CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
T he dream’s monstrous hunger for revenge lingered through the morning as Leona changed her husband’s dressings and checked for signs of infection.
She tucked away the wound of her grief and desire for justice as she did so, chewing the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood.
Grateful not to find any infection, she washed and dressed herself while he stood at the window looking down at the street.
“I need to get out of this room,” Gil complained as she adjusted the sling for his damaged arm.
“We’ll get you set up in the good parlor,” she assured him.
Leona shaved her husband, helped him dress, and left him waiting on the bed.
In the parlor, with walls papered in muted blues, gray, and yellow, she fluffed the pillows for the blue-striped chair by the fireplace.
She moved the table to hold his breakfast forward.
Pulling open the yellow curtains let in the pale winter light and flitted across the painting on the wall.
She stopped before the canvas cousin Ada had covered with a glorious midsummer sunrise from a White Mountain summit.
Leona basked in the light of Ada’s spirit emanating from it before she returned for Gil.
She walked with him down the hallway, and he leaned on her without a word.
Once she had him settled, he said, “I want my books. After all, that’s why I went out on Christmas Day in the first place.” The night’s chill gripped the room, and he shivered.
Leona suffered a sting of guilt. “You should rest.”
“What was all that noise last night, another nightmare?” he asked her sharply. “Mrs. McCarthy wouldn’t tell me. She said I needn’t worry and to ask you, but I fell asleep.”
“We have a guest, an acquaintance who has lost her family and her home.”
“Oh.” He sank back against the pillow. “A fire, then? You are a good woman, Leona.”
He’d lost his own family to fire. She didn’t correct his assumption Millie’s had died in a house fire, knowing how he felt about the Frosts, common in the winter with stoves and fireplaces always lit.
“I’ll come up with some wood and then bring your breakfast.” She pulled a blanket over him, tucking it in.
“I want my books,” he repeated. “And the newspapers and all the correspondence from the last few weeks. The small notebook, too, it’s in my coat pocket.” He grabbed her hand. “Do I sound like a terrible curmudgeon? I’m sorry.”
She squeezed, glad to feel the warm strength returning in him. He’d been so still and cold in his hospital bed when they brought him back from surgery. “If you feel up to it, I’ll bring your things, of course.” She took the bell from her pocket and handed it to him. “Anything else?”
He rang the little bell, staring into her eyes. “A kiss?”
Leona obliged him. She’d been so wrong. But this also meant they still had an unknown enemy to worry about. It would have been easier to face a known enemy and work their way through the problems in their marriage.
Downstairs, she entered the kitchen where Ruth and Mrs. McCarthy murmured with their heads together.
“Good morning. Mr. Gladney will take his breakfast upstairs in the good parlor. Please, Mrs. McCarthy. I’ll bring it when it’s ready.”
Ruth and Mrs. McCarthy turned to her with grave expressions.
A sharp stab of fear struck her. “Now what’s wrong?”
“Your guest is ill, Leona.” Ruth wiped her hands on a dishcloth. “Mrs. McCarthy said she’s been outside living rough. She’s got a fever and a cough.”
Leona’s grandfather entered, seeking to refill his coffee cup. Mrs. McCarthy looked flustered for a moment, distracted by Ruth and Leona, but set about refilling the man’s cup and completing Gil’s breakfast tray.
“Grandfather, would you start a fire for Gil?”
“That’s my job if—” Mrs. McCarthy protested.
“I’m quite capable, my dear Abigail,” Grandfather said cheerily. “I’ve got to earn my keep.”
Mrs. MaCarthy turned back to Leona after a smile for the older man, but her expression grew serious. “She’s been coughing since I got in, maybe started before that? I checked on her and found her feverish. Will you have breakfast with Mr. Gladney, m’um?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. McCarthy, just toast and coffee in here. Ruth, I’m sorry she kept you awake.”
“I slept like the dead, didn’t hear a thing.” Ruth removed her apron and folded it neatly. “But my brother is here for me. Theo’s taken sick, too, and Sally needs me to come home.”
“Of course, we’re fine here, Ruth.” Leona hugged her friend. “Thank you.”
After seeing Ruth to the door, she took her husband’s tray, the ledger books on his desk he’d taken from the office, the mail, newspapers, the notebook, and brought it upstairs. He glanced at her face once but immediately busied himself with the correspondence.
She returned to the kitchen, where her grandfather and Mrs. McCarthy discussed fever and cough remedies forced on them in their childhoods. None of them sounded pleasant.
“I’ve honey and whiskey in hot tea for the cough and cold cloths for the fever. And I’ll start a beef broth,” Mrs. McCarthy told her.
“I’d better check on her.” Leona’s own breakfast would have to wait.
She pushed open the guest room door as a cough wracked through Millie. She lay in the messy bed, rolling over to gaze at Leona with blood-shot eyes. Her cheeks were pink and sweat lay on her brow.
“I am not well,” Millie declared.
“Rest is the best thing for you. You’ve been through an ordeal.”
Mrs. McCarthy entered with a basin of cold water and some flannel cloths, setting them down on a nearby table. “The tea is almost ready, m’um. I’ll come back with it.”
“Thank you.” Leona dropped a flannel in the water and wrung it out. “Let me put this on your forehead.”
Millie held out her hand. “I can do it. I’m not completely helpless.” She placed the wet rag on her brow and lay back with a sigh. “Why are you so kind to me? Daphne Van Wyn was your friend and yet you—” A cough ripped through her, deep and worrisome.
“Millie, there’s only one place you can go besides here.” The reminder had cut like a knife, and she sharpened her tone. “And I’m not doing it out of simple kindness—I want you to go to the police and tell the truth.”
Another fit of coughing took her. “How can someone like you possibly understand? You’ve money, a pedigree, a fine house in the fanciest neighborhood in Brooklyn. What would you do without them?”
I would not turn to confidence tricks to make my way in the world. The words were on the tip of her tongue, but she didn’t want to antagonize Millie any further. Not while she was sick and weak, anyway.
Mrs. McCarthy entered with the tea and plate of toast and warm muffins. She brought fresh handkerchiefs for Millie’s use, too. Mrs. McCarthy returned to the kitchen to tend to her beef broth, she said, for Millie’s luncheon.
Millie peeled the damp cloth from her forehead. “I’m dying. At least this travail of tears will be over.”
“Don’t be foolish.” Leona poured the tea, the hot steam brushing against her cold fingers. “Think of it as your first step on the path of redemption.”
Millie snorted and hacked into a handkerchief. Leona added a splash of whiskey and a generous portion of honey to the tea. She handed it to Millie, who held the cup close to her face and inhaled the steam.
“You gave me laudanum last night,” Millie croaked. “Can’t I have some of that or are you keeping it for yourself? Iris said you are some kind of opium addict.”
“Iris is a liar, which you must know by now,” Leona answered sharply. “The laudanum is for my husband, though he refuses to take it. Later you may have some. But I want the truth.”
Millie drank her tea, her eyes wandering about the room, taking it in. “What’s wrong with your husband?”
“On Christmas Day, someone tried to kill him.” Leona stood and opened the curtains. “It’s been a brutal year. Money doesn’t solve every problem.”
“But it helps—you’ve money to pay the doctor’s bill, don’t you?”
Perhaps not true for too much longer. Leona poured herself tea, adding whiskey and skipping the honey. She picked up a muffin and bit into it as an excuse to think and not talk. Millie ate two of the muffins and all the toast in the meantime and held out her empty cup for more.
“Do you want to tell me your story?” Leona doctored Millie’s tea as she had before. Millie’s cough had quieted, though the effect of the honey and whiskey would wear off again soon. And Millie knew Leona wouldn’t throw her out now. “Perhaps get paid for it?”
Her guest gave her a suspicious look. “Iris said you aren’t a reporter, so what’s your angle?”
“I’m an authoress. How will you support yourself without Jesper and Iris? All the jewelry and whatever hidden in the WC is gone. Is there a bank account?”
“I went to the bank, but they had men watching. The minute I try to withdraw any funds, the police will arrest me.”
“If you turn yourself in and tell your story, I know it would go a long way toward leniency with the court and the judge.” She took Millie’s empty cup again and refilled it, then added a drop of laudanum.
“After all, you weren’t present when they murdered Mrs. Van Wyn.
And probably not those others.” Leona guessed at the last bit and didn’t really believe leniency would apply in Millie’s case.
But the truth could only help Benedict and Geneva, herself, and perhaps in the end even Millie.
Her husband and Iris had forceful personalities.
Perhaps the judge would see them as an evil influence, though Millie was hardly a child, or an impressionable young woman, though she had been once.
“No, I wasn’t there for any of—I don’t know what you’re about, Leona Gladney. Who will pay for my story?” She rubbed her throat and moaned.