All She Ever Wanted (38 page)
Rory stared at her, his mouth gaping. He seemed too stunned to speak. Fiona began slowly backing away from him toward the apartment.
“Arthur gives me a generous living allowance. If you come by each Friday, I’ll leave an envelope of money for you with the doorman. Let me know when Mam and the others come from Ireland. I want to see them. … Good-bye, Dad.”
Fiona turned and hurried inside, grateful that her father didn’t follow her. She had escaped from him, but as she rode the elevator upstairs, she couldn’t escape from his words. Was Rory right—was she being nai
ve? Was she simply Arthur’s plaything—his beautiful bird in a golden cage? The apartment seemed small and confining as she paced around it, wondering if Arthur’s wife was the one who was delaying the divorce… or if he was. Fiona was still upset when Arthur stopped in to see her later that night after work.
“Fiona, darling, what’s wrong?” he asked as soon as he saw her. Fiona moved into his arms, immediately sorry for having doubted his love. Arthur was so loving, so sensitive that he could read her every mood even before she spoke a word.
“Nothing, Arthur—”
“But I can see that you’ve been crying. Come, sit down and tell me all about it.” He led her to the sofa. Fiona felt safe and loved once again as she nestled in his arms. “What happened?” he asked gently.
“My father came to see me today. He… he knows we didn’t elope. He knows you’re still married, and he’s very angry about it. I’m afraid he’ll cause trouble for us.”
“Don’t worry about him, Fiona. We have each other, now.” He began kissing her neck, his bristly mustache tickling her skin. “I’ve been thinking about you all day…” he murmured.
Fiona’s earlier worries came rushing back. Was she being a fool? Was this the only reason Arthur came to see her? She didn’t want to pressure him and scare him away, but she didn’t want to be his mistress all her life, either.
“Didn’t you hear what I said, Arthur? My father knows the truth about us, and he’s furious. You have to do something! I’m afraid he’ll try to marry me to another man or else take me back to Dublin with him.”
Arthur stopped kissing her and sat back. His dark eyes lost their velvety softness, and there was a coldness in them that she had never seen before.
“He can hardly afford to take you back to Ireland on a dock worker’s pay, can he?”
Fiona stared at Arthur, horrified. “How long have you known?” she whispered.
“New York only seems like a big city, darling. In fact, it’s not. Everyone knows everyone else among high society. And that’s true in the business world, as well. No one has ever done business with Rory Quinn—except on the loading docks.”
“You knew all along that I was an impostor?”
“It didn’t matter to me, Fiona.”
She struggled out of his arms and leaned back against the sofa, feeling as if she might faint. What had she done? Why had she let this man ruin her life? The nuns were right, after all—one small sin leads to bigger and bigger ones, until you can never escape from the mess you’ve made.
“My father was right,” she wept. “You were just using me!”
“Oh no, you’re wrong, Fiona. I fell in love with you long before I learned who you were or where you came from. By then I didn’t care.”
She heard the emotion in his unsteady voice, and when he took her face in his hands and made her look at him again, she saw the love shining in his eyes.
“The most beautiful woman I’d ever seen walked up to me at the theater one night, and I was captivated. Then I got to know you, and you were as fascinating and as enchanting as you were beautiful. I was so lonely, Fiona. My marriage has been over for years, and there were times when I thought I would never be happy again. Then you showed an inter-est in me, and I could scarcely believe it. You could have married any man in New York—handsome men, younger men half my age. But you looked at me as if I were handsome—”
“But, Arthur, you are handsome.”
He pulled her to himself, clutching her tightly. She felt his tears on her neck. “See, my darling?” he murmured. “How could I resist falling in love with you?”
He stayed all night for the first time since she’d moved into the apartment. This time it felt wonderful to wake up beside him. She felt like Mrs. Arthur Bartlett. She made breakfast for him in the morning before he left for work, and he kissed her good-bye as if he didn’t want to leave her.
“Meet me for lunch, Fiona. There’s a place down by my office, just off Wall Street. Shall we say, twelve-thirty? Charles will call a cab for you.” He gave her the address and money for cab fare, then kissed her good-bye again. “I don’t know how I’ll ever wait until twelve-thirty,” he said with his sad, lopsided smile.
Fiona floated on air all morning. Her father was wrong. Arthur truly loved her.
F
iona stepped from the hired cab, her arms loaded with packages from her day of shopping. Charles hurried out front to help her.
“Let me get those for you, ma’am.”
She smiled and thanked him, but she couldn’t quite meet his gaze. She’d noticed that Charles always called her ma’am, not Mrs. Bartlett or even Miss Quinn. She heard him addressing all the other residents by name, and she wondered what he thought of her. He must know that she and Arthur weren’t married.
“Oh, and ma’am?” Charles said before opening the elevator door for her, “Mr. Quinn left something for you when he came to pick up his envelope today.”
He set down Fiona’s packages and retrieved an envelope from behind his counter. She glanced at it and saw that it was the same envelope she had given her father a week ago, his name printed on the front in her handwriting, the seal opened. She avoided looking inside until Charles finished carrying her packages into the apartment for her and she’d closed the door behind him.
Her father had sent her a newspaper clipping, torn from the society pages. It told about a political fund-raising dinner held the previous week. But it was the photograph, not the article, that caught Fiona’s attention. Arthur had his arm draped protectively around a woman’s shoulders, pulling her close the way he always did with Fiona. It was an affectionate gesture that Fiona loved; it made her feel as if Arthur was claiming her for his own and saying to the world “Hands off—she’s mine.” According to the caption, the woman was Mrs. Arthur Bartlett.
Fiona felt a chill of fear as she took the picture over to the window to study it. Even in blurred, black-and-white newsprint, she could see that Evelyn Bartlett was a striking woman, with fair skin and dark hair and a radiant smile. Arthur was looking down at his wife, not at the camera, but Fiona knew by the expression on his face that if she could see his eyes, they would be soft and warm and filled with love.
She crumpled the picture into a ball and tossed it into the trash, refusing to torture herself with it. Nor would she mention it to Arthur. The dinner had taken place last Saturday—the night he had told Fiona that he couldn’t see her. But he had made it up to her by spending all day Sunday with her. Arthur loved her, not his wife. The dinner had been a social obligation he couldn’t squeeze out of.
A week later Rory sent two articles. The first one reported on a group of society women attending a lecture. He had underlined the words
Evelyn Bartlett, the cultural society’s president, is the wife of banking mogul Arthur Bartlett
. The second article told about the opening of a new play:
Present at the theater’s grand opening last night were financier Arthur Bartlett and his wife, Evelyn
.
Rory sent more articles the following week and the week after that. Fiona quickly recognized a pattern: The society events were always on evenings that Arthur hadn’t been able to come to the apartment. But many of them had taken place on the same day he’d visited her for an afternoon tryst. She felt a stab of jealousy at the thought that he’d been with his wife after assuring Fiona of his love that afternoon. Now that she’d seen a picture of Evelyn Bartlett, she couldn’t get the image of her and Arthur out of her mind.
Fiona promised herself she wouldn’t read the articles anymore. She vowed to throw away the envelopes without even looking inside them. But each time something would compel her to read about the man she loved, to learn more about the double life he was living.
One hot summer day, Fiona pulled an article from Rory’s envelope and read the words,
Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Bartlett hosted a dinner at their home on July first in honor of their twentieth wedding anniversary
. She ran into the bathroom and vomited. Why would Arthur agree to an anniversary celebration if he and Evelyn were fighting a bitter divorce?
Fiona couldn’t stop crying. Her nausea lasted all day, and she was grateful that Arthur didn’t come to see her that evening. But as she cried herself to sleep, Fiona wondered where he and Evelyn were that night and what news she would read about them in the next batch of articles.
Fiona was still sick in bed when Mrs. Murphy came to clean the apartment the following morning. “You poor dear,” she soothed. “Shall I make you a cup of tea to settle your stomach?”
“I’ll try one… but to tell you the truth, Mrs. Murphy, the thought of eating or drinking anything makes me feel sick.”
Mrs. Murphy paused in the doorway as if considering something.
When she turned to speak, Fiona saw the look of concern on her face. “I know that it’s none of my business, dear, but are you sure it’s just the flu?”
“What else would it be?”
Mrs. Murphy regarded her steadily. “Well… might your monthly curse be a wee bit late, too?”
Fiona felt the rush of heat to her cheeks. She suddenly knew what Mrs. Murphy meant—and she also knew that she was right. Fiona’s cycle was more than a week late. But how could she be pregnant? Arthur always assured her he was taking care so that wouldn’t happen.
Mrs. Murphy must have seen the certain knowledge on Fiona’s face because she stepped back into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’ve known some girls who’ve had the same trouble that you’re having, dear. I can give you the name of the doctor they went to see. Mr. Bartlett doesn’t ever have to know about it.”
Fiona went numb with disbelief. She was pregnant with Arthur’s child. He was married to Evelyn, not to her. And the cleaning lady surely knew that she was living here in this apartment as his mistress. Mrs. Murphy was counseling her to have an abortion. Fiona felt too dazed to be shocked by the offer. “I-I’ll let you know,” she mumbled.
“Don’t wait too long, dear. The sooner you take care of things the better.” She patted Fiona’s hand and left to fix the tea.
Fiona had all day to pull herself together and decide what to do before Arthur arrived. In the end, she realized that she had no other choice except to tell him. Her father would never take her back with a baby on the way, and she had no way to support a child on her own. She wouldn’t even consider Mrs. Murphy’s proposal and kill her baby before it was born. She clung to the hope that Arthur would finally leave his wife when he learned the news and marry her. But the idea of telling him terrified her. What if he left her instead?
She waited until he was lying contentedly in her arms before bringing it up. “I have something to tell you, darling,” she began. “We… I… I think I’m going to have a baby.”
Arthur grew very still. “How certain are you?”
“I-I haven’t been to a doctor, but… I’m fairly certain.”
Arthur swore softly, and Fiona began to cry.
“No, darling, don’t cry,” he soothed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to swear. I’m angry with myself, not you.”
“But what are we going to do? We have a baby on the way, and we aren’t married.”
“I’ll take care of you and the baby. It doesn’t change the way I feel about you.”
“But things have to change, Arthur. I don’t want to have a baby out of wedlock. We have to get married!” She felt him move away slightly, his high forehead furrowed. She had never made demands of him before, and she was sorry that she had to make them now. But the deep fear she felt— for herself and for her child—had driven her to do it.
“You know I want to marry you, Fiona. You’re wearing my ring.”
“Will you tell your wife about the baby? Will she divorce you now?”
“Perhaps.” Fiona felt him pull away a little more. “Don’t worry about it, darling. I’ll take care of everything.”
“But if we’re not married, our child won’t have a name. He’ll be a—” “He’ll be my child,” Arthur said, covering her lips with his fingers.
“He’ll have my name. And so will you, darling. So will you.”
“When? When can we get married?” He didn’t answer. Fiona was tired of asking. “Do you know what I’ve become, Arthur? Do you know what people think of me? My father warned me that you were just using me as your mistress, and now—”
“No! It isn’t true!” he said, clutching her tightly. “That’s not what you are, Fiona—you’re my salvation. I hated my life before I met you, hated going home from work to that cold, empty house. I felt so trapped. There were times when I thought I would never be happy again, times when I just wanted to stop living and end it all. Then I met you, and you gave me a new life with love and companionship and tenderness—all the things I’d been missing for so long. You’re
already
my wife, not Evelyn. Can’t you see that?”
