A Stranger's Wife

by Maggie Osborne

  “Tonight that’s hard to do,” she said, gazing at a bronze figurine atop a gracefully curving wall table.

  Once she had been grateful to own an extra set of petticoats and a clean hanky. She’d slept on straw-filled ticking until she ran away from the farm. Had used an outdoor privy all of her life. She had never dreamed that one day she would be standing in a palace, wearing real pearls in her ears, and wedding rings on her finger. Seeing a portrait of herself dressed in white lace like a princess, or a sacrificial lamb. She had gone from half-starved hard labor in an Arizona prison to a sumptuous mansion and soft, elegant clothing. From the low-bred habits of a lifetime to fancy speech and refined mannerisms. The changes had happened too swiftly for her mind to accommodate them easily.

  “I’m trying,” she said to Paul. Lifting her head, she bit her lips and straightened her shoulders. “I don’t want to see Quinn’s bedroom, and I’ll see my own later, but show me the rest of the house.”

  She looked into a half dozen guest rooms, the second-floor water closet, and Miriam’s morning room. Miriam’s desk interested her, but closer inspection could wait for a later time.

  Touring the third floor was a decision she regretted. Standing in the doorways, looking into the servants’ private quarters reminded her of the prison matron’s inspections and how much she had resented the intrusion into her private space.

  “Did they know I’d be looking at their rooms?” Each of the rooms was exceptionally tidy and oddly impersonal, as if the inhabitants had tucked away all personal items.

  “The house has been rebuilt, their mistress is seeing it for the first time. They were all given tonight off,” Paul said with a shrug. “I’m sure they understood an inspection was probable.” They walked along a corridor narrower than those in the main house. Paul opened doors, Lily glanced inside and they moved on. “This is James and Mary Blalock’s apartment.”

  “We can skip it,” Lily said wearily. She’d seen enough. All she wanted to do was curl into a ball in the middle of bed and think about tonight and everything she had seen.

  “We’re here, and the opportunity may not come again,” Paul said, opening the door. “A locked door on a servant’s room is a privilege earned by tenure and loyalty. This door would ordinarily be locked, as the Blalocks have earned that privilege.”

  The Blalocks’ apartment was as tidy as the other rooms, but had a homey feel to it, and not all personal items had been tucked away. Hand-tatted lace doilies protected the arms of comfortably worn furniture, a collection of flower paperweights were displayed where the sun falling from a row of windows would show them to advantage. Mary Blalock’s kitchen was small but well organized; Lily didn’t look into their bedrooms.

  “This apartment is larger than my Aunt Edna’s house,” Lily said with a sigh.

  It was clear that Quinn thought a lot of James Blalock to have created the roomy apartment for him and his wife. This was the very type of thing that made Quinn so confusing. Just when Lily decided he was cold and uncaring, she ran into evidence that he could be considerate and thoughtful.

  They walked down the servants’ staircase and emerged on the second floor, not far from Miriam’s bedroom door. “Do you live here, too?” Lily asked. “Or is that a stupid question?”

  Paul didn’t laugh often but he did now. “I know it must seem as if Quinn and I are inseparable, and it will continue that way until after the election. But no, my house is a few blocks to the east.”

  “Is your house this grand?” she asked curiously.

  “I live alone, and I’m a behind-the-scenes man, remember? It wouldn’t do to attract too much attention. My home is comfortable for my needs, but modest.”

  “I’d probably like it better than this,” she said, finally pulling off her gloves. Miriam’s rings caught the light from the lamp mounted on the wall near her bedroom door.

  “You’re an interesting woman,” Paul said, studying her face. “Most women dream of being the mistress of a home like this.”

  “It’s too much,” Lily said simply. “Two people don’t need this much space.”

  Then she remembered that Miriam had longed to fill her house with babies, and she ducked her head, feeling an ache behind her chest. Quinn had not replaced the nursery. There was no reminder that a child had ever lived in this house or ever would in the future.

  Chapter 9

  Miriam had chosen rose-colored velvet draperies and rose-and-green striped wallpaper, the color and pattern of which repeated in a ruffled satin bedcover. A strand of blond hair was caught in the bristles of a silver-backed brush atop the vanity. She had worn the wrappers hanging in the armoire and touched the stopper of the perfume bottle to her ears and bosom. Lily inhaled the sweetness of forget-me-nots, then replaced a heart-shaped bottle on the vanity, feeling like an interloper.

  The room was too crowded with fringes and ruffles and flowers and stripes for Lily’s comfort. Opening the windows a few inches, she inhaled deeply, drawing frigid night air into her lungs while she tried to picture Quinn in a room this suffocatingly feminine.

  His masculinity and smoldering virility would crash up against the feminine defense of satin and ruffles, flowers and lace.

  She gazed at a fringed canopy arching over the bed, then turned aside and unpinned her hat. In looking for a place to put it, she discovered a small room set aside just for clothing, which surprised and delighted her.

  Stepping inside, she inspected racks of dresses and gowns and ensembles. Rows of hats, boots, glove boxes, and a special chest for jewelry and hair ornaments. Were these the new things Quinn had ordered? Or Miriam’s clothing? She’d explore more tomorrow. Right now she was exhausted, her mind whirling with confusing impressions. She placed her hat on a shelf with a row of others, hung up her traveling suit, and found her nightgown in the luggage Paul or the driver had placed in her room.

  Her room. She thought about that as she stood before the vanity and brushed out her hair with Miriam’s brush. This would never be her room or her hairbrush or her perfume or her bed. It would never be her home. She was a trespasser, a shadowy impostor who would leave nothing of herself inside these walls.

  Lowering the brush, she peered into the mirror, needing to see Lily Dale. She had never looked this beautiful, had never imagined that she could. Yet she wasn’t vain about her appearance as she once had been. The knowledge that another person looked exactly like her was humbling. She was not unique, as she had always believed. Biting her lip and blinking at tears, she stared into the mirror and saw a stranger frowning back at her.

  She would never be the old Lily again. It was impossible. The person she was evolving into would never be satisfied with straw-filled ticking or coarse homespun or chunky thick cups and plates. She would never step into the sun without opening a parasol to protect her face. Would never make noise when she drank her morning coffee, or hold her fork in her left hand. Would never again use the word ain’t or approve of those who did. She couldn’t unlearn the refinements that were becoming habit.

  Dropping the brush, she lowered her head and massaged the headache throbbing behind her temples. She was three people, Miriam, Lily, and the blended person she was becoming. And oh Lord, it was confusing and upsetting. Nothing made sense anymore.

  * * *

  After Paul departed, Quinn walked through the house turning off lights, banking the fires in the grates, trying to see his home through Lily’s eyes. The rooms seemed ostentatious, extravagantly overdone. He had thought so when Miriam furnished the house originally, and he thought so now. The ranch house was too spartan, but this house was too grandiose. He and Miriam had never found a middle ground or a way to be comfortable in each other’s spheres.

  Before he turned off the lamps in the receiving room, he poured another whiskey and stared up at the portrait that had upset Lily. After the election, he would have the damned thing destroyed.

  Jaw working, he stared at the painting and thrust his hands into his pockets. He’d fo
rgotten about the locket. That was something he should never have kept. Should never have shown to Lily or anyone. He should have taken one of the tintypes to Arizona, not the locket. He didn’t know why he’d kept it, except the locket fed his anger. Anger was easier to handle than the other emotions Miriam evoked.

  When he couldn’t put it off any longer, he went upstairs and entered his bedroom, instantly aware of a bar of light beneath the door that separated his room from Miriam’s. Lily’s.

  He had intended to read the material Paul left for him, but he couldn’t concentrate, kept glancing up from his chair toward the light beneath her door. When the light went out, he hesitated, swore under his breath, then gave in to impulse.

  The instant he opened the connecting door, light from his room fell across her bed. She bolted upright and clutched the coverlet to the lacy white nightgown molding her breasts. “What are you . . .”

  “There’s something I want to say.” He took a swallow from the glass of whiskey he’d been replenishing all evening. A long golden braid fell over her shoulder, and her face gleamed with the lotions that had restored her complexion. He noticed she wore gloves, also filled with lotion he guessed. Her lavender eyes flared wide. With outrage? Fear? He couldn’t tell.

  “You want me to hound Miriam and try to bring her back. You’re offended that I don’t beat my breast and tear my hair when talking about her, offended that I had her portrait altered.” He gazed down at the whiskey then frowned at her. “Why in the hell should I chase after a woman who left me? Why should I revere her portrait or her memory?” He guessed he was intoxicated, suspected he would regret this intrusion in the morning. “What you forget is that Miriam made a choice, and she didn’t choose me.” His fingers tightened around the glass. “You’ve placed Miriam on some kind of pedestal, and you think I should, too. Why is that, Lily? Why should I honor the memory of a woman who didn’t honor me?”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “A little.”

  She sat up straighter, pulling the coverlet to her throat. “I have to know this. Did you love her?”

  He hadn’t expected that question and tried to consider it honestly. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I cared for her. I care for her now. You said I was probably a poor husband, and you’re right. Whatever I felt for Miriam, it wasn’t enough.” He rubbed his forehead, telling himself to shut up, return to his room and end this. Instead he leaned against the doorjamb and swallowed the last drops of whiskey. “Her father was a politician, he’d been a lawyer. I thought she understood the demands of those professions, how much time they required. I didn’t intentionally set out to neglect or ignore her. It never occurred to me that she might be vulnerable or lonely. Looking back, she probably was.”

  She listened intently, her lavender eyes wide. And good God, she was lovely. He stared at her and imagined himself opening that gleaming braid and filling his hands with spun gold, spreading a halo over her pillow. Imagined her thick-lashed eyes going violet and dazed with desire. He needed to leave her before he did something profoundly foolish and ungentlemanly.

  “It irritates me that you think I’m some kind of unfeeling brute,” he murmured, wondering if he imagined the tremble along her lower lip. He didn’t imagine the dampness on his palms or the tension in his loins. “There’s no reason why I should care what you think, but I do.”

  Her breast rose on a sudden intake of breath, and his stomach twisted in knots. The powerful female scents of lotions and creams reached him, dizzying in the images they evoked. But it was Lily that ignited a fever in his blood, watching him with wide eyes and parted lips.

  “By now it should be obvious that Miriam and I were mismatched. I can’t think of a single damned thing we enjoyed in common. I wanted her to be something she wasn’t, she wanted me to be something I wasn’t. When the end came, we were living separate lives, strangers inhabiting the same house.”

  “Even after Susan’s birth?”

  “Especially after Susan’s birth.”

  What in the hell was he doing? Kicking open doors that he and Paul had decided must remain locked. He truly did not know why her opinion mattered, or why it stung that she saw him as a different man than he wanted to believe he was.

  “Go to bed, Quinn,” she said after a long minute. “We’ll talk again in the morning.”

  He doubted it. This kind of conversation required darkness and quantities of whiskey. “There’s another thing,” he said, leaning against the jamb to steady himself. “I’ve lied to you. You’re correct about that. And I may need to lie to you in the future. But I’m trying like hell to keep the lies to a minimum. You have to understand there are things you can’t know, don’t need to know.”

  “Are you suggesting that I should be grateful that you only lie to me when you feel it’s necessary? And how often is that?” she asked softly. Her voice seemed huskier than usual, curling from the long arch of her throat like an invitation. “I need to trust you, Quinn. I need to trust that you won’t send me back to prison on a whim. That you’ll keep your promises when this is over.” Her fingers twitched on the coverlet. “How can I trust you when you admit you’ve lied?”

  Because he had no convincing answer, he sidestepped the question. “You’ve never lied?”

  Color rose in her throat and cheeks, and he experienced a glimpse of how she would look in the throes of passion. Crimson staining her pale skin, her face gleaming, her lashes lowered, and her lips slightly parted. Silently he cursed the sudden powerful stirring between his legs. Lathered in lotion, her hair braided and her hands in damp gloves, she wasn’t attempting to be seductive, but God in heaven he wanted her.

  “I’ve lied,” she said evenly. “But not to you.” A faint smile hovered at the corners of her lips. “Well, maybe a little. But not about anything important.”

  They were absolutely alone in the house, a circumstance that would not happen again. She was a woman for whom rules held no meaning, a woman who would not let convention stand in the way of what she wanted. A vibrant, desirable woman. And he was a man aching with loneliness. Neither of them had experienced lovemaking in a very long time. Would it be so wrong to seek comfort in each other’s arms?

  He took a step toward her, but her voice stopped him.

  “Is it me, Quinn?” she asked in that husky voice that swirled in his mind like smoke. “Or are you seeing Miriam now?”

  He almost laughed. Miriam had never looked at him like that, her eyes challenging and unafraid, the heat of desire warming lavender depths. Miriam had never scalded his mind with feverish desire or made his hands tremble to look at her. He had never visualized Miriam bathed in salty sweat, arching her naked body to meet him.

  But her words poured over him like a shower of ice water. Standing straight, trying to remember how much he’d had to drink tonight, he pulled his shoulders back and released a low breath.

  “It’s late,” he said hoarsely. “Good night.”

  It wasn’t until he was lying in his own bed, hands folded behind his head, staring up at the ceiling, that he realized how close he had come to placing an appalling complication on their situation. Worse, she had tracked his thoughts perfectly. She had known he wanted her and what he was thinking when he took that step toward her bed.

  But she had not objected or ordered him out of her room. Her only question was if it was Miriam he saw or her. If he let himself dwell on the implications, he would go crazy, he thought, lowering his eyes to her door.

  He burned for her.

  * * *

  In the morning Lily met her new ladies’ maid, Elizabeth, who opened the draperies, laid a wrapper across the end of the bed, and inquired which dress she wished to wear this morning. Sitting up in bed, Lily removed the lotion-filled gloves and discreetly inspected Elizabeth’s small neat figure clad in a black dress and white cap and apron.

  She drew on Miriam’s wrapper, inhaling the scent of forget-me-nots before Cranston appeared, bringing a tray with her morning cho
colate and two cranberry muffins. Quinn stepped through the connecting door in time to answer Cranston’s knock. He wore a green dressing gown, and his dark hair was charmingly tousled. Although Lily suspected he suffered from a morning-after headache, he made an heroic effort to show no indication of discomfort. Last night’s visit might never have happened.

  “This is Cranston, our new butler,” Quinn said pleasantly, taking the tray. He placed the tray across Lily’s lap, looked into her eyes, then leaned to lightly kiss her forehead, his lips warm and dry.

  The deception now began in earnest.

  “Welcome home, madam. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  She certainly was not at her best, hardly awake and rattled by Quinn’s kiss. Hoping to hide the color on her cheeks, she lifted a hand to pat her hair and discover if her braid had unraveled during the night. That Cranston would meet her while she was still in bed revealed his importance to the household and his intimacy with master and mistress.

  Cranston was about fifty she guessed, white-haired and puffed with dignity, wearing crisp white linen with dark grey trousers and a black waistcoat.

  “With your permission, madam, I’d like to suggest that we bring the staff to your office after breakfast. The presentations won’t take long.” Keen dark eyes examined her, and Lily supposed he was looking for lingering signs of illness in her face. “Afterward, if I might have an hour of your time, we’ll review the household routine and make any necessary adjustments to suit your preference.”

  Lily flicked an uncertain glance toward Quinn, who stood gazing out her window, then she licked her lips and nodded. “Shall we say ten o’clock?”

  “As you wish, madam.”

  After Cranston withdrew, she took a sip of the chocolate, lifting the cup with both hands lest nervousness cause a spill.

  “Remember,” Quinn said in a low voice. “Of all the people you will meet today, only the Blalocks have met—you—before.”