“Truth, my dear, comes dressed to suit many occasions. Take yourself, for instance.”
“Let’s not.” All Meredith wanted to do now was to escape. She started to rise, but Preston’s hand landed heavily on her shoulder, keeping her still. Astonished by the casual force of it, Meredith uttered no protest.
“What a novel picture,” Preston said. “I like you, sitting before me like a vanquished maiden. I give you full marks, my dear. You’ve proven to be more of a challenge than I originally planned. It hasn’t been easy, using you.”
“I . . . see. You used me to—to get to Mr. Walker.”
“Yes.” His voice was almost gentle. “He couldn’t be bought off or blackmailed, an annoying inconvenience for me. His reputation—well, let’s just say if he’d kept his enterprises out of my corner of the world, I would have wished him well. I haven’t decided about the hotel here in town. Perhaps I’ll let him keep it as a consolation prize.” His gaze swept over her, turning almost dreamy. “I can see you in the lobby, on my arm. Wearing a Worth evening gown, one I’d order especially for you. You deserve more than gowns purchased from a Montgomery Ward’s catalog, my dear.”
“Preston . . .” She took a swallow of water to ease the burning in her throat. She didn’t think he even realized how deeply he’d insulted her. “What you did to Mr. Walker, what you’re doing to me—it’s monstrous. Despicable.”
“All depends on your point of view. For me, the actions were expedient. I’m sorry that you . . .” Before she realized his intent, his fingers were brushing the line of her chin.
Thought followed action. She knocked his hand away and rose, clumsy with anger, to her feet. “Don’t you ever touch me again, you—you profligate!”
“Ah. The maiden has claws. I’d wondered.” He tugged out his handkerchief and touched it to his forehead, then jammed it back inside his waistcoat. “Didn’t your father ever warn you about men, pet? You and I are alone. It wouldn’t be wise to provoke me too far.” The dreamy expression had vanished, replaced by one of subtle cruelty.
His erratic displays of conflicting moods were almost as frightening as his revelations. “It would be equally unwise to provoke me,” Meredith managed to retort. Her heart thumped against her ribs as she gauged the distance to the doorway.
Beneath the mustache Preston’s lips thinned to an unpleasant line. “It’s almost a temptation to send you back to your employer . . . somewhat the worse for wear. Be careful, my—”
“He’s not my employer. I quit after he accused me of lying.” At least she now understood his accusations.
For some reason the terse declaration seemed to lighten Preston’s mood again. “Must have been an interesting confrontation. I only heard Ellis’s rather dry version, of course. The one where you deny any role in my ‘scheme to undercut Poplar Springs’—was that the gist of it? You played your part to perfection.”
“I was not playing a part!”
“Forgive me. Of course you’re right. You weren’t playing a part. The image tantalizes.” His malicious chuckle grated, and Meredith’s hands clenched in impotent fists. “Mr. Hill—my surveyor?—added a nice touch of authenticity, don’t you think? Even Ellis was almost convinced that you had no knowledge of my plans before Hill stepped in.”
“I didn’t. I don’t. And you know it.” Now the pain arrived, fresh as a wound, bleeding away the bravado. Again. Again. She’d been duped and betrayed again and had nobody to blame but herself. Not God. This wasn’t God’s will. Just Meredith’s. She was impulsive. She was . . . stupid.
But she was also the daughter of Jacob Sinclair.
“You’ve known about Poplar Springs for almost a year,” she said. “Why wait until now to—to do what you did?”
Preston picked up one of the smoldering cigars and considered the tip for a moment. “It took that long to . . . arrange . . . the purchase of all the adjoining land,” he admitted. “After Mr. Walker was obliging enough to show me the plans for Poplar Springs, I realized it would have been a top-of-the-line resort spa.” He took a puff on the cigar and blew the smoke upward. “I couldn’t allow that to happen.”
“Couldn’t allow it? You can’t stop it,” Meredith said, her voice suddenly fierce. No matter how badly Benjamin had treated her, defense of him was automatic, as instinctive as breathing. “Even if you build your own health spa, it won’t stop Mr. Walker. He knows what he’s doing, has planned for every detail.”
The resort was his dream. He’d called in all manner of experts, from architects to engineers to a botanist to plan the grounds. The threat of competition, even with adjoining properties, would not cause Benjamin to fold his tent and steal meekly away in defeat. “He’ll find a way, he’ll build it in spite of your detestable conniving.”
“An interesting response for a former employee whose employer believes her to be a lying and a faithless Jezebel.” Cigar clamped between his teeth, Preston strolled over to a sideboard and poured himself another drink. “I find your loyalty commendable, if wasted. Nonetheless, he won’t be building Poplar Springs.” Turning, he lifted the filled glass. “Congratulate yourself, my dear. Thanks to you—unwittingly of course—Benjamin Walker has finally tasted defeat.”
“I’ll explain. Make him understand. I won’t let you use me to destroy a man’s dreams.” As Preston had just destroyed hers.
“Empty words, futile effort, my dear.” He ran his thumb around the lip of the glass before adding lightly, “And . . . unwise, shall we say? I’m afraid a lot of people wouldn’t take too kindly to even a hint of scurrilous gossip. About myself, of course.” His voice deepened. “You must understand. Powerful men of my stature have to guard their reputations, regardless of the cost. Meredith, my dear—please. I wouldn’t want you to be . . . hurt. You’re very vulnerable, aren’t you?”
“I—what do you mean?” Stunned, not wanting to comprehend, she searched his face. “Preston, are you threatening me?”
“I’m only helping you curb your impulsive nature.”
“How generous. How may I help you curb your villainous nature?”
A faint smile curved his lips. “Like I said, impulsive. Let it go, Meredith. There’s nothing you can say or do to alter the inevitable.”
“Preston, none of this makes sense. Threatening me is ludicrous—I have no influence over Mr. Walker. Especially now.”
Preston swallowed the drink in three gulps. “Ludicrous as you find it, you can trust me in this, Meredith.”
After stubbing out the cigar he strolled back across the room to stand in front of her, hands tucked inside his pockets in a subtle insult. “Benjamin Walker is through in Winchester.”
“You’d like to think so.” Her movements brittle, Meredith edged around him toward the door.
“Meredith?”
She tensed, not trusting the regretful tone of his voice. Warily she turned around.
“Earlier I told you that it hasn’t been easy, using you,” he said. His hands spread in an almost helpless gesture. “I need you to believe that.”
“You—need me to believe that? You charmed me. You cultivated a false image of someone I could admire, someone I could”—her chin lifted—“I thought you were the man God arranged . . . I trusted you.” She hurled the words at him. “I trusted you, and you threw that trust back in my face. I never really knew you at all, and you want to be absolved?”
“Try to understand. It was the only way. I regret having to hurt you, but—”
“Spare me your pretense at remorse. You don’t know the meaning of the word.” Meredith stalked toward the door. “Benjamin Walker’s worth a dozen of you. There’s more integrity in his littlest toe than you possess in your entire frame! I’m ashamed of myself for not realizing it sooner.”
Choking, she wrapped her slippery palm over the brass doorknob. “I’m ashamed of myself. But all I feel for you is pity. You might own a fortune in gold, Preston, but you’re nothing but dross.”
It was very satisfying to slam
the door in his face.
Forty-One
Papa? It’s late. What are you doing standing on the porch in the dark?”
Jacob reached backward, drawing Leah against his side. It still astonished him, this youngest daughter a woman grown instead of his baby, no bigger than a whittling stick. “Thinking. Praying. It’s a soft night, and the Big Dipper up there looks like it’s about to spill a drop or two of God’s grace over us.”
“More likely the Lord’s going to spill a bit of ague, you out here in the chilly spring night in your shirtsleeves.” She dropped her head on his shoulder.
Jacob inhaled the scents of cleaning soap and vanilla, Leah’s favorite scent, the only fragrance of toilet water she would wear. Love vibrated all the way to his fingertips. Love and—uneasiness, though not about Leah. “ ’Tis a joy to have you back home, lass. I’ve missed your bullying.” He searched for a lock of fine silky hair and gave it a tug. “But don’t be thinking I’m expecting you to stay beyond the summer. When September comes round again, I’ll put you back on the train.”
Leah wriggled from beneath his arm. With nothing beyond a quarter-moon hanging, Jacob was able to discern only the pale oval of her face and the blurred impression of her light blue gown.
“I just returned home two days ago. What on earth possessed you to brood about something that won’t happen for months?”
“I do not brood,” Jacob protested. Leah made a scoffing sound. “Och, you always were a pert one, weren’t you? Very well then, I’ll enjoy my little wren for now and leave tomorrow where it belongs, in the Lord’s hands.” He found her nose and gave it an affectionate tweak. “And I was not brooding.”
“Yes, Papa.” The smile in her voice made Jacob’s lips twitch in response. “Just like you didn’t brood when Meredith went haring off after—Papa? What is it? What’s wrong?” she asked, all lightheartedness gone. “You’re not in pain, are you?
“No, lass.” Jacob propped a hip on the porch rail and crossed his ankles. “In fact I—”
“Oh. Well, remember to watch your diet. And Sloan told me that undue agitation would—”
“The only agitation in my life,” Jacob interrupted dryly, “comes from a gaggle of women treating me like a wee babe. Took most of this past month to convince Mrs. Willowby not to check on me every hour of the day. Only time I had a moment’s privacy was bedtime.” And even then, more often than not those first weeks after Garnet and Meredith left, Effie’s footsteps creaked the floorboards outside the door, though she never knocked or intruded.
“Mrs. Willowby was acting on Sloan’s instructions. Take your protests to him. Papa,”—the light voice took on a hint of steel—“if it’s not the ulcer, tell me what’s bothering you. Something is, and I want to know.”
Jacob heaved a sigh and gave in. With Leah, there’d never been any use to prevaricate. “Can’t stop thinking about Meredith. She’s been gnawing at my mind most of this day. I figure the Lord’s laid her on my heart for a reason. So I came out here to talk a bit to Him about her before going to bed.”
“Oh. I’m sorry I intruded.”
He heard the scrape of her footsteps retreating across the porch. “Don’t go. You can pray with me if you like.”
“Papa, if God knows everything, then what do you hope to accomplish by nagging Him with your worries?”
“A bit of peace.” Jacob smiled sadly. “The comfort of knowing that He’s there, willing to listen to those worries. Sort of like my girls come to me at times, needing a hug, needing to know how much they’re loved, no matter where they are or what they do.”
Leah scampered back across the porch and burrowed inside his waiting arms. “Papa,” the whisper drifted into his ear, “if I could feel God like I can feel you, I’d pray with you.”
How well he knew that. Jacob tightened his arms, rocking her while his gaze returned to the starlit night. Leah’s lack of understanding made his heart ache, but at least when he was holding her he could rest assured that, for this brief moment at least, she was safe.
He wasn’t so sure about Meredith.
Lord? Keep her close inside Your arms, since I can’t have her in mine.
“Sloan?” Roused from sleep by the creaking bedsprings, Garnet yawned, her hand blindly patting the empty space beside her.
“Over here by the window, sweetheart. It’s all right. Go back to sleep.”
“Someone knocked? You have to go?” She struggled to rise, but before she was fully upright in the bed Sloan was leaning over her, gently laying her back down while his mouth brushed soothing kisses over her face.
“Nobody knocked on the door.” His hand lifted her nighttime braid, his fingers sifting through the tuft of hair at the end. “I was praying.”
An uprush of love spilled through Garnet along with a prickle of uncertainty. She wrapped her hands around his wrist, hugging his arm to her chest. “Why didn’t you wake me?” she whispered. “Who for this time?”
When he didn’t immediately answer, the last of Garnet’s sleep-lulled security fled. Her nails dug into his wrist. “Sloan? Is it Papa? Do we need to—”
His kiss stemmed the flow of panicked words. “Hush, sweetheart. Not your father . . . so far as I know, he’s still basking in Leah’s homecoming. And he’s welcome to bask away, long as he finishes the armoire he promised to have done for us by the end of the month. It’ll be nice, won’t it, to finally have our bedroom suite completed—a legacy for our children to cherish. Furniture made by their grandfather, the famous Jacob Sinclair.”
“Sloan . . .” She pressed her fingers against his lips. “You may as well tell me. Let me pray too.” In the sliver of pale moonlight drifting through the window, his silhouette loomed above her, a dark guardian angel whose love for Garnet humbled her.
She watched his shoulders shift, then he was sliding back under the quilt and tucking her against his side. Garnet settled in her spot, head nestled between his chin and shoulder, her left hand over the comforting beat of his heart.
Sloan pressed a last kiss to her temple. “It’s Meredith,” he admitted then and held her still. “For some reason, we need to be praying for Meredith. I don’t know why, so I was just . . . praying.”
Garnet quelled the lurch of panic. Then, because she had learned to trust God’s all-loving Presence as much as she trusted her husband, she closed her eyes and prayed for her older sister.
Somewhere along the lonely walk back to her boardinghouse, Meredith decided to pack her belongings and in the morning leave Winchester in the dust. Any spiritual insight to be derived from the debacle of the last eighteen months could be absorbed just as thoroughly somewhere else.
There was precedent in a retreat. King David had cowered in a cave once. And she thought it was Elijah who crept under a rock or something. With those noble heroes of the Bible as her models, Meredith managed to deflect the crushing shame, ignore the corrosive loneliness.
Two blocks from her boardinghouse, she decided she was angry with Benjamin Walker, almost as angry as she was over Preston’s perfidy. The notion transformed her. With each step ringing hollowly into the spring night, Meredith fed her anger another incendiary thought to fan the flames. Benjamin had no right to treat her as he had, especially when she’d defended his honor so valiantly. Yes, even in the midst of her own destroyed dreams, she hadn’t betrayed him. Benjamin hadn’t given her the benefit of the doubt. Hadn’t even had the courtesy to confront her quietly, in the privacy of his office. Instead he’d sent Hominy as his lackey. And to think she’d been helping the dignified servant to become a gentleman. Gentleman, ha!
The pair of them deserved a hiding with a willow switch. No, a railroad tie.
As for J. Preston Clarke, well, if she weren’t a God-fearing young woman she knew just what she would wish for that snake.
Meredith decided that she thoroughly despised the entire male species.
A block from her boardinghouse, she decided she was angry at God after all, for putting her in this
humiliating predicament. Why shove Preston in her path in the first place, when as the omniscient Creator of the universe, the Lord knew all along what would happen? What use was there in spending all your life obeying the tenets of His word, when God let you down without a lick of warning? He knew the desires of her heart, yet He thwarted her at every turn. It wasn’t fair . . .
By the time she reached the gate in front of the boardinghouse, her anger and outrage had flared into self-righteous fury, an emotion far more satisfying than shame.
She stubbornly ignored a tiny flicker of caution.
It was quite dark now and very still. Only a single light shone through the parlor window of the boardinghouse. The good citizens of Winchester were all cozily ensconced in their homes; Meredith might have been the only soul on the planet. A ghost-white quarter-moon filtered through the newly leafed trees lining the streets, but other than the low-pitched hum of insects serenading one another in a hedge next door, the night wrapped her in a smothering shroud of silence.
She hated the silence, and when she thought about her room—a dark cell devoid of company—every nerve rebelled. She’d be alone with her thoughts, with an anger she couldn’t sustain on her own. She needed to vent her wrath, preferably upon one of the people who deserved it the most. Not Preston—she never wanted to see that man again, never wanted to speak his name.
Fine. She couldn’t satisfy her thirst for vengeance with a deceitful snake, so she would seek satisfaction from the man whose lack of faith in her wounded far more deeply than Meredith was prepared to admit. At least Benjamin should be easy to find. He lived in a suite of rooms on the top floor of the Excelsior. Meredith knew his schedule, and he had nothing planned this evening—unless he and Hominy had scuttled off somewhere like the cowards they were. But she would find the witless Mr. Walker if it took the entire night. If necessary she’d hunt him down in his private domain—hammer down the door, hang propriety and dignity and respectability.
Shenandoah Home (Sinclair Legacy Book 1) Page 34