The House of Closed Doors (30 page)

I turned the band around in my fingers; it did not look new. “Where did you come by this, Stepfather?”

Hiram flushed uncomfortably. “I had it made for Emmie, but it was too big and the design did not please her.”

“Emmie?” I could not place the name.

“My Emmeline.” Hiram’s icy blue eyes actually softened a little. “My little wife.”

“Oh. Yes.” Mama had told me about Emmie when she and Hiram were about to be married. Dead in childbirth, the child dead too, many years ago. Married when she was barely sixteen and Hiram in his thirties and dead just one year later. Hiram still visited her grave.

I slipped the ring on the appropriate finger and looked at it critically. It fitted quite well; my hands are large, but my fingers, although rather solid-looking and squared off at the ends, are passably slender.

I looked up at Hiram, not wishing to thank him. “I will wear it.”

Hiram grunted his approval and stalked off, leaving me staring at the gold band. It symbolized, in my mind, not a nonexistent husband but the inescapable commitment that now bound me. I was tied to my daughter with chains that could only be dissolved by death: “whither thou goest, there shall I go.” It also seemed to symbolize Hiram’s promise that he would keep that bond intact.

I
t was inevitable that my presence in Victory would gradually become known. Bet and Marie were sworn to secrecy, and I do not think they betrayed me; but in a small town like Victory, scandal has all the power of a barrel of rotten fish and is just as impossible to keep hidden for long. We invented an unfortunate personage by the name of Jerome Govender, who had married me in haste but had not lived long enough to repent at leisure. This ridiculous fabrication meant, of course, that I had to adopt mourning dress.

“It will become you, Nellie.” Martin ran an appreciative finger over the fine alpacas and silks his assistant had brought over in the morning. “With your Titian hair and pale skin, the black will have a wonderfully dramatic effect.” He whisked a tulle ruffle out of the pile and held it around my neck, turning me to the parlor mirror so that I could see the result. “And you have a long neck‌—‌swanlike, I would say if you were a customer I needed to flatter‌—‌so if you wear your hair high, a frill just so‌—‌do you see?‌—‌will be most ornamental.”

I did not know what “Titian” meant, but I could see his point about the frill. Martin’s hands rested lightly on my shoulders, and as he spoke about my neck, he brushed it lightly with the back of his hand. Something about the gesture reminded me of a far-off day in May, and I shivered.

Martin immediately stepped away from me and turned his back as he searched among the parcels. “And you must have‌—‌ah! Here it is.” There was something forced about the joviality in his voice, but I did not inquire what was wrong. He was deftly picking open the knot on a very small parcel from which he extracted a length of the softest velvet ribbon I had ever seen and something that gleamed in the light from the window. He held it up; it was a beautifully carved oval of jet, leaves and branches twisted around a single large pearl held in a setting of chased silver leaves.

“From Whitby, in England.” He grinned as he saw my face light up at the beauty of the pendant. “Just the thing for a young widow.”

I had seen much mourning jewelry‌—‌after all, the War made many widows even in Victory‌—‌but this delicate masterpiece was far different from the morbid monstrosities most women wore. I was grateful that Mama had never worn my father’s hair as a bracelet or brooch.

“Thank you, Martin.” I eyed the dull sheen of the black fabrics, calculating how best to make them up into a becoming dress. “If I must mourn an imaginary husband, then I suppose at least I may look elegant.”

Martin caught my hand and kissed the very tips of my fingers. “Nothing but the best for my dear Mrs. Govender.”

“Stop it.” I did not like the pretense, but I had to admit I had brought it upon myself, and any reminder of that fact was unpleasant to me. I looked down at the ring on my finger, twisting it around so that the minutely incised flowers danced in the afternoon sun.

“What are you going to do about Hiram?” Martin’s tone became serious. “He all but confessed from what you told me. You saw the bodies of those he murdered; can you really keep silent?”

I did not speak for several moments, watching the play of light across the soft silk. Far off downstairs I could hear Sarah’s squeal and Marie’s answering laugh. Hiram was out on some business or other, and Mama was resting in her bedroom; she had had a string of bad nights and for once did not feel up to keeping visiting hours. Martin rested his elbow on the pianoforte and waited for me to say something, his face still and patient. Amid the crimsons and browns of our overdecorated parlor, his hair gleamed like a golden beacon.

I shook my head slowly. “No, I do not think I can keep silent. But think, Martin. Whom can we tell who is not a crony of my stepfather’s? He has every official in the county in his pocket.”

“And in Chicago? Does his influence reach that far?” Martin’s brow was wrinkled in thought.

“Go to Chicago? When? How?” It made sense. I did not think my stepfather had an extensive acquaintance with the large community of Irishmen who made up the police force.

Martin ran a hand over his hair, straightening up to his full height. I tipped my head to follow the movement, fighting the temptation to smooth my hands over his clean-shaven cheeks as I did when I was a child. We were still the best of friends, but somehow I knew I could never go back to the innocent affection of those bygone days.

“Let me think about it, Nellie. We could go to one of the police commissioners‌—‌they will surely have no jurisdiction this far north, but they will be able to suggest a solution, I am certain of it.”

“Supposing we try, and fail, and Hiram gets to hear of it? He will definitely try to take Sarah from me then.”

Martin’s square face held an oddly resolute expression. “If it comes to that, I would marry you myself and give you and Sarah the protection of my name.”

My face must have shown the astonishment I felt. “You would do that?”

“And annul the arrangement as soon as I could, naturally. Once you were well out of Hiram’s grasp.”

“Ah.” Well, yes, I did not suppose Martin wanted to be married to me any more than I wanted to be married to him. After all, Sarah was not his child.

Martin picked up his hat and motioned to the tea table. “We have let Bet’s good pot of tea go cold. She is sure to wonder what we were doing all this time.”

“It’s none of her business, and anyway I will pour it into the aspidistra.”

Martin grinned at my cowardice and reached out his hand to mine. I thought he would kiss it again, but instead he enveloped my hand in both of his large, warm ones and gave it a gentle shake.

“If there is any justice to be found in this deplorable situation, I will help you find it. Give my love to your mama.”

And then he was gone, leaving me staring out of the window until a sound from below made me fly toward the still-full teacups. Justice, I thought as I tipped the cold, pale liquid into the dusty earth of Mama’s favorite plant. Justice for Jo, for Benjamin, and for Blackie. At what expense?

THIRTY-EIGHT

“O
h, Nell, this is wonderful news.” My mother’s eyes were alight as she read a letter written on Cousin Elizabeth’s distinctive green letter paper. “Dear Jack is an attorney at last!”

“Really?” I knew that I had flushed slightly and kept my head bowed over the black ruffle I was sewing for my new mourning dress. I cursed inwardly at myself for being sensitive to Jack’s name. After all, he was my cousin, at least in the technical sense. I would be hearing news of him for many years to come, no doubt.

And from Mama’s lighthearted tone of voice, she had either dismissed or forgotten any suspicions she might have harbored about my relationship with Jack. Forgotten, probably. She had become a lot more forgetful lately, and that worried me.

“Elizabeth says he is now a junior in the firm where he has been apprenticed the last two years‌—‌or is it three? I cannot remember. I am so glad for him. He found it hard to readjust to civilian life. But now look! He is on his way to success and fortune.”

“He has a fortune already, Mama. Uncle Barnabas left my cousins very well provided for.”

My mother chuckled softly. “You are hard on your mother’s little turns of speech, Nell dear. I was merely expressing the conventional wish that Jack will do well in his profession. A man needs a profession, however wealthy he might be.”

“I wish him well too, Mama. You might tell Elizabeth that when you reply to her letter.”

And indeed, I did wish him well. I just did not want to see him again for the rest of my life.

My mother, who was absorbed in the letter and was not listening to me, drew in her breath sharply.

“My goodness!”

“More news?”

“He has done it!”

“Mama, you are not making sense,” I said. “Who has done what?”

“Jack has proposed to his sweetheart. Her name is Elizabeth too, but everyone calls her Beth. Elizabeth‌—‌your cousin, I mean‌—‌says,” she paused for a moment to decipher the handwriting, “that she is a remarkably‌—‌Nell, I cannot read this. Do look.”

I made my face as expressionless as possible and took the sheet of paper from my mother’s hand, beginning where she indicated: “… a remarkably sweet-tempered girl who is ready to spoil Jack just as much as we have done, dear Aunt. She will make him an excellent wife and brings a considerable sum of money with her, so they will be quite a‌—‌beguiled?‌—‌no‌—‌gilded couple.”

Oh, dear. Beguiled indeed. Fortunately, Cousin Elizabeth’s letter took a more practical turn as she launched into details of the bride’s relatives. English and aristocratic. Jack must be relishing his new connections.

“Ah, that is better.” Mama took the letter back from me. “Elizabeth must have fetched a new pen.” She continued to plow through the details of family alliances, third cousins, and political connections. Her absorption gave me time to think.

I had always rather imagined Jack as the villain of our little story‌—‌after all, was he not older and more experienced than I?‌—‌but it was borne in upon me, as I listened to the soft drone of my mother’s voice, that Jack and Beth were going to begin married life on a false footing, and it was all my fault. I had never, right from the moment I had begun to suspect I was pregnant, thought of anyone other than myself. Now I began to wonder whether, indeed, it would have been right to inform Jack that he had a child before he betrothed himself to this innocent girl. It would have ruined his life and mine, to be sure, but now there were three people involved. And soon, if they had children, there could be more victims of my silence.

“They may have children before two years are out.” My mother’s thoughts chimed in most unpleasantly with my own, and I squirmed in my chair. “How delightful it will be to have more little ones in the family! It is such a shame I cannot tell them about Sarah.”

My limbs turned to ice. “I think we should be prudent about concocting falsehoods on paper, Mama.” I felt my breathing quicken and stitched assiduously, willing myself to be calm.