Chapter Twenty-Six
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
E VELYN HAD ALWAYS KNOWN. O THERS MIGHT HAVE BEEN FOOLED, but she had a professional eye, and it had noted every crack in his mask and loose thread of his costume. Still, to finally know Tom Gallagher in fullness …
It destroyed everything she’d thought of him to this moment.
Or, perhaps, not of him . But of what the two of them could mean to one another.
Until this night, she’d fancied the possibility of a dalliance. He was unconscionably handsome, and good in a way she wasn’t used to. He respected her. He treated her well. Their tryst on Coney Island had given her a taste of him; she wanted more. She had thrilled at the thought of unraveling this tightly bound-up man. And perhaps bedding him, so powerful and so coveted, would have helped her overcome the self-consciousness that had been haunting her ever since Miss Banting’s had gone up outside her dressing room window. All this alongside the fact that they had true chemistry, the kind that didn’t come about every day.
Yes, the reasons for wanting to fuck this man—controlling and remote as he could often be—were plentiful. They were never far from her thoughts, either.
But here, on this night, with this revelation, she knew it was possible for her to want more. That he was offering her more.
And that could not be allowed.
Evelyn pulled in a shaky breath. “Why have you told me this?”
“Tonight, a very appealing offer was made to me. An offer that might have fulfilled all of my hopes. All of my ambitions. However, it came with certain … strings attached. Strings that made me look down the barrel of my future and hate what I saw loaded for me there. After a lifetime of seeking control over my destiny, I found myself on the brink of trading that for a bit of good press and a place at a powerful man’s table. And I finally saw in myself that cowardice of which you spoke this afternoon.”
He laughed. Evelyn did not. The carriage rattled on.
“Tonight, I saw the possibility of a future with someone else. A life of cynical social climbing. A life without laughter or warmth or wonder. A life that mirrored the one I’d left back in England. A life … A life without you. And I couldn’t bear the thought of it. So when I heard you were hurt, I knew I had to make a decision. And this was the one I made.”
“And you told me about yourself—?”
“Because I am not content with our current agreement, and I couldn’t imagine changing the terms of our relationship without you knowing the truth. I needed you … I want you to care for me. Not who I have pretended to be.”
The carriage pulled to a sudden, steep halt. Evelyn blinked the past from her eyes and found herself once again in Manhattan, far away, but not as far as she would have liked, from the pain of the man sitting across from her.
Their hands were still interwoven.
To her relief, the carriage driver afforded her a few minutes to collect her thoughts and harness her feelings before he opened the door, lowered the step, and ushered her down onto the street outside Thomas’s house.
Thomas’s house, she noticed. Not her boarding house.
If the mood between them hadn’t been so uncertain, she might have made a joke of it, might have raised her eyebrows when he quietly murmured a request for her coat, might have started for the stairs instead of his sitting room when he removed it from her shoulders.
But, as it was, she felt she not only stood on his floorboards but also on the brink of a thousand-foot drop. She couldn’t allow herself to fall.
“I didn’t wish for you to return to the boarding house in such a state,” he said, by way of explanation. “I don’t know much about your friend Miss Matterly, but I imagine she would have had my head if you didn’t at least receive some medical attention. Given his family’s feelings on his medical career, Dr. Samson uses my back parlor as a clinic on occasion, so my supplies should be sufficient to clean you up.”
With that, he opened the French doors of the sitting room, where a roaring fire illuminated tasteful and utterly plain furniture towered high with what must have been every pillow and blanket in the house. A small rolling bar had been retrofitted with nearly a dozen medical supplies in various shapes and forms—scissors and needle and thread (thoughtful, but unnecessary) and medicines in glass vials and rags and hot water bottles and real, honest-to-goodness ice and—
That’s when she knew for certain that he hadn’t been lying. This rescuing act of his wasn’t about the show or his business or their various agreements.
It was more than that. Far, far more.
He wanted to care for her. Something, it seemed, he’d never done for anyone.
She didn’t have the first clue what to do with a man like that.
Hand hovering over her lower back but never quite touching it, Thomas guided her to the makeshift hospital bed and propped her up on the pillows. Wordlessly, they set about the work of playing doctor and patient. She sat still as he positioned the hot water bottle against her ribs, as he wet a rag and washed the last of the blood from her lips, her eyes, the column of her neck.
With his every touch, she felt as if he were not only fitting the fragmented pieces of her back together, but fitting them together, too. Here in the halls of his home, they were both stripped of their performances and pretensions and suddenly, finally, actually alone.
Just Tom and Evelyn.
In his silence, she heard a thousand questions he couldn’t bear to ask her out loud. He’d just bared his soul and she’d not said a thing. He must have taken it as a rejection, condemnation.
“I understand,” he said, at length, his voice trembling as badly as his hands, “if you wish to draw our association to a close. I only hope you’ll let me finish looking after you now.”
“Why would I want to do that? Leave you, I mean.”
“You know who I am now. What was done to me. What I’ve done.”
“Yes,” she said, meeting his gaze firmly. “I do. And I’m still here.”
The fact that she was exerting all her self-control to keep a wave of warm, romantic sentiment from overtaking her was reason enough for her to leave. To run down the street, out of the city, across the ocean, and never look back.
But when the light of the fire danced in his eyes and he tipped her chin upward with one gentle finger, she knew she wouldn’t be leaving.
“So you are. And if that is going to remain the case …?”
He asked for confirmation with his eyes, and she nodded. She was Evelyn Cross. She could salvage this. She could keep this wonderful man in her arms and her heart firmly protected. She’d never faltered before. Surely, Thomas Gallier would not be the first man to break her.
He grinned. So did Evelyn. It was decided.
“I think we should court,” he said, at the exact same moment Evelyn declared, “We should have an affair.”
Present Day
I DON’T THINK THAT, AFTER THE WHOLE “SLEEPING OVER AT MY house to make sure I didn’t die of the flu in my sleep” thing, it was a particular secret that I liked Armitage.
Okay. Let’s be honest. It probably wasn’t a secret from the beginning, either. But it definitely wasn’t after that.
More shocking, though, was that he didn’t keep his feelings a secret anymore, either. At least, not from me.
Our relationship was almost assumed. Easy. Our affection incidental. Domestic. As we worked together, it was like we’d been doing it all our lives. I’d gently tease him. He’d try to parry back, but never as well because he wasn’t used to being liked enough to be teased. He’d bring me tea and go out for waffles at a place I’d mentioned loving one time. I’m pretty sure he rigged a ticket contest after I’d talked about never having gone to a Yankees game. After work, he’d ask me out to the terrace for a drink or up to the observatory to watch the sunset over Central Park. We’d tuck ourselves in the window and people-watch. Sit close but never touch. I’d think about kissing him, think the moment was right, but never make a move.
We talked a lot, but never about anything important.
Or perhaps, what I should say is that we talked about some stuff that was very important to me, but probably not to him. And I always tried to keep it casual so that he wouldn’t know just how much I wanted to know the answers to the questions I was asking in a carefully lighthearted, almost ironic tone.
Do you have a girlfriend, Armitage? No. Boyfriend? No. Partner? You’re my research partner. Does that count?
Have you ever written a love letter? No, and I’ve never had the urge to, either. Not yet.
How was your date last night? I saw that picture of you in the society pages . It wasn’t a date. She was barely dinner conversation. Just something my father set up so I wouldn’t look ridiculous sitting next to an empty chair.
We never talked about our feelings. We just danced with each other around them. Afraid that it all might burst if we so much as breathed on each other wrong. But to me, whatever was going on between us was like finding a life raft in the middle of a stormy sea.
The night that everything changed started with grilled cheese. He’d had food poisoning for four days after attending the wedding for a Getty or a Rockefeller or a Kennedy or something, so when he found himself on the mend, I decided it was the perfect recovery food.
Harmless enough, right?
“I can’t believe you’ve never eaten a grilled cheese before,” I said, slathering butter on two big pieces of cheap white bread I’d grabbed from the bodega around the corner. “It’s like, an American delicacy.”
“That explains it. They don’t teach the fine art of grilled cheese at Swiss boarding school.”
“No grilled Swiss cheese?” I made a ba dum tss sound and faked hitting a drum kit rim shot with the butter knife. He flattened his stare. I surrendered. “Sorry. Bad joke.”
His shoulder brushed mine as he gingerly placed the cheese—puzzle pieces to a picture he hadn’t ever seen before. “I happen to like your bad jokes.”
“Oh, boy. Then we’ve definitely got to get you out more. What do you say? Comedy show tonight? I know a great place in the Village.”
A gamble, asking him out like that. The grilled cheese sizzled in the pan.
“Yeah,” he said at last. “I think I’d like that.”
“Really? Like a … like a date?”
Okay, that was pushing it.
Still—he blinked at me over the stove.
“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing? Dating?” he asked.
My jaw dropped slightly and I totally botched the grilled cheese flip. “I thought we were doing more of an unresolved workplace sexual tension thing.”
“I see.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to date you. I just didn’t think—I mean, I never thought that you would—”
“Yes, I would. I really would.” His face shifted and I could tell he was going to take one of his rare stabs at teasing me back. “Because there’s one American delicacy I’ve been desperate to try, and it’s not the grilled cheese.”
My stomach fluttered, but I rolled my eyes anyway. “Now that was a terrible joke—”
All of a sudden, the air in the house shifted and a great thump, click, click rang out. The sound of the aging front door opening and closing again, its heavy lock-latch clicking into place. Armitage and I jumped away from each other, surprised by the sudden intrusion.
No one ever came to this house. It was our retreat. A sanctuary. Our own private world.
Not anymore. A deep, booming voice called out: “Armitage?”
Everything in his demeanor changed. His spine straightened. His face fell. His eyes clouded. He took another step away from me, and ran a hand through his hair, trying to arrange it out of the mess it had been in all day.
“I—” he whispered. “Will you go into the next room?”
“What?”
“It’s my father. Please. He doesn’t know about—about the research.”
Everything in me wanted to ask, What are you, twelve? What does it matter if your dad sees me or knows about what we’re doing here ? But this was the first time I’d seen anything even approaching panic in Armitage’s handsome face, so … “Sure. Okay.”
Quick as I could, I stepped through the nearest door, which turned out to be the pantry, and closed it behind me. Darkness washed over me, cut through only by the tiniest shaft of light across the floor from the kitchen. Heavy footsteps from expensive shoes accompanied Mr. Gallier’s entrance.
Yeah. I eavesdropped. I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t like it was a noise-canceling pantry.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” a dismissive voice asked.
“Just … cooking.”
“You? Cooking? What are we now, poor?”
“No, sir.”
“And what is this? A sandwich?”
“Grilled cheese.”
“You’re joking. That shit will clog your arteries.”
A swish of the trash can signaled the sandwich’s immediate and final end. My heart panged. Not because of the gesture, but because of how quickly Armitage followed the order.
“We aren’t grilled cheese people, Armitage.”
“Of course not.”
“What are you doing in this fusty old house anyway? People will start to think something’s wrong with the penthouse. Can’t have them whispering. That building cost a fortune and we still need to move four units on the seventh and eighth floors.”
“Just trying it out. I’m thinking about moving here, actually. It’s beautiful.”
“Absolutely not. It’s a relic. You should get rid of it. Sell it. You’ll make a fortune—and not a small one, either. One of the last mansions left on the Avenue. The Duke Mansion sold for eighty million last year, and that place was an absolute shithole.”
I knew about the Duke Mansion. Shithole was not a word I would have used to describe it. Ever. But Armitage flatly replied:
“Yes, sir. Great thinking.”
“I didn’t believe it when your secretary said this is where you’d been working lately. I was having a hell of a time trying to find you. Wanted to check and see that you were still alive. You haven’t been answering my calls.”
“Alive and very well. Sorry about the calls. Been working on a project.”
“Anything you want to clue me in on?”
“No, sir. Just a small side thing. Not worth your time.”
“Then it’s likely not worth yours, either.”
My chest tightened. So did Armitage’s voice.
“Sure.”
There was another ten minutes or so of conversation. Well, not so much conversation as a diatribe from the older man on everything from worry about Armitage’s diet—apparently, he also spotted a bag from our last waffle truck visit in the trash—to the idiocy of the CEO of the company they were about to acquire, to the weather (aka the only thing a man as wealthy as Mr. Gallier couldn’t control). There was much mm-hm- ing and yes, sir -ing from Armitage, who suddenly sounded nothing like the warm, quietly funny man I’d been falling for these last few weeks.
Eventually, Mr. Gallier left. I gave it a few minutes before I emerged from my hiding place. Armitage sat at the kitchen table, staring ahead at the wall, face blank and expressionless.
I sat next to him. Hands on the expensive wood grain of the table’s surface. Wordlessly at first, and then:
“Why are you so afraid of him?”
“I’m not afraid of him.” Fingers reached out and brushed my own, then laced through. He pulled my hand up to his lips, pressed the smallest kiss I’d ever been given into my skin, and breathed: “I’m afraid of you.”
I didn’t know what he meant then. And the moment was too fragile to break. I let it go.
I shouldn’t have.
That night, Armitage asked if we could stay in instead of going to the comedy club. He looked so small, so sad, that I couldn’t think of any reason to say no.
There it was again. The funny feeling that he was playing go away, closer .
Just like Evelyn and Thomas. Always on the knife’s edge of disaster and hope.
We were everything, and we were nothing.
Just like them.