Nelle didn’t know how much time had passed when Alice nudged her shoulder. She must have fallen asleep.
“I’m leaving soon,” Alice said in a soft voice. Night had descended, and a single, lonely lamp was on in the hotel room. “I’m meeting Mathew for dinner. Would you like to come along? I wouldn’t mind, you know. It might keep my nerves more steady.”
Nelle wanted to see Mathew, but she knew she couldn’t endure seeing him. Not now, not when he and Alice were together. Nelle was afraid her face would betray her secrets about Alice. How her cousin would manage this, Nelle didn’t know.
“I’m really tired,” Nelle said just above a whisper. Alice looked disappointed. There was only so much Nelle could do for her cousin. Keeping such a large secret would have to be enough for now.
“Get some rest,” Alice said. “I can bring you something back to eat.”
Nelle could only nod. She’d already closed her eyes again as she heard the door click shut behind Alice.
“Father,” Nelle called to the man crossing the street, moving away from her. Perhaps it hadn’t been him. But the slope of his shoulders and the turn of his head were so familiar. So she stepped into the street to follow him.
A carriage suddenly appeared, its horses galloping at great speed. Nelle tried to jump out of the way. She lost her balance and began to pitch forward.
“No,” she cried out, her heart racing in fear.
A hand grasped her arm, tugging her backward, hard. Nelle was pulled out of the way of the oncoming carriage. When she looked over to see who had rescued her, Nelle blinked her eyes in disbelief.
“Pearl?” she asked.
The woman smiled. She wore a black fur coat over a deep blue dress. Pearl earrings and a matching necklace adorned her delicate features, making her look like a film star.
Nelle found herself reaching toward the woman and asking, “Are you real?”
Pearl’s eyebrows arched. “I am more real than most things,” she said in the sweetly accented voice that Nelle remembered. “But you have not been true to your heart.”
Nelle could only stare. “What do you mean?” she asked, looking around at the people passing by. No one seemed to be paying attention to them.
“Do you remember my advice?” Pearl asked.
Nelle had never forgotten it. “To not dwell on my sorrows, and to let the good things fill up my heart?”
“Yes, that is correct,” Pearl said. “It’s time for you to wake up and live, Nelle.”
Nelle’s eyes pricked with tears. “I was doing better for a while, but then…” She thought of finding the apothecary shop all boarded up and of discovering the truth about Alice and Lucien. “Where did you go?” Nelle whispered.
Pearl smiled. “There are other people that I need to help,” Pearl explained. “But I have not abandoned you.” She grasped Nelle’s hand. “Only you can make your journey a happy one. You just need the courage to do it.”
Nelle nodded, although she wasn’t sure that she entirely understood.
“I won’t always be able to save you,” Pearl said, looking at the street. “One day, you’ll need to save yourself.”
Nelle opened her mouth to ask Pearl to explain herself, then something bumped Nelle’s shoulder. She turned to see who it was but only saw a man who’d passed too closely. When she turned to look back to Pearl, the woman was gone.
“Nelle,” Alice said, her voice soft.
Nelle opened her eyes, realizing she’d been sleeping again…and dreaming.
“It’s morning,” Alice said.
Nelle looked around to see the sunlight streaming in through the window. She must have slept all afternoon and all night, for hours and hours, though she still felt tired.
“You were sleeping so deeply last night, when I returned from dinner, that I didn’t want to wake you,” Alice said, settling herself next to Nelle on the bed.
“How was dinner?” Nelle asked, her voice raspy as she tried to sit up.
“It was lovely,” Alice said in a demure tone, looking down at her hands. “I feel so guilty…about what happened with Lucien,” she added, looking up at Nelle, tears on her eyelashes. “Thank you for agreeing to not tell Mathew.”
Nelle wasn’t entirely sure that she had verbally agreed, but this had definitely been understood.
“This note was under our door,” Alice said, handing over an envelope.
Nelle took it, recognizing the handwriting immediately as Dottie’s. As Alice busied herself with something else, Nelle opened the letter and read.
Nelle,
I’ll meet you at the Alumni races. But I refuse to spend any more time with your cousin.
Dottie.
Nelle exhaled in both relief and frustration. She looked over at Alice. “What time is it?” she asked.
“Ten o’clock,” Alice said. “Mathew’s race starts in two hours. Are you coming?”
Nelle wanted to say no because she didn’t know whether she could stand see Mathew, knowing what she knew, and be able to manage the conflicting emotions coursing through her. But she wanted to meet Dottie there.
“I need to bathe,” Nelle said. “I’ll meet you there.”
Alice nodded, a look of relief on her face. “You must be starving,” she said. “Can I bring you something?”
Nelle wanted to be alone more than anything right now, to sort out her thoughts and feelings. “I’ll buy something on my way to the races.”
“Well,” Alice said with a bright smile. “Mathew is picking me up in a few minutes. We could wait for you—”
“It’s all right,” Nelle said, waving her off. “I can make my own way. Dottie will be meeting me anyway.”
Alice’s face clouded for a moment. Then she smiled again, pulling on her gloves. “I’ll see you there.”
The moment the door shut behind Alice, Nelle wanted to bury herself beneath her covers again. She didn’t want to pretend to enjoy the boat race, to chat with Alice and Mathew, or to know the secrets she knew—that Mathew loved her and that Alice had been unfaithful.
As she lay curled up, bits of her dream came back to her, and she remembered seeing her father hurrying away from her. Or was he hurrying toward something? Pearl had seemed so real in her dream, but had she only been a dream from the beginning?
Nelle groaned, forcing herself out of bed, and started running the bathwater. Maybe it would be better if she did return to the city and stay with her uncle, where time and distance would help her forget all that had happened in Waterbury. And then, eventually, her broken heart might have a chance of healing.
Chapter Twenty-Six
As Mathew handed Alice into the rented carriage, she grasped his hand, leaned over, and gave him a lingering kiss on his cheek. This shouldn’t have bothered him, but it did. During their dinner the night before, Alice had also held his hand. And when he’d delivered her to the hotel room door, she’d kissed him on the mouth.
They’d kissed before, of course, but Alice had always made it seem like more of a duty. Now she was practically crawling all over him. Instead of turning his blood to fire, it had made him want to distance himself from her—which was ridiculous, when he thought about it.
Mathew hadn’t been able to forget that Nelle was sharing a room with Alice and was likely to be on the other side of the door as Alice gave him her good-night kiss. And he couldn’t forget the way Nelle had chatted with Davey the day before, her smile bright as he laughed and joked with her.
Now, Alice was fawning over him again, and Mathew couldn’t exactly identify why it was bothering him.
“Is Nelle coming with us to the race?” he asked Alice.
“She hasn’t been feeling well and slept in this morning,” Alice said with a pretty smile. Alice is a pretty woman, Mathew admitted. I should be elated at her sudden affections. “She’ll meet us there,” Alice explained.
“I could come back for her,” Mathew suggested, knowing he didn’t really have time to double back, for he needed
to warm up with the crew.
“She’s meeting Dottie,” Alice said.
This sentence seemed casual enough, but Alice’s tone sounded strained. As the carriage set off, Mathew glanced over at her. Everything about her was perfectly in its place—her blonde curls pinned up, her lavender hat set at an angle, and her matching lavender dress freshly pressed. She caught him looking at her and smiled. She reached for his hand.
“I’m so glad we’re able to spend this time together without our mothers watching every move,” she said with a giggle.
Mathew stiffened. She’d never used her giggle on him before; it was what she reserved for her flirting conversations with other men. His heart twisted even tighter. He hadn’t liked being ignored by her, but this seemed far worse. There was something off about Alice, Mathew decided. He had no idea what. And he didn’t think it was merely the absence of their mothers.
The crowds had already started to gather as they arrived, so Mathew made sure Alice was settled on a terrace, overlooking the water, with a good view of the races. As he threaded his way back through the crowd, he was surprised to see Lucien, the Greenwoods’ cousin.
He was about to raise his hand and call out a hello, when Lucien called out on his own.
“Alice!” Lucien said.
Mathew turned to see Lucien hurry toward Alice. She half rose from her seat, her face blooming into a full blush. Mathew had seen Alice flirt with Lucien more than once, but something in the softness of her smile stopped him. She’d never, not even once, smiled at Mathew like that.
As the crowd moved and shifted about him, Mathew stood like an anchor, staring as Lucien grasped Alice’s hands and leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. That wasn’t so unusual, was it? Then Lucien pulled Alice into a tight embrace. The breath stopped in Mathew’s chest, for this embrace was far longer than a polite greeting. And when Alice pulled away—Mathew noted that it was she who pulled away—tears stood out on her face.
Mathew couldn’t move as he watched Lucien speaking rapidly to Alice as she shook her head. Were they having a disagreement? Had something terrible happened, and Lucien was delivering the bad news? What if the news was from back home? Mathew suddenly worried.
He strode forward, thinking it should be him comforting Alice if something terrible had happened. As he neared the couple, Mathew heard the announcement for the next race. Mathew knew he was a couple of heats away and had to get to the boathouse soon. He needed to find out what was going on with Alice.
As he approached, Alice didn’t even notice him, for her attention was so focused on Lucien.
“No, Lucien, he can never know,” she was saying.
Mathew stopped, unsure now what he was hearing.
“I am still going to marry Mathew,” Alice said, gripping Lucien’s shirt, as if she were trying to hold herself up. “I’ll never forget what we had together, but it can’t go on. This is good-bye.”
Lucien pulled Alice into another embrace, and it was only then that Alice spotted Mathew. Her face flushed, and she scrambled out of Lucien’s arms.
Lucien turned to see Mathew and the look that crossed Lucien’s face told Mathew all he needed to know. He might otherwise have believed Alice was upset about something else, but Lucien’s expression was full of guilt, the guilt of a man who’d taken what hadn’t been his to have.
“There you are,” a voice said behind Mathew as a hand clamped down on his shoulder. “We’ve been looking for you. Warm-ups are starting.”
Mathew was dimly aware that it was Davey speaking to him while Alice was stuttering out some explanation and Lucien stepped forward, declaring his love for Alice.
The voices blended together into a dull cadence, and Mathew could only focus on one thing—Lucien’s face. Mathew did the only reasonable thing to stop all this chaos. He threw a punch at Lucien, landing his fist on Lucien’s nose. The man went down like falling timber. As he thumped to the ground, the surrounding crowd went silent.
Alice gasped and fell to her knees, calling out Lucien’s name.
Davey grabbed Mathew’s arm, calling out, “Easy, man. What’s going on?”
Mathew kept his gaze locked on Alice, waiting for her to look back up at him. When she finally did, tears were dripping down her face.
“How could you?” she said. “You broke his nose.”
“I broke…” Mathew began but couldn’t finish. How could Alice be worried about Lucien’s broken nose when she’d betrayed Mathew in the worst way? If the man’s nose wasn’t already broken, Mathew would have done it right then.
“Come on,” Davey said, tugging on Mathew’s arm. “We don’t want trouble. Let’s get to the race and let them clean up their own mess.”
Mathew took a step back, letting Davey pull him along, but Mathew didn’t break his gaze with Alice. He wouldn’t be surprised if this was the last he ever saw of her. And he wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Nelle sat on the terrace at a small table, watching the boats assemble below for the eight-man race. It took her a moment to pick out Mathew. Once she had, he was all she could see. Tears pricked her eyes as she watched him. She’d known before that Mathew was unattainable and even more so now, knowing that after this race was finished, she’d never see him again.
For Nelle had decided that she couldn’t return to Waterbury, not with her heart breaking a little more each day and especially not now that she knew Alice’s true character. Nelle couldn’t be part of Alice’s farce, and she couldn’t bear to see Mathew deceived day after day. There was only so much a human heart could endure.
Perhaps leaving Waterbury would strengthen her mind and she’d be able to sort out what had truly happened with Pearl and the apothecary shop she’d imagined. Perhaps she would even realize that it had been a dream and that she had purchased the teas at the general store on Main Street.
“Here’s your lemonade,” Dottie said, joining her at the small table Nelle had been lucky enough to procure when its former occupants decided to stand and watch from the rail.
Nelle took the lemonade and thanked her. It was already quite warm, and the lines for food and drink were only getting longer. Nelle was grateful to have a cup before Mathew’s race started.
“Have you seen Alice?” Nelle asked Dottie.
“I haven’t been looking for her,” Dottie said in a flat voice.
Nelle blew out a breath. Maybe she’d have to leave a note for Alice in their hotel room. Her gaze continued to track Mathew as his crew went through a series of warm-ups. Then the positions of the boats were announced. Mathew’s boat was in position two, considered favorable if Nelle was to trust the comments from other spectators she overheard.
The starting gun sounded, and Nelle flinched, gripping her lemonade as the first strokes sliced into the water. As the boat in the first position pulled ahead, people around her began to shout encouragement to whatever team they were rooting for.
Nelle gripped her cup tighter, keeping her gaze on Mathew’s crew and admiring how they rowed in sync. Their movements were mesmerizing to watch, and soon Nelle found herself cheering along with the rest of the crowd. It didn’t seem to matter that they weren’t all cheering for the same boat, and it was an exciting event no matter who happened to be ahead at the moment.
“They’ve pulled ahead!” Dottie said, and both women jumped to their feet.
Nelle realized it was so. She watched as Mathew’s boat moved one oar stroke ahead, then two. They made it all look effortless. Right before the finish line, his boat reached a full length ahead of the boat in second place.
Nelle hugged Dottie in her elation. Mathew’s team had won. She could only grin as she watched him and his teammates climb off the boat and celebrate. She wanted to push through the crowd and make her way over to him. She held back, letting the other well-wishers surround him, expecting Alice to appear at any moment.
“Come on,” Dottie said, grabbing Nelle’s hand and tugging her throu
gh the crowd. “We must congratulate him.”
Nelle wanted to hang back and watch the celebration from afar. It will make my departure all that much easier, she told herself. But Dottie was determined. If Nelle resisted now, Dottie would suspect something was going on, and Nelle wasn’t ready to confess it yet. So she let Dottie lead her closer to the harbor, where the crew team was surrounded by people celebrating with them.
Nelle’s breaths stuttered the moment she caught Mathew’s eye. Alice still hadn’t shown up. Mathew pushed through those surrounding him, heading straight toward Nelle. For a moment, she looked around, wondering if Alice had arrived after all, but she was nowhere in sight. Nelle turned back toward Mathew. He was much closer to her now, and his focus was entirely on her.
Her heart thumped at the intensity in his eyes and the smile on his face. This was more than the smile of a boat victory. It was like he was happy to see her, specifically her.
“He’s coming this way,” Dottie said, standing next to her, although Nelle could see well enough for herself. His gray eyes were dark, almost stormy looking, and the perspiration from rowing stood out on his neck and forearms.
“Congratulations!” Dottie said as Nelle started to offer her own congratulations.
Mathew only nodded and barely spoke his thanks to Dottie before he pulled Nelle into a hug. Nelle felt the air whoosh out of her from Mathew’s embrace, for she was too startled to breathe. His arms tightened about her, and he lifted her from the ground, turning slowly as he smiled down at her.
Stunned, Nelle grasped his shoulders, trying to hang on and to comprehend what had gotten into Mathew. Wasn’t he worried about Alice? She was probably coming toward them right now. Mathew didn’t release her though, and Nelle could feel the thump of his heart against her own chest.
Love is Come (Power of the Matchmaker) Page 16
