Words Spoken True (23 page)

She paused and studied her father’s face. There was no change. “Marrying Stanley Jimson would be like going into a dark closet, one nobody could ever rescue me from the way you used to rescue me from Henrietta’s closets. I don’t know what being married to Blake will be like, but I know it won’t be like that.”

She fell silent, rubbing her father’s hand as if she could rub life back into it. Finally she said, “I think you might like Blake if you didn’t already hate him so much.” She smiled a little at the contradictory words. “He has a way of getting things done. Even now, with his press nothing but a pile of rubble and ashes, he’s printing a newspaper on our press, on our newsprint, Father.” She half expected her father to rear up out of the bed in rage at that, but he was as motionless as ever.

Tears pushed up in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Father. I knew Stan would be angry, but I didn’t think he’d go this far. I wouldn’t have written him the letter if I’d known. I would have done what you wanted.” She held his hand to her cheek a moment. Then she took the rag from the pan beside the bed, wrung it out, and carefully bathed his face.

Adriane heard footsteps pounding up the stairs, and then Joe was in the doorway. “Sorry to disturb you, Miss Adriane, but the boss says to tell you to hurry up with that piece. He’s holding up page two for it.” Joe’s eyes caught a moment on the blank paper she’d laid on the end of her father’s bed before he kept talking as if he saw the page half full of words. “And he says maybe something about the two of you marrying and joining up the papers might not be out of line. But he says that’s up to you.”

“All right, Joe. Tell Mr. Garrett I’ll work on it.”

“The boss said to tell you we ain’t gonna put the paper on the street without something about Mr. Darcy in it. Something you write.”

After Joe went back downstairs, she stared at the blank sheet for a long moment before she made herself dip her pen in the inkpot. Then as if a dam had broken inside her, she could barely keep enough ink on the nib of her pen to keep up with the words flowing out of her.

She didn’t try to make her father into a hero. She simply wrote of him as a man who knew his part in the tragedy that had played out on the streets during the terrible night and who had done everything he could to stop the insanity, even to standing in front of a mob bent on violence. Violence that had not spared him. She wrote about the strength of his beliefs and the power of his words and in the last paragraph begged their readers to pray for his recovery. Then she signed it Adriane Darcy Garrett.

She stared at the name on the paper for another long moment before she got a fresh sheet of paper and quickly wrote a short editorial announcing the merging of the two papers.

This joining together of two so disparate newspapers will usher in new opportunities for growth as our great city prospers in the years ahead. The
Tribune-Herald
will ever be open-minded on any and all issues as we attempt to illuminate the truth.

She quickly reread what she’d written, and though she thought it could be better, she didn’t have time for rewrites. Once more she signed her new name. This time it did not look quite so strange, and she decided the name itself would have to serve as the announcement of her marriage. Due to her father’s grave condition, it would hardly be proper to print a formal announcement of the event. The very fact that she had married at such a time would be considered highly improper and scandalize the townspeople quite enough without flaunting an announcement in black and white in front of their eyes.

For a minute she considered scratching out her name at the bottom of both stories, but then she went to the doorway to call to Joe downstairs. When he rushed upstairs, he looked a little surprised to see all the words. She smiled to herself. It wasn’t going to be the first time she surprised Joe. Or Blake.

The
Tribune
may have been merged, but its spirit wasn’t dead. Then sadness overwhelmed her, first for her father, then for Duff and his family, and finally for the whole city.

She returned to her chair by her father’s bed and began once again watching for the rise and fall of his chest. She was sitting just the same two hours later when Blake came into the room as the first light of morning was pushing through the window.

“It’s done,” he said. “The boys are picking up their bundles.”

“How does it look?” she asked without taking her eyes off her father.

“Not bad considering how we threw it together. If Beck hadn’t come back, we’d have never gotten it ready on time. You want to see an issue?”

“Not now.” She still didn’t look up at him.

“You should rest.” He came over behind her and laid his hands lightly on her shoulders. “I’ll sit with him.”

“No. He’s my father.”

He didn’t argue with her. “Then if you don’t need me here, I’ll go with the boys to see if there’s anything to salvage at our building. Maybe some of my files didn’t burn completely. There might be something. And I want to go talk to Duff and his mother.”

“Duff?” She finally turned her head to look up at him.

His face was fierce as he answered. “I made him a promise. I intend to keep it.”

“How?” she asked. “No one ever seems to see or know anything about whoever it is who kills these girls. It’s as if he rises out of the river like some evil wraith that can appear and disappear at will.” She wanted to weep when she thought of what Duff’s sister had suffered.

Blake tightened his hands on Adriane’s shoulders as his frown grew even fiercer. “The man doing this is no apparition. He’s real enough and we can catch him.” But then he sighed as if he knew words alone couldn’t make that happen. “If we can only figure out a way to bring him out in the open.”

Her hand came up almost of its own volition to touch one of his on her shoulder. “Thank you, Blake.”

“For what?” He looked surprised.

“I don’t know.” She searched for something to say that would make sense. “For rescuing me, I suppose.”

A smile chased some of the dark worry off his face. “You do seem prone to needing rescuing, for a fact.” He leaned over to lightly kiss the top of her head before he left. “Beck will be downstairs if you need anything.”

A
fter Blake left, the room was too quiet with only the shallow sound of her father’s breathing. Adriane stood up and busily straightened her father’s covers and fluffed his pillow. Then she tried to pour some of the medicine the doctor had left down her father’s throat, but it slid out the corners of his mouth and trickled across his cheek to his ear. After she carefully wiped off his face, she laid a fresh, cool cloth on his forehead. When she could think of nothing else to do, she put her ear down on his chest to listen to his faint heartbeat and try to pull hope from the sound.

“He ain’t no better.” Beck stood in the doorway, a cup of coffee in one hand and a plate of bread, apples, and cheese in the other. A paper was tucked under one arm.

It wasn’t really a question, but Adriane straightened up and shook her head slightly anyway.

Beck’s mouth tightened a little as he handed her the food. “Blake told me to make sure you ate something.”

Adriane looked at the plate and then at Beck. “Blake?” she said. “What happened to Garrett, the enemy?”

“He weren’t never my enemy. Just the
Tribune
’s. And I reckon the two of you brought all that to an end last night.”

Adriane broke off a piece of bread and stared at it. “His man, Calvin, said he had a way of getting things to go his way.”

“What’re you getting at, Addie?” Beck studied her as he waited for her answer.

“I don’t know.” Adriane turned her eyes toward the window as though she might see some truth come floating in with the morning sunshine. Finally she said, “I’m just not sure I did the right thing.”

“Weren’t nothing else to do.”

“You mean because of getting the paper out?”

“I don’t think the
Tribune
had all that much to do with it, Addie. Or the
Herald
either.” Beck’s wrinkles softened a bit, but he didn’t actually smile.

Adriane stared down at the piece of bread she had reduced to crumbs, and Beck went on. “But if you did just get hitched to keep the paper rolling off the presses, you picked a good man. You should have seen him putting them stories in the galleys straight out of his head. The man knows what makes a good paper same as the boss. I brought one up for you to look at.”

Adriane’s eyes went from the folded paper still under Beck’s arm to her father on the bed. “Do you think we should send for Dr. Hammon again?”

“I’ll fetch him if you want me to.”

“But you don’t think it will do any good.”

The old man shook his head sadly as he looked at her. “No, child. I think the boss has done gone off and left us. His body just ain’t figured out it’s supposed to stop breathing yet.”

Adriane didn’t try to deny his words. Instead after a moment she asked, “Will you stay with me, Beck?”

“Me and the boss, we go back a long way, Addie. Before you were even born. I ain’t going nowhere.”

So they waited together. The doctor came, shook his head, and left. A little later, Lucilla made an appearance. She followed Beck up the stairs, but then hung back in the doorway as she offered to send a servant over to help them.

“I’ve never been good in sickrooms,” she said. “The smells, you know.” She held a dainty white handkerchief to a face almost as white. “You do understand, don’t you?”

“Of course, Lucilla.” Adriane quickly ushered her away from the room before the woman fainted.

Once out of sight of the sickbed, Lucilla quickly regained her composure. By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, the color was back in her cheeks as she turned to Adriane and demanded, “What exactly have you done, Adriane?”

Adriane wasn’t sure what she meant until Lucilla pulled a copy of the morning paper out of her reticule and opened it to point at Adriane’s new name. Adriane Darcy Garrett.

She kept her eyes on the printed words. She seemed to need to see them to believe it was true as she answered, “I married Blake Garrett last night.”

“How could you?” Lucilla looked a bit faint again as she began throwing out questions without giving Adriane time to answer. “What about Stanley? What about your father? And what about your future, my dear? Did you never think of your future?”

“I’ve thought of little else for weeks. I had no future with Stanley.”

“And what kind of future do you expect to have with this man? Especially after this affront to the Jimsons. The
Tribune
cannot survive that. You surely know your father owes a rather substantial amount of money to Coleman, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Adriane said.

“I won’t be able to help you.” Lucilla looked truly distressed. “Most of what the late Mr. Elmore left me is tied up in trusts his lawyers handle. Your father understood that and was working out other avenues of repayment.”

Adriane felt a deep sadness as she answered, “I know. Poor Father. It seemed so simple to him. I would marry Stanley, and all his problems would be solved.”

Lucilla looked at Adriane as though if she only tried hard enough, she might be able to understand. After a long uncomfortable moment, she said, “My dear, have you been indiscreet? Is that the reason you married Mr. Garrett so hastily?”

For the first time in hours, Adriane felt the seeds of a smile on her lips, but she didn’t allow it to grow. “No, Lucilla. I’m still quite pure.”

Lucilla’s eyes narrowed on her a bit. “And quite foolish.” Lucilla jabbed her finger at another spot on the newspaper she still held. “This story is proof of that if nothing else. Even if you did take leave of your senses and venture out on the streets last night, you should have never admitted to that foolhardiness in paper.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Adriane said.

Lucilla read the headline aloud. “Lady risks life to save Irish boy.”

Adriane quickly scanned through the story before she looked up at Lucilla and said, “I see no names in the story.”

“But it is about you, isn’t it, Adriane? You did go out on those streets last night when all decent ladies were locked in their houses on their knees praying.”

“I knew Father was in danger. I wanted to warn him.”

“Adriane to the rescue,” Lucilla said with a wry little smile. “But you didn’t save your father, did you?”

When Adriane didn’t say anything, Lucilla went on, her voice gentler now. “My dear girl, who is going to save you from your own folly?”

Again Adriane made no answer, and Lucilla put her small slender hand on Adriane’s arm. “I will help any way I can, my dear. I am fond of you, but you do understand I can’t go against the Jimsons. You should have married Stanley.”

Adriane stepped back away from her touch, and Lucilla’s hand hovered a moment in the air before she began adjusting her dark blue lace shawl over her lighter blue, crisply pressed, morning dress. After a moment, she said, “Do send a messenger at once if Wade shows the slightest change.”

“Of course,” Adriane said without smiling. Then as Lucilla turned toward the door, Adriane blurted out, “Do you love my father?”

Lucilla turned back toward Adriane, her small smile appearing to be affixed to her lips much the same way the sapphire brooch was fastened on her collar. “Is that what this is about? Love? My poor dear, you surely weren’t foolish enough to throw all your chances away simply because you fancy yourself in love with Mr. Garrett.”

As Adriane silently watched Lucilla go out the door, she wondered why she’d even bothered to ask the question. Lucilla would not be leaving if she loved Adriane’s father.

Adriane was halfway up the steps when she heard the front door open again, quietly, softly. Thinking it might be Duff, she turned on the stairs and went back down.

But it was not Duff. Instead when she stepped back out into the hall, she almost bumped into Stanley, who was standing in front of the hall mirror checking his hair as she’d seen him do dozens of times when he came to pick her up for a social event. She gasped and stepped back quickly.

“Adriane, my dearest,” he said, showing not the least bit of surprise at her sudden appearance beside him. “The very person I wished to see.”

Adriane took a deep breath to regain her composure, and when she spoke, it was coldly. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted you to know how very sorry my father and I both are about your father. It’s so unfortunate that he had to be the victim of such random and unreasoned violence.”

Adriane stared at him, trying to see through his polished exterior to the truth underneath. He met her eyes as though welcoming her study and even smiled a bit. Suddenly Adriane did see, and her heart began to pound. Stanley’s smile grew wider, and she knew he was not only aware of her fear but relishing it.

“You’re despicable,” she said.

“At last, my dearest, you are beginning to understand me.” He stepped closer to her.

Adriane wanted to run up the stairs away from him, but she forced her feet to stay planted on the floor as she pointed toward the door. “I must ask you to leave. You are not welcome in this house.”

“But Adriane, my dearest, it is probably more my house than yours.” His smile didn’t waver as he moved away from her to peer into the pressroom and wave his hand toward the presses. “We the same as own all of this, you know. Unlike my own father, your father unfortunately has never had much of a head for business, and now he has failed to deliver the promised payment.” Stanley looked directly at her again, his eyes traveling slowly up and down her body.

She crossed her arms in front of her in a vain attempt to hide from his eyes. “Whatever debt is owed your father will be repaid. You can tell him that.”

“I don’t think it will be that easy.” Stanley casually picked up one of the papers and scanned the print on the first page. “I see another poor Irish girl was murdered last night. What a shame, but I must say I am surprised to see the report on the front page with so much other news to report. But then your new editor seems to enjoy stories of young women coming to a bad end.” Stanley looked up at her, and his eyes were chilling. “Has he told you about Eloise Vandemere?”

“What he has or has not told me is no concern of yours.”

“Oh, my dearest Adriane, you couldn’t be more wrong. I still care deeply for you in spite of the heartless way you have spurned me, and while I certainly don’t mean to upset you unduly at such a time, I would be remiss in my duty to you as a loving friend if I did not warn you to be careful of our Mr. Garrett. I believe Miss Vandemere’s father owned a newspaper as well.”

“Get out, Stanley,” Adriane said as forcefully as she could without raising her voice. “You and I no longer have anything to say to one another.”

“Oh, I have to disagree, my dearest. I believe you are quite wrong on that count. We have a great deal yet to say to each other, and a great deal yet to do, you and I.”

He grabbed her, moving so quickly that he had her pinned up against the wall just inside the pressroom before she could much more than gasp. She kicked at his legs and tried to twist loose of his hold, but he only smiled and pushed her harder against the wall. His fingers dug into her upper arms as he pressed his body against hers. “So soft,” he whispered as he touched her cheek with his lips.

She couldn’t fight him. He was too strong. She stood perfectly still then as she demanded, “Let go of me, Stanley.”

“Oh, I’ll turn you loose.” His laugh sent chills of fear up her back. “When I’m through with you. And not one second before.”

“Turn loose of me now,” Adriane hissed through clenched teeth.

“Or what?” He looked amused. “Do you think Blake Garrett can protect you? Is that why you married him?”

Adriane stared at him coldly without answering.

“But where is he?” Without loosening his hold on her, Stanley made a pretense of looking around. “I don’t see him.” He looked back at her. “If I were you, my dear, I wouldn’t count too much on Mr. Garrett. Women have counted on him before and ended up dead.”

Suddenly Beck was calling to her from the top of the stairs, “Addie! Addie.”

At the same time the front door swung open with a bang. Stanley loosened his grip on her arms the slightest bit, and with a sudden, sharp twist, she scrambled away from him. She grabbed the first thing her hands touched, Beck’s stool, and held it out between them as Stan reached for her again.