Blind Trust

  SUSANNAH BAMFORD

  M Evans

  Lanham • New York • Boulder • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

  M. Evans

  An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  http://www.rlpgtrade.com

  10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom

  Distributed by National Book Network

  Copyright © 1990 Susan Bamford

  First Rowman & Littlefield paperback edition 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

  ISBN 13: 978-1-59077-376-5 (pbk: alk. paper)

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Kathi Lynne

  The Beacon

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Epilogue

  One

  DARCY

  January 1888

  IT WAS EITHER leave him or kill him.

  It had come down to that, at last.

  Darcy Statton sat alone in her bedroom on the edge of the gilt armchair that had belonged to the dauphin of Louis XIV. It was after midnight, and the house was filled with a huge silence. Rigid, unable to bend because of the corset underneath her elaborate white satin gown, she tracked the silence through the house, imagining it as a force that moved. It clung to the high corners of the rooms, it scampered down long marble halls, it meandered around the elaborate curls of boiserie, it slid against limestone walls. It pressed against her breastbone, and it whispered of madness in her ear.

  Her feet hurt, but she did not remove her shoes. Her husband was to come to her later. That meant that she must send away her maid and sit in her room, with her hair still done and her diamonds on and her Worth gown billowing uncomfortably around her waist and her corset pressing red welts into her flesh and her feet aching, and wait. She had disobeyed him once, she had slipped into a dressing gown and uncoiled her hair, and she would never do it again. Sometimes he didn’t come at all, and she would fall asleep in her chair, waking with a start at four or five. Even the difficulty of undressing herself properly and getting herself to bed was nothing next to the relief.

  Tonight had been such an ordinary evening. One evening in a long trail of evenings, glittering and dull, the same words said to the same people, the same silent carriage ride home through the snow. There was always snow. Sometimes she felt that summer took place in the time it took her to blink. One day she changed from merino to muslin, and the next day it was time to change back again.

  Now she heard the snow hit her windows like the skittering pats of tiny fingertips. Darcy turned her head. She stared out at the cold black night and tried to think of summer; she pictured the lush greens of Central Park, the lawns of Newport, her many floating white dresses, her elaborate hats. She tried to remove any trace of the here and now from her mind. But she was drawn back to tonight. To the snow that fell around them and melted on their wraps as they stepped inside the house, Darcy shivering, for the marble vestibule never provided any warmth. Even in the dead heat of summer, she shivered when she entered this house. She had begun to glide away toward the staircase when Claude had touched her arm. He had said that after he looked over some papers, he would come to her. It was late; she was tired; he knew it. She could not refuse. And while she had nodded the acquiescence it was her duty to give, she had felt a frightening rage. It had filled her blood and her limbs with an awesome strength, and for the first time in her life, she knew how one could do murder and receive pleasure from it.

  Closing her eyes, she pictured it. When Claude came later tonight, she would be sitting just as she was now, still dressed in her diamonds and her heavy white satin gown with the gold sash. His yellow eyes would glitter with unusual lights as he entered, nervously drawing his dressing gown tighter around him. First, he would begin his private ritual of examining her, a ritual that she dreaded almost as much as what followed it. She hated the touch of his cold hands, she hated the way his thin fingers trembled, the dead intent look in his eyes. He would run his hands along the material of her dress, fondle the diamonds, examine her lace. He would exult in the exquisite perfection of the Parisian stitches in her underclothes. Sometimes he ran his skeletal fingers along the veins of her wrist, and Darcy knew he was thinking of the impeccable blood that ran beneath her skin, the blood of the Snows and the Graces. That would excite him more than his gropings between his own legs, thin as twigs underneath his dressing gown. He would close his eyes, and his odd, full red lips would purse, his breath coming heavily, as he squeezed and kneaded himself damply. And at last, he would push her down on the bed of carved ebony inlaid with gold that had been dismantled and removed from the master bedroom of a French chateau. Not once would he touch her breasts, her legs, her belly. Not once would his too-red lips touch hers. He would begin.

  But this time, this time, something within her would break, would snap. She would reach under her pillow and her fingers would close on the heavy marble bookend. She would raise it above his head, that long head with its lank streaks of blond hair trailing down the scalp. His eyes would be shut, he would be sweating with his efforts. She would feel him, inert against her belly, his hands trying to stiffen himself enough to gain entry. And she would crash it down on his bony skull, and she would feel the ecstasy of his slight body going slack, the exhilaration of pushing his spindly legs, his dank, flaccid torso, off her. And she would leap from the bed triumphant.

  No scandal, no calumny, no prison term could defeat the glory of that moment.

  Lord, forgive me. Darcy bent over, her elbows pressed into her stomach, and forced herself to breathe deeply. He was her husband. He gave her everything. He was scrupulously polite. Didn’t he offer her a shawl when she was cold, a glass of wine when she was agitated, a cold cloth if she was overheated? He rang for her maid if she was the slightest bit upset; he soothed her if she was irritable or tired. Years ago, he had told everyone that her nerves were poor. If she raised her voice even slightly, if she laughed too often or danced too much, he would remonstrate.

  Don’t overexcite yourself, my dear. You remember what happened the other day.

  But I’m fine. I’m fine, Claude! Please let me keep dancing.

  Now, my dear. Come, come, my pet. You excite yourself, can’t you see that? Let me help you to a chair.

  What could she do? Where could she go? Who could she run to? There was no one she could speak to of such things. Conversations in her circle revolved around the weather and upcoming social events. Even her bubbly widowed cousin Adelle, a woman who occasionally spoke with surprising frankness, was not a person Darcy could go to with her marital trouble. She would have to hint, to convey her desperation with eye and hand. And Adelle would laugh, pass it off, uncomfortable and wondering why Darcy didn’t keep it to herself.

  Abruptly, Dar
cy stood and went to the window to stare outside at the drifting snow. If Claude could see her, he would remonstrate, for like Mrs. Astor he would not stand by a window at any time for fear the rabble on the street would glimpse him. The carriages from the Fifth Avenue mansions around her would be returning soon, the high-stepping horses clouding the air with their breath, the passersby calling aloud the distinctive liveries, the light blue of the Astors, the maroon of the Vanderbilts. The maids and valets would be waiting up, yawning and cold, to put them all decently to bed.

  In that world, women did not leave their husbands. But for the first time Darcy wondered if perhaps more of them would if there was anywhere they could go.

  The thought roared through her brain with such fury she had to grip the velvet curtains to keep herself upright.

  She could leave tonight.

  “No,” Darcy said aloud, shaking her head. One had to plan such things. Everyone knew that.

  Why?

  She had no need of concealment, of train tickets, of the ship to France her mother had taken at dawn. No need to take trunks of dresses and jewels, no need to transfer monies to Europe to support herself and her lover. Darcy had no money of her own. And she certainly had no lover.

  She could leave right now, if she dared.

  If she dared. Daring, and courage, had fled so long ago, years ago, when she put the bit between her teeth and stopped trying to buck her way through her marriage. Courage. She would have to remember what it was like, when she was seventeen and had taken over the running of her family. How frightened she’d been, how she’d had to force herself to rise in the mornings sometimes, how she’d had to steel herself not to shriek at her father, his eyes rolling at her helplessly, how she’d had to reverse years of training and learn how to act. To learn how to do, instead of to simply be.

  Deliberately, Darcy pushed open the leaded glass pane and stuck out her hand. She scooped a mound of snow that lay on the sill and buried her face in it.

  The shock of the wet and the cold cleared her mind. She forced herself to think, to analyze and plan. Her maid had been sent away to bed with the rest of the servants. Although Claude employed a legion of them, he disliked seeing the help. His standing order was that they pause and stand with their face to the wall if he happened to walk by. He was upstairs now, locked away in his third-floor private office. No one would be about. The snow wasn’t too deep. If she could get out of the house, she could get a hack or a horsecar to her father’s house easily. He was only a few steps off Fifth, at Twenty-eighth street. She would have to leave so much, personal items she held dear. But there was a price for everything, Darcy told herself. She could do it, and the only way to do it was to leave with just the clothes on her back.

  She moved quickly. There wasn’t time to change. Without hesitation, driven by fear now that Claude would retire earlier than his custom, she collected her outer garments, her stout walking boots. But she kept on her evening slippers. The soft kid whispered against the Persian carpet runner all the way down the fourteenth-century carved staircase Claude had stripped from a castle in Italy. She paused on the landing and listened. She could hear nothing, and there were no lights lit downstairs.

  Darcy started down the last flight of stairs. She hit the bottom and stopped again, listening. Was that a noise coming from the south hall? Impossible. Nevertheless she moved quickly in the opposite direction down the hall, her footsteps barely making a noise on the cold marble floor. She passed the small, exquisite salon, her favorite room, and the room where Claude kept his precious medieval reliquaries, past the long reception hall with its ravishing Bouchers.

  And then she heard it. Footsteps coming down the hall behind her. Rapid footsteps, anxious footsteps. Claude.

  In a panic, Darcy opened the first door on her left. It was a sitting room with doors opening out to an interior courtyard, and they used it only in summer. Directly to the right of the door was a massive Riesener commode. She bundled up her cloak and boots and hurled them underneath it, then quietly shut the door. Her heart thundering, she darted back down the hall toward the salon.

  A moment later, Claude materialized out of the shadows. “Darcy!” His voice was sharp. Then it recovered quickly, becoming the thick, honeyed croon that made her skin crawl. “What are you doing, dearest?”

  “I thought I left my book in the salon,” she said. “I thought I’d read while I waited for you.”

  “Why didn’t you ask Solange to fetch it for you?”

  “I sent her to bed. You know that,” Darcy said with downcast eyes. Let Claude think she was embarrassed at this allusion to what would happen later.

  “It was lucky I was downstairs in the library, then.” His cold fingers skittered down her bare forearm and grabbed her wrist. “Come. I’ll help you find it.”

  “That’s not necessary, Claude, I—”

  “Come.” He almost dragged her into the salon. She heard the pop of the gas lighting. He turned it up high, too high. Harsh shadows loomed toward her. “We’ll look together.”

  She glanced around the room quickly. “I don’t see it. Perhaps it’s in my room, after all.”

  “But how can you be sure?” Claude asked smoothly, insistently. “Let’s look together, my dear.” He took her hand and squeezed her bones together. “I don’t like your being up this late, alone. You know how I worry that you’ll catch a chill. So if we look carefully and find it together, perhaps you’ll learn your lesson, my dear. We’ll start here, in the salon. But perhaps you left: it in the reception hall, or the library, or the drawing room, or even the conservatory.”

  “I don’t think so—”

  “But how can you be sure? We’ll have to search carefully. Never fear, we’ll find it before we go upstairs.”

  He yanked her wrist again and brought her over to the sofa covered in Aubusson tapestry. “Not here. A pity.” He moved a pillow, then clucked his tongue and dragged her over to the writing table. “No, nor here, either,” he said musingly, already pulling her to the other corner of the room. He peeked behind the damask curtains. “Perhaps it slipped—no, not here.”

  And so he went on. For the next hour, Darcy allowed herself to be pulled to each piece of furniture, each shadowy corner. She was soon cold, with her bare shoulders and thin-soled dancing slippers. But as they moved from room to room her only fear was that they would return to the summer sitting room and find her cloak. It would be just like Claude to bring her through every room downstairs and then end his search there. Her wrist burning while her flesh grew increasingly cold, she dumbly followed her husband down the long halls, from conservatory to library to gallery, as they searched for the book they both knew they would never find. And then at last, with her stumbling behind him, he led her to her bedroom and locked the door behind them.

  TAVISH

  San Francisco was the damned muddiest city he’d ever seen. Some of the streets he’d been on today had been knee-deep in the stuff, a mixture of dirt and manure and garbage and sweet Jesus only knew what else. It didn’t help that it had rained steadily for a week. Tavish was not a fastidious man, but he was disgusted at the look and smell of his trousers.

  He didn’t think his looks would go over very well at the home of Artemis P. Hinkle. He’d have to look like a gentlemen if he wanted to get through the front door. Well, there was nothing for it but to tramp all the way back to his hotel and change. He’d get a ribbing from Jamie, but he was used to Jamie’s ribbings. Even the trouble that brought them to San Francisco couldn’t stop the twinkle from appearing in Jamie’s eye now and then.

  Tavish turned his steps toward his hotel, thinking contentedly of the whiskey he would have with Jamie while he changed his pants and they compared notes of their progress that day. He was bone-tired, and the lack of a decent meal in a week didn’t help his disposition. Tonight they would have a good meal, an excellent meal, no matter what. The trouble with adventure, Tavish had often reflected, was that it so often involved bad food. He had given
up his roaming life and had sunk gratefully into the simple pleasures of Solace, California, including the succulent meals at Grace Tooney’s boarding house. The memory of her wild turkey could bring tears to his eyes. Only Jamie could have convinced him to leave the retiring life in Solace he loved and the pretty widow Tooney he had his eye on in order to ferret out a mystery. Tavish had sent up many a silent prayer that they would be back in Solace by next week.

  Jamie would have returned by now from the meeting he’d been so mysterious about. Somebody who might have useful information, he’d said. Well, if it was like any of the other trails they’d followed, it would more likely be someone sniffing a reward for information who didn’t have any to give. Jamie, amiable as always, would stand the bloke a drink and send him on his way. Actually, he’d spent most of his time in San Francisco in brothels, where he claimed most of the useful information was floating around in the sitting rooms while the men relaxed with their cigars and whiskeys. He was “following a scent,” Jamie said, though Tavish often wondered aloud just what that scent was and got a smirk for his answer.

  Tavish was frowning as he went up the stairs of the small hotel on Pine Street. Jamie was enjoying this whole mess just a bit too much, he thought. All he wanted was to go home.

  The lobby was deserted at this time of day, except for a well-dressed gentleman who was heading out the back door. The sight of an elegant back was unusual in this hotel, but Tavish was too disgruntled to give the man more than a glance. He got his key from the desk, made his usual futile request for messages, and started up the stairs to their room. He was already grinning as he put his key in the lock, expecting the jibe from Jamie as soon as he opened the door.

  What he wasn’t expecting were the feathers. Confused, he watched as the draft from the open door partnered them lightly across the floorboards in a delicate dance. He stared dumbly at them for a moment before he smelled it. Blood in his nostrils, and that other too-familiar smell of a recently discharged gun, the combination of smells he’d never wanted to experience again.