Tainted Love

by Louisa Trent

  "The tide was coming in that night."

  "So?"

  "So--my grandmother's beach is on an inlet. Everything washes up on the rocks sooner or later. If Frank's wallet had fallen out of his pocket, someone--a fisherman--would have found it and returned it to his father."

  Lillian shook her head back and forth. "Someone must have taken it."

  Doyle rubbed his jaw. "Why is the wallet so important to you?"

  Breathing was torture. "I cannot say..."

  "What was in it? Can you at least tell me that much?"

  "No!"

  To tell Doyle why, was to reveal that while married, her grandmother had written love letters to a man who was not her husband. Frank had found them in his father's law office, and had taken them, without authorization. She needed to get them back; she needed to ensure that no one else ever saw them!

  Her poor grandmother didn't even realize they were missing, she didn't know that they had somehow found their way to the Johnson Law Firm with the rest of her legal papers. If her grandmother ever found out that someone might have those papers, she would...

  Lillian drew back from that terrible thought. She wouldn't allow herself to consider what would happen to her grandmother if she ever learned those love letters were missing.

  "Before he visited you that night, Frank had gone to another woman. A prostitute. He might have dropped the billfold then."

  "How do you know this?"

  "Men talk when they drink, Lily. There are several bedchambers above Kelley's Tavern that are rented out as love nests. Ever use one?"

  She kept her outrage to herself. "No."

  "Well, Frank did. As it turns out, he had a fondness for abusing whores. One almost died as a result of his idea of foreplay."

  "I had no idea..."

  "The elder Johnson had the incident hushed up. But as I say, men talk when in their cups. When I heard Frank slapped fancy women around, I visited him in his father's fancy law office. I told him to stay the hell away from you. And you know what Frank said? He told me you liked it rough. We had words. Later, I broke his nose. Frank Johnson made a lot of enemies. A lot of folks would liked to have seen him dead."

  "You, among them?"

  "The idea of you in bed with Frank makes me violently ill."

  "That begs the question."

  "You little fool! Stop asking questions! Stop stirring up the past. Someday, you might just ask the right person the wrong question and come to regret it. Now, go home. Before anyone one else sees us, hears us, talking. Even if you didn't see the murderer that night, he most likely saw you. He might be watching you even now."

  "But I already admitted to killing Frank. My interest now is purely in finding the location of that wallet. To cover my tracks, so to speak."

  "Right. Your little confession." He smirked. "Now, let me get this straight: Frank and you slept together that night. Afterwards, you two lovebirds went for a stroll on the Widow's Walk. Frank, the big romantic swain, figured he would pluck you a posy for a keepsake. As he bent to pick it, you pushed him over the edge of a cliff. You, who couldn't hurt so much as a flea, tossed your lover over the rocks within minutes of warming a bed with him. I fail to find the logic in that scenario, Lily."

  Lillian felt faint. "No... I..."

  "Did I mention that all of this supposedly happened during the worst rain storm in years?"

  "Yes," she whispered. "It was raining. My nightgown was all wet. From the rain. From the ocean. From Frank's blood. I scrambled down the rocks onto the beach. To help him. But he was already dead. His face! My God, his features were unrecognizable. When Mr. Johnson's henchmen questioned me, I was still wearing my nightclothes. I was so cold and wet. Numb. From swimming out into the surf, trying to get Frank's body. I remember... I remember ... you tried to wrap your coat around me. To cover me. But those horrible men held you back. You fought them, tried to get to me. I was in shock, I suppose, and..."

  She partially covered her mouth with a trembling hand. "I felt so alone. Lost. Desperate. Exposed. When you tried to protect me, they dragged you away..."

  Lillian shuddered in memory. She had been wearing her white nightgown, but she might just as well have been wearing nothing. The linen was so wet, it was transparent; it clung to her, from shoulders to legs, accentuating more than it hid. She saw the speculative way those men had looked at her, like she was a common...

  It wasn't true. None of it was true! But those men had regarded her with looks that said she was about to get what she deserved. And she had known sheer terror.

  "I remember like it happened yesterday," she said, her voice flat.

  Doyle reached out a hand to her...

  To comfort her? To protect her from her own memories?

  She didn't know. Thinking better of the gesture, his open hand wavered between them for a moment, then was withdrawn and placed in his pocket, as though he dared not touch her.

  "Lily," he said solemnly, "you went to bed with Frank Johnson that night, but you didn't kill him." He bowed. "Now, if you will excuse me? I have a business I must attend to."

  * * * *

  Lillian had no real awareness of entering the labyrinth.

  Her latest interview with Doyle leaving her too shaken to drive her grandmother's pony cart back to the cottage, she opted to delay the trip. Without a definite destination in mind, she wandered around the grounds, one foot aimlessly placed before the other. While she walked, she thought back to the night Frank died, about how distraught Doyle's face had looked, about how hard he had fought to get to her when Mr. Johnson's men had led her back inside the cottage for questioning. It had taken five burly men to subdue Doyle. When they finished with him, he was bleeding so badly, she thought he might die.

  Inside the cottage, she was asked graphic questions about her "promiscuous history". Suggestive things. Repulsive, filthy things. The men surrounded her, interrogating her. One stepped up to her face, a burly man with pitted skin, and demanded to know about Doyle's 'violent nature'. And, 'Wasn't it true that he was the jealous type?'

  Doyle had already admitted to being with her at the cottage earlier, and she knew that he was the one they wanted to blame for Frank's death, and if she said anything at all about the attack, her words would be twisted around, deliberately misconstrued, and that Doyle would be implicated in Frank's death.

  And so, she told the men that she had entertained both men in her bedchamber that night. First Doyle. Then Frank. She told the men that soon after Frank arrived, she had discovered that her grandmother's cat, Henri, was missing, and that when she went outside to find him, Frank must have followed her. Unaware of the hazards of the Widow's Walk on a dark, rainy night, he must have become disoriented, and fallen, accidentally, to his death.

  When she refused to implicate Doyle, she was hauled upstairs to her bedchamber. The men threatened to strip her, spread-eagle her to girlhood bed, and take turns manually 'searching' her body's orifices for 'evidence'. There was little doubt in her mind that if given the opportunity, each man in Mr. Johnson's employ would have assaulted her. As they dragged her to the bed, though, Doctor Peterson appeared on the scene--Doyle had gotten word of Frank's fall to him. His knock on the cottage's door to pronounce Frank Johnson's death accidental interrupted the men's plans. But for his timely entrance, she would have been gang raped that night.

  She never told anyone about what had almost been done to her, especially not Doyle, and she never would.

  Lost in the horror of reliving that excruciatingly painful chapter of her life, Lillian didn't realize that the evergreen hedge that surrounded her was, in actuality, an intricate living green puzzle. It was not until she started to experience that all-too-familiar closed-in feeling that she began to panic.

  The bushes that formed the maze grew close together, each individual arborvitae blending into the one next to it. And the hedge was tall--at least twenty feet in height. The enclosure was cool and shaded, the ground covered with moss. A faint musty smell
assailed her nostrils.

  As her closed-in feeling escalated to a critical, smothering state, she sought a way out. Any way out. Frantically stumbling down a seemingly infinite assortment of twisting corridors, retracing her steps at dead-ends, and rounding non-productive turns, instead of finding an exit, she ended up deeper within the complex network of interconnecting pathways, no closer to an escape than when she had first started her quest. All paths in the labyrinth seemed to lead nowhere.

  But suddenly, as she fought an overwhelming sense of dread, the confining space opened up and brightened. The center widened, and within this inner sanctum she found a mystical world of dappled golden light, whimsical metal sculptures, stone statuary, and babbling water fountains. Amazed at the discovery, she forgot her terror...

  Until she heard the fall of a footstep within the cool green shadows; then her terror returned with a vengeance!

  She lurched. Tried to scream. Failed miserably. Her diaphragm clutching, and with not even sufficient air in her tightly restricted lungs to gasp, she emitted a half-hearted whimper.

  "Why the hell are you still here?"

  Doyle!

  Again.

  There she stood, like a ninny, seized by a fit of the hiccups, as he came sauntering out from behind a huge stone urn.

  "I thought you had left an hour since. I happened to look out onto the drive after my client left and there was your grandmother's pony cart still tied to the hitching post."

  "I felt rather like taking a walk," she said, nose pinched between two fingers.

  He shot her a quizzical look. "What are you doing?"

  "I should think it was apparent. I have the..." Hic Hic. Her diaphragm clutched again. "Hiccups. This maze..." Hic. Hic. "...has so many hidden twists and turns. So many narrow corridors leading nowhere."

  "That is the nature of mazes," he said dryly.

  "I am well aware of that!" she snapped, then hicked.

  He skimmed a finger down her cheek. "Poor baby, are you lost?"

  Her veiled hat was removed, set atop a bronzed sculpture; tantalizingly, he feathered his fingers over her hair, dawdling over the pearl clasp that anchored her chignon in place.

  The hiccups immediately stopped.

  Doyle's fingers immediately dropped from her hairpin. His dark brows arched sardonically. "Frightening you always did get rid of 'em."

  He remembered! As a girl, he would scare the tar out of her to make the spasms end.

  "Sometimes the cure is worse than the aliment." She changed the subject. "Whose works are these?"

  "Local artisans. They sell on commission."

  "What an extraordinary idea!"

  "Are you buttering me up for a reason I should know about, Lily?"

  "I am not buttering you up! I am merely interested." She slanted him a look from under her lashes. "Since when have you become an art patron?"

  "Since a young lady introduced me to painting. Her ambition was to become a landscape artist. She had some mighty big dreams." Near black eyes assessed her. "Whatever happened to those dreams?"

  "Dreams have a way of fading when the rent comes due."

  "As I recall, you wouldn't let me use that excuse. You took me to task for abandoning my dreams."

  "You must have thought me terribly naïve back then. I must have given you hours of amusement."

  "I never--not once--found your ambitions amusing."

  She ducked her head. That was an unfair jibe, she conceded to herself. Doyle had always been her staunchest supporter. But what was he doing here? Why did he always seem to appear from out of nowhere to extricate her from trouble? His rescues were not only humiliating; they were suspicious.

  Doyle ushered her to a narrow opening in the hedge.

  She looked up at him. "The way out?"

  At his slight nod, she slipped between the bushes, Doyle following at her heels.

  "Watch yourself," he urged.

  Her companion was remarkably solicitous. One might even go so far as to say, courteous...

  Doyle's fine manners didn't fool her; she knew what bubbled right under his polite surface. Better to have his contempt out in the open where she might deal with it!

  "My goodness," she prodded. "What you have managed to accomplish in only a few years! Author, art patron, successful architect..." She flashed him her most radiant and insincere smile. "Have you considered running for governor?"

  Doyle's eyes narrowed. "Where are you going with this flattery?"

  "I realize cordiality must present a terrible strain for you..."

  "You ruin my family's name and then lecture me on cordiality!"

  Her smiled widened, and this time it was genuine. "Oh, this is so much better. I much prefer having your hostility on the outside."

  His eyes glinted like black gems. "Go home, Lily."

  "Not until I see what is at the end of this wonderful path."

  "Nothing is down there."

  "Oh, come now, Doyle, there must be something. This is rather an elaborate walkway to have nothing at the end of it."

  "Stop, Lily!"

  But it was too late. She was already running. Clutching her side, panting and gasping for breath, she raced ahead.

  Doyle didn't chase after her. As usual, he let her go.

  As soon as she came to the sunlit meadow delineated in the pines, she knew. Simply knew.

  The tears were flowing freely before he caught up with her.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Would she have been better off never knowing? Lily asked herself as she stared at the scene before her.

  No! She decided. Some hurts should not be avoided; this secret place was one of them.

  Doyle came up behind her, not actually touching her, but standing close enough for her to feeling the warmth he radiated. With every fiber of her cowardly being, she longed to lean back against him, to shore up her strength with his.

  She did not give in to the weakness; she did not touch him in any way.

  The distance between them broke her heart all over again.

  Nevertheless, heartbroken or not, she continued to hold herself rigidly, her starched posture the epitome of proper ladylike deportment. Regardless of public opinion, she was not a cheat. Not a ... slut. She was affianced, and though the engagement was on shaky footings, she would not do or say anything that might be construed as disloyal to Charles.

  "You would never listen to me," Doyle said quietly.

  She dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a batiste handkerchief taken hastily from the interior of her sleeve. "Oh, my..."

  "You never used to cry so easily," he said softly.

  "I know," she gurgled. "And since coming home, I have done nothing but."

  She turned slightly, enough to smile tearfully up into Doyle's scowling features, as she swept a hand across the vista, which was an exact replica of the painting she had done for him years before. "This place is so, so special."

  He grunted, a typically male, nonverbal communication of distress.

  "Would you tell me about it?" she asked.

  Another male grunt: Doyle obviously wished to avoid this conversation.

  "Please, Doyle?"

  "For every tree I take down to make way for a new building, I like to give something back to the land, to preserve it for future generations. I have always felt that beauty exists in the naturalness and wildness of a woodland retreat, as well as in grandiose bedding displays."

  "I agree, and the results are stunning."

  "As well they should be: you inspired this wildlife habitat."

  Lillian clutched at her constricted chest. She mustn't succumb to breathlessness now! "Don't say that!" she rasped. "Don't be so generous!"

  "Dissemble if you will, but it is the truth." His hands stuffed his pockets. "So--you like the sanctuary?"

  "Like it? I love it. This is not what I expected to find at all. I am consumed with jealousy," she said mournfully. "I haven't done anything with my life and look at all you have accomplished wit
h yours."

  "Your life is far from over, Lily. You have plenty of time yet to do what you need to do." He sighed. "Anyway, the pond is stocked with fish. I keep a basket of stale bread for feeding them in the gazebo." He pointed. "Over there, behind the row of lilacs. Follow the sound of the wind chimes."

  No further encouragement was necessary. She was off, following the melody of the chimes to the gazebo. Tripping up the stairs, she scooped up a handful of stale bread crusts, and raced back out again, dashing for the pond.

  He called, "The dock is the best place for observation."

  The dock it was!

  Lillian laughed as goldfish and koi broke the surface of the water, tame as pets, and gobbled up the stale crusts she flung.

  Doyle joined her. "See those water lilies over there, the white ones with the pink tips?" At her nod, he said, "They reminded me of the ones you painted in the picture. It took me a while to find the right color combination, but I did."

  She tilted her head to the cloudless sky. "It's so peaceful here. So quiet. A true refuge. I would love to paint this scene again, now that it actually exists."

  "Go ahead."

  "Oh, I don't know..."

  "Round up your paints and easel and..."

  The suggestion ended abruptly. "You don't paint anymore, is that it?"

  "Not much. I teach others to paint now."

  "Doesn't what's his name--your fiancé--encourage your art?"

  "His name is Charles, and he doesn't approve of women painters. He was scandalized upon learning that the core curriculum at the Museum School includes nudes. He thinks life models should wear fig leaves." She giggled at the absurdity.

  Her mirth faded quickly. Why had she revealed that piece of information to Doyle?

  Lily caught herself before she said anything further. She must guard her tongue! Already, she had said far too much. After all, most men thought a wife should look pretty and bear children. The end. Only the exception felt differently.

  Charles was not the exception.

  Doyle looked out across the pond. "Your future husband doesn't approve of you painting, when art is an intrinsic part of who you are?"