Bees in the Butterfly Garden (40 page)

Meg’s heart pounded so painfully that it seemed to demand all of the blood from her head. “Out—do you mean free?”

“We’re hoping to avoid a trial in order to end all of this quickly, but until he sees a judge, we won’t know what’s to happen. In the meantime, I’ve been given custody.”

“I . . . I thank you, Nelson.” Meg could barely muster more than a whisper. “Your generosity is beyond compare.”

“You might think me as foolish as generous when I share with you what Ian and I have decided to do.”

Any trace of fatigue had long since disappeared in Meg, but she saw that curiosity on both Kate’s and Claire’s faces had rid them of their sleepiness as well.

Nelson turned back toward the foyer. “Come with me, will you?”

Meg followed in step, and so did the other two women. To Meg’s surprise Nelson led them to the kitchen and through the service door. He stopped only when he’d descended the few stairs outside and turned back to the house, looking at the bushes on each side of the porch.

To her astonishment, Nelson fairly dove into one of the thorny bushes. A moment later he pulled himself out, holding some sort of object.

When they returned inside, a nightcapped and obviously groggy butler greeted them.

“May I be of any service, sir?”

“No, Deekes. It’s a family matter, nothing to concern yourself about.”

The butler followed them from the kitchen, but only as far as his room beneath the stairs. Nelson led Meg and the others through the foyer and into his father’s study, turning up the gas lamp on the innermost wall. Afterward he offered a look at what he’d carried inside by unwrapping it on the center of the desk.

The Pemberton seal.

Looking at Meg, he said, “I arrived home the other night before Ian could return it.”

“So you do believe he had no intention of stealing from you, then?” Meg asked.

“Yes, that much was obvious when he left everything intact. The interesting fact is, if Ian is right, there is a certain Mr. Brewster who thinks Ian has this seal.”

Meg was intrigued. “Something Mr. Brewster wants.”

“Exactly. And you’re going to hand it over to him.”

Ignoring Claire’s gasp and Kate’s sudden grasp of her arm, Meg smiled. “And why would I do such a thing?”

“Because all he has to do is use it once and I can have him arrested.”

“But won’t your seal be suspect by the banking industry?”

“The moment I discovered it missing, I started proceedings to have a new seal made, and every note we hold is to be kept aside awaiting new authentication.”

“But Brewster must know you would do such a thing,” Kate said.

Nelson shook his head. “With Ian in jail and he the only one Brewster thinks knows the whereabouts of the seal, he can be led to believe I think the seal is still safe to use. How can it be used fraudulently, if the one who stole it is safely incarcerated? Any thief would always have known the seal’s worth would be short-lived. We only need Brewster to use it once to be guilty as charged.”

“But how do I give it to him?”

“You’ll say Ian told you where he’d hidden it, but that all he wanted you to do was return it so he can be released, innocent of the charges against him. And this is where you might think me mad, Meg. You must convince Brewster that you chose the wrong partner in Ian and want to work with Brewster instead.”

Meg swallowed hard. She’d seen what Brewster did to those who betrayed him. Memories of Ian in the alley, broken and bruised, were still vivid. “Did . . . Ian think of this?”

Nelson shook his head, holding her gaze steady. “After hearing about this Brewster fellow, I was the one who suggested it. As a matter of fact, Ian insisted I keep this to myself. He liked the idea of setting up Mr. Brewster for arrest, but he wanted to be the one to hand over the seal. I disagreed; I believe no one with any sense would fall for it, after what Ian already did to the man. But you won’t be in danger. I plan to have men following you to see that you’re not harmed, and you’ll hand it over to him in as public a place as possible. A restaurant, perhaps.”

“I can accompany her,” Kate said.

But Nelson shook his head. “No sense risking more than necessary—not only your safety but any opportunity this man might have to interrogate two of you rather than one.”

Meg picked up the seal, surprised by its weight. “Of course I’ll do it.”

Nelson smiled grimly. “It’ll have to be first thing in the morning, before Ian is released on bail. It’ll have to appear as if you’ve turned your back on him.”

“So . . . I can’t even see him?”

“No, not until Brewster uses that seal.”

40

A young lady is more blessed to inherit from her parents their virtue rather than their money.

Madame Marisse’s Handbook for Young Ladies

Though the carriage came to a smooth stop before the St. Denis Hotel, Meg’s heart still pounded as if in rhythm with the fast gait of a racing buggy. She waited for the cabbie to open the door and help her alight, offering him her free hand and using the step he pulled out onto the curb. In her other hand she carried her reticule, heavier than usual though it contained only one item. The seal.

The neighborhood was busy enough for late morning, for which Meg was grateful. Perhaps Jude, who’d insisted on being one of the men on her trail, would not be readily spotted.

Walking into a hotel unescorted would have been deadly to Meg’s reputation, but as she’d assured Claire that morning, such a thing hardly mattered anymore. She went directly to the desk and without a word retrieved from her glove the card she’d held on to all these weeks from Brewster himself. She handed it to the clerk.

He barely glanced at it before raising a surprised gaze to Meg. Then he studied her with a glint in his eye. “You don’t look his type, miss.”

It was easy to ice her stare, since it readily claimed some of her nervous energy. Though it was too early in the day to meet in the dining room as Nelson had hoped, she had another idea. “Can you ask Mr. Brewster if he will meet me across the street, at Grace Church?”

He laughed. “You don’t know Mr. Brewster, then? He isn’t likely to darken the church door.”

She pursed her lips. “Then ask him to meet me just outside, on the steps in front of the church. I have something he’ll be interested in.”

With far more confidence than she felt, she turned away and exited the hotel lobby, dodging carriages and horse-drawn trolleys full of shoppers to cross the street. Once there, she dared glance around. Jude was just outside the hotel, a newspaper in front of him, but she could tell he watched her. Another man was closer, just to the side of the church. She was sure he was no ordinary loafer, though he might be a bored husband waiting for a wife to finish her errands.

She hadn’t been there more than a few minutes before a familiar figure crossed the street. But it was not Brewster. It was Jamie, dressed in as showy a jacket as ever, this one the color of an overripe tomato.

“Well, if it ain’t Miss Davenport!” he said. “You make the sun pale in the sky.”

“I want to see Brewster, Jamie. I have something he wants.”

“And what’s that?”

She clutched her reticule. “I plan to show only him.”

“There some reason you won’t come up and share a cup a tea or something? This is a bit unfriendly, standing here on the street.”

“You tell him I’m giving him the opportunity to prove himself a friend to me. Until then, I don’t trust him any more than I did Ian Maguire.”

He folded his arms and grinned, assessing her with what appeared to be new appreciation. “So you and Maguire had a parting of the ways?”

“That’s right. I gave him the opportunity of a lifetime and he threw it away because he didn’t think I could be like my father. Well, I’m every bit like my father, and it appears I should have trusted Brewster to believe me because Maguire obviously didn’t.”

He looked at the purse she held. “What’s that you got in there, anyway? Can’t be much of that Pemberton gold. Too small.”

“It’s something better than that. The gold has been dispersed to several banks in the city—the Bank of New York and others. With what I have right here, a banknote can be drawn up to demand the withdrawal of several of those bars. You tell him that and see if he won’t come down to these unfriendly streets.” How her heart pounded with each word, but her voice didn’t give her away.

Jamie unfolded his arms, more serious than ever. He glanced across the street, up to one of the windows. “Here’s the way it’ll be, little lady. You see that open window on the second floor?”

She did.

“Just inside that curtain is a man with a gun on you right now. He can shoot you dead and before anybody figures out where the bullet came from, he’ll be gone. So either give me what you’ve got there or come on upstairs and give it to Brewster himself. But he ain’t coming down here.”

The idea of having a gun aimed directly at her dizzied Meg. Never, ever, had she imagined the courage she would have needed to associate with the people her father must have dealt with every day of his life.

“I—I need some assurance that you’ll give this to Brewster. How do I know you won’t let him down, the way Maguire let me down?”

His brows met in surprised confusion. “You don’t double-cross Brewster, Meggie Davenport! You think I’m addlepated?”

“I need to see him, then. So I can be assured he knows I’m giving you something.”

Instead of leading her back across the street, somewhere Meg assuredly did not want to go, Jamie saluted toward the open window. A moment later the curtain was brushed aside to reveal Alwinus Brewster. On his face was a friendly smile.

With a puff of his cigar, he waved at her.

She had one more piece of advice for Jamie to feed Brewster—though she hoped her urgency wasn’t recognized as the desperation she felt. “You tell him this prize won’t be good for long. The Pembertons think Maguire still has it hidden somewhere. If they find out I took it when everyone was so busy counting those gold bricks, they’ll make it as worthless as the lead it’s made from.”

Meg handed over the seal, reticule and all, then turned to walk down the street, hiding herself in the growing number of shoppers filling the walkway.

41

There is no greater tribute a woman may receive than a man’s pledge of eternal love.

Madame Marisse’s Handbook for Young Ladies

Meg could barely keep herself from the window, in hopes of seeing Nelson arrive home—this time with Ian at his side. So distracting must her pacing have been that Claire suggested the three of them—Claire, Meg, and Kate, who had stayed the night—move to the garden.

“You’ve made it so lovely out there, we really ought to enjoy it. Perhaps the air will soothe you.”

Although Meg didn’t want to go, she knew it was silly to choose one spot to wait over another. The garden was not so much farther from the front door, was it? What did a few seconds matter, anyway, once Ian arrived?

It had taken Alwinus Brewster no more than three hours to employ the Pemberton seal. Like the coward Meg believed him to be, he did not go himself but sent Keys to the Bank of New York, with a fraudulent banknote demanding the withdrawal of three of the famous Pemberton bricks. Once the theft was completed, Keys was arrested before he’d made it out the front door of the bank.

It might have been challenging to indict Brewster as well, having only Meg’s assumption that he’d been the true recipient of the seal used to make the withdrawal. But Keys had been so eager to lighten his own sentence that he’d been happy to cast the blame on Brewster. Evidently having awakened the considerable resources of the Pemberton family had intimidated Keys enough to know they were a greater danger to his future than Brewster was.

Now, with Ian free on bail, Meg could barely withstand the wait.

The garden was indeed lovely, with tiers of colorful plants, a nest of exquisitely designed orchid pots, and the prized focal point, a monkey puzzle tree newly imported from as far away as Chile. It was just unusual enough to have become the most fashionable of the exotic fauna in any modern garden. Beside that, flowers had been especially chosen throughout to attract butterflies and their larvae for years to come.

Only after they’d settled did Meg realize the wisdom of Claire’s suggestion. The quiet of the garden made it seem as if they were far from any worries, particularly when a butterfly glided in from above. Sunlight touched his purple-and-black wings, and after landing on the tip of a thistle, he fluttered as if knowing he was on display. There wasn’t a bee to be seen.

Kate and Claire, obviously intent on helping to keep Meg’s worries at bay, asked question after unnecessary question about nearly all the plants and flowers. It was an effective ploy, one Meg cooperated with gratefully.

When at last the door leading to the garden opened behind them, Meg was almost afraid to turn around. What if Nelson stood there alone and they hadn’t let Ian go? But a glance at Kate’s pleased face gave Meg the courage to look.

Nelson stepped out of the way to let Ian emerge from the house. Before a word was spoken, both Claire and Kate abandoned their spots, joining Nelson to leave Meg alone with Ian.

He stood before her, hat in hand, gaze holding hers transfixed. He wasn’t wearing the suit she’d seen him in a few days ago. Rather he wore what looked like something new, a navy frock coat and matching trousers. A tan waistcoat stood out, along with the navy cravat over a stark-white shirt. He sported the look of an honest gentleman.

It seemed as though their first glance went on forever. It wasn’t that Meg was at a loss for words. It was that too many came to mind at once.

“I want to know only one thing,” she said softly. “Why did you stop yourself from stealing the bricks?”

The relief on his face made her wonder if he’d doubted his welcome. He took a step closer but made no effort to touch her. “I would say I wanted to protect you, but that’s only partially true. Until seeing the painting that hid the lever, I wasn’t sure I had it in me to do the right thing. With God’s help, I did.”

Heart hammering in her chest, Meg wished she could see even farther into his eyes. She’d once marveled at how easily she could read him, but at the moment she was too afraid to believe what she saw. The peace she’d thought rose from a job well done, an illegal job . . . she knew now it wasn’t that kind of satisfaction at all. It was the kind of peace she herself had experienced; she was sure of it. An honest peace.

He took a step closer so that he was mere inches away. “You deserve better than me, you know. You deserve someone with a long, trustworthy history. Not me.”

“Perhaps we’re exactly what we need for each other, Ian. Someone who knows what it’s like to have been forgiven.”

He nodded, a grateful smile touching his lips. “I have much to make up to society for and much to prove to you. But with God’s help, I can do it. He’s already taught me I could love someone more than money. And I do. I love you, Meggie.”

Meg was in his arms the moment he’d uttered her name, knowing that from him she wanted to be called nothing else.