Bicycle Built for Two

by Duncan, Alice

  Alex remained polite in spite of everything. Breeding showed, he told himself. “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  Still overtly unhappy about losing control, Sergeant Maguire said stiffly, “This is most irregular, sir. Under the circumstances, however . . .” He guided a look of disapprobation to Alex’s sister and Kate’s brothers.

  “I can’t tell you any more than I’ve already told you, Sergeant. Mr. Finney went backwards out of the window after I punched him. He tried to hit me first. End of story.”

  “Hmmm,” said Sergeant Maguire, and said no more.

  He probably didn’t dare, which added one more bit of unfairness to the pile of them Alex had gathered since he’d first met Kate. If Alex were poor, he’d have been charged with manslaughter, at least, by this time, even if the charges had to be dropped later.

  But Alex could think about the unfairness of life all he wanted later. Right now, there were more important things to attend to, the primary one being to explain himself to Kate and her brothers. He knew the Finney children detested their father. It seemed vital to Alex, perhaps for that very reason, that they know exactly what had happened in that dismal little room over the dismal little butcher’s shop.

  While he couldn’t even imagine having a father like Kate’s, and would have loathed him if he’d been so unfortunate, he also knew that the death of a parent must be a blow no matter what. That being the case, he took Kate by one arm and his sister by the other, and nodded at the Finney boys. “Let’s get out of here. We need to talk.” Sending a significant glance his sister’s way, he added, “Without any nosy Parkers listening in.”

  “I’m not a nosy Parker!” Mary Jo cried, stung.

  “Right. But I’m dropping you off at your room anyway. I guess we can hold a conference in my room or in the hotel restaurant.”

  Walter pulled out a pocket watch that was nowhere near as fine as Alex’s and squinted at it as they exited the police station. “I don’t suppose there’s a restaurant open in the entire city of Chicago at the moment. It’s almost three in the morning.”

  “Right. My hotel room it is, then.”

  “What about my apartment?”

  Alex realized Kate still trembled, as if the emotions trapped inside her were seething and roiling and trying to get out. He squeezed her arm. “Do you want to see it? It’s—” He remembered the blood splattered on the floor and on the wall beside the window. He’d been thinking a lot about that blood. A shard of broken window glass must have severed an artery for there to have been so much of it. He didn’t want Kate to see it. “I think there will be time to see it tomorrow.”

  Walter caught his eye and shook his head. Alex felt curiously akin to Kate’s older brother in that instant, and he appreciated Walter for wanting to spare his sister the sight of her father’s blood. Walter said, “Mrs. Schneider and Mrs. Brewster are cleaning it up, Kate. Mr. Schneider’s going to hammer a board over the window until the glazier comes to replace the glass. You don’t want to see your room now.”

  “Right,” said Bill, and shuddered involuntarily. “It’s—it’s a mess.”

  Kate stopped walking suddenly, pulling Alex up short. “Why?” Her gaze flew between her brothers and Alex. “Why don’t you want me to see it? I thought he just threw things around and then went out the window and fell to the ground. Is there anything else? Tell me, darn it!”

  Walter looked at her blankly. Bill shuffled his feet. Mary Jo didn’t know what was going on, and stared at the knowledgeable parties with fascination. Alex knew it was up to him. He expelled a gust of breath. “There was some blood, Kate.”

  “Blood? Like, a bloody nose or something?” She gave a shaky laugh. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “It was more than that.”

  Kate stared at Alex, demand plain to read in her blue, blue eyes, and Alex gave up. What the hell. She’d lived through hell already. What was a little blood? “I think maybe a piece of glass severed an artery when he hit the window. Might have been in his throat or his arm or anywhere. I know I didn’t look hard at the body. But blood sprayed everywhere inside your room.” There. He’d told her.

  Her body went still. Not a tremble shook her. “I see.” She nodded. “I see.”

  Walter kicked at the wall outside the police station. “It was a mess, Kate. You don’t need to see it. It’s being taken care of.”

  She nodded again. “Was he drunk?”

  That was enough for Alex. Roughly, he tugged her into a walk again. “We’re going to talk all about it as soon as I get my sister stowed. Until then, let’s just be glad it’s over. We’re going to have to tell your mother, too, and we’ll talk about that at the same time.”

  “Right.” Kate walked like an automaton to the carriage Walter and Bill had waiting. It was crowded, but they all fit. They were as still as statues as the carriage rattled them back to the Congress Hotel.

  # # #

  “I don’t know why I can’t sit in,” Mary Jo grumbled. “I won’t say anything or get in the way.”

  “Stop being a pain in the neck,” her fond brother advised. “You’re going to go to your hotel room and stay there.”

  Kate blessed him for it. She really liked Mary Jo, sort of, but she didn’t feel like putting up with her right now. “I’m sure we won’t be long, Mary Jo. I’ll have to borrow a nightgown, I guess.” She tried to shake off the exhaustion trying to smother her. In truth, she didn’t care about nightgowns or day gowns or anything else. She only wanted to sleep.

  “Are you ready, Kate?”

  Alex’s voice was all solicitude, and it made Kate want to cry, which was stupid and irrational. She revised her emotions and decided she actually wanted to scream at herself and stamp her feet. And then sleep. “Yeah. I’m ready.” She sighed down to her toes.

  “Walter and Bill are waiting for us. I had them pick up some sandwiches from the kitchen.”

  Kate perked up slightly. “You mean somebody’s still awake in the kitchen at this hour?”

  “It’s a brand-new, top-of-the-line hotel, Kate. They’re there to offer their services for money, and I have money.”

  His sister appeared shocked by this audacious statement, which she probably took as a boastful one. Kate knew better by this time and only gave him a wry grin. “Must be nice.”

  Alex was firm but gentle when he deposited his sister in her room. Mary Jo stuck her tongue out at him, but he only closed the door in her face.

  “It is. Now come along with me. I think they got some tea and coffee, too.”

  “Tea,” Kate mused. “I could use a cup of tea.”

  “Good.” He took her arm and tugged. “Then come with me.”

  She did. As Alex had told her, Walter and Bill awaited them in Alex’s room. She tried to smile at her brothers, but it was a feeble effort. Billy popped up from the chair he’d been holding down.

  “Come over here, Kate. I’ve got a cup of tea ready for you, just the way you like it.”

  Kate doubted it. She took nothing in her tea, and Billy always used milk and sugar. She eyed the teacup and saucer he held out to her. Sure enough, the cup was filled to the brim with tea laced with milk and, she had no doubt, liberally dosed with sugar. She was about to protest when Alex thwarted her.

  “I told him to give you sugar and cream, Kate. Hot sweet tea’s good for shock.”

  She felt her shoulders slump as her gaze went from the teacup to Alex. “You think I’m in shock?”

  “If you’re not, you’re inhuman.” Alex didn’t sound as if he cared a whole lot. He took a cup of coffee from Walter, who was manning the coffee pot. “Thanks.”

  Walter only nodded and gulped from his own cup. “Sit down and quit fighting, Kate. We all need to talk about what’s happened and what we need to do now.”

  Before she even knew what was happening, Kate felt tears well up in her eyes. Because she’d slit her wrists before she’d cry in front of these three men, she swallowed them and sat with a flounce intended to demo
nstrate her state of bravado and indignation. Somehow or other during this performance, she managed not to spill her tea.

  “Exactly,” agreed Alex. “And what I propose is this. I had expected that Kate and I would marry in a few months in order to allow for all the folderol usually attendant upon such ceremonies, but after this night’s work, I think we’d best speed up the process.”

  “What?” Kate cried, all inclination to weep having vanished.

  “Good idea,” said Walter, sounding judicious and ignoring his sister.

  “Right. It would be best to do it soon,” said his brother, likewise ignoring his sister. “Then Katie won’t have to worry about where she’ll be living and so forth, and we won’t have to worry about her.” Bill turned his head grinned at his sister in a manner intended to let her know how fun he thought it was to override her in every particular.

  Kate was so offended, she couldn’t even find words to fling at him.

  “Glad we agree,” said Alex complacently. “I recommend we hold the ceremony at the farm in a couple of weeks. That way your mother won’t have that tiring trip back to Chicago. Besides—” hH winked at Kate’s brothers. “—my mother and yours will have a grand time with the decorations and so forth.”

  Walter nodded. “Women love that sort of thing.”

  “Yeah,” said Billy. “They seem to, all right.”

  This was too much for Kate’s independent soul. She’d been the mainstay of her family for too many years to put up with having her fate decided by three interfering men in this outrageous way. She stood up with even more of a flounce than she’d sat. “Now you all wait just a minute here! I’ll have you know that I have absolutely no intention of marrying—”

  An imperative knock came at Alex’s hotel room door, cutting Kate off in mid-tirade. All four of the room’s inhabitants turned abruptly and stared at the door.

  Alex moved first. With a jerk, he launched himself out of his chair and headed to the door. “If that’s my interfering sister, I’ll—” He flung the door wide and blinked at the uniformed messenger standing there, holding out a tray upon which lay a yellow envelope.

  “Telegram for Mr. Alex English,” the bellboy said. Then, taking in Alex’s furious face, he gulped and braced himself.

  But Alex, as Kate might have told the boy had she been asked, wasn’t one to relieve his anger on innocent strangers. At once his expression softened, although he still appeared rather worried. Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew some coins and exchanged them for the telegram on the boy’s tray. Relieved, the boy smiled and hot-footed it away from Alex’s door.

  Kate, Walter, and Bill, as if propelled by the same force of nature, all rose from their seats. Kate’s heart, which had taken a real beating lately, began hammering out a funeral dirge. Telegrams always meant bad news.

  Turning at the door and shutting it absently behind him, Alex tore open the envelope and took out the message. He read it, looked up at his guests, then reread it.

  Kate bit her lower lip. It was about Ma. It had to be about Ma.

  Alex cleared his throat. “Um, it’s about your mother.”

  Kate pressed a fist to her mouth.

  “Ma?” Billy sounded like a little boy.

  Walter said nothing.

  “It’s from my mother. It says, ‘Mrs. Finney has taken a turn for the worse. Dr. Conners recommends her family come at once.’” Alex looked up from the telegram, straight at Kate, as if he knew what she wanted to know. “My mother sent one of the farm boys to Centreville on our fastest horse, where the telegram was dispatched. The message is no more than an hour old, Kate.”

  “I’ll have to make arrangements at work.” Walter turned to his younger brother. “You go with Katie, Bill. I’ll clear your absence with Mr. Schneider.”

  Kate heard Billy answer Walter, and she turned to say she’d go with Bill to the English farm. A strange, muted roaring in her ears interfered with the thought, and she didn’t get her statement out. The last thing she heard was Alex’s sharp, “Kate!” Then she heard no more.

  She awoke in Alex’s arms. He held her cradled gently, and he sat in one of the chairs in his room. Billy hovered over her. When she rubbed her eyes and glanced around the room, she didn’t see Walter.

  “She’s awake!” Bill sounded unutterably relieved, which seemed rather an over-reaction to Kate, mainly because she had no idea why he was reacting at all.

  “Kate.” Alex’s gentle murmur seemed to draw Kate closer to him.

  “What . . .” What what? Oh, yes, she remembered. “What happened?”

  “You fainted,” Alex crooned. “My dear, darling Kate. You actually fainted.”

  “I never faint,” Kate declared stoutly. She struggled to release herself from Alex’s arms, although she didn’t really want to.

  “Nuts,” crooned her beloved. “You’ve fainted twice in the short time I’ve known you.”

  “I have?” Bother. There went that illusion of strength and determination. Then she remembered the telegram and her heart gave a huge, lurching spasm. She sat up in spite of Alex’s attempts at restraint. “What about Ma?”

  “Walter’s gone to send a telegram back to Mr. English’s farm, Kate,” Billy said. He was such a nice boy. Kate really loved her little brother. And her big brother. “Ma’s taken a bad turn. Mr. English is driving us all out there tomorrow. He’s sending a telegram to the preacher from his church, too. You two can be married in front of Ma, Katie, as soon as it can be arranged. That will make her happy.”

  “Married?” What was all this talk about marriage? She couldn’t marry Alex. She’d ruin his life, for heaven’s sake.

  “Married,” Alex said firmly, as if he intended to consider no more arguments from her.

  “But we can’t get married, Alex.” She felt feeble, as if all the strength in her body had fled sometime between this morning and right now. “I can’t allow you to make that sacrifice.”

  “Sacrifice?” Bill looked honestly bemused.

  Alex gave him a wry glance. “She thinks she’ll be ruining my life if she marries me, because I have more money than she does.”

  “That’s not the reason, and you know it, darn it!”

  Bill eyed his sister with disfavor. “Shoot, Katie, that’s the stupidest reason I’ve ever heard. If any two people were made for each other, it’s you and Alex.”

  Kate’s mouth fell open.

  Alex grinned at Kate’s brother. “Exactly. My thinking to the last degree. I knew you were a smart man from the moment we met, Bill Finney.”

  “Likewise,” said Kate’s brother, who looked to Kate like Mr. Carroll’s Cheshire Cat in full meow.

  “Besides,” Alex said in that reasonable tone Kate hated, “it will make your mother happy to see you and me attached permanently. She can go to her grave with the full knowledge that her children will be cared for.”

  It was absolutely the only argument Kate would have accepted. And Alex knew it, the rat. She heaved a gigantic sigh. “Oh, nuts.”

  “Exactly,” said Alex.

  Bill got up and sauntered to the door. “Now that that’s taken care of, I’ll go downstairs and collect Wally. We’ve got some packing to do.”

  “I’ll pick you both us tomorrow morning. Or this morning.” Alex yawned. “You know what I mean.”

  “I know,” said Bill. Before he shut the door behind himself, he winked at them both.

  As soon as they were alone, Alex began nuzzling her neck. “We’ll make the happiest couple in the United States, Kate. You’ll see.”

  “I’ll make you miserable,” she grumbled, although it was difficult not to purr with his warm breath melting her bones.

  He chuckled. Kate thought that, in a well-run world, Alex’s deep, velvety chuckle would be outlawed. As she had reason to know, though, the world wasn’t well-run, and there was no escape for her via that road.

  That being the case, she decided it would be foolish to fight. Turning into his embrace, she flung her ar
ms around him and completed her abject surrender. “I love you, Alex.”

  “I love you, too, Kate.”

  The words were so sweet to her ears that she almost fainted for the third time in her life.

  They made sweet love that night, in Alex’s hotel room, leaving his innocent sister to fend for herself. Alex told Kate that Mary Jo wouldn’t dare say a word, and Kate believed him. Why shouldn’t she? He’d been right about everything so far.

  “I love you, Kate,” he whispered as he entered her.

  She lifted her hips to welcome him home and clung to his shoulders as if to a lifeline—which is pretty much what she considered him. “I love you, too, Alex.”

  He drove her past the point of desperate hunger, up a ladder of craving, until it seemed to her as if her entire being exploded in a shower of brilliance. The experience was so exquisite that tears leaked from Kate’s eyes when Alex, too, achieved release and collapsed at her side. She held on to him almost desperately as an odd sense of understanding seeped through her.

  “You know,” she mused after they’d both caught their breath, “I’m beginning to understand how a woman could cleave to a man even after he’d ceased to behave as a human being.”

  Alex grunted and turned over so that his body cocooned hers. “You’re thinking about your mother and father?”

  “Yes. I always wondered how she could have loved him, because to me he was always a monster.”

  “Mmmm. But you’re thinking he must have been a different man when they met?”

  She nodded. “If Ma had ever loved him the way I love you, well . . .” Her words faded out. Even with this new understanding on her part firing her imagination, she couldn’t conceive of Alex turning into a drunken monster like Herbert Finney.

  Alex squeezed her to him, and she felt his sex begin to stir to life again. Good. To Kate, the life-affirming act of sexual union was a blessing, and she hoped to do it as often as Alex was able.

  “I swear to you, Kate,” he said solemnly, “that I’ll never, ever behave in a manner that will make you ashamed. Or in a way that will make you hate me. I couldn’t stand that.”