Honor (4 page)

She would not give them the satisfaction of seeing her bolt from the room in tears. She kept her features composed and forced herself to sit down, conscious of hostile stares boring into her back like daggers.

Weymouth gave her a contemptuous look that plainly said “Uppity woman,” then turned his attention to his notes.

Adcock glared at Davis in thin-lipped hostility, then slunk off to his seat like a whipped cur.

“As for you, Mr. Davis,” Weymouth said, “I’ll have no more brawling in my classroom for any reason, is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.” Robert took the seat next to Honor but didn’t so much as glance at her.

Honor couldn’t concentrate. She remembered all too vividly those horrible weeks after her father’s arrest when people she thought were her family’s friends acted as though the Elliotts had suddenly contracted the plague. Neighbors whispered behind their hands and cut Honor and her mother in the street. Children who had been lifelong playmates threw stones and called her “the butcher’s daughter.”

Honor feigned rapt attention during Weymouth’s boring lecture, but his words were nothing more than the unintelligible buzz of so many industrious bees on a hot summer day.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the portly professor glanced up at the clock on the wall, assembled his notes, and said, “Gentlemen—and our esteemed Miss Elliott—that will be all for today.”

Honor closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. When she opened them, she found Robert Davis staring at her.

“Do you have another class today?” he said.

The gentle concern in his voice caught her off guard. She shook her head.

“Neither do I. Why don’t you let me escort you home?”

Honor looked at him askance. “The last time you escorted me anywhere, you kissed me against my will.”

He rose. “I promise to be the perfect gentleman this time. Perhaps we could study together.”

“Fair enough.”

She let Davis collect her books, and they left the classroom without incident.

Once outside in the cool autumn air, Honor forced her father from her mind. “I appreciate your defending me, but I can defend myself.”

Davis gave her an odd look. “Don’t you get tired of it?”

“Of what?”

“Being so strong all the time.”

“I have to be strong,” she retorted, “or fools like Adcock and Weymouth will eat me alive.” She looked at him. “I would have thought you, of all people, would understand that.”

“I do, but I also know that sometimes you have to put aside your pride and let other people help you.”

Honor lifted the collar of her velvet cape to keep him from seeing how much his words had affected her. “The carriage is over here. My aunt won’t mind if we study in the library.”

Once inside the carriage, Honor closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the soft leather squabs. Damn Adcock to hell for resurrecting the story about her father! Honor bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling and revealing to Robert Davis how close she was to losing her precious self-control.

Seated across from her, he said, “Is what Adcock said about your father true?”

“For the most part.”

Davis sat silently for what seemed like an eternity. Finally he said, “That must have been a terrible time for you.”

“It was.”

“Tell me about it.”

She stared down at her clenched hands. “You must think me an ungrateful wretch after you so kindly came to my rescue today.” She looked over at him. “But I’ve always found it difficult to bare my soul to strangers.”

“I consider myself your friend, not a stranger, and friends confide in each other.”

Honor considered his offer. Perhaps it was time she trusted someone other than her aunt.

“I’ll never forget the morning my father was arrested,” she began. “It was two days after my fifteenth birthday. We were halfway through breakfast when Moira, our parlormaid, came flying into the dining room as though she had just seen a banshee. Three policemen followed her.”

In a halting voice she told Davis how the father she adored rose from his seat at the head of the table and bellowed, “What is the meaning of this?” in his majestic baritone voice.

Honor retrieved her handkerchief from her skirt pocket and dabbed at her eyes. “When they told him that an associate had been murdered the night before and that they were arresting him for the crime, he shrank in stature right before my very eyes.”

Davis asked, “What grounds did they have?”

“This associate was a financier who advised my father about investments. It was common knowledge that my father had lost a great deal of money because of bad advice, and that he and this man had been having bitter disagreements. They had quarreled often and loudly. Witnesses came forward to say they had overheard my father threaten to kill him.” She shook her head in disbelief. “So when the man was found shot to death in his library, the police blamed my father.”

“What proof did they have?”

“My father had called on the financier the night he was killed. Unfortunately, Father never told my mother or any of our servants where he was going. He swore that the man was alive when he left, but since the financier had given his own servants the night off, he and my father were alone. No one saw what really happened. No one could corroborate Father’s story.”

“What about your father’s driver? Surely he saw something.”

“Father sent him away and told him to return half an hour later. He didn’t hear or see anything.”

“And the neighbors?”

“They claimed they didn’t hear a thing.”

“What about the murder weapon?”

“Since Father often worked late, he kept a loaded gun in his desk at the office. When the police searched for the gun, they found it missing, so they claimed my father used it to shoot his business associate, then got rid of it. Unfortunately, Father’s gun was of the same type as the murder weapon.”

“So they convicted your father of premeditated murder and executed him.”

Fresh tears filled her eyes, and she looked out the carriage window again. “My mother was devastated. She cried all the time and walked around in a daze. I tried to help her as much as I could, but she was inconsolable. Later she went into a decline and died of a broken heart.”

She felt her hand enfolded in a warm clasp and found Robert Davis seated next to her. She resisted the urge to withdraw her hand and let herself take comfort in his strength.

“Did you go to the trial?” he said softly.

“Every day. Father’s lawyer wanted me there to evoke sympathy in the jurors. I sat there day after day, listening to people who didn’t know my father say vile, untrue things about him.”

A picture of her father flashed through her mind. She saw him, white-faced with resignation, as he stood in his jail cell and said good-bye to Honor and her mother the night before he was hanged.

Davis squeezed her hand. “You said in class that someone else later confessed to the crime.”

“The financier’s wife had been carrying on with another man,” Honor said. “She plotted with her lover to kill her husband so she would inherit his fortune, and the two of them framed my father. Her lover broke into my father’s office and stole his gun. When the wife’s plan succeeded and she got the money, she foolishly discarded her accomplice and married someone else. She assumed her former lover would keep their secret, for if he didn’t, he would implicate himself as well. She didn’t count on his obsessive love for her.” Honor took a deep, shuddering breath. “He confessed and implicated the both of them.”

“Were they convicted?”

Honor nodded. “And hanged. Together. Fitting, don’t you think?”

Davis muttered, “Hell hath no fury like a lover scorned.”

“Too late to do my father any good,” Honor said bitterly. “People never remember that he was exonerated, but they never forget that he was convicted of murder.”

She unbuttoned the top button of her cape, pulled out her locket and opened the gold engraved oval. “This is a picture of my parents in happier times. Minerva and Jasper Elliott.”

“You obviously inherited your mother’s beauty.” Davis sat back in his seat. “So you want to become a lawyer because of what happened to your father.”

She closed the locket and smiled dryly. “As foolish as it may seem, yes.”

“You think it foolish?”

“Isn’t it foolish of me to subject myself to the Weymouths and Adcocks of the world when I could be married and caring for a husband and children, oblivious of the many injustices in this society? After all, my becoming a lawyer won’t bring my father back.”

Davis looked at her and said nothing.

“It’s difficult to explain.” She groped for the right words. “What happened to my father had a profound effect on me. Like most people, I was raised to respect the law. I thought that the guilty were always punished and the innocent always set free.” She laughed mirthlessly. “Oh, what a naive fool I was! I saw my own innocent father convicted and sentenced to death for a crime he didn’t commit.

“It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. I was appalled and furious at the injustice of it. I wanted to do something to help him, but I was helpless.” She pursed her lips. “I hated it.”

“Considering the overwhelming evidence against him, there was nothing you could have done,” Davis said gently.

“True. But if I become a lawyer myself, perhaps I can spare someone else such an undeserved fate.”

Davis raised his brows in astonishment. “You realize that no woman lawyer has ever argued a criminal case on the East Coast.”

“Then I intend to be the first,” she replied coldly.

“As much as I admire your determination and idealism, I think the odds are stacked against you.”

“I’ll just have to stack them in my favor by working twice as hard.”

“Did you come to Boston after your mother died?”

“Yes. Her only sister offered me a home. My father had lost much of his wealth when he made those bad investments, and Aunt Theo’s husband had just died after a long illness, so she insisted that I come to live with her.”

“You’re lucky she was here for you.”

“Very lucky. Aunt Theo has been like a mother to me.”

They arrived at Honor’s house, spent the rest of the morning studying together, had luncheon, and continued studying all afternoon.

That night she dreamed of her father.

The dream never varied. Snow always fell from a low gray sky, filling the prison yard. The damned black chessmen marred its pristine surface. Her father, his hands bound behind his back, walked alone toward the scaffold, leaving deep footprints in the snow.

Honor screamed his name and tried to save him, but the snow held her feet fast. He never turned around. He climbed the scaffold steps. His hands were suddenly free, and Honor stood beside him. She placed the noose around her own father’s neck.

Honor screamed as he dropped through the trapdoor and the rope went taut. The scaffold vanished. Nothing remained but footprints and chessmen in the snow.

She awoke panting and bathed in a cold, acrid sweat, her cramped fingers clutching the sheets, her heart pounding irrationally. She lit a lamp and sat up in bed.

It was only a dream, she told herself, hugging her knees. Only a dream.

She knew sleep would be a long time coming. It always was, after the dream.

Two weeks later Honor sat in constitutional law class awaiting the results of the most recent test. She stared out the window at the pewter-gray clouds hanging low in the November sky and prayed that her frequent study sessions with Robert Davis had done her some good.

She held her breath when Pudding Weymouth rolled into class, dabbing at his sweating forehead, his bulging stomach preceding him like the prow of a ship. When he reached his desk, he removed the test papers from his valise and waddled around the room to distribute them.

Honor risked a glance at Davis, seated to her right. He gave her an encouraging smile.

Weymouth’s slow, deliberate footsteps approached. Honor took a deep breath and uttered one last prayer.

Weymouth stopped beside her desk.

Honor looked up.

His mouth pursed in a thin line of disapproval above his three chins, he said, “You’ve improved since the last test, Miss Elliott.” He handed her the papers.

The butterflies fluttering in her stomach disappeared when she saw the
A
written near her name. Grinning with elation, she could have even hugged Pudding, but she caught Davis’s eye instead. He grinned back and held up his own paper with its
A.

“Congratulations,” he said later, once class was over and they were walking together across campus.

Still smiling from ear to ear, her cheeks flushed with a combination of cold and exultation, Honor said, “I couldn’t have done it without your help, Mr. Davis.”

He studied her, his green eyes twinkling. “Since you’re now in my debt, the least you could do is call me Robert.”