Words Spoken True (7 page)

He looked puzzled, unsure of her meaning at first. “Which announcement is that? No candidates have officially filed for office yet, have they?”

“No, Father. I mean the announcement of Stan’s and my engagement.” The smile fled his face, and Adriane rushed on before he could speak. “I need time to get used to the idea.”

“What is there to get used to, Adriane? You’ve been seeing Stanley for months. He’s a good man from a fine upstanding family, and he’ll be able to provide well for you. Your future will be secure.”

Again the word “secure” echoed hollowly inside her head. Her heart was beating too fast and her hands felt clammy, but she made herself put forth her best argument against the union. “I don’t love Stan, Father.”

Her father frowned and with his hands on the blotter pushed himself up to a standing position. He leaned across the desk to stare straight at her. “Love? What romantic nonsense is this?”

Her heart began pounding even harder, but Adriane stood her ground. “Marriage should be a union of love.”

“You’ll learn to love Stanley,” her father said.

“I’m not sure that I can, Father.”

He pushed away from his desk and tried to pace back and forth, but there wasn’t room between the shelves of books and stacks of papers. So instead he stood still a moment and stared at the wall.

Adriane had seen him do the same thing a thousand times when he was searching for the right way to word his arguments in an important editorial. When at last he began speaking again, it was slowly and with great care, as though she might not be capable of understanding. Adriane had heard him speak to opposing editors in the very same tone, and her heart sank. He was going to refuse to understand.

“My dear, I think you have some misconceptions about the union of marriage. You mustn’t believe what you read in those ladies’ magazines or the silly novels some women are writing these days. Love is not the most important factor in a marriage. Far from it, in fact.”

Adriane started to say something, but her father cut her off. “You can’t argue with me on this, Adriane. I have more experience than you. I’ve been married twice.”

“I know,” Adriane said quietly. “I lived through one of those marriages. I saw how it destroyed Henrietta.”

They had not spoken of Henrietta since her funeral over ten years ago, and now her father’s eyes burned into Adriane even as he answered in his calmest voice. “It was not the lack of love that destroyed poor Henrietta but the lack of babies. And there was nothing I could do about that. The fault was with her.”

Adriane wanted to ask what it was that had destroyed her own mother, but she dared not voice the question, even though Henrietta’s words that her mother had wanted to die echoed in her head. Instead Adriane said, “And do you love Lucilla?”

Her father met her look directly. “I am very fond of Lucilla. She’s a lovely woman, but love is not the most important consideration in our decision to marry.”

“What is, Father?”

“Comfort. Security. Lucilla has both to offer me. Stanley Jimson has both to offer you.”

“I’m happy with my life the way it is.”

At last his eyes softened on her. “But you can’t stay my child all your life, Adriane. Lucilla says it’s not proper to have you working so much on the paper and neglecting the more important things a young lady your age should be doing. She says it’s time you married.”

“And what do you say, Father?”

“Lucilla is a woman. She knows more about these sorts of things than I.”

“I am a woman too.”

Her father came around the desk to take her hands. “You are. A very beautiful woman, but Lucilla tells me I have neglected your proper upbringing. That you know more about being a man than you do a woman and that you are very fortunate to have someone like Stanley Jimson who adores you as you are.”

“I’m not at all sure that is true.”

“But it is. He thinks you’re the most wonderful girl he’s ever known.” Her father was smiling again now. “Remember, he talked to me yesterday.”

“He doesn’t know the real Adriane Darcy.”

Her father squeezed her hands a bit and laughed gently at her. “There is only one Adriane Darcy, my dear. And since he’s been keeping company with you for a good while, I’m certainly sure he’s aware of the type of person you are. He respects and admires your talents and individuality.”

“His mother has taken to her bed.” Adriane wasn’t sure why she brought up Meta Jimson except that she was running out of other arguments.

“Meta has always been too possessive when it comes to Stanley. She would be upset no matter whom he had chosen to marry, but given time, she will learn to love you.”

“It appears we all have a lot of learning to do.” Adriane squared her shoulders as she looked directly into her father’s eyes. “I’m not sure I can go through with it, Father. Not unless I have time to adjust to the idea.”

“The marriage won’t have to be right away. You’ll have plenty of time to appreciate all the advantages of marriage to Stanley Jimson, and by the day of the happy event, you’ll be eager to join with him in holy matrimony.”

Adriane pulled her hands away from her father’s touch. She studied his face a moment longer before she said, “What if I refuse? What if I say I cannot marry Stan?”

“Cannot?”

“All right.” She lifted her chin defiantly. “Will not.”

He looked at her sadly for a moment. “You’re twenty-two, Adriane. There are decisions that I suppose I cannot make for you anymore. This may very well be one of them, but you know how I feel. I want you to marry Stanley. I think he will make you happy, and I know it would make Lucilla and me very happy to see you in such a good situation before we marry ourselves. I don’t think you should make any kind of foolish decisions just because of a silly, romantic notion about love.”

“And what happens if I do make the ‘foolish’ decision not to marry Stan?”

Her father’s sadness now was mixed with a bit of anxious concern as he began to realize how serious Adriane was. “I really don’t know. I suppose I might be able to help you obtain a position as a teacher in one of the female academies in the North, although that wouldn’t be what I would wish for you, my dear.” Again he frowned. “And the Jimsons will naturally be upset. Coleman Jimson might withdraw his support from the
Tribune
, perhaps even insist on replacing me as editor.”

“How could he do that? The
Tribune
is your paper.”

Her father went back to stand behind his desk. He stared down at the papers there for a moment before he answered. “A little over a year ago we were short of cash and Coleman loaned me some money. I haven’t been able to repay him as yet.” He looked up at Adriane. “I will, of course, but he has been very considerate and has allowed me to take my time gathering the necessary funds. You understand, don’t you, Adriane?”

And at last she did. The words came hard, but she said them. “Yes, Father. And perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I am being too romantic.”

“You are fond of Stanley, aren’t you, Adriane?” Frown lines wrinkled his face as he peered across the desk at her.

“Of course. We’ve been friends for a long time.”

So much relief washed over her father’s face that Adriane feared he hadn’t told her everything, but she didn’t ask any more questions. She simply listened as he said, “I feel very sure Stanley will make you very happy, Adriane. I wouldn’t have agreed to any of this, no matter what, in any other case.”

“I know, Father.” Adriane forced a smile. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d best begin dressing for the party tonight.”

Again he came around the desk, this time to lay his hand on her cheek. It was the most affectionate gesture they ever exchanged, and Adriane wished for one crazy moment that he would hug her. “You will look beautiful in your new dress,” he said.

Adriane turned away from him and fled the office before he could see the tears in her eyes.

Upstairs in her room, the beautiful blue dress spread across her bed mocked her. Adriane blinked away her tears and ran her fingers across the sleek fabric. She had to wear the dress. She understood that now. Slowly her hand moved up to touch one of the small bows decorating the neckline. Adriane had wanted Nora to take the bows off, but the dressmaker had assured her they were the latest rage on all the most fashionable dresses.

Adriane brushed away the last trace of tears and found her small sewing scissors on top of her bureau. With great care she snipped the threads holding the bows and pulled them off the dress. She might have to wear the dress. She did not have to wear the bows.

B
lake Garrett sat at his desk and stared at the blank paper in front of him. He should have had the piece about Mrs. Wigginham’s little benefit written an hour ago. All he had to do was wax eloquent about Mrs. Wigginham’s noble desire to expand the holdings of the library and the fine support the ladies of the community were giving her efforts. He ought to be able to write the piece in his sleep, but thoughts of Adriane Darcy kept pushing everything else out of his mind.

He’d stayed at Mrs. Wigginham’s far longer than the half hour he had planned, talking to a dozen pretty young things who tried to enlighten him on the meaning of the flowers a gentleman might send a lady. Silly little Cordie Fricklan had even found a copy of a book detailing this gentle art of expression in Mrs. Wigginham’s parlor to show Blake. He feigned interest, all the while secretly watching Adriane Darcy.

He kept thinking he must have seen her somewhere before. Something about her was so familiar, especially those wonderful eyes, but he would remember if he had. No man was likely to forget meeting such a beautiful woman. While his eyes were pulled to her like iron filings to a magnet, she ignored him completely as she worked her way through the guests with young Jimson dancing attendance on her.

Every time Jimson caught Blake’s eyes on Adriane, he glared across the room at Blake. Blake merely smiled back, half taunting the man. Stanley Jimson was a milksop, a mama’s boy. The talk around town was that even his father had little use for him in spite of the fact Stanley was his only son.

Blake stared across his desk at the posters and news articles tacked to the wall in front of him without seeing any of the words. Behind him Joe was shouting at one of the hands, but Blake was only vaguely aware of the noise.

He shouldn’t have told Adriane she had his sympathy. Still, he wasn’t sorry he’d said what he had. A woman like Adriane Darcy should not even consider marrying a man like Jimson. Blake wondered what would have happened that afternoon if he had charged across Mrs. Wigginham’s parlor to forcibly remove Adriane from the man’s clutches and help her make her escape.

He smiled a little at the foolish thought. She, no doubt, had no desire to be rescued, since women generally set great store on marrying well. If he’d learned nothing else from his tragic affair with Eloise, he learned that.

He’d had nothing to offer Eloise but the infatuation of a foolish young man with dreams of someday running his own newspaper. Her father wasted little time pointing out to his daughter that dreams could not supply fancy dresses and servants, much less a house in the better parts of town where society ladies would stop in to leave their cards.

Any hint of a smile vanished from Blake’s face as he rubbed his forehead. He didn’t often think of Eloise, but here she had come back to haunt him twice in one day. It was the murders that brought her to mind, he supposed, but it did little good to think of her now. She was beyond his help, and perhaps had been ever since she’d made her choice.

“You do understand, don’t you, Blake?” she’d told him that day almost five years ago as tears wet her pale cheeks. “It’s not that I don’t love you. I do. Desperately. But I must do as Father says.”

While Blake hadn’t understood at the time, he accepted her choice and, surprisingly, had not mourned that choice very much. Instead he embraced his newfound freedom and decided love was a distraction he could do without until after he managed to achieve his goal of having his own paper.

It remained a distraction he could do without. He picked up his pen and wrote a couple of sentences on the paper in front of him as he tried to shove thoughts of Adriane Darcy out of his head.

So what if she intrigued him? Lots of things intrigued him. Such as who the river slasher was. Such as whether or not the Irish boy he’d grabbed that morning knew anything about the murders. Such as deciding which political candidates the
Herald
should support in the spring elections. Such as making sure he beat Wade Darcy to every important headline and making the
Herald
the most widely read paper in Louisville.

“Hey, boss.” Joe came over to his desk. “Ain’t you got that piece ready to go yet? You said it wouldn’t take you five minutes.”

“It’s ready.” Blake scribbled down one last line, then glanced quickly back over the paragraph he’d written and hoped it would please the old lady. It mentioned her name three times and the good cause twice. Still, it was short and not very flowery. Adriane Darcy’s story would be better.

He handed the page to Joe who was watching him with a worried look on his face. “You ain’t sick, are you, boss?”

“I’m fine, Joe.” He smiled at the short, wiry man.

When Joe came around begging a job shortly after Blake took over the
Herald
, Blake had been ready to send him on his way, but Joe started talking before Blake could say the words.

“I need the work, Mr. Garrett, and I’m good at it. Just give me a couple of weeks to prove it to you.” Keeping his eyes on the ground, the man had twisted the rim of his hat as he went on. “I guess maybe you might’ve heard I once upon a time had a problem with the drink, but I’m married now and she’s got two little ones by her late husband—God rest his soul—and we need what money I can make for food, not the drink.”

Blake hesitated. “What experience do you have?”

“I reckon at one time or another I’ve worked for nearly every paper in town,” Joe said.

“The
Tribune
?”

“Some years back. But Mr. Darcy or his man Beck don’t put up with much in the print shop. So I didn’t last long.” Joe’s eyes darted up to Blake’s face and quickly away. “You understand that was before I give up the drink.”

“I understand,” Blake said thoughtfully. “Well, Joe, it just so happens that some of the hands walked out when they heard Mr. Chesnut had hired some fellow down from New York City.”

“I heard some talk on it. That’s why I come over.” Joe raised his head and looked directly at Blake for the first time since he’d come to the door.

Blake studied him intently. “I plan to make the
Herald
the biggest paper in this city, and in order to do that I need the right kind of men to back me up here in the shop.”

“I know just about everything there is to know about printing a paper, boss. You learn a lot moving around the way I have.”

Blake reached behind him and took an apron off the rack. “All right. You’ve got the job. We’ve been late with the last two issues. I don’t want to be late again.”

“Won’t be no late issues while I’m here, Mr. Garrett. You can count on that.”

Joe had been true to his word, staying sober and becoming as loyal to Blake and the
Herald
as a stray dog who’d finally found a home. Before a month was gone, he was practically running the shop. He knew all kinds of tricks to make the printing go faster and had a way of keeping the other hands on task. Best of all, he knew most of the other papers in the city inside and out, and he was just as anxious to see the
Herald
pass them by as Blake was.

Now Blake looked at Joe and said, “I met Wade Darcy’s daughter this afternoon.”

“Adriane?” Joe’s face softened a little. “She’s something, ain’t she, boss?”

“What do you know about her, Joe? I mean, did you meet her back when you worked for the
Tribune
?”

“Meet her?” Joe’s voice went up a level as if Blake’s question surprised him. “The girl was always in the shop helping do this or that. Beck used to say he had her setting type before she was ten. I reckon when I was there she might have been about thirteen. Pretty as a picture even back then. Not that she did much girlie stuff. She was already living and breathing the news. It was right unnatural when you thought about it.” Joe frowned a little.

“Unnatural? How do you mean?” Blake watched Joe intently as the man twisted his mouth to the side and thought about his answer.

“I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “I guess that a little girl like she was then could know what folks would want to read in the paper and what they wouldn’t. She had a feel for it, right enough. There’s plenty of ink in her blood, and that’s a fact.”

“Didn’t she go to school?” Joe’s answers were making Blake even more curious.

“Oh, I suppose she might have. I don’t rightly remember. I do remember Beck used to worry about her some, especially when he heard people talking about her.”

“What kind of talk?” Blake thought about pulling out his pencil and scribbling down a few notes the way he did when he was working on a story to make sure he kept his facts straight. But this wasn’t for a story, and it was unlikely he’d forget a word of anything he heard about Adriane Darcy.

“You know how folks are. And I don’t suppose it was exactly proper a little girl like that spending so much time working with us fellows. ’Course at that time there wasn’t nobody but me and old Beck, and I reckon we’d a both died on the spot before we’d have let any harm come to little Addie.” Joe smiled a little. “That was Beck’s pet name for her.”

“What do you think about her now?”

“I ain’t seen her for a long spell, but they say she grew up real pretty. ’Course I still hear talk about her.”

“What kind of talk?”

“Same old stuff.” Joe waved his hand in dismissal. “How this or that ain’t proper. How she’ll never find no decent gent to marry her because of the way she don’t mind telling a body what she thinks without worrying about who she’s talking to.”

“I guess they were wrong about that.” Blake pushed back his chair and stood up from his desk. “There’s a big party tonight announcing her engagement to Stanley Jimson.”

“Is that a fact? Stanley Jimson.” Joe looked thoughtful. “Who’d a thought it? But maybe she got tired of setting type.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that.” Blake watched Joe’s face as he went on. “You sound like you were really fond of her.”

Joe looked down at the floor, then back at Blake. “Now, boss, I know how you feel about the
Tribune,
but I ain’t gonna say nothing bad about the girl cause there ain’t nothing bad to say. I don’t care if she is Wade Darcy’s daughter.”

“Ease down, Joe.” Blake smiled and held his hand palm out toward Joe. “I was just curious about her. Besides, I don’t think you need to worry too much about defending her. She’s capable of that all on her own.”

“Sounds like the two of you might have had a little run-in. I wouldn’t want to make no wagers on which of you bested the other.” Joe grinned.

Blake laughed a little. “If we’d had pistols, we’d both be bleeding. That’s for sure.”

“And you say she’s planning to tie the knot with Stanley Jimson.” Joe’s smile disappeared. “I’ll bet poor old Beck is grieving some over that.”

“Why do you say that?” Blake’s eyes sharpened on Joe.

“Well, you know Stanley Jimson, boss. And old Beck fairly doted on the girl. He’d want better than that pantywaist for her. For a fact, I’d wish better than that for her my own self.”

“And who would you match her up with, Joe, if you were playing matchmaker?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” A wicked little glint lit up the man’s eyes as he stared at Blake. “You maybe, boss. The two of you together might start a newspaper dynasty. Why, you’d have your kids setting type before they could walk.”

Blake threw his head back and laughed. “Wade Darcy would shoot me first.”

“Now that could be a fact. And I reckon he’s happy as a pig in mud with the whole setup. With Jimson behind the
Tribune
, he won’t have to worry much about the
Herald
overtaking him.”

“And with the
Tribune
behind Coleman Jimson, Jimson may think his way’s clear to the state senate house.” Blake’s face tightened at the thought. He wasn’t going to let that happen without a fight.

“You saying he has another think coming, boss?” Joe raised his eyebrows.

“Could be.”

Joe suddenly looked worried. “Things could get ugly if you take on Jimson and the Know Nothings. They’ve pretty well got the town wrapped up right now. Most of the old Whigs is going their way, and the Democrats ain’t got nothing to stop them.”