Easing out his breath, he glanced around.
Everyone within fifty feet of him seemed oblivious to what had happened. The few men nearby were either seated on benches or leaned up against the brick walls absorbed in their dailies, while a handful of couples and other knots of people walked or talked without a glance his way. It was hard to know which, if any, were following him.
Was the stranger’s comment just to ensure he got on the train back to Quellentown, or for some other reason?
Inhaling to disperse the last vestiges of adrenaline rattling his joints, he gathered up his belongings and willed a smile for Miss Lyons’s benefit as she exited the powder room just as a not-too-distant whistle and humming shudder of metal track announced the train’s imminent arrival.
“I AM SORRY TO ASK YOU to come in on such short notice, and on a Saturday, Mrs. Sweeney, but in response to Robert’s queries for assistance in verifying the second will’s validity, Mr. Perkins decided at the last minute to detour here en route from New Orleans to Baltimore. He called me at home when he arrived on this morning’s train. And he must catch the evening train out again, as he’s to give a lecture at the University of Maryland School of Law Tuesday. He’s only here today to loan us benefit of his expertise.”
“Please do not apologise, Mr. Lyons,” Margaret said. “It is no problem at all. I was already awake when your note arrived, and I’m more than grateful to you and Dr. Perkins for taking this matter so seriously. I only hope I’ve not wasted your time,” she added with a smile to Mr. Perkins seated on her right.
Coral had brought up Lyons’s urgent summons with her morning tea and toast. When she emerged from the house twenty minutes later, Magnus and the coach were already waiting. She’d arrived for the nine-o’clock meeting with twenty minutes to spare, leaving Miss Alma to coordinate the party organisers.
Dr. Perkins returned her smile with a warm one of his own. “I’m more than gratified to have this opportunity to help,” he said. “But you understand...” His smile faded. “This is not yet an accepted science. We have our supporters, and as many sceptics willing to disparage our assessments, which I can assure you your Mr. Griffiths will try very hard to do.”
He was in his mid or late thirties and mostly bald, with a fringe of greying hair at the rear of his skull and gold-rimmed spectacles that slightly magnified his dark eyes. He held his fedora on his lap, fiddling with it in a way that reminded her of George.
He reminded her strongly of George, come to think of it: balding and slight and deferential. But where George had been lithe Mr. Perkins was bony, his hands prematurely aged by rheumatism, the knuckles bulbous and digits canted awkwardly.
He must have noted her gaze, because he lifted one hand and flexed his fingers as best he could.
“They’re the reason I took an interest in graphology, and in particular forgery,” he said. “I wasn’t yet twenty when my hands started to weaken with pain and my handwriting became wavery and unbalanced on the page. Eventually, I found I had to start appearing in person to sign for things lest my signature be questioned and credit denied. As my disease progressed, I became quite melancholic, though I forced myself to complete my doctoral studies at Oxford—history and literature.”
He offered a wry smile. “I was twenty-five when I met Rosa Baughan. She introduced me to graphology, and I found it enlivened me in a way that the Italian Renaissance and Chaucer did not. So, when I returned to the US, I sought a brief mentorship with Mr. Albert Osborn, who wrote Questioned Documents and most recently Proof of Handwriting. And now, like him, I work to decipher personality and authenticity in clues found in written documents and signatures. I dictate my conclusions and have an assistant type them up for me—”
“I hate to interrupt,” Lyons interjected, “but I’ve requested an emergency consult with Judge Fairview, and he’s agreed to meet Dr. Perkins in one hour to go over both wills and correspondence we know for certain was written by George. I’ve already shown Mr. Perkins the letter purportedly written by you and a handwritten note from Barrister Griffiths that I received last year requesting your contact information so that he might send you his condolences.”
“Oh?” Margaret’s stomach hollowed around a knot of anticipation as she looked from Lyons to Mr. Perkins. “And?”
Mr. Perkins’s smile was no longer warm or wry, but grim.
“I believe you’re correct, Mrs. Sweeney,” he said. “Your late husband did not write the second will.”
Chapter 32
Revelry and Reminiscence
THE MUSIC AND LAUGHTER filtering out open windows would have alerted him to the revelry inside the house if the long line of horse-drawn conveyances and automobiles clogging the driveway from its entrance at the road and around the keyhole outside it hadn’t.
Firming his grip on his suitcase and packages and ignoring the strong desire to turn around and walk back to town, he trudged off the gravel drive onto the shadow-carpeted keyhole lawn.
He should have asked Miss Lyons and her fiancé for a ride back to town the minute they were unable to advance up the obstructed drive. But it was too late. He’d already thanked them for their kindness in going out of their way, despite his insistence that it wasn’t necessary and he would grab a room in town for the night and wait for Magnus, who was scheduled to collect him off of the Sunday morning train. And young Geoff had already turned his Model T truck around and rumbled off. Besides, he’d been away from Maisie too long. He missed her. Terribly. Missed another certain redhead, too. Though from the sporadic sounds of merriment ahead, she wasn’t missing him.
A spur of anger caught in his throat. He swallowed it and focussed on what was in his control, like the fact Sugar Hill was crawling with strangers. Strangers to her, at least, and most everyone else at Sugar Hill except maybe Rufus and Miss Alma. They’d been around long enough to have encountered some if not all of the older, well-heeled people visible through the parlour windows back when Cyril and Sarah Sweeney used to host, not because they knew them on a friendly or even nodding acquaintance but because they’d likely served them tea or cake or helped them in or out of their coats more than once.
He inhaled strongly.
She should have warned him she was planning an event. He was still her overseer, still responsible for the estate’s well-being, which included the safety of its owner. Not that he thought her foolish enough to invite Barrister or Esther, or either of them foolish enough to crash the party and do something stupid like pull out a pistol or knife and threaten her in front a large group of witnesses. But then he’d never imagined Simmy would fake her death and marry a gangster.
Or that that gangster would send a henchman to threaten him and run him out of Atlanta.
He twitched but managed not to look over his shoulder.
No one had followed him from the train depot. That much he’d been able to ascertain on the drive out, faced backwards in the truck bed peering through the dust and growing dusk and trying not to chip a tooth on the wooden sideboards as Geoff wrenched him from side to side, dodging potholes and rocks without slowing down.
Maybe what Andy Emerson’s spokesman had meant about him being followed related to someone else remaining at the Atlanta depot to ensure he got on the train. Or maybe it had been an empty threat meant to scare him into getting on the train just in case he’d suffered delusions of doing otherwise.
Ten years of quiet if not monotonous—predictable—living, where he didn’t have to keep an eye out for mysterious henchman or worry about arsonists and murderous nephews, had been turned on its proverbial ear in less than two months. He wasn’t sure he could survive another two months under Mrs. Sweeney’s stewardship.
But her on top of him, naked, those fascinating green eyes looking into his as her hair hung loose and wild around them both...He growled, and gave thanks his teeth were made of stronger stuff than muscle. If not, he’d have splintered every one of his molars by now, as often as he’d had to bite down on romantic thoughts
and lustful fantasies about her.
The gravel on the other side of the keyhole crunched like brittle bones breaking under his boots.
If not thinking about her had been hard prior to his trip to Atlanta, it was going to be all but impossible now.
Simmy’s adamant negation of any future contact between them, even if only related to Maisie, along with her faux grave and her husband’s third-party promise of lethal reinforcement of her wishes, had slammed shut a door to the past he’d left ajar for far too long. Miss Lyons’s recommendation that he take the Emersons at their word, combined with her father’s admonition and warning about a future life of emotional penury if he didn’t marry, and soon, burned a hole in his auditory memory and had blown open a bigger door. One to a world of impossible possibility. Impossible possibility that, on the train ride home, his foolish mind had spun like a spider’s web around his petite, red-headed boss.
Fool.
Not a complete fool. He had thought to send a telegram to the Guenthers before getting on the train home to advise them he’d personally collect Maisie and Miss Lisette from Lily Grove tomorrow evening instead of the girls being driven to Sugar Hill after church.
He’d done it with the intention of taking over a bottle of Old Pepper Whiskey for Norm and some Hershey’s chocolate for Else and Miss Chloe to thank them for their kindnesses over the years with Maisie and, more recently, with regard to the clothing they’d sent over following the fire. He’d return those clothes tomorrow—at least those belonging to Norm, as the majority of his new ready-made wardrobe would be delivered next week. Now he was grateful he’d made the alternate arrangements because it offered him extra hours to rehearse the apology—and story—he planned to give Maisie about where he’d gone and why: how his trip to find her mother, who’d been alive and well the last he’d seen of her almost ten years ago, had ended tragically with the location of her grave—photographic proof of which Miss Lyons promised to have to him before end of week.
The thought of having to double down on his initial lie when he’d intended to clear the air with Maisie and ease his heart and conscience stirred a dangerous stew of guilt and anger inside him as he stomped up the brick walk.
“Welcome home, Mr. Banner.” Rufus tipped his head in polite greeting as he leaned back to swing open the front door. “Mrs. Sweeney said to—”
“I’m going straight to my quarters,” he said before Rufus could finish with any invitation to join the festivities Mrs. Sweeney might have left him with to pass on. “Don’t tell her I’m back. I want to reconnoiter the grounds and house and ensure everything is secure.”
“Yessir,” Rufus said.
The strains of “Ave Maria,” playing on what he could only assume was George’s Victrola—his first and only luxury purchase upon inheriting Sugar Hill and promptly decamping it again—and the deafening cacophony of multiple people moving and talking in a confined space assaulted him as he stepped inside the foyer. Head down and face angled away from the parlour doors to avoid having to play nice when he wasn’t in a nice mood, he made for the ground-floor guest wing.
“Joseph!”
He stopped cold, courtesy of the ice freezing his joints as his mother’s voice rang out. And then there she was, in a pale-yellow gown with long, flowing sleeves sluicing towards him through a knot of tailored and begowned guests clustered near the entrance to the parlour like a coal-fired ocean liner ploughing through a rowboat-filled harbour on a beeline for shore.
MARGARET FLINCHED AND tried hard to maintain her focus on Mayor Ivan Bellman-Winn, who was regaling her—between puffs of the stubby cigar he held between the index and middle finger of one hand and sips of bourbon from a short glass held in the other—with all the reasons he, of all the interested parties at the party—of which, to her surprise, there were far more than she cared to have to politely reject, though she would—was the perfect candidate to introduce her to the many wonders and social extravaganzas Georgia in general, and Quellentown in particular, offered. Like next week’s monthly Rotary dinner and dance that, unlike the Rotary’s weekly luncheons, welcomed the fairer sex, and that he, as chairman, was hosting at his estate, Deer Haven, as he did the third Saturday of the month. But Antonia Banner’s shouting of her son’s Christian name proved too distracting.
Rather, the sudden racing of her pulse and resultant skin-tingling rush at the knowledge he was back made it hard to concentrate on anything but holding her smile, when what she really wanted to do was to follow in Tonia’s wake and see him for herself.
“Hors d’oeuvres, sir?” Coral offered the mayor a benign smile as she presented a silver platter of salmon pâté on toast rounds garnished with slivers of radish and sprigs of parsley.
“Don’t mind if I do,” the mayor said and, shifting his cigar to his mouth, collected three rounds and fit them on the palm of his bourbon hand, his short crystal-cut glass still braced on the pads of stubby fingers, all without spilling a drop or dropping an ash.
This was a man who took his smoke, food, and drink seriously. Too seriously, perhaps.
For a self-confessed thirty-five-year-old, he looked at least two decades older, his bald brow and florid face dappled with sweat as he wheezed breaths between bites, each movement of his arm to his mouth testing the thread strength of his jacket’s seams.
“Ma’am?” Coral angled her body and platter in such a way as to block the mayor from seeing her face as she raised her brows, dark-brown eyes lit with question.
In answer, Margaret inclined her head and murmured, “Thank you, Coral. I’ll have to pass, as I believe we have a new arrival. I should go say hello. If you’ll excuse me, Mayor.” She slipped away into the crowd before the mayor could swallow his second hors d’oeuvre and reply.
Academia might not be her strongest suit, but Coral had so far aced every lesson in the art of strategic social intervention and polite redirection Margaret had taught her.
Twice, now, she’d freed her from untenable unmarried bores, like the mayor who’d recounted his ancestry and social and business affiliations as if his being Rotary chairman, mayor, and Henrich Bellman’s great-great-grandson on his mother’s side was aphrodisiac enough to incite her into a sexual frenzy in which she’d happily trade vows—and title of Sugar Hill—in exchange for an opportunity to bed him.
Not bloody likely.
If she was in the market for a husband—which she wasn’t—it wouldn’t be to a blustering braggart, no matter his wealth or connections, even if his poor health suggested he might leave her thrice a widow before she’d had time to recover her senses.
She had wealth. She wasn’t sure she wanted connections—at least not to the likes of men like Barrister Griffiths, who the mayor had mentioned was also a Rotary member.
She liked men with integrity. Courage. Humility. And if she ever banged her head hard enough to consider marriage again, it would be to someone like that. Someone down to earth and honest, who treated her intelligence as an asset, as William had, and her interest in teaching as valid, as George had. And who wasn’t after her solely for the purpose of getting his grubby hands on her body and money.
But he would have to offer her more, too, than simple courtesy and respect. He’d have to give of himself. The good and the bad—and in bed.
She was tired of stuffy two-dimensional cut-outs. She wanted a man full of life, vigour, and passion, who always did the right thing, even when it hurt.
Like Mr. Banner.
And not Mr. Banner. That was something she must ensure Miss Alma understood. For it had been on Alma’s recommendation that most of the single men in the market for a wealthy wife had ended up on the guest list. And if she believed there was even a hint of possibility between Margaret and Mr. Banner, she’d pack a minister in the next picnic basket.
“Oh, Mrs. Sweeney.” Mr. Lyons held out a broad, freckled hand to her as he tipped his bearded head to the tall, black gentleman standing beside him. “I have a late arrival I’d like to introduce you
to. My protégé, Nathan Lewis.”
Mrs. Lyons, on the other side of her husband, smiled and nodded encouragingly.
But what made it impossible for her to ignore either spoken or nonverbal invitation was the man himself.
Trim and clean-shaven, and dressed in a dark three-piece suit, white shirt and black bowtie and shoes, he was, quite possibly, one of the most attractive men she could recall having met. And that was saying something, given the number of men she’d been introduced to during her years squired about on William’s arm—princes, dukes, archdukes, all the way down to barons, knights, theatre stars, and commoners with an uncommon knack for building great fortunes. She’d met them all in one country or another. But none had been as symmetrically beautiful as this man was, with his twinkling brown eyes and perfectly even white teeth.
“He snuck in about twenty minutes ago while you were in Ivan’s snare,” Mr. Lyons said as she approached, guarding her attraction to his protégé behind a pleasant hostess smile.
The man returned her smile with a wider flare of those spectacular white teeth. “How do you do, Mrs. Sweeney,” he said, extending a long-fingered hand.
“Mr. Lewis.” She inclined her head as she offered up her hand. “A pleasure to meet you.”
“It is, ma’am. It is.” He bent and brushed the air above her skin with his lips without actually touching her, and straightened, his gaze as warm and seductive as the feel of his fingers still holding hers, inspiring a teeny tiny tremor of lust in her that the mayor couldn’t, and wouldn’t, in a million years.
But it was nothing like what Mr. Banner induced in her, and she dismissed it as her body having a minor tantrum now that its favourite playmate was, for all intent and purpose, unavailable to her, despite sleeping under the same roof. So it wanted a new one. A want, she sensed from the interest flickering in Mr. Lewis’s sultry gaze, he’d happily fulfil.
My One True Love Page 30
