Her Defiant Heart (46 page)

"No commissioners in your pockets?" she asked. "No politicians?"

Christian looked down at himself. "No pockets."

Jenny laughed, raised his hand to her lips, and kissed his knuckles. "I realize you are eager to help, Christian, but until I have proof, there is no story. Print what I am telling you without proof and the courts will see that Mr. Bennington owns your paper."

"Perhaps," he said. "Perhaps not. Innuendo could do a lot of damage to Bennington.
The
Herald
wields a lot of power that way. There may be a way to present the story without giving Bennington the opportunity to file a libel suit."

"No," she said firmly. "That's not the way I want to do it. And that's not the reputation the
Chronicle
has. Or the
Times.
Even the
Herald
wouldn't take this story. If Mr. Bennington had committed a social peccadillo, that would be different. But this is more than being caught in a compromising position at Amalie Chatham's. This involves the trust's reputation as a financial institution and the safety of thousands of depositors' money. I want proof, Christian. I want this to go from the papers to the courts, and I want so much proof that my—that Mr. Bennington cannot buy his way clear of the evidence."

"How do you propose we get it?"

"We? You are really going to help me?"

Christian sighed. "Of course I am."

"Even after what you've heard?"

"Especially after what I've heard."

Jenny released Christian's hand and moved away from him, dragging the sheet with her. She crooked a finger, indicating he should follow as she put her legs over the side of the bed.

"Where are we going?" he asked, hitching a blanket around his waist. "And am I dressed appropriately?"

She laughed. "Quite appropriately. Come. I want to show you my darkroom." Jenny paused long enough in the parlor to shed the sheet and slip into her satin wrapper. Christian kept his blanket.

He whistled softly when Jenny opened the door to the spare bedroom. "This is something," he said appreciatively. He leaned against the doorjamb and surveyed the room while Jenny lit a lamp. In the corner to his left was a tripod, about five feet high. Another was set up near the window with a brassbound camera already attached to it. The black blanket a photographer had to wear over his head when he took his picture was lying on the floor beside the tripod. The nightstand to the left of the bed was crowded with bottles of chemicals, a couple of glass funnels, and a discarded lens. There was also another camera, this one a double-extension model with long, tapered leather bellows for an extended range of focusing movements.

The bedroom was Jenny's studio as well as her darkroom. Christian was doubly impressed when he saw where she was developing her pictures. Jenny had removed the mattress from the four-poster. It sagged against one wall. The bed's pale yellow canopy lay over it. The four-poster now supported what looked to be an old army tent, or rather two old army tents sewn together.

Christian pushed away from the door and went right to the bed. He lifted the flap at the foot and peered inside, then motioned Jenny to bring the lamp closer. He took it from her and stepped over the bed frame to get inside the darkroom.

Jenny had set a table against the headboard. On it were trays for the chemical baths. Parallel to the table, but several feet above it, hung a yellow pane of glass. Christian pointed to it. "Is that how you filter the light when you're working?" he asked.

"Yes. I can set a dimly lit lamp on it and don't have to worry that my pictures will be exposed. It gives me enough light to see by, but doesn't destroy the photographs."

He nodded. He had something similar in his darkroom. "When did you become interested in photography?" he asked, hunkering down in front of the table. He found a stack of albumen-treated paper, a case of lenses, and a hatbox partially filled with pictures she had already developed. He raised the hatbox. "May I?"

"Certainly, but you'll be able to see them better if we go in the parlor. There's more light there."

Christian agreed. Jenny sat in the large overstuffed armchair, her feet curled under her, while Christian sat on the floor and leaned back against the chair. Jenny's tapered nails lightly scratched his neck while he bent his head over the photographs. "Tell me how you come to know so much about photography," he said.

Jenny was hoping he would forget that he had ever asked. Here were dangerous waters. "I read some things," she said. That was true.

"Oh? What?"

"The Silver Sunbeam
for one. It's a technical manual."

"I'm familiar with it." He was making piles of the photographs, sorting them according to clarity. "What else?"

"Let Moniteur de la Photographie. Tijdschrift voor Photographie."
She pronounced the titles of both journals with careless ease.

"Those are periodicals, Jenny."

"Yes."

"They are foreign periodicals. The first one is French. And if I'm not mistaken, the second is Dutch. You read both those languages?"

Jenny was furious with herself. She'd let her guard down because he'd asked the questions so casually, as if he were only making small talk to fill a void. Christian's focus seemed to be elsewhere, more on the pictures than on her. "I did not actually read them myself," she said. "Mr. Bennington's cook is French. The housekeeper is Dutch. You would be surprised how many people are interested in photography these days."

Christian's murmured reply was strictly noncommittal. He would have been very interested to hear about a cook and housekeeper who could afford to have foreign periodicals posted to them in New York when so many English journals were available. Jenny was spinning another tale. Rather than pin her to the wall with it, Christian simply filed it away. "The equipment you accumulated did not come cheaply," he said. "Where did you get the money?"

She wasn't going to let herself be trapped again. "I think you already know the answer to that. You read the personal columns."

"Watch Ruby R. Sterling," he said.

"Yes."

"So Reilly
is
stealing from Bennington."

"Just some items that won't be missed. I'm fairly certain of that. I wouldn't have asked Mr. Reilly to risk being found out on my behalf."

Christian finished sorting. He set the hatbox aside, picked up the first pile of photographs, and flicked through them. "What is Reilly to you?" he asked.

"A friend."

"That's all?"

Jenny tugged on the end of Christian's hair. She could hardly believe what she was hearing. It was difficult to take his question seriously. "Are you suggesting there is something more between us?"

"It occurred to me. I was just around the corner in the hallway when he met you here. You told him he was still a fine figure of a man. He gave you money. You said—and I quote—'As long as you can give me this, you're welcome to anything I have.'"

"Goodness, Christian. I cannot even recall the conversation, and you are repeating it back to me, I assume, verbatim. You must have been disturbed by it."

"Disturbed?" He put down the pictures in his hand and picked up another set of prints. "That's a rather mild way of putting it. I contemplated murder."

"Mine?"

He shook his head. "Hardly. No, I thought about killing
him.
"

Jenny leaned forward and kissed the crown of Christian's head. "Mr. Reilly is a dear, dear friend. He is the one person I knew from my other life that I thought I could trust. As far as I know I was right. He has kept my secret. We correspond by mail now, though infrequently. I'm still concerned that Liam might find me through Mr. Reilly."

"Do not worry about O'Shea. He is occupied with another case."

"How do you know?"

"I hired him."

"You did? To do what?"

"To keep William Bennington from ever finding you." He turned his head and slanted Jenny a boyish grin. "Liam O'Shea's services do not come cheaply, but since he's the only copper I have on my payroll, I can afford to make certain he stays loyal to me."

Chapter 13

Jenny couldn't think of anything to say for several moments. As she sat in silence, withdrawing from Christian, his grin faded. He put the pictures aside and stood up.

"It's not the end of the world," he told her. "O'Shea's a trustworthy man in his own fashion."

"If his loyalty can be bought, a man is not trustworthy. What if Mr. Bennington offers him more money?"

"Why should he?" asked Christian. "William doesn't know that O'Shea is leaving details out of his report on Reilly. Specifically, O'Shea is not telling Bennington about the post office box that your friend rented or about the occasional letter he receives there. I do not think you realize how quickly Bennington could have put Mr. Reilly under his thumb with that information."

"Mr. Reilly would not have betrayed me."

Christian laughed shortly, without humor. "After your experiences with the Benningtons, I don't know that you can afford to be naive. Anyone can be forced to talk, Jenny. Anyone, that is, who values his own life. If William Bennington found a way to have a perfectly sane woman drugged and committed to Jennings, don't you think he could manage to get an address from Reilly?"

"If that's true, then why hasn't he done it already?"

"I thought that was obvious. He is not yet certain that Reilly can truly lead him to you. He does not want to raise suspicions with false accusations, but if he had evidence from O'Shea that Reilly was communicating with you, then in very short order, he would find you."

Jenny adjusted her position as Christian rested his hip on the rounded arm of her chair. "Does Mr. O'Shea know where I am?"

"No. He's being paid by me
not
to know—or learn—certain things. I think he believes I am after Bennington in connection with a story for the paper. That was less true when I hired Liam, but now that I know what you want to do, his theory may turn out to have a grain of truth." Christian put his arm across Jenny's shoulder and nudged her so that her head fell against him. His fingers played in her hair. "Am I forgiven?"

"I suppose."

"That lacks certain feeling."

"Oh, Christian, you know I forgive you. It is just that I thought I had planned better. I didn't know I needed protection."

"It is not as if I put a guard on you."

"I know." Discouraged, she sighed. "I thought I was being careful, you see, and now I realize that I am neither cautious nor clever. I have been here for two months, and I still don't have the evidence I need. It is lowering to realize that I require protection
and
answers. I do not like this sense of dependency."

"That has been made very clear to me today." Above her he was smiling, but when she glanced up to gauge his sincerity, he managed an appropriately grave expression. "Tell me about your photographs. What is it that you want them to capture?"

"Besides details of the hideous ornamentation on that brownstone, you mean?"

He chuckled. "Yes. I am assuming your interest in Hancock Trust is not strictly architectural."

"It's not." Jenny slid off the chair and onto the floor. She picked up the last set of photographs Christian had been studying and passed each one back to him after she had looked at it. "This one's not too bad. See? That's my—er—that's Mr. Bennington behind his desk."

"It is? William or Stephen?"

"Why, it's William."

"You're sure?"

Jenny took back the picture and tossed it into the hatbox. "If you cannot tell, then it's no good." She looked at the next one. "Here. You can see the safe. It's open. That is a newspaper Mr. Bennington has spread across his desk."

"It looks like a blotter. Where's William?"

"He's bending in front of the safe."

"He is?"

Jenny took back that picture as well. "Look at this one. What do you see?"

"Someone... Stephen, I think... sitting on the edge of his father's desk. That's William behind the desk. What are they doing? Playing cards?"

"Christian!" Jenny's shoulders slumped. "Can you not see that it's money they're handling? It is spread all over the desk. And that is a newspaper under it. They fold up the paper with the money inside and Stephen walks out with it. William spends the next twenty minutes or so going over the account books to make certain it all tallies."