Louisa Rawlings (53 page)

“But I love you,” she whispered, knowing even as she said it that it was too late.

“And I love you. But that doesn’t change anything.”

She
had
to reach him. “What about Arthur? Have you forgotten that he tried to kill you? That your grandfather’s death was his fault?”

He sighed. “I’m too tired even for revenge.”

“I’m not! I’ll make him pay.”

He shook his head. “Don’t waste your time, Willough. He’s not worth it.” He limped toward the door, picked up his carpetbag. “I’ve left a note for your father. There on the desk. I’ve refused the partnership. He can get a new manager too. If he’s smart, he’ll choose you. But he’s probably too much a fool for that. I’ve also written out a list of the agreements we made yesterday with the men. You can fill him in on the details.” He picked up a battered cap and jammed it on his head. His golden eyes were filled with tears. “You’ll haunt me, Willough,” he choked. “All the rest of my days. But I want peace. Maybe there’s something out west, some unspoiled wilderness, that can give it to me.”

Chapter Thirteen

“We’ll be getting into the Grand Central Terminal in half an hour, ma’am.”

“Thank you, porter.” Willough smiled, looked out the window of the parlor car. “It looks like a fine morning.”

“Yes indeed, ma’am. Would you care for another cup of coffee from the dining car?”

“That would be nice.” She rubbed at the back of her neck as the porter moved off. Sitting up all night on the train from Saratoga—even in the relative luxury of the parlor car—didn’t exactly compare to traveling in Brian Bradford’s car, but it hardly mattered. She wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway. Her mind had whirled with thoughts all night long.

She was surprisingly calm about Nat. He was wrong about her. After a year with Arthur, she wasn’t the same person. That idiotic child who’d been ashamed of Nat because he hadn’t known which fork to use had vanished long ago.
Don’t wish for something too much
, Grandma Carruth used to say,
or your wish is liable to come true.
Well, her foolish wish had come true. She’d had a fairy-tale wedding to a well-tailored gentleman with impeccable manners. And the morals of a guttersnipe.

After Arthur, she’d have been
proud
to be Nat’s wife. She sighed and brushed away a tear. But she never could have made Nat understand that. There’d been too much pain, too much hatred between them that he couldn’t forget. And too much grief in his life, burdening his heart. She understood his need to be alone, though it brought her misery.

“I wish you peace, Nat,” she whispered.

And Daddy too. All night long she’d played the scene over and over in her mind. Daddy in Saratoga, ashen-faced, drawn. And she—calm, controlled, seeing him clearly for the first time.

“I don’t know how you did it, lass,” he’d cackled. “Getting Nat to turn down the partnership! I didn’t want to see it go to a stranger. Especially not after he put me over a barrel the way he did.”

“I had nothing to do with it. It was his own decision.”

“Well, all the same… I’m damned proud of you, lass. I had reports from Bill and Taggert. The way you handled the negotiations. And the fire. By thunder, I wish I’d been there! They’re all saying the whole furnace house would have been lost but for you. You know, Willough, Drew’s a disappointment to me. He came back from France to be my partner, then turned me down and went back to his fool painting after that little wife of his vanished.” Brian cursed softly. “And after I’d advanced him all that money too.”

“Maybe painting is what he wants to do. Have you ever seen his work?”

“I’m not interested in his work. And I’m not interested in him. You’re the one. You’ve got a head on your shoulders. Come into the business with me. Right now. I’ll give you a ten percent partnership right off the bat.”

She almost laughed aloud. If he’d talked this way a month ago, she would have leaped at the chance. “I don’t want it, Father,” she said coolly. “Not any part of it.”

“Are you daft? What do you mean, you don’t want it?”

She sighed. “Tell me, Daddy. How soon would your daughter have been the currency for the next business deal?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“When you sent me to Nat…what did you think he wanted?”

He thought about it, then frowned. “Why, that son of a bitch! I didn’t think he was that kind of lowlife.”

She felt a surge of fresh anger. “You helped Arthur blackball him. Without a twinge of conscience! And didn’t bother asking me about it. Under the circumstances, don’t you think Nat was entitled to his revenge?”

“Willough. Lass. If I’d known…”

“Would it have mattered? I begged you not to send me to him. That should have been enough.”

“It was just that I was so worried. With the business and all…”

“And I was your daughter. Oh God, Daddy, did you ever really
see
me?” Her bitterness was choking her. “I spent half my life trying to please you, and feeling guilty because I wasn’t the son you wanted. Drew was smarter than I was. He ran as far away from you as he could.”

“Damn Drew,” he muttered.

“He’s your son. You could have helped him. He’s struggling now. He needs your encouragement more than ever. But all you ever cared about was your business. Your money.” She took a deep breath, picked up her hat and gloves. She was suffocating in this house. “Good-bye, Daddy,” she said softly.

His eyes were filled with terror. “You can’t leave me, Willough! I’m a sick man! The doctor said…”

She blinked back her tears. “I’m sorry for you, Father. I spent too many years caring about you more than I should have. You’ll have to forgive me if I care less now than I should. Please have Martha pack my things and send them on to New. York City. I’ll not be returning to this house.”

“Your coffee, ma’am.” The porter bent above her.

“Thank you.” Poor Daddy. She didn’t hate him. No. The only hatred in her heart was for Arthur. For all the misery he’d brought her, for his unforgivable cruelty to Nat. But she’d deal with him, by God! And then? She wasn’t sure what she’d do with her life after that. She only knew she felt a sense of freedom, thinking about the future.

Her confidence wavered on the carriage ride up Fifth Avenue. What would she do if Arthur was at home? She took a deep breath. She held all the cards…why should she be afraid of him?

Brigid met her at the door. She put a comforting hand on the maid’s shoulder. “I was so sorry to be called away the day your brother died. Is your family managing?”

The soft brogue was filled with grief. “Thank you, ma’am, yes. Me other brothers are all workin’. It’s just that… Kevin was special to me, I guess. And the TB is a terrible way to go.”

“If you want a few days’ holiday, I’ll see that you get paid.”

“No, ma’am. I reckon keeping busy is the best way.”

She handed her gloves and hat to Brigid. “Is…is Mr. Arthur at home?”

Brigid’s eyes opened wide. “No, ma’am! He came flyin’ in here yesterday like a bat out o’ hell, if you’ll forgive my sayin’. Tore up your sitting room something fierce, then packed a bag and said he’d be at his club. Lillie and me, we cleaned up the room the best we could, but there’s still a lot of papers we didn’t want to put away.”

“I’ll take care of them, Brigid.” Thank God she’d had the sense to put all the incriminating notes and papers in the bottom of her sewing box! It had always given her a perverse pleasure to know that while she sat with her needlepoint—Arthur smiling nearby in smug domesticity—she had his ruination at hand. Absentmindedly, she rubbed at her chin, still tender from his assault the other day. And the sooner the better, she thought. “I’ll just go up to my room for a little while. It’s been an exhausting trip.”

Brigid bobbed politely. “Yes’m. Oh, Mrs. Gray. I hate to tell you this right now, you being so tired and all…”

“What is it?”

“Well, maybe you don’t have to take care of it right away… I can say I forgot to tell you…”

“Brigid!”

“It’s only that your mother, Mrs. Bradford, sent a message round last night. She said she
had
to see you. The moment you came in. But she doesn’t have to know that you…”

Willough smiled at the girl’s thoughtfulness. “Thank you. But I suppose I ought to see her if it’s important. Come up to my room with me. I’ll just freshen up a bit. You can help me change. This suit smells of smoke.”

“From the train, ma’am?”

“Yes.” She thought of the flaming furnace at MacCurdyville, the life that she and Nat might have shared, had he stayed. “And from my past.”

She was at her mother’s within the half hour. Isobel Bradford reclined on her chaise in the parlor. She hasn’t even bothered to dress! thought Willough. Indeed, the disorder of her mother’s toilette was shocking. Her wrapper was tied together in a careless fashion, and the graying hair was straggly and unkempt. Her face was flushed; her hands twitched constantly. Nat had said once that she was addicted to her tonic, and Willough had scoffed at him. But if the tonic contained opium, then perhaps he’d been right. She’d been too young and stupid last year to realize
that
, either!

“You wanted to see me, Mother?”

“Yes.” Her mother’s eyes were dark and accusing. “Arthur was here yesterday. He told me that you had made up terrible lies and stories about him. And that you intended to go to the newspapers with your scurrilous charges!”

“Yes.”

“He assured me there was nothing to them, but that you could ruin him in any event. Is that true, Willough?”

“He’ll be fortunate if he doesn’t go to jail.”

“Oh!” Isobel patted her brow with a linen handkerchief. “That you could so brazenly admit it to me! You surely don’t intend to go through with it. Think of the shame to the Carruth name!”

“The only shame I feel is in being foolish enough to marry him in the first place.”

“But why are you doing this?”

She thought of Gramps, dying alone in his little cabin. Of Nat, crippled. Of her own happiness so cruelly destroyed. “To settle old scores,” she said wearily.

Isobel’s eyes filled with tears. “Willough, I implore you! Don’t do it.”

“Are you asking for yourself? Or for Arthur?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did Arthur come here yesterday and ask you to make this plea to me?”

“Why shouldn’t he, the dear boy? He’s too ashamed and hurt by his own wife’s treachery to face you directly.”

She laughed sharply. “What nonsense!” She thought, He used you, Mother. All those years that he came to call. And went away again with what he most craved. Influence. Respectability. And you thought he loved you, Mother. Poor, snobbish Isobel Carruth Bradford. What would she think if she knew that the love of her life had once been a street arab? Artie Flanagan from Broome Street.

Isobel pressed her lips together, drew herself up in her most imperious pose. “You can’t do it, Willough. I won’t have a scandal!”

“He tried to kill me, Mother. And Nat. Up in MacCurdyville.”

“There’s nothing I can do to talk you out of it? You ungrateful daughter!”

“He tried to
kill
me! He’s no good!”

“
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!
”

The absurdity of it made Willough laugh. If Isobel wasn’t quoting Grandma Carruth, she was quoting Shakespeare. She stood up abruptly. “If you have nothing more to say to me, Mother…”

Isobel’s voice had become shrill. “You’re not my daughter!”

Willough shrugged. “I never was.” She turned toward the door.

Isobel sniffled and dabbed at her nose. “At least I still have Drew. He doesn’t belong to his father now. Or that awful wife of his. He’s
mine
!”

Willough frowned. What was it Daddy had said about Drew? She turned. “What do you mean, he doesn’t belong to Daddy now?”

“He was going to go into the business with him.”

“Yes. Daddy said he changed his mind.” Something in Isobel’s tone made her uneasy. She walked back to the chaise, leaned over her mother. “
Why
did he change his mind?”

Isobel’s hands had begun to flutter helplessly. “Because he wanted to continue painting.”

“But he didn’t change his mind until Marcy went away. That’s what Daddy said.”

“Well, when he didn’t have the burden of a wife to support, he was able to stay with his painting.”

That didn’t sound like Drew, thinking of Marcy as a burden. Willough sat down on the chair beside Isobel. She gripped her mother’s hand. “What happened to Marcy?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“I’m sure you do.” Willough’s voice was like steel.

Isobel fidgeted in her chaise, shook her hand free from Willough’s grip. “Well, if you must know… Drew found her with another man.”

Willough rocked back in her chair. “I don’t believe you! What man?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“
What
man? They’d just come home from a year in France. Who would Marcy know in the city?” Isobel’s eyes had begun to dart nervously about the room. It was clear that she knew more. “
Tell me
, Mother!”