Escapade (9781301744510) (19 page)

"You are no brother of mine!" The woman spoke
at last, her voice charged with loathing.

Only the flicker of an eyelid betrayed that
her harsh words had any effect on Zeke. "So you have always told
me, Tessa, on many occasions." He continued with deliberate
emphasis. "This is my sister, Theresa Marceone."

He tipped his chin to that pugnacious angle,
as though challenging her to contradict him again. When she did
nothing but compress her lips, he turned to Rory. "And your
friend?"

It took Rory an instant to realize that he
was inquiring after Tony.

“This is Tony. Tony Bertelli."

"Ah, the long-lost balloon assistant."

It was as well Zeke didn't offer his hand,
for Tony would never have taken it. Rory held her breath as the two
men sized each other up, the hostility overt at least on Tony's
part. She had thought that Tony had grown to be such a man of late.
But standing in Zeke's shadow, he appeared no more than a sulky
boy, and Rory sensed that Tony was miserably aware of that
fact.

"Well, Mr. Bertelli, I missed some of what
you were saying outside." Zeke's pleasantness was deceptive, never
reaching as far as his eyes. "Perhaps you'd like to explain again
why you have brought Tessa to call upon Rory."

"If I had known you would be here," Tessa
spat out "I wouldn't have come."

"I have no doubt of that. But forgive me,
Tessa. I was addressing Mr. Bertelli."

Tony washed a dull red, but he thrust his
hands in his pockets, adopting that belligerent stance Rory knew
too well. "I don't like Rory going out with strangers. I told her
I'd do some checking. My brother Angelo has this friend who—.”

"Oh, please, Tony." Rory gave a weary sigh.
"Not that bit with the second cousin again."

"Anyhow," Tony continued doggedly, "I was
lucky enough to track down Miss Marceone here, ask her some
questions. I told her I had this friend who was getting involved
with this Morrison fellow. She was nice enough to come with me to
see Rory. To-" Tony faltered, looking a little uncomfortable
beneath Zeke's hard stare.

"To warn her?" Zeke filled in softly.

Rory tried to intervene. "This is all very
melodramatic and quite silly."

"Perhaps not, my dear," Zeke said, shifting
his attention back to his sister. "What about it, Tessa? You've
come a long way. Aren't you going to speak your piece? Don't hold
back on my account."

"I don't intend to," she said.

"Good for you. I'll say this much for you.
You never were a backbiter. You always were willing to abuse me
quite freely to my face."

Tessa ignored him, turning instead to Rory.
Peering from beneath the layers of that black shawl, the woman made
Rory think of a strange play Da had once taken her to see,
something about the old days in Greece. A group of women had acted
like a chorus chanting dire predictions. Theresa Marceone reminded
Rory of just such a harbinger of doom as she gestured toward
Zeke.

"Miss Kavanaugh, you don't want to have
anything to do with my broth— with this person here who calls
himself Zeke Morrison. He's a bad man."

Rory opened her mouth, then closed it. What
on earth was one supposed to reply to such a statement? She didn't
want to insult the woman, nor did she wish to listen to Tessa's
venomous remarks about Zeke either. Rory cast an appealing glance
toward him, seeking some sort of guidance on how to handle this
extraordinary situation. But Zeke appeared to have retreated behind
a wall of detachment as though none of these proceedings concerned
him.

Tony tugged at her elbow, urging in a low
voice, "You listen to Miss Marceone, Rory. She ought to know. She
can tell you everything."

Tessa nodded in grim agreement. "My mother
took that man off the streets when he was seven years old. She used
to call him Johnnie, raised him up like her own son. He repaid her
with nothing but heartaches. In and out of trouble until he had to
flee New York. He finally returned, a rich man, though God alone
knows how."

Tessa paused to cross herself. "That was when
he finally broke my mother's heart, turned his back on her."

"That is not true," Zeke interrupted. "I
would have given that woman heaven and earth."

"Mama didn't want heaven and earth." Tessa
whipped about to face Zeke, her eyes burning. "All she ever wanted
was some small sign of love from you, just once to hear you call
her 'mother.' All your lousy money and you couldn't even give her
that."

Zeke's detachment crumbled. He paled, looking
as though he had just taken a kick in the gut.

"You killed Mama with worrying over you,"
Tessa shrilled. "And then you didn't even come to see her
buried."

Rory waited for Zeke's words of denial, but
none were forthcoming. He lowered his eyes.

Tessa flushed, saying to Rory with a kind of
angry triumph, "So you beware of loving him, Miss Kavanaugh. He has
no heart. He'll destroy all your dreams just as he ran roughshod
over mine. I was engaged to be married until he drove my poor Marco
away. Flashing his money around, he bullied and bribed Marco,
forced him to desert me."

"I never meant to hurt you, Tessa," Zeke
said. "I was only trying to protect you."

"By making certain that I stayed an old maid
forever?” Her lips trembled, her eyes filling with tears. "For the
rest of my life, I will be alone."

“Tessa, for the love of God!" Zeke stepped
away from the mantel and tried to rest his hands on her shoulders.
"There is no reason that has to be true."

She struck his hands away. "Don't touch me. I
told you once I'd never forgive you and I meant it. You ruined my
life. You ruin everything you touch." Her tears spilled over,
streaking her cheeks. "There now, I have said all I mean to
say."

Backing away from Zeke, she wrenched open the
door to the flat and raced out into the corridor.

"Tessa!" Zeke rushed forward, and Rory
thought he meant to run out as well, But he pulled up short on the
threshold and snapped at Tony, "Don't just stand there gawking. Go
after her."

"Damned if I will! I'm not leaving you here
alone with Rory."

"You brought my sister here and you are
bloody well going to see that she gets home safely. I would myself
but-"

"But she doesn't want a thing to do with
you," Tony said with a vicious satisfaction.

"Oh, shut up, Tony," Rory cried. "Zeke is
right. Get going."

"Rory!" Tony looked completely betrayed but
Rory was beyond caring.

"I said, get out of here! You've caused
enough trouble for one evening."

Hurt and anger warred in Tony's eyes. "Right!
Well, you don't have to worry. I won't be causing you trouble
anymore."

Whipping about, he left, deliberately shoving
against Zeke as he rushed out of the flat, slamming the door behind
him. But Zeke didn't even seem notice. He hurried to the windows
that fronted the street and parted the curtain, peering out
anxiously.

Rory joined him. In the pool of light cast by
the street lamp, she could see Tony handing up Theresa Marceone
into a wagon. Angelo was in the driver's seat and must have been
waiting all this time. Apparently he was in on this too. At this
moment, Rory would have given much to have boxed both their ears,
Tony's and Angelo's.

Zeke let out a deep breath of relief as the
wagon clattered off down the street. "Thank goodness for that or I
would have had to take Tessa home myself, by force if necessary.
And the devil knows she already has enough grudges against me."

Zeke let the curtain fall back in place, his
shoulders sagging. Rory thought she had never seen any man look so
drained. Her Da had told her once that words often inflicted more
damage than fists. She'd never believed him until now.

Zeke appeared to have taken a worse battering
from the confrontation with his sister than the one with the two
street toughs. They had only roughed him up, bruised his jaw. It
had taken Tessa to bring that look of utter misery into his eyes.
Zeke had made little effort to defend himself, just letting her
hammer away at him as though he deserved it.

Rory rested one hand on Zeke's arm. "You
don't have to worry about your sister. For all his temper, I know
Tony will make sure she gets home."

"I'm certain he will." Zeke did not attempt
to pull away, but he didn't respond to her touch either. "You never
told me I had a rival, another suitor in the offing."

"He's not a suitor. He's just Tony."

"I see." And Zeke did appear to understand,
for he added wryly, "Poor fellow."

He walked slowly back to the armchair and
gathered up the coat he had discarded before. A rush of alarm shot
through Rory as he moved toward the door.

"What are you doing?"

He spared her a weary glance. "I was going to
save you the trouble of asking me to leave."

"Why would I do a thing like that?" She
rushed across the room. Although she did not do anything so
dramatic as flatten herself against the door, she did get between
Zeke and his exit.

"Come now, Rory. You're a sensible girl. And
Tessa has seen to it that you have been most thoroughly
warned."

"As if I would believe anything she had to
say without giving you a chance to defend yourself.”

“I can't. All that she said was basically
true."

Was it? Rory wasn't so sure. Perhaps it was
enough that Zeke believed it to be. No matter how bitterly Tessa
accused, no one condemned Zeke any more than he did himself. Rory
could read it in his eyes, a sentence of eternal damnation.

"I still don't want you to go," she said.

"Forgive me, Aurora Rose, but I fear I am in
no mood to take up where we left off when we were interrupted."

His dry reference to that passionate moment
on her sofa caused Rory to blush hotly. "I never expected you to.”
She faltered. How could she explain to him what she hardly
understood herself? That she just couldn't let him leave this way,
in a far worse case than when she had brought him home.

"It's a long way across town. You look so
tired. I would offer to let you use my Da's bed, but I already gave
it away to Tony's grandpa. But you could spend the night on my
sofa. It's quite comfortable, and I am sure everything will seem so
much better in the morning."

As his brows arched upward in surprise, she
blurted out, "I can't bear the thought of you going back to that
great empty house of yours."

"It's not empty. I have twenty-three
servants." Despite the irony of his reply, his lips curved into the
semblance of a smile. His eyes softened with something akin to
gratitude. Retreating, he dropped his coat back on the chair.

Rory had actually tucked a blanket around
him, Zeke thought with some bemusement as he lay flat on his back
on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling. And she had pressed a kiss
to his forehead before turning down the lamps and retreating to her
own bedroom at the back of the flat.

Now the parlor was lost in shadow and
silence, only the moonlight providing patches of illumination, the
only sound an occasional clatter of coach wheels from the street
below. The darkness and the quiet oppressed Zeke. He wished he had
been more responsive to Rory's kindness. She probably thought him
damned ungrateful, which was far from the case.

No matter how great his misery, he only had
to think of her and he found himself able to smile. She was a bit
of a hoyden, his Rory, taking crazy risks up in the sky and on the
streets of New York. Imagine walking alone through that warehouse
district after dark. Still, she had fairly brained that one ruffian
who had attacked him.

Yet for all her toughness, she had her more
womanly side. He remembered the gentleness of her hands as she had
pulled the blanket more snugly about him, softly bidding him good
night. He could picture Rory as a mother, raising a rowdy brood of
kids.

Oh, she would be quick to deal a smart slap
to sticky fingers caught raiding the cookie jar, or to box the ears
of squabbling siblings. But he could also imagine her mending
scraped knees, brushing back tousled hair, bestowing fiercely
tender kisses to soothe away childish woes.

He'd made a mistake when he believed all her
nonsense about not being the marrying kind. That's exactly what she
was. She ought to be wed to someone like that Tony. For all the
trouble he had caused Zeke, dragging Tessa here tonight, Zeke could
tell Tony was a nice boy, an honest one with Rory's best interests
at heart. It was painfully obvious the kid was crazy in love with
Rory and half-mad with jealousy.

As for Zeke Morrison, once known as Johnnie
Marceone- he was nothing but a selfish bastard. Thinking back to
that moment earlier on the sofa with Rory now only filled him with
self-loathing. Ever since meeting Rory, he hadn't given much
consideration to anything but his own desires.

Tessa had been right to come here and warn
Rory. Exactly as she had said after her own simplistic fashion—he
was a bad man.

Zeke tossed restlessly, nearly dislodging the
blanket Rory had tucked so carefully about him. He had to bend his
knees, the sofa not quite matching him in length, but he had slept
in far worse places. It wouldn't have mattered if he had been
ensconced upon the world's downiest feather bed. No matter how
exhausted he was, he knew he would get no sleep tonight.

It had been a shock seeing Tessa again. A
year had gone by since he'd seen her last and she still looked
ready to spit in his eye. Time had done nothing to dull her tongue.
Sharp as ever, she could be more cutting than any blade that had
ever nicked him in a street fight.

Maybe that was as it should be. Sadie
Marceone had always been too gentle, never rebuking Zeke half
enough. Perhaps it was good that she had always had Tessa to do it
for her.