Leslie LaFoy (33 page)

“Let me see if I'm understanding this correctly,” her brother said hotly. “You're willing to assist this man in depriving me of my birthright?”

Suddenly she was so tired of dealing with the impossible expectations of her life; so very, very tired of carefully choosing her words and trying to cushion everyone's feelings. Let the pieces fall where they would; she didn't have the strength to care anymore. “Jackson isn't exaggerating. The MacPhaull Company is almost bankrupt. Properties have to be sold or we'll lose everything. It's a calculated liquidation and it's absolutely necessary. And I'm sorry, Henry, but you don't have the business sense of a gnat. If I let you have control of the company in its present condition, we'd all be living on the street within a few short months.”

“And what,” he brother asked, his words dripping poisoned honey, “are you getting in exchange for being the MacPhaull Judas?”

“A house!” Agatha shrilled. “She's getting her own house. She doesn't care what happens to us!”

Lindsay sagged in her chair, mentally and emotionally near exhaustion.

“I've had about all of this that I'm going to take,” Jack declared, laying his napkin on the table beside his plate and preparing to rise.

Lindsay roused herself, knowing that only she could avert a truly ugly escalation of the tensions in the room. “Jack, please,” she softly pleaded. “Let me deal with this in my own way.”

“You've got two seconds, Lindsay, and then I'm pitching them both out the front door.”

“That won't be necessary,” Henry announced, throwing his napkin into the center of the table and surging to his feet. “We're leaving. Come, Agatha.”

Numbly, Lindsay watched chaos erupt around her. Jack vaulted to his feet, his jaw hard and his eyes flinty. Agatha jumped up from her chair, the buttons on her dress catching the edge of her dinner plate, flipping it over and scattering food over the pristine linen tablecloth.

“My things!” Agatha howled, her hands pressed to her cheeks. “I have to get my things or she'll sell them to beggars!”

“Beggars don't have any money,” Jack quipped sardonically as Agatha ran for the door.

Lindsay called after her, “Agatha, I'm not going to—”

“I'm impressed, Lindsay,” Henry interrupted, his tone sickly, deadly sweet. “I truly am. You've finally come into your own; finally managed to employ Mother's instruction. It's a damn shame, though, that you didn't do it sooner. Of course, Charles Martens was of the Terwilliger-Hampsteads, a family of impeccable breeding and incredible wealth. He was
considerably
out of your league.”

Her stomach knotted and dropped to her feet as ugly certainty settled into her.

“Lindsay,” Jack said softly, reaching for her.

She stepped away from the comfort of his touch, knowing that to accept it would be playing into her brother's intent. “Get out, Henry,” she demanded, her hands fisted at her side, her heart racing with fear and rage.

He smirked and sauntered to the door. “Just out of
curiosity, Linds,” he said wryly, turning back. “I know Mother was very clear about the parameters and mechanics of trading your virtue. Despite that, the whole town knows you didn't come even remotely close to meeting Martens' expectations. He was quite candid about it all, you know. Why do you think it worked this time and not the last? Does Stennett have lower standards or have you gotten better in bed?”

The verbal slap and the flood of humiliation that came with it were familiar. Lindsay closed her eyes, enduring, unwilling to see Jack's reaction to the revelation of her darkest truth.

There was a snarl, deep and hard and utterly feral. Lindsay gasped and instinctirely stepped back, opening her eyes and desperately searching for the threat. Her heart skittered and a cry strangled low in her throat. Henry's eyes were bulging from their sockets, his body pinned high against the doorjamb by Jackson's massive shoulder.

“Don't kill him!” she heard herself cry, watching in horror as Henry's face turned red and his nose began to bleed.

Jack stepped back, grabbed her brother by the lapels of his jacket, spun around, and flung him into the foyer. Henry landed in an uncontrolled heap of expensive suit and slid toward the front door. A brilliant thrill of satisfaction rippled through Lindsay at the sight.

Through the tears welling in her eyes, Lindsay saw Jack stride forward, yank open the door, turn, and lift Henry by the lapels of his jacket again. She cried out again, but the plea didn't so much as give Jackson pause. With a snarl, he tossed Henry out onto the front steps.

He turned back and, even through her tears, Lindsay could see the fiery light in his eyes, the deep, quick rise and fall of his chest. “Are you all right?” he asked through clenched teeth.

No, she wasn't. Her heart was racing too fast; it was going to explode. And deep down inside her were coiling the unmistakable, shameless tendrils of desire. Heat fanned through her body and she gasped at the surging impulse to throw herself into his arms. Shaking her head, she backed
up, struggling to breathe, struggling to gain control of herself. Jack's brows knit and the fire went out of his eyes. In its place came a soft light of understanding, a shadow of pity.

“Lindsay,” he whispered, reaching out his hand.

She retreated another step, her mind reeling amidst a raging torrent of thought and emotion. The heel of her shoe struck the bottom stair, and through the swirl of her confusion she saw a chance to escape. Snatching her skirts into her hands, she whirled about and fled up the stairs.

She met a hysterically screaming Agatha along the way. Her sister's arms were loaded with gowns and spilling jewelry boxes. Lindsay twisted out of her path and kept going, dashing up the stairs and through the path of glittering baubles left in Agatha's wake.

“Yes, Agatha!” Jackson called from the foyer below. “Hurry! Run! The beggars are coming!”

Lindsay heard and felt the front door being shut just as she reached the haven of her bedroom. She slammed her own door closed and quickly turned the key in the lock. She stood staring blindly at the door, the wild chatter of her thoughts still pounding her senses.

She should be doing something, she thought vaguely. She should be analyzing what had happened and trying to see her course. Jack might come upstairs after her and he'd expect—

Jack. What Jack must think of me now. A proper whore.

Tears filled her eyes and spilled over her cheeks. Her strength drained out the soles of her feet. Her knees trembled and she closed her eyes, unable to care about saving herself. Out on the street, a carriage rolled away.

J
ACKSON STOOD
in the center of the foyer, staring at the marble floor and shaking his head in disbelief. He didn't even know where to begin to sort out all that had happened. It just boggled the mind. And people said that Texas was a land of uncivilized manners. Jack snorted. In all the saloons and hellholes of Texas, he'd never seen any man who had sunk to the human depths that had been plumbed and mapped by Henry MacPhaull. The things he'd said to Lindsay, of Lindsay… Jack clenched and unclenched his fists and regretted to the bottom of his soul not having made the son of a bitch eat teeth.

And Agatha … Sweet Jesus. Her boat might be in the water, but both oars had slipped the locks. He couldn't recall having ever met a person—man or woman—who moved from blatantly seductive to vacuous to conniving and into outright hysterical insanity with the speed and smoothness that Lindsay's sister had. Agatha needed a keeper with a strong arm and a stout leash. He could only assume that she'd hauled her armload of valuables to Henry's house.

Which meant that he could almost feel sorry for Henry. Almost. Maybe he should pity Edith. Jack smiled wryly. Edith was the wife exhausted by a maid burning a hole in the rug. Having to get through one of Lindsay's days would kill the woman. Henry's pomposity and condescension under the same roof as Agatha's craziness and Edith's frailty… Thank God it wasn't this roof. The upheaval of the Rutherfords, Mrs. Kowalski, her cat, and a kitchen war paled in comparison. Even if you added in a blind gardener, a one-armed housekeeper, and a busted-up coachman, Lindsay's world was still infinitely saner and more predictable than the one swirling around the other MacPhaulls. No wonder she felt as though she had to take care of Henry and Agatha; they were idiots.

But, he silently reminded himself, at some point one had to step back and let others not only make mistakes, but suffer the consequences of them. It was how people learned
not
to be idiots. He'd be willing to bet that Henry would at least hesitate and look over his shoulder the next time it crossed his mind to insult Lindsay. It would have taken only one beating with most men; but then, Henry clearly wasn't like most men.

“If I had two hands, Mr. Stennett, I would applaud.”

Mrs. Beechum.
Jack turned to the dining-room doorway and found her standing there, smiling at him, her empty sleeve, as always, tucked neatly into the waistband of her shirtdress. Emile and Primrose stood at the door on the far side of the dining room, looking at the table morosely.

“I suppose you heard it all,” he ventured.

“Oh, indeed. Henry getting his comeuppance was definitely the high point of the evening. But we,” she said, gesturing to the cooks behind her, “thought you telling Miss Agatha that the beggars were coming was particularly entertaining.”

“She brings out the worst in me. My mother raised me better.”

“Miss Agatha brings out the worst in everyone, sir. So does Henry. I wouldn't let it bother you another moment. May Emile and Primrose clear the table and finish in the kitchen?”

“Certainly,” he said, thinking that as long as his day had been, the servants' was going to be even longer. “Miss Primrose, Emile?” They both turned to face him. “The food was excellent and I appreciate the work it took to keep it until we got here. I'm truly sorry that the circumstances didn't allow us to properly enjoy it.”

Primrose smiled shyly, Emile bowed slightly at the waist, and then they both stood there looking him. The rules for servant conduct bubbled from the recesses of his memory; they wouldn't move until he formally gave them permission to or he walked away. “Don't worry about cleaning the kitchen too thoroughly,” he said, turning to leave the doorway. “Your day's been long enough.”

He stopped in the center of the foyer and looked up the stairs, vaguely aware of the clink of china behind him and that Mrs. Beechum moved past him and then bent to pick up one of the baubles Agatha had dropped. He needed to go up and see Lindsay. Just exactly what he was going to say when he got there, he didn't know. He wasn't about to apologize for throwing her brother out the front door on his ass. And while he might be able to utter some regrets for goading Agatha there at the end, his heart wouldn't really be in it. The only things he saw that they had to talk about were, first, why she allowed her siblings to treat her so badly, and second, why she'd been so upset at having justice finally exacted on her behalf.

He could pretty well guess what she'd say; they couldn't help being the way they were and she had to make allowances for their behavior because they were her brother and sister. Nothing he could say in rebuttal would make a bit of difference in how she saw the whole thing. As for the reason she was upset… He could guess on that one, too. She thought that he'd gone too far, that he'd overreacted and beaten a defenseless man. He could explain until he turned blue, but it wasn't likely that she'd ever accept the fact that, in the world of men, Henry's mouth was considered a weapon.

Jackson sighed quietly and shook his head.

“Is there a problem, Mr. Stennett?”

He'd forgotten that Mrs. Beechum was there. “You
know Lindsay better than anyone else,” he said quietly. “Why does she take such abuse from her brother and sister?”

“It's a very complicated situation,” the housekeeper answered, bending to retrieve a glittering ring.

“I'm willing to wade through a lot.”

Mrs. Beechum stepped to the central table, dropped the ring onto the silver calling-card tray, and then faced him squarely. “Lydia MacPhaull made no secret as to how she felt about her children,” she began, her words so quick and precise that Jackson knew that she'd given the matter a great deal of thought over the years. “As you've no doubt surmised, Henry and Agatha were doted upon. Lindsay, however, was an unwanted and deeply resented child, Mr. Stennett. Despite her every effort, she has never fit in the MacPhaull family. She's spent her entire life wanting only to be wanted. Suffering insults and indignities is a small price to pay for being important to those around her.”

“She's not important to them beyond the fact that she controls the MacPhaull money.”

“I agree. But you must understand that for Lindsay, being used is better than being all alone in the world.”

“She's not alone,” he protested. “She has you. And besides, she's a wonderfully intelligent and charming woman. If she went out into the world, she wouldn't be alone for any more than ten minutes.”

“We know that, but Lindsay doesn't. The only value that she's ever been granted is that derived from what she can give to—or do for—those around her.”

“Even Richard Patterson?” he posed.

“Even Richard,” Mrs. Beechum countered firmly.

Jackson stared at the far wall. He was no better than anyone else in Lindsay's life. She was important to him, yes, but only because she knew the workings of the MacPhaull Company and he needed her assistance to get out of it the cash he had to have. He was using her just like all the others. And when he didn't need her anymore, he was going to walk away. In doing so, he'd be adding to all the experiences that made Lindsay believe about herself as she did.

“Mr. Stennett?” He met the housekeeper's gaze and she
went on, saying, “As Lindsay's friend, I want you to know that she had no real choice in accepting the attentions of Charles Martens. Lydia schemed and Lindsay was the reluctant, unhappy pawn. There were no other men before him and there have been none since.”