Leslie LaFoy (6 page)

Lindsay shook her head and smiled at his back. “Whether you strip fifty-two and some-odd thousand dollars from the company or Henry gains control, the end result will be the same: the destruction of the MacPhaull Company. I might as well have the satisfaction of seeing you trampled in the street.”

He laughed, set his glass down, and then turned to lean against the sideboard, his arms crossed over his chest. “Do you play poker, Miss MacPhaull?”

An intriguing turn.
“I beg your pardon?”

“Billy taught me to play. It occurs to me that facing you across a table and a pile of chips would be a lot like playing with him again.”

Very intriguing.
“Are you suggesting that the ownership of the MacPhaull Company could be the stake in a game of cards?”

“Not at all. I own it and I'm not about to risk it on the turn of a card,” he answered, shaking his head slowly and studying her all the while, a knowing smile tilting up the corners of his mouth. “What I'm thinking is that you have your father's way of coming at a high-stakes game. You've been dealt some lousy cards, but, by bluff and bravado, you're going to make the best of them. You're going to do whatever you have to to keep Richard Patterson alive for as long as possible so that you can keep the reins in your hands. You're not going to let anything happen to me and you're going to do your best to control how I get what I need out of the MacPhaull Company assets.”

He was very good at judging character as well. She wasn't surprised. There was one inaccuracy, however, and she wanted it corrected. “Richard Patterson is like a father to me. To suggest that my concern for his life is based on business concerns is not only callous, but intentionally cruel.”

“Death is inevitable, Miss MacPhaull,” he countered, his eyes just as hard as his voice. “And feelings aside, there are consequences of it that practical people acknowledge long before the actual day of reckoning. Billy was like a father to me, but that didn't prevent me from knowing what his gambling and dying would mean to me in a business sense. It's not callous; it's not cruel. It's life. And you know damn good and well that when Richard Patterson goes to meet his maker, you lose control of the MacPhaull Company. You're Billy's daughter and you'll fight tooth and nail to keep your fate in your own hands.”

“You would appear to be equally mercenary in your quest to do the same,” she observed.

“I am. And I'll make no apologies for it. Neither am I going to take offense that you understand that. You don't have any reason to take offense, either. There's nothing wrong with being realistic.”

“Well, if realistic is what you want, Mr. Stennett,” she said, setting her sherry glass on the corner of the desk, “then you might take a look at this morning's correspondence.” She motioned to the chair, adding, “Make yourself comfortable. I'm going to have Mrs. Beechum prepare a room for you. I'll be back shortly to answer any questions you might have.”

“You're actually going to allow me to stay here?” he asked as she headed toward the door.

“It's your house,” she replied without looking back. “And then there's the fact that you never allow a player to leave the table with cards in their hand.”

He laughed and called after her. “My bags are at the Dunmurphy. Send someone for them, will you?”

She paused just across the threshold and turned back. “Your wish is my command,” she said dryly, dropping an abbreviated curtsy.

Jackson watched her go. Lindsay MacPhaull was a very interesting woman. He'd always respected and admired the man Billy had been. But not once had he ever thought of how he'd feel about Billy's traits turning up in a woman. It was… well, both fascinating and a little unsettling. Like her daddy, Lindsay MacPhaull had a whole range of poker acts and could switch between them at the drop of a hat. Who she really was underneath it all remained to be seen. He was fairly certain he'd gotten the foundation right, though. She hadn't so much as blinked when he'd laid the brutal truths about business reality out on the table. No matter how badly things might have gotten, Billy never flinched. It looked as though Lindsay was made of the same stern stuff.

And damn if she didn't have the same sort of attraction to high risk that her father had. Jackson remembered the look in her eyes as he'd expounded on the consequences of the Panic. He hadn't bothered to keep the anger and frustration out of his voice. And she hadn't bothered to hide her fascination with both. It had taken every bit of his self-control to hold the distance between them. He'd been so damn tempted to step up to the unspoken challenge and see just what she'd do about it. It had been the suspicion that she wouldn't back down that had kept him planted against
the desk. He'd have pushed and she'd have pushed back and the odds were that they'd have ended up on the carpet together, a snarling tangle of arms and legs and …

Jackson expelled a hard breath and sat down in the chair. He needed to focus on the business at hand. He had less than sixty days to figure the lay of the land, get what he needed out of it, and get gone. Lindsay MacPhaull was off-limits. She was Billy's daughter and he didn't need that kind of guilt riding his coattails. Besides, he couldn't afford the luxury of distraction, no matter how pretty it was, no matter how much he wanted it. More often than not, it came with a price he couldn't afford to pay. He'd learned that lesson the hardest way a man could.

Pulling the papers from the valise, he willed himself to focus on the flat, emotionless words of the correspondence.

L
INDSAY PAUSED AT
the housekeeper's door and drew a steadying breath. Before her resolve could desert her, she knocked and called, “Mrs. Beechum? I'm sorry to disturb you, but I need a few moments of your time.”

“One moment, dear,” came the instant reply.

The door was thick enough to prevent Lindsay from hearing small sounds from the other side, but she didn't need to. Mrs. Beechum was desperately trying to compose herself so that neither one of them would be forced to acknowledge their grief over Richard Patterson's collapse. Lindsay shook her head and smiled wryly. Richard Patterson was the only matter on which Abigail Beechum kept her silence. Everything else was fair game.

A hard metallic click instantly brought Lindsay back to the matter at hand. The door swung open and, taking her cue from her housekeeper, Lindsay pasted a serene smile on her face and pretended that she didn't know that Mrs. Beechum had been crying.

“As I said,” Lindsay began, “I'm sorry to disturb you, but I'm afraid that matters simply won't wait. May I come in?”

“Oh, dear, do forgive my lapse in manners,” the middle-aged woman said in sincere apology as she stepped back. “My mind is so scattered this morning. I just brought a pot
of tea down to settle my nerves a bit. Would you care for a cup, Miss Lindsay?”

It was a comforting ritual they'd shared over the years; a little ceremony they both used to erase the formal boundaries that normally separated employer from employee. Relief surging through her, Lindsay stepped into the room, saying, “Gladly, and thank you. Shall I pour?”

As was the custom, Mrs. Beechum closed the door, replying, “That would be most kind of you, dear.” And as Lindsay fully expected, she added, “While you do, you can tell me about Mr. Stennett and how you happened to have made his acquaintance.”

“Satan sent him.”

Mrs. Beechum chuckled as she settled into her rocking chair. “Well, I must say that he does indeed have the dark good looks of a true rogue, but he doesn't strike me as being malicious in nature. I found him to be quite respectful and well mannered during our conversation.”

“You've met the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing,” Lindsay countered, beginning the ritual of tea.

“Miss Lindsay, I'll respectfully remind you that you tend to view all men as having wolfish tendencies. Perhaps you're misjudging Mr. Stennett?”

“I'll tell you a story, Abigail, and then you can tell me if I'm off the mark.” She placed the tea set on the table between the rocker and the wing-back chair. Before them, the fire cracked and popped. “Stennett is from the Republic of Texas and—”

“I was trying to place his accent. I knew it sounded Southern.”

“Apparently my father considered Mr. Stennett a son. The favorite son.”

“Oh, dear me.”

“Abigail, please let me get through this as quickly as I can,” Lindsay said, exasperated. “I don't relish having to say it all in the first place and I'd just as soon get it over with.”

“I'm sorry. I'll reserve my comments for when you're done.”

“Thank you. Now, the important part of it all stems from the fact that my father died recently.” Abigail Beechum
made a sympathetic noise, but Lindsay didn't give her a chance to offer condolences. “In his Will he left everything to Mr. Stennett, who has come to New York to claim his prize.”

“Well, leave it to your father to upset the apple cart. What, precisely, does ‘everything’ entail?”

“As Mr. Stennett has so delicately put it to me: every bit of property, from the business holdings to the clothes on our backs, to the pots and pans in our kitchen. Which, in terms of our daily lives, makes me your former employer.”

“Miss Lindsay …”

She heard the hesitation in the woman's voice. Abigail Beechum never hesitated unless what she wanted to say was well outside the bounds of her role as housekeeper. It was always a healthy dose of something Lindsay would have preferred not to hear. “Go ahead and say whatever you're thinking.” She leaned forward to pour the tea as she added, “I honestly don't think I can be any more deeply bruised than I already am.”

“Whatever the formal nature of our relationship, Miss Lindsay, I'll always think of us as being more than employer and housekeeper. We've shared far too many pots of tea over the years for things to change between us now.”

The spout clanked hard against the edge of a teacup. Lindsay quickly set the pot down and checked for a chip in the rim. A nod was all she could permit herself in acknowledgment of Abigail's words. She forced the tightness in her throat to ease and then said, “You know that I can't fight him for control.”

“Of course you can't. It would be foolish to try, dear.”

“I can't very well let him run around the city loose, either,” Lindsay explained, setting a teacup on the table, within easy reach of her housekeeper. “I need to keep him where I can influence his decision-making. It's the only hope we have of coming out of this fiasco with anything.”

Abigail Beechum nodded slowly. “So he'll be staying in the house with us. I'll prepare a room for him.”

“Now, tell me, Abigail…” Lindsay sipped from her own cup. “Have I truly misjudged Mr. Stennett?”

The silence was deafening.

Lindsay looked over to see her housekeeper looking decidedly resolute. “Oh, Abigail! Really!” Lindsay cried, dismayed. “The man's willingly taking something that he has no right to take! Oh, yes, he has a conveniently desperate tale of why doing so is unavoidably necessary, but that doesn't alter the fact that what he's doing is wrong. He hasn't poured his life into the MacPhaull Company.”

“Dear sweet Lindsay,” Abigail said softly, with a slow shake of her head. “Life is seldom fair or kind. You can only make the best of what it gives you and go on. You know that.”

It had been just that attitude with which Abigail had faced the loss of her arm. Lindsay wasn't, however, in the mood to be stoic or resigned. “Just once in a lifetime,” she riled at her teacup, “it would be nice to have something go right, to have something happen that produced just the tiniest bit of happiness. I wouldn't even care how long it lasted. To be free of worry and able to smile for a small part of a single day would be so welcome.”

Again the silence hung between them. Lindsay slid a glance at her companion; Abigail arched a brow. “What?” Lindsay asked petulantly.

“Are you finished with the self-pity?”

“It's not self-pity. It's anger.”

“Call it whatever you like, dear, but it's inappropriate.”

“I'll remind you that Stennett could toss us out on the street before luncheon, if he's of a mind to do so. I think a bit of anger is quite justified.”

“Mr. Stennett isn't going to do any such thing. He's a gentleman.”

“He's a man without a conscience,” Lindsay shot back.

“Hear me out, dear,” Abigail said, her hand raised to forestall any further comment. “Your world has never been idyllic or happy. Both your family and business circumstances have been deteriorating for quite some time and well you know it. Perhaps Mr. Stennett's intervention will change things for the better. He seems to be a man quite capable of taking charge.”

Oh, yes indeed.
Lindsay sipped her tea again, tamping
down her anger and deliberately taking refuge in the structure of business affairs. “I forgot to tell you the most important part.”

“That's not like you at all.”

“My mind's a bit scattered this morning as well,” she admitted with a tight smile. “Stennett intends to immediately liquidate the MacPhaull holdings, taking some fifty-two thousand dollars out of the proceeds to pay off the debts on the land my father left him in Texas.”

In the stunned silence, Lindsay added the last brick of painful truth. “Things aren't going to change for the better, Abigail. We've been living in a house of cards for years. And Stennett's determined to bring it down around our ears.”

Abigail sighed and then quietly said, “And would it not have happened anyway? It's now a matter of sooner rather than later. And I'll be honest and tell you that I think that the company passing into Mr. Stennett's hands is better than it passing into Henry's. And if you were in a mood to be honest, you'd have to agree, wouldn't you?”

Yes, dammit.
“You can see silver linings in the blackest clouds.”

“It's a gift. I'm thankful for it.” Abigail picked up her teacup and took a sip. “And I'd suggest that you might try cultivating a bit of the ability yourself. You'll be a happier person for making the effort.”

Lindsay nodded, not because she had any intention of buying herself a pair of rose-colored glasses but because civility required some sort of positive response from her.