Chapter 30
On the way back to Englewood, Maggie’s mind was full of both hope and trepidation, daydreams tangled with dread as she wondered whether she’d made a terrible mistake in agreeing to Theo’s investment.
Yet if she hadn’t…
This was her best choice, Maggie told herself, far from the first time, as she alighted from the streetcar onto Sixty-Third Street and headed toward home.
Theo had offered to take her in a hansom, but she’d refused, wanting to keep a sense of propriety about their arrangement. She hoped it would be enough.
“Ah, Miss O’Halloran!”
Maggie tensed at the unwelcome sound of Dr. Holmes’ rich, assured voice.
He was strolling down the sidewalk toward his building, smiling in that open yet shrewd way of his underneath his well-groomed mustache, his gaze friendly yet assessing.
Maggie kept telling herself not to be so suspicious of the man, but every time she saw him, her skin prickled with a strange kind of uneasy awareness, almost as if she was in the presence of some kind of danger.
She had no good explanation for it, only that she didn’t like being in his company, not even when safe out on the street.
“Dr. Holmes,” she greeted him as cordially as she could.
“You are without your gentleman friend?” he inquired, his tone solicitous yet with a decided edge, in that two-faced way he had, the sweetness hiding a far sharper and insidious note.
Maggie stiffened, disliking the way he cocked his head, his gaze turning sly and knowing.
“You must mean Mr. Stein, my investor,” she replied with dignity.
This was, she knew, a conversation she would have to have many times over, and yet she resented having to have it with this man.
“As it happens, he is investing in my millinery business.”
Dr. Holmes’ smile widened underneath his mustache, although his pale blue eyes looked cold and small. “Is that so?” he replied, sounding decidedly skeptical. “Because from inside the drugstore, it almost looked as if he were courting you.”
Maggie recalled how Theo had ridiculously gotten down on one knee, and she cringed inwardly. Clearly Holmes had seen that silly, over-the-top gesture. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” she told him coolly, and Holmes raised his eyebrows.
“I must be,” he replied with something like a sneer, “for he looked far above your station to be offering what looked like a proposal.”
Maggie started, surprised by this unnecessarily pointed barb.
It was as if Holmes’ charming mask had inadvertently slipped, albeit briefly, revealing the true, unpleasant man underneath.
He smiled, a knowing smirk that didn’t reach his cold blue eyes.
For the first time in the man’s presence, Maggie felt not just uneasy, but frightened.
“Good day to you, sir,” she said frostily, and swept into the building, only to be stopped at the door as he called out to her.
“Oh, Miss O’Halloran? I saw your father the other day.”
Maggie stilled, then slowly turned around. “My father?” she repeated, unnerved by the sudden turn in conversation. “You saw him?”
Holmes’ gaze remained trained on hers as he answered. “Yes, hurrying across Halsted Street. He was too far away for me to call to him.” He paused, his unblinking stare unnerving. “Otherwise, of course I would have told him you were looking for him.”
“But…” Maggie’s mind spun. Her father, going about his business right here in Englewood, and she hadn’t seen him? He wasn’t trying to find her and Danny? Was Holmes even telling the truth?
“Maybe,” Dr. Holmes suggested with a cool little smile, “he’s not trying to find you?”
Maggie shook her head. She’d had enough of this man’s unpleasantness, the way he tried to control every conversation, the insinuations and the innuendoes hidden beneath that thin veneer of charm.
For whatever reason, he clearly wasn’t trying to flatter her with his usual effusive compliments and interest anymore, and the unmasked unpleasantness, while more honest, was disturbing.
The sooner she could move into her new lodgings, Maggie thought, the better.
And, if Theo was able to arrange matters, it might be very soon indeed.
Maggie was still troubled, thinking about her father as well as Dr. Holmes, as she came upstairs into the long, narrow hallway, the gas jet providing no more than a flicker of light to pierce the impenetrable gloom.
Brendan stepped out of his apartment as Maggie opened the door to hers, the expression on his face composed but inscrutable.
“Ah, you’re alone,” he remarked. “I thought you might have… company.”
The slight acid edge to his voice told Maggie all she needed to know. Like Holmes, he’d seen her with Theo, and drawn all the wrong conclusions.
Or at least, Maggie acknowledged uncomfortably, some of them. She could not think of Theo’s kiss without a blush rising to her cheeks and realizing uncomfortably that Brendan had some justification for his remark, even as she bridled.
“I just saw Dr. Holmes,” she told him, sidestepping his pointed observation. “And he said he’d seen my father the other day.”
“He did?” Brendan frowned, his own complaint temporarily forgotten in light of this news. “Did he tell him you and Danny are living here?”
“No, he said he only saw him in passing, from across the street.” A creak sounded on the stair, and Maggie’s heart lurched.
Was Holmes listening to their conversation?
She would not put it past the man. “Let’s not talk in the hallway,” she urged Brendan as she opened the door, and pressing his lips together, he followed her in.
“If your father’s living nearby, you might run into him on any occasion,” he remarked, closing the door behind him.
“I suppose,” Maggie replied, a note of uncertainty audible in her voice, and Brendan’s gaze narrowed.
“Why do you sound so unsure?”
“I don’t know that I believe Dr. Holmes,” she admitted slowly. She knew Brendan didn’t share her suspicions about their landlord, but she felt them all the same, deeply. “It was strange, the way he said it, almost as if he’d simply thought of it on the spot.”
“Why on earth would he lie?” Brendan demanded. He shook his head, looking exasperated by her intransigency.
“I don’t know,” Maggie returned, a little sharply, “but, in any case, he was thoroughly unpleasant to me.”
“Unpleasant!” Now Brendan was the one who sounded disbelieving. “The man relies on his charm absolutely, whatever you think of it. How was he unpleasant?”
Maggie hesitated, not wanting to go into details, but she saw from the flash of understanding in Brendan’s narrowed eyes that she didn’t need to.
“He saw that little display out on the sidewalk this afternoon, didn’t he?” he surmised, and she stiffened in affront. Was she going to be subject to speculation and judgment from Brendan, as well?
“That little display?” she repeated as she unpinned her hat. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“That—that swell, fawning over you in such a public fashion,” Brendan retorted, his eyes flashing with ire. “I saw the whole thing from inside the store.”
“That swell,” Maggie informed him in the same icy tone, “happens to be an investor in my business.”
Brendan’s jaw dropped before snapping shut. “Oh, is he?” he said slowly, his voice nearly a drawl, his lip curling, and Maggie knew exactly what he was thinking, and it felt as if he might as well have slapped her across the face.
“I didn’t realize,” she said after a moment, her voice shaking, “what a decidedly low opinion you had of me.”
Brendan gave an impatient shake of his head. “I haven’t said anything—”
“You didn’t need to,” she snapped. “I can see it in your face. You think Theo is investing in my business as—as a way of… paying for services!” She blushed to utter something so crude, and yet she knew it was what Brendan thought, or almost. “Perhaps you believe Mr. O’Malley, as well,” she tossed at him, turning away because she didn’t trust the look on her face.
She had always trusted that Brendan would believe in her, she realized.
She had counted on it, but right now he was looking at her with both derision and doubt, and she hated it.
“Was Theo,” Brendan asked after a moment, the slightly sneering emphasis on his name audible, “the gentleman who kept you out late a few months ago?”
“Does it matter if he was?” Maggie cried, her hands balling into fists as she whirled around to face him once more. “What does any of it have to do with you?”
Brendan stared at her for a long moment, the spark of anger in his eyes dimming, the tension leaving his body as his shoulders slumped a little. “Nothing,” he answered after a moment, his voice flat. “Absolutely nothing.”
A shuddering breath escaped her. She didn’t want to fight with Brendan, not like this, and it felt as if the conversation had spiraled out of control so quickly. Yet, Maggie knew, she wouldn’t take back a single word, and neither, she suspected desolately, would Brendan.
“You should know,” Maggie said after a moment, when she trusted her voice to sound even, “I’ve found new lodgings. Danny and I will move into them as soon as possible.” Theo had told her the apartment on Washington Street could be ready within the week. “In a few days, I hope.”
Brendan nodded slowly. “And do these new lodgings have anything to do with this Theo?”
“Mr. Stein has secured the lease on a building,” Maggie confirmed stiffly. “For a shop with an apartment above. There is plenty of space for both Danny and me.”
“How convenient.”
She glared at him, more hurt than angry, but she didn’t want him to know how much his assumptions wounded her. “I won’t ask you to clarify such a remark,” she stated coldly. “It’s clear enough what you think of me.”