Enchanted Afternoon, page 7
“Ma’am?”
“If something, anything, happens to me, you’re to look after William, do you understand? Even if you must run away and hide, you must keep him safe from Troy Barnes. Can you do that?”
“Ma’am—”
“Take this.” Helena handed her the Tiffany emerald brooch. Then she took out one of the letters she had dictated. “Sell the piece, and then go to the telegraph office and send a message to my sister. Do you remember her name?”
“Abigail Cabot Calhoun. Mrs. James Calhoun.”
“That’s right. The Butlers of Georgetown will know where she’s gone in her travels.”
“I reckon I can do that.”
Helena was relieved that Daisy didn’t argue with her, or try to tell her that nothing was going to happen, that everything would be all right.
Daisy knew better. Helena realized this when her maid went to the gun cabinet and selected a Henry repeating rifle. It was a collector’s piece, and one of which Troy was especially proud. In return for legislation Troy had initiated, the manufacturer had made a special presentation to him of a gun with single-digit serial numbers, richly engraved and inscribed, and fitted with a rosewood stock. Seeing it in Daisy’s large, competent hands reminded Helena of the true peril they faced.
With a weary expression, Daisy said, “He won’t leave you be.”
“He must.”
“I knows the kind of man he is. He needs his pretty wife and child. He won’t let you go. What’s he going to do when he figures out you up and left?”
“He’ll be wild with fury. But I have no choice. I refuse to live my life on the run, like a fugitive criminal. And I refuse to live in Troy Barnes’s house. If I stay here, I’m a sitting duck, aren’t I?”
“You got that right. So when’s he due back from Albany?”
“Tomorrow evening. And he always goes to his club straight from the station, so that gives us a few more hours. But it’s not much time, is it?”
“It’s enough.”
“He cannot do a thing to stop me. You see, after…yesterday, the answer came to me. In order to be free of him, all I have to do is make him too afraid to come near me.”
“How you going to scare a man like that?”
“With a black stick,” she murmured, then caught Daisy’s look of confusion. “With what I know, I can control him. He stole the last election.”
“And you can prove that?”
Helena indicated the low cabinet. “I have the stolen ballots. Archie was supposed to dispose of them, but I took them.”
“Old Archie’s in a world of trouble.”
Helena gave a taut smile. “I think you care about that even less than I do.” She stood up and surveyed the room, then went out the door for a view of the house from the upper gallery. A curious feeling crept through her. This vast house had been her domain for nearly a decade, and she was about to walk away. The last time she’d left home, it had been to marry Troy, because Michael had gotten her with child and then abandoned her.
The curious ambivalence shifted to smoldering anger. Each time, it had been a man who had driven her off in a new direction in her life. But this time, she thought, she would make her own way.
CHAPTER FIVE
Helena awakened in a strange place, feeling safer than she had in days. Her bedroom faced east, with a bank of windows framing a view of the lake. Watery reflections of light and shadow wavered on the ceiling. A curious feeling welled up inside her, so different from the crushing sense of dread and obligation that had afflicted her since the day after her father’s funeral. A place of her own.
The rustic lodge had been built for size and comfort. The furniture was sturdy, practical, comfortable. She suspected the pastoral simplicity of the big lodge explained why no one would buy the place. People came to Saratoga Springs for style, not comfort. Well, she’d had her fill of style. She was ready for something different.
Rising from the bed, she ignored the lingering pain in her injured arm and rib cage and looked out the window. It was a beautiful property with its pristine lakeside setting. As with most places around Saratoga, abundant mineral springs trickled from cracks in heaved-up rock or spilled down from the dark woods. They’d found one with enough effervescence to make breakfast bread without soda, and another that was sweet enough to drink without gagging. The house, outbuildings, forest paths, dock and carriage house were in a sad state of neglect, but she would soon remedy that. She spied William and Daisy walking toward the carriage house, undoubtedly to prepare a stall for Hector the horse. William, bless him, seemed to think they’d moved because of the horse. She had yet to correct the notion.
Helena got dressed on her own, a painful business given her injuries, and went downstairs, following her nose to the speckled enamel coffeepot in Daisy’s kitchen. Daisy had already staked out her domain, putting away supplies and utensils, scrubbing the plank counters and the big pine table in the center.
The house had been abandoned except for a litter of kittens. Most of the feral animals dispersed in terror when Helena arrived with William and Daisy Sullivan. Only one remained, a skinny, ginger-colored runt that shrank into a corner and hissed at her. Like all creatures whose hunger was sharper than their wits, the kitten was soon won over with a can of Highland Evaporated Cream.
Humming softly, Helena busied herself with cleaning, straightening, exploring, wrenching open windows with creaking sashes and airing out rooms that hadn’t been disturbed in years. It was an awkward business, given her injuries, but curiosity and ambition overcame the aches and pains. The lodge was simply built, its upper storeys housing at least nine bedrooms. The main floor was simple, too, with the kitchen in the back, a dining room furnished with a boardinghouse-style table that seated a good two dozen, and a huge open room with a river rock fireplace and a musty billiard table covered in fading green baize.
While surveying the common room, she spotted an ancient, illustrated calendar lying in the corner. Picking it up, she studied the age-brittle pages. There were captions explaining each picture, but she couldn’t read them. She really didn’t need to; the pictures were self-explanatory. Dated 1848, the calendar was nearly fifty years old, and it commemorated a famous event—the convention for women’s rights in Seneca Falls.
The women in the engraving looked appropriately solemn as they took turns signing the long document. Helena liked the picture so well that she dusted the cobwebs from the page and hung it from a rusty nail in the dining room on an empty, light-washed expanse of wall. She missed her Degas, the woman at bath, the glowing light streaming over her soft flesh, the lush colors forming a nimbus that echoed the shape of shoulder, thigh, belly, breast. This was hardly the same thing. The artistic appeal was minimal but it had its own sort of significance.
There was so much to do and she hadn’t accomplished much yet. They’d provisioned the kitchen, made up the beds, removed the dust covers from the furniture. The musty smell of disuse still infested the place. But her idea of making this into a home, filled her with a glorious energy she hadn’t felt in a very long while. Perhaps never.
* * *
In the late afternoon of their second day at Moon Lake Lodge, she heard a sound, and went to look outside. Michael Rowan came riding up the drive on a dun mare.
The sight of him stirred a discomfiting mixture of joy and dread. There was so much between them—danger, passion, secrets and lies. And a past that would not stay buried.
How had he found her? She’d made no secret of her departure; she hadn’t had to. She had the power to ruin Troy, and once he understood that, he’d leave her alone. But she had no way to keep Michael at a distance. And now she knew she must. She’d been a fool to contact him. She wished she could have that day back, that moment of sheer insane panic when she had sent him the message, begging to see him, naively praying he would help her find some way to make her world right again. It was too late now.
Though he eschewed proper riding attire, wearing street clothes and shoes rather than boots, he looked exceptional in the saddle. He rode hatless, his dark hair flowing behind him and his tinted spectacles adding a dashing air of mystery.
Waiting in the foyer, she checked her dress in the shabby age-spotted mirror and made a swift assessment of herself as she waited for him to approach along the overgrown walkway. The misty, pockmarked glass, which ran from plank floor to beamed ceiling, reflected a pale, somber and well-groomed woman with red hair and green eyes. A proper lady in mourning for her father, except for the scrawny slip of ginger clawing up her skirt. The kitten wouldn’t go away, so she let it haunt her petticoats as she went to the door.
She realized she was holding her arm. She made herself release it, then opened the door. “Hello, Michael,” she said. “Welcome to Moon Lake Lodge.”
“And where will I find you tomorrow?” he asked, striding across the foyer. “The Grand Union Hotel? The Claremont? Do you plan on changing residences every day?”
“No. I plan to divorce my husband only once.”
“It’s taken me a day and a half to figure out where you went. I called at the livery to get William’s horse, and was told it had already been collected.”
“Why would you fetch the horse?”
“Because I told him I would.”
A flicker of concern unsettled her. “That wasn’t necessary. A groom from O’Keeffe’s brought it ’round.”
“Where’s your husband, Helena?”
She sniffed. “In Albany. He’ll likely be back on the three o’clock train, but he always goes straight to his club from the station. Why do you ask?” She glanced at the case clock, which she’d wound and set that morning. It was nearly three now.
He studied her with a hard and searching gaze. Then, without warning, he turned away, inspecting the premises. He seemed to fill the cavernous foyer with his presence. He had always been an imposing man; that quality had struck her the first moment she had met him. On an autumn morning nearly ten years earlier, he’d fallen out of a tree onto the buckled brick sidewalk in front of her Georgetown house.
He’d either failed to notice—or perhaps he’d simply ignored the fact—that he had ripped his sleeve wide open and his elbow was bleeding copiously. He’d cared not at all that she had lost her favorite silver filigreed hair comb that day, probably while staggering around on the brickwalk to avoid a collision with him.
With scarcely a glance at her, he’d handed her a coil of wire, saying, “Hold that, will you? I just managed to connect to the trunk line, but I need to extend the copper tubing. Once that’s done, the house will be electrified.”
It had been one of the oddest moments of her life. A spoiled young debutante, she was accustomed to being the center of attention. He was the first man who was not struck brainless by her looks. Instead, he had employed her as unpaid labor while he rigged electrical wiring—so newfangled that it never actually worked—to his house.
Perversely, she had begun to love him right then, as she stood draped in copper wiring and indignation.
She brushed aside the memory and led the way through an arched doorway into the sitting room. “I hope this unexpected visit means you have reconsidered my request.”
“About being named a correspondent in your divorce?” He stripped off his threadbare morning coat with an unceremonious gesture of impatience. “Hardly.” His voice cracked like a physical blow, imparting a phantom ache.
Helena perched on the edge of a rickety cane-bottomed chair across from him. “I don’t know why I expected otherwise,” she said. “You were beastly to me when you left nine years ago, and you are being beastly to me now. If I meet up with you ten years from now, I expect you will still be beastly. If I came upon you as an old man in bed, choking out your final gasp, I suspect you’d spend your last breath being—”
“I know. Beastly.”
“You always think you know what I’m going to say.”
He circled the room, inspecting the outmoded furnishings, the tattered drapes. The ginger kitten tiptoed toward him, swirled around his ankles, and without seeming conscious of the movement, he scooped up the tiny thing, his hands engulfing it so that it disappeared. A purring sound started up immediately.
Helena was mesmerized by the sight of his big, gentle hands petting the kitten. Against her will, she started to think of times long past, and nearly wept with old, unfulfilled yearnings. “Michael, I—” Her whisper was so faint that she had to swallow past the ache of tears in her throat. She glanced away, not allowing herself to speak further.
“What are you doing here, Helena?” he asked, breaking the spell before she could start again. “What are you doing, alone in this place?”
The questions he would not yet speak rumbled beneath the surface, and she knew it was only a matter of time before he asked about William. Grateful for the reprieve, she said, “I have taken a lease on Moon Lake Lodge and will have the option to buy it. My father left a handsome legacy, as you might expect. But it will be in probate a good while, and so I must live in reduced circumstances. Besides, when I buy this property, I wish to be an unmarried woman. I do not want Troy Barnes to have any claim on it whatsoever.”
“So you intend to stay here by yourself.”
“With William and Daisy—she’s my maid. I recently hired her in Georgetown, and she was pleased to be given this chance to travel north with me.”
“Why not simply pick up and return to Georgetown? You grew up there. It’s your home.”
“It was never my home,” she said, her heart flooding with bitter memories. “It was the place we lived because of Father’s career, but it was no more a home than a hotel. My sister is off to Lord-knows-where in the middle East. My father is dead. I had no true friends there, not after—” She bit her lip, stopping herself just in time again, stopping herself from blurting the truth: Not after you left. Taking a deep breath, she said, “This is a wonderful place, Michael. Can’t you see that?”
“I see a large, rambling lodge that will fall to ruin if it’s not properly maintained.”
“Come, I’ll give you a proper tour of the house and grounds.” Ignoring his skepticism, she led the way out the front and along a pathway leading to the lake side of the house. Sturdy perennial flowers bloomed amid the weeds, and dragonflies skimmed down toward the water. The fresh smells of summer blossoms spiced the air. “I’ve known of this place for years. It has an amazing history. The foundation was laid by a Dutch colonial. After the Revolution, it was abandoned until the new century when—”
“Silas Moon bought the property and built a deer lodge.” He pointed at the high ceiling. “These hand-hewn open beams were felled and milled right on the property.”
“How did you know that?”
“I think you’ll find I’m quite familiar with local history.”
She promenaded him through winding, overgrown pathways, under huge, spreading trees and down toward the lake where a sagging dock and boat launch gave access to the water. The skinny kitten followed at a distance, occasionally pouncing on a cricket or leaping at a butterfly.
“You see, William has any number of places to run and play. And there’s a proper stable for the horse. It’s just through there.” She pointed in the direction of the old carriage house, then caught his look of surprise.
“So you’re letting him keep it after all.”
“I’m not heartless, Michael. Only cautious. This is a rather big change for William, and I thought perhaps having a pet would ease the transition.”
“So you aim to live here, and while away the hours…doing what?”
“Raising my son. Teaching him to be a good man. After so many years of doing the practical thing, the expected thing, I am doing something decidedly impractical. And it feels right. I won’t be criticized by you, Michael.”
“I didn’t come here to bicker, Helena. I came to discuss my son.”
Finally. This was the crux of the matter, of course.
“Your son indeed.” The words tasted bitter on her lips. She could feel the color creeping back into her cheeks. Perhaps Michael was good for one thing. She felt alive and vital when he was around, even if it was because he infuriated her. “Your son,” she repeated. “He no more belongs to you than this kitten belongs to the tomcat that sired it.” She picked up the tawny cat that had been shadowing them. It poured its body through her hands and slithered to the ground, swirling itself around her ankles in an immodest fashion.
“Have you always been this bitter, Helena?” Michael asked. “Or am I only seeing you more clearly now?”
You’re not seeing me at all, she thought, but resisted the urge to confess everything.
“You weren’t the least bit interested in William when I first told you about him,” she said. “I don’t understand why you’re so keen on claiming him now.”
“You never told me—” The color dropped from his face.
She watched the memories dawn on his face. “I see you remember. It was a November afternoon, as I recall,” she said, heading back toward the house.
“Damn it, Helena. Do you mean when you came to me with your story about being with child, you were telling the truth?”
“Yes.”
She’d allow him that. Being truthful had never been a priority for her. Seating herself across from him, she forced herself to take shallow breaths, because breathing deeply caused her ribs to hurt. “As soon as I suspected I was with child, I went straight to you. I said—”
“You said, ‘What if I’m with child?”’
“And you said, ‘Ah, pet. Don’t try to snare me in that old trap. It won’t work. You wouldn’t want it to, anyway. I’m not cut out to be anyone’s husband, let alone a father.’ You see? I remember it word for word.” She gave a small laugh and instantly regretted it as a sharp pain stabbed her rib cage. Besides, the topic was not amusing in the least.
“So I took your advice,” she concluded. “I did exactly as you instructed.”
“You should have told me about William. You should have insisted.”
