Baroness Page 10

  Okay, so yes, she’d planned on betraying Lilly, but once she’d returned home, her own heart in pieces, it felt so wicked, for a moment, she debated holding onto her secret.

  Rosie wished she had someone who might break a door down for her.

  Lilly swallowed. Drew in a breath. “Rennie loved me, Rosie.” Her voice emerged sharp and brittle. “And if Oliver hadn’t shown up, I’d be with him in Madrid, right now. Oliver destroyed everything.”

  “You don’t know that. Rennie might have tired of you—”

  Lilly rounded on her. “He wasn’t Dash! Rennie wasn’t playing games with me!”

  “Of course he was playing games. That’s what men do! They play games. They only want a woman who will fit into their world, who will give them what they ask for, become the thing they want. Our job is to beat them at their own game and get what we need in return. None of it is real, Lilly, and the sooner you figure that out, the sooner you’ll realize that Oliver did you a favor.”

  “No. He didn’t. I don’t know why, but Oliver is set on destroying my life.”

  “Oliver loves you.”

  “If he did, he would have left me alone to be happy instead of dragging me back to a city I hate, a life I loathe.” Lilly turned back again to the dark pane of night. “I’ll never forgive him.”

  Rosie looked down, at the way the steamer lights skimmed the ocean, leaking out like puddles upon the oily surface. The dull thud of the waves against the hull sounded like a heartbeat. “And me?”

  Lilly drew in a breath. From the ballroom inside, the orchestra played Mozart and the music drifted out to season the night. “Being out here helps me forget. The stars dripping on the ocean, like fire. Look—there’s a falling star.”

  Lilly pointed to the sky, but Rosie couldn’t find it, lost among the glitter of the Milky Way.

  “It’s not really a star, you know,” Lilly said. “It’s a meteoroid. A big rock that passes through the earth’s atmosphere. We’re seeing the earth burn it up.”

  “Did Rennie tell you that?”

  Lilly shook her head. “I read it in the Chronicle. Some German astronomer wrote a paper on it. He also wrote an article on black holes. He said that when a star dies, it leaves a black hole so large the magnetic force pulls everything around it into the darkness.”

  Rosie searched again for the meteor, but her attention fell to the lights of New York, twinkling in the distance. Tomorrow they’d dock, disembark to New York City. Then, Rosie planned on forgetting everything about Paris and Dash any way she could. Perhaps Mother would pack them up and they would spend the summer in Newport, at Rosehaven.

  “The sky is so big, it reminds me of Montana.”

  “Everything reminds you of Montana, Lilly.”

  “I’m going back there, you know.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “I will convince Mother to send me back. To let me work the ranch. She’s not the only one who can move out West, create a life. I am just as capable as my mother. I don’t need her help—or Oliver’s. I can do this on my own.”

  Rosie drew in her words, the robust fragrance drifting off the sea. “Look, you can see the Statue of Liberty from here.” She pointed to the glow emanating from the harbor.

  “I saw the real one in Paris, at Luxembourg Gardens,” Lilly said, her voice bitter again.

  “This is the real one, Lilly. That’s just the model. This is the one that means freedom and liberty.”

  Her own words fell through her, settled like a fist over her heart.

  As long as her mother dictated who she married, where she lived, and controlled her allowance, she’d never have liberty.

  She’d end up marrying some Russian count, or Belgian duke.

  She needed to be more like Lilly, standing at the rail, fierce and strong and headed to freedom.

  The lights along the harbor pulsed into the sky, like a marquis. Beyond that was Broadway, the theaters.

  She almost flinched when Lilly’s hand slipped into hers and folded between her fingers. She expected it to be cold, but Lilly’s grip warmed hers. They stood at the rail in silence as the ship anchored just outside the city, waiting for tomorrow’s arrival.

  “Someday I’ll earn your forgiveness?”

  Lilly glanced at Rosie and now offered the barest of smiles. “Yes.”

  * * * * *

  The plan had churned inside Lilly all week, once they’d left port in France. Until then, a sort of numbness spread throughout her body as Oliver forced her into a taxi and then to the train back to Paris.

  She hadn’t seen Rennie—not once after she’d fled from him. She’d sat in her room at the hotel all night, the paint around her eyes turning into a mess, waiting for him to knock.

  Instead, Oliver had banged on her door—it felt like he might be pounding on her soul—demanding to see her.

  She locked the door, refusing him. What might he do but offer reproof at her actions?

  As the sunlight finally tipped over the sash in her bedroom, she cleaned herself up and found a resolute expression. Oliver sent a porter to fetch her bags, but she had nothing. She left Presley’s clothing folded in the satchel and took only her reticule. She didn’t even have her Zane Grey book to occupy her mind as she stared out the train window.

  Oliver sat across from her in a private car, his gaze turning her flesh to cinders.

  Oh, how she hated him. Hated how he made her feel a nuisance. And now, as if she might be tawdry.

  “He didn’t hurt you, did he?” he’d asked once, devastating the padding of silence.

  She’d shot him a look. “Never. Rennie cared for me.”

  Oliver gave her a look she couldn’t comprehend and she glanced away, her eyes burning.

  Funny how her mind played games with her, one moment impressing on her the moments—flying, and walking along the Seine, the next, impaling her with Rennie’s cold, brutal words. Go home.

  He didn’t mean it, and if Oliver hadn’t arrived…

  Lilly watched him now, on the dock below, paying a porter to fetch their trunks. By the time she’d arrived back in Paris, Aunt Jinx had all her belongings packed and en route to port.

  She couldn’t believe it when Aunt Jinx, Finn, and Rosie left right behind her and Oliver. She bit down a sluice of satisfaction.

  So Rosie had lost Dash. He was trouble for her anyway, slick, with his gray reptilian eyes, his smooth smile.

  The bustle of New York seemed less refined than Paris, the workmen along the docks thick with muscle, the stench of their work on their skin. They tied up the steamer like brutes manhandling a whale, their words raw and ugly. For as far as she could see, piers stretched out into the wharf like fingers, great twisted ropes falling from masted yachts, barges, and tugboats, fastening them to shore. The reek of oil and fresh fish curdled the breeze. Beyond that, upon the long stretch of harbor, motorcars and carriages huddled like beetles, ready to whisk their charges away.

  Immigrants queued up to be ferried to Ellis Island and processed, their belongings in crates and burlap and trunks. Most wore their journey on their faces, children draped over the laps of their older siblings.

  Beyond the docks, the city rose with alarming alacrity, blotting out the sky, dust hovering between buildings.

  Her mother would no doubt be at work at the Chronicle Building in midtown Manhattan, and surely Oliver would take her there before delivering her home. Back to their chateau along Fifth Avenue, where from her window she could stare out at Central Park and make believe it might be a prairie.

  On the docks below, Oliver finished his business and glanced up at the ship. Lilly looked away from him, searching for Aunt Jinx and Uncle Bennett. She’d seen Amelia disembark with Finn and knew they couldn’t be long behind. Rosie she hadn’t seen since last night on the bow.

  Since she’d tried to smooth out the disaster of Paris. Someday I’ll earn your forgiveness?

  Perhaps. Yes. Today, however, the sting of Rosie’s betrayal bit into
her, reminded her why she couldn’t be with Rennie.

  However, if Lilly’s plan came to fruition, she might find it easier to slough away the memory of Paris.

  To forget Rennie.

  But she’d never forget the taste of freedom, the sense that she could be more than what she was in New York.

  “Lilly!”

  She glanced down where Oliver had been standing, and found him gone.

  “Lilly!”

  She found him striding up behind her, looking every inch the powerful owner of the local press in his black suit, a derby hat. He and Mother made a fetching pair, if she didn’t let herself remember the pictures of her real father back on the ranch. And, she could admit that Oliver made her mother happy. As if, when Esme met him, she’d breathed for the first time in years.

  “Oliver.”

  “The porter will transport our belongings. Are you ready to go?”

  Lilly manufactured a smile but didn’t take his arm, choosing the rope instead to steady herself down the long gangplank to the dock.

  She simply had to time her performance well. Throw herself into her mother’s arms, plead her loneliness in Paris, and beg to return to Montana before Oliver scandalized her with his version of her escapades in Spain. Perhaps, even if he did, Esme would be so grateful to have her back, safely, that she would relent. She might even convince herself that Lilly was safer, far from the city, in Montana.

  Her mother could stay in New York.

  And, she’d be just fine on a train to the West—after all, hadn’t she gone to Pamplona, the bullfights, on her own?

  Of course she’d miss her mother, but Esme had seemed willing to send her to Paris, without her.

  Oliver loaded her into a taxi then climbed in the other side.

  Sure, her mother longed for her to join her in the newspaper business, but Lilly wasn’t a businesswoman or a writer. She wanted adventure. To live life, not write about it.

  Esme, a woman who’d left New York and headed to Montana at the very same age Lilly was now, should understand that.

  They drove into the arteries of the city, past women shopping, their jackets raked by a spring wind, motorcars and buses, the elevated train, and not a few delivery carriages. They passed the Flatiron building, its shadow darkening the pavement, then turned down Fifth.

  “Aren’t we going to the Chronicle? I don’t want to go home yet.”

  Oliver didn’t look at her, drawing in a breath. “There’s a reason I came to get you, Lilly, one that had nothing to do with…your excursion to Spain.”

  They passed a newsie on a street corner waving a copy of the Chronicle, or perhaps the World.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know.” He looked at her then, and for a moment, the expression on his face struck her silent. His dark brown eyes seemed pained, his mouth tight and lined at the corners. It stirred in her the uncanny feeling of wanting to take his hand, to squeeze it.

  It scared her.

  “Your mother isn’t in the city, Lilly. We sent you away in the faint hope that by the time you returned, she would be better, and that she could come home again.”

  Lilly’s chest began to knot, slow and tight.

  “We both felt it was time to come and get you. However…her condition is progressing and we are unable to stop it.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s convalescing at a private sanitarium in the Adirondack Mountains, on Saranac Lake. It’s really quite peaceful, and…” He swallowed; his voice hitched. “They’ve had good results from the fresh air and climate in the mountains and offered a great hope. She’s been there since you left. We’re going right to the train station.”

  The words slipped out a little louder than a breath. “What’s wrong with her?”

  He tucked his hand into hers and she didn’t even flinch, just let him hold it as he said, “Lilly, your mother has tuberculosis. She’s dying.”

  * * * * *

  It seemed more a vacation spot than a hospital where people came to die. Lush, green grounds, fragrant pines, and wide-trunked oak trees, the whisper of hope on the wind. The lake rippled along the shore, such a rich blue Lilly thought it might be painted. A flag fluttered in the scant wind from the white pole in the center of the grounds, and the sun in the cloudless sky winked down at them as she climbed the wide stairs to the brown-bricked administration building.

  Oliver had directed their belongings to a boardinghouse in town, pointing it out to her as the taxi took them directly to the Adirondack Cottages.

  Inside the reception hall, Lilly found a room filled with straight-backed chairs and the cheerful pictures of patients smiling into the camera, as if, indeed, they might be on an extended holiday. A nurse in a smart white dress and green cardigan greeted them and handed them passes. “She’s curing at her cottage,” she said.

  Oliver nodded, as if he understood exactly what she meant, and led Lilly out to the grounds.

  “What is that—curing?”

  “The consumptives spend a great deal of the day wrapped in blankets, resting on the open porches. It’s part of the regimen.”

  He pointed to a row of children, bundled and lounging on what appeared to be canvas chairs. “These are called cure cottages.”

  They walked down the path bordered by marigolds, the air seasoned with the fragrance of optimism. They passed a cluster of small red houses with white trim and tiny porches. Farther back on the lawn, larger houses with expansive porches suggested group lodgings.

  “Are they taking good care of her?”

  “They feed her well. Milk and eggs and pork chops for breakfast, dinner at noon is roast beef, baked potatoes, corn or peas—sometimes I’ve even seen them serve rice pudding for dessert. She eats four or five times a day. Even so, brace yourself. She has lost a great deal of weight.”

  “Is that part of the disease?”

  “It comes from the fatigue of so much coughing, the night sweats, the fever.”

  “I knew she had a cough, but…how did I not know?”

  “They only diagnosed it a couple of weeks before you left. She’d lost so much weight, and we thought she simply had the flu, or fatigue from the paper….”

  He cut up the path toward a large house with a stone foundation and rolling roof. Pink peonies poked from the garden on each side of the steps, just starting to push open blooms. A lilac tree in bud waved as if in greeting. “I shouldn’t have allowed her to work so hard.”

  Her throat felt tight, scratchy.

  They climbed the stairs, and even as they drew near, she heard the coughing, then voices. Oliver stopped, one hand on the screen door. Then he met her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  He nodded and opened the door.

  She always liked her mother best from the photos taken on her honeymoon with her first husband, Lilly’s father, Daughtry Hoyt. In them, Esme was tall and regal, her thin neck boasting a choker of pearls, her hair piled into a proper knot at the nape of her neck. She stared into the camera without a smile, as if it dared capture her.

  Lilly had surely inherited her independence from her mother.

  She’d heard the story about how her mother fled to Montana after her sister Jinx had married Esme’s fiancé, Foster, how Esme had built a newspaper in a town called Silver City, just west of Butte, Montana. How she’d stood up to the Copper Kings—the mine owners who wanted to bankrupt the workers—and that she’d learned to run a mining operation. She’d inherited a ranch and a herd of Buffalo from Lilly’s father, then built her paper to three more towns. Most of all, she’d kept alive her deceased husband’s legacy for her fatherless daughter.

  Then she’d moved to New York City, helped prove her sister Jinx innocent of the murder of her husband, taken the reins of the largest paper in New York. She’d married Oliver, the publisher, and helped him expand the Chronicle to Europe.

  Esme Price Hoyt Stewart was beautiful, brilliant, always buoyant, and possessed t
he ability to light up a ballroom or stop the presses.

  The person before Lilly was not her mother.

  This person lay on a bed, her eyes reddened, her skin nearly bled of color, her straw-blond hair dry and wispy, her body mere bones, the flesh wrinkled upon it like tissue. This person waged a losing war with the disease ravaging her body.

  This person lay upon death’s door.

  A nurse moved away from the bed, a tray of bloody spittle in her hand. “She’s been holding on for you,” she said softly as she turned to the sink in the room.

  Her mother looked up at Lilly and smiled. “You made it.”

  Lilly had no words, nothing but a moan escaped from her as she shuffled toward the bed. She looked for help from Oliver, but he’d walked to the other side of the bed and drawn up a chair. Esme turned her head. “You are so handsome.”

  He kissed her forehead before sitting down. He took her hand. “And you can still take my breath away.” But his eyes glistened.

  Lilly bent down to kiss her cheek, but Esme closed her eyes, turned away. “Wear a mask, Lilly. Please.”

  “I’m not going to get ill—”

  “Please, Lilly. If you don’t already have this, then I pray you don’t get it from me. If I give you anything, it’s a future with Oliver and the Chronicle, not this.”

  A future with—Lilly shook her head even as she sank onto a chair. The nurse handed her a mask, and she fitted it over her nose. Oliver took one also, his mouth a pinched line before it disappeared beneath the cloth.

  “Mother, you’re going to be fine.” She ran her thumb over Esme’s hand, the bones brittle beneath her touch.

  “No, Lilly. It’s gone too far. I feel it in myself. I’m fading.” She glanced at Oliver. “I’m so sorry.”

  Oliver pressed her hand to his lips. Shook his head.

  She turned back to Lilly. “How beautiful you look, tan and strong. Paris agrees with you.”

  Oh, Mother. She glanced at Oliver, but he was lost in a place she couldn’t yet go. Apparently, he hadn’t told Esme anything of Lilly’s misbehavior. She might forgive him just a little because of that.