The Hungry Heart Fulfilled (The Hunger of the Heart Series Book 3) Read online

  A less egocentric woman would have quit after the first battle, but Madeleine was blindly convinced that she would win the war on her own ground.

  She sought to interject her own opinions and attitudes into several of Emer’s conversations, but was set down every time.

  Though Emer appeared to be perfect pleasant, her sharp sense of humour, and ability to converse knowledgeably on a variety of subjects in several different languages enabled her to continually put Madeleine firmly in her place.

  Emer only required two seconds’ acquaintance with Dalton’s betrothed to agree with Myrtle’s assessment of her character wholeheartedly, that she was selfish, vain, spoiled, and loved no one but herself, let alone Dalton.

  Yet as the Bishop had reminded Emer, it wouldn’t do to alienate someone who could be instrumental to her charity.

  Still, Emer couldn’t resist remarking somewhat acidly, “I’m surprised then, Miss Lyndon, at your taking such any interest in the fever hospital, if it’s true that you really believe that God helps those who help themselves. Surely once you and Dr. Randall are married, he will expect you to support his efforts there, especially since he intends on giving his medical services for free,” Emer said with a slow smile as she saw Madeleine’s face visibly fall.

  Madeleine’s eyes flashed dangerously at her adversary, as she was conscious of all eyes witnessing her disconcerted expression. “I’m sure you've made a mistake. Dalton does work at the fever hospital, but...”

  “No mistake, I assure you. The Bishop of Quebec’s deputy signed the papers for Dr. Randall's terms of appointment just yesterday.”

  “But Dalton, what about the shipping company?” Madeleine snapped.

  Emer apologised profusely in front of the enthralled audience.

  “I'm so sorry, I though you knew. You are to be his wife, after all. I wouldn’t dream of causing any dissension between you. If I were in your place, I should be proud of everything Dr. Randall did to help the poor, and would support him in any way I could,” Emer said with an obvious sincerity which Dalton couldn’t fail to remark upon.

  “Well you’re not me, so I’ll thank you to mind your own business and not interfere with matters that are none of your concern!” Madeleine hissed.

  She snapped her fan closed, and stormed off, looking as black and threatening as a stormcloud.

  “Well, it's been such an illuminating conversation, Dr. Randall, but if you’ll excuse me, Miss Chandler's friends are beckoning me to join them.”

  Emer smiled graciously, enjoying herself despite the awkwardness of the situation, and tore her eyes away from her beloved, reminding herself that the children were counting on her and she couldn't allow herself to have any intimate conversations with him ever again.

  Though she had felt like her heart was breaking when she had first heard of his engagement, now she felt an almost smug sense of moral superiority. If this was the woman Dalton preferred over herself, well, he was welcome to the narrow-minded, ignorant shrew.

  “I shall be pleased to escort you over there, Madame,” Dalton said, gallantly taking her arm, but also determined the make sure that she couldn’t escape.

  “I hope you enjoyed that, getting me into trouble with my fiancee on purpose,” he accused gruffly, though secretly he had been delighted to see the great Madeleine Lyndon taken down a peg or twenty for the first time in her life, as had the rest of the guests.

  He had to admit, he was rather proud of his beloved. Emer had triumphed on every front, and without even trying. Or being unkind about it. If he had ever had any doubts about how she would fit in in his social sphere, they had just been put to rest.

  However, Emer would have been the first to point out that her position was a far cry now from the poor governess she had been when they sailed together on the Pegasus .

  “According to you today, you didn’t care what she thought, because you didn’t want to marry her, so don't pretend to be upset by her discomfiture,” Emer reprimanded him under her breath.

  “I’m sorry, I thought she knew. I'm sorry if I broke a confidence. I didn't think it was a secret. I didn’t mean to make you look foolish, or cause a rift between you. But it is the principle of the matter. I do mean what I said, Dalton. What you're doing is a wonderful thing.”

  Dalton grinned devilishly. “Who knows, perhaps you’ve given me just the right excuse to get her to want to break it off with me. I feel as giddy as a schoolboy with delight, and relief. I know it's bad of us to tease her so, but she almost deserves it. Every time I see you, Emer, all rational thought flies out of my head.

  "I know I should go over there and try to explain things, but one look at you, and I don’t want to waste another minute of my life worrying about anything other than my career helping people, and making you the happiest woman in the universe. “

  Emer shook her head, and looked up at him in mild exasperation. “Really, it's not worthy of you to toy with people's feelings. It was all a silly misunderstanding. Madeleine is angry because she thinks she has a reason to be jealous of me, judging from her irate looks in this direction. So just go back to her now, and try to explain your point of view. And you do have to worry about what other people think if you are every to get charitable subscriptions for your hospital, and decent, paying patients. You can't afford a scandal, Dr. Randall.”

  His lips quirked into a smile at her inadvertent rhyme. “I have nothing to explain, and if she had any clue as to how I feel, she would know that the only woman I ever plan to wed is you."

  "Dr. Randall, please, this is not a suitable topic of—"

  "The only thing I want to do right now is take you back home with me right now, strip you out of that lovely gown and make love to you until you beg for mercy,” he rasped.

  “That’s quite enough,” Emer rebuked him severely. “Everyone is staring at us, and I’m sure Myrtle just heard you.”

  “I’ve heard worse,” Myrtle said with a loud laugh.

  "Please, don't encourage him."

  Dalton gave an even more seductive smile. "As if I ever needed any encouragement where you're concerned. Please, darling, stop this charade and—"

  "Miss Chandler, I need a word with you, if you please," Emer said, forestalling Dalton's increasingly incriminating conversation the only way she knew how.

  Emer grabbed her friend by the arm and tugged her away from Dalton with a glare, leaving him standing a short distance away, but still almost suffocatingly near.

  She put one steading hand to her throat, and hissed, “I want to leave, now.”

  “That really will excite comment,” the older woman warned. “Very well then, if you wish me to remain and drum up support for the orphanage, then you will behave yourself.”

  “Try telling Dalton that,” Myrtle giggled.

  Emer’s patience snapped. “That’s it, I’m leaving.” She began to head for the oak double doors of the richly appointed drawing room.

  Myrtle clung to her fiercely, and pushed her into a burgundy velvet armchair. “Madeleine is trying to make you look a fool, Emer, don’t you see? She kissed him on purpose when you came into the room just to see how you would react.”

  Emer shook her head. “Myrtle, it makes no difference. She's his bride to be, and that is the end of it. I have to keep my promise to his father, and remain silent about these past few awful months.”

  “But you love him! Give the money back, and pick up where you left off,” Myrtle urged desperately, anxious not to see two more innocent lives thrown away for the sake of two vicious people who would do anything to control Dalton and destroy Emer.

  “I can’t give the money back, even if I wanted to,” Emer replied with a shake of her head.

  “You still have the ten thousand in the bank from Dalton’s father. Give it back to him.”

  “And risk going to prison for arson? Risk a scandal when he breaks off with the Lyndon heiress? I can’t do it. It would destroy any chance he had of setting up a decent practice or proper fev
er hospital here in the city. Besides, what about the other five thousand I’ve already spent?”

  “I’ll get it from Dad as a donation for the orphanage,” Myrtle promised.

  Emer shook her head. “No, Myrtle, it's really kind of you to try to help, but it’s finished. I can never tell Dalton the whole truth, and I doubt I can forgive him or his father for ruining so many lives. It’s over,” Emer stated firmly.

  “And the baby? What will you tell it when it’s old enough to understand?” Myrtle challenged suddenly.

  “I don’t have to tell it anything. Oran would legally be his father,” Emer stated.

  “With a wedding date of the first of November on the marriage certificate and the same on death certificate, the child is going to wonder,” the other woman warned astutely.

  Emer’s hands began to shake, and she now rose from her chair and went over to the sideboard nearby. She poured herself a glass of punch from the bowl to steady her nerves.

  “Myrtle, is there anything you don’t know about me?” Emer muttered in exasperation.

  “I know you love Dalton," Myrtle whispered. "Damn it, Emer, stop being so stubborn and tell him the truth. Stop trying to protect him. Dalton is a grown man, not a child, and he has a right to know what a monster his father really is! And that he is to be a father himself.”

  Emer shook her head. “He’s been hurt enough in the past year. I can’t do it. And I can't burden him with such a huge responsibility, not when he's just embarking on his medical career. If you care about me at all, Myrtle, you will say nothing, nothing, do you hear,” Emer insisted.

  “All right, I promise, I won’t say anything,” she agreed rebelliously. Myrtle’s emphasis on the word “say” should have given Emer a clue as to her intentions, for Myrtle resolved that she would give Dalton a copy of the provision bill for the Pegasus and see what he made of it.

  Myrtle was convinced that Emer and Dalton deserved a happily ever after ending, and was determined to help her friend get it.

  Unfortunately, Madeleine had other ideas, and was adamant that no matter what she did, she was going to marry the fabulously wealthy and handsome Dalton Randall on Thursday, and remove Emer from their lives forever no matter what.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Madeleine’s plan for revenge took shape as she half-listened to her driver, Pertwee, complaining about how some people simply didn’t know their place.

  “You take that red-haired hussy, who calls herself Mrs. Dillon now, and did nothing but whore on my last ship and cause trouble. Now as far as I’m concerned, that trollop wouldn’t be fit to clean your ladyship’s boots, let alone sit at the same table to dine with you and all those fancy society people.”

  “What do you mean? How did you know her?” Madeleine gasped incredulously as they made their way through the narrow streets in her curricle the next morning as she went about town on her errands.

  “She said she was a governess when she first came on board, and worked as a cabin boy," he replied over his shoulder.

  "Very friendly with all the men she was, especially a lad called Joe, a stowaway she had helped hide on board. Some of us reckoned that Mr. Randall was having a fling with her, you know, but of course we had no idea that he was engaged to you, so it couldn’t have been true.

  “Anyway, the Captain flogged her, so he did, for setting the ship on fire. She was probably carrying on with one of the lads in the galley, and got a different kind of fire than she bargained for, if you know what I mean.

  "Yes, sir, a right little goer she was. Nothing but trouble. She must have come straight off the ship and got her hooks into someone even richer than Mr. Randall to be where she is now. I say it’s a disgrace, a tart like that sitting in such distinguished company as yourself under false pretences,” Pertwee said emphatically.

  Madeleine sat back in her carriage, gloating. At last, she had the perfect way to be rid of her. She could expose her to Quebec society for what she really was. People would admire her for her ability to spot a fraudulent heiress, and Dalton would merely become a figure of pity for having been taken in by such a convincing impostor.

  But perhaps it wouldn’t come to that. Perhaps this Mrs. Dillon could be persuaded to disappear, and if risk of exposure didn’t convince her, hard cash would.

  “Pertwee, can you find out where she lives, and escort me there when you do, while I have a little chat with her about all you’ve said? I’m sure if she's as notorious a woman as you say, then she will be most unwilling to have all of her wicked deeds brought to light. I think she can be convinced it is in all of our best interests for her to leave Quebec, at least until after I'm safely married to Mr. Randall.”

  “With pleasure, my lady. I can go ask the Hearsts, since they sent the invitation to her to the soiree you attended last evening. We shall go just as soon as your luncheon with Mrs. Hargreaves is over,” Pertwee said with a smirk.

  Madeleine descended upon Emer in the middle of her lessons, and was given a complete tour of the home by a confused Sissy, who thought she was looking for children to adopt.

  Madeleine’s face was like granite throughout the entire tour. When some of the children tried to give flowers and presents to the pretty dark-haired lady, she recoiled from the innocent boys and girls as though they were so many snakes.

  Emer couldn’t fail to notice her reaction as she came out of her room to see who had come to call. She was displeased to see Madeleine, but tried to be polite. She had no inkling of the terrible consequences that Madeleine’s odd behaviour portended.

  Emer asked Madeleine to step into her room for some refreshment, but felt her heart sink when she saw the evil Mr. Pertwee leering at her as she entered the library. How on earth did the two of them know each other?

  Emer decided that attack was the best form of defense. “I have a feeling I already know what you're going to say, Miss Lyndon, so the answer is no. I will not leave town, nor will I promise never to see Dalton again as long as I live. He is a grown man able to decide who he wishes to be friends with, and no amount of lies told by this man Pertwee is going to make me give him up,” Emer said hotly.

  Madeleine's mouth flapped up and down like a landed trout's. Once again, she had been completely routed by the slut. She fumed that Emer had guessed so easily why she had come, and scowled blackly out the window at the children playing outside.

  “Not even if this orphanage were in danger of closing, or worse?” Madeleine threatened softly.

  “You may be a powerful force in this town, Miss Lyndon, but so is the Bishop. At any rate, I don’t have to run an orphanage to help the poor, I choose to. But if you want to try to run me out of town, it will reflect badly on you, trying to destroy my work out of petty spite and malice. Dalton wouldn’t be too impressed if you started spreading rumours about me, and besides, he was the on the Pegasus. He would know first-hand that what this liar has told you hasn’t got a particle of truth in it.”

  “Better a liar than a whore,” Pertwee flung at her.

  “If I were a man, I’d knock your teeth down your throat for that remark,” Emer hissed.

  Pertwee was about to face up to Emer, when Madeleine held up one hand imperiously, and requested, “Pertwee, wait outside for a moment, will you?”

  Once he was safely out of the room, Madeleine asked flatly, “How much of a, er, donation, do you want then, to leave, and never come back?”

  Emer grew reckless, desperate to remove this conniving woman from Dalton’s life once and for all even if she couldn’t have him herself.

  “I can't leave. There's no one else willing or able to do the work I do."

  "I'm sure someone can be—"

  "Hired? I doubt it, not without huge cost. Unless of course your volunteering your time and are able to teach—"

  The other woman, clad in peacock blue, changed color to match the shade of her gown at the very idea.

  "Miss Lyndon, let's be frank, shall we? I think you’re going to lose Dalton no matter w
hat I do. He didn’t want to marry you before he met me. It was an arrangement between your two fathers, wasn’t it? Dalton never actually proposed to you, did he? Got down on bended knee and swore his undying love? No, I am sure he didn't. You face right now confirms that as well. No, indeed, once he’d met me, he wanted nothing more to do with the deal.

  "I don’t know by what tricks old Frederick convinced Dalton that he was sincere, but he told Dalton I was dead. Now that Dalton knows I'm alive again after so many months of suffering without me, do you honestly think he won’t try to follow me, track me down, if I suddenly disappear again?”

  “You have nothing to offer him, a common little streetwalker like you! I have a fortune, beauty, status...” Madeleine blustered.

  “And yet you've never married?" Emer asked with a pointed look.