She did. Oh, she did.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Tessa, poised on the curb, glanced around for a steamcab, having left both Marty and Mitch’s big car at home earlier in the day. Before meeting Lily Michaels for tea, she’d gone shopping, had even done something unprecedented and bought her husband a present—a silk shirt she fancied might look well on him. Now, loaded down with packages, she saw a cab approaching and turned, raising a hand.
Only to collide with a gentleman bent on hailing the same cab.
The minor collision succeeded in making her drop all her packages. The man in question scrambled to help her retrieve them, and they both lost the cab.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she gasped, looked into his face, and faltered. “Richard?”
Sure enough, she found herself staring into that very young man’s eyes. Accustomed, now, to Mitch’s rather rough appearance and even rougher edges, she found Richard Trask almost shockingly handsome. Shining fair hair and a complexion that looked like it had never seen a razor…
His blue eyes immediately cooled. “Mrs. Carter.” He looked around frantically, as if searching for another cab. None appeared; the two of them stood marooned on the curb.
But why was Richard looking at her that way? He’d been the one to break off their friendship, reject her without so much as a decent explanation.
She wanted that explanation, and she wanted it here and now. “I got your message,” she said. “How could you, Richard? I thought we were friends.”
“Your husband doesn’t want me to be your friend.”
“What’s it to do with him?”
Richard twitched, a full body motion; fear flashed in his clear eyes. “I don’t wish to speak of it.”
“I do. We had an understanding, or I thought we did. You’ve even stopped coming to the meetings.” She added with emphasis, “Where we were supposed to meet.”
He faced her fully. His gaze widened and enfolded her. “I only attended those meetings because of you, so I could see you.”
“So, what’s changed?”
“Look, Tess, we can’t talk about it. Not here in the open where anyone might see—”
“Then let’s go somewhere. A café, or a tea house.”
“God, no. You can bet he has you watched. He’ll know.”
“He? Who?”
“Don’t be stupid, Tess.”
“Mitch? You’re talking about Mitch? But he wants me to be happy, he’s said so over and over again.”
“He wants you to himself.” Now anger kindled in Richard’s eyes. Odd how easy it seemed, reading Richard’s emotions, after learning to decipher the mysteries of Mitch’s shuttered face.
Richard rushed on. “He’s like a dog. Can’t you see that? Some big, ugly, vicious street mongrel in need of a good kicking. He’s found a morsel he wants and now won’t let anyone else near it.”
Tessa shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Then I’ll tell you, shall I? He came to see me, Mitch Carter—your husband. Paid me a call at my home. Told me I’d better stop seeing you, warned me if I didn’t I’d better not walk down any dark streets in this city, not unless I expected some terrible harm to befall me.”
Tessa reeled. She blinked rapidly. “But—the note you sent…”
“He ordered me to break it off, or else. Now, I daren’t stand here talking to you any longer. If one of his toughs sees us, it will be me, not you, who pays the price.”
“You’re afraid of him.”
Richard’s fair face flushed. But he replied, “Damned right I am. Do you know what a man like that could do to a fellow? Tess, you’re his wife.”
“Not by choice.” True, but once uttered the words felt like a betrayal. She’d married Mitch at her father’s behest, yes. But she’d slept with him, these many nights past, for her own sake.
“You married him,” Richard said almost nastily. “So in future, please leave me out of it.”
A long steamcar with glossy black sides purred up to the curb in front of Tessa. The nearest window cranked down, and she saw the face of Marty, her husband’s chauffeur.
“Mrs. Carter, do you need a ride?”
Richard made a strangled sound in his throat and hoofed it with more haste than grace. Marty left the car running while he got out, opened Tessa’s door for her, and ushered her inside.
Not till they turned onto Prospect Avenue did Tessa realize the car hadn’t appeared by chance, or even providence. Richard had been right—her husband was indeed having her watched.
For how long? And why?
What could she do with the emotions the knowledge raised?
****
“Good news, Tessa,” Mitch told his wife as she entered his office. She rarely ventured here uninvited, but they’d become closer since that night when she came to his room, and quite likely she’d come looking for the little dog, which tended to stay with Mitch when she went out.
He didn’t care; just seeing her enter the room brought him almost painful pleasure, akin to that when he made love to her. And how lovely she looked, having obviously just come in from outside. She still wore her hat and carried a number of shopping bags in her hands. Her cheeks looked flushed, and her eyes unusually bright.
But she failed to pat the little clockwork dog when it ran up and pawed at her skirt.
“Good?” she repeated the word. “Good news? What could be good about it?”
Mitch frowned at the edge in her voice, but he answered readily, “The old man who owns Carter’s is ready to sell. I figure it will take just a bit more persuasion.”
“Persuasion.”
She sounded like an automaton. Perhaps she’d been spending too much time with that new friend of hers. Glaring at him, she jerked to life; the bags fell from her hands and hit the carpet.
Only then did Mitch realize how angry she was, aflame with rage.
She stepped up to the desk where he sat and leaned both hands on the surface opposite him. Her eyes glowed like those of an incensed tabby. “What sort of persuasion would that be?”
He tensed as he tended to do in the face of any strong emotion or personal threat. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
“You frequently persuade, don’t you? You coerce. You threaten. It’s what you do best.”
Mitch got to his feet slowly. He walked around the desk, around the dog which stared at Tessa as if it had never seen her before. Mitch sympathized; he’d never seen Tessa in this mood either. He shut the office door and turned to face her.
“You’re angry.”
“Oh, how perceptive he is—for a tough.”
Mitch flinched inwardly, though he didn’t let it show. Disappointment touched him. He’d hoped they were past all that and she’d accepted what he was—and wasn’t.
“Maybe you should explain why you’re so upset, Tessa.”
“No, maybe you should explain.” Her eyes narrowed. “Do you have me watched?”
And where had this come from? When he failed to answer at once, she grimaced and barreled on.
“By your boys? By Marty, maybe? Big man in this city, aren’t you? You can have things any way you want.”
“What’s got you so fired up?”
“Marty appeared with the car this afternoon, out of nowhere—just after I’d bumped into a friend.”
“So?”
“The friend was Richard Trask.”
Oh. Anger combined with dread in Mitch’s stomach. This couldn’t be good. It couldn’t possibly—
“Richard said you warned him off me. Threatened he might meet with a mishap down some dark street in the city if he didn’t break things off. That’s why he dropped our association. Is it true? Is it?”
“Tess, you don’t need associations with other men.”
“How dare you?” she howled. The little clockwork dog dove under the desk. “How could you banish a friend from my life and then act as if you care about my welfare?”
“I do
care about you.” If she only knew how much.
“So you show it by making me friendless?”
“He was more than just a friend to you, and you know it. You wanted relations with him. What chance did I have, with him in the picture?”
“You might have spoken with me about it, told me how you felt.”
She had no idea how difficult he found it to express his feelings.
“Instead you went behind my back. Got Richard to drop me with no explanation, so I thought he didn’t care about me anymore.”
“He didn’t care.” Just like hers, Mitch’s voice rose. “If he cared—if he really loved you—he’d have done anything for you. Whatever he had to. He’d move heaven and earth to be with you.” This Mitch knew to his very soul.
“He’s afraid of you. Most people with any sense in this city are afraid of you. Why did I ever think anything else? Why did I imagine you could change?”
“I can change,” Mitch said desperately. “Tessa, listen to me.”
“I’m done listening to you. You’re nothing, Mitch Carter—nothing but a brute, a bully, and a manipulator. You thought you could manipulate me, didn’t you, with your gifts and your kisses? Well, it’s over. I’m finished with you.”
“Tessa, don’t say that.” He reached for her the way a man overboard might reach for a life preserver. Frantically, she batted his hand away. “Don’t touch me, never again. I hate you. Do you hear me?”
He heard. He heard. He also heard the door slam as she went out of the office, the worst sound since a similar heavy door used to slam on that room in the back, at Carter’s, where Fink would put a boy alone.
It all rushed upon him then. What had he done? Lost her.
Lost her.
She hated him.
Groping like a blind man, he found his way back around the desk and sat in his chair. Something nudged his hand. The little clockwork dog had ventured out from under the desk and stared at Mitch with earnest glass eyes, as if reading his mood.
He touched its head, and it scrambled up over his knee and into his lap, where it cuddled close. It stayed with him as he sat on into the night.
****
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Carter, ma’am, but I have orders not to offer you the car. From the boss.”
From the boss. Of course. Tessa’s anger, which had eased only marginally during the interminable night, roared back to life. He thought he could keep her trapped here, did he? The monster.
And Mitch Carter was a monster, just as she’d thought at the beginning of their association. He might have fooled her for a time with touching confidences, after worming his way into her bed, but she saw the truth about him now. And she needed to visit her brother, Gerald, as soon as possible, so she could tell him she wanted her marriage dissolved after all—by whatever means possible.
That was the truth she’d realized in the depths of the night after she wept and raged and grieved—for she had grieved the loss of trust and belief in Mitch Carter. If he could go behind her back that way, he might do any damned thing.
She couldn’t stay with such a man. She certainly couldn’t love him.
But when morning came and she pulled herself together, put on her most stylish clothes, curled her hair, and ventured downstairs, Marty refused to let her use the car.
Now she stared at the chauffeur in outrage. He looked back at her impassively, all but for what might be a hint of sympathy in his eyes.
God knows how she must appear—she hadn’t managed to erase all the tearstains and still felt ill.
But she said, “Very well. I’ll hail a cab. Or walk.”
Marty reached out for her. “Ma’am, I—”
She stiffened. “Oh, are you going to keep me here by force? Are those his orders? And you do whatever he tells you, right?”
Marty withdrew his hand as if she’d slapped it. He seemed to battle some strong emotion. “I’d do anything for the boss. He’s been good to me. He came back and got me out of Carter’s.”
Tessa thought of that terrible place, of the courage it would take to go back at all, once sprung. But that couldn’t overwhelm her anger or make her trust Mitch again.
“Please, ma’am,” Marty said earnestly, “don’t hurt him.”
“Me, hurt him?”
“He cares so much for you. I can tell.”
“You’re mistaken. Now, unless you mean to make a captive of me, please step aside. I’m going out.”
Looking miserable, Marty shuffled to one side. Hand on the doorknob, Tessa looked back at him. “I suppose as soon as I step out this door you’ll go running to him.”
Marty shook his head. “He’s in a meeting. An important one.”
“Good.”
Still watched by the chauffeur, Tessa slipped out the door and stood for a moment in the fading sunlight, trembling. The chilly autumn day promised rain, and Prospect Avenue looked busy. No cab to be hailed.
Very well, then, she’d walk to her brother’s house on Bouck Avenue, if she had to.
Whatever it took to dissolve her marriage and free her from Mitch Carter.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“We have a problem. Seems that fecking hybrid automaton has quite a number of informants, likely more than you and I put together. He probably hears from every tin servant in this city, and there are a lot of them.”
Mitch turned his head to glare at Danny Dwyer, who’d invaded his office early that morning and now lounged in the big chair opposite the desk.
Mitch had never made it out of the office all night and still wore the clothes he’d donned yesterday, now creased and far from fresh. He’d consumed more whiskey than he normally did in a year, grieved, argued, and raged in his head.
He wanted to go up to his wife’s room. He longed to take her in his arms and tell her—no, show her—what she meant to him. He didn’t quite dare—him, the frigging King of Prospect Avenue, who didn’t dare face a small, slender woman.
Instead, around midnight, he’d summoned Tiny and given him orders for the other boys.
Watch her. Protect her. Guard her life as they would his, Mitch’s, life.
If she found out, he supposed it would make her hate him more than ever. If that were possible.
The last thing he wanted or expected was an appearance from Danny Dwyer. He fought to marshal his thoughts as he paced behind the desk, unable to keep still.
“You’re talking about Pat Kelly.”
“Of course I’m talking about fecking Pat Kelly. The bastard’s like an octopus, I tell you, damned mechanical fingers everywhere.”
Mitch paused in his pacing to eye Dwyer again, and rage licked through him. “I suppose you’re telling me he’s on to us—the fact that we’ve teamed up to outbid him downtown.”
“No.” Dwyer sneered. “I’m after telling you he suspects we’re the ones who snatched his wife.”
“What?” Mitch glared. “I had no part in that business. You were supposed to talk to him, reason with him, Irishman to Irishman. Instead, you terrorized that woman.”
“Ah, she wasn’t hurt, was she? Just frightened a wee bit. And how was I to know Kelly’s obsessive about the woman? He’s a fecking machine, for God’s sake.”
“You don’t mess with a man’s family, machine or not.”
Dwyer snorted. “You going soft, Carter? Or maybe you’re developing sympathies for the steamies, like that piece o’ trash under your desk?”
Mitch, all too aware that the little dog which had kept him company all night rested there, didn’t even glance down.
“I have few sympathies for anyone.”
“That’s not what word on the street says.” Dwyer smiled. “It says you’ve taken up philanthropy, planning on buying up orphanages.”
“What’s that to you?”
Dwyer shrugged. “Only that you’re supposed to be such a hard man, but I’ll bet Kelly’s harder than you, and he’s not even a man.”
“You think I care about your opinion of me, Dwyer? I
don’t give a damn. You’re a fool—you never should have snatched that woman. It was business, but you’ve made it personal with him. Now he likely won’t rest till he and his army of steamies bring you and me both down.”
Dwyer shrugged again, this time uneasily. “It was you gave me the idea, mentioning he had a wife. Anyway, I didn’t have to come here and warn you he’s on to us.”
“Not us—I never suggested you should grab her.”
“You were there in that shed, though, weren’t you?”
“I’m not afraid of him.” Mitch had far bigger problems.
“You should be. Yesterday he bought that property on Chippewa right out from under us. He has bids in on both Swan and Huron. I don’t know where he gets the money.”
“I told you, they probably pool it—the automatons. What else are they going to do with it? Listen to me, Dwyer. Our association, yours and mine, is over.”
“What?” Dwyer shot up in the chair.
“You heard me. You went beyond the terms of our agreement, snatched that woman, and queered the deal. I’m done.”
“You can’t do that, man. He’ll beat us both. We’ll lose downtown.”
“Then we lose it.”
“To fecking automatons? God damn it, Carter, they’re not even real.”
“They’re real. They’re just not human.”
“What the hell’s happened to you?” Dwyer got to his feet. “We had an agreement. It’s not a good idea to go back on any agreement you make with me.”
Mitch stepped up to him. “That a threat?”
An ugly look invaded Danny Dwyer’s eyes. “You’ve got a wife too, right? A damn pretty one.”
Mitch moved without his own volition, his body leaping before his mind could react. In a blink he’d seized Dwyer and forced him up out of the chair and against the wall beside the door, his forearm across Dwyer’s throat.
“Don’t even think about it. You touch a hair on her head—you even look at her—you’re a dead man.”
Dwyer gurgled; his eyes spat hate.
“Now…” Mitch released him with an extra hard thump. “Get out of my house. I don’t want to see you again. Like I said, our association’s done.”
Tough Prospect Page 19