The Roswell Legacy by Frances Statham (parable of the sower read online .TXT) 📗

Date it for today, and when you’ve typed it, return it to my office.”

“Yes, sir.”

Stanley hesitated. “Why don’t you read it back to me so that I can hear how it sounds? I don’t want it to seem too threatening, of course.”

Martha nervously held the tablet up to the light, and with a slightly shaky voice, she repeated what he had dictated.

“Very good, Miss Gregory. And when you type the envelope, make sure you mark it personal.”

“Yes, Mr. Quail. Will there be anything else?”

“No. That will be all.” Again he hesitated. “I need not remind you, Miss Gregory, that all correspondence going out of this office is confidential.”

“I understand, Mr. Quail.”

“Then you may get back to your typewriter. I’ll be waiting here in my office to sign the letter, once you’re finished.”

“Yes, sir.”

Martha left Stanley’s office. As she sat down, she glanced at the unfinished brief still in the carriage of the machine. Regretfully, she removed it, knowing that she would have to start over and retype the page once she’d finished with the letter Mr. Quail had just dictated.

Consulting her tablet, she began the letter to Mr. Meadors. Although the language used was cautious, the letter sounded strange and troubling, almost like blackmail. But, of course, no attorney would be threatening Senator Meadors.

All of a sudden, Martha wished that she could confide in Ginna. But that was impossible. If she were to do that and Mr. Quail found out, she would lose her much-needed job. No, it would be best if she said nothing at all. Just type the letter and forget it.

Within a few minutes, the letter was finished. Again she rose and knocked on Quail’s door. “I have the letter ready for your signature, Mr. Quail.”

He opened the door only wide enough to take it from her. Then she went back to her typewriter, put a fresh sheet in the carriage, and returned her attention to the brief. She was still typing when she heard his voice beside her.

“I’m leaving now, Miss Gregory. When you finish your work for the day, please lock the door behind you.”

“Yes, Mr. Quail. Good evening.”

Stanley disappeared with the letter in his hand. At the entrance to the office building, he engaged a runner to deliver it to the government building. With that done, he headed for a quick rendezvous with Maryann before going home to supper.

He was grateful to Maryann for giving him the information that might lessen the large fine imposed on him by Meadors’s committee. Keeping up two houses in Washington was expensive, but he was compelled to do it, especially with Maryann’s becoming pregnant and producing a child. He would have to take care of them from now on.

From the time he found out she was going to have the baby, he’d had nightmares, worrying that it might turn out to be a monster. It happened sometimes, he heard, with brother and sister. But they’d been lucky. The child was normal.

Well, he’d have to admit that it was probably because they weren’t full-blooded brother and sister. After all, they’d had different mothers.

He would never forget when it had first started, his sleeping with her. He had come home early from school for the holidays when he was sixteen and she was twelve. After that, his passion for her had grown into a full-fledged obsession with each vacation. Throughout those three years, he had taught her well. Too well. He should have known that they would finally get caught and he’d be sent away to England in disgrace—with his father putting an ocean between them. But now his father was dead. And there was no one to stop them—not even Cassie—from taking up where they had left off.

As he walked along to the small house beyond the Mall, he stepped back in time to that day when his world had changed.

He had left school a day earlier than planned, coming halfway home with Robert Landen. Then he’d gotten a ride with a peddler as far as the crossroads. And he had walked the rest of the way.

“Hello, everybody. I’m home.”

The house seemed empty at first, with no sign even of Hagar, the black servant. As a disappointed Stanley stood in the entrance hall of the rambling old country house, he heard footsteps. And then he saw his twelve-year-old sister, Maryann, rushing to greet him.

She threw herself into his arms. “You weren’t supposed to come home until tomorrow,” she said. “Mama and Papa aren’t even here.”

“Where are they?”

“At the Marsdens’s. There’s a big Christmas party and they’re staying overnight.”

“Well, then, maybe I’d better go away and come back tomorrow.”

“No, silly. You’re already here.”

“And where are the servants?”

“Elbert fell in the creek and took pneumonia. So there’s just Hagar left, to fix supper and spend the night with me.”

Stanley stepped back and began to examine Maryann. She was no longer a little girl. Her body had changed in the past four months.

“What are you staring at?”

“You. When I left, you were a little girl. Now I see you’re growing up.”

He suddenly shook his head as if to clear his vision. “I brought you a present.”

“May I have it then? Right now?”

“I can’t give it to you yet. It’s in one of my bags. And I left them at the overseer’s cottage.”

“Why did you leave them there in that deserted old building?” she asked.

“They were too heavy to carry. Want to ride with me to get them?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go to the stable and saddle up a horse.”

The two disappeared before Hagar, busy in the kitchen, knew he had returned home.

Thinking of that ride, with Maryann clinging tightly behind him, Stanley brushed his bald pate. His hair had not yet thinned at the time. It had still been brown and thick, and his youthful nose had not yet taken on the thin, aquiline shape of his uncle’s.

He remembered helping her down from the horse and seeing her dress slide upward, revealing her thighs before she nonchalantly smoothed her skirt.

They walked into the deserted