The actress colored at Honor’s rebuke. “Well, you would feel that way, being a lawyer and all. I was just leading up to the fact that with Mr. Delancy out of the country, Nevada has been running their company.”
Honor scribbled a few notes on her tablet. “So Mr. LaRouche is obviously wealthy.”
“I daresay Nevada’s one of the wealthiest men in New York. You should see the Fifth Avenue mansion he lives in. It’s—”
“I’m sure it’s most impressive,” Honor said, continuing to write. She looked up. “Here we have a wealthy man taking advantage of a hapless, trusting young woman. He woos her with promises of marriage, and when he tires of her, he coldly casts her aside.”
Lillie’s eyes grew luminous with tears. “That’s exactly how it happened, Mrs. Davis.”
“Now tell me about Mr. LaRouche.”
Lillie’s expressive face reflected puzzlement and a trace of suspicion. “He’s in his late twenties or early thirties. I never did get around to asking, but—”
“I meant, what kind of man is he? I need to know as much as possible about him so I’ll know what I’m up against.” Honor also wanted to see just how well the actress really knew LaRouche, or if she was playing Honor for a fool.
She patiently sat through Lillie’s rapturous description of her former lover as “tall and ever so handsome, with hair the color of summer wheat and eyes as blue as a prairie sky.”
Lillie added, “He’s a gentle man, for having lived out on the wild frontier. And he’s real quiet, even when he loses his temper.” She shivered. “He becomes so still, like the air just before a thunderstorm, until you wish he’d just yell and get it over with.”
“Did he lose his temper often?” Honor asked.
Lillie smiled a self-satisfied, blatantly sexual smile. “I never gave him any cause.” Her expression changed to one of bewilderment. “He’s a secretive man, hard to know. When I asked him how he got those scars on his body, he just smiled and told me not to worry my pretty little head about them.” Lillie’s eyes widened in awe. “I’ve always suspected he got shot in several gunfights.”
At least Honor now knew that Lillie had known the man well enough to see him unclothed, giving credence to her claim that she had been his devoted mistress.
Lillie smiled another dreamy smile. “He has a beautiful voice, low, quiet, with a musical drawl. When he talks, he speaks prairie poetry. He once said my hair was the color of desert sand and that I was as pretty as a Colorado sunrise.”
Honor suppressed a smile and made a few more notes. “How do you think Mr. LaRouche will react to the possibility of a lawsuit? Will he settle out of court, or will he fight your claim?”
Lillie’s lovely face went blank. “He was always very considerate of me up until he decided to give me my walking papers. And he never struck me as nasty or vengeful, the way a lot of men are when they don’t get their way.” She wrinkled her brow in concentration. “He’s a decent, honorable man. I think he will settle.”
Honor rose and walked around her desk. “You’ve given me all the information I need, Miss Troy. I’ll make an appointment with Mr. LaRouche before I file a writ summons and complaint, and then I’ll let you know if he wants to settle or if we’re going to have a fight on our hands.”
Privately, Honor hoped he chose to fight, for if he did, this would be her first court case. She hadn’t become a lawyer just to write wills and negotiate contracts.
Honor leaned back in her chair. “Would five thousand dollars be adequate compensation for you?”
The prospect of so much money made Lillie Troy’s lovely face brighten. “That would certainly help mend my broken heart.”
“It’s a fair settlement.”
The actress rose and dabbed at her eyes one last time. “I am so grateful to you, Mrs. Davis. Now I don’t feel so helpless and alone.”
“There are laws to protect the helpless, Miss Troy.” Even if they had failed to protect Honor’s own father. Then she wished her client a good day and showed her out.
When Lillie Troy’s footsteps died away, Honor turned to Elroy Crisp, the stenographer and assistant she had hired a month ago. “What were you able to find out about our Miss Troy?”
“Not much, boss,” the freckle-faced young man replied. “She’s not one of those women who make a habit of suing former suitors. The people I’ve talked to all said she is a sweet young girl who honestly thought LaRouche was going to marry her.”
“That’s gratifying. She’s my client and I’ll protect her best interests, but I will not tolerate a client who lies to me.”
After telling Elroy to make an appointment with Nevada LaRouche, Honor returned to her office to plan for their confrontation.
Three days later, immediately upon Honor’s arrival at the Wall Street offices of Delancy and LaRouche, a woman ushered her into the inner office and announced, “Mrs. Honor Davis to see you, Mr. LaRouche.”
He stood before a tall arched window bathed in spring sunlight, with his back to Honor. “Thank you, Miss Fields. If I need anything, I’ll call.”
Lillie Troy’s description of his voice as low and musical didn’t do it justice. Seductive, Honor thought, a drawling velvet voice that could soothe a high-strung horse and then, in the same breath, charm the pantalets off a duchess. She raised her guard.
He turned, and Honor’s first thought was that he looked out of place amid the uncluttered, pedimented desk and cabinets, the banal accoutrements of commerce. His tall, lanky frame, which topped Robert’s six feet by a good two inches, didn’t account for it, and neither did the fact that he wore his sun-streaked blond hair and mustache longer than current male fashion decreed. The hand-tooled black leather cowboy boots he wore certainly set him apart from the average New Yorker, but the reason for that other indefinable quality kept eluding her.
When he nodded curtly and said, “Mrs. Davis,” she realized that while his eyes were as blue as Lillie Troy’s fanciful prairie sky, they had wild, untamed depths that conjured up in Honor’s own mind equally fanciful images of wide-open spaces inhabited by rough, lawless men.
Be careful, Honor. This man will be a formidable opponent.
She returned his nod. “Mr. LaRouche.”
He walked toward her, his step light and soundless on a plush Turkish carpet. He smiled, a disarming white grin even more charming than his voice. “I know lady doctors, but I’ve never met a lady lawyer before.”
She braced herself for lavish references to her beauty and was relieved when he made none. Then she surprised him by extending her hand.
When he placed his hand in hers, she shook it firmly. “I’m something of a rarity, but I can assure you that I am indeed a fully qualified lawyer, and I represent Miss Lillie Troy.” Honor watched him carefully for any sign of recognition, and when his eyes turned wary and he quickly released her hand, she said, “I see you know Miss Troy.”
He indicated a comfortable leather chair, then rounded his enormous desk, where he remained standing, his thumbs hooked in his belt, his weight resting easily on one leg. “Ma’am, I don’t deny knowing Lillie. I’m just puzzled as to why she needs a lawyer and why that lawyer has come calling on me.”
Honor opened her valise and removed her notes. “She claims you knew each other so well that you promised to marry her.” She looked up at him. “Is this true?”
He reached up to stroke his drooping mustache. “Mrs. Davis,” he said softly, “what in damnation is this all about?”
“I’d advise you to have your own attorney present while you hear what I have to say.”
“No need, ma’am. I fight my own battles.”
“Suit yourself.” She leaned back in her chair. “Miss Troy intends to sue you for breach of promise.”
“Come again?”
Honor scanned her notes as a delaying tactic, hoping to rattle him into saying something imprudent that she could use against him to her client’s benefit. “Miss Troy claims you led her to believe that you wanted to marry her, then reneged on your offer. Is that true?”
He sat down, stretched out his lanky frame as if even this large room were too small to contain him, and studied Honor with the maddening deliberation of a cat stalking a mouse. “I’m not one to use coarse language in front of a lady, and I don’t mean to offend you, ma’am, but—”
“Candor does not offend me, Mr. LaRouche,” she said. “In fact, I would find it most refreshing.”
“Lillie was my—my
petite amie.”
He stumbled over the French phrase, giving it an odd, flat pronunciation.
“Your mistress.”
He inclined his head slightly at her blunt use of the word. “I set her up in her own apartment, and for the last six months I paid all her bills, which were considerable, without complaint. A man keeps a woman, he pays her bills. Fair exchange for services rendered.” He leaned forward. “But I was always honest with her. I never led her to believe that I would marry her, especially when I found out that I couldn’t trust her.”
“She claims you did deceive her.”
“Then one of us is lying.” He rose, came around his desk, and leaned against its edge so he was only a few feet away from her. “Did I give her a betrothal ring?”
She refused to let his disconcerting nearness intimidate her, for he was one of those men whose quiet demeanor was more intimidating than raving and hollering would have been. “No, you did not.”
“Did I tell my friends that I intended to marry her?”
“I don’t know. Did you?”
“No! You can ask every last one of them.”
“Why should I believe your friends? Of course they would take your side.”
When he looked chagrined; Honor softened her voice regretfully. “Mr. LaRouche, you don’t have to convince me of anything. It’s obvious that it’s your word against Miss Troy’s, but the courts will decide who’s telling the truth.” Honor paused. “Unless, of course, you choose to settle this dispute out of court.”
Comprehension dawned immediately. The cold disdain in his eyes would have made lesser opponents rise and leave the room while they still had their skins intact, but Honor thought once again of all the men who had put ink on her chair, and then she steeled herself for battle like a warhorse smelling cannon fire.
He gave a knowing nod. “So that’s what this is all about. Blackmail.”
“Justice for a defenseless woman, Mr. LaRouche,” Honor retorted just as coldly.
“How much?”
“Five thousand dollars, which I think is only fair.”
He grew very still, though the very air around him thrummed with suppressed rage like the calm before a thunderstorm. “So you think that’s only fair.”
“I do, and Miss Troy agrees.”
The disdain in LaRouche’s eyes turned to pure contempt. “You seem like a decent woman, ma’am. How can someone who claims to uphold the law be a party to out-and-out blackmail?”
Honor raised her chin and looked him in the eye. “As a lawyer, I am bound to represent my client to the best of my ability.”
“But she’s lying to you.”
“So you say, but I choose to believe she’s telling me the truth.”
“Did she tell you why I broke off with her?”
“She wanted marriage, and you didn’t.”
He gave her an exasperated look. “I went to the apartment intending to surprise her, but I was the one who got a surprise. I found her entertaining another man, and they weren’t playing cards, if you get my drift.”
She suppressed a smile at his choice of words. If Nevada LaRouche had found his paramour in bed with another man, then Lillie hadn’t been totally honest with her lawyer after all.
“Miss Troy’s fidelity or lack of it has nothing to do with the fact that you promised to marry her and broke that promise.”
LaRouche shook his head in palpable disgust. “Damnation! You mean to tell me that you could defend a woman who would cheat on her man and still expect him to marry her?”
“That’s your version of what happened. Why should I take your word over Miss Troy’s?”
“Because I’m telling the truth.”
“I would consult with your lawyer, if I were you,” Honor said, “though if you want my advice, I would pay up the five thousand and select my mistresses more carefully in the future.” She returned her notes to her valise and rose. “Be warned that if you choose to go to court, we will ask for an even larger settlement, and we will insist that you pay Miss Troy’s court costs and my legal fees.”
He crossed his arms and raked Honor from bonnet to hem with an insolent gaze that made her itch to slap him. “You have the face of an angel and the heart of a sidewinder, ma’am.”
If that’s his idea of poetry, Honor thought, then I’ve read better written on the side of a barn.
She smiled coldly. “I’ll give you seven days to come to a decision, Mr. LaRouche. If I don’t receive a settlement check by then, my client and I will start proceedings against you and we’ll next meet in court. Good day.”
She didn’t bother to extend her hand, for she had the uneasy feeling it would be akin to sticking it into the jaws of a lion.
As she turned to go, LaRouche said, “Mrs. Davis,” and extended his hand.
Honor had no choice but to shake it or risk appearing afraid of him. “Mr. LaRouche.” When she tried to withdraw her hand, he held it fast without hurting. Honor remained still and returned his cool, challenging stare.