The Tea Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  Fiona closed her eyes and sat back against the bench. This was a nightmare, one she’d been wishing she could wake up from ever since the boy, a messenger Nick sent from the Tombs last night, had arrived at Michael’s. She’d rushed to the jail hoping to get him out, to at least see him, but the desk sergeant wouldn’t permit it. Captain’s orders, he said.

  She hoped he was all right. Hoped he’d had something to eat and drink, and someplace to sleep. She heard Teddy’s words echoing in her head, “… he’s foreign … they’ll deport him.” If that happened, it would destroy him. He’d lose his gallery and everything he’d worked for. He’d be forcibly taken back to London. To his hateful father who’d threatened to cut him off without a penny if he returned. He’d be all alone. How long could he possibly survive like that?

  She felt a hand on her back. “Darling! What on earth is going on?” Her heart lurched. It was Peter Hylton.

  “Say nothing,” Teddy hissed in her ear.

  “I heard Nick was arrested last night. And in The Slide, too! Slumming, was he?”

  “I … I don’t know, Peter … I don’t know what happened. There’s been a terrible mistake.” Her emotion overtook her again and tears slipped down her cheeks.

  “Oh, dear! It’s him, isn’t it? Nick’s the one. Look at you, you’ve been crying buckets. No woman cries like that over a man she doesn’t love. I always knew McClane didn’t have a chance.”

  “Peter,” Fiona began wearily. “We’re not …” Teddy’s elbow in her side silenced her. She turned around.

  Peter knew nothing about her engagement to Will. Only members of their immediate circle, her lawyers, and the discreet Madame Eugenie knew. If anyone admired her ring, she told them it was only glass and that she’d bought it herself for fun. Will had wanted the match kept quiet. He knew people would talk about it plenty after the fact; he didn’t want Hylton getting a head start. The man was relentless. He’d know about the dress, the cake, and what Fiona planned to wear to bed on her wedding night. And he’d make sure all of New York knew, too. She heard him flip open his notebook, heard his pen nib scratching over the paper.

  She turned around. More people had come into the courtroom. Quite a few had notebooks. She recognized Nellie Bly, a friend of Will’s. A woman she quite liked. A woman who, with a few paragraphs, could ruin Nick. She realized that even if he wasn’t convicted, the press would hang him anyway. All they needed was to mention the sort of clientele The Slide catered to and he was finished. There would be a scandal. An ugly one. The society people who patronized his gallery would drop him like a hot coal. His business would be destroyed and that would kill him as surely as the privations of jail and deportation.

  Panic set in. Her chest felt tight. She told Teddy she needed air and was going outside for a few minutes. On the steps of the courthouse she hugged herself against the chilly morning and wondered what she was going to do. If only Will were here, he’d know. But he wasn’t. He was in Pittsburgh and wouldn’t be back for days. As she stood there, feeling hopeless and lost, she looked through the window of an office across the street, a law firm, and the receptionist talking on a telephone. In a flash, she was across the street and through the doorway. She would call Will at his hotel. He might not be there, but it was worth a try.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I have an emergency and I need to use your phone. I’ll pay you.”

  “I’m sorry, miss, but I can’t.”

  “Please. I wouldn’t ask you, but my friend’s life depends on it.” The woman hesitated. “All right,” she finally said. “Do you know the number?”

  Fiona told her the name of the hotel in Pittsburgh, and after a minute or so the girl had the place on the line. She handed the telephone to Fiona, who asked the clerk for William McClane. To her relief he was there, breakfasting in the dining room. The clerk would get him, he said. Fiona nearly sobbed when she heard his voice on the other end.

  “Fiona? Darling, what is it? Is everything all right?”

  “No, Will, it’s not.” With tears in her voice, she told him what had happened.

  His response was harsh and immediate. “Fiona, listen to me. I want you to get out of there as quickly as you can.”

  “Will, I can’t. Nick needs –”

  “I don’t care what Nick needs!” he snapped. “The Tombs, the courthouse, they’re no place for you. You’ve got to distance yourself from him. From all of this. Immediately. This is going to be a goddamned mess when the press gets hold of it. And not just for Nick. I want you to go upstate. Take Seamie with you. And Mary. I’ll call Emily and tell her you’re coming. Fiona? Are you still there?”

  There was a beat of silence, then, “Yes … yes, I’m here.”

  “I’ll try and cut this trip short. I’ll get home by tomorrow night if I can. Do not talk to anyone about this. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes. Quite.”

  “Good. I’ve got to go now. Do what I said and everything will be all right. Take care, darling. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” she said. The words tasted like acid in her mouth.

  “Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye, Will.”

  The line went dead. She listened to it click for a few seconds. Then she placed the earpiece back into its cradle, handed the receptionist a dollar bill, and thanked her. She walked to the door stiffly. Her limbs felt as cold as ice. Will had told her to abandon Nick. Her best friend. The man who had rescued her when she had no one. Now he had no one and she could no more abandon him than she could cut out her own heart. She returned to the courtroom and sat beside Teddy. More people had arrived. The benches were filling. Just then, the door to the judge’s chamber opened. A court officer emerged. “All rise!” he boomed.

  Fiona stood, along with the rest of the courtroom. Cameron Eames entered dressed in a flowing black robe. He glanced around the room, then sat down to read his docket. She was amazed at how young he looked. And how hard. There was no compassion in that fair, boyish face. No mercy. When he’d finished with his docket, he called for the prisoners to be brought in. A door opened at the front of the courtroom and a line of men was marched in. They were cuffed. Fiona craned her neck, searching frantically for Nick. When she finally spotted him, she gasped. His left eye was purple. There was a gash on his cheek and dried blood under his nose. He was limping. His jacket was torn.

  “Nick!” she sobbed, rising in her seat.

  “Hush!” Teddy hissed, pushing her down.

  Nick hadn’t heard her, but Eames had. He cast an irritated glance in her direction. “Criminal Court of the City of New York is now in session,” he intoned. He apprised the men of the charges leveled against them. “Loitering, disorderly conduct …” he read.

  “Both misdemeanors,” Ambrose whispered, hopeful.

  “ … public lewdness, solicitation … and sodomy.”

  “He’s cooked. That last one’s a felony. They won’t let him off with a fine. If he doesn’t plead guilty, they’ll go to trial. For some reason, Eames wants an example made of these men.”

  “Stephen, isn’t there anything we can do? Anything at all?” Fiona asked, pale with fright.

  “I’ve got one idea,” Stephen said. “Not a very good one.”

  “Anything. Try anything.”

  “You said Nick walks the streets at night?”

  “Yes. Often.”

  “Why?”

  “To tire himself. Sometimes he can’t sleep.”

  Ambrose nodded.

  Eames called the first prisoner, an unsavory-looking fellow who pleaded guilty to all the charges. Two respectable-looking men were called after him. Both were asked if they had counsel. Neither did. Guilty pleas were entered for both. It was Nick’s turn next. When the judge asked if he had a lawyer, Stephen Ambrose stood and approached the bench. Nick, who’d been sitting with his head down, looked up in surprise. His eyes traveled from Ambrose across the benches, searching. And then he saw her. Their eyes locked and she saw the fear in his
. He tried to give her a quick smile, but winced instead. It was all she could do to stay in her seat and not run to him and throw her arms around him.

  Eames asked Ambrose how his client pleaded.

  “Not guilty, Your Honor,” Ambrose replied.

  “Counselor, I’m in no mood for antics. Mr. Soames was apprehended at The Slide. There are eyewitness accounts, testimonies from the arresting officers,” Eames warned.

  Ambrose held up his manicured hands. “I do not dispute my client’s presence at The Slide. Nonetheless, I maintain he is innocent of all charges. There’s been a terrible mistake, Your Honor.”

  “There always is,” Eames sighed, eliciting titters from the courtroom.

  “My client, Mr. Soames, wandered into the said premises quite innocently. He was simply looking for something to drink and did not recognize the establishment for what it is. My client suffers from insomnia and has a habit of walking the streets at night to tire himself. Being a foreigner, he is not entirely familiar with all the parts of our city, or the nature of some of its denizens. He was unaware that he was patronizing a place of ill repute.”

  Fiona held her breath. Stephen’s ploy was risky. What if Nick had indeed visited The Slide before last night? What if one of the other prisoners said so? She looked at them. Several were smirking but nobody said a word.

  “Mr. Soames is a respectable and upstanding member of society,” Stephen continued. “These charges are spurious. A law-abiding man has been wrongfully arrested –”

  “Counselor –”

  “And badly treated, too. I would like the record to reflect that.”

  “Counselor Ambrose, I am not impressed by this cock-and-bull story,” Eames said. “I’ve seen all sorts of ploys to avoid punishment and this one is as old as the hills.”

  Fiona started to cry again. It really was hopeless.

  “Oh, don’t cry, darling. I can’t stand it,” a voice whispered emotionally from behind her. It was Peter Hylton. “Your Honor! Your Honor!” he shouted, standing up.

  Oh, no, Fiona thought. “Mr. Hylton, don’t –” she started to say, but he was already in the aisle.

  Eames banged his gavel. “Order! Do not shout at me, sir. Approach the bench.”

  “Sorry.” Peter scurried to the front of the courtroom.

  “What is it? Mr.—’ Eames asked.

  “Hylton. Peter Randall Hylton. I write a column for the World – ‘Peter’s Patter’ – and –” “What is it, Mr. Hylton?”

  “I just wanted to tell you that Mr. Ambrose is telling you the truth! There has been a mistake. A dreadful mistake. Nick Soames isn’t … you know,” he said, waving his hand.

  “No, sir. I do not.”

  “A pansy!”

  The courtroom erupted in laughter. Eames crashed his gavel down again.

  “Well, he isn’t,” Peter insisted. “He has a sweetheart, you know. A female one. I won’t name names here – it wouldn’t be right – but it’s true.”

  Fiona saw her chance. She stood up and asked for permission to approach the bench. Eames granted it and she walked up to him, her legs shaking. To think that Ambrose had called his ploy a long shot. Hers was about a million to one. Will would be furious with her, but it couldn’t be helped. It was all she had – all Nick had. She cleared her throat and said, “Your Honor, what Mr. Hylton said is true. Mr. Soames is my fiancé. We’ve been engaged for two months.” Gasps, followed by mad chatter, filled the courtroom. Eames banged his gavel and threatened the occupants with ejection. “What Mr. Ambrose said is also true,” she continued. “Nicholas does not sleep well and walks at night to tire himself. I don’t quite know how he got himself into a place like The Slide, but I’m sure he didn’t mean to. And I’m sure he regrets his mistake terribly.”

  Ambrose shot Fiona a horrified look. “Your Honor …” he hastily began. The rest of his words were drowned out by the noise of the people in the benches. Reporters, sensing a good story in the making, were crawling over one another, trying to get Fiona’s full name, the proper spelling of Soames, the address of Nick’s gallery.

  Eames, infuriated, banged his gavel as if he meant to break it in half. “Sit down, Counselor!” he shouted. His voice effected the silence his gavel could not. He gathered his papers together and stood. “Counselor Ambrose, I am growing very, very tired of you and your sideshow. I’m going to call a short recess and when I return I want to see everyone back in his or her seat. And I want to be able to hear a pin drop. Do I make myself clear?”

  No one dared speak; everyone nodded. Eames turned on his heel and left the courtroom for his chambers, slamming the door behind himself. The boom echoed hollowly.

  Fiona returned to her seat and sat down next to Teddy. Stephen Ambrose wedged in beside her. “That took balls,” he said quietly.

  She nodded miserably. She had hoped to save Nick. Now, it appeared, she had only made things worse.

  Ambrose noticed her broken expression. “Cheer up,” he told her. “You never know, if Eames doesn’t send Nick to the gallows after that, he just might set him free.”

  * * *

  Will Junior took a large swallow of Scotch, grimaced cheerfully as it went down, and said, “Cameron, you’re a genius, you know that? A goddamned genius!”

  Cameron, sitting in his chambers with his feet up on his desk, grinned at his friend. “It is going rather well. Even if I do say so myself.”

  “Going well? Cam, it couldn’t possibly go any better. I can’t believe she’s here!” he exclaimed, leaning back in his chair and smiling up at the ceiling. “That she actually spent the night at the Tombs and is sitting in a courtroom with faggots and criminals! My father’s going to be furious! What happened after Ambrose pleaded?”

  Cameron laughed. “Then Hylton put his two cents in. God, I wish you could’ve seen it, Will. He actually stood up and told the whole courtroom that Nick Soames isn’t a pansy. I thought I was going to fall out of my chair.”

  Cameron went on to describe Peter Hylton’s performance and Will listened raptly, shaking his head in disbelief over his good fortune. This was all going off perfectly, better than he’d dared to hope. Cameron had told him that the courtroom was packed with reporters. A few photographers had shown up, too. There would be a huge scandal. By tonight – maybe even by lunchtime! – the shit would be flying. And Fiona Finnegan was going to get covered with it! His father would surely finish with her now. He’d have to. Marrying a respectable woman from another class was one thing, but marrying a woman who consorted with deviants was quite another.

  “ … and then, Will … oh, you won’t believe this … she gets up and tells me she’s engaged to Soames. Since two months!”

  “What?”

  “She said they were engaged, and that Soames stumbled into The Slide by accident, because of insomnia or some such horseshit.” He waved his hand dismissively. “They really do think I was born yesterday.”

  This is the luckiest day of my life, Will Junior thought as Cameron finished his tale. She has played into my hands completely. “Cameron …” he said slowly.

  “Hmm?” he replied, refreshing Will’s drink.

  “What if I’m wrong? What if my father were to actually forgive this mess?”

  “Then all our hard work and the favor I called in with Malloy will have been for nothing. But surely he wouldn’t, Will. Not after it makes the papers.”

  “In his present unhinged state, anything’s possible,” Will Junior said. He drained his glass and regarded his friend. “I think, Justice Eames, that what we have in front of us is nothing less than a way to get Miss Finnegan out of the picture permanently. And I think we must avail ourselves of this extraordinary opportunity.”

  Cameron returned his gaze, then nodded, and Will Junior knew that he’d taken his meaning. They’d always been good at reading each other’s thoughts. It had served them well when they’d needed to cook up stories as youngsters and again when they’d been caught cheating on their exams at school.
They had come far together, he and Cameron, and they would go farther still.

  “If your father ever learns what happened, he’ll string me up.”

  “He won’t. How could he? I’m surely not going to tell him.”

  “What am I going to say when he finds out I was the officiating justice?”

  “What can he say? Technically, you don’t even know who she is. Have you ever seen them together?”

  “No.”

  “Has he ever introduced you?”

  “No.”

  “Did he tell you they were engaged?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then how can you be blamed? You simply didn’t know. You were only doing your job. When the time comes – if it ever does – that he asks you about it, you’ll tell him if only you’d known who she was, you would never, ever have insisted on this condition.”

  “All right. But you’d better go now. Out the back way. Same way you came in. Don’t let anyone see you, Will. Not anyone.”

  “I won’t. Stop worrying, Cam. Make this happen for me.”

  Cameron stood up and put his robe back on. The two men made plans to meet at the Union Club for dinner, then Will made his exit. He felt an enormous sense of relief wash over him. Soon this would be over. Seamlessly, perfectly over. His father would never suspect that Cameron had done what he was about to do on purpose. And he’d never expect that he himself had engineered it. He’d done too fine an acting job for that – apologizing for his bad behavior, welcoming the girl into the family – and his father had bought it all. As he headed down the dark hallway used by court officers to whisk the infamous and condemned in and out of the building, Will Junior told himself that he really owed Cameron one for this. He knew of a good way to pay him back, too. As soon as he got his seat in Congress, he’d set about working to get Cam the state supreme court seat he wanted so badly. And one day, when he got to the White House, the very first thing he would do would be to nominate Cameron Eames for Federal Supreme Court justice. Every president needed a judge in his pocket.