My Lucky Penny Read online

  My Lucky Penny

  Jill Barnett

  Jill Banett Books

  Contents

  The Novels of Jill Barnett

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

  The Sisters of Scotland

  My Something Wonderful

  Praise for Jill Barnett

  About the Author

  Also by Jill Barnett

  The Novels of Jill Barnett

  MY SOMETHING WONDERFUL

  WICKED

  WILD

  WONDERFUL

  BEWITCHING

  DREAMING

  IMAGINE

  CARRIED AWAY

  JUST A KISS AWAY

  THE HEART'S HAVEN

  A KNIGHT IN TARNISHED ARMOR

  SAVING GRACE

  DANIEL AND THE ANGEL

  ELEANOR'S HERO

  MY LUCKY PENNY

  SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

  THE DAYS OF SUMMER

  BRIDGE TO HAPPINESS

  jillbarnettbooks.com

  Copyright

  My Lucky Penny

  Copyright © 2017 by Jill Barnett

  ISBN: 978-1-948053-59-4

  Publisher: Jill Barnett Books

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover by Dar Albert

  Created with Vellum

  1

  Late 19th Century New York City

  Edward Abbott Lowell was named man of the year by the four hundred esteemed members of New York City's most exclusive gentlemen's club. As he walked around the grand ballroom of the Union Club, shaking hands after his acceptance speech, Edward was struck by the strangest feeling that something was off. Not with the club or its members, but something else, as if the air around him was vibrating when there was no elevated train nearby.

  He rubbed a hand over his neck then noticed the waiter who had quietly appeared with his bourbon. He took advantage of a break in conversation, taking a long draw off his drink and turning away from the busy mayor chatting with his cronies. The man must have taken a bath in Macassar oil. He smelled like a cross between a lift engine and Aunt Martha's Christmas buns.

  Edward needed air.

  A few minutes later, he closed the door behind him and effectively shut out the din of loud voices, the distant sound of a tinny piano, and the raucous male laughter inside the club. Before he turned away, he looked at the crowded room through the sleek glass of the terrace doors; it was full of expensively tailored coats and custom-fitted vests, pockets slung with many a gold pocket watch and diamond fob, a veritable sea of mustaches, clipped beards, and hair slicked back so all those top hats lined on shelves in the lobby coat room would sit atop the owner's head at the right jaunty angle.

  Man of the Year--the Union Club's highest honor...hard to believe. He shook his head and moved to the stone balustrade that rimmed the third floor terrace and overlooked Fifth Avenue.

  How many of the city's new business deals would be struck or sealed in that room tonight?

  Like most of the city's big business, his largest and last project--and the one that had earned him man-of-year distinction--the Grant Building, had been negotiated and confirmed with a solid handshake in this very gentlemen's club a few years ago. And it had only taken him over a decade of hard work, and the sheer luck of being picked out of Boston Tech to go to Chicago as a protégé to the great architect William LaBaron Jenney, proof that even a blind monkey could find a peanut once in a while.

  And now he had a lot of peanuts...more than his father had lost in the big crash, more than his wealthy grandfather had earned in his entire lifetime, and his great grandfather before that, and Ed was twenty-nine.

  But tonight, before he'd stepped out to that podium, he'd felt as if he were that young kid again, nerves raw, feeling as if he didn't fit into his feet, and taking him back to that first day of college, a mere two days after his sixteenth birthday, when--green buck that he was--he had tentatively walked into that Back Bay building--one that embodied the sheer possibilities of everything he had ever wanted. That was what tonight was all about to him--the culmination of all those fantastical possibilities.

  He heard the doors open and turned to see Harold Green closing the door with his foot while balancing cocktail glass in each hand. "Look who the cat dragged in," Ed said. "And here I was just thinking about green."

  Hal grinned and handed him one of the drinks. "Somehow I doubt it was about me, my friend. More than likely about the scandalously low-cut green gown the delectable Miss Marrianne Fitzgerald wore to Fleming House last evening. Arthur, Rand, and I were taking bets on how long before she busted out of it. And you, lucky fellow, seated to her right all through that nine course dinner. So tell me if you set her free a few hours later," Hal said...far too cheery to hide the truth. "I have a few hundred riding on the fact that you got lucky since it was you who took the lady home."

  "She's a friend of Josie's."

  "Just because she went to school with your sister doesn't mean you didn't get lucky."

  "I'll leave the details to your dreams...and overly-vivid, overly-randy imagination," Ed said to irritate him for being such a horse's ass. He took a drink and waited.

  "Ah, yes. A true gentleman never kisses and tells. So what else happened?" Hal laughed wickedly but Ed was no fool.

  "Nothing. I took Marrianne home--her father's home--to keep her safe from your roving hands and critical tongue. She's a sweet young woman. You well know that, so cut the crap. There's a reason she won't have anything to do with you."

  "That happened a long time ago," Hal muttered into his glass.

  "Apparently not long enough for you to forget and move on."

  "Marianne Titsgerald means nothing to me," he said with clear contempt.

  "If you would stop calling her Titsgerald and apologize, perhaps she might forgive you."

  "I can't apologize even if I wanted to. She won't come near me," he paused and frowned into his drink. "Half the men in the room last night were ogling her. I'd swear Macaffey was drooling. Damned idiot. Someone ought to talk to her dressmaker...or lock her in a room."

  "Marrianne's twenty-four. She and Josie went to cotillion in the same year. She's hardly a young miss to be dressed as pure as the driven snow."

  "The girl's mother is dead. She's too wild. Far too wild. And we both know her father indulges her terribly." He paused. "Do you really think she's not--? I mean, has she--"

  "Stop Hal. You're head over heels for her and she won't have anything to do with you."

  "I know," Hal said miserably.

  "Apologize, then marry the girl, and find out how pure she is for yourself."

  "She's turned down ten proposals."

  "I would bet that all of them were not as insulting as yours. Enough about Marrianne Fitzgerald. Look, there've been some changes to the ground floor supports for the Forsythe Building. I need you to go over the plans with me tomorrow."

  "I'll be there at seven," Hal said, his spirits less lively as he turned and rested his elbows and cocktail glass on the balustrade, then stared down at the shadowed street, the clopping sound of a horse trolley echoing up from below. Ed watched him for a minute. His friend was a sad mess of heartbreak.

  He'd met Hal Green that first week at Boston Tech and they had almost inst
antly become fast friends. Both had eventually left the institution with enhanced architectural engineering degrees and promising apprenticeships, Ed's with Jenny in Chicago and Hal's with Frank Furness in Philadelphia. As fate would have it, they were also both ready to branch out on their own when Harrington Wilson approached Ed with the offer of a lucrative contract to construct three large, multi-story, steel-constructed commercial buildings in New York City. The projects were big and Ed knew Hal was the partner he needed beside him, so they came to New York to work together and the innovative commercial architectural firm of Lowell & Green was born.

  The night air outside the club had grown suddenly colder and Ed and Hal left the terrace and were back inside amidst the rest of the club, soon smoking imported cigars, talking and downing as much whiskey as the waiters could bring.

  But as Ed mingled, he was still bothered by something, the prickle of warning he couldn't exactly pinpoint. An itch of trouble. So he went to the adjacent card room and sat down to play cards with his friends, tossed a few gold pieces on the table and tried to forget about premonitions. One thing he was certain of, trouble often found you just when life felt foolishly at its best.

  The hour was late, or early, depending on how one thought of four AM, when Ed's carriage dropped him at the entrance to his townhouse, then rumbled around the corner to the carriage house on the block behind. Damp air hovered overhead and dew formed on the lower bay windows from the cold air outside and the heat inside. Despite the ungodly hour, Ed knew Baxter, his butler and manservant, would make certain fires were burning in his library and upstairs bedroom. A platter of cheese and fruit would be covered with a cloth and sitting for him in the kitchen icebox, a bottle of claret decanted in the butler's pantry and readily available if he were so inclined, and the fine sheets in his bedchamber could be warmed in a matter of seconds if Ed chose to get some sleep. When it came to his comforts, Baxter could be counted on to make certain nothing in Lowell House was wanting, especially its owner and his employer.

  Inside the front hall with its marble tiled floors, carved mahogany staircases and painted ceiling dome that soared four stories up, and its ten-foot potted palms, Ed handed Baxter his coat, gloves and hat.

  "There's a telegram, sir," Baxter said. "I've laid it on your desk. Can I get you anything?"

  Ed frowned. "No nothing. When did it arrive?"

  "An hour ago," he said. "I sent Mason to the club, but I suspect you two crossed paths, sir."

  Ed nodded and went into the library where a fire blazed in the large fireplace and the electric light fixture in the center of the room cast bright reading light on the desk below. He looked at the telegram lying face up on the felt desk pad, and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Despite the warm fire, he felt a chill run through him. He tore it open to read:

  Western Union Telegraph Company

  Rec'd at 2:33 AM West Side Office 21

  New York, NY

  To: Mr. Edward Abbott Lowell,

  Josephine and Robert Courtland killed in boating accident in San Francisco Bay. Your niece Penelope is safe with nurse. Please contact immediately.

  Archibald T Whitmore, Esq.

  332-56 12th Street, SF

  Edward sat down on the edge of the desk. A numbness overtook him suddenly, fiercely. He closed his eyes. Josie? Josie was dead? The memories of his little sister swam before him: her freckled nose and gamine grin, missing a front tooth and that silly lisp until the new one grew in--the way he had persistently teased her about it, forcing her to say words with S's; her pestering him to play with him and his friends and the stubborn look on her face when they tried to lose her as would most obnoxious boys of thirteen; her cotillion at seventeen, when she was dressed like a white angel and floated through a waltz with him in the ballroom of the Metropolitan; and the clearest memory of her gripping his hand so tightly at the memorial for their parents, who died together when a Transatlantic steamship sunk.

  Oh God, he thought. It was happening all over again! He closed his eyes.

  Josephine, his beloved Josie, who he'd thought he had lost five years ago. Dead? Not just living three thousand miles away. She was dead. In his mind's eye he saw her defiant expression when she marched into his office and told him she had eloped with that rogue Stephen Courtland and she was pregnant and they were moving across the country and there was nothing he could do about any of it. She would live her life, not his.

  And now she had no life. Damn that Courtland!

  The bourbon he'd drunk earlier roiled and turned sour in his belly. He ran a hand over his eyes and shook off the urge to break something. He had to think. Clearly. Aunt Martha was in England. He needed to get a telegram to her. Where was she staying again? Someplace in Somerset.

  San Francisco. He had to leave. He had to leave now. On the first train. Penelope was alone. He glanced at the bookcase, where a small frame in Tiffany Japanesque held a photograph of a baby and sat on a shelf next to his photos of her mother. She was how old...four or five? That he didn't know his niece's age said something awful about him.

  He leaned over his desk, hands splayed, the telegram staring back up at him, and took long, deep breaths before he eventually straightened and called for Baxter.

  2

  After the funeral in San Francisco, Ed took Henry Huntington up on his offered use of a private train car for their return to New York. Penelope's world was shaken up enough for any child, let alone a four year-old. Yes, now he knew his niece's age. He knew her face, no longer that of the chubby, serious baby in the sepia photograph Josie had sent him after she was born.

  She was a tiny thing, a little doll-like girl with pale, porcelain skin, Josie's sweet face, and Courtland's copper hair and brown eyes. But his niece had known him, when he'd arrived and gone upstairs so tentatively, not knowing how the child would greet him, frightened to his heels about his responsibility for her, to her--he, her absent uncle, a man he assumed was unknown to her because of his estrangement from her mother.

  No one had been more stunned than he when she turned and saw him and clearly whispered "Uncle Eddie" (he was always Eddie to Josie) and ran from her nurse right into his arms and began to cry. He picked her up--she weighed next to nothing, this little copper-haired girl--and took a deep breath. He then saw the photographs on the tables and bookcases, all displayed in silver frames, Josie and him at her presentation ball, the two of them as kids, Josie in a wagon and him pulling her with their first dog, Sam, tagging along, the formal family photograph sitting with their parents when he was maybe twelve, his hand on his father's shoulder as he stood to his right, Josie about Penelope's age sitting in their mother's lap. He walked to the bookcase with his niece still in his arms and stared at the photograph for a long time. He had forgotten what they looked like, his parents.

  Penelope lifted her head and followed his gaze. "Mama" she said and pointed the debutante photograph.

  "Yes," he said with difficulty; his voice cracked.

  "Uncle Eddie," she said so softly it was almost as if she had not spoken.

  Those were some of the only few words she had said in the last ten days. "Uncle Eddie" and "Mama," which she wailed so pitifully when she was crying. That one word carried all the pain and grief and loss this poor child was suffering. But soon she stopped crying, and no amount of prodding could get her to speak. She merely nodded or shook her head and either ignored everyone, especially if pushed by Miss Clement, her nurse, or she started sobbing all over again. And though her nurse tried to soothe her, the world she had known was shattered to bits, and she awoke crying for her mama almost every night and three times now on the train.

  Traveling back to New York with his niece and her nurse would have been difficult without the private car--a godsend, with its separate bed and bath, its office and small, heavily-draped and gilt salon. The only sounds Ed was aware of had been the rattling of the train on its tracks, a sound he could forget after a few hours while he worked.

  Then came
the sound he could not ignore--Penelope woke up crying again. Pitiable and keening sounds pierced the air, instantly pulling him out of his thoughts, which were not really on the drawings and plans laid out on the desk in front of him.

  He stood. A light came on in the adjacent room at the same time he reached the doorway. "Penelope?"

  She broke free of the bedding and her nurse's arms and ran to him on small bare feet, clinging to his leg as he placed a soothing hand on her coppery head.

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Lowell," Miss Clement said, clearly dismayed, and she reached for her dressing gown and started to move toward them.

  Edward raised a hand and shook his head, then squatted down. A pair of large brown eyes stared back at him from her bright pink, tear-streaked face. "Penelope? Would you like to sit with me for a while?"

  She gave him a serious look and nodded, her small arms falling limply to her sides, as if she had given up. He scooped her up with one arm and told the nurse to go back to sleep.

  What did one say to a grieving, confused four year old at half past midnight?

  He sat in the wide leather desk chair and settled her on his lap. Her little toes dangled from beneath the ruffles on her white nightgown. He'd never seen toes so small. Looking at them reminded him of his enormous responsibility to her, those tiny toes. She had no one but him. She leaned forward and pointed to the plans on his desk and looked up at him.

  "What are they? They're drawings for a very tall, new building in New York. You remember that's where I live?"