Chapter 23 #2
For a second, Maggie hesitated. She could tell him the truth, and perhaps such honesty would bring them closer.
Perhaps it would tear down this invisible wall that had formed between them, built of silence and strain.
She’d been far too set in her ways when it came to Brendan, Maggie knew.
Too sure of herself and what she wanted, and so she’d kept pushing him away, and yet…
She couldn’t bear for him to look at her with pity. Not again.
“It went well,” she said firmly, averting her face as she busied herself with folding her letter and sliding it into an envelope. “I have six commissions for the Exposition Dedication Day.”
“Six!” Brendan sounded suitably impressed. “But that’s only next month! Can you manage it?”
“I shall have to,” Maggie replied briskly as she sealed the envelope.
Brendan was silent for a few seconds, and Maggie did not dare look at him, her head bent over her work.
“Why,” he finally asked slowly, “do you not seem pleased?”
“I am pleased,” she replied swiftly. “Of course I am.”
He frowned, clearly not believing her. “Maggie—”
“It’s just a lot of work,” she continued, cutting him off.
“And so much depends on it. And… I don’t have very much experience at all, no matter how I might attempt to act otherwise.
” She turned to him with a small smile. This, at least, she could admit.
“I feel like an upstart and a sham. Why on earth should any of these women wear hats of my amateurish design? Why should they want to?”
“Oh, Maggie.” Brendan’s voice was low and tender, and felt far too intimate, wonderfully so.
It made her miss him, and the way things had once been between them, could have been between them, all the more.
He crossed the room to reach for her hands, squeezing them lightly.
“With success comes self-doubt, but your designs are truly unique, and you wouldn’t have been given this opportunity if these women didn’t think so, too. I know you can do it.”
But they didn’t think so, Maggie thought miserably as she slipped her hands from Brendan’s. They wanted ridiculous, not sublime. “Thank you for your vote of confidence,” she told him with an attempt at wryness. “I certainly hope so.”
She went to the mirror to fix her hair, while Brendan watched her from his place by the window. Self-conscious under his observation, she stilled her hands as she met his gaze in the mirror. In the twilit dimness of the room, she couldn’t make out his expression, but it felt important somehow.
“What is it?” she asked uncertainly.
“Nothing,” he replied quietly. He hesitated, as if he’d say something else, then gave a little shake of his head. “Nothing,” he said again. “We should go down to supper.”
Downstairs, the mood remained merry as Harriet brought dishes to the table and Patrick O’Malley opened the bottle of brandy to offer Brendan, Horace, Teddy, and even Danny a drink.
The women, Maggie noted, were not offered a taste, but she wasn’t surprised.
Women were rarely encouraged to drink spirits, and Patrick O’Malley seemed like the kind of man who put stock in such notions.
She stood to the side of the room, content as before to let the conversation drift and swirl around her.
Brendan stood with the men, sipping his brandy and chatting amicably, his gaze only occasionally meeting hers, before Maggie looked quickly away.
She wondered what he had been going to say upstairs, and then decided it must have been nothing important.
Because surely everything important between them had already been said?
It wasn’t until they’d all sat down to dinner and were halfway through the meal that Maggie had the sense that something was wrong.
Or if not wrong, then at least worrying.
First, it was the speculative looks Patrick O’Malley slid between her and Brendan, as if he was watching them both in a way that put her on edge.
Then it was the questions he began to pepper them with, more than on their first night when everyone had wanted to know the details of their wedding.
He asked about their families, and whether anyone would be visiting them as newlyweds, and if their parents had been pleased by their match.
The questions, while at first good-natured, became more pointed and invasive until even Brendan, who had mastered the art of seeming at ease, started to look both annoyed and a little alarmed.
The unease she’d felt at meeting the man deepened into something darker and more dangerous.
Why, Maggie wondered, was their absentee landlord interrogating them in such a way? What did he suspect?
The answer became all too clear as Harriet cleared the table and brought in a tray with the coffee pot and half a dozen cups.
“Well, it’s very interesting,” Patrick O’Malley remarked as he rocked back in his chair, his smug, speculative gaze moving once more between her and Brendan, “to see the two of you together, like this, acting as husband and wife and sharing a room. Because the truth of it is, I’d bet my last dollar that you aren’t actually married. ”