by Shirl Henke
“A situation I itch to remedy, my dear,” he replied bitterly.
“Ah, but you won’t, Samuel dearest. I know that you’re too honorable to stoop to murder.”
A sudden flash of intuition caused him to ask, “But you aren’t, are you, Tish? Neither is your lapdog, Bullock.”
She feigned confusion. “I’m quite certain I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I want is my husband returned safely to me. And now I have him, don’t I, Samuel?”
“What you have, Tish, is a stalemate. I won’t petition for divorce and you won’t besmirch Olivia’s reputation. When do you wish to return to Washington?” he asked with bitter resignation.
“I think by the first of the week. I shall have to have time to pack. And we must attend the gala the Parkers are giving tomorrow night. You will escort me, of course.” She looked up at him coyly. “I suppose I should move into that quaint little cottage of yours now that you’ve returned.”
“Don’t put yourself out, Tish. You could never survive without a retinue of servants and I’ve no room for them—not to mention no place for your beloved brother either.”
“Very well. But don’t think to publicly humiliate me by sleeping with your French whore. You’d not like my retaliation, I vow.”
Samuel stepped closer to her and seized a fistful of silver gilt hair, twisting it around his fist. He pulled her head back, forcing her to look him full in the face. “Don’t ever threaten me or Olivia again, Tish. We have an agreement. I’ll not tarnish her reputation. You had better not either.”
With that, he released her and stalked out, leaving her to rub her aching scalp while she seethed.
* * * *
“I already told you I don’t care a fig for my reputation! Don’t let her do this to us, Samuel,” Olivia pleaded.
Shelby stopped pacing across the Quinns’ library and sat down on the small settee beside her. “I have no choice, Livy. Neither do you. If I don’t return with her to Washington, I’ll just be giving her father more ammunition to use against us. God, a court might consider my failure to escort her as desertion. If I’m ever to get free of her, I have to fight Senator Soames on his home ground, away from any possible scandal here.”
“You promised me you would never return to her and now she’s blackmailing you into it.” Olivia knew she sounded stubborn, petulant even, but she could not seem to help it.
“I’m doing only what I must. You know I would never touch her,” he said patiently.
“Nor me either until this whole ugly mess is over,” she replied disconsolately.
“It could take a year, Livy.’’ There was anxiety in his voice, his manner, as he watched her. “I have no right...”
Her heart turned over and she seized his hands, raising them, kissing the callused palms one at a time. “Samuel, sometimes you have no more sense than a chicken. You have every right. And I will wait no matter how long it takes.”
After Samuel had departed, Elise found Olivia staring out the window, lost in thought. “You’re sad,” she said sympathetically. “Do you want to talk?”
Olivia turned to Samuel’s sister as the tears she had held at bay so long battled for release. “I love him so much and I may lose him. If only he weren’t so pigheadedly honorable, she couldn’t do this to us.”
“Being pigheadedly honorable is one of my brother’s failings, but neither of us would love him half so much if he were any different,” Elise replied, remembering an earlier time. “Once he risked his life to save my reputation. He’ll do no less for you, Olivia. It will all work out in the end,” she added, praying that it was true.
“In the meanwhile he and Tish will masquerade as husband and wife. What can she hope to gain by it?”
Elise shook her head. “I never understood Leticia Soames. There’s something about her...something dark and sick beneath all that gilded beauty.” For some reason Richard Bullock’s handsome face flashed through her mind and she shivered, then forced the thought aside, wanting to reassure Olivia. “Samuel knows her for what she is now. He’ll deal with her. In the meanwhile, we can’t have you pining away like some recluse. I recommend a shopping trip. It’s marvelous therapy.”
Their conversation was interrupted by a servant rapping lightly on Olivia’s bedroom door, asking to talk with Madame Quinn.
“There’s a gentleman asking to see Mademoiselle St. Etienne, Madame. Monsieur Wescott, her guardian.”
Elise turned to Olivia. “You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to.”
“No. I’m not afraid to face him,” Olivia replied. “In fact, I’d rather enjoy it.”
Downstairs Emory Wescott stood in the Quinns’ parlor, mentally rehearsing his speech for Olivia, half expecting that she would refuse to see him. At least he had to try it the easy way. Perhaps he could bring her around with the lure of the New Orleans trip now that Shelby’s first wife had so conveniently broken up their little romance.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Wescott.” The coolness of her voice brought him swiveling around to face her.
“Mr. Wescott, Olivia? Come, come now. What happened to Uncle Emory?” he cajoled, walking closer to give her a fatherly embrace.
Olivia neatly sidestepped him without backing away. “He’s dead. An uncle would never try to sell his niece as if she were a common harlot. I must say I admire your gall coming here as if you hadn’t tried to pander me to Samuel.”
His face turned the color of aged bricks. “See here, Olivia, I’ll not accept that kind of talk from Julian St. Etienne’s daughter, whom I took in when her father died in penury. You owe me a debt of gratitude, gel.”
“I may owe you money for my upkeep, perhaps, but gratitude? I think not after you attempted to collect the debt the way you did.”
“You went to Shelby willingly enough after all was said and done,” he snapped testily. “I saw you and Shelby pawing at each other on several occasions.”
The thought of this twisted, greedy man spying on them made Olivia feel violated. She blanched as Wescott smirked triumphantly and continued.
“He even married you in some backwoods ceremony, didn’t he? A pity it was bigamous. If anyone in the city learned about your scandalous liaison with Shelby, you’d be quite ruined. That’s why I came to take you back under my protection.”
“I don’t need your protection.”
“I beg to differ. You’re a hot-blooded little chit who needs guidance. You should be thank—”
“This interview is at an end,” she said coldly. “Get out. Right now.”
“You ungrateful little—”
“You will leave this instant or I’ll show you a few of the tricks I learned from Micajah Johnstone. You won’t like them.” Olivia extracted a small, slender dagger from her sleeve. “Micajah’s first lesson was to always be armed. Shall I show you the second?”
Emory Wescott jumped away, backing toward the door, red-faced and furious. His eyes darkened to dull pewter, narrowing on her as he turned in the hallway. “You willful, foolish little bitch, you’ll pay for this.”
When he was gone, Olivia replaced the knife in her sleeve, then sat down on a chair, trembling from head to foot.
“Don’t weaken now. That was quite an excellent showing,” Elise said from the doorway. “I couldn’t have done better myself and I was accounted pretty good with a knife by some people who should know.” A small smile of remembrance tinged her lips as she pulled up another chair beside her friend. “I didn’t mean to spy on you, but I was concerned. Wescott isn’t to be trusted. I’ve always had a feeling about him.”
“Samuel thinks he’s the one who was supplying Stuart Pardee.”
Elise digested the fact that her secretive brother had shared his suspicions with Olivia. “How much do you know about what Samuel does for the army?” she asked point-blank.
“You mean that he spies for President Madison?” Olivia replied artlessly.
“My, he has confided a great deal,” Elise murmured dryly
.
Olivia smiled wistfully. “He didn’t exactly confide so much as I intuited and pieced and extracted.”
“That’s always been the better way of making sense of a man,” Elise replied with a chuckle.
The two women chatted and exchanged confidences about Samuel and husbands in general. Elise shared childhood memories of growing up with a troublesome younger brother, and before they realized it, the day was half-spent, past time for the shopping spree Elise had promised Olivia.
* * * *
Across town an exchange of confidences of quite another sort took place. At the Parker estate Tish stood in the sitting room of her suite, impatiently tapping her slipper as her stepbrother carefully removed his gloves and tossed them inside the beaver hat he had set on the table after slipping up the backstairs into her quarters undetected.
“Where have you been? I waited for you last night...all night alone in that big lonely bed,” she said, her voice softening from petulance to purring, as she gestured at the bedroom door across the small sitting room.
“I do have a life of my own to attend, pet,” Richard replied lightly, evading her question as he reached out and ran his pale slender fingers across the swell of her breasts, which were bulging from the top of her low-cut bodice. Only the sheerest wisp of cream lace covered the pinkness of her nipples. He reached inside and tweaked one, then the other, watching her eyes close for an instant, involuntarily.
Tish forced her body to obey her mind, stepping quickly away from the hypnotic spell of his touch. “Later, there will be time for that later,” she said breathlessly, still feeling the throb of hunger deep within her as her nipples stung from the rough handling.
“How did your interview with Shelby go?” he asked as he poured himself a glass of the expensive sherry Mr. Parker kept on a Lannuier pier table between the windows.
“As well as could be expected, I suppose,” she replied guardedly.
Bullock studied her, his glittering eyes hooded beneath heavy lids. “He threw your touching offer of a reconciliation back in your face, didn’t he? I told you the whole bloody ruse of faking your death and returning would only enrage him. You should have let me kill him, rather than debase yourself in front of him.”
“You tried twice and failed,” she reminded him coldly.
Thinking of his unsuccessful attempt the preceding night, Bullock knew he would never admit his third failed attempt to Tish, even if she had agreed to let him kill Shelby. “I will succeed the next time,” he said arrogantly.
“You will do nothing. He’s agreed to continue our marriage and to return to Washington with me...but there is one obstacle.”
He studied her as she paced. “You mean the St. Etienne girl? She’s quite a beauty. You were scarcely cold in your supposed grave before your beloved husband married her,” he could not resist jibing.
Tish turned on him with a furious oath. “She is a nobody, nothing!” she hissed furiously, then calmed, smoothing her hands over the gauzy clinging fabric of her rose pink gown. “I’ve already made plans with Emory Wescott to dispose of her. Once she’s out of the way, Samuel will come to heel quickly enough.”
“I beg to differ, my pet. If I know you...and I do, quite well...you’ve blackmailed your noble husband with the chit. If you kill her, you’ll lose whatever tenuous hold you have on him.”
This time she came at him with nails bared, but he was ready for her. Seizing her wrists, he twisted her hands behind her back, bending her backward across his arm while his mouth ravaged her exposed breasts, nuzzling them free of their scant confinement, then biting the nipples until she whimpered in a frenzy of pain and excitement.
“Ah, Leticia, my beloved, I burn for you. I will eventually burn in all eternity for you, no doubt, but I will have you now,” he rasped as they sank together onto the carpet, their hands greedily tearing at each other’s clothes.
* * * *
Not a bad forgery, all in all, Emory Wescott considered, examining the poignantly worded letter to Samuel Shelby for the dozenth time. As Olivia St. Etienne’s guardian, he had ample samples of her handwriting to copy from in concocting the missive. Over the years in trading ventures, Wescott had become adept at forging various bills of lading and payment receipts.
“One might even say I have a talent for forgery,” he said chuckling to himself.
Now to the matter at hand—the way to lure Olivia out from under the watchdog eyes of Madame Quinn. It was a good thing her husband, that deadly Spanish renegade, had left to parlay with the Osage. Smiling to himself, he thought about the irony. A failure in one area led to success in another. The British failure to incite the Osage against the United States meant nothing to him. When Olivia brought him the Durand fortune, he could say to hell with the whiskey trade forever. Let the English and the Americans all kill one another and the miserable savages in the process! He would live like a king in Queen New Orleans.
He folded up the letter and placed it in the envelope he had painstakingly addressed to Shelby in Olivia’s hand. So much for deflecting the troublesome American from following the chit once he had abducted her. Now he had to lure her into his trap. The colonel would be at the Parkers’ gala tonight, an unwilling escort for his wife. Olivia was no doubt repining over that fact. But what if Shelby sent her a note, requesting a tryst after the party? Surely she would slip out of the Quinn house and meet her lover.
“I think the racetrack up on the bluffs would call forth some fond memories, Olivia,” he murmured. Certainly the dark, deserted area would be perfect for his plans. He would have her on that keelboat headed to New Orleans within twenty-four hours while Shelby was mourning the loss of his fickle lover. Smiling, he took another piece of paper and began to compose a second forgery…
* * * *
Samuel sat in the parlor of his house on Plum Street. A pouch of dispatches from Fort Bellefontaine had been delivered in his absence and sat on the desk in front of him. Looking around the simple room he remembered Olivia’s delighted reaction to it when he had carried her across the threshold the other night. She had been thrilled with everything. Hell, she had been happy in a one-room cabin with Micajah Johnstone. He massaged his temples and closed his eyes, willing away the bittersweet memories of their brief time together. How could their lives have changed so radically in such a few days? Tish alive. Livy not legally his wife.
Livy. No matter what society or the courts might say, she would always be the wife of his heart. At least for the present he could content himself that she was safe with his sister and that Tish had indeed preferred the Parkers’ accommodations to his humble abode. The thought of. traveling all the way back to Washington in such close proximity to that woman was enough to send him to the liquor cabinet to refill his snifter with brandy.
“Why not? It’s half-past three in the morning,” he muttered disconsolately. He had spent the past evening in full dress uniform as befitted the husband of Leticia Soames Shelby. Just spending a few hours in her company made him realize how impossible her demands on him were. She wanted him to be a man who never existed, a figment of her imagination, someone who could magically carry her all the way to the White House.
Sipping the pungent brandy, he returned to the desk where his reports on Stuart Pardee and his further suspicions regarding Emory Wescott lay, half-written. The verbal accounts he had given in such detail the night of his arrival had to be followed up with a mound of written reports. He had put the chore off for too long.
What a glamorous life! He grimaced, a spy who was more apt to expire from choking on paperwork than die of a gunshot. He opened the dispatch from Washington first, giving it a quick perusal before completing his own task.
The news was not heartening. President Madison had. convened Congress early to prepare for war. He scanned the report, glad that he could at least send back a small piece of good news regarding the Osage alliance, especially considering the information in the second dispatch. It had come from Indiana Territory wher
e the young hotheaded governor and militia leader William Henry Harrison had incited the Shawnee to join the British by burning their village at Prophetstown. His forces experienced heavy casualties at a battle on Tippecanoe Creek, resulting in a stalemate which would soon erupt into a full-scale Shawnee uprising once the absent Tecumseh returned to regroup the embittered and undefeated Shawnee and their allies.
“The damn fool,” Shelby muttered in disgust, throwing down the papers and running his fingers through his hair. War would soon be here and Tish would be lobbying for him to take a military command on the front lines. “If not for Livy, I might just do it to escape.”
He polished off the brandy, then resumed writing his report for Jemmy Madison. He would probably be able, to deliver it in person rather than rely on a courier, he thought glumly. His troubled ruminations were interrupted by a soft insistent rapping on the front door. It was scarcely the hour for social calls. “Who is it?” he asked, reaching for the pistol lying beside him on the desk.
At once he recognized his sister’s voice and rushed to throw open the door. Elise slipped inside, shivering from the cold damp mist that had enveloped the city, bringing a taste of winter. “What’s happened?” he asked, knowing it must bode ill indeed for her to be out at this hour.
“Olivia’s gone,” she said urgently as her eyes swept around the parlor and then returned to meet his. “I had hoped she’d come to you but I see she hasn’t.”
“What do you mean, gone! Has she been kidnapped from your house?”
“No. She rode away alone. I saw her slip out from the stable behind the house.”
“But where would she go in the middle of the night?”
Elise betrayed some agitation now. “I don’t know. It was quite accidental that I saw her leave. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known she was gone until morning. Orlena’s kitten wandered away from her room and she awakened me crying for it. I searched the house and just happened to be passing the kitchen window when I saw someone open the stable door. By the time I got to the backyard it was too late to stop her. I don’t think she even heard me call her name.”