Once an Heiress (Gilded Promises) Page 13

  In that moment, Fitz felt a little less sure of his reasons for taking the pearls from her. He could repay Connor another way.

  Fitz fought against a surge of guilt. Gigi had made her choices out of selfishness, then desperation. The consequences of her actions were hers to bear, not his. Fitz’s loyalty belonged to his family. It didn’t matter if Gigi regretted her actions. It didn’t matter that she wanted to restore her relationships with her family. It didn’t matter—couldn’t matter—that he’d once considered her a friend.

  And yet, in that instant, when Fitz’s gaze connected with Gigi’s, his sole ambition pointed to a single goal. Ease her suffering.

  She drew closer.

  Time seemed to stand still. A silent message passed between them, something his heart understood but his head couldn’t quite grasp.

  He’d never felt this connected to Gigi before, or this concerned over what was about to come out of her mouth. And yet, this was the most real, unaffected moment they’d shared since childhood.

  For several long seconds, Fitz stayed where he was, drawing in air, willing his mind to remember where his loyalty lay.

  Gigi came to a halt directly in front of him. Her eyes were desolate behind the thick lashes. Fitz knew whatever she said next, he wasn’t going to like it.

  He gave her a curt nod in greeting, careful not to use her real name in public.

  She returned the gesture, her eyes locked with his. She had a beautiful, dramatic face that no disguise or poorly dyed hair could hide.

  “I want you to know,” she began, looking over her shoulder and then back again. “I am not one of your employees.”

  Despite the seriousness of her tone, Fitz felt his lips twitch in amusement. “That certainly needed clearing up.”

  She made a face. “I will not allow you to bully me into giving you my great-grandmother’s pearls.”

  He said nothing.

  “I have reasons for wanting to return them myself.”

  Fitz studied her face. The strength and sorrow that shifted across her features made his heart burn with regret. He could never erase her loss of innocence. Did she distrust her own judgment? Did she question every man’s motives?

  Of course she did.

  That was no way to live.

  “I must be the one to return the pearls.” Despite her proud conviction, her entire bearing was a study in misery.

  Inside Fitz’s chest, his breath stalled and his heart began to throb harder. “I am not here to harm you.” It was important she understand that. “I mean it.”

  He put a hand on her arm, felt a shock of sensation rush through him. She felt it, too. Fitz knew she did by the way her eyes widened and her breath quickened.

  “We are in agreement, then?”

  He angled his head, a silent question in his response to the one she’d just asked of him.

  She gave him a soft, sad smile that managed to reach inside his heart and squeeze. “Annie must wear the necklace at her wedding to Connor. And you will let me be the one to give it to her.”

  Fitz was torn. He’d thought of nothing but the pearls since awaking this morning. But he had a good idea why Gigi wanted to be the one to return the necklace. She wanted absolution.

  He wanted to give it to her. Yet he couldn’t make himself say the words. Gigi couldn’t know how much he owed his cousin. Connor had kept his father’s condition secret and had asked for nothing in return.

  When Connor had mentioned the Wentworth wedding tradition centered on the pearls, and his desire to see Annie wear the heirloom on their wedding day, Fitz had redoubled his efforts to find Gigi. He’d hired a second private investigator when the first had failed. For the most part, Mr. Offutt had proven himself better than the man before him.

  But if Fitz himself returned the pearls, Gigi would have nothing but her promises to prove she’d changed. Fitz would be the hero and Gigi the villain. There was no joy in the knowledge. No triumph.

  He stared into her startling blue eyes, knowing he couldn’t hurt her like that. “You may be the one to return them.”

  The lines of strain around her mouth seemed to smooth out right before his eyes. “Thank you.”

  Emotion scraped through the words. Her gratitude made him stand a little taller, as if he had the power to conquer any obstacle, slay any dragon.

  Fitz fought to contain thoughts of what might have been had he been a little less rigid and she a little less frivolous. But he couldn’t change who he was or the fact that she hadn’t wanted him. Their time had come and gone. He found himself caught between yearning and frustration.

  The reflex to drag her into his arms came fast, strong, and too powerful to deny. He reached for her.

  “Mr. Fitzpatrick.” Mr. Everett sauntered over to their tense little group of two. “Would now be a good time to review the accounts payable? I have arranged them in order of importance.”

  Fitz couldn’t fault the man’s persistence. The owner was quite determined to push the sale. Out of the corner of his eye, Fitz noticed Gigi melting away.

  A moment later, she seamlessly joined a group of women dressed in blue costumes and engaged in their conversation as if she’d been there all along.

  Unable to think of a handy excuse, Fitz followed the theater owner into his office. After producing a large stack of receipts, Mr. Everett left him to make his review in peace.

  A half hour later, Fitz found his concentration wavering for the tenth—or was it the eleventh?—time. His mind returned to the most recent telegram from his cousin that had arrived this morning. Connor had ended the message in the same way as the one before: Situation under control.

  Fitz would repay Connor for his loyalty to the family. In the meantime, something had to be done about his father. Fitz now had the names of three specialists in New York willing to meet with him. He was still waiting to hear from the fourth. Maybe one of the doctors would have answers.

  With no reason to rush back to Boston, Fitz would use his extended stay to investigate potential new investments.

  Giving up all pretense of work, Fitz set down the pencil and rubbed at his eyes. His father was getting worse by the day. The strong-willed, fair-minded man of his youth was gone. If his father wasn’t watched closely, he wandered off. Sometimes he was gone for an hour, sometimes longer. He would show up at the racetrack, the park, and, worst of all, the office. The latter required careful handling to avoid talk getting out.

  The worst part was that Calvin Fitzpatrick never remembered where he’d been or why he’d gone out in the first place.

  Fitz wanted his father back. The one who’d taught him how to toss a ball and balance accounting books.

  Music drifted through the seams of the office door. Fitz dropped his hands and listened. He didn’t know the song, but that didn’t stop his mind from returning to Gigi. The young girl she’d been, the one who’d loved the theater and the opera, was as much a memory as the loving father Fitz had lost to mental illness.

  He reached for his pencil, plucked it free from the desk, and began twirling it between his fingers. He longed for simpler times, for relief from his many burdens. He wanted to go back to the days when his life had added up as neatly as the line items listed on the ledger beneath his palm.

  After an hour of sitting through tedious calculations, Fitz’s brain throbbed. He needed a break, a distraction. The obvious solution was playing out on the stage beyond the shut door.

  Decision made, Fitz left the office. He looked out over the auditorium. Pools of gray shadows concealed the plush velvet seats. The entire area beyond the stage was empty, save for a lone man polishing the brass rails. His movements were slow and rhythmic, as if he’d subconsciously timed them to the music.

  Fitz shut his eyes a moment. He recognized the opening notes of “Habanera,” the lead mezzo-soprano’s famous aria.

  He hated Carmen. The tragic operetta was absolutely the worst tale of love and deception ever composed. The convoluted story was Gigi’s
all-time favorite and—ironically—the source of their first argument. He’d been forced to attend the theater with his family, around the time his father had begun showing signs of instability, but no one wanted to acknowledge the problem, not even Fitz. At the party afterward, Gigi had gushed over the music.

  Happy for the diversion, Fitz had vehemently disagreed with her, saying the story was overly dramatic. She’d called him boring and accused him of possessing the imagination of dry toast.

  His thoughts leapt to the end of their verbal tussle, straight to the remarkable conclusion of their disagreement.

  Fitz had pulled Gigi into his arms and pressed his lips to hers. He’d only wanted to shut her up. That’s what he told himself, anyway. Much to his surprise, she’d clung to him and kissed him in return.

  The glorious moment had been short and never repeated. Their relationship had grown tense from that day on, full of awkward pauses and uncomfortable silences.

  Lost in the memory, Fitz changed direction. Instead of watching Esmeralda take center stage, he allowed his feet to take him to the wardrobe room.

  Mrs. Llewellyn had told him she’d hired Gigi in a part-time capacity as a finisher, whatever that was. Fitz deduced her duties had something to do with sewing. The pay had to be minuscule. Fitz wondered why Gigi had agreed to such menial work. Out of the goodness of her heart or for another reason?

  She was becoming somewhat of a mystery.

  Fitz hated mysteries. He told himself he was only seeking her out to solve the puzzle of this latest hole in her story. But he knew that wasn’t entirely true. He wanted to know all of Gigi’s secrets, even the ugly ones. He wanted to know what she was hiding.

  What did it matter?

  She’d promised to return the pearls. His business with her was complete. He should return to the theater office, back to the familiarity of receipts and ledgers and numbers that always added up.

  Fitz kept walking.

  He made it halfway to the wardrobe room when a movement caught his eye. Gigi stood in the wings, her eyes on the stage. Fitz watched her a moment, saw her wince. He couldn’t blame her reaction. One of Esmeralda’s understudies was butchering the opening aria.

  Even Fitz could tell the difference between Esmeralda’s vocal adroitness and the screeching coming from the stage. He’d nearly reached the end of his endurance, yet the heavyset woman continued shrieking out her heart’s most hidden desires for love and passion.

  The singer’s overuse of the dramatic was nothing short of criminal. Her command of the lyrics was questionable at best. She kept stumbling over the French word l’amour, pronouncing it “la-mare.”

  In Fitz’s estimation, the only saving grace was that he wasn’t alone in his misery. Some of the cast actually gave in to the impulse and slapped their palms over their ears.

  Two dreadful stanzas later, the director called a halt to the magnificent torture.

  Esmeralda took her place, all but shoving the woman out of her way, muttering something under her breath that Fitz was glad he couldn’t hear. No doubt a few curses were included in the angry spurt of English mixed with Italian.

  The music began again, and Fitz felt the shift in the theater’s atmosphere almost immediately. Esmeralda’s approach to the song was restrained and elegant.

  Glancing at Gigi, he caught the sigh sweeping out of her, noted how her eyes were two pools of watery emotion. Esmeralda’s masterful performance obviously stirred her.

  Fitz wasn’t sure why he did it. He couldn’t fathom what had gotten into him, but he moved to stand beside her. She smelled of soap, lavender, and mint. Fitz would always equate those particular scents with Gigi. He reached out and took her hand.

  She turned her head and, clearly caught up in the moment, gave him a soggy smile. His chest moved soundlessly as he breathed his way to composure.

  That look, it brought all sorts of inconvenient emotions to the surface. Tenderness, longing, a need to protect. Not for the first time that day, Fitz wanted to drag Gigi into his arms, fight off the men in the world who would hurt her.

  He didn’t have the right. He’d never had the right.

  Her delicate perfection, now in disguise, was not for him. She was not for him. She’d never been for him.

  And so he’d stood by and watched helplessly as she’d run away with a fortune hunter. He’d let her turn her back on everything she knew, her family, her friends, him, because Fitz had known she didn’t want him.

  Even now, when he would like nothing more than to find Nathanial Dixon and make the man better acquainted with his fist, Fitz accepted the truth. No matter what he did, he would never win Gigi’s heart. He wouldn’t even try.

  The life he had to offer her would only bring her more pain.

  She may have cared for him, once, as a friend. But Fitz had never accepted the status of second best, not in business and especially not in a woman’s heart. You mean, not in Gigi’s heart.

  After she’d run away, the original private investigator’s report had arrived and Fitz’s suspicions had been confirmed. Nathanial Dixon was not the man he seemed. He was not from a wealthy English family. He was a con man from Philadelphia who’d targeted Gigi for her inheritance.

  Gigi had not been his first mark. Nor, Fitz doubted, his last. As soon as the report had landed on his desk, Fitz had begun to look back and wonder if he’d been wrong about Gigi’s affections for Dixon. If he’d stayed out of their relationship, would she have grown tired of the man?

  They would never know.

  Still, she’d run away and had done . . . who knew what. She’d made her choice. And that choice had not been Fitz.

  She’d dodged a lifetime of regret and didn’t even know it.

  He must keep that in mind or he would never be able to maintain the necessary distance between himself and Gigi. Distance. Yes, he needed distance.

  Then why are you still holding her hand?

  And why was she clutching his in return?

  Esmeralda’s performance came to an end. A pause, a moment of poised silence, a collective sigh of appreciation, and then . . .

  Gigi jerked her hand from his. Eyes wide, mouth agape, she stared at him.

  He liked that he’d put that flustered expression on her face. “Something wrong, Miss . . . Smith?”

  A furious blush colored her cheeks.

  “Do you feel faint?”

  Her answering scowl was answer enough.

  “No? Well, then it must be another reason.” He leaned over her. “The lovely music perhaps? It was really quite wonderful, wasn’t it?”

  She found her voice at last. “You hate Carmen.”

  “And you adore it.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “I remember a time when you were quite passionate in your praise.”

  Back ramrod straight, she glared at him. “I have to go.”

  Eyebrows cocked, Fitz stepped closer. “I wonder . . .”

  “Mrs. Llewellyn is expecting me.”

  “I wonder,” he repeated, moving directly into her path, “if you recall the other time we came to blows over this operetta?”

  Her eyes instantly narrowed, telling Fitz all he needed to know. She remembered their argument as well as he did.

  They were in dangerous territory now, and neither seemed capable of walking away. As they settled into their silent standoff, Fitz noticed that Gigi wasn’t calling him boring or unimaginative.

  Mind stuck somewhere between past and present, he stepped closer still. He moved his head a fraction closer to hers, and—

  Common sense returned.

  He shifted his stance and looked toward center stage. A groan shot past his lips. Perfect. Just perfect.

  The afternoon had only needed this.

  Esmeralda had spotted him. The look of displeasure on the diva’s face was similar to the expression Gigi wore on her delicate features. Fitz had that way with women. Some men charmed them. He was unnaturally talented at frustrating them.

&nbs
p; Giving up Gigi as a lost cause, he swung around to smile at Esmeralda.

  The diva stood in the halo of light pouring over her. “Fitz, darling, come here, please.”

  Fitz answered Esmeralda’s call without a single glance in Gigi’s direction. All right, he looked. Once. Briefly.

  Briefly was all it took. The image of her frowning displeasure would stay with him for hours to come.

  Gigi told herself she didn’t care that Fitz had obeyed Esmeralda’s summons. She knew what the diva was about. Of course she knew, but Esmeralda would find her machinations wasted. Sophie had no interest in Fitz.

  Did Fitz share Sophie’s disinterest?

  It didn’t matter. He’d given up on the pearls. Gigi had won.

  Where was her sense of satisfaction, then, her glee?

  With a strange sinking sensation in her stomach, Gigi stepped into the wardrobe room. “What can I do to help?”

  Mrs. Llewellyn glanced up from her sewing. “At the moment, nothing.”

  “Please, there must be a chore you can think of.” Her voice sounded raspy and desperate. She swallowed and began again. “I need something to do with my hands.”

  The wardrobe mistress looked around the room, her eyes searching and then landing on a bucket.

  Gigi inwardly cringed. You asked, she reminded herself.

  Placing a smile on her face, she said in the most philosophical voice she could muster, “I have a sudden passion for sorting buttons.”

  “How fortuitous.”

  “Indeed.”

  Gigi sat on the ground and tucked her legs under her skirt. As she settled into the tedious task given her, she reviewed her recent encounter with Fitz through the brutal objectivity of time and hard-won experience. There’d been a moment, several, actually, when she’d been caught up in the romance of the music.

  But she should know better than to be swept away by music and sentiment. Had she learned nothing from her time with Nathanial? Apparently, parts of her former self were alive and well in the woman she’d become.