Riverrun (16 page)

“Miss Bowsmith, yes, how good to see you again. May I be of assistance?”

The fascination in his young eyes was almost too much to bear, and she had to cough again lightly to keep from laughing. “David,” she said, “has Mr. Cavendish come in yet this morning?”

“No, ma’am,” he said, his disappointment evident in his voice. “He won’t be in until after lunch. Mr. Roe, he won’t be back until the end of the week. Went to New York, you see. Something about a meeting, I don’t know.”

Cass thought a moment, placing a gloved finger to her chin. Then she reached into her purse and pulled out a small sealed envelope with the lawyer’s name written on its face. “Well, I’m afraid I can’t wait, David. Would you see that he gets this for me? Please, David?

“I want him to read it as soon as he can. It has to do with my aunt’s house on Jordan Lane. And will you tell him please that I would appreciate his company at tea this afternoon if he can spare me the time.” Then she added a coin to the envelope, which David deftly tucked into his waistcoat. “And something else, please, David.”

“Whatever you say, ma’am.”

And she knew he meant it. From the way he looked at her, ignoring the black veil and black dress, seeing the woman beneath it, she knew she could ask anything of him; he was love-struck, and for the uncomplicated moment, as docilely pliant as a pet.

“Thank you,” she said, smiling just enough to send a blush to his cheeks. “I want you to see to it, somehow, that Mr. Cavendish does not do anything about selling the house until I talk with him. If he comes in with papers, do what you can to mislay them, understand?”

His expression told her he did not, but he would do it anyway only because she asked him and not because of the money that had changed hands.

“Is there anything else, ma’am?” he asked eagerly.

“No,” she said. “Thank you, David.”

She turned to leave, then, and had her hand stretched out to the door when he cleared his throat and called out to her.

“Yes?” she said, turning back to him.

“There was a gentleman in here this morning, right after we opened—I opened, actually. Mr. Cavendish lets me because he knows he can trust me. I’m good at that, you see. I’m going to be his partner when I’ve studied long enough. He told me that just last week, you know. I’m going to have my name on the window and everything, if all goes well.”

“I’m sure, David,” Cass said. “But what about the gentleman you mentioned?”

“He—well, he was here to see you. Not see you, actually; he was just trying to find out where you lived.”

Cass frowned as she listened. The old lawyer had said nothing to her about a visitor, and she wondered what manner of man he was that the name should be kept from her. “Who?” she said, fighting her intense curiosity. “Do you know his name?”

David looked downcast, as though he had betrayed her without knowing it. “No, ma’am, I’m sorry. I only know he was in the army—ours, of course. A fierce looking man he was, too. He had only one hand and a great red patch over his left eye. Tall, though, and looked as if he could lift a horse without half trying. He wasn’t very nice either, I remember that, too. He did a lot of yelling when I said I couldn’t give out the addresses of the clients.” He grinned, then, and rubbed a hand against his coat. “I think I would have put a fist into his ugly face if there hadn’t been a lady present at the time. She was waiting for Mr. Roe. She wouldn’t believe he’d left for New York.”

“Did he leave a message for me?”

“Who? Mr. Roe?”

Cass frowned her exasperation and tapped her purse against her side. “No, David, I mean the gentleman who was asking about me. Did he leave me a message of some sort?”

“As a matter of fact, he did,” David said, darting back to his desk and yanking out a drawer. Muttering to himself, he fumbled through some papers until, with a short exclamation of triumph, he held up an envelope sealed with a smear of dark green wax. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “He gave me a dollar to get it to you. I would have come when it was time for lunch, but now here you are so I don’t have to leave. Mr. Cavendish doesn’t know about it, of course, and I won’t tell him. Is it very important?”

Cass did not answer. She turned the envelope over in her hands searching for signs of the sender, but found only her name scrawled across the front, and nothing else. When she looked up, David was watching her intently, but she only smiled shortly and gave him a brusque nod before she hurried back into the street. She was tempted to tear open the envelope immediately, but something in the manner of its coming to her made her wait. Impatiently, then, she retraced her steps until she had reached the square near her aunt’s house, passed through a gate in the fencing and found a deserted bench beneath a chestnut tree drooping pathetically in the humid heat that had settled over the city. She smoothed her skirts and sat primly, ignoring a gaggle of children racing by behind a spinning hoop. She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and held the envelope briefly in front of her eyes before tearing off its end and pulling out the message inside. The paper on which it had been written was small, the handwriting miniscule. And when her gaze automatically jumped to the signature at the bottom, a veil of dizziness passed over her and she had to clutch at the bench’s seat to keep herself from falling. The city’s sounds around her merged into a continuous roar, her heart raced until she thought she would faint. She leaned back and closed her eyes for a moment, waiting for the trembling of her hands to calm long enough for her to read the message.

My Dear Cassandra,

No doubt, by this time, you have been led to believe that I am dead. Obviously, nothing could be further from the truth. If my writing is somewhat awkward and somewhat feminine, it is because I am having a friend do the work for me. She is not well versed in the manners of the educated, and I must stop her frequently for the corrections I know a schoolteacher would demand. Nevertheless, she is faithful to me, which is more than I can say for Cassandra Bowsmith. In my direst hour of need, you deserted me, Cass, and I will not forget you for it, nor will I forgive. Your friends, if I may call them that, did not search the hiding place well enough to find me. I had been driven by heat and smoke into a far corner of the cellar and there I waited, praying for your return, drinking the water that sifted down through the soil, once desperate enough to dine on an over-eager rat who thought me more dead than I was. But I survived, Cassandra. I survived that hell you thrust me into. And I damn your soul for it, and the souls of your parents too weak to think of more than themselves! I understand from certain friends that you intend to leave the country in the company of another man. I should have known that a farm girl would have the morals of the animals she tends, but I was blinded by the smiles, those false and insidious smiles you cast in my direction. I should have known, but I did not, and I have paid the price for it. I may not be the whole man you once knew, Cassandra, but I am man enough to know when my pride has been callously dealt with. And since my limitations have driven me from the service I faithfully attended for most of my adult life, I am now free to do what I will. And what I will, Cassandra, you will learn soon enough. It took me quite a while to find you, and now that I have, I will not let you go without exacting the payment that is due me. Expect my friends, Cassandra. They are legion. And when we finally meet again, God help you.
God help you

G.H
.

Tears rushed to her eyes and blinded her, coursed down her cheeks and burned her as though they were acid, but she left them untouched as she stared into the glare of the midday sun. Geoffrey was alive! From the intimations in the letter and David’s description, it had been he who had delivered the envelope to Cavendish’s office. Maimed. Crippled. But nevertheless alive! And so full of unreasoning hatred that, when she scanned the note again, each word was like a sword thrust into her stomach. It was apparent he had no idea what had happened after he had been carried down into the cellar, and it was even more evident that his ordeal had affected the balance of his mind to such a degree that his love for her had swung like an emotional pendulum to the most mindless of hatred. It had to be so or he would not have thought she could deliberately have left him to die in that hellish darkness with only the rats and insects to eat and brackish water to drink. He must have dug himself out, she thought, wholly mad as he thought of the rescuers so close by, yet not responding to his frantic calls. It would be enough to unhinge even the strongest of minds.

A flicker of blue at the corner of her vision made her start and look up quickly, a hand to her throat. A Union captain strolled rapidly by her, nodding politely but not stopping to speak. She tried to swallow the stone that had lodged in her throat, leaned back, and let the sun and a sudden gentle breeze work to relax her. She remembered the moment by the well, then, when he had taken her so tenderly, so urgently, as though the both of them had known their first time would be the last. It was a memory both sweet and bitter, and for the briefest of moments she wondered if the charge he leveled at her was true, that she was only a farm girl, willing to give herself to the first handsome man, to any man, who passed into her isolated existence. No, she thought; she was too much her own woman to behave in so wanton a manner. He had misunderstood, and the misunderstanding had been underscored by his entrapment in the cellar. A temptation followed immediately on the heels of her reaffirmation, to track him down as he was stalking her, to explain everything to him, from the men who had kidnapped her to the man who had saved her; but that, too, she knew would be a fruitless undertaking. In the condition he was now in, nothing short of a miracle would penetrate the cloud of hatred and insanity that hovered over his mind.

But, she asked herself as she finally rose from the bench, do I really want that miracle to occur? Do I still love him? Did I ever really love him?

She shook the questions off with a shudder, stuffed the letter back into her purse, and hurried out of the small park. She would have to tell Eric immediately, there was no question of that. She had no idea what this new Geoffrey had planned for her, but whatever it was it constituted a danger that would doubtless end with the taking of her life.

J
ordan Lane was nearly deserted as many of those who used it for passage were at their midday meal, and she scanned the faces she did encounter for signals of recognition. And in spite of the brilliant facades of the homes, the equally brilliant glow of the sun, she felt as though she were walking through a perpetual twilight, where the shadows took on aspects of creatures best left to the nightmares of little children. When she had finally unlocked the front door of the house and slammed it shut behind her, she leaned against it heavily, her breath coming in sporadic gasps, perspiration breaking out on her forehead and palms. Quickly, she stripped off her gloves and hat and hurried into the living room where she poured herself a large brandy. She stared at the amber liquid distastefully, then downed it in a single gulp, choking once and holding a palm to her breast until the burning subsided into a comforting glow. She called out for Eric, received no answer, and cursed when she scanned the mantel vainly for a note explaining his whereabouts.

She poured herself another, smaller drink and wandered nervously about the room. There was no question now that she would have to convince him to stay in America. He was the only protection she could count on now, and his departure would leave her too vulnerable.

A knock at the door interrupted her thoughts and sent her to the window on the door’s right. She pulled back the curtain slightly and saw a man wearing a black armband on his suit jacket; he was well dressed and carrying an ivory-topped walking stick in his left hand. He appeared to be anxious; he kept glancing back at the street, up to the windows above him, adjusting the dark silk cravat at his throat. Another one of Aunt Aggie’s friends come to console the bereaved, she thought sourly, dropping her hand from the curtain. After a cursory check of herself in the mirror centered in the coatrack, she opened the door with a smile. The man bowed slightly, then stepped quickly over the threshold and grabbed the door from her hand to close it firmly behind him.

“Here,” she said angrily. “What’s—”

The man pushed her disdainfully aside with the walking stick and strode into the sitting room with Cass following him, her indignation rendering her speechless. But that indignation turned to heart-stopping fear when he reached the center of the carpet, turned, and aimed a derringer at her chest.

“Don’t call out, Miss Bowsmith,” he said quietly, his pale lips trembling in the ghost of a smile. “Please don’t. For your sake.”

Cass shook her head slowly, not daring to utter a word. The stranger, though pleasantly handsome enough, had a stony hardness about his eyes that would have wrenched her into silence even if he had not spoken.

“Excellent,” he said, his tone openly mocking. “Now we can get down to business.”

With her initial shock over, and at her recognition of the man as the one who had bumped into her on the street, her fear began to boil into a rising anger. “I don’t think,” she said grimly, “I have any business at all with you. Not if you’re going to use that thing as a calling card.”

The man looked down at his weapon, shrugged as if it did not matter and tucked it into a pocket of his waistcoat. The handle, however, protruded just far enough for her to see it, and he patted it once to be sure Cass understood how rapidly he could take it out and fire. It was not, she knew, the most effective weapon ever constructed, but at this range it would do its job lethally enough.

“A trifle bizarre, I admit, Miss Bowsmith,” he said. “But allow me to introduce myself.”

“I don’t want to know you, either.”

“Pity,” he said. “I’m called Forrester. I have, let us say, an employer who wished me to make myself known to you, for various reasons. Primarily, however, so that you would know me the next time we meet.”