Her Safe Harbor: Prairie Romance (Crawford Family Book 4) (12 page)

“I do not understand Boston society, or even your or your
family’s place in it, but I do understand men like Jeffrey Rothchild. His kind
of intimidation happens in the cheapest saloon, the most luxurious boardroom,
and in the kitchens of everyday families. You are not unique nor do you need to
manage this yourself. Please don’t call yourself a coward, either. You are not
a coward. You are facing an enemy alone; however, that is not necessary. Allow
me to help.”

She stared into his eyes. “I am shaken to my core. What I’ve
always thought I could discern about another person has been proven to be
completely and utterly wrong. The stakes, the consequences of my poor judgment,
threaten the Crawford family, threaten those that depend on us, threaten the
fortunes and the legacy my family has built. Where Jolene expected a lifestyle
of wealth as our due, and Julia naively assumed that everyone lived as we did,
I knew differently. I know that the kind of wealth and prestige our family
enjoys is the product of incredibly hard work, perfect timing, and considerable
luck, otherwise, every other family in America would be wealthy and enjoy a
home such as Willow Tree with all of its amenities. That existence hangs in the
balance. I will not allow this generation to fritter it away.”

“I am unable to help you with Boston society or your family’s
business, but I do think you need to hear the truth. Ask your friend Miss
O’Brien what was whispered in her ear concerning you when she was attacked. It
may be true that you must navigate Boston society alone, but you must be safe
while you do so or all of your work and worry is for naught. I will see to
that.”

“So you are proposing to keep me safe while I tend to what
is necessary?”

“Yes. I will escort your sister back to Washington as
planned later this week and return to keep watch. You will become very tired of
seeing my face but you will be free to do whatever is needed to get your family
ship righted.”

“Mr. Rothchild will not care for it. Neither will my
mother.”

“That is not my concern.”

“What will Max say? You are his employee. He may not allow
you to leave for any extended amount of time.”

Zeb took her hands loosely in his, touching his thumbs to
her palms. “I am employed by the senator, not owned by him. I will suggest he
appoint a new chief of staff.”

“You would give up working for my brother-in-law? A
prestigious, challenging position? I listened to you and Max speaking about
your bills and procedures and how future generations will benefit from the laws
you are writing and hoping to pass. You would give that up? But why?”

He stared at her then, looking into her eyes, past her
fears, past her hurts and torments, to her. To the place deep inside her where
her heart and soul beat. Where all the worldly adornments and entrapments of
wealth and obligation were stripped away and did not influence her feelings or
hopes. Where the essence of
her
recognized
his
. She was not
breathing, nor did she feel the cool breeze at her back.

“I don’t have a choice, you see,” he said in a whisper. “The
only thing I know is that I must keep you safe, that that is more important
than any future outcomes or past consequences. You can relax, you can breathe
easy. No one will ever strike you or threaten violence against you on my watch.
I promise you that and would die fulfilling it.”

Tears streamed down her face although she was not sad or
fearful. “You would let me win my battles at the expense of your dreams?”

“There is no cost too high for your safety and happiness.”

Jennifer touched his cheek, still pink with her handprint.
“I am so sorry. I am unable to even touch my mount with a crop and yet I lashed
out in anger at someone who has done nothing but be kind to me. Have I become
the tormentor?”

Zeb covered her hand with his. “No. But you are frustrated
and frightened. I believe you and Miss O’Brien have uncovered something
unsavory at the bank, and it is difficult to know how to proceed when you are
scared for your life. It is no longer necessary to be afraid.”

“It is no longer necessary to be afraid,” she repeated. She
believed him. Zeb Moran, even in his expertly tailored jacket, snug trousers,
and flat satin waistcoat, exuded a dangerous physicality. She’d watched him
rope horses and carry feed and lift calves in his dungarees and flannel shirts
while in Texas. She’d wiped the sweat from his chest and lanky arms, strung through
with muscle, when she nursed him through the influenza. He was manly and
lovely, she’d admitted to herself at the time, and his body was so different
from her own. But here now, in his formal clothes, with his brown-gold hair
touching his collar in a curl, his chest just inches from her breasts, she’d
never felt safer, or more attracted to a man. For him to touch her, caress her,
run his fingers the length of her, and she him.

Jennifer leaned forward and touched her lips to his, for
just a moment. She could smell his soap and feel the bristle of his beard
against her chin. He was breathing quickly and staring at her mouth. He touched
her cheek and pushed his fingers through the loose strands of her hair, holding
her head lightly in place, as he touched his tongue to her lips. Jennifer
groaned with the heat of it, wishing every inch of her body was touching his.

“I want to kiss you, Jenny,” he whispered.

“Is that not what we are doing?”

“I want to hold you. I want to cover your mouth with mine. I
want your breasts and your hips tight against me”—he pulled away to look into
her eyes—“but I don’t want to scare you.”

“I am not frightened of you. Please,” she said, although
unsure of what she was asking.

Zeb wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her to him
until her body was flush against his. With a last survey of her face, he
focused on her mouth and claimed it, pushing his tongue through her parted
lips. She clutched his shoulders where her hands lay, relishing the friction
and heat on her breasts where they pressed against the stiff fabric of his
jacket. He angled his mouth over hers, and ran his hand up her side, his
fingers just grazing the side of her breast.

He pulled his lips away and laid his forehead on hers. “I’ve
been dreaming of kissing you since the day I woke up from fever. But I couldn’t
imagine such a fine and bright woman as yourself ever dreaming of a scoundrel
like me.”

Chapter Eleven

Jennifer had spent the last hour
pacing her rooms, deciding what would be the next wise thing to do. She was
feeling lighthearted, gay even, thinking that she was no longer worried about
Jeffrey. She would be able to say what she wanted to him with no fear of
reprisal. She wondered why she hesitated to be forthright with her mother and
father as well, and she could not think of one reason that was justifiable. She
was an adult and well educated. She managed all the consequences of her
mother’s manipulations with staff and family anyway. Why appease someone who
would not be mollified? She was going to be kind, but straightforward, lifting
the veil from her father’s eyes and challenging her mother rather than
acquiescing to her constant demands and wishes. Jolene’s advice finally made
sense.

Her newfound confidence ebbed when she spoke to O’Brien.

“What did he say?” she asked her friend as they sat beside
each other on O’Brien’s bed. “You must tell me.”

O’Brien stood and wandered to her window. “I was hoping to
shield you from all this with my silence. Hoping to convince you that the
Dorchester portfolio balanced. How I was going to do that, however, is a
stretch of the imagination as I can barely step over the threshold of my home
without crying and shaking, let alone go back to the bank, to my work that I
love. As much as I hate my attacker for the violence he perpetrated on me, I
hate myself more for being terrified.”

“I know of what you speak,” Jennifer acknowledged, after
taking a deep breath. “Mr. Rothchild has hit me on two separate occasions. My
ribs were broken, I believe, the first time. I am so sorry to have dragged you
into this.”

“I’m so sorry for you. I’ve found that violence like this
affects the mind as much as wounds on the body.”

O’Brien sat down beside her. The two women held hands as if
facing their tormentors, staring ahead out the side window of the house to
where the winter landscape was giving way to spots of green. “He said you’d be
used foully by several men, raped and ruined, and that you’d be happy that
Rothchild would still have you, if you weren’t with child. He said that you
would learn to like a good smacking before servicing your husband, as you would
be doing whenever and wherever Rothchild wanted.”

Jennifer shivered and fought the bile rising in her throat.
Tears filled her eyes. “Sometimes I believe the terror of my imagination is
more horrible than what could actually happen. But how ridiculous! When I think
about the pain, the humiliation, and embarrassment that followed after he hit
me, I am certain my imagination cannot match.”

“I can smell my attacker’s breath, I swear, when I wake up
in the middle of the night,” O’Brien said. “I can feel his spittle hit my ear
and cheek as he whispered all the foul things that would happen to my father,
and to Sean and to you.”

Jennifer rose. “Mr. Moran is going to see to my safety,
personally. I will no longer be in a position to be tormented by Jeffrey
Rothchild at home or at the bank. When you are ready, I am certain he would
guard you, too, if you chose to come as well.”

O’Brien wrapped her arms around herself and shook her head.
“No. I can’t. Please do not ask me to.”

“Do not worry one second. Stay here and get well and let
your father and brother care for you. You are barely out of your sickbed!”

“I cannot do it.”

“Then you must not.”

* * *

“Father, may I speak to you?”
Jennifer asked as she stepped through the door to his study.

“Certainly, my dear. Have a seat. Shall I ring for coffee?”

“If you wish, Father. I have some important things to
discuss with you.”

“Important things, my dear?”

Jennifer watched a maid roll in the coffee cart and
proceeded to pour for her father. But she did not sit down when she finished.
There was too much at stake to be casual. “I believe O’Brien was attacked
because of what she and I have discovered at the bank.”

“At the bank? How could that have anything to do with what
happened to Miss O’Brien? She should have never been on that street. It is
unsafe, and she is the proof.”

“No Father. It was not random. She was a target, and her
family was threatened.”

“You must have the wrong of this. Perhaps she is hysterical.”

“She is terrified. Not hysterical.”

“It is a horrible lesson learned for a young woman. Her
father is surely tormented by it.”

Jennifer stepped closer to the desk and waited until her
father placed his cup that he had been contemplating in some seriousness in its
saucer and looked up at her. “O’Brien did nothing wrong. There was no lesson as
a consequence of bad behavior, but there was a message. She was attacked
because we have found something unscrupulous in the Dorchester portfolio and
have been making inquiries about our concerns.”

“Unscrupulous? How absurd! There has been a mathematical
error made. That is all.”

She shook her head. “You are wrong, Father. I believe
someone is pocketing money and hiding the difference in the percentages the
bank charges in interest.”

“That cannot be. We could see it if the debits and credits
did not balance.”

“It is hidden in the credit column as if the pilfered funds
were redeposited.”

“But then we would see it in the cash balance.”

“I suppose it depends on the accountant who is doing the
cash balance for that month.”

William Crawford rose from behind his desk. “Are you
implying that one of the vice presidents of the bank is falsifying records?”

“Yes, I am,” she said. “I cannot yet prove it—”

“Of course you can’t!” he shouted. “Because it is not true!”

“I cannot yet prove it, but I believe Jeffrey Rothchild is
embezzling money.”

“Jeffrey Rothchild?” her father said in disbelief. “
You
asked me to hire him after you had just met him last spring! Yet you went to
your sister’s last month to escape him and an impending engagement, but at the
Randolph dinner you were his fiancée. And now you are accusing him of theft?
You must say nothing about this to anyone! We could have a run! Rumors such as
this have brought banks to their ends before, and if word was out, Jeffrey
would never be hired in Boston again!”

“You are concerned about
Jeffrey
?”

“Of course I am! He is a vice president of the Crawford
Bank! Any aspersions cast upon him will reflect on the bank. People will say that
you have argued with your fiancé and now are spreading rumors about him. We do
not need anyone to know about this or speculate on the bank’s liquidity or
trustworthiness. You must obey me on this.”

“It would be better for these
errors
to be exposed during
a bank audit? We would never survive the aftermath. Creditors would be lined up
at our door if the Comptroller of Currency for Federal Banks were to find an
inconsistency.”

Crawford dropped into his seat and stared away at the fire
burning brightly in the fireplace. He sat silently for some long minutes. “I
will look into this personally,” he said, and looked up at Jennifer. “But I
will not have a good man slandered over delicate female sensibilities. I have
dealt with that all of my life.”

“Female sensibilities?” Jennifer whispered. She should tell
her father now, right this very second, she thought, about Jeffrey’s violent
nature. But she did not. How could she reveal that she’d allowed it? That
perhaps she was deserving of it? And what would she do? Open her blouse and
lift her chemise and show him the faded bruises?

 She had just recently concluded that perhaps she’d sought
out the man who would be able to humiliate her much like her mother had done to
her all of her life. That she was accustomed to that treatment and comfortable
with it. Wasn’t that what was said about children and their parents, after all?
Her father had concluded she was the manipulative one and cruel like his wife,
and she’d always viewed herself as a victim of Jane’s moods, or insanity as
Jolene insisted, and now Jeffrey’s. And beyond it all, she was still
embarrassed and now more than ever knowing that her revelation provoked her
father to be compassionate to another of his gender who was at the mercy of the
females in his sphere. But had she not just promised herself to convince her
father otherwise?

“You will find I am right about the Dorchester portfolio. I
never once said I was Jeffrey’s fiancée at the Randolph party, but it was said
by
someone
. I didn’t deny it because Mother was ill and she had already
made herself look a fool. I didn’t want to fan any fires.”

“A fool?” he said and rose, wandering to the window and
presenting Jennifer with his back. “She seemed quite popular with the young
people.”

“Popular? Her preoccupation with Fitzhugh made her a
laughingstock.”

He turned. “Do not speak of your mother this way. It is not
dignified.”

“Oh, Father,” she said, and shook her head slowly. “There is
talk about Mother . . . about her peculiarities. Her behavior reflects on the
bank as well. We are in a precarious situation.”

He turned to the coffee cart, refilled his cup and looked up
at her with a smile, as if the previous conversation had not happened. “More
coffee, my dear?”

“No, thank you,” she said. “I must check in with Mrs. Gutentide
on this week’s menu.”

* * *

“You consider this serious enough
that you would quit working for Maximillian?” Jolene asked Zeb.

“Yes. Your sister has not told me the details, but I feel
her life is in danger,” he said. “I will escort you back to Washington and then
return immediately to Boston.”

“If it is that dangerous, you must stay with Jennifer. We
will make some other arrangements for my travel.”

“No. I will not break my word to Max. I will see you home
and travel back the following day. I have contracted with a young man working
at Willow Tree. Luther is his name, and he has been in your family’s employ
since he was very young and is a friend to your sister’s maid. Luther is to
guard Jennifer as best as he is able. I told him if he is dismissed or
threatened, he will come work for me. Miss Crawford has no outside engagements
for the time I am away so I am hoping all will be well until I return.”

Jolene sat stiffly in the brightly flowered settee in the
study of her brother-in-law, Calvin Billings, her hands folded in her lap. “It
is Mr. Rothchild, is it not? What has he done to her?”

“It is not my secret to tell. But I will not allow anything
to happen to her. I will guard her with my life as I have already told her,” he
said.

Calvin touched Jolene’s shoulder. “If for any reason Mr.
Moran cannot return by Sunday evening, Eugenia and I will arrive at Willow
Tree, collect Jennifer, and be her escort at the Boston Hospital Soiree. I will
not let her out of my sight, and Mr. Moran has already arranged for additional
protection at the hotel.”

“Have you spoken to my father about your concerns?” she
asked.

Zeb shook his head. “That is for your sister to do, and I’m
not sure he would believe me anyway.”

“Maximillian is not going to like this,” she said. “He
considers Jennifer to be in our family sphere. He is going to want to take the
next train to Boston and have a word with Mr. Rothchild.”

“Max has state matters that must keep him in Washington. I
have already spoken to your sister. She has agreed to allow me to guard her
while she solves . . . other issues.”

“What other issues?” Jolene asked. “You must tell me.”

Zeb shook his head. “It is not my place to say, but she has
not told me either. You should talk to your sister before you leave for
Washington.”

“I will. I’ll be dining at Willow Tree tonight.”

He sat down beside Jolene. “Please do not allow yourself to
be alone with Mr. Rothchild. I believe the point of his aggressiveness is your
sister, but he has already proven to be the type of man who would use terror to
get his way. I cannot sufficiently guard both of you, and I will be focusing on
Miss Crawford’s safety as I think she is the one most at risk.”

“So I shall pretend to be helpless and not stray far from my
father’s arm?” Jolene said and raised her brows. “And how ridiculous you sound
referring to Jennifer as Miss Crawford. You are in love with her. There is no
need to stand on ceremony with me or with Calvin, as he is my family, and
therefore Jennifer’s as well.”

“I never said, I would never presume to . . . Miss Crawford
and I have no understanding other than that I will guard her as she goes about
her business and the bank’s business.”

She rose and straightened her dress. “I have no doubt you
would slay a battalion of men for the safety of my sister. You are brave other
than in matters of the heart. I will speak to Jennifer this evening and unearth
her secrets if she is willing to share them.”

Zeb watched her sweep out of the room, her yellow silk dress
swirling, leaving a rose scent in her wake. Calvin Billings was staring at him.
“She is the most exasperating woman I have ever had the misfortune of knowing.
How Max lives with her is a mystery,” Zeb said.

Calvin laughed. “Max is hopelessly in love. He dotes on her
and she him. Jolene can be sharp-tongued but she is not stupid. In fact, she is
very perceptive.”

Zeb stood outside of Jennifer’s room that evening waiting to
escort her to dinner. It would doubtless be interesting or contentious, as
Jeffrey Rothchild would be joining them that night at Mrs. Crawford’s request.
He had watched the man himself enter the front doors a few minutes ago from his
vantage point on the second floor balcony across from Jennifer’s suite, and
drop his hat and coat into Bellings’s arms with no acknowledgment that the
butler existed other than to serve him.