‘But we don’t know that yet, do we?’ He leaned nearer still, his lips far too near mine for propriety. ‘We might find out some night when the moon rides high in the sky and spills its silvery light over our entwined limbs and bare flesh.’
‘Spoken like a poet!’ When she stepped between us, Clarice’s voice was airy, but I did not fail to see her eyes shoot fire.
In spite of myself, I couldn’t help but think of what I’d learned from Jonathan at Delmonico’s. Andrew had been there with Clarice on the very night he’d been murdered, and when he’d told her he wanted to end their relationship her anger had been palpable.
When it came to the men in her life, was Clarice as jealous as all that?
At the same time a chill crawled up my spine, an idea formed in my mind.
‘It is your poetry that interests Miss Barnum,’ Clarice told Damien, winding her arm through mine. ‘Not your sad attempts at romance.’ She made a move to pilot me to the nearest chair.
I stood my ground, at least for the space of a heartbeat. The next moment, I removed my arm from hers and dared to step closer to Damien. Like Clarice’s resentment, Damien’s animal energy was easy to perceive and impossible to ignore. It wrapped around me like a living thing, the scent and the heat, the very essence of the man. I had never been a coquette. I had never needed to be with James Crockett whose affection, so I thought, was so immediate upon our introduction I did not need to try at being clever or pert. They were not behaviors that came easily, and I nerved myself and managed a smile I hoped was more mysterious than ridiculous.
Sure to keep my voice low so that Clarice could hear the murmur of it but not the words, I told Damien, ‘Clarice does not know me all that well. Perhaps some night when the moon rides high—’
‘Ah, when the moon rides high!’ His sigh might have transported me if not for the heavy scent of spirits that came with it. ‘I have a place nearby where I write. Small but private. We can meet at twilight, my dear Miss …’ He dismissed the obvious fact that he did not remember my name. ‘We’ll watch the sun set the evening afire and then kindle a fire of our own. I can see you are the type. All cloaks and bonnets and petticoats. But once I get you out of them …’
I allowed my smile to inch up a notch. ‘Once you get me out of them?’
‘Really, Evie!’ This time when Clarice tugged my arm, it was with enough force to yank me back a step. ‘You mustn’t get caught up in Damien’s nonsense. He’s a dreamer, after all. Or so he’d like the world to think. But we are not here to listen to him spin his fantasies. I asked you to stop by to listen to his poetry.’
It was so obvious a ploy, I had no choice but to obey. When Clarice waved me toward a chair, I took it and twined my fingers together on my lap, wondering what she’d think if she knew that, ruse or not, those few minutes in the pull of Damien’s orbit had made my heart beat double time.
Once I was seated, Clarice whirled to face Damien. ‘I told Miss Barnum about your newest poem.’
I cannot say I had ever met a poet before, yet something told me that, like all artists – painters and writers and makers of all the things of beauty that adorn our world – they can be caught up in their own vision of themselves. Damien obviously was. The simmering smile he’d turned my way when he’d talked of moonlight and naked limbs disappeared and was replaced with a look that was more self-important than sensual.
‘My new poem.’ His shoulders inched back. ‘I’ve just completed it and it is a masterpiece. Finer than anything I’ve written before. More real. More carnal. Like that painting of your friend’s over there, Clarice.’ He slid a glance toward the barnyard scene and another at Clarice that made me wonder what silent secret passed between them. ‘But then, there can be nothing more real than Walker’s paintings, can there? We are but amateurs, artless in his presence.’
Clarice rolled her eyes. ‘The poem, Damien.’
‘The poem.’ Damien cleared his throat. ‘Miss …’ A brief, pained expression crossed his face and he conceded to his forgetfulness with a shrug. ‘She needs to know this poem is written not from a dream but from real experience,’ he told Clarice.
‘That is the point,’ she shot back. ‘But she will not know any of it, not until she hears the poem.’
‘Yes, of course.’ He pulled himself up to his full height and stood with his feet apart and his head high.
‘Woe for the pain that banishes the brightness from the earth,’ he said, and his words echoed through the room with its high ceilings and gilded walls. ‘Woe for an Eden that has been lost. To sin. To shame. To those who remain unseen.’
I did my best to pretend understanding and reminded myself that, someday, such a skill might serve me well. Phin often talked of adding a sort of lecture room to the museum where he might present plays and speeches and public poetry readings. If his plans ever came to pass and I was forced to attend such events, I would have to know how to wear the mask of interest. Still, I could not help but slip Clarice a look of confusion.
With the small movement of one hand, she told me to be patient.
I did my best and focused again on Damien, who had lost his way through his stanzas and repeated himself quickly until he got to the place where he’d stopped. ‘To sin. To shame. To those who remain unseen.’ He coughed politely and slowed his speech again, endowing each syllable of his work with its own importance. ‘And to the man whose visage peered through the darkness, his skin and face so green.’
Bad rhyme or not, I sat up like a shot. One look at Clarice’s satisfied smile and I knew this was exactly what she’d wanted me to hear.
‘A green man?’ I could not keep to my seat. I closed in on Damien. ‘You say you did not dream these images? That they are not flights of your imagination?’
‘Exactly how Clarice tried to criminate me.’ Damien’s pouted. ‘I reminded her that though I do have more imagination than the normal human, this was not one of those times. It is like Walker’s work.’ He turned to Clarice to say this. ‘Realism. I saw him.’
‘The green man?’ I had to be sure. ‘Tell me about him.’
Damien’s top lip curled. ‘My age, my height. I was trolling through the dark, looking for the grotesque so that I might give it immortality with my words.’
‘And you saw him.’ I forced myself to hide the excitement that made me feel as if I’d leap from my own skin. ‘Where? When?’
‘I wrote it all in one sitting. In one night.’ Damien wanted me to be impressed, and I confess I was shameless enough to try and play the part, the better to have him continue with his story. ‘The poem is very new and I have yet to let my stanzas marinate, yet I do think you will agree, they are quite brilliant.’
‘Quite,’ I agreed. ‘And this green man, you saw him …’
He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘Wednesday,’ he said, then opened his eyes again. ‘No, Thursday.’
Just two days earlier! I folded my fingers into my palms, the better to disguise my eagerness. ‘And where? Where did you come upon such a unique specimen of a man?’
He stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest. ‘Are you a poet?’ Damien asked.
‘Me? No, I’m—’
‘A writer then? Looking for the macabre and the marvelous?’
‘Not at all, sir. I’m simply—’
‘Then another artist!’ Damien threw his hands in the air and spun away. ‘I am sick half to death of artists. If you’re looking to find this hideous creature so that you might paint him, I have to warn you—’
‘I have no intention of painting him or writing about him or immortalizing him in verse. The green man is … Jeffrey. Jeffrey is a friend.’
As quickly as he’d turned away, Damien spun around again and gave me the sort of look I’d seen men of wit and intelligence bestow on our Feejee beauty back at the museum. ‘There is more to you, miss, than I imagined. You are friends with a green man?’
‘Yes, and I must speak to him. I must find him. Where did you come upon h
im?’
‘Not in a place where a woman should be alone.’
I nearly laughed. ‘I’ve already scoured the Bowery. And Five Points.’
‘And lived to tell the tale.’ The gleam in Damien’s eyes told me he was actually impressed. ‘Will you quake in your boots, pretty miss, if I tell you to look for your friend along Water Street?’
‘Near the docks?’
‘You don’t look the type of woman who would know of such places.’
I had no doubt he was right, just as I had no doubt he would be surprised to know I’d been to the Water Street docks any number of times to receive shipments for the museum.
‘Has he taken a position on one of the ships?’ I asked Damien.
His shrug was casual. ‘I can only say that when I came across him, your green man was scurrying out from under an old tarp, like one of the rats that lives nearby. He clapped eyes on me and scuttled back the way he came.’
‘Thank you.’ I didn’t wait for Damien to respond but made for the door. ‘Thank you,’ I told Clarice before I got there.
‘It hardly helps,’ she told me.
‘Yet it is a place to start.’
‘But, Evie.’ She caught me by the sleeve before I could exit the house. ‘You can’t just go off to the docks on Water Street by yourself. Promise me you will be careful.’
‘Of course I will.’
‘And you must also promise me that you don’t think less of me for introducing you to people like Damien.’
I couldn’t help but smile, but it was an expression that did not last once I was outside. For I had learned two interesting things that day at Clarice’s and neither cheered me. One was that I might find Jeffrey hiding somewhere near the East River.
And the other?
Before I entered my carriage, I glanced over my shoulder toward the house and found Clarice at the window watching me.
I could still feel her eyes on me as the carriage drove away, just as I could feel the weight of the thought that would not leave me alone.
Clarice was a jealous woman.
Was she jealous enough to kill?
TWELVE
As I was expected at the dinner table that evening, I had no chance to go to Water Street to begin my search for Jeffrey. It did not matter, I told myself, for the next day was Sunday, the museum was closed and I would have all day to find him.
I did not count on Charity having other plans for me.
That Sunday morning, a list in her hand, she hurried into the breakfast room where Phin and I were already sharing a loaf of Cook’s delicious, crusty bread, a plate of sausages and a pot of coffee. My brother and I exchanged wary looks.
When Charity makes a list, it usually costs Phin a great deal of money.
He managed a smile. ‘More decorating ideas, my dear? I thought we were done.’
Charity’s mind was clearly elsewhere. She waved away the question with one hand and waited while Delia, the girl who came in to help during the day, poured coffee.
‘We’ll need oranges,’ Charity said.
‘I thought there were to be artichokes,’ Phin replied.
When Charity looked at him in wonder, he threw up his hands. ‘On the wallpaper in the dining room, of course! I thought we were going to have—’
‘I’m not talking about wall coverings.’ Charity slapped her list on the table. ‘I’m talking about luncheon. This afternoon at one.’ She had ignored me completely since walking into the room but now she glanced my way, a tiny smile playing around her thin lips. ‘Sebastian Richter is coming.’
This was not unpleasant news. Leastways, it would not have been on any other Sunday.
I set my cup on my saucer. ‘I am sorry I will miss him.’
Charity had just picked up a piece of bread slathered with apricot jam and she froze with it at her lips, blinking rapidly like an owl surprised by a sudden light. She set down the bread and twined her fingers together on the table in front of her.
‘He is hardly coming to call on me,’ she said.
‘If he is coming to call on me,’ I replied, ‘perhaps I should have been apprised of it.’
‘I am telling you now.’ Charity picked up the bread, snapped off a piece and chewed it, her gaze still on me. When she was finished, she swallowed down her coffee. ‘I don’t need to remind you—’
‘No, you don’t.’ Phin was at the head of the table, and reached out and put a hand on hers. ‘Evie knows.’
‘Perhaps she doesn’t.’ With a look, Charity dismissed Delia, and once the girl was gone she leaned forward, her elbows on the table. ‘You’re fortunate he wants to call on you at all.’
‘I cannot say if I am or I am not,’ I told her. ‘He seems pleasant enough but I hardly know the man.’
‘That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it,’ she shot back. ‘It is not Richter’s character that’s in question, it is yours, and yours being what it is—’
‘Now, Charity, my sweet pigeon.’
It had taken me little time under Phin and Charity’s roof to discover that when he called her sweet pigeon it was because he was doing his best to appease her. In that same, scant time, I had come to realize that when he tried to appease her, Charity only got more angry. Phin, it seemed, had never learned the same lesson.
He patted her hand. ‘Evie needs no reminder—’
She swatted his hand away, at the same time pinning me with a look. ‘Apparently she does. You are lucky, indeed, that he is interested. He wouldn’t be. Not if he knew the truth about you.’
My shoulders shot back. ‘If he is truly interested, he will know the truth about me. I could not spend my life with a man who doesn’t know my history. All of it.’
‘Then perhaps we should call the men from the newspapers in here right now!’ Charity leapt out of her chair and her voice rose. ‘Wouldn’t they love to hear the story of Phineas T. Barnum’s sister? Wouldn’t that make for delicious gossip from one end of Manhattan to the other? Not to mention in Bethel. Oh, how delightful it would be for your mother to read the story in Bethel.’
‘My mother knows the story,’ I reminded her, my voice calm even while my insides twitched. ‘She is the reason I am here with you today.’
‘Oh, no!’ Charity wagged a finger at me. ‘Your good mother is not the reason. He …’ She swung around to point that same finger at her husband. ‘He is the reason you are here. If he wasn’t so soft-hearted—’
‘It was your decision, too.’ Phin’s voice was quieter than hers and, though I was sure it was designed to calm her, I knew all too well that it was also an attempt to make sure we weren’t overheard; Delia may have been sent from the room but that did not mean she was very far away. ‘You know it was the right thing to do,’ he told his wife. ‘The kindest way to deal with a situation that was difficult.’
Charity snorted. ‘Difficult for us!’
‘And not for me?’ I had been complacent for too long, following my brother’s advice to stay silent and depending on his wisdom to guide me, but now the pain of the last years clutched at my throat. ‘I spend my every waking moment thinking of my child!’
‘And so you dote on my son because of it,’ Charity shot back. ‘You must put your debased past behind you, Evie. I told you that from the day you came to us with the shame in your belly.’
I rose slowly and ever so carefully, and I think it was that more than anything that made Charity see the depth of my anger. No sooner was I on my feet than she plunked back into her chair, unable to keep her place beneath the rage that simmered through my words.
‘That child is my flesh and my blood. He is my soul, and I will never be ashamed of him.’
My words hung in the air between us, punctuated only by Charity’s sharp, rough breaths. I do not know how long I stood there, daring her to contradict me; I only know that when Phin jumped up and clapped his hands together, I flinched.
‘It is good to get these things out in the open,’ he said. ‘It will make
for smoother days down the road.’
I wasn’t convinced, but when there was a gentle tap on the door I again took my seat and was relieved when Cook approached Charity with a question about the luncheon arrangements. When I reached for my coffee cup, my sister-in-law didn’t see my hands trembling.
They agreed on boiled salmon and mutton with caper sauce, followed by a custard, and then nuts and oranges for dessert. Before Cook retreated to the kitchen, Charity sent me the briefest of looks.
‘For five,’ she told Mrs O’Donnell. ‘Mr Richter’s cousin, Sonya, will be joining us.’
And so it was determined, and I might have argued if Phin hadn’t implored me with a look.
At one o’clock, I was downstairs when Sebastian Richter and Sonya arrived.
They made a handsome couple. I never realized it until I walked into the parlor and saw them standing side by side, she – just a slip of a thing next to her tall, broad cousin – in a sweet gown of rose-colored silk brocade with the Succor ribbon pinned to her shoulder and Richter dressed all in black aside from his white shirt and twin ribbon. She greeted me as if we were old friends. His eyes lit up when I extended a hand to him.
‘Your sister is too kind to ask us for a meal,’ Richter said, and he gave my extended hand a quick squeeze.
‘My sister-in-law’ – Charity was on the other side of the room, supervising the pouring of lemonade and I shot her a look – ‘is very happy that you could join us.’
‘We look forward to you coming back to Succor to visit,’ Sonya told me. ‘We’ve been devising something of a plan to try and intercept young women before they are alone in the city.’
‘Really, Sonya!’ Richter’s laugh was deep and rich. ‘It is a beautiful Sunday afternoon, the sun is shining and the last of the flowers are in bloom. Do we really want to demoralize Miss Barnum’s mood with such gloomy talk?’
‘I don’t mind. Really,’ I told him. ‘I am interested in Succor’s work.’
‘There. You see.’ Sonya lifted her chin. ‘Miss Barnum is not airy-headed as so many young women are. She is interested in our work.’ She bent her head toward mine. ‘We are thinking of organizing small groups of women to meet ships at the dock.’ She apparently thought I might be abashed at such news (little could she have imagined my search for Jeffrey!) because she sent up a silvery laugh. ‘I don’t mean every ship, of course. That would be unseemly as well as impossible. I mean the immigrant ships. The ones that come from England and Ireland. If we could talk to the young ladies just as they disembark we would sooner find the ones who need our help before they are forced to take to the streets on their own. We will give them our ribbons as a sign of our commitment to them, and to remind them that if they are in need of friendship, they can find it with us.’
Smoke and Mirrors Page 14
