Unfinished (Historical Fiction) (8 page)

A distant whistle broke the cold night air and they both jumped, startled from their fog of lust. James held up his hand, a gesture of silence. Her body went cold with fear and irritation, a frustration that settled into her pores rather than her mind.

“Now that's a fancy carriage!” James knew the voice instantly.
Goddammit, Bobby – do you have to ruin everything?
Having nine siblings was bad enough; he had to share everything. Sharing this moment was cruel, though, and if he'd have believed in God beyond the Catholic ritual he'd have cursed Him.

Furiously quick, James moved Lilith off his lap and did up his buttons. Unfocused and drunk on lust, Lilith was dazed. He paused, his heart aching with the sweetness of this moment.
That
. He wanted that look on her face, every day, every morning and night, in his bed, legs wrapped around him, mouth open and hungry for more, sated yet insatiable, inelegant and primal.

But right now he had to deal with his brother.

“Bobby, back off!” he shouted, sticking his head out a small window.

“James?” Thirteen years old and shaped like a string bean, Bobby was the antithesis of James. He looked more like Da than Ma, and James had taken after the men on his mother's side, thick and huge, with a side of sarcasm.

“Yes, James. Don't be getting any ideas,” he growled, the threat clear.

“You in there with someone?” Bobby asked, the leer loud and clear in his voice.

“Go away before I beat you,” James warned. “I won't tell you again.”

“I'll go tell Ma what you're up to. You got some expensive whore in there? How'd you get the money?”

Lilith clapped one hand over her mouth at the word “whore,” he eyes going wide with mirth.
Glad someone is amused by all this
, he thought.

“You're right, Bobby. You figured it out. I'm sleeping with a whore in a fancy carriage outside Tinker's. How smart you are, for a boy who left school in fifth grade. Now get!”

Bobby ran off and shouted, “Hey, Pat! You won't believe this! Come see!” A few curtains in dimly-lit windows pulled back and James knew he'd just provided more stories for the gossips than any racing paper.

The coachman chose that moment to stagger out of the door to Tinker's. “What's going on?” he asked Bobby with a slurred roll to his words.

Lilith grabbed James' hands and pulled them to her chest. Her heart beat like a big bass drum. “He'll be here any moment and then I need to go. My father is leaving town on Thursday – can we meet again then?”

He opened one hand and placed his palm inside the “v” of her shirt, the hot flesh a balm for his nerves. “Yes. But there's something I have to tell you – ”

“Tell me Thursday,” she whispered, eyes going hard as the coachman appeared. Her entire being changed, back straightening and eyes hooded with a sheen of frost that belied the heated scene he could feel, still trapped in his trousers, the ache tempered only by decent social expectations and the coachman's appearance.

“Yes, Ms. Stone. I'll follow your instructions carefully, and let Mr. Reed know how you'd like your business conducted,” James said loudly, his stage voice just enough to catch the ear of the coachman. He climbed out of the carriage.

Lilith moved to sit in the center of the padded seat and nodded politely, as if his hand hadn't just seared her breast, as if hers hadn't just given him an exquisite caress that he'd carry home with him. Her closing off pained him, a piercing of his consciousness that tasted like turned communion wine.

The coachman muttered, “I think Jack Reed's been in quite enough of her business already,” then winked at James.

It took every ounce of control not to knock him out. That would be his only victory over his emotions that night.

As the carriage pulled away he took a few steps toward home and winced. The shoes, like his pants, were too tight, a painful reminder that nothing about him fit quite right anywhere.

Chapter Five

D
EAR
L
ILITH
,

B
EFORE WE MEET
on Thursday, I must tell you something that could change your mind. I am leaving for the country of Chile in two months. For the past two years I have spent considerable time on a business venture dealing with the sodium nitrate trade, and have brokered a business deal in which I will have my own mine there. I realize this is an unusual story and, very well, may be one that you find preposterous, but I assure you it is true. You may ask my business associate, Maria Escola, about the venture; her father has provided the capital for the mine.

The other night I asked you what this is. I no longer need a name for it or a label, but as a gentleman I felt it necessary to tell you that my long-term prospects are in South America and not here in Boston. Should you wish to no longer see me, I fully understand.

Yours,

James

Lilith read the letter four times consecutively, snorting each time she read “Maria Escola” and “business associate.” The pieces of the puzzle fit, then; a poor boy from Southie with aspirations slept his way to capital money from Maria's father.

Ouch.

Was Lilith a conquest, too? With a father with deeper pockets?

Two could play this game. But she didn't want to. It wasn't a game when she had feelings for him; then it was just masochism.

So she wrote back:

Dear James,

I am sorry to hear of your pending departure. I am certain you will enjoy your time in Chile. I've heard Maria Escola talk fondly of her family's home in Santiago.

Sincerely,

Lilith

“Oh, Jaaaayyyyy-meeeee. You got yourself a fancy letter here!” Bobby crowed, trying to taunt James with a fine watermarked envelope. Lilith. He was expecting some sort of response and tore it open eagerly, leaving Bobby breathlessly jumping up and down behind him, trying to read over James' mountain of a shoulder.

The words left a tinny taste in his mouth. He expected rejection. Hoped she'd still meet him. But this?

This made no sense.

Even after his fourth reading, the words jumbled in his mind. What did she know about Maria? Why would she bring her up? His hands curled and uncurled, forming fists and releasing, crumpling the thick, fine paper. His relationship with Maria was open. He'd never been that fond of her, but when he'd read about sodium nitrate and possibilities in Chile, and then seen a few poor kids from Southie go to Latin America and come back rich, he'd hatched a plan.

Sleeping with Maria had never been part of that plan, but it had its perks. She used him to make another lover jealous. He used her to gain access to her father's ear. Marco Escola was a minor character on the Boston social register but in Latin America he was the great-grandson of a Viceroy and had the pockets to prove it.

Investing a few thousand in James' mines was nothing to him, but was everything to James.

So why would Lilith bring this up?

His tight shoes still bedeviled him, thick, red welts burning as he strode. Walking the streets had been his balm for years but now this simple problem made him stumble – literally – and he had no way out. Escola's money didn't extend to his daily life; he'd receive a ship's passage and basic supplies in Chile and nothing more until – unless – he made his mark. And his fortune.

A fortune, he hoped, that might not rival John Stone's but that would set him for life. Allow for a wife.

Lilith.

Ah, he willed the thought away, yet it crept back in, like gnat in summer's hot sauna that wouldn't stop hovering. Her note didn't say no to Thursday's meeting.

But it didn't say yes.

Damn it, woman! What was this trick? He was simple. Eat when hungry. Have sex when a woman was willing. Work when money was needed. Create opportunity when despair made it necessary.

These games the rich played, with words and
bon mots
and the social mazes that only leisure could allow, were so petty.

James used what he knew – forthrightness – as his only weapon.

Dear Lilith,

If you're asking me whether I am sleeping with Maria Escola, the answer is no. If you have other questions, please ask me directly.

I'll show you how this is done in my neighborhood: do you wish for me to visit you on Thursday, as planned?

No airs. No innuendo. Just a straight question.

Sincerely,

James

The servant left James' note on her dresser. Lilith read it quickly and felt a flush of heat and anger barrel through her. Of course! How stupid of her. Delivering the perfect barb jabbed at the right moment without ownership of the poisoned word had been imprinted on her since birth, it seemed. James lived by a different social code.

And yet...he hadn't answered the question of whether he was sleeping his way from millions to billions. If she were a notch on his well-worn belt, then...

Then what?

Did it matter? Would she sleep with him if it meant nothing more to him than a luscious encounter? A way station to investment? A connection to money he could only witness from afar?

The touch of his fingers on her chest felt as fresh, now, as it had the other night. Rising heat drifted from her womanhood to her heart, a relief map of desire.

Was it dignity she sought? A guarantee that he might have feelings deeper than the blood that would fill him enough to take what he wanted? She fought to be a modern woman, to claim that women could have what men had, yet here she struggled with very dainty feelings that threatened to reduce her to the sort of muddle-headed frivolity that she despised.

In the heat of her fury, her wanton reckless abandon, she composed a note and quickly handed it to a courier.

Dear Mr. Hillman,

My direct answer: yes.

And now, my direct question: are you mapping a path through Beacon Hill that will be marked by sexual encounters with women of increasing net worth? And if so, to what purpose? I assure you that John Stone has no interest in any man who considers his daughter's vagina a conduit for investment.

Sincerely,

Miss Stone

Bribing his way into John Stone's five-story Beacon Hill mansion had not been easy, but he knew too many people who knew a cousin who worked on Beacon Hill who knew a servant in the Stone family home for it to be impossible. A promise to help a friend's aunt's daughter's husband with an application for a clerk's position with his law firm was enough to get back door entry. Access was the grease that lubricated where money could not.

Here he stood, skulking about the servants' stairwell, squeezing into passages that threatened to cut off the blood supply to his arms. It was Thursday night, and he stood outside her door and tried to find a way to ask her if he could come inside and talk to her. He'd read the final letter and realized that this was what she did. She used a bitter, caustic sarcasm and wit to express her anger, then she'd cool down later. Right now he was as concerned with talking to her as he was with controlling his raging arousal. The angrier she got the more it excited him, and he wanted to strip off her clothes and take her right there on the hallway floor.