Mary's Pledge Read online

  Mary’s Pledge

  KT Morrison

  Contents

  About the Author

  Also by KT Morrison

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Afterword

  About the Author

  KT Morrison writes stories about women who fall in love with sexy men who aren’t their husband, and loving relationships that go too far—couples who open a mysterious door, then struggle to get it closed as trouble pushes through the threshold.

  Visit My Website!

  ktmorrison.com

  Also by KT Morrison

  SERIES

  Landlord

  Maggie

  Obsessed

  The Cayman Proxy

  Happy Endings

  Separate Schools

  EPIC NOVELS

  Cherry Blossoms

  Learning Lessons

  NOVELS

  Going A Little Too Far

  Pool Party

  Après Ski

  NOVELLAS

  Watching Natalie Cheat

  Watching Natalie Again

  Inconceivable

  ANTHOLOGIES

  The Taken Anthology

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  Models on cover are meant for illustrative purposes only.

  All characters in this book are over the age of eighteen.

  MARY’S PLEDGE

  23,000 words

  First Edition. January 13, 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 KT Morrison

  Written by KT Morrison

  Cover by KT Morrison

  1

  Though he was over an hour early, Jack Kingsway crossed the College Road onto the girls’ side of the campus, headed to McKenzie House where Mary lived. At one of the side ground-floor windows that looked into the empty administration office he stopped to check his reflection. It was approaching dusk, but there were no interior lights so he was able to comb his hair, adjust his tie, give his shave one last check. He’d engaged Mary for the evening to see a show in the town, but with an extra hour now he’d like to treat her to a Coke at the diner before the movie started.

  Up the three stone steps that led to the women’s dorm house, in through the vestibule, he went to the front desk, found it unattended so he tapped the bell on the counter to let them know there was a visitor. Before help arrived at the desk, Mary’s roommate, Hazel, descended the steps dressed as though she were heading out for the evening. He called to her.

  “Hello, Jack, how are you?” she asked as he met her at the bottom of the steps.

  “Are you girls done studying for the evening?”

  Hazel was an ascetic city girl—the opposite of Mary—always poised and smartly dressed and never seen to be impressed by anything. Her hair was pulled back from her face and held by a headband, falling in full chestnut waves to her shoulders. Below her light wool coat she wore leggings and polished shoes. She cocked her head and frowned as though she didn’t understand him and rested her leather glove palm over the carved upside down acorn that formed the newel post at the bottom of the dorm house’s staircase. “Studying, Jack? I’m afraid I don’t follow.” Only her eyebrow raised.

  “Mary said you girls were studying maths this evening.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood, Jack. I’ve been at the library and Mary’s not in our room. I don’t know where she is.”

  “You don’t know where she is?”

  As Hazel told him she was sorry again, Ms. Haskell, McKenzie’s den mother, appeared at the stair’s landing, removing her eyeglasses and letting them hang from the chain around her neck. Two steps down, she paused and regarded him with a stern expression.

  He said, “Good evening, Ms. Hask—”

  “Your foot, Mr. Kingsway,” she said, disregarding the niceties and getting right to protocol. While talking to Hazel he’d casually rested one foot on the first stair leading up to the girls’ rooms. He whisked it back and stood straighter.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Hask—”

  “On your way up the stairs, were you, Mr. Kingsway? Perhaps to see Mary, or are you interested in one of my other girls?”

  “Of course not, Ms. Haskell. I was only talking to Hazel, I wouldn’t want to go upstairs unescorted.”

  Ms. Haskell shook her head and pursed her lips. Her light cardigan hung open over her shoulders and she plucked at it to tighten across her bosom before descending the stairs to join them. “Of course you wouldn’t, Mr. Kingsway. Why would a randy eighteen-year-old boy want to get up to the second floor where all my young ladies sleep and shower and otherwise relax into vulnerability?”

  “I would never, Ms. Haskell. I’m only here for Mary. And Mary is the only girl for me, we’ve been steady four years now, almost five, we’re—”

  Ms. Haskell raised a hand and closed her eyes with forced patience. “I’m aware, Mr. Kingsway.”

  He said, “Hazel said Mary’s not in…”

  “Were you the one ringing my bell?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You don’t have an appointment.”

  “I do, Ms. Haskell.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “At 7 P.M., Mr. Kingsway, and unless my watch has raced ahead with the excitement of a new school year, you’re an hour early.”

  “I am, Ms. Haskell. I only wanted to see if she was done studying. I’d like to take her out to the diner before the movie.”

  She studied him a moment longer, said, “A movie.”

  “Yes, Ms. Haskell. A Star Is Born.”

  Hazel said, “May I please leave now, Ms. Haskell?”

  “Good evening, Miss Gardner,” she said without looking at her.

  “Good evening, Ms. Haskell, good evening, Jack,” Hazel said, quickly stepping across the lobby rug to the front door.

  “Bye, Hazel,” he said as she stepped out.

  They both watched her leave and were quiet a moment before he said, “Do you know where Mary went, Ms. Haskell?”

  “I do not, Mr. Kingsway,” she said, coming off the steps and walking around him to the walnut desk with the Victorian legs where he’d rung the bell. On the other side now, she stooped to retrieve a single white envelope from a shelf against the wall. She flapped it once against an open palm and studied him again without saying anything.

  He said, “Is that for Mary, Ms. Haskell?”

  “No, Mr. Kingsway. It’s from Mary. For you.” She still watched him and made no effort to present it.

  “May I have it?” He extended an open hand but she still would not pass it to him. “Please, Ms. Haskell…?”

  “Miss McConnell left this note with me to pass to you in the event she would not return in time to meet for your engagement.”

  “Where has she gone?”

  “I told you, Mr. Kingsway, I do not know—my girls are free to come and go as they choose as long as they are within McKenzie’s walls before 10 P.M. At ten-oh-one I will alert campus authorities, and should they ever choose to sneak past me a male companion I will have them expelled. Simple rules I keep uncomplicated and therefore effective by the need to not-know-everything. Perhaps your Mary has gone to the library.”r />
  “Would you give me her letter, please, Ms. Haskell?”

  “Mr. Kingsway, Mary is not late for her engagement, you are an hour early.”

  “You won’t give it to me, Ms. Haskell? Please, it can’t make a difference, if she tells where she’s gone perhaps I can still meet up with her.”

  Ms. Haskell’s posture didn’t change, and he feared she would stick to the rules and keep the letter until 7 P.M. Or more likely, seven-oh-one.

  “Please, Ms. Haskell…? She’s put my name on it, it’s meant for me—I can see my name in her handwriting…”

  Ms. Haskell set her eyeglasses on the middle of her nose and regarded the front of the envelope. Mary had excellent penmanship, and she’d scrawled Jack across the front with a large and elaborate J. She flapped the envelope against her palm one more time and now regarded him overtop of the eyeglasses’ frames.

  His eager hand was still extended. “Please, Ms. Haskell…”

  She breathed one long heavy inhale and then an exhale. “Good evening, Mr. Kingsway,” she said, and his heart sank. But she flapped the envelope into his palm. The kindness was unexpected.

  “Thank you, thank you so much, Ms. Haskell,” he gushed.

  The slightest smirk tugged at her tight mouth. She said, “Enjoy the movie, Mr. Kingsway. I hear Judy Garland is wonderful.”

  2

  Out of McKenzie House and standing on the brick path under a maple showing its first sign of surrender to autumn, he ran a finger under the sealed flap of Mary’s envelope. With shaking hands holding the single sheaf found within he was bewildered to read:

  Dearest darling Jack,

  I most sincerely apologize that I’m late for our evening engagement. Please hold fast, and I will be with you as soon as I am able; I’ve been so looking forward to our time together.

  If perhaps this letter can broach what I know will be difficult to say I must take this opportunity. Jack, my true love, my cherished husband-to-be, you told those upperclassmen No, but I know in my heart of hearts what this means to you. We will have forever together, darling, what’s one night if I’m surrendering for the sake of the man I love? It’s nothing; a useless marker, a dead symbol; our love means ten times more than the tiny thing I offer them. I’m doing it for you, my love.

  You and I must work as a team because we are going to have a long and wonderful life together!

  If there’s one thing I know, the simple thing I’m offering to those men tonight will return in value something to my future-husband a thousand times greater. And what I give them will be yours every night once we’re married.

  I did it because of my love for you.

  I don’t know how long something like this must take but I assumed an hour. But what do I know, ha ha, neither of us have any experience in this realm.

  What I do know is that I hope and pray I’ll find you with this letter, your arms open and ready to receive me with love because what I’ve done was all for you.

  Sincerely, with love,

  your Mary

  The stiff paper rattled in his hand from the tremors that coursed his body. This was impossible. She couldn’t mean it; surely he was misunderstanding her letter...

  “Oh no,” he sighed, “you crazy, crazy girl.”

  Wait!—this note was meant for him to read after 7 P.M. It was only six now, and she’d given herself an hour to perform that horrid act he’d told her he didn’t want...

  Then there was time. Time to stop this madness...

  3

  Now he was running as fast as his long legs would take him, hoofing it across the grassy expanse of Studdard Field, crossing the College Hill Road, and his suede bucks tapping out a staccato on the brick path that meandered the boys’ side of the campus. He had to stop her.

  While Mary was smart, she was also naïve, maybe sometimes misguided. It wasn’t her fault. Most of the men and women at the college were city-folk, but he and Mary came from the Heartland. Good homes, solid, Christian homes; ones where some of the ills of the world were kept at bay by good upbringing. Why else could she not see why he forbade it?

  It was her devotion to him that prompted this madness; it was his incessant drive to be an Omega-Man that had his sweet Mary preparing to sacrifice herself to the volcano-gods like some dime-store pulp hero’s damsel-in-distress. This was his own fault.

  Mary was a kind girl, a shy girl despite her overwhelming beauty. The youngest of six McConnell daughters, she was the baby of the family; her father pampered her, her mother shielded her. Now look what it got them. A poor young waif who didn’t see the magnitude of her choices, didn’t see how men would take advantage of her. In a small-town where everyone knew everyone, she’d grown too trusting.

  And maybe him being the doting boyfriend for four years had done her a disservice too. Perhaps it would have been better if she’d dated other boys; let her see the mind of men—let her know the darkness that worked through men she met at school or on the street every day. Then she might know that all men weren’t as kind and caring as her Jack Kingsway. His poor Mary didn’t know the louts that existed, and their treacherous ways.

  The things they would do, the things they would say, just to take advantage of the beauty of a young girl like her...

  4

  The three heads of house, the men who formed what was called The Trident, met Jack at Omega House four days ago, and he’d told her they requested her to attend with him. It was exciting, and she couldn’t be more proud of Jack.

  They’d dressed in the very best clothes they’d brought from Iowa. She’d gone into the village the day before the meeting and bought a new hat. She’d put it proudly on her head, arranged the veiling and clipped the pillbox in place with bobby pins. She’d even worn gloves.

  The meeting was at two in the afternoon, and they walked there together and she’d held Jack’s hand. He let it go as they approached Omega House. He was always so tense, so stiff. But she loved him and she understood how much the fraternity meant to him so she kept out of his way. The fact that he had been summoned was good news indeed. Her Jack had pledged and suffered the previous five days, endured the boys’ hazing and antics without permanent injury.

  The sun shone through the tall office windows on the second floor of the Omega’s fraternity house, lit them all in a hazy golden light. The Housemaster, the biggest of the big men on campus, sat at a leather office chair behind a huge walnut desk. Royce Lansing. Heir to the Lansing fortune; the Lansing family were barons of all kinds in various stages of the last four-hundred years in this establishing nation. From land to oil and even some smuggling. Behind and on the left of Royce, sat Teague Hazelton, another college man with powerful family connections. And the third member of the Trident, sitting on the opposite side of Royce was Sven Olufsen. No legacy to speak of (at least that she knew about), but he was imposing in his own way, just the same. Captain of the football team, nicknamed Moose, six-foot-four with a razor-sharp blonde brush cut and a handsome face. She wasn’t the one pledging Omega House, but she was just about as excited as her boyfriend that day. Her fingers had tingled inside the tips of her white cotton gloves. She sat with her legs together, chair pushed half a foot behind Jack’s, and said nothing after their introductions. The Trident went through the formalities, and Holt jotted things down acting as secretary. The whole endeavor was very official and formal, and she knew what they would offer her love. Jack was tense and tight, and refused to believe that they would accept his pledge, but she knew they would.

  Royce was dashing and confident; he commanded attention. He was tall and tanned, and Mary liked to think that he had probably summered in Long Island somewhere, maybe out in the Hamptons, one of his family’s estates out there, coming in now for the school year looking like he was out of the pages of Confidential. He had wavy blonde hair that was almost golden, cut short at the back and sides but roguishly long up top. While he talked, she couldn’t help wondering what he would look like with black sunglasses on. She wond
ered what kind of car he drove, too, and pictured a two-seater, a foreign convertible in red.

  After the formalities and some pleasant small talk (and she was sure they were doing it to drag out Jack’s apprehension), Teague stood up from his chair and opened the side door. She could see in the opening a half dozen young ladies sitting in the adjacent room playing cards. Without saying anything, one of them stood up and came to the door. Teague whispered in her ear, and she motioned to the table where the other girls were. Two more girls joined her, and they entered the Tridents’ office full of smiles. Royce said, “Mary, you wouldn’t mind joining the ladies while we get down to brass tacks, as they say…”

  “Certainly,” she’d said. She rose, erected her back with perfect posture, and joined the quiet girls who waited with broad but polite smiles. One held out a hand, and Mary gave it to her. They escorted her into the adjoining room.

  Gathered around the table were the ladies that she wanted to be. Ladies of the Kappa sorority, the highest of the high on campus. Campus royalty. Future wives of some of the most powerful men this country would likely know. And they looked the part. Perfect hair, perfect lipstick, perfect makeup, perfect clothing. They liked her hat. They complimented her clothes. They served her ice water that had a lemon slice in it. They served tea and offered her biscuits (which of course she refused—Kappa girls watch their figures). They tittered and laughed and got to know each other.