My Heart Belongs in Niagara Falls, New York

by Barratt, Amanda;

  But though the subject had gone unvoiced, it had occupied his thoughts every hour of every day, mingling with prayers for wisdom and her welfare.

  “She cared for you.” Truth shone from Hope’s eyes. “I could see it in her eyes when she looked at you. I may not get out much, but I’m not daft. She looked at you…the way I’ve always wanted to look at a man. Not that any would ever return the gesture…with me as I am now.” A catch filled her voice.

  Though her words about Adele struck a place inside him all too raw, he pushed that aside. It was the lot of every human on earth to crave love. Sometimes it was their blessing, sometimes their undoing. Misery. Joy. Sorrow and rapture…the inner longings of the heart.

  In his sister’s case, a heart all too innocent and blind to what stared her in the face every time Jim Delany looked at her.

  But he wouldn’t spill his friend’s secret, not when it was still too fresh. So he reached across and placed his hand atop his sister’s. “It won’t always be like this. The day will come when we’ll have suitors lining up for blocks, just to catch a glimpse of the beautiful Miss Hope Dawson. I’ll have to chase them away at the point of a shotgun.” He grinned, and Hope smiled.

  “But you’ll let the good ones through, won’t you? Those worthy of my hand?”

  “I highly doubt I’ll ever find a man on this earth truly worthy of my precious sister.” He squeezed her fingers, glad she smiled again.

  He picked up his teacup and stared into the murky brown, remembering Adele’s delicate fingers cupped around this very object. Even amid the joys of a day like this one, sorrow still lingered, creeping out from the corner like an unwanted pile of ashes and dust. It was a valuable lesson to learn how to sweep them away and simply revel in life. In the blessings rather than the hardships. In joy, even when there was still evidence of pain.

  “I’d echo the sentiments.” Hope plucked another sweet roll from the plate and met his gaze, pastry hovering midair. “But they would be untrue. Because I’ve seen a woman who just might come close to deserving your heart.”

  Memories spun before his vision—Adele curled up beside him, eyes closed in exhausted slumber. Adele leaving at dawn to walk to work, checking in on them with a whispered inquiry as to their needs. Their gazes meeting across the crowded deck on the Maid of the Mist. Little did he know then how the threads of their futures would weave together, creating a bittersweet tapestry of moments and memories.

  He possessed it still. But it was a poor covering to stave off the chill that her departure had left in the deepest places of his heart.

  A Month Later

  Embracing a parent was a bit like coming home. As if, when she enfolded her mother close and breathed in the scent of her lemon verbena perfume, she transported herself home to Linley Park and back to her girlhood days. Where smiles came easily and her greatest problem was whether or not she could coax her father to give her threepence for peppermint candy. Where she didn’t teeter on the precipice of a new life, one that dug sharp points of fear into the soil of her resolve.

  Not that she could turn back now, with the wedding in two days. If she managed to forget for even a moment, evidence to remind her could be found everywhere she looked. In her bedroom, where trunks containing her trousseau lined the walls. In the rest of the house, where cleaning and decorating had begun, to ready the rooms for the wedding breakfast. And now in the form of her mother, all the way from England to watch her daughter wed Franklin Conway.

  As part of her social rehabilitation, Mr. Conway had arranged for her to return to the Osbournes, and she’d spent the past weeks there, all of them struggling to paste a loving veneer over the moments of awkwardness. Her mother had arrived yesterday, tired, yet joyous at the thought of her daughter marrying such a fine man. Wealthy, and one who seemed, on all points, to be a gentleman.

  That was how it would stay. Her mother need never know the truth. It would only distress her, and Mother had endured enough of that to last the rest of her days.

  But no longer. Adele vowed to do all in her power to make the rest of her mother’s life as secure and happy as could be managed.

  As for her own fate, resignation had taken firm hold and she wasn’t about to let its grip lessen anytime soon.

  Running her fingers across a row of books in her uncle’s library, a chill crept beneath the gauzy material of her evening dress. The Osbournes, perhaps spurred by guilt over their earlier treatment of her and wishing to make amends by incurring exorbitant costs, as well as hosting the wedding breakfast, were holding tonight’s dinner party.

  Outwardly, Adele behaved pleasantly toward them. But life had taught her that a profusion of money couldn’t mask one’s true character, nor bestow happiness. It wasn’t a potion to eliminate unpleasantness, but sometimes seemed to add to it. It did have its uses though. Drew and Hope were reaping the benefits of those uses at this very moment, Drew having found a well-paying job at the same place Delany now worked—she’d learned that from Nora, now Millie’s lady’s maid. Envisioning them had gotten her through many a difficult moment. And it would no doubt take memories of Hope’s smile to force her feet up the aisle two days hence.

  Allowing herself even a moment’s thought of the other Dawson sibling on her wedding day would be foolishness indeed.

  The door creaked and opened. No one had thought to light many candles in this particular room, but it wasn’t difficult to discern Mr. Conway coming toward her. He stopped a few paces away.

  “They told me you were in the library. You look exquisite.” She ought to, since each one of her dresses had been commissioned by him and completed by the dressmaker in a rapid succession that had probably cost him a small fortune. “Come here.”

  She stilled, the memory as swift and painful as a surgeon’s needle.

  “Come here.”

  Drew had voiced the words as a request, Mr. Conway, a command. Drew had spoken them out of concern for her welfare. Mr. Conway only sought his own. The latter possessed enough worldly goods to supply a king’s ransom, but it was the former’s touch that stirred her heart to life, embedding memories she’d been unable to erase.

  “Adele? Did you not hear me?” His tone suggested he spoke to a servant instead of the fiancée who would become his wife in two scant days.

  She nodded, the gesture weighty and forced. Let him make of the nod what he would. At the moment, she didn’t have the strength to summon the proper words. Her well of them had run dry over recent days, leaving only a few, scarce droplets at the bottom.

  “Then why did you not obey?” His eyes flashed with a look that made no secret of his displeasure. Past experience told her that if she did not act quickly, she’d have a storm to contend with. In the past month, she’d seen him rage at his servants for much, much less. These days she too seemed relegated to that class of serfdom.

  “I’m sorry, Franklin.” She’d been bone weary after a day of toil, that night in Drew’s apartment. Yet it had taken far less effort to turn and come to him than it did to cross a few steps to reach Franklin Conway. Science was right when it said the mind held great sway over the body. Her mind had wanted to go to Drew, so her body complied.

  “That’s better.” He looked down at her, hunger in his eyes, a hunger that could only be sated in one way. His arms wrapped her waist in a grip far too tight to be anything but painful. “Next time, I expect you to obey immediately. I’ll not have a wife ignoring my commands.”

  “No, of course not.” She fixed her gaze on the space between her skirt and his shoes.

  “That’s what I like to hear.” She heard rather than saw his satisfied smile. “Now look at me.”

  She lifted her eyes, unable to suppress the tremble that passed through her. Was this what horses felt every time they glimpsed a riding crop? Did terror speed through them with the realization of what was coming? No wonder animals belonging to cruel masters seemed always to wear a look of panic in their eyes.

  She squeezed her own shut, as
his mouth pressed down on hers. Occupying her mind with inconsequential matters served as the best distraction, so she wondered whether it would rain tomorrow and what sort of flowers had grown in the gardens at Linley Park earlier this summer. Her mother had always taken such pride in those flowers, forever showing them off to visitors and pulling her and Tony away from their lessons to admire some new plant.

  There. He’d finished. She opened her eyes. He trailed his finger across the edge of her cheek. “You’ll be my wife soon.” His whisper left no doubt of the underlying meaning in his words. After their vows were said, he’d have access to far more than just her lips. And the frequency of his kisses suggested that gaining entrance to her chamber could not come soon enough.

  Bile rose in her throat. Her stomach churned painfully, cramping.

  “Please excuse me. I feel very unwell…all of a sudden.” She extricated herself from his hold and made for the door before he could stop her.

  She reached her room and washbasin just in time. Her stomach emptied itself of its contents as she coughed and heaved into the porcelain basin. The lacings of her corset pinched her middle as she gasped and struggled for breath.

  Wetting her towel in the pitcher, she pressed it to her mouth and sank down on the bed. Perhaps, if she tried hard enough, she could imagine herself again in that little Canal Street apartment, the warmth of Drew’s strong arms around her. There had been such safety as she’d rested there. And as she’d slept that night, she’d done so knowing the reassurance of his presence was but a touch away.

  A tear trailed down her cheek, followed by another. Drew wasn’t there to hold her and comfort her through these tears. No one was. She was alone. Not just in her room but in the world. The Osbournes barely tolerated her, and Mr. Conway considered her an object for his base desires. Her mother loved her, perhaps, but she was not strong. More child than parent. It was Adele’s task to see to her welfare instead of the other way around.

  So it would be for the rest of her days. If she cried, it would be alone. If she experienced joy, that too would be for no one but her. It took a mutual joining of hearts to summon the courage to peel back the outer layers that existed for everyone to see and delve into those places intended for only a few to enter. More than a marriage, it was a relationship. One that went far beyond signatures on a certificate pronouncing two people to be husband and wife.

  And it was not to be hers. Nothing was, save the knowledge that Drew no longer owed anything, and she and her mother would be provided for.

  How was such a life to be endured? Empty places had riddled her existence before, but there had always been a measure of hope. The promise that tomorrow just might be better than yesterday. Now, all that stretched before her was the knowledge that nothing would ever be better. None of the things that truly mattered when one reached the end, anyway.

  What would she see if she leafed ahead through the pages of the story of her life? Six months from now? Two years? Mrs. Franklin Conway, American socialite and decoration wife. She would never be more than that to her husband. Love would become a fantasy, life a burdensome task.

  The vast emptiness gulped her in, dragging her down into a whirlpool of her own making. Tossing her round and round through an endless cycle as tears clogged her throat and she curled tighter into a ball on the rich coverlet of the curtained, four-poster bed.

  Weary. So, so weary. Of all of it, not just her impending marriage. Of the guilt that pulverized her every time she envisioned her brother’s still, sheet-wrapped body. Of the struggle to force away the memory of the short days she’d truly mattered to a man as a person instead of an object. If each soul were a ship traversing life’s sea, right now, her storm-battered vessel was at the point of foundering.

  And not even a glimmer of promise emerged to cast light over the shadows.

  “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isaiah 40:28-31).

  The verse Reverend Darfield preached about. A harsh laugh rose to her lips, as she pressed her face tighter against the pillow. A scripture verse? At a time like this?

  “I was one of those young men who had grown tired and faint. For me, life was about existing on my own and following the oft-quoted saying that God helps those who help themselves.”

  Wasn’t that what she’d always believed? If she worked hard, became good enough, God would listen. Of course, she’d never been good enough, because striving to rise above one’s situation involved dirtying one’s hands…and conscience. Her conscience was black. Blacker than black.

  A mangled sigh emerged. She had no strength left to keep walking the weary road of life alone. Certainly, she could slap on a good facade, but that was the extent of it. A facade to conceal the broken emptiness inside.

  A knock sounded on the door and the voice of one the maids said that everyone was wondering after her and was she unwell?

  She ought to go down and play the dutiful fiancée, but she was through with her litany of obligations for tonight.

  “I’m not feeling very well right now. Tell them that I’ll be down later.”

  The maid’s footsteps clomped down the hall, leaving Adele in silence again. Pondering on the reverend’s words and on the scripture verse had at least diverted her from dwelling on the chaos of her own emotions. So she turned onto her back and squeezed her eyes shut, filtering through the memories.

  “But ultimately, He is our help and our only hope is in Him. And when we try to fix things on our own, especially when life seems desperate, all we’re doing is spinning ourselves in circles, just like the Israelites in the desert. Instead of entering the Promised Land, we keep going around that same mountain of discouragement and defeat, thinking we can run our own lives better than anyone or anything.”

  Spinning herself in circles. Like the Whirlpool Rapids. It never ceased battling, but accomplished little, save to toss sticks and debris in endless motion.

  Could it truly be possible that if she handed her problems over to God, the swirling would cease and rest could be found?

  The idea wooed her, like the first taste of an addictive substance. Rest. True rest. No more struggling, no more scrambling to solve the problems of her world. She hadn’t done a very good job of it. In attempting to save Drew, her own brother’s life had been lost. In attempting to repair the damage done to Drew, she’d ended up engaged to a man she did not love.

  It wasn’t a far stretch to believe God could do a better job of rescuing than her.

  But could she let Him?

  Trust Him?

  If she didn’t, that left her on the same path of relying on her own paltry strength. There was control there, the feeling of holding fast to the reins of all of her plans. But she hadn’t planned for Tony to die. Nor ever imagined her father’s life would be cut short.

  Life would happen, whether she planned for it or not. But could she surrender her own plans and dreams and place them in the hands of a heavenly Father, when her earthly parents had always failed her?

  She swallowed hard. She didn’t want to walk alone, carry life’s burdens unaided. It had brought her to the point of collapse already. It wouldn’t take much more to shatter her beyond repair.

  “Take it, God. All of it. It’s an utter, filthy wreckage, but You say that if I hope in You, my weariness can end. I’ve never really trusted You before…I wouldn’t blame You if You didn’t want me.” Did one have to be in church to make such declarations? It seemed more fitting than lying in a darkened bedchamber while, downstairs, everyone else dined and gossiped.

  Drew had always seemed close to the Lord, even when his injuries prevented him from stepping foot inside a church.

  So perhaps—no, she was through with perhaps—God would hear her prayers.
There had been a glimpse of His presence, both in the cathedral and at the humble church Drew attended. As if He’d waited for her, called to her, longed.

  Wanted.

  Her.

  Tears streamed down her cheeks, and it was a beautiful thing indeed to trust that, even if no earthly human remained to comfort, God’s presence lingered.

  And if she let Him, He would hold her.

  “I’m Yours, Lord. I want to belong to You. I might never be able to give my heart to Franklin Conway or Drew Dawson, but I can give it to You.”

  This realization hadn’t come from hearing a sermon or even from watching Drew. It had come from God, a priceless gift in the midst of the chaos. A clarity in spite of confusion. In the past, she’d have dismissed the warmth that filled her now as nonsensical.

  Now, she wanted to let her throat ache with it, to bask in it.

  Almost feverish in her haste, she stood and dashed from her room, down the stairs into the library, her feet noiseless against the plush carpets. Among her uncle’s collection, she had the choice of any number of novels, poetry, or factual accounts. Scanning the bindings, she searched, ears attuned to any noise from a servant or guest who might disrupt her. She was beyond caring if they found her in a state of disarray, with her hair rumpled and face blotchy with tears. But she needed peace, and she needed this volume.

  Finally, she caught sight of the book, an immense showpiece of gold edges and leather embossed cover. Scarcely opened. Never read, at least by any of the Osbournes.

  Darting up the stairs, clasping the Bible against her chest, she didn’t dare draw a free breath until she reached the safety of her room again. She laid her treasure upon the bed and moved to the mantelpiece to light a few candles.

  There. She hitched up the skirt of her elaborate evening gown and kicked off her slippers, sitting on the bed in a position that would have horrified any of the coiffed ladies downstairs. A giggle escaped at the prospect.

  Inhaling the scent of leather, she let her eyes fall closed, fingers poised over the volume.