A Bride So Fair, page 15
part #3 of A Fair to Remember Series
It was better to keep quiet. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing his trust again, perhaps forever this time.
They crossed a tiny scrap of land that lay between the island and the shore then continued along a second bridge. Emily concentrated on keeping pace with Stephen and trying to get her spiraling thoughts in order. When they reached the top of its gentle arch, she saw a figure step off the end of the bridge ahead of them.
The man stopped along the edge of the lagoon and put his hands in his pockets, looking over the nighttime scene with a proprietary air. Emily caught her breath. Even from a distance, she recognized the arrogant stance: Raymond Willard Simmons III, master of all he surveyed. In his own mind, at least.
At that moment, he looked up and saw them. In the bright light cast by the multitude of incandescent bulbs, Emily could see his expression harden. Her stomach knotted so tightly she was afraid she was going to be sick.
Raymond didn’t have a mustache. Emily drew closer to Stephen and saw the other man’s face twist into a scowl. She held the rose tightly between her fingers to keep from swiping the back of one hand across her mouth.
15
“Aren’t we the very picture of domestic tranquility?” Mrs. Purvis picked up another stitch of soft blue yarn and went on with the cap she was knitting for Adam.
Emily looked around the parlor and smiled. She sat on the floor, on the parlor rug, with Adam snuggled against her side, reading the story of Thumbelina from a volume of Hans Christian Andersen’s works. Lucy sat in one of the overstuffed chairs, darning her stocking.
A smile curved her lips, and her heart swelled with contentment. Yes, they did look very domestic. It would be easy to become accustomed to this feeling of being home, being family.
A tap sounded at the front door. “I’ll get it,” Lucy volunteered.
“Don’t bother.” Mrs. Purvis set her yarn and knitting needles in the basket beside her chair and walked toward the front door with her usual springy step. “You girls work hard all day. It’s a treat to see you have a chance to sit and relax for a bit.”
Voices filtered in from the entry hall, telling Emily who their visitor was even before Mrs. Purvis caroled, “Look who’s here!” and Stephen stepped into the parlor.
Mrs. Purvis followed right behind him, only to pivot and turn back when another knock rattled the door. She returned a moment later, her arms filled with an enormous spray of pink roses. Her eyes glowed with excitement and a touch of mischief. “Goodness, look what the delivery boy just brought.” She crossed the room and held the armful of blooms out to Emily.
Emily gasped. “For me?”
“Look at the card,” Mrs. Purvis urged. “It seems you have a secret admirer. Or maybe not so secret. I’d say the timing on that delivery was perfect.” She flitted a coy glance at Stephen.
Emily got to her feet and held out her arms to accept the flowers. She looked at Stephen with a smile of gratitude, startled when she saw a frown darken his face.
Mrs. Purvis hurried toward the kitchen. “I’ll fetch a vase so we can put these in water right away.”
Emily laid the blooms on the table in front of the settee and pulled a small square envelope from between the stems. “Miss Emily Ralston” was penned neatly on the front of the envelope in a strong, masculine hand.
Once again, she shot a look at Stephen, hoping she had misread his earlier look of displeasure. His expression remained dark and somber. He crossed his arms and watched her without comment.
“I can’t imagine who these are from.” She heard the shakiness in her voice and cleared her throat. Taking a quick breath, she turned the envelope over and tore open the flap. A single sheet of stationery nestled within. Emily slid it out and glanced at the first line, then froze.
“I hope you enjoyed our kiss as much as I did.”
The pork chops she’d eaten for dinner turned over in her stomach. So it had been Raymond after all. She looked down at the roses again. It was just like him to do something underhanded like stealing that kiss and then bragging about it this way, without daring to face her. What a coward!
Her anger burned. She took hold of the note with both hands, ready to shred it into bits, when the second sentence caught her eye. She held the note closer and read the entire message through, then went back to the beginning and read it again.
“I hope you enjoyed our kiss as much as I did. Having now made your acquaintance, I have little doubt that you are well qualified to care for Adam, whatever your reason for taking him in the first place. Make sure nothing happens to my boy and know that I’ll be watching.”
The signature was a series of scrawls and curls, but Emily could make out the first letter in each word: I and M. She let out a cry and felt the floor rise to meet her.
The next thing she knew, she was stretched out on the settee, with Lucy patting her hand and Mrs. Purvis fanning her face with a dish towel. Stephen stood to one side, his face a stony mask.
Emily saw the square of stationery in his fingers and stifled a groan. He must have read the message by now. She let her eyes drift shut again.
Tiny fingers patted her face. “Miss Em’ly all right?”
She roused herself enough to open her eyes and smile at Adam. Pulling her hand from Lucy’s grasp, she wrapped her arm around the little boy and held him close. There was no room for doubt now. Adam was Ian McGinty’s son. She held him tighter and rubbed her cheek against his soft blond hair. How could such an angelic child be fathered by such an evil man?
She risked a glance over the top of his head. Stephen hadn’t moved an inch since the last time she had looked at him. How was she ever going to explain that note to him? She pushed herself up off the settee and wobbled to her feet. Crossing the room with unsure steps, she took the offensive note from his hand and set it on the table next to the flowers.
“So you’ve met his father?” His voice was flat, empty of emotion. He nodded toward Adam, who had returned to the corner and was playing with the blocks Matthew had given him.
“No!” Emily reached out and touched the lapel of his jacket, willing him to believe her. “It happened last night while we were walking on the fairgrounds.” She squeezed her eyes shut, remembering the shadowy paths, the fairy lights, and the heady scent of roses.
Roses. She cast another look at the mass of blooms on the low table. She would never think of them in the same way again.
“Do you remember when you left me to go pick the rose from the garden?”
He nodded abruptly. “It seems a pretty poor offering now. There’s quite a difference between that one little bloom and what you just received.”
“You’re right, there is a difference. Yours meant something to me. These”—Emily swept her arm out to indicate the bouquet on the table—“mean nothing.”
She took a shaky breath and forged ahead. “While I was waiting for you in the dark, I heard footsteps. I thought it was you at first. Someone came up to me and kissed me. Hard.”
Emily saw the muscles in his jaw tighten. “It was horrible. I felt… violated. Back in that corner, it was so dark I couldn’t see anything but the shadows. Just after that, there you were, holding out the rose you picked. I didn’t realize until later it couldn’t possibly have been you.”
She squared her shoulders and looked up at him. “And I’m sorry I doubted you at all. I should have known better from the first. That kiss was the action of a cad. You would never do a thing like that.” She saw his shoulders relax, and the planes of his face softened.
Emily turned to where Mrs. Purvis and Lucy stood listening openmouthed. “I don’t understand any of it—the kiss, the flowers, the note. Why would he do such a thing?”
“I can tell you that.” Stephen’s voice was heavy. “He wields control over people through the use of power and intimidation.”
Emily gave a shaky laugh. “I’d say he did a good job of both.”
“Then that means he knows Emily has been keeping Adam,” Lucy said. “Has he known that all along?”
Stephen raked his fingers through his hair. “There’s no way of telling when he found out. The only thing that matters is that he knows now.”
“What we decide to do about it matters, too,” Lucy put in. “We need to find some way to make sure Emily is safe.”
“As long as he’s happy about Adam staying here, there shouldn’t be a problem. The danger will come if we cross him in any way. What happens when he wants his son back?”
“He can’t have him.” The words burst forth from Emily’s lips. “I won’t let him.”
Stephen gave her a long look. “And how do you propose to keep that from happening? He knows who you are. He knows where you live. The man has informants everywhere. Do you think you’ll be able to make a move without him knowing?”
A chill ran from Emily’s head to her toes at the thought of what had happened to the poor woman who tried to run from McGinty, only to meet her fate in a lonely shed on the fairgrounds. Did she want to come to a similar end?
A thin thread of panic crept into her voice. “Are you telling me the only way to keep myself from danger is to turn Adam back over to his father?”
Blocks clattered to the floor. She looked over to find Adam staring at her, his eyes huge in his pale face. “Da?”
Emily rushed to scoop him up and cradle him in her arms. She held him close and looked at Stephen over the top of the little boy’s head. “I can’t do that. I don’t know what it’s going to cost me, but God help me, I can’t do it.”
“Maybe we should just leave Chicago.”
Emily stared at Lucy over the rim of her teacup. Surely her friend wasn’t serious.
Lucy reached out to grip Emily’s arm, sending a thin stream of tea sloshing over the rim of the cup. “If we leave in the middle of the night and get far enough away, he won’t know where we are. You can’t play games with a man like this, Emily. I’m frightened for you. You’re the only family I’ve got.”
The tremor in Lucy’s voice made Emily soften her response to this wild scheme. “Think about it. A man like that—you heard what Stephen said about the resources he has. How far do you think we’d get?”
She used her napkin to dab up the spilled tea and leaned her head against the back of her chair, feeling unutterably weary. Her eyes were gritty from lack of sleep, but none of the three women felt ready to go to bed after Stephen left. Even Adam was restless. After two abortive efforts to put him to bed, Emily gave up and decided to let him play quietly on the parlor floor until he wound down enough to be able to sleep. She blessed Matthew’s mother for the gift of the blocks. Adam knelt in the corner near the bookshelf, engrossed in adding another building to what looked like a small town.
“Where would you go?” Mrs. Purvis pulled her shawl farther up around her shoulders.
Lucy looked from Emily to Mrs. Purvis then held out her hands, palms up. “I don’t know. Somewhere.”
“And what would we use for money?” Emily pressed. “You have to think these things through, Lucy. We can’t just jump and run.”
“But you aren’t safe here.”
The chill of fear Emily had been fighting off ever since reading McGinty’s note came back to coil itself around her heart. “At this point, he seems willing to let things go on as they are.”
“But for how long?” Lucy persisted.
“Longer than if we uproot and take off. Think again. What would we do with Adam—take him with us? You heard what Stephen said. The man has informants everywhere. We’d never know who to trust. He’d be after us before we knew it. We could wind up like…” She nodded toward Adam and let the rest of the thought go unsaid. “If we stay here, at least we’ll have a little time to make some plans.”
Mrs. Purvis smiled at them from her overstuffed chair. “We may not know the answers, but we know Somebody who does. All we can do at this point is place this little boy in His hands—and ourselves, as well. The Bible talks about praying without ceasing. If ever there was a time to follow that advice—”
A soft thud from the far side of the room caught Emily’s attention. She looked over to see Adam sitting in the midst of a pile of books. She got up and hurried over to him. “Are you hurt?”
His tired little face turned up to hers, and she could see his eyes fill with tears. “It fell down.”
Emily knelt down beside him. He had apparently decided to expand his building efforts by using all the books from the bottom shelf to construct a bridge over the buildings in his make-believe town.
She sighed and started to put the books back in their proper places. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Purvis. I didn’t realize what was going on. I don’t know if you had these in any certain order, but I can at least clear them off the floor.”
The landlady waved her hand. “It doesn’t matter to me what order they’re in. I seldom do more than dust them, anyway. I keep them there mostly for the use of my boarders.”
Adam moved to help Emily, picking up the books with his chubby hands and passing them to her one by one. A slim blue volume slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor with its pages splayed across the rug.
“Oh dear.” Emily picked it up and smoothed the pages.
Adam scooped something up off the rug and handed it to her. Emily took the yellowed envelope from his hand, memories of her recent experience with Ian McGinty’s gift card making her shudder. This one, though, had one word written across the front in a bold scrawl: Ethelinda.
“What’s this? Adam, maybe you’d better take this to Mrs. Purvis and see if it’s something she wants.”
She turned around and called across the room, “This fell out of one of the books. I don’t know if it was marking a particular page or not. Do you want me to put it back where it was, or is it something you’d like to keep out?”
Adam trotted over with the envelope in his hand, and Emily went back to stacking the books on the shelf.
Mrs. Purvis caught her breath and gave a sharp cry. “Well, forevermore.”
Emily placed the last two books on the shelf, stood, and dusted her hands. She went back to rejoin Mrs. Purvis and Lucy, taking a seat on the settee and lifting Adam up to sit beside her. Without a word, he curled up and laid his head in her lap.
“What is it, Mrs. Purvis? Are you all right?” Lucy bent toward the older woman, a look of concern shadowing her eyes.
Mrs. Purvis sat with her hand pressed against her chest, staring at the envelope. “That handwriting—I haven’t seen it in years. It’s Randolph’s.”
“Your husband’s?” Emily’s eyes widened. “How long has that envelope been down there?”
Mrs. Purvis shook her head slowly. “I have no idea. I don’t even know that I’ve seen this before.” She turned the envelope over, lifted the flap, and slid out a bit of pasteboard. An array of emotions flitted over her face. “Oh my, I do remember this. It’s one of the little clues he used to leave about for me to find. I can tell you exactly how long it has been since I’ve seen it. I discovered it on the very day he took ill.”
Her eyes misted over. “How strange to come across it again after all these years. It almost makes me feel like there’s been a little bit of Randolph here all along.”
Lucy gave a little bounce in her chair. “How exciting! I loved the stories about your treasure hunts. What did this clue lead to?”
Mrs. Purvis’s face fell. She pressed the slip of paper between her palms and held it against her chest. “I guess I’ll never know.” She held it up to show a rough sketch, faded with the passage of years. “I remember looking at this one and trying to puzzle it out. It was right then that Randolph suddenly told me he wasn’t feeling well.” Her mouth twisted. “After that, my mind was on other matters. This was one hunt we never did finish.” Her voice caught on the last few words.
Emily’s heart went out to the older woman. “Do you think it’s a clue to what you’ve been looking for all these years?”
Mrs. Purvis’s face lit up for a moment. Then the spark faded. She cleared her throat and straightened in her chair. “I’ve been thinking since our talk the other night. Maybe I misunderstood him. Maybe I assumed he meant his big surprise was ready when it wasn’t finished at all. Perhaps it was still just a plan in his mind.”
She stroked her thumbs along the faded drawing. “This may have been nothing more than a clue to one of the little treasures he used to leave lying around. It’s possible I’ve built all these expectations up out of nothing but my own imagination. And even if this was supposed to lead me to Randolph’s grand secret, I still have no idea what it means, and the other clues are surely gone by now.”
Mrs. Purvis slid the drawing back into the envelope with an air of finality. She sighed. “I’ll tuck this away as a final memento of Randolph and the love we shared. I’m afraid—sorely afraid—I’ve been wasting my time all these years. Surely he wouldn’t have wanted me to act like such a foolish old woman.”
She pushed herself up out of her chair. “It’s time for me to go to bed. I’ll bid you girls good night now, and it looks like that little tyke is fast asleep, too. Why don’t we all get some rest? This has been a rather eventful day.”
16
Stephen trotted up the front steps of the house on Blackstone Avenue. He rattled the doorknob before tapping on the door. Good, they were keeping it locked. Trying to appear casual, he looked up and down the street, looking for anyone who seemed out of place in the neighborhood.
He heard the sound of feet crossing the entry hall toward the front door and tried to get his nerves under control. In recent days, he’d been as skittish as a cat on hot bricks, his every waking moment consumed with dreaming up ways to keep the occupants of Mrs. Purvis’s boarding house safe.
The door swung open, and Emily looked up at him with the sweet smile he had become so fond of. No, his feelings had gone well beyond fondness. If he wanted to be honest, he was head over heels in love with this girl. Emily might worry about not knowing her family background, but her courage, her loyalty, and her willingness to sacrifice her own safety for the welfare of a little boy she barely knew were proof enough of her character.
