Kissing in the Dark (38 page)

“Who’s delivering?” a male voice asked from the other side of the door.

Damn! He’d hoped the mistress was alone. Now it was a guessing game of how many people were inside guarding Cora. He scrambled for a name, then remembered the store behind the courthouse. “Horton’s Mercantile!” he hollered to whoever was on the other side of the door.

“What do you have?”

“Don’t know, sir. The package is sealed.”

A grumble came through the door, then the rattle of a key, and twisting of the door knob.

The second the door started to open, Duke slammed his shoulder into the solid oak and shoved the man back several steps. The man was short, stocky, and half asleep by the look of his eyes, but Duke’s abrupt entrance into the kitchen snapped him to attention. He lunged for a cast iron frying pan on the stove, but left his jaw exposed to Duke’s fist. The first blow spun him away from the stove and into the sink. The second blow rolled his eyes back in his head. He crashed to the floor, and Duke bolted into the next room.

A tall, striking woman spun to face him, her eyes filled with fear.

“Daddy!” Cora scrambled to her feet, but the woman caught Cora’s arm and held her back. “Daddy!” Cora cried again, her fear slicing through him.

“Whoever you are, get out of my house,” the woman said, pulling Cora toward a doorway that led to another room.

“I’m that little girl’s father,” Duke said, striding across the room. “And I’m taking her home.”

He reached for Cora, but the woman screeched and raked his face with her fingernails. “Get out!” She pummeled him with her fists, as if she were fighting for her life. And maybe she was. Maybe Stone would punish the woman if she let Duke take Cora, but he didn’t give a damn. Until now, he had never once considered hitting a female, but it was all he could do to hold himself back when this woman jerked Cora’s arm and hauled her toward the open doorway.

He wrenched her crazed grip off Cora’s elbow, then swept Cora into his arms. The woman came at him again, but he used a straight arm to her chest to knock her back three steps. He headed for the door, feeling every blow she rained across his back, thanking God she hadn’t picked up the candelabra from her table. Her friend was awake and waiting in the kitchen doorway with that damned frying pan, bleeding from the mouth and huffing from his nostrils. With Cora in his arms, Duke was unable to push past without risking injury to her.

Pivoting on his heel, he grabbed the clawing, fist-swinging witch by her arm, and shoved her into her pan-wielding friend. The pair fell against the kitchen door, giving Duke the opportunity to dash for the front exit. He yanked open the door just as the frying pan bonged off the wall beside him. The crack of a gunshot, and sound of splintering wood, drove him out the door at a dead run.

With Cora clutched in his arms, he bolted between houses and across yards, over shrubs and through clusters of trees, until he was certain they weren’t being followed. Gasping for breath, he leaned against a dilapidated building and hugged Cora to his pounding chest. Hard sobs shook her body and she gripped his neck.

“It’s okay, princess. You’re safe now. Daddy’s got you.”

He stroked her back and let her cry, knowing she needed the comfort, and that he needed the time to catch his breath. His shoulder was killing him, and he had no idea where the hell he was.

“I don’t want to go b-back there,” she cried.

“You won’t, princess. Not ever. Daddy’s taking you home.”

“Is Mama there?”

“No, she’s waiting for you at a friend’s house.”

Cora’s face was covered in tears. “Can we see her now?”

His throat closed and he could only nod, unable to bear the devastation in her eyes.

She looked at his cheek. “That woman s-scratched you.”

“It doesn’t hurt.” Nothing hurt but his heart. He pulled out his handkerchief and cleaned her face, and helped her blow her nose. Then he pulled his coat around her and held her against his chest to keep her warm in the cold night.

“Ready to go?” he asked cheerfully, but inside he raged, wanting to wrap his fingers around Stone’s neck and kill the bastard.

Duke stayed to the alleys and backyards, trying to avoid walking the streets as he navigated in a northeasterly direction. The neighborhood could only be called dilapidated, the people destitute and desperate, and he wanted to get out of it as soon as possible.

But Cora’s squeal brought him to a stop. “There’s grandma’s house!” she said, her face lit with wonder as she pointed at a big house on the corner. “Is Mama there?”

Shocked, Duke looked again at the enormous two-story house. It wasn’t as shoddy as the surrounding homes, several of which were being torn down and the lots cleared, but it was far from what he would want to live in.

“Can we go there?” Cora asked.

He nodded, feeling a deep need to see the root of all his troubles.

They scared off two young boys who were playing on the front stoop. Duke forced the back door, then went through the big house where Faith’s mother and aunts had sold their bodies, and where Faith had used her beautiful hands to give other men pleasure.

“This is pretty,” Cora said, ogling the gaudy parlor. “Grandma only let me and Adam come in the kitchen.”

Thank God.

Other than the loud decor, the house was unremarkable. Still, Duke couldn’t help wondering which room Faith had worked in—and where she’d lost her virginity to Jarvis.

“Our house is out back,” Cora said, tugging his hand as if she were giving him a tour.

She showed him a ramshackle greenhouse where Faith had grown her herbs, and where her mother had tended roses. Then Cora showed him the house where she, Adam, and Faith had lived.

It was a shack.

A one-room, one-bed, miserable little shack.

But Cora trotted to the bed like it was her favorite place in the world. “I slept here,” she said importantly. “And Mama and Adam did too.”

He’d suspected that. Their spare existence outraged him, but Cora seemed to think she’d had a fine house. With a cry of joy, she scrambled off the mattress and dove for something beside the bed. “My book!”

She lifted the book, and a brush fell to the floor with a clunk, but she was too absorbed with the book to notice. But Duke noticed. He knelt beside Cora, picked up the brush with the silver handle and painted porcelain back, and tucked it into his coat pocket.

How on earth had Faith survived this?

Knowing she had spent twenty-five years living in this barren little room sickened him. It must have been a prison. No wonder she had spent her time in the greenhouse. How easy it would have been for a well-traveled man like Jarvis to mislead a desperate girl into believing she was finally getting an opportunity to escape this life.

“We need to go, princess,” he said.

“Can I take my book?”

“Of course. Take whatever you’d like.”

She rooted between the wall and the mattress like a dog digging for a bone. She found another book and proudly hugged it to her chest as she headed for the door.

Duke lifted Cora and her two precious books into his arms. He peered out the window to make sure they hadn’t been followed, then stepped outside and closed the door on a place he never wanted Faith, Adam, or Cora to see again.

“Bye, Grandma.” Cora’s comment confused him, until he saw her waving at a small rosebush behind the shack. “Mama says grandma’s sleeping beneath the rosebush now.”

As much as he wanted to remain indifferent, or silently curse the woman who’d allowed her children to live in such sordid conditions, he couldn’t bring himself to walk past the grave marker. Faith, Adam, and Cora loved her. Even their crazy aunts loved the woman. She must have had some saving graces.

With Cora tucked inside his coat, Duke knelt by the bush. “I’ll take care of your children for you,” he said, speaking his first words to his mother-in-law.

Cora reached out and plucked a dried, withered rose from a thorny stem. “Mama will like this,” she said, closing her fingers around the ugly brown flower.

It was nearly dark when Duke found the lawyer’s house. And not a minute too soon. His shoulder hurt like hell, the scratch marks on his cheek stung, and he was starving.

Cuvier opened the door before Duke could knock. “I was preparing to come look for you,” he said, hurrying them inside.

Faith rushed into the foyer, but when she saw Duke holding Cora, she burst into tears and threw her arms around them both.

“Thank God. Oh . . . thank you, Jesus.”

“Mama, I got my books!” Cora said, but Faith sobbed too hard to respond. She pulled Cora into her arms and rocked her.

“Oh, baby, I missed you.”

Cora buried her face in Faith’s neck. “Daddy says I won’t go back there no more.”

“You won’t, sweetie. Never again.”

“I got this for you.” Cora opened her hand to show her the crushed rose that was falling apart. “It was on Grandma’s rosebush.”

Faith frowned and raised wet eyes to Duke. He nodded to say that Cora wasn’t confused, that they had been to the brothel and he finally understood.

“Oh, no.” Her lashes swooped down to cover her eyes, but he’d seen the shame in them.

“Don’t you like it?” Cora asked.

“Yes, baby. I like it very much.”

As they clung to each other, Duke began to understand that they were never sisters. From the moment of Cora’s birth, this little girl had been Faith’s daughter.

And now she was Duke’s daughter.

He felt small for having judged Faith, for condemning her for keeping secrets and marrying him to secure Adam’s and Cora’s future. She’d chosen that path out of necessity. He couldn’t blame her for that. But still knowing she’d
had
to marry him, left a hollow hole in his chest.

o0o

Faith gave Cora a bath, read her books to her and rocked her to sleep. She put her in bed, then went downstairs to her father’s study where he and Duke were talking. She accepted a glass of wine from the lawyer, then sat in a large leather chair.

Cuvier stood by the fireplace, deep in thought. Finally, he sighed and turned up his palms. “There’s no easy way to explain this, so I’m going to state the bald truth. I was a young man just out of law school when I first visited your mother’s brothel,” he said. “My flower of choice was Rose. Every time. She told me it was foolish to care about her, but that didn’t stop me from falling in love. I thought we could find a way to be together, but she insisted it was impossible . . . .”

His subsequent silence unnerved Faith. If he left the story unfinished, she would never feel settled. “Did you know about me?”

“Not right away,” he said, refilling his glass from the decanter on the wine cart. “My uncle offered me a job at his law firm in Chicago, and Rose insisted I take the opportunity to start my law career. I thought if I earned enough money, I could bring Rose to Chicago with me.” He rested his wineglass on the stone mantel. “I didn’t make it back to see her until the second year, and it was only twice, but each time I asked her to come to Chicago with me, she refused. By the third year, I was miserable. I quit the firm and moved back to Syracuse.” Sadness filled his eyes. “That’s when your mother finally told me she had a daughter. But she insisted you weren’t mine. I didn’t know what to believe because she was always twisting her words and changing her mind about seeing me.”

Faith nodded to let him know she understood, that his absence in her life wasn’t completely his fault.

“It didn’t matter to me. I wanted to marry your mother and move us to another city, but she refused. When I pushed, she called me a fool and said I was becoming bothersome, and that she didn’t want me to visit her anymore. I stormed out, feeling like the fool she called me. It took me ten years to discover that my father had paid her a visit. He’d told her about my successful family and my achievements in law school, and explained that I would forfeit everything and ruin my life if I continued to visit her. So she made sure I didn’t come back.”

Of all the possible scenarios Faith had imagined about the man who fathered her, this wasn’t one of them. He’d always been the one at fault. Her mother had always been the victim. But the truth was harsher, because they were all victims. Her mother had loved a man enough to save him from his own destructive love. Her father had loved a woman from the wrong side of town. And their children had suffered the shame of their sins.

“I loved Rose from the minute I first saw her, and I still wanted her, so I went to see her. She welcomed me as a lover, but refused to marry me. Being continually spurned and lied to finally wore me down, and one day I just decided not to go back.”

Which explained why he didn’t know about Adam. Because if he’d ever seen the boy, he would know Adam was his son.

“I thought by helping the judge push the theater project, it would raise property values and your mother could sell the brothel and buy that house she wanted.”

Pain squeezed Faith’s heart to know her mother had shared her dream with this man—and that he might have been able to make her dream come true.

“I didn’t know Judge Stone was working against us. I thought he was an honorable man like his brother and father. He promised me great career rewards if I worked hard and kept my nose clean. So when he warned me to stay away from the badlands section of the city, I never suspected it was because of your mother. But now I see what a blind fool I’ve been. Your mother sent me a letter shortly before she died, but I thought . . .” He sighed, a deep sadness filling his eyes. “I didn’t trust her. I suspected that my father was using her again to manipulate me. He wants me to go back to his brother’s firm in Chicago.”

“May I ask what was in her letter?” Faith asked.

“Rose said Stone was trying to strip her of her property. I did some digging while I was at the courthouse watching Stone this evening, and it appears she was right. Stone has recently filed papers with the city to list the property as abandoned and seize it for his theater project.” Cuvier shook his head. “I feel like the world’s biggest fool. Judge Stone was using me and your mother to protect his investment.” He handed the letter to Faith. “I let your husband read it while you were tending Cora.”