A Most Unusual Match (17 page)

T
hea arrived in Waycross, Georgia, with her spine straight as an iron rod and the rest of her body throbbing with exhaustion. A rattling, swaying local railroad that lurched to a stop in every rural village it passed finally deposited her in Brunswick a little past one o'clock Friday afternoon, six days after Devlin left StoneHill. The hurt had solidified into a spiny lump, permanently lodged just below her breastbone. But from the moment she asked the station agent in Paeonian Springs to have someone return the horse and buggy to StoneHill, a steely calm had encased her with impenetrable armor. She'd left a letter for her grandfather, another for Bessie and Jeremiah, and packed herself enough food to last for two days.

In Washington, while she waited for a southbound train, she posted her letter to Devlin—in care of the United States Secret Service.

Standing on the depot platform, a shudder of memory caught her off guard and almost punctured her frozen calm. She didn't know which she feared most—that Fane would learn Devlin's identity and kill him or, if her bold plan succeeded and Devlin captured Fane before Fane killed her, she might never be able to forgive Devlin.

She didn't let herself dwell on either possibility. Right now, she couldn't afford emotion.

Emotions were as untrustworthy as people, especially when love and hate intertwined. She had failed in Saratoga Springs because her hatred toward Edgar Fane had blinded her to her own ineptitude. But fear for Devlin had hurled her south nearly a thousand miles to carry out a plan born of equal parts love, anger, hurt and defiance. She wanted to succeed where Devlin and the entire Secret Service had failed, wanted to hand over proof and humiliate them as well as Edgar Fane. Then…then….

She didn't know what “then” entailed, so she ruthlessly throttled the surge of emotion and set all her resources on accomplishing her purpose.

 

At the Brunswick dock she found her way barred by a group of Italian girls freshly arrived from the northeast on a Mallory steamer. Surrounded by piles of trunks and carpetbags, everyone in the group seemed to be talking at once, their escalating voices drawing stares, though nobody approached the tight little cluster. One of the group, a slight young girl, half turned, and Thea caught a glimpse of a frightened, tear-bright gaze beneath her cloth hat. Thea stepped closer, her mind scrambling to recall the Italian she'd learned over the years from two of the typesetters at Porphyry Press.

“Mi scusi, ma posso essere di servizio?
” she said to the young girl, asking if she could be of any help. The girl responded in a stream of incomprehensibly rapid words. Thea set her carpetbag down and lifted her hands in a calming gesture. “I don't understand.
Voi,
ah, speak English?
Qual è il problema?
What is the matter?”

A plump, middle-aged woman next to the young girl turned around, scrutinizing Thea with a blend of deference
and desperation. “I speak English,
signora.
My name is Bertina, Bertina Giovanni. Please, a doctor is needed, but we do not know how to find, or pay. We have little money.” Switching back to Italian, she spoke firmly and several women moved aside, allowing Thea to see a woman supine on the dock, her bandaged head in another woman's lap. Beneath the olive skin her complexion was chalk-white, her eyes closed.

“What happened?”

“On the ship, was yesterday, she fall, hit her head. There was a cut, but Carmella promise she is fine.” She gestured to the hovering girl. “This is Maria, Carmella's sister. They are to be maids on the Island. They are new, this year. Now we are all afraid. We wait for the boat to take us across, and Carmella put her hand to her head, and then she fall down.”

Slow tears leaked from Maria's eyes, and she silently pleaded with Thea, begging her to do something to help her sister. Thea finally clasped her hands and gave them a reassuring squeeze. “I will find a doctor. Um…
un medico.
Do not worry.” After a quick scan of the dock, she addressed Bertina. “I'll be right back. Here—” hurriedly she unbuttoned her long coat and handed it over “—put this over Carmella, but don't move her. She might have a concussion.”

“
Grazie, signora. Grazie.
You are a blessing sent from God. But…we have little money to—”

“I do,” Thea interrupted. “Please do not worry. I'll be back, with a doctor, as soon as I can.”

At the end of the dock she collared a barrel-chested man propped against an empty wagon. After a brief conversation the man tossed aside his cigar, handed Thea up onto the board seat and hollered at his two mules. Moments later, they pulled up in front of a neat frame house on
the edge of town. “Ol' Doc Merton'll fix ya'll right up, ma'am.”

Less than half an hour had passed by the time she returned to the dock in the physician's buggy; a lanky man of few words but shrewd eyes, Dr. Merton examined Carmella, now conscious but groggy and confused, and concurred with Thea's diagnosis: concussion. She needed complete bed rest for at least a week. After a verbal skirmish conducted half in Italian, half in English, Thea arranged to have Carmella transported to the spare bedroom in Dr. Merton's house, where Carmella would be well tended by the doctor's housekeeper and Dr. Merton's wife. Thea paid the doctor in advance, adding an extra twenty dollars to ensure the Mertons suffered no financial hardship for their care of a stranger.

After Dr. Merton departed with Carmella, the other servants gathered around Theodora, their expressions an amalgam of awe, gratitude and confusion. Maria wept quietly into a large red handkerchief.

“Why you do this, for strangers?” Bertina asked, apparently the designated spokesman for the group. “For—servants. You are a lady.”

“You needed help. I couldn't pass by, when I knew I might be of assistance,” Thea stammered, suddenly awkward. These days, she didn't feel much like a “lady.”

Heavy black eyebrows drew together over Bertina's forehead. “Yet…you travel alone?”

“I travel alone,” Thea admitted. “I too am bound for Jekyll Island. It is very important to me. I—I cannot explain.
Mi perdoni.
Forgive me, I will leave you now, for I must arrange for transportation myself. I hope Carmella recovers soon.”

“You are expected?”

Bertina's soft question halted Thea's retreat. “Yes, and
no.” Needles of shame stitched an ugly path across her conscience. Haltingly, because she no longer possessed the stomach to lie to anyone, ever again, she said, “There are…two men. One of them I believe is a very bad person. The other is—” the word stuck in her throat but she managed to force it out “—my fiancé. I don't know how to say…
mi innamorato?
” Color burned her cheeks. “He is in danger because he is a noble idiot. But it is my fault. I must go to him, to help.”

Before Bertina could reply, Maria threw herself against the woman, sobbing and pleading, her words too thick for Thea to follow. For a moment Bertina allowed her to cry, then she set her away with a firm command to quiet herself. With a Gallic shrug she explained to Thea, “Maria is afraid Carmella will lose her position if she does not arrive today. She does not know these people. They have not met her or Carmella, so…she has no trust. I tell her I will explain to the boat captain, why we have one less number, that Carmella will still have her position when she is recover.”

Abruptly she stopped speaking, her lips pursing as she looked first at Maria, then Thea. “Your
innamorato,
he is a member of the Club?”

“No, he's not a member,” Thea confessed wretchedly. Her heart, which she had struggled to encase in ice, was awash in all the emotions she had tried to sever. Maria's wrenching tears, Carmella's bandaged head, her helplessness—suddenly all of Thea's hurt and rage against life seemed a paltry thing. The selfish tantrum-riddled reaction of a child. She focused her gaze on a small steamer chugging steadily toward the dock. “I will not bother you with my problems. You have enough of your own.”

“
Signora,
I do not know how to say this. But you have shown kindness. I must do likewise. So I must say to
you…is not allowed for visitors to come to Jekyll Island without invitation. Only members, their guests. Servants. The rules, they are to be followed.” For another moment of prickling discomfort she studied Thea, then muttered something Italian beneath her breath. “Signora…I believe I have a way to help you, like you help Carmella. How long you stay on Island?”

“Not long. If I'm lucky, less than two days.”
Luck has nothing to do with it,
she could almost hear Devlin's voice whispering in her ear. Like a snake, the quick bite of memory struck too fast, and she crammed a fist to her mouth to prevent an anguished cry. “Signora,
scusi.
Please wait. I will talk to these girls.”

Wait? She may as well wait until she crusted into a barnacle if she couldn't find a way to reach Jekyll Island. Her thoughts swarmed without direction, horseflies buzzing in her head….

At StoneHill, the horses would be out in the pastures, their winter coats a patchwork quilt of dappled grays and bays…and in the paddock, Percy with his soot-spotted rump would watch the lane, black ears pricked, waiting for his beloved master to return. The animal walked now without a limp. He had completely recovered.

If she lost Devlin, Thea would never recover.

Tears scalded her aching throat. She was so intent upon controlling them that she scarcely noticed that all seven women had suddenly formed a circle around her again.

“Signora,” Bertina said, “we have talked. We have agreed. To help you is the right thing to do. But we must be careful.” Pausing, she watched Thea, gesturing the others to silence while Thea in dawning awareness examined each somber face.

“The boat captain expects eight of you, doesn't he?” she
repeated slowly. “Not seven. He doesn't know Carmella. He doesn't know what happened.”

Bertina nodded. “I have kept her papers, for safety.” She glanced over her shoulder. The boat would arrive in less than five minutes. “You must be one of us,
signora.
This people, they no let you come if you not one of us. Here,” she unpinned her own black cloth hat and held it out. “You cannot wear yours. Is too much like a lady.”

“I don't want to cause trouble,” Thea began, even as her pulse leaped with excitement—and resolve. She fumbled with her own stylish toque with its bird-of-paradise feather and ruthlessly stuffed it inside her suitcase. “I have no words….”

The other women commenced babbling in a stream of Italian and broken English, their gazes warm with sympathy. A lovely girl with thick dark hair and rosebud lips handed Thea a brightly patterned shawl, framing her sentences in slow, careful Italian so Thea could understand. “Do not be sad. You save Carmella. You follow your man to here to save him, no? This is why you come, all alone? We will help you.”

“But you must not speak until we are safely to the servants' quarters,” Bertina added drily. Then she grabbed Thea's shoulders and pressed a kiss on each burning cheek.

“God is good,” she pronounced. “God is good.”

T
he Jekyll Island Club compound faced Jekyll Creek, on the island's western side. As the Howland steamed toward the wharf, Thea clutched the damp iron railing and tried not to panic. Five months earlier, she had spent weeks at one of the most famous grand resorts in the world, surrounded by entire blocks of hotels, choked with thousands of guests. Yet this serene, deserted-looking island with its collection of buildings intimidated rather than welcomed. Jekyll Island was private, for millionaires and their families, not a social watering hole for the masses. The owners had deliberately retained as much of its natural state as possible, so forests surrounded by pristine sandy beaches abounded with wildlife and birds and beautiful scenery. “
È como il Paradiso,
” one of the servants promised her as they chugged across the water. So Jekyll Island looked like Paradise?

Well, if Thea failed to find proof of Fane's perfidy this time, her fate would probably land her at the real pearly gates.
Lord? I know my sins number higher than grains of sand on the beach these past few days. Is it too late to ask You to forgive me?
Certainly her motives for haring off to this place were ignoble as well as heroic. She wanted
to scream her hurt at Devlin, pummel his chest with her fists—but then she wanted to wrap him in her arms and feel the beat of his heart against her ear.
Please, God. I don't want him to give his life for me, not like this.

Shivering a little in the ocean breeze, she studied the Clubhouse, which vaguely resembled a castle with lots of square windows and a round tower on one corner. The four-story building next to the club, Bertina told her, contained eight private apartments for members. Some owners had built large houses, most within walking distance of the Clubhouse, but they usually brought their own staff. There were also servants' quarters, gardens and stables. Paths of sand and crushed oyster shells, and roads wide enough for carriages wound their ways throughout the buildings and around the entire island.

“But be careful of the alligators when you go for a stroll,” Bertina warned her. “Also to remember everyone knows everyone,” she reminded her again as the steamer pulled up to the long wharf. “Unless they new, like Carmella and Maria, who are for to work in the clubhouse. You must be careful with the housekeeper, Miss Schuppan—she is, how you say? Particular. Yes.” She nodded firmly. “
Signora
…you will be careful?”

 

The next morning, clad in plain black worsted skirts, over-starched white blouses and striped aprons, Theodora, Maria and two others from what Thea privately thought of as “her troupe,” presented themselves to the housekeeper. A surprisingly young woman, Miss Schuppan inspected them with the thoroughness of a drill sergeant. After warning them her word was law, that slovenliness in either appearance or work would result in dismissal and that she expected the clubhouse to shine like the sun by the end of the month, Miss Schuppan turned them over to an
assistant. Thea was assigned the task of sweeping hallways and public meeting rooms on the first floor.

At present only eight of the sixty guest rooms were occupied. The assistant, Mrs. Dexter, ticked them off her work-reddened fingers; when she spoke Edgar Fane's name, then his guest Mr. Langston, Thea jerked. Mrs. Dexter paused, a questioning look on her face. “
Scusi, signora,
” Thea managed with what she hoped was a Bertina-like shrug.

After a narrow-eyed look, Mrs. Dexter continued speaking. “For those of you working on the second floor, where Mr. Fane is lodged, you may clean the rooms as usual but under no circumstances are you to bother the large steamer trunk in the corner. Mr. Fane has been most specific, and as you know, we pride ourselves on catering to every need of our members. So do not even dust the trunk, or mention to Mr. Fane that there is sufficient room to store it in the basement or attic.” She paused. “Miss Schuppan was forced to dismiss a chambermaid yesterday, for making that suggestion to him. He was—most displeased. Do I make myself clear? Very good, then. Now let's be about our duties.”

By midafternoon Thea had finished sweeping and with a pleased smile hovering around her thin lips, Mrs. Dexter told her to help with the dusting until four-thirty, when she could have a fifteen-minute break as a reward for her diligence. Armed with feather duster, a stack of cloths, a bottle of linseed-oil-and-vinegar furniture polish and Mrs. Dexter's advice: “and make sure you rub the polish, not smear it over the furniture,” Thea walked into the card room, where a gentleman sat alone at one of the tables. He glanced up at her entrance, his dark brown eyes disinterested. Then the cards in his hands fell with a clumsy slither all over the table as the man leaped to his feet.

“Hetty?” he whispered hoarsely. He passed a shaking hand over his eyes, and slowly took a step toward Thea, who had frozen where she stood.

Tall and spare, dark hair streaked with gray at the temples, neatly combed and held in place by a touch of pomade, Richard Langston approached, color draining from his face with every step. A vein throbbed in his temple. He stopped less than a yard away, close enough for the scent of bergamot and cloves to flood Thea's nose. “Not Hetty,” he said finally. “But…you're the spitting image of her…Theodora.”

With preternatural calm she set aside the dusting materials, her gaze never wavering from his. “Father.” She tested the word, found the syllables as foreign as the Italian she'd been practicing. “I'm afraid I don't consider that a compliment.”

He inclined his head. “She lacked maternal instinct. But to me, once she was the most beautiful woman in the world.” He half lifted a hand.

“Don't.” A hot trickle of bile slid down her throat. Her automatic backward step was instinctive, and the heat spread. A daughter shouldn't feel this way about her father.

“You left her. You left us all. You never tried to stay, not once.”

“Is that what your grandfather told you? Well, part of it's true.” Moving away, her father clasped his hands behind his back, his face now an expressionless mask. “I did leave—after your mother kicked me out along with the baby who had spoiled her figure. I didn't know what to do. I was only twenty, and knew nothing about babies. You can't appreciate it, I know, but I did you a favor, leaving you with family who would care for you.”

“You're absolutely right. I can't appreciate being abandoned by both parents. At least Grandfather didn't dump
me in an orphanage when the rest of that caring family perished in the Hudson. I was only three, but I remember them. Do you?”

A muscle twitched the corner of his mouth. “Hetty's dead, you know. Smallpox. After that ferry accident I did go back to her, Theodora. I was willing to try, but it was too late. I sent you cards for a while, but decided you were better off forgetting me. Seems like a lot of my life has been too little, too late.”

“I don't care.” The childish fantasy that one day her mother would appear and ask Thea's forgiveness shattered, one sliver at a time. The lovely Biblical parable would never happen; if forgiveness was to be granted, she would have to extend it to the man who had fathered, then rejected her. Grandfather had warned her many times she may as well carry a gravestone as a grudge. Both marked the spot where death held the upper hand.

Hate and hope could not coexist. “I used to wonder what kind of a person I would have been, if my parents had loved me. Then I stopped wondering, and thought of all the words I would throw in your faces if we ever met. Now…I don't want to care at all,” she said thickly.

A flicker of pain glimmered in his eyes, quickly extinguished. “Then you shouldn't have come here, Theodora. Why did you?”

“Perhaps because until I saw you, I didn't want to believe what I'd learned—that you'd become another Edgar Fane sycophant. Another lackey of the man who ruined our family. A man who continues to commit the same crimes against countless other innocent victims.” When Richard merely continued to watch her with mournful basset hound eyes, Thea's outrage sparked. “Is the money he provides worth that much to you? In all your life have you ever considered anyone but yourself?”

“For the most part, no,” Richard replied without a blink or a twitch. It was the face of a gambler—a poker face, Thea realized, and could have wept. “Mr. Fane hasn't chosen to enlighten me on the details of his life of crime,” he continued evenly. “But I'm not here willingly, Theodora. If you won't believe anything else, will you at least believe that?”

For the second time his gaze searched behind Thea, through the open doorways on either side of a huge fireplace. “Which is why you need to leave, at once. Must I spell it out? I'm the bait,” he confirmed, looking back at her. “This is a trap. For you, Theodora.”

Bitterness coated his words, the same bitterness toward all of life that Thea had hurled at Grandfather in their last conversation. She flinched away from the comparison as though physically struck.

Richard didn't seem to notice. “Whatever you've done to him, this man is planning a nasty bit of revenge against you. You never should have crossed him. So please, Theodora. Leave now, before he returns from his bird hunting expedition.”

“I'll leave—after I find proof to take to the Secret Service. You know precisely what I'm after, don't you…Mr. Langston? I'm pretty sure it's in his room, inside a locked trunk.”