Blind Trust, page 9
Fury coursed through her, and she shot to her feet. “How dare you! How dare you judge me! My marriage is none of your business, Mr. Finn, but your activities with my father are my business. Therefore, I will cheerfully and with all good conscience expose you if you do not accept my conditions.”
“I don’t accept forced conditions.”
“Fine. Then accept the consequences.” She started past him, but he grabbed her arm.
“You are being a fool, Mrs. Statton. This is a dangerous game. It goes beyond stock manipulation or fraud. It could involve blackmail and … other crimes.”
Her head jerked up. “Blackmail?” Blackmail such as her father’s? Was Claude blackmailing others, too? Tavish Finn couldn’t know about Edward, could he? “I must go,” she murmured.
Furious, he kept his hand on her arm. “You’re not going anywhere until we settle this.”
Her eyes flashed at him. “Until I capitulate, you mean. You don’t intimidate me, Mr. Finn. I don’t care who you represent and who you are trying to capture—it could be the devil himself and I still would not be afraid.”
They stood, toe to toe, eyes blazing. Darcy’s hands had curled into fists that shook against her dress.
And then, as her hot words hung between them, something changed. She saw the hard, flat look leave his eyes. Something else entered them, something she knew in her limbs and her heart before her mind knew what it was. The moment had come. Despise him or fear him, it was here.
“And one more thing,” she said weakly, needing to stall.
“Yes?” he asked, his eyes never leaving her lips.
“I don’t simper.”
“No,” he said. “You do not simper.”
Then he reached for her, grasping her hard by the arms, and pulled her to him. He said something; she didn’t know what. His hands were impatient, almost rough, and his mouth was hot and greedy as it found hers.
Before, she had felt bloodless lust, cold fingers, shaking limbs, hands that despised what they touched, eyes closed from the fear of meeting her gaze. Never had she felt this.
Rushing desire flowed through her, almost lifted her off her feet. Barely aware of what she was doing, she rose up on her toes to encircle his neck, and her mouth opened against his. She felt hard lips and tongue and teeth, a confusion of senses, a roaring, tumbling rush in her ears.
When they broke the kiss and she stumbled backward, he reached for her. His hands grasped hers.
“Darcy—”
“I must go,” she said numbly.
“Wait.”
“No, I hear the guests returning. I hear them. I must go,” she said urgently. She had to be alone. “Let me go!”
“As you wish,” Tavish said, dropping her hands. “But only for now, Darcy.”
She looked at him. He expected a mute appeal, a pleading glance, asking him to go no further. He expected fear in her eyes and a relinquishing of her will to his. But he saw none of that. Her eyes met his boldly. There was no fear; there was only honest acknowledgment of the importance of what had passed between them.
“Yes,” she agreed quietly. “For now only.”
Six
SHE KNEW OTHER women in her set had affairs. Unhappy as she’d been with Claude, she’d never understood it. It seemed so unnecessary, a sad attempt to inject some daring into a society life, replacing one pair of trousers and a tall silk hat with another. And then there was her mother, who had broken the rules altogether and taken her passion seriously. Darcy had always despised that worst of all.
Now, for the first time, Darcy pictured the cause, instead of the effect, of her mother’s decision. She thought of Amelia posing for James Fitzchurch in her blue velvet gown. What did her mother feel as she looked across the room into his eyes? Did her heart beat wildly, did she think she had found something profound, something with a force so great it could detonate a life locked since birth in a careful, cast-iron plan?
As she sat across the long table from Tavish Finn for each splendid Van Cormandt meal that sat untouched on her plate, Darcy wondered. Could this be it, could this be the same, awful force? Her husband was at the same table, she knew the danger of that, and yet the effort it took for her to stop her eyes from seeking out Tavish’s was painful. Was this why women risked so much? Was it for this, this man who was avoiding her eyes just as assiduously as she was avoiding his, for if they looked at each other, would not the whole world know?
As she went from room to room, as she participated in tablaux vivantes and smiled at Ambrose Hartley’s sallies, as she ate and drank and talked, Darcy felt as though her old life was slipping away. It was carried away on a strange, hot wind that moved against her cheek, insistent and impossible to ignore. She could not stop it or control it. The earth had tilted on its axis just a few more degrees, and everything was new.
She was consumed with the physicality of her feeling. Her body seemed suddenly important, suddenly so much more there than it had ever been. She felt her fingers tremble and her heart beating and her skin heating up with his presence in a room. She always knew where he was standing, or sitting, who he was conversing with, how he moved his hands, but she didn’t have to watch him, it seemed. The back of her neck could feel him behind her. Her thighs pressed together underneath her gown to prevent herself from squirming with the nearness of him. His presence was immediate and total, and it consumed her every moment.
Reading Whitman in her room late into the night, Darcy felt the charge of the poet’s words fill her with courage. The verse made her physical longing suddenly natural, tied to the elemental forces of nature and earth and universe. No wonder Claude had forbidden her this book. It placed a knowing finger on her pulse and applauded its secret, racing rhythm. The words hummed inside her brain as she went through the prescribed rituals of the house party with a heart suddenly given voice.
Three stormy days had kept everyone trapped inside. But then there came a morning when Darcy opened her eyes and saw clear sky, and the knowledge entered her brain plainly: this was the day she would see Tavish alone. She didn’t know how they’d manage it. But they would.
It was early; her breakfast tray wouldn’t arrive for two hours. Darcy flung back the bedclothes and dressed hurriedly, praying that Solange would not appear. She slipped through the cold halls, shivering, and made her way downstairs.
He was there, as she’d known he’d be, standing in front of the fireplace in the drawing room. When she walked into the room, he smiled.
“I think a walk would be best,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
It was dreadfully cold; no one in their right mind would walk in such weather. The sun hadn’t had time to warm the frost on the lawn or melt the ice on the trees. Darcy and Tavish went quickly across the grass, their footsteps crunching through a thin skin of ice, until they were out of sight of the house. Hidden by the folds of Darcy’s cloak, they held gloved hands, then stripped off their gloves to feel each other’s palms. When their fingers turned to ice, they put their gloves on again. When they could no longer bear not to feel each other’s skin, they removed them.
When their pace slowed and Darcy caught her breath, she felt the minutes already press against her. There was so little time for them! And there were so many questions she wanted to ask.
“What is it?” Tavish asked, squeezing her hand. “Is it Claude? Darcy, I didn’t mean to imply the other day that your husband is involved. I simply don’t know. But—maybe I have no right to say this—perhaps you should be careful. That’s all.”
Darcy moved restlessly. “Don’t speak of it now. There are too many other things to say. I don’t want to talk about Claude, or even about my father. We can do that later. I want to know you, Tavish Finn. I’ve been thinking for days of so many things I want to ask you. I don’t know where to begin.”
“I think we have about an hour before your reputation is ruined,” he said. “So begin at the beginning, and we’ll talk as rapidly as we can. I want to know all about you as well, Darcy Snow Statton.”
She smiled. “But you have the advantage—you are in my world. My life holds few surprises—you can look around you and see how I was raised. You’ve been in the house I grew up in. You could probably tell me what kind of dress I wore at my coming out party. But I know nothing about you, where you came from, how you came to be here. Are you the scoundrel you appear?” she asked mischievously.
“Oh, undoubtedly. Ah, Darcy. My life is a long tale, I’m afraid.”
She pressed his arm. “But I want to know it. Were you born in Ireland?”
“Yes. My mother had been living in England, but she returned to her folk when she was with child. But she had no husband, and Ireland is not easy for illegitimate children. When I was about two she’d had enough and returned to England to seek out my father and ask for help.”
“And? Did she find him?”
Tavish gave a sardonic laugh. “Oh, yes, he was easy to find. That wasn’t the problem.”
“He was married,” Darcy guessed.
“Married, and a lord, with a large estate and a son and daughter. They’d met when she’d been in service at an estate he was visiting. He wasn’t very happy to see my mother at first. But he did give her a job.” Tavish’s eyes had a faraway expression. “My mother was hauntingly beautiful—she could have married many times, even considering her shame. This man, my father, he wanted her again, you see. And my mother loved him, so she stayed. She became a companion for his great-aunt, which gave her some free time. At least he didn’t make her a maid. And later, when I was older, I was sent to the stables. I was great friends with the groom, and back then I had no higher ambition than to follow in his footsteps.”
“Did you know about your father?” Darcy asked hesitantly.
“Soon enough. It doesn’t take long, living on a country estate, to learn all its secrets. The other servants treated us differently; it didn’t take a genius to see it. I knew by the time I was ten or so. My father took no notice of me, but I knew. And then …”
The pause was so long that Darcy wondered if he was planning to stop his tale. But she didn’t prompt him. She waited.
“My father’s legitimate son was kicked in the head by a horse one day. He died a week later without regaining consciousness. The family was destroyed. He was seventeen, the pride and joy of the family. Handsome, smart, high-spirited. We’d been friends, actually, though he was five years my senior. He made an effort to befriend me, and … well, no matter. I too was crushed when he died, though I couldn’t mourn with the family, of course. A month passed, and my father’s wife went abroad to recover, taking my half sister. My father took to riding long hours. He came, he mounted his horse, and he never said a word to me. Yet I saw him looking. Then, one day, he spoke to me. And my life changed.”
“How did it change?”
“He trained me,” Tavish said expressionlessly, “to be a gentleman. I don’t know if he planned to make me his heir or not. But I do think he needed to replace Tony. He sent me away to school, though I didn’t want to go. He took over the training on holidays and vacations. He pushed me and prodded me and humiliated me until I stood the right way and spoke the right way and could eat the right way. And on long vacations, he sent me away to some impoverished family relative and paid them to continue my education. I barely saw my mother for six years. He had to send me away, I suppose, because things would be difficult for his wife and daughter. How would they treat me? They couldn’t very well ignore my existence, now in my tailored clothes and my new accent.”
“It all sounds very awkward.”
Tavish laughed. “You sound like an Englishwoman. Awkward. That’s putting it mildly.” He squeezed her hand again, so she’d know he was teasing. Then his voice grew serious once more. “I grew to be a gentleman, and I grew to wait for my father’s love. I convinced myself that I had it, that it was something of which he could not speak. And I believed it. Slowly, I began to feel like my father’s son. My mother and I moved to a small house on the grounds. One day I was unexpectedly befriended by my half sister. We found we had something in common: we both feared our father.”
They stopped under a grove of trees. Without the faint rays of the sun, the wind invaded Darcy’s furs and made her eyes tear. But Tavish didn’t seem to notice.
“My father, in an act of sheer cruelty, forced my half sister into an advantageous marriage to a drunken brute that destroyed her spirit within a year. My father locked her in her room until she would agree—she was seventeen. I was furious with him, but it was ‘inappropriate’ for me to express it, as I wasn’t a true son. Something shifted for me then. But it wasn’t until my mother told me she was going to have a child that I broke. I was shocked; my father had made it plain that he had gone on to other mistresses. Yet, one night, he had visited my mother. I had no idea. My mother had been unhappy for so long, and then when she told me she was with child, she was radiant. I suppose she thought this would bring her back to him. I’m afraid I took the news badly. I was horrified. We became estranged.”
Tavish laughed, and it was a bitter sound. “Estranged! I sound like a Englishman now. I was insufferable to her, awful, a prig. Our relations grew strained. And then one day she began to get pains. I ran to get my father. Her doctor was not available, and I begged him to send for the family doctor. He would not. He had made a promise to his wife, you see, not to use the family doctor for his mistress’s pregnancy. His wife was afraid of exposure, I suppose. So I saddled a horse and rode to the next village, searching for any doctor at all. I brought one back, but it was too late. He was there for barely a half hour when she died. The child was stillborn. My mother was dead because of a gentleman’s promise. And that was the day,” Tavish said quietly, “I ceased being a gentleman.”
“What happened then? What did you do?” Darcy whispered.
“I burst into the family dining room—they were all there, including my half sister and her husband—and I broke the news of my mother’s death. It was a terrible scene. My father threw me out. I stayed in the area long enough for the funeral and long enough to see my half sister one more time. I was wild, I told her she should leave her husband, that my father did not deserve her obedience. I’m afraid I called her a coward and said she would be destroyed as my mother had been. She too threw me out. After a time in London I came to America. The East Coast seemed too much like England, so I went West. I got a job protecting railroad workers as they laid track across Indian country, but I soon switched allegiances when I understood the terrible greed of the railroad men. I was involved with the Grange for a while, I played poker in mining towns and lived by my wits for a spell, and I was a Pinkerton detective chasing outlaws until I quit—well, I did after they fired me. And then I settled down in Solace, California, after I won a share in a lumber mill. And there I found a home.”
“But when did you start working for the federal government?” Darcy asked, confused.
“Ah.” Tavish cleared his throat. “But that’s a story for another time. Fll tell you everything someday.” His eyes glinted, and he turned her face to his. “Here I’ve told you my life story, and I’m knowing nothing about you,” he said, putting on a soft brogue and a raffish grin that made her smile. “Sure, what kind of gentleman could I be, with all my boasting?”
“Sure, you are no gentleman, Tavish Finn,” Darcy responded faintly, her lips already parting for his kiss. She had so many questions. But his mouth descended on hers, hard and hungry, and she forgot them in the pleasure of touching him again.
When they re-entered the house, they blundered onto Cora Van Cormandt and Maud Valentine. Significant looks were their reward. Darcy didn’t care. It was just a walk. What married woman in New York society did not conduct a harmless flirtation? They would return to town, and it would be forgotten. No one but she and Tavish would know how profound their meeting was, how painful it was, even now, to trade pleasantries with the others and parry their drawling incredulity at an early-morning walk in such freezing temperatures. At least Claude had not been there to see.
But when he was there, did he notice? Claude seemed no different. He had always watched her carefully, he was always remote in public, he always left her to herself at house parties. He was still furious with her for dismissing him in the library, but he had not come to her to vent his anger. He was waiting, Darcy knew with a shivering certainty, for them to be at home. Three more days.
But that meant three more days with Tavish. What would happen when they returned to town, she could not begin to consider. Not yet. She was too busy feeling to think. She pushed aside everything—her father, Claude, blackmail and possible scandal, her own desperate unhappiness, her growing fear of her husband. She would take her three days, and be damned.
Darcy saw the letter, forwarded from town, on her morning tray and quickly snatched it up before Solange could see and report back to Claude. At home, he always opened her mail and passed it on to her. Here he could not enforce the custom. It was from Columbine Nash, and it merely said she was sorry their visit had been interrupted, and that she hoped to see Darcy again soon. Darcy marveled at Columbine’s tact. She would not call at the Stattons, though she knew as well as Darcy that eti~ quette demanded that she do so. By sending this note to Darcy, she was letting her know that friendship could be on her terms, and Claude would never have to know of it.
Thoughtfully, Darcy tapped the letter against the tray. Truth to tell, she was disturbed by Columbine’s note. She had simply forgotten her existence for a time, and the note reminded her of the easy familiarity between Columbine and Tavish. On what terms, exactly, were Tavish and Columbine? Believing in Tavish’s integrity, she hardly thought now that they were lovers. But they must have been at one time.
