Romance: Luther's Property (57 page)

Warning

This book contains explicit content intended for readers 18+
years old.

If you are under 18 years old, or are not comfortable with
adult content, please close this book now.

I thought the night I watched Father’s print shop burn to
the ground would be worst of my life.
 
We’d been abed when there was a thunderous boom. Going outdoors, we saw
the conflagration, violently oversized from the very first moments. Towering
orange tongues of flame curled heavenward, nearly reaching the stars, while
plumes of foul-smelling oily smoke banked all around us.

“Dear God in heaven!” Father said, clenching at his chest.
“This is a catastrophe!”

In that moment, I feared I would lose my darling Father.
He’d already borne so much loss and tragedy – my Mother’s passing when I was
but five years old, then losing my older brother Henry to a Union bullet. The
war had taken everyone’s fortune, and rebuilding hadn’t been easy. The print
shop was only just beginning to turn a profit, and now it was in flames.

“It will be all right,” I tried to assure him. “Surely the
fire brigade will save the shop!”
 
And
truly, those stalwart brave gentlemen did come rushing through the night, bells
clanging and their spotted dog howling with a devilish glee. They worked
feverishly at the pump, sending up a spray of water that proved to be wholly
inadequate against the conflagration.

“We’ve got to let it go, Mr. Calhoun,” the fire marshal said
to Father before too long. “We might be able to save the house, but that fire
there’s just too hot. It’ll have to burn itself out.”

Father stood as if he were frozen in place. His mouth was
open, but no sounds were coming out. He shook his head as if to say no, but
neither the fire marshal nor I were inclined to pay attention to that.

“Please!” I beseeched the good man. “Save the house. It’s
all Papa and I have left in this world!”

The fire marshal nodded, and I could see from the look in
his eyes that my proclamation was not news to him. “We’ll do our best, ma’am.”
He gently guided Father and I further away from the burning shop. “We’ve got to
pull the wagon through this way. Take care you don’t get hurt!”

The smoke thickened, all but obscuring our view as the fire
brigade began to soak down the side of our home and the thin strip of lawn that
separated our domicile from our livelihood.
 
Abandoned, the flames consuming the shop redoubled their efforts. There
was a mighty crack, as loud as a rifle’s report, and I had to fight to not
cover my ears.

“That’s the ridgepole going,” Father said. “The roof’s not
long for this world.”

I’d heard my father sorrowful before. But never to the
extent of the heartbreak echoing through his voice right now; he was absolutely
despondent.

“We will rebuild, Papa.”

Father shook his head. “No, Abigail. We won’t. This is the
end of the road for me.” He hung his head and kicked at the ground. “The good
Lord’s decided I was never meant to be a happy man. And seeing as that’s the
legacy I’ve left you, I’m truly sorry.”

Father’s comments about an unhappy legacy puzzled me, but I
put them down to the heat of the moment. While I always try to look for the
hopeful path out of any situation, I know that not everyone can do that. So I
held my peace and stood by Father, watching as the fire consumed itself.

When the print shop had been reduced to no more than a
forest of standing smoking timbers, and the smoke had died away to a
low-profile fog that clung to our ankles, Father shook his head. “I’m going to
bed. Perhaps when I wake up, this will all have been a bad dream. Or perhaps
the Lord will be merciful, and I won’t wake up at all!”

“Don’t say that, Papa!” I tried to embrace my Father, but he
would have none of my affections. In fact he shoved me away gruffly; an action
so shocking that I could not help but cry aloud.

“Don’t mind him, miss,” the fire marshal said. He took his
helmet off, revealing a white line across his forehead where the smoke had not
yet reached his skin. “Your Father’s had a great upset and he’s not in his
right mind.”

“Well, I’m upset too!” I exclaimed.

The fire marshal nodded. “But you’re a lady, and ladies are
cut from a stronger cloth than gentlemen.”

I raised an eyebrow. The messaging I’d heard from my
youngest days was quite the contrary: women were the fair sex, gentle creatures
who needed protection from the harsh world. Acting as if one were the least bit
capable opened one’s self up to stern reproach and vicious gossip.

“Disappointment is a ladies’ lot in life, more often than
not,” the fire marshal said. “And she’s no choice but to bear it with what
grace she can muster. That takes strength.”

Shakespeare has never failed me. Many long hours I have
passed with my own dear Mother’s cherished volume in my lap, finding
inspiration and solace in the Bard’s immortal words. “Perhaps,” I told the fire
marshal. “It may be that this lady will take up arms against her sea of
troubles, and in so doing, end them.”

The marshal chuckled. “That will take strength too.”

I nodded and stepped toward the steaming wreck of the shop.
Perhaps the presses, which were wrought of heavy iron, weren’t damaged beyond
repair. Whatever could be salvaged wouldn’t need to be replaced – a small
comfort, perhaps, but it might make the dawn easier for my Father to bear if he
knew he didn’t need to start again entirely from scratch. “Let us hope I’m
equal to the task.”

He caught my arm and stopped my progress. “It’s still plenty
hot in there, Miss, and I don’t need you setting your skirts ablaze. I’d never
hear the end of it.”

“Father wouldn’t blame you,” I said.

“It’s not your Father I’m worried about,” the fire marshal
replied. Again, there was something in his expression that made me feel as if
he knew something I did not.
 
“Whatever’s
there worth saving will be there when it’s cooled off.”

There was nothing worth saving. I’d not expected to save any
of the paper, and of course, the inks and solvents Father used in the print
shop were all extremely flammable. They’d burned with such an intense heat that
the old press was warped beyond recognition, and the new press – the one
designed for high speed production
 
– was
totally destroyed.

“We can’t fix it.” I wasn’t asking, but Father took it as a
question.

“I’m afraid not, my girl. It’s done for.”

“What will we do about Mitchell’s handbills?” The
advertising flyers, I knew, had been paid for in advance; they were no more
than a pile of cinders now, and we had no hope of replacing them.

Father laughed. There was no humor in the sound. “Those
handbills are the least of my worries,” he said.

“We’ll rebuild, Papa,” I said. I couldn’t bear to see him so
sad. “I know it all looks hopeless right now, but before you know it, we’ll
have the shop looking as good as new.”

Father shook his head. “I wish that could be so,” he said,
“but that’s not how it’s going to be. My days as a business man are over. This
has ruined me.”

“Surely not!” During the war, I’d seen many other businesses
leveled; there were those who said not a single square mile in the Shenandoah
Valley had gone untouched.
 
But one after
another, the shops and factories had slowly come back. Things weren’t equal to
what they’d been, or so I’d been told, but due to our neighbor’s determination
and hard work, the region was beginning to be prosperous once again.

“Oh, my darling girl.” Father reached out and took me in his
arms. His embrace was strong and passionate, quite unlike his normally reserved
manner. “I am going to miss your spirit and optimistic nature.”

I stepped back and looked at Father. “What do you mean,
you’re going to miss me?”

He looked at the ground and did not answer me.

“Are you going somewhere, Father?”
 
I’d heard about people had been finding gold
out West, in the wild California country.
 
Fortunes were being made, but I couldn’t imagine my Father making a
cross-country journey at his age.
 
Even
if he arrived safely, would he be strong enough for prospecting? The thought of
claim jumpers filled me with dread. “I am going to go with you!”

Father shook his head. “It’s not me that’s leaving,
darling.” He looked at the smoldering wreckage of the shop, and then at me. I
was astonished to see his brown eyes welling up with tears; even at his most
upset, my Father never cried. “It’s you.”

“And where am I going?” I demanded.

Father turned his back on me and started to walk into the
house. “I think you’d better come inside,” he said. “The time has come and I
can’t put this off any longer. You and I, we’ve got to talk.”

“I want you to know I’ve never purposely kept things from
you, Abigail.” My father was pacing back in forth in the kitchen; I sat propped
in my favorite chair beside the cook stove.
 
“But I didn’t want to worry you with a possibility that seemed remote at
best.”

I nodded. “I understand that, Father.”

“You have to understand I had no choice.” He took a deep and
shuddering sigh. “If the shop was to be viable, I needed the rotary press. We
had to have it. Otherwise, we couldn’t handle the larger volume orders – things
like Mitchell’s flyers.”

Again, I nodded. Nothing Father was saying was news to me;
while I hadn’t worked in the shop alongside him, I knew enough about the
operation of the business to follow his thinking. “You did what you thought was
best.”

“No,” he said, with an anguished cry. “I did what I had to
do.” His pacing increased in speed; I was worried he would lose his footing due
to his agitation. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be, that’s the sensible
way.”

“So you borrowed money to purchase the press?” I smoothed my
hands over my skirt. “It seems a sensible enough thing to do. Surely whoever
leant the money to you will understand about the fire.”

Father looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “When you
take on a debt of this size, the lender often requires you to put up some sort
of collateral – a guarantee that you’ll surrender in case you cannot pay the
debt.”

My stomach sank. Suddenly I understood what Father was
saying. He’d put up our home as collateral for the business loan. The lender,
whoever that might be, was going to be taking possession of it in lieu of
repayment. We were going to be vagabonds; pitiful creatures without a roof over
our heads. The idea made me frantic.

“Who did you borrow the money from? We must go to him and
plead for a little time.”

Father shook his head sadly. “I’ve had that conversation
already, my darling. The man’s heart is made of stone. He will not delay
collecting his due by even a single hour.”

I took a deep breath. “Then we’ll go West.” California,
which had seemed an impossible destination moments before, was suddenly
appealing. “Even if we can’t find gold ourselves, we’ll find work. Start fresh.
Build a life for ourselves. You’ll see, Papa!”

Father cocked his head, clearly puzzled.

“It doesn’t matter if this man takes the house from us,” I
explained. “I know it looks impossible right now, but we can start anew.” I
thought of what the fire marshal had said about bearing disappointments with
grace. “It will be an adventure.”

Father looked sadder than I’d ever seen him. “It wasn’t the
house I put up as collateral, darling.” He reached out and took my hand. “It
was you.”

The blood in my veins had turned to ice; I was near to frozen
through with shock. “Father,” I demanded sternly. “Who did you borrow this
money from? What, exactly, have you promised?”

My father broke down, weeping. Great racking sobs overtook
his frame. He buried his face in his hands. “I can’t,” he said. “It is too
terrible to tell you.”

“No,” I said. There was steel in my voice I knew not the
source of. It was unfamiliar to Father as well, who looked up, startled, at the
sound. “It was terrible not to tell me, but that is what you have done. Now you
must let me know what is going to happen.”

“All right.” Father began pacing again, wrapping his arms
around himself one moment, flinging them wide open the next. “I am going to
tell you.”

I waited, but he was not any more forthcoming.
 
The silence grew between us, long and
uncomfortable. The whole house was quiet. I could hear the clock in the front
room ticking, each second passing with a loud report.

Finally, it grew too much for me. “Papa,” I pleaded. “You
have to tell me.”

“Robert Benson,” he said in a great exhalation. “I promised
your hand in marriage to Robert Benson as collateral for the loan.”

I stood up, shocked, and then sank back down into my chair,
with my hands pressed over my mouth.

“He’s a wealthy man,” Father said. “You’ll never want for
anything as his wife.”

It was true. Robert Benson was one of the richest men in the
valley; his big brick house was the envy of the town. But while the property
was desirable, the man himself was anything but. He was a big man, loud-mouthed
and coarse, with a terrible temper and a worse reputation.

“Papa!” I whispered. “He killed his wife. And you’re sending
me to marry him?”

“That’s a rumor. There’s no proof of it that anyone can
find,” Father said, wringing his hands together. I knew he didn’t believe what
he was telling me. “I asked the sheriff for the truth of it before I agreed to
Benson’s terms.”

“And the sheriff said Benson didn’t kill his wife?”

Father’s gaze dropped toward his boots once again. “He said
there was no proof to be found. Kitty Benson might have run off on her own
accord.”

“Or Mr. Benson might have strangled her in a fit of rage and
thrown her body in a cave!” I snapped. I’d heard that story more times than I
could count; the aging banker had not taken too kindly to
 
his bride’s affectionate banter with a
tradesman.
 
Kitty had disappeared not
long after a well-witnessed argument between the pair; the tradesman hadn’t
been seen recently either.

“There’s no proof, Abigail.”

“And that lack of proof was enough to convince you he was a
suitable husband for me?”

Father shrugged. “I never in a million years thought it
would come to this.” He shook his head. “It shouldn’t have come to this.”

“And yet it has.” I stood up, hands on my hips. “How long do
I have before this travesty takes place?”

Father exhaled slowly. “Benson’s up in Boston, meeting with
some business partners. He’s not expected back for another week.”

“But then I’ll have to marry him.”

Fresh tears filled my Father’s eyes. “Yes, my darling. I’m
afraid so.”