Blessing (37 page)

His father sat behind his desk with a sigh.

The sound goaded Gerard into speech. “Well, you’re free now,” he snapped.

Saul looked up, frowning. “Do we need to have a display of emotions tonight? I’m quite fatigued.”

“Really?” Gerard clenched his fists. “Burying your wife has left you ‘fatigued.’ What a pity.” Every syllable dripped sarcasm.

Saul rose. “I’m going to my room. I’m not in the mood for an outburst.”

Gerard blocked his exit. “Are you in the mood for bigamy?”

His father froze by his chair.

Gerard stared into his father’s wide eyes. “I know about the house in Manhattan.”

Saul stumbled back and slumped into his chair. “What? What house in Manhattan?”

Gerard let loose a sound of disgust. His father was going to try ignorance—really? He moved onto the balls of his feet, ready to fight and wanting to pound the man. “I met Bella and Lucille.”

His father’s mouth opened, but no words came forth.

Gerard slammed his fist onto the desk.
“Well?”

Tears welled up in his father’s eyes and poured down his cheeks. The ever-dignified Saul Ramsay buried his face in his hands and sobbed.

Bemused, Gerard listened to the sound, something like
the whimpering of a puppy separated from its mother. He’d never imagined his father like this, sobbing and defenseless.

His father’s vulnerability pulled the plug on his rage, and it drained out of him. Exhausted by his own rampant emotions, he sank into the chair on the opposite side of the desk. “Why?”

A long silence ensued.

“Why?” Gerard prompted again, wanting to hear, not wanting to hear.

“I just desired a little happiness,” his father muttered, not looking at him.

Gerard snorted. “So you committed adultery, misled two women, and fathered an illegitimate son and daughter,” he sneered, his anger resurfacing. “So you could have a little happiness.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Speak the truth?”

“You’ve always hated me,” his father said.

Gerard stared at him. “Did you ever give me a reason to love you?”

“I’m your father.”

“You’re right. No son is born hating his father. You know that. So I have to love you, and that means you can do whatever you want—is that it?”

“My family in Manhattan is the only thing I’ve ever done just for myself,” Father snapped, looking resentful. “Ever since I was born, it’s always been all about doing my duty to the family, to the business, to society, to the church. I wanted a life of my own. And so I created one.”

“Mother didn’t have that option. You held her fast. Why did you marry her if you didn’t want her?”

The man glared at him. “My father insisted our family needed the infusion of capital that marrying Regina would bring.”

“Did you even like my mother?”

He shrugged. “I always gave her everything she wanted—”

“Except for love and devotion.” Gerard didn’t know how much further he could go with this conversation. Each word scored his throat. “Then you tried to do the same thing with me. Tried to marry me to a banker’s daughter.”

“I gave you plenty of time to fall in love with someone.” His father sounded aggrieved. “Your life was going nowhere. It was time you settled down.”

Blessing’s face entered his consciousness, bringing with it feelings he didn’t want to acknowledge. “And if I said I’d fallen in love with a radical suffragist Quakeress, you would have welcomed her to the family?”

His father sat up, looking alarmed. “What?” The words must have shaken him. Saul Ramsay had evidently learned nothing from this confrontation.

Gerard rose. “Don’t worry. I doubt she’d have me anyway.”

“Wait. What are you going to do? I can’t . . . The truth would kill Bella—and the children.” He flung up a hand. “They are blameless in this.”

Gerard halted, his father’s words settling in him like concrete. He knew that Bella and her children didn’t deserve scandal and shame. He couldn’t hurt his father without
making them suffer. And there was already too much suffering in this world and in this family.

“When I visited them in Manhattan, I identified myself as Gerard Ramsay, a distant relative from Cincinnati. I shall contact them no more.” He paused to draw in fresh breath, suddenly exhausted. “Stoddard’s wife has miscarried and is still recovering. He needs me.” The way opened before Gerard. He wasn’t trapped here in this mire. “I’m going back to Cincinnati to live my life.” Gerard had no more words. He lifted a hand and walked out.

As he picked up his gear in the foyer, he thought of Kennan. He must stop him from airing this scandal in public—of that he was sure. Gerard couldn’t see much of his way forward, but he knew Kennan was capable of anything. He’d proven that the night he’d drugged Gerard at Smith’s bidding.

Gerard took a cab straight to Kennan’s family home and found his onetime friend still there. In the family garden, Kennan greeted him with a broad grin. “So what’s the plan?”

“I’m going back to Cincinnati. And I don’t want to expose my father.” He tried to come up with an excuse. “It’s too soon after Mother’s parting. It would shame her memory.”

Kennan’s grin faltered, his mouth drooping open. “What? You have him in your grasp at last. You can get anything from him.
Anything.
”

“There is nothing I need from him. He doesn’t have anything I want.”

“You don’t want the family fortune?”

Gerard shrugged. “I have a life in Cincinnati, and I’ll find another occupation there. I’m not coming back east. I’m warning you not to make my father’s bigamy public nor to use it against him. Even though my mother’s dead, I don’t want people to know how Father disrespected her.” Though what leverage he had to stop Kennan, he didn’t know.

Kennan’s jaws moved as if he were chewing wood. “I don’t get it.”

Gerard gripped Kennan’s shoulders. “I am my own man. Not a puppet attached to my father and his wreck of a life. Kennan, you need to break free too.”

“I am free.” Kennan jerked out of Gerard’s grasp. “I do what I want, when and where I want.”

“Living in the bottle is what you want?”

“Don’t preach to me,” Kennan growled, stepping backward.

“We’ve been friends since we were boys. Do you think I want to see you go down to delirium tremens or early death?”

Kennan took another step backward. “You’re not the Gerard Ramsay I knew.”

“Thank heaven,” Gerard said, recognizing the truth. “Good-bye, Kennan. I wish you well.”

“Go to hades.”

“No, Cincinnati is far enough for me.”

Kennan jeered wordlessly.

Gerard walked out of the garden and hailed a cab. He could be home in a week if he left in the morning. A longing to be near Blessing once more worked in him like a magnet. He resisted its pull. That was the only danger in returning to Ohio.

Commendable in many ways, Blessing was a woman devoted to causes, a woman who wouldn’t welcome marriage and its obligations—especially after a marriage that seemed to have caused her suffering. And she didn’t blink at breaking the law. In contrast, all he wanted now was peace. And Blessing Brightman was not a peaceable woman. Yet he was unsure what to do about this misguided attraction to her.

MARCH 27, 1849

The spring breeze played with Blessing’s gray bonnet ribbons. The middle-aged land agent, another Quaker, walked beside her through the open field decked with tender green leaves, grass, and wildflowers—tiny lavender and yellow violets, white trilliums, and bluebells. The world around rejoiced. Inside, she mourned. Gerard had been away for days now, but it felt like much longer.
I can’t think of that.

“This property is well drained by the creek at the back,” the land agent said, pointing toward the line of budding trees and shrubbery lining the small creek. “It’s on the Lebanon Road, but there’s enough land to set the orphanage and its grounds far back.”

Blessing struggled to keep her mind on task, on the new
orphanage. “It looks like a good place—plenty of room for the children.”

“And there are no near neighbors.” He left unsaid that people usually didn’t want an orphanage in their vicinity.

“Good.”

“Thee is planning on closing the other orphanage in town?” he asked as they walked through the wild grass toward his open gig for the short ride back to town.

“I will keep that house as a kind of receiving center for orphans,” she said, letting him hand her up into the gig with care. “And it’s convenient for other activities too.”

He exchanged a glance with her. He was also involved in the Underground Railroad.

“I am done looking,” she said. “I think this acreage will suit my purpose. Close to town but not right in town, and it’s large enough for now and the future.”

“A good decision.” He climbed onto his seat in the gig. “I will make certain we get it at a reasonable price.”

She thanked him and he slapped the reins, turning them back to town. She closed her eyes and tried to direct her thoughts away from Ramsay. He might not come back to Ohio. And even if he did, she would have no more to do with him on a personal level. He had become too important, too tempting. And she, too weak.

APRIL 2, 1849

Gerard rode beside the drayman from the riverfront to the bluff on this bright April morning. This was the third time he’d arrived in Cincinnati but the first time he felt as if he’d
truly come home. A satisfying reaction. Yet he suffered from wanting what he couldn’t, shouldn’t have. Everywhere he turned at the docks, he saw the phantom of Blessing.

He forced her from his mind and began planning. He needed to find a new position. He’d inherited his mother’s portion, the money settled on her in the marriage agreement between the two wealthy families, so he didn’t need funds, but he needed to occupy himself and to begin forging connections here, where he’d make his life. Nonetheless, what he’d left behind—his father’s duplicity and his uncertainty over Kennan’s discretion—continued to plague him. How could he trust a man so often in a drunken state? He had no choice but to do so, however. Kennan would have little reason to blackmail Saul Ramsay—unlike Gerard, he was once again living comfortably off his family’s estimable resources. Gerard also doubted Kennan had the ambition for such a scheme.

Gerard himself wanted a fresh start, not one tainted by extorting funds from his father. And he didn’t hate Bella, Lucille, or Jeremy; he wished them no harm. He’d suffered from his parents’ unhappy union. Why should more people suffer in the wake of Saul Ramsay’s selfish decisions?

The drayman drove Gerard and his valises toward Mrs. Mather’s, rumbling over the uneven road. Imagining the widow Brightman on every corner was a torment. The thought of seeing her lifted him even as other memories of these streets pressed him down—catching Theodosia as she jumped from a window, testifying against the slave catchers in a biased courtroom. After these past few tumultuous months, he craved peace.

And if he let it, time would gradually erase Blessing from his mind. He just needed to get busy, find employment, and begin cultivating a new life here. He would visit Stoddard today and ask him for possible leads on a new position. Surely Stoddard, with his connection to the Foster family, would be able to point him in the right direction.