From This Moment (12 page)

“How did you learn about this A.G. person?” Romulus asked when he sat back in his desk chair.

She told him how she and Gwendolyn had exchanged long, chatty letters at least twice a week. Gwendolyn’s letters initially had been full of sisterly gossip, such as the new almond oil tonic she used to make her hair shiny or the inexplicable way her landlady managed to burn soup. But then Gwendolyn noticed money flowing under the table at City Hall. It was illegal, and she had reported it to the one and only man she could trust.

“And that was when the tone of her letters changed,” Stella said, relieved that Romulus had completely dropped his breezy manner and now listened with solemn concern. “Gwendolyn’s letters became obsessed with this man. She described him as though he were a hero out of a storybook. He was a courageous man who wanted to expose all the entrenched corruption to the sunlight. He had a utopian vision for America, and Boston would be his test case. He wanted Gwendolyn to help him.”

A muscle in Romulus’s jaw tightened. “He recruited a lone woman to venture into a den of vice to do his investigating for him?”

“Gwendolyn didn’t see it that way. She had always been idealistic, and she wanted to help. I know if I can only find this man, he’ll provide insight into what happened to her. Gwendolyn said that she first met him at one of the subway meetings because of his position in the city, but he wasn’t a formal member of the commission. Do you know who he might be?”

Romulus frowned. “There must be thousands of men with those initials in Boston.”

“If you can get me that list of city employees, I’d be eternally grateful.”

“It’s happening as we speak. I’ve also gotten you an appointment with the medical examiner on Thursday morning.”

“You did?”

“I did. Meet me here and I’ll walk you over.”

Relief eased through her like a cool breeze on parched skin. It was strange how quickly she was coming to trust and rely on Romulus, but there was far more to him than it first appeared. His debonair exterior hid a keenly intelligent mind that was highly attractive.

“You’re a miracle worker,” she breathed as she stood and prepared to leave.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Romulus asked.

She glanced around the office. Her canvas tote was clutched in her arms, and she’d brought nothing else. She looked at him in confusion.

“An illustration, perhaps?”

Understanding dawned. “Your manure advertisements. Yes, I suppose I owe you that.”

“And if you tire of manure, in the coming months our maga
zine will be running articles about the medicinal properties of orchids and the moons of Jupiter. Both would be more interesting than fertilizer, if you can be persuaded to join our staff.”

It was tempting. Now that she had lost her job, what else did she have to do with her days? It would be so easy to slip back into the familiar, exhilarating world of art and leave the grief of the past behind.

Dwelling on the prospect was dangerous. The more she gave of herself to art, the more Gwendolyn’s memory would slip away. She would not permit her life to begin again until Gwendolyn’s death had been solved, but already Romulus was interfering with that. She’d been attracted to him from the instant she’d seen him lounging so elegantly in the auditorium at the subway meeting, and now . . .

Well, now it was even worse. After teasing and insulting her, he made her laugh, solved her problems, and then dangled the job of a lifetime before her. All while looking devastatingly handsome in a flawless suit with a shantung silk vest.

And he’d taken notice of her, too. The spark of energy humming between them each time they were together was getting harder to ignore. She ought to resist him, but instinct took over.

His eyes flared as she closed the distance between them, placed her hands on his chest, and kissed his cheek. He even smelled divine, like piney soap and the crisp scent of starched linen.

“Thank you, but no,” she whispered.

He hadn’t moved a muscle, but his gaze flicked over to study her through lowered lids. “Careful, Miss West.”

She could feel his heart pounding beneath the silk vest, but still he hadn’t moved.

“I’m never careful,” she replied as she turned and left the office.

7

F
rom the fourth floor, Romulus had a bird’s-eye view of the activity on Tremont as the groundbreaking for the next leg of the subway got underway. Wooden barricades had been erected along the walkways, and stakes with bits of colored fabric marked underground gas lines, water pipes, and sewage drains. Men hefted and swung pickaxes to dislodge the paving stones, while a few yards behind them came another team to pry up the broken stones and hoist them into the wagons to be carted away.

The city had opted for the “cut and cover” method of building a subway, which was faster and safer than tunneling beneath the streets, but it was loud, dusty, and disruptive. Each ten-block portion of street took workers two months to blast, dig the trench, erect the braces, pour the concrete tunnel, and then cover it all over and move farther down the street to repeat the process. Until the subway was complete, they’d be subjected to this awful racket.

The street swarmed with men, mostly the laborers known as sandhogs, whose job it would be to dig up and haul away the soil. Clyde Brixton stood on the corner, talking to a burly Ital
ian man in charge of the sandhogs. Even from here, Romulus could see Clyde’s shoulders heave with laughter as he clapped the sandhog foreman on the shoulder. They went to examine a set of blueprints on a sawhorse. It was impossible to see what was on those complicated plans from here, but Romulus was certain Clyde could recite it all from memory.

It was moments like these when his old insecurities came roaring to life. Clyde was brilliant, while Romulus had always been completely unemployable. Except for the fluke of launching the magazine, he would have no way to capitalize on his assortment of arcane knowledge. If this magazine ever went under, he would be broke and jobless, and it would be blatantly obvious he was nothing but an imposter. A man good at faking success, but with no real skills. Clyde had always been a far better man than he.

Evelyn still didn’t know Clyde was back in Boston. After the incident four years ago when the squabble over ownership of the magazine had landed them all in court, Romulus had declared himself a neutral party. He would no longer carry messages, negotiate ceasefires, or take sides. He was determined to maintain both friendships, even if Clyde and Evelyn couldn’t be in the same room without fireworks.

The office door opened behind him, and Evelyn’s voice was bright with excitement. “They’ve finally broken ground!” she said.

The enthusiasm on Evelyn’s face dissolved his gloomy thoughts. While most people loathed the disruption caused by the coming of the subway, Evelyn was dazzled by it. If the world were fair, Evelyn would have gone to college and studied engineering like her father. How ironic that her father, the general in command of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, had refused his daughter the opportunity to follow in his own
footsteps. Romulus had always wondered if Evelyn’s immediate attraction to Clyde had been based on Clyde’s respect for her frustrated ambitions. While most couples courted through formal dances or moonlit walks, Clyde and Evelyn’s courtship took place while wiring a greenhouse for electricity, and they thought it the most romantic thing imaginable.

Romulus nodded as Evelyn joined him at the window. “I hear Park Street is entirely jammed with wagons loaded down with timber for the tunnel braces. It’s going to be a mess.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “It’s an exciting mess, and I’m going to love watching every stage of it. Someday every large city in America will have a subway, but we are the first to take the leap.” Her voice was a little breathless and trembling.

“Are you getting misty-eyed over the groundbreaking?” he teased.

She blushed but didn’t deny it. “I think it’s splendid, and I can’t help being proud that I’m part of a city that is undertaking such a project. It’s a huge risk, and yes, sometimes I get a little emotional over such things.”

They weren’t the only ones intrigued by the groundbreaking. Across the street, almost every window had curious spectators watching the action get underway. Evelyn still hadn’t recognized Clyde, whose wide-brimmed canvas hat was pulled low to protect his eyes from the sun as he hunkered down over a set of plans unrolled on the ground.

Romulus could tell the moment she spotted Clyde. Her entire body stiffened, and she flinched.

“Is that . . . ?” Her voice trailed off, for just then Clyde stood and began sauntering to the other side of the street in his distinctive, rolling gait. It was impossible to mistake that long-legged, loose stride, and Evelyn’s entire body recoiled. “What is
he
doing here?”

Romulus turned away from the window to sit at his desk. He dragged the calendar showing his day’s appointments before him. “It looks as if he is gainfully employed at a job he is highly qualified for.”

“He promised he would stay away from Boston,” Evelyn bit out. “He
promised
.”

“Yes, he did. And so did you, ten years ago while standing before an altar. I was in the front row and saw it in person.”

She turned to glare at him, her normally ivory skin blotchy with patches of red. “You have no idea,” she said in a voice vibrating with tension.

“You’re right, and I don’t
want
to know. I’ve spent the past six years trying to keep myself out of the line of fire. Clyde is here, and he is likely to be in Boston until the first leg of the subway opens in the fall.”

Evelyn stormed out of his office before he could finish the sentence, slamming the door loudly enough to rattle the window glass.

Evelyn took the stairs down rather than letting herself be trapped in the confined space of the elevator. She wanted to run and scream and hit things. As it was, she locked the emotions down and limited herself to calmly descending three flights of stairs, the click of her boots echoing in the stairwell.

She’d always been so weak where Clyde Brixton was concerned. After the series of cold, unfriendly homes of Evelyn’s childhood, the immediate friendship that had formed between herself and Clyde had been a blessing. She was only eighteen and Clyde was a senior at West Point when he came to her house to help her design a hydraulic pump. She’d been entirely self-taught from studying old engineering texts in the library,
but she had been desperate to prove to her father that she had what it took to go to college. She and Clyde had fallen in love while fixing a hydraulic pump for her greenhouse, and then they went on to tinker with designing a dry-cell battery and an electric generator as well.

She pushed through the heavy front doors and stepped out onto Tremont Street, coughing at the lungful of dust she inhaled. She clasped a handkerchief over her nose, scanning the crowds to see if it was really Clyde or if her imagination had run away with her.

The clank of pickaxes mingled with thuds of broken pavement tossed into wagon beds. She angled through the crowds on the sidewalk and headed to the hotel next door. Clyde’s makeshift table was set up between two sawhorses, and from her position behind a column, she had a perfect view of his back as he leaned over a blueprint.

How naïve she had been to think he would honor his promise not to return to Boston. When she’d heard that the contract for building New York’s subway had fallen through, she should have suspected he would turn up here within the week.

Was it possible to feel the weight of a gaze? Clyde had his back to her, but she saw the muscles in his back stiffen, and his pencil froze. He stood and turned around, spotting her beside the column.

A flash of regret darkened his face, but after a moment, he gave her a reluctant, lopsided smile. She’d always been such a fool over that smile.

He set down his pencil and headed her way. It would be childish to run, even though they had nothing to say to each other. The document they’d signed four years ago had finalized their legal and financial situation for all time.

“Hello, Evelyn,” he said softly. He swept off his battered hat
and ran a hand through his dark blond hair. His face was dusty, streaked with sweat, and his eyes looked impossibly blue against his tanned skin. She’d always loved the sight of a man who was strong and capable of building things. She looked away.

“Clyde,” she said with an infinitesimal nod.

“Did Romulus tell you I was here?”

Her eyes widened. “He knew?” Wasn’t that just perfect? The only man she trusted in the whole world knew about this and hadn’t bothered to tell her.

“Don’t hold it against him. He swore four years ago he was finished being an emissary between us.”

She was surrounded by a hundred workmen and dozens of pedestrians, but they faded into the distance, making it feel as if she and Clyde were the only two people in the world, pinned together in this awful silence stretching between them.

“How are you?” he finally asked.

“Fine. The damage was confined to my uterus.”