“Thank God, I thought you were—”
“Shut up, fool!”
“Sorry, Mr. Cavendish, but I was only—”
“Please,” Cass said weakly. When all sensation returned, she discovered she was lying on a couch, her head on its carved maple arm, a thin pillow protecting her from its deep-grooved swirls. She struggled to sit up. Immediately, a hand at her shoulder tried to stop her but she would not yield to its pressure; and finally, with reluctance, the hand moved to her back and pushed lightly, while another took her arm and pulled. And once up, with fingers massaging her cheeks and brow, she saw David standing nervously behind the couch, an alarmingly pale Melissa at his side. Cavendish moved to sit beside her stiffly, his hand absently patting at her knee, and the two men she had seen in Kevin’s—
“Kevin,” she gasped, but Cavendish’s hand firmed, and she did not rise.
“My dear,” he said gruffly, “I was hoping you wouldn’t have to see it. Dreadful stuff, but the only way, too, if you—”
“Please,” David snapped, coming around to sit at her right hand. “Don’t you think she’s been through enough without all that blather?”
Cass closed her eyes to shut out the bickering and someone thoughtfully pressed a small glass of brandy into her hands. She smiled gratefully and sipped at the liquor until the chill that had settled over her began to dissipate and her stomach became calm. “Tell me,” she said, looking around at the array of faces that stared at her anxiously.
“Well, I don’t know,” David said doubtfully, and Melissa hushed him angrily.
“Tell me.”
The dark-suited man took a step in front of her, hiked up his trousers and squatted in front of her. He was nearing fifty, she judged, most of his hair was gone and what remained was a snowy white. His face was heavily lined, jowled, his suit rumpled and he carried in every conceivable pocket what she recognized instantly as various medical devices. His eyes were soft, and when he spoke his voice was immediately calming.
“Mrs. Roe, I am Edward Waldrop, a physician. I happened to be here checking on old Hiram’s infirmities—”
“Sound as a dollar,” the old man grumbled.
“—when …” He paused and took both her hands in his. “Mrs. Roe, I’ve never been able to make this easy for anyone. I’m afraid I have to be the one to tell you that your husband is dead.”
She did nothing, only felt the others tensing as if they expected her to lapse into another attack of hysterics. She had known it was coming. She had seen Kevin on the floor. She had seen his blood. She only nodded, stiffly, and whispered for him to continue.
The doctor cleared his throat. “It was by his own hand, Mrs. Roe. Mr. Erasmus here,” and he indicated with a wave the solemn-faced man in tweed standing by Cavendish’s desk, “is a law official of the city. When he arrived, he found a note on your husband’s blotter. There’s no question of foul play.”
“What does it say?” she asked when Waldrop seemed reluctant to continue. “No, never mind. I want to see it.”
Again there was tension, and no one spoke for several long moments.
“I want to see it,” she insisted quietly. She looked then to Erasmus, a gaunt, homely man who had a nervous tic at his right eye. He hesitated, then reached into a jacket pocket and produced a torn square of paper. He unfolded it and handed it to her over the doctor’s shoulder. “It says,” he began in a reedy voice, “that—”
“I can read, thank you,” she said shortly.
And when she had finished, she handed it back as though it were diseased and drained the rest of her brandy in one swallow.
My dear Cassandra, please find it somewhere in your generous heart to forgive me. This is the only way out for me now. I know that some will call it the coward’s way, and so it might be when I am finally judged. But I have taken too much of that which is yours, including your dreams, without repaying in kind. I have gone too far. I cannot hope to recoup. And rather than have you ruined, I resort to this. I pray that someday you will find it in your heart to forgive me. For everything.
The silence was awkward, until Cass turned to her husband’s partner. “What does he mean, too much of mine?”
Cavendish coughed noisily into a fist, and she scowled, turning to David instead, who would not look directly at her.
“Well?”
“Your money,” he said lamely. “He was—well, it’s what you wanted me to find out.”
She felt her heart sink, and her hands formed fists in her lap. “Tell me,” she ordered. “I have to know.”
“He’s been selling off nearly all your shares in the coal fields, forging your name to the instruction receipts. He made himself a power of attorney …” He looked to her then, and she nodded impatiently that she understood. “None of us knew, you see. Your husband dealt directly with the bankers who had no reason to suppose the signatures were false. He had very little left of his own money and had transferred funds from your account to his. And—well, I suppose he was afraid to tell you how badly he was doing.”
“I knew his own money was going,” she said. “I thought it was because his luck had run out.”
“His luck did run out,” Erasmus said, more to himself than to the room.
“Then I’m back where I started,” Cass whispered; only David was able to hear her. “Just when I was ready to move, I cannot.” Then, more loudly, “Is there—is there anything left to take care—”
“Nothing to fear in that regard,” Cavendish said, as if none of the emotion charging the room affected him. “You’ll have nothing to worry about for a while. Of course, while I’m doing what I should have done in the first place, you’ll have to contain your impulses for pretties and things, and no lavish parties and such. There are, you see … well, we haven’t had time to examine all the scoundrel’s finagling, naturally, but I’m sure—”
“Mr. Cavendish!” Melissa interrupted angrily. “My God, do we have to attend to that now? Can’t you see the woman is grieving, and all you can do is talk about business! Damn it,” she exploded, coming around to the front of the couch, fists at her sides, her lips trembling, “don’t any of you have any feelings at all? There’s a dead man in the next room, damn it!” She glared at them all, then burst into tears, and David was at her side immediately, holding her, then walking her slowly out of the room.
“Such language from a lady,” Cavendish muttered
Cass, holding her head rigidly, rose from the couch and nodded to the doctor and the policeman. “I think, if you don’t mind, that I’ll go home now. There are matters to attend to. Mr. Erasmus, you must have questions, I’m sure, but do you think you could hold them until tomorrow at least?”
“I have no questions, ma’am,” he said solemnly, his professional sympathy less irritating than she would have imagined. “It’s clear what happened, and I’ll have a word or two with Mr. Cavendish here. I’ll also take care of—” and his hand lifted toward Kevin’s office.
Cass nodded quickly in thanks, and turned to stand before Hiram. “Mr. Cavendish, it’s only a short distance, I know, but all those people out there … I think—would you mind?—I could use a carriage.”
“Of course,” the old man grumbled, shaking his head. “Bad business, this is. Such a bright man, too.”
Doctor Waldrop took Cass’s arm firmly. “I’ll go with you,” he said quietly, his voice brooking no argument. “No matter what you think, you shouldn’t be alone just yet.”
Cass nodded and leaned heavily on him. For a moment she hoped she would awaken now and recognize the dream for what it was; but as they moved into the outer office, she saw Erasmus dropping a cloak over Kevin’s face, saw the faces of the crowd outside pressed close to the front window. It was then that she felt the first tears come … and she wondered for whom she was weeping.
T
wo days later the funeral was over, and once the mourners had left Jordan Lane in the wake of whispered, obligatory sympathies, the house suddenly seemed too large for her. She had not cried since the evening Waldrop had left her in Melissa’s hands, did not weep or even become red-eyed at the gravesite. She would not give those so-called friends of her husband’s the satisfaction of seeing her in a state they believed she deserved; and she knew with grim satisfaction that her unexpected strength had quietly scandalized them; would provide fuel for their gossipy fires for months to come. She hated them. She hated them all for their insulation and their prejudice, knowing their attitudes would have sooner or later, despite Forrester’s machinations, driven him back to the gaming tables.
Yet he had loved her, and now he was dead, and not just an ordinary death, not simply a suicide.
It was murder, as insidious as any such crime even though the killers had not stained their hands with Kevin’s blood; On the orders of Captain Hawkins, she was sure, Forrester had been the one to bleed Kevin, to instill in him a sense of complete futility, of fear; he had been the one to drive Kevin over the brink to what most people pretend to believe is the “gentleman’s way out”. It was murder. And there was no court in the land that would bring in a conviction. Kevin had gambled away money not belonging to him, and he had paid the price. People would feel sorry for her when they heard, but not nearly as sorry if he’d been struck down by illness or a dray.
Forrester and Hawkins: two more names to add to her list.
My God, my God … She pounded a helpless fist against the foyer wall, then braced herself when Melissa bustled in from the kitchen where she’d been helping Mrs. Hamilton with the evening meal. David would be joining them shortly. In the meantime, they climbed silently up to Cass’s bedroom where Melissa helped her out of her widow’s weeds. When Cass had on only her chemise, rubbing at her stomach and sides to ease the blood back into circulation from the tight, stiff gown, Melissa sat on the footstool by the bed and stared at her. “I wish I could get away with not wearing one of those monsters,” she said. “Whalebone makes me want to scream.”
“You? Come on, Missy, you’re too thin for a corset.” As she lifted the black dress from the floor, then, she turned and held it up to her chest in front of the vanity mirror. “It seems to be my favorite color, in Philadelphia,” she said, smiling weakly.
“Cass, I don’t know if I should—”
Cass spun around suddenly, reached out and took Melissa’s hands in hers. “And you, you poor girl,” she said with a shake of her head. “Look at all you’ve done for me, practically a stranger, and how long have I known you? Less than a week!”
“Sometimes it takes things like this,” the girl said.
“But look at what I’ve done to you! Your marriage—”
“We can always be married by a Justice whenever we choose. We can’t always help someone who needs it. David understands, believe me, Cass.”
“Maybe,” she said, looking back to the mirror. “But I still can’t help thinking—”
A call from Mrs. Hamilton at the foot of the stairwell silenced them. Melissa frowned, then rose from the stool and walked into the hall, returning a moment latter with her face pinched in consternation. “There’s someone down there to see you, Cass.”
“No. I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime. Kevin’s friends weren’t my own, and I’ll be—”
She stopped, almost choking, as she looked over Melissa’s shoulder and stared into Forrester’s sardonic smile. Melissa spinning around, gasped and stumbled back a step to grab onto the beds nearest post.
“Mrs. Roe,” he said with a mocking bow, “my condolences. If you would be so kind as to accompany me now, there is one more person who would like to express his sympathies.”
“Get out,” Cass spat at him, reaching to the vanity to snatch up her brush. “Get out of here, you heartless bastard! Get out of here before I call the police!”
Forrester laughed, his obsidian eyes hard. “My dear woman—”
“Cass, what’s this all about?” Melissa said, frowning. “Who is this man?”
“Shut up, madam, if you value your—let me be generous and say—your beauty.”
“His name is Forrester, Melissa,” she said, without taking her gaze from him. “You’ll remember that I mentioned him once, a while back. It seems he also goes under the name of Sampson, when it pleases him.”
Melissa gasped and fell silent; Forrester nodded to her, that infernal smile not faltering at all, and reached behind him to the wardrobe from which he yanked out a dress and threw it at Cass. “Dress,” he ordered. “I like what I see—”
“You bastard!”
“—but I’ve really no time. Get dressed, Mrs. Roe. Now!”
Numb, still not believing that one nightmare could follow so closely on the heels of another, she pulled the dress down over her head, noting with a pang that it was the first one she had purchased after Kevin had told her she was a fairly—no, she thought, what was the word?—moderately wealthy woman—the brown one with the white lace trim, high neckline and loose sleeves to the wrist, the skirt tightened at the waist and the folds narrow so she could ride comfortably in it when she chose. Unconsciously she smoothed the material around her figure, and glared when she realized Forrester was watching her closely.
“You will come with me now, Mrs. Roe,” he said.
The obsidian had gone hard.
Her anger returned. “No! I would sooner be with Kevin.”
“You will be, Madam, if you don’t move.” And the black eyes flared with his own impatient rage. He took a long step toward her, his hand shifting toward an ominous bulge at his waistband, when, quite without warning, Melissa grabbed the footstool and rammed one of its stubby legs into his midsection. Caught unaware, he grunted as the air slammed from his lungs, and he staggered back against the door, and slid to the floor, wheezing as he fought for his breath. Cass instantly shoved the girl ahead of her and they raced down the stairs. Mrs. Hamilton, lumbering in from the kitchen, could only stare, open-mouthed, as they grabbed their cloaks, and Forrester’s rage screamed down on them.
Cass flung open the door and chased Melissa out. “Hide,” she said to Mrs. Hamilton then. “For God’s sake hide yourself until we’re gone. Then get hold of Cavendish and tell him—”
Footsteps in the upstairs hall made her dash from the house and into the crowded street where Melissa waited. She had no idea where she could go, knew only that the city was no longer safe. Melissa, sensing her indecision, took her arm and pulled her toward the park. “David’s,” she said as they broke into a run; and Cass only followed mutely, allowing herself to think just one thing: it’s over … and I’m running again.