“Ed. How’s it going?”
Daisy laughed; she’d never seen anyone less “Ed”-like than Edward Powers.
“Hey, pretty lady,” Brad said to her. “How you doing tonight?”
“I’m OK,” Daisy said, blushing lightly. She lowered her head so Edward wouldn’t see.
“What you guys been doing tonight?”
“We went down to the Union to see Richard Weston.”
Brad looked blank.
“A famous author; and Daisy here wowed him.”
“I didn’t wow him, I just asked him if he was rich.”
“Getting right to the point, huh.” Brad grinned. “I like a chick who speaks her mind.”
He looked at her, and Daisy thought she could lose herself forever in those dark-lashed eyes; and then his eyes slid off her.
“I was thinking about trying out for the rugby team,” he told Edward.
“You don’t know the first thing about rugby,” Powers replied.
“True, but I’m built like a linebacker and I can play football.” He flexed his biceps. “Whaddaya think, Daisy?”
She gingerly felt his arm; it was hard as a rock. “I think you’d be a great rugby player,” she murmured.
“Piffle, rugby’s an art,” Edward protested, and the two men started talking about sports, which bored Daisy rigid. She just sat and nursed her half-a-cider and tried not to be too obvious as she gazed at Brad. He was just so hot. Of course, his eyes weren’t on Daisy; he kept checking out other girls around the pub as he talked. But it didn’t put her off. She couldn’t help it, she just wanted him.
Sixteen
Rose qualified her tenants through an open house. She had everything ready; the place was clean and sparkling, and she put fresh flowers in each apartment. The response was encouraging. Rose was polite and friendly; she didn’t tell anyone she was the owner. She selected tenants, took deposits, and ran credit checks. The ones with the best records got the apartments.
Meanwhile, Rose moved into the basement. She’d had it fitted out as cheaply as possible, getting her furniture from garage sales and deep-discount stores, and even though it was gloomy, she added lots of lamps and mirrors opposite the windows and had everything white, to make the most of the light from the small openings.
She banked her first month rent checks and held her breath, but they all cleared.
Rose took money from the first and paid the mortgage; the rest she had to live on. It amounted to over a thousand dollars a month.
A fortune.
Her parents couldn’t believe it. Rose made her father come out to Maple Leaf Drive the first Sunday she moved in.
“You own it?” her father said. “I don’t understand.”
Her mother just burst into tears again.
Neither one of them minded her moving out, or if they did, they didn’t let Rose see it.
“I always knew you’d be spreading your wings, sugar,” Paul said proudly. “My daughter, a homeowner.”
Rose didn’t see them having to park the car around the corner, sobbing in each other’s arms, right after they drove away.
She was tempted not to bother with Columbia. She had run the numbers on 22 Maple Leaf right after she bought it, adding in projected rents, and she thought that right off the bat she’d probably made twenty thousand. What she wanted to do was refinance, take out fifteen, and buy something else. It was risky; she had no equity cushion. But rents were going up everywhere, and one three-family in Mount Vernon wasn’t the glittering skyscraper she had pictured on her walls.
But she didn’t dare. It would upset her mom and dad. For all the love they’d given her, Rose thought, she owed them.
So she showered in the tiny, tiled but windowless cubicle she had down in the basement, got up at seven, and walked down to Columbus Avenue to catch the bus for the city.
*
“Welcome to Orientation Week,” a student said brightly, a young man with too-long curly hair and I’m-smart glasses. “My name is Sebastian, and I’ll be showing you around the campus today…”
Rose quietly slipped out at the back. She thought she could find her way around without this guy. All she needed to know was the location of the library and the classrooms for her various courses. For the rest of it, she was going to be the loner she’d been at high school. Student housing blocks—who cared? Community room? No thanks. She regarded her fellow students not exactly with disdain, but with total disinterest. Rich kids, bright-cheeked, with scarves trailing and neat hair and new leather ankle boots under their 501s; no scuffs, and being driven up to the door in shiny cars—Mercedes, Rolls-Royces, Porsche 911s. Rose had nothing in common with them. She sighed, and tossed her long fountain of raven-black hair behind her. Four years of this. Maybe if she made enough on the side she could drop out, and her parents wouldn’t mind.
Rose started quietly at the history faculty. She took a spot in the back of the class, listened politely to the professors, and took notes. She never bothered to ask questions. What would be the point of that? She understood what they were saying. Rose cared more about getting out and taking the bus back home, walking around her neighborhood, and looking for more properties.
*
“Miss Fiorello.”
Rose stopped, startled. Professor Bartlett was calling her. She paused on her way out of the lecture hall. Had she done something wrong? He’d seen her taking notes. She never talked in his class.
“Yes?”
“Come here, please.” Bartlett was in his late forties, a crisp, neat, and rather effeminate man, with a manicure and a piercing stare. He was also her favorite lecturer. Rose never missed even one of his talks on the Renaissance. Reluctantly, she walked up to the front of the hall, where he was standing by the podium.
“You have an appointment? A job to go to?”
“Not exactly,” Rose said.
“I’m having a symposium tonight. Various students will be attending. It’s a discussion group on Elizabeth I. I would like you to come.”
“I really—”
“It’s an invitation-only group,” Bartlett said. He shrugged. “If you are not interested, it’s not compulsory. This is extra work, without credit of any kind. There’s nothing in it for you except academic interest.”
“I’d love to come.” Rose smiled at him. “Thank you, Professor.”
“We’ll be meeting in my rooms at five-thirty.” He gave her the directions and turned back to gathering up his notes.
Rose walked out of the lecture hall and headed to the library. She could sit and read there without having to spend a dollar on a cup of coffee. Also, nobody could bother her. Rose didn’t like to wait around for guys to hit on her. Ever since William Rothstein, and then Mike Chastain, she’d avoided boys.
All they wanted to do was fuck her, use her. She guessed that one day she’d meet a “nice” man, whatever that was—somebody like her father, just a little smarter. Rose blushed with disloyalty at the thought, but she instinctively knew that intelligence was the single most important thing for her. She shared a culture, a faith, and a childhood with her parents, but what she didn’t share was genes.
She was cut from a different cloth, and it wasn’t simply a matter of her dusky skin and ice-blue eyes, her slanting cheekbones and the tall, slim frame that could not have come from her mother. Her father was hard-working, but he had no dreams, no ambition. All of which, and the brains to achieve them, were millions of miles from Paul and Daniella. Not from their daughter.
But there would be time to find this nice guy after she’d got where she needed to go. When she was a millionaire and had ruined Rothstein Realty, then she could get married. Right now, Rose wasn’t even looking.
She pored over her notes on the Papal States until five-twenty, then grabbed her papers and headed off to Professor Bartlett’s rooms. Rose might have mistrusted the invitation, but she was pretty sure Bartlett swung from the other side of the plate. Anyway, she loved his lectures.
Rose grudging
ly guessed that since she was at Columbia, she might as well get a real education.
She knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” demanded Bartlett’s soft, rather breathy voice.
“Rose Fiorello.”
“Come in, please.”
The door opened and Rose found herself in a room which would have been spacious were it not for the books everywhere—stacked in piles on the table, on chairs, on the floor, looking as though they multiplied themselves when people weren’t watching, like Tribbles in Star Trek. There were two couches and two chairs ranged on a rare book-free stretch of floor, and students were already sitting perched upon them.
There were eight in total. Marion Watson was bookish and always asked Bartlett questions; Rose wasn’t surprised to see her here. Apart from herself, Marion was the only woman. The others were all kids whom she regarded as “keen”—library hounds and lecture hogs who signed up for courses they weren’t even studying, just for fun: Keith Jones, Tommy Crawford, Hank Javits, Peter Blake, Brad Oliver. Two others she didn’t recognize; one was small and skinny, the other taller than herself, and muscular. He had brown hair and hazel eyes fringed with dark, thick lashes, and a square, masculine jaw with a touch of five o’clock shadow. Rose noticed his confidence—his arrogance—first. Then her eyes flickered over the suit and the shoes. She had seen suits like those before—in the front windows of Saks. Her gaze darted to his wrist. Yeah, there was a Rolex there.
How predictable, Rose thought.
“Now we are all assembled, I’ll make the introductions,” Professor Bartlett said. “Everybody, this is Rose Fiorello.”
There was a chorus of greeting.
“I know everybody,” Rose said, “apart from these two … gentlemen.”
“This is Stanley Young,” Bartlett said, indicating the weedy kid, “and this is Jacob Rothstein.”
“Hi,” Stanley said. Jacob nodded at her, his dark eyes examining her in the way men usually did.
“Of Rothstein Realty?” Rose joked.
Jacob looked annoyed. “I prefer not to talk about that, if you don’t mind.”
Rose sat down sharply. A flush of shock had hit her, creeping from her neck right up to her hairline. Her heart started to race and she felt a sheen of sweat hit her skin.
The entire group caught her reaction.
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” Jacob said.
Rose just managed to catch her breath, with a supreme effort of will. “You didn’t. It was—a—a—head-rush.”
“This week’s meeting is on Elizabeth I of England,” Bartlett said. “Last week I asked the symposium to consider how Elizabeth’s childhood affected her policies as Queen.” He turned to Rose. “You are our new member, but you’ll pick it up. You can learn a good deal from these meetings.”
“I’m sure,” Rose said softly.
“Mr. Rothstein,” said Bartlett. “Why don’t you start?”
Seventeen
“I feel therefore that this sense of danger, of being hunted, remained with the Queen throughout her reign and that the diplomatic skills she learned during her various confinements were put to full use in the avoidance of marriage.”
Jacob Rothstein stopped speaking, setting a sheaf of neatly typed notes to one side.
The room gave a collective sigh and leaned backward in their seats. Rose saw that they had been spellbound by watching Rothstein talk. He had a soft, even voice, very confident, she would even say polished. He had made eye contact with each one of them, including the Professor, drawing them into his argument, binding them to him. He was obviously quite used to public speaking. She had to force herself to keep looking away, so that nobody saw her staring at him with loathing.
Jacob Rothstein spoke like a man entitled. Entitled to their attention, to their respect, to commanding this room.
“Jacob, that was wonderful,” Marion Watson purred. Rose watched with disbelief as Marion fluttered her eyelashes at him. Marion Watson, who hardly seemed to know men were alive!
Well, Rothstein was good-looking, Rose conceded privately, if you liked that obvious sort of thing.
She didn’t. Rich Columbia jocks were two a penny.
“Yes, fascinating,” Keith agreed.
“I disagree with your conclusions,” Rose snapped.
Everyone blinked and looked at her. Professor Bartlett raised a neatly plucked brow.
“Ah, Miss Fiorello; I was hoping a more informal setting might bring you out of your shell. You have an alternative viewpoint?”
Rose nodded, holding Jacob Rothstein’s gaze as he looked at her. Evidently he wasn’t used to being challenged here.
“I think Mr. Rothstein, and historians in general, are looking for neat little facts to fit neat little theses,” she said, coldly. “But real life doesn’t fall into such patterns; or very rarely. And not in the case of Elizabeth.”
“I believe,” Jacob said, equally coolly, “that the facts I have presented support my conclusions.”
“So do I.” Rose gave him a polite smile that did not reach her eyes. “But what about the facts you did not present? If Elizabeth had such a sense of fear, why did she react as she did to the preacher at Mary I’s funeral, who said, ‘Better a dead lion than a live dog?’ If her dance around suitable princes was evidence of such incredible diplomatic tact, honed by years of sucking up to her father and brother and sister, how come she put on madrigals insulting the French and Spanish, and in her lifetime gained a reputation for sleeping around?”
Bartlett was now staring at her, fascinated. His eyes began to twinkle gleefully.
“What of the Queen being suspected of the murder of the wife of one of her favorites? When the Countess of Essex was killed by a suspicious fall down the stairs, people thought Elizabeth was behind it. This level of cavorting at Court—which, after all, endangered her crown when the Irish rebellion was raised by Essex—does not tend to your view of a frightened monarch, desperately calling on all her reserves of diplomacy.”
Rose took a deep breath and settled back in her seat. The class gazed at her, as though they were watching a train wreck. She instantly understood that Jacob was the big star of this group. Her pale blue eyes challenged him.
Rothstein squared his shoulders and regarded her.
“You cannot try to deny that Elizabeth was able to string her various suitors along in a masterly way, before they finally gave up hope. And, furthermore, this … tease,” he said, deliberately looking her over, slowly, his glance traveling up her legs and flickering over her breasts before rising to meet her stare, “was applied not only to foreign courts but also to the pressure from her ministers at home, who looked for an heir.”
“I do not deny that,” Rose said.
Jacob shrugged. “Well, then.”
“I challenge the causation you are trying to establish,” Rose went on. “You assert that this skill was the result of the privations of her childhood, and all the loyal protestations she had to make to her father and siblings in order to keep her head on her neck. However, it seems more likely that this skill was simply innate. If she’d felt hunted and threatened all her life, she would not have been prancing around with married men—her inferiors, men who could only hurt her political aims. Nor would she have authorized pirate raids on Spain…”
“Very interesting.” Bartlett’s measured tones cut her off. “I see you two could engage in debate all night. Clearly we have added another valuable member to our group,” he inclined his head slightly toward Rose, “especially as Miss Fiorello was not aware of the subject of tonight’s discussion. Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Rothstein?”
Jacob Rothstein examined his rival and grinned very slightly, which Rose found extremely annoying.
“Yes, I would,” he said softly.
“For next week, we will discuss Renaissance literature. Miss Watson, you will speak on Dante. I would like the rest of you to study the topic in pairs and each pair will speak briefly after Miss Watson. Mr. Crawford a
nd Mr. Blake; Mr. Javits and Mr. Young; Mr. Oliver and Mr. Jones; and Miss Fiorello and Mr. Rothstein.”
Rose blushed with anger, but what the hell could she do, say no?
Bartlett was looking her way, with a hint of mischief in his eyes.
“That’s OK with you, Rose?”
“Certainly, Professor Bartlett,” Rose muttered.
“Wonderful. See you all next week.” And the class stood and filed out of Bartlett’s room in pairs.
The students pooled out on the stairwell, and Rose found herself trapped by admirers.
“Wow, that was awesome,” Stanley Young said earnestly. “How could you argue like that off the top of your head?”
“I’ve always liked Elizabeth,” Rose mumbled, desperate to get away.
Jacob Rothstein glanced at her over the top of the crowd. “I’ll make an appointment to meet you, Miss Fiorello. Where are your rooms?”
“Off-campus,” Rose said shortly.
He scribbled a note on a business card which she saw him pull from a solid gold card-case. “These are mine. Does noon tomorrow suit?”
“Whatever,” Rose snapped.
“See you then.” Rothstein turned and walked down the stairs, leaving Rose stranded in a throng of admirers.
*
The next morning, Rose did a little research.
Jacob Rothstein. Star debater, pussy hound, jock—he boxed, apparently—and top of his class. He was in the year above her, and he had aced his exams. Women flung themselves at him, and, one of the girls she occasionally spoke to told her in the bathroom, giggling, “He’s just too polite to say no.”
He had the charm of a Southern gentleman married with the sophistication of New York. Add the fact that he was an heir to a vast fortune—“They’re in Forbes,” Anna told her, with a wink. “You interested?”—and girls could not stay away.
“So he loves ’em and leaves ’em?” Rose asked.
“Yeah, but in a nice way.”
“How the hell can you do that in a nice way? Come on.”
“Look.” Anna fluffed up her blond curls and reapplied her lipstick, with liner. “He doesn’t promise anything, you know? That’s what the bullshitters do. He just promises you a real nice time. Reeaal nice. And when it’s over, he sends you a nice piece of jewelery.” She sighed. “He’s very generous.”
Devil You Know Page 14