Read Somebody Wonderful Online
Authors: Kate Rothwell
Somebody Wonderful (14 page)
“So we won’t tell her, will we?”
Mick was about to leave when he remembered something else.
“Mr. Calverson. About the man with yellow hair, brown eyes. Maybe six two, with a scar on his neck, usually wears dark clothes?”
Calversonebryebrows moved up a whole quarter of an inch. On another man, it would have been an openmouthed gawk. “Again, you impress me. He is the best in his business.”
“Call him off me, aye? I’d never harm your sister. You know that by now.”
Calverson stood. He held out his hand and then surprised the hell out of Mick by saying, “Mr. McCann, I rather wish you liked me as much as I like you.”
Mick shook his hand in a daze. He clapped his helmet onto his head and walked out without looking back.
When Timmy reappeared in his life that night, he held her tight and made feverish love to her. But he no longer thought of her as his own. She might be too earnest and infatuated with him to know they did not fit, but he knew. He had seen her real world and knew she was a princess romping with peasants. Her true home was back in that marble palace of a hotel. Good God almighty, Mick was afraid to even consider what the bloody king was like.
In the middle of the night she nudged him awake.
“Aw sweet, I am too blasted tired,” he moaned.
She was sitting up. He blinked at the pale shape of her face, all he could make out of her in the dark room. Wide awake, she bent over him, and he saw her teeth flash into a brief smile. “Not that, Mick, you filthy-minded beast.” The smile was gone. “I- I just need to ask you. To tell you, actually. Please don’t inform my brother . . . about things. He wormed the story of the kidnapping out of me yesterday morning, and I am afraid he might do something. I so wanted to take care of it myself.”
He pulled her down on top of him and wrapped his arms around her small frame. “Yes, I understand,” he whispered into her hair. “Your brother is a strong-willed man and he cares for you something fierce.”
“He does. Truly.” Her voice sounded thick and Mick wondered if this woman whom he’d never seen shed tears, not even after being kidnapped and nearly raped, was crying. He gently touched her cheek. It was wet—she’d likely been crying for a long while.
“Hush, hush,
a
Timmy,
a chrói
,” he crooned, but she was still talking.
a
Timmy,
a chrói
,” he crooned, but she was still talking.
“Griffin did something already. That’s why you showed up to talk to him. The man is dead.” It wasn’t a question.
“Your brother came right out and said he did not mean for the bastard to die. No one is crying for the villain.”
A small squeak sounded from his arms. “I am. And for Griffin, too, I suppose.”
“Timmy.” He found her mouth and gave her warm kiss. After a few more kisses, it turned out he wasn’t too blasted tired after all.
Afterwards, she settled on her side, tucked to fit perfectly into his arms, and was soon asleep. But he stared into the darkness, contemplating what he would do with himself when the time came for her to leave. He found no answers other than the same old dreary understanding that he would have a great chunk ripped from his soul.
Ah well. He would discover a new meaning of the old saying. “
Go milis an fion, tá é searbh ri dhiol
.” The wine is sweet, the paying bitter.
Go milis an fion, tá é searbh ri dhiol
.” The wine is sweet, the paying bitter.
He woke in the gray dawn and watched her sleep until he heard the clock toll the half hour beforrm d to report to the precinct house. Shaving and breakfast be damned. He wanted to stay for every moment she lit in his life.
He dressed as quickly and quietly as possible. For a long minute before he left, Mick stared down at her high cheekbones, her slender neck, the great cloud of hair pulled carelessly back with a ribbon. If a man wanted to pick the most appealing sight in the world, this would be a likely winner.
With a sigh, he snapped his fingers for Botty and they left while she still slept.
Chapter 14
Another dutiful message from Miss Calverson arrived. And like the others, it told Blenheim nothing. Sir Kenneth sat at his desk reading an article and occasionally burbling on about jawbones and femurs. Blenheim ignored him and reread the stack of telegrams.
The only clear signal Timona gave in her messages was that she had no intention of immediately returning to her father’s retinue.
And Griffin obviously had taken no action or the girl would have changed her tune. She’d be back where she belonged.
Blenheim paced the downstairs of the Minnesota farm house and looked out the window. During the last several years, he’d grown familiar with this vision. In the unusually warm weather, a few dozen men worked in pits, digging between the strings that Sir Kenneth used to measure off possible sites.
Over time, he’d seen different countries, different collections of laborers but they were the same everywhere. Peasants.
These grime-covered men talked to one another, bellowed with laughter, almost all speaking with the broad and atrociously crude accent of the Irish. Oh, for pity’s sake, one of them was dressed in nothing but a grimy breechclout and boots.
Blenheim turned in disgust from the window.
He needed help.
There was the little matter of requiring more money, but Blenheim refused to explore that thought. No need to panic, yet. Mr. Taylor in New York had mentioned he was exploring “possibilities.”
Timona had done worse than not coming to heel fast enough. Not only had she failed in her duty to him and her father, his beloved had shown she had feet of clay, no, mud. From consorting with a man like those workers.
Taylor had sent an outraged message to Blenheim, as if it were somehow Blenheim’s fault.
The harlot, wrote Taylor, was openly living in sin with a man who could barely sign his name.
Timona Calverson, the famous Traveling Sweetheart, was trying as hard as she possibly could to turn her name, and thus her family’s name, into excrement. Taylor would do what he could, but Blenheim had better contact him as soon as possible.
Blenheim planned to eventually forgive his beloved. In the meantime, Griffin was obviously not going to be of any aid in his reclamation of the lost female. So Blenheim would have to use another, more dependable Johnny-on-the-spot.
He’d have a ten-mile ride to the station. But he wasn’t about to trust his messages to anyone else.
“No, I am sorry. I cannot go. I must work.” Of course Mick was anything but sorry. He’d rather face a group of drunken rowdies than a gala ball. Two groups of rowdies. Armed with clubs.
“I’d rather not go myself. There will be a reception and a cartload of dignitaries. Dr. Dennis insists I’m some sort of guest of honor. It’s supposed to raise money for the museum. Otherwise I’d cry off, too,” Timona admitted.
“I’m not crying off,” said Mick with an attempt at dignity. “I shall be at work until eleven o’clock.”
Timona brightened. “Oh, you can come after that, then. Please, please. Mick. You come extricate me. Dr. Dennis swears he will be my escort but I know he will stay until the bitter end. And then I will end up having to stay at the hotel.”
“So you’re saying that unless I get you, you’ll be staying away from home.”
“Home,” she said, and her face grew bright. “Yes, that is just what I’m saying. Away from you.”
He rubbed his chin. “After work. I’ll come to fetch you. I’ll not stay for a moment, Timmy. I have seen those parties from afar and I’d fit there as well as a- a sheep might.”
“I know precisely what you mean.” she said, nodding. “B-a-a.”
“Nonsense, Timmy. You grew up with such a life.”
She shook her head. “I’ve been to formal events. But I haven’t had instruction on how to be a proper young lady.”
He gave a disbelieving sniff.
She ignored it. “My impression is that New York parties are not so plagued with pomp and ceremony, but I still will be glad to leave early.” She handed him a large, gilt-edged invitation that bore his name, written in a gorgeous curling script. The thing smelled like an upper-class whorehouse.
“Here’s your card. You’ll need it to set me free.”
Mick walked his beat that afternoon and evening and when he thought of the ball, a sense of morose amusement filled him. He did not want to be reminded of her real life so soon again. He enjoyed pretending she belonged with him.
The entrance to the pale mansion was well lit and well guarded. The warm night meant the guests lingered near doors and on the patio and balconies of the place. Bare arms and necks glittered with jewels. Large feathers in elaborate coiffures. Men in white tie and tails. Jeroboams of champagne, a full orchestra at the back of the cavernous room. He’d had glimpses of this scene before. Mick had gotten an extra couple of dollars working a few gala events.
At least he didn’t recognize the men hauled in to guard the doors. They were pulled from the Broadway division, the tall, good-looking officers hired with an eye to impress the public.
He pulled off his helmet and tucked it under his arm. Christ, hadn’t he just lived through this? The Fifth Avenue Hotel all over again. This time, however, he had a ticket allowing him to temporarily enter the forbidden kingdom of the rich.
The room was crowded, but he spotted Timmy almost at once. The largest circle of men and women surrounded her. They talked animatedly to one another, but glanced at her, the colorful and illustrious Miss Calverson, as if she were their touchstone.
For a long moment, he simply watched and admired her. Her dark hair was piled high, flowers artfully arranged in the curls. The gown shimmered on her shapely body, with the barest wisps of sleeves cleverly designed to cover the red mark of her still-healing shoulder injury.
Her clothing was no surpriss ghough she had not shown him this gorgeous overdone dress before, he’d easily imagined her dressed as royalty. But the look on her face gave him pause, a haunted look that reminded him of the first days after he had met her.
Skittish, that was how she seemed. She smiled, nodded, answered questions, but anyone could see she was preoccupied. He could, at any rate.
And then she caught sight of him. Her expression changed so completely into delight that he wondered that the people around her didn’t notice. Perhaps they did, for a few in her circle looked over at him as he gently shoved his way through the crowd, murmuring apologies. She might have shouted his name, her message was so clear to him.
Don’t grab at her, he warned himself.
He reached the group that contained Timmy. To get through, he laid a hand on a gentleman’s shoulder. The man gave him a scared, startled look, then scuttled backward to let Mick into the circle.
For lack of knowing what he was supposed to do, he sketched a rough bow to Timona. She showed a graceful treat of a curtsy in return. As if she’d been practicing the move for years. She probably had been, come to that.
“Will you excuse me, Dr. Dennis?” she said to the white haired gentleman at her side. “I am afraid I am expected elsewhere.”
The man merely harumphed and plucked at his disheveled beard with his fingers. He didn’t look remotely surprised. Well, so Timmy had told this man about her policeman companion.
Getting away took some doing.
“No, I am not under arrest,” Timona said again and again, always with a laugh, as they made their slow way towards the door.
Mick wondered if he’d imagined that look of discomfort on Timona’s face. She seemed perfectly able to talk with these people. To him, the women decked out in jewels and elaborate gowns and the men in their black-and-white getups all might have been speaking a foreign language.
They didn’t even smell like regular people. Their breath was sweet or laden with sweet wine or brandy, rather than raw whiskey or bad ale or rotting teeth. Even the hint of their perspiration was neither rank nor stale. They’d bathed recently, not just splashed in a shallow pan of cold water.
Mick knew people’s sweat often stank of what they ate. He could tell no one in this lot consumed garlic or cabbage in the quantities like most of the crowds he’d barged through.
He stood, attending Timmy, fidgeting with the leather strap of his helmet, waiting an interminable age, while people touched Timmy and kissed or shook her gloved hand—or, even worse—insisted on shaking his hand. The worst were the people who asked for introductions to the officer. Mick must have mumbled a “how-do-ye-do” several hundred times.
But oh, it was worth every mildly embarrassing moment when he followed her out of the stuffy room into the cool night air. She peeled off one of her long white gloves, he yanked off his own glove, so their skin could touch.
Astonishing that he could walk off hand-in-hand with this vision of beauty and no one would yell at him to take his squalid self away.
“Let’s not take a cab,” Timmy pleaded.
“ ’Tis fifteen blocks back to my flat.”
“But the night feels so soft and wonderful.”
He smiled. “It does at that.”
Timmy’s long and elaborate lace train dragged on the dirty sidewalk. She could not gather it up properly without exposing her legs.
Mick had the idea of using his badge. He squatted behind her and pinned up as much of the gossamer lace and the underdress of silk as he could.
She giggled and said, “Do I look very silly?”
He tilted back his head to examine her. The flickering gas-light caught the shimmer of her dress, the curve of her long neck and turned her gold. Hardly mattered to him what she wore. The haphazard bundle he’d created below her bustled backside looked nice, actually, something like a waterfall. “Nah. Could be the start of a new fashion, I’d say.”
He stood up.
As he took her hand again, he blurted, “You don’t enjoy that kind of thing much, do you. You weren’t just saying it to . . . to make me feel better.”
She squeezed his hand. “I haven’t lied to you, Mick. Ever,” she said cheerfully.
“No,” he said at last. “I see that.”
It hurt his heart to understand how open she was to him.
So maybe he didn’t want to fool himself about her place in his world, after all.
Ah well. If he did need to be reminded, it was easy enough to give himself a jolt back to reality. He only had to pull up that picture of Griffin sitting in that hotel room.
She looped her arm through his. “You have tomorrow off?”
“Aye.”
“Come play with me. I want to take a few pictures of you.”
“Timona. You like to take pictures of buildings and I am not a building.”
“It won’t take long, I promise. And you have said you wanted to see my equipment.”
Determined to shake his strange despondency, he gave a playful growl. “And what made you think I was speaking of photographic equipment?”
She laughed. “You undress for me and I’ll show you any kind of equipment you want.”
He stopped dead and frowned at her. “Undress? Unless you’re speaking of undressing for your eyes only, it’s a no, Timmy.”
Mick glared from the dais built into the studio Timmy borrowed. He folded his arms across his chest. “I’m telling you, not the trousers, woman. And I’m not showing the world my chest, neither.”
Timmy hummed as she checked the glass plate holder. Getting a picture of his back was more than she’d hoped for. She looked up and smiled. “Fine. Would you like to take a look through my camera? I have the ground glass in now.”
Mick hauled on his sleeveless undershirt and jumped off the stage. She showed him the bellows and the lens and how the shutter opened up with a pull of the string.
She lovingly touched the mahogany frame of the camera. “This Scoville weighs only twenty pounds. My last one was heavier. Oh, but my best new purchases are the dry-gelatin plates. My assistant, Mr. Kendall, and I always have had to work with so much equipment. We even have a special wagon to carry it all. Because you see, with the wet sort of plate, any time I wanted to use the camera I had to prepare the film before and after right away and . . .”
She clamped her lips together. She could almost hear Mr. Blenheim’s mild reprimand. She was doing it again; talking too much about her picture taking.
Mick g a her a nudge. “Go on, then. What’s different about the film now?”
She shook her head. “Photography is dull stuff.”
He clamped his hand on her arm and gave a tiny shake. “Nonsense, Timmy. I want to hear. You know I like your pictures. They steal my breath away, they’re so wonderful.”
She knew she was a good photographer but still, her chest throbbed with delight at his words. She felt as if she’d just won a prize. “Do you really think I’m good?”
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