Enchanted Afternoon, page 9
He peeled back the sleeve, inch by inch.
Above them, in the spreading elm tree, a pair of robins squabbled briefly, then sped off in a whir of wings.
Michael stared at her arm, at the grotesque swelling, bruises the color of the blooming foxglove in her garden. “My God. What happened?”
She was used to hearing brusque command in a man’s voice. It made her stubborn, resentful. Carefully extracting her injured arm from his grip, she said, “I fell down the stairs. You know how clumsy I’ve always been, Michael.”
It was the wrong thing to say. She understood that as soon as she saw the look on his face. The excuse hadn’t fooled him for a moment.
Michael’s expression underwent a silent but visible change, a shadow slipping across the sun. “God damn him to hell.”
He became a Michael she had never seen before, a Michael she did not know as he stepped away, his features hardening to granite. With deliberate, agitated tugs, he drew on his riding gloves, finger by finger.
The gloves didn’t match.
“What are you doing?” she asked, confused by his reaction.
“I have good news for you, Helena.”
“That’s a very odd thing to say, Michael. Good news?”
“Yes. You don’t need to petition for a divorce from Troy Barnes,” he stated, swinging himself into the saddle.
His socks didn’t match, either.
“What do you mean, I—”
“Because I’m going to make a widow of you.”
CHAPTER SIX
How do you kill a man with your bare hands?
The question plagued Michael during his wild ride across town. Fury enveloped him in a fog as thick and deep as an alcoholic haze. It made him just as reckless as a bottle of tequila might, only this was a very focused recklessness, almost cleansing in its intensity. He didn’t even think about the ride through town. Heedlessly he raced past the Congress Street jail, ignoring the shrill, indignant whistle of a town constable as he clattered down Main Street. He crossed Lake Street, narrowly missing the lumbering trolley car. Then he took a shortcut across Congress Spring Park and several vast estate lawns. For all he knew, he’d run over someone or trampled a prized garden. He didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything but finding Troy Barnes.
Over the years, he and Barnes had barely spoken a dozen words between them, but Michael knew him. He knew the habits of the spoiled and privileged favored son. Knew his haunts, his tastes, his strengths and weaknesses. He had known Troy as long as he’d known himself, it seemed.
So why hadn’t he known Barnes was the sort of coward who hit women? Dear God, did he hit William, too?
The clock tower of the whitewashed Huntington Church tolled four as Michael raced by. He heard the bell faintly under the piston-like rasp of his horse’s breathing, the drum of hooves, the swish of blood in his ears. He recalled what Helena had said—Barnes would have already arrived at the D&A railroad station, then headed straight for his gentleman’s club.
Michael arrived in only a few moments and strode past the startled doorman. He made some sort of sputtering protest, but Michael ignored him and walked on. The Steeplechase Club was the sort of place a man like Troy Barnes would sit with his cronies and sycophants, sipping whiskey and talking until the men dispersed to go to supper. Some to wives, some to indifferent servants who were paid to be polite.
The club had always smelled, Michael thought, like new leather and old money, fine cigars and mellow whiskey. The smells of wealth and privilege. The smells of men who beat their wives and thought they could get away with it.
The grand salon was fairly quiet this time of day. A tall archway opened to the walnut-paneled main room, richly furnished with leather wing chairs and heavy oak card and gaming tables. Behind a massive, altar-like bar constructed of carved wood and etched mirrors, a lone barman indolently polished glasses with a white linen cloth. A card dealer shuffled his deck, readying a table for faro.
A group of men sat by a picture window with a view of the famous track with its pointed pavilions, the mile oval criss-crossed by pathways. The light of the afternoon sun colored the grassy sections a livid emerald. The rolling, forested hills shadowed the lake. Layers of blue-gray cigar smoke hovered like shapeless ghosts over the nearly empty room.
The men looked up as Michael burst upon them, yanking off his gloves and hurling them to the floor. He recognized Cornelius Cotter, fat, red-faced and jovial, a corrupt millionaire, which probably made him a favorite of Barnes. He didn’t know Barnes’s other two companions, didn’t care who they were. He made straight for Helena’s husband, his hand shooting out, fist curling into the immaculate fabric of the starched shirt. A chair tipped over, thudding hard on the Persian silk carpet. The table wobbled, and several glasses fell over, breaking. The sharp reek of spilled whiskey pervaded the room.
Barnes made a strangled sound of surprise and indignation; the others shrank back. Michael knew he’d have the advantage only for a moment, so he wasted no time.
He hauled Barnes to his feet with one hand. Barnes shoved hard with both forearms, threw Michael off and then rushed him, his head angled downward. They clashed. The wind rushed out of Michael’s lungs. An ashtray on a pedestal fell over, knocking into a brass-rimmed spittoon. Barnes recovered quickly and came up fighting, fists flying.
Michael felt the skin split at his cheekbone, felt blood running down the side of his face, heard a ringing in his left ear from a side blow. Yet the pain didn’t really touch him. Because he was not here for himself. He was here for Helena.
Flushed and panting, his shirt torn at the throat, Barnes looked astonished that Michael didn’t go down. The doorman called out, running to summon a constable, but the few men present quickly slid money across the table, placing bets. Betting was, after all, the chief sport of Saratoga Springs.
Barnes lunged again, upending another table. Michael stepped aside. In that split second, Michael regained his breath. He blocked the blows, swatting at the flying fists as though batting at horseflies. They crashed down the center of the room, past tables set with costly, heavy crystal decanters. Time seemed to stretch out forever. This was taking far longer than he’d anticipated.
“Not so easy as beating a woman, is it, Senator?” Michael said.
“You’re a madman,” Barnes replied, taking a swing and missing his mark as Michael feinted from side to side, fast learning the rhythm of violence.
“And you’re a dead man,” Michael replied, driving his shoulder into Barnes’s midsection.
Warm, whiskey-scented breath pushed out of Barnes as he went down. A decanter fell over, pouring its harsh contents down upon them both. Michael landed on top of him, forcing the air from Barnes’s lungs. With the same motion, he slammed his fist into his opponent’s face, and Barnes let out a roar of agony.
Now what now what now what? Michael had not been in a fight since he was a lad. He had always hated it. The initial surge of rage had fueled the first moments of the attack. Now he had the advantage, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Fighting was a dirty business, every blow leaving an indelible taint on his soul.
Barnes writhed beneath him, arching his back to buck him off. Blood poured in streams from his nose, but he fought with desperation. Both fists shot up, catching Michael under the jaw.
Half-blind from the blow, Michael clamped his hands around Barnes’s neck. How do you kill a man with your bare hands?
Troy Barnes’s chin and neck were slick with blood. His teeth were coated in red. Michael had no idea a man’s blood could be so slippery.
“…do something,” someone said behind him. “This has gone beyond mere sport.”
From his position on the floor, Michael saw white leather spats approaching. It was all he could see from his perspective, but he knew it would be one of Barnes’s cronies.
He grabbed the upended decanter and cracked it against the edge of the table. Shards of glass exploded outward in a glittering fountain that stung his eyes, his face, his fingers. He’d hit it too hard, reduced it to nothing. The jagged-edged bottleneck in his hand would have to do.
He pushed the broken edge against Barnes’s throat.
The approaching spats froze in their tracks.
“Mother of God,” someone said. “He’s going to kill Senator Barnes.”
Michael looked at the bright crystal pressed against his opponent’s throat. How much pressure would he need to apply in order to break through that pale skin, that wildly beating artery so close to the surface? How long would it take a man to die?
The moment felt so weighty and fraught with memories of the past that it was almost…biblical. There was never a time in his life when he hadn’t been aware of Troy Barnes. Michael could still see him clearly, clean and scrubbed, riding in an enamel-sided Dorchester cart with his parents, right down the middle of Broadway. They had crossed paths often, growing up in Saratoga Springs.
“Listen,” Barnes said, his voice a faint whisper as though he feared that if he spoke aloud, his vulnerable throat would fall prey to the razor-edged crystal. “Let me up, let’s talk about this man-to-man.”
“Did you give Helena that option?” Michael snapped out.
“Will you look at that?” the barman remarked. “The senator pissed himself.”
Barnes trembled and convulsed. “You’re mad, I tell you. Completely mad. Someone, get him away from me.”
Michael took no satisfaction in having reduced Barnes to a cowardly victim. He felt no sense of power. He merely felt the grim sense of duty he used to feel when forced to put down a broken horse.
Barnes breathed through clenched teeth. Quick shallow breaths. And then they were both breathing in the same fast, dizzying rhythm. Michael gripped the broken crystal harder. His hand was bleeding. His blood dripped down and mingled with Troy’s.
The glass had warmed to his touch, yet glittered, sharp as ice in his hand. No one moved. Even the shifting cloud of cigar smoke seemed to hover, waiting, above their heads.
“Stop.”
Helena’s voice. How had she found him so quickly? He heard her footsteps, treading lightly on the carpet as she crossed the room to him.
“Don’t do it, Michael,” she said. Her voice sounded different, more commanding than desperate. He realized that whatever Barnes had done to her, he had not broken her. “Put down that glass. You’ll only make things worse.”
Whispers erupted from the corner table and money began changing hands again.
“Helena, please…” Barnes was begging her.
In a rustle of skirts, she moved closer. Blood seeped into the hem of her black dress, sucking all light from the dark fabric.
“You are no murderer, Michael,” she said. “You’re a better man than this.”
He wasn’t. He wasn’t. He wasn’t. That was the reason he had left her in the first place.
“Don’t do this,” she said. “If you think of nothing else, think of William.”
William. His son. A boy with copper-colored hair and pottery blue eyes, a boy who was missing one front tooth, a boy who had saved a horse from being put down.
A boy whose father was about to become a murderer.
“Do get up, Michael,” Helena snapped. “I want to divorce him, not kill him.” Her statement sparked an eruption of speculation.
Then Michael sensed a new presence in the room. He glanced up to see the town constable and two deputies crowding into the doorway, polished hickory truncheons raised to do battle.
Helena held them off with a wave of her hand. “Gentlemen, this will be over in a moment.”
“Yes, please,” whispered Barnes. “I’ll agree to whatever you want—”
“A divorce. On terms to be dictated by me, effective immediately.”
“Agreed,” he choked out.
“Michael, move away,” Helena said. “Let us settle this in private. It’s better that way, I swear it.”
He stared down at the ruined face of the man he hated. The face of the man who had hurt Helena. Then he looked up at Helena, into her lovely eyes, so filled with terror and hope and dread.
He tossed aside the broken crystal and stood up. His foot slipped a little in the blood.
Troy Barnes clung to the brass bar rail and pulled himself up. He grabbed the barman’s white towel and carefully placed it over his nose, and with an ugly sound moved it back into place.
The onlookers murmured and squirmed. Barnes dabbed the blood from his mouth and his chin. “Mr. Brody,” he said, “you’ve come just in time.”
Michael was probably the only one in the room who understood why Barnes retained such remarkable self-possession. He tensed, but Troy spoke the next words before he had a chance to react.
“Constable, place this man under arrest for deadly assault. Immediately.”
Michael picked up a chair to fend them off, but there were three of them, well-armed and well-trained. Within moments, they had the wrist irons on him and were dragging him outside.
“Mr. Brody, no,” Helena said, hurrying after them. “That won’t be necessary.”
Barnes grabbed her arm—the one he’d injured—and she turned completely white, though she made no sound. Michael roared in rage and frustration.
“You came just in time, my dear,” Troy Barnes said. “That maniac nearly slit my throat.”
“I should have let him.”
“And Brody,” Barnes called, “please send for Dr. Hillendahl. My wife is obviously hysterical.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
As she was borne away in an express wagon that reeked of urine and decay, Helena guessed at Troy’s plan. He would try to convince people that she was insane. Why else would a woman want to divorce her husband?
It was the ploy of a coward, and she refused to be reduced to despair. She was, after all, the daughter of Franklin Cabot, a man known for his sangfroid during times of adversity and tribulation. Besides, after all she’d endured at Troy’s hands, the famous sanitarium of Dr. Hillendahl held no terrors for her.
Her first concern, of course, was William. He must be kept safe at any cost. Daisy had promised on her life to look after Helena’s son, come what may. Helena had to trust that.
Since her husband had turned from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde, she had drawn on strengths she didn’t know she possessed. Led by the wagon attendant into the handsome brick hospital facility, she clenched her jaw in frustration. Everyone at the gentleman’s club had readily believed Troy’s assertion that Michael was a mad scientist and she a hysterical woman, and her protests only served to support the theory. So she had surrendered, intending to regroup and find a way past this new disaster.
She wasn’t doing a very good job of carrying out her goals. She had always known that divorce was no simple matter, particularly when the object of the suit was a United States senator.
Once inside the freshly painted residence, she released a sigh of exasperation and studied her surroundings. The doctor’s office was comfortable and clean, with personal touches here and there—a delicate German figurine on a shelf containing leather-bound books, a dainty music box on the windowsill. A photograph of a plump, smiling woman holding two apple-cheeked babies hung on the wall alongside important-looking official certificates. Were it not for the express wagon attendant across the room, she might even relax and enjoy the view of Hamilton Park visible out the office window.
She made the attendant nervous, she could tell. He was a big man of mixed origin—perhaps Indian and African, she surmised—and he kept glancing out into the hallway.
“I’m sure Dr. Hillendahl will be here soon,” she said.
The attendant shuffled his feet. “I’m real sorry about your arm, ma’am,” he said.
“It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known it was injured.” When he’d taken her arm, she’d passed out from the pain, then awakened in the wagon with a canvas jacket buckled around her. It would have been easy to blame him, but she was saving her accusations for the man responsible. “Where is my husband, by the way?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
She ground her teeth in frustration. He moved fast, a weasel on the run. In a single afternoon, he’d managed to have Michael hauled off to jail and her taken to a women’s sanitarium. And then he’d managed to disappear. The coward. That attribute had made him a highly successful politician. He knew the scandal would settle down much quicker if he kept a low profile, letting his staff handle such minor, troublesome details as a wife who wanted to divorce him.
Lord, she thought, how did I get here? What had begun as a rather pleasant afternoon settling into Moon Lake Lodge had exploded into disaster. But how could she have known Michael would show up and discover what Troy had done, and how could she have anticipated his extreme reaction? Even now, she shuddered at the memory of the rage burning in Michael’s eyes when he’d vowed to kill her husband.
Finally Dr. Hillendahl arrived. He was a diminutive, almost painfully earnest man, clutching a folio of long paper briefs against his chest. “I’m terribly sorry, madam,” he said. “I did not mean to keep you waiting.”
With visible relief, the attendant stepped out, closing the door.
Helena sent the doctor her most attractive, unfelt smile, knowing it would take him aback. As the most influential woman in Saratoga Springs, she had her own kind of power. She prayed it would be enough, and took pains to appear perfectly calm, even though she was frantic with worry about William. “I will forgive you if you release me from this preposterous situation. Regardless of what my husband said, it really isn’t necessary.” She cocked her head, knowing she had him. “Of course, you must hear that from all your patients, don’t you, Dr. Hillendahl? However, in this case, you may rest assured, I’m no more dangerous than a lamb.”
