Even now, all these years later, she could hardly dispel the incredible sense of regret. Lord only knew, there were so many things she would do differently if only she could.
So much she would change...
The knock upon the door startled her. She’d completely forgotten about her tea.
“Come in,” she said, a bit unsettled as the door opened.
“Your tea, Miss Woodard.”
Sarah straightened. “Yes, thank you, Hopkins.”
He entered, bearing his tray, and she ignored the slight raise of his brows as he glanced down his nose at the paper in her hand. She held her tongue, resenting in herself the need to explain. Why should she be forced to? What man felt obliged to explain himself when caught with a paper in his hand? One he’d paid for twice at that! Having scarcely read a word of it, she refused to set it aside, just on principle. Her tea could wait.
“Thank you, Hopkins,” she said again, dismissing him, and didn’t bother to wait until he left to continue her perusal of the morning edition. With Hopkins dismissed and her morose thoughts chased away, she began to scan the articles in earnest, finding little of interest...
She perused an article about some new headache and hangover remedy:
Coca-Cola goes on sale May 8 at Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, where local pharmacist John S. Pemberton has formulated his esteemed Brain Tonic and Intellectual Beverage from ingredients which include dried leaves from the South American coca shrub…
She flipped the page. What a name for a hangover remedy: Esteemed Brain Tonic and Intellectual Beverage!
A model Bloomingdale’s department store to open on Third Avenue at Fifty-ninth Street...
And then ... there it was ...
His name in bold print, as it so often was.
Peter Holland’s personal life was fodder for gossip, and his business dealings carefully scrutinized by his peers and the press, but rarely was there a single word spoken of the one person Sarah most wanted to know about. Christopher. And here it was at last, though indirectly.
And more.
Wanted. Personal instructor familiar with the systems of Louis Braille and William B. Waite. Must be willing to work and reside in house, and must deal well with children. Generous pay with benefits. Willing to employ the blind. Send resume directly to Peter Holland at the corner of University Place and Twelfth Street. Applicants will be personally selected and interviewed.
Sarah inhaled a breath, and her hands began to tremble. She was forced to set the paper aside. Good Lord ... this was precisely the opportunity she had been hoping for ... waiting for... six long years...
“Miss Woodard?”
It couldn’t have presented itself more propitiously. “Miss Woodard?”
Shivering away her thoughts, she peered up to find Hopkins standing at the doorway still, the knob in hand, but he was frozen in his stance, staring at her. Waiting for some response.
She blinked, her thoughts still upon the article, and its import. Her mind raced with unmade plans. “Yes?”
“Are you quite all right? You appear as though you’ve a sudden malaise.”
“Oh yes,” Sarah declared, “I’m fine, thank you.” Never better, in truth! Despite that she had hoped and prayed for such an opportunity—prepared for it even!—she simply hadn’t expected to find it this dreary morn, not when she’d checked the paper literally hundreds of mornings before to no avail.
She peered up from the paper, placing it upon the table beside her. “I’m quite well indeed. That will be all, Hopkins, thank you.”
This time she waited for him to leave her before rising from the chair and going to her desk. There was so much yet to be done! So little time! But no matter what it took, no matter what the risk, she was going to do this—she wanted Mary’s journals. She needed to know the truth.
Mary’s journals had all been discovered and dissected by the police and the press, but for that one—the one that held the accounts of her days until the date of her death. Sarah wanted that diary. All her carefully laid plans would not go to waste, and Peter Holland was going to pay the consequences of his actions. Sarah was determined to see it so.
She was going to find that missing journal!
Opening her desk drawer, she plucked up a sheet of paper and reached for her quill. She scribbled a brief note and then called for Hopkins, instructing him to hire a messenger to deliver her message to an address on Twelfth Street. That done, she returned to the desk and plucked out another sheet. Wholly absorbed now with the task at hand, she sat down to pen her resume.
Inadvertently, with his very own ad, Peter Holland had given her the most ingenious idea how to search his house free of suspicion. Who would ever suspect a blind instructor for the blind?
Chapter 2
Most six-year-old boys might have entered a room with a boisterous shout and a slide to his knees, particularly in the case of this room, which was situated at the rear end of a long, wide corridor with bare wood floors, floors that were buffed to a brilliant, blinding shine. His son entered quietly with a smile that shone more brightly than any wood floors could possibly. His steps were cautious and yet unerring, his bearing straight and dignified.
Pride filled him.
“Daddy?”
Peter Holland swallowed the knot that rose in his throat.
Christopher couldn’t know that his father’s eyes had been trained upon him from his first glimpse of movement at the far end of the long hall. Even before Christopher had spoken, Peter’s attention had been fully riveted on his only son. It pained him that Christopher might scent his presence, hear his every movement even, but his son could never perceive the stillness of a loving stare.
“Here, son,” he said, and his voice wavered a bit. Christopher’s smile brightened. “I knew that, Daddy,” he boasted, and spoiled the prideful boyish response with a statement that sounded entirely too mature. “I can smell your port.”
Peter chuckled, but his gaze fell to the glass that remained ever before him upon his desk, never touched, never acknowledged, except by his child who couldn’t possibly understand its meaning. He turned away from it, his gaze returning to Christopher, but the sweet scent of the liquid lingered. He closed his eyes and took the scent into his lungs... a soft, sweet burn upon the air.
But how much of the burn was remembered and how much was real?
Did his son smell it the same way?
Would he describe it as such when he had never felt the sweet, numbing heat slide down his throat?
“Are you working, Daddy? Am I botherin’ you?”
“Never,” Peter answered without hesitation. “Come in, son.”
His steps were less cautious now, as Peter had never placed obstacles between his desk and his door. By design, the room was almost sterile in its decor, as was the rest of the house. And yet Christopher did not run into his arms as Peter craved. His son had never done so. There seemed to be imaginary walls between Christopher’s black world and the universe beyond, barriers that barred far more than color and light. It was as though his blindness robbed him of confidence, as well.
But this moment, Christopher’s expression was eager, and something more. “I can’t wait, Daddy! May I stay?”
To listen to the interview, he meant. “Christopher,” Peter protested.
“I’ll be quiet, Daddy. I promise! I promise!”
Peter had never a doubt. His son’s deportment had never been anything less than upright. Christ, he was an old man at the ripe age of six.
“It’s not that,” Peter said. “I just can’t imagine why you’d wish to. We don’t even know if this will be the one, Christopher.” Neither was he certain he wished his son to hear some of the answers the applicants gave. They angered him enough with their lack of regard for his son’s condition.
Then again, admittedly, much of what angered Peter failed even to register with his patient, young son. Certainly Christopher was wise beyond his years, but perhaps, as a father, he was a
bit overprotective.
“If you wish,” he relented.
Christopher beamed. “Where may I sit, Daddy?”
“How about in my lap?”
“No!” Christopher declared at once, and halted in his step. He crossed his arms with stubborn little- boy pride, and exclaimed, “They’ll think I’m a baby.”
Peter chuckled at his son’s alarmed expression. “Impossible, sport. You forgot to be a baby altogether. Everyone knows that.”
And it was true.
His son was brilliant, his mind unparalleled in its thirst for knowledge. Peter had rarely seen such a grasp of the English language in a child so young, nor had he ever witnessed such a profound sense of logic. Were Christopher not blind, Peter would have labeled his mind photographic. Even from as early as the age of three, Christopher had been able to recite a tale, word for word, after the first time it was read to him. Christopher had graduated from his crib to a mountaintop, from his baby squeals to the gentle words of a sage. Peter had no reason to believe he should wait before introducing him to Braille.
“How about you sit at my desk,” Peter suggested, “and I’ll sit upon the divan?”
Apparently that satisfied him, because Christopher came forward once more and Peter opened his arms to embrace his son. “I think I’ll just sneak myself a hug,” he said playfully, and Christopher squealed with embarrassed delight as Peter lifted him onto his lap.
“Who’s coming today?” his son demanded to know.
“Someone better than yesterday, I hope.”
Yesterday’s applicant had come near to leaving with a bloodied nose when he’d dared suggest that Christopher wear dark spectacles in his presence always. The man was uncomfortable with the stare. Without warning, Peter had launched from his seat and the man had leapt from his own, taking his leave at once. He’d been quite fortunate. Had Peter set hands upon him, he might not have walked out the door at all.
The day before that he’d interviewed an older woman who had never had the first contact with Braille but had cared for her blind mother until her death. The poor woman seemed to have missed the point entirely. If he’d wished to hire an escort for Christopher, he’d have done so long ago. Christopher didn’t need a bloody chaperon. He had Peter and he had his aunt for that. What he needed was to begin to learn to manage his own affairs—and the first step toward that end was to instill in him a sense of confidence that he could accomplish anything he set out to do. Matters of intellect did not seem to intimidate his son, so the next order of business was to empower Christopher with the tools he would need to achieve his goals.
Blindness was a disadvantage certainly, but not an insurmountable obstacle. Peter refused to see it as such.
His son would succeed despite it. Peter intended to make certain.
“What’s his name, Daddy?”
“Not him, son. Her.” He lifted his brows, though not for Christopher’s sake. It was something he had great reservations about, to be quite honest. He hadn’t wished to grant yesterday’s interview with the old woman either, but he never left a stone unturned—not that he was opposed to hiring a woman, but most were simply not so well lettered. “Her name is Sarah...” He leaned forward to peer over his son’s shoulder at the file upon his desk. “Sarah Hopkins. But you should call her Miss Hopkins.”
“All right,” his son replied.
The tinny sound of a distant bell rang, and the echo of footsteps pursued it into the foyer, heavy but distinct footfalls upon solid wood. A knock upon the door at the far end of the hall followed and then the door was opened, the caller greeted.
Because their visitor had been expected, Gunther escorted their guest in without announcement.
Peter stood, with his son in his arms, and peered down the hall to find not one, but two women being escorted down the corridor to his office.
He lifted a brow at the sight of them.
“We are being invaded,” he joked to his son. And then whispered, “There are two of them.”
His son giggled while Peter settled him at his desk.
“What do they look like?”
Peter understood the question. “Not too awful scary.”
His son covered his ears and whispered, “She sounds like Aunt Ruth!”
Peter watched as they entered the room. The taller of the two overshadowed the other. Boisterous in her demeanor, she prattled on to Gunther, who dutifully ignored her snippy tone and answered her questions with a yes madame, no madame.
“She rather does at that,” Peter agreed.
Though he couldn’t quite hear their discourse, he thought her rather confident in her bearing, a positive trait in one who would teach, and an indication to Peter that she knew her position and was well at ease with her abilities. The other woman, he could not see entirely, as the boisterous one managed to shield her from his view. He moved forward to greet them.
She—they—were hardly what he had expected.
Both were lovely, and some bit younger than he had imagined. The boisterous one appeared to be in her early forties, he surmised, while the other couldn’t be more than thirty.
“Mel Frank,” said the boisterous one, extending her hand in greeting.
Peter stepped forward to accept it, and was about to bring it to his lips for a gentlemanly peck, but she wrapped her fingers about his hand and, with the grip of a deadly boa constrictor, shook it fiercely.
Her boldness took him aback so that he failed at first to note the name.
Mel Frank.
She looked him squarely in the face, and with her piercing blue eyes staring back at him, the realization struck him first that she was not blind.
She was not his applicant.
His attention turned at once to the woman who stood behind her. He blinked then, and entirely dismissed Mel Frank.
He forgot, even, to breathe.
Good God, she wasn’t just lovely.
She was damned well beautiful.
With delicate brows that arched over dark spectacles and a princess nose, she exuded a sort of little-girl charm. Auburn strands escaped her otherwise neat coiffure, and framed her face with gentle highlights that contrasted with her rich dark hair. But it was her lips that caught his attention, and held it—full lips that seemed formed to suit a man’s pleasures. Not those of a child at all.
Did she know how to use them? The thought stirred his loins.
“Mr. Holland,” Mrs. Frank said, drawing his attention once more. “May I introduce to you my employer, Miss Sarah Hopkins.”
Miss Hopkins stepped forward, and Peter held his breath. His heart began to hammer.
“How do you do?” she replied at once, and extended her hand, as Mel had done. Only her gesture wasn’t nearly as bold. He was so stunned by the sight of her that his hand remained at his side.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had been so instantly taken with a woman.
Breaking free of his stupor, he took her hand but refrained from kissing it, merely shook it. He had the indication from both women’s demeanors that a gentleman’s kiss would be an entirely unwelcome gesture. Though Sarah’s manner was not nearly as forward as Mrs. Frank’s, her carriage was filled with the same haughty defiance, despite her obvious handicap; she couldn’t see him.
Peter’s first thought was that he wished she would remove her dark spectacles so he could see the color of her eyes. The mischievous shape of her brows intrigued him and he found himself peeking down over the rim of her spectacles, trying to get a glimpse. And then his focus shifted to the spectacles.
Blind, she was blind.
He was ashamed to admit that the notion left him slightly unnerved. His gaze fell once more to her lips, not quite able to meet her eyes, despite that she couldn’t spy his.
And yet, to his stupefaction, and despite her disadvantage, for the first time in so long, surrounded by such disparate female company, Peter found himself at a loss for words.
“Do come in,” he managed, still not qui
te able to tear his gaze from her lovely lips.
Slightly pouty.
Unpainted.
They looked so soft... he longed to brush a finger across them. Like the velvet blush of a rose petal... they begged to be touched.
Hardly by design, he held her hand a bit longer than was appropriate.
Chapter 3
Her hands were trembling.
Sarah prayed he wouldn’t notice.
Confound it all, this wasn’t going to work.
Good Lord! This, of course, was the man who had turned her cousin’s heart. Of course he would be beautiful. For him, Mary had cast away all her values. For him, she had thrown away her life!
Sarah tried to remember as she stared into his eyes—deep blue, and piercing in a way she’d never experienced before. In that instant she was grateful her own eyes were shielded, for she doubted she could have hidden the thoughts that were going through her mind.
There was something slightly wicked in the way he gazed at her... something slightly thrilling about the way his eyes lowered to her mouth... lingered there.
It gave her a delicious but unwelcome shiver.
Resisting the urge to turn away, she reminded herself that a blind woman could not be cowed by what she could not see. And she tried to appear oblivious, tried to appear blissfully unaware of his lips, which parted once more to speak. Sensual lips that promised a lover’s gentle kisses...
Another shiver raced down her spine.
She closed her eyes.
He was Mary’s murderer, she reminded herself—a heartless wretch.
“My son, Christopher,” he said, introducing the boy who sat behind the desk with a wave of his hand—a gesture she wasn’t supposed to see.
She could scarcely hide her gasp of surprise at his introduction.
How could she have failed to notice the very face she most wished to see?
Swallowing the lump that rose in her throat, she resisted the urge to turn to him fully, to drink in the sight of Christopher Holland with her eyes. So long she’d waited for this moment! She tried to focus on Mel’s advice, and instead tilted her head toward the sound of his voice when he spoke, seeing him first through the sound of his little-boy voice.
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