Unfinished (Historical Fiction) - By Harper Alibeck Page 0,30

up to and set out to make sure Lilith would be safe and cared for. Stone will never leave his money to her."

"But he raised her as his daughter." James' tone made it clear he didn't understand the paradox.

Shaking his head, Reed pushed the empty glasses away from his belly and stood. "Of course he did. Can't have anyone knowing that Margaret bested him. The scandal -- John Stone as a cuckold? Can you imagine?"

No. He couldn't. But torturing Lilith at McLean because she’d figured out he wasn't her father still made no sense.

"So he hates her so much he told the people at McLean to do these unspeakable acts?"

Reed shrugged. "I don't know 'bout that. I just know what the kitchen maids whispered when I came for dinners and parties. And that Lilith came home after months there as much a shell of herself as men come back from war. She looked like she'd spent those months watching ghosts." And with that, Reed, stepped back, shook James' hand, and staggered off to the street, James watching his feet as they plodded past the window, lurching to the left out into the cold, starless night.

Chapter Eight

NOTHING TO FEAR. NOTHING TO FEAR. She chanted the words in her mind like an Eastern yogi muttering to himself along a verbal journey to nirvana. Of course, a yogi would not need to ruminate over the silly phrase. He would simply be enlightened. Lilith held no illusions of her own enlightenment when it came to this strange fluid.

She was frightened. No chant would cure it.

Perhaps Dr. David Burnham could.

His office was as peculiar as his receptionist. Both were large, dark, and shabby. While Burnham seemed to have taste – the oak-lined walls in the reception area and New Hampshire granite floors attested to that – the anteroom was a man's room, decorated by and for men. An oddity for a doctor who treated women for the most part.

“Who is your decorator?” Lilith asked the receptionist, using a finely-honed, clipped voice. Leaving people no choice but to answer an authoritative question had served her well for years. She didn't really care about the answer. How the subject replied, though, revealed everything she needed to know.

Silence. Her face was bent down over a manuscript. Thick black waves of hair streaked with the occasional craggy grey, like broken guitar strings, were twisted into a knot at the base of her head. Tea-stained cotton covered the woman in a tent-like dress, her bosom rising over a misplaced drop waist. The effect made her appear to have stuffed a pillow in a brassiere the size of a saddlebag.

Tipping her face up slowly, the receptionist's sharp eyes belied her molasses demeanor. Raven black, pupils blending into the iris like spilled ink. An angry scar from right nostril to ear, covered with a sad attempt at makeup.

“I wouldn't know. The doctor has kept his office as such since I began working here, Miss.” Gravel mixed with sand came forth in her voice, the words infused with an Irish lilt. Lilith wondered who gave her that scar.

And then the receptionist stood, towering a good foot over Lilith. “Excuse me while I attend to a pressing concern,” she said. Limping away, the woman's gait appeared to cause her great pain. Lilith snatched a glance at the desk. A small placard read “Mary Murphy,” a name you could shout in south Boston on any given day and hear fifty women cry “aye!”

Any concern she held for Mary dissolved when Dr. Burnham stepped through a door that was built into a wall panel. He seemed to materialize from nowhere, a spirit at a séance.

“Miss Stone? Do come in. I apologize for my tardiness.”

She glanced at the clock. He was two minutes late.

“If two minutes is tardy, Dr. Burnham, then you are as exacting a physician as I would wish to see. You inspire confidence.”

“I seek only to find answers, Miss Stone. The rest is a byproduct.”

An arched eyebrow was her reply.

She had come to the right place.

Nothing to fear, indeed.

His inner office was as professional and shabby as the reception area. With curtains that needed a strong beating and airing, and a threadbare Turkish carpet that might stretch back to the nights of Scheherazade, what he lacked in finery he made up for in book volume.

“You are no stranger, then, to my condition?” If she could be blunt here then she would take advantage of the freedom.

Burnahm touched the top of a thick stack of