“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 thanhe 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.
Twenty-One
