by Darcy Burke
“You wouldn’t take the baby from his mother,” she whispered.
“Yes, I would. If your husband succeeds in winning his annulment, of course I would. You cannot support the child alone.”
Richard felt no compunction about putting Lizzie on notice. It had necessitated his reaching the bottom of the sea of despair, but now that Richard had kicked off the bottom, he had nowhere to go but upward. Toward light. Seeking air. For the little creature he’d sired, he was determined to do the right thing starting now.
Lizzie wheeled and slammed out of the door of his shabby little cabin.
“Goodbye, Lizzie,” Richard called after her, mocking.
He was free at last. Blessedly free of bad coffee, whining manipulations, and the miasma of scandal that followed Lizzie wherever she went. Richard slept more soundly that night than he had in years.
His peace was not to last. Shortly after dawn Richard awoke to pounding on his cabin door.
“Open up, Lord Abuser of Women!” Bang, bang, bang. “Open this door and fight a man your own size!”
Groggily, Richard stuck his legs into his trousers. Had he been drinking, he might not have responded but because he was not hungover for once, Richard felt perfectly awake within moments. He rubbed his face and found a flake of dried blood from Lizzie’s direct hit the evening before.
“Come out here you coward!” a young man yelled.
Richard unlatched the flimsy door and stepped into the wan morning light barefoot and shirtless. A lad with slightly oversized ears and the prominent Adam’s apple of youth staggered back several paces.
Below the stairs stood five or six onlookers. One of these was Lizzie. She appeared hungover and miserable. The faint bruise at her eye had turned a shocking combination of violet and green. A lump at her hairline was an ugly, mottled mass. Lizzie’s undamaged eye was bloodshot, whether from tears or from wine or both.
The tall boy jabbed a finger at Richard. “You did this to her.”
He turned and jabbed his finger in Lizzie’s direction. She did not meet her would-be protector’s gaze but stood defiantly a few feet away, daring him to contradict the accusation. Richard absorbed this for a moment. Was it possible that Lizzie felt any shred of shame for her outright lie?
Richard began to laugh. He chuckled, warming up. Then he guffawed. As the laughter overpowered him, the boy swung a large fist at Richard’s face.
Richard was ready for him. He lifted one leg, shot his foot straight into the boy’s chest and sent him sprawling down the steps into the duff.
“Spence!” Lizzie shouted. Another girl held her back. “You gave Lizzie that goose egg and the shiner to match when you tumbled her off the porch yesterday evening.” Richard stepped warily down from the porch as Spencer regained his feet.
Spencer swung again and missed. Richard had never been a brawler, but he was trained in boxing. He was also a veteran of more than his share of pub fights. He’d learned from painful experience that Americans did not fight fair. They fought to win. That hard-won knowledge had brought him to Howard, after all.
“Lizzie claims that you decked her after a quarrel last night,” the girl holding Lizzie’s arm spoke, though Richard heard the hesitation in her voice.
“The quarrel is truth. Nothing else,” he replied, low and sure.
“How dare you call my lady a liar!” Spencer lunged and this time caught Richard with a glancing blow to the shoulder. Instantly, two other boys were upon them, with Richard trying to defend and attack simultaneously from all fronts. Richard grabbed a shorter lad by the collar and used him as a shield.
“Coward!” the third boy, stout and pimple-faced, shouted.
By now they had attracted an audience. Lizzie whimpered helplessly and cowered into her companion’s body. Richard felt a flash of rage at the way she used people. Everything had to be her way, and she must be the center of attention at all costs. How had he sunk so low as to get involved with such a narcissistic, spoiled brat?
Never again. It stops here. Now.
With a grunt Richard flung the captive boy at Pimples. Both fell to the ground in a squirming heap. Richard brought his hands up to guard his face. Spencer bobbed on the balls of his feet, wary now that he realized his opponent had both skill and strength on his side.
Richard feinted and shot out his fist. The boy’s head snapped back. Blood spurted. Richard didn’t let up. He buried a fist into the lad’s middle. Doubled over, his rear end was an easy target. Richard placed one foot on the boy’s rump and sent him sprawling into the heap of underdeveloped manhood.
Richard advanced on Lizzie. She cringed pitifully. It made Richard feel like a monster. Yet he was not the one who’d used a prospective child as leverage in a scheme to cheat his friend. That was all Lizzie’s calculation.
“Don’t ever lie about me again,” Richard warned softly. “I am not your plaything. I am not your lover. Not your friend. Not your foe. Leave me alone. We are finished.”
He turned his back. Miriam Walsh stood at the edge of the onlookers, observing the scene with gray eyes wide with shock. Richard shook his bruised hand as he walked to her. He gripped her chin gently, firmly. Miriam’s gaze never wavered. She did not flinch as he bent to kiss her. The thrill of kissing Miriam’s fine, sweet lips, mixed with the adrenaline of the fistfight, went clear to his cock. She was beautiful, and Richard wanted her. As a spoil, as a woman, it didn’t matter. At any cost.
“I am returning to the city immediately. I will call upon you when you return,” he said, pulling away.
“Yes. I would like that,” Miriam responded without hesitation.
So much for her supposed brilliance, Richard scoffed mentally. Miriam was too foolish to understand that even if he were through with Lizzie, they were of a kind. He would have her because he could, and because her lips were silk against his, and he liked the way she tasted. Richard trotted up the steps into his cottage. The murmur of whispers rippled like waves after him—every bit a walking scandal as the woman he scorned.
Chapter 8
The day after her return from the beach, Miriam made her way downtown to the modest New York Stock and Exchange Board. The clerk across the counter frowned. His eyebrows resembled two caterpillars wiggling across his face to meet over the bridge of his nose. “You again.”
“So it is,” Miriam replied cheerfully. “I am after all listed on the account.”
She refrained from saying it was her account, even though it was. All the thousands of dollars she had accumulated from her father’s small initial investment several years ago were her own to dispose of as she liked. What Miriam liked to do most was to make her money multiply. The compounding of numbers soothed and thrilled her at the same time. This was independence. It meant she could exercise a degree of choice over her own fate. She couldn’t change the fact of her asthma. Not that she had any intention of leaving her father or Mrs. Kent. But the memory of two brown eyes made her abdomen go warm and soft.
“What you want to trade this time?” snapped the clerk.
There was a nameplate on the desk which read Mr. Featherstone. “I don’t suppose you’ve decided to take my advice and put everything into railroads.”
Not exactly. Miriam had quite enough railroad stock, mostly in England but a portion of it invested in a new project across the river in New Jersey. Much to Mr. Featherstone’s disappointment she continued to sell whenever it rose and purchase declining stocks. The past several years had left many investors reeling as booms and busts rocked the investing world, but Miriam had devised a strategy to manage the shocks. It did not involve accepting advice from arrogant, strange men who thought they knew better than she.
“Mr. Feathers,” she began with all the silliness she could summon. “I hoped you could advise me on whether beef has risen or fallen over the past several weeks?”
“Falling like a rock.” Then, under his breath, “Not that women ought to pay attention to such things. And it’s Featherstone.”
“Oh, of course,” Miriam giggled, playing the idiot she quite definitely was not. “I don’t pay any attention to complicated things like buying low and selling high. As a woman I cannot be expected to know the difference between up-and-down. I’m just the messenger.” Miriam shrugged. The clerk’s eyebrows appeared to crawl across his forehead as he wrote out the orders. He passed the papers across the desk for her for final signatures.
“Why on earth are you buying beef? I told you it’s falling like a rock,” he complained with exasperation.
“I was hungry,” Miriam responded with another shrug.
Mr. Featherstone rolled his eyes. This was the most irksome part of her errand. Other clerks lined the rough-built stock exchange, but somehow, she always ended up with this one. Mr. Featherstone. Last time she had been in line to meet with another clerk entirely. Immediately before her turn, the clerk had closed his window and waved her over to her nemesis. Miriam took this as a sign from the fates that she was heaven-sent to torture him with feigned stupidity in addition to the pleasure of watching her account increase.
True, sometimes she had a bad month or even a bad quarter. When that happened, Mr. Featherstone took great pleasure in condemning her losses. Never mind it was her money to lose, and she usually lost less than the men who bet heavily on a single commodity. Nobody believed in her strategy of buying shares across a range of commodities, bonds, and stocks, but Miriam saw the results in the form of numbers she tracked diligently.
“Here you are,” Mr. Featherstone said grudgingly. “Certificate for shares of beef. Sign at the bottom. I’ll need to reach out to Mr. Walsh to confirm this trade is within his understanding.”
Miriam glared at the man. “That is unnecessary”—especially as Mr. Walsh, unless he meant her father, did not exist—“He is away for the summer. I am approved to manage all transactions on the account.”
“No one has given you leave to lose a thousand dollars on cattle,” Caterpillar eyebrows informed her.
“Well, I suppose I shan’t lose it then.” Miriam scooped up her belongings and swept out of the room with her back stiff. The damned man had better execute her purchase. If he didn’t, the fictional Mr. Walsh had every intention of lodging a complaint with his superiors. Perhaps she could get Richard to play the part. She could just imagine the English nobleman looking down his nose as he informed Mr. Featherstone’s superiors of his useless advice. The mere idea made her chuckle as she took the steps down at twice her usual pace, never mind the hint of a wheeze that crept into her breath with the exertion.
Mrs. Kent helped her settle into the carriage. Today had been a rare departure from Miriam’s side as she ran a personal errand. Miriam savored her short-lived freedom to manage her monetary affairs free of interference from the people she loved best. Upon their arrival at home, Miriam discovered a pale envelope on the center hall table with her name scrawled across the front in a slanting masculine script.
It read, Miss Walsh. Curious, she handed off her redingote to Mrs. Kent and went to her father’s study in search of a letter opener. Her heart beat in her throat as she tried to tamp down her eagerness. A shock of excitement zapped through her at the sight of the name at the bottom.
Richard Northcote.
Dear Miss Walsh, he had written. I request the pleasure of your company tomorrow afternoon at two. Please respond if this time meets your approval.
That was all. Miriam smiled and traced the edge of the elegant paper with one finger.
“I see you found your letter,” her father observed from behind her. Miriam startled. She hadn’t noticed him sitting in his favorite leather chair reading the newspaper.
“Papa, I’ve met someone.” She clasped her hands in her skirts trying to quell her nerves. Livingston Walsh emerged from behind his newspaper inch by inch. First, his shock of black curls, cropped short and combed with oil to make it stick close to his scalp. Her unruly curls marked her as Livingston Walsh’s progeny. Next, his high, pale forehead. Here, too, Miriam bore her father’s stamp. Fortunately, her eyebrows weren’t as thick as the forest that formed an almost-solid line across her father’s brow.
“A friend?” he asked in a voice that sounded as if he gargled gravel. Livingston’s affection for tobacco had roughened his baritone into a tiger’s purr.
“A man,” Miriam clarified. The newspaper descended further to reveal an aquiline nose above an extravagant mustache. To her great relief she hadn’t inherited the facial hair, either. The bump in the center of her nose that matched his was enough to make her feel self-conscious. Then again, Miriam generally felt self-conscious about her appearance. As if her asthma wasn’t enough, her height, excessive mass of dark curls and bumpy nose usually left Miriam feeling more self-conscious than attractive—until she’d met Richard.
“A man?” The paper fell to the table. The last time Miriam had seen her father’s eyebrows knit together in such a glower they’d lost half their wealth in a crash. Miriam swallowed.
“Yes, Papa, a man. He wishes to call upon me.”
Her father tilted his chair back on its legs. Miriam fought the urge to press her toe against the bottom and send him sprawling backward. Recently, she’d begun to think of her father as aged, and as someone in need of coddling despite his robust health and wiry, strong physique. As a youth, she had been emboldened by her father’s indulgence of her abilities. It had led her to be insufficiently respectful of him. Yet he continued to protect her as if she were the tiny child left in his care after her mother had died.
Miriam was no longer a child. She ached with the need for her father to understand that.
“I suppose it’s time,” Livingston responded mildly.
“Time?” Miriam asked, arching one brow.
“You’re of age.” Wood squeaked and thumped downward. Livingston’s chair had settled back to earth. He laid his newspaper on the table, unfolded, in a heap of printed words. “Twenty-three is past time for a young lady to be interested in a suitor. Not that I will give my daughter to the first blighter who happens to come along.”
As if Miriam needed reminding. She retrieved the newspaper and folded it back, neatly running one finger down the edge to make a crease. Rows of numbers faced upward, begging her to read them and discern their hidden meanings. For now, Miriam resisted the siren call of the daily report on activity at The New York Stock and Exchange. Today, there were more pressing matters that needed her attention.
“Although I am old enough to make my own decisions, I prefer to have your approval,” she said softly.
“Good girl.” Her father’s chin dipped. “If you believe this particular man is worthy of your time and affections, I wish to make his acquaintance. You, my dear, are a treasure not lightly bestowed.”
Miriam’s heart strained her bodice. She wasn’t foolish enough to believe Richard’s suit would be welcomed with open arms, considering his Englishness and affiliation with Lizzie, but her father had agreed to meet with him. Given her father’s protectiveness, it was as optimistic an opening as she could hope for. A grin stretched her lips wide. “Thank you, Papa.”
“Any man wise enough to win your heart is worth a few minutes of my time, Miri.”
Miriam thought of Richard’s warning on the beach. I am a very bad man, he’d said. Indeed, if he’d done half the things he claimed, Miriam wouldn’t trust him either. She didn’t believe his presentation of the facts, however. Not entirely. Anyone could see the grief and despair in the man’s eyes, if they bothered to look. She believed there was more to the story. No man killed his father and experienced the kind of remorse that Richard did without it being an accident.
He wasn’t a bad man, only lost.
More than anything, Miriam wanted to help him find his way home. Richard was a good man in a bad place, just like Lizzie was a good woman doing bad things because she was unhappy. No wonder the two had been attracted to one another. It was over now, yet Miriam didn’t feel entirely sanguine about taking up with her frien
d’s former lover.
She supposed she ought to feel a greater degree of condemnation toward Richard and Lizzie for commencing an extramarital affair, yet her father’s affairs had taught Miriam to be skeptical of marriage vows not honestly entered into. People married for any number of reasons. The only one that seemed to work over the long term was love. Even that was a roll of the dice.
“How are Marshall Walsh’s investments faring lately?” Livingston Walsh stretched as he stood up from the table, cracking his neck with a loud pop. Miriam’s gaze returned to the stock figures in the daily as if drawn by a magnet. She skimmed the top line. Her smile widened further.
“It should be a good report this month. Wheat has rebounded. The futures I bought in April are paying off.”
“You’ve accomplished great things with the small stake I lent you. You’ve an eye for wise investments, lass. Consider how you’d like to use your fortune.” Her father followed her into the breakfast room, where Mrs. Kent had laid out a simple luncheon. The dining room often went unused for weeks at a time, for they rarely entertained guests here in New York. They had another residence, Cliffside, for that.
“I will. Perhaps on an extravagant wedding gown,” Miriam teased. Her father cut his eyes at her. She’d managed to shock him.
“That sounds serious. I had hoped you would put your earnings toward a more charitable cause, but it’s your money to spend. If you want a silk gown dripping in diamonds to be married in, then it’s your decision.” Livingston tried to smile indulgently but it came off as a grimace at the thought of wasted coin.
“I can’t imagine spending money on anything sillier than an extravagant gown. A simple dress works for me, should my wedding day ever come to pass.” Miriam tucked the newspaper under her arm and rose on tiptoe to kiss her father’s bearded cheek.
