Whiskey Island (43 page)

There had to be a better way.

She was adding cream to a thick chicken soup when Nani came into the kitchen. “Bloomy said I was to come here?”

“Nani.” Lena was so grateful to see the other woman that she was tempted to kiss her. “Yes, Bloomy’s gone, and she tells me Mrs. Simeon has left for the evening, too. I thought you might like to sit awhile and have a cup of tea while I finish Mr. Simeon’s supper.”

Nani looked puzzled at the unusual invitation. “But I have things I must do upstairs.”

“Can’t you do them later?”

“Mr. Simeon has given me the evening away. Just now he has given it. Soon I am going home.”

Lena felt sick. Simeon never gave the servants time off that wasn’t strictly owed them. Yet now both Bloomy and Nani were leaving.

And she wasn’t.

Nani was poised like a bird about to take flight. Lena realized that if she didn’t tell her the truth, her friend would never remain to protect her with her presence. Lena dried her hands on her apron and went to stand beside her.

“Nani, do you consider me your friend?”

Nani looked puzzled. “Must you ask?”

“And do you know that I only tell the truth?”

“Yes, this I know.”

“Then please listen to what I have to tell you.” In as few words as she could manage, Lena told Nani about her confrontation with James Simeon, about the things he had said and, worse, the things he’d implied.

“That’s why I need you to stay here with me,” she finished. “If you’re in the kitchen, he’ll leave me alone. He doesn’t want witnesses, Nani. He doesn’t want anyone else to know. He’s the kind of man who does these things in secret.”

Nani’s frown had grown deeper with every word. Now she shook her head. “He is not a man to like, Lena. This I agree with. But I have worked in this house a long time, and I listen to what the other servants say. No one has said such a thing about him. And he has never come to me and asked of me the things you say he asked of you.”

“I don’t know why he’s chosen me. But he has. I’m not imagining this. Please believe me.”

Nani chose her words carefully. “I believe you think this is true. But he is a man who drinks. We know this. A man who drinks will not always remember what he says.”

“He told me his wife cries when he goes to her bed. Is that much true?”

Nani looked uncomfortable.

“He told me she’s planning a trip to Europe soon.”

Nani gave a slight nod.

“Nani, if these things are true, please believe the others. If I lose this job, Terence loses his only chance at an education, we lose the chance to bring our families here. Can you understand what a hold he has over me?”

“He is not as bad as you believe. This he would not do to you.”

“Then you won’t stay? It’s only a few hours, Nani. I’ll do anything you ask in return. If I have to I’ll pay you for your time. Only please, stay down here until it’s time for me to go home.”

“Allow me to stay? He will not.”

Lena could feel the panic rising inside her. She hadn’t had time to think her plan through, but now she saw that Nani was probably right. The moment Simeon realized Nani was in the kitchen, he would send her right home. He wouldn’t tell her why, of course, he might even be particularly solicitous and charming. But send her home he would. And if Nani refused to go, her job would be as good as ended.

Lena hung her head and fought to breathe. The hunter was closing in.

“Nothing will happen,” Nani assured her. She was upset. She sounded as if she might cry. Lena wondered if Nani knew deep in her heart that Lena was not mistaken.

“You go home,” Lena said.

“No, I will stay. Upstairs. And later I will come down to visit you.”

Lena looked up. “Later?”

“I will wait quietly, so he cannot send me away.”

“You would do that?” Lena thought this newer version of her plan might work. If Nani timed her entrance carefully, perhaps toward what should be the end of Simeon’s supper, Lena could be finished with her work and leave with her friend. There might be no time for Simeon to attempt a conquest.

“You see? All will be well.”

Lena hugged her. She was so grateful she couldn’t speak.

Nani left, and Lena finished the supper preparations. When the bell in the dining room jangled, she took a steadying breath, then ladled the soup into a china bowl and carried it into the dining room, where Simeon still insisted he dine, even when he was alone.

James Simeon sat at the table head. The room was softly lit with gas lamps and candles, but it still had the appearance of a medieval banquet hall. Simeon himself was the king to whom all were forced to pay homage.

“Soup, Lena? And no one else to serve me tonight?”

He knew well why Bloomy wasn’t there to bring it to him, but she answered politely. “Only me, sir.”

“And what have we besides soup?”

“Roast pork, sir. Parsnips and potatoes. Carrots brought all the way from California. Bloomy’s special applesauce.”

“It’s too good to eat alone. I believe I’ll have you join me.”

She looked up. This was unexpected and deeply troubling. “Oh, I couldn’t, sir. Thank you for asking, but it wouldn’t be right.”

“And who decides what’s right if I don’t?”

“I’m only your cook. And if the others see me sitting at the table, they won’t understand, will they?”

“There are no others. Everyone has the night off. Except you, Lena. How unfortunate that you had to stay behind to serve me.”

“Serve you, sir. Not dine with you.”

“You will sit at the table and eat with me. Is that understood?”

Everything was understood. His plans, his motive, his darkly twisted soul. She gazed at him and questioned him anyway. “Perhaps I’ll understand better if you tell me why.”

He seemed about to refuse; then he smiled. “I want to hear about your husband, Lena. I want to know how he’s progressing so I can make plans for his future. You can tell me over supper.”

Trapped and staring down the barrel of a gun. Her hands shook, and she clenched them again and again.

“Get your soup,” he said.

In the kitchen, she poured a second bowl of soup. The slick china slid from her hands and crashed to the floor, splashing hot liquid on her apron. But she wouldn’t need the apron anyway. Tonight she was to be this man’s consort, not his cook. She rested her face in her hands and tried not to cry.

“Lena!” he called, loudly enough for her to hear him.

She mopped the floor with a rag and threw away the broken porcelain; then she dished up another bowl and brought it into the dining room.

“I thought perhaps you’d gone home,” he said dryly. “Then I thought, no, that’s certainly not the case. Lena is not a stupid woman. She knows her job would be over if she ever did such a thing, and who on the Avenue would hire her after I’d told my stories?”

“Who indeed.” She placed the bowl on the table to his right and edged as far from him as she could manage.

“The soup’s delicious. You’re a woman of many talents.”

“Only cooking, sir. My other talents are meager.”

“I believe you don’t do yourself justice. You’re quite beautiful, you know. Had you been born on the Avenue, there’s no telling what sort of life you might have led. Marriage to a president, a senator. Perhaps even to me.”

“I am happy married to my Terence. It’s all I ever wanted.”

He smiled thinly. “What devotion to a man who surely can’t be much of a husband now.”

“He is all the husband I’ll ever need…sir.”

“I think not. A man with his injuries surely cannot perform his husbandly duties. Such a shame for a young man and a young woman. Am I correct?”

She didn’t answer, but she felt her cheeks flushing. When she glanced at him, he was smiling, as if he had the answer he needed.

He pushed away his bowl and picked up a glass filled with an amber-colored liquid. He sat drinking as she tried to eat some of the soup. Her stomach clenched against it, so that every bite made her nausea worse.

“Enough of that,” he said at last. “You seem to be finding little enjoyment in it. We’ll have the next course.”

She rose, taking his bowl and her own into the kitchen. She wondered when Nani would make her appearance and prayed she would wait until the meal had ended. But what were the chances that Nani would come at exactly the right moment?

Lena carried new place settings into the dining room and laid them in front of Simeon. His arm carelessly brushed her hip as she leaned over him, and she shuddered. She moved away, but not fast enough. His arm came around her hips, and he pulled her closer.

“The silver is crooked. Straighten it, Lena. It must be straight.”

She looked down and saw that the knife was just out of alignment. His hand lay beside it, and she was trapped in the circle of his arm. She straightened the knife with trembling hands.

“Better,” he said. He patted her hip as he released her. “We won’t lower our standards, will we, just because you’re dining with me?”

She didn’t answer. She went back into the kitchen and began to bring the serving dishes to the table. The platter of sliced meat, the vegetables in gold-trimmed china bowls, Bloomy’s applesauce, adorned with thick sprinkles of cinnamon. When all the serving dishes were in front of him, she turned to go back into the kitchen, but he stopped her.

“You haven’t set your own place, Lena. You’ve been invited for the whole meal, you know.”

“I have no appetite, sir. And I’m afraid I’m a better cook than company. I’d rather finish the dessert I’m preparing for you—”

“You’ll join me. Quickly.”

She returned with her own place setting; then she sat and waited for him to pass the serving dishes.

“Have you ever sat at a table as fine as this one, Lena?”

She put the least amount of food she could on her plate as he passed the dishes, one by one. “I haven’t.”

“Do you wish for this sort of luxury sometimes?”

“Never, sir.”

“Really? And why not?”

She looked up, and for a moment anger extinguished her growing fear. “Because it doesn’t bring happiness, and it doesn’t make the people who have it better people, does it? It only makes it easier for them to hurt others.”

“Not always. Many of us do innumerable good works, Lena. We build churches, establish educational institutions. We even reach out to those individuals in need. Like your poor Terence, for instance.”

She wanted to ask him what he wanted with her, to make him say it and stop pretending. But a small part of her still hoped she was wrong, that somehow she had misconstrued everything that had and was happening, that Nani was right, and that although Simeon enjoyed toying with her, he had no intention of taking this further.

She attempted to appeal to his better nature. “Helping my Terence is the act of a kind man. I’m sure, sir, that
everything
you plan for my family is every bit as kind.”

“And yet all my kindness hasn’t brought me the one thing I need. I married Julia after a thorough consideration of her bloodlines, her reputation, her deportment, her training to become the mistress of a house like this one, a hostess, a wife.” He shook his head sadly. “It was a rare mistake. I’m not easily misled.”

Lena pushed the food around her plate, unable to swallow so much as a bite.

He went on when she didn’t speak. “I learned from my mistake. Do you know what I learned?”

She put her fork down and looked up at him. She waited.

“I learned a bit of spirit in a woman is as important as it is in good horseflesh. If all the fight’s gone out of a woman or a mare, she’s not a good breeder.”

“These are things I have no right to hear.”

“We’re talking about horses, Lena. You’ve no wish to hear about horses?”

She rose, lifting her plate from the table. “If you’re to have dessert, Mr. Simeon, I’d best get right to it.”

He waved her back to her chair. “A man who knows horseflesh recognizes his mistake the moment he brings the mare to the stallion, of course. If she’s so high-strung, so afraid to have the stallion mount her that she has to be held down by half a dozen grooms, then the colt won’t be worth much, if there is a colt.”

“I know nothing of horses, sir.”

“So a man who wants the finest stable finds another mare, a stronger, better one, with some spirit of her own. She might be frightened, but fear turns to excitement as the act progresses. The stallion’s happier, the man is happier.” He smiled. “It all works out in the end. Even the first mare, the carefully chosen filly, is happier, because she can be quietly put out to pasture.”

Lena wished that Nani would appear. She was sick at heart. “And what of the second mare? What does she get?”

“A warm stable, extra oats, an occasional apple or sugar cube, the best grass to graze. Life is very, very good for her, because the man needs her, you see.”

Her voice was bitter. “We are lucky, are we not, that we aren’t horses?”

“Are we? I like simplicity. Breeding horses is simplicity itself.”

She rose, and this time, when he waved her back to her seat, she shook her head. “I must go. My husband will be waiting for me. I have just enough time to make your dessert, then I must be gone.”

She headed for the kitchen without so much as a glance in his direction. She might lose her job, but she could not sit at the table with him a moment longer. Not without being sick.

She expected him to follow, to stop pretending that they were talking about horses, and demand she submit to him. She was trembling, and the urge to run was the strongest she’d ever had.

Yet what would happen if she did? Simeon himself had said it. If she lost this job, there would be no other on Millionaires’ Row or among any of the wealthy families in the city. Oh, perhaps there might be one matron who would listen to her story and sympathize, who would go against her peers and hire Lena to cook for her. But how long before she found such a woman? A woman who believed her story instead of a man of her own social class, a woman who would even give her audience to tell it? Father McSweeney had little enough power to help her. He had succeeded in getting Simeon to help Terence, but at what price?