The Lady of Bolton Hill (25 page)

“It was Alfred Forsythe, wasn’t it.” It was a statement, not a question.

Clara shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

He stifled an angry snort. Clara was so naive in her desperate need to believe that a simple conversation could banish the enmity between him and Forsythe. She had no idea what a man would sink to if a fortune were on the line. Clara moved to stand before him. “Bane wouldn’t tell me who hired him, but he said something about you needing better judgment about the people you surround yourself with.”

He narrowed his eyes. There was a very small circle of people at the helm of his company, and Daniel would trust each of them with his life. “He is just trying to sow dissension between me and the people I have worked with and sweated beside for the better part of a decade. I know these people, Clara, and
I trust them
. That leaves Alfred Forsythe, who has spent his entire life cutting corners and cheating to get what he wants.”

Clara shook her head. “I don’t think it’s Forsythe, Daniel. I really don’t.”

“Fine,” he bit out. “Bane is not setting foot outside this house until he spills everything.”

“That’s fair enough.” Her face softened and she placed her hand on his shoulder. “Daniel, there is more you need to hear.” Her voice was so gentle, as though she were trying to comfort him, when she was the one who had been brutalized and deserved comfort. He turned to face her, removing her hand from his shoulder, and pressed a kiss into her palm. He breathed in the warm scent of her as he cradled her hand against the side of his face.

“Tell me what you need to say. I won’t lose my temper.”

She drew a deep breath. “Bane was the person who ordered your house to be burned down.”

The breath left his body in a rush and he sat on the side of the desk. Clara kept talking, rattling on about how Bane didn’t personally set the fire, but he had stopped listening. There seemed to be no end to the destruction that angelic-looking monster had introduced into both their lives, and heaven help him, he knew what Clara was going to ask of him. He knew it to the marrow of his bones, but he didn’t know if he would have the strength to do it.

“He has changed, Daniel. I have forgiven him and I trust Bane.”

He grabbed her wrist and turned her arm up to the light. “You would trust a man who forced drugs on you? Who burns down houses in the dead of night? What would you have me do, Clara . . . turn the other cheek? Do we offer him your father’s house to burn down next?”

Clara pulled her arm away. “Don’t you understand what I’ve been telling you? Bane has
repented
, Daniel. He was as hard and vicious as they come, but no one could do what he did last night if he were not truly prepared to walk away from that life forever.” He listened as she told him of the opium Bane had destroyed, and in so doing how he had awakened a network of evil that even now was searching for him. “When a man repents his sins, God will forgive him and welcome him back. The Lord’s capacity to forgive a person who is truly repentant is without limit, without qualification. We must learn to forgive Bane, as well.”

Ever since she had returned from London, Clara had been badgering him about forgiveness. First Forsythe, and now Bane. He looked down into Clara’s sweet, heart-shaped face, her vibrant eyes bright with excitement as she implored him to forgive his enemies. It seemed to be so easy for her, this willingness to let go of the sins that had been committed against her.

“This isn’t easy for me, Clara.”

She cradled his face between her hands. “I know what I’m asking of you. I know you’ve struggled and worked and sacrificed your entire life, which is why it is hard for you to forgive someone who cheats you out of what you have earned. But it is doing the hard things that makes a man great,” she said. She stood on tiptoes so she could see him better. “Be a hero, Daniel. Be the kind of man who can weather the storms hurled at you and emerge stronger and better than before.”

What kind of man did he want to be? A man so small he valued the bricks and mortar of his ruined house more than the love of this awe-inspiring woman? A man whose resilience paled in comparison to a seventeen-year-old street thug who had managed to turn his life around? He leaned down to Clara.

“If Bane is truly repentant, he is going to answer every question I have about who paid him to kidnap you.”

“Agreed.”

“And I swear on my father’s grave, if Bane dares to implicate Ian Carr, I will know for certain he is on Alfred Forsythe’s payroll. The two of them are likely thick as thieves.”

Clara’s eyes dimmed. “I don’t think Bane has anyone left in the world.” And as they left the room, Daniel knew that she was wrong.

Bane had Clara.

D
aniel stood in the corner of the room, his arms folded across his chest as he watched Clara sit at Bane’s bedside, the young man’s slim hand clasped between her palms. “You need to tell us the truth, Bane,” she said softly. “I can’t go through the rest of my life wondering when another attempt is going to be made on my life.”

Bane was gazing at Clara with a dazed half smile. It bore no resemblance to the smirks and the nonchalant taunts he had seen on Bane’s face earlier. If Daniel didn’t know better, he’d think the boy was infatuated with Clara.

“I told you,” Bane said. “Your robber-baron boyfriend needs to clean up his business affairs if he wants to keep you safe. I never would have been so careless with your safety if you’d been with me.”

Daniel gritted his teeth. He would throttle the boy if he dared to make a false move toward Clara, or if he suggested that Ian Carr had betrayed him.

“A little more specificity would be a big help, Bane,” Clara said.

Bane’s lazy gaze traveled to Daniel. “You really ought to take a closer look at Ian Carr,” he said.

“You’re not even worthy to speak that man’s name,” Daniel ground out.

Bane shrugged. “Probably not. But Carr doesn’t know much about raising a family. His son is a lazy waste of a man with a mistress he can’t afford and a hankering for the finer things in life. When I talked to Jamie Carr, he was obsessed with all the riches you have cost him by refusing to sell stock in the company.”

Daniel felt his eyes widen. It was true that Jamie Carr had always lacked the drive that made his father such an outstanding man of business. Ian had long despaired of his son’s profligate ways, but how on earth would murdering Clara bring Jamie the fortune he craved?

“The plan was for me to kidnap both Manzetti and Clara,” Bane continued. “I’d keep Manzetti drugged and out of commission for a few days. Long enough for us to bump Clara off and plant the evidence in Manzetti’s house. We’d leave some incriminating evidence from Manzetti’s house on Clara’s body, as well as a fat wad of cash that had been withdrawn from your bank. We made a hefty withdrawal from your account last week. Forgery is one of my sadly underutilized talents, and it was laughable how easily your bank was deceived.”

Clara shook her head. “How was framing Daniel for killing me going to make Jamie Carr rich? Surely all of Daniel’s assets would have gone to his sisters.”

Daniel felt the blood in his veins turn to ice. “If I were out of the company, Ian would have proceeded to take our company public. He would have sold our technology to Forsythe, and the company would have made a killing on the stock market. Jamie would have been as rich as any Vanderbilt or Carnegie.” Instead, Jamie was going to prison, and Ian Carr was going to be destroyed seeing his only child taken from him.

“Bane, why did you burn down Daniel’s house?” Clara asked. “How did that fit into the plan?”

The smirk was back. “Oh, that was my idea. I told Jamie no one would believe Daniel would take out Clara over a stupid newspaper article, and that he ought to make it look like he was mad at her over all the labor troubles she stirred up. If he believed your meddling articles caused his house to be burned down, well, that is the sort of thing that was liable to set a man off. From what I hear, he played right into my hands, shouting at you in front of dozens of witnesses the night of the fire.”

Daniel’s eyes drifted closed. Clara’s life had been hanging by a thread, all on the whims of two adolescent boys, both acting for their own twisted means. And now that hatred and corruption was about to reach out and strangle Ian Carr, a man who had picked Daniel up out of poverty and trusted him enough to make him a business partner.

He skewered Bane with a glare. “So what made you change your mind?”

The boy flicked a glance at Clara, and Daniel thought he saw a flush redden the boy’s cheeks. “I just didn’t feel like killing her, that’s all.”

Heaven help them all; Bane was in love with Clara.

She heard the breath rush out of Daniel as he sagged against the wall. A combination of emotions warred across his face—disgust, anger, exhaustion. But mostly he simply looked bleak.

He pushed away from the wall. “I’ve had enough of this,” he said and bolted from the room. He spoke the words in a voice so soft she could barely hear it. At first she thought Daniel was merely leaving the room, but she heard his treads on the stairway and then the slamming of the front door.

Clara bounded down the stairs and followed him outside, the glare of sunlight making her squint as she raced to catch Daniel. Her satin slippers were not meant for running, and tiny pebbles managed to work their way inside. She was limping by the time she caught up to Daniel on the cobblestone street.

He barely spared her a glance as he kept striding toward the end of the street. “You don’t need to say anything, Clara. I know you want me to forgive Bane, but I don’t know if that is possible. I will vomit if I have to spend one more second in his presence.”

Clara reached out an arm to slow him. “Daniel, please. Tell me what I can do to make this easier for you.” She didn’t expect him to stop so quickly, and she nearly ran into him when he halted and turned to look at her.

“
You
offering me comfort . . . how rich,” he said with a bitter twist to his mouth. “Don’t you understand, Clara? I am responsible for this entire disaster. It is my fault you were kidnapped, my fault that Ian is about to lose his only son. It is all toxic poison from my private feud with Alfred Forsythe.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “This was
Jamie Carr’s
doing. You can’t accept responsibility for that.”

“Fine, then. There is plenty of blame to spread around, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m at the center of this stinking heap.” He faced her, and the anger drained from his face, replaced by a raw, aching agony in his eyes. The fingers of his hand were trembling as he laid them against her cheek.

“Clara, all I’ve ever wanted to do was make you happy, to give you a tiny shred of the joy you have shown me. Back when I was working in the steel mills, I wanted to lay the world at your feet, but I could barely afford the clothes on my back. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for you, because Clara, from the moment I met you, your friendship has given me a glimpse of what paradise must be like.”

She clasped his hand to the side of her face, fearing that the lump swelling in her throat was about to make her start bawling like a baby right there on the street, but Daniel hadn’t finished speaking. “I’ve never done you much good,” he said. “I got you shipped off to England when you were still just a child, and ever since you’ve been back I’ve delivered fresh rounds of misery to you. You have asked for precious little of me, and I have disappointed you at every turn.”

“Not true! Daniel—” The finger he laid across her lips stifled her.

“If you had asked me to fetch you pebbles from the surface of the moon, I would not rest until I had found a way to make it happen. Instead, you’ve asked me to forgive Forsythe and Bane. It would be so easy to tell you that all is forgiven, but it would be a lie. To this hour I have rage festering inside me, and I want them both to suffer for what they’ve done.”

He turned her wrist so that the bruise where Bane had driven the needle into her arm was exposed in the harsh light of day. Daniel bent his head, and the touch of his lips on her injured flesh was so gentle it was as though a butterfly had brushed against her skin. When he straightened, his face showed all the exhaustion of the last few days.

“But I
will
find a way to do as you ask,” he said in a voice as soft as cashmere. He tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear before pulling her toward him to kiss her forehead. “I’m not sure how, but I’ll find a way to do it. Clara, I will love you until my dying hour. I haven’t done a very good job of making you happy yet, but I’m going to work harder at that.”

He tilted her chin up so he could place a kiss on her lips. “I need to be on my own while I figure out how to accomplish this. Give me some time, Clara, and I promise I will find a way to do this.”

Clara stood frozen on the sidewalk, watching Daniel’s back as he strode down the street. With every fiber in her being she wanted to spring into a run and chase after him, offer him help or understanding, or even a shoulder to lean against.

But Daniel’s instincts were right. She could not fix this for him. Seeking the Lord’s peace and coming to terms with the bitter enmity that had been festering within him for decades was something only he could do.

That evening, Clara was stunned to see Bane up and dressed when she brought him his dinner tray. He had obviously gone into her room, because he was wearing the boys’ clothing she had discarded that morning.

“Get back into that bed,” she gasped, worried that he would tear his stitches, if he had not done so already. She dumped the tray on the bedside table and scurried to prop him up and lead him back into bed.

“Take it easy with that tray,” Bane said. “That looks like chicken soup you are being so careless with.” Bane looked ravenous as he eyed the liquid still sloshing in the bowl.

“It is, and you’re not getting any of it unless you sit down and start behaving like an invalid.”

Bane sat on the edge of the mattress and picked up the bowl, wolfing down the soup before she could suggest that she wanted him
horizontal
in bed. “Sorry, no time to play invalid,” he said between gulps of soup. “I want to be out of Baltimore before the sun rises tomorrow.”

“So quickly?” The knowledge that in a few short hours she would never see Bane again was oddly painful. Somehow, now that she was safe at home it had been easier to minimize the danger that surrounded Bane, but he hadn’t lost sight of it for a second.

“I certainly don’t want anyone knowing I was ever under your roof,” Bane said. “The sooner I’m out of town, the safer all of us will be. Manzetti said he would give me a ride to the railroad tracks. I’ll hop a freight train out of town.”

Bane went back to shoveling the soup down his throat. She drew a ragged breath when she realized this was likely to be the last hot meal Bane would enjoy for a very long time. Before she could dwell on it, her practical mind snapped into gear and she returned to the kitchen for another bowl of soup. She placed some cheese and a loaf of bread in a sack for him to take. She scanned the nearly bare pantry, wishing there was something else she could give to help ensure Bane’s safety. The bread and cheese seemed so inadequate as she set the bag beside him on the bed.

“For your travels,” she said. How would Bane even be able to walk, let alone hop on a passing freight train, with a fresh gunshot wound in his side?

“Thanks,” he said as he polished off the remainder of the second bowl of soup. This was surely the last time she would ever see Bane, and a surge of regret filled her heart at the thought.

Bane must have caught the mournful look on her face, because he flashed her one of those reckless grins and reached up to remove one of the tiny diamond studs in his ear. Before she realized what he was doing, he pinned it through the collar of her dress. “That’s to remember me by,” he said. “If I survive the year, I’ll send you the other one.”