The expression on Jack’s face was indecipherable. “Where’s he been?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Where’s he going?”
“He didn’t say. All he said was he served at the pleasure of the president.”
Another question hovered in the air between Jack and Charlotte. They eyed each other, but left the thought unspoken.
“Was he surprised to see you?” Jack asked.
Charlotte answered in a clear but soft voice belying her true feelings. “He knew we were here.”
Jack snatched his hat and coat from the coat tree. “I’m going over to the Willard.”
Gordon lips twitched in what might have been a faint smile. “Would you care to ride with me?”
She watched the two men leave, hoping Jack didn’t haul off and punch either Gordon or Braham. On second thought, she still believed both men might benefit from having some sense knocked into their rocklike skulls. He had her blessing.
42
Washington City, February 1865
Beyond the window of Charlotte’s bedroom, moonlight painted a glittering trail across snow left over from a late winter storm. The only sounds were the crackling fire and the wind groaning outside. The dark, velvety cloak of night would lift in a few hours and a new day would begin. Perhaps the dawn would illuminate solutions to this abominable situation.
She sat curled on the love seat in front of the fire, massaging her forehead, nauseous with the onslaught of a massive headache. The book on her lap forgotten, she stared blindly into the flames, still shivering—a disastrous date, a confrontation with Braham, an unexpected and unwelcome meeting with Booth. One of the three would have been enough to send her into a tailspin. All three within hours of each other was sufficient excuse to pop open a bottle of valium. She had never taken the stuff, didn’t have any pills with her, but had heard plenty of people rave about its calming effect. If she expected to ever be calm tonight, she’d need another glass of wine, or two.
What had Jack been thinking to invite Booth to Braham’s house? If Braham had come home and found Booth there, one of them would be lying on the floor bleeding out right now.
Shivers rattled her teeth, exacerbating the headache.
The front door opened and closed, and voices floated up the stairs. Golden light from the lamp in her room spilled out into the second floor’s wide hall. Jack would, out of habit, stop by to talk before bed. A few minutes later, he sauntered in, carrying two glasses and a bottle of wine.
“Saw your light on when I came in. Thought you’d like a glass of wine after your exciting evening.”
She held up her empty glass, smiling. “Perfect timing. Thank you.”
He refilled her glass and poured some for himself, then squeezed and squirmed until he finally settled into the walnut lady’s chair next to her.
She lifted the glass to smell the bouquet before taking a sip. “Did you find Braham?”
An impertinent grin livened his face. “I found him. He was working his way through a bottle of whisky. You must have done a number on him.”
She snorted and rolled her eyes “Who, me? I hardly said anything. He was as shut down as a condemned building waiting for the wrecking ball.”
“Yeah, but I think he was the wrecking ball searching for a condemned building to plow into. He definitely wanted to pick a fight, but I wasn’t about to give him an excuse.”
“I begged him not to do anything based on what he learned in the twenty-first century, and he told me to go home.”
“He didn’t like seeing you with Gordon.”
She jerked back with a start, the book in her lap landing on the floor with a hollow thud. “Did he say so?”
“More or less.”
She leaned over, grabbed the wine bottle off the floor, and read the label. “This is good.” She took another sip. “Now don’t be so cryptic. If he said something, tell me.”
“He asked how you met Gordon, how often you spend time with him, and if he had seen you in scrubs with your hair down.”
“Where does he come up with these things?” She pulled her feet up under her hip and snuggled once again into the sofa’s soft, plushy cushion.
“Conversation with him tonight was like patting a porcupine,” Jack said.
“Why was he so testy? Did he know Booth was in town?”
“Nah. His mood was directly related to you, and I enjoyed his suffering. Payback for lying to me.” Jack gave her an unrepentant grin. “I made it worse by talking about how beautiful you looked tonight.”
“Must be a guy thing.”
“Right, like girls don’t do it, too.”
“Girls might play games, but they don’t bring the enemy into the house.” Her voice was hemmed with jagged edges of fear and fury. “What were you thinking when you invited Booth here? He’s dangerous, and associating with him could be deadly.”
A worry crease appeared over Jack’s nose. He propped one booted foot on his opposite knee and picked at the threads of his wool sock, thinking. Finally, he broke his silence. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have brought him to Jackson Place. But I wanted to tape the conversation, and the noise at the National Hotel made it impossible to get a good recording.”
“What’d he talk about…other than his gorgeous and talented self?”
Jack dropped his foot to the floor and leaned forward, holding his glass with both hands. “He asked what I thought of Lincoln. I said I admired him. He wondered how a good Southern gentleman could support a despot. I told him the focus of the interview was his career as a thespian, not his politics. He switched tactics and talked about the theater and oil and land investments.”
“Did you mention your meeting with Booth to Braham?”
Jack shook his head. “Braham’s not an assassin. He might threaten, but he’s got too strong a moral code. I predict when the date gets closer, he’ll make comments to Lincoln about additional security, and on the fourteenth, he’ll try to keep the president from going to the theater.”
“Since we don’t know where he is,” she said, “we can’t keep him from interfering. He was in town tonight to meet with Lincoln and Stanton. He could slip back into the city at any time and we wouldn’t know.”
“He ducked out on me tonight. He left to use the necessary room, and when he didn’t come back, I went looking for him, but by then it was too late. He was gone. Which won’t happen a second time.” Jack sat back in the chair, stretched out his legs, and gave her his endearing raised-eyebrow look. “Now, I want to hear what happened with Gordon.”
She looked down at her fingers, fussing with a hangnail.
After an awkward silence, Jack said, “You done stalling? Fess up. What happened?”
“I hate it when you’re right. You had Gordon pegged. He was about to propose when Braham showed up. Boy, did that piss him off.”
“Gordon told me I had done you a disservice by allowing you far too much freedom.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him the same thing I told him the day we met in December. You make your own decisions.”
She couldn’t help smiling with relief. “I don’t want to see him again. Not after the way he acted tonight. He might not even come back.”
“Oh, he will.”
“What makes you so sure?”
A dimple identical to the one she saw in the mirror every day appeared in Jack’s right cheek. “Gordon sees it as a competition now, and doesn’t intend to lose to Braham.”
“Men. I don’t intend to be a pawn in a chess game, and I certainly have no intention of being any Neanderthal’s prize.”
43
Washington City, February 1865
A knock on Charlotte’s bedroom door startled her awake. Her eyes popped open to see Braham standing in the doorway. “Ye left the door ajar. It’s allowed all the heat to escape the room. And ye look uncomfortable on the love seat. Why don’t ye sleep in yer bed?”
She yawned, shivering. �
��Jack stopped by to talk. I must have dozed off after he left.” Although smoldering ash of a dying fire scented the air, he was right, there was no heat coming from the red, yellow, and orange embers. “I’m surprised you’re here. I didn’t expect to see you again.”
“And I thought ye’d be gone, too.” His voice was low and husky.
“I don’t make it a habit of disappearing into the night like some people I know.”
He leaned back against the doorframe, wearing only a pair of trousers with suspenders dangling down his legs. Damp hair reaching his shoulders dribbled glistening drops of water onto his bare chest. The whiskers she’d seen earlier had given way to a smooth-shaven, expressionless face, but she sensed the roiling going on inside him. He closed the door and sidled over to the fireplace where he added wood and poked the dying embers, coaxing it to reluctant life. He then turned to face her, the furrows in his forehead deepening.
“I had to leave Jack at the hotel tonight. I didn’t want him to follow me.”
She reached for a shawl tossed over the back of the love seat and draped the warm velvet around her shoulders, snugging the ends close to her body. “Am I going to read about Booth’s murder in the morning paper?”
He set the poker aside and picked up the bellows. A whoosh of air stirred the embers even more until red-gold sparks burst into brilliant flames. “If ye do, it won’t be my doing.”
He turned, and those kindling eyes of his pierced her soul, deeper than they had any right to penetrate. She squeezed hers shut, pushing away his intrusion. Could he see her defenses crumbling? Because they were. Like sand castles when the tide comes in. She couldn’t speak; tears were too near the surface.
She took a breath and looked at him once more, saying softly, “Why are you here?”
Although the burning logs sizzled and popped, he poked at them again somewhat absentmindedly. “I didn’t want our earlier meeting to be my last memory of ye.”
Unsure of him, and definitely unsure of herself, she asked, “What kind of memory would you prefer?” Heat radiating off him, imagined or real, nonetheless warmed her. She loosened the ends of the shawl.
He set down the poker. “That’s not a smart question to ask a man going off to war.”
“Are you…” Her voice cracked, and she tried again. “Are you going off to war?”
“Yes.”
He crossed the flat woven carpet defining the edges of the small sitting area in her bedroom. She patted the sofa cushion, inviting him to sit. His shoulder brushed her arm, and his face was but inches from hers. The expression he wore was soft, eyes unguarded. With surprising tenderness, he stroked her cheek with his fingertips, up and down like a narrow brush, painting the essence of her.
“Don’t go.”
He laughed softly. “It’s my job.”
She leaned toward him with her arm along the back of the love seat. “You scared me when you left the plantation. I imagined all sorts of things had happened to you, and almost all of them would have been better than what actually happened.”
His large hand traced the muscles of her arm with unsuspected gentleness. He brushed the shawl off her shoulder and pinched a bit of her gown between his thumb and forefinger, toying with it softly. His eyes roved over her hungrily.
“I’m sorry.” There was a still, smooth tone to his voice, lulling.
The stew of her emotions came to a boil. “Now I understand how you can go into enemy territory and do what you do. It was no small feat to drive a car almost five hundred miles when you’d never driven before. You have nerves of steel.”
“Sometimes.” He let go of her gown and picked up one of her ringlets carefully. “Ye looked beautiful tonight, elegant. I’d never seen ye in anything other than scrubs and jeans.” The fingers of his other hand swept seductively across her chest below her collarbone, above her breasts. “Yer décolletage”—he raised an eyebrow—“is not for cads to view. Next time, I suggest ye wear scrubs. If there is a next time.”
Heat rushed to her cheeks. There was nothing particularly revealing about the dress she’d worn tonight, at least by twenty-first century standards. Was it her imagination, or was he truly attracted to her? Did he find her desirable? Was his heart beating to the double-time cadence of a drummer like hers? “And now?” she asked, her voice soft, and she anchored her attention on him, careful not to move or blink or think beyond this moment. “How do you see me?”
“Very desirable.” His mouth twitched with the tiniest and briefest of smiles. He dropped the curl and picked up another one close to her ear, brushing her neck with the back of his hand. “I like yer hair falling down around yer face and shoulders.” He pulled the curl to his nose and sniffed, smiling.
She was silent for a long time, and so was he, seemingly content to listen to the wind. Embers fell apart and sparks floated like fireflies in the dimness of the room. She returned his gaze, waiting to hear the unspoken whispers hovering in the air. To say them would strip away all vestige of hope. He let the curl fall back into place and, instead of picking up another one, he touched her cheek again. His scent was fresh and clean from the Proctor & Gamble white soap he had used, but there was an underlying scent—his own male musk—the kind of scent that pulled on a woman at a primal level. His thumb slid over the curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw, stopping at her mouth, and he gazed at her with a visual caress.
“I came for one last memory of ye.”
“So, you said.” She realized she sounded a bit breathless. “What you didn’t say was what kind of memory you would prefer.”
He nudged her chin up with his thumb. “I didn’t, did I?”
She touched his arm, and a shudder went through him. It went through her, too, pulsing and vibrating, and she moaned with a rush of desire. It seemed so natural to slip into his arms and share a kiss. His mouth came down slowly, tentative at first, then he kissed her full on the mouth, pulling on her bottom lip with his teeth, lightly and erotically. His large, gentle hands stroked her face. When their tongues touched, she tasted sweet whisky on his warm breath. His tongue moved against hers, tantalizing her mouth with thorough, languid movements. She kissed him back, astonishing herself with a depth of passion she had not believed possible.
He leaned back with a groan, pulling her with him until she lay on top of his sprawled body. Only the thin silk of her gown and the wool of his trousers separated their tightly strung bodies, each molding against the other. Braham gripped the curves of her buttocks and nudged her ever closer. The hard outline of his pulsing erection pressed against her almost bare thigh.
And she desired him as feverishly as he wanted her. She skimmed her hand down the side of his face, tracing the lines of his chin, his neck, to the hollow of his throat, and kissed him there. He shifted his fingers through her curls from her nape to her crown. He nudged her chin up and coaxed her mouth to stay open.
He tasted wild and fresh, and the touch of lips seemed like something other than kissing—more urgent, more relentless, eroding her balance. She clutched his shoulders, curving her fingers over the long plane of bone and muscle to the hard nape of his neck. If she could crawl inside his skin and know him, know the flesh and blood of him, know his thoughts, she would go now, this very instant, and never look back. She threaded her fingers through damp, satiny hair, cradled his head, and kissed him intensely. A desperate ache burst low in her belly. Responding on her need alone, she pressed his hand against her breast.
“Do you feel the beat of my heart, the hum of my soul?” she whispered.
His fingers drifted over the round shape, cupping the top of the slope until her nipple ached sweetly.
“Yes.” There was a slight quiver in his voice.
“You’ve crumbled the defenses I created so long ago to keep from loving and wanting this much,” she said.
As their looks entwined, her hands moved to his buttons, longing to feel skin against skin, and aching to show him, silently, the depth of her desire for him.
With a soft breath she asked, “What’d you say?”
“I’ll live with yer absence every day.” He eased curly wisps of hair behind her ear. “Ye’ve bewitched me with yer eyes, yer touch, and, yes”—he squeezed her breast tenderly—“yer heart. I thought ye might have feelings for me though not so much as this. I care about ye so much I canna take ye now, knowing I must leave. And Jack would be a wee bit angry with me, too.”
“My life is my own. He won’t be angry. Come back with us.”
He shook his head. “Ye know I can’t.”
She laid her head on his chest, relishing the warmth of his hand still cupping her breast. His heart thumped against her cheek, solid and steady, relaxing some of the frozen bands of fear plaguing her since he’d left.
She had saved his life, unaware this moment would come. But even if she had known he might break her heart, she would have handed it to him gladly, wrapped in a package tied with hope and longing. Strands of dread coalesced into the cold shudder snaking down her backbone and coiling in her belly, twisting and knotting her insides. Would the knots ever untangle? She doubted it. Desire for him would hold her captive, and she would continue to dream there would one day be a time and place for them.
44
Washington City, February 1865
By the time Charlotte went downstairs for breakfast, she’d only climbed halfway out of her pity party. Jack would want to know what was wrong, and she couldn’t lie to him. He could be counted on to notice her hurt and disappointment. What was she going to tell him? Whatever she decided to say, it would have to be the truth. He had an uncanny ability to read body language and discern thoughts—not just hers, but everyone he met.
The Sapphire Brooch Page 26