by Denney, Hope
“I don’t understand the compulsion, but if you’re as happy as I think you are, you deserve all of this. I hope he can set you up with all you want, Somerset.”
“He will.”
Somerset pushed the office door open and found herself in a sitting area with walls of ledgers, textbooks, and several degrees bearing the South Carolina seal on them. Just around the partition came Phillip’s hushed voice, which still came out loud.
“I tell you it’s a splendid building for a clinic for a girl like her. The foundation is solid, and a new roof was put on just last year. I talked the seller down two thousand from the asking price so it was a steal. There’s enough room for an office so I’ll post an advertisement around December. I don’t anticipate it being difficult to find someone for her to work with. She’s as smart as they come but easy to get along with.”
Joseph nudged Somerset in approbation and she tugged on his bicep to stop him from walking around into the office. She needed to hear what else Phillip thought about her. Hearing him compliment her behind her back tickled her face like champagne bubbles.
“It doesn’t suit either of us to wait around any longer. We’re going to move the wedding up if I’m not mistaken. My thought was to apply for a license tomorrow so we’ll be ready, but I wanted to let you know rather than have you read about it in the society pages.”
“So you’re going to uproot everything?” The unseen voice stabbed through the air with malice. “I guess you weren’t lying then. You are in love with her. I don’t doubt it after laying eyes on her face and speaking to her. She’s the most charming thing in the world and it would take a hardhearted person not to fall in love with her.”
Phillip laughed.
“Indeed. Her curiosity, her drive, the way she looks when she’s concentrating—they’ve driven me mad the past few weeks. She has a way of looking out of those blue, blue eyes that makes me feel powerful, which is saying something because I’ve grown used to the feeling.”
“What about me? Once I made you feel powerful. Are you really going to push me off to the side?”
“We’ve discussed this before. Things can go on between us as they always have. I’m going to be tied up more to begin with, but things will even out in time. You’ll see. Your spending allowance will go on unchanged.”
“So just like that you don’t love me anymore.”
“Loving you and being able to marry you are very different things. Even if you were divorced now, I couldn’t marry you. Can you imagine the scandal and the hissing that would create? Public interest in my company would plummet, and I’d be drummed out of town to have taken the wife of another prominent figure.”
Somerset had only fainted twice in her life: once, when she got the telegram that Eric was missing, presumed dead, and once more, when she read Amelia’s telegram that Teddie was dead. She thought she might a third time. She clawed at Joseph’s hard shoulders, and her head swayed like a sick mare’s as he struggled to hold her upright without revealing their presence.
“I’ll always think of you as mine. I get racked with jealousy just imagining you kissing those pink lips and touching that fair skin. It isn’t fair that you’ll be spoiling her after all the years of me having you to myself. There are memories of us all over Turning Tide, and now you’ll be making newer, fiery memories with her. I would almost have never known you than have you compare your new memories to the ones of me.”
“I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that I don’t care for her. I do care for her, and I respect you enough not to tell you otherwise. You don’t regret anything with me. Come here. I don’t have long. Give me this last.”
Somerset felt Joseph’s hand clamp over her mouth to keep her quiet even as one arm braced around her ribcage to hold her up. The hazel eyes blazing in fury above hers imparted a second strength that she didn’t think she had coming. She fought him to get free as she heard little whispers and heavy breathing coming from around the partition. She flung off the arm from her middle and stormed around the wall, feeling as if the plagues of the Bible had less power than herself.
For a second Phillip didn’t see her so she had time to memorize the sight of him bending Ophelia backward over the long mahogany desk, one hand on her hip and the other hand cupping her face as he kissed her. It was a slow, languorous kiss, the kind they had shared only hours earlier. It was the kiss of two people who are familiar with another and couldn’t be reproduced but by sheer means of desire. Then she saw the faint outline of a scar across Ophelia’s shoulder that matched the scar from the whip in Phillip’s palm. Ophelia. He’d never married because of Ophelia.
“How dare you!” yelled Somerset.
He released Ophelia, her head nearly hitting the desk as he let her go, and jumped up.
“How dare you!” she repeated.
An emotion Somerset couldn’t name colored his cheeks.
“Somerset, let me explain,” he said, as he reached out to her.
“I will not. Do you know who I am? No man treats me like a possession that can be put away on a whim. Have you lost your mind? I can have this story all over Charleston in the time it takes to walk out into the hall! Have you forgotten who my mother is, much less my sister-in-law?”
Somerset couldn’t think of anything else to say. Joseph eased around her, his hand reaching for the pocket where she knew he kept his knife.
“I’m leaving this house tonight,” Somerset said. “We will not be getting married, and it isn’t something you can barter for or negotiate.”
She wrenched the ring from her finger, and because she wanted to hurt Ophelia, too, but didn’t trust herself to make it through another speech without crying, she pitched it as hard as she could at Ophelia’s face.
“Come on, Joseph. Let’s go home.”
***
Chapter 21
Somerset sat in the wingback chair near the parlor window wrapped in one of Blanche’s shawls made by Flora and shipped from Virginia. Flora had kept their deposit on the trousseau and promised that she would create a worthy wardrobe when Somerset did marry. The prospect didn’t interest Somerset.
Kirk Harlow had ridden over from the Hollow that morning to hear about their trip. He hadn’t heard that Ivy and Joseph eloped and settled in for a long morning to hear about Somerset’s broken engagement, how Richmond and Charleston fared, and about Joseph’s elopement. He insisted on playing chess with Joseph while Joseph filled him in on all the news, and Joseph’s stories were regularly interrupted by ecstatic cries of “Checkmate!” from Kirk and then the thudding on the floor of all the pieces as he cleared the board with one lean forearm.
In the old days, Somerset would have laughed, but her thoughts were tedious. Ivy sat in the chair facing her and worked on mending some of Joseph’s socks. She hadn’t told Joseph that she might be pregnant. Her color was ugly, and her eyes were glazed as she worked on the heel. Somerset saw that Joseph cast a worried look at her every few minutes as he gossiped with Kirk.
Somerset didn’t have a plan, and that was the part that worried her more than anything. Thomas and Blanche hadn’t made her feel guilty about throwing Phillip over, and in a strange way, it would have been better if they had. At least then she would have something to be angry with them about. With no job prospects and her desire to get married quelled, Somerset imagined that she would become a fixture of the plantation. She would be the sole old maiden aunt that drove the geese and made fried pies, because Myra was planning her return to Virginia in less than a month, and Victoria and Holt were seeing each other with enough regularity that Bess remarked she would jump the broom next.
Myra sat at Somerset’s feet doing a word puzzle and eating a hunk of chocolate cake that Birdy had just pulled from the oven.
“You can come home with me,” she said between chews. “Grandmother Marshall loves you almost as much as she does me.”
“I hate Richmond.”
“Once you get past the pomp and circumstance it’s a gran
d place to live.”
“Once you get married—and you will—there won’t be anyone left for me to talk to.”
“That’s why you should get married there, too. We can head all the social clubs.”
“I don’t have any business loving anyone.”
She didn’t. She had one great true love, and he disappeared into nowhere.
Blanche entered the room looking wild. Her curls sprang from her coif, and her hands flew in the air as she spoke.
“Somerset, Phillip Russell is sitting in the drawing room this minute! I didn’t know what to do with him. I wanted to tell him you had no desire to see him, but you know he takes over and now he’s sitting out there expecting to see you.”
Ivy shook her head and Kirk and Joseph both turned from the game.
Somerset didn’t stir from her seat.
“He can sit out there all day,” she said. “I’m not seeing him today or any other day. I wish I had a secretary to carry the message to him. He’d understand the message if it were businesslike.”
“Somerset,” boomed Phillip’s voice.
She wasn’t surprised that he let himself in. It was his way.
“Phillip.”
“You left town without giving me an opportunity to explain, and regardless of whether we continue our relationship, I’d like to have the opportunity. Why don’t we go on a walk?”
“I’m not going anywhere with you. I broke the engagement and am telling you with certainty that we aren’t going to continue anything. Anything that you need to say can be said now.”
Blanche let herself out of the room with Myra clinging to the train of her black skirt.
“Ophelia is—”
“Yes, Phillip?”
“Ophelia is a special friend.”
“I have two working eyes that ascertained that fact in Charleston, Phillip. Thank you.”
“I care about Ophelia. We’ve never been able to marry because she’s taken, and the liability on my reputation would be harsh if I married a divorced woman.
“I love you more. Ophelia is jealous of you. You’re younger and more attractive. You’ve never been married, and she resents that your family tree gives me social security that hers can’t. What you heard at the party was my attempt to break things off slowly with her, to acclimate her to her new life.”
“You must think me quite the goose if you’re counting on me to believe this tale. I think Ophelia will always be part of your life, your heart.”
“Mistresses are an accepted part of civilized life, Somerset. You have enough experience in life to know that.”
“The kind of love I want doesn’t involve a mistress, Phillip. There’s no room for a mistress in my marriage, and if there’s one there at the beginning of the marriage, then the rest of it doesn’t bode well for me.”
“You aren’t opposed to mistresses. Don’t be coy. I haven’t upset your moral fiber one bit.”
“I am so. It’s why I left Charleston. Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not sorry for our time together, Phillip. It served to show me the times and people I do value so that I won’t question it ever again. I also have the Unnamed House. That counts for something.”
“The Unnamed House is mine, Somerset. The deed reads Mr. and Mrs. Russell if you bother to look at it.”
“It was an engagement gift to me. You don’t mean to take it back?”
“It cost far more than the diamond on your hand did. I’m not giving it to you as a goodwill gesture. You can have it if you marry me.”
A hot pain wormed itself through her head as she digested the information. Eric’s legacy lost forever and all because she fell for a man who looked like him.
“If you think that’s the appropriate leverage to get me to marry you, you’re wrong,” she said. “I’d rather die.”
“I understand your hurt pride, but I should sue you for breach of contract.”
“What? Never! You breached the contract by being intimate with a married woman.”
“I never said I wouldn’t marry you. I never went back on my word.”
Kirk stood and circled the davenport to stand by Somerset.
“It’s true,” he cautioned her. “No one will care that he sees other women, but you calling off the engagement can get you into trouble if he chooses to pursue it. Don’t get into an argument with him. He’s goading you into a position where you’ll have to marry him. If you want us to, Joseph and I can throw him off the place.”
Phillip laughed a short, deep laugh.
“Imagine what a judge would say about you jilting me in light of your history with my brother Sawyer.”
“What history?” shrugged Somerset.
“Tell us what history, my love. Tell them what inspired you and Sawyer to end your engagement.”
“What?”
“Would you like to tell them what compelled the two of you to break the engagement or should I?”
“What engagement?” asked Joseph. He stood and crossed the room.
“Somerset and Sawyer were engaged. She wasn’t honest with me about it although I knew all along,” said Phillip.
“You knew. You knew he and I were engaged. I heard him argue with you about me before he left. I know he had to have told you about us.”
“It’s true?” asked Ivy.
“Yes, Mrs. Forrest, it’s true,” said Phillip. “Sawyer and Somerset are both prone to making quick decisions and then regretting them. Somerset, do you remember what you said to Sawyer when you begged him to marry you?”
“How do you know all of this?” asked Somerset. “How?”
She knew the answer. A muggy, sunny day at Riverside. A household readying itself for a birthday party with people spilling out on the lawn in candy-colored dresses.
“I can’t stay far from beautiful women, Somerset. I couldn’t help but admire you even if you and Sawyer were in the middle of the most melodramatic parting I’ve ever witnessed. I was only walking on the gravel path behind the trees. I couldn’t help it if I heard you.
“What was it you said about mistresses? You told Sawyer that if he married you, you’d let him have whomever he wished, that all you wanted was to marry him. Isn’t that true?”
“This is not true,” said Joseph.
“It is,” said Somerset. “It is true.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” asked Ivy.
“I was waiting for the right time,” said Somerset. “I didn’t want to offend Eric’s family by marrying his cousin, and then Sawyer broke things off because—because—”
“It’s an unbelievable tale,” said Phillip. “Tell them, dear. Then they’ll understand why he had to skip town.”
“You’re enjoying this so much, you tell them,” growled Somerset.
She stood and poured herself a generous glass of wine. Joseph’s and Ivy’s eyes followed her as if she were a stranger. Phillip made everything sound awful and he hadn’t told the worst of his news.
“I am enjoying this,” he said, “and if you’ll change your mind and go back to Charleston with me, you won’t have to suffer falling from your pedestal in the eyes of your family.”
“Don’t give in to him,” Joseph said. “I don’t care if you murdered someone or helped Wilson himself when he came through. Let’s find a way to get this cretin out of here.”
“I’m not marrying you. I have more self-respect than you are trying to make it look like I have.” Somerset squared her shoulders. “Go ahead. Tell. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Somerset and Sawyer couldn’t pull off marriage because Sawyer killed Eric. He tried to save him from a Yankee ambush and his aim was bad. He killed Eric. When he remembered, he couldn’t live with himself except by confessing to her.”
Phillip’s expression was smug as he poured a glass of whiskey.
“That’s blasphemy!” Joseph crossed over to the mantel and held onto it, his back turned to them.
“It is,” agreed Phillip. “It is. The man who loved her more than anyone
killed her one true love, and she had the misfortune to fall in love with him. It is blasphemy.”
“Somerset?” asked Ivy. Her gray eyes brimmed with unshed tears.
“It’s true,” Somerset said. “Sawyer’s fall made him forget, but Joseph’s injury made him begin remembering. He couldn’t rest until he told me. Then he wanted a fresh start so he went west. It’s true.”
“I don’t want to believe it,” said Kirk. His hawk profile was anguished as he paced from the door to the chair.
“I hate to have to be the one to point this out, but Sawyer technically didn’t do anything wrong,” said Somerset.
Joseph reached up and pulled Teddie’s Whitfield from its place above the mantel. Amelia had forced it into his hands as they boarded the train to Alabama. She said she never wanted to see another weapon as long as she lived.
Joseph turned the worn, scarred piece over and over in his hands before replacing it above the mantel. Then he went to the highboy and removed Teddie’s Bible and thumbed through it before replacing it. His face was smooth and unperturbed as he turned back to them.
“Phillip Russell, you’ve done enough to this family. I challenge you to a duel.”
“Joseph, no!” screamed Ivy.
“I challenge you to a duel.”
“Think of me, Joseph!”
“I am thinking of the whole family.”
“Sometimes things need to just be about me.” Ivy’s eyes flashed.
“She’s right,” cried Somerset. “One of you getting shot won’t bring back Eric or change who killed him. Sawyer left. I did a foolish thing by falling into Phillip’s arms but there’s no need to pistol duel over any of it. Think of your wife, Joseph!”
“We’ll all be more comfortable if he’s dead. Do you want him spreading this trash everywhere he goes?”
“I accept,” said Philip.
