Chapter Thirty-Six
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
W ITH A WHOLE TIN OF GIN INSIDE OF HER AND THE MUSIC HOT AS hell, Evelyn felt as though she were successfully outrunning her feelings.
This was good. This was what she needed. This was what she was good at.
“I thought we might start with a slow dance—a waltz, perhaps,” Tom stuttered as she dragged him toward the mass of swirling, shadowed forms. The spieling was in full effect, and she did not want to miss a moment.
“Absolutely not. What’s the fun in that? Come along. Follow me.”
Pulling him in close, she moved her body to the strong beat of some Irish dancing tune crossed with a vibrant African drum. This wasn’t like any of the dances he would have learned in high society, but it was a joyous affair, and she wouldn’t have them left out—no matter how much he protested.
“I don’t move like this,” he said.
She laughed—a sound that barely registered over the music. “You certainly do. I’ve seen quite a bit of this movement in your bedroom.”
Fire awakened in her when their eyes met. Something in him turned dark, feral, and when she brought his hands to her hips, he did not retreat.
“See?” she called over the unfamiliar song. “I’ll make a dancer of you yet.”
Once, she’d heard a nun say that singing was the soul itself praying. And if that was true, then dancing was the soul sinning. And whether he believed it or not, Tom sinned beautifully .
Evelyn likewise threw herself into the dancing, letting the carnal nature of it whisk her away.
She and Tom were not strong enough to hold the universe back for very much longer, she knew that. And if she didn’t evacuate herself from this shelter they’d built for themselves, she would inevitably be crushed. Betsy’s and Jules’s and Bea’s and her own fears would come to horrible fruition.
But for the moment, this dance was enough. She lost herself in the rhythm—lost herself in his uncomplicated touch.
Just like their relationship, however, no song could last forever. The band turned their attention to a soft and painfully sappy song.
Tom’s face lit up. Now this sort of dancing, he could do.
As soon as the waltz began, she expected him to take up a perfect dancing posture and sweep her around the floor. Instead, he pulled her in close and barely moved his feet to the music.
What they were doing could hardly be called dancing, really. Which was why she was so keen to leave.
“We should go, I think. I’m sure Bea and Jules gave you a devil of a time—”
“I’m happy to stay.”
The waltz itched against her skin.
“Bea and Jules are, well, intimidating to say the least. But it’s a wonderful thing, to have friends so devoted. To be loved so dearly.”
There was something unspoken there. That he didn’t feel as though he were loved.
It was an invitation for a confession. Evelyn silently declined.
She’d never told a man she loved him. Not once in her entire life. She knew the dangers of saying those little words out loud—they were a curse, one you brought entirely on yourself. Whether or not she felt for Tom, she could never bring herself to fall so low. It was too great a risk.
Especially after that little newspaper stunt this afternoon.
“Evelyn. I want to tell you the truth. Always.”
“Oh, please. Not this. No confessions. No grand proclamations. I only want to dance—”
“I have wanted one thing my entire life. And falling for a vaudeville dancer could destroy it.”
Her heart faltered. He continued:
“I think … I think I would be happy to be ruined. But I cannot do it for someone who doesn’t love me in return.”
With great force, he stopped their dancing altogether so he might catch and hold her gaze. Evelyn had nowhere to go, nowhere to run from all that he offered.
“Your friends have told me that I must choose between my ambitions—between Miss Alban, between her father’s help and esteem, between the sympathies of society—and you. I will do so. Happily. But I must know that you would want such a thing.”
Hot tears blurred Evelyn’s vision. She had half a mind to leave him on the dance floor altogether. Her weak body, though, made that quite impossible. “Why should I make confessions? Why is it always the woman who is expected to—”
“I love you.”
Those three words knocked her planets out of orbit. He put them all back together by placing his warm, big hands on either of her cheeks.
“I have loved you since the first moment I saw you, and every day, I have found something new, something deeper, something altogether more wonderful to love in you. I have never built anything so strong as my feelings toward you. I could never earn enough money to buy this sentiment. My life, my works, my fortune—they amount to nothing when laid out before my love for you, Miss Evelyn Cross.”
His lips were so close. The urge to close the space between them was overwhelming. Anything to get him to stop talking. But when she tried, he pulled back.
“Please, don’t. Don’t say this.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Why now? Why—”
“Because I am on the brink of something, Evelyn. And I need to know that I won’t be alone if I fall.”
She wanted to believe him. More than anything, she wanted to throw caution to the wind, tell him she loved him, and watch the world itself bend to the fairy-tale glory of their romance. After all, experience taught her that men’s promises dissolved to ash after sex, but Tom was still here. Still loyal. Still faithful. Still as wonderful as ever.
But he wanted something from her she’d never given before.
It was too frightening. The risk too great.
Her voice hitched.
“You love me?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you,” she lied.
“Then I suppose I’ll just have to prove it.”
He kissed her, then. And though neither of them knew it, a figure in a darkened corner of the racket collected his hat and left. He had a report to write, and his powerful client would not be kept waiting.
A NOTE FROM THE HISTORIAN
I have to imagine that the sex that night was great. Evelyn would have spent the whole evening saying goodbye to Thomas with her body, wringing the last pleasure from him that she thought she would ever get.
After all, Evelyn was not going to stick around for love. That was the deal. And if she couldn’t have love, then she would at least get very, very good sex.
Again, this is all speculation. When my last relationship ended, I would have given anything to know that our last night spent together was our last. I wish I could have kissed him a little harder, pulled his hair a little tighter, held him a little closer and longer.
I hope Evelyn got all of those things.
What I know for sure she got?
The proof Thomas promised her, in the form of two pieces of paper left on her bedside the next morning.
First, there was an invitation:
CHARITY BALL BENEFITING THE SOCIETY FOR WOMEN’S SOCIAL HYGIENE TO BE HELD AT THE HOME OF GEORGE C. CONTHORPE AND MRS. GEORGE C. CONTHORPE ON OCTOBER 17, 1897
And second, there was a handwritten letter.
My Beloved Evelyn,
I have attended a number of these affairs alone. It is my dearest wish to never be alone again. At a party or otherwise. Would you do me the honor of joining me?
Yours Always,
Tom Gallagher