Chapter Twenty-Four
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
F OR SOME REASON, HE HEEDED HER REQUEST.
The man was normally so un-suggestible, so stubborn, she could hardly believe it when he took her hand and led her outside to his idling carriage.
The carriage was one of those small numbers, a two-seater usually reserved for single gentlemen or married couples. Normally, Evelyn would have relished the chance to get this close to him, to toy with him by brushing her knees against his and accidentally jostling into his lap when the slow-moving carriage hit a bump in the street.
But she was so tired. Exhausted past her throbbing flesh and down to her bone marrow. Not just in her sore body, either. In her emotions. Only this morning, they’d been laughing their way across Coney Island. This afternoon, he’d thrown her over for some newspapers and convinced her that she meant nothing when weighed against his career and image. Then, there had been the fights, the beating, the arrest, the imprisonment …
And Thomas, for his part, looked even less willing than usual to entertain her teasing. So she kept her legs firmly tucked to the side and her hands to herself, even when Thomas wordlessly reached below his bank seat, withdrew a small canteen, splashed it out onto a handkerchief emblazoned in bright thread with his monogram, and handed it over to her like a peace offering.
Hesitantly, she accepted it and lifted the cool fabric to her swollen, split lip. The blood stained his expensive mouchoir and her fingertips.
“Quite a spectacular way to breach our contract, sir,” she muttered at last.
Thomas blinked as if he’d been asleep for a long time and was only just coming back to consciousness. “I beg your pardon?”
“Work hours concluded some time ago,” she reminded him blankly. “And here we are. Together.”
“Unbelievable. I’ve just gotten you out of a jail cell and that ’s what you’re thinking of?”
“What’s unbelievable was that you didn’t leave me in that jail cell until open of business tomorrow,” she muttered bitterly as she crumpled the bloody handkerchief and tossed it carelessly aside.
Thomas said nothing. Anger burned through Evelyn, singeing everything it touched. He’d made it very clear that they were no more than colleagues, that they never would be anything more, and that her fixation needed to be put to an end.
Well, she’d done that. She’d gotten the sentiment for him beaten right out of her. And yet, here he was, confusing everything.
“That’s all we are, aren’t we? A business affair,” she reminded him.
A muscle in his jaw flexed. “What the devil happened tonight?”
“I picked a fight with the wrong people,” Evelyn said. Her lips smarted from the fresh bruising, but still, she smirked. “Or the right ones, depending on your view of things.”
Thomas shot her an exasperated look. “Will you ever stop your nonsense?”
“It seems ever so imprudent to borrow someone else’s nonsense when I have such a vast store of my own.”
In the dark of the carriage, it was nearly impossible to get a good read on the man. He seemed to be all nervous tension, but she couldn’t decide from where that tension originated. Was he angry with her for getting herself tangled up with the law? Was he genuinely concerned for her safety? Why was the usually calm, controlled Thomas Gallier now flexing and clenching his gloved hands and darting his gaze around and breathing erratically? Why did it seem as if he were fighting against his very skin?
Not that Evelyn cared a whit for his discomfort. Not after he’d shown such careless disregard for hers this afternoon. And so, she goaded him.
“What? No laughter? None of those poorly hidden smiles that show you’re trying not to be charmed by me? My, my, Thomas. It’s a wonder you didn’t leave me in that cell forever , never mind business hours tomorrow. You would have been well rid of me.”
His eyes flashed, and something in Evelyn’s heart cracked.
It all made perfect sense now.
“Ah. I see. It is business, then. You couldn’t lose your headliner entirely, so you had to collect me at some point. You couldn’t have me bloodied too bad—then I wouldn’t have been any good onstage. You didn’t break the rules because you care about me. But because you couldn’t afford to lose your investment.” Every word she spoke was like a fresh billy club blow. But better to feel the pain than delude herself any longer. In spite of herself, she’d believed so deeply in Thomas Gallier. And she had been disappointed at every turn. “We’re a sufficient distance away from the precinct now. You can leave me here. I’ll walk the rest of the way back to my boarding house, thank you.”
She reached up to knock on the ceiling of their buggy and alert the driver to stop, but Thomas captured her hand in his, holding it fast. The warmth of him seeped through their gloves, making her wish she could feel that bare warmth on the rest of her.
Their eyes met. He was a man at war with himself—the evidence was written all over him.
Yet when he spoke, it was with a devastating clarity of purpose.
“You are not just an investment, Evelyn. I understand the terms of our agreement. And I understand that I’ve broken them. If you wish to get out of this carriage this minute, then I will oblige. Freely, if not happily. But I cannot allow you to leave thinking that you are merely an obligation.”
Evelyn’s breath hitched. It was as if he spoke those words onto the very fabric of her heart.
“I didn’t come tonight to protect The Empire,” he continued.
“Why did you, then?”
He opened his mouth once, then twice. “I’m afraid I can’t answer that question directly. Not yet.”
Evelyn rolled her eyes and turned once more toward the carriage door. Thomas tightened his grip on her ever so slightly. Pleadingly.
“But I would like to try,” he said, his voice quieter than she’d ever before heard. “If you’ll let me. And if I can find the courage.”
“Courage? Why should you need courage?” What an odd thing to say. And so appropriate, considering she’d called him a coward just this afternoon.
He drank in a rattling, uncertain breath, still never letting go of her hand. “Because we cannot continue until there are no secrets between us. It wouldn’t be fair. So … May I tell you something? Can you keep a confidence?”
If only he knew how silly that question was, he wouldn’t have asked it. She’d gotten herself beaten and thrown in jail tonight to protect the secrets of two of her dearest friends. She could keep whatever Thomas had to throw at her. “I can.”
He squeezed his fingers around hers, as if holding on to something he was desperate not to lose. “My name isn’t Thomas Gallier.”
The air thickened. A thousand emotions crossed Thomas’s face, and she catalogued each and every one in turn. Fear and trepidation and hope and affection and so, so, so much shame.
When he opened his mouth again, gone was that English accent of his. So posh. So perfect. So aristocratic. So foreign. In its place, his voice rollicked with an Irish lilt much more familiar to Evelyn’s ears. It was the music of the docklands, the rhythm of Five Points, the cadence of her backstage fellows.
It was his voice. His real voice. A little rusty and worn from disuse. But she didn’t care. Because he was sharing it with her. And despite her still simmering frustration with him, she couldn’t help but soften at the sound. It was beautiful.
“My name is Tom Gallagher. Just Tom, by the way. My mother—God rest her—was quite specific on that point.”
That was the name he’d played under during their trip to Coney Island.
“Tom,” Evelyn repeated, greeting him with this new name as if they were just meeting for the first time.
And maybe, really, they were.
A NOTE FROM THE HISTORIAN
In the year 1881, a story rocked the scandal sheets of London. Allow me to present a few headlines:
SCANDAL!
AN IMPOSTER IN THE GREAT HALLS OF LONDON!
A COMMON LAD’S DEFRAUDING OF A DUKE’S DAUGHTER!
This was certainly not the first such story to captivate the public’s attention. There was Perkin Warbeck. Alexander Wood. Christian Gerhartsreiter. Stories of fakes and imposters and their rises and falls.
In fact, the more history I study, the more I see how everyone has their secrets. Everyone pretends to be someone else—at least a little bit. We hide ourselves, our motives, our feelings. Masking until we’re sure we’ve convinced someone of our own fictions.
This story from the scandal sheets, though, concerned three men:
Tom Gallagher.
The Honourable Clement Fitzhugh Ridley, heir to the barony and viscountcy of Blagdon and Blythe.
And finally, Thomas Gallier.