“Miss Wells, your mother’s taken ill.”
Elizabeth stared at her parents’ coachman and gripped the molding along the doorway until wood dug beneath her fingernails.
“She’s asking for you directly,” he added.
Giggles and squeals rang out from the parlor of her house behind her, where would-be actresses dressed in costumes and applied makeup for their production of The Taming of the Shrew. Miss Atkins’s calm voice tempered the insanity of laughs and chatter—when it could be heard above the noise.
“Ill? How ill? What’s wrong?”
“I was merely sent to fetch you, miss.”
“Yes, of course.” Something hard fisted in her chest. Mother’s illness would have to be consuming for her to cancel the dinner party tonight. She’d hosted such events before in spite of fevers, headaches and nerves. Unless...
Mother wouldn’t be using some illness as a ploy to get her away from the play, would she? Mother had a way of getting what she wanted, but surely a weekly dinner party wasn’t important enough to pull antics such as this.
“Miss Wells?” the coachman asked.
“Is she truly ill? Not feigning something?”
The coachman shifted back and forth on his feet. “As far as I know, miss.”
Elizabeth licked her lips. “Did you see her? Was she lying down?”
“I only see your mother when she needs use of the carriage.”
“Yes, of course.” Elizabeth glanced down at the tips of her shoes, part of her ready to bolt outside and head to Albany, and another part aching to ignore the summons and return to her students. The tinkle of feminine voices and laughter rose from behind her. But what had Luke said earlier, about her having family? Something about her being blessed to have family alive and well and close at hand?
Yes, that was it. She had family, and she needed to cherish it, because one day she might find herself in a situation like Luke and Samantha, with her brother in the grave and a parent heading there. “Just give me a moment. I’ll be right out.”
The coachman nodded and moved down the steps. She closed the door, reached for her coat, then headed into the parlor.
MaryAnne, dressed in trousers and a waistcoat for her upcoming role as Petruchio, stopped her at the entrance. “Miss Wells, are you all right?”
“Pardon? Oh, yes...I’m f-fine, dear. But I’m afraid I’ll have to miss your performance this evening.”
The students nearest them fell silent, and MaryAnne inched closer. “Then you’re not all right. Something has to be wrong, or you wouldn’t miss the play.”
“You’re leaving?” Miss Atkins asked from across the room.
Elizabeth swallowed. The chaos existing only moments before turned to heavy silence as every student’s gaze riveted to her. If only she could find some way to be both here and in Albany. Some way to see the hours of work and effort acted out on the stage while also supporting her mother.
“You promised to stay backstage and help with the scene changes,” Miss Atkins insisted.
“I’m sorry. I just...” Elizabeth blew out a long breath. Mother wouldn’t want rumors spread if whatever ailed her could be easily treated. But how else to explain leaving? “A family emergency has come up. I’m terribly sorry, but I must go to Albany immediately. Please forgive me. I know you’ve been working hard, and I so wanted to help with your play.” She turned and hurried outside before more accusing words could be flung her direction.
“Miss Wells. Wait!” Samantha rushed into the yard, a dish of powder and a cosmetic brush still in hand and more makeup spread across her dress. “It’s not Jackson, is it? I was supposed to see him at the dinner party tonight, but decided to help with the play instead.”
“No, no. Mother’s fallen ill and sent for me. I can only assume the dinner party is canceled. But please don’t speak of it. I don’t yet know what ails her, and I might arrive to find it something so slight as a headache.”
Concern clouded Samantha’s flawless face. “I hope everything turns out all right.”
Elizabeth swallowed. “I hope so, too.”
And with that, she turned and climbed into the carriage.
* * *
“How is Mother?” Elizabeth demanded as she burst through the front door of her parents’ Albany home.
Connors, the butler who had been serving their family since before she was born, raised his eyebrows at her. “Quite well. She is in the drawing room.”
“The drawing room? She’s not in bed, then? Has she taken a turn for the better?” Without waiting to be announced, she rushed into the drawing room—and then stopped cold.
Mother sat on the settee, her face round and healthy, and a beautiful gown of green silk draping her figure. Jackson, dressed in a suit, lounged in a chair opposite Mother. And Father stood by the fireplace, deep in conversation with...
No. Anyone but him... Her body trembled as her eyes latched on to the “dinner companion” leaning against the mantel.
“Good evening, Elizabeth.” Mother smiled brightly.
She should excuse herself, rush from the house and never step foot in it again. And she would, if her tongue didn’t weigh like lead in her mouth and her stomach didn’t lurch until it threatened to heave its contents. Instead she stood planted to the floor, staring at the one man she forever wanted to blot from her memory.
He turned slowly. “Ah, Elizabeth, darling. How kind of you to join us. A bit late though, aren’t you? And...”
The eyes of her former fiancé skimmed down her. She didn’t need to follow his gaze to know what he saw: a plain white shirtwaist and serviceable blue skirt. Both probably dusted with a mixture of chalk from a calculus lesson and stage powder. And her hair...she shoved some of the loose strands hanging about her face behind her ears.
All while Mother sat there, wearing soft silk and a hopeful smile.
“...a bit underdressed, perhaps,” David finished.
“Mr. DeVander.” Scanning the room again, she raised her chin. “We seem to be missing your wife this evening. Is she not joining us?”
Surprise lit his deceptively handsome face. “She passed away. A carriage accident over the summer. I assumed you’d heard.” His voice sounded like coffee, rich and deep and entirely too smooth.
“I’m sure you were devastated,” she snapped.
“Elizabeth, that was uncalled for.” Mother fanned her face. “Do forgive my daughter, David. Sometimes her tongue gets the better of her.”
“I was, actually. Quite devastated.” David glanced at his feet, as though truly pained.
Elizabeth sighed. Perhaps she was being unfair. He may well have loved his wife. Simply because he hadn’t loved Elizabeth when they’d been engaged didn’t make him incapable of loving anyone else. “I’m sorry for your loss then. Truly.”
“Thank you.” He flicked his gaze over her once again, lines of disapproval wrinkling his forehead and mouth. “You’ll want to clean up for dinner, I’m sure. We’ll wait for you before we adjourn to the dining room.”
The controlling snake. He was a guest here, yet he had no scruples at hinting she wasn’t good enough to dine as she was. He may have lost his wife, may have even been upset by the death, but the man hadn’t changed. “Mother, I’d like a word with you. Now.”
Mother straightened. “Surely any conversation we have can wait until after we eat, dear.”
“No.” She clenched her teeth. “Either we talk now, or I leave.”
“You’re not leaving, when we’ve waited the better part of an hour for you to get here,” Jackson piped up. “I’m famished.”
“Yes, daughter, is this truly necessary?” Father added.
She gripped her skirt in her hands and turned. “Then watch me leave.”
“Very well, very well.” Mother stood slowly, as though trying to temper Elizabeth’s quick movements with her own languid ones. “This won’t take but a moment, gentlemen.”
Elizabeth marched straight across the hall and into her father’s office.
“Really, child. You’re going to ruin your chance with David all over again.” Mother closed the door behind her. “‘I’m sure you were devastated’? You don’t say such things to a man grieving for his late wife.”
“If he still grieved, he wouldn’t be here, expecting to have dinner with me.” Fury built inside her, an angry storm of rage and betrayal and past regrets. “You lied. I had plans for this evening, a play to help with, and you deliberately misled me to get me away from it.”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic.” Mother sank fluidly into a chair. “I had a headache when I sent for you, and it cleared up before you arrived.”
“You didn’t send for me because of a headache. You sent for me because you wanted me to have dinner with David while he was in town.”
“Why you’re here hardly matters now that you are. So stop blabbering, fix your hair and come in to dinner. Wait. Don’t you have one of your dresses here, up in your old room? That ivory velvet?”
“Hardly matters? Have you gone daft?” She paced in front of Mother’s chair. How could the woman sit and wear that guileless smile after what she’d done? “No, don’t answer that. You must have. Or you wouldn’t have called me away from my commitments. My students have been working since the beginning of the school year on the production, and I promised I’d be there for them.
“Maybe the play and how I got here hardly matter to you. But they matter a great deal to me.” She stopped her pacing and headed straight for the door. “Good evening, Mother. I’ll see myself out. Thank you.”
“No, you won’t.” Mother sprang up, a terrifyingly quick movement for someone so elegant, and rushed to the door. “You’ll go into the dining hall and eat with the rest of us. You have a responsibility to aid your family, not spurn it, and this is your opportunity to do so.”
“Opportunity? For what? I know you didn’t want me to walk away from my engagement to David all those years ago, but that’s over and done. And you did let me. Why do I suddenly have to marry now, when you’ve survived the previous twenty-six years of my life with an unwed daughter? And don’t tell me it’s because I wrote an editorial in the paper. I’m not a fool.”
“We’re going to lose our house if you don’t marry him.”
She barely refrained from rolling her eyes. “Yes. You told me so at the banquet. But I highly doubt it’s going to happen tonight, so that still doesn’t answer my question.”
“No. You don’t understand. The bank sent a man to...to our house yesterday. He was here when I returned from the Ladies’ Society meeting. He apparently spoke with your father and assessed the value of the property. There were papers from the bank and...and...I don’t know.” She waved her hand, as though the simple gesture would shoo the problem away. “I had hopes of you and David reuniting while he was in town. What mother wouldn’t dream of such a thing? But after your father told me about the bank man...”
Mother’s lips tightened into a straight white line. “I had to get you to dinner. I didn’t want to lie, but there seemed no other way.”
Elizabeth gripped the bookshelf behind her for balance and pressed her fingers to her temple. Could her parents truly lose the house she’d grown up in? At the banquet, it had seemed like an idle threat, another of Mother’s endless dramatics to try to keep her in line. But Mother’s face had gone pale beneath her cosmetic powder, and her eyes pleaded for understanding.
“Things can’t be that bad,” Elizabeth argued. “Look at you, you’re dressed in a fine gown and still maintaining a full staff here. If there was so little money, wouldn’t Father be cutting back?”
“Oh, stop with this ridiculousness about expenses and cutbacks. I’ve never paid attention to how your Father manages his accounts. I simply trust him to do so, as any good wife would. And I know what he told me this morning, that the bank will take our house before Christmas if we don’t come up with money. Which is why we need you.”
The worry in Mother’s eyes faded into a dreamy sheen. “David DeVander has money and position. The panic barely touched him. And he needs a wife. Someone elegant and refined, someone who can charm the crowds in Washington and here at home. He’s willing to marry you and willing to help your father get back on his feet.”
Elizabeth wrapped her arms around herself and stared at the plush blue carpet beneath her feet. Mother couldn’t understand how deeply David had hurt her. If she did, Mother would have never asked such a thing. “I can’t, Mama. He cheated on me.”
“Don’t you see, dear? David would take you back.”
“He would take me back?” She paced across the floor again, four steps to the fireplace and four steps back. She had to do something to burn off the fury raging inside her. “How very gracious of him, but I refuse to take him back. I can’t ignore what he did.”
“Well, you should. Any woman of breeding ignores—”
“Ignores what? That her husband sleeps with other women?”
“They’re called mistresses, Elizabeth.”
Mother spoke calmly, so coolly, that Elizabeth stilled, all her fury draining from her at the mention of that one terrible word.
“Father has one, doesn’t he?” The whispered accusation slipped from her mouth. Her lungs felt as though they would shatter if she breathed wrong, and a steel band, heavy and unbreakable, tightened about her heart. But still, it couldn’t be true. Father wouldn’t take a mistress. He couldn’t. Perhaps he had his faults—she’d be the last person to proclaim him perfect—but he wouldn’t betray her mother, her family, in such a manner.
A faint blush rose on Mother’s cheeks. “Your father is very discreet, both personally and professionally. How should I know whether he has a mistress?”
“Don’t lie to me. You know.” Oh, goodness, she wanted to be sick. But she couldn’t, not here in front of Mother, not with David and Father and Jackson across the hall. “A woman always knows that kind of thing.”
She had with David. She’d just been too young and trusting to pay attention to the warnings inside her head.
“Don’t you understand why you need to marry?” Mother stepped close, her eyes framed with unfulfilled dreams and glittering like bright, hard diamonds. “Mistresses don’t matter, not in the grand picture of things. But a good marriage can take care of both you and your family.”
Obey your parents. Honor them. The minister’s words from Sunday’s sermon curled like smoke around the recesses of her mind. But surely honoring her parents didn’t mean she had to spend the rest of her life married to a man like David. Surely God wouldn’t ask that of her, would He? “I’d never be able to keep him happy.”
“Happy? What has happiness to do with duty?”
“You speak as though I neglect you, but I help the family whenever an opportunity arises. I make appearances with Father, attend your social events and give speeches on his behalf. I’m even giving a speech next week. Why can’t that be enough?”
“We’re going to lose our house, and you have the ability to stop it from happening, yet you refuse. Oh, dear, you’re going to make me cry.” Mother blinked her eyes frantically, but two large tears streaked down her cheeks. “Have you a hankie?”
Elizabeth reached into her pocket and handed Mother a chalk-dusted handkerchief.
“Thank you.” Mother sniffled and dabbed at her face, unwittingly smearing the tears, cosmetic powder and chalk dust together into a pathetic mess on her skin. “I simply don’t understand why you can’t marry David and leave that wretched teaching job.”
Elizabeth sighed. No. Mother didn’t understand, not how important teaching was to her, or how miserable she’d be if she married David.
Perhaps Mother didn’t understand because she didn’t care to, or perhaps she was simply incapable of recognizing that some women had dreams which extended beyond marriage to a prominent husband. So round and round they went. Mother would never look at her life and see success, would never say, “Well done, Elizabeth. You’re making a difference.” She would only, always, see the world through her unchanging, marriage-hungry eyes.
“Good evening, then. I’m quite done here.” Elizabeth hurried out of the study and to the front door, not stopping to ask for her coat or reticule. The cold air cloaked her as she rushed outside and down the steps. Then she halted, staring at the empty street.
The carriage. How could she have forgotten she’d ridden here in her parents’ carriage? Mother certainly wouldn’t offer to have the coachman return her to Valley Falls, and without her reticule, she could hardly pay to take the train home.
“No way home?” a cool voice asked from the steps.
Her body tensed. If only she could find some way not to turn around, some way not to face the man she’d once promised to wed. But that would involve walking down the street and into the night without either her coat or reticule. Her knees trembled and her hand locked onto the iron railing beside the steps as she turned.
“If you’ll please step aside, I need to retrieve my things.” She tried to move around David, but he shifted to the middle of the steps and extended his hands until they touched both railings, completely barring her way.
“You’ve changed.”
“Yes. A great deal.” She shivered. Didn’t he realize that she needed her coat?
The lantern on the porch slanted down, illuminating David while his eyes narrowed and traveled down her once again—as though he hadn’t learned enough from his earlier perusal in the drawing room. “I’m trying to determine if the change was for the better.”
She stared into the smooth face, the hair black as midnight, and the brown eyes full of secrets. Most would call him handsome, but then, most people saw his outward charm rather than the blackness within. “And what about you? Have you changed? Or do you still keep a mistress in the house around the corner?”
He laughed, a bold, raucous sound. “Still upset about that, darling? No, if you must know. I tired of her long ago.”
“And moved on to another, no doubt. Probably one who stays in Washington. Tell me, did you bring her with you on your trip here?”
“Come now, Elizabeth. No gentleman discusses his mistress with a lady. You know that.”
No. You only discuss your mistresses with other gentlemen. The old wounds, long buried under the busyness of her current life, opened fresh as she stood before him, David DeVander, the man who had caused her untold hours of tears and heartache.
The man who had taught her never to trust another man again.
Of all the nights to have this conversation, all the times to face him, did it have to be now? Tonight? After Mother’s lie and news of the house and missing her students’ play?
She glanced down at her skirt, still splotched with chalk and cosmetic dust, and her shirtwaist tucked crookedly into her belt.
“I’m not much of a lady anymore,” she whispered. Was it a bad thing?
“You would make any man a fine wife and if you marry me, I’ll see that your family is taken care of. I’m sure you know your father’s about to lose his house.”
She tried to breathe, clean deep breaths that would calm her, allow her to think rationally. But the air choked off in her throat, and her entire body turned cold, then hot, then cold again. Mother had given her the same ultimatum inside, so why did the words seem more terrifying coming from David himself?
Perhaps because David’s offer laid the choice bare in a way Mother’s hadn’t. Mother was always imploring her to marry one man or another, but never before had her family’s house been at stake. Never before had someone made her so clear an offer: Marry and save your family or refuse and...and what?
She looked up at the house, the strong brick walls that had sheltered her family for nearly thirty years, the bedroom in the upper left corner where she’d spent the first seventeen years of her life, the room that her parents shared on the opposite corner of the second floor. She could save it, allow Mother to keep her silks and Father to keep his dignity. Just one single, tiny word. Yes.
She licked her lips. The word wasn’t hard to say, not even two syllables. So why did her tongue refuse to form it?
Because she didn’t want a marriage based on a business contract. Perhaps some young ladies married for the reasons David delineated. But her? She’d shrivel up and die. Was the sacrifice worth it, her family for her soul?
“What are you thinking?” David’s dark voice pierced her thoughts. “Tell me.”
She took a step away from him. “You wouldn’t want me. I’ve changed too much.”
“You know how to behave, even if you’ve been off on this...” he twirled his hand in the air as though too bored to find the right word “...teaching escapade for several years. Your recent antics with newspaper articles have been a little much of late, but they merely prove a woman like yourself ought not be living on her own, without parents or a husband to answer to. It’s nothing a solid hand couldn’t correct once you’re wed.”
Solid hand. Correct. Did he think her some errant child?
“Furthermore, my late wife left me with two young sons. They need a mother. I need someone to host dinner parties and appear at political gatherings. You’re a rather good orator and would do well speaking to ladies’ groups and so forth.”
A mother. A hostess. An orator. All the things he required in a wife. Still the man said nothing about her as a person. What she dreamed of, what she liked or disliked.
Because he didn’t know. She’d been raised with him, their families were longtime friends. Then they fell into courtship and got betrothed at the proper ages. But he only knew her in the way one knew an objet d’art. A person could study the lines and forms of a sculpture, the position and facial expressions. But a statue was only clay or stone or marble, incapable of feeling or emotion, of behaving in any way other than what the sculptor designed.
That’s what David wanted: a marble wife.
His golden-tipped words would have been enough once. But she’d changed; David was right in that assessment. And she’d rather spend her life teaching mathematics and offering her students a glimmer of hope instead of hanging on the arm of David DeVander or anyone of his ilk.
“I thank you for your compliments, Mr. DeVander. But truly, I must be going. Now if you’ll let me pass so I can fetch my belongings.” She tried to brush by him, but he grasped her shoulder and turned her face to his.
“You’re beautiful, Elizabeth.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
She lurched away, the feel of his fingers so near her face burning despite the cold seeping through her clothing. “Don’t touch me.”
He tightened his grip and dragged her closer. “I leave for Washington in two weeks. I need a wife before I return, and your family needs money. You think I don’t know how badly off your father is? He can barely keep his house and staff and you can change all that—if you marry me.”
“Elizabeth?” a rusty voice called from the direction of the street.
Elizabeth gulped a breath and closed her eyes. She’d imagined the voice, she must have. Luke couldn’t be here, not now. She merely needed to open her eyes and see that no one stood on the walkway, particularly not a tall, lean man wearing a cowboy hat.
“What’s going on here?” the voice growled.
She opened her eyes and took in the shadowed figure in the unmistakable cowboy hat. There was no denying Luke was here, all right, staring straight at her.
* * *
Luke wasn’t sure whether to run up and yank Elizabeth from the scoundrel who held her on the steps or turn and head home. When he’d left Valley Falls an hour ago, he’d figured on finding any number of things at the Wells’s house, but Elizabeth standing outside, practically in the arms of another man, wasn’t one of them.
She tried to step down, probably to greet him, but rather than release her shoulder, the other man pulled her back against his chest. Luke curled his fingers into hard fists.
“Can I help you?” the dandy asked in a voice as smooth and liquid as water itself.
Luke flicked his gaze to Elizabeth. “Since you’re not keeping vigil near your mother, I assume she’s feeling a mite better.”
“Yes, I—”
“The students were worried, especially Samantha. I volunteered to come check on you. Though I see they got their dander up over nothing.”
“Is that what your mother did to get you here?” The other man laughed, a chilling sound. “Sent word she was ill?”
The laugher must have loosened his hold, because Elizabeth jerked away and headed down the steps. “It’s not funny. My students were counting on me.”
“I’m sure they were, darling. I’m sure they were.”
She stopped before Luke, and he stilled as the words sank in. Her mother had tricked her by sending word she was ill? Why would she do such a thing? Surely Mrs. Wells didn’t begrudge her daughter helping with a play.
Luke shifted closer, running his eyes down Elizabeth’s slender form. Her face didn’t carry the flushed look of anticipation one might expect from a woman meeting with a lover, but glowed pale and taut with tension in the dim lamplight. Lines etched the corners of her mouth, while smudges haunted the hollows beneath her eyes, and her dirty, serviceable clothing hung limp and twisted on her frame. Not the way a woman would look if she had a rendezvous with a man.
She shivered under his gaze—no, not under his gaze. She was freezing. Hang it all, he’d been too all-fired frustrated to notice how cold she was.
“Where’s your coat? Did you leave home without it?” He shrugged out of his and wrapped it about her shoulders. “And why are you outside without something to keep you warm?”
“My coat’s inside with my reticule.” She hunched her shoulders against the cool air and stretched the coat tight around herself. “I was heading inside to retrieve them when I was...intercepted.”
He glanced toward his carriage, then back to her disheveled form. “You need a ride home?”
“She most certainly does not,” the other man interrupted. “She’s coming inside to dinner. Aren’t you, darling?”
“Stop calling me ‘darling.’” Her body stayed slumped as she spoke, as though she hadn’t the energy to straighten and raise her chin in that familiar, haughty angle. As though the man on the steps had already defeated her.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend, darling?” Something sharp glinted in the man’s eyes.
Luke shifted in front of Elizabeth as the scoundrel came forward.
“Mr. DeVander, this is Luke Hayes, grandson of the late Jonah Hayes, whom I’m sure you remember.” Gone was the usual steel behind Elizabeth’s voice, replaced by a small quiver. “Mr. Hayes, this is David DeVander, United States Representative of our congressional district.”
DeVander. The name set off warning sounds. Luke looked the scoundrel up and down, from the top of his sleek black hair to the tips of his shiny shoes. Where had he heard...?
DeVander. Luke hardened his jaw while Stevens’s words echoed inside him. This was the man who had offered to marry Elizabeth and then taken a mistress.
“The Hayes heir.” DeVander straightened and extended his hand, his eyes assessing, probably trying to figure whether he could hit up the new heir for a donation. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Luke stared at the offered hand and pushed some spittle around in his mouth. If only the lady wasn’t present...
He settled a hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder instead. “Do you want to leave? I can take you in my carriage and send a footman later for your things.”
“I already said she was attending dinner,” DeVander barked. “And she can hardly ride back to Valley Falls with you unchaperoned.”
Unchaperoned in a carriage. Did that break one of the social rules? Probably. Simply breathing was enough to break half those highfalutin guidelines. But at the very least, he could take the train and give Elizabeth his carriage.
“As though you would complain if I rode unchaperoned in a carriage with you,” Elizabeth snapped at DeVander, then turned. “I appreciate your offer, Luke. I can use a ride home.”
Luke extended his arm, and she took it.
“Very well, Elizabeth.” DeVander glowered at them through the darkness. “I’ll be waiting to hear your decision.”
A shudder rippled down her slender frame as she headed to the carriage.