American Anthem

by BJ Hoff

  When Bethany appeared in the doorway, her appearance triggered an urgency in Andrew to go to her, lest she faint. He did get to his feet, as did Frank, but something in her expression warned him not to approach her.

  She looked…ill. Tendrils of her fair hair had escaped the confines of the neat little knot at the back of her neck. Her porcelain skin had turned ashen, and her eyes deeply shadowed, with an almost startled expression. But even more stark was the mask of pain she wore.

  “Bethany?” Andrew suddenly wished he had tried to stop her from talking with Mary Lambert. Whatever she had heard had left her…different. Changed.

  Clearly shaken, she seemed not to hear him. She leaned heavily against the door frame, staring into the room but obviously not seeing them.

  “Dr. Cole? What did she tell you?” Frank’s voice, stronger and not so cautious as Andrew’s, seemed to snap her out of her peculiar state. Slowly she raised her head, lifted her shoulders, and walked the rest of the way into the room.

  She faced them both at the table. Andrew hoped he would never again see such a look of anguish on her face as he saw in that moment. Her hands trembled when she gripped the back of the chair, and when she spoke, her lips trembled, too.

  She looked from one to the other, her countenance still taut with distress. “I’m so ashamed,” she said, shocking Andrew and, from his expression, Frank, as well.

  Andrew reached to cover her hand with his, but she pulled away from him and shook her head. Although hurt and confused by her appearance and her behavior, he stood very still, sensing her need for quiet.

  “I judged her, you know.” Her voice was unsteady, yet there was no sign of wavering. “The first time I saw her, when we went to that awful tenement building and found her and her children in such wretched circumstances, I was so angry with her. I thought she must be a terrible woman, to degrade herself and allow her children to live in such squalor.”

  “Bethany, don’t—” Andrew tried to interrupt, but she raised a hand to silence him.

  “No, let me finish. I want to say this before I tell you anything else.” She seemed to gain strength as she went on. “I judged her to be a weak and selfish woman. A woman with no morality, no self-respect.”

  She moistened her lips, then swallowed, as if she were finding it extremely difficult to get the words out. “I was wrong. Although Mary Lambert may have been naïve and too trusting for her own good, she wanted out of her situation. But she believed herself to be trapped—by the three pregnancies and later the addiction—and Warburton threatened her and the children if she should try to leave him.” She paused. “I’ve only now come to realize that, in her own way, Mary Lambert is a very strong woman.”

  She stopped to pull in a deep, ragged breath. “At least she survived, and that makes her stronger than I. I would never have survived what she’s lived through.”

  She locked eyes first with Andrew, then with Frank, and the pain in her expression reflected the hideous nature of what she had heard from Mary Lambert.

  “I…wanted you to know that before I tell you anything more. You mustn’t make the same mistake that I did. You mustn’t judge her. She doesn’t deserve that.”

  There was still horror in her eyes, but her features softened when she turned to Andrew. “I can’t talk to you about this, Andrew. Please understand. You and I, we’re—” She shook her head. “I…couldn’t bear to tell you the things she described to me. But Sergeant Donovan—” She glanced at Frank. “He’s a policeman. I’m a doctor. And he needs to know…what Warburton really is.”

  She touched Andrew’s hand, her gaze meeting his in a look of appeal. “Perhaps you could check on Mary while I speak to the sergeant?”

  At first he didn’t understand, and he was about to object, but something in her eyes told Andrew not to press. Apparently, Frank sensed the same thing, because he was quick to chime in. “Why don’t you do what Dr. Cole suggested, Doc? You stay with Mary for now and let us talk.”

  Andrew didn’t like it. If what Bethany had to tell was so horrible she couldn’t repeat it to him, how could she tell Frank—a man she scarcely knew and didn’t even like?

  He knew if he voiced what he was thinking, he would risk sounding peevish. As it happened, Frank offered an answer before Andrew could ask the question.

  “There’s no shockin’ a copper, Doc. What I haven’t heard most likely hasn’t happened. But there’s some things a woman shouldn’t have to discuss with the man she’s going to marry, and I’m thinkin’ what Dr. Cole has to say may just fall into that category. So you go on now and tend to Mary while Dr. Cole and myself have a chat.”

  Andrew glanced back at Bethany, and when she nodded he took his cup of tea and started for the bedroom.

  Frank Donovan sat drumming his fingers on the kitchen table, staring at the flickering flame of the oil lamp. He was aware that Bethany Cole, seated across from him, was avoiding his gaze, and it wasn’t difficult to understand why. She might be a doctor, but she was also a lady. As a physician, she’d doubtless encountered a number of situations that would have horrified other women. But that didn’t mean she found it easy to confront the sort of ugliness she had just related to him.

  He cringed to think that Mary Lambert had lived with this sort of ugliness for years. The very thought kindled a hot flash of anger.

  With more than two decades under his belt as a policeman, Frank had known surprisingly few individuals he would have categorized as altogether evil. There had been some, of course, but even they had rarely evoked in him the dark bloodlust that ran through him now, the kind that makes one man feel as if he might murder another.

  At the moment he was trying to figure whether the urge to hurt Robert Warburton, to destroy him, was due entirely to the unqualified evil the man seemed to personify. Or was it more because Warburton had inflicted that evil on Mary Lambert?

  An equal dose of both, most likely. But whatever the reason, it in no way lessened the fury building in him that made him want to grind Warburton under the heel of his boot like the vermin he was.

  The man was a plague, more vile than he’d even thought.

  “So he’s a pervert as well as a charlatan,” he muttered, speaking aloud what he was thinking.

  “What will you do?”

  Bethany Cole’s strained voice yanked him back to his surroundings. He looked at her, and saw, not as he usually did, a woman physician—and a testy one at that—but a woman. A woman who was tired and still badly shaken from sharing the confidence of Mary Lambert.

  “Nothing near what I’d like to do,” Frank bit out. “And he’s just snake enough to get away with it all.”

  “That can’t happen! The man is a monster! You’re going to arrest him, aren’t you?” Outrage had stained her pale skin an angry crimson.

  “Oh, I’ll go after him, all right. But don’t be surprised if he never sees the inside of a cell. In fact, I expect he’ll be gone like a shot as soon as word leaks out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Frank leaned forward a little on his elbows. “What brings down a man like Warburton is a public scandal. Once it gets out that he’s not and never has been what he’s passed himself off to be—well, that’ll be the beginnin’ of the end for him, don’t you see? His fancy church will throw him out on his ear, and all the speeches and the book writing will come to a halt, so there’ll be no more funds coming in. Now, if Mary’s right, it’s Warburton’s wife who holds the purse strings. So just how likely is it that she’ll be spending much of it on him once she knows what he’s been up to all this time?”

  “I think she does know. Or at least knows in part. It was his wife who first came to Andrew and asked him to make a call on Mary Lambert. Andrew recognized her the day he went to Warburton’s house.”

  Frank lifted both eyebrows. “Is that a fact now? Then that means she must be a decent enough sort. All the more likely that she’ll send him packing.”

  Rather enjoying the scenario he was painti
ng for Bethany Cole, Frank went on. “New York will wash its hands of him, and he’ll simply pull out some night when no one’s about to see him go. And no one will care.”

  “That’s too easy for him!”

  “I agree with you, Dr. Cole, but I know how things are done in this city. And though I’d like nothing better than to walk him to the hangin’ tree myself, I’m about as sure as I can be that he’ll disappear before I have the chance.” He drew in a long breath. “He’ll more than likely just pull up stakes here and start all over again somewhere else.”

  “But if you arrest him—”

  “His fancy lawyer will have him out before the sun goes down. So far as we know, he hasn’t murdered anyone, and there’s no clear evidence of fraud or theft—at least not the kind you can prove, the kind that will put a fella behind bars. No, listen to me now. As much as I’d enjoy cleaning the city streets with his bare hide, I’m more interested in undoing the damage that’s been done to Doc. That’s what I intend to take care of before anything else.”

  Bethany frowned. “But how? Warburton has all but ruined Andrew with these fiendish attacks. What can you do?”

  Frank stood. “I’ll have to work on that, Dr. Cole. But don’t you worry—I’ll think of something.”

  He braced his hands on the table and leaned toward her. “Something I want to know first. What can you and Doc do to help Mary Lambert?”

  She looked surprised. “Why…I’m not sure.” She paused, studying him with an intensity that made Frank squirm a little. The woman had a way of looking right through a man.

  In spite of the sadness engraved upon her face, a slow smile began to tug at the corners of her dainty little mouth. She looked as if she’d just realized something of great interest. “Don’t you worry, Sergeant,” she said archly, repeating his own words to her. “We’ll think of something.”

  “Well,” he said gruffly, “if there’s a question of money for any special care she might be needin’, you’ve only to ask. I’ve a bit put by.”

  Her smile grew even wider, and, tired as Frank knew she must be, for an instant her eyes took on a peculiar shine. “That’s very generous of you, Sergeant—Frank. Andrew will be pleased to know you want to help.”

  Eager to escape that curious look, Frank started for the door. “Tell Doc I had to go,” he said. “I’ll stop by tomorrow.”

  28

  KEEPING THE PEACE

  My crown is in my heart, not on my head;

  Not deck’d with diamonds and Indian stones,

  Nor to be seen: my crown is call’d content;

  A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  On the Wednesday before Easter, chaos reigned at Bantry Hill. Michael was working in a frenzy on his American Anthem suite in addition to preparing for two concerts before the Independence Day event. His calls for help were frequent but erratic, and he seemed to expect Susanna and Paul to anticipate each request. He was usually more reasonable than this, but, as Susanna was learning, he was by nature a musician, and as such tended to isolate himself in his own world when the pressures of his work engulfed him. Until, that is, he needed something—when he had a way of bursting forth from his world and rocking the axes of other worlds. Of course, when he was actively composing, he really did require assistance—and these days, he seemed to be composing most of the time.

  Then there was Caterina, who was in a fret, insisting that her dress for Easter Sunday needed the hem let out and the shoulders eased. Susanna found this hard to believe since the dress had been finished only six weeks before. When she tried it on her niece again, however, she realized Caterina was right. The child had grown just enough that the garment was too short and needed more give in the shoulders. There was nothing to do but alter the dress before Sunday.

  Moira Dempsey and Nell Grace, who seemed of one mind these days, especially in regard to the extra cleaning and preparations required by the Easter season and the approach of spring, were dashing about from one task to another, attacking each with great energy. Susanna could not have been more grateful for the addition of the MacGovern girl to the household staff, for Moira seemed to have taken a liking to her and was happy to share the work. The negative aspect of this was that there seemed to always be someone dusting or polishing or cleaning something in any room Susanna happened to enter. There was simply no way of getting out from underfoot wherever she went.

  Papa Emmanuel tried, in his own way, to be of help, but he had his own method of doing things—and unfortunately his way never seemed to coincide with Moira’s way. Consequently, he spent much time following individual family members or staff about the house, offering his unsolicited suggestions—and sometimes his criticisms—regarding their activities. To Susanna’s dismay, the two people he most closely adhered to were Moira and Michael.

  Riccardo Emmanuel and the Dempseys had known each other forever, of course. Michael and his parents had often spent weeks with his mother’s family in Ireland, and the Dempseys had been friends and neighbors of his grandparents. Although they had not seen each other for several years, one would have thought that Papa Emmanuel and Moira had never been apart, so familiar were their habits to each other and so personal and heated—and frequent—their disagreements.

  In the midst of all this pandemonium, too, ran a somber undercurrent: Maylee’s obvious decline. While everyone else in the house was running about in a constant flurry, Maylee lay abed almost all the time now, watching through her window as winter ended its last dance to make way for spring. Dr. Carmichael had cautioned them all during his last visit that these were almost certainly Maylee’s final days.

  Given this painful reality, when Susanna was tempted to grumble about the extra work and confusion, she tried to stop and give thanks that she and the rest of the family had been blessed with the strength and the good health to carry out their daily busyness. At the same time, in light of what the ailing child in the front bedroom had to endure, she found the household skirmishes and everyday irritations increasingly difficult to tolerate.

  More and more, she understood why Michael had such a deep need for peace in his home and in his life, and why he so often went out of his way to thank her for whatever she managed to do to keep the peace at Bantry Hill. What he didn’t know was how often she had to pray for patience with those who sometimes seemed intent on disrupting that peace.

  Papa Emmanuel could easily be heard throughout most of the first floor when he raised his voice. For that matter, so could Moira Dempsey when, as Michael put it, “her Irish was up.”

  That being the case, Susanna didn’t feel too guilty when she happened to overhear the argument taking place in the kitchen that afternoon. In truth, she was tempted simply to walk in on the fracas and hope that her intrusion would put a stop to their bickering, which of late seemed to be an almost daily event. But when one heard one’s name being bandied about by raised voices, it was awfully difficult not to listen.

  So she stopped just outside the door long enough to hear Riccardo Emmanuel pronounce her “too young,” and “possibly too far removed from the music world to understand Michael’s genius,” and to know “what was best for him in his career.”

  Susanna bit her tongue, fully expecting Moira to agree with Michael’s father. It hadn’t taken her long to realize that she wouldn’t have been Moira’s choice for Michael. Nor had she forgotten another conversation she’d overheard some time back—goodness, she’d been eavesdropping then, too; she really mustn’t allow this to become a habit. During that exchange, Liam Dempsey had been defending her to his wife, while Moira insisted that ‘even if she means well, she’s too young. A girl like that is not going to tie herself down with a blind man and a child for long!’”

  All the more reason she was caught completely off guard by Moira’s next words. “Aye, she’s young, but she understands more than you think. I say she’s been good for the lad. You haven’t been here long enough to notice the difference she’s
made in him.”

  Riccardo made the sound he typically uttered when he disagreed or was put out with someone. Susanna likened it to an audible breath with a nasty edge. “Sì, she is a pleasing girl,” he said, “and perhaps she, too, has the gift of music—my son tells me this. But I think she is not so wise—or she would want him to return to his first love, the opera. She should want him to accept Conti’s offer for Lucia.”

  Susanna’s eyes widened at Moira’s retort. She could almost see the housekeeper waving a kitchen utensil at Michael’s father as she took him to task. “He had that world, now didn’t he? And what good did it do him is what I’d like to know? Why can’t you get it through that thick Eye-talian head of yours that the lad was sick of all that? Didn’t he give it up? And it seems to me that should be his business! Sure, it’s not yours!”

  Susanna took a sharp breath. Michael’s father would never stand for such disrespect.

  As she’d expected, his rebuttal was harsh with anger as his accent grew stronger. “I am his father! My son’s welfare—it is my business! And who are you, you Irish…busybody, that you should talk to me in such a way?”

  Silence. Susanna waited, her nails digging almost painfully into the palms of her hands.

  “Well, this Irish busybody has spent a good deal more time with your son than you have these past years,” Moira shot back. “I saw what he went through when he lost his eyesight—you didn’t. And I saw how that other one—that Deirdre—nearly unmanned him with her wanton ways and her drunkenness and her mean-spirited devilment. You didn’t. And I’ve seen how much happier the man is now. Miss Susanna might be young, but she’s good for him. And what’s more, she’d be the first to encourage him if she thought he wanted to go back to that other world, that opera. But she’s smart enough to know that has to be his choice, not hers.”