Heiress (18 page)

She brushed the wetness from her cheek. Found the appropriate word. “Happy. He makes me happy.”

“Then he must leave.”

Jinx looked up at her mother. No. No! “That is not necessary.”

“Yes, Jinx. The longer he is in this house, the more the risk that he might recognize your affection. And that you might do something regrettable.”

Regrettable.

Jinx looked away, turned another page in the book, despite the blur of the handwriting.

“Jinx. You haven’t done anything Foster might not approve of, have you?”

“Of course not.” But the words came out high, uneven. She tried again. “No.” Although, Foster might have even disapproved of her wantonness that night, even if it had been him asleep in his chamber.

The lie lay in her chest, burning.

Oh, she’d done so much to betray him—and not just that night, but every day when she raced downstairs to breakfast with Bennett, or met him on the terrace for tea. Every night when she tried to burnish from her mind the memories of his touch, his smell, the sweetness of his embrace that forbidden night. She hated how often she stared at the adjoining door, wishing he might be on the other side. The fear that scuttled through her at the very allowance of that thought shook her to her core.

Regrettable? She didn’t know how to articulate the word that embodied that night.

Many words, perhaps, but not regrettable.

Bennett, and his friendship, had awakened something dead inside. Made her feel alive.

“Good,” her mother said, taking a breath, as if to rise. “That’s very good. Then it’s not too late. I’ll arrange for Bennett to take rooms at the Casino. You can tell him tonight.”

“No!” She held up her hands, hating the way the word lurched from her, but… “No, Mother. Foster wants him to stay here.”

Her mother gaped at her. “Foster doesn’t want to lose his wife to his brother!”

“Foster doesn’t care about me. About what I want.”

“Of course not. You’re his wife, not his mistress.”

Jinx recoiled. Stared at her mother, whose face had tightened, her own eyes reddened.

“Haven’t you figured out yet the role of a wife? It is to manage her husband’s life, to give him a legacy. He finds his happiness elsewhere.”

“And me? Where do I find happiness?”

Phoebe’s hand went to her neck, the pearls there. She rose stiffly, wandered to the window overlooking the front gardens. Finally, “You don’t.”

Jinx stared at her, an outline of darkness against the light of the window. “Mother, I know about Father’s indiscretions. I know how he hurt you.”

Phoebe drew in a breath but didn’t turn.

Jinx softened her voice. “Did you never once have a friend who made you feel as if your words, your thoughts, your laughter, mattered?”

“Women in our position don’t have the luxury of true friends. Male or female.”

No. “That’s not good enough for me. Bennett makes me…happy. Since he’s arrived I’ve realized I want more, Mother. I want to know companionship, maybe even real love. I want a marriage like Esme and Oliver.”

“Don’t talk to me about Esme and Oliver!” Her mother rounded on her. “Oliver is dead, and Esme is lost. Living hand-to-mouth out in some feral land.”

The words shucked Jinx’s breath from her, and again she felt ill, her head light. “Dead. Oliver is dead?”

“He died in a fire in his tenement. The night Esme left us.” Her mother’s jaw twitched. She turned back to the window. “Esme was stupid and headstrong and she destroyed her life.”

“We destroyed her life, Mother. We lied. We sent her away.”

“So you could marry Foster! So you could live this life. Rosehaven. Your chateau in New York. You are among society’s elite; everyone wants to attend your cotillions, your dinner parties, your soirees.”

“And everyone is laughing behind my back as I sit here, childless, while my husband cavorts his way around the globe with his yacht full of trollops. We conspired every bit of this life, Mother. We stole from Foster the bride he wanted. I probably deserve Foster’s cruelty.”

Her mother’s shoulders rose and fell. Nothing of protest issued from her.

Jinx allowed the silence to linger, soothe their words. Finally she rose and joined her mother at the window. She wove her hand into hers, not acknowledging the wetness on her mother’s lined cheeks.

“Fear not, Mother. I don’t love Bennett. I am simply very fond of my brother-in-law. I find him to be everything Foster could be, if I could win his heart again. In Bennett, I see the man I thought I married.” Her voice fell, almost to nothing. “Please don’t deny me the pleasure of Bennett’s company, for as fleeting a time as this. Please don’t send him away. I promise not to disgrace Foster, to sully our reputations.”

Outside, the sky had begun to purple with the twilight, long shadows from the oaks lay across the lawn.

“Your reputation is not what scares me most, Jinx.” Her mother squeezed her hand. “Please don’t lose your heart to Bennett Worth, for I fear you will never get it back.”

She wasn’t in love with Bennett. Jinx watched him as he surveyed Foster’s fleet of motor carriages, running his gloved hand over the olive-green fenders of Foster’s newest acquisition, a Benz Comfort, fresh from Germany. Bennett wore the same grand expression of his brother so many years ago, when Foster had pulled up in front of their mansion to ask her to go motoring.

No, he’d wanted Esme to accompany him. Jinx had been his second choice. She sometimes forgot that.

No, she wouldn’t love him. But sometimes, Bennett simply made her remember what it felt like to be noticed. Especially when he looked at her, a smile in his blue eyes. “It’s beautiful. Are you sure Foster won’t mind us driving it?”

“Not at all.” She pulled her goggles over her eyes, adjusting them under her motoring hat, then allowed Amelia to tie the gauze veil under her chin. She already wore a fawn-colored alpaca duster, purchased especially for the sport of motoring, and now held up her arms for Amelia to fasten the cuffs tight around her wrists. “In fact, the Comfort belongs to me. It was a birthday gift.”

She motioned her driver and his footmen to push the car from its stable in the garage house and onto the curved drive. She stood away as they started it up, cranking it to full power. It belched out black smoke, settled to a loud rumble.

Beside her, Bennett also affixed his goggles. “Do you like your new coat?” She’d ordered an alpaca motoring coat for him, in gray, weeks ago, when Foster first suggested she might teach him to drive.

“It’s splendid. And a perfect fit.”

She’d taken Foster’s measurements and subtracted two inches from the waist.

Overhead, the sky suggested an intemperate day, patches of crisp blue being blotted out with bulbous clouds, the kind bearing trouble. In the distance, over the sea, a swath of dark suggested rain. But, for the moment, she’d grasp the cool August day with Bennett.

He’d been spending too much time with Elise.

In fact, their names appeared together twice last week—once at an afternoon tea thrown by Mamie Fish, another at a coaching tournament.

Society would have them married off in a week’s time if he didn’t school his attention to her. How could he possibly know if they were a suitable match after such a short courtship?

She shooed the footmen away, allowing Bennett’s hand in assistance as she gathered her skirt and climbed aboard, settling behind the wheel.

Bennett stared at her, frowning. “Are you driving?”

“Of course. Did you not hear me offer to teach you when you first arrived?”

He stepped up on the running board. “I thought you were playing with me. You drive?”

“I am a better motorman than Foster.” She patted the seat next to him. “You have nothing to worry about, Bennett.”

He raised an eyebrow but sat next to her. She noticed his gloved hand curl around the edge of the seat and suppressed a smile.

Indeed, she had been the first of society’s ladies to dispense of her footman and partake in the sport of motoring. Something about the power of directing her own course down the road, under the canopy of elms and oaks as they rumbled down Bellevue, set her free. In a motorcar, she could determine her own speed, her own course, decide her own destination.

The feeling had surprised her and wooed her quickly into the sport.

She removed the arm brake and stepped on the accelerator. The motor carriage eased forward and she bit back another smile as Bennett collected a quick breath.

“Certainly you have ridden in a horseless in Paris,” she said.

“I preferred my own two feet in Paris.”

They turned down the long drive and finally out onto Bellevue. She drove slowly enough to keep the nails and debris in the street from littering their clothing. Still, they passed a landau, the top up, and a Shay on their way to Bailey’s Beach.

No Bailey’s for her today. In fact, she’d lost her appetite for bathing at Bailey’s. If she couldn’t sink her naked toes into the wet sand, she preferred to not let it frustrate her. Let Duchess Consuelo bask in society’s attention in her bathing hut.

Jinx would choose driving along the beach with Bennett over society’s praise any day.

“You are a professional, Jinx. I am impressed.” Bennett loosed his hold on his seat rail. “But I’m not surprised. You do everything well.”

She kept her hands on the wheel, but her face heated.

“I mean it, Jinx. Elise holds you in high regard. In three short years you have managed to become a powerful lady in Newport, and your motor coaching cotillion is one of the most sought-after invitations of the season. You manage your household with efficiency, your staff is well-trained and attentive, and you have even acquainted me with a host of eligible debs. I am in your debt.”

She hazarded a quick glance at him, shaken by his words, his smile.

“And you drive a horseless carriage.”

They passed a landau carrying a company of bathers, clad in their dark dresses and hats.

“How are things going with Elise?”

“She is pleasant enough. Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.” She grinned at him. Pleasant enough. That didn’t sound smitten, did it?

He folded one leg over the other, sat back in his seat as she turned at Webster then motored down to Spring Street, the mercantile district. “We’ll cut over to Thames and observe the ships in the wharf.” Hopefully, Foster’s yacht wouldn’t be moored in harbor. She didn’t even want to know if he’d returned. Please not.

Please, never.

“Tell me about the motor coaching cotillion. I’ve been to several coaching weekends, but never a motorized event.”

“It’s a way for Foster to display his collection of vehicles, really. Everyone is required to bring their newest acquisition. We display them in the front courtyard, and then, a few select drivers agree to run an obstacle course down Bellevue Avenue. It’s a grand event.”

“Do you drive?”

She turned onto Thames, braking for a milk cart stopped in the road. The odors of the wharf, with the redolence of fish and oil and the brine of the sea, saturated the air. From here, she made out the shiny masts of the yachts moored in the harbor, bright spires against the darkening horizon. Overhead the sky seemed undaunted by the danger at sea.

She didn’t spot the
Jinx.

“No, I don’t drive in the cotillion. Too much to oversee.”

“Society not ready yet for a woman driver?”

“Perhaps.”

He reached over and honked the horn affixed to the lamps in the front. Two schoolboys in knickerbockers looked up and waved. “I think you should drive this year.”

She laughed and turned on Farewell Street, toward Memorial Park. So far to the north of Newport, no one would ever see her teaching Bennett how to drive. “And what would Foster say?”

“Perhaps Foster hasn’t the right to say anything.”

She drew in a long breath. “He has every right.”

Bennett said nothing, letting the sound of the motor fill the air. Finally. “Of course he does.”

They passed the cemetery, a thousand headstones at awkward angles cascading over the hillside. Then, finally, they came upon Memorial Park. Beech trees swayed in the wind, scattering their leaves over the rolling hillside. She turned off the dirt road onto a two-lane carriage path.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to teach you to drive. Hang on.” She slowed the motorcar as it rumbled over the pathway, careful to keep it in the dirt rows. Once, when driving, she’d veered off the pathway and the uneven ground caused her to lose control. The car plummeted into a depression and stranded her for an hour until the Ernest Wilsons happened by in a carriage and rescued her.

It made the Newport Daily News.

Today, she’d stay on the path and find a secluded place to show him the steering mechanism, the brake lever, and how to work the gas pedal.

They topped a hill and she coasted down to the bottom, to a long stretch of scenic pathway that disappeared into the woods.

She braked and slid over on the seat. “Your turn. This is the brake lever, and you steer it here.” She demonstrated the turning of the wheel.

Bennett just looked at her. “Jinx, I don’t think this is a good idea. I don’t want to destroy your birthday present.”

Around them, the trees seemed to shiver in the approaching storm. Perhaps coming out this morning hadn’t been the most judicious of ideas, but Bennett seemed to be away from the house so often, she didn’t know how much time remained.

“It’s grand fun, Bennett, I promise. And, when you get proficient, you can take Elise out in one of Foster’s—”

“Please stop talking about Elise.” His tone stilled her. “I don’t want to talk about Elise when I’m with you.” He drew in a long breath. “I’m sorry.” A pained expression crossed his face.

She felt it all the way to her bones, a quickening, a scurry of forbidden hope that stirred up the taste of fear inside.

Somehow, she found the appropriate tone. “I don’t understand. Isn’t everything going well with Elise? You said she was pleasant.” Amazing how her own voice could manage such a façade when inside her heart thundered.

“She is. And I—I suppose she is a good match for me.” He turned to her, his eyes searching hers. “But Jinx, even when I’m with Elise, I think about you. I think about your laughter, the way you always try to best me in cribbage, how you have an answer for every social topic I raise, how you know exactly what to say to anyone, and how, when you look at me, I am completely undone. And, heaven help me, I think about that night. I remember everything now, and I can’t dislodge it from my mind. You’re in my head, Jinx, and I fear in my soul too.”