Hidden Affections (34 page)

“Irene!”

The housekeeper ignored Annabelle’s outburst, set down her brush and shook out the cape. “There. The cape is almost as good as new again. All it took was a little hard work.” Once she had the cape neatly folded, she set it back on top of the bed and looked directly at Annabelle. “You had the chance today to put all of this behind you, and I’m not talking about accepting Philip’s marriage proposal. You could have stayed with Prudence at the boardinghouse, but you didn’t. You came back here. Now are you going to stay and drop that pride you’re wearing like a badge of honor long enough to tell Harrison that you love him and you’re not leaving until he realizes he loves you, too?”

“I do love him,” Annabelle admitted, “and I . . . I know he loves me, too, but it’s . . . it’s terribly complicated. I tried talking to Harrison today, but . . . please. Don’t make this any harder for me or for him than it already is.”

Irene walked around the bed and sat down next to Annabelle. She put her arm around her, held her close, and rocked her from side to side as Annabelle let the tears fall. “Sh-h-h. Don’t cry. It’s not your fault. Poor Harrison. He’s so afraid of loving you, he can’t let you stay. I know. I know,” she crooned. “Don’t worry. He’ll discover all by himself that he can’t live without you, but I’m afraid he’ll be quite an old man by that time.” She chuckled through her own tears. “If I have anything to say about it, I plan to be here to see it, even though I might be a hundred by then. Can I say something to him then about what an idiot he was to let you go?” she teased.

Annabelle sniffled. “You can tell him when you’re a hundred and ten. But don’t call him an idiot. Just tell him that I never loved anyone before in my entire life like I came to love him and never did again and that . . . that I spent the rest of my life still loving him. Can you do that for me?” she asked, grateful the friend she needed Irene to be was back again.

“I surely can,” Irene pronounced. “Now let’s talk about how soon you want me to get you back to that boardinghouse.”

Now that Bradley was about to be ensnared in the trap that had been set for him, all Harrison had to do was hope that the man was as desperate as he thought he was, if not equally stupid.

While he waited for Bradley to return to his hotel room on Thursday after arranging for the man to be sent out on a fool’s errand an hour ago, he reviewed a mental checklist to make certain he had not forgotten anything. He sat in the one rickety chair in the room he had placed at an angle so Bradley would not see him until after he entered the room and closed the door. Within easy arm’s reach, the documents Harrison had brought with him after rushing about this morning were neatly arranged in a specific order on top of the scarred dresser in the corner. Most importantly, Annabelle was safe at home at Graymoor Gardens, so he did not have to worry about her at all. The only thing he might regret later was involving Philip, although he had no one else he could trust as much as his cousin, who had no idea what Harrison was really doing today.

He was satisfied that the scheme he had reviewed with his lawyer before coming here was legal, albeit in the loosest interpretation of the law and ethically questionable. Before he wasted a single worry about what he would do if Bradley failed to show up, he heard footsteps approaching the door.

He concentrated on Annabelle’s image to ease the tension wrapped tight around his chest. The moment he saw the doorknob begin to turn, he held his breath, and he did not exhale until Bradley had entered the room.

Once Bradley shut the door and finally saw that Harrison was sitting in his room, the man’s eyeballs nearly popped out of his head. One of his cheeks began to twitch, and he took a step back.

“I know you were expecting my wife, but she’s been detained rather indefinitely,” Harrison offered and stood up. He nudged the chair with his foot to slide it across the planked floor. “Have a seat. I have a number of documents you need to read. Until you do, I’m afraid you’re not free to leave. If you try, once you open the door, you’ll see that there’s someone now waiting at the top of the staircase down the hall who will convince you otherwise.”

Reluctantly, Bradley sat down and offered no protest when Harrison told him to pick up the first document and read it. The man’s hands were shaking so hard, Harrison wondered if any of the words were less than a total blur, but he appeared to read the document before he set it back into place. “All it states is that Annabelle’s father, William Tyler, died a number of years ago. How could that possibly be of any interest to me?” he snapped.

Harrison folded his arms over his chest and fully intended to be perceived as a bully if that’s what it took to guarantee this man’s cooperation. “Pick up the second document and read it.”

Bradley was sputtering by the time he finished reading the document and tossed it back onto the dresser without bothering to fold it. “Y-you actually got a sworn statement from the desk clerk to prove I used a dead man’s name to register for this room? If this is some attempt to intimidate me or to convince me that I’ll have to face charges for impersonating a dead man, then you’ve made a serious mistake. I’ll have you know—”

“The mistake you made was to threaten my wife and to blackmail her,” Harrison hissed and closed the distance between them. “That was a very, very serious mistake on your part.”

Bradley’s gaze hardened, but when he attempted to stand up, Harrison glared at him—hard—until he reluctantly sat down again. “You were more than just wrong to threaten Annabelle. You were very, very stupid, and I have little tolerance for stupid men, particularly when they interfere in my life in any way.” He handed him the next document. “You can read this later. I don’t need to take it with me. I have the original, along with ones for all the others. This document simply confirms that you opened a bank account at Hunterdon Bank some time ago under the name of William Tyler. It was signed by the bank president, who remembers you rather well, considering you were there just last week to make another deposit, as well as this morning,” he said before he handed him the fourth document. “There’s not much to read here. It’s just a document stating that as of ten o’clock this morning, the funds in William Tyler’s account increased by one thousand dollars, which is, oddly enough, the amount of the donation you told me you were going to make to the Refuge before you changed your mind.”

“That’s my wife’s money,” Bradley argued.

“Not anymore,” Harrison said. “According to this next document, which declares that any and all residue remaining in the estate of William Tyler belongs to his sole surviving heir, Annabelle. The bank president was most accommodating in that regard, as well. After he closed that account, he transferred the funds immediately to an account I’ve established there in Annabelle’s name. I won’t bother you with the details of how I convinced him to cooperate, unless you insist,” he added.

Bradley leaped to his feet, and his face was blister red. “That’s my money. It’s mine. You can’t take it from me!”

“If you truly believe that, you can always hire a lawyer and sue me,” Harrison offered calmly. “I’m quite certain your wife will not find it very entertaining to sit in court and listen to you explain why you’ve taken money from her and put it into an account under another man’s name—a man who just happens to have been your former father-in-law. Annabelle has all the documents I need to prove exactly when you married her and when you divorced her, as well,” he said coldly.

“If you honestly believe that your wife will be inclined to be understanding when she learns that she married a divorced man who claimed he had never been married before,” he continued, “then you might want to consider what she’ll think when she sees a note in your own handwriting demanding that the sum of ten thousand dollars be deposited in that very same account.” Harrison pulled Bradley’s note, which Annabelle had given to him, out of his pocket and held it up for Bradley to see before quickly storing it away again.

“But you can’t—”

Harrison took a step closer until he was practically nose to nose with the man. He enjoyed looking down at him. “I can and I will. And if you ever so much as look in my wife’s direction or tell anyone that you were once married to her, I will take every one of those documents straight to your wife. I believe I can easily convince her she should handle the matter instead of going to the authorities. For your son’s sake, as well as the scandal that would ensue if she chose to divorce you, she may decide to remain married to you, but I suspect you’ll never find your way into her good graces again. At the very least, you’ll never get another coin from her for the rest of your life, which will hopefully be as miserable as she can possibly make it for you.”

Clearly defeated, Bradley shook his head. “I can’t believe you’d do all this for Annabelle. For
Annabelle
?”

“I’d do all this and more. And now I’ll leave you to see what’s in the final envelope,” he replied and let himself out of the room. He joined Philip at the end of the hall and they descended the staircase together.

“Well? Were you able to convince Bradley to make the donation after all?” Philip asked innocently.

“I’m afraid not. It appears that Bradley has far less at his disposal than he led us to believe, but don’t fret. Since you’ve won the wager we made, I’ll make the one-thousand-dollar donation myself. I’ll see you again late next week.”

Anxious to get back to Annabelle to tell her that Bradley no longer posed a threat to either one of them, he walked outside and around the corner to where Graham was waiting with the coach to take him back to Graymoor Gardens. When he finally arrived home, he did not find her waiting for him in the parlor and took the main stairs two at a time. Pleased to find her door unlocked on the outside, he knocked softly. When she didn’t answer, he knocked harder.

He called out her name and took half a step inside, but he could still see that she was not there. In fact, the room itself felt empty, as if she had never been there at all. With his heart pounding, he walked into the room, saw the note lying in the middle of her bed next to two small packages and the envelope containing her settlements funds, and his chest tightened with dread.

He did not have to count the settlement money inside of the envelope to know it was all there, so he picked up the smallest package instead. He knew by feel alone that it contained the two wedding rings he had bought for her.

Unprepared to see them quite yet or to think about what he planned to do with them, he set the package back onto the bed. When he opened the second package, he found himself staring into a mirror, looking at the face of a man who had lost the only woman who had ever laid claim to his heart before he had the opportunity to create one final memory when he bid her farewell.

He set the leather-framed mirror back on the top of the bed and opened the note that had been attached to the mirror:

My dearest Harrison,

While I am no longer a part of your life, I am leaving this small gift with you. If you ever doubt again that you are a man of great character, all you have to do is look into this mirror. When you do, you will see the man that I saw every time we sat and talked together—a man who has a giving heart and a caring spirit, who now shares his wealth with little encouragement from others and a man who is capable of being a valued friend.

I pray that you will remember me with great affection, for that is how I will always remember you, and place your trust in God who will love us and comfort us both during the difficult days ahead.

Annabelle

Grief-stricken, he closed his eyes and whispered her name, just once, before he accepted the reality that he would never see her again. He did not regret a single moment he had spent with her, but the pain of knowing those moments were gone forever was so great that he vowed to never make the mistake of falling in love again.

Never. Never. Never.

Learning to live with Annabelle had been hard enough, but living without her was proving more difficult with each passing hour.

Desperate to ease the gnawing pain that intensified with the dawn of each new day, Harrison threw himself with reckless fervor back into the life he had led before he met her—only to find that he found no pleasure in the entertainments he had always enjoyed with likeminded friends on Petty’s Island.

He finally returned to Graymoor Gardens at midmorning a week later to embrace the pain completely, once and for all, in an attempt to finally end it. But he was more exhausted, broken in spirit, and heartsick than he had been before he had left.

Avoiding Irene entirely, he locked himself in Annabelle’s room and gave Lotte instructions to leave his meals on a tray outside of the door. Surrounded by crushing memories, he sat in front of the fire and stared at Annabelle’s empty chair. While their frank and open talks were often not easy for him, at least at first, he had learned what it was like to have a friend whose opinion he valued and whose character inspired him to improve his own.

It was the memory of Annabelle, simply Annabelle, however, that haunted him the most. He could still envision her pale green eyes, alive with excitement as she shared her enthusiasm for the volunteer work she had done, or shadowed to a darker green by the scandal that wound around his name, rather than her own. He could hear her voice, encouraging him to share his talents and wealth with others, yet rejecting the settlement funds she rightly deserved.

But most of all, it was the deep and abiding faith that held her steady, even when he set her aside because he could not take the risk of loving her and keeping her in his life.

Although he had not been able to pray for years and had little interest in his faith until Annabelle walked into his life, it was nearing midnight when he was inexplicably drawn to the Bible she often read that was lying on the writing desk.

He picked it up and saw that she had left it open to the passage from Corinthians that she loved. He carried the Bible back with him and sat in front of the fire to read it, over and over, until it was as familiar to him as her beautiful face.

“Faith. Hope. And love,” he murmured and flipped through the pages of the Bible. In the simplicity of those three little words, would he find the core of the faith that sustained Annabelle and actually claim it for himself?

When his fingers touched a page thicker than the others, he paused and worked his way back until he found it again near the center of the book. He had not seen this page before or realized that this particular Bible contained a record of his family that dated back to his great-great-grandfather, who settled in Philadelphia over one hundred fifty years ago. Marriages, births, and deaths were all listed in a variety of handwritings, and they testified to generation after generation of Graymoors who had made this city their home and claimed this faith as their own, as well.

Using the tips of his fingers, he traced the names of his parents, the older brother he could not remember, and his older brother Peter, along with Peter’s wife and two sons. Harrison’s name and the date of his birth, however, stood alone, real testimony that the Graymoor family name would end with him.

He knew he had not updated the record to include the date of Peter’s death, along with his wife and sons, and he dismissed the possibility that Irene was responsible. Even though she was just learning how to write, she would never have made those entries without his permission. Not in his family Bible. That left Annabelle as the obvious suspect, and he narrowed his gaze to study the record again.

She had not listed her name or the date of their marriage, which made sense, and he wondered if she had, would he have had the courage to make an entry noting the date of their divorce?

Deeply troubled, he juxtaposed the pain of living without her with the incredible risk he would take to love her and keep her as part of his life, inviting the pain that he knew only too well could follow. Either way, he would be hurt, and he could not decide which path to take or which hurt would be greater.

Desperate to find an answer to the dilemma he faced, he paged through the Bible until he found the passage in Corinthians again. He pressed his hand to the page, closed his eyes, and opened his heart to receive the love of God he had rejected for so long.

He whispered the passage he had memorized by now, word by word, over and over again. Finally, when his voice was hoarse and his spirit had been broken and bowed down to the will of God, his very soul filled with faith, with hope, and with a love so overpowering that he literally dropped down to his knees. And there he found the courage to do what he thought he had forgotten how to do: He prayed.

After living at the boardinghouse for a week and swinging from despair one hour to hope the next, Annabelle finally came to accept that Harrison was not going to change his mind and keep her as part of his life.

After spending that same week working at the boardinghouse, she also knew she definitely did not want a similar position again anywhere else, regardless of how much it paid. It was nearly eleven o’clock again tonight before she had a new but late-arriving boarder settled into a room, and she collapsed into her own bed, which was actually the cot Widow Plum had once kept in the kitchen.

The elderly woman was extremely kind and the only saving grace to working here. Otherwise, Annabelle found the position so physically demanding that she ached from head to toe. Her hands were raw from scrubbing every room. Her back was sore from moving furniture and carrying loads of laundry up and down three floors on the only staircase in the house. Her entire body was stiff from overwork, but it was her broken heart that caused her real pain.

Unable to find a position on the cot that did not hurt some part of her body, she got up. Even though she was so exhausted she doubted she could get her eyes to focus properly, she lit the oil lamp and spread the newspaper out on the cot to see if there was a position posted today that had not appeared before.

She did not know how it happened, but the next thing Annabelle knew, it was dawn. She woke up with a start when she saw the newspaper spread out beneath her, but with little time before she had to help start breakfast, she did not bother to read the first page at all.

Instead, she opened the four-page paper searching for the section where she would find the notices for positions printed among other advertisements for various shops, available houses or land listed for sale, and the notice Widow Plum had posted three days ago announcing that her boardinghouse was now accepting new clients.

She caught a glimpse of something on the inside page that grabbed her attention, and she clapped her hand to her mouth to keep from squealing out loud while she read it:

Mr. and Mrs. Eric Bradley and their infant son, Daniel, recent esteemed visitors to our city, have departed for an extended holiday in Richmond, Virginia, where the weather is far more hospitable than we all are struggling to endure here. They expect to return in the spring to their home in New York City.

“Harrison did it! He actually got Eric out of the city!” she whispered, and her heart lurched in her chest for want of being with him again.

Hopeful that God’s plan for her life might become clearer to her today if she found at least one notice for a position far away from here, she quickly scanned the notices and squealed out loud this time when she saw a position she actually found appealing:

Widower moving west in March requires a mature woman of faith for housekeeping responsibilities and the care of four young children during journey and thereafter. Respond to this newspaper by 18 February and include references. M. L. Lerner

“I could handle this position. I know I could.” She quickly refolded the paper and stored it under her pillow. Even the prospect of providing references should not present a problem, assuming Irene and Widow Plum would be willing to vouch for her character as well as her willingness to work hard. She dismissed the idea of getting any kind of references for the work she had done at the Refuge as too risky for a host of reasons, and sighed. She had not even thought of doing volunteer work since she arrived here. She had not even picked up her knitting, for that matter, for the same reason: She had absolutely no free time.

Heartened by the fact she had finally found a notice for a position that appealed to her, she closed her eyes to whisper a prayer of thanksgiving. She quickly said another to ask God to heal her broken heart and give her the strength and courage to follow the path He had set before her—a path that seemed to be leading her away from the man she still loved so deeply.

She arrived downstairs a little later than usual but she still managed to get to the kitchen before Widow Plum. Shivering, she added some wood to the cookstove to heat the room as well as to get it ready to use to make breakfast. She was pumping water into a pot to parboil some potatoes to fry before she remembered to whisper a prayer that Irene would come for another visit soon and bring the diary Annabelle had forgotten to pack.

Although she still could not fathom why she had not remembered to bring her diary, of all things, her heart was a little lighter knowing Irene would keep it safe until she was able to bring it to her. She took out a bowl and a sharp knife and set them onto the table before she lugged over a large sack of potatoes that needed peeling.

She had barely started her work when she heard a knock at the front door and hurried to answer it. “It’s barely six o’clock. If boarders would take the time to read the notice in the newspaper more carefully, they’d know not to arrive before ten o’clock in the morning,” she grumbled and opened the door.

“Wearing a face like that will send boarders in the other direction,” Irene teased before stepping into the house.

Stupefied, Annabelle could scarcely believe her eyes. “What are you doing here again so soon and so early?”

“Coming to see you—and don’t ask me how I got out of there so early. I don’t quite believe it myself. I can only stay for a few minutes so I can get back home with Mr. Anderson’s deliveryman before anyone finds out I’m gone. By the way, I finally found Jonah yesterday. Or I should say, he found me again. He’s keeping company with another squirrel. Now I’ve got two critters to feed.”

“Did you find my diary?” Annabelle asked as they passed through the dining room into the kitchen.

“I haven’t been able to look for it. Harrison was back by the time I got home last night, and he’d already locked himself up in your room and told Lotte to leave his meals on a tray outside the door. Even if he decides to leave the room, he’ll probably lock it up, and he’s got the only key.”

Alarmed, Annabelle helped Irene out of her coat. “He’s in the same room as my diary?”

Irene waved away her distress. “That diary can’t be in plain sight. Otherwise, you would have seen it, which means you wouldn’t have forgotten it in the first place. In the second place, Peggy was the one who cleaned the room right after you left, and she didn’t find it either, which means the diary is probably on the floor underneath your bed.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because that’s the only place it could be, and she doesn’t usually clean underneath the beds. She complains it’s too much trouble,” she explained.

Unconvinced, Annabelle pressed her friend further. “Can’t you get Alan to take the lock off the door so you can get inside?”

Frowning, Irene plopped herself down at the table, picked up the knife, and resumed the task Annabelle had just begun. “Not with Harrison in there. Besides, Alan’s afraid of his own shadow. He wouldn’t do anything unless Harrison told him he could. But don’t worry. I have a plan.”

“You usually do. Should I ask what that plan might be, or am I better off not knowing that, too?” she teased and took the flour and other ingredients out of the larder to start making up the dough for the biscuits Widow Plum wanted to serve with breakfast.

“As soon as I know exactly what it is, I’ll let you know,” Irene replied and her cheeks turned pink. “I’m not sure how I’ll manage to do it yet, but I intend to take that lock off myself if I have to, get the diary out of your room, and put the lock back on again without anyone being the wiser.” She set the potato she had peeled into the bowl and grabbed another one.