by Jill Morrow
“I haven’t asked yet. After her explosion in the dining room this morning, I wasn’t sure she’d be open to the request.”
“Oh. Well, she won’t be.” Jim settled back in his seat. “She’s scared to death.”
“Scared?” Adrian frowned as he shifted gears.
“Apparently Mrs. Chapman gets more insistent each time she comes to call. Amy wants to keep her away. She’s afraid that the late Mrs. C will show up one day and take up permanent residence inside her head.”
Adrian paled, but it didn’t stop him from continuing. “We’re still missing crucial information. We need another opportunity to speak with Mrs. Chapman.”
“You can suggest it, but . . .”
“I was hoping you would suggest it.”
Jim smacked his palm onto the seat between them. “Ask me to do something else.”
“I can’t. It’s clear that Amy Walsh wants nothing more to do with this, but it’s crucial that we meet at least one more time. If anyone can persuade her to do so, it’s you.”
“Why me?”
“Need I really elaborate?”
“There’s nothing between us anymore. I’m finished with it.”
Adrian guided the automobile toward the curb, slowing to park. Down the cobblestone street a ways, several navy recruits escorted a group of giggling town girls toward a movie theater. Jim sighed as their laughter floated back to the town car. What would it be like to ask Amy out on a bona fide date, to casually slip an arm around her waist as he plunked down change for a ripping Douglas Fairbanks adventure? Or Valentino. Maybe Valentino would be a better choice. Amy might go all swoony over Valentino, and all those romantic feelings would have to transfer themselves somewhere . . . Without the trappings of Spookyville, was there a chance he and Amy might actually have a grand time together?
“Constance believes that a good woman might very well be the making of you,” Adrian said, following Jim’s gaze to the boisterous crowd down the street.
“Don’t tell me that,” Jim said glumly. “I thought your wife liked me.”
“She does. Quite a lot. And not only is she an excellent judge of character, but I’ve learned over the years that her instincts are usually correct.” Adrian turned off the auto. “I need to send a telegram, and then we’ll go back to Liriodendron. That will give you plenty of time to speak with Amy before we begin drafting the will.”
Jim opened his mouth to protest, then thought the better of it. His words wouldn’t really matter anyway. Adrian had made up his mind.
Another thought struck him. “Adrian.”
Adrian paused halfway through the auto door.
Jim cleared his throat. “Do you believe it’s really Mrs. Chapman coming through?”
Adrian slid back behind the steering wheel, gaze focused straight out the windshield. “I didn’t at first. But Mrs. Chapman delivers messages that undermine her messengers. She tells secrets nobody wants revealed. With that in mind, it’s only logical to believe that neither Miss Walsh would choose to invent her.”
“Logical?”
“Yes.” He turned toward Jim, a hint of a smile crossing his face. “And don’t forget: I knew your Granny Cullen too.”
Jim followed him out into the sun. So Adrian believed. Knowing that made him feel more confident about his own instincts.
Talking to Amy would be about as much fun as bouncing a ball against his head. There wasn’t much he wouldn’t rather do. But perhaps the only way out of this situation was to help it finish in the same way it had begun.
CHAPTER
29
February 1898
Cassie slept deeply after the Phillips’s dinner party, lost in the eiderdown and silence of the cottage guest room. Her dreams, born of fatigue and too much rich food and wine, churned through her mind in restless swirls. Most of them vanished before she could even begin to decipher them. But as dawn stretched into midmorning, they seemed to acquire a reality of their own, dragging her through landscapes and emotions she had no desire to visit. The down pillows, so soft and inviting throughout the night, transformed themselves into hellish clouds intent on smothering her. She clawed at her throat as strong fingers entwined around it. Spectral hands pushed against her shoulders, pinning her to a mattress that suddenly felt as unyielding as a hardwood floor. She knew what came next. Time was short. Struggling against drugged tides of sleep, she opened her mouth to shriek before an expected hand could clamp it shut.
“Cassie.”
She heard her name but could not respond. Tears streamed down her face, and her shoulders shook with gulping sobs that seemed to come from her very core.
“Cassie!”
The spell of the nightmare shattered, releasing its ghosts into the air. Cassie’s eyes opened. Adrian Delano leaned above her, one hand on her shoulder, the other grasped around the bedpost. His was the only familiar shape in the room. It took a moment to remember that she was in a cottage in Newport, Rhode Island, as far away from Poughkeepsie as she had ever been in her life.
“Here.” Adrian fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief. Her senses still shrouded by the dream, Cassie could do nothing more than open her hand. He pressed the handkerchief into her palm and closed her fingers around it. “Are you all right?”
“I . . . I’m sorry. It was a dream, that’s all. Did I wake you?”
She realized the moment the words left her lips that he’d been awake for some time. He was dressed in tweed knickerbockers, boots, and a collarless white shirt. He hadn’t shaved, but his cheeks beneath the shadow of beard looked more olive than sallow this morning. He seemed full of light, as if a sunbeam shone down upon him. In fact, the whole room seemed brighter.
She pulled herself up to sit. “There’s so much light! It’s quite late, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but it’s more than that.” He glanced around and found her robe hanging on a bedpost. “Here, put this on and come look.”
He discreetly turned away as she slid from beneath the quilts and slipped the robe over her flannel nightgown. She padded across the chilly floor to join him at the window. Outside, the garden was blanketed with snow.
“It’s beautiful!” she cried. “But what about the wedding tomorrow?”
Adrian looked like a cat about to purr. “There may be fewer guests, but I’m sure it will go forward as planned.”
“Why do you look so pleased? It’s not as if you’ve never seen snow before.”
“This means we don’t have to call on anyone today, and no one will call on us. No need to be sociable. I couldn’t be happier.”
“No!” She tugged her bathrobe more tightly around her. “I need those calls! I can’t afford to lose a single opportunity if I’m to convince Peter Phillips—”
His gaze skewered her. “Oh, I don’t know that it matters all that much, Miss Walsh,” he said, and the sudden detachment in his voice made her shiver. “Between Peter’s drinking and your determination, a day or two shouldn’t make a whit of difference.”
She tried to ignore the shame that washed through her. It was one thing to battle fate on her own, pushing bullishly through to achieve a necessary end. It was quite another to see the callousness of her plan reflected in Adrian’s eyes.
“I can be very persuasive indeed,” she said, but the words sounded as hollow as she felt and fell far short of bravado. Unexpected tears welled up in her eyes. She turned abruptly from the window, swiping them away with the handkerchief still crumpled in her hand.
“Cassie . . .” Adrian laid a tentative hand on her shoulder.
She glanced up at him, hoping to find enough condemnation in his expression to harden her backbone. But it was no use: his coldness had already evaporated, replaced by open concern. “Don’t mind me, Adrian. I’m still in the throes of that awful dream, that’s all,” she lied.
“Would it help to tell me about it?” he asked. “Nightmares always seem less frightening in the light of day.”
“It’s the light of day it
self that frightens me,” she said, crumpling the handkerchief as if it had caused grave offense. “What am I to do, Adrian? I can’t go back home. I just can’t. I would rather die.”
Adrian studied her for a long moment. She wished she looked better. There was nothing fetching about a tousled braid and an old chenille bathrobe to begin with, and she’d only enhanced their style with tearstained cheeks and red eyes.
At least he didn’t seem to notice. “Come,” he said. “Mrs. Vickery brought us breakfast this morning. I think the food will do you good.”
He extended his hand. She allowed hers to rest inside it. His fingers were warm and strong, and an unexpected shiver raced through her. She glanced up, surprised.
“Cassie,” Adrian said in a low voice, “you are worth so much more than you seem to think.”
She wondered what he saw to make him think so. Damn him for going to Europe. Why couldn’t he have stayed in Poughkeepsie where she might have confided the truth in him long before now?
She drifted into his open arms, resting her head against his shoulder.
“Perhaps we should play some backgammon.” His voice was soft in her ear as he stroked her hair. “For old time’s sake. We can talk . . .”
Sleigh bells jingled outside, their gay chimes piercing the frigid air. Startled, Cassie stepped from the circle of Adrian’s arms.
Peter Phillips’s voice, unnaturally loud and hearty, penetrated the glass window pane. “Heigh-ho! Marjorie and I have come to rescue you from a day of boredom!”
Cassie hurried to the window, peering from behind the curtains so as not to be seen. “Dear God,” she said, an excited flush coloring her face. “I’m not dressed. Adrian, can you talk to him until I’m ready?”
His only response was the slam of the bedroom door as he left the room.
FOR THE SECOND time in less than twenty-four hours, Catharine Walsh hauled her suitcase from beneath Liriodendron’s guest-room bed. Kneeling on the floor, she flipped open the lid, propping it against the edge of the mattress. Although she’d returned most of her belongings to closets and drawers last night, she’d kept a few essentials packed away, just in case the need for an emergency flight should arise. None of that mattered now. Her hand slipped beneath a pile of lingerie, burrowing until her fingers brushed an object in the rear corner of the suitcase. She carefully withdrew a small bundle wrapped in a linen handkerchief. It was held together by a faded green ribbon, which came undone easily at her touch.
No matter how often she told herself that there was no need to look at these things anymore, there always came a time when the pull toward her past became more than she could ignore. Only two objects, but they were nearly all that was left from a time she could never fully reclaim.
She lifted a small sterling silver pendant first, willing her hands to stop trembling long enough to unlatch it. Nested inside was a curling lock of soft hair, so blond it was nearly white. The delicate curl had been clipped from Amy’s head almost twenty years ago as the toddler tossed feverishly in her makeshift crib, leaving her anguished mother to wonder if she’d live until morning.
Catharine’s stomach still clenched whenever she recalled that frightening winter. The sound of her child’s piercing wails had been preferable to the possibility of only deathly silence coming from the crib.
She returned the pendant to the center of the unfolded handkerchief, then reached for the small tintype beside it. It had been taken in 1901, just after that horrible winter and shortly before she and Amy had left New York City for Chicago. Amy sat in an oversized chair, her little legs straight before her, hands clasped demurely in her lap. Her chubby cheeks reflected glowing health, as much a testament to her mother’s sheer will as to the gradual sale of the few items of value Catharine had still possessed. Edith Delano’s pearls, one of the final items to leave her possession, had paid for the heat, medicine, and food needed to restore Amy to health that winter, as well as for train tickets west and a fresh start. Even after all these years Catharine still blushed when she remembered the pearls. Desperation made people do despicable things. She still wondered what lie Adrian had spun to keep his family from pursuing her for theft.
Amy had survived, but she’d done so mainly because Catharine herself had always known how to endure in the face of adversity. Catharine had always been able to see the bare essentials of any situation, and the truth had never burned more brightly than in that freezing New York garret during that dreadful winter: a marriage certificate might provide a thin veil of respectability, but one could neither eat nor buy medicine with it. In the end, it was merely a piece of paper, and a fairly useless one at that.
Catharine still didn’t know what muse had inspired her to dress in her most refined attire that night Amy lay so ill, to scoop both child and blankets into her arms and carry her to the nearest doctor. “I need your help,” she’d said, lower lip trembling. “My brother and sister-in-law have just died. I have little to offer you, but I promised them that I would do everything in my power to save their child. Please don’t fail me.”
The young doctor had straightened, eyes moist with emotion for the brave scene of dedication unfolding before him. For the first time, Catharine saw none of the pity or disbelief that followed her usual fable of widowhood. Suddenly she was a saving angel instead of a ruined girl, and Amy reaped the benefits.
It was a gift, this inherent knowledge of which part of her history could be jettisoned in order to stay afloat. Amy had not been the only one granted a new beginning through the fervent ministrations of the doctor. Catharine, too, had emerged reborn. Chicago had met the Walshes as aunt and niece, and if survival required the restrained distance of an aunt rather than the unbridled warmth of a mother, it seemed a small price to pay. Catharine had never looked back.
But, then, she seldom did. Even now, as she tenderly rewrapped her keepsakes, she did her best to avert her gaze from the initials embroidered in the corner of the handkerchief. Usually she paid them no mind. Today, however, it seemed that every steadfastly constructed wall around her heart had fallen. Her eyes focused on the initials as if there were nothing else in the room to see. AJD: Adrian James Delano.
Her head hurt. With a sigh, she leaned against the heavy nightstand and closed her eyes.
CHAPTER
30
Chloe Dinwoodie sat cross-legged on the flagstone terrace, eyes scrunched shut and palms upturned. Jim willed himself to turn straight around and head back toward the front of the house, but instead his pace slowed as he squinted in her direction. A votive candle burned next to her left knee, its flame flickering every time a breeze blew in from the ocean. Her lips moved in what he sincerely hoped was silent prayer, but as he drew closer, it became evident that Lady Dinwoodie would never be accused of doing anything silently.
“Om mani padme hmmm . . . Come to me, Spirit.” Chloe’s grating voice rose as the words rolled off her tongue. “Talk to me. I invite you! I implore you!” Her eyes flew open. “Damn it, Mother! Why do you show up for total strangers and not for your own flesh and blood?”
Jim tried to slip out of sight, but it was too late. Chloe nailed him with a gimlet stare. “Mr. Reid! No, no, don’t slink away. I’m dying for some company. Let’s face it, without Mother around to liven things up, this place is dull as nails.”
There was no polite way to escape. Jim submerged a groan and made his way to the terrace.
“Please, Mr. Reid, tell me you’ve brought entertainment.” Chloe blew out the candle.
“No. I’m sorry. Actually, I’m looking for Amy.”
“Aren’t we all? She tells us this morning that Mother has more to say, and then she vanishes from sight.” She extended an arm. “Help me up, will you?”
“She’s vanished?” Jim tugged Lady Dinwoodie to her feet, planting her firmly at arm’s length before she could tumble forward into his arms.
Chloe glowered. “Oh, hold your horses, Romeo. I’m sure she’s around somewhere. But, clearly, she’s avo
iding us all. Jesus, I’d forgotten how bloody boring it is here. You wouldn’t happen to have a ciggie, would you?”
“Sorry.”
She rolled her eyes. “No, of course you don’t. I don’t suppose the dashing Mr. de la Noye is anywhere nearby.”
“Sorry again.”
“Pity.”
Chloe wore a bright saffron-colored frock with diaphanous scarves attached to the neckline. It didn’t suit her, but Jim supposed she was trying for a free-flowing, spiritual effect. A thin line of gray detailed the roots of her bleached blond bob. One foot tapped an impatient rhythm against the flagstone terrace where, next to the pointy toe of her shoe, an empty flask lay on its side.
Chloe followed his gaze. “Yes, I’m out of hooch.”
“I thought you—”
“Had given it up? I thought so, too. I had the best of intentions, but I’m bored to tears. If Mother doesn’t plan to chat all that often, then what’s the point of going clean?”
“Isn’t it worth it for its own sake? Didn’t you feel better?”
She stared at him, genuinely puzzled. “You really are a naïf, aren’t you. Never mind, there’s something quite fresh about it. How I’d love to be the one to corrupt you! Alas, there’s no way to do it properly in this dull place. Now, if you ever find yourself in New York City . . .”
Jim took a giant pace backward as she stepped toward him. “I thought Newport was a party sort of town,” he said, circling to the far side of the terrace table.
Either Chloe recognized defeat or she was just too bored to continue pursuit. She seated herself on the tabletop with an unladylike plop. “Not anymore, Mr. Reid. That ended years ago. Now this place just makes me feel old before my time, positively embalmed. Who’d want to live here, anyway?”
Voices carried from the garden. Bennett Chapman emerged from between the rosebushes, Catharine Walsh by his side. Jim peered more closely. Bennett’s cheeks were ruddy, his posture straight. He looked fit enough to tackle a ten-mile hike.
“Perhaps she’ll be willing to live here,” Chloe said, tipping her head in Catharine’s direction. “As far as I’m concerned, she’s more than welcome to carry the keys to this colossal white elephant. I hate the place.”