M. Donice Byrd - The Warner Saga (31 page)

He clenched his jaw in an effort not to show what he was feeling. Blake would have liked to have embraced Pete but knew Pete would not allow it.

“So,” Blake said suddenly drawing attention away from Pete. “What was the consensus about Meredith?”

“You whisked her away so quickly, I don’t know that anyone came to an agreement about her. The bucks fear that if she landed you, it’s in their best interest to keep her away from the unattached women. The women are looking for the slightest things to hate her over.  I heard many comments on her tan. Who knows maybe she’ll start a new trend.”

Blake ran his hand through his hair. “I doubt she’ll ever fit in. Demure is not in her vocabulary.”

“Rebecca likes her.”

“Rebecca’s an outcast, too.”

“Speaking of your lovely bride,”
Frederick said abruptly. “You need to talk to her about what you do and keeping it to herself. Cloris nearly had an apoplectic fit when she called you a government courier. How long have you been spying?”

“Christ, Freddy! She’s not the only one who needs to learn discretion,” Blake said pointedly nodding towards Pete. “Pete, finish getting dressed and wait for me in the waiting room.”

After the men were alone, Blake told Frederick how he had met Pete and Lolly and what happened. “He’s never asked me if I was spying. I think he just believes I was looking for my long-lost sister.”

“Blake, I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t know. It was bound to come out sooner or later. I just would have liked to have had a little more rapport with him first. He’s been through so much and I know he blames me so we’ve been struggling to see eye to eye.”

29

Pete thrust the tablet into Blake’s hands as soon as they were in the carriage. He knew what it was going to say before he read it.

“You need to stop using that word, Pete. That language is unacceptable.”

Pete tapped on the page wanting his answer.

“You heard Dr. Billingsham, Pete. I knew you’d ask me eventually and I’m not going to lie to you. Yes, sometimes I spy. I went to
Missouri to locate and count troops in the area. It’s not as if I was trying to assassinate General Lee or Jefferson Davis. I’d like to see the war over as quickly as possible. Wouldn’t you?”

Pete opened his mouth and let out a frustrated primal cry.

He took back his tablet and began writing.

“
Yanky
skum
.”

“You can call me all the names you want but I guarantee it wasn’t a Northerner who killed your family. My hand was not on the trigger of the gun that killed your father. My hand was not on the knife
that killed your mother, stabbed you nor cut out your tongue and I’m tired of you acting like it was. You are the only one who knows who did it and rather than tell so those men are brought to justice, you’re keeping it to yourself and you’re blaming me. I’ve apologized until I am blue in the face and I’m not going to apologize anymore. What was I supposed to do, leave you there where the men who hurt you could come back and kill you when they realized you could identify them? You didn’t have to tell them I was your uncle but you did and now you are stuck with me. You need to make up your mind if you’re going to be miserable the rest of your life or make the best of it.”

It was at moments like these when Pete punched
the wall of the carriage and made grunts of frustration that the boy reminded Blake of himself after his mother killed herself. Perhaps that was why he felt so drawn to this little kid. He knew his tirade would do little good but it made Blake feel better to have it off his chest.

“Maybe you should write a letter to the sheriff and tell him what happened so the criminals are brought to justice.”

Pete put pencil to paper. “Don’t member.”

Blake read it and cast a dubious glance at Pete. “You don’t remember? Funny you can remember how long the knife was and how far it went in. You don’t have to lie to me.”

Pete flipped over the tablet began writing on the back of the page.

“Truth is, I do member and I
ain’t never telling you or the sheriff or anyone ever.”

Blake nodded his head. He’d never told anyone, not his father or
Donna, his mother had killed herself so he knew all about keeping painful secrets inside.

“It’s your secret to tell not mine. I’m not going to tell anyone you remember.”

Meredith and Lolly were waiting outside the dress shop when they pulled up in the carriage. Blake hopped down and helped them into the conveyance. He was surprised to see Lolly wearing a new dress. It was light pink with a white pinafore and she had a red wool cape with it.

“Well, don’t you look pretty,” Blake said smiling widely at the little girl.

“They had two dresses that they made for someone else who never paid for them,” Meredith explained. “Lolly couldn’t wait to put one on.”

“Do you like my dress, Petey?”

Pete nodded but his heart wasn’t in it.

It was late afternoon when they finished the rest of their errands and returned to the hotel. Blake only had one conflict with Pete at the tailor’s. He wanted all of his clothing to be Confederate gray. Blake had compromised allowing him to have two gray sets and no blue in his wardrobe but the rest was filled out with browns and blacks.

As they stepped into the elevator, Mrs. Donovan called out to Blake. Blake shook his head and handed Meredith the room key. “I’ll be up in a minute or two or three.” He rolled his eyes.

Agnes Donovan patted her unnaturally red hair as Blake Warner approached the desk and, finding an errant strand, quickly tucked it behind her ear.

“You are very popular today,” Agnes said. “We’ve had all sorts of visitors for you while you were out. I suppose everyone is excited to meet Mrs. Warner.”

“I’m afraid I whisked her out of the gala last night before she could meet everyone.”

“So I’ve heard,” Agnes boasted, with a wide smile. “That’s what happens when newlyweds are apart. They can’t think of anything but being alone.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

Agnes reached into the box with their suite number on it and retrieved several calling cards, invitations and two letters. Blake recognized the large brown missive and immediately put that one inside his interior breast pocket.

Before returning to their suite, Blake paid for a few more days. Tomorrow he’d wire Hamilton to have the funds for the house sent. Donna would be thrilled to
know they were going to stay married.

“What did she want?” Meredith asked when he returned to the room.

Pete put Lolly down for a nap and stayed in the bedroom with her giving Meredith and Blake a little privacy. He sat down next to her on the sofa.

“We had visitors while we were gone.” Blake began sorting through the cards. “A friend of Cloris,” he said as he handed her the cards one at a time.
“A friend of mine. I don’t know this one.”

Meredith leaned over to look at the name on the card. “He’s the estate agent,” she said.

“Ah,” he said handing the card to her. Blake cursed. “A woman I recently courted. I have no doubt she just wants to cause trouble. Sorry.”

“Live by the sword, die by the sword?”

He began opening the invitations. “Oh, a dinner party invitation. That would be a nice place to ease into society – not too many people. You’ll like the Horton’s. They’re very kind and they have an excellent cook.” Blake opened the next invitation. “A ball. What do you think?”

“Will you be dancing with other women?”

Blake laughed. “Let’s put this one in the
No Pile
.”

“Good, as I only know how to waltz and I don’t want to dance with men I don’t know.”

Blake swore again when he read the next one. “My father is having a fundraiser tonight. I’m always expected to make an appearance.”

Meredith knew Blake was still exhausted from his travels. “Maybe you could send an excuse tonight. You could tell him one of us is sick or we don’t have anyone to watch Pete and Lolly.”

“No, you can stay if you want but I have to go. Cloris and her mother will never let Father hear the end of it if I don’t attend.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Thank you. I hate going to these things. Father and a half dozen of his cronies get up and make speeches and my father goes around to all the tables making everyone feel like they’ve got his ear but he doesn’t have time to speak with me except to thank me for coming. And the food is usually not very good.”

Meredith tried to pay attention to the speeches but time and time again found herself daydreaming. She was thankful when it was over and they could go back to their suite.

As Blake put the key in the lock, he realized the door was unlocked. His brow lowered as he pushed the door open.

“What the devil?” The room was dark and no light came from under the children’s bedroom door. Blake quickly located a Lucifer and lit a lantern. As the flame began to cast its yellow light around the room, they could see page after page of Pete’s tablet strewn around the room. There were pages on the sofa and the chairs and on every table and even on Blake’s side of the bed. Each page had the same foul expletive that Blake had forbidden him to use repeated over and over in Pete’s even script.

“They’re gone.”

Neither Blake nor Meredith slept for the next twenty-four hours. They started by questioning the hotel staff but no one had seen them leave. They went to the livery and had the horses saddled and began patrolling the streets. They contacted the police and offered a large reward but no one could find them anywhere.

Their first night in their new home should have been exciting and something to celebrate but Blake and Meredith left the Regent Arms with reluctance fearing the children would not be able to find them. Blake instructed every member of the hotel staff he saw, if Pete and Lolly returned to the hotel, they were to be put in a room, fed and word sent immediately to him in their new home.

Meredith marveled at the changes in the cavernous house. Blake had hired someone to furnish and decorate it so they did not have to take time away from searching for Pete and Lolly. The furniture the previous owners left in the house was moved into the servants’ quarters on the third-floor and new furniture filled nearly every room of the newly painted house.

The smell of paint and varnish made her head pound which only made her unease more palpable.

She had never seen Blake so despondent. He was sullen and solely focused on finding the children. She kept expecting him to tell her about the part of his childhood he spent living on the streets
, but just as Donna said, he never spoke of the time before she found him. But Meredith could tell by the perpetual scowl on his face, he thought of little else – no doubt imagining Pete and Lolly living the same experiences. It hurt her that he would not tell her. It hurt almost as much as the knowledge he loved the children but he didn’t love her.

Like
Minnesota, Chicago’s autumn brought light snowfalls, the precursor of winter’s pending storms. They awoke to a light dusting that morning and spent the day, as they did every day, riding horseback through the streets searching. Even though this was to be their first night in their new home, Blake sat in a leather wing chair studying a map of Chicago, marking off where they had searched and contemplating an area for them to look the next day.

He had not acknowledged her when she entered the study in her nightgown and when she stood in front of him, he did not glance up until she gently pried the map from his fingers. She dropped the map on the floor and sat across his lap, wrapping her arms around him and embraced him.

“We’re going to find them,” she said before burying her face in his neck.

Blake seemed reluctant to accept the comfort she offered but gradually lifted his arms to surround her.

She leaned back after a minute, smoothed the worry lines between his eyebrows with her thumb and offered a slight smile. He was so handsome and so troubled but he wouldn’t let her into his heart or his mind.

“How long will we search for them?”

Blake’s eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched. “I will look for them every day until I find them. I don’t care if it takes years. Would you have asked that if you had given birth to them? Criminy, Meredith, it’s only been two weeks and you’re ready to give up?” he shouted. “Get off me. I don’t even want to look at you right now.”

As he pushed her away, she scrambled to get her feet under her.

“That’s not what I meant. I don’t want to give up. It’s just….Never mind.” She stared at him a moment. “I’m going to bed.”

“It’s just what?”

Her mouth formed a mulish line and her fists rested on her hips. “I need to know if you’re going to divorce me if we don’t find them.”