For the barrister, it was practically dandyish.
I was not, of course, unaware that whatever Gil was doing might require him to maintain the appearance of a courtship as an explanation for his presence. But when he turned from amiably grousing with Tommy about the once more chilly autumn weather to greet me, the expression in his eyes left no doubt that the appearance was not the heart of the game at this exact moment.
I hadn’t seen him since my unfortunate upset after our fencing match on Sunday, and to my considerable relief, he made no mention of it. But I did notice a bit of added protectiveness and gentleness in his manner toward me. It was as if he valued me the more for knowing those awful truths about my childhood. Probably the last reaction I would have expected, and one that absolutely warmed my heart.
Someday, if we continued our acquaintance, I might tell him all of it.
“Washington Square Park?” he asked as we walked down the stairs.
I took his offered arm, glad for the excuse to be close to him. “I know no better place. Unless you would like to go shopping for fripperies on the Ladies’ Mile.”
“Fripperies are hardly my area of interest.”
I grinned. “Neither mine.”
“And what is your area of interest, Shane?”
His eyes held mine, and I was suddenly, sharply, aware of the warm muscle of his arm under the wool cavalry-twill sleeve, the faint scent of some sort of herbal shaving cream, and the closeness of that ice-blue gaze. Oh, dear.
“At the moment”—I took a breath to propel myself in a more appropriate direction—“probably Marie Antoinette’s deleterious effect on political matters in the last months of her husband’s reign.”
Gil laughed, breaking the spell. “Well played. I would not have thought you a student of the French Revolution.”
“Well, I’m not especially interested in it, except as it affects the fate of Marie Antoinette. One of the other books I am currently reading.”
“I don’t even have that much interest, I’m afraid. I know I should care very much about how people who started out merely wanting to create a working government ended by slaughtering thousands, but I can never make myself wade through the blood and terror to understand.”
“True. I’ve reached the king’s trial, and it’s very hard sledding.”
“No one is making you finish it,” he pointed out.
“But I hate to just put down a book.”
“Such a diligent scholar.” He chuckled a little. “No one will quiz you on it, after all. So skip to the dramatic scene of the guillotining and then find a more congenial volume.”
“It might be the thing at that,” I agreed as we turned the corner toward the park.
“And by the way, sweetheart, I’ve asked Mr. Reuter’s lawyer to send me the correct autopsy report.”
“What?” I stared at him.
“I picked it up last night, ready to do my part, only to discover that I was looking at records from the demise of one Florence Lantz. Apparently, a mistake at the medical examiner. His defender—who really ought to have caught the error—is getting the right papers.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.” He gave a wry little chuckle. “Mrs. Lantz, by the way, died of entirely natural causes, if anyone was concerned.”
We exchanged a small smile.
“A penny for a poor widow?” Mrs. Early was on her usual bench, and I had the usual coins.
“Please wait here.” I slipped quickly away from Gil and gave the widow her mite, exchanging blessings, as always.
“That your gentleman?” she asked as I turned to go.
“Yes.” Close enough.
“I had someone who looked at me like that once. Good luck, sweetie.”
“Thank you.”
Gil had indeed waited compliantly, and when I returned, he offered his arm once more. “Another of your many kindnesses, Shane.”
“It’s a cruel world for some people. I can’t fix everything, but I can make things better for people within my reach.”
His eyes lingered on my face. “That you do.”
“Life has been good to me. I should share it where I can.”
After a breath or two, his serious expression faded, and he said in a teasing tone, “Our swashbuckling heroine has a heart of gold.”
“Kindly don’t tell anyone.” I returned his smile. “Come, you promised me a walk in the park.”
“Indeed I did.”
We walked happily on, well matched in pace and stride, and moving quickly enough to be quite comfortable despite the chill. I reflected that I might enjoy doing this more often, though I surely didn’t relish the idea of moving to London for the privilege.
Also, that I would be an absolute fool to ruin a lovely promenade with such serious thoughts.
“Why, Miss Shane, is that you?”
Grover Duquesne was on a bench just inside the park, reminding me of one of those large, nasty spiders that sit in their burrows, waiting to devour unsuspecting insects as they pass. I might have preferred the spider.
I nodded to him as his eyes swept over me in the usual repulsive fashion. Gil’s arm tensed under my fingers, and he cleared his throat.
“Ah, and your duke. How delightful.” Duquesne pretended a jovial expression for the next comment, which in fact was anything but a jest. “I was beginning to think you’d been quite seduced and abandoned.”
For one terrifying full measure, I had the distinct impression that Gil might just give the Captain of Industry the broken jaw he so richly deserved for a remark like that, however carefully delivered to sound like a joke.
“Mr. . . . Duquesne is it? I am assuming we once again have some sort of misunderstanding.” Gil’s eyes narrowed, and the temperature dropped several more degrees as he smiled, not soothingly. During our previous misadventure, Gil had backed him off in similar fashion, allowing him a pretense to climb down. Now, though, my swain was leaving less room for doubt. “No decent man would jest about such matters with a lady.”
Duquesne swallowed hard, looking more unnerved by Gil’s calm menace than he’d ever been by the prospect of a “word” from Tommy or Preston, and finally managed to speak, attempting joviality. “You know, different English on different sides of the pond. How nice to see you again.”
“Indeed.” Gil managed a barely genuine social smile. “Miss Shane has kindly agreed to walk out with me, since I am in town on business.”
“Ah. Didn’t I see you in the gallery at the Van Vleet trial?”
They held a tense gaze carefully for a measure or so, each clearly trying to determine the other’s game, and Gil was apparently curious enough to allow the conversation to continue. “Yes. Quite the sensation.”
“Quite a thing, indeed. I suppose just as well that she wasn’t convicted. Terrible thing to electrocute a woman.”
“Terrible.”
Gil’s eyes flicked toward me and back to the Captain of Industry, who swallowed again, with a blotchy flush creeping up under his whiskers. I wondered why he had any expectation that Duquesne would know where the line of appropriate conversation lay.
“Er, quite. You know, it was bound to end badly. Poor Hosmer never saw her coming.”
“Oh? How so?” Gil asked.
I could have jumped into the discussion, but this was clearly something among men, and really, why would I want to dignify the Captain of Industry’s existence? Better to listen and observe.
“Yes. He went to some summer resort in Maine two years ago and came back engaged. He was widowed, and she just snapped him up.”
“Perhaps she was a match for him.”
“She was something, all right.” Duquesne gave a filthy chuckle, and his porcine eyes glanced from Gil to me and back. “Men sometimes make mésalliances in the middle years, you know.”
“Do they, now?” His voice was cool, but the cords in Gil’s arm were like steel cable under my fingers.
“A man sometimes thinks he
has to marry a woman when really—”
“I warned you before, Mr. Duquesne. That is really quite enough.”
Duquesne’s flush bloomed into full, repulsive effect. “I meant no—”
“I am sure you did not.” The words came in an arctic tone, with London diction sharp enough to cut glass. “But as you are clearly utterly unable to maintain polite conversation, we are going to walk on. And while it is not my decision, I am going to strongly suggest to Miss Shane that she forbid you from the house.”
And with that, we indeed walked on, leaving the Captain of Industry gaping, and now looking rather more like a distressed bullfrog than a spider.
As the properly defended lady, it was, of course, my place only to follow along, but I was rather stunned by the whole thing. Terribly polite and terribly dangerous. And Gil taking up for me with such intensity.
Perhaps rather more than one might expect with merely an “understanding.”
“I’m very sorry, Shane,” Gil said perhaps a hundred yards later. “But I’m quite sure you know the outlines of what he was saying about you, if not the exact details.”
“I do.”
“And if I had listened for just one more instant, I might well have done something quite violent.”
“Really?”
“It is, unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of being courted by a man who’s half Scots, sweetheart.” He looked down at me, eyes still burning, and I noticed the faint Northern accent creeping back into his speech. “When that vile man insulted you, I wanted to behave like a wild Highlander and defend my woman.”
I blushed to the roots of my hair.
Gil took a breath and shook his head, and his angry expression faded. “I am, of course, well aware that besides being a respectable lady and an artist, you are also an admirable swordsman and more than capable of fighting your own battles.”
I was still back at “defend my woman,” which had struck me speechless.
“I hope you were not offended, Shane.”
I cleared my throat and hoped I wasn’t blushing too badly as I spoke. “Not in the least. Actually, though I may be banned from the next suffrage march for it, I rather liked being defended.”
“I won’t tell the Women’s Rights Committee.”
We exchanged grins.
His expression turned a bit more serious as he patted my hand on his arm. “I don’t mean to be overprotective of you, but it has been a long time since I courted a woman . . .”
“Has it?” I wondered if he might tell me about his late wife. All I knew was the line in Debrett’s listing her as more than ten years dead, and his brief comment months ago that influenza had killed her.
“You are curious.” A faint smile.
“Of course I am. I would never bring up painful topics, but if you want to tell me, I’ll gladly listen.”
“Kind and diplomatic, as always, Shane.” The smile turned wistful as we turned down another path, one lined with the dying vegetation that is all that remains this time of year. “I was a twenty-four-year-old barrister in training, still well removed from the title, when we married. May—her name was Millicent, but I never called her that—was the widow of a friend of mine.”
“A widow.”
“I admit to envying Edward a little when he married her. And, of course, when he died in a ridiculous train mishap half a year later, to feeling terribly guilty.”
“Not guilty enough to not court her.”
Gil’s face took on the “bad little boy” expression I love. “Well, no. At least not after she informed me that it was past time I started.”
“She did?”
“Indeed she did.” He shook his head and chuckled. “We were all of the same social circle, young lawyers and their wives. Remember, people married much earlier then.”
“Some people.” This was not the moment to point out that Irish women who hoped to have a relatively secure life had always married rather late, in order to have time to save up some money.
“True. Once one had the wherewithal, though, there was no reason to wait. And certainly not when a lovely acquaintance rather pointedly informed one that she was six months past the end of mourning.”
“Ah.”
“She was not at all like you, Shane. Small and dark haired, gray eyes, which she gave our younger son.”
Suddenly, I was not at all sure I had been right to follow my curiosity.
Gil turned to me. “But in the only ways that mattered, she was very like you. Intelligent and well read, not to mention fiery and determined to have what she wanted as she wanted it.”
“Not a bad thing.”
“Not at all. And ferocious in her defense of those she loved.” The Northern burr became stronger as his voice went softer, and his face clouded. “She had the Russian flu, and she ordered me to keep our children out of the sickroom, even at the last.”
My father, while dying of typhoid, had given the same order to my mother. It had probably saved my infant life. As his May had saved their children at the same unimaginable cost.
We stopped walking for a moment, and he looked down at me, a muscle flicking in his jaw and the skin around his amazing eyes tightening a trace. “When she was sick, she told me to marry again.”
I nodded.
“It was unthinkable.” He took a breath. “For many years, absolutely unthinkable.”
I didn’t speak or even breathe. I had to let him say what he needed to say.
“It no longer is.”
I met his gaze and held it for a stanza or more. When I finally spoke, it came out a little rusty with my own emotion. “Marriage was unthinkable for me for most of my career.”
“But?”
“No longer.”
For what seemed like a very, very long time, and likely was, we just stared at each other. It was too much too soon to go any further, and yet, we both knew the most important question between us had been answered.
Finally, we both took a breath at the same time, and we allowed the moment to break on a laugh.
“In any case,” Gil said, nodding to the path ahead as we started walking again, “that repulsive man—”
“Why don’t we just agree that the Captain of Industry brings out the worst in us all?” I offered.
“That he does.” He nodded. “Even if he might have useful insight.”
The Van Vleet matter? I wondered. “Not useful enough to justify this trouble.”
“I entirely agree. Now, shall we circle the fountain?”
“A lovely idea. I may drop in a penny for a wish.”
“What might you wish for, Shane?”
“Ah, that would be telling . . .”
Chapter 23
In Which Our Detective Finds a Clue
That night, after a rather routine performance, with none of the favored friends of the company making an appearance, Rosa was helping me into my coat and Tommy was on the settee with a book when Cousin Andrew appeared in the dressing room with a rather serious face.
“So,” I asked after greetings were exchanged, “how did the Miss McTeers enjoy the show?”
The thought of Katie softened his aspect for a moment. Dead gone indeed, to use Marie’s expression. “They loved it. I’m told the little one has been sniffing around the stage door?”
“She’s come over after school a few times, I’d guess.” I nodded. “We don’t mind, and it’s harmless enough.”
“Mother McTeer probably wouldn’t like it much if she knew, but she’s not likely to notice as long as homework is done and everyone is at the dinner table.”
“Sounds like my mother.” Tommy laughed. “Your chaperone is perfectly safe with us, and, of course, someone always bundles her out the door well before dark.”
“Oh, yes.” The detective gave a vaguely uncomfortable nod. “She’s always home of an evening.”
Tommy gave him a wise smile at that. “She really is your chaperone.”
“And a very dedicated one. Mother McTe
er has seven, and a husband who’s asleep at the dinner hour because of the bakery, so she has no time to supervise a courtship herself.”
“I imagine an observant twelve-year-old will do nicely.” I chuckled a bit.
“Observant little tattletale.” He sighed again. So did we, because sighs are contagious among the Irish.
Then his amiable face turned serious. “At any rate, I thought you should know that a body was found in the East River early today.”
“A body?” Tommy asked, eyes narrowing, whether at the unpleasant topic in my presence or the actual information, I wasn’t sure.
“Poor fellow was from one of the Five Points gangs, and he’d been beaten to death. Not quickly.”
Tommy’s eyes sharpened on Cousin Andrew, likely over that nasty little detail of the unfortunate’s demise.
“Five Points,” I said. We all knew.
“An underling to one of Connor Coughlan’s rivals, I’m told.” Cousin Andrew watched us both. “I’m also told that Mr. Coughlan ran into a spot of danger during the benefit for Jamie Eagger and assured you that it wouldn’t happen again.”
“All true.” Tommy nodded. “I doubt the incident was the first such thing to happen to Connor. But he was very troubled that it happened here.”
“As he should be.”
“So he did what every Irishman does,” I cut in, giving my two undeniably Irish gents a wry face. “He turned overprotective and assured us that he’s looking to our safety.”
Cousin Andrew and Tommy both ignored the dig, a very bad sign.
“He put out the word that the show is under his protection, you think?” Cousin Andrew asked.
“Very likely,” I said.
“Some of my superiors are worried about the possibility of a new gang war. Might I be able to offer them a little reassurance?”
A Fatal First Night Page 18