Heiress (42 page)

She read the byline on the top of the article. “Where’s your name?”

“It’s your article. I wanted you to have your own byline. You deserve it.”

She read the article through. “I wish we’d been able to pry the name of Flora’s suitor out of her.”

“I suspect she’ll be having that very chat with the police by lunchtime. My court reporter called. The charges against Bennett were just dismissed.”

Esme ran her hand over the article, the feel of the paper so familiar. Newsprint came off on her hand. She set the paper on his desk, turned to watch the square. “I have to admit, I thought that someday this would be my view, my office. I thought I deserved it because I was a Price. But this office has to be earned, not bequeathed.”

“Are you saying you don’t deserve your inheritance?”

“I ran away. So, no.” She looked up at him. “I went to Montana thinking God wouldn’t bless me because I’d despised all the other things He’d given me. But He blessed me anyway, despite my mistakes.” She tried a smile. “I figured out when Daughtry died that blessing wasn’t about being rich or powerful. It was about knowing that through all of it, rich or poor, I could trust in God’s love for me. Being poor in spirit is about needing God, and it’s when I needed Him that He poured out his riches into my life. My daughter. My town…” You. She wanted to say it, but she wasn’t sure what lay beyond this moment, this day.

She turned back to the window. “I just wish my father would have believed in me, known that I grew into a woman who loved newspapers, just like he did.”

“He did believe in you,” Oliver said, frowning. “He kept everything you ever wrote.”

She stared at him, and must have worn her bewilderment.

He gave a laugh, something that sounded more like disbelief. “Of course.” He took her hand. “Come with me.”

He walked her through the lobby—clearly not caring that his receptionist watched them with censure on her face as they exited his office, Esme in her rumpled clothes, he in his shirtsleeves, and walked her down past the editor’s offices to the library. Racks and racks of archived newspapers lined the shelves, their dates written on placards on the shelves below. Oliver pulled her through the room to the back, to another set of shelves. He pointed to a placard.

The Copper Valley Times.

She let go of his hand, lifted out a newspaper. One of her first, she recognized it as one she’d sent to her father. She ran her hand across the flimsy paper, eight pages of poorly written news. “I sent this to him.”

Oliver nodded. “And then, one day, you stopped. He told me about how he waited for the paper every week, how he closed his door, read it cover to cover when he received it, how he saw you between the lines, growing into a businesswoman, a pioneer. He was so proud of you, Esme.”

She blinked back the burning in her eyes. Swallowed. Slid the paper back into its place. “But these…” She read the dates on the next stack. “I didn’t send him these.”

“He ordered these. He didn’t want you to know, so he had them sent to Chicago, and his correspondent there forwarded them to the
Chronicle.”

She remembered that, the post office box in Chicago; she had thought it might be the subscription of one of the former miners. “Why didn’t he want me to know?” But she could answer that for herself, she didn’t need Oliver’s wince, the way he tried to find a clever truth.

“His pride. I know it too well,” she said quietly. She moved her finger down the row. It seemed he’d collected every paper for the past twenty years. She pressed her fingers under her eyes, caught the wetness there.

“Now you have newsprint on your face,” Oliver said, turning her. He took out his handkerchief, held her chin as he wiped it off.

She caught his wrists. “Oliver…I know that this paper doesn’t belong to me anymore. And I’m so proud of all you’ve become here. But…do you think I could have a job? A real job, as a reporter?”

She couldn’t read his expression—amusement, disbelief?—and she suddenly wanted to steal the words back. What was she doing? She had her own life, her own paper, her own mine back in Montana. She didn’t really want to stay here, resume her life…

Except, yes, she did. Standing in the
Chronicle
office, with the bustle of the street below and the elevated train rumbling by, the current of the city had rippled through her, the dormant passion fresh, young, burning to live inside her.

She wanted to stay here, introduce Lilly to her legacy. Fall in love all over again with Oliver. She saw them skating in Central Park and attending the Opera, or even one of the
Ziegfeld Follies,
saw them writing articles late into the night, stopping when he looked at her with those dark eyes that could unravel her thoughts…

Like now.

“Esme,” he said quietly. “I can’t give you a job.”

Oh, she tried not to flinch, tried not to let the betrayal show on her countenance. She gathered up the society woman inside and took a breath. “I understand.” After all, why would he want to work with her again?

He’d already done that.

She nodded, moving past him, toward the door. “You’re right, of course. I have a good life in Montana, and people there that depend on me, and—”

“Esme!”

She felt his hand on her arm, turning her. In the murky light of the library, he suddenly appeared the young, angry man she’d remembered that day when she’d visited him in the tenements, shocked, even frustrated at her appearance. “Esme, I can’t give you a job, because you’re the heiress. This paper is yours.”

She blinked at him, frowned. “But you said—”

“I thought I could make you go away. I thought you’d give up, and frankly, I couldn’t take letting you into my life only to break me again. But here you are, with newsprint on your face and your hair down to your waist, asking me for a job and I—I’m a scoundrel if I don’t tell you that making you publisher is exactly what your father wanted.”

Her mouth opened, and she might have uttered a sound, but she had nothing comprehensible.

Oliver stepped closer to her. “Esme, this paper belongs to you. It’s your inheritance. I was wrong not to go after you, but I thought you didn’t want it.”

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I want it. And…I want you to run it with me.”

She closed the gap between them, ran her hands up behind him, hooked them onto his shoulders. “Run this paper with me, Oliver. It belongs to you too.”

He drew in a long breath. “Would you still marry your footman, do you think?”

She tucked herself into his arms, drew in the smell of him at his neck. “It’ll make the headlines,” she said. Then she kissed him beneath the dust and shadows of the
Chronicle
, right above the cloakroom, where they began.

* * * * *

“Roll up the carpet, Amelia, and add it to the fire.”

Jinx stood at the doorway to Foster’s den, the hearth roaring, spitting out ash as it devoured Foster’s things, the pictures of his motorcars and the
Jinx
, a stash of playbills she’d found in his desk drawer, even his tuxedo, which she’d found in a closet in his den, the stink of him in it, a woman’s kiss at the collar.

She’d dispose of him, incinerate him from her life.

Start again, clean.

The doors to the garden hung open, the smell of the room drifting into the spring breeze. She’d arrived home after dropping Bennett at the Waldorf-Astoria and set about creating a life that lived outside society’s whims.

She would have burned the dueling pistols, but they’d disappeared after her arrest, probably in police custody.

“And the picture, ma’am?” Amelia gestured to the oil of Jinx and Foster, the one she’d had commissioned early in her marriage when she believed in a happy ending.

Perhaps she still believed in a happy ending. Just not one of her own making. “Burn that also.”

“Jinx!”

The voice turned her on her silk heel.

Her mother stalked up behind her, dressed in the latest fashion—a V-necked blue silk dress, cinched tight at the waist, her face betraying the horror that Jinx knew she should probably feel. “What on earth are you doing?”

“I’m cleaning house, Mother.” Jinx turned back to the room. “I’m starting over.”

“With nothing!” Phoebe grabbed her arm, turning her, too roughly. “I was in the middle of my morning tea when Elizabeth Fish called me and informed me of your public declarations of”—she chiseled her voice to low—“ your indiscretion with Foster’s brother.”

Jinx jerked her arm away. She’d had enough of people intimidating her. “You needn’t whisper, Mother. Bennett and I are getting married, today perhaps, and by this evening, I will be a scarlet woman no longer.”

“Come to your senses, Jinx! No woman benefits in society by admitting cuckolding her husband. You will be cut, uninvited, your family ignored in society. You need to retract your statement, tell them you were under duress. Perhaps even take an extended trip to Europe at some sanatorium. Maybe then, you will be accepted back next season.”

“I couldn’t care less about society, Mother. Haven’t you noticed? There’s a war on. No one cares about debutantes or gala balls or the opening of the opera. My life—your life—is worth nothing but what the
New York Chroni
cle
declares. I’m tired of trying to end up on the social pages.”

“The social pages are what built your life.”

“No, I built this mess, Mother. Me. And you, thank you very much.”

Phoebe recoiled, and for a moment Jinx wanted to yank back her words. Her mother seemed to shrink, the lines on her face suddenly crevassed and brutal. She still wore hair rats, still cinched her corset so tight that her internals probably had begun to lose their moorings. Jinx didn’t want to end her days like Caroline Astor, dementia requiring her to rearrange the dinner settings of imaginary guests long into the night.

“I did nothing of the sort,” Phoebe finally said, her voice but a haunting whisper.

“Oh, Mother, be honest. You lied so I could marry Foster—”

“I did that for you.”

“You did that for you. Because it was all you had—society. But see, I have more. I have Bennett, and Jack, and Rosie. Despite everything, God has blessed me, and I’m not letting go of that.”

“Don’t talk to me of God’s blessings. You are an adulteress.”

She didn’t let the epitaph bruise. “But maybe God blesses even the sinners.”

Her mother stared at her, a muscle pulling in her jaw, her eyes fierce. “I very much doubt that.”

Jinx turned away. “I did too. But that’s where I think we’re wrong. I think God’s blessing might have everything to do with Him and His riches, and nothing to do with whether we deserve it.” She walked into the room, where Amelia and her staff were removing the painting. She reached out for it and then met Amelia’s eyes. On the count of three, they heaved it into the fire. The frame broke, the canvas curling in the heat.

She turned back to her mother. “I don’t want society’s blessing—I want God’s. And this time, I’m going to be strong in the belief that God loves me. Not rich, socially competent Jinx, but possibly poor Mrs. Bennett Worth. Although Bennett has surely made his own way these past years.”

Phoebe now pressed her hand to her mouth, shaking. “You have destroyed our family.”

“I think you and Father took care of that long before I came along.”

Phoebe blanched. “You will have nothing. I will make sure of it.”

“Then I will take care of her.” Bennett came up behind her mother, his blue eyes on Jinx, her hero in a gray sack suit, vest, a black tie, obviously cleaned up from his stay in the Tombs. Something had resurrected in him when Jinx declared to the court reporters that she loved him, washed clean of shame upon his countenance. She saw in him a man tasting redemption.

Now, he brushed past Phoebe. “If she’ll still have me.”

Jinx pressed her hand to his chest. “Find me a judge.”

He laughed and kissed her cheek. “Bossy Jinx, always in charge.” He looked around the room. “I approve of your changes. What will you do with the room now?”

“I have no idea,” Jinx said, and looped her arms around Bennett’s neck. He met her gaze. Oh, he had eyes she’d spend the rest of her life finding herself inside.

Phoebe came near the fire in the hearth, her gaze upon the burning portrait. Her eyes glistened.

“Jinx,” Bennett took her hands. “I don’t want you staying here tonight. I talked with the police detectives—they seem to think that it might not be safe. Whoever killed Foster might come back, finish with Rosie and Jack.”

“Don’t be absurd, Bennett. I have my staff here to protect me. No one will hurt Rosie, or Jack.”

“Mother.”

Jinx looked up. Rosie stood in the doorway, her eyes red. She looked at Bennett without warmth, back to her mother. “Jack’s not coming back.”

Jinx stilled. “What?”

“I went after him, but…he’s enlisting.”

Jinx’s breath hiccoughed from her. “What, no, he’s only seventeen… .” She looked at Bennett. “He’s only seventeen.”

“I’ll find him, Jinx. I’ll stop him.” Bennett kissed her hands. “I won’t let our son go to war.”

“Oh, Bennett, Thank you.”

He turned to go then stopped. “Jinx, get behind me.” He reached out his hand behind him, grabbed hers.

She glanced at her mother, who had paled.

Jinx stiffened, looked around Bennett.

Foster’s valet stood a foot from Bennett, one of Foster’s dueling pistols pointed at his chest. Rosie had moved away from him, toward her grandmother.

Bennett raised his hands. “Now, Lewis, I don’t know what you believe happened, but Jinx was telling the truth when she said I didn’t kill my brother.”

Perhaps he’d come to collect a sort of severance. She started to step out from behind Bennett, but he pulled her back. “Stay put,” he hissed.

Fine. She wasn’t tall enough to lean over his shoulder, so she peeked out. “Listen, Lewis, if you want money, I’m sure we can work out something—”

“Shut up.”

She stiffened at his tone. And a ripple went through her when he stepped forward and pressed the dueling pistol hard to Bennett’s chest.

To her horror, Lewis reached out, grabbed her by the arm, and yanked her forward.