Unfinished (Historical Fiction) (2 page)

“Mother!” Lilith cried, leaning down and elevating Margaret's head. “Michael!” she screamed, calling for their coachman. Heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs as Lilith lowered her ear to Margaret's mouth. Relief flooded her at the feel of hot breath against her earlobe, her hand checking for a heartbeat and finding it steady. The man thumped up the stairs, reeking of tobacco and flush-faced with surprise.

“Mrs. Stone? What happened?” Michael asked, leaning down and delicately sliding his arms under her legs and waist. Lifting Margaret seemed to rouse her enough to murmur something like “You can't know.” Lilith swallowed hard, the pebble of truth reappearing. Her mother's secret was her own, a different sort of obstacle that, thus far, had traveled through two generations. Not quite timeless, yet persistent nonetheless.

Removing her coat and draping Margaret with it, she shooed Michael toward the door, a man of barely twenty carrying Margaret's tiny, elegant frame, careful to catch each step without stumbling. As Cornelia and Marjorie flitted about their biddie friend, the medium slipped from the room, glancing back nervously at Lilith as if being a conduit were a contagious disease.

No more séances.
Whatever lies stood in Lilith's way, none were worth her mother's health.

Or Evangeline Wolf's dead eyes.

Chapter Two

L
ILITH
NEVER EXPECTED TO BE STARING
into her father's eyes when she lost her virginity.

The early autumn evening was the perfect setting for John Alastair Stone's annual Beacon Hill event, the party that would fuel the society pages of newspapers within one hundred miles for weeks to come. Though Stone had spent the last few years in Toronto with his wife and daughters, he'd been born, raised, and machine-honed by the Mayflower pedrigreed family that had lived on Beacon Hill for generations. Now he'd come back to roost.

The Harvard-Boston Aero Meet was the topic of choice, as most of the party's guests had attended the airplane show. President Taft had been in town, and John Stone had met with him, a fact he worked into every handshake, each conversation, and any offhand comment he could. Former Mayor Fitzgerald monopolized as much of Stone's attention as possible, discussing a business venture with the billionaire, and Lilith gratefully took the opportunity, out from under her father's surveillance, to achieve her goal.

That night, Lilith positioned herself with Jack Reed, her father's new lawyer, and flirted until he knew exactly how to get her. And then she let herself be caught. The gardens were lush with ripe, turned Japanese maples and oak trees pregnant and laboring to drop their gold, pumpkin and adobe leaves on the New Hampshire granite stone floor. A bundle of mature hostas under a small maple tree provided ample ground cover and shade for Lilith and Jack.

“Are you sure?” he murmured into her lips, his mouth a buffet of red wine and garlic.

“Of course,” she purred. She was done with her maidenhead, ready to discard it like a broken pen or an old, torn towel. It did her no good, and at twenty-four it was a nasty reminder that she'd held on to her virginity for all the wrong reasons. In the beginning she was a good girl and stayed pure because her mother insisted. After a few years, though, she found that remaining a virgin was easy; finding a man worth sleeping with was the hard part.

No man met her standards.

And now her hymen was a niggling bother, something that she'd likely lost years ago riding horses at her father’s country estate, but whether the actual membrane was intact did not matter to Lilith. In fact, she doubted it, given her time at McLean and the treatments she'd received. The symbolism, however, was critical. She needed to free herself from the straightjacket of her untouched vagina.

Well, untouched by passion.

And with her consent.

An obstacle in her soul's path. Indeed.

Jack seemed nice enough, with a well-muscled body he hid under professional dress. Her eye had been drawn to him for the past year, a sympathetic man who seemed uncowed by her wealth and mind, though keen to exploit the former if it met his ambitions. A social-climbing lawyer, she knew he'd view this as a conquest but would, if need be, remain discreet. She also knew that she could trigger her father's temper with one careful whisper hissed within hearing distance of the worst Boston gossips.

Having a twenty-four year old, unmarried daughter was a source of great embarrassment to John Stone. Knowing she'd given herself up to a lawyer, a near servant in her father's eyes, would be unforgivable. Yet she could not help herself. Surges of desire consumed her these days, as if the recognition of the obstacle made it the center of all being. Right now her focal point was a hot spot of flesh that took over her mind, her senses, her nerves and her heart.

You're not untouched
, a voice inside her whispered, like a snake sharing gossip, the hiss an echo that stretched out from seven years ago to now. She pushed it aside, imagining a hand reaching for a door to a cage that enclosed the snake. Whatever had happened in the mental ward was done. It could not be undone.

But this? This she could control.

Lilith smiled through another sloppy kiss. Jack took it as encouragement and a slow hand slid up her ribcage, searching for a breast. His other hand slid up her leg, past the garter clasp and under her bloomers to find her already wet. She'd known it would feel illicit to have a man's touch under dress but had not anticipated how her body would respond, the maddening flush of need and craving that would replace her racing thoughts. The quelling of intellect and the piquing of passion, the rush of want that only his mouth, his hands, his manhood could fill.

And all on her terms.

He groaned and she threw herself into the kiss, less from passion and more as an object lesson. This is how you kiss someone when you are about to make love. This is how it feels when his hand caresses your inner thigh. This is how it feel when his touch is wanted. This is how it feels when he places your hand on his clothed bulge. This is how you grasp an erect –

And then her father's voice boomed into the open air above their heads.

Now she began to enjoy herself, welcoming Reed's mouth against her own, a yearning tongue finding each inch of her, movements strong and close, helping to unleash a pent-up frustration that she'd carried for years, desperate now for release in the arms of a man whom she invited into her body.

“What a lovely night for a party, Fitzgerald.” A voice replied, its tone accented with an Irish lilt, but Lilith couldn't make out the words. “What's the return on investment, then?” her father replied, his voice conspiratorial and cunning.

He paused. His tone changed, a smile coming through his words. “And, apparently, young love is in bloom, even in this late autumn!” His baritone laugh carried through the garden and Jack froze, his arm wrapped around Lilith, holding one hip in his hand, inches from consummating the moment.

She pulled back and Jack's face made her laugh, his features a mask of horror, a guttural, yet silent, scream trying to come out. If her father, the richest man in Toronto and one of the richest in Boston, learned he'd slept with his daughter, not only would Jack lose his job, he'd likely be blackballed forever. Yet he wanted her still, a fact that warmed her. No one had dared make advances on John Stone's daughter. She'd been the one blackballed, rejected for her too-strong opinions and for the random event of being the gateway to a billion-dollar fortune that simultaneously attracted and repelled.

“Lilith!” Jack hissed.

“Kiss me,” she said, shifting her head to the right, the light from a gas lamp on the upper balcony spilling over her forehead and eyes.

Jack stayed still. Her heart dropped.

Lilith looked up without thinking, her head bent back, and met her father's eyes. The shock made her go slack, a chill running through her, driving all arousal from her as if she'd jumped off the Titanic in a fit of panic.

Seeing her wiped the smile off his face. Red coals of anger ignited in his eyes. He whipped around and stomped off the balcony.

Jack pulled away from her and began tucking his shirt back into his pants. “Your father! He heard us. What was I thinking? What were you thinking? I was drunk. You, you...tricked me!” Jack hastily made up his clothing, buttons half done and jacket askew. He wouldn't meet her eyes and she hardened.

“How did I trick you? Did I cast a spell and force you? Poison your drink? Make your penis attempt to enter my vagina?” She arched one eyebrow and now viewed him with disdain that – she hoped – covered her humiliation. For all she'd thought she would feel about losing her virginity, she'd not expected to find the man she'd nearly slept with to be so mousy. Cowardly. Relief filled her; she'd narrowly avoided giving herself up to this disappointment.

The relief battled an overwhelming vulnerability.

Sarcasm won out.

His nose wrinkled and his upper lip pulled up to reveal extremely crooked teeth as a look of revulsion passed over his face. “That's a vulgar way to put it!”

“And having sex with me in my father's open garden isn't vulgar?”

Jack's features had been of no importance when Lilith chose him, but now his eyes were a bit too deeply set, his chin a shade receding, and though he could do nothing about the crooked teeth, his brown hair needed a good haircut. It looked like his mother put a bowl on his head and cut, then piled lard from a homegrown pig as a pomade. She sniffed. Smelled like it, too.

She shook her head and turned, not waiting for a response. The hurt would flood her later, the pain of being used would sink in. But right now the only safe response was cool, calm rejection. Reject him before he could strike first. She could cry and feel and mourn and rejoice later. Right now, she needed to regroup.

The obstacle would remain intact, and right now she was a conduit only for her father's anger.

“My God, Lilith, what were you thinking?” her father roared. She'd seen a lion at the Bronx Zoo many summers ago, and he did, in fact sound like a lion. His beard and hair, both in need of a trim, added to the appearance of the African animal. John Stone looked a bit like an unkempt Andrew Carnegie, though taller and broader in the shoulders. He exuded disappointment in the world and in every human being he met, the waves as pungent as body odor. No one could please him, yet so many tried.

Lilith had decided long ago to stop trying to please him and, instead, to keep him in a constant state of irritation and horror regarding her activities. She knew she'd gone too far this time, though.

“You...that was an abomination against nature! Looking at me while you...” his voice trailed off into a low growl that ended in a spitting gesture.

A knock on the door startled them both.

“I've called for a review of your grandfather's trust,” Stone announced, a smug expression filling his jowled face.

“You can't do that!” Lilith replied. A cold flush ran through her arms and legs while her chest heated with a red blush, her hand creeping to her clavicle, fluttering there, transmitting the rapid heartbeat that took her during moments of conflict. Usually with her father.

“The provisions are quite clear,” she continued. “I inherit when I turn twenty-five. Should I marry before thirty, I lose the funds. Grandfather was careful to make sure you have no control,” she added. “Likely for moments just like this,” she muttered.

“Come in,” Stone announced to the callers at the door, ignoring Lilith's words.

Jack Reed walked in, a tight, professional expression pasted on his face. When his eyes settled on Lilith he paled, swallowed hard, and tried to look at anything other than Lilith or John, finally settling on the cuticle of his left thumb.

This did not escape John Stone's attention.

“Mr. Reed, you've come here to converse with me. Not with your digit.”

Reed startled and made eye contact with his client. “Yes, sir.”

“And who have you brought?”

An enormous man stood in the doorway behind Reed. Easily a foot and a half taller than Lilith's five foot even frame, he resembled a bear more than a man. Thick, coarse auburn hair slicked into submission couldn't be tamed; full-formed coils sprung from the lumpy, greasy mess at odd angles, attempting escape. His eyebrows were nearly as thick as one of Lilith's wrists, but the bright green eyes under the woolly canopies scanned the room with intelligence and cold calculation. He looked to be Lilith's age, and she pondered his weight. His chest mirrored the circumference of a wagon wheel. He was, nearly literally, a mountain of a man.