Once an Heiress (Gilded Promises)

by Renee Ryan

  Gigi felt an odd sensation that was part confusion, part longing. “I’m not sure that applies to me.”

  “God’s grace is available to all.”

  “Even your mother?”

  “Yes.” Although her voice never wavered, a trace of impatience played across Sophie’s face. “God’s grace is available even for my mother.”

  Early the next morning, Fitz went to meet with the first doctor on his list of specialists. Dr. Trent, the one he’d been waiting to hear from, had finally responded late the previous afternoon with a brief message requesting to meet at his office before nine. Fitz had collected the names of all four doctors from extensive research. One of them had to have the answers he was looking for.

  As he made his way through the morning foot traffic, he tried to banish Gigi from his mind, but that odd moment when they’d held hands wouldn’t disappear.

  Even before then, Fitz had been aware of nothing but her, so lost in the moment that he’d given in to her request about the pearls with hardly a fight. His resolve had melted as if it were raining and he were a malleable pile of mushy spring snow.

  Ever since the investigator had informed him of Gigi’s location, Fitz had told himself he only wanted to retrieve the pearls she’d stolen from her family. He’d told himself he was here for Connor. Now, Fitz admitted the truth. He’d come to New York for Gigi, not only to ensure she was well, but also to see her again.

  She’d changed.

  His feelings for her hadn’t.

  Fitz knew that now, accepted it, lamented over it. He had enough to worry about without having to fight off the memory of leaning toward Gigi, moving closer, ever closer. Her eyes had been frightened yet combative, like a wild animal uncertain whether to flee or fight. What might they have done if they’d been alone?

  He shouldn’t want to know. But he did.

  Frustrating him further, Fitz couldn’t stop thinking about the first, and only, time he’d kissed her those years ago. The connection had been brief, barely a meeting of lips, and yet Fitz hadn’t been able to replace the image with another. He’d kissed other women. None had left him that stirred.

  None had made him yearn.

  He looked to the heavens, seeking guidance or perhaps a reprieve from his troubling thoughts. He found neither.

  Puffs of cottony white were in constant motion, floating against the pristine blue of the sky.

  Enormously preoccupied with the memory of Gigi’s lips pressed to his, Fitz nearly missed the three-story brownstone on the East Side of Manhattan. The bottom level had been converted into an exclusive medical clinic, his destination.

  Almost immediately upon giving his name, he was escorted past the reception area and left to wait in a small, unassuming office that could have belonged to an attorney, a businessman, or any number of low-level clerks.

  Fitz didn’t know what he’d expected, but this wasn’t it. The dark furniture, with its bold, masculine lines, was functional and sturdy but lacking all signs of craftsmanship.

  A fire snapped in the hearth, giving the room a pleasant, smoky odor. The atmosphere was too warm, too inviting. Shouldn’t a place where illness and death loomed be more somber?

  The sound of approaching footsteps reverberated off the walls like hammers on nails. A second later, the door opened with a long creaking groan, and in walked a man carrying a small medical bag in one hand and some sort of intense-looking apparatus in the other. He was young, close to Fitz’s age, with dark hair and grave, aristocratic features.

  He wore what Fitz thought of as the quintessential doctor’s uniform of black pants, a crisp white linen shirt, and a serious expression. Fitz had seen that same look on his father’s physician far too often in the past two years. The most memorable was on the night Calvin Fitzpatrick had nearly drowned himself in Boston Harbor after forgetting he didn’t know how to swim.

  “I’m Dr. Trent.” The man set down both objects he’d carried in the room with him, then reached out. “And you must be Mr. Fitzpatrick.”

  Fitz shook the offered hand.

  “Please. Have a seat.” Dr. Trent waved toward a matching pair of nondescript hardbacked chairs facing a large mahogany desk.

  Fitz lowered himself into the one on his right.

  The doctor divested himself of the bag and instrument, then, instead of rounding the desk, took the empty chair next to Fitz.

  He wasted no time getting to the point of the visit. “I’ve had a chance to review your father’s medical history. His physician in Boston has been very thorough.”

  Appreciating the doctor’s direct approach, Fitz pressed his palms on his thighs. “Do you have a diagnosis?”

  “Before I give you my thoughts, I’d like you to tell me about your father’s condition in your own words. When did you first notice changes in his behavior?”

  “I don’t know, precisely. The shift began small, in ways we didn’t notice at first. But two years ago, he started acting in ways we couldn’t dismiss as we had before.”

  “How so?”

  “He misplaced items, forgot names, lost his ability to recall details of past events.”

  “Go on.”

  “I didn’t think the problem was serious until he began having difficulty remembering names of people that have been in his life for years, some since childhood. He’d always been better with faces, so I didn’t think there was anything to worry about initially, but then”—Fitz lifted a wool-encased shoulder—“his personality changed.”

  “How so?”

  “He would get agitated when he couldn’t recall names or common words, mostly nouns. It was especially noticeable at the office, probably because I worked alongside him every day. He would review a contract, then be unable to repeat the important points he’d just read minutes before.”

  “What about his sense of time? Any problems with that?”

  Fitz shoved at the hair on his forehead, forcing himself to relay the facts with the same matter-of-fact tone he adopted for board meetings.

  His father was important to him. Fitz had always admired the man. He couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t want to turn out exactly like him. It was as if Fitz was losing his father, little by little. Calvin was disappearing, still living and breathing, but not the same man. Fitz didn’t know how to put his silent anguish into words.

  He had to try.

  “Some days, it’s as if he’s right there, standing in front of me. The same intelligent, savvy businessman I’ve always known. But then, seemingly in the blink of an eye, he’s gone. It’s like he’s gotten lost in his own mind.” Fitz rubbed a hand over his face, the stubble scratching against his palm. “I’m not making sense, am I?”

  The sharp planes of the doctor’s face softened. “You’re making perfect sense.”

  Fitz feathered his fingers through his hair.

  “We knew something was wrong when he lost his ability to make sound decisions. In the past two years, he’s made a string of bad investments. He hid the worst of his mistakes. I didn’t discover the magnitude of the situation until it was nearly too late to save the company.”

  “Did you confront your father once you realized what he’d done?”

  Fitz shut his eyes, the events of that spectacularly bad day turning his breath cold in his chest. “He became angry and accusatory. He claimed my cousin and I were trying to force him out of the company.”

  The doctor nodded. “Anything else?”

  “He’s become increasingly paranoid of late.” There was no other word for it. “He often accuses my mother and the household staff of stealing.”

  Fitz laid out the details of a terrible argument over a timepiece that had sent his mother into hysterical tears. He then went on to explain his father’s refusal to bathe and his mercurial moods, ending with the increasing bouts of depression.

  “Does he wander off and get lost?”

  “Far too often.”

  Now that the most concerning topic had been broached, Fitz unloa
ded the bulk of his worries. He told the doctor of the time his father had wandered off and ended up at the racetrack. He’d bet and lost a fortune on a horse with fifty-to-one odds.

  “He calls me Declan,” Fitz said, shaking his head. “Declan is his younger brother who died twenty years ago.” He stared at the doctor. “Well? Is my father . . . is he going mad?”

  “I can’t know for certain without a thorough examination of the patient. But what you’ve described could be a brain disease that’s most often found in patients of a certain age.”

  Fitz’s pent-up frustration came out in a ragged sigh. “Can anything be done to reverse the effects?”

  “The science is incomplete. The experts disagree on the best approach.”

  Disappointment seeped into every bone of Fitz’s body. Ask the question, he told himself. “If he does have this brain disease, is it hereditary?”

  A long, excruciating silence followed. “The research is inconclusive at this time. Did either of your father’s parents show similar degeneration as they aged?”

  “They both died young, in a boating accident.”

  “Ah.”

  Fitz shifted in his chair, stretched out his legs, pulled them back in. No amount of repositioning his body brought him comfort.

  “Let’s deal with what we know,” Dr. Trent suggested. “Rather than what we don’t.”

  “That seems a logical approach.”

  The doctor leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. “Eventually, patients with your father’s symptoms require full-time care. Simple daily activities such as dressing, feeding himself, even walking, will become too much for him to carry out on his own.”

  The breath in Fitz’s lungs turned cold enough to freeze into icicles. He thought of his mother, of the pain she’d suffered already and what she would have to endure if her husband’s disease progressed to what the doctor had described.

  Mary Fitzpatrick had aged considerably since his father had taken ill. How much more could she withstand before her own health suffered?

  Fitz wanted to howl in fury. He’d come into this building with a sense of tempered hope. Dr. Trent’s calm, detached summation of the possible disease his father had contracted dashed that hope to pieces.

  “Thank you for your candor.” Having nothing else to ask, Fitz stood. “I won’t take up any more of your time.”

  Dr. Trent joined him at the door and shook Fitz’s hand. “I urge you not to despair. There may be another reason for the symptoms you described. I won’t know for certain until I’ve had a chance to examine your father.”

  “I understand,” Fitz said, making no promises.

  He still had three other experts to consult. Perhaps one of them would have better news. He wanted to cling to that chance. But as he exited the doctor’s office, the pang in his heart was grief, not hope.

  Chapter Eleven

  After turning his back on the clinic, Fitz was too agitated to sit inside a closed carriage. Nor did he want to be alone with his thoughts, and so he covered the ten blocks to the Summer Garden Theater on foot. Moving at a good clip, he was propelled by a need to escape Dr. Trent’s diagnosis.

  A cold mist hung on the air, mimicking the gloom in Fitz’s heart. He hunched his shoulders against the wind and rounded the street corner, putting the doctor’s visit in the back of his mind.

  At the edge of the next block, he caught sight of his reflection in the shop window on his right. It was only the dimmest of impressions but enough to send waves of shock quivering through him.

  Fitz saw his father in the blurry image. The likeness went beyond the physical, Fitz knew, in ways that couldn’t be seen or easily measured. They were both hardworking, dedicated to the firm and its employees, loyal to a fault, and loved nothing more than family and a balanced ledger.

  Dr. Trent had confirmed the secret fear that had haunted Fitz for months. The same illness that was ravaging his father quite possibly lay dormant in Fitz, waiting to appear as he aged.

  The doctor maintained the research was inconclusive. Fitz found no comfort in the claim. He saw what the disease was doing to his mother. Her grief and helplessness were killing her as surely as the illness was destroying his father. If Fitz ever married, it stood to reason that he would be condemning his wife to the same fate.

  Fitz would never ask a woman to marry him, knowing he might have to live out his twilight years trapped inside his own mind, unable to remember the simplest things or take care of his personal needs.

  And what of children? If the disease was hereditary, Fitz could pass it on to them.

  The risk was too great.

  He must never marry, or father children. The realization was the worst kind of blow. Fitz had always wanted a family of his own.

  He stared down at his hands, his head full of the burdens he carried. His mother had insisted he keep his father’s condition a secret. At the time, Fitz had been all too willing. Mary Fitzpatrick didn’t need to contend with outside speculation and cruel gossip on top of the other hardships she endured.

  Now, Fitz wondered at the cost of his silence. He’d never felt more alone, a situation that would grow more severe as he aged. There’d been a time when he’d dreamed of a different kind of future, one that included a wife and children. He would have taught them how to appreciate the arts, something his own education had lacked. He would have taught them the intricacies of commerce, as his father had taught him.

  That dream was a distant memory now.

  According to Dr. Trent, Calvin Fitzpatrick’s illness would continue to drain the family’s resources. The future required Fitz to do what he’d been trained to do—find promising investments and turn lucrative profits.

  Luke Griffin’s automotive company was the most promising of the investments Fitz had his eye on, or so it seemed on paper. He would know more after their meeting.

  Fitz conquered the remaining blocks and entered the theater through the backstage door. He listened a moment to the music.

  Though fluent in French, he didn’t need to understand the language to know that Esmeralda was singing about unrequited love. Her voice was full of pain and lost hope. Each note sung in her dynamic voice was gut-wrenching, raw, and very real. The words wrapped around Fitz, digging deep in his heart and twisting.

  Watching Gigi fall for Nathanial Dixon had been excruciating. Learning of her ruin had been even worse. Fitz didn’t know if he still loved her. But he knew he still cared and regretted his role in her shame.

  He could do nothing about the past, but perhaps he could change the future. He would help Gigi find redemption.

  The task loomed large, but Fitz was undeterred. He always got what he wanted. Almost always, he amended, a self-deprecating smile slanting across his lips. He’d never won Gigi’s heart.

  Now, he never would. She deserved better than a life trapped with a man who would one day succumb to a brain disease.

  “You look deep in thought.”

  Fitz relaxed his shoulders deliberately, muscle by muscle. He liked the stage manager. Will McClain, a tall, bespectacled man with baggy features and kind eyes, had been in the theater’s employ for over thirty years.

  “I blame my mood on Esmeralda’s performance.”

  Will nodded a head full of thick white hair. “She’s certainly one of the greatest talents ever to play the Summer Garden, if not the best, which is saying something.”

  Fitz looked to the stage. Esmeralda sat on a chaise longue, her voice now filled with fatigue. Her eyes drooped, nearly shut before she fumbled them open again to stare at the young tenor playing Carmen’s lover, Don José. The longing in her eyes looked genuine.

  Paul Dupree, the singer playing the male lead, grazed his hand over hers, the move casual yet somehow proprietary, indicating intimate knowledge.

  A slow smile curved Esmeralda’s mouth.

  The scene was expertly executed, a triumph of acting and singing. Fitz felt as though he was eavesdropping on a private moment. Th
e audience was in for a show opening night.

  “How are the negotiations going between you and Mr. Everett?” Will asked.

  Fitz didn’t pretend to misunderstand. He did, however, give a cautious answer. “He insists the value of the theater is worth the price he is asking. He is embellishing, of course.”

  The stage manager’s expression turned shrewd. “You have no intention of buying the Summer Garden, do you?”

  Had Will asked the question a week ago, perhaps even a day ago, Fitz would have silently agreed, though he wouldn’t have admitted the truth aloud. Today, he found himself captivated, not only by the theater with its ornate décor, roof garden, and public café, but by the people that worked to put on a production.

  Fitz assured himself sentiment had nothing to do with his interest in the Summer Garden. But as he watched the drama unfolding on the stage, he finally understood why Gigi loved the theater.

  This world suited her, nearly as much as the world she’d lost. A world Fitz vowed he would restore her to, no matter the cost to him personally.

  “I find,” he said, “the more time I spend in this building, the more intrigued I become.”

  “Not exactly an answer.”

  No, but it was all Fitz was willing to give. “What can you tell me about the theater that I don’t know already?”

  “I’d rather show you.” Will took Fitz on a tour, his fifth, yet far different than all the others before.

  The stage manager led Fitz up into the rafters, where he pointed out the rigging, lighting, and various other technical aspects of the building itself.

  “We’re far superior to most theaters in Manhattan or Brooklyn. In fact, the Summer Garden was one of the first to put in electrical lighting and indoor plumbing.”

  They toured the roof garden next, then wound their way down a rickety spiral staircase and into the café. When they returned to the spot where they began, Will spoke again. “It’s more than the building that makes the Summer Garden special. We’re a family.”