Her Defiant Heart (41 page)

"No, no," Liam said quickly. "Nothing of the sort."

"Then I should see Stephen for a reference."

Liam shook his head, rolling one tip of his mustache between his thumb and forefinger. "His father. But I don't have Mr. Bennington's information for him yet. If you talk to him now, he won't be able to give you a good estimate of my ability."

"That's all right. I suppose I can trust that he wouldn't have hired you if he hadn't made inquiries of his own."

"True enough," Liam said. "He was satisfied."

Christian nodded. "I just don't know," he said, pretending to vacillate. "I am convinced the job I have in mind for you is of a delicate nature." He lowered his voice to a confidential tenor. "I believe the woman I am currently seeing is having an affair with another man," he said. He recalled how Mrs. Brandywine had spun a similar tale from the personal ads. He did the same. "A married man. If it's so, naturally I would decide against offering marriage. I'd want you to watch her... see where she goes, whom she meets. Have you ever done any work of that sort before?"

"Except for the mark being a woman, it's the same thing I'm doing for Mr. Bennington."

"Then you're following a man," he said. "A business associate?"

"An employee."

Christian took an inspired stab at the man's identity. "The butler?" O'Shea did not have to answer. His face gave him away. "You're following Mr. Reilly?"

"But how—"

"Joe knows him," Christian said, hoping his driver would support him.

As if on cue, Joe glanced over his shoulder and nodded.

"I heard Joe call out to him."

Liam wondered how he had missed that exchange. It probably happened while he was concentrating on the hack Reilly arrived in. "I see. I don't suppose it matters that you know," he said, shaking off his discomfort. "I did not really tell you."

"No, you didn't. And I'm sure that if I had talked to William he would have confided the nature of your job to me." Not likely. "Don't give it another thought. If you worked for me, I believe I could depend on your discretion. But tell me, I am very interested in how you work. Does Mr. Reilly knows you are following him?"

Liam glanced at Joe's back. "If Joe knows the man I really shouldn't—"

"Don't worry about me, Liam," Joe said, turning his head. "I ain't likely to say anything. Don't know him all that well or like him any better." Above Liam's head Joe winked at Christian, joining the conspiracy.

Liam's hesitation was brief. He was eager to convince Christian Marshall that he could handle another assignment. His chest expanded as he sat up a bit straighter. "No, Reilly doesn't suspect anything. He couldn't. I've been very careful. That's my nature when it comes to matters like these."

Not careful enough, Christian thought. Reilly had changed cabs three times. The man knew something. "What is it that you're trying to find out?"

"I'm not certain," Liam admitted reluctantly. "Mr. Bennington's secretive. I suspect it has something to do with thefts. That's what these cases usually are. The owners believe someone in their employ is stealing from them, but they don't want to lose a valuable retainer if they're wrong. Situations like that are better handled without a lot of fuss." He pointed to himself. "That's why Bennington hired me. I'm supposed to document the butler's movements. Find out where he goes, whom he sees. Exactly what you have in mind."

Christian ignored Liam's prompting. "And have you? Documented his movements, I mean? Really, this is fascinating," he said. "Today, for instance, where did he go?"

Liam cleared his throat, and his eyes darted left and right. "Can't tell you that," he said finally. "Wouldn't be right, would it, what with me not having the chance to tell Mr. Bennington first."

Christian relaxed. It seemed clear that O'Shea was putting him off because he did not have the answer. Apparently the copper had lost sight of his man. It was a relief. Jenny was not implicated in whatever the butler was doing. Or was it the butler who was not yet implicated in whatever scheme Jenny was plotting? The truth of it was, everything concerning Jenny Holland was a puzzle that made Christian's head ache. Except for the fact that there was no liquor in his house—a matter easily remedied—Christian could not think of one reason why he shouldn't open a bottle of whiskey when he arrived home.

"You're right, of course," said Christian. "You can't tell me. But if it's a matter of theft, as you suspect, then it's likely the man is meeting someone who would help him get rid of the stolen items."

"Certainly." Liam was standing on firm ground again. "We call them fences."

"Yes, I've heard of that." But Reilly was not carrying anything when he went to Jenny's room. And the butler had given Jenny money, not the other way around. Something did not fit. There was no surprise in that. "It sounds as though you have an interesting case. Do you know, there may be an article in it for the paper. Not now, of course, not while you're working on it—and we certainly wouldn't use any real names—but it could have story potential."

"I don't know about that," Liam said uneasily. "The commissioner frowns on his men picking up extra work."

"Then the city should pay them better," Christian said. "Let me think about it. I won't talk to my city editor without speaking to you first." Christian threw back the blanket as Joe brought the carriage to a stop in front of Marshall House. "Joe can take you wherever you want to go," he said, jumping to the sidewalk. "It's been a pleasure talking to you, O'Shea."

Liam tugged on his mustache, frowning. "What about the personal matter you mentioned to me?"

"I am still undecided. Frankly, I am not certain she is worth all the trouble. If she wants this other man, then perhaps I should let her have him."

"But I thought you didn't really know if she was seeing the other fellow. Isn't that what you wanted me to find out?"

Christian leaned against the carriage and crooked his finger, getting Liam to bend his head closer. "Just between us, O'Shea, I know. I've always known. The question is how badly do I want to catch them at it? Then there's the other man's family. I am not certain they deserve the scandal this would cause."

"That's considerate of you."

Christian thought so, too. Since he was creating the story he felt he could afford to be magnanimous. He pushed away from the carriage, raising his hand and waving Joe off. "I'll remind Mrs. Morrisey and Mary Margaret about the crullers," he called. Christian turned away, bowing his head and hunching his shoulders against the wind. He started up the sidewalk to the house, limping noticeably because his leg was stiff. "Sweet Jesus, Jenny Holland, what have you gotten yourself involved in?" His words were carried away so quickly that he wasn't sure he had spoken his thought aloud.

* * *

Jenny unfolded the paper that had arrived at the same time as her evening meal. The first thing she noticed was that it was the
Chronicle.
She had asked for the
Times.
The second thing she noticed was the date. March 9,1867. She stared at it for a long moment, unaware of her drawn-out sigh. Eight weeks had passed since she'd left Christian Marshall. Eight interminably long weeks. How much longer would it be before she would stop marking time by her aloneness? Jenny cautioned herself that it had to end. Lately she had been making herself sick over it. Without looking in a mirror she knew she was losing weight. The gowns that Reilly had packed and sent to her didn't fit the same way they had even a few weeks ago.

Jenny picked at her dinner while she read the paper. Once she scraped off the sauce she found the whitefish to be palatable. The asparagus was tough and stringy, but the rice was buttered and seasoned exactly to her liking. She ate all of the rice, left the asparagus, and forced down half the fish because she remembered breakfast had not stayed down and she hadn't ordered any lunch.

Nothing in the
Chronicle
caught Jenny's interest. She read the front page perfunctorily but did not go to the inner pages to follow up on the stories. The obituaries received a cursory glance. The editorial page had no contributions from Christian, so Jenny passed it over. She didn't care what anyone else had to say. The society pages were filled with accounts of the latest dinner gala at Delmonico's. Everything from the menu to the guest list was printed. Jenny glanced over the latter. William and Stephen had been there. So had Christian.

She refolded the paper and tossed it on the opposite chair with an annoyed flourish. It was probably too much to hope that they had choked on their littleneck clams or spilled a magnum of Moet et Chandon all over their hostess. That at least would have been interesting.

When the young waiter from the hotel dining room came to collect Jenny's tray, she found herself engaging him in conversation just because she was eager to hear a voice other than her own. When she realized how she was prattling on and how he was misinterpreting her interest, she showed him the door.

Jenny realized the managers of the St. Mark did not know quite what to make of her. Since Reilly's visit nearly eight weeks ago there had been no gentlemen callers. None. The night clerk had stopped hinting about his hush money once he understood that no guests meant that Mrs. C. Smith was not a prostitute. There were those on staff who thought she was ill; others thought she was merely peculiar. They all agreed she was a recluse.

Except for an occasional evening stroll, Jenny rarely left her suite. The St. Mark offered family-style dining, which meant guests were seated twenty or even thirty to a table. It would have been difficult
not
to become acquainted with at least a few of the five hundred people staying in the hotel. Jenny avoided the elegant dining room for just that reason. She also avoided the lobby, reading rooms, and parlors. Any time of the day one could find loungers in those areas, but just before the dinner hour they held such a crush of registered guests and visitors that it was inevitable that some of the crowd would spill out onto Broadway.

From the windows in her second-floor suite Jenny would often watch the throng until it disappeared, accommodated at last by the splendor that was the St. Mark. As lonely as she sometimes was, Jenny still never experienced the least desire to be part of that crowd. The astonishing press of people made her uncomfortable.

Jenny traveled the length of her sitting room several times, going from the door to the large bowed windows by a number of different routes. Sometimes she went to the right of the chaise, other times to the left. She would stop in front of the unlighted fireplace and rest her shoulder against the mantel, studiously avoiding her reflection in the gilt-framed mirror above it while she fidgeted with her hair. She would pause in front of one of the registers that brought the centrally heated air to her suite and warm her perpetually cold hands and feet. She fingered the fringed drapes with one hand while the other pressed a skeletal imprint onto the frosted windowpanes.

She moved slowly, without purpose or deliberation, wandering rather than pacing. Jenny thought she could fool herself into believing she wasn't agitated. It didn't work. For all the peace of mind she had, she might as well have been frantically tracing and retracing her steps until the carpet was worn shiny.

The evening was cold, but Jenny made no allowance for it as she stepped onto the balcony from her bedroom. She breathed deeply, welcoming the chill that filled her lungs and cleared her head. Resting one hip against the iron railing, her arms folded under her breasts, Jenny looked directly across the lamp lighted street. Her bedroom balcony doors did not open onto Broadway, so she was not looking past the heavily trafficked thoroughfare. Her view wasn't distracted by the steady promenade of fashionably dressed women and their formally attired escorts on their way to the theater. Flakes of snow glittered in the gaslight, not jewels. Around the corner from where she stood there was no end to the parade of carriages, horsecars, coaches, and sleighs. If it had not been for the bells, the occasional crack of a whip, and the rise and fall of laughter, Jenny might well have forgotten how close she was to the heart of the city.

Half as wide as Broadway, the street Jenny faced was silent in contrast. It was not deserted, just serene. Drivers quieted their horses. People did not laugh as loudly. Jenny was oblivious to the calm that enveloped the street. As she stared at the building opposite her, she felt and heard the steady thrumming of her heart to the exclusion of everything else.

The First Hancock Savings and Trust was a large, imposing brownstone built some twenty years before the St. Mark Hotel. The actual banking institution went back nearly forty years before that. It was a highly respected house of finance, counting a dozen of the richest families in New York among the depositors and investors. Under the direction of the Van Dyke family it had never failed, never even faltered. In sixty years there had never been a hint that the trust was anything but sound. There were rumors alleging something to the contrary now. Jenny knew that because she had started them.

The rumors were not without foundation. Jenny was not so vindictive that she would have set the stage for a panic without sound evidence. She had heard and overheard more than enough conversations between her stepfather and his son to know that the bank was skirting the edge of complete ruin. William had approved a number of large loans during the war that were never going to be repaid. By themselves those loans could not have toppled Hancock Trust, but when they were followed by William Bennington's poor investments, made in haste to recover the anticipated losses, the situation had altered dramatically. In addition, William and his son were taking depositors and interest funds directly from the bank and making personal investments in real estate, anticipating the steady northward move of the city would drive up prices. There was a very good chance that they might achieve the individual wealth they craved and believed was their due, but it was coming at the expense of thousands of the small depositors.