Blind Trust (15 page)

“Your clients, Mrs. Ganay—they're from the cream of society, the Old Guard primarily?”

“Oh, yes.”

“So this man was able to spread his rumor through that society.

“I see what you mean, Mr. Finn. He would have to be one of them himself, wouldn't he?” Fleur Ganay's eyes widened. “He would have to be a gentleman.”

“Exactly.” Tavish frowned, thinking hard. Something had tickled at his brain, something he'd not thought important at the time. What had Columbine been telling him about the new problems of her girls? Something about paying more for sheets …

Could it be, he thought, horrified. He was almost tempted to laugh at the perverse audacity of it.
A brothel trust?

“Mrs. Ganay,” he started cautiously, “has by any chance this unknown person insisted that you charge more for board and linens? Or insisted on your dismissing girls should they get sick or in trouble?”

“Yes, it is abominable, a great trial to me.” Fleur Ganay looked at him with new interest. “How did you know this?”

“Because those other girls I talked to—through Mrs. Nash—have been complaining about the same thing. So that means that other houses have been blackmailed, just as you have. And they are all steadily raising their prices.”

“So someone is making a great deal of money,” Mrs. Ganay said grimly. “But I think I know his weakness, Mr. Finn. He is greedy. He is pushing us too far, and our girls. The latest demand is that I turn over the girls' incomes to him to bank. I have resisted for weeks, put him off. This is something I cannot do! What if those savings, small as they are now with these new charges, should disappear? I shouldn't be able to face my girls, or myself. Already things have gone too far. This house depends on laughter, on gaiety. Soon the girls will not be able to conceal their anxiety and worry. Even the price of abortions has risen through the roof! Oh, I'm so sorry, Mr. Finn, I forgot myself. I apologize for distressing you—”

Trying to hide his excitement, Tavish sat forward. He hadn't been offended; suddenly, a light had appeared. “Abortionists,” he murmured. Mrs. Usenko. Claude's messenger boy had gone to her door. What if the money mentioned hadn't been to pay for services rendered? What if it wasn't a bill for Claude to pay but a percentage of the profits Mrs. Usenko would have to pay to Claude? Tavish put down his sherry glass, almost dashing it to the floor in his excitment.

“That's quite all right, Mrs. Ganay,” he said quickly. “I'm not distressed at all. By the way, did you say whether your tormentor has a name?”

“Oh, I didn't mention it. A Mr. Dargent, he calls himself.”

“And you've never met him.”

“No. I've never seen him. Only one of my girls has.”

Shock snapped Tavish's spine straight. “Someone here? Who? May I speak to her?”

Fleur Ganay fluttered a hand. “Oh, the girl disappeared long ago. She was recruited by Mr. Dargent. Apparently she was fired from her job and wound up on Wall Street as a flower girl. That's where he found her. He sent her to me. I found out later that she had agreed to give him part of her earnings under the table. That was his entree into my house. I don't know if he forced her, or if he was her lover, but she did tell him how the house was run. Eventually, she left—just disappeared one day—and Mr. Dargent offered me his ‘proposition.' I suppose he missed her earnings and got a taste of what money he could make. You know the rest.”

“You have no idea where this girl has gone?”

“None at all. She didn't stay in New York, that I know. I would have heard, somehow, were she at another house. She was very pretty,” she mused. “Smart as a whip, but there was a kind of shining innocence in her eyes that she never lost. Some clients pay well for that.”

“And her name? Do you remember?”

“I remember all my girls, Mr. Finn. Her name was Annie O'Day.”

Tavish made a mental note of the name. “Tell me, Mrs. Ganay. Have you a client by the name of Claude Statton?”

She gave a sour smile. “I'm afraid my girls are too sophisticated for Mr. Statton. He was here once or twice, but not for years. I believe he frequents Irene Trimble's.” She sniffed. “Her girls are young and depraved, an enticing combination.”

“Young?”

“Well, young-looking, at least. There are some men, Mr. Finn, who enjoy girls who have not passed into womanhood. Is there something about Mr. Statton I should know, Mr. Finn?”

“No,” Tavish said.
Darcy
, his heart cried. To be allied to such a man. “Nothing at all. May I have another glass of that excellent Madeira?”

Tavish waited underneath a large oak in the park. He tried not to look at his watch more than once every five minutes. She would come, he told himself. Somehow, she would manage. He had taken a risk by leaving a message at her house, but he had checked to make sure Claude was downtown first. Tavish looked at his watch again.

He was in a mess, that was certain. He wasn't sure enough that Claude was Dargent to tell Darcy. But he had to tell her he suspected him. If Claude wasn't the man himself, he was surely involved up to his neck. He could have committed the murder in San Francisco—Edward had told him that Claude was in Boston for three straight weeks in January. It would have been difficult, but it was possible. He knew it was foolish, he knew he was letting his heart lead him, but he had to warn Darcy.

He looked up and he saw her. She was heading down the snow-banked path, her hands hidden in her muff, her cheeks aglow with the exercise. Her coat was plum-colored trimmed with dark fur, and a dark green dress hung beneath it. She hadn't seen him yet, and then he moved out of the shadow of the tree and she recognized him. A slight scamper to her step was instantly corrected back to her ladylike pace, but then she gave in. With a grin, she grabbed her skirts and ran toward him.

Tavish's heart squeezed with something like pain and something close to joy. As he watched her run toward him, he looked truth in the face. He loved her. He knew the feeling for what it was, though he had never felt it. It was like the first taste of champagne his father had given him, festive and bubbling on his lips and in his throat, surprising him, then a cold draft that slid into his belly and changed, warmed and glowed and spread out through his body to his fingertips.

It shook him to the core. He had never been so shaken. It was inconvenient to say the least. It was mad. To fall in love with the wife of your enemy! Bad enough when he'd thought himself merely attracted. This would weaken him, it would tempt him toward mistakes. It could ruin him.

Closer now, she saw his expression and her steps slowed. A question rose in her gray eyes. He walked toward her. He took her gloved hand in his and remembered how he'd held it at the Van Cormandts'. The feeling had started then, though he hadn't been able to put a name to it. Now that he had, he knew he was lost. His heart beat furiously in fear, but he managed a smile.

“I'm glad you could come,” he said.

“I had to come.”

“We need to talk privately. May I take you somewhere where you won't be known? It's riot far.”

“Where?”

“It's a place where no one will see us and we'll have a room in which to be alone.”

“I don't understand …” Understanding grew in her eyes, and her mouth opened in surprise. “Adelle has told me that such places exist, but I hardly believed her.”

“They exist. And many women such as yourself use them. But that's not why I thought of it.” He pressed her hand. “We need to talk, Darcy. Only talk. And it was the only place I could think of. We could be seen if we traveled down to Columbine's or went to a restaurant. I would not want to see you in Colonel Mann's paper, or to have Claude hear of our meeting. This will be safe, I assure you. I'm sorry that there is no better place, but—”

She put a gloved hand on his lips. “Let's go.”

He hadn't expected to feel so awkward, but he did. He hadn't expected to feel so tender—but he did. Darcy seemed perfectly at ease, interested, really, in the fine furnishings, the privacy, of the house of assignation on the west side of Central Park. Tavish had heard of the house from Ned Van Cormandt, and he suspected that Ned had taken Columbine there. But he didn't want to know that.

He told her everything he'd learned. He left out only Jamie's death; he didn't want her to panic, and he had no way of linking Claude to the murder. Darcy listened, her face growing paler and paler. But she said nothing. After he'd finished, she went to the window and stared out for several minutes. He did not try to console her. He waited uncomfortably on the sofa, his hands dangling uselessly in front of him.

“If you feel,” he said, “that your husband could not possibly be involved, I will listen.”

Darcy didn't turn. “Oh, he is involved,” she said softly. “I saw copies of Dargent's letters in his files.”

Tavish looked up. “Letters addressed to Claude? Or copies of letters to others?”

“I don't know. I only noted the name in passing.”

Staring at her straight back, he let out a long breath. “Darcy,” he said gently, “it looks bad. But there is still a chance that Claude isn't—”

She halted him by lifting one hand aimlessly, then dropping it again. Again, she said nothing for long minutes. Then she turned to face him. “Yes, we don't know if he's Dargent. But we both know he's involved if he knows the man. Tavish, I've been reflecting on the fact that this information does not surprise me. I feel no need to rush to my husband's defense, I'm afraid. And I am trying to understand how I could live with a man who I could learn such things about and not be surprised. I feel implicated in his crimes.”

“That's absurd. You did your duty as a wife. Once you married, you had to carry on.”

She looked beyond him, her gaze far away. “Did I?” She hugged herself and shivered. “That's what I've been thinking, Tavish—Did I? I've lived my life with Claude in a certain accepting fashion, an inexorable obedience to the way things are. I never acted. I was only acted upon. And I put my trust in the things that I was told to put my trust in—my position, my husband, society. The great Snow name. Who to call on, and who to snub. You might be surprised to hear that I was not always this way.”

“No, love,” Tavish said. “I would not.”

It was as though she didn't hear him. One corner of her mouth lifted in a grim smile. “I was a rebellious child, an impossible adolescent. And then my mother ran away. Perhaps if she hadn't I would have become a different woman. But instead I changed. I changed because I
had
to, because my father collapsed into himself. He became a stranger with dead eyes, staring, mute. I was so frightened! And so I told myself that I loved the world I knew growing up, that it was deserving of my sacrifice. I forgot that every step of the way I had chafed against it. But my father took to his bed and I opened my arms and embraced every convention I had scorned. I had to keep things going, and to do that I had to forget the way I had been. I had to keep believing in that world to keep everything from flying apart.”

She seemed to be pleading with him to understand. And of course he did. “Yes,” he said. “Certainly you did.”

“I never examined the trust I invested in my world. I never wondered, I never deviated from the path. Marrying Claude kept my feet on it. I've been such a fool.”

“No—”

“A silly, blind fool,” she said bitterly. “I've been a dray horse, pulling my cart, following my same route, day after day after day, never altering, never faltering, never even looking down an unfamiliar street. And now I see the depths and heights of my blindness. Of what I've missed,” she whispered.

He looked at his hands, at the bed, at the window, for he could not bear to look at her and see unhappiness. “I'm sorry I've caused you such pain.”

Then, surprising him, she ran to him. She knelt in front of him, and when he looked in her face she was smiling through her tears. “No, no, Tavish, don't you see that you've saved me? I'm glad to see it all crumble to dust. I'm glad to wake up—at least I have at last! I can look down that unfamiliar street, I can take my chances and walk down it. And the intoxicating thing, the amazing thing, Tavish, is that
I am not afraid
.”

“I love you.” He hadn't meant to say it. He blurted it out, and the sound of the words pleased him. He touched her face and said them more gently. “I love you.”

“And I you. And Tavish, oh, my love, isn't it a miracle that we should find each other?”

He kissed her then, and before long his arms were around her, insistent and urgent. He felt desire flood him, and he had to break away. He stood and put out a hand to bring her to her feet. “I'll walk you to the park. You'll be all right walking home from there?”

She took his hand but made no move to rise. “But I don't want to go,” she said softly, still kneeling in front of him. “Don't you understand what I'm trying to say, Tavish?” In a gesture so tender it broke his heart, she kissed his fingertips.

“Stay with me,” she whispered. “Show me, help me, don't leave me. I'm ready to leave it all behind, I'm ready. Oh, Tavish, let's stay and love one another.”

He had to pull away, for her words inflamed him so that he wasn't capable of thinking. He crouched beside her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Darcy. Do you know what you're saying?”

She nodded, her eyes huge in a face ecstatic with emotion. She put her hands on his face. “Don't you see, my love? Now I have something to believe in.”

V
IRTUE
. M
ODESTY
. D
UTY
. They were bonds she'd accepted without question. She'd never asked what they meant; she'd swallowed the explanations whole and washed them down with fine champagne to aid her forgetting that she had a mind with which to draw her own conclusions. Duty had meant marrying Claude. Virtue had meant coming to that marriage without knowing one single detail of what awaited her—what else could she do, then, but accept her husband's perversions as natural? And then when she slowly realized that other women did not have to suffer this way, modesty had meant not confiding her anguish to anyone.