Blessing (5 page)

The open field carved out of the forest showed signs that this was not the first race held here. A track had been dragged and covered in sawdust. Jockeys walked their horses nearby. The familiar raucous excitement of men gathered around bookmakers livened the atmosphere. It was impossible not to feel it, catch it.

“Kentucky breeds really fine thoroughbred horses,” Stoddard was saying. “The races can be exciting.”

Gerard started toward the most reputable-looking bookmaker, then paused. He needed to get his bearings. “Which bookmaker do you usually choose?”

Stoddard looked surprised. “I don’t waste money on betting.”

Since when?
Gerard stifled his response. If he was right about who had caused this change, he needed to use subtlety. “Cousin,” Gerard coaxed, “how much fun is a horse race if one hasn’t placed a bet? Come on.” He gestured for Stoddard to follow him and continued toward the bookmaker.

Stoddard came along but with such obvious reluctance
that Gerard silently cursed Miss Foster for her bluestocking influence. A gentleman was entitled to his entertainments. And leave it to a woman to take all the fun out of life.

“What’s the favored horse?” Gerard called to the bookmaker over the heads of other betting customers.

“Fate’s Fancy in the third race,” the man replied, handing out scribbled betting slips to the crowd. “Odds two to one.”

“What’s the long shot?”

“Kentucky Pride in the first race. Odds fourteen to one.” The man turned to dicker with another customer.

Gerard pulled out his purse and shook out two gold dollars.

“Have you any idea what you’re doing?” Stoddard murmured close to Gerard’s ear.

Stoddard’s words and concerned tone goaded Gerard. “Two dollars on Kentucky Pride!” he called out to the bookmaker.

Stoddard’s exclamation was loud and frustrated. “If you want to throw money away . . .”

A man’s face at the edge of the milling bettors caught Gerard’s attention. For a moment he felt the man’s animosity like a punch in the gut. Holding up his two dollars to the bookmaker, he stared at the well-dressed stranger. Did he know him?

The crowd shifted, coming between them. Gerard accepted the betting slip without even looking at it, craning his neck. When the throng parted, the man had disappeared from sight. Who was he? Did they know each other from somewhere?

Gerard stepped back, still musing. Then he thought he
saw Kennan again, just a moving figure at the edge of the crowd near where the stranger had been standing. Unsettled, Gerard closed and then opened his eyes, blinking. “Did you see him?”

At his elbow Stoddard replied, “Who?”

“I thought I saw Kennan.”

“Really? Where?” Stoddard was glancing around.

“Over there. I just glimpsed him. Or thought I did.”

The two of them scanned the crowd.

“Must have been someone who looked like Kennan,” Stoddard said at last with a shake of his head.

Gerard agreed with a curt nod, but his gut didn’t believe it. And if Kennan was here, why would he avoid them? It didn’t make sense.

Stoddard hailed a friend and hurried a bit forward. Gerard turned to follow him and found the man who’d stared at him with malice standing right in front of him. Blocking his way. “May I help you?”

“No.” The man did not move.

“Have we met?” Gerard asked, nettled.

“Not formally. No.” The man spoke with a familiar accent, but not the one Stoddard and Gerard shared. This voice held the flavors of both Boston and Ireland, Gerard thought. But he didn’t recognize this man.

Not wanting to start a fight, Gerard could think of no reply except “If you’ll excuse me, I must join my friend.”

“Of course.” The stranger grinned unpleasantly, turned, and walked away.

Gerard noticed that the crowd parted like the Red Sea, giving the stranger a wide berth, and then swallowed him up.

Stoddard touched Gerard’s elbow. “Come, I want you to meet someone.”

“Did you know who that man was?” Gerard motioned toward where the retreating figure had gone.

“I wasn’t paying attention. Come on,” Stoddard urged. “The first race is about to begin.”

Gerard let himself be led away, but meeting this stranger left him feeling unsettled, vaguely troubled. He shook it off and shouldered his way to the front to watch the first race. A worry niggled at the back of his mind. Stoddard was right: When Gerard still had no concept of how to make a living here, why was he betting money he couldn’t afford to lose? He could only hope Kentucky Pride would win.

SEPTEMBER 2, 1848

In the autumn twilight a day later, Gerard walked sedately beside Stoddard. Miss Foster—Tippy—and her parents had invited them to dine. Apparently Stoddard was as firmly in her clutches as ever. Gerard wanted to grab his cousin and pull him away, head down the bluff to the wharf, where they could lift a glass and laugh and perhaps sing, forget the fact that neither of his horses had won their races the day before. Instead they were headed for a dinner party, a social obligation, a collar-tightening bore.

The girl’s parents must be in transports over a catch like Stoddard Henry—a handsome, socially prominent, and well-educated man. Gerard sneered at the thought. But how could he counter their stratagems to gain such a son-in-law?

“I know you’ve come to save me from Tippy,” Stoddard said baldly, blandly. “But I don’t need saving.”

Before Gerard could think of a reply to this sudden frankness, Stoddard called out, “This is the house.” It was a three-story home on a corner lot with a large garden. And Gerard didn’t like how his cousin’s step quickened as if he couldn’t wait to get inside. Gerard was depressed. Kennan in the bottle and Stoddard “in love.” It was disgusting.

Stoddard all but ran up the steps, grinning like a fool.

A somber butler opened the door—a black man with a head of hair that resembled silver wool.

Gerard had rarely seen black servants. He studied the man.

“Mr. Stoddard, good to see you, sir,” the butler said with a Southern accent.

Stoddard greeted the man and added, “George, this is my cousin Gerard Ramsay of Boston.”

The butler bowed slightly. “Please step in, Mr. Ramsay. Welcome to Cincinnati, the Queen City of the West.”

The grand greeting, spoken with evident pride, threw Gerard off stride. He nodded and gave the man his hat and gloves as he entered the home. Inside the house smelled of lemon oil and good food. Gerard’s mouth watered at the fragrance of roasted fowl. Well, at least he might get a good meal here. If his stomach would let him enjoy it.

The butler showed them to the parlor, decorated in deep rose and white with heavy draperies at the windows and flocked wallpaper patterned with roses and vines. Clutter covered every exposed surface. On lacy crocheted table coverings sat porcelain figurines and daguerreotypes in intricate
gilt frames, and oil family portraits hung on the walls. In the midst of all this feminine frippery, Gerard couldn’t shake the feeling of being swallowed up by the sumptuous decor. On the other side of the parlor, three older couples and the daughter of the house waited for them.

Stoddard headed straight for a woman in lavender silk who sat on a chair by the cold hearth. “Mrs. Foster, I’d like to present my cousin.”

The ritual of introductions proceeded according to form. Gerard sized up the Fosters, a middle-aged couple who appeared to be in comfortable circumstances. The husband was tall with side-whiskers, and his wife an older version of her daughter. The other two couples were of similar age and appearance.

“Mr. Ramsay,” Tippy Foster, sitting near her mother, greeted him brightly. “I’m so happy you’ve ventured to the barbarous frontier.”

“Xantippe,” Mrs. Foster said reprovingly.

“Miss Foster, I see that you have not lost any of your sprightly charm,” Gerard said, wishing he could say what he really meant.

As if she read his mind, the girl chuckled. “You are very adroit, sir.”

An intimate glance passed between Stoddard and Tippy, and Gerard fought to hold his courteous smile in place.

“Miss Blessing,” the butler intoned from the doorway.

Gerard turned and found the Quakeress standing there. The woman appeared to be ushering in daylight. The oil lamps seemed to dim and the overdecorated room to pale. He mentally stepped back.

The Quakeress moved purposefully into the parlor. She did not try to float across the room in that affected, aggravating way most young women did. Her measured, forthright gait irked him all the more.

And every head turned to watch her. Two of the ladies moved toward her with smiles and pleasant phrases on their lips, startling Gerard. A radical female would not have been welcome in any Beacon Hill drawing room.

Or was that true?

He had heard of people who had presence, but he had never known what that meant. Now he recognized it firsthand, though it still defied definition. He tried to analyze what about her seemed to reach out toward others. She was admittedly good-looking, and she dressed very simply but expensively in gray-and-white silk with a white widow’s cap over her chestnut hair. Nothing outstanding that in itself should have called attention to her. If he could understand what her attraction was, perhaps he could counter it.

Because he would bet she was the one who’d lured Tippy Foster into radical ideas, and a beautiful girl with radical ideas was evidently the type that snared Stoddard. A bitter taste leaked over his tongue.

“Gerard Ramsay, we meet again.” The widow offered him her hand like a man, behaving as if she were unaware that she was the center of attention in the room.

It irritated him, so he responded with an older and even more formal courtesy, taking her hand, bending over, and kissing it. “Madam Suffragist.”

She chuckled.

The lilting sound grated on his nerves, and he tried to
come up with another way to catch her off guard. “How is the crusade for women’s rights proceeding?”

“Slowly, much too slowly.” Then she took back her hand and moved toward her hostess, effectively cutting him out.

He watched her, his annoyance deepening. Any other woman would have been chagrined at his provocative greeting and would have tried to downplay her radicalism. Why didn’t she?

“I’m sorry not to arrive on time, but I was detained,” the Quakeress said.

“Your work is very important,” Mrs. Foster replied. “Don’t apologize.”

The other ladies murmured similar sentiments, sounding sanctimonious.

Her work? What else didn’t he know about this woman? A particularly painful spot in his stomach began to flare, burn. He thought longingly of the small tavern he’d glimpsed near his lodging. He could be there now. Perhaps finding someone for a game of cards or chess.

Then he overheard Mrs. Brightman murmur to Tippy, “I received a letter today with important news from a woman we met in Seneca Falls. I’ll call on you tomorrow to discuss it.”

Gerard was intrigued. A letter from one of those radical suffragists? Perhaps Miss Foster would accomplish his mission for him. Certainly more outlandish behavior from this young lady could not fail to wipe the mist of blind love from Stoddard’s eyes. As he thought this, he sent a particularly generous smile to Tippy.

The mystery was how this Quakeress and this young lady
of society became friends and why the Fosters hadn’t protected their daughter from such a woman.

“Dinner is ready,” the butler said from the doorway.

Soon, in a large dining room decorated with wallpaper depicting the Parthenon in Greece and alight with a crystal chandelier, they settled at the white-clothed dining table, lit by candles and gleaming with polished silver. Miss Foster and Stoddard sat across from him. Mrs. Brightman had been seated to his right. The master of the house sat at the head and the lady of the house at the foot, with the other guests ranged along the sides. Just a happy family and their guests.

Gerard opened his crisp white napkin and placed it in his lap, dreading the long, many-course dinner ahead. Social chatter always needled him while at the same time boring him.
But I must learn all I can about this family, all that is useful to me.

“I used to go to Saratoga,” Mr. Foster said toward the end of his wife’s drawn-out story about how Tippy had met Stoddard there. “Great horse races.”

Gerard beamed at the man. “Nothing like a good horse race. Stoddard took me to one yesterday. I take it Cincinnati doesn’t have a formal racetrack?”

“No, but those races are held in outlying towns from time to time,” one of the other men said. “If a Cincinnati man wants a regular racetrack, he must go across the river.”

“Really?” Gerard said.

“And that’s close enough, if you ask me,” Tippy snapped. “Men betting on horses and losing money that should feed their children.”

Prudish busybody. Gerard held his tongue.

The other ladies busied themselves with their napkins, trying to ignore this lapse of good manners. Young debutantes were not supposed to censure gentlemen, and especially not at dinner.

Gerard regarded the girl, smiling with his teeth and hiding his animosity. “One can’t outlaw every enjoyment just because some abuse it. I’ve always enjoyed horse racing.”