Taking the High Road (4 page)

“You mean, with a lot of fuss and feathers?” Cecelia said coldly. “Bugles and beads? Flights of fancy and foorarah? I’m sure I can come up with suggestions for my dressmaker, Mrs. Kingsley. Any particular style you prefer, or hue?”

A casual flip of the hand. “Oh, no, I will leave that decision up to you. Something not quite so—uh—bright, perhaps…a quieter shade, since you have such—oh, my, you do have very vivid coloring yourself, do you not?”

It was a long afternoon. One demanding great endurance and hardihood. Both of which she possessed, fortunately, in copious amounts.

When at last it was over, and Cecelia could finally escape into the carriage Josiah had waiting for her, she begged only to be taken home to deal with the terrible headache that had come upon her.

Josiah’s sympathy was tinged with his mother’s asperity. “I do hope headaches aren’t a usual thing for you, Cecelia. You seem to be such a vigorous young lady otherwise. Giving in to a minor physical ailment, however, seems to me an unseemly weakness.”

She’d show him a weakness. But not until later. Much later, when this blinding, nauseating pain had disappeared and she would be able to return to good health. For now, she merely groaned, sank back against the seat, and allowed herself to be carted away.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

“Cecie, what in the world were you thinkin’, to accept this man’s proposal?” Gabe, completely baffled, asked once this story of meeting the dread Mrs. Kingsley had been recounted. “I’ve checked around here, with some of my contacts, and Josiah Kingsley isn’t that well thought of, a’tall.”

“It does seem,” Bridget, invited to join the conversation, was putting in her own two cents’ worth of opinion, “that he may not be the one you really want to be with. Are you havin’ second thoughts?”

“Ohhhhh…second thoughts. Maybe third thoughts.” Cecelia sighed.

They were gathered, the three of them, in the airy, fresh-scented parlor the next night after Mrs. Kingsley’s command performance. Cecelia wanted to tell her side of the introduction and the visit, and to ask advice.

“Doesn’t sound like he was very supportive,” grumped Gabe. With a cigar in one hand and a glass of his favorite bourbon in the other, he was stretched out comfortably on the chintz settee, feet crossed at the ankles atop an ottoman. “Gossip has it, Josiah is a mama’s boy.”

“Gossip? Gabe, you old phony, you. Since when do you listen to gossip?”

“Why, ev’time I get a chance, sugar. Gotta keep my ear to the ground, y’know. With this town, just like Boston, you need to be aware of what’s goin’ on around you.”

Bridget was so used to being busy that she found it almost impossible to sit still, even in a semi-sociable setting. She rose now to light several of the kerosene lamps, twitched shut draperies over windows facing the street, smacked two pillows into shape and moved another entirely. “Did you not get to know this man enough before you said yes to him?” she asked curiously.

“Perhaps not.” Pushing aside a book on the little table beside her chair, Cecelia took a skip from her glass of lemonade. “We’d had only a few engagements, just for carriage rides or a picnic, once attendance at his church—that sort of thing. I might have been so surprised by his proposal that I—well, I wasn’t sure how to turn him down.”

Bridget sniffed. “Well, I’d say he’s showin’ his true colors now. And as for that witch of a mother of his—well! In the Old Country we’d’a put her out on the front stoop in the middle of winter and locked the door behind her.”

“Bridge!” Cecelia was torn between horror and laughter.

“She’s not so far wrong,” Gabe twinkled. “Well, Cecie, looks t’me like you got yourself a big decision to come to. Think you can make a man out of Josiah Kingsley, put some backbone into him? Or you gonna chuck the whole thing, and show him up as a laughingstock?”

“Oh, I don’t think his heart would be broken if I returned his ring.”

“Likely his pride, though,” guessed her mentor shrewdly. “If enough people know about it.”

She shrugged and rose. “Not even that, Gabe. But you’re right—I do have a decision to come to. And that requires some consideration. Meanwhile, it’s past time for me to consult with Mrs. Liang about next week’s menus.”

Something didn’t add up. All these figures, listed correctly on the page, and something simply didn’t add up. What had gone wrong, and where?

Frustrated and fuming, Noah Harper scrolled once more through the columns, without any luck at solving the mystery. Pushing the ledgers aside, he began searching front to back and back to front of various file folders. “Damn it to hell,” he muttered. Then, raising his voice, he shouted for help. “Jenkins, get in here!”

A brief pause, then the answer, “Right away, sir!”

When the secretary entered the main, sumptuous office of Harper Hazard and Company, Noah was peering over his paperwork, all the while grumbling to himself. Thrusting his fingers through short curly brown hair, he looked up with a glare. “Took you long enough.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the young man apologized. “Was there something I can help with?”

“I hope so, Jenkins. For months now I’ve been trying to track down the distribution of shares in a gold mine conglomerate that have disappeared. Simply damn well disappeared. Any idea what might have happened?”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Another apology. Beholding Jenkins’ nervous mannerisms and timid appearance, one gathered that he spent a good deal of time apologizing to Mr. Harper. “I’m afraid I have no idea. But I’ll be happy to look through your records, if you like. Have you consulted your attorney?”

Noah frowned. He was a well-set-up young man, in his late twenties, with light gray eyes whose emotional range ran the gamut from cool to frosty to drop-dead-frozen, depending on circumstances. “This was one of my father’s deals, Jenkins. Something he worked out with that shyster Mick, Gabriel Finnegan. Gone these past eight months to California.”

“Ah. I see. So…perhaps another set of records somewhere?” The secretary paused delicately. His boss possessed a hair-trigger temper, and it was anyone’s guess what might come along to spark an uproar. Office staff trod carefully when Noah Harper prowled the halls.

“Might be. This will warrant further searching. All right, Jenkins, that’s all. You may go.”

A slight bow, and poor Jenkins could thankfully escape.

Further searching, indeed. Noah decided that finding out more information would entail a long, loving discussion with his esteemed parent.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

“Why would you expect me to know anything about your father’s business concerns?”

“It’s perfectly logical, Mother. After all, you were married to the man for thirty years.”

Noah had cornered her in the small drawing room, so beautifully decorated in white and cream and yellow. Bowls of hothouse roses lent color and fragrance; lightly patterned rugs crisscrossed the floor to lie like clouds beneath the feet, and soaring windows opened onto a luxurious expanse of neatly clipped lawn. If he were to choose one area in the three-story mansion as his favorite, he supposed it might have been this.

“That doesn’t mean he ever confided in me.” Serenelym Elvira Rockingham Harper, of the famous Back Bay Rockinghams, went on opening her mail with a sterling cutter. Much like herself, that cutter: slender, expensive, and potentially deadly.

Impatient, Noah threw himself down upon the damask loveseat. “Who the hell else
would
Father have confided in?” he demanded. “You must have had some idea of his financial affairs.”

Elvira looked up, gray eyes as cool and intent as the silver dagger in her hand. “Some of his affairs, certainly.”

“Well, then, tell me—” he broke off as the significance of her words sank in. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, I think you know exactly what I mean.”

“I’m asking about his damned money, Mother. Specifically, what happened to his majority shares of a gold mining conglomerate? And you’re telling me—”

She put aside envelopes, magazines, and local advertisements, dusted the skirt of her afternoon tea gown, and reached for the cup of tea honeyed and creamed beside her chair. “You’re an adult, Noah. If you can sit there in my house and swear like a dock worker, surely you can understand simple English.”

“So my father had affairs.”

“Singular, I do believe. One, in particular.”

“Why?” He spread his hands, perplexed. “Everything seemed fine between you two. I never heard an argument, or shouting, never saw anything that might have led me to question your marriage.”

She slightly lifted one thin shoulder. In a lesser individual, the movement might have been considered a shrug; in Elvira, it passed as a faux pas. “There were no arguments because we were rarely together long enough to share conversation, let alone anything else. After you were born, I wanted no more to do with—that—the bedroom side of life. Your father expected it. I refused.”

An expression of distaste darkened those wintry gray eyes. Ice chips, now. Even the atmosphere in the sunny room seemed chill.

“I’m sorry, Mother. I had no idea.”

“Oh, he was discreet, I’ll give him that much. As for the occasional whisper here and there in my social circles…well, other men were just as guilty. It seems that taking a—a paramour is perfectly acceptable, it’s just something that is
done
.” Some emotion finally escaped that tightly controlled façade: bitterness.

Noah, raised by a succession of wet nurses, nannies, and tutors, had had little contact with either parent from babyhood on. Small wonder now that, grown to manhood, any suggestion of sympathy or compassion for a possibly hurting parent would not come easily, if at all.

“At any rate,” his mother continued, after a silent moment, “your lost and gone shares have very likely made their way to California.”

“California? Of course, I realize the conglomerate is headquartered in San Francisco. The Catherine Syndicate, according to some information I found. But, still—”

“Her mother’s name was Marla Powell,” Elvira said. Another sip of cooling tea, another dusting of the immaculate skirt that needed no dusting. Other than an “Out, damned spot!” kind of moment. “Marla owned The Bostonian Gentlemen’s Club.”

“What?” Noah stared. The revelations were coming fast and furious, almost too much for him to hear, absorb, and understand. “The place is still in existence. I’ve seen it—”

“Of course you have.” His mother sounded impatient. “My understanding is that it was sold, and the proceeds given to her.”

“Her who?”

“The daughter. Marla’s daughter.” Time for the killing blow. “Your half-sister.”

Noah surged to his feet with a great scraping of table legs across the wooden floor. “The hell you say!” he gasped.

“I say indeed. Your father’s doxy gave birth to a girl, when you were about eight years old.”

“My father. Extra-marital hanky-panky. A half-sister. Good God.” Noah’s head was spinning.

Another slight shrug. “Her name is Cecelia Powell. If you look far enough, I daresay you’ll find that’s where your missing shares have disappeared to. Your father deeded them to her in his will.”

“He did what? Jesus Christ!”

“Noah, I will not have that sort of talk in my drawing room,” Elvira sharply reprimanded her son as if he were still five years old. “Now, I realize you may be extremely disappointed at hearing all this, but it isn’t as if—”

“California, you said?”

“San Francisco, to be exact. I have been told that was the destination of the girl and your father’s friend—that pathetic drunken excuse for an attorney.” She sniffed. “I hired my own, thank you very much. After your father was killed in the carriage accident—along with his harlot, I might mention—I needed someone I could trust.”

Fueled by fury and disbelief, Noah had been pacing from one end of the room to the other. Now, suddenly, he halted short. “Why now, Mother?”

“Now?”

“Yes. You’ve held onto this little secret for thirty years. Why did you decide to disclose it to me now?”

Surprised, Elvira stared up at him. “Why, so you can resolve the situation, of course.” As if he was too dense to realize the ramifications. “Or do you think we should let the conniving little hussy get away with this?”

“Ah-hah. I see. My revenge will serve as your revenge.” Another silent moment to digest possibilities and probabilities. Then, “Thank you, Mother, you’ve been quite helpful.”

With that, Noah buttoned his coat, grabbed his hat, and dashed out the door and away. Elvira, left behind, pulled facial muscles into what might have been a sardonic smile and returned to the day’s mail.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * 

“And you never sleep?”

“So the slogan says.”

“Does that mean you, in particular?”

A chuckle. “No, Mr. Harper, it means the Agency, in general. Me, I sleep, every chance I get.”

Immediately upon leaving his mother and her stunning revelations, Noah had returned to Harper Hazard’s executive suite for information and files. From there, it was a short brisk walk to the local Pinkerton office. After stating his request, and his business there, he had been ushered into a back office and asked to wait.

A rather gloomy, rather dingy place, thought Noah disparagingly, looking around. Not a patch on his own. Could this possibly be the stellar operation he had heard so much about?

“Mr. Harper? John Yancey. Please, have a seat, sir.”

Noah was a tall enough man for his time. But, distracted, he had to look up as a rugged six-footer entered the room. Business suit or not, there was that about the newcomer to suggest he might have ridden straight in off the range, with a Colt revolver strapped to his hip and a weather-beaten sombrero perched upon his head.

Yancey settled into a wooden five-legged castered chair behind the desk and rocked back almost to the wall, comfortable and at ease. “So,” he said pleasantly, with a slight twinkle in his dark brown eyes. “We hustled all the preliminary get-to-know-you’s out of the way. What can I do for you, Mr. Harper?”

“I have a problem.”