“Back to our suite?” Molly asked, already turning away from the banker.
“No. He said you would know where he was.”
Again, he’d deserted her when she needed him. Molly’s heart sank; of course she knew where Wolf was.
Wolf studied the cards in his hand with little enthusiasm. The brandy at his elbow was not as fine as the bottle in his suite, and the cigar he clenched between his teeth was not the best he’d ever had.
But he couldn’t take another minute of being Molly’s tamed Wolf.
This is where he belonged, where a few people accepted him for who he was. If he had to pretend enthusiasm on occasion, that was a small sacrifice. As far as anyone watching would know, the brandy was the finest he’d ever had, and the cigar was superb.
He didn’t know what had broken the spell. His realization that Molly wanted to own him? Robert’s offhand comment about Molly taming him? Or had the spell been broken the moment Molly had willingly left him standing in the Grand Ballroom with his banker, while she sauntered off to spend five minutes alone with the most notorious rake in New York?
Luck hadn’t been with him so far tonight, but he blamed his bad fortune on his distraction. The evening was young. Wolf was certain he’d win back what he’d lost so far, and then some.
“Look who’s here,” Foster muttered from the chair to his right, and Wolf lifted his head to watch Molly cross the room.
She wasn’t happy, but when she caught his eye he saw the relief rush over her face.
He didn’t give her a chance to ask what he was doing here. “I thought you’d be enjoying the concert in Robert’s company, right about now.” He kept his gaze on his hand.
“How could you leave me alone with that horrible man?”
Wolf twisted his head to look up at Molly. “I didn’t leave you alone. You went with him on your own, Red. Tell me, did he triple your fund? Quadruple it? What, exactly, did he want from you?”
“I told him to keep his money,” she said softly.
Wolf folded, even though he had a decent enough hand. “You surprise me, Red. Most of the ladies find Robert quite charming.”
“Good Lord, Wolf,” Foster grumbled as he tossed down his own cards, and turned to present a fading black eye that was now more yellow and green than black. “Jealous again? She passed your little test with —”
“Shut up,” Wolf muttered.
“What test?” Molly gave Foster her full attention.
“He didn’t tell you?” Foster looked squarely at Wolf. “You didn’t tell her? Oh dear. Look what I’ve done.”
Wolf knew without a doubt that this was Foster’s revenge for the black eye.
“What test?” Molly repeated.
“Wolf asked me to flirt with you, just to see what your reaction would be. Then, of course, he didn’t approve of my methods, and gave me this.” He pointed to the brightly colored skin beneath his eye. “Since you behaved so admirably, I rather did think he would congratulate you.”
It would be cowardly to continue to study the cards on the table, so Wolf lifted his head and looked at Molly. She’d never been able to hide her emotions. Everything she felt was written on her face for the world to see. While it was true that he sometimes tried to deny what he saw there, he couldn’t deny the pain in her eyes as she stared down at him.
Was this a worse sin than his overheard conversation with Adele? She had forgiven him that, but this . . . .
“A test,” Molly whispered. Wolf refused to react to the hurt in her eyes, the disbelief that came and went slowly. For a moment, perhaps, she’d wondered if he was capable of such betrayal, but of course she knew he was. “Tell me, Wolf.” There was strength even in her whisper, a strength he could never match. “Was Foster to be a part of my education?”
Wolf glanced around the table, at the crowd of interested faces. “Not now, Red.”
“Why not now?” she asked coldly. “You’ve always been one to appreciate a good shocking story. It seems you’ve outdone yourself, this time.”
Molly couldn’t maintain her icy facade. She didn’t cry, wouldn’t cry, he knew, but there was such pain etched on her face it made his heart ache. “Twice,” she whispered, “I’ve needed you and you haven’t been there. I turn to you for comfort only to find that you’ve disappeared. And now I learn that you asked your friend to test me? That you put me in that situation so I could prove myself?”
“I don’t have to explain my actions to you.”
“No, you don’t,” Molly whispered. “You know, I always realized that you didn’t love me. I had even accepted the fact that you might never love me, but I always thought that you trusted me. That you were honest with me. If we don’t have that, we have nothing.”
“We’ll talk about this later.” Wolf stood, and Molly backed up a step.
“No, we won’t. I’m going home, Wolf.” There was rebellion in her soft voice and in the stance she took, as she pulled back her shoulders and stood as tall as she could. “I don’t belong in New York, and I don’t like living in a hotel. I miss the woods and the fresh air. My mother and my grandmother. I miss the quiet, and the sunshine breaking through the trees instead of past tall buildings.”
“Red —”
“I’m going home.” Her words were soft, but strong. Unyielding. “Are you coming with me?”
Molly stared him boldly in the eye, as if she had forgotten about the growing crowd that surrounded them, as if there was no one in the room but the two of them.
Wolf shook his head.
“I have an idea,” Foster said brightly, and Wolf wanted more than anything to kill the man who had started all of this.
Foster gathered the cards that had been thrown face down on the table, and shuffled as he spoke. “One card. Molly draws high card, and Wolf leaves New York behind for the quiet of Maine. Wolf draws high card, and he stays here in the city. What do you say?”
“It’s ridiculous,” Wolf growled.
“I’ll do it,” Molly agreed softly.
Foster spread the cards across the table, fanned them evenly and widely from edge to edge.
“You first, Molly,” Foster insisted.
Molly didn’t hesitate, but reached out and flipped over the card at the end nearest her. The queen of hearts. There was a small collective gasp from the crowd surrounding the table.
“Wolf?” Foster prodded.
Wolf stared at the card Molly had turned over. Perhaps it was fate. There were worse fates than living at Vanora Point with Molly — once she forgave him for testing her. And she would forgive him, eventually. She was angry now, but she wouldn’t stay angry for very long.
There was something strong that brought them together, something he was not yet ready to call love.
“Come on, Wolf,” Foster prodded, and Wolf looked up to see that the crowd around the table had grown, and that some gamblers were still taking bets. Who would win this time? The red queen or the black-hearted Wolf?
Molly was calm, calmer than most, as they all waited for Wolf to make his move. He caught her eye, for a second, and then he turned his attention to the cards on the table, the queen of hearts face up, and fifty-one others, face down.
Was he willing to risk the rest of his life on the turn of a card? He looked again at the queen of hearts, Molly’s almost unbeatable card. His luck had been terrible all night, so perhaps he’d be lucky now and turn over a deuce.
Fate.
Wolf reached down and flipped over a card from the middle of the deck.
The king of spades.
Chapter Eighteen
Wolf followed the bellboy who carried his bags down the stairs, as he left the suite for the last time. It was out of habit that he took the stairs. Molly had never cared for the elevator, and she’d been unrelenting, no matter how often he’d tried to explain to her that the device was perfectly safe.
Since Molly was gone, Wolf was returning to the club, back to his convenient single room and the life of a bache
lor.
It had taken every ounce of determination he possessed not to follow Molly to Vanora Point, to see her to the steamer and watch her sail away without so much as asking her once to stay behind.
She hadn’t mentioned, not a single time, her fear of seasickness. It was just as well.
Half of New York claimed to have been there as he’d turned over the winning card. He had a reputation to maintain. He couldn’t possibly relent and chase after his wife like some lovesick twit.
But he missed her already.
The bellboy placed his bags in the carriage, and when the boy turned around he stared up at Wolf with undisguised hate in his eyes.
Usually the bellboys and those who worked in the dining rooms here at the Waldorf avoided looking Wolf Trevelyan in the eye at all, and if they did it was a mistake quickly corrected. His reputation was widespread, and he had lost his temper in plain sight of the hotel employees on more than one occasion.
But this boy didn’t look away. The look the frail bellboy gave Wolf was bitter, a challenge.
“Do you have a problem, boy?” Wolf leaned down slightly, placing his scowling face close to the bellboy’s. Still the kid didn’t back away or even blink.
The boy opened his mouth and closed it, and his fists clenched and unclenched several times. Finally, he lifted his chin defiantly. “Go to hell, sir.”
Wolf was taken aback, by the suggestion and the reluctantly added “sir.”
“Arthur! Are you delaying Mr. Trevelyan?”
Wolf glanced over his shoulder and raised a stilling hand to the doorman who frowned at the bellboy who blocked a guest from his own carriage. “I’d like a moment of Arthur’s time, if you don’t mind.”
The doorman nodded solemnly, and Wolf returned his attention to the bellboy. “Do you have a problem with me, boy?”
“I would like very much, sir, to pound your face into the ground,” Arthur said seriously.
Wolf glanced down at the small, tight fists that hung at Arthur’s side.
“Any particular reason?” he asked dryly.
There was a momentary softening of the boy’s face. “You made her leave, and worse than that, you made her cry.”
Wolf crossed his arms over his chest, thoroughly confused. “Are you talking about my wife?”
“Yes, sir,” Arthur said softly.
“Mrs. Trevelyan never cries.”
Arthur narrowed his eyes. “You made her cry. She’s a good person, you know. An angel.”
“I know,” Wolf said softly. “What makes you think this is any of your concern?”
“She never told you about me, did she?”
Wolf shook his head.
“She saved me from the police, and got me a good job here in the hotel, and she said . . . she said I had potential.” Brave Arthur looked as if he were about to cry himself.
Molly was always trying to save the world. She said she wasn’t, but Wolf knew better.
Arthur’s face hardened again, as he pushed back the tears that made his eyes shine bright. “I’d love to pound you into the street,” he seethed.
“Why don’t you?” Wolf prodded. “I’ll make certain it doesn’t cost you your job, so there’s nothing to stop you.”
He was thinking it over, and Wolf knew the kid wanted more than anything to light into him. Maybe he should. Maybe he deserved it.
“Molly forbid me to hit you,” Arthur said sullenly.
“She forbid you?”
Arthur nodded. “She said you were an old man and your heart was bad, and that if I killed you she wouldn’t be here to save me from the police.”
Wolf could almost smile. Molly had saved the kid from a beating and saved his pride at the same time.
Arthur finally moved aside, and Wolf stepped into the carriage.
He’d known this day would come, that Molly would return to Vanora Point and he would stay here in New York and tend to business. There was always Phil’s, and the club, and all his old friends.
None of it appealed to him, and as the carriage carried Wolf to his club, he realized that like it or not, he missed his wife.
It was such a big house, and so quiet. More often than not, Molly found herself likening it to a mausoleum, rather than the castle it had first appeared to be. At the Waldorf, she’d never had to dine alone. The dining rooms had been filled with people, and even if she never said a word to anyone, at least she was surrounded by other diners.
Here, she ate her meals in isolation, in a dining room that was as large as the smaller dining rooms at the Waldorf. Wolf had, on occasion, told her about his day in the office as they shared an evening meal, but now she had no one but Mr. Larkin, who silently came and went as she ate, for company.
Molly spent much of her time in the library, because it was the one room in the Trevelyan house where she didn’t feel as if she were in someone’s way. She could sew or read while the staff cleaned and cooked, and she rarely even heard them. It was almost like living completely alone.
In a mausoleum.
When she’d left New York, it hadn’t been her plan to return to Vanora Point to live alone. As far as she was concerned, she could move back into her mother’s house, help with the baking and the mending the way she used to, and forget she’d ever met, much less married, Wolf Trevelyan.
She hadn’t expected to return to Kingsport to find her mother just recently married to Mr. Hanson. Molly had sailed from New York before the telegram with the news had reached her. The newlyweds were so happy, there in Mary Kincaid Hanson’s little house, and there was no room for Molly.
So she’d pasted on a smile, and told her mother that she just didn’t care for New York City, and that was why she’d returned to Maine. It was the truth, after all. In a way.
Grandma Kincaid was getting along very well with the live-in companion Wolf had arranged. The woman was Mr. Larkin’s sister, and she had lived all her life in Maine. She’d been widowed less than a year, and already she and Grandma were good friends. Molly didn’t want to get in the way there, either.
Molly was certain she could adjust to her new circumstances, and she told herself again and again that it could be much worse. She had a roof over her head, a very nice roof, and food on the table, more than she could possibly eat, and she would eventually adjust to living alone.
It wasn’t as if she expected Wolf to return to Vanora Point. He’d made his intentions very clear, on more than one occasion. Molly had chosen to disregard those intentions, until she couldn’t ignore them any longer.
She’d have this house all to herself.
Molly put down her book, and lifted the sampler she didn’t have any enthusiasm for. Once she had worked feverishly over the wedding sampler, but now that it was almost finished, she found she couldn’t bear to look at it. The names and the date were complete, and most of the border was finished. A few hours of work would finish the piece, but then what would she do with it?
She’d intended the sampler to be a gift for Wolf, but she knew now that would be a mistake. Their marriage meant even less to him than she’d thought.
For three weeks she’d been at Vanora Point. The only time she’d been able to forget her own problems was when she was embroiled in Bridget’s dilemma. Molly’s telegram had found her friend, and warned her about Robert Hutton. Bridget’s reply, a long letter Molly had slipped into a favorite book, had eased her fears.
Bridget had found, in San Francisco, the real man of her dreams. Someone sweet, and caring, and kind. A man who loved Bridget completely. Even when Bridget had told him the truth, that she was no widow, he hadn’t deserted her as she’d feared he might.
They were probably already married. Molly suspected, from Bridget’s glowing description of her beloved, that Robert Hutton would have a fierce battle on his hands should he try to harm Bridget and her child.
Molly placed her hands over her still flat belly. Was there just a bit of roundness there, or was it her imagination? Her breasts were fuller, it see
med, and terribly sensitive. She was hungry all the time, but had not yet been subjected to the bouts of morning sickness Bridget and Stella had described to her with such clarity.
Wolf was going to get his redheaded child. Unless, of course, the baby had his black hair. If it were a boy, Molly wanted him to have his father’s black hair and green eyes. It was such a striking combination.
She’d started several letters to her husband, to tell him the news. They’d all ended up as wadded balls in the wastebasket by the desk. He didn’t care. Not for her, and certainly not for the child. He would find out eventually, and would no doubt be most pleased with himself. An heir, and so quickly.
That meant his use for her was over. He might visit Vanora Point once or twice a year, if it suited him, and while he was home he would seduce her with his touch and his smile, and then he’d leave her behind again.
If she were lucky some of those visits would leave her as she was now. Carrying his child. Then, at least, she wouldn’t be all alone.
“Madam.”
Molly’s head snapped up. How did he do that? Mr. Larkin stood in the open doorway. She hadn’t heard a sound, not his step or the opening of the door. “Yes?”
“Dinner will be on the table in half an hour.”
“Thank you.” She lowered her head. He was a spooky one, Wolf’s Larkin. Always there, looking over the house and the people in it as if it were his only calling in life.
Molly hugged her arms to her chest. Summer was over. The nights were cold, and usually, after a warm supper, Molly retired for the evening with a book in her hands and a blazing fire in the stone fireplace in her bedroom. By morning it was always cold, but for most of the night she was quite warm.
Not as warm as if she’d had Wolf to hold in the night, of course, but warm enough.
Wolf tried to flatten the papers with his big hands, but the wrinkles refused to give. It made the smeared ink even harder to read.
“Dear Wolf,
I know you don’t care, but you really should know . . . ” There was a scribbled mess after that. Wolf looked for a legible note of some sort among the sheets of wrinkled paper, but there was nothing. The letters had arrived just that morning, postmarked in Kingsport but with no return address.
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