“Why, for the ungentlemanly behavior of my old friend, Charles Decker.”
Ungentlemanly? Zeke nearly choked. “Yes, I suppose murder does tend to place a man beyond the pale. I daresay he would never have received an invite from the Vanderbilts again.”
“There is no need for you to be sarcastic, John. You cannot imagine how shocked I was when I heard the things Charles had done. I felt as though he had betrayed my trust as well. When I think of how I introduced him to you, insisting he was an honorable man!”
“I guess he fooled a good many people besides you.”
“But I knew him such a long time,” she murmured. “I should feel more at his death, the way he took his own life, but I can’t help thinking that it was better that way.”
Zeke had difficulty agreeing with that, but he said, “His suicide was rather unexpected.”
“I suppose when you escaped he knew you would return to expose him and couldn’t face such a risk.”
“The man was such a coward, he seemed to me more likely to bolt than to kill himself.”
She gave an eloquent shrug. “Desperate men do the most inexplicable things. I always—She broke off, staring past Zeke, her face going rigid. She dropped Zeke’s hands. Glancing behind him, Zeke realized Rory had come back down, emerging from the shadows of the upper stairwell.
Rory paused a few steps above Zeke, unable to tear her eyes from that woman. It was only the second time in her life shehad ever seen Mrs. Van Hallsburg, but her first impression held good. No wonder she had dreamed of her as the banshee. The woman’s eyes were like her diamonds, cold, brilliant and hard.
After her initial unnerving stare, Mrs. Van Hallsburg’s gaze roved over Rory in a disparaging fashion, making Rory aware that she was still garbed in Annie’s old gown. Rory had never given much thought or care to what she wore. But at the moment, she felt as though she would have sold her soul to be dressed in a gown as regally elegant as Mrs. Van Hallsburg’s, to appear before Zeke just as beautiful, just as sophisticated. Facing that woman this way was like confronting an enemy knight without a suit of armor.
For too many moments, none of them said anything. Rory experienced a kind of fierce triumph when Mrs. Van Hallsburg was the first to look away.
“What is this person doing here”she asked Zeke.
Zeke replied with barely restrained civility. “Miss Kavanaugh is my guest.”
“I see.” Never had two words been so fraught with icy scorn and insult. Rory felt her cheeks burn.
“Not that it’s any concern of yours,” Rory blurted out. Her retort sounded childish by comparison with Mrs. Van Hallsburg’s rigid self-possession. Zeke stepped hastily in between them.
“Miss Kavanaugh is tired. She was just on her way upstairs.” Turning to Rory, he touched her cheek, his eyes alight with tenderness and reassurance. He said in a low voice, “Go on, Rory. Don’t worry about her. I’ll get rid of her.”
Although Rory reluctantly complied, she was worried. She had an urge to remain at Zeke’s side, to protect him. A strange notion indeed, for what sort of protection could Zeke possibly need, he such a huge strapping man and Mrs. Van H. such a thin blade of a woman?
All the same, Rosy lingered, her troubled gaze following the pair until they vanished into the study.
Zeke would just as soon have showed Mrs. Van Hallsburg the front door, but he could tell that she would not be so easily dismissed. Nor did she intend to enact any scenes within hearing of the servants. It was she who selected the study, obliging him to follow her.
As Zeke lit the gas jets, he flinched at the sight of the room he would connect forever with what he now thought of as that fatal confrontation with Decker. If only he had known, he could have throttled the little weasel then. Maybe Addison would still be alive.
It didn’t seem fair that the room remained so unchanged, so mundanely normal. Hell, even the Joseph Riis book with its stark images of life on the East Side remained on his desk, right where he’d left it. The text seemed to stare up at him, a grim reminder of Addison and all his dreams, his vows to do something to change all those harsh realities.
Zeke thrust the book to one side, having no desire to linger in the study, so thick with memories that seemed to hang like the dust in the air. He wished Mrs. Van Hallsburg would say her piece and be gone. He knew it was going to be about Rory and he wasn’t going to like it.
She paced off a few steps as though seeking just the right words to convey her displeasure. “This was not exactly the reception I had hoped for, John.”
“No? Well, if I had more notice I could have arranged for the Astors to be here. Hell, madam, I have been on the run for my life.”
“Yet you still found time to be seeking your pleasure with that young female that you assured me meant nothing to you.” Her lips pinched in a taut line. “Even my brother, Stephen, never fouled his own house by taking his harlots there.”
“Rory is no harlot. I owe her my life. If not for her risking everything to get me away in one of her balloons, I would be stretched out in the morgue beside Addison.”
“The balloon? So that’s how you managed it. I had wondered.” A fleeting smile touched her lips, but it never altered the hardness in her eyes. “I suppose that gives me reason to be grateful to your little circus girl myself. So buy her something pretty, John. Then send her on her way.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that. I plan to marry her.”
Zeke would have wagered that nothing was capable of shocking Mrs. Van Hallsburg, but she paled, gripping the back of his desk chair.
