Only Love

Chapter One

Stephen always said: Ellen Fallon, you have an undeniable appetite for fruit.

Her secret sweetheart knew her only too well; she absolutely did adore fruit, the fresher the pick the better.

Plums, especially. Their look, smell, taste, and texture. How their meaty flesh yielded to her cupped hand, to the bite of her teeth. How sweet juice trickled ever-so slowly down her throat when she nibbled on one, savoring every swallow.

Ellen clutched at her bosom. In the middle of the crowded farmer’s market, she had all to do not to gasp out a lusty yesss.

This small coastal town in Maine boasted so many plum varieties! Any of those on display here at the market would have made her an excellent prop in a still life composition. The artist in her bemoaned their present fate, wasting away in rustic wicker baskets, their worth unappreciated.

Save by her.

Ellen was reaching for a succulent branch-ripened specimen – resplendently purple, almost the pigment of Manganese violet  – when over to the right, well within earshot, two biddies started talking, their every word mean-spirited and laced with spite. The gossip they swapped was as nasty as can be.

After ducking behind a farmer’s stall, Ellen cocked an ear – better for eavesdropping – and settled in for a good long listen:

Did you know, Miss Perch, that Mr. Vincent Brandt takes his daily constitutional every morn at dawn?

Miss Perch sniffed, the nostrils of her thin nose quivering with disapproval. "Miss Sounder – are you speaking of that highfalutin Manhattan art dealer, the flatlander widower who rusticates up here in Maine every year? That Mr. Vincent Brandt? "

One and the same, my dear. Miss Sounder vigorously shook her salt-and-pepper head, which sent the seagull plumage on her gaudy blue bonnet bobbing. I have it on sound authority that Mr. Brandt walks every day just as the sun comes up.

Miss Perch’s face relaxed into the familiar lines of a frown. And who is this sound authority?

The Reverend Gordon. The good minister mumbles a prayer at half-past six every morning at the rectory window. Coincidently, the rectory window overlooks the graveyard’s east gate, the one located at the rear of the chapel. It is through this east gate that Mr. Brandt passes en route to his estate.

At this tasty tidbit, the disapproving Miss Perch gasped. But the west gate is ever so more direct to the cliffs where Mr. Brandt resides. How extremely peculiar! Why would the art dealer take the east gate?

Exactly! Why?

And the Reverend Gordon told you this?

No. Miss Sounder’s hat feathers flapped again. The good minister reported this odd habit of Mr. Brandt to his housekeeper in passing, and she in turn brought up the subject to the day maid, who shared the detail with my sister at their weekly sewing circle. So you see – there can be no mistake.

Certainly not! No mistake at all, Miss Perch agreed. I would never accuse you of such a thing.

As to Reverend Gordon – he could not help but notice Mr. Brandt’s odd habit. That rusted east gate squeaks something terrible.

Yes, most odd, Miss Perch whispered so low Ellen had to strain to hear. Not the gate – although we church ladies must take a can of oil to that squeak  – but how Mr. Brandt never fails to pass through the graveyard on his way back to his estate on the cliffs.

And why do suppose he does that, walks through the graveyard, that is, when there is a perfectly respectable dirt road he can take that circumvents the tombstones, altogether?

Guilty conscience, I ’spect, Miss Perch answered. And, as I hear tell, he has good cause.

My thoughts too. The art dealer is a notorious letch. Waits until a girl’s eighteenth birthday, to keep things all decent-like, before moving in on her. Turns her head with gifts and such. No doubt, he seduces them. Likes ‘em young and he likes ‘em virgin.

Behind the farmer’s stall, Ellen smiled with glee. How very illuminating!

And what of that poor, unfortunate young woman? You know the one, prompted Miss Sounder, talking out of the side of her mouth. New to town, only as good as she need be, and got herself killed because of it.

It is my understanding – being a teetotaler, myself, and so not a frequenter of such places  – that the individual under discussion served ale at the tavern. They found her on the beach two days since, her neck broken. A fair-haired girl, by all reckonings.

Behind the farmer’s stall, Ellen touched a strand of her own pale hair.

And that was not all the serving wench had that was broken, Miss Sounder said with a smirk.

The insinuation sailed straight over Ellen’s head…until Miss Perch spelled out the details. A virgin – so I did hear. Just turned eighteen and tampered with, deflowered by some man right before her death. Had to be. A fall from the cliffs could not have broken her maidenhead.

Or stripped off her gown, tavern apron, and small clothes, Miss Sounder smugly replied.

My thoughts, as well. Although, to be even-handed – and I pride myself on being so  – the idiot gal might have met up with the customer at the cliffs, tripping on a rock and falling to her death below…after…the tryst. An accident, in other words. Not murder.

The killer would like the townspeople to think so. I am not so easily duped, said Miss Sounder. I am of the opinion that the serving maid was raped up on the high rocks and then purposefully pushed over the edge, the assignation done deliberately there to make her death look like the result of lust-inspired carelessness. If you ask me, Mr. Vincent Brandt did the deed.

Ellen had heard enough. After snatching a choice plum from a basket and then dropping her booty for safekeeping into the deep pocket of her full skirt  – where the eagle-eyed proprietress waiting to get paid her damn penny would hopefully fail to spy the suspicious bulge of stolen fruit  – Ellen left the farmer’s market, her thoughts in a turmoil.

That poor serving wench! Only looking for love, as any woman does, and for her troubles, finding a deadly end to her romantic dreams instead.

That would not be her, Ellen reassured herself as she made her way back to the inn. She was too smart to get caught. And besides:

Forewarned was forearmed.

Thanks to those two gossipy biddies, Ellen had more information to go on now than she had before on Vincent Brandt. If it were the last thing she ever did, she would bring down that suspected murderer of young fair-haired virgins.

That poor tavern wench deserved retribution.

And so did Ellen’s father.

Chapter Two

The morning following her eavesdropping at the farmer’s market, Ellen awaited the arrival of the art dealer at the church cemetery located beyond the town center. With a touch of macabre whimsy, she crouched at the foot of an ancient tombstone covered in moss as chilly rain splashed down around her.

No matter the weather. Vengeance kept her warm.

For all of five minutes.

Cold was cold, and her teeth were chattering.

The last peep at her timepiece showed the hands at half-past six. Where was he?

Vincent Brandt was late.

What an inconvenient time for him to vary his schedule – the very day Ellen had decided to ambush him!

His mumbled prayers finished, the good reverend had already vacated his post at the rectory window, and her most hated enemy had yet to put in an appearance.

Bloody hell! If those two gossipy twits at the farmer’s market had led her astray after Ellen had gone through all the bother of listening in on their private conversation, she would…she would…

…do nothing. As usual.

Still, she could fantasize. And did, all the time. Whilst her clicking teeth made her sound for all-the-world like a predatory cat on the prowl, Ellen daydreamed about getting even with the biddies. Dropping a physic of castor-oil into each gossips’ bowl of wholesome oatmeal would do the trick. Loose bowels would teach that pair not to go around running off at the mouth, giving out erroneous information where a revenge-seeking eavesdropper like herself could possibly overhear.

In her effort to bring down Vincent Brandt, Ellen had left nothing to chance.

Save for the dratted weather. How could she have planned for that? Was it her fault that Maine’s coastal clime changed every five minutes?

Not a cloud hung in the sky when Ellen left the inn for the cemetery at daybreak. Now look at it! The skies were dark and overcast, brooding, and positively bloated with more rain to fall. And the winds! Their bluster threatened to blow her out to sea.

An unplanned dip in the ocean was the least of her worries.

The most worrisome?

Her hair. She had planned to use the nearly white strands to lure Vincent Brandt. By all accounts, the art dealer was a man-of-the-world, a bon vivant jaded in his tastes, a connoisseur not only of art and high fashion, but of women, especially fair-haired women.

To show off her own fair locks, Ellen had forsaken a hat.

A mistake.

The winds had destroyed her coiffeur, a stylish Gibson girl topknot that had taken her hours to construct. And then the rains came along and toppled what little high fashion that remained, leaving nothing in their soggy wake but a tangle of wet knots and bad intentions. What had once been an ode to artful Egyptian pyramids was now flatter than the plains of Serengeti. Darkened from the downpour, the lank strands now stuck to her nose and chin like mousey-brown embroidery floss. Sad to say, the lemon juice she had applied to her hair the night before had all been for nothing. Her fair locks would turn no male heads this day. Unfortunately, her entire plot hinged on turning his.

Who?

Vincent Brandt, the rotter she came to Maine to ruin…after he had ruined her, in a different way, a significantly female way…

…but only if she got lucky.

Oh, it was all so complicated!

And not worth thinking about at this juncture. Her scheme might fail before she ever left the starting gate, the east one, the rusty one that supposedly squeaked

She could pat herself on the back about one aspect of her plan: Rather than walk all the way out from town, she’d had the presence of mind to hitch a ride in a wagon.

A farmer’s wagon.

A farmer’s hay wagon. Who knew there were still such primitive conveyances on the road? Or that the straw piled in such a primitive wagon would have hayseeds that detached from the dried stalks and shed during a bumpy trip? Or that the roads of Maine were nothing but such bumps? Or that the rain would act like glue on those shed hayseeds and stick to her, head-to-foot?

Not a New York City girl like her. Lord, but she missed Manhattan.

Some flirty impression her bedraggled self would make on the sophisticated art dealer.

And that was not all.

Before disembarking at the church, she had borrowed a sack from the rear of the hay wagon. Though the burlap was decidedly filthy, beggars cannot be choosers, and so she fashioned a makeshift cape out of the sack, reasoning that some coverage over her hatless head was better than no coverage over her hatless head, especially if the coverage succeeded in warding off the worst of the downpour.

It. Had. Not.

So there Ellen squatted at the base of the tombstone, the shallow puddle surrounding her turning ankle-deep, a burlap bag tossed over her mousey-brown head, hayseeds sticking to her wet clothing, waiting for man-of-the world seducer Vincent Brandt to arrive, all whilst thinking:

"Will he like me enough to seduce and then attempt to kill me?"

Let it be said, she was a woman of high aspirations.

Let it also be said that Ellen had no personal acquaintance with the man she stalked, never suffered the displeasure of actually having met him. As a very influential art dealer, his photograph, however, had been plastered over enough art periodicals for her to know him in her sleep.

Nightmares, every one.

His was an unmistakable face. A singular face. An interesting face she ached to capture on canvas. An angular face she longed to slap until the high and broad cheekbones cracked wide open as if blown-up by a stick of dynamite.

Too fanciful?

Fine. She would settle for stomping all over those natty silk waistcoats he was so fond of wearing in pictorials. Ripping his vest to pieces would hold her until she could ruin his professional reputation in the art community.

Although…although….her true fantasy was landing him in prison. In her imaginary world, she always aimed high and was willing to sink low.

In the real world, many might not agree that the rape and murder of a young woman, especially one of questionable repute, was a punishable crime.

For that reason and more, Ellen needed to prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Vincent Brandt was guilty of the tavern maid’s murder and one far more personal.

The first step in the process – actually meeting him – was taking longer than she had originally expected. Apparently, the swindler rarely ventured into town. At least not at an hour when Ellen cared to be up and about.

Really. Who fell out of bed at dawn?

No one in her bohemian circle – painter, sculptor, life model – even thought of rising til noon, when they could luncheon in Washington Square. And even then…

Shudder.

Then again, members of the arts and craft movement to which she proudly belonged tended to stay up til all hours of the night, eating and drinking and dancing and fornicating and discussing various creative techniques – not necessarily in that order – with one another.

Personally, Ellen snuggled under the bedcovers for as long as humanly possible in the morning, including at the town inn, where she stayed whilst thinking up creative ways to accidently on purpose run into the art dealer.

Running him through would be so much more satisfying. Preferably with one of the many antique English scabbards said to line the walls of the art dealer’s 18th century home, once a privateer stronghold during the Revolutionary War. Supposedly, muskets and rounds of gunpowder and saltpeter were still stockpiled there in hidden tunnels that ran under the house.

La! Rumors abounded about that old place up on the cliffs!

Rumors abounded about Vincent Brandt too.

Damn crook. Damn scoundrel. Damn rotter. Damn thief. Damn swindler. Damn possible rapist/murderer of a young blond-haired virgin.

Of this Ellen was certain: the art dealer had bilked her painter father out of a fortune in the five years leading up to Papa’s death. When she finished with the double-dealing sod, Vincent Brandt would have no clients left to represent.

Papa had trusted that treacherous bastard. As well as his business agent, her father had naively considered the art dealer a friend.

Then again, poor Papa always thought the best of everyone. Even if people subsequently let him down, he forgave them.

A born skeptic, Ellen decidedly did not think the best of people. And if ever they crossed her, she at least fantasized about exacting revenge.

Revenge was why Ellen was here in Maine. She was recovering the fortune the art dealer had stolen from her father, by fair means or foul.

Foul was more her forte.

If Brandt was the early bird who breakfasted on worms at dawn, she was the kitty who pounced later, leaving nothing on the ground from her brunch but feathers.

Shredded feathers. Blood-encrusted feathers. With bone shards attached.

In the middle of her fantasizing, Ellen looked out from behind the loose weave of her burlap covering and spied Brandt ambling toward her.

The early bird was about to get plucked, and she could hardly wait for the feathers to fly.

At first, the art dealer appeared not to notice her. Nothing new there. No one ever noticed her. Perhaps mistaking her for a lumpy sack of spuds, he kept walking.

Piffle! Not her. With visions of potato soup simmering in her head, Ellen would have absconded with the burlap sack. Of course, the art dealer had never known a day of hunger in his life, whilst she had a belly-growling familiarity with the topic.

Upon her fifteenth birthday, the situation improved. Every year thereafter, a lovely cake and actual food, choice food from a hotel or such, was delivered to the loft where she lived with her father. Also, a gift. Not something shoddy, either – a small gold trinket of some sort, a broach for her collar or dainty hoops for her pierced ears.

That Papa actually recalled the date of her birth every single year without fail thence forward was nothing short of miraculous given his faulty memory…when the recollection came to her.

Whilst loving her father, she was not blind to his faults.

Ellen stroked the delicate filigree necklace at her throat, Papa’s last birthday present to her and the most beautiful of them all. After his death, she had stumbled upon the box wrapped in the prettiest paper…

As sadness took hold, Ellen wrapped her arms around her waist.

Buck up! No tears now! Not in front of the thieving art dealer, of all people.

A pathetic sob tore from her throat anyway. And then everything fell apart and a humiliating case of the weepies ensued. She was just so blue.

And Ellen knew why:

The inn where she was staying offered a free breakfast every morning. Because of her earlier-than-usual rising today, she had missed out on the lovely bacon and eggs, and gorgeous biscuits and ham, and oh, the fresh fruit, and now she had come down with a bad case of the mopey-mopes.

Quelle surprise! What her darkened hair failed to accomplish, her crying did.

His boots slapping the mud, his coat collar hiked up high against the storm, the art dealer noticed her!

Striding over to her where she huddled under the burlap at the tombstone, he said:

Take that filthy bag off your head at once.

Small talk? A polite "How do?" A linen hanky offered to mop up the streams of rain and tears sluicing down her cheeks?

A pig’s arse! Not from him. The art dealer started issuing orders at her right from the outset.

Looking on the bright side, at least she had caught his attention.

Not the right kind of attention, however. Not the sort that would advance her plan. This picky gent would never take a mousey-haired, runny-nosed, flat-chested  – a separate complaint, that last  – old crone like her to a set of tall cliffs, where he would rape, then murder her, then toss her into the drink.

With a self-pitying sniff, Ellen threw the sack to the ground. Not because the art dealer told her to. Intimidation never worked on her. But cutting off her too-long nose to spite her plain face made no sense, particularly when the burlap obscured her blue eyes, which Stephen said were possibly passable as far as pretty was concerned.

Much better, said the art dealer. "Now I can see you.

The question was: How?

Did he view her as her independent, twenty year-old self, a suffragette and painter and spinster who had been on her own far too long? Or as the vulnerable eighteen year-old she must pretend to be in order to keep his interest sparked?

Oh God. It was all too much.

The dam broke and a renewed deluge of noisy tears poured down Ellen’s cheeks.

Chapter Three

Vincent Brandt’s frown deepened. Confound it! What was she doing here?

After carefully monitoring Ellen Fallon’s progress from afar at the scandalously unconventional Manhattan loft where the artist both worked and lived, Vincent was shocked, to put it mildly, to have her turn up less than a mile from his summer retreat in Maine.

As this cemetery was in the middle of nowhere, even by Maine’s somewhat lax standards, stumbling upon her by happenstance was utterly impossible. So, once again:

What was she doing here?

No firing questions at her. The first order of business was patience. Grant her the opportunity to tell him, in her own words, why she had traipsed all the way here to the coast and during a storm too.

The reason had to concern her late father’s estate, a thankless and frustrating task he had managed for the past five years.

How much did she know of that managing?

Before dealing with that question, Vincent must first deal with this one:

Christ! Her unrelenting weeping!

Ellen’s sobbing dealt a blow to his already shaky peace of mind. She had to calm down before…before...

…before he took her in his arms and consoled her. A foolhardy move bound to destroy her in the end.

Did some technique exist to provide comfort to the overwrought?

If there was one, he sorely lacked it.

Where to begin?

When he reached an ungloved hand toward her, Ellen Fallon cringed and scooted away. Not at all promising.

Evidently touching a hysterical person during a bout of uncontrolled weeping was a blunder of some sort.

Very well. He was a fast learner. And mistakes could be rectified.

Stop crying at once, he hollered. This very instant!

Her tearfulness intensified.

Obviously, he had once again employed the wrong methodology.

For the past five years, Vincent had done everything in his power to prevent Ellen Fallon’s tears. Now this! She wailed as if her heart were breaking.

Maybe a shout instead of a holler? Worth trying…

Cease, I say!

Clearly unnerved, she shrank from him again.

As Ellen had never struck him as naturally skittish, presumably she pulled back in fear.

Of him.

Fortuitous! For her own good, Ellen Fallon needed to leave. And for the return of what remained of his peace of mind, Vincent needed to get her gone.

But her tears. Damnation! They tore him up. He had to stop them.

And he suddenly knew how.

His oilcloth coat flapping about him like a sail in choppy seas, Vincent rounded on her. "What in Christ’s name is