Deadly Vows (4 page)

She refused to see him as he truly was, and sometimes, that terrified him.

One day, he knew his world would implode—when she realized the truth about him.

And as he had that unhappy thought, the lounge door opened and Rick Bragg walked into the room.

Hart stared at his brother, who had given up all the finer things in life to pursue justice, equality and liberty for all. He despised his virtuous half brother, but he recognized that Rick was as selfless as Hart was selfish, a noble do-gooder. He truly wished to save the world, and it was not a show. Yet Rick was not the perfect gentleman, no matter how he might pretend to be. He had flesh-and-blood needs and dark desires, just like anyone else. Sometimes, Hart could not stand Rick's attempt to cling to his moral code. When it crumbled, Hart thrilled. Unfortunately, those moments were rare. As unfortunately, the world needed men like Rick Bragg, just as it needed women like Francesca. Otherwise, the world would be a living hell.

He just wished that Rick were not his half brother. He was good, Hart was bad. He was loved, Hart was not. Rick was the insider, the wanted one; no matter his wealth and power, Hart was always the outsider.

Mostly, he hated the fact that Rick had seen, courted, kissed and loved Francesca first.

Rick looked grim. Hart did not smile now. Rick was perfect for Francesca. They were exactly alike—two radical, reforming, saintly peas in a pod. He had always thought that they were perfect for one another. But Francesca had chosen him.

He tensed. “Hello, Rick. I really didn't think you would come.” He had won this battle. He might as well relish the fact.

Rick did not smile in return. “I debated declining.”

He approached, feeling predatory. He was not a hypocrite; he had not asked Rick to stand up with him. “And what, pray tell, changed your mind? Surely you do not wish to celebrate my union with Francesca?”

“I saw Francesca this morning.”

Hart started. He did not like being taken by surprise.

“She remains dazzled by you. But then, you know as well as I do that she is trusting and naive.”

His fists clenched involuntarily. “She came to see you?” Why would she go to Rick on the morning of their wedding? Oh, he knew why!

Rick stared. Finally, slowly, he smiled. “No, Calder,
I
went to see her. I wanted to persuade her to delay the wedding. I am afraid for her.”

He inhaled. For one moment, he had been blinded with jealousy; for one moment, he had thought that Francesca had doubts. “I am going to take care of her—in every possible way.” He let the ugly innuendo hang.

Rick flushed. He lowered his voice and said, “And for a while, she will be even more smitten, won't she? But one day, passion will not be enough.”

Hart wanted to tell him to get out. But within half an hour, he would be exchanging vows with his bride and he wanted Rick there, suffering through it—as jealous as he himself had just been.

“You know I am right. You broke it off with her after Daisy was murdered, to protect her from yourself. You should do the right thing now. Call off the wedding.”

Hart smiled, and it felt ugly. He had broken their engagement when he had been arrested for his mistress's death. He hadn't wanted her ruined by association with him. He would never be able to live with himself if he brought her down that way. “I am not under arrest now. I am not in jail. I am not a suspect in a murder. In fact, what I am is one of the country's wealthiest millionaires.”
He couldn't help thinking that Rick was acting as if he still loved the woman Hart was about to marry. His half brother had been detoured by the return of his wife and his lust for her, but lust wasn't love and it did not last for very long. Besides, Rick was no fool. The blinders were clearly coming off. Leigh Anne was as weak and selfish as Francesca was strong and good. Sooner or later, he would realize the mistake he had made—if he hadn't already realized it.

He continued viciously. “I am going to give Francesca the life she deserves—a life of intellectual freedom, with all the power she needs to do as she wishes, when she wishes. Nothing and no one will stop me, and certainly not you. In a few more moments, we will stand before Reverend Cramer and exchange our vows to become man and wife. Tonight I will consummate that union, and no man—not even you, Rick—will be able to come between us. In a few more days, we will be on our way to Paris on our honeymoon. Did you know I bought the vessel that will transport us across the Atlantic?” They would be its only passengers.

Rick flushed. “Lust isn't love. And you don't have a clue as to what the latter is.”

“And you do?” Hart mocked. “Is the lovely Leigh Anne downstairs—or upstairs, in your bedroom?”

Rathe came to stand between them. “I cannot believe that the two of you are carrying on the way you did as small boys!” He glared at Hart. “You are provoking him, when you know he has strong feelings for Francesca.” He glared at Rick. “You are married, and your wife deserves more. Today is Calder's wedding day—for better or for worse!”

“I am afraid for her,” Rick said, not even looking at Rathe. “He will destroy her, either slowly or in one fell swoop.” He turned on his heel to leave.

“Rick. Don't bother to attend the ceremony,” Hart said softly, furious now. Rick was wrong. He would never hurt Francesca. He just hoped his black past wouldn't ruin them, as it had almost done so recently.

Rick turned back to face him. “I apologize. I gave Francesca my blessings this morning, and I meant it. I want her to be happy. That means I want both of you to have a successful marriage. I am hoping you will be a good and devoted husband.” He flushed again. Clearly, the words pained him.

Hart raised his brows, incredulous. “You are giving me your blessings?”

“Unlike you, I prefer taking the high road.” Rick stared, his expression hard and tight. “I am trying, no matter how difficult you make it.”

Hart had to laugh. “Of course you are—you are so damn noble!”

Rourke shoved a scotch at him. “Drink it. He has apologized, and you should bury the hatchet, at least for the rest of the day.”

Hart took the scotch, but did not bother to take a sip. He was utterly amused. Only Rick would sincerely offer him his blessings. He wondered how noble his brother would be later that night, after he and Francesca had gone home to finally and thoroughly make love to one another. He hoped Rick would stay awake, brooding unhappily about it.

A knock sounded on the lounge door and Gregory went to open it. The moment Hart glimpsed Julia's starkly white face, with Connie standing behind her fearfully, his heart turned over with sickening force. He glanced again at the grandfather clock. It was 3:30 p.m.

“Julia?” Rathe hurried forward. Hart saw Rathe's wife, Grace, standing with Julia—her arm around her, as if she might collapse.

“I don't know where she is!” Julia cried. “Francesca isn't here, she isn't at the house, and no one has seen her since noon!”

Hart felt the room still. All conversation ceased. Time stopped.

Francesca wasn't there.

Of course she wasn't. There wasn't going to be a wedding—and he wasn't even truly surprised. She had come to her senses at last.

Saturday, June 28, 1902
4:00 p.m.

H
ER THROAT WAS
raw from shouting for help. Francesca leaned against the door of the gallery, blinded by a sudden surge of tears. How was she going to get out? She had been crying for help for a very long time, and no one had heard her. What time was it, anyway?

She could barely believe that she remained locked inside. Trembling, she turned to find her purse. She had dropped it on the floor when she had heard the front door being locked. It was on the other side of the central wall where her nude portrait hung. For one moment, Francesca stared through the shadows in the gallery at her own sultry image.

She had been lured to the gallery and now, she was locked inside.

Someone wanted her to miss her own wedding.

There was no other conclusion to draw. She was not going to miss her own wedding! Somehow she was going to get out of this damn basement. She loved Calder Hart—she could not wait to finally be his wife. She would never leave him standing at the altar, in shock, waiting for her!

As she stumbled into the other chamber behind the wall, she wondered who had done this.

She had made many enemies in the course of the past
six months. Every crime that she had solved had involved justice for the perpetrators. The list of those who wished to hurt her was probably long. She would consider it the moment she was out of the gallery and uptown—finally married to Hart.

Her purse lay on the floor, open. Francesca knelt and dug within for her pocket watch. Her heart slammed when she saw that it was a few minutes before four.

By now, her family, friends and three hundred guests were at the church. Everyone—including Hart—must know that she had not arrived.

Surely he was worried about her! She wished she had left a message with Alfred; she wished she had shown Connie the damn note. But she hadn't done either of those things and no one would have any idea where she had gone.

She must have been screaming for help for perhaps an hour, hoping a passerby would hear her. Clearly, the gallery was set too low below the sidewalk, and too far back from it, for anyone passing to hear her. There had to be another way to get out.

Francesca dismissed the notion of trying to escape through the front windows, as they were barred. She ran back into the office, praying that the windows there were not as small as she recalled.

She stared up at the two windows, which were high up on the wall near the ground level, just below the office's ceiling. They were small rectangles that barely allowed any light in. Each was probably eighteen or twenty inches wide. They looked half as tall.

She was a slender woman, but even if she could get up to the windows and break the glass, she feared she would not be able to squeeze through. She shuddered. If it weren't her wedding day, she would continue calling for help—and wait for someone, eventually, to hear
her. But she was going to take her vows, even if she was late—which now, obviously, she would be.

Francesca glanced around. She quickly realized she must push the desk to the wall, beneath the window, and stack the file cabinet on the desk, in order to make a ladder. The desk looked small enough, but it was surprisingly heavy, and it was many moments later before she had pushed it across the small space. She cleared the desktop with a determined sweep of her arm. Then she marched to a file cabinet. She pushed it across the floor, then managed to lift it onto the desk. Her back felt broken. Panting, she paused and looked up.

Francesca stared up at the window grimly. If she got stuck in that window, she could hang there all night. The possibility was distinctly dreadful.

But there was no other choice. Determined, she removed her shoes and stockings, the better to gain some traction, and climbed onto the desk. She tested the cabinet for balance by jiggling it. It sat square on the desk and seemed steady enough. Hiking up her skirts, she climbed onto it, clawing the rough wall with her fingers. She paused. She wasn't afraid of heights, but she was now six feet from the floor and she did not think her makeshift ladder all that trustworthy. She sighed. Very slowly, she tried to stand up.

The file cabinet rocked.

She froze, regained her balance and tried again. A short time later, she was standing upright, her fingertips now grasping the shallow concrete ledge of the window, which was about four inches wide. Her face was level with the glass pane, which was thick and dirty. Her heart was thundering, but she was briefly exultant.

Then she grew grim. The window opened onto a grassy patch of backyard, or some such thing. She thought she could fit through it, but wanting to get through it was
one thing, actually doing so, another. Once she broke the glass and cleared it away, she was going to have to jump up and try to get her chest onto the ledge, at least. If she failed, she was going to fall to the floor.

Francesca slowly, gingerly reached with one hand into the waistband of her skirt for her gun. The cabinet she stood on teetered slightly, but she felt that it was stable enough for her next move. Raising the gun slowly, she inhaled and slammed it with all her strength into the glass.

It shattered.

She covered her face with her arm, turning away. She felt shards dart against her cheeks anyway.

The rocking cabinet stilled. Her heart was pounding hard, but somehow, she was still standing on the cabinet. She took a few steadying breaths, then used the gun to clear away the remaining glass. The edges of the frame were dangerous—there was no way to make them shard free. But she intended to ignore a few scrapes and cuts. This was her wedding day.

She told herself not to look down. Francesca put the gun through the window and laid it outside on the grass. Then she reached with both hands for the ledge. There was nothing to really grab on to, and she was afraid that she wasn't strong enough to hoist herself up high enough to begin to get out the window.

But she had to try.

She leaped up, pushing with her legs and her arms. For one moment, she thought she had made it. Her breasts hit the concrete and she was briefly suspended there. And then she was falling wildly downward, through the air.

 

S
HE HAD COME TO
her senses, realizing the folly of marrying him.

It seemed as if the floor were tilting wildly beneath his
shoes. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder. Rathe, who had clasped his shoulder, said rather inanely, “What do you mean, she isn't here? Where is she?”

He tensed, facing Francesca's frightened mother. Julia was deathly pale. She moaned—a sound she had undoubtedly never before made in public. Behind her, Grace and Connie were almost as ghostly as she was. “She isn't here, Rathe,” Julia gasped. “She was last seen at noon, hailing a cab. I do not know where she is!”

A terrible, shocked silence fell. He finally achieved a single coherent thought. Francesca had hailed a cab at noon. A new, darker tension began. Had she run away? He glanced from Julia's white face to her sister's. Lady Montrose seemed very frightened. He turned to look at Rick, who was clearly as surprised as anyone.

She hadn't run away with his half brother, he somehow managed to think, because Rick was right there. But she had run off.

He felt the stares in the room, all leveled at him. He did not look at anyone now. The shock remained, but there was disbelief, as well.

She had run off.

He has been stood up at the altar.

Images flashed of Francesca smiling at him, laughing with him, her eyes filled with warmth and affection, all of it meant for him. He stared through the memories at his half brother, and he wondered how he could have ever thought, even for a moment, that she would actually marry him. He was a fool. She had never wanted him as her husband—it was always Bragg who she had wanted to marry. She had wanted him as her lover.…

She lusted for him, but she loved Bragg.

He was her second choice.

He trembled and realized his fists were clenched. How could he have been such a fool?

“Who was the last to see her?”

Hart started, realizing that Rick had stepped forward to take charge.

Julia said hoarsely, “Connie. Francesca asked her sister to bring her clothing here. She told her she would meet her here at 3:00 p.m.”

“I begged her not to go!” Connie cried.

Hart heard, but vaguely, as if from a distance. Something odd was happening inside his chest, but he was determined to ignore it. How could she have done this to him?

More images flashed in his mind of the many moments he has shared with her—over a good scotch whiskey in his library, or inside his coach in the dark of night, or at a supper club by candlelight. There had been debate and discussion, levity and laughter, lust and love. He had committed himself to her completely. He had trusted her completely. Or had he?

He was her second choice and he had always known it; he had never forgotten it.

The odd feeling in his chest intensified, as if something within the muscle and flesh was snapping—no, ripping—apart. He was determined to ignore it. He should not be shocked or surprised. He should have realized how this day would end.

Connie was speaking to him, he realized. “I don't know what the note said. She wouldn't show it to me. I begged her not to go! She swore she would be here at three!”

“Did she leave the note in the salon?” his half brother was asking.

“She had it with her when she ran upstairs to get her purse,” Connie said, wringing her hands. “Only Francesca would respond to whatever was in that note on her own wedding day!” She looked pleadingly at Hart.

He stared coldly back. He did not care about any note.

“Did she say anything about the note, anything at all?” Rick asked.

“No,” Connie said tearfully. “But she seemed very distressed.”

And he almost laughed, bitterly. Francesca had received a note that had distressed her—enough for her to fail to attend her own wedding. He had meant to spend his life with her. He had looked forward to showing her the world, offering her any experience she wished to have, when she wished to have it. He had wanted to open her eyes to the pyramids of Egypt and China's Great Wall, to ancient Greek ruins and the temple of David; he had wanted to share with her the greatest works of art in the world, from the primitive drawings in the caves of Norway, to Stonehenge of Great Britain, and the medieval treasures cloistered in the cellars of the Vatican. How could she have done this to him?

He had taken her friendship to heart. Having never had a friend before Francesca, he had thought her friendship an undying profession of loyalty and affection. How wrong he had been. Friends did not betray one another this way.

He realized Rourke was offering him a drink. He had given her his trust—his friendship—his absolute loyalty—and her desertion was his reward.

In front of three hundred of the city's most outstanding citizens.

“Calder, take the scotch. You clearly need it.”

He took the glass, saw that his hand trembled and hated himself for being a weak, romantic fool. He downed the entire contents of the glass, handed it back and walked away from everyone.

Hadn't he expected this? Wasn't that why he had kept staring out the window, waiting for her to arrive? Hadn't
he known on some subconscious level that this marriage was not to be?

Of course she didn't want him.

He refused to remember being a small boy, scrawny and thin and always hungry, sharing a bed with Rick, in the one-room slum that was their flat. He did not want to think about their mother, Lily, before she died, standing at the stove, smiling not at him but at his brother, telling Rick how wonderful he was. Nor would he recall her last dying days, when he had been so terrified that she would leave him. It was Rick she was always asking to see, Rick she was always whispering to.

He was an adult now. He knew that she had made Rick swear to take care of his younger brother, but that knowledge didn't change anything. Lily had loved Rick greatly; to this day, he wasn't sure that she had ever wanted him, much less loved him. The more troubling his behavior had been, the more distant she had become, looking at him with sorrow. She had never looked at Rick that way.

“You were a mistake!” his father, Paul Randall, had said.

Hart had been accepted at Princeton University at the age of sixteen. Rathe had been a personal friend of the university's president, but his test scores were superior anyway, allowing his early admittance. Yet instead of going to New Jersey and registering for his first term, he had gone to New York City. Returning to Manhattan as a young man in a suit with a few dollars in his wallet had been strange—and exhilarating. He liked the fact that when he stepped out into the street and raised his hand, a cab instantly pulled up. He liked walking into a fancy restaurant and being called sir. But the trip to the city was hardly impulsive; he had hired an investigator to find his biological father. He had not only found Paul
Randall, he had been shocked to learn that he had a pair of siblings.

Randall had been living in the same house, on Fifty-seventh Street and Lexington Avenue, where he was murdered last February. Hart had succumbed to uncharacteristic nervousness as he approached the brownstone. In spite of having rehearsed a nonchalant introduction, he was speechless and perspiring by the time he reached the front door. He had imagined their first meeting while on the Manhattan-bound train. No optimist, he had nevertheless imagined various scenarios that ended on a happy note.

When he had told Randall who he was, the man had turned deathly white with shock. Instead of inviting him in, he had stepped outside onto the front stoop where Calder stood, closing the door behind them. “Why are you here?” he had cried. “What do you want? My God, my wife must never know.”

Instantly understanding that his father did not want him, he had come to his senses. “For some odd reason, I thought it appropriate for us to meet.”