Page 6 of Cloaked in Beauty

Her smile returned. “It seems you strive for humility as well. An admirable virtue.”

Philip grinned. “Yet one impossible to claim.”

Mrs. Radcliffe chuckled, the sound as light and airy as the room in which they stood. “Indeed. The fact that you are clever enough to recognize that truth speaks well of you, too.” She turned and gestured to the seating area behind her. “Please, join me. We have much to discuss.”

Philip followed her to the grouping of chairs arranged in front of a small hearth. He waited for her to resume her position on the settee, then planted himself in the armchair to her right, the one that also offered a view of the doorway. A man in his line of work couldn’t afford to take safety for granted. Danger could lurk anywhere, and his chances for survival increased if he saw it coming.

Philip leaned back in his chair and waited patiently for Mrs. Radcliffe to gather her thoughts and the box she’d set aside earlier.

Pulling a photograph from the box, she ran a finger lightly over the image, her expression softening into a strange mix of tenderness and heartbreak. Her vulnerability lasted only a moment before her posture straightened and she handed the photograph to Philip.

“My daughter, Scarlett.”

Philip gazed at the image of a girl in her late teens. Eyes bright. Hair in braids. Full lips tilted just enough to give the impression of a smile. Her right hand was lifted in a wave, though he recognized the true purpose of the pose. Her sleeve had been pushed up to expose the underside of her wrist and the small strawberry-shaped birthmark that confirmed her identity. In her other hand she held a copy of Peterson’s Magazine. The September 1893 issue. Three years ago. The girl would be a young woman now.

“She’s lovely.” It seemed the expected thing to say. Not that the girl wasn’t lovely. She’d obviously inherited her mother’s delicate features, though the freckles smattering her nose and cheeks hinted at a life lived more in sunshine than drawing rooms.

Philip flipped the photograph over, searching for a watermark or anything that might give a clue to the photographer who’d developed the image. As expected, he found nothing. Except a handwritten inscription. Scarlett—age 17.

“Is this the most recent photograph you have of her?”

Mrs. Radcliffe nodded. “Yes. The plan was to have one sent every year, but the delivery system is somewhat . . . unreliable. I’ve received eight over the last fifteen years.” She pulled other photographs from the box and spread them out from youngest to oldest across the tea table between them. “It’s torture for a mother not to be able to watch her only child grow to womanhood. So many milestones missed. But I’d rather suffer the pain of temporary separation than lose her permanently, like I did her father.”

Philip added the photograph to the tea table and studied his hostess’s face. “And you believe her to be in danger.”

Her mouth pinched. “I know it. My brother-in-law will stop at nothing to claim her shares in Radcliffe Shipping and the fortune my husband left her. Since he stands to inherit, the easiest way to accomplish those things is for Scarlett to die before her twenty-first birthday.”

“And that date would be . . . ?”

“October 23.”

Philip leaned back in his chair. Five weeks. That didn’t leave him much time to find her.

“Why are you convinced Drake Radcliffe intends to harm your daughter?”

The man definitely needed the money, but would he stoop to murder? Philip had seen coldhearted crimes before, but taking the life of one’s own niece in order to gain her inheritance was a level of darkness that went beyond the callous shooting of innocent bystanders in a robbery or gunning down a man out of revenge. How depraved did one have to be to want to kill a child?

“He killed his own brother. A niece he barely knows stands little chance of faring any better.”

Thoughts of theoretical crimes evaporated beneath the accusation of a real one. Philip frowned. “I thought Lowell Radcliffe died in a carriage accident.”

“A carriage owned by Drake. One in which my brother-in-law was also supposed to be riding until an ‘unexpected’ business matter arose to detain him.”

Facts worthy of suspicion, certainly, but just as easily explained by happenstance.

Mrs. Radcliffe’s eyes narrowed, and she held up a hand to forestall the questions forming on his tongue. “Before you give me the circumstantial evidence speech or, worse, the one about overwrought women seeing causality where all that truly exists is unfortunate coincidence, answer me this. If the carriage carrying my husband toppled over the edge of a ravine, rolling down a hundred-foot embankment until it came to rest as a pile of splintered kindling in a shallow creek bed, why were no horses injured?” She raised a brow in challenge. “The driver could have jumped to safety when the carriage first slid over the edge, but the horses? The only way for them to escape unscathed would be if they’d been cut free in advance.”

Philip leaned forward. “Did you see the cut traces?”

She made a shooing motion with her hand. “Of course I didn’t see the traces. The carriage was at the bottom of a ravine. What I did see was the very same team of horses at the funeral the following week, pulling my brother-in-law’s buggy. The moment I saw those bays, I knew that my husband’s death had not been an accident.”

“Did you explain this to the authorities?”

“I did. They patted me on the hand and told me how common it was for people in the throes of grief to search for explanations and meaning in random events. Lowell’s accident was a tragedy, but casting blame and outlandish accusations wouldn’t bring him back. I’d do well to turn my attention to more productive matters, like tending to my daughter.” Mrs. Radcliffe’s gaze fell back to the photographs. “I took their advice to heart. Scarlett needed me. Not only to walk beside her in our grief but to protect her from her uncle. If he would kill his own brother to gain control of Radcliffe Shipping, what was to stop him from eliminating the last barrier that stood between him and the power he craved?”

Philip rubbed his hand against the denim that pulled tight over his thigh. Everything he’d learned about Leah Radcliffe painted a picture of a thoughtful, clever businesswoman. Not a histrionic female prone to dramatic accusations. The employees he’d interviewed from the companies she’d inherited from her husband sang her praises. She’d continued the work her husband had started, eliminating child labor and ensuring safe working conditions in both the Radcliffe Oil Mill and the adjoining Radcliffe Cotton Compress. Recognizing that her gender would put her at a disadvantage, she hired her brother, Stefan, to manage her holdings, but every employee Philip had spoken to had credited her for the running of the company. Stefan Anderson might be her voice, but no one doubted who made the actual decisions.

She’d continued to grow and expand the pair of companies her husband started in the late 1870s and, according to city records, now employed nearly five hundred workers between the two—a miniature cotton dynasty. Not only was she invested in one of the local gins, but she had access to exporting through both rails and sea thanks to her ties to Radcliffe Shipping. The compress allowed her to ship flattened cotton bales that took up a fraction of the space of their noncompressed counterparts, but it was her oil mill that brought in the largest profits. The Radcliffe mill produced nearly a million gallons of crude cottonseed oil a year, not to mention ten thousand tons of oil cake and cottonseed meal.