Unfinished (Historical Fiction) (11 page)

She didn't want his pity. Or even his compassion. She wanted to unwind time and make these damn episodes end. In a wildflower field on the edge of town she stared at him, gloriously naked in a sunny patch of Queen Anne's Lace, his muscled chest sprinkled with brown hair, waist tapered, a thatch of darker hair leading down to –

Oh, my.

Modesty disappeared, as did her humiliation. Before her lay this man, stretched out and unpretentious, comfortable in – literally – his own skin.

And wanting her.

Accepting her.

Cacophony bloomed inside, competing voices and memories vying for the prestigious role of shaming her out of being with James, of believing that any man would love her for her heart and mind.

Disbelief won out, claiming victory in her next words:

“Good day, James. I – I don't know what else to say.”

She ran through the field, jumped on her bicycle, and rode away from the only person on earth who welcomed her into his arms and heart.

She turned hot and cold – no, flesh and granite – so easily. How? Why? What secret did Lilith hold that made her so damn unreadable, as hard as a statue at the Museum of Fine Arts, yet so delicate and soft and luscious? All angles and bones, with few curves between, she twisted like an overpruned grape vine along Lake Erie, arms akimbo and legs spread in a perfect ratio, a triangle whose northernmost peak housed the key to nirvana.

Yet that mind held even more. A mind tortured in hospital seven years before, an experience that had shaped her, made her mind loop and rattle, one thought ricocheting in rapid advance until it made a vibration even he could feel. She couldn't let ideas go. Or events. Or pinpointed images, riveted into her skull, a photograph embedded in her psyche.

Freud would have a lifetime of research analyzing Lilith.

James was a poor man's Freud.

The damn woman left him naked in a field. Post coital. Without a penny in his pocket, and to add insult to injury, she'd managed to take one sock with her, leaving him limping with blisters from riding that damn bike back home without a sock. Too-tight shoes were bad enough. Being left without his clothes, like a scene from a nightmare, was worse. Living with the constant reminder as pain gnawed away at his ankles made him just want her more.

Who
was the freak?

Who could give him more? No Boston Brahmin would address him from ten paces. He'd lose his job – and possibly his mining investments – if he asked too many questions among the moneyed class. Economic imperialists, the lot of them. And he was exploiting them as they exploited him, the mutual understanding clear. Deliver, Southie, and we'll make you rich.

But you'll never be of our kind.

He needed their kind, just for the initial push into Chile and Peru. After he'd proven his claim, they could all go to hell.

Yet who could tell him more about Lilith?

Ah.
He knew. And a fine Scotch whisky, a week's worth of wages, might do the trick.

Chapter Seven

B
ELLY UP TO THE SHINING OAK BAR
, Jack Reed was half drunk already before most men had wandered home from the evening commute. James wouldn't have to spend nearly as much of his wages on getting Reed far enough along to spill his guts. Two or three more shots and he'd be good to go.

"What are you doing here?" Reed asked, clapping James' shoulder as he sidled up next to his boss, motioning to the bartender for a pint of cheap beer.

"I figured I'd lower my standards this once."

"Hah!" The bar on Newbury Street wasn't James' style, but it certainly was Reed's. Overpriced beer and liquors at a fancy half-basement bar, with a small window at street level for foot watching. The decor was warm enough and the scent of spoiled alcohol was covered by thick, rich pipe tobacco. A few men played darts in one corner but, mostly, the point of the place was for social climbers like Reed to be seen and to preen.

And, hopefully, be heard.

"That John Stone is one hard man," James said quietly, shaking his head. "Moving you off his accounts and all."

Reed's boozy features tightened with anger. He cocked his jaw to the left, simmered for a bit, then tossed back a jigger of what smelled like scotch. "Ayup."

"How long had you worked for him?"

"Just a year or so. But I've been around the Stones for a long time." He chewed on a peanut. "Too long."

"What do you mean?" James flicked his hand toward Reed's glass. The bartender refilled the jigger. A half day’s pay was about to be converted into back alley piss in the lawyer's body, but James didn't care. Expensive urine was worth what he needed to know.

"My father was one of the first partners in the firm. He was nothing but another self-made lawyer trying to chase down criminals for clients until John Stone hired him to help with some dock worker busting. That was when me and Lilith were about ten. We're a regular old pair of siblings, we are," he hooted, slapping James' knee and pounding the bar.

"So you've grown up around her?"

"Here and there, sure. She was all spit and sunshine when she was little, that one was. Looks like a strong wind could snap her in half but she had the balls of an Indian elephant and the brains of a man."

"Was? She seems pretty strong to me. Nothing like most women," James prodded.

Reed snorted. "What you see now is just some cold shell. Actually, she's improved in the past few years. For a while there, after he – you know -- she was just dead inside. Dead outside. Closed up and plain old hard as granite. Like a stone." He cocked his head and mused for a moment. "Well, she is a Stone, so that's something!" More slurred laughter.

"After who did what?" A creeping, prickly cold started in his legs and traveled up behind his knees, settling in his gut. Now he was hitting pay dirt.

"Stone. After he had Lilith committed to McLean."

She had mentioned that in the meeting the first time they'd met. But he hadn't thought much of it; plenty of wealthy women went away for a few weeks for nerve attacks, or after having babies, all to clear their minds or to be pampered in a way no woman he'd met in his neighborhood could ever imagine.

James waved his hand dismissively. "Most of the Beacon Hill women have spent a month or so there."

Reed's face went hard and wistful, a touch of fear and pity filling his features. "Not like what he did to her," he whispered, leaning in and breathing sour air across James' ear and face.

Easy, boy. Don't overplay your hand
, he warned himself. Closing the gap, he left two inches between his ear and Reed's mouth. "Like what?"

"He had them experiment on her." Reed's voice was barely a whisper, and the tremor wasn't from alcohol. "With electric devices and, rumor be believed, on parts of the body that no person, and 'specially no woman, should have them on."

The prickly, cold sensation spread. He swallowed and heard a click, then pulled away from Reed in horror.

"Why would someone do that?" James' voice came out louder than intended and Reed looked around, skittish and unsettled.

"Because he can." Reed popped back another shot. "Remember how I told you the rich aren't like us? I wasn't kidding."

"No, but...I mean why? What did he hope to accomplish? What did Lili -- Miss Stone -- do to deserve treatment like that?"

Whoosh
. Reed's sudden, long exhale filled James' breathing space with rancid peanut breath. "Well, now, James, you're going to have to get me a bit drunker to hear that one." He winked.

Ah, shit.
Found out. James suppressed a grin and nodded, acknowledging his transgression. A quick wave brought two more shots to the men and James gulped his, along with the rest of the beer. If Reed needed even more alcohol to reveal what was coming next, then so did James. What could be worse than this?

"She ain't his," Reed mumbled.

"She isn't -- " James's eyes went wide.

"Once you know, it's obvious. Look at her. She's teensy tiny, just like her mother, but with those blue eyes that ain't made in nature. John Stone is thick and dark. Now – I'm telling you this in confidence. You tell anyone, I'll have you and every dirty cousin related to you fired from the firm and from every factory, office, and household I can control. You got that?" Reed wavered between geniality and bitterness. James liked him better when he was unctuously ambitious. This snake had some poison in his bite.

"Of course." He slammed another shot, banging the glass on the bar. "I'll have a few more of these and trust me, I won't remember my own name tomorrow morning." His turn to wink. Reed grinned, and continued:

"Word from the servants is that Lilith was finishing her final year at Dana Hall, 'bout seven years ago. She got into a fight with her father and she threw it in his face. Everyone in the house knew that Margaret had slept with someone while he was out of the country right after they were married. Some say she had a lover and a final fling. Some say she didn't do it by choice." An uncomfortable silence hung between the two men.

"However it happened, she got pregnant with Lilith and Stone didn't know. Then nothing. No kids for years until Miss Julia was born. And she's feeble-minded. Gossips say there was a big fight between Stone and Margaret when Julia was born and she threw it in his face that the only child he could make was weak. He hasn't visited her bed since."

"How did Lilith find out?" James knew plenty of people who weren't the children of their "Da," but had never given much thought that it happened on Beacon Hill, too.

"Who knows? She's smart, that one. And so she threw it in his face when she was seventeen. And he had her committed."

"Tortured."

Reed nodded. "Something like that. I've heard some of the doctors there get their hands on a woman and, well – they cut off parts of a woman that most would prefer to keep.” James wasn't sure what to make of that, but the cold chill that unwound the warmth of his drinks didn't sit well.

A raucous shout interrupted the room's chatter as a group of young barreled through the door, someone shouting about a fight outside. Half the room poured into the street, leaving James and Jack with a chilly draft from the now-closing door and a colder knowledge seeping into James' pores.

Reed sniffed and said, “And that's when her grandfather -- Margaret's Da -- set up the trust. He knew what Stone was up to and set out to make sure Lilith would be safe and cared for. Stone will never leave his money to her."

"But he raised her as his daughter." James' tone made it clear he didn't understand the paradox.

Shaking his head, Reed pushed the empty glasses away from his belly and stood. "Of course he did. Can't have anyone knowing that Margaret bested him. The scandal -- John Stone as a cuckold? Can you imagine?"

No. He couldn't. But torturing Lilith at McLean because she’d figured out he wasn't her father still made no sense.

"So he hates her so much he told the people at McLean to do these unspeakable acts?"

Reed shrugged. "I don't know 'bout that. I just know what the kitchen maids whispered when I came for dinners and parties. And that Lilith came home after months there as much a shell of herself as men come back from war. She looked like she'd spent those months watching ghosts." And with that, Reed, stepped back, shook James' hand, and staggered off to the street, James watching his feet as they plodded past the window, lurching to the left out into the cold, starless night.

Chapter Eight

N
OTHING TO FEAR
.
N
OTHING TO FEAR
. She chanted the words in her mind like an Eastern yogi muttering to himself along a verbal journey to nirvana. Of course, a yogi would not need to ruminate over the silly phrase. He would simply be enlightened. Lilith held no illusions of her own enlightenment when it came to this strange fluid.

She was frightened. No chant would cure it.

Perhaps Dr. David Burnham could.

His office was as peculiar as his receptionist. Both were large, dark, and shabby. While Burnham seemed to have taste – the oak-lined walls in the reception area and New Hampshire granite floors attested to that – the anteroom was a man's room, decorated by and for men. An oddity for a doctor who treated women for the most part.