by BJ Hoff
Where she perceived herself too tall and too thin, Patrick referred to her as “patrician.” The heavy chestnut hair that was only stubborn and troublesome to her seemed to hold a certain attraction for him: he insisted her thick chignon gave her style.
And when she mentioned her self-consciousness, Patrick claimed to find her shyness charming. The one time she had openly objected to his teasing about her lack of confidence, he had quickly moved to reassure her. “I’ve always disliked overconfident, brazen women, my dear. I prefer you just the way you are.”
Now, in the silent, tense moment that hung between them, an entire tide of memories surged through Ruth—memories followed by regret. Regret for lost love…lost years…lost innocence.
For an instant panic gripped her. Could she really go through with this, now that she was here? Could she actually confront and accuse this man whom she had loved so completely, so wholeheartedly?
So foolishly…
She struggled to recall the words of reason and appeal she had carefully rehearsed all the way from Chicago, but at this moment she could think of nothing but escape. Shrinking beneath his furious, incredulous glare, it was all she could do not to turn and bolt from the room.
He let go an oath and slammed his pipe into its stand. With his hands braced on the desk, he lunged to his feet, his eyes blazing. Then he spoke, and the thunderous rage of his words immobilized her. “What do you think you’re doing, coming here? Have you lost your wits altogether?”
Ruth stood perfectly still, stunned by the venom lacing his tone. Taking in a deep, steadying breath, she struggled to keep her voice from trembling as she faced him. “I didn’t want to come here, Patrick. I had to. I need help—remember?”
“As I recall, I’ve already sent you a generous sum of money,” he shot back. The fire in his eyes suddenly banked to a cold stare, and his voice lowered to a threatening hiss. “You’re wasting your time and mine if you’re looking for more.”
Her heart pounding, Ruth groped for some shred of her carefully scripted argument. “Patrick…I’m carrying your child!” Even to her ears, the tremulous tone sounded like the whining of a frightened schoolgirl. “You—you can’t simply dismiss me. This is as much your problem as mine.”
The stone mask remained unyielding. His words pierced her heart like shards of ice. “You have a keen sense of drama, Ruth. But the fact that you find yourself in difficult straits doesn’t mean you can foist your unwelcome little bundle onto me. Surely you don’t expect me to believe I’m the only man you’ve been with?”
Ruth had to brace one hand on the back of a nearby chair to keep her legs from buckling. “You are the only man I’ve been with!” she choked out. “You know you are!”
His mouth twisted in an unpleasant smile. “Dear girl, I know nothing of the kind. To the contrary, as free and easy as you were with me, I find it difficult to believe you were ever as innocent as you’d like me to think.”
His tone was impatient, and his expression held a distinct note of dismissal. Glancing down, he began to thumb idly through a stack of papers on his desk.
Hot tears welled up in Ruth’s eyes, almost blinding her. Denial warred against reason as the truth began to penetrate. Still she fought against the reality of what was happening.
“How can you say that to me?” she burst out. “There was never anyone else but you. Never! Not before I met you—and certainly not after!”
He went on shuffling through the papers in front of him. “There’s no need for you to defend yourself to me, Ruth. Your private life is none of my concern.”
Without warning, resentment slammed into Ruth like a fist. “Perhaps you’d better make it your concern, Patrick!”
He looked up then, and the utter disdain in his eyes chilled Ruth’s soul. A sickening dread washed over her. Threatening him had been a mistake.
“Get out.” His voice was frigid, his words edged with the same ice that glazed his eyes. But his tone held an unmistakable note of warning that made Ruth take a step back. “Get out of my office, and get out of New York. Now, Ruth.”
She was appalled that she could have deluded herself into believing that this cold, relentless man across the desk had ever cared for her. She didn’t even know him. Only now did she realize that she had never known him.
Ruth tried to swallow, but anguish rose up in her, numbing her throat. Her mind registered the finality of his words even as she struggled to find some way of penetrating his indifference.
She stretched out a hand toward him. “Patrick…how can you do this…after everything we once meant to each other?”
He lifted his chin, and his pale, unblinking gaze raked over her, devastating her with contempt. “You stupid little baggage,” he said in an unbelievably casual tone of voice.” You never meant anything at all to me.”
Ruth swayed, tightening her grasp on the wing of the chair to keep from pitching forward. “You…you are despicable!” She nearly strangled on her own words. “You won’t get out of this so easily, Patrick!” she blurted out. “Perhaps your wife will be more interested in my predicament than you are!”
Before Ruth even knew what was happening, he was around the desk, his hand clutching her throat.
“Don’t you dare threaten me, you little tramp!”
The face she had once thought so noble and handsome now held only menace—menace directed at her. The taut composure of his features had given way to a frenzied, contorted ugliness fired by rage.
“I’m warning you—stay away from my wife!”
Raw fury burned in his eyes. For the first time, Ruth was actually afraid of him. His fingers tightened around her neck, cutting off her breath. At that moment she believed he was entirely capable of killing her.
Gasping, she twisted, trying to shove him away.
“Patrick!” she choked out. “You’re hurting me!”
His fingers eased their tension only slightly as he pushed his face into hers. The blazing hatred in his eyes seared her soul. “I haven’t even begun to hurt you, you little fool! If you ever—ever—try to interfere in my life again, I’ll teach you about real pain!”
Still gripping her throat, he let his furious gaze play over her face for another instant. “Now you’re going to leave my office, Ruth. You’re going to leave New York.” His mouth twisted. “You’re going to go back to Chicago and find some balding, dim-witted butcher to ply your questionable charms on. If you don’t let any grass grow under your feet, you might even convince him that the brat in your belly belongs to him.”
The cruelty of his words echoed in the silence. The physical pain he was inflicting on her throat was nothing compared to the self-disgust that impaled her.
He seized her shoulders and wrenched her around, then shoved her hard across the room and out the door.
Sobbing, her vision clouded with scalding tears, Ruth stumbled past the inquisitive stare of the narrow-faced man behind the reception desk.
The door to Patrick’s office banged shut behind her.
In the tumult of her pain, the sound was like the slamming of a coffin lid.
Ruth shuddered as somewhere deep inside her a dark abyss of despair slowly opened and drew her in.
The moment Colin Winston left the office, Nicholas Grafton turned back to Jess.
“You are going to fight him, aren’t you?”
His head in his hands, Jess looked up at his friend. “Fight him?” he repeated thickly. “How? He’s Amanda’s uncle.”
“But he’s also a complete stranger to the child.” Nicholas stopped. For a moment he stood fingering the chain of his pocket watch. “Jess…did you notice that he never once asked about Amanda? Never so much as inquired after her welfare? Doesn’t that strike you as somewhat strange?”
Jess looked at him but said nothing.
“Something about that fellow,” Nicholas went on, “doesn’t register quite right with me. I’m not sure what it is, exactly—perhaps just the shock, and not wanting to see you lose
Amanda—but I don’t much like him.”
Jess struggled to free himself from the fog enveloping his mind. It occurred to him that he had never heard the good-natured physician say anything derogatory about another human being. Nicholas Grafton usually had something good to say about most people, and if he didn’t, he said nothing.
But he was right about Colin Winston’s apparent indifference toward Amanda; it was peculiar. If Winston was really as concerned for her as he claimed to be, why hadn’t he at least asked about the child, rather than simply demanding custody of her, as if she were nothing but a piece of property?
He looked up at Nicholas. The silver-haired physician had removed his eyeglasses and was rubbing the bridge of his nose as he regarded Jess. “If I were you,” the doctor finally said, replacing his glasses, “I would talk with my attorney right away. There might be something Hancock can do to put Colin Winston off for a time—at least until you can find out more about the man, perhaps even have him investigated. You don’t really mean to turn Amanda over to him without more information, do you?”
Jess shook his head as if to clear it. “We didn’t expect anything like this. Not after so long a time. I’m not sure what to do.”
He still could not believe what was happening. Only this morning at breakfast he and Kerry had been making plans with Casey-Fitz for him to take the larger guest room as his own so they could redecorate the smaller bedroom for Amanda. The three of them had discussed color choices and appropriate furnishings for the little girl’s bedroom as seriously as if they had been deciding on a potential suitor for her.
But now…now there might never be a little girl’s bedroom…
“You love that child as if she were your own, Jess,” Nicholas said quietly. “You told me so yourself.”
“Yes,” Jess answered, staring at his hands. “Yes, of course, I do. And Kerry—” He stopped, swallowing hard. Looking up, he met Nicholas’s gaze. “Do you really think we’d still have a chance for adoption? Blood almost always wins out in matters like this. I can’t think we have any real hope of keeping Amanda.”
“There’s always hope, Jess. Forgive me for sounding like a physician, but until the last breath is drawn there is always hope.”
The doctor paused, giving Jess an intense look. “Do you know what they call you around town, by the way?”
“Call me?”
Nicholas nodded, smiling faintly. “Around the Bowery and Five Points, they call you the ‘Fighting Parson.’”
Jess frowned. “What?”
“Oh, it’s meant with respect,” his friend assured him. “A number of the fellows down here like to boast that their preacher is ‘a real man—a fighting man,’ when the circumstances call for it.”
Jess groaned. “That’s hardly a compliment to a man who considers himself a pacifist, Nicholas. Where did they get such an idea?”
“They mean well, Jess. You’ve won their respect—and that’s no small accomplishment, I’d say. At any rate, they’re not talking about fisticuffs. You’re known as a man who’s not afraid to fight for what’s right—for what you believe in.” He paused. “And I’d be the first to agree. That’s why I know you won’t simply give up Amanda without a fight. You’d be sending her off to another country with a man she’s never laid eyes on—a man you know absolutely nothing about.”
Jess looked at him for another moment, then got up. Going to the narrow-paned, clouded window, he stood, hands in his pockets, staring out onto the brick wall of the junk dealer’s shed next door.
“I believe strongly in family, Nicholas. If Colin Winston is determined to take Amanda back to England, I’m not sure I have the right to try to prevent it. He’s a blood relative—and the only family left to her.”
There was silence for a moment. When the reply came, it was quiet but firm. “Blood doesn’t make family, Jess. Love makes family. Love and commitment.”
The words rang in Jess’s ears, striking his heart like a bell. He turned around and met his friend’s gaze. After a moment, he finally nodded. “You’re right.”
“Not always, but on occasion.”
Still Jess hesitated. “Will you help us?”
Nicholas Grafton’s eyes glinted. “In any way I can.”
Outside, on the dusty street, Ruth Marriot stood with her shoulders hunched and her eyes lowered, trying to avoid the curious stares of passersby.
The heat was oppressive. The putrid smell of rotting garbage and horse droppings hung like a vile shroud over the street. Her stomach churned. She felt feverish and had to fight off wave after wave of dizzying nausea.
The sickening assault of Patrick’s betrayal, combined with her physical condition, threatened to prostrate her in the middle of the street. She fought down a vicious swell of queasiness, at the same time groping for some semblance of reason.
She was on her own now. There was no longer any hope of help from Patrick. She had only herself…and the baby. No one else.
Below the surface of her anxiety rode an undercurrent of fear. She had never felt so isolated, so entirely alone, in her life.
She had no one to turn to, no one to count on. She would soon have no job, ultimately not even a place to live. And if her health continued to falter, she might not even be able to care for the baby without help.
At the fringes of her mind whispered what seemed to be her last remaining shred of hope. She had fought the idea from the beginning, disgusted with herself for even considering the possibility. It was the last thing she wanted to do.
But now it seemed the only thing she could do. She had to try…for the sake of her baby.
After a moment, she lifted her face and squared her shoulders. Bracing herself against the heat and the stench of decay, she finally mustered the nerve to ask a middle-aged man with a kindly countenance directions to the Staten Island Ferry.
16
Child of My Heart
Let me press thee closer still,
A gradh geal mo chroidhe;
To this scathed, bleeding heart,
Beloved as thou art,
for too soon, too soon we part,
A gradh geal mo chroidhe!
JOHN WALSH (1835–1881)
Jess Dalton didn’t have to think twice before accepting Nicholas Grafton’s offer to go home with him that afternoon.
He dreaded telling Kerry about Colin Winston, and when Nicholas offered to accompany him, he was immeasurably relieved. Until that moment he hadn’t realized just how anxious he was about what this turn of events might do to Kerry.
She was the most precious thing in life to him, and he was about to break her heart.
As the buggy slowed and drew to a stop in front of the house, he exchanged a long look with Nicholas. “I’d rather face almost anything than the pain this will cause her.”
The physician nodded. “I know.” He reached for his medical bag and stepped out of the buggy. “I’ll take this along, just in case,” he said, avoiding Jess’s eyes.
This unexpected act of caution unnerved Jess even more.
They found Kerry at the kitchen table with Amanda. Kerry’s hair was in disarray, and the pinafore apron over her dress appeared slightly rumpled. From the looks of things, the two had been having a late luncheon.
Kerry looked up in surprise as the men entered. “Why Nicholas Grafton! And isn’t it past time you were paying us a visit! But, Jess, whatever are you doing home at this time of day?”
She looked from one to the other. Jess saw the light of welcome in her eyes flicker and change to uncertainty. He went to kiss her, bracing himself for the ordeal ahead.
“Something’s wrong. What is it?” Her voice suddenly sounded very young and small. She lifted a hand to her hair and began to tug at one stray ringlet.
By now Amanda was reaching for Jess, her face, smudged with potatoes, eager and bright. “Da!” she cried, thrusting her plump little arms toward him.
Kerry’s hand went around the child’s shoulder in a protective gestu
re. “Yes, love, it’s Da.” Her gaze searched Jess’s face. “But you must finish your potatoes, like the good girl.”
Even as she spoke, Kerry’s eyes never left Jess’s face. He saw her go pale and longed to deflect her questions, if only for a little while.
“Jess?”
He opened his mouth, but the words froze in his throat. Nicholas finally bridged the way to the bad news.
“I’m afraid we have something rather…difficult to tell you, Kerry.” He stopped, then went on, his words coming more quickly than before. “But be assured that Jess and I are already taking steps to redeem the situation.”
With that, he reached for Amanda, who went to him cheerfully. “Dokka Nick!” she cooed. She studied him for a moment, then giggled and pressed a chubby thumb over each lens of his eyeglasses.
Nicholas hoisted the child to his shoulder, smiling at her. “Why don’t I take you to Molly, young lady? We’re going to have to get rid of those potatoes around your nose before they take root.”
He started for the door with the child in his arms, then turned. “I’ll be right back.”
When Jess finally forced himself to face his wife, her searching green eyes held an unmistakable glint of alarm. “It’s about Amanda, isn’t it?” she said.
Jess pulled up a chair beside her. “I’m afraid it is.”
She went ashen.
“Kerry…”
“I shan’t listen!” The words burst out unexpectedly, and she shook her head, refusing to look at him: “Whatever it is, I don’t want to know!”
Jess stared at her in dismay, not quite knowing how to go on. “Kerry…love, I’m afraid you must know. Amanda’s uncle…it seems that he’s come for her. He’s here, in New York, right now. He wants to take Amanda back to England with him.”
Squeezing her eyes shut, Kerry continued to shake her head in denial. She looked like a child herself now, especially when a solitary tear escaped, slowly tracking down one side of her face.
