Romance: Luther's Property (32 page)

“I’m sorry that your father is so sick and that Fausto isn’t
here with him,” Lucrecia said after the silence had spanned out between herself
and Nolan for too long. “It’s a shame that he got himself into such a bad mood
before I was properly introduced.”

“Like I said,” Nolan interrupted, holding up his hand, “he’s
always like that. Since childhood he’s had awful mood swings that never seem to
go away or calm down. He’s always on top of the world or as angry as the fires
of Hell themselves.”

“Is he really always like that?” Lucrecia asked, a twinge of
fear creeping into her voice. When writing to Fausto and when boarding the
train, she had convinced herself that it didn’t matter what kind of man he was.
The kind of man that he was didn’t matter when she was faced with the
opportunity of a lifetime. She had told herself over and over that even if he
hit her, it wouldn’t make a difference to her. Right then, it made all of the
difference in the world. “Always so… so angry?”

Nolan looked up at Lucrecia, sympathy spreading across his
features. He had seen many a girl who thought that they were interested in
Fausto. They thought that, even through his anger and his temperament, they
could survive and understand that underneath it all, they were wealthy.
Disgustingly wealthy. That would never change who Fausto was.

“Yes, he’s always like that,” Nolan said. It wasn’t a lie,
and he wasn’t hyperbolizing it. That was just how Fausto was. “And I hate to
break it to you, Miss Lucrecia, but I doubt that he even cares about you. In
our father’s will, Fausto must get married and have a child before he can
inherit his portion of the will. That’s the only reason he sought you out.”

Even though Lucrecia knew that it was the truth, the words
stung her deeply. She smiled through it, and gave Nolan a little shrug. “I’ve
known that,” she said.

“Then why are you here?” Nolan asked. He was shocked that a
girl as nice as Lucrecia would suffer through someone like Fausto. “Don’t you
know that you deserve someone so much better than he is?”

“When you find a man that’s better than he is and willing to
take me in, you let me know,” Lucrecia said, a little laugh forming on her
lips. “Truly, I would love to meet a man like that. It would make my day. I
wouldn’t even care if he was poor or rich. All that would matter is that he
would love me unconditionally.”

As Lucrecia spoke, Nolan felt a surge of emotion rush
through him. He couldn’t pinpoint it, but he wanted to give Lucrecia hope. She
didn’t deserve to be so broken already, not when she was so pretty and young.
He wanted to tell her that she deserved the world, and absolutely nothing less.
There wasn’t anything that she should want for, be it a beautiful jewel or a
man that would know how to treat her right. She was worth more than the
universe itself.

“Lucrecia, I…” he began, but trailed off, his confidence
waning.

Lucrecia looked up, but Nolan’s luck couldn’t have been
better. A shaky cough rattled through his father’s chest, making Lucrecia jump
back. Nolan did the opposite, sitting forward and helping his father to lift
his head. It always helped him to get rid of a particularly nasty cough. He
wheezed like that for a long time, held in Nolan’s arms. Lucrecia had reached
out and clasped his frail, bony hand in hers.

“Who might you be…?” he asked, his voice just as wheezing as
his cough had been. He was trying to turn his eyes to look at Lucrecia, but he
was having difficulty doing so. He hardly knew where the girl was. He only knew
that someone new was there because of the racket that Fausto had made when the
two of them had entered.

“I’m Lucrecia,” she said. “I’m going to be Fausto’s wife.
I’m not certain where he ran off to, but I’m very pleased to meet you.”

A smile creaked onto Mr. Redman’s wizened, wrinkled face and
a laugh pushed forward past his lip: “What a very polite young lady,” he said,
making Lucrecia blush. He laughed a little more, turning his head in Nolan’s
general direction. “A man like Fausto doesn’t quite deserve a woman like her,
does he?” he asked.

Nolan blushed just as much as Lucrecia was. He didn’t have
the heart to reply to the old man’s question. “Father, she came here from New
York on a train. Isn’t that amazing?” he asked.

The old man nodded. “I remember when there weren’t any
trains,” he said, a hum in his voice. “When I was your age…” a horrible
coughing fit wracked his body for a good two minutes. “When I was younger, and
not so sickly, we took horses and caravans all the way out here.”

“We know, Father,” Nolan said.

Lucrecia could imagine the same phrase from Fausto’s lips.
He would be short with the old man, treating him as though he were lower and
not worthy of his attention. It made Lucrecia’s skin crawl, but Nolan was
exactly the opposite. He was smiling as he spoke, and it gave way to the true
lightheartedness of his words.

“Don’t you interrupt me,” Mr. Redman scolded.

“I would like to hear the story,” Lucrecia said, beaming
from ear to ear. “I’ve grown up in New York my entire life reading adventure
stories. It would be nice to hear one that was actually true for once.”

A smile broke out onto Mr. Redman’s lips, showing his lack
of strong teeth. He turned his head between Nolan and Lucrecia, a little laugh
creeping up on him once more. “Nolan,” he said, catching his son’s attention,
“I like this girl very, very much more than any other girl.”

Together with Nolan, Lucrecia stayed at the hospital for a
long time. Mr. Redman had many stories to tell her, and she soaked them up like
a sponge. Fausto was nothing like his father, and Lucrecia wondered if perhaps
he had inherited the bad traits from his mother. Mr. Redman never once spoke of
his wife, and Nolan never offered to fill her in, so she assumed that her
suspicions were true. There was no other explanation for how such a sweet man
like Mr. Redman had reared a child as horrible as Fausto. Clearly it wasn’t his
parenting skills, as Nolan had turned out perfectly well.

At a quarter to five, a doctor rapped on the door three
times with his knuckles and then entered the room. He was a kindly looking
young man, with sweeping blond hair and golden, sun kissed skin. He looked
perfectly at home in his white doctor’s robes.

“I’m afraid that I’m going to have to ask the two of you to
leave,” he said. His voice was gentle, and Lucrecia appreciated the way he kept
his tone soft for his patients and their visitors. “Mr. Redman needs his sleep.
I know that it has been a very long day for him.”

It was true, and Mr. Redman was already half asleep by the
time the doctor had entered the room. He had tried to stay awake as best as he
could, but he soon found himself unable to keep his eyes open for much longer.

“I’ll come back and visit you another time,” Lucrecia
promised. She leaned over the bed and placed a tender kiss to the crown of Mr.
Redman’s head. He smiled at the gesture, and closed his blind eyes.

“That’s right, Father, we’ll be back tomorrow,” Nolan
agreed. He patted his father’s hand, and then stood.

He and Lucrecia took their leave, glancing back as the
doctor flicked off the lights in Mr. Redman’s room and walked behind them. He
was shepherding them in a way, but Lucrecia didn’t mind. She knew that she had
no doubt overstayed her welcome.

“Where do you think Fausto has gone to?” she asked Nolan,
glancing at him as they left the hospital.

The air was still broiling hot, an incredibly uncomfortable
temperature. Lucrecia hadn’t noticed it inside of the hospital, but now she
could feel her clothes sticking to her body. A sheen of sweat had formed on
Nolan’s forehead that was a touch too large for his face, and his thin hair was
clinging to it.

“He’s probably gone back home,” he said. “Or maybe to a bar.
He likes to drink when he gets angry.” As if realizing what he had said, Nolan
turned to Lucrecia with wide eyes. “Not that he gets violent! Sure, he’s angry
and drunk, but I’ve never seen him raise a hand to anybody when he’s like that.
It doesn’t matter who they are. He’s too much of a gentleman for that kind of
thing, or so he says.”

“You don’t have to defend him to me,” Lucrecia said with a
little sigh. “I know that he must be a horrible person. If anything, I’ve
learned that more and more over the past few hours.”

She didn’t know where they were heading, but Nolan had begun
to walk in one direction and she decided to follow him.

“I can’t believe that he was awful like that even when the
two of you were children,” she said with another sigh, a larger, longer one
that time. “I wonder why he turned out like that.” She didn’t dare to bring up
Nolan’s mother. The last thing she wanted was to disrespect him. She didn’t
sense it in him, but she didn’t want to test his anger and see if he was the
same type of man that Fausto was.

“No one knows for sure,” Nolan replied. He took his hat off
of the top of his head and began to fan himself with it as they walked
together. The sun was behind them and steadily setting, but it didn’t do
anything to cut the heat that had permeated through the air all day long. “He’s
just the way that he is. Maybe God made him to be an awful person.”

Lucrecia had no arguments. She could believe that he had
just been made horrible, even if God was meant to never make anyone horrible. A
silence fell between the two of them, but it wasn’t like the silence that she
had been forced into with Fausto. With Nolan, it was comfortable and she knew
that at any moment, she could say whatever it was that she wanted to say. She
had no doubts that Nolan would love to engage in a conversation of stocks and
the economy with her, whereas Fausto would have called her a stupid woman.

“Where is it that you live exactly?” she asked after thirty
minutes of walking with Nolan. The scenery had yet to change, since they were
heading away from town. There were no buildings in sight, and the lights from
the buildings behind them were growing dimmer by the minutes.

“We live a few miles out this way,” Nolan said. “I should
have thought about it sooner before making a lady walk all this way. It wasn’t
very polite of me.”

Lucrecia laughed and shook her head at Nolan, offering him a
broad grin. “I appreciate the exercise,” she said. “You don’t have to treat me
like a porcelain doll. Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean that I can’t
handle walking a few miles. Actually, I think it’s really pretty out here and I
like it a lot.”

“I hope that Fausto doesn’t scare you away from liking it so
much,” Nolan mused. He set his hat on top of his head once more, using the brim
of it to shield Lucrecia from his wandering eyes.

She had said that she didn’t want to be treated like a doll,
but Nolan couldn’t help but think of her as the most beautiful treasure that he
had ever seen in his life. He wanted nothing more than to hold her close and to
keep her safe for the rest of time.

“Fausto?” Nolan called, opening the door and stepping into
the house. It was more properly a mansion, but he had lived in it for so long
that it had become his one and only home. He tried to ignore the way that
Lucrecia seemed to have become completely star struck by the place. “Fausto,
are you home?” he nearly yelled.

Lucrecia didn’t care if the man was home or not. What she cared
about was getting a formal tour of the place. She had dreamed of the day that
she would get to live in a place like this since she had been a child. After
meeting Morgan, she had decided that that idea was more than a little
ridiculous. There was no way that someone like her would ever get the chance to
live in a place like this.

As she stepped past Nolan and traipsed in gentle circles in
the front room, she allowed the idea to truly sink into her head. What had once
been a fantasy, something that was so far away and unrealistic, was finally
becoming true. She was going to be married to one of the wealthiest men in
America, and she was going to live in his mansion. She would never want for
anything. Fausto would always be there for her, in his strange sort of way that
left her feeling empty and unimportant.

“I guess he’s not here,” Nolan finally said, a little frown
on his face. He furrowed his eyebrows and glanced around, looking for any sign
of his brother. “I’m not surprised.”

“He said that he would be here to give me a tour,” Lucrecia
mumbled, a little pout creeping onto her features. “Would you do me the
honors?” she asked, turning towards Nolan and offering him a smile.

Nolan couldn’t have agreed faster. He was tripping over his
tongue, and Lucrecia was laughing at him, and it was making him blush even more
than usual. It wasn’t his fault that he wasn’t the best with words. After
growing up with somebody like Fausto, he had learned to keep his mouth shut
from day one. It wasn’t as thought Fausto really noticed. He appreciated having
a brother that was totally and completely silent. It made his life easier.

“I would love to give you a tour,” Nolan agreed.

He held out his hand, and Lucrecia took it in her own
delicate fingers. Together, hand in hand, they toured the house. Nolan showed
her the upstairs first, and all of the rooms that it had to offer. Next he took
her downstairs, and in the kitchen, where several maids and butlers were hard
at work making dinner, they discovered the answer to their questions.

“He’s already gone to New York?” Lucrecia asked, taking the
note from Nolan and looking it over.

Fausto had a delicate scripted handwriting, and it allowed
for beautiful, sweeping lines. He had clearly stated that after the little spat
with Nolan, he had hopped on the soonest train back to New York. He felt
horribly dismayed that he had to leave Lucrecia behind, but he had left the
servants with specific instructions to take care of each and every one of her
needs. If her would-be husband weren’t already on his way to New York, having
abandoned her in Montana with his only kin, she might have appreciated the
sentiment for just a moment longer.

“Too bad,” Nolan mused, although he did not mind at all. He
took the note back from Lucrecia, and crumpled it in his hand. There was no
time for any sort of lollygagging. His opportunity had arisen, and he was going
to take it. “Shall we continue on our tour?” he asked.

Lucrecia nodded, and followed Nolan out into the main
parlor. Down a hallway that they had yet to explore, he pointed out several
different rooms to her. Most were unimpressive, but still lavishly furnished
and well taken care of. Lucrecia could see that the hired help were very
proficient at their jobs. She would have to remind herself to thank them for
all of the hard work that they put into what they did.

Nolan seemed to hesitate with the last door, but it didn’t
stop him for long. He pushed it open, hardly touching the pure golden handle.
The door gave way to a huge room, as large as the ones that had been in the
upstairs floor. There were paintings of horses and their racers on the walls,
and the huge, wide windows gave a perfect view of the landscape outside, facing
towards the racing track. Nolan had made sure that Lucrecia was familiar with the
place and knew its ins and outs before taking her through the house more. She
would see the racing track tomorrow.

“Which room is this?” Lucrecia asked as she stepped inside
of the door. The first place that she stopped was a large dresser and vanity. A
few things were there, mostly pictures and men’s shaving tools. She had already
seen Fausto’s room, but not a single idea crossed her mind as to what room that
she had been taken into this time.

Nolan swallowed thickly around the guilt that was beginning
to form in his throat. He knew that he was tricking Lucrecia. He would never
take advantage of her, but he would use all of his cunning and his wits to aid
him in his endeavors. He watched Lucrecia as she picked up a photo of their
family when he and Fausto had been children. He longed for those days to come
back to him, no matter how horrible Fausto had been, even way back when.

“We’re in my room,” he said, staring straight ahead of
himself.