Woman's Own

  “It was a mistake from the beginning. If Lady Nesbitt hadn’t threatened and insisted--”

  “Well, that’s all water over the dam. And if you’ll remember, the problems started long before Lady Nesbitt arrived. I’m afraid I’ll have to insist the two of you share blame for your troubles.”

  “You won’t find my wife willing to share blame!” he contested.

  Or anything else, Lilly thought.

  “You’re far too busy to give the baby all that she requires, and Patricia is not a doting mother. I am, however, a very interested grandmother. If you tried to raise Katherine alone, you would find yourself too often giving up important matters to be sure she is being properly supervised, don’t you think? But you must promise to come here often--she mustn’t grow up not knowing how deeply you care for her.”

  “I won’t,” he said. “I will,” he amended.

  “I’m so sorry all this has happened,” Emily went on. “And Dale, I do understand. You’re looking weary. Get some rest, try to enjoy yourself if you can, and please don’t be concerned about Katherine. I promise you I’ll take good care of her.”

  “But, my father--”

  Emily laughed very good naturedly. “Please, tell Wilson to come and see me. Such a dear man! I know if he trusts anyone with his granddaughter’s welfare, he trusts me. And give my regards to Deanna--I miss seeing her.”

  Dale took a moment to absorb that. He frowned and then nodded. “Yes, he might approve.”

  “There really doesn’t seem to be an alternative that works as well. I think no one will notice, actually. It’s not as though all society stayed close enough to tuck you in at night.”

  “No…but don’t you think they’ll soon discover that I live at home and Patricia--”

  “I doubt, under the circumstances, Patricia will be inclined to socialize. Don’t you agree?”

  Dale made a few lame attempts at conversation for a while longer and then left when Katherine became fussy and difficult to hold. Once the baby had been passed to her nanny for a nap, Dale lost interest and left. Lilly had said hardly a word. Emily sighed as though she was exhausted.

  “Dear God,” Emily said in a breath.

  “What in the world--”

  “Oh, Lilly, I had to convince him to leave the baby with me. I’m not usually one to give up hope, but the man is a drunkard, Patricia is completely self-centered and takes no notice of her child, and Wilson didn’t take a hand even in raising his own son. There just isn’t any other way!”

  “You’re just going to let it be? You’re not going to make Patricia go back?”

  “Who knows what kind of cure he’ll try on her next,” Emily said wearily. “Who knows what kind of condition she’ll invite. Lilly, I give up. Patricia is not going to make any improvements in her marriage…and I honestly think Dale has destroyed himself with drink.”

  “You knew he was drunk,” Lilly said.

  “I as much as invited him to go home and drink some more. I offered to keep his child for him so he can!”

  “Is he gone?” a voice in the doorway asked.

  “Yes, Patricia,” Emily said patiently, looking at her daughter. “He’s gone.”

  “He’s not coming back, is he?”

  “I’ve asked him to visit Katherine, but I don’t think he’ll bother you.”

  “Well, good. I’m not going back there, not ever. You do understand, don’t you, Mama?”

  Emily stood slowly, leveling her eyes at her daughter. “Patricia, I think it very likely I will die not understanding you.” Emily left the room.

  “Well, that’s just fine!” Patricia said to Lilly. “What does a person have to endure beyond being stripped and tied to a bedpost before a little sympathy is in order?”

  “Believe me, Patricia, we all sympathize,” Lilly said. “In fact, I think there’s not a person alive I don’t pity more than you.”

  Lilly should not have been surprised when a letter arrived for Patricia, and she gleefully snatched it out of Emily’s hands.

  “Who is it from?” Emily asked.

  “A young lady I met years ago in Saratoga,” Patricia lied.

  In the middle of July, when the heat was high and the air thick with humidity, Patricia requested a suite of her own on the fifth floor. “Since we’re all so crowded here,” she said, “and since it’s understood I’m not returning to my former abode, I think we should do something a bit more permanent.”

  “And the baby?” Amanda asked.

  “She seems very content here,” Patricia pointed out.

  It was done with very little fanfare. Katherine was left behind with her grandmother. Quarters were adjusted so that Emily could be nearer the baby, and Bertie, who was aging and not serving Amanda so much as living out a retirement, could move back with her friend. Patricia settled herself and two maids into a comfortable suite of rooms. There was no trouble about the arrangement until Lilly found Patricia standing beside Amanda in the foyer of the hotel, taking the hand of a guest and smiling. Then something like an explosion went off inside Lilly’s head. She waited, seething and nearly frothing, until Patricia finally took the steam elevator to the fifth floor and her suite.

  Lilly was ushered into Patricia’s sitting room by a maid and found her sister reclining on a daybed, sampling candies.

  “Lilly, what rare honor is--”

  “You are not a hostess here, do you understand me? You will not join the family in greeting guests!”

  “Lilly, what in the--”

  “You may have this suite, you may join us for dinner, you may occasionally attend a function here if I feel it will do no harm, but you will not be a part of this business! This hotel has nothing whatever to do with you! You are given accommodations out of the mercy and generosity of this family, and nothing more! You are a married woman who chooses not to live with her husband and chooses not to be a mother to her child, and I will not have you playing hostess as if you built the place!”

  “How like you, Lilly. After all I’ve been through, you act as though you could be ashamed of me!”

  “I am ashamed of you,” Lilly said carefully. “I’ll take care of you because you can’t take care of yourself, but if you do anything to embarrass this family further, I will throw you out! Do you understand? You can go find your own place to live, your own income, and your own damned social life. You will not be here at Mama and Grandmother’s expense.”

  “Hah! That’s what you say, but when the whole story is told, I have been more a victim of this business than anything else. When I needed my family, where were they? Building Lilly’s hotel, that’s where! And they call me selfish!”

  “I’m warning you, Patricia. I will tell them about your letters. I could probably show them. I know the two of you are at it again.”

  “Is that how you expect to keep me invisible, Lilly? By threatening to divulge my private correspondence? You will be sadly surprised in that case.”

  “Do you mean to tell me it’s stopped, at long last?”

  “I’m just saying that one day you will regret your accusations. Someday you will be sorry you treated me so badly.”

  “Patricia, if you do anything to hurt this family or the reputation of this hotel, I will get my revenge. Tread carefully. Very carefully!”

  Flushed and trembling, Lilly left, slamming the door. She had never before felt the murderous rage she felt today. Through all that Patricia had done, through all her duplicity, it was not until Lilly saw her business compromised that she felt her anger turn to a hot rage.

  When the summer passed and Patricia seemed to be following orders, something occurred to Lilly. Patricia was seen about the hotel frequently enough; she couldn’t be expected to remain behind locked doors. But she seemed not to attract attention, certainly not the sort of scandalous chit-chat that Lilly had feared. When Mrs. Sinclair visited the hotel for a tea and was talking with Amanda, she saw Patricia in the room and clucked sadly. “What a shame,” was all she muttered. Th
at’s when Lilly understood that each of the women was regarded differently. Amanda was the noble dowager, Emily was the hard-working, widowed mother of two daughters, Lilly was her grandmother’s protégée, and Patricia had become, by her own hand, a problem to the managed. If Patricia created scandal and was evicted, women like Mrs. Sinclair would click their teeth with sympathy.

  With all she had accomplished, this was the very first time Lilly had felt the power of a heavy hand. She knew herself capable of handling problems even greater than those her sister presented. She thought it was high time they got rid of Ned Armstrong. She had a plan she thought would expel him from their city, from their worries. She met with Amanda and Fletcher and informed her grandmother she would go with Fletcher Drake to the Philadelphia address to which money was sent every month.

  “This doesn’t appear to be a social visit,” Ned said, looking at Fletcher.

  “You don’t have to invite us in,” she said. “This will take no more than a moment. My grandmother has been giving you some money--is it fifty a month? It’s going to stop immediately. You may do anything you like.”

  “Then you won’t mind getting to know your father again?” he asked, puffing up and smiling. “I can move into the--”

  “I won’t be spending any time with you, and you won’t be admitted to the Armstrong Arms under any circumstances. Mr. Drake, our solicitor, has discovered you have indeed had a spot of trouble here and there, although nothing too criminal. A little philandering, for which you’ve become well known. At any time you would like to make public the fact that you abandoned your wife and children, we’re prepared to withstand the embarrassment. In fact, we’re prepared to help you spread the rumors. Mr. Drake?”

  Fletcher pulled several folded papers from the inside of his coat and handed them to Ned.

  “Keep this,” Lilly said. “It’s a list of addresses for newspapers in major cities throughout the United States. Have you visited any of these places? When you begin your siege, we’ll write to them all. I have a very good friend who is a cartoonist and can make an excellent captioned drawing of your face. I think you’ll get your wish at long last. You’ll be quite famous. I do hope, for your sake, no one is looking for you.”

  “You would do this to your own father?” he asked.

  Lilly shrugged. “Only because my mother doesn’t know how to load a pistol and fire. Good day.”

  “Wait a minute, what about Patricia? I demand to know--”

  “Patricia, sadly, was lost to us in seventy-six. I’m sorry, there was nothing we could do to save her. We did try, you may believe me.”

  For all the power she had exercised, all the poise she displayed, when she was in her coach again, she leaned against Fletcher and sobbed. “If you knew all the years I longed for a father!”

  “I do know, Lilly, darling. I know.”

  “Oh, Fletcher, I don’t understand that kind of evil! I can’t bear the fact that I’m part of it!”

  “Lilly, Lilly…do you think one inherits evil like one does hair color?” He put his arms around her shoulders, holding her. “No, darling, if you have none of his treachery now--you won’t. Believe me. You weep for loss, not really for shame.”

  “For years when I was young I dreamed of this poor, tattered but honorable soldier, not really dead. All a mistake! he would say. I’m home to my loved ones! he would proclaim. Oh, Fletcher, how did this happen?”

  “You wanted to be the one to send him away, Lilly. Something about feeling you’d really finished with him. You can’t be finished with him…not ever. Long after he is dead, you will lament the truth.”

  As she wept, as Fletcher held her, she might as well have been returning from a cemetery and the burial of a loved one. But Fletcher, who had his own troubled youth and disillusionment, comforted.

  “How I wish you were my father,” she said as they approached the hotel.

  He wiped her eyes with his hanky. “I wish it, too, Lilly,” he said. He kissed her brow in a fatherly way. “Think of me as your father, if you like.” A huff of laughter bubbled through her tears. “You’ll have to behave, however,” he added staunchly. “You’ll have to be completely obedient.”

  She studied his face, as if for the first time. His thick brown hair, warm brown eyes, strong nose, and angular face gave him a soft handsomeness. He was the dearest, most sensitive man she had ever known. “How I wish I were in love with someone like you,” she mused aloud.

  “I am your loyal friend, Lilly. I would do anything but murder for you. Would you ask any more of me than that?”

  “I suppose not,” she said. “Thank you, Fletcher. You’ve saved me again.”

  Four days later Fletcher found Lilly in the foyer of the hotel at almost teatime. Emily was standing beside the desk, talking quietly with the clerk, and Fletcher reported to Lilly in a hushed voice that Ned Armstrong had taken a trunk and carpetbag to the train station. His destination was Chicago. Despite the relief, tears came to Lilly’s eyes.

  “Shouldn’t I feel good?” she asked Fletcher.

  “It can’t be pleasant, Lilly. But you can’t blame yourself.”

  “It’s this feeling of being cheated, Fletcher. If it isn’t terrible enough to never know a father, you can’t imagine the strange feelings it creates when you discover one, and he is terrible.”

  “Have you told your mother?”

  “No. Maybe I will, if the time is right. She says he can’t do any worse to her than he did years ago, leaving her at a dockside shanty pregnant and with a small child. Mama is a strong believer in God’s will. She accepts any burdens thrust on her and only worries about others. Her fear was more for Grandmother and me than for herself. She worried that Ned would create some sort of gossip and hurt our hotel.”

  “I think it might come as a relief, then, when you find the moment to tell her he has disappeared again.”

  “Have you heard Grandmother say we have the worst luck with men?” she asked him. “Not so with you, Fletcher. You’ve been the best sort of man. Do you think you’d change much if one of us decided to marry you?”

  “You flatter me. If I could find a woman like any of the three of you, I would marry in a moment.”

  “The rumor is that such an event would break a hundred hearts.” She cocked her head to look at him. He was so handsome a man, a man of such stature and charm. “You’ve escorted dozens of beautiful ladies to our various parties. None of them can keep your attention long.”

  “I assure you, Lilly, the rumors give me undeserved prowess. Perhaps I can’t keep their attention.”

  Lilly was prepared to argue when she was distracted by a very unusual sight. Her eyes became large. “Maybe our luck is about to change,” she told Fletcher. “Excuse me a moment.”

  She walked to the desk where Emily talked with the clerk and tugged on her mother’s sleeve. “Mama,” she whispered. “Look.”

  On the portico, just off the coach, stood a tall man with sandy colored hair, a cowboy hat, a limp, an untrimmed moustache. He was dusty; he looked as though he could have ridden a horse all the way to Philadelphia.

  “Can it really be?” Emily asked softly.

  He was arguing for his saddle, a huge, ornate thing that the coachman wanted to carry for him. A slow smile spread across Emily’s face. She clasped her hands together at her waist as he entered the foyer balancing his saddle on his shoulder and carrying his overstuffed carpetbag. He lowered the saddle to the floor, put down his bag, and removed his hat.

  “I didn’t think it was possible,” he said, “the name, and all.”

  “Carl,” Emily said to a bellhop, not taking her eyes from Noel’s, “Mr. Padgett will have suite five-twenty-three. That will be twelve dollars a week in advance, Mr. Padgett.”

  He grinned, but the poor clerk stuttered and stammered. “Twelve…Mrs. …Mrs. Armstrong, we--”

  “You won’t be needing a spittoon, I trust,” Emily said.

  “I reckon not, ma’am,” he grinned.

/>   “Welcome home, Mr. Padgett.”

  “Thank you kindly, Mrs. Armstrong. It’s mighty fine to be back.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lilly returned to the apartments one afternoon and was amazed to be told that Andrew was visiting with her mother. She quietly entered the sitting room, paid a brief, polite greeting, and sat down with them.

  Andrew Devon felt a debt to Emily Armstrong. She was the one to influence him to find a special kind of help for his wife. It had taken many months and many visits from doctors before he came to the conclusion that a home away from Philadelphia, under the supervision of a very sensitive and kind couple was the best sort of life for Brenda. Andrew had come to inform and thank her.

  “Her condition is described as mania,” he explained. “There is no cure, and even though we might draw the conclusion that the harsh life Brenda endured could explain this illness, there is also no known cause.”

  “Does she seem content, Andrew?” Emily asked.

  “Contentment may not be possible for Brenda, Mrs. Armstrong. There are asylums, mostly terrible and costly places. She’s already in a kind of prison--she can’t escape the grip of hysteria. There are times she can’t sleep for days…also times when she seems to be all right and apologizes for creating disturbances, but she doesn’t seem to remember what kind of disturbances she has created.”

  “Oh, Andrew, I’m so sorry for her…for you both.”

  “Now that I’ve learned a few things about her disturbance, what little is known, so much has become understandable. Before Mrs. Waite’s death, Brenda was plagued…perhaps less severely, but plagued just the same. I was often confused by some of her rages that seemed to be caused by nothing at all. Or, those times she was sick in bed for days, but there was no real illness. The truth is that her mother could control her and hide her symptoms.”

  Lilly listened calmly, though whenever he was near her heart pounded. Freedom from Brenda’s illness must be credited for his apparent health--he looked rested and refreshed. There was a new touch of gray at his temples, hardly more than a suggestion. Andrew, thirty-three years old now, grew only more handsome, more powerful. She watched him perform small habits she hoped to memorize: the way his strong hands gripped and squeezed his knees while he talked, relaxed while he listened; at times his smile lifted the left corner of his mouth more than the right; he frequently tugged his coat sleeves toward his wrists.