Words Spoken True (16 page)

“I thought that was because he was worried about the
Herald
stealing all his readers.” He kept his voice light.

Priscilla laughed as he had intended before she went on. “You are a concern to him, I’m sure, but not as much of one as Adriane. The poor man is caught in a difficult predicament. There are some who say if he fails to marry Adriane off, Lucilla Elmore may refuse to go through with their own wedding plans this fall.” Priscilla’s voice lowered a bit. “And even worse, I’ve heard the poor man is in some financial difficulty. It’s rumored he owes Coleman Jimson a good deal of money, and that if Adriane doesn’t marry Stanley, he could very well be ruined.”

“Are you saying their marriage was arranged by the fathers as a kind of business deal?”

“Good heavens, I didn’t say that exactly, did I?” Priscilla twisted her mouth to hide her amusement as she fluttered her fan. “I suppose I shouldn’t be telling you any of this. The way the
Herald
and
Tribune
are battling lately, I’m apt to see my words on your front page tomorrow and be roundly condemned by the whole of Louisville society for having such a loose tongue.”

“A newspaperman never betrays a confidence,” Blake said.

She raised her eyebrows at him. “Another of your father’s sayings?”

“No. Mine.”

“At least I would pray you’d not mention names.” Priscilla looked back at the Jimsons. “But it’s all just too delightful not to talk about it. I’ve even considered paying a call on Adriane to see if I can determine whether she plans to honor her promise to marry Stanley, but I’ve heard she isn’t receiving callers. That wrinkled little man who works for her father comes to the door and says she’s indisposed, and we all know what that means.”

“Perhaps she really is ill,” Blake said, suddenly unable to completely keep his worry at bay.

At his words, Priscilla’s eyes sharpened on him. “Do you know Adriane well?”

“Our paths have crossed a few times at various socials,” Blake said casually. “The first time at just such a meeting as this here at Mrs. Wigginham’s.”

“Yes, I remember.” Priscilla was studying him closely. “We all quite expected a bit more reaction from one or the other of you that day, but as I recall, the two of you hardly argued at all.”

“Only enough to please Mrs. Wigginham, who I’m sure had arranged the meeting as an amusement.”

“That sounds like our Mrs. Wigginham. She’s always planning something exciting and imagines herself quite the matchmaker.” Her eyes widened a bit as if she’d just figured out something that had been puzzling her.

“We must let her have her fun.” Blake avoided Priscilla’s eyes. The woman was altogether too quick.

Priscilla’s lips straightened out in a rather grim line as she studied Blake’s face for a moment. Then she fluttered her fan again as she asked, “Do you believe in love at first sight, Mr. Garrett?”

A bit startled by her question, Blake hesitated before he said, “I’ve never given it much thought.”

She didn’t seem to care what he answered as she went on. “Mrs. Wigginham does, you know. She says that sometimes when a couple first meets you can practically see a spark fly between them. I used to pray such an occurrence would happen to me.”

“I doubt it happens to very many people,” Blake said.

“But it does happen to a few, doesn’t it, Mr. Garrett?” She stepped a bit nearer to him to look directly in his face.

He quit trying to lie to her. “It does happen to a few.”

She smiled a little. “You and I would make an interesting couple. We would always understand one another.”

“You’re a lovely lady, Miss Bowberry, but unfortunately I have no interest in such a commitment at this time. All my time must be spent building the
Herald.
”

“If only that were true, sir,” she said with a sad shake of her head.

Blake had no answer to that and so instead offered to fetch the lady a glass of lemonade. It seemed the least he could do.

A few minutes later he made his excuses to Mrs. Wigginham, claiming a heavy workload at the paper. She patted his hand as she said, “At least you made an appearance. That’s more than we can say for dear Adriane, isn’t it? However, Stanley has sweetly offered to carry a report of my little event to Adriane for me. It seems she hasn’t been feeling well.” She lifted her eyebrows. “All this hot weather, I suppose. It’s quite trying dear Stanley’s patience, I do believe.”

“The weather or Miss Darcy?” Blake asked.

“Dare we say both, Mr. Garrett.” She raised her fan up to hide her widening smile, but there was no hiding the smile in her eyes. “If you happen to see Adriane, please tell her how much I’ve missed her the last few weeks.”

“I doubt I will be seeing Miss Darcy.”

“One never knows, does one?” Mrs. Wigginham peered at him with no hint of a smile now. “Sometimes the most unexpected things happen. Especially if we take things into our own hands.”

A little later without actually planning it, Blake found himself going up the steps to the
Tribune
offices. Beck met him at the door with a scowl.

Blake could have pushed the old man out of the way easily enough. Both men knew that as they stared at one another, but it wasn’t something Blake wanted to do. Instead he said, “I have to know if she’s all right. That she’s not really ill or anything.”

“She ain’t sick.” Beck narrowed his eyes on Blake as he considered him for a long moment before he added, “She just needs some time, that’s all.”

“It’s been weeks.”

“Addie will have to be the one to say how much time she needs.”

Blake’s eyes burned into the little man. “Tell her one thing for me.”

“Addie don’t listen to nobody she don’t want to listen to.”

“She’ll listen to you.” In fact the longer Blake stood there, the surer he was that Adriane was just on the other side of the door hearing his every word. He raised his voice a little as he went on. “Tell her, and be sure she understands. Tell her that if I have to, I’ll kill Stanley Jimson before I let her marry him.”

The old man’s eyes changed then, and for a brief moment, Blake thought Beck realized they were on the same side. Then the old man was pushing the door closed in Blake’s face. “I’ll tell her.”

A
driane was sitting frozen at her work desk when Beck came back into the pressroom. He looked at her and said, “You heard?”

“I heard.”

“The man appeared to mean every word.”

Adriane kept her eyes away from Beck’s face. “Perhaps,” she said. “Though he’s already proven he can’t be trusted. Don’t forget the
Douchester
.”

“I think you can trust him on this one.” Beck stepped over to her desk. “You want to talk about it, Addie?”

“No.” Her hand shook as she dipped her pen in the inkpot and a splatter of ink smeared her paper.

Beck watched her blot up the ink before he said, “You can’t just keep pushing it away, girl. You’re going to have to face it sooner or later.”

“I know. Father tells me the same thing every day. How I need to snap out of this ‘unladylike’ lethargy and come to my senses before it’s too late.” She stared down at the paper on her desk until the words ran together. The page was already a mess before she’d spilled the ink on it. Three sentences written with two of them crossed out. “Maybe he’s right. I can’t even write anymore.”

Beck reached over to pat Adriane’s shoulder. “It’ll come back, Addie. The writing. You just have to get this other stuff straightened out.”

“I’m not sure I can, Beck.”

“There ain’t nothing you can’t do, Addie, if you set your mind to it.” He leaned down to look her straight in the face. “You know I’m praying for you.”

“I know.” Adriane blinked back tears and put her hand over Beck’s on her shoulder. “I’m praying too, but maybe I’m not praying hard enough or for the right thing.”

“The right thing? Sometimes we can get all mixed up on what the right thing is.”

“But isn’t that why we pray? So the Lord can give us answers? The right answers that let us know what we should do.” She stared at Beck’s face, wanting to find the answers there she couldn’t seem to get to her prayers.

“I reckon that’s true enough, but the trouble is them answers don’t always come down clear as newsprint.” He pulled his hand away from her shoulder to wave toward a stack of the day’s papers in the corner of the room.

“But why not? Why does everything have to be so hard?”
Honor thy father.
Those words slid through her thoughts a dozen times an hour. How could she pray for the Lord to open a way to her that her father would never understand? Or forgive.

Beck gave her a long look before he pulled a stool over to sit down in front of her. They were alone in the pressroom, as they were so often in the afternoon these days with her father off to his endless political meetings.

“That’s a question that used to bedevil me some,” he said. “Especially after my May died. So young and all. Didn’t seem to me for there to be a bit of reason for that to happen. You have to understand that I loved her as much as a man could love a woman. I always thought it was a kind of a miracle that she made out like she loved me back. But the one she loved the most was the Lord. It was her that taught me about him. She did everything right.”

Adriane forgot her own troubles for a moment as she tried to imagine Beck as a young man so terribly in love. The grief was plain in his voice even after so many years. She reached out and took his hand. “And then she died.”

A single tear slid out of Beck’s left eye and made a trail down through the wrinkles on his cheek. “And then she died.”

“I’m sorry, Beck,” she said softly.

“It was a long time ago,” he said. “And I ain’t telling you about it to make you sad for me. I’m telling you so that maybe you can understand how the good Lord keeps on reaching down his hand to help you even when you think he’s forgot about you. Worse than forgot you. That he just plain don’t care. That’s what I thought when he didn’t make May get well. I got mad. I didn’t want to have no more to do with God if he couldn’t come up with no better answers than taking my May away from me. Because you see, I prayed while she was sick. Down-on-my-knees prayers that I thought ought to be answered. My way.”

“But they weren’t.”

“No, my May died. Same as hundreds of others died from the cholera in Louisville that year. But I wasn’t worried about nobody else’s prayers not being answered. Only mine.” Beck was quiet for a moment before he went on. “It pains me to admit it, but I shut my Bible tight and turned away from the Lord. I know May was looking down from heaven, grieving over my hard heart as much as I was grieving over her being gone.”

Adriane’s eyes went to the Bible Beck kept on his worktable. “I’ve never known a time when you didn’t read the Bible.”

“That’s just it, Addie. A feller might turn away from the Lord, but the Lord, he don’t turn away from you. The good Lord, he just waited me out. Kept on walking along beside me. Understanding. Knowing my hurt. And after a while, I felt his hand on my shoulder again. He helped me see cholera happens. People die.”

“He could have healed her. The Bible is full of miraculous healings,” Adriane said.

“It is. But that wasn’t the answer he had for May and me.”

Adriane looked at Beck. She was glad he’d told her about May, but she couldn’t see what his story had to do with her own troubles. Her own lack of answers to her prayers. “So what answer does he have for me?”

“I don’t know, Addie. But I know he ain’t turned his back on you. He’s gonna help you find a way. This ain’t like the cholera. You just keep on praying, and with the good Lord’s hand on your shoulder, you’ll figure it out. The right thing.”

“One thing I already figured out a long time ago.”

“What’s that?”

“That I don’t know what I’d do without you, Beck.” She smiled as she tightened her fingers around Beck’s hand.

“You’d do fine,” Beck said gruffly. “’Cepting, of course, you’d have to learn to set type a heap faster if the paper got out on time. Fact is, we’d best get to work now if we aim to have the galleys ready to run when your pa gets back from his meeting.”

Later, after Adriane had given up on writing her piece and given Beck a filler to use instead, she went out to sit on the back step in the late afternoon sunshine. The old dog came slinking out of the shadows to peer up at her hopefully.

“Sorry, I don’t have a biscuit, Mr. O’Mallory, but I can scratch your ears,” she said as the dog looked at her with dark brown eyes before he poked her hand with his graying muzzle. She smiled a little and rubbed his ears. “You look like you’ve been around. I’m thinking you’ve heard a lot of troubles in your time. You want to listen to mine?”

It was silly of her to want to pour out her heart to a dog, but she needed someone to listen. “I don’t know what to do, Mr. O’Mallory. It’s all such a mess.”

When the dog cocked his head as though to hear better, she rubbed his ears again, before he settled down contentedly at her feet. Adriane leaned back on her arms to raise her face to the sun. As her skin warmed, she remembered how as a little girl, she had tried to soak up the bright light of the sun to carry with her the next time Henrietta locked her in the closet. But she had never been able to store enough light inside her, and the time always came when she had to face the monsters in the darkness again.

Beck told her it was time she faced her problems now. He thought she could. With prayer. Dear Beck. He had kept people away from her and given her these weeks of near solitude. The only person he couldn’t keep away was Stanley who came by nearly every day to alternately beseech and threaten her.

She hadn’t told Stanley yet she would not marry him. She had rather hoped he would be the one to say he wouldn’t marry her when she stopped playing the part of his happy fiancée at all the social functions. But he did seem determined to marry her. Much more determined than she’d ever dreamed he could be about anything. And all the while September drew closer and closer.

Soon she would have to do something. She often thought of joining Grace Compton in Boston. She had written Grace more than one letter asking if she could, but each time Adriane tore the letters up instead of posting them. Her father was right. Grace was barely able to support herself, and Adriane would be a heavy burden on her friend’s slim resources.

Besides, she didn’t want to go to Boston. She wanted to stay here and put out the
Tribune
. She wanted things to be the way they’d always been. Even as she thought it, Blake Garrett’s face pushed into her mind, and she knew that wasn’t exactly true.

Adriane had refused Blake’s letters through the end of June and then just when she began to weaken and think about opening one of them, he stopped sending them. He surprised her by coming to the door today. Just hearing his voice had made her blood race, and it was all she could do to keep from running to the window to catch a glimpse of him as he left.

I’ll kill Stanley Jimson before I let her marry him.

Of course, he hadn’t meant it. Not literally. But what had made him come to her door to tell her such a thing? Could it be he truly cared for her enough to contemplate such a desperate move? Cared for her more than his own reputation? More than his newspaper? She dared not believe that.

What her father had said about Blake courting the daughter of a newspaper owner was true. She’d read the letter her father had gotten from Willis Hastings, an editor in New York, telling of Blake’s engagement to the daughter of the owner of the
New York Post.
The father had fired Blake and the daughter had married someone else. Hastings concluded his letter by writing that if Wade was asking about Blake Garrett because the man was looking for a job, to send him back to New York since he didn’t have any daughters to worry about. Just a newspaper to get out. The letter left a lot of questions unanswered.

If you want answers, you can ask Blake
, a voice whispered in her head. But how could she be sure he’d tell her the truth if she did? Even worse, how could she be sure she wouldn’t believe whatever he said simply because she wanted so much to believe him? No, it was better to wait here in this small, quiet space of her own making a bit longer. To send up her prayers and wait for the Lord to show her the right thing to do.

She had a little time yet. With the election less than a month away, her absence by Stan’s side would surely go almost unnoticed in the heat of the political races. The election and the political rallies were the news, the only news. Even in the
Herald
the murders had slipped to the back pages, although Blake managed a front-page mention at least once a week to be sure no one completely forgot a murderer remained on the loose.

Meanwhile her father was furiously writing editorials in favor of Coleman Jimson and the other Know Nothing candidates. Blake Garrett was as furiously writing editorials against them, especially against Coleman Jimson. If indeed he’d ever lacked editorial courage, he’d found it now. Adriane’s father said it was more like editorial idiocy, and not just to her but in print for all of Louisville to read.

In answer, Blake blasted the
Tribune
’s editor for being nothing but a mouthpiece for the Know Nothing party. He accused her father of writing only what the party approved with no ability to think on his own. So the words flew like bullets between the editors, and the sales of both papers increased. Their readers, on the other hand, began choosing sides and shooting their own volleys of words in letters to the editors.

Now as she stared up at the blue summer sky, Adriane thought she should try to write a Colonel Storey letter calling for cool heads. But even if she was able to reach inside herself past the odd blankness of her mind and find the right words, she doubted if such a letter would do much good. It was as if the whole town was not only ready to explode, but wanted to.

Adriane sighed and kept staring at the sky until her face began to burn and sweat trickled down between her breasts. She touched her cheek and smiled a little as she imagined Lucilla’s shock and horror if she were to catch Adriane exposing her face to the sun. Adriane would no doubt sprout freckles, but what did it matter? No one was going to see her but Beck and her father and the hands. And Stanley.

When the rumble of the press started up, she gave the old dog a last pat and stood up to go back inside. There was news to print.