by Nancy Holder
The skin of Thomas’s face prickled. He watched Edith recede into the distance like the sun sinking beneath the horizon. And then he went to find Lucille, as Mr. Cushing had asked—no, more correctly, ordered—him to do.
* * *
I take no satisfaction in this, Carter Cushing thought, as Sir Thomas and Lady Sharpe joined him in his study. But truth was, he did. He had pulled himself up by his bootstraps, and each time he won out over any challenge, he felt a thrill of victory. Perhaps it was petty of him, but it was the truth.
“Now, Lady Sharpe, Sir Thomas.” He regarded them both. So pale and dark, the two of them, practically twins. “The first time we met, at my office—”
“I recall it, sir. Perfectly,” Sir Thomas assured him.
Cushing raised a brow. “I imagine it wasn’t hard for you to realize I didn’t like you.”
Sir Thomas took his frank statement manfully. “You made that plain enough, sir. But I had hoped that now, with time…”
“Your time, Sir Thomas, is up.” And thank God for that.
“Could you speak plainly, Mr. Cushing?” Lady Sharpe cut in. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”
He was astonished at her brass.
“Plain I will be, missy. Plainer than you might like to hear. I have no idea what your implication is in the matters at hand, but in the past few days, your brother has deemed it fine enough to mix business with pleasure by repeatedly engaging socially with my daughter. My only daughter,” he added for emphasis.
“Sir, I am aware that I have no position to offer,” the young man said. “But the fact is…”
He fumbled, and Cushing regained the upper hand.
“You love my daughter, is that it?” He restrained his anger. There was no point to it. He had an end game in mind, and the sooner there, the better.
Sir Thomas matched his gaze. “Yes, sir, it is.”
“You play the part well.” An honest statement. “A few days ago, my daughter asked me why I didn’t like you. Honestly, at the time, I had no good answer. But now I do. I obtained some interesting records on you. English peerage, property records…”
He pulled out the envelope from Mr. Holly containing the documents he had paid an extra sum to acquire, and slid the contents across the table, toward the Sharpes. As he had anticipated, the corner of one piece in particular attracted Sir Thomas’s attention.
“But that document there, the Civil Registry, that’s the real find,” Cushing declared, nailing the coffin lid shut. A single glimpse of the seal was sufficient; the young man turned stark white.
“I believe that’s the first honest reaction I’ve seen from you.”
There was silence. Lady Sharpe was impossible to read, but Sir Thomas was a study in misery as he ground out, “Does she know?”
“No,” Cushing answered. “But I will tell her if that’s what it takes to send you on your way.”
Sharpe’s expression broke as he leaned forward, perhaps unconsciously. He said, “I am sure you won’t believe me, but—”
“You love her. You’re repeating yourself.” He opened his book of checks and wrote out the one on top. “Now you…” He held it out to Lady Sharpe. “You seem to be the more collected one, dear.”
Her eyes widened as she saw the amount. He took grim satisfaction in her avarice as it reinforced his very dim view of this nefarious pair.
“It’s more than generous, I know. But if you want that check to clear, there are two conditions.” He handed them two train tickets. “A train for New York City leaves first thing tomorrow morning. You and your brother better be on it. Do we understand each other?”
“We do.”
She was angry, and that made him angrier. She had no right to any emotion except shame. She took the check and the civil certificate. That damned, damning certificate. He was astonished at their arrogance, assuming that a foolish American from a backwater town wouldn’t think to check their credentials. Their days were not only numbered, they were over.
“What is the second condition?” she asked.
“That concerns my daughter.” He looked hard at the lecherous parasite that was her brother. “Tonight, you must thoroughly break her heart.”
* * *
The banquet was served, and Edith was busy ensuring the comfort of all her father’s guests. She had been the manor’s hostess ever since her mother’s death, and she was quite skilled at it. But tonight she was preoccupied, aware that Sir Thomas had begun to ask her a very important question—perhaps the most important question a woman was asked during the course of her entire lifetime—only to disappear with her father for a private discussion.
Which signified to her that she was correct about the nature of that question.
Her heart was fluttering in her chest; there were legions of butterflies in her stomach. She was unable to read Thomas’s expression as he and Lucille, seated as the two guests of honor, ate but little. If she was right, then Thomas had every prerogative to lack an appetite. According to her reading on the matter, men about to propose marriage tended to be very jittery. Could it be that his sister shared his anxiety because she wanted him to be happy? Edith had never had siblings, but had often wanted them. Lady Sharpe could be her sister, then. She was overjoyed at the prospect.
Stay calm, Edith, she told herself, but the very air crackled around her.
Her father raised his glass.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have an unexpected announcement to make. Sir Thomas?”
Oh, God. Here it is. But he would speak to me first, yes? So am I wrong? Perhaps it’s not that at all. Perhaps the announcement is about their business partnership. I shouldn’t get my hopes up. It is too soon, and I am swooning like a foolish heroine in an Ann Radcliffe novel.
But no, he was looking straight at her and he raised his glass. Lingering on her face with those soulful blue eyes. He looked like a man about to announce a partnership of a far different kind.
“Thank you, Mr. Cushing,” he said. “When I came to America, my heart was brimming with a sense of adventure. Here the future actually seemed to mean something.”
She met his gaze. He was speaking of the future… their future?
“I have found warmth and friendship among you all. And for that, I am ceaselessly grateful.” He fell silent for a moment. Edith lived a lifetime in that pause.
His expression shifted, his gaze steady as before, but now it was sad. A tiny flash of alarm darted through her. Something was amiss.
“But for now, farewell. May we meet again. Perhaps on a different shore. My sister and I depart for England just in time for the winter.”
His little joke brought laughter and cheers around the table. But not from Edith. He was not proposing. He was leaving. Passing her by exactly as he had passed by poor Eunice.
But I thought… I thought he… loved…
Devastated, she murmured her excuses and escaped.
She did not know he had followed her until he spoke her name.
“Edith.”
She swallowed down her pain as she had on another snowy day, as true a death as this one visiting upon her breaking heart. She had thought… she had hoped…
“You are leaving us.” Each syllable was a struggle, but she betrayed nothing. Her voice was as steady as his gaze had been seconds before he delivered the killing blow.
“We must go back immediately, tend to our interests,” Thomas said. “The pit digging must commence before the depth of the winter.” There was another beat. “And with nothing to hold us in America…”
Could he be any crueler? Did he know that he was?
“I see.”
She had reached the stairs; she caught sight of her father hovering in the background. Her dear father, perhaps aware that this decision would cause her pain, was standing sentry in case he was needed. She was not unloved.
“Your novel,” Thomas said. “I read the new chapters. I will have them delivered in the morning.”
“That�
��s good of you.” Her mind spun back in time to their first encounter, his admiration of the as-yet-unknown author of her novel. There had been a connection between them, there had. The pain in her heart ratcheted up to agony.
“Would you still like to know what my thoughts are?” he asked.
She nodded, and he reacted with a bit of a start, and then took a breath, as if the entire conversation had become nothing more than an odious and perfunctory task.
“Very well. It is absurdly sentimental. The aches that you describe with such earnestness… the pain, the loss. But you have not lived at all. In fact, you seem to know only what other writers tell you.”
She could not have been more mortified than if he had spat in her face. What was he saying? How could he say such things in public? Humiliate her in her own house?
“I thank you for your frankness, sir,” she said tightly.
He took a step toward her, an act of aggression. “I am not done, child. You insist on describing the torments of love when you clearly know nothing about them.”
Why must he be so awful to her? Had her gestures of familiarity… of hope… embarrassed him? Was she… did he see her like Eunice, all misplaced presumption, beneath serious consideration for his affection?
“You’ve made yourself more than plain.” Was that her voice? Were those her words? She sounded like an ice princess, cold and hard and angry.
The guests were wandering in, attracted by the quarrel and now witnesses to her humiliation. He was relentless, approaching her, mocking her:
“…I advise you to return to your ghosts and fancies. The sooner the better, Edith. You know precious little of the human heart or the pains that come with it. You are nothing but a spoiled child playing with—”
That was as much as she could take. She knew nothing? At least she had a heart.
She slapped him hard; he flinched but took it.
She turned and fled.
* * *
Darkness. Her room. Tears.
The door handle moved, and Edith, lying in her bed, tensed.
Then it opened, and there stood her father. She longed to be comforted, but her feminine pride lay in tatters already. He had called her a child, and so had Thomas. But she was a grown woman who had endured an excruciating rejection, and her father was not the person to offer proper comfort at such a time. If there was anyone who could, which she doubted.
“I am not blind, Edith,” he said delicately. “I know you had feelings for him. But give it time. Perhaps you and I… we could go to the West Coast. You could write and I…” He trailed off, and she saw a future in which he was a widower and she was a spinster, and they kept each other company, and she could not bear it.
“I love you, Father. But can’t you see? The more you hold me, the more I am afraid.” She didn’t want to speak the words she was thinking. “I just don’t want to talk any further tonight. I just can’t.” Weariness overcame her. “Good night.”
He was sorrowful as she closed her door, shutting him out.
For now, anyway.
* * *
“My love is like a red, red rose…”
The next morning, the sweet old tune that had been his love song to his wife played on the phonograph. Cushing stood in the locker room of the gentlemen’s club in his robe, pensive and triumphant. Edith had been prevented from making the mistake of a lifetime. If Sir Thomas Sharpe had managed to pull off his loathsome scheme, Edith would not have had a life. The scandal would have ruined her.
That morning, Cushing felt especially close to his dear departed wife. When he gazed into the mirror at his gentlemen’s club, he could almost see her beautiful face. Not the horror that they had buried, but the sweet girl she had been when they’d wed.
I’ve kept our daughter safe all these years, he silently told her. She is still safe.
Edith was an heiress, and he supposed there would be other Sir Thomas Sharpes who would come sniffing after her money. He would do whatever it took to protect her. But he hoped he would never again plunge her into such pain and suffering.
Morosely, he prepared to shave. The attendant arrived with clean towels, making all ready for Cushing with a twist of the washroom basin’s hot water faucet.
“How’s the water today, Benton?” he asked with forced cheerfulness.
“Piping hot. Just the way you like it, sir,” Benton replied as he turned on one of the showers as well. The room began to steam up.
“Very well, then,” Cushing said. “Be kind enough to order me some ham and eggs. I’ll start with coffee, if it’s hot. And a sip of port.”
“Right away, sir. And the Times?”
“If you’d be so kind.” Perhaps there would be a short squib about the departure of Sir Thomas Sharpe, baronet, from the fair shores of America. And good riddance.
Mist clouded his vision as he prepared to disrobe. Then a shadow flitted behind him, startling him, and he turned to see if Benton had returned.
There was no one there.
But there had been someone. And he had the distinct feeling that he wasn’t alone. Any member would announce himself. It was curious and rather off-putting that they had not.
Perhaps it was his imagination.
And still…
Feeling rather silly, he checked the lockers. Of course they were empty.
Hot water was spilling over the basin; in his distraction he had let it run too long. His flat razor fell, the soap brick too. With a grunt, he bent to pick them up, nicking his finger. Clay-red blood swirled down the drain.
There it was, the shadow again. Then someone grabbed him by the cuff of his robe and the back of his head. Before he could react, his head was slammed down against the basin’s corner. There was no pain, only shock. He staggered, went down. The figure loomed over him, grabbed his head, and smashed it again and again against the porcelain. He heard his bones crush as his nose shattered.
Edith.
As his forehead fractured.
Again.
Edi—
As gouts of scarlet blood gushed out of the ruin of his skull.
Again.
E—
As he did not move, and the blood plumed into the clear, boiling water.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HOW SHE HAD managed to doze off, Edith had no idea. But she woke slowly to awareness sprawled on top of her sheets in her bedroom, still fully dressed. What a trite cliché; she had cried herself to sleep.
Annie was in her room, and she was holding a sheaf of papers that Edith recognized at once: the most recent chapter of her now-hated manuscript. Thomas had made good on his promise to return it, and the sight rekindled every bad feeling that had haunted her that night.
“What is it, Annie?” Edith murmured.
“This was delivered this morning, miss. But I didn’t want to wake you up any earlier.”
“It’s all the same, Annie, thank you.” She indicated the wastebasket, but the maid hesitated.
“The letter, too?” Annie asked.
“The letter…?” Edith fished for her eyeglasses and looped the ends over her ears. Red wax in a coat of arms with a skull design sealed the flap of an envelope of thick parchment paper. Her name was written across the front in a bold but elegant hand. Edith didn’t know if she dared read it, but she ripped it open anyway. The room seemed to dim as she devoured the lines:
Dear Edith,
By the time you read this, I will be gone. Your father made evident to me that, in my present economic condition, I was not in a position to provide for you. And to this I agreed. He also asked me to break your heart—to take the blame. And to this I agreed too. By this time, surely I have accomplished both tasks.
But know this: When I can prove to your father that all I ask of him is his consent—and nothing more—then, and then only, will I come back for you.
Yours,
Thomas
Elation surged through her; euphoria. He had not abandoned her, had not proven a heartless cad. But
when had this been delivered? What time was his train?
Am I too late?
Frantically, she rushed for the stairs, shouting for Annie. She dashed out into the hall, crying, “Annie, my coat!”
Then through the streets, past so many monuments to her father’s pride, through traffic and crowds, fighting to get to the hotel where the Sharpes had been staying; dodging, weaving, then into the lobby and at last to the front desk.
“Thomas and Lucille Sharpe?” she asked breathlessly.
The manager studied the guest registry. “One-oh-seven and one-oh-eight,” he said, “but—”
Edith bolted, rushing past some guests and a porter; at last she reached the door to one hundred and seven, to find it ajar—
—and two young, dark-skinned maids inside a room devoid of luggage or personal belongings, making up the bed.
One of them said, “They checked out this morning, miss. In time for the early train.”
Edith stood stock-still, panting, defeated. No, it couldn’t be. To have found out, to know, and to have missed him… it was too cruel.
“Are you all right, miss? Miss?” the other maid asked.
Would she ever be all right again? Would she—
She became aware of another presence; someone standing close by. She turned her head.
It was Thomas.
Unimaginable joy blazed inside her. She managed to rein in her instinct to throw herself into his arms as his dear face sought understanding in hers. Forgiveness. Hope. Her heart thundered in the silence. Surely he could hear it.
“Lucille has gone,” he began, “but I could not. Your father bribed me. To leave.”
He reached into his pocket and produced what she recognized as a bank check. Then he tore it in half.
“But I cannot leave you, Edith. In fact, I find myself thinking of you at the most inopportune moments of the day. I feel as if a link, a thread, exists between your heart and mine. And that, should that link be broken by distance or time… well, I fear my heart would cease to beat and die. And you’d soon forget about me.”
