1863 Saratoga Summer Page 14

  ~*~

  Ludwig Dewitt watched Sinead run down the outside stairs and leap into her father’s carriage. He let the drape fall from his fingers and turned to his wife. “Adelaide, I don’t believe this new marriage thing is going to work to our advantage.”

  Adelaide looked up from her painstaking needlework and exclaimed, “Don’t say that Luddie.” She smiled grimly. “Trust me, the girl will not stay with that man, who calls himself her husband, and leave the child.”

  “She’s a grown woman. She will want a life of her own.” Ludwig stretched and patted the vest, which barely covered his ample stomach.

  “Look how she let us sell Cavanaugh House and all its goods. She didn’t want a bit of the money for herself,” Adelaide retorted, plying her needle through an intricate part of the hunting scene she was sewing.

  “She allowed us to put it all away for the boy because she had no real knowledge of it.” Ludwig lumbered over to his humidor and pipe, sitting on the small table at the entrance to the room.

  “And look what that money has done for your business,” Adelaide offered with a languid and sly smile. “In the long run, she’ll choose the boy to the man, just as she has from the very first.”

  “What if she falls in love with the man? What then?” Ludwig tapped tobacco into the bowl of the pipe then used it to scratch his beard while he paced.

  “That oaf? You should have seen him at the pier. He was dirty, with tattered clothes and a shaggy, unkempt beard.” Her voice rose with pretended horror as she described Connor. “Grimy dark hair fell onto his face. His dark eyes glared at me, while all the time he tried to belie his appearance with pretty speechifying.” Adelaide laughed as she remembered the scene at the pier. “Definitely an Irishman to the core. And you know she no longer associates with them, since you do not allow Robert to do so.” Adelaide snapped, “The only one she seems to favor is that stupid, coarse father of hers.”

  “I know. I know. It seems she still goes to church and all with her father. Just now, I just saw her get into his carriage. They were obviously going somewhere.”

  “She told me she intended to spend the evening with her new husband in an attempt to get to know him a bit better,” Adelaide said in a mocking voice, nervously crossing and uncrossing her legs in discomfort.

  Ludwig strolled over to a mahogany sideboard, which stood against one wall of their bedroom suite. He put down the pipe, took a cigar from the humidor lying on top of the sideboard, clipped one end and stuck the other in his mouth. “The whole thing infuriates me,” he said, chewing on the end of the cigar before scratching a match to light it.

  “Luddie, you just lit your pipe. Please, smoke one or the other,” Adelaide admonished. She pricked her finger with the needle. “Damn it…!” She reached into the pocket of her gown, drew out a handkerchief and wrapped it around her forefinger.

  “I don’t have the time or patience to spend traipsing through court after court to get the custody settled,” Ludwig groused, pointing the end of his cigar and moving toward her. He waggled it back and forth beneath her face, until she sneezed.

  Smiling, he lit the match, puffed until the rosy glow at the cigar’s tip brought the smoke to his mouth. He inhaled deeply then exhaled, sending a stream of smoke toward Adelaide. She picked up the fan on the table next to her and waved it about. The smoke drifted toward the ceiling.

  Adelaide coughed politely into her hand until Ludwig moved back toward the window. “We have to spend the time, Ludwig. We have to. Think what it would do to your business if you lost the child’s money.” She watched her husband and saw the greedy look he wore. “Besides, what would our dear departed Lucinda think if we left her child to the care of another, one who was not of his blood?” she sweetly asked, knowing it would rile him.

  “Adelaide, do not fool yourself into believing things that were not so.” Ludwig whirled on his wife and glared.

  Adelaide stood and asked angrily, “I beg your pardon. What exactly do you mean?”

  Ludwig puffed away on his cigar and paused. In an unconscious movement, he flicked ashes onto the floor. Adelaide frowned but held her tongue. She waited to hear what else he had to say about their daughter, a child he hadn’t cared for from the very beginning.

  “Lucinda didn’t want a child. She only had one for that Cavanaugh, so he wouldn’t leave her!”

  Adelaide gasped. She quickly laid the fan down, sat and grabbed at her needlework. She needed to be doing something other than listen to this fat husband of hers go on about her daughter, a daughter made in her mother’s image.

  “I will never understand that,” she said, shaking her head and working hard to recover her composure. Her hand shook as well. “Lucinda was such a beautiful, kind and sweet girl. How could any man want to leave her?”

  “Lucinda was never kind and sweet, my dear, not from the day she was born. She made Cavanaugh’s life a living hell with her flirting and spending habits. But I will grant you one thing. She was beautiful.” He looked over at his wife, whose expression mirrored her distaste of his last remark. “Not as beautiful as you, of course, my dear.”

  Adelaide smiled up at her husband. He always knew the right thing to say to her when she was upset. “Lucinda did other things for that man.”

  “Ach, yes, she converted to Catholicism against my advice, putting us in a precarious situation. Then she died in childbirth…”

  Adelaide huffed at him. “Well, she didn’t die on purpose. It was through no fault of her own that she died giving birth.” Vitriolic words spurted from her mouth. “That stupid doctor Cavanaugh hired to care for her was at fault.”

  “You don’t know that, Adelaide. Although I wonder…” Ludwig stopped in the middle of his thought as another surfaced. “Might the doctor have been in cahoots with Cavanaugh regarding the birth?”

  “My God, what are you suggesting, Ludwig?”

  “No, it’s a terrible thing to think about, much less say.”

  Adelaide stood and swayed over to her husband, with grace. She drew the draperies tighter than before and laid her hand on his arm. She looked up at him in the fetching way she knew he admired. “What do you mean, you darling man?”

  “It’s just a thought, just a thought,” he said, staring off into space. “Could it have been that Cavanaugh was already interested in our little Jane?

  Adelaide laughed. “I doubt it. She’s so plain looking. That Cavanaugh was interested in more attractive things. Why, he even flirted with me once.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “You probably wouldn’t have believed me anyway,” she said with a smile crossing her face. She made her eyes twinkle and she patted his arm before going back to her pillowed chair. “And what could I possibly say about my daughter’s husband that would have made anyone believe me?”

  Quiet, seemingly morose, Ludwig let his dirty cigar dropped more ash onto her lovely, bright oriental carpet. When he spoke, he spoke slowly as if testing the idea out in his mind.

  “Perhaps Cavanaugh felt that way about Jane before Lucinda got with child. Jane had worked for them for several years before the birth.” He tipped his head to one side. “I know Lucinda said otherwise, but might another love be the real reason he hired that doctor instead of the midwife we suggested?”

  “How could any man love another when Lucinda was present? I was just not possible, although I do rem…” Adelaide leaned back in her chair, stuck herself with the needle she was using and let her needlepoint fall to the floor. With her hand raised to her mouth, she sucked the tiny spot of blood from her finger.

  “If that is so, I’m glad he was injured in the accident. He tried to tell me that, on the night of the child’s birth, as soon as he got word of its coming, he hurried back from club,” she said with a cold vehemence, coming up from her toes. “It crippled him forever.” She chuckled. “Once our daughter died, he could do nothing about his abnormal sexual drives.”

  “How do you know about sexual drives,
my dear? I had no idea you were so worldly.” Ludwig wriggled his eyebrows at her, a gesture he often used to change the subject.

  She giggled, letting him think he was distracting her. “Ach, Luddie, you know I’m not worldly-wise. I’m searching for answers to our daughter’s death, something that shouldn’t have happened to such a young and lovely girl. I couldn’t think of anything else that might have precipitated the events.”

  “Don’t think on it my dear. Your thoughts will change nothing. How is your new chair seat coming?” he asked, crossing the floor to pick her needlework up.

  “Why, Ludwig, you heard what the doctor told Cavanaugh. Lucinda was too tiny to bear such a large child. She should never have married Cavanaugh or tried to have his child.”

  “But dear, she kept telling us she was desperately in love. That’s why we gave our permission when she was so young, why we hired Jane to be her maid and why we’ve let Jane take care of the boy for all these years. Lucinda wanted everything her own way.”

  “For no good reason. And with a blackguard who married Jane within three years, despite all his crippling injuries, insisting his child be brought up Catholic, as if that makes any difference. Sinead, that stupid name was what he called our Jane. She was the only mother the boy had ever known he kept saying. We felt sorry for him, for the constant pain he was in, and we went along with all his machinations.”

  Tears of self-pity rolled down Adelaide’s cheeks. She took a soft silk handkerchief out of her sleeve and daubed her eyes with it. “Does that give her the right to take the child away from us?”

  “It shouldn’t, but how are we to take care of a young boy? Our own son, up in Albany, and his wife don’t want the responsibility of another child, and we’re too old to have a child disrupt our lives.”

  “The ultimate decision is up to you, Ludwig. It is your blood, as well as mine, you give up in the long run,” she retorted, still daubing streaming tears.

  “My darling, don’t cry. We’ll think of something.”

  “What do you think of nursemaids until he old enough to go to the school your parents sent you to? Please Ludwig, for me.”

  Ludwig began to puff on his cigar again, taking deep inhaling breaths of pure smoke. “Decent and hardworking folks are hard to find. That’s why our Jane is so wonderful for the boy. Perhaps we can find another who will suit and...”

  Adelaide interrupted. “Definitely not an Irish one. I’ll never have another Irish servant in my household,” she said with a great deal of passion.

  “Adelaide, do you feel as if you could take care of the boy by yourself, with the help of another?” Ludwig asked calmly as thought he already knew the answer.

  “I wouldn’t have to. I thought you promised he’d go off to a dormitory school when he turns five?”

  Ludwig patted her shoulder then went back to the curtains. “Definitely. He’ll go to the schools I did. At five.”

  “He just turned four,” she said, forcing a single tear to slide from her eye. “How on earth will I manage until he’s five? We’ll just have to keep our hands on Jane until he’s old enough to go away to that school.”

  Ludwig paced in front of the window, his face getting redder and redder as plans raced through his mind. “I’ll send the boy to all the schools I went to. Once he graduates from my college, I’ll take him into the company.”

  “That’s nice, dear,” she said, smiling to herself.

  “You know, you’re right Adelaide. I’ll not give up my daughter’s child, nor do I intend to bring him up Catholic, particularly once Jane leaves us.”

  “His father insisted though. It was part of the marriage agreement with Lucinda and again with Jane. That’s why he married a low class Irish maid, so the boy would be brought up in that religion.”

  “The whole idea disgusts me, my dear. Such a savage religion!” Ludwig’s pacing grew more intense.

  “Well then we’ll just have to take the whole thing to court, don’t you think so Luddie. Especially, now that there is another involved. Lord knows what that husband of Sinead’s has up his sleeve, but I’ll bet it’s something. You know how those Irish are.”

  “Never fear, wife, we will surmount this obstacle as we have every other. I didn’t get to this position in my life, and in this City, by not solving problems. This, too, will pass. Let Jane go wherever she wants. She’s just not going to take our grandchild with her. And that’s my final word on the subject.”

  “Ach, husband, you do thrill me,” Adelaide said, grinning broadly. “And now that you’ve made up your mind, let’s retire to our summer home upstate. The heat of the city is getting to be too much for me.”

  Chapter Nine

  Sinead said little during the carriage ride to Fifth Avenue and the Hotel. When she was this wrapped up in her thoughts, she didn’t feel in a conversational mood. Her tension regarding the next meeting with her husband, for only the third time, was overwhelming. She barely noticed the busy streets, unusual for Sunday, when most stayed at home with families.

  Bowes reined the horses in from their smart trot and slowly walked them the rest of the way to their destination, something he seldom did. He sat up straight in the driver’s seat, showing pride in his rig and the well-mannered behavior of his horses. His attempt at dignity made Sinead briefly smile.

  A liveried servant rushed to the carriage. Another hurried to hold one of the horse’s heads, patting the creature’s neck and murmuring to him in a voice too low to hear. The first fellow opened the door to the carriage and helped her down the short step.

  “Thank you,” she said, watching him reach for her clothing bag. She turned to her da, moved to the driver’s seat and asked, “You’ll come back here no later than noon tomorrow? Please, Da, do this without argument?”

  “Shouldn’t ye be spending a full day with yer husband? Showing him the sight of this big city, although I’m not too sure if that’s what he’ll be interested in seeing,” Bowes said, raising his eyebrows at her.

  A blush crept up her face and, with it, all the thoughts she was trying to avoid. How could she possibly be cozy with a man she didn’t know, a man who looked, for all the world, like the darkest of devils? “Da, I can’t. As you well know, I’m responsible for Robbie’s care.” She spun away but turned back to say softly, “I will never get any peace from Adelaide if I’m derelict in my duties.”

  Bowes waved his arms in a useless gesture. “Och, you’ll never get any peace from that old…”

  “Da! Please, pick us up here.” She almost stamped her foot but stopped when it seemed others were listening to the exchange. “We’ll get Robbie and take him with us to the park or somewhere. After the treatment Connor and his brother received here, I’m not sure he’ll want to go anywhere, except to check on his brother.”

  “All right, darlin’, he said, shaking his head. “I won’t be fussing at ye this evening. I suspect ye have enough on yer mind as it is. Count on yer old da. I’ll be here around eleven.”

  Bowes gathered the reins and nodded to the servant holding the horse. He turned back to her. “You best be remembering, lass, just go up to the desk in that lobby. Tell them what’s working there who ye’re looking for.”

  “Da, I know what to do.” She giggled from nervousness.

  ‘Well, don’t let them tell ye he’s not around. I know for a fact he’s here already. Dropped him off myself an hour or so ago.”

  Despite her frowning, Sinead smiled up at him. “Don’t worry, Da. I’ll find my way,” she said, turning to the servant, who held her small cloth bag in his hand, waiting for her.

  “Follow me, missus,” he said, leading her toward the gilded lobby. She heard her da’s cluck to the horses. She sighed, looked down at her feet and followed.

  The gas chandelier lit the inside of the lobby with moving flashes of fire, making it seem like daytime. Sinead glanced around then stared at the people milling about, talking and gesturing with ease. All were elegantly dressed. She peeked at her outfit, whi
ch was several years older than the newest fashions, and felt more the servant than ever before.

  The hotel was fancy, filled with glitz and glitter, from the long expanse of shiny counter to the upholstered lounge chairs. She didn’t belong here anymore than she belonged at the Dewitts.

  Did Connor want to embarrass and show her up? They were out of place here. Why did he come to this particular hotel, she wondered, looking at the gilded décor woven into the marble flooring. She touched it with her toe and looked up, embarrassed.

  All the while she followed the young man, wending his way past people who stared, as she kept turning around to feast her eyes on sights she’s never seen before. Huge chandeliers lit every corner of the room. A golden railing at each side of wide carpeted stairs led the way to another floor, labeled The Mezzanine.

  Looking elsewhere, she bumped into the young blond man who carried her bag. “So sorry. I didn’t mean to bump into you.” His red uniform, with its gold trim, blinded her for a moment. Doing a slight side step, the young man stopped and held out a hand to steady her. “People often do that, ma’am. Especially, if it is the first time they’ve been to this hotel.” He smiled and gave an expansive bow. “Don’t upset yourself. Come.”

  He brought her to a long desk running the length of a curved alcove. She handed him a coin and watched him nod his thanks then move away to another part of the lobby.

  Behind her, a man coughed politely. “Can I help you, missus?”

  Startled, Sinead turned. She eyed the clerk and spoke with as much dignity as she could muster. “Why yes, I’m looking for my husband, a Mister Connor O’Malley, please.”

  The clerk pointed to a specific corner of the lobby. “Why yes, madam, he’s across the lobby, reading the Tribune. He’s been most anxious for your arrival.”

  Sinead looked in the general direction the clerk pointed and noticed several tall, very handsome men reading newspapers under the chandelier and another gaslight affixed to the wall. Two of them glanced over at her, one waggling his eyebrows.