Unfinished (Historical Fiction) (13 page)

Now he realized the true price, and it was higher than he wished. While Maria had never uttered the word “love,” and James shuddered to imagine it, he nonetheless felt something for her, even if it were just scraps of gratitude for access to her father's investment.

And a healthy appreciation for skills few women possessed in carnal matters.

Whatever Maria may have felt for him seemed distant, too incomprehensible to consider. Her cold exterior and calculating eyes made him feel like a pawn in a game. She moved the pieces where she wished and analyzed positions, strategies, strengths and weakness, all with a goal of an end game that gave her pleasure.

But her feelings? For him? If she had them, she'd never hinted at it.

With a slight tremor in his hands, James opened the new letter from Lilith.

Dear James,

Your journey to Chile is pending, and I will throw all proper behavior by the wayside and simply ask you to visit me at my friend Esther Nourse's home on Salem Road in Cambridge tonight after 9 p.m. Use the servant's entrance. I leave my boldness at your mercy and urge you to meet with me, for your pending journey will remove all chance.

Yours,

Lilith

A bold parting gift? How was he supposed to take this? The billionaire's daughter inviting him to his friend's house two days before he boarded a train, then a steamer, for a far-off land? What good would come of this?

The best course was to ignore her letters. He'd done so with the first and no harm had come of it.

Stay the course. Hold strong and continue packing. Selling his few possessions of value, mostly books, had given him pocket money. Selling his one work suit brought a bit more, and those too-tight shoes had gone for a pretty penny. A war chest – more money than he'd ever held at once – rested in his pocket right now, enough to get Lilith as far as the California coast with him.

But no further.

Madness. This was mad thinking, fueled by speculation and this crazy woman who had burrowed into his brain and heart, etching herself in places no one else had dared to reach. He was leaving his home, all his family, and the only place he knew for a foreign land where he spoke only a few words of the native language, where his size and coloring would make him a target, and where he had still to prove himself. Here in Boston he'd only proven himself capable of sleeping with a wealthy man's daughter as a way to better himself.

He'd done that to Maria.

He'd not do that to Lilith as well.

Not, Lilith. No.

Berating himself for a choice he couldn't undo was also madness. The keening in his heart made a palpable beat that thrummed in him, a throbbing worse than too-tight shoes on his feet, more insistent than than Lilith's pulse, like a metronome in one delicate wrist clasped in his baseball-mitt hands. It drove him, like a score written by a composer that lived inside him, writing a melody and harmony that could only be heard when he was with her in body or spirit.

The music swelled within him, teasing and tormenting, brief fragments almost audible on errant breezes, a vibration barely perceptible in the very air around him, accompanying every mundane conversation, every snore and breath and word and grunt of his daily life with Ma and Da.The ebb and flow of life merged with the beat that mercilessly coursed through his veins until he found himself walking toward the subway, colder than he should be, his coat sold off to a cousin. Measure by measure he made his way to Cambridge,
allegro
and
grave
fighting to win each instrument's soul, his body the score.

All was cacophony without Lilith, only the cadence decipherable without her, driving him to march toward her, the only conductor who could make the music pitch perfect.

“Are you certain, Esther? I feel that I am asking too much of you.” Lilith switched between excitement and guilt, waiting for James to arrive and wishing her friend would disappear – and take the Mexican rat with her.

“Of course I am certain! I suggested it. The prying eyes in your father's home make it too dangerous, though I give James credit for his fortitude and resourcefulness in breaking into John Stone's home for your earlier rendezvous. The gossips ruined that one already. Even my maid knows.” Esther stroked the head of the chihuahua, making the creature's eyes bulge even more. It looked less like a rat and more like a creature from an H.G. Wells novel.

“Thank you.”

“I hope this meeting is worthwhile, Lilith.” Her voice softened and Esther put the dog down. The
tic tic tic
of the animal's nails on the Turkish tiles sounded like teeth chattering in the cold. “I suppose this makes me a Madam of sorts.”

“Esther!”

“What other word would you use for a woman who arranges to have another woman gain full freedom to spend the night with a man?”

“A friend.”

Esther smiled, then moved in close to Lilith and whispered, “Anything that angers your father is worthwhile. More important, if James is your true love, then you need this final night before he leaves.”

“I feel so stupid. Dr. Burnham helped me to understand – ”

“It's not about what you understand, Lilith. The question is whether James understands.”

“That's the point! He did! I am the problem.”

Esther's face reddened and her typically calm self shifted to a more primal, angry side. “Dr. Scott was the problem.”

Lilith blinked rapidly, absorbing the words. “Yes, I guess so.”

“And your father knew exactly what he was doing.”

“Yes.”

“Tonight, though, John Stone has no control. He has no control. Your destiny is yours.” Esther nodded, deferring to Lilith. “
Mi casa es su casa
, as they say in the land where my little Rodrigo originated. I will go off to visit my aunt in Weston and you, Lilith, can have your James.”

A quick hug between the two cemented the deal. Esther picked up her bag, stuffed a whiny Rodrigo in it, and walked to the door. She turned back at the last minute, a sly smile on her face.

“Lilith?”

“Yes?”

“A honeymoon at Niagara Falls might be most appropriate.” She scurried out of the room, crooning sweet words to the rat dog in her purse before Lilith understood the comment, her laughter ribboning down the hall.

I won't chase him.
Nine o'clock came and went and now, as the mantel clock ticked its way toward ten, portions of Lilith's heart died with each passing second, hope fading and a thick, metallic taste filling her.

'You already chased him.'
The internal voice, so clearly her father's berated her, the words flying so fast they were no longer distinct, simply a raging white-water rapids of berating and shame.
'Of course he won't come. What respectable man would?'

And why did he need Lilith when he had Maria? He simply used women to gain access to their fathers.

The voice was so clear she checked the room, twice, to make sure her father wasn't present.

Yet he was. He lived in her head, silent and crouched, ready to pop out for moments like this.

Boston rat
. Ether's words made her grin, neutralizing the fear.

A Boston rat, indeed.

If James never appeared, what was the worst that would happen? He would leave for Chile, she would go home, and in less than a year she would receive her trust, freeing her from her father's financial control. Perhaps she would share Esther's home; her friend had suggested it, and looking around the Cambridge mansion, tightly tucked into a side street behind Harvard Square, she wondered whether freedom meant that her father's voice would disappear.

Right now she wanted to replace it with James' voice. Sweet James, protective and sincere, loving and compassionate. He could provide her with affection and wit, street smarts and passion, everything but money. Yet she would have money, and the unlikely coupling mattered not to anyone but her father and high society. Lilith wouldn't be attending teas and
séances
if she were married to James. They would have to find their own path, a group of peers so exquisitely class blind as to forge a new social strata. Wracking her brain, she searched her social inventory for poor men married to rich women.

She knew none.

Perhaps she should settle for a chihuahua and dress it in little overcoats.

She could name it James.

Or John.

Esther's butler stepped into the room as if conjured by a spirit. “Miss Stone? You have a courier visit from your father's law firm. A Mr. Hillman.” The butler glanced at the clock. It read 10:22.

“Please send him in.”

The man who entered Esther's parlor was more Yeti than human, with crisp frost on his whiskers. Lilith nearly laughed and cried out in disbelief all at once. “James! Whatever happened to you?”

He seemed surprised by her question, then reached up to touch his mustache. A chiding laugh filled the room. “I didn't think, Lilith. I just started walking and – ” he caught her eye, exhaling slowly, an unbreakable look piercing her and filling her with warmth and expectation. “Here I am.”

“Here you are, indeed, half frozen. You look like a sideshow spectacle.”

“You've attended sideshows?” he mocked, eyebrows nearly to his hairline.

“I've – oh, stop. Get yourself before the fire. Reeves, please fetch Mr. Hillman some tea.”

“I'd like something stronger, if you have it,” James asked, now shivering as he warmed. Lilith poured him two fingers of Scotch and handed him the highball glass, which he drained in one gulp.

She wanted to throw her arms around him and warm him, but he would just as likely chill her. Scotch and a roaring fire would do more for him now than she could. As James crouched before the fire, Lilith arranged her thoughts and emotions, knowing exactly why he was here but uncertain how the next few minutes would – or should – unfold. How a hostess ought to behave with a man she’d invited to her friend’s home to make love was not a predicament she had read about in any of mother's etiquette books.

And “predicament” was hardly the correct word.

Reeves entered the room, deposited the tea tray, and left quickly. Had Esther told him of this tryst? A small chill of shame shot through Lilith. The servants would gossip. Word would get back to her own home's crew, and perhaps one would snitch to her father. Earlier in the evening, she might have cared more. James would depart tomorrow and by the time idle whispers reached the Stone home he would be boarding the train, off for a steamer journey to a land that might as well have been the moon for all Lilith cared.

Watching James sip the scorching tea and warm his hands on the porcelain cup, Lilith cleared her throat nervously and asked, “Are you ridding yourself of the chill?” Formal, as always, her voice and words felt so stilted, yet she could not break out of her habit. Even with this man, who opened her heart and teased her mind and who would leave her for a life's journey that could kill him.

All they had was this. She needed this night, needed the memory they would create, to feed her for the coming months, or keep her sane and even and to give her strength as she moved forward.