Vintage Love (292 page)
“I was with him last night,” Murphy said. “He talked about what he should have done and he said that he should have made you marry him. He thought it night all have worked out if he had.”
“I doubt that, Murph,” she said. “I won’t be at the funeral. I’m leaving Hollywood tonight. I’ll send flowers.”
“It won’t be the same without him,” Murphy said.
It seemed oddly appropriate to Nita that Billy should have died at this time. He had played a part in her coming to Hollywood and now again in her leaving. Like Marty and herself and all the others, Billy Bowers had lived in a world of hopes, dreams, and illusions. Their struggles had been ignored in their fierce devotion to make-believe. Theirs was a make-believe world, and Hollywood was the capital city of a make-believe kingdom.
But Nita wanted no more make-believe. She bent to close her suitcase, her eyes still blurred by tears. The last thing she had packed was her old good luck charm, the doll she’d taken with her a few short years ago when she’d run off to join Marty, full of excitement and plans for a glorious future. Once again she was making a new start, setting out on a new adventure. After a moment’s hesitation, she took the doll out of the suitcase and set it on the bed. What would the new tenant think of it, she wondered. Would some other star-struck young woman claim the battered toy as a token of luck? Resolutely she closed the suitcase. No time to think about that now. After all, Phillip was waiting. It was time to leave make-believe behind, and join the real world of true love and devotion!
This edition published by
Crimson Romance
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
Copyright © 1980 by Nordon Publications, Inc.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 10: 1-4405-7514-2
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7514-3
eISBN 10: 1-4405-7515-0
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7515-0
Cover art © 123rf.com
Honor Among Thieves
by Elizabeth Boyce
1816, Middlesex
The grandfather clock in the corner thunked a steady rhythm, and Lorna sipped her tea. Around her, the parlor's shabby sofa and chairs stood empty, waiting for callers who wouldn't arrive. No one mourned the passing of a madman.
A series of hollow gongs announced ten o'clock. At the cemetery, the vicar soon would pray over Thomas, with only poor little Daniel and a manservant in attendance.
The droning chimes faded. Silence filled Lorna's ears, a soothing balm to her frayed nerves. Her brother's screams and curses had filled the house for months before the end came. Belligerent and wheedling and sinister by turns, the incessant noise had threatened to pull the whole house into insanity with him. Even when he no longer opened his lids because light hurt his eyes, his lips moved, spewing blasphemies and mad rants or begging for somethingâthe services of a prostitute his most frequent request.
On one of these occasions, her resolve to ignore his revolting words had failed her. “Hasn't your whoring done enough?” she'd snapped. “There will be no more of that for you, brother.”
Thomas growled in protest and squirmed against the lengths of linen bound to his ankles and wrists. One eye cracked open, rolling in the socket until it settled on Lorna. It looked like a watery poached egg floating in a ring of crusty lashes. Gaunt, stubbled cheeks pulled back to reveal slimy teeth. “Then give me
your
mouth.” The thin, soiled nightshirt wadded around his thighs outlined a jutting erection.
Lorna's cheeks still burned in shame to recall her brother's suggestion. He'd laughed at her shocked indignation, all the while lewdly grinding his hips in circles. “You're too scrawny to fuck, and your cunt's dusty like a harp in the corner, waiting for someone to play it. But your lips are pink and ready.” She'd never heard two of those words before, but it took her only a second to interpret them.
Lorna took a cake from the table of refreshments meant for sympathetic neighbors. Cook insisted on providing the late Baron Chorley a respectable funeral, despite the disgrace he had heaped upon the family while he lived. Lorna nibbled slowly, relishing the sweetness against her tongue.
Of late, her meals had been gulped down without tasting the food. Almost every waking moment had been spent at Thomas's bedside, watching the restraints. Twice he'd escaped. The first time, he kicked through a window, shredded his leg, and nearly bled to death before they wrestled him back into bed. The second time ⦠Lorna winced at the memory of the maid's ruined face.
After that, Thomas was kept under constant supervision. Lorna hadn't thought it fair to leave the last remaining footman, Oscar, and the old butler, Humphrey, entirely in charge of tending himâespecially since the servants worked out of loyalty now, rather than for a decent wage.
Lorna swept a few crumbs from the skirt of her black dress. The garment began its life a pale rose, but the necessity for mourning weeds had seen it dunked into a stinking vat of vinegar and dye just yesterday. Mrs. Lynch, the housekeeper, had smoothed an old sheet over Lorna's chair before she sat, lest dye bleed onto the faded upholstery.
A knock sounded at the front door. Lorna set down her teacup and folded her hands in her lap a few seconds before Humphrey's stooped form appeared in the parlor door. “A Mr. Wiggins is here, Miss Robbins,” he said, presenting the caller's card.
“Show him in,” she said.
The name sparked no recognition, but Lorna did not know most of Thomas's acquaintance. Fifteen years her senior, her half-brother had been mostly absent from Lorna's life. She'd made rare, brief visits to London, and he came home with even less frequency, despite the family seat being only a handful of miles outside of Town. They'd spent no length of time together until six months ago, when one of his London companions unceremoniously dumped him, soaking wet and raving, on the portico. From what Lorna had been able to piece together, Thomas had no friends, only people to whom he was indebted. If this Mr. Wiggins had come from Town to pay his respects, though, perhaps he'd been a true friend to her brother.
Humphrey returned with her guest. The man was not much taller than she, several inches over five feet. Stringy gray hair inadequately covered a balding pate, and the man's middle paunch had a sadly deflated quality to it, like an empty wineskin. His apparel looked fine at a distance, but when he took her hand in greeting, Lorna noted frayed cuffs and thin places at the seams.
Not that I've room to judge,
she thought, glancing at her own tatty furnishings.
“Miss Robbins,” he said, “please accept my condolences for your loss.” His accent carried the remnants of a working class upbringing.
“Thank you, Mr. Wiggins.” Lorna took her seat and gestured him to a chair. “May I offer you some tea?”
“With my gratitude.” As Lorna handed him a cup, he said, “I was hoping I might see Lord Chorley.”
“Oh.” Lorna faltered, grasping for delicate words. “I'm afraid that won't be possible. The viewing has ended. My brother has been moved to the church for burial. Unless ⦔ She twisted her fingers together, uncertain about the protocol of graveside services. “If you hurry to the churchyard, you might be able to see him before ⦠But I really don't know.”
Wiggins gulped his beverage and smacked his lips. “I'll wait,” he announced. “I've got no pressing engagements.”
Lorna frowned. “I'm sorry, sir. Do you mean you wish to see the new Lord Chorley, not the deceased?”
“Just so,” Wiggins replied. “I've no wish to peep at a soul case.” His eyes narrowed on Lorna in suspicion. “Unless this is another ruse to get out of paying his notes. Has he skipped to Calais?”
Lorna suppressed a groan. So Mr. Wiggins wasn't a friend, after all. “If it's money you're after, sir, I'm afraid I cannot help you.”
The man nodded. “Then we're all right, miss. I wouldn't dream of treating with a lady, so if you don't mind passing me one of those cakes, I'll just await his lordship's return.”
One of her cakes, indeed. Lorna raised her chin a notch. “You mistake me, Mr. Wiggins. I run this household, not his lordship. Any understanding between you and my late brother is none of my affair, and I refuse to be drawn into his financial mishaps.” She stood, calling upon every ounce of her girlhood comportment training to maintain a polite tone. “I do thank you for your condolences, Mr. Wiggins, but I'm afraid I must bid you a good day.”
Wiggins wagged a knobby finger. “Now, now, missy, that dodge will never hold up in a court of law.” From a pocket he produced a stack of notes, which he handed to Lorna.
A cursory examination showed amounts to make her stomach clench. A hundred pounds. Fifty. Five hundred twenty. All carried her worthless brother's signature, all dated within the last eighteen months. “Thomas was ⦠sick,” she said, her throat catching around the allusion to his insanity, “when he borrowed from you.”
Wiggins sneered, all pretense of politeness dropped. “He's not the first taken by the French disease, and he won't be the last, but I'm out the coin anyway. My business is with Chorley. If the baron I knew has escaped to hell, then I'll speak to the new man in charge. He'll make good on these notes, all right, or I'll have the law on him.”
The threat against Daniel turned Lorna's despair to rage in an instant. “
The new man in charge
,” she said, venom dripping from her words, “is a boy of seven. You cannot hold him responsible for another's debts.” She threw the stack of notes right back in Wiggins's face, where they exploded like confetti.
A shadow darkened the moneylender's features an instant before he chuckled. He reclined in the chair, more at his ease than when she'd offered him tea and pleasantries. “Oh, but I can. Lord Chorley is responsible, and it doesn't matter a whit to me if he's a babe in arms. I'll bring suit against the estate. It'll cost you dear to have a barrister speak for you, and you'll still have to pay up in the end.”
She closed her eyes and scratched at her head with both hands, an anxious habit she'd abandoned years agoâuntil Thomas came home. Now thin weals crisscrossed her scalp. She winced as her nails dragged across them; the pain brought clarity. Lorna rounded on him. A faint smell of vinegar wafted from her skirts as they swished around her legs. “All right, Wiggins, look.” If he could drop the social façade, so could she. “I have perhaps twenty pounds to my name. Take it or leave it.” She looked down her nose, raising a brow in challenge.
He guffawed.
“Twenty pounds, the chit says!” He wheezed through a laugh, his face going puce with the force of his amusement. “If that's not the best demmed jape I've heard this age and more.” He wiped tears from his cheeks with the ratty cuff of his coat. Then he gathered up the promissory notes and tucked them into his pocket. “I'll leave your twenty and take the fifteen hun'ret I'm owed, miss.”
He smiled as he rose to his feet, but the malice gleaming in his eyes sent ice to Lorna's toes. Wiggins stepped toward her. Lorna instinctively retreated. “I will have my due. Need be, I'll take this house and everything in it; I happen to know it ain't entailed. Better for you to sell on your terms, than give it to me on mine. You have two months, then it's pay up or else.”
Sell Elmwood? Everything inside of Lorna rebelled at the notion. For years, she had worked to keep the estate's ledgers balanced. She had scrimped and cut back and done without, all to provide Daniel a safe, happy home. Thomas never did anything for his half-siblings. He couldn't be bothered to visit the small property more than once every few years. No, it had been Lorna's duty to keep everything running. And now Thomas was threatening to ruin her carefully ordered world from beyond the grave. She wouldn't allow it.
“Absolutely not,” she declared. “I won't give up my home.”
“Then you'll have to cough up the blunt some other way.” Wiggins gave her an appraising look. “Might be you've something else to sell.”
Lorna took leave to doubt that.
In response to her dubious expression, Wiggins turned cajoling. “You
could
use some meat on those bones, but there's some as like the skinny ones. Not to mention being the first to breach the walls, as it were, commands a higher rateâ”
She shoved him, hard, toward the door. He stumbled and cracked his shin against a side table. The impact drew a hiss of pain from Wiggins.
“Get out,” Lorna said in a low voice. “Take your notes and your filthy mouth, and get out of my house.”
Wiggins rubbed his injury through his pant leg. “You're gonna wish you hadn't done that. I'll be back. Fifteen hundred. Cough it up, or I'll choke it from you.” The moneylender limped from the room.
An hour later, Daniel found her. His dark eyes were wide and solemn in his slender face. Oscar the footman patted the new baron on the shoulder before leaving him in Lorna's care. When they were alone, Daniel curled up beside her, heedless of his formal black suit. Her arms twined around her young half-brother, pulling him into her lap, where he nestled against her. He was getting too big to fit comfortably, but neither of them was ready to give up the familiar closeness.
While Lorna had a few scant memories of her own mother, Daniel had none of his. His mother, their father's third wife, had died only hours after his birth. Following her burial, their father took a drunken ride. Never much of a horseman in the best of times, he was thrown from the saddle and broke his neck. At the age of fourteen, Lorna became the only parent Daniel had ever known.