To Dream Again (16 page)

She hadn't had any choice, she reminded herself. As Nathaniel had pointed out, she'd had nothing to lose by making that wager with him, but she'd had something to gain. Consoled by that thought, Mara rolled onto her side and closed her eyes, trying to force herself to fall asleep.

Two cats meowed and hissed, indicating a fight. Boot heels tapped the pavement of the street, floating down the alley and through her open window, and she knew the local policeman was strolling past. Another sound, a new and unexpected one, pierced the night, and Mara sat up in bed. What was that?

She listened, and the sound came again, then another, then another—the musical notes of a violin. It had to be him.

She tossed back the sheet and walked to the window. Thrusting her head through the opening, she looked up. Sure enough, the sounds of a melody drifted down to her. The man was actually playing the violin. She pulled back and fumbled for her pendant watch that lay on the washstand. She held it up to the moonlight and groaned. It was after two o'clock.

Mara would have closed the window, but the room would become unbearably stuffy if she did. She walked back over to the bed and crawled between the sheets, waiting with growing irritation for the music to stop. But it continued on, a soft and delicate melody.

Why, why, was he playing that thing at this hour? She groaned again and pulled the sheet over her head. It didn't help. She would never be able to go to sleep now. Once again she tossed back the sheet.

Rising from the bed, she slipped into her wrapper, unlocked her door, and marched upstairs, one hand on the stair rail guiding her through the darkness. She halted in front of his door and knocked. The music stopped, and she quickly thrust her hands into the pockets of her wrap to hide them as she waited for the door to open.

When it did, Mara opened her mouth to tell him exactly what she thought of his prowess with the violin, but the words stuck in her throat. Light spilled from the doorway over his bare shoulders and gave his skin the tawny smoothness of polished leather. He was wearing nothing but a pair of trousers. She stared straight into the solid wall of his naked chest and couldn't think of a thing to say.

What on earth was the matter with her? She was no innocent miss. She'd been a married woman. She'd lived in places where men went around nearly naked. Reminding herself of those facts, she forced her gaze to his face.

“Mara? What is it?"

His voice intruded on her wayward thoughts and succeeded in renewing her irritation. "Mr. Chase, it is two o'clock in the morning," she informed him with a sigh. Nodding to the instrument and bow in his hands, she asked, "Do you have to play that thing at this hour?"

"I couldn't sleep," he answered. "Playing music relaxes me."

"They have nerve tonics for that sort of thing, don't they?"

"I don't know how to play a nerve tonic," he answered, a smile tipping the corners of his mouth.

Mara was not amused. "Now I can't sleep either, thanks to you."

"Mara, music is the oldest sedative of all. It is a natural nerve tonic, and Brahms's
Lullaby
is particularly soothing. It would lull you to sleep, if you would stop fretting enough to allow it."

"I doubt that."

He didn't reply but just smiled at her. With another sigh, she turned away and went back downstairs. She should have known better than to waste her time. When she reached her room, she could once again hear the strains of a melody floating down from upstairs.

She scowled at the ceiling. He really was the most impossible person. She tossed aside her wrapper and crawled back into bed, knowing it was futile to bother. He would keep her up all night, and that was all there was to it. Natural nerve tonic, indeed. She rolled over on her side, plumped up her pillow, and once again reminded herself the man was mad as a hatter.

She closed her eyes. Still resenting him for keeping her awake, Mara drifted off to sleep to the poignant notes of Brahms's
Lullaby
.

When Mara left her flat the next morning, she found Nathaniel coming down the stairs from his own rooms, and she had to resist the temptation to scurry back inside and wait for him to pass by.

"Good morning," he said, pausing on the landing beside her. "Did you sleep well?"

Mara frowned up at him. "Is that question supposed to be amusing?"

His blue eyes told her he thought so. "'Music has charms to soothe a savage beast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak,'" he quoted. "William Congreve. Didn't you find Brahms soothing?"

She would have died rather than admit she'd actually fallen asleep to the languid melody floating through her window. "Not at two o'clock in the morning," she answered as she locked her door.

He laughed, not the least bit perturbed by her disapproval. "Do you mind if we walk together?"

Mara did mind, but she could think of no polite way to say so. Day or night, she couldn't seem to get away from him. She gave a brief nod, thrust her latchkey in her pocket, and continued on down the stairs. He followed, falling in step beside her as they walked out of the lodging house.

"I think—" he began.

She groaned and came to a halt on the stoop. Turning to face him, she held up one hand. "Please, don't. Don't think. Your thinking has the unfortunate tendency to wreak havoc in my life."

"I think it shall rain today." He looked down at her innocently, but she thought she detected a tiny smile lurking at the corners of his mouth. Praying for patience, she moved to start down the front steps, but she found the kitten in her path.

"You again?" Mara urged the kitten to move aside with a gentle nudge of her boot. The kitten meowed, but it didn't hiss at her. It also didn't move out of the way. She stepped around it. "Do you really think it'll rain today?" she asked Nathaniel with an anxious glance at the sky.

Her query received no answer, and she turned back around to find Nathaniel kneeling on the steps, talking to the kitten. He held out one hand, and the kitten backed away from him, hissing.

"Careful," Mara cautioned him. "It'll scratch you."

"Perhaps," he conceded, but moved his hand a bit closer. "Hullo, little one," he murmured to the cat. "Cautious, aren't you?"

The kitten backed up, tail in the air, and hissed again. Nathaniel rose to his feet and joined Mara on the sidewalk. "Poor thing. It has a cut on its ear. It's probably been in a fight."

"It lives in the alley behind the factory, I think. I see it almost every day."

They had taken only a few steps when Nathaniel glanced back over his shoulder. "He's following us."

"What?" Mara saw the kitten was indeed following them, keeping a cautious distance. It meowed at her, and she halted.

Nathaniel leaned closer to her. "I think he likes you."

"Don't be ridiculous. It's an alley cat, not a pet." She waved a hand at the cat. "Shoo. Go on."

The kitten sat back on its haunches and stared at her.

"He's awfully young," Nathaniel said. "Maybe he thinks you're Mama."

She shot him a rueful glance and once again resumed walking. The kitten continued to follow. When they reached the factory, the cat tried to follow them inside, but Mara quickly closed the door.

"Let him in," Nathaniel urged. "He won't hurt anything."

"And have it underfoot, in everybody's way?" She shook her head. "No, leave it outside."

"It could be useful, having a cat in here. I saw a mouse the other day."

She stared at him. "I've never seen a mouse in this building."

He shrugged. "I saw one upstairs. It makes sense to have a cat around. Besides, the poor thing is starving. Put yourself in his place. Wouldn't it be frightening to be a baby cat in a savage world of alley toms without your mama there to protect you? Think of what the little fellow's had to endure. He's probably lonely and frightened and needs a friend."

He was teasing her again. Mara sighed and opened the door to find the kitten sitting there. "Oh, all right," she mumbled. "Come on in." She opened the door a bit wider and the kitten scampered inside.

"It'll just be in the way," she told Nathaniel, watching the animal pounce on a scrap of paper that lay on the floor.

"True."

"If anybody tries to pet it, it'll scratch."

"True."

She looked at him, then back at the kitten, and sighed. "I'll purchase some milk later," she said and walked away, wondering why on earth she should care that a hissing alley cat might be lonely.

***

That evening, Nathaniel went to the little cubbyhole Mara called an office to walk her home. She was seated at her desk, papers and ledgers in neat stacks all around her.

"Are you ready to go?"

She shook her head and held up one hand, running the pencil in her other hand down the column of numbers before her as he leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb and waited. "Thirty-eight, forty-seven, fifty-seven, sixty-two pounds," she counted and wrote the final number in her ledger. "I still have about an hour's worth of work to do," she said.

"Started gathering information from subcontractors, have you?"

She nodded. "I intend to be thorough."

"I never doubted it for a second." He came into the room and took the chair opposite her desk. He watched her for a moment as she added up another column of figures. When she'd written the total at the bottom of the page, he said, "Would you like me to teach you how to use that abacus? It truly would make what you're doing easier."

She glanced at the abacus that lay on one corner of her desk, lifted it in her hands to study it for a moment, then looked over at him again. "Yes, I would. If—" She hesitated. "If you wouldn't mind?"

"If I minded, I wouldn't have offered." He stood and circled her desk, dragging his chair with him so that he could sit beside her. He reached for the abacus and placed it flat on the desk, with the rods strung with beads in a vertical position like the bars of a prison cell.

"Notice how this crossbar divides the top part from the bottom?" When she nodded, he went on, "There are nine rods, and each rod is strung with seven beads, two in the top section, five in the bottom. The Chinese call the top half heaven and the bottom half earth."

She gave him a skeptical look. "Heaven and earth?"

"The Chinese are a very poetic people." He began pushing beads around until all the beads in heaven were flush with the top of the frame and the beads in earth were flush with the bottom. "The first thing you have to do is set the beads so that your abacus is at zero, like this."

She leaned a bit closer to study the abacus, and her shoulder brushed his. He could smell the lilac fragrance of her hair, and he savored it, like the warmth of a spring day after a long, lonely winter. He turned his head to look at her as she studied the abacus. The profile of her face was somehow both sharp and delicate, her parted lips soft above her stubborn chin, her ivory skin smooth over the plane of her cheek. Involuntarily, he leaned even closer to her.

"Does each bead represent a different number?"

Her question penetrated his mind slowly, and he swallowed hard, fighting to clear his senses of the scent of lilacs and the warmth that radiated from her body so close to his.

"No," he answered, forcing his attention back to the matter at hand. "The beads in heaven are worth five, and the beads in earth are worth one. Each rod represents the position of a multiple of ten, with the first column on the right being ones, the second column tens, the third column hundreds, and so on." He reached toward the rod of beads on the far right and pushed one bead down from the top and one bead up from the bottom until both hit the crossbar. "Five and one. That means the number six. If I do the same thing in the next row as well, then I have sixty-six. Do you see?"

She nodded. "That's seems simple enough. But how do I add a column of numbers together?"

"We have sixty-six here. If I want to add, say, thirteen to that number, I add three to the first column by pushing up three more beads, and I push up one bead in the second column to represent ten. I now have the sum of seventy-nine."

"This is simple!" she exclaimed, surprised. "Let me try it."

"All right." He gave her two numbers to add, and she immediately ran into difficulties.

"I have to carry the number to the next column. How do I do that?"

He showed her how to carry over, and within minutes she was adding numbers well into the thousands. "I can't believe how easy this is."

She sat back in her chair and looked over at him. "Can I subtract?"

He nodded. "You can also multiply and divide, although that's a bit more complicated."

"Show me."

He did, and an hour later she was totaling numbers in her ledger twice as fast as she would have done with her pencil, easily dividing them into pounds, shillings, and pence.

He sat back and watched her, smiling. She worked so hard, and she took everything so seriously. He would have to teach his partner that work, while important, wasn't everything.