Foundation of Love: The Gypsy Blessing 2 (5 page)

It had not been necessary for him to ask who had answered the phone because that was a fact of which he was painfully aware. It had been Elizabeth Bennett. In fact, he would recognize her voice anywhere, anytime, for it affected his soul like no other. How could he forget when it haunted him for days each time he heard it?

He rose from his office chair and paced over to the window. Maybe something on the street below his townhouse would distract him. He sighed. Barring an emergency, there was little chance of that.

Anne had a habit of forgetting to charge her cell phone, so she had a landline installed in the common room of her suite at school. Whenever he called that number, by either coincidence or design, Elizabeth answered. The rich timbre of her voice had affected him even before he put it together with her name, which was immediately after he had seen her photograph.

The images from the countless photos that Anne continued to send to him of her friends, combined with the stories and descriptions of her that he would hear from Anne, Richard, and Edward and Madeline Gardiner, invaded his dreams almost every night.

Everything about her seemed perfect... perfect for him.

But it was all an act. It had to be.

William ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head.

Whenever Elizabeth answered the phone, his mind went completely blank. Not able to speak coherently, he would barely get the idea across that he wished to speak to Anne, and then he would spend the next few hours chastising himself for being so pathetic. Eventually, he resolved never to call the landline again, but his fingers betrayed him and dialed it anyway—every time. Once summer session at school was over, he was forced to call Anne’s cell phone.

Now Elizabeth was answering Anne’s cell phone, too? Would it never be safe to call Anne again?

He was twenty-seven years old, in charge of one of the largest construction companies in the nation, on the board of several corporations, and he socialized with some of the most important people in the world—when he
had
to. Meanwhile, he could barely find the words to say “Hello” to a twenty-year-old student who had absolutely no claims to fame or fortune or anything else he dealt with on an almost daily basis. The entire situation was ridiculous.

This time, Elizabeth’s saying a simple thing like “Hi, Will” had put him deeper into a stupor than ever. She had said his name for the first time—times three—and for some reason, he knew he would never be the same. Hearing her say it in an annoyed tone the second time and a condescending tone the third made no difference; it was still a heavenly sound.

This girl was going to drive him insane, and he hadn’t even met her yet.

William noisily huffed out a deep breath and walked over to the coffeemaker he kept in his office. As he waited for the single-cup to brew, his thoughts returned to Elizabeth Bennett.

If she could do this to him from a distance, he was sure she could manage an alarming amount of harm to him in person. A few correctly placed words, paired with the right flash of those incredible green eyes, and he knew very well that he’d be completely under her control. It was frightening enough that part of him longed to experience what he thought she would do to win him. However, no matter how hard he tried not to give in, another part of him hoped she would
save
him, which left him utterly terrified when in a more rational frame of mind.

Elizabeth Bennett was as dangerous as anyone he had ever known.

No! She was worse. Just like the others, if he let her, she
would
use him. But with the way he reacted to her, she would be the one who would hold all the power.

When she eventually realized she’d have to sign a prenuptial agreement as a stipulation of his inheritance, the thought of marrying him would lose its appeal. She would chew his heart to bits and spit the pieces right back into his face.

William nodded vigorously.

He had to hold onto that thought. He would refuse to allow it to happen. He
had
to meet her and stay strong to prove to himself that she was as bad as those who had come before.

I wonder if she would pick up again if I called back?

William closed his eyes and sighed. “Pathetic!”

~

When Anne returned the call a few minutes later, her voice betrayed her anger. “You know, it wouldn’t hurt to put a
tiny
bit of effort into being nicer to my friends. Lizzy has never done anything to you, but from what I hear, you’re very rude to her when she answers the phone at our suite. From the look on her face when she handed me my cell just now, I’d bet you just repeated that performance.”

“That wouldn’t have been necessary if you had picked it up yourself.”

Anne huffed. “I asked Lizzy to answer my phone while I washed the gunk off my hands. What’s going on, Will?”

Since the truth was too embarrassing to admit, William’s answer was delayed while he took a sip of his coffee, giving him a few moments to think. His answer had to be something that was true, but would actually make some sense. “I have to be very careful that I don’t lead anyone on, Anne. From what I understand, the delusions that Charles’s sister, Caroline, had about me began the moment I said hello to her.”

Anne gasped. “Will! When did you become so conceited that you think every woman you meet will think of marrying you?”

“Except for you, the sum of my experiences with women is that they’ve either fawned all over me or acted a part to trick me into liking them for all the wrong reasons. Forgive me if I’m expecting it to happen with others I meet,” William snapped. “I thought summer session was finished. Why are you with
her
?”

“I’ll let you get away with avoiding the subject of your attitude
this
time, but when I visit you and Georgiana next week, we are going to have a long talk about it, Will.” Anne sighed. “Summer session is over, but Richard is away at a job site, as I’m sure you know, and Georgiana isn’t in the city yet. And Mama... well, Mama is off traveling somewhere or other, as usual. I was so lonely that I decided to visit with Lizzy and Jane.”

“Oh.” William needed to change the subject, and soon. “What gunk?”

“Huh?”

“You said you had to wash gunk off your hands.”

“Oh… I’m learning to cook!”

“
You’re
cooking? Miss I-can’t-even-toast-bread-without-having-to-call-the-fire-department?”

“Yep! I’m enjoying it, too.” She hesitated only a moment before changing the subject again. “Hey, Will? Richard is coming here to visit this weekend. Why don’t you come with him? He says you like the Meryton area… the Lambton Village project will be built near here.”

“You’re kidding? She lives
there
?”

“She?” Anne giggled. “Jane
and
Lizzy live here, Will, and Charlotte lives nearby, too. Come on... I’ll even cook a meal for the two most important men in my life.”

William massaged his temple, trying to ease the headache that had been his constant companion these past few days. He was tempted to go just to get away from his troubles, but how could he go to meet
her
without inviting even more trouble? Perhaps bursting his concept of “perfect Elizabeth” and proving to himself once and for all that she was a mercenary shrew would be a good thing. But he didn’t want to make a fool of himself in front of his cousin and friend by turning into the blabbering idiot that he became every time he heard her voice. “Thanks, but I can’t. I’ll take you up on the offer of a home-cooked meal when you come to town.”

“I swear that Richard and I won’t try to set you up with anyone, if that’s what’s preventing you from coming.” The last time they were all together, Richard suggested a blind date. William had become very angry at the suggestion. “After what you told us about Caroline, I can definitely understand why you’re unwilling to go out with someone you’ve never met. Why would Charles expose you to a woman like that in the first place?”

“You don’t know the whole story, Anne. Please don’t ask
him
that question. Charles feels incredibly guilty as it is. Not only did he expect to be fired, but he also thought he’d lose our friendship as a result. I can’t blame him for what Caroline did, and besides, who would suspect
that
from his own sister? Actually, that’s what I called about—I really need to talk about all this, if you wouldn’t mind listening, and I think you should be prepared in case the press gets wind of any of this. The judge tried to keep the news people away from court, but you never know who will leak news.”

“You know I don’t mind. You never did tell me the details of what happened with her.”

“Well, it sounds even worse when all the pieces of the story are put together, as the attorneys have been doing in court during the past few days.

“Caroline had been pestering her brother for years to have us spend time together. Knowing his sister was a little—
intense
was the word he used on the witness stand—Charles had tried to avoid it, but finally he asked me to do him a favor and have dinner with the two of them just to get her off his back. Charles had no idea his sister would turn into a crazed stalker and couldn’t have predicted that she would snap the way she did—if that’s
really
what happened. You already know that for a couple of years, she would show up almost everywhere I went.”

“How could I not remember? Whenever she’d come up to us at an event I attended with you, you’d beg me not to leave your side.”

“As it turns out, my instincts were correct. Charles kept misplacing his cell phone whenever he was at home, which I always thought was odd since he didn’t lose it anywhere else. Personally, I think Caroline was hiding his cell phone so that he would have to use the house phone, but there was no way of proving that in court. The police found something attached to the telephone system at her brother’s house. She had told her brother that she hired someone to install equipment that would supposedly help stop the feedback on his hearing aid, but it turned out to be
monitoring equipment.
She must have been listening in on the call when I told Charles that I was going to my beach house on Long Island for a quiet weekend alone.

“You can’t imagine what I found in the Hamptons, Anne. Her lawyer
claims
that she went nuts and honestly thought she was my wife. When I arrived, I found several trucks for workmen that I had not hired.

“Caroline had contracted with a construction crew to redecorate
my
house, including my mother’s favorite room—the very room that I had just gone to so much trouble to
restore
to its original condition after the water damage from flooding from the super-storm. Caroline was in the backyard, sunbathing
in the nude
, within view of half a dozen workers.

“As bad as it was, it could have been a lot worse. When the police tried to take her into custody, she turned absolutely wild trying to get to me. If she had been carrying the gun she had used to threaten the staff, I’m positive that someone would have been shot. I try not to think about what could have happened if Georgiana had been there.” William sighed. “This morning, Caroline Bingley was officially declared insane by the court, and she’ll be forced to get some much needed psychological help. I honestly hope it does her some good, but I doubt it will.”

“You don’t think she is insane?” Anne asked.

“Not in the way she was portrayed at the trial.” William was furious. “The part I don’t understand at all is how, if she really
had
been insane, did she have the presence of mind to learn how to get the better of my state-of-the-art security system and think of providing food and other essential needs to the two staff members she locked up? Why would she have locked them up in the first place if she really thought she was my wife?

“And think about all the planning she had to do. The construction company verified that they’d had a work order sitting around for weeks. They had been promised double the amount of the estimated cost to come over the moment she called—as long as no questions were asked. She must have watched the house for several days to know that it would be empty at the time of day she had someone come to give her the estimate. I can’t figure out why the jury didn’t seem to be as impressed by any of this as the District Attorney and I were.”

Anne did not wait for him to finish before making a comment. “Wow!”

“Since she will most definitely lie to her doctors, I’m sure the therapy she receives won’t be very helpful. I can only hope that she won’t be released until after the doctors find out what is truly going on with her.”

“I had no idea it had been anywhere near that bad, Will. After hearing all this, it sounds like you need to get away even more than I thought.”

“Maybe next time, Anne.”

“I can understand why you’re putting it off right now, but you
do
know you’ll have to give in and meet my friends someday. Jane and Lizzy are beginning to think you’re a figment of my imagination.” Anne laughed half-heartedly. “Well, maybe not Lizzy.”