staying there. I’ll see that a key is delivered to the Monteleone for you within the hour.”
“Wasn’t that nice of him?” she said in a most sarcastic tone before turning her attention to Sam. “I think our attempt at conversation is over for today.”
To punctuate her statement, Miss Bolen turned her back on them both and walked toward the door.
“Then I will call on you tomorrow,” Sam said. “At your father’s home.”
She stopped short and whirled around, likely unaware that the expression on her face mirrored the one on her image in the painting. “Mr. Austin, my father may have appointed you guardian of my future, but you are not guardian of my present. I shall meet you when and where I wish and if I wish. Do you understand that?”
“You have less than three weeks left before any arrangement between us means nothing. Are you sure you want to be so difficult?”
She looked away. “All right, then. Half past ten tomorrow. I’m sure Miss Gallier can provide the address.”
“That’s Mrs. Gallier, and yes, I can do that.” When the door shut behind Miss Bolen, the older woman reached over to touch his sleeve. “Now don’t you mind her. From what I know about all this, she’s not had an easy go of things despite the fact she was born in luxury. Having more money than love is not good for anyone.”
“I’ll have to trust you on that,” he told her. “My father was a lousy businessman, but we never had to wonder how he felt about us or our mother, rest her soul.”
Mrs. Gallier gave him an appraising look. “Yes, you’re Samuel’s son. How is he?”
“You knew him?” At her nod, Sam shrugged. “Determined to outlive us all but failing miserably.”
Her smile was broad and quick. “Well, I do like to hear that he has lived a good life. I wondered given, well …” She paused. “Water under the bridge, all that. Look, I do not know the particulars of whatever it is that will requires you to do, but I do know one thing. That painting over there, Thomas commissioned it exactly as you see it. He gave that poor artist such grief until every detail was just right.”
Sam walked over to the painting as he listened to Mrs. Gallier. Up close the brushstrokes and colors showed the artist was possessed of a unique talent.
“Do you know what the title of this painting is, Mr. Austin?” When he shook his head, she continued. “May’s Wedding.”
He let that thought settle as he said his goodbyes.
Chapter Four
May stifled a yawn. Perhaps tomorrow she would actually climb the stairs and seek out a proper bedchamber, but last night she’d barely managed to find a soft chair to rest for a few hours.
While sleep had evaded her, regrets and memories had not. Those had chased her through the rooms she’d managed to walk and swirled around her even after she’d given up trying to ascend the staircase.
Mama and her friends in New York would be aghast to see her now. Even as she had the thought, May couldn’t think of a single one of them she expected would still call her a friend once word got out that she had married in haste.
Or worse, that she was penniless.
The benefit to all her sleepless hours, however, was the time she had to consider how to best remedy her situation. Though several plans had occurred to her, each of them was tripped up by one thing. By one person.
And that person was Samuel Austin III.
If her father’s servants thought it odd that she chose to sleep in a chair in her father’s library and to wash and dress in an empty room tucked off in a remote corner of the first floor, they were too discreet to say so. Even the girl who brought her morning meal had kept her eyes downcast and avoided looking anywhere but at the tray overflowing with food May would eventually ignore.
She wanted to tell them all that it wasn’t fear that kept her from climbing those stairs but guilt. Guilt and a profound sadness.
Her father’s butler appeared at the door. “Mr. Austin is here to see you, Miss Bolen.”
“Please send him in,” she said as she rose to pinch her cheeks and smooth her hair back into place. After exchanging a greeting with Samuel Austin, she returned to her chair and indicated that he should take a seat.
“You’re prompt,” she said as the grandfather clock in the hallway chimed half past ten.
“I work for a living, Miss Bolen. Being prompt is generally required of a man like me.” He paused. “But we’re not here to talk about me, are we?”
“Aren’t we?” May let that question settle between them before she continued. “After all, I have no power in this odd situation we’ve both been put into. You’re the one who will be making the choice, so in that case, I think that talking about you is exactly why we are here.”
Mr. Austin acknowledged her statement with a dip of his head but remained silent. Finally he shrugged. “Then help me make the choice,” he said.
“And how do I do that?”
“Tell me about those alleged offers you’ve had,” he said. “The ones you’ve purported to have brought me aboard the Vengeance.”
“The telegrams I delivered to you were real indeed, Mr. Austin,” she snapped. Oh, how this man irritated her. “And if I had not been treated so poorly while aboard your vessel, I would still have them to offer as evidence. As such, I have sent responses asking for another telegram from each of them.”
“If you had not come aboard my vessel uninvited, and had you not prodded my deckhand with a stick, you would indeed still have them.” Mr. Austin shifted positions. “Look,” he said as he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “I am no more happy about any of this than you are, so can we agree to work together to solve our mutual problem?”
“Of course,” she said as sweetly as she could manage. “And how do you propose we go about this?”
“Tell me about these three offers. Who are these gallant men who are willing to marry you on such short notice?”
May searched his face for signs that he might be teasing her. When she saw none, she nodded. “I realize it may be difficult for you to understand that I could find three men to make offers of marriage so quickly, but truly all three of them—and several more—have been making offers regularly for quite some time. You see”—she said as she paused to consider her words— “when a woman lives at a certain level of comfort and ease, gentlemen tend to gravitate toward her.”
“So what you’re saying is rich girls get marriage proposals pretty regularly?” Mr. Austin sat back in his chair and seemed to be pondering his own question. “If these three men are making offers to you due to your ‘level of comfort and ease,’ then that does not speak highly of them, does it?”
“I disagree. All three of them are well thought of in the community and among our set. Why, I can name a dozen charities that have benefitted from each of them. And many more likely that I do not know about. Each has his own high level of financial comfort as well.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. The expression on his face told her he was completely unconvinced.
“All right,” she said as she held her hands up. “You tell me what you want to know about them.”
“Nothing you could say would give me good reason to say yes to any man I have not met.”
May’s breath caught. “Are you serious?”
“Quite.”
“You’d ask three men to drop everything and hurry to New Orleans so that you can look them over like prize racehorses?” She paused for effect. “Truly?”
“No,” Mr. Austin said. “I would not.”
“Well, that’s more like it.”
He shifted positions but held her gaze. “You would. After all, it is up to you to bring the offers to me. I merely make the choice.”
Several responses came to mind, but none of them would be beneficial to achieve what she wanted from this man. So she smiled. And then she offered a
slight nod of her head.
“You know, this does not have to be so difficult, Mr. Austin. Wouldn’t it be easier to simply take my word for it that these are men whose reputations are sterling and with whom I am willing to spend my life? Must everything be so difficult?”
“The easy way is rarely the best.” Mr. Austin’s gaze swept the length of her, and then he shook his head. “Miss Bolen, do you believe in a loving God?”
What an odd question. “Of course I believe in God.”
“That isn’t what I asked. I want to know if you view your heavenly Father in the same way you apparently saw your earthly father. If you think He is good and loves you.” He paused. “Because I don’t believe you thought the same of Thomas Bolen.”
“Thomas Bolen was content to live without me. I would hope that God did not wish to abandon me, although there were times …”
“Times when what?” he urged.
May shook her head. What was it about this man that made her want to unburden her thoughts on him? “Times when I felt that my heavenly Father might be as far away as my earthly one. Or, at least it felt that way.”
“I do understand,” he said.
“So you are estranged from your father, too?”
“Quite the opposite,” he said. “I see him almost every day when I am in port and write him daily when I am not.”
“Oh,” she said as she felt the slightest twinge of jealousy. What might it feel like to have that sort of relationship with a parent? Sadly, she would never know.
“But I digress. I asked for your thoughts on God because I want to understand whether you believe the Lord can have your best interests in mind when plans are interrupted or life changes abruptly. A good father always protects his children, even when the children do not always understand they are being protected.”
“So you believe I am being protected from something by being cast into this untenable situation?”
“I would rather know whether you believe that.”
May rose to walk over to the window. Though there was a lovely garden just beyond the glass, she looked beyond the beauty to the brick wall that protected her from the world outside. That sort of protection she understood. The kind this man was claiming for her made no sense at all.
Of Rags and Riches Romance Collection Page 17