Legacy of Secrets (55 page)

“Don’t forget, he was poor,” she reminded him. “A man from a background like his will always think that only money can buy him happiness.”

Finn took time off to help Dan with his election campaign in Boston, but he did not go to watch Lily. Still, he knew her every movement. The private detective he employed had earned himself a small fortune of his own, keeping daily watch on the beauteous and perfidious Mrs. Lily Adams, who cheated on her unaware husband, certain that he was so wrapped up in his work he would never find her out. And she was right, because John just seemed grateful that she was happy with her new interests and friends in New York. And naturally, he trusted her.

Lily fizzed with excitement when she was in New York, out and about at dinners and parties, on the arm of the good-looking famous Broadway star, but in private her guilt gnawed at her. And besides, she knew for certain that much as she liked Ned, she was not in love with him. At least, not madly, passionately in love, the way she wanted to be. It was all too smooth, too predictable, too easy. What was missing, she told herself, was
excitement

She kicked back the sheets late one night after they made love, and prowled, naked, to the window. She pulled aside the gold brocade curtain, peering restlessly out into the night.

“What’s the matter?” Ned asked, leaning back against the pillows and lighting one of the Egyptian cheroots he had taken to smoking recently.

Lily wrinkled her nose at the pungent sweetish smell of the tobacco. “Do you have to smoke those things?” she said irritably. “You know I hate it.”

“No, you don’t. You always tell me how nice it smells.”

“When did I say that?” she demanded heatedly. “Tell me when, Ned Sheridan.”

“Oh, a couple of hours ago, I guess. After dinner at the restaurant. I seem to remember you even had a puff.”

Lily stamped her foot angrily. “Jayzus,” she said, “do you always have to be right? Can’t we ever have a fight?”

“But I don’t want to fight with you, Lily,” he said, astonished. “I love you. You know that.”

She pushed back her long black hair and glared at him. “Yes, but …” She stopped and turned back to the window again. She had been going to say “but it’s so boring.” And it was true. She
was
bored, and in a way she was glad that Ned was leaving the next day, taking his company on a tour across America. He had asked her to leave John, to come with him, to live with him, to marry him. He would settle for anything and she knew it. Ned would be glad of the crumbs of her love. Even when he made love to her his adoration made him treat her gently, like a porcelain doll who might break, when what she really wanted … Again
she stopped herself, but this time it was because she did not know what she wanted. She only knew it was not this.

She saw Ned off at the railroad station the next morning. He had his own private carriage with a blue-carpeted bedroom and a brass bed, a mahogany bathroom, and a red plush parlor complete with armchairs and potted plants. “It’s plenty big enough for two,” he said hopefully, but she just laughed and shook her head and kissed him good-bye.

He followed her back down the steps onto the platform, reluctant to leave her, and she eyed him ruefully, her head to one side. “I shall miss you, darling Ned,” she told him, thinking that she was a fool and that she should leave John and go with him after all.

“Not half as much as I shall miss you,” Ned replied, then jumped back on as the train steamed and huffed and hooted and then rattled away from the platform. He leaned from the window watching, but Lily did not stay to wave. She turned and walked resolutely away down the platform, and out of his life. Again.

T
HE FOLLOWING WEEK,
Cornelius James returned to his office after a hearty lunch taken with an old friend and colleague who had retired the previous year. “You should try it, Cornelius,” his friend had said. “Look at me. Look how I am enjoying life. I have learned to play golf and lawn tennis. I go out with my son on the sailboat during weekends at Newport, and at last I have time for my grandchildren.”

“You’ve got something there,” Cornelius had replied thoughtfully. “The only thing is that I don’t have a son, or even a daughter, and none of those delightful grandchildren, like you have. But Mrs. James is getting a bit frail—they say it’s arthritis, stiffening of the joints and all that. Maybe she would be better in a drier climate.”

Sitting at his desk he shook his head, thinking of the icy Boston winters with the snow and the rain that prevented Beatrice from setting foot outside for months on end. His sigh of regret changed to a gasp as a sudden pain in his
chest took him by surprise. Telling himself he must have eaten and drunk too well at lunch, he summoned his secretary and asked him to bring a glass of water.

When the man returned with a carafe and a glass on a silver tray, Cornelius’s head was resting on the leather-bound blotter on his desk in front of him. “Mr. James, sir,” the man cried. He put down his tray and hurried to his boss’s side and lifted him up, but he knew he was too late. Cornelius James was dead.

The funeral was held in Boston, but Beatrice could not attend because the wet weather had aggravated her arthritis and she could not walk; she could not even sit for more than five minutes in a wheelchair without the pain becoming too agonizing to bear. She kissed her husband goodbye before they sealed the coffin, and watched from her bedroom window overlooking Louisburg Square as it was carried down the front steps by his pallbearers, chief of whom was her husband’s protégé, Finn O’Keeffe.

Afterward, there was a reception for the mourners at the house, with sherry for the ladies and warming whiskey for the men, and small pieces of madeira cake and plain biscuits. Finn was asked to stay afterward for the reading of the will in Beatrice’s sitting room.

The lawyer cleared his throat. He looked at the old lady and the young man sitting expectantly on the straight-backed Queen Anne sofa, and said, “My sole duty is to inform you of the contents of the Last Will and Testament of Cornelius James. It is very simple and straightforward.” He glanced sympathetically at the widow. He had known her for many years and it was sad to see her become so quickly frail and old. “If I may be permitted, Beatrice,” he said, “to offer you my deepest condolences. Cornelius was a good man and a good friend.”

“And a good husband,” she said with a quiet little smile.

“And that Beatrice, Mr. O’Keeffe, is all,” the lawyer said, folding up the documents again.

Finn took Beatrice’s gnarled hands in his. There were tears in his eyes as he said, “Mrs. James, I am deeply touched, but of course I cannot accept half Cornelius’s fortune. The money is yours.”

She smiled and patted his hand gently. “I don’t need it,” she told him calmly. “I have more than enough for my wants, and the Church will get what’s left when I go to join Cornelius. He wanted you to have the money so you could live up to your position as chairman of his company. And he trusted you to carry on his name in the same honest and creditable way he did himself.”

“I will do my best, ma’am,” Finn promised.

“Another thing,” Beatrice said. “I am planning on moving to a drier, warmer climate. To California. The doctors tell me it will be good for my arthritis and that I might not
last another winter on the East Coast. I want to
give
you this house. I’m sure that is what Cornelius would have wanted.”

A few weeks later she left for California and Finn found himself the owner of the house where he had once worked as the stableboy.
If only,
he thought as he prowled the big, graceful empty rooms,
if only it had been Ardnavarna.
But no matter. He, Finn O’Keeffe James, an Irishman and a Catholic, jumped up from the bogs and the North End slums, had achieved the impossible. He had penetrated that most exclusive old guard enclave, Beacon Hill. He was the owner of a grand house on Louisburg Square and the possessor of a fortune. And right around the corner lived his neighbor, Lily.

J
OHN
A
DAMS GLANCED UP
from the book he was reading as his wife came into the room. It was a gloomy gray afternoon and he was surprised that she had been out on her usual drive, but she always seemed so bored nowadays. She almost never went to New York and he wondered guiltily whether he should make an effort to take her there himself. But dammit, he was so busy and there was still so much research to be done for his next book. Still, summer was just around the corner. He would whisk her off to Europe again, and maybe this time they could travel further afield, to Greece, or even Turkey. Meanwhile, at least for this evening, they would have company. That should please her.

“There you are, darling,” he said, watching as she tossed her coat moodily into the waiting arms of her maid and walked across to the fire to warm her hands.

“Of course I’m here, John,” she said irritably. “Where else would I be?” She turned her back to the fire and hitched up her long violet wool skirt, warming her backside, and he stared at her, amazed.

Lily laughed. “My pa always used to hitch up his coat-tails like this,” she said. “Unladylike, I know, but it warms you quicker than almost anything I can think of.”
Except lovemaking,
she thought yearningly.

“You never talk about your father,” he said, surprised. “I don’t think I know much about him.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” she retorted. “And none of it is the least bit important.” She glanced at the French eighteenth-century clock on the marble mantelpiece, all gilded cherubs and sheaves of corn and flowers. It was very beautiful and the hands pointed to four o’clock.

“Is that all the time it is?” she exclaimed indignantly. “How can the hours possibly go so slowly?”

“Even you cannot change the passing of time, Lily,” he pointed out mildly.

“And if I could I would put it back,” she retorted.

“We are to have a visitor,” he said. “A Mr. James. He’s a relative of old Cornelius James. He just inherited his beautiful house on Louisburg Square, and along with it quite a library of rare books. He says he knows nothing about them and he wants my advice. So I invited him around for tea. At five.”

“How exciting,” Lily said scathingly.

“Yes, I thought so too.” John beamed at her. “It would be nice for you to meet him, my dear.”

Lily sighed. She supposed any old book collector was better than no visitors at all. “I’ll be here,” she promised as she drifted from the room.

John had to admit to himself that he could not resist the kind of challenge young Mr. James had laid at his feet. “I
know nothing on the subject of rare books,”
he had said in his letter to him,
“and I have heard, on the very best authority, that you, sir, are an expert. I beg of you, Mr. Adams.
Educate
me.”

He had telephoned Mr. James, glad for once that Lily had insisted on having one of the newfangled machines installed in the house, and invited him over that very afternoon.

He smiled, putting away his book as he heard the doorbell ring and the parlormaid hurrying across the hall. “Welcome, welcome, young man,” he cried genially, shaking his hand and taking stock of him. He guessed James was around thirty, slender and dark-haired with a mustache and brooding gray eyes. He brought with him a breath of
cold air from the street and a current of vitality and excitement, like a man going into battle instead of coming to consult an old fogy like himself about rare books.

“Glad to meet you, sir,” Finn said, looking at the man who was Lily’s husband, noticing his slightly shabby but good suit, his age, and the genuine warmth of his greeting. He tried to harden his heart against him.

He glanced around the room. It was lined with shelves of books and filled with drawings and paintings and dozens of glass-topped curio cabinets. Seeing his interest, John led him across and began to show him some of his treasures.