Chapter 12 #3
Francesca leaped away from Hart, cheeks burning, heart rushing, feeling as if Rourke Bragg had just caught them in bed—with her in the dominant position.
She smiled brightly at him. “Hello,” she cried, tucking too many tendrils of stray hair to count behind her ears.
Then she remembered she was shoeless, and she tried to hide her feet beneath her skirts.
His cheeks blotched pink. “I’m sorry.”
Hart slowly stood. “The door was closed,” he drawled.
Still blushing, Rourke said, “It was. I’ll come back at another time.”
“Don’t leave. Francesca needs a chaperon,” Hart said, laughter in his tone. “Scotch?”
Rourke, who took after the Bragg men with his dark, golden-brown hair, amber eyes and sun-kissed complexion, nodded and glanced at Francesca. “I seem to have left my good manners in Philadelphia.”
“It’s all right,” Francesca said, meaning it now that she’d had a moment to recover her composure.
She was terribly fond of Rourke and not because he looked like Rick Bragg’s younger but nearly twin brother.
He was a compassionate, considerate gentleman and he’d been rather heroic on several occasions, as well as helpful on more than one investigation.
“I heard you have applied to Bellevue Medical College?” she asked with a wide smile.
“I had an interview yesterday and I believe it went very well,” he said, returning her smile and accepting the scotch Hart handed him. “My final examinations end in mid-May and I will relocate then.”
“I will be more than glad to lease you a room,” Hart said with a straight face.
Francesca laughed but Rourke said, very seriously, “I doubt I could afford to lease a room from you. My tuition is very expensive and my personal budget doesn’t leave much for rent.”
Francesca was very surprised, as his family was extremely wealthy.
As if reading her mind, he said, “I’m not comfortable being lackadaisical with my family’s money.
Rathe and Grace have wanted to buy me a house, but I refused.
I’m single and I can get on well enough in a room.
It’s really enough that they are paying my tuition and all my living expenses. I try to be frugal.”
“Well, I cannot say I am surprised,” Francesca said.
“Rourke, I was in jest,” Hart said. “You’ll stay here. I have dozens of empty bedrooms. Take as many as you want.”
“I’ll think about it,” Rourke said. “Thank you.”
“You’ll save yourself the cost of renting a flat,” Hart pointed out.
Francesca tugged on Rourke’s sleeve. “He needs the company—and the moral guidance you can offer him, as well.”
Rourke laughed.
Francesca smiled at Hart, who smiled back, but she was actually serious about the former issue.
When she had first met Hart, he’d been living completely alone in this huge house of his.
But since Rathe and Grace had returned to New York with young Nicholas D’Archand, Rathe’s nephew, they had been staying with him.
Rourke’s visits had also become frequent, and he also had been residing at Hart’s when in the city.
Francesca felt certain that the Calder Hart she had met at the end of January had been a lonely man, although he would deny it to his dying day.
She was as certain that he enjoyed having so much family around him now.
Hart went to Rourke and clapped him on the shoulder. “She’s right. Now that I am to give up my rakish ways, I need some severe moral support.”
“He is being transformed before my very eyes,” Rourke said to Francesca. He was smiling, but he seemed very earnest.
Francesca looked directly at Hart. “Actually, he is not.” Her smile vanished. “Nothing’s changed except that a prickly outer layer, meant to conceal, is finally being peeled away to expose what is really there.”
Hart stared at her, and his cheekbones seemed to have a flush.
Rourke murmured, “It must be love.”
And Francesca thought, you are noble and good, Calder, and I have not one doubt.
“She has a heart of gold. One must be a cold-blooded killer for Francesca to think ill of him.” Hart turned away, fiddling with his drink.
“As I said, it must be love,” Rourke said, glancing at his half brother and clearly meaning now that Hart was the one stricken by Cupid’s arrow.
Hart shrugged.
Alfred appeared but no servants and no supper cart were with him. “Sir? There is an urgent telephone call.”
Hart started for the door.
“Sir? It is for Miss Cahill,” the balding butler said.
Hart turned to her as Francesca came forward, puzzled. “But I sent Mama a note telling her I was dining here. Who else would call?” And even as she spoke, she knew.
It was the case; something had happened; it was Bragg.
“It’s Police Commissioner Bragg, sir.”
Francesca bit her lip and looked at Hart. If he was dismayed—or anything else—she could not tell. For one more moment, she made no move to go to the telephone, awaiting his real reaction.
“Alfred, please show Francesca to the telephone. And I do believe supper has been postponed,” Hart said.
Francesca started eagerly forward when Hart took her arm and said, “Darling, your shoes.”