Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“May I take it that you’ve decided to join me for dinner, then?” Theo asked, eyeing her dress.
“That will depend entirely on how you answer my questions,” she said.
“I’ll take care to only tell you what you want to hear then,” he said.
“No,” she countered. “I just want the truth.”
She set Sesame on the ground.
“I saw you yesterday, after you left our lunch,” she said. “You said you were going to see a family friend.”
He remained expressionless. “In a way, I was.”
“And yet you went to the Tunnels.”
He was so handsome in the golden light of the afternoon, surrounded by the scent of roses and the drone of bees—his dark lashes lining his eyes, the shadows cutting like a delicate knife along his cheekbones.
“I was trying to help someone who was in trouble,” he said.
“An honorable thing, to be sure,” Grace said. “Then why lie about it?”
The familiar storm cloud passed over him, and she saw the look of arrogant disdain in his features. But it was something else this time. Something warring within him.
“When I heard that you had been robbed and threatened—that someone could have hurt you—I… snapped,” he said, his jaw twitching.
It was a confession, unhidden by banter, a lifting of his armor to the softness underneath.
“I wanted to undo it in some way. I wanted to help. And I knew the best way to do that was…”
“To help my brother.”
Their fingers were a whisper’s breath from touching. She felt pulled to him, as powerfully as a magnet.
“Theodore,” she said faintly. His hand reached for hers.
And then the butler emerged with a tea tray, and Theo abruptly stood.
“Thank you, Doyle,” Theo said, turning to him stiffly.
Doyle took the hint and left the tea, but Grace joined Theo in standing.
He had helped to get Walt off the street and keep him out of prison. It was a risk to his reputation and assuredly an enormous sum to get him the best care.
Something was smoldering inside of her. It must have come out like shadows in her gaze. She drew toward him but kept a tantalizing distance.
“You’re a difficult man to really know,” she said.
He stiffened at her words, as though they were raised weapons.
She tilted her face up. Her lips were just close enough to his, without touching. “Like a storm that tries to warn people away,” she said in a husky voice. “But what you really are…”
He traced his thumb down the curve of her jaw. “… Is the shelter from it,” she finished.
He kissed her. Softly, more softly than she ever would have expected.
He had formerly been all angles and sharpness and shadows but not here.
He was delicate and gentle, and she was heat and sparkles, a firecracker that blazed right after it had been lit.
She kissed him back, melting at the pressure of his lips on hers.
It lit a hunger in her she had never known before, a taste for something that was instantly her favorite.
He slipped his hand around her back and everything in her came alive.
She let out a small sigh and he abruptly pulled back.
“I’m sorry,” he said breathlessly. “Forgive me.”
Her heart beat so fast she felt like she could fly.
“Perhaps I should go,” she said.
“That bad, huh?” he deadpanned.
She laughed, low and hoarse. “On the contrary. I think it’s entirely too dangerous to be alone with you.”
He cleared his throat with a look that sent a shimmering tingle of light through her entire body.
“Or perhaps you could stay, if I promise to behave,” he said. “I could give you a tour?”
She jumped at the chance. “Yes,” she said.
She smoothed out her dress and clasped her hands behind her back, following him around the grounds.
“My mother used to love this garden,” he said, careful to keep an arm’s distance between them.
He showed her a lush boxwood knot garden with carved ivory statues studded throughout the greenery, their crisp white echoing the bursts of cream-colored hydrangea.
Thorndale English ivy threaded amid fixtures of patinated bronze, all encircling a three-tier, Parisian fountain.
It was the garden of her dreams. If she lived there, she would situate herself on the wrought iron bench with a book and never leave.
“My father is coming into town next week,” Theo said. “He hopes that my time in St. Louis has changed my mind about wanting to find some sort of occupation rather than merely be a gentleman.”
“You wish to work?” she asked. She couldn’t believe how handsome he was. That she was in Theodore Parker’s gardens. That he had just kissed her.
“I’d like to do something meaningful with my life, yes,” he said.
He turned, suddenly close enough to graze her. “How admirable,” she said, lightly teasing, but all she wanted was for him to kiss her again. He swallowed, searching her eyes. When she bit her lip, he guided her a step backward until Grace felt the brush of the stone fountain behind her.
“You were saying?” she asked faintly.
“My father thought I’d change my mind, living the life of a gentleman here these last few months. But if anything, it’s made me want something real even more.” His voice was dusky as he leaned toward her. “The fair has shown me glimpses of what is possible. And how short life can sometimes be.”
“Working or not, you’ve shown you will always be a gentleman,” she said, feeling lightheaded and dizzy, as though she were about to swoon. His hands tightened on her ribs.
“I’m trying very hard to behave, Miss Covington. You’re making that difficult.”
She lifted her lips to his ear. “You must know by now that I’m not much for following rules.”
He made a sound somewhere between a low laugh and a growl.
“May I assume this means you’ve accepted my dinner invitation for tonight?” he said.
Her soaring heart promptly sank.
“I can’t. My intrepid reporting has gotten me barred from the fairgrounds,” she said. “I don’t think they’ll let me in.”
“Well, who needs it? We’ll go somewhere else, then,” he said. “I’d rather dine with you than the president tonight.”
“If I had a penny for every time I’ve heard that before,” she said.
He laughed, low and curling, like smoke and touched the bow of her lips.
“I’ll change and we can go,” he said. With a bow, he left her sitting along the fountain, letting the faint mist wet her skin.
They decided on the restaurant Piccadilly at Manhattan.
Theodore gave the directions and his carriage turned west.
He looked debonair. He wore a coat with tails, a white tie, white gloves, and a silk top hat, and was carrying a cane.
He kept stealing glances at her from across the carriage.
“You have always driven me a little crazy, Miss Covington,” he said. “Since that very first night.”
“At the Fair?” she asked. “In the ill-fated little canal boat with Oliver and Harriet?”
“No,” he said softly. “Even before that. In Chicago.”
She went a little cold and shifted in her seat. “Let’s not speak of it,” she said, suddenly unable to meet his eyes. “It has taken me a long time to get over that night.”
She glanced out the window. But it hung in the air between them now.
“What changed between us, since then?” he asked.
“I could ask you the same question,” she said.
“You decided you could look past my flaws?” he said. “You made it quite clear that there would be much to overcome.”
“We have different recollections, then,” she said, a flush starting in her chest. “I came out to the balcony and found that you were a different person.”
He frowned. “Only because of what you had said to Frannie about me.”
A creeping sensation made its way up Grace’s neck.
The carriage jolted.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
His expression darkened. “I will admit, I acted so beastly that night. I apologize. I’ve never gotten over the shame of it. But your words had found their exact mark.”
“What did Frannie say?”
He narrowed his eyes. “You’re going to make me repeat it?”
“Tell me,” she said urgently. The carriage lurched again, and she grabbed the seat.
“She had overheard you and Lillie. That I might want to watch myself around you because of your family station and your… desperation.”
“That’s exactly what I thought she said,” Grace said. Her hand tightened on the cushion. The warmth of the coals within her at his presence had died.
“But that wasn’t all. She said you laughed that it was a good thing I came from money, that otherwise no one would be interested.” He gestured toward the port-wine stain on his cheek with his gloved hand. “Because marked men made for easy marks.”
The blood drained from Grace’s face.
“I lashed out because I was humiliated, but it was unacceptable. Your words felt like poison going down. I’ve always been rather…
vulnerable there and you struck that soft place right between my armor.
I reacted badly, and I’ve been ashamed ever since.
I have regretted those words every day. That’s partly why I wanted to help Oliver so much. To make it up to you.”
Grace let go of the seat, her hands tremoring. “She lied to you. I never said that. I thought… I thought you were handsome. I thought you genuinely liked me, the way I genuinely liked you, until you found out I didn’t have money.”
He scowled at her furiously. “What?”
“I saw Frannie talking to you and I assumed she was telling you about my family, my station, my brother’s scandals. And then the way you reacted confirmed my worst suspicions. You only were interested if I had money and status like yours. My places of weakness. My biggest fears.”
He sat back roughly. “She exploited them against us both,” Theo said.
He looked at her sheepishly and rubbed his hand over his handsome mouth. His mouth that had just been on hers.
“There’s going to be another murder on the fairgrounds because I think I’m going to kill her for this,” Grace said.
“Can you stop looking so attractive while you’re plotting?” he said. “It’s hardly fair.”
The warmth kindled like fire through Grace again.
He slid across the carriage so that he could sit beside her.
She took his face in her hands. Gently stroked the birthmark on his jaw.
“I have never once thought of you as marked,” she said. “Only extraordinarily handsome, snobbish, and maybe a tiny bit brooding.”
“Brooding, afraid of heights, and angry with you for being poor. Got it.”
“Frannie Allred lied to you about me. Poisoned you against me.”
“She turned against Oliver and Lillie as soon as Oliver was a suspect.”
“And she lied to Earnest about the note I’d had sent to her house.”
“She tried to misdirect the investigation about Harriet.”
It all came back to Frannie.
Grace looked at him with a growing sense of horror.
“What else has she lied about?” she whispered.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Theo said.
He rapped on the top of the carriage.
“Change of plans, Bert,” he ordered.
The carriage turned back toward the fair.