That night he learned that Lily’s truth ran deeper and truer than he had let himself suspect.
* * *
“Quinn?” she called softly, rapping at the connection between their bedrooms before opening the door. Hesitating in the doorway, she clutched the collar of a blue wrapper close to her throat.
Leaning back from his desk, Quinn admired the gaslight gleaming in the loose fall of her wheat-colored hair. A heart-shaped face, pale skin, light hair, and those magnificent lavender-blue eyes imparted an impression of tender fragility. With Miriam, her appearance had matched her character. But Lily was neither delicate nor fragile. She was strong and courageous in her determination, and he thanked God for that. Yet seeing her now aroused his protective instincts. He wanted to gather her into his arms, hold her, and shield her from life’s bumps and bruises. He wanted to wrap her in security and safety and happiness.
“I’m sorry to interrupt . . .”
“Come inside,” he said, swiveling in his desk chair to enjoy watching her walk toward him. It still surprised him that two women who looked identical could be so different. To the best of his recollection Miriam had never rapped at his door, had never stepped foot in his bedroom, had never sought him out at this hour of the night. She hadn’t talked like Lily or moved as Lily did, in a way that made his mouth go dry with awareness of her hips and buttocks and milky thighs.
“I know you reserve Wednesday nights for yourself . . . but I need to speak to you.”
His eyebrows lifted. He had lied to her about dining at his club on Wednesdays. That wasn’t where he went. “Please sit down.” He dropped his pen into the inkwell. “I was going through the accounts, bringing the books up-to-date. It’s time to quit for tonight. Would you care for some sherry? Brandy?”
“No, thank you.” She took a chair near his desk and crossed her legs at the knee, something she knew Miriam would never do. At this hour of the night, artificial constraints dropped away, and she became his Lily, the Lily that only he knew or saw. Her breasts lifted beneath the blue wrapper as she drew a deep breath. “I don’t want to tell you this, and I’m dreading it, but there’s something you need to know.”
“Tell me what?” he asked, smiling. Frankly he welcomed whatever problem had raised the turbulence in her eyes. After dealing with knotty campaign issues, an irritating problem at the firm, and Callihan’s blackmail, it would be a relief to solve a household difficulty for her.
“I don’t know where to begin or how to tell you,” she said in a low, husky voice. Her fingers moved over her lap, plucking at the folds of the wrapper. Matching slippers peeped from her hem, revealing toes he had kissed and sucked into his mouth.
“Begin at the beginning.” When she had finished talking, he would take her to bed and lose himself between her rose-scented breasts. To hell with it being Wednesday night.
“I don’t know where the beginning is,” she admitted with a frown. “I’m not sure if my obsession with Miriam began that first day, or if it’s something that grew as I began to live her life.”
Instantly his expression sharpened. Not a household problem, then. Something more serious. Miriam again.
“Quinn, I’ve disobeyed you.” Her chin came up, and she met his gaze directly. “I called on Helene Van Heusen. I’m telling you this because you and Paul need to realize there are people besides Ephram Callihan who know things about Miriam that could be devastating to everything you’ve worked for.”
“Damn it!” Anger constricted his chest and choked his voice, not because she had disobeyed but because now he knew what she would say. An uncharacteristic sense of helplessness that he couldn’t admit and, therefore, couldn’t express emerged as anger. But there were also legitimate reasons. Carefully constructed plans were beginning to disintegrate like a rope unraveling, each strand curling into a hangman’s noose.
His expression alone would have driven Miriam from the room in tears. But Lily looked up at him, gripped the arms of the chair, and held her ground.
“Miriam was having an affair,” she whispered.
His teeth ground together so violently that the sound filled his head. Standing abruptly, he strode to the window and jerked back the draperies. A million icy chips glittered across a moonless sky as black as his thoughts.
“Is that what Helene claims?” he asked coldly.
“Don’t shut me out, Quinn. It’s true, and I think you know it. I haven’t put together all the pieces, but I’ve thought of little else for the last few days. I think you discovered Miriam’s affair, and I think you beat the hell out of the man involved.”
He’d believed that business finished. But if Lily had discovered Miriam’s affair, others might also. Swearing, he struggled against an urge to slam his fist through the window. “Say what you have to say.”
She talked for twenty minutes, telling him about a note she had found in one of Miriam’s pockets, about a trip to the City Ditch, and about calling on Helene, damn the woman. He listened, standing at the window and staring outside, until Lily made a sound, and he realized she was crying.
“Last night I remembered the locket. You said it commemorated Susan’s birth.” She held a handkerchief to her eyes. “But you didn’t give Miriam the locket, did you? She had the locket made and intended to give it to Marshall.”
“Why are you crying?” he asked harshly. He detested it that she knew his wife had preferred another man to him. No matter how she explained the tears, part of what she felt was sympathy for him and that was galling.
“One of the reasons I’m crying is because I think Miriam is dead,” she whispered, looking up at him with streaming eyes. “You won’t understand this, but . . . Miriam is part of me in a way I can never adequately explain. It goes deeper than just looking like her. I understand her in so many ways. I’ve walked in her shoes, Quinn. I’m surrounded by her belongings, I’m living her life. I know how it feels to lose people you love, to be alone in the world. And I know what it’s like to feel hopeless or trapped. Or to know that you’ve made a terrible mistake and nothing you do will change it. I’ve lain in my cell bed and stared at the ceiling and thought I’d be better off dead. I think Miriam killed herself after Susan died, and that makes me cry, because she’s me, and I’m her. Part of me loves her, and part of me wants to shake her until her teeth fall out. I feel the pain of her mistakes as if they were mine.”
He returned to his desk chair, sat heavily, and dropped his head in his hands. It was all coming apart.
Slipping from the chair, Lily knelt on the floor beside him and laid a trembling hand on his cheek. “Quinn? I beg you. Tell me what happened.”
One minute passed, then another, and finally he leaned back in his desk chair and gazed at the window, telling the story of his marriage to the darkness beyond.
“You asked me once if I’d ever loved Miriam. I can’t remember how I answered. Perhaps I did in the beginning. But I always knew that Miriam’s heart belonged to the man she had planned to marry after the war. She was fond of me, and we got along well enough, but she would have chosen spinsterhood if her father hadn’t pressed her to marry.”
He fell silent for a time, thinking about their early years together. “I believed I could win my wife’s affection, and perhaps I might have if we’d had children. But Miriam’s pregnancies ended in miscarriage, and she interpreted the loss of her babies as a sign that we should never have married.”
She had withdrawn in silence and sadness and she had rejected his attempts to reach her. After a time, he’d stopped trying. Predictably, they’d become two strangers who shared the same house and a few social activities.
Lily laid her head in his lap, and he stroked her hair.
“I don’t know when exactly, but it was probably about this time last year that Marshall Oliver reappeared in Miriam’s life. He hadn’t been killed in the war as Miriam had assumed. I don’t know what the son of a bitch told her to explain why he never returned, but when I checked his background I discov
ered he married a woman he met toward the end of the war. He was too cowardly to write Miriam and tell her that he’d betrayed his promises. It was easier to let her think he was dead.”
Lily looked up from his lap, her eyes wide. “Marshall is married, too?”
“He and his wife live in the eastern part of the territory on a small farm. They have three children.” He brushed her lips with his fingertips, needing to touch her. “Marshall’s wife has been an invalid for several years.”
Her eyes narrowed with contempt. “He really is a son of a bitch!” Then her expression went blank for a moment before a wave of color blazed up from her throat, and a hand flew to her mouth. “It’s true, then. I didn’t want to believe it, told myself it couldn’t be. But the reason you’ve always sounded so detached from Susan is because—”
“The child Miriam carried to term was fathered by Marshall Oliver,” he confirmed in an expressionless tone.
She closed her eyes. “I didn’t believe it. But Helene was right.”
“Damn that woman to hell,” he snarled, speaking between his teeth. “I believe Miriam confided in Helene about her grand love who didn’t return from the war. And I believe the Van Heusens traced Marshall Oliver and discovered he was living within three hours of Denver.” Bitterness harshened his voice. “I’ll go to my grave believing the Van Heusens arranged to reunite Miriam and Marshall, then sat back and hoped something explosive would come of it that could be used to destroy my campaign.”
Paul had said it best. How could he sell Quinn as the people’s choice if even Quinn’s own wife preferred another man to him?
“And something devastating did happen,” Lily whispered, staring into his face. “Susan.”
Since he and Miriam had not shared a bed for months before she became pregnant, he’d known at once that it was not his child she carried.
“It was a bitter time.” Standing, he went to the cart beside the book shelf and poured two brandies. “Miriam was overjoyed by the pregnancy, but distraught about the circumstances. She had to confess the affair with Marshall, of course.” That simple statement glossed a period of agony for her and a time of shattered pride and rage for him. He tossed back one of the snifters then refilled it. “I suppose she and Marshall discussed running off together. Maybe they didn’t. I don’t know.”
Lily accepted the snifter of brandy. “They might have discussed eloping, but it couldn’t have been a real possibility. Miriam would never have agreed to Marshall’s leaving an invalid wife and three children,” she said softly. “She simply could not have lived with buying happiness at the expense of another woman’s pain. And even though she didn’t agree with your decision to run for governor, I’ll never believe she would have left you after you announced you were in the race. She would have known the scandal would destroy your chances. No, Quinn. Running off would not have been a genuine possibility. Too many people would have been devastated.”
He stared at her. “You astonish me.” Miriam had said enough for him to believe that she’d felt exactly as Lily had just described.
The hiss of gas jets was the only sound in the room, and the creak of his chair as he sat heavily.
“Quinn?” Tilting her head, she examined his face. “It was good of you not to cast Miriam off. Many men would have. But if you hadn’t already declared for the governor’s seat . . . would you still have tried to maintain the marriage? Would you still have forgiven Miriam and tried to accept Susan?”
Had he forgiven her? Not then. But now? He had dealt with the problems, but the healing had not begun until Lily came to him. Now he could accept his share of the blame and move on.
“When I learned about Miriam’s affair, I expected her to leave me. I was angry enough that I would have helped her pack and good riddance.” He paused to draw a breath. “In the end there was no choice. Miriam had no place to go.”
“So you forgave her and beat the hell out of Marshall?”
“That’s the gist of it.” He drained the last of his brandy and set the snifter aside. “She’s my wife, Lily. For better or worse, in sickness and in health. What would you have had me do? Cast her out in the streets? Whatever else she is, Miriam is an honorable woman. In ordinary circumstances, an affair would have been unthinkable to her. I think you know her character well enough to agree. But Oliver was her first and only love. It would have taken someone much stronger than Miriam to resist.”
“The Van Heusens exploited her love for Marshall and in the process hurt a lot of people.”
He wanted this conversation to end. Even now, pride made it difficult to face that Miriam had never loved him. That she had merely tolerated him in her life and in her bed and had always held an essential part of herself beyond his reach.
But he understood now in a way he’d been unable to understand in the past. Now he knew what it was to love so deeply that consequences didn’t matter. That obstacles seemed insignificant. Now he knew what it was to feel a passion so consuming that reason burned in its path and nothing made sense but surrender. When he looked at Lily, when he felt the magnetic forces irresistibly drawing them, he understood Miriam. She could no more have resisted her obsession than he could resist his.
“Quinn? Do you believe that Miriam is dead?”
“I don’t want to think about the past right now,” he said, leaning forward to take her hand. Running his thumb across her palm, resonating at the touch of her, he remembered when calluses had hardened the pads of her fingers and her hands had been red and chapped raw. It gladdened his heart to know there would never again be calluses on this woman’s hands. Never again would she be forced to engage in hard labor, he thought, bringing her fingers to his lips. He would see to it.
“Oh, Quinn,” she whispered. For an instant her gaze was so sad and anxious that he thought for one stunning moment that he was looking into Miriam’s eyes.
“It isn’t over,” she said in a low voice. “Helene isn’t sure who fathered Susan, but she suspects it was Marshall. She’s been in contact with him. The reason Helene was so persistent about seeing me was to give me a message. Marshall insists on seeing Miriam.”
Chapter 18
“Damn it! She called on Helene after you expressly forbade it?” Paul tapped the ashes out of his pipe with short angry raps against the ashtray.
The strategy meeting had broken up half an hour ago, but the library still smelled of cigar smoke and tension. Most of the party leaders supported Paul’s tactic of evasion when it came to controversial issues, but a few supported Quinn’s desire to put the issues on the table and run a no-holds-barred campaign. Arguments had been strenuous on both sides tonight.
Paul dropped into a chair away from the conference table and crossed his ankles on a low ottoman. “Can we speak freely?”
“Cranston has the night off.” He’d dismissed the servants for the evening, and Lily had retired hours ago.
“The Miriam problem was solved. Completely. Now the Miriam problem has resurfaced, and it’s beginning to look like we have a Lily problem.”
Quinn sank into the chair facing the embers in the fireplace and laid his head against the back cushion. He had stayed at his desk until after midnight every night this week, had given four speeches, had put in a full day every day at the firm. Exhaustion tightened the back of his neck. He glanced at the clock on the mantel, counting the minutes until he could go upstairs, take Lily to bed, and fall asleep in her arms.
“Lily deflected Helene’s suspicions, and when she left the Van Heusens’ their estrangement was complete,” he said, hearing the weariness in his voice. “Helene won’t be a factor in the future.”
“But that son of a bitch Oliver will be.” Paul swore. “If Lily had ignored Helene, Helene and Oliver would have gone away. But Lily opened a door we thought was nailed shut.”
“When you discovered Lily and we put the impersonation in place, the door opened again. Did you really think Oliver would stay away after he learned that Miriam had returned?”
“Didn’t you? How many beatings can the man take?”
Quinn pulled a hand down his jaw, gazing at the glow of ash and embers in the grate. “He needs Helene to tell Miriam when he’ll be in Denver. With Miriam’s connection to Helene severed, he has no way to contact her. There should be no problem.”
“There’s a problem, Quinn, don’t deceive yourself.” Holding up a hand, Paul ticked down his fingers. “Lily found a note, and she didn’t tell us. She went to the City Ditch and talked to a kid who knows about Miriam and Oliver, and she didn’t tell us. She called on Helene Van Heusen, and she didn’t tell you until she felt she absolutely had to. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“The point is, she did come forth.”
“The point is, what the hell is she doing? She’s prying into private matters that don’t concern her and have nothing to do with the success of the impersonation. Where does it end, Quinn? How many blackmailers can we afford to pay?”
“You know Lily better than that,” Quinn said sharply. He didn’t like the turn this conversation was taking.
“My job is to consider every possibility and solve problems before they happen. If I can. Right now, Lily is dazzled by the big house and carriage, the fine clothes, the places to wear them. She’s living a fairy tale, and she thinks she’s in love with the handsome prince.”
Quinn straightened and narrowed his eyes.
“What happens when you say thank you and good-bye? Is she going to be happy with a modest home and one or two servants instead of a houseful? When she has to check her account books before she orders a new gown? Or is she going to start thinking she was used and underpaid? Maybe she’s already thinking that way. So she’s nosing around, looking for security. The more she learns about Miriam, the better armed she is to come back at you for more money.”
“I’m starting to wonder if our friendship can survive this campaign.”
“Think about it. I met with Ephram Callihan yesterday, and he’s figured out that Lily is impersonating Miriam. The price went up. Lily could be twice as damaging because she can quote chapter and verse on that one. She could prove her claim in five minutes simply by repeating a conversation she had with someone who believed she was Miriam. How hard would that be for a journalist to verify? Now toss Marshall Oliver into the mix. She’s compiling enough information to bury you personally and professionally.”
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