Perfect in My Sight

Perfect in

My Sight

TANYA
ANNE CROSBY

All Rights Reserved.

This e
-
book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved, including
the right to reproduce this book, or a portion thereof, in any form. This book my
not be sold or uploaded for distribution to others.

This is a work of fiction. Any references to events or people, histori
cal or otherwise are used fictit
iously.
N
ames, characters, places and incidences are the product of the author
’
s imagination and any resemblance to actual events, locales  or persons living or
dead is purely coincidental.

Cover design by
Ravven

ISBN-10: 0988497484

ISBN-13: 978-0-9884974-8-1

Published by Oliver-Heber
t Books

Copyright © Tanya Anne Crosby

Dedication

For
Adam.

More
E-
books by

Tanya Anne Crosby

THE MACKINNON’S BRIDE

LYON’S GIFT

ON BENDED KNEE

LION HEART

HAPPILY EVER AFTER

ONCE UPON A KISS

Prologue

“You are the only one I would let read this, Sarah—not even Papa has seen it!”

Dressed in their pajamas and ready for bed, both girls lay upon their bellies on the
bed in the room they shared, staring down at the little book that lay between them.

Sarah Woodard gazed down at her cousin’s neat penmanship and relived through her cousin’s
words the events of the day. The wedding had been an elaborate affair, though hardly
something Sarah ever cared to experience. At seventeen, she didn’t feel particularly
keen on the notion of abandoning her goals and dreams simply to serve a man—not any
man! If Diana Halloway wished to give away her freedom and her life to that end, far
be it from Sarah to condemn her for it. She and Mary, however, would never be so small-
minded!

Placing a finger at the center of the page, upon a particular passage, Sarah agreed,
“That was so very funny. I cannot believe he sneezed in the middle of their vows!”

Mary giggled, and Sarah did as well, remembering the moment with her best friend and
confidante, her cousin Mary.

“I thought Diana would swoon!” Mary exclaimed. “Did you see the look on her face when
the pastor asked him a third time and he sneezed yet again rather than say ‘I do?’
How horrifying!” Sarah’s giggles intensified. “How dreadfully embarrassing,” she said,
and rolled upon her back. She reached out and seized a pillow, clutching it to her
breast, laughing.

Mary did too, leaving the diary on the bed between them. “Gawd!” she said, and ceased
laughing abruptly, reaching up to plug her nose, imitating the pastor. “Do you, Donald
Alfred Salinger, take this woman, Diana Marie Halloway, to be your lawful wedded wife...”

Sarah giggled and clutched the pillow tighter, answering, “Achoo!”

Mary pursed her lips, trying not to laugh as she continued with her imitation. “To
have and to hold,” she persisted, as seriously as she was able, “to love and to cherish,
for better or for worse, until death do you part?”

“Achoo!” Sarah replied, and burst into even more giggles.

Mary’s imitation deteriorated into laughter. “How terribly funny!” she exclaimed.
“How dreadfully embarrassing, but how funny. Good Lord, I should never ever, ever
wish to marry at all!”

“Me either,” Sarah agreed.

The two cousins shared a look.

Sarah didn’t know what she’d do without her cousin and her uncle. They were all she
had in life. Her own mother and father had died too young to leave her even with memories.
When she had been orphaned, her uncle Frank had taken her in hand and had raised her
as his own, despite the fact that she had not been a blood relation, per se. Her mother
and Mary’s mother had been cousins, but Mary’s mother had long been dead, and Mary’s
father had upon his own decided to take Sarah into his home and his heart. He’d taught
both girls to be strong. He’d inspired in them a love for academia, and he’d encouraged
them to follow their dreams and to cow before no man. Sarah and Mary both had embraced
his ideals and his teachings with a grateful heart. “Promise you’ll not marry,” Sarah
said.

“I do,” Mary swore, and then demanded, “You swear it too. Swear you will never marry!”

“Ugh!” Sarah exclaimed. “Why should I wish to give up my life to a man who only wants
to use me for a breeding vessel? Please!”

“Why, indeed?” Mary affirmed.

“Silly creatures,” Sarah muttered beneath her breath in reference to the male gender.
She peered at Mary. “Except for Uncle, of course.”

Mary smiled. “Did you hear what Papa said to Mrs. Brighton, when she inquired with
concern over our lack of marital prospects?”

Sarah grinned and flipped over upon her belly, an expression of glee upon her face.

“He told her we were not allowed to marry a man unless he cooked and cleaned and bore
children as well.” “How scandalous!” Mary declared, applauding her father.

Sarah did as well, grinning. “Did you see her face? I thought Mrs. Brighton would
just die of apoplexy.”

“She has no sense of humor at all,” Mary decreed.

“I don’t ever wish to be like that,” Sarah countered. “I want so much else in life
... I want to paint, and I want to visit Paris. And I want to visit the Louvre someday.”

Mary turned on her side, reaching out to caress her journal reverently, as she spoke
of her own dreams. “Yes, and I want to be a news reporter, I think,” she revealed,
somewhat hesitantly. “I know it seems a lowly job, Sarah, but I should love to write
about people. I love to watch them, don’t you know.”

“You would make a fine reporter, Mary,” Sarah assured, watching her cousin’s uncertain
expression. “I would proudly tell everyone I know.”

“Would you?” Mary asked her, lifting her brows in surprise.

“Of course! And Uncle would too.”

Mary smiled softly, reassured. Her eyes shone over the prospect. “He has always,
always
said we should do what makes us happy inside.”

“Yes, he has,” Sarah agreed. “We are the luckiest women.”

Mary nodded.

“You’re my very best friend, Mary. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

“And you are mine,” Mary swore, “and it shall always be so.”

“I will never leave you,” Sarah said.

“Let us make a vow, then,” Mary proposed. “No man shall ever come between us—not ever!”

“Never,” Sarah promised fervently. “We shall grow old together.” She grinned. “And
we shall be the two happiest old women upon the face of the earth, doing whatever
we please.”

“Yes we will,” Mary agreed. “And don’t you dare go and fall in love, Sarah Woodard!”

Sarah grimaced. “Don’t be silly. I shall never. Anyway, it would be you first, Mary.”

“Not I!” Mary denied vehemently. “And just to be certain ... we should seal this vow
somehow.”

“How?”

“I don’t know...”

“I know! What would you most regret losing?” Sarah asked.

“That’s easy, my hands, lest I am unable to write,” Mary replied.

Sarah cast her a glance. “I cannot lop off your hands,” she told her cousin. “That’s
no good. It will not do.”

Mary giggled. “No, I don’t suppose you can. I should need my hands for more than to
write with.” “What besides that?” Sarah prompted.

“How about my hair? It is my one true vanity, I fear.”

Sarah gave her cousin a nod and a knowing smile. “Your hair, then... If you marry,
then you must cut off your hair.”

Mary shrieked, her hand going to her hair. “Gawd! I shall truly never wed, then. Not
ever!”

Sarah giggled. “Good.”

“And you?” Mary prodded. “What shall you give up?”

Sarah had to think about it a long while. There was only one thing she held at such
high value and she never wished to lose that ever in her life—her family, her uncle
and her cousin. Besides that, little compared. “How about... my painting,” she proposed.
“If I marry, then I shall never again lift up another brush to paint.”

“Then we’ve a bargain?”

Sarah smiled and nodded. “That we do.”

“But we needn’t worry,” Mary added, “because we have each other. We don’t need some
silly husband to lock himself away with his fellows in some stuffy library and smoke
cigars until he goes bald.”

Sarah grinned at Mary’s unflattering description. “Yeah... who needs them!”

“Not I!” Mary declared once more, and both girls fell again into fits of giggles,
swearing upon their very souls that nothing would ever, ever separate them.

They laughed until they cried, and then grew sleepy.

“It’s been a very, very long day,” Sarah said wearily, and Mary agreed, closing her
eyes.

Sarah reached out and clasped her cousin’s hand. “You’re my very best friend,” she
said again, and sighed.

“And you are mine,” Mary reached out to place a hand upon her journal. “G’nite, Sarah,”
she mumbled sleepily.

“G’nite, Mary.”

They fell asleep together, holding hands.

CHAPTER
1

New York City, 1886

Somehow the daily never seemed to arrive as expected.

Sarah’s pique was only magnified by the condescending attitudes of those men who’d
stood ogling her rudely while she’d procured her paper from the corner boy—something
she should never have to do, mind you, as her daily was scheduled to be delivered
into her hands each day. Confound it all, despite the fact that she paid her own bills
and kept her own house, someone had obviously taken it upon himself to decide her
reading material for her. Well, she was not the sort to sit at her embroidery like
some good little maid, and she would certainly read whatever she chose! Despotic men,
all of them!

Flinging off her coat, she hung it upon the rack to dry, swiping her hand down the
length of it in annoyance. Another cold, drizzly March morn, and the filth of the
city hung upon the air like a black mood. Good grief! A body could freeze to death
simply walking down the street. Frowning at the trace of ash that remained upon her
fingers, she shook her head and made her way into the study. All those smoking chimneys
could make a person ill.

“Shall I bring you tea, Miss Woodard?”

Sarah started at the voice, halting abruptly. She slid the paper to her side, hiding
it behind her skirts. “Yes, thank you, please.”

Somehow he always managed to appear, even when she thought she entered as quietly
as a church mouse. She smiled as she watched him pivot and go, wondering if he employed
little spies to inform him. For a butler, he wasn’t particularly amiable either—not
at all, to her experience. Not at all. Perhaps he was that way because she was a woman
alone in the city. Not many approved of her status; no doubt it was expected to flaunt
her wares at some idiotic soiree, instead, trying to snare herself a wealthy man to
care for her. That, of course, would be so much more acceptable than enjoying one’s
own company and minding one’s own affairs. The very notion outraged her.

Only her cousin Mary had shared her convictions. Her uncle Frank had taught his daughter
better. Poor sweet Mary.

Cradling the morning edition of the Times beneath her arm, Sarah closed the door to
her study and made her way to her favorite chair. Opening the paper first, as always,
to the society page, she assured herself as she did so that most of what she would
read there would be absolute drivel. Only one name interested her.

Peter Holland.

Mary’s husband.

Was he her murderer, as well?

Sarah had to know. And someday she bloody well would. If she spent her dying breath
in pursuit of the truth, then so be it. Mary’s son, whom she had never set eyes upon
as yet, deserved better than to be raised by a murdering papa. If Sarah discovered
that Peter Holland was in truth responsible for Mary’s death… she would not leave
Christopher in the care of a man who would have his wife murdered for the sake of
her money.

Money was evil, Sarah believed, but not as evil as Peter Holland if the rumors were
true.

It was said that his wife’s death was entirely too coincidental. It was said he’d
been on the brink of financial ruin before her death. And then miraculously, his finances
had recovered.

A bit too miraculously.

It was Mary’s money that had saved him. Unfortunately, only Mary knew the truth of
the matter, and Mary had died that night protecting her son while her
loving
husband had sat in a drunken stupor at the other end of the house.

How could he not have heard the intruder?

Why hadn’t he been there to protect his wife and son?

Sarah wanted to know these things and more.

Mary might yet be able to give her the answers: Her cousin had kept a journal from
the time she’d learned to scribble her first words. It had been Mary’s passion—her
writing. And her prose had stirred both Sarah’s heart and mind. After the murder,
much of her writing had been leaked to and exploited by the press, at whose prompting,
Sarah had no idea. But the unhappy details of her cousin’s marriage had been printed
in excerpts by thoughtless idiots more concerned with selling papers than respecting
a dead woman’s memories. The journal entries, however, had ended abruptly about three
months before her death, and no one had been able to produce the final three months
of her life.

Without Mary’s journals, Sarah only knew what the papers had reported—that poor Christopher,
not more than six months old that awful night, had been blinded by the glass breaking
in the window above his crib.

The intruder had entered, the
Times
had said, startling the sleeping mother from her bed. The screaming infant, he’d
abandoned as he’d escaped through the broken window, leaving the mother lying in a
pool of her own blood.

The very thought left Sarah ill.

She hadn’t been able to sleep for months afterward, thinking of Mary, wondering if
she had suffered much and regretting forevermore her own behavior toward her beloved
cousin.

Sarah’s eyes stung with tears. She had been so furious over her cousin’s perceived
betrayal, she’d not even attended Mary’s wedding. In retrospect, Sarah knew she was
the one at fault—not Mary. She understood that now. She should have stood by Mary’s
decision—whether it was right or wrong. Good grief, it had been Mary’s right to decide.
Such foolishness on her part!

And yet… it had bereaved Sarah so much to see her cousin, her best friend, married
to a man who admittedly wed her only for the heir she could produce for his name and
fortune. Such ideas were positively medieval, though she knew it to be common still.
Sarah had been abroad at the time, otherwise she might have, in her outraged youth,
gone and dragged Mary away from the altar by her hair! Peter Holland hadn’t loved
her cousin; he’d been forthright about that, at least. And still Mary had been willing
to wed him, because her foolish heart had lost its way. Sarah thanked God she wasn’t
so inclined!

And yet… she had been wrong to turn away from one of the only two people in her life
who had stood beside her through every ordeal.

Sarah had gone to France with her uncle to study painting, and Mary had remained,
intending to join them later. She’d never arrived to meet them, instead had sent a
messenger to her papa with a profession of love for this man who had not cared a whit
for her. Her uncle had taken the news quite well. With his good and kind heart he
had stood behind Mary and had returned dutifully to watch his daughter take her vows.
Sarah had not been so benevolent. She’d refused to watch her cousin throw her life
away and had remained in France.

She’d lived to regret it.

For more reasons than one.

Her uncle fell ill a year after Mary’s nuptials, and he’d passed away so quickly that
Sarah had received news of his illness only days before the news of his death. She’d
written to Mary with her wishes to join her, but Mary’s response had been full of
anger and bitterness. In a return note, she’d informed Sarah that she was no longer
welcome in her home. And so Sarah had remained in France to grieve alone. Less than
six months later came the news of Mary’s death. She’d not even learned of Christopher’s
birth until she’d read the report in the papers.

Sitting blindly with the paper clutched in hand, Sarah relived the anguish of those
moments.

Even now, all these years later, she could hardly dispel the incredible sense of regret.
Lord only knew, there were so many things she would do differently if only she could.

So much she would change...

The knock upon the door startled her. She’d completely forgotten about her tea.

“Come in,” she said, a bit unsettled as the door opened.

“Your tea, Miss Woodard.”

Sarah straightened. “Yes, thank you, Hopkins.”

He entered, bearing his tray, and she ignored the slight raise of his brows as he
glanced down his nose at the paper in her hand. She held her tongue, resenting in
herself the need to explain. Why should she be forced to? What man felt obliged to
explain himself when caught with a paper in his hand? One he’d paid for twice at that!
Having scarcely read a word of it, she refused to set it aside, just on principle.
Her tea could wait.

“Thank you, Hopkins,” she said again, dismissing him, and didn’t bother to wait until
he left to continue her perusal of the morning edition. With Hopkins dismissed and
her morose thoughts chased away, she began to scan the articles in earnest, finding
little of interest...

She perused an article about some new headache and hangover remedy:

Coca-Cola goes on sale May 8 at Jacob
’
s Pharmacy in Atlanta, where local pharmacist John S. Pemberton has formulated his
esteemed Brain Tonic and Intellectual Beverage from ingredients which include dried
leaves from the
South American coca shrub…

She flipped the page. What a name for a hangover remedy: Esteemed Brain Tonic and
Intellectual Beverage!

A model Bloomingdale’s department store to open on Third Avenue at Fifty-ninth Street...

And then ... there it was ...

His name in bold print, as it so often was.

Peter Holland’s personal life was fodder for gossip, and his business dealings carefully
scrutinized by his peers and the press, but rarely was there a single word spoken
of the one person Sarah most wanted to know about. Christopher. And here it was at
last, though indirectly.

And more.

Wanted. Personal instructor familiar with the systems of Louis Braille and William
B. Waite. Must be willing to work and reside in house, and must deal well with children.
Generous pay with benefits. Willing to employ the blind. Send resume directly to Peter
Holland at corner of University Place and Twelfth Street. Applicants will be personally
selected and interviewed.

Sarah inhaled a breath, and her hands began to tremble. She was forced to set the
paper aside. Good Lord ... this was precisely the opportunity she had been hoping
for ... waiting for... six long years...

“Miss Woodard?”

It couldn’t have presented itself more propitiously. “Miss Woodard?”

Shivering away her thoughts, she peered up to find Hopkins standing at the doorway
still, the knob in hand, but he was frozen in his stance, staring at her. Waiting
for some response.

She blinked, her thoughts still upon the article, and its import. Her mind raced with
unmade plans. “Yes?”

“Are you quite all right? You appear as though you’ve a sudden malaise.”

“Oh yes,” Sarah declared, “I’m fine, thank you.” Never better, in truth! Despite that
she had hoped and prayed for such an opportunity—prepared for it even!—she simply
hadn’t expected to find it this dreary morn, not when she’d checked the paper literally
hundreds of mornings before to no avail.

She peered up from the paper, placing it upon the table beside her. “I’m quite well
indeed. That will be all, Hopkins, thank you.”

This time she waited for him to leave her before rising from the chair and going to
her desk. There was so much yet to be done! So little time! But no matter what it
took, no matter what the risk, she was going to do this—she wanted Mary’s journals.
She
needed
to know the truth.

Mary’s journals had all been discovered and dissected by the police and the press,
but for that one—the one that held the accounts of her days until the date of her
death. Sarah wanted
that
diary. All her carefully laid plans would not go to waste, and Peter Holland was
going to pay the consequences of his actions. Sarah was determined to see it so.

She was going to find that missing journal!

Opening her desk drawer, she plucked up a sheet of paper and reached for her quill.
She scribbled a brief note and then called for Hopkins, instructing him to hire a
messenger to deliver her message to an address on Twelfth Street. That done, she returned
to the desk and plucked out another sheet. Wholly absorbed now with the task at hand,
she sat down to pen her resume.

Inadvertently, with his very own ad, Peter Holland had given her the most ingenious
idea how to search his house free of suspicion. Who would ever suspect a blind instructor
for the blind?