"And my father too? Did he know what became of me?”
"I suppose he did, if you believe the dead can look down upon you." She sounded almost bored by the entire discussion. "What is all this sudden fuss about your birth, John? You never expressed much interest in your parentage before, at least not to me."
"I never realized you knew so damn much. Now I want the truth."
"Do you?" She had an odd glint in her eyes, her smile mocking. "As tough as you think you are I wonder if you can take it."
"Try me," he snarled. "You might as well come out with all of it. You've as good as told me that Stephen Markham was my father. That makes you my aunt."
To his astonishment, she laughed. He couldn't recall ever hearing her do so before. The sound left him feeling cold.
"Not your aunt, John," she said with one of those smiles he was coming to dread. "Your mother."
She had to be lying, or else she was crazy. She didn't know what she was saying. He hadn't heard her right. Zeke sought every form of denial, but there was no escaping the truth reflected to him in the depths of those taunting eyes.
"My. . ." He couldn't bring himself to say the word, not in connection with her. "What the hell are you talking about? You mean that you and your own brother—"
He stopped, moistening his lips, feeling as though he would be sick.
"No." Her voice held a faint trace of amusement. "Stephen always took his pleasures elsewhere."
Zeke heaved a deep breath of relief. That made it better, but not much.
She continued, "Your father was one of the Irish grooms in our stables."
His incredulity must have shown, for she went on quickly, "Everyone commits some indiscretion, and this was mine. That one hot July afternoon, I needed to know what it would be like to lie beneath a man glistening with sweat, calluses on his hands, passions as wild and primitive as the studs my father bought to breed his mares."
For a brief moment, a shudder tore through her, her features transformed by a look of ecstasy she quickly repressed. "The experience was every bit as loathsome as I imagined. Yet I made a fool of myself over that man. There's no saying where it would have ended before I came to my senses. Fortunately, one day Sean broke his neck, jumping one of the horses."
"How obliging of him." Zeke tried to summon some feeling of sorrow for the father he had never known, tried but couldn't. He couldn't help believing that the young groom was better off even descending into hell rather than within Mrs. Van Hallsburg's poisonous grasp.
Undaunted by his sarcastic remark, she said, "Yes, Sean was always a most accommodating man. I might even have mourned his passing but for the legacy he left me."
Her gaze swept toward Zeke, her eyes icy splinters of accusation. "You were already growing inside me, feeding upon my life's blood like some parasite. I would have aborted you, but I was too far gone before I realized. I was rather naive about some facts of life in those days."
Zeke couldn't credit it. Cynthia Van Hallsburg might have been many things in her youth—spoiled, selfish, fatally attractive—but never naïve.
"So then what?" Zeke prompted when she fell silent, uncertain if he could stand to listen to any more of this, but unable to turn away from her either, until he had heard every last wretched detail.
She sighed. "I had to pretend to leave for an extended visit to a friend's summer house, while actually I went to live in this miserable boarding house with only my maid Emma to attend me. You came into the world after midnight one April morning, not stillborn as I had hoped, but lusty and screaming."
Mrs. Van Hallsburg pressed her hands briefly to her brow as though after all these years, she was yet trying to shut out the sound of those cries. "It was your constant screaming that did it, drove me to abandon you on that refuse heap. If I had been thinking more clearly, I would have suffocated you, but the ordeal of childbirth had disordered my wits."
Zeke's mouth went dry, but he was too stunned to say or do anything other than regard her with loathing. She was so calm. That was the true horror of it—so calm as she explained why she hadn't managed to murder him at birth.
"You needn't look at me that way," she said. "As though I were some sort of villainess. When I heard later you had been found, and taken to the orphanage, when I was far away from your cries, I didn't mind at all that you had lived."
"Thank you," Zeke said bitterly.
"No one would have known a thing about you, except that my maid betrayed me. She told my father, who insisted that something more had to be done. Such a stupid man. He paid the orphanage a large sum of money for your care, and to keep silent about who your benefactor was. And what good did that do? You never saw a penny of that money and it only put my reputation at risk. Luckily everyone believed you were just another one of Stephen's indiscretions."
Zeke wished he could have continued believing that himself.
"And that's what you told Sadie when she came to see you?" he asked.
"I started to, but it was so strange. Somehow I found myself confiding the truth to her. I knew she would never betray me. She was too terrified I might want you back. But I never found you the least interesting until you were fully grown."
The nature of her interest showed all too clearly in her eyes, that unholy light there again. Zeke took an involuntary step back, his gut wrenching. Now he understood full well why Sadie had never told him any of this, the painful knowledge she had tried to shield him from, why she had been so terrified when Mrs. Van Hallsburg had come back into his life.
As Mrs. Van Hallsburg approached him, he tensed, afraid of what he might do if she tried to touch him. He glanced down at that once-lovely face that suddenly seemed to be showing the lines of age, not a graceful aging, but one of decadence, a twisted soul too long kept hidden behind that timeless mask.
"Sadie tried to warn me once," he said. "She said you were evil."
"Evil? Simply because I desire my own son?" She drifted closer, her scent filling his nostrils, as cloying as the sickly sweet smell of too many floral offerings clustered round an open casket.
"The trouble with you, John, is that you have a lower class mentality. You understand wealth and power, but not fully enough to know that they bring you freedom from the laws that govern lesser men. The Pharaohs of Egypt intermarried, mingled their own blood. Why not us?”
"My education might be lacking, but they sound like nothing but a bunch of heathens to me."
"I forgot. Dear Mrs. Marceone raised you to be a good Catholic boy."
"Don't sneer at my upbringing," he said. "Especially when you never troubled yourself whether I lived or died."
The closer she came, the more his flesh crawled, and he knew he had to get out of there, get himself a good stiff drink. Maybe if he poured enough whiskey down his throat, it would burn, cleanse him of the taint of her.
As he moved to leave, some of her composure crumbled. She even looked a little desperate as she got between him and the door. "Where are you running to, John?"
"Anywhere away from you. You were right about me and the truth. I guess I can't take it."
"John, please!”
"Get out of my way."
"I understand. I should have broken this to you more gently. You are in shock, but when you have had time to grow accustomed to the idea—"
"Not in a million years!"
"But you may never see me again after tonight. When all the truth is known, I will be forced to leave the city."
"Not because of me. I'm not about to go boasting of the connection between us."
"I'm not talking about us, but that other matter, with your friend Duffy."
When Zeke regarded her blankly, she said with impatience. "You must be the only person in New York who doesn't know about the extent of his investigation, how he's dragging me down."
She hesitated and then rushed on. "I may as well tell you. I was Charles Decker's partner in his enterprises. When he made such a disaster of everything, I had to kill him and
fake his suicide. Does that astonish you?"
"After what you've already told me tonight?" Zeke gave a harsh laugh. "Nothing about you would surprise me. And so Duffy is onto you? Well, I wish you luck, because you're going to need it. He's damned persistent."
"I don't need luck. All I need is you." She clutched at his sleeve. "Come away with me, John. I have money deposited in Switzerland. We could live quite comfortably abroad.”"
But he barely heard her breathless flow of words as he stared at her hand, which no longer appeared so smooth or elegant, but rather like skeletal fingers grasping at him, death tugging at his arm. Desperation and madness swirled in her pale blue eyes.
He grasped her wrist and put her away from him very deliberately. But when she tried to cast herself into his arms, his control broke and he shoved her back with more roughness than he had ever shown any woman. She staggered into one of the chairs.
"John," she cried. "We belong together. You are my flesh. It's my blood that flows through your veins."
"If I thought that counted for anything, I would slit my wrists," he said. Before she could regain her balance, come at him again, he strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
With a shrill cry, she started to go after him, only bringing herself up short as she reached the threshold, fighting for the familiar comfort that was her dignity, the icy shroud of her composure. What was happening to her? Never had she begged anything of anyone before.
Leaning against the door, she closed her eyes, trying to still the unaccustomed pounding of her heart. Instead she found herself looking back over the ruins of her life, wondering where it had all started to come apart.
Despite her youthful folly, she had always enjoyed the position in society to which her birth entitled her. And thanks to Charles Decker, she had had the wherewithal to sustain it. When John Ezekiel Morrison had strode back into her life and she had commenced the task of polishing him, making him a fit companion for her, everything had been perfect.
Until the day of that disastrous lawn party when that girl had crashed on John's lawn. Yes. Mrs. Van Hallsburg's mouth pinched taut. That was the day when she had first begun to lose control of John, when that girl had swept into his life. She laced her fingers together as though tightening them about a slender white throat. She had never understood the concept of revenge before, considering it a meaningless waste of energy and emotion.
But as the image of Aurora Rose Kavanaugh's lovely young features rose into Mrs. Van Hallsburg's mind, she comprehended the allure of vengeance for the very first time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Early morning mists curled off the East River, rising slowly to assume the form of a woman, a flowing white gown hanging from her in tattered shreds, silvery hair tangled wildly about a face pallid as death, the eyes as empty as the black void of a grave.
Rory shuddered as that pitiless gaze turned in her direction. She slashed frantically at the ballast bags weighting down the balloon, seeking to rise above the mist and that terrifying visage. But as the balloon lifted, soaring skyward, the spectral figure below let out a shriek of laughter.
Stretching her arms upward, the white witch floated after Rory until her hands closed over the side of the gondola, her fingers more bone than flesh. Rory sought to pry away those cold grasping hands, but at the first touch, she could feel that deathly chill spreading to herself. In horror she watched as her own hands began aging, decaying before her very eyes.
"No!"
With a loud cry, Rory sat up, wrenching herself awake. Bathed in cold sweat, it took her a moment to realize she was safe, sprawled on the sofa of her flat. The packages delivered by Altman's yesterday were bestrewn upon the floor, mingling with the cozy furnishings of her parlor, familiar, reassuring surroundings, and yet her heart thudded with fear. The dream had been so vivid. She took a trembling survey of her hands, relieved to find her skin smooth and warm, life yet thrumming through her veins.
She released her breath in a shivery sigh and raked her hands through her hair. Damn! She hated dreams like that. Go back to sleep and forget about it, her Da would have told her. He had always scoffed at the old superstitions of the banshee and been sorry he had ever let her head be filled with such nonsense.
Rory wished she could be equally as scornful, but in the past her nightmare had always been followed with a death. Whose might it be this time- her own?
Zeke had warned her she was going to break her neck one of these days. But she wasn't even taking the balloon up today. She had formed far different plans. The heavy ring of keys left lying on the parlor table reminded her of what she had to do, reminded her also of a future so bleak she didn't care if she crashed to her death or not.
That was a wicked thought, and Rory was quick to cross herself. All the same she did feel utterly miserable. Ever since Zeke had stormed out of her apartment, she had drifted into a state of lethargy, unable to do anything but replay their dreadful quarrel over and over in her mind. Furious and despairing by turns, her fretting had culminated in a sleepless night.
She had at last curled up on the sofa, eventually drifting off somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, falling asleep in time to have a nightmare. Just her luck.
Struggling to her feet, Rory pressed one hand to the small of her back, stiff and aching from the posture she had been sleeping in. She nearly tripped over one of the boxes. She would have to notify Altman's to have them retrieve the parcels, or else have the whole lot packed up and sent to Zeke's mansion.
Her trousseau, Zeke had called it. But there could be no trousseau when there was to be no wedding. She had no doubt but that all was ended between her and Zeke. What he had done, trying to force her to abandon her dream, was dreadful, but the words she had hurled at him were more unforgivable.
She could hardly believe she had been so cruel, even in the grip of her rage and anguish. But perhaps what she had said, driving Zeke away as nothing else could, would prove kinder in the long run. It should have been obvious from the beginning how unsuited they were for each other.
Even as she sought to convince herself, other memories intruded, of dancing until dawn, sharing stolen kisses in the little cottage by the sea, snuggling against Zeke's shoulder on the bench in City Hall Park while watching the sun set. Memories of how they had laughed, loved, even fought together, side by side, ready to take on the toughest of villains, the whole world. Memories that she had to suppress if she were going to make herself believe that she was better off without Zeke Morrison in her life.
She strode resolutely to her bedchamber. She had spent enough time moping. She needed to get dressed and go to the warehouse. Tony and the others would be expecting her to get ready for the return of the government contractor. It was going to be difficult enough to explain to them why they would be spending the day otherwise engaged without facing them all with reddened eyes.
Perched upon crates in the warehouse, Tony, Pete and Angelo faced her in varying postures of confusion and disbelief. She had finished explaining how Zeke Morrison had bought the warehouse, rendering it necessary for Rory to remove all her equipment from the premises.
"Wait a moment." Angelo scowled, scratching the back of his head and succeeding in making his cowlick worse. "Didn't you just say that Morrison left you the keys?"
"Yes, he did." Rory tapped her foot impatiently, not wanting to offer any more explanation than she had to. "And so?"
"Then the fellow must have changed his mind about tossing us out, right?" Angelo appealed to Pete, who shrugged but nodded in agreement.
"It makes no difference even if he did. I have no desire to be the recipient of Mr. Morrison's generosity."
"Resippy-what?" Angelo echoed. "What's that mean?"
Tony, who had listened in silence, his arms crossed over his chest, now spoke up, "It means Rory and Morrison had some sort of a row and now Rory is being stubborn."
Rory glared at him. "It means nothing of the kind. It's merely that I can no longer
afford the rent here. So get up off your tails and start packing."
Pete and Angelo slid off the crates, still looking nonplussed, but preparing to begin. Tony, however, kept shaking his head in a way that made Rory want to hit him. As the other two shuffled off, he said, "I don't know what this is really about, Rory. But I can take a good guess and for once I sympathize with Morrison. If you were going to be my wife, I wouldn't want you flying the damned balloons anymore either."
That Tony would range himself on Zeke's side both wounded and annoyed her. "I'm not going to be anyone's wife, Bertelli. Now I would appreciate your getting busy."
"What do you think you're going to do with all this stuff?"
Rory hadn't thought that through clearly, but she blustered, "For now, I suppose I'll have to cram it all into my flat."
Tony rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to say something, then apparently thought better of it. With a snort of disgust, he moved off to supervise the other two boys.
They all fell to their task in a manner less than enthusiastic, moving so slowly, exchanging so many superior male glances over the illogic of women that Rory could no longer bear to watch them. She stomped off upstairs to clear out her office.
But as the minutes ticked by, she packed very little, sitting behind her desk, staring up at the familiar cracks on the ceiling, wondering if she was, as Tony said, merely being stubborn.
Tony's ready sympathy for Zeke's position had disturbed her more than she cared to admit. Was she being unreasonable? She knew Zeke was only trying to protect her in his rough way. But she couldn't accept his manner of doing things as though her feelings and opinions didn't count. He was so aggressive, bullying, maddening.
And she still loved him desperately.
Tears stung her eyes and she blinked them fiercely away. There was no sense sitting here thinking such things as that. She would only end up bawling. With a dogged set to her lips, she forced herself into movement, heaving ledger books, pencils, pens and ink bottles into a carton.
At noon she paused long enough to see how Tony and the boys were doing. They had made suspiciously little progress. Tony had gone off somewhere to fetch lunch back for all of them, and she caught Angelo, in his usual garrulous fashion, pausing to entertain a visitor.