Reborn, I Married the Man He Feared novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Alley and the Ring
Clara dies in an alley, wakes at her engagement dinner, turns down Chase's ring in front of forty guests and asks Alexander Tilghman to marry her. He agrees before she names a day, and her father says Tilghman owns them.
Three men kicked Clara Althaus behind the Carrow Street garage while her phone lit up on the asphalt.
She had curled around her ribs and stopped screaming a while ago.
Her voice was gone, and so was most of the feeling in her legs.
One of the men stepped on her wrist so she couldn't reach the phone.
The screen showed a text from her husband.
Chase: Is it done?
She understood it then, all at once, lying in the oil and the broken glass.
He had known where she would park tonight, because he had asked her that morning.
A boot came down on the side of her head, and the alley went dark.
Then there was candlelight, and a fork in her hand, and the smell of her father's roast.
Clara sat very still at the long table in the Althaus dining room.
There were forty guests, and every one of them was smiling at her.
She was alive, and she was twenty-four, and she was wearing the blue dress she had burned the year after her wedding.
Across the table, her stepsister Daphne touched the strand of pearls at her throat and smiled the sweetest smile in Baltimore.
They were Clara's mother's pearls.
Daphne had asked to borrow them for the night, and Clara remembered saying yes.
Chase Loomis stood up at the head of the table with a champagne glass.
"I want to thank Morton for letting me steal his daughter," he said.
The guests laughed.
Chase's eyes slid to the far end of the room, to a small table by the window, and he lost his place in his speech.
A man sat there alone with a black cane hooked over the back of his chair and a cup of tea in front of him.
He was not eating, and he was not smiling.
Alexander Tilghman was looking at Chase, and Chase had gone pale.
Clara knew that man by his reputation, as everyone in the city did.
He owned the harbor.
He had married three women, and not one had lasted a year.
Her father had invited him tonight and would not say why.
Chase cleared his throat and got down on one knee.
"Clara Althaus," he said, "will you make me the happiest man in Baltimore?"
He opened the ring box.
The diamond was the same one she had worn for one year and four months.
Clara looked at his kind, handsome face, and she remembered the text that had lit up her phone in the alley.
"No," she said.
The room went quiet.
Chase laughed softly and held the ring box a little higher.
"Sweetheart, stand up and say yes. You're embarrassing us."
"I said no."
Her father rose from his chair.
"Clara, sit down. Not tonight. Not in front of everyone."
Daphne leaned over, pearls swinging.
"You're just nervous," she said gently. "We all love you."
Clara pushed her chair back and stood.
Chase got up too, and his voice dropped so only she could hear.
"Don't do this. Who else is going to take you? Tilghman?"
He gave a little laugh, and it did not quite work.
"You'd last a week with that man."
"Then I'll find out," Clara said.
She walked the length of the room with forty people watching her.
She stopped at the small table by the window.
Up close, Alexander Tilghman had grey at his temples and dark green eyes that did not look surprised.
"Mr. Tilghman," she said, loud enough for the whole room. "I need a husband. Will you marry me?"
Somebody dropped a spoon.
Alexander looked at her for a long moment.
Then he took a pen from his breast pocket and put it into her left hand, before she had reached for it.
"Write down what you want from me," he said.
"Not on a napkin."
"Then say it."
"Your name," Clara said. "A year of it. And my father's rail yard stays out of Loomis hands."
"Done."
He said it in a flat, even voice.
"When?" she asked.
"Friday."
She had not given him a day.
He picked up his tea and drank it black.
Her father reached them, out of breath, his face grey.
"Clara, what have you done?" he whispered. "Tilghman bought my bank note last week. We owe him nine million dollars."
Behind her, Chase Loomis said her name once, sharply, and then stopped.
Clara turned her head.
Alexander had not moved, but Chase was backing toward his chair.
"Then he already owns us," Clara said. "I'd like to see what he does with it."
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