Her Safe Harbor: Prairie Romance (Crawford Family Book 4) (9 page)

He rose from behind his desk and buttoned his jacket. “What
a pleasant surprise. Please come in.”

Jennifer steadied her eyes on his. “I’d like to talk about
our last encounter.”

“Really?” he said, and indicated a chair. “I’m not sure
there is much to discuss, but I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to think I
didn’t indulge my future wife.”

 “I’m here to ask you not to fire O’Brien or spread rumors
about my mother.”

Jeffrey tilted his head and smiled at her. “And?”

“And, well . . . I’m asking you to not fire O’Brien. She is
here only to serve as a chaperone for me in the parlor lobby. I have no idea
why she asked your clerks anything, but I will have a direct conversation with
her and instruct her to never do such a thing again. As for the comments you
made about Mother, I don’t imagine that it would be good for the bank’s
reputation for that sort of thing to be said publically. Our fortunes, yours
and mine, are tied directly to the success of this bank.”

“Touché. However, you must remember, I came to this bank
with considerable wealth of my own. I will never be destitute.”

She met his gaze. “True. But there is no doubt of your
plans. You wish to marry me to secure the bank as your own. Father will retire
at some point and his daughter’s husband will move into the chairman’s suite.
You would hardly risk that, would you?”

“How clever you are, Jennifer! It will be useful to have a
wife with insight and intuition.” he leaned forward, glaring at her. “Just as
long as you speak only to me on such matters. I will not have a wife who makes
herself look ingenious to anyone other than her husband. It is unnatural, and
such a wife would be punished for it.”

Jennifer backed up in her chair at his tone, and his
seething contempt for her. “I understand,” she whispered.

“Good,” he said after staring at her for some long minutes.
“And since you have been so cooperative, I will not fire your friend O’Brien.”

“Thank you,” she said, and hurried from his office. They had
not discussed his threats about her mother, but she could not stand to be in
his presence one more moment. She had thanked him for not firing O’Brien. How
foolish and scared she’d been! As if she was required to thank him for every
small relief he gave her. But perhaps she was.

Why didn’t she just walk away from Jeffrey? Refuse to see
him? And yet she knew the answer to that question. She knew that it was not in
her nature to make a scene or openly defy someone. She’d been the peacemaker
all of her adult life, and perhaps when she was a child as well, placating her
mother, consoling her father, calming servants who had been in her mother’s
purview. She did not want shouting and hysteria and managed the middle ground
between her parents and others. How pitiful she was!

Jennifer arrived at the bank the following morning with
renewed enthusiasm for the Dorchester portfolio. After she had spoken with
Jeffrey the previous day, she and O’Brien had been able to narrow down the
initials to four bank employees. She told O’Brien to make no more inquiries for
fear that Jeffrey would hear of them. They had agreed that the initials in
question looked as though someone was deliberately making the letters
illegible, and it worried Jennifer excessively to think that someone at the
bank was stealing.

Jennifer knew she must speak to her father about it soon and
wasn’t sure how to begin. He considered the bank employees, from the kitchen
staff to the clerks to the men in high positions to be his family, in a manner
of speaking, and made sure employees with an ill relative or a tragedy like a
house fire were well taken care of. He would be devastated to find out someone
had been stealing from him. She and O’Brien had not broached the word “theft”
in their conversations but she believed they had the same suspicions. They
would discuss it today.

But they did not. O’Brien did not come to work, which was
unusual for her, nor had she sent her younger brother to Willow Tree with a
message as she had done on other occasions. Jennifer was peeved at O’Brien but
spent her day busy entertaining clients with only a few scant hours to examine
the books further. By midafternoon she was exhausted and sent for her carriage.
She had her driver take her to the house adjoining Willow Tree stables, where
O’Brien and her father and younger brother lived. She’d made herself angry over
O’Brien’s absence but chided herself for being unduly upset with the woman, who
had become a friend. Jennifer knocked on the O’Brien door. The stable master
opened it.

“What are you doing here?” he said gruffly.

“I . . . I stopped to see your daughter. She did not come to
the bank today and I wondered if she was unwell or if there is something else
the matter,” Jennifer stuttered, and took notice of his unshaven face,
bloodshot eyes, and disheveled clothing as she followed him inside.

“Yes, there’s something the matter, girl,” Thomas O’Brien
said. “There’s plenty the matter! But we need none of your help.”

“Mr. O’Brien! What is it?” she asked.

But the tall, muscular man just stood there, hands on his
hips, clearly furious. Then his shoulders dropped and he sat abruptly in the
kitchen chair behind him. He rubbed his hand over his face, and tears tumbled
down his ruddy cheeks.

“What has happened?” Jennifer said. “Where is she?”

“The doctor is with her now,” he said and gazed at the
staircase. He looked at Jennifer. “I fell asleep reading in my chair by the
fire last evening and woke when I heard what sounded like a kitten crying at
the door. It was no animal. It was my Kathleen.”

Jennifer sat down beside him, watching him wipe the tears
from his face. She leaned forward. “Please, Mr. O’Brien. Tell me.”

The older man nodded. “’Twas her. ’Twas my Kathleen. Broken
and bloody on the stoop. I carried her inside and sent for the doctor.  He came
and worked on her ‘til dawn and he came back now to check on her. She cries out
though as if whatever happened is happening again and again.” He stopped crying
and looked directly at Jennifer. “She went to the Robinson Theatre with someone
she met at the bank earlier in the evening. Said he was a real gent and that he
was even a friend of your intended. I never thought twice about letting her go,
I’m sorry to say. The theatre is only down the street and she said there were
other young people going. I never thought . . .”

Jennifer watched O’Brien drop his head in his hands and sob.
She turned to the sound of a man’s voice.

“Thomas,” the doctor said as he came into the kitchen.
“She’s going to live, I believe. I’ve bound her ribs. There are three broken
but none have punctured her lungs. The bone around her eye is shattered. What I
did last night is probably the best we can do without surgery. She’s going to
lose some teeth, but not the front ones. And we’ve got to watch that cut on her
chest. I’ve stitched it shut but I’m worried about infection. She’s alive,
Thomas. She’s still alive.”

Jennifer stood, as if in a dream. She turned away from the
doctor now patting Thomas O’Brien on the back. She walked to the steps and up
them, trancelike, not conscious, but not so far away that some terrible truths
were not able to begin to take hold in her mind and make her queasy. She walked
down the hallway to where O’Brien’s brother sat on the floor near a door, his
head on his knees. She touched the doorknob and looked at the blood on the door
and its frame before opening it.

She took a deep, gulping breath at the sight of her friend
and tears streamed down her face. She smoothed O’Brien’s hair. “O’Brien,” she
whispered. “Who did this to you?”

O’Brien’s uninjured eye flittered open and she panicked,
struggling against Jennifer’s hands and making terrified guttural noises in her
throat. She finally connected with Jennifer’s eyes and looked past her, wildly
writhing as if to see someone else in the room.

Jennifer shook her head. “There is no one with me. Your
brother is guarding the doorway, and your father and the doctor are guarding
the door to this house. It is just you and me. Calm yourself.
Shhh.
”

O’Brien shook her head.

“You must be calm,” Jennifer soothed, and opened the drawer
on the nightstand beside the bed, finding a pencil stub and a scrap of paper.
She put the pencil in O’Brien’s hand. “Tell me who did this to you. I am
terrified at what I am thinking. Please tell me.”

O’Brien clutched the pencil and waved it at her.

“Paper. Yes. Here is paper, O’Brien. I will hold it for you.
Tell me,” Jennifer begged.

After some struggle, O’Brien scratched two words. Jennifer
turned the paper around to read them but it did not say a name. It said merely,
“be terrified.”

She looked at O’Brien and their eyes met. There was no
mistaking the message even with no words between them. O’Brien grabbed her
hands then, and Jennifer held the paper for her again. She knelt on the floor
to watch as O’Brien wrote.

“B. F. J.,” Jennifer said. “What does that mean? What does
it stand for?”

But O’Brien was running out of energy. She scrawled “initi”
before her hand fell away to the bed.

Jennifer stood and looked down at her friend. “Initials.
Those are the initials that we were unable to decipher. Those are the initials
of the person who attacked you. It is connected.”

O’Brien nodded once, and Jennifer kissed her forehead. “Do
not worry about anything. I will see that your father has help and that you
have the best care and that there are guards at your door if you feel it necessary.
Do not worry. Rest and I will be back often.”

* * *

Zeb watched the door to the parlor
as he waited for dinner to be announced, and socialized with Jolene and her
father. Jane Crawford was on a settee with Jeffrey Rothchild, whom he’d been
formally introduced to on his arrival. The man had quickly turned back to
Jennifer’s mother, as if Zeb were as insignificant as a worm under his polished
boot. Jane and Rothchild had their heads close together now and Jane was
patting his hand, and looking at him from under her lashes.

There was not an ounce of doubt in Zeb’s mind as to who was
tormenting Jennifer. He recalled the look on her face when he’d interrupted her
and Rothchild’s embrace in the music room. She had looked up at him when he
said her father was asking for her and the look on her face was combination of
terror and helplessness that had made him swallow back his anger and hatred for
the man and concentrate on escorting her somewhere she could compose herself.
She could not bring herself to look him in the eye otherwise.

“I had best check on Jennifer,” Jolene said. “I don’t know
what could have kept her so long.”

Zeb looked up just then and saw Jennifer, standing outside
the door, one hand on the doorframe as if to steady herself and the other
fisted tightly at her side. She was pale and took a deep breath before coming
into the room. She avoided her mother and Rothchild and made straight for her
father’s side.

“It is time for dinner, Bellings has just told me,” Jennifer
said in a breathy voice. “Please escort me to the dining room, Father.”

Zeb winged his elbow for Jolene to take as they passed
Jeffrey, now assisting Jane from the settee. “Your sister is white as a ghost.”

“She is,” Jolene replied. “I stopped in her room earlier and
she was shaking and near tears. She told me that her companion at work was
severely beaten last night. O’Brien is her name, and she is the daughter of the
man who manages the Willow Tree stables. She is a well-educated young woman and
has known our family since she came here with her father years ago.”

“Beaten?”

“Yes. The doctor that attended her feels she will live, but
she has broken bones and is cut deeply on her chest. Jennifer has told Cook to
send three meals a day to O’Brien and her family and to have a maid attend them
once a day to clean and wash laundry and help with changing dressings and that
sort of thing. Mrs. O’Brien died during the same flu epidemic that claimed my
son, William. Few families were untouched.”

“I’m sorry to hear about Miss O’Brien,” he said. He watched
Jennifer and her father ahead of them walking down the hall to the dining room,
she hanging on to her father’s arm, even leaning her head against his shoulder
as they walked.

“Here, Jennifer,” her mother said once she was seated. “Sit
between Jeffrey and I. We have much to talk about with the Randolph dinner
dance coming soon.”

Jennifer stood stone-still, not looking at anyone as her
father moved to his seat at the other end of the table. Jolene swept past her.

“But Mother,” Jolene said as she circled past her mother’s
chair and seated herself between her and Rothchild. “We’ve had so little time
to chat, and I haven’t had the opportunity to get to know Mr. Rothchild.”

Zeb held a chair for Jennifer beside her father and then
seated himself across from her.

“I am anxious to hear of your work in service to the
Crawford Bank, Mr. Rothchild. Please tell me every detail,” Jolene said,
snapping open her linen napkin and forestalling a comment from her mother.

“How are you today, Miss Crawford?” Zeb asked.

She looked up and took a sideways glance at Rothchild. “I’m
sorry. I didn’t hear what you said, Mr. Moran.”

“I was wondering how your day was, Miss Crawford. It was a
pleasant temperature out of doors, and I wondered if you’d been able to enjoy
it,” he replied.

“I did not notice, the temperature, that is,” she said
softly.

“It has been comfortable as of late, even for a late-night
stroll,” Rothchild said. “Although going out alone without the company of
family is never prudent for a young lady.”

Jennifer looked up sharply, startled by Rothchild’s words.
He appeared pleased he’d been able to do so, staring at her still and smiling.