The Glass Orchid (17 page)

Del’s heart slammed into her chest, and if she hadn’t been restrained in a chair, physically prevented from moving, she knew she would have collapsed. There was only one option left open by Mr. Camden, an option he seemed disinclined to voice himself, but one she had no doubt he would see done. Not by his hands, of course, but by his bidding nonetheless.

Against the wall, Murphy visibly gulped. “I’ll deal with it. Make sure no one sees nothing. Make sure the problem disappears.”

Tears sprang from her eyes, and Del panted, trying not to become completely hysterical. The men were careful not to look at her and had ceased to even refer to her as a person. She was now a “problem” that needed disposing of, like spoiled cargo to be unceremoniously dumped in the Thames, never to be thought of again. Neither of the men said the word, and she knew they would steadfastly refuse to call her murder for what it was, but all their euphemisms wouldn’t change the fact that she would wind up just as dead.

Her mind raced. She refused to believe this was her end, that there was nothing she could do. She would think of something. She had to. There had to be some overlooked means of escape or some perfect combination of words that would convince Mr. Camden to release her. Her muscles were tense, though, locked in place from abject fear and the physical pain of being tied to the chair. She couldn’t move, couldn’t make words come out of her paralyzed throat, could scarcely take in enough breath to prevent herself from fainting. She was running out of time and she couldn’t
do
anything.

Mr. Camden stared at Murphy for several minutes, until the man squirmed and looked away. “We will leave her here until dark. When everyone is gone and you can move about unnoticed, you will remove her from the premises and make sure no one sees or hears of her again.”

Murphy nodded, but when he looked about to say something, Mr. Camden cut him off with a raised hand and then gestured him out the door. Demonstrably bumbling but not completely lacking sense, Murphy left the room as quickly as he could without breaking into an obviously cowardly run.

The elder Camden then walked over to the table, the one Del had hoped contained her salvation, and picked something up before coming to her. Del’s vision went dark around the edges and she grew dangerously lightheaded from the terror. He meant to do it now; he would kill her and have Murphy dump her body later.

“Please,” she managed to say, the word barely a whisper, and she could say no more.

But Mr. Camden’s hands didn’t contain any implements of death or torture. Instead, he shoved a dirty rag into her mouth and secured it with a rope tied around her head, ensuring she would be unable to call for help. He knelt down to tie her ankles to her chair, cutting off the slightest chance of escape Murphy’s previous oversight had left her. He stood up, having neither looked her in the eye nor spoken to her directly the entire time he was in her presence, and then left.

Alone in the dim and dusty room, Del cried.

The warm, salty tears ran in rivulets down her cheeks, and her sobs, muffled by the rag stuffed in her mouth, caused her to jerk against the ropes, further tearing into her flesh. She had no means of freeing herself, and Camden, not knowing where she was or what dangers she faced, would not be coming to save her.

She wept for the cruel sadness of it all, the unjustness of meeting her demise right after she had finally figured out the course her life was meant to take.

She wept for Camden, that she would be torn from him before she ever had a chance to really tell him what he meant to her. She loved him more than anything, and she could only hope that, even after her death, he would know it.

Memories of Camden flitted through her mind, and her tears flowed harder when she realized how much time she had wasted being stubborn. If only she had let her guard down in the beginning, right after meeting him, when she had seen him for the amazing man he was but had not let herself believe it. They could have had all those months instead of just the last few weeks when she had finally come to her senses. She had been so scared then, of feeling and loving and giving. It was all so wretchedly, comically clear to her now how wrong-headed she had been.

Her breathing became hitched, irregular. Her sobbing was leaving her gasping for air but the rag in her mouth was preventing her from getting it. Her vision went cloudy and her hands and feet went numb and she knew she was going to lose consciousness.

The last thing she thought of before the world went dark was Camden’s face as he asked her to marry him, and the last thing she felt before losing all sensation was the stab of pain through her heart as she realized she would never be able to.

Camden walked along the corridor leading to his office. He was restless, distracted. Working today seemed an impossible task. He wasn’t sure how he would muster up the motivation or interest in cargo manifests and pricing lists when all he could think of was Del. Of how beautiful she had looked this morning, tousled and thoroughly satisfied. Of how impatient he was to be with her again this evening, when he could take her in his arms, feel her soft body melt into his —

Gah. It was no good to think of her now, not when he was stuck at the shipping company and couldn’t go to her. He was only torturing himself by conjuring up her image, by remembering the feel of her against him, under him, the way she moved and the way she sounded when he —

Dammit, he was doing it again. His head was filling with thoughts of her and his body was responding physically. He quickly thought of the stack of paperwork waiting for him on his desk. Nothing made the blood cool faster than the thought of slogging through piles of bills of lading and quarterly receipts.

In his reverie, he didn’t notice the other man in the hallway until he had brushed past him.

Camden frowned. It was Murphy, one of his father’s stevedores, and he had looked extremely unhappy.

Camden wondered if there was trouble. The stevedores usually kept to the docks and were almost never seen in the offices. If his father needed to communicate with one of them, he sent Camden or another employee to them rather than summoning them to building. The elder Mr. Camden didn’t like having the austerity of his office sullied by the presence of the common laborer, as if their dirt and sweat and —
commonness
would cause his carefully created façade of wealthy respectability to come crumbling down around him and he would be exposed for the what he was: a desperate social climber of humble origins far closer to the stevedores than the blue-blooded aristocrats he aspired to become one of.

Camden stopped and turned around, intending to ask Murphy what his business was, but the man had already disappeared around a corner. Camden heard the creak of a door shutting behind him and he turned back in the direction he had been walking. His father was coming out of one of the records rooms, locking it with one of the myriad of keys he kept on him at all times.

“Ah, Rhys,” his father said, looking startled to see him. He dropped the key in his pocket before walking quickly toward his son. Placing a hand on his shoulder, he steered his son back down the hall in the direction Murphy had gone. Camden allowed himself to be led. “I’ve been looking for you. Wanted to talk to you about a possible new account.”

“Is that why Murphy was here?”

“What?”

If Camden hadn’t known his father so well, if he hadn’t become accustomed to reading the slightest expression changes and shifts in voice or stance or language, he may have missed the almost imperceptible reaction to his question. But he did catch it, how his father’s eyes had widened just a touch, how he had given a small twitch, like he was going to abruptly stop walking but then caught himself and carried on. It had become a survival tactic for Camden, to notice the tiniest of details in his father’s behavior as a way to gauge his mood and determine the level of danger he faced.

“Oh, Murphy. Yes,” his father continued. “I was questioning him on whether he thought an addition of an account this large would necessitate hiring more stevedores.”

“It must be quite the sizable account,” Camden said.

“Indeed.”

Camden tried to surreptitiously study his father as they walked side-by-side down the corridor. He wondered why the issue of a new account would cause his father to seem so guarded, so distracted, and he tried to find clues in the man’s demeanor. Glancing at his father, however, showed him no insights. His father appeared to be his usual self: impatient, confident, with an ever-present aura of slight aggression and casual meanness. Camden could sense no more hesitation or surprise, and he thought perhaps he had imagined it all. It was Camden, not his father, who was feeling irritated and cagey, and he must have projected his own restlessness onto the older man.

He let out a frustrated breath. He hated having to be away from Del. His longing for her, his impatience for their nuptials, and his uncertainty regarding his father’s approval of them was driving him mad and he knew it would only get worse as the day wore on, lonely and tedious and seemingly never-ending. It was distracting him, making him see trouble at the office and strangeness in his father when there wasn’t any.

They reached his father’s office, a large, Spartan room, impeccably organized. It was dimly lit even though there were six large windows extending from nearly ceiling to floor. The elder Camden kept them shuttered at all times, as if convinced the sunshine would destroy his machine-like productivity and drive for success. Heaven forbid he let any light into his life, either metaphorically or literally. He instead relied on a single gas lamp resting on his desk.

There were books, ledgers, and papers everywhere, but unlike in Camden’s office, where they occurred in haphazard heaps strewn across every horizontal surface, here they were coded, stacked and lined up in neatly organized piles on his huge desk. There were no pictures, no portraits of relatives or painted tableaux of calming pastoral domesticity. Nothing that would personalize the office, enliven it, or hint at a life outside it. The entire room was like a physical representation of the man who kept it: willfully restrained, relentless organized, devoid of ostentation or anything resembling softness or comfort.

Mr. Camden went to his desk and sorted through the piles of documents. There were no chairs to sit in, a deliberate choice to keep visitors from becoming comfortable or staying too long, and so Camden stood awkwardly by the door, waiting for his father to give him further instruction.

“Here,” Mr. Camden said, placing several thick folders of papers in his hands. “Take these to your office and read through them. They contain all the information of the possible new contract. Prepare a prospectus outlining the relevant issues, the costs, labor and equipment needs as well as all the possible profits and net gains of taking on the client. I’ll have it by this afternoon.” He sat down at his desk, waving his son out of his office without another glance in his direction.

Camden shifted his weight self-consciously. He knew the prudent thing to do in the face of a dismissal from his father was to run and do his bidding, but he wanted to bring up the issue of his marriage. It wasn’t the perfect time, of course, but there was rarely a good time to discuss anything with his father, and he was impatient to have things resolved. His father never looked up from his desk, however, and Camden was once again feeling a strange agitation from him, and so he decided to go to his office and get to work. Things were sure to go more smoothly for him if he engaged his father in discussion
after
handing him a meticulously prepared report that would, he hoped, show a significantly favorable outcome for the company. The prospect of huge financial gain was the one thing that went the furthest to put his father into any kind of mood resembling amenability.

Once sitting at his own desk, Camden threw himself whole-heartedly into the project. He welcomed the chance to concentrate on something other than Del and how much he wanted to be with her right now, since there was nothing he could do about it at the moment. The facts and numbers contained in the files were dry, straightforward, and numerous to the point of being almost overwhelming. Because there was almost nothing he hated more than sitting indoors sorting through this type of information, he had to force himself to give it his full attention. It meant there was no opportunity to torture himself with imagining, in exquisite detail, exactly what he would do to Del if he were with her. Stuck at the office, those fantasies would do nothing but frustrate him both physically and mentally, and it was better to concentrate on other things until he could go to her tonight and act out every last decadent thought he had ever had about her.

The distraction worked, for when he looked up from the papers in front of him to give his tired eyes a rest, a glance at his pocket watch told him several hours had passed. He was stiff from sitting so long in an uncomfortable chair and he took a moment to stretch his arms and legs. He needed to take a break from work to move his limbs and perhaps take a meal, and so he decided to ride to Del’s townhouse and invite her to eat with him.

Outside, astride Sebby, Camden was immensely glad of his notion to leave the offices for a bit. The afternoon was beautiful, with clear blue skies with a gentle breeze containing just a hint of autumn crispness. The trees were showing their golden, crimson, and brown colors, and already a few leaves had fallen to the ground, crunching beneath Sebby’s hooves. It was a perfect day for a picnic in the park, and Camden deeply regretted he had only limited time for a visit with Del before returning to work to finish his prospectus.

As he approached Del’s townhouse, his entire body warmed in anticipation of seeing her. Perhaps he would forgo the suggestion of a meal and instead invite Del to partake in sating a far more primal hunger. His appetite was voracious when it came to her, like she was his ambrosia, the only thing capable of sustaining him. It was difficult to remember he needed anything else when he was around her. Air, food, and water seemed like inconsequential nuisances when his senses were filled with her heady scent, her luscious curves, her beautiful voice.