The Only Gold (25 page)

Jonah cast him a puzzled glance. “Why on earth are you bringing that up?”

Reid grinned. “Bank business. You’ll have less of a falsehood to tell the Muncys.”

“A lie is a lie,” Jonah said. “But… thank you.” He bent to kiss Reid, who pulled him down to the bed with clear interest in pursuing something more. Breathless, Jonah pushed him away before temptation kept him another hour. “Let me go before the Muncys call a police hunt. I’ll have a time explaining myself, as it stands.”

An unmistakable gleam shone in Reid’s eyes. “Does it stand?” he whispered, as he brought a hand to rest on the object in question.

Jonah immediately shook his head. “No. Don’t—”

“Ten minutes.” Reid’s grip firmed and not even the thickest broadcloth could mute that pleasure. Jonah caught desperate hold of his wrist.

“I can’t. You know I can’t.”

“Five minutes,” Reid whispered. He nuzzled the skin above Jonah’s collar, teasing with lips and tongue, and Jonah lost all will to stop him.

“Damn you.”

Reid laughed, and smothered him with another kiss. Five minutes stretched into thirty, and it was half past when Jonah reached the street corner and stood another ten in a sharp wind until he was able to hail a cab. Arriving home to a quiet house, he assumed everyone was in bed, until a door creaked on his passage upstairs and Liliane peeked out. At the sight of him, relief flooded her face. “You are all right?”

Jonah found it difficult to hold her gaze. “I… was meeting with Mr. Hylliard.” He tried to smile as if the evening had been regrettably long. “I didn’t think to send a note. I hope no one has worried.”

Liliane glanced back into her room, then slipped out into the hall and closed the door. She was smiling as she turned to him. “I think you and Monsieur Hylliard have become friends, yes?”

Her curiosity made him uneasy. “It seems we have.”

“Yes, and so I do not worry. But Edith thought you might be away again and Lansy hasn’t made a fire. Stay with Bertie, and I will go down to Winnie’s tonight—”

“I won’t put you out of your room just because I’ve come in late. I’ll be all right.”

She shook her head impatiently. “You will catch pneumonia. Give me your brick.”

Jonah turned it over to her and stayed to talk while the low flames in the grate heated the clay. But the brick proved a poor substitute for the arms that had warmed him earlier in the evening. Huddled in the middle of his bed, assiduously avoiding the cold edges, he realized it wasn’t just the physical warmth he missed. Learning to decode Reid’s blithe verbosity and his tendency to make a joke of just about every subject, to understand the man beneath the blue striped tie, had become an irresistible prospect. He had seen Reid’s serious side often enough, had collided with it to an extent that he hadn’t wanted to study it further. Now even the qualities that had vexed him sparked a measure of appeal. Reid Hylliard could be the most exasperating man in all creation, but lying alone in the dark, Jonah missed him. He lay awake for some time, wondering if Reid missed him too.

The
next afternoon, he fell asleep at his desk and would have missed the directors’ meeting if Reid had not come by for him. At supper, he broached the matter immediately. “I can stay no later than nine.”

“Stay the night.” Reid appeared disinclined to suppress a grin. “You’ll sleep better.”

“No doubt I would,” Jonah said in all seriousness. “But I’m not sure my reputation—or yours—can stand much more of this.”

“Don’t blame me. I was good as gold today.”

“I don’t believe smiling at me for no apparent reason during the directors’ meeting can be counted as good, but I will credit you with more restraint than usual.”

“You don’t ordinarily look so flushed and sleepy—and guilty—at work. Credit me with not laughing out loud.”

Jonah cast him a dark look over the wine bottle. “Nine. No later.”

That respectable hour eluded them, and Jonah scrambled for a cab at quarter past eleven, shivering in the night air and wishing he’d never left. His loneliness was not assuaged by arriving home to a slumbering household, no matter that it allowed him to pass upstairs, unquestioned.

The curiosity of Reid’s neighbors had already been awakened, and Jonah knew it wouldn’t be long before quizzical glances led to whispers that, en masse, would become full-fledged rumors.

But it was beyond bearing, the thought of giving up his evenings with Reid. Each day was a distraction in itself, and he wandered through them, disbelieving that the world could be so fresh and vibrant after being so ordinary for thirty-three years. If he felt things he would be wiser not to feel, there seemed no way to stop it. Where he and Reid might safely meet to keep rumors in check was another issue he could not resolve. Even the lowliest hotel was not without its risk.

With the arrival of Saturday and the likelihood he would stay the night, he knew the danger had grown too great. Even the kindly Greens studied him with puzzled eyes whenever he met them on the stairs.

In a cab on the way to the rooming house, Jonah finally broached the subject, and Reid, to his amazement, burst out laughing. “I’ve been wondering when you’d bring that up.”

“Then you’ve been as worried.”

“I’d be a fool not to be,” Reid said, with a distracted glance out the cab window. “Which is why I’ve taken care of it.”

The sudden vision of a sordid sporting house catering to all types made Jonah cringe. He did not care for a second experience in such circumstances. “Just where….”

Reid smiled. “Well, it’s not a back alley, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

The cab rattled to a halt, and he leapt out, pulling Jonah as he went. The Astor House with its stately granite front stood before them, an impenetrable fortress of respectability. Jonah shrank back. “You’re not serious. We can’t—”

He turned to the cab, but Reid caught him and, paying the driver, let the cab go. Before Jonah could protest, Reid held aloft a key. “I’ve taken a room until I find new lodgings.”

“Here? But the cost—”

“Worth it.” Reid smiled. “I’ll go up first. Follow me when you’re ready.”

Marveling
at his composure, Jonah waited a long minute before venturing into the lobby. It was the venerable atmosphere he expected, all marble, old oak, and fresh hothouse flowers. Telling himself it only felt as though every pair of eyes was upon him, he crept past several couples and a man who might well be a hotel detective, and finally reached the lift. The fourth floor was blessedly deserted. Finding Reid’s door, he was about to try the knob when he realized it would look better to knock. He’d barely tapped at the wood when the door swung wide; Reid grabbed his coat collar and dragged him inside. “Did you take the stairs?”

At his exasperation, Jonah smiled. “I can’t have been more than five minutes.”

“Six.” Reid kissed him as if it had been weeks instead of hours since they’d last touched. Time rocked to a standstill, giving him just short of forever to linger in the feel of Reid’s lips on his, and an emotion overcame him to which he could not give voice. Not when Reid was keeping such a close study and would think him a fool.

His silence earned him a curious smile. “You all right?”

Jonah nodded, chagrined. “The shade. We’d better close it.”

Reid moved to the window, then stood, caught by something without. Jonah joined him and saw, across the road, St. Paul’s churchyard, white and peaceful in the rays of the setting sun. Jonah wondered at the wry, distant look on Reid’s face.

“Father Francis would not approve. Or did he know?”

“Know….” Reid appeared to waken from his thoughts. “If he did, he never let on. He had a soft heart for wayward souls, because he recognized his own.” Reid drew the shade, and in its shadow, turned to Jonah. “Your family?”

“There’s as little to tell. I was engaged at eighteen—”

“You?”

“Is that so difficult to imagine?”

Reid grinned. “No. Not at all. What happened?”

“It was rather more a convenience. She was the bank president’s daughter. I was a clerk well on my way to advancing. At least, I had hopes. There was one other young clerk. Ames Bromwell.” He could not help smiling at the memory. “I was infatuated. My family discovered it, and they all agreed—”

“All?”

“I have two older brothers and three sisters, two of them younger. They have families in town—”

“They threw you out.”

“They asked me to consider their position.” He met Reid’s troubled gaze. “What else could I do?”

Reid shook his head as if he did not understand it. “Your parents?”

“Both gone by then. Mercifully,” Jonah added softly. He gave Reid a wry look of his own. “I shouldn’t have brought up any of this.”

“What became of Ames?”

“He left town too, I believe.”

“And you haven’t been back home since?”

“It’s better I don’t.”

“But—”

“And better we don’t dwell on it.” Jonah drew him close. “We can’t change the past. I’d much rather consider the present.”

He went searching for the kiss that made the present all there was, and found it when Reid kissed him back. Saturday night slipped away, to Jonah’s mind, much too swiftly; but with Sunday morning came the happy awareness that they had the day at their disposal. As they dressed, Jonah was surprised to learn Reid had not attended church in years.

“I have my own sort of communion these days,” Reid said, “which you will see for yourself….” One boot on and partway buttoned, he jumped suddenly to his feet. “I forgot. I’ve got something for you.”

He plucked his discarded coat from the floor and fished out something wrapped in a handkerchief. Mystified, Jonah took it and realized before he’d drawn back the linen that it was a pocket watch—
his
pocket watch, he discovered, and he looked at Reid in amazement. “You found it.”

“They pawned it. Which I expected they would.”

“You’ve been searching pawnshops?”

“Not alone. I have a few friends in the neighborhood.”

If Reid meant to make light of the accomplishment, Jonah would not let him. “That was such a fine thing to do.” An unexpected ache in his throat prevented him from saying anything more. Reid took the watch, gave it a polish with the handkerchief, and tucked it into Jonah’s waistcoat pocket. Pleased beyond measure to have the familiar weight back in place, Jonah fixed the chain through the buttonhole. “Will you thank your friends on my behalf? Or will I have that opportunity, myself? It’s a little early for visiting, you know.”