A Most Unusual Match (6 page)

T
he clinking of glasses and the scrape of cutlery against china stilled. Once again all gazes fastened onto Thea, including the sideways flash of sympathy from a waiter removing her plate. “If you prefer honesty,” she returned, picking her way through a mine shaft of volatile responses, “I'd have to say I agree with Mrs. Gorman about God's view of gambling. I can't quote a precise verse of scripture. On the other hand, I do recall a verse where Jesus instructs His disciples to ‘
Judge not, that ye not be judged
.'”

“Told you she was one of those reformers.”

“Shh!” someone hissed, then added, “Let her be. Noose is already around her neck….”

“Jesus ate with sinners, didn't He?” A greyhound-thin woman sitting opposite Thea leaned over the table. “You think you're being Jesus, Miss Pickford, surrounded by so many evil people? Got to warn us about our wicked ways?”

“That's enough!” Edgar Fane half rose. “Miss Pickford is
my
guest.”

Thea shivered a little at the possessive tone but managed a reassuring smile. “It's all right, Mr. Fane. Truly. I'm not offended. I've attended many dinner parties where
the conversations broke every social rule in the book, and frankly, found them stimulating.”

Mr. Fane sank back down into his chair. “Stimulating?” He shook his head, laughed. “You're…quite the lady, aren't you?” His hand came down over hers and briefly squeezed.

Quick as a terrified mouse who just realized the tickly feeling was a tom cat's whiskers, Thea whipped her hand away and thrust it out of sight beneath the table. For a moment the room shifted off balance…or was she tipping sideways?

For some reason an image of Devlin Stone popped into her head, auburn-tipped brown hair windblown over his forehead, lake-colored eyes intent as he washed her hands with a gentleness she'd never experienced from a man. “I was reared to be a lady,” she murmured. “As for faith, I haven't talked much about God or Jesus with anyone lately. I haven't made up my mind what to think, until now.” She lifted a stubborn chin and faced them all. “Now I see that most people, whether they call themselves Christian or heathen, are quick to judge, and slow to understand opposing viewpoints. I have compelling personal reasons that govern my views on gambling, but I ask forgiveness for any offense I caused in stating them.”

“Dessert, miss?” the waiter's voice inquired at her elbow.

Startled, Thea glanced up. His face was expressionless, but admiration briefly lit his eyes. “Thank you,” she said. The icy ball in her stomach thawed as the rest of the waitstaff efficiently drew attention away from her.

Another lady made some remark about the superb quality of the meal and queried if anyone planned to attend the concert at Convention Hall the following night. Some
one else across from her responded, and the atmosphere smoothed into gaiety once more.

Later, while coffee was being served, Edgar Fane leaned over to Thea, his voice pitched so only she could hear. “I have obligations for the rest of the week, but I must see you again. Will you join me for a private dinner, next Tuesday night? Just the two of us this time?”

Another eddy of dizziness warned Thea to stall; she ignored it. She had survived an evening with Edgar Fane and his friends, so the worst of the attacks must be under control. “I'd be honored—as long as you fetch me yourself, and leave Mr. Simpson to whatever other duties he performs for you.”

“Ah. Humor, principles and pride. Miss Pickford, I just might come to find you irresistible.”

Panic leaped through her like a sword flashing in moonlight. “Then beware, Mr. Fane,” she retorted, and tossed her head. “At the moment, I am not inclined to reciprocate.”

 

Devlin loved rainy days. He could think better, more clearly, on days when rain drummed on the roof and splattered on the earth.

Or at least he could until Miss Pickford-Lang erupted into his life. Something about the elusive lady didn't fit, either her dogged pursuit of Edgar Fane, or the secrecy and lies. All clear markers of malfeasance, yet Devlin was ready to stake his reputation on her innocence. Restless, he prowled the two-bedroom suite he'd rented in the Cottage Wing of the United States Hotel, alternatively casting glances through the windows at the rain and the writing table covered with documents, reports and reams of information he'd been analyzing for—he tugged out his pocket watch—for six tedious hours.

Dev wearily plowed a hand through his hair.
I could resign, turn the Hotel Hustler case over to somebody else.
Despite pouring heart, soul and a significant stash of his own money into this case, Operative Stone had precious little to show for his efforts.

The fleeting impulse to quit trampled him like stampeding hooves. Dev rolled his head to relax the knotted muscles in his neck and shoulders.

“You're such a sap,” he muttered aloud. Then, jaw set, he picked up the daily report he'd been working on for the last few hours.
“…concluded the female Miss Lang, aka Pickford, in need of closer surveillance, due to unflagging interest in E. F. Will await instructions while maintaining present persona.”

Was it possible to sound more priggish? With a muffled imprecation Dev tossed the weekly report back on the heap of papers, snagged his umbrella from the stand by the door then strode from the room. Back in Virginia he never used the contraptions; here they offered a valuable aid to anonymity.

When he reached the entrance to Congress Park he realized it had been his destination all along—a place to satisfy his hunger for green spaces, for a patch of earth that retained at least a partial resemblance to nature as God created it. Dev paid for his ten-cent ticket, skirted the elaborate Arcade and the few visitors sipping hot coffee in one of the colonnade cafés and headed toward the center of the park. Due to the rain, pathways and lawns were deserted. He might have been tramping across a wooded meadow at StoneHill, except for the blurred outline of the music pavilion with its quaint domed roof. Weather permitting, the band played concerts there every afternoon. Today, happily, weather did not permit. Unable to resist
the novelty of having the space to himself, Dev headed for the ramp over the pond.

Then between the decorative cast-iron posts, he spied a solitary figure seated in one of the band chairs. Disappointment ripped through Devlin. Confound it, was it too much to ask, a half hour of his own, without tripping over some—

The figure turned slightly and he stopped dead, his disbelieving gaze on the profile of the face that had haunted his dreams for weeks now.

Dev set the umbrella aside, a dangerous sense of jubilation coursing through his veins. “Seems I'm not the only one who enjoys a good rain. We seem to have cultivated a habit for unexpected meetings, Miss Lang.”

Slowly she rose to face him. Hatless and gloveless, today she wore a narrow pin-striped shirtwaist and plain navy skirt, which gave her the look of a schoolteacher as opposed to a well-turned-out heiress. “If I'd known in time it was you beneath the umbrella, I would have left before you saw me,” she said.

Not a chance,
Devlin thought, though he nodded agreeably. “I experienced a similar reaction when I realized the gazebo was occupied. Since the rain's picking up anyway, we may as well allow ourselves to enjoy a bit of natural drama, together. Is that what you came out here to do? Enjoy the rain?”

A shawl was draped over the back of her chair; averting her gaze, Miss Lang wrapped it around her shoulders. “I suppose you think I'm even more of a peculiar sort of female than you already did, for seeking an isolated spot outside in the middle of a rainstorm.”

“No more peculiar than a man after the same thing.” He sensed her wariness and arranged a pair of the spindle-backed chairs where he could not only watch Miss Lang
but prevent her from bolting across the ramp. “Mrs. Chudd's warm and dry in her room, I take it?” A wisp of a reciprocal smile fluttered before she nodded. “Good.” He rubbed his palms together. “Then there's no reason we can't make the most of our opportunity to share what we've been up to this past week.”

Between droning raindrops, turgid silence fell until Devlin plowed ahead. “I've only caught a glimpse of you once, outside a tearoom with several other ladies.” And experienced far too much relief, because for the past several days he'd been shadowing Edgar Fane in an exhausting round of shopping, dining, solitary painting expeditions and noisy group excursions to every tourist attraction within ten miles. Not once had Miss Lang been part of his entourage.

“I didn't think you'd care to associate with a woman who makes a public fool of herself,” she finally murmured.

“Oh, I don't know. I've seen a quite a bit of foolery over the years. Perhaps you don't care to associate with a man who's witnessed human behavior at its worst, and too often been unable to correct it?”

“Well, when you put it like that.” Solemn-faced, she sat back down. “Your phrasing is intriguing. You sound like either a preacher or a policeman.”

Fortunately a lifetime around horses and several years as a Secret Service operative had taught him not to betray strong emotion, particularly anger, fear—or surprise. “An intriguing analysis. Well, despite the unpleasant price you paid later, you were pretty entertaining the other day, there by the lake.” He twitched a chair around and straddled it, propping his forearms over the back. “Was it worth being sick in the bushes? Did you receive your invitation?”

“Yes.” A fleeting sideways glance. “Dinner at the
Casino. I was offered, like bait to a bear, to a table full of his acquaintances.”

Rage prickled his careful equanimity. “I'm sorry. Are you all right? Did the vertigo—”

“They made me angry. I didn't have a spell. The anger might have helped, but I've thought about it a lot ever since, and I think there's a more practical solution.”

“And that is?” he asked when she seemed hesitant to continue.

“When you were a child, were you ever afraid of monsters hiding under the bed? And when you finally found the courage to check, you discovered your fear was the product of a too-vivid imagination?”

“So you no longer believe Edgar Fane is a monster.”

“Let's just say I've come to understand that some monsters know how to disguise themselves more discreetly than others. His friends are mostly sycophants. A few tried to be kind. I can hold my own with them.”

“Ah.” This time they watched the rain in companionable silence. “Something's still troubling you,” Dev eventually observed.

“Yes.” Her shoulders lifted in a nervous shrug. “You really are very perceptive. Um…would you mind if I ask you something?” When he hummed a lazy sound of assent Miss Lang cleared her throat, fiddled with the ends of her shawl, then shared softly, “I don't know why, but for some reason it matters that you not think the worst of me. A month ago I didn't know you existed, but now…” She ran her finger over the chair finial, color staining her cheeks.

“Never mind. This is silly. It must be the weather. Rainy days have always made me introspective. But that doesn't mean I should—”

“I feel the same way, about rainy days,” Dev interrupted. Reaching down, he let his hand hover over hers
for a moment, and when she didn't flinch away he gave her restless fingers a reassuring squeeze. “We have more in common than you realize, Miss Lang. Come now, tell me what's troubling you. Today I promise not to bite.”

O
nly a flicker of a smile appeared. “My last name isn't really Lang.” Above the white collar of the shirtwaist her throat muscles stretched taut. “I would prefer to not reveal my surname right now. If you…could you call me Thea? That's my Christian name. I—it's unconventional, but here at Saratoga the unconventional seems to be the accepted standard of behavior. My name is really Theodora, but most times I prefer Thea. Theodora sounds too formal, when the man I'm talking to has…seen me at my worst.”

In the muted, rain-drenched world her brown eyes had darkened to the color of wet pine bark. Automatically Dev registered the subtleties of her body that conveyed truth telling—slightly expanded pupils, crinkly eyes accompanying her shy smile, leaning slightly toward him—even as he filed away the revelation that she was afraid to tell him her last name. “Thea. It suits you. A strong name, and a deep one. Family name?”

“No.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Hmm. Touched one of those chords you don't want to play, did I? No, don't turn all tense on me…Thea. Yeah, that fits, much better than Miss
Pickford, or Miss Lang. To even things up, call me Devlin. My grandmother was Irish. You may have noticed when the sun shines on my hair there's a wee bit o' red? But that's all the Irish heritage I received, besides the name. My grandmother died when I was two so I don't remember anything else about the woman responsible for naming me.”

“Your parents didn't choose your name?”

“They couldn't agree, so they asked her to.” He could hear the curtness in his own voice, but Thea merely nodded her head, that wistful aura hovering around her again, twisting his heartstrings. “What else did you want to ask me about?” he added quickly. Let it be Edgar Fane, or something about the vertigo. Or the weather, for crying out loud. Just—no prying questions where too much honesty might be demanded.

With this woman, he should have known better.

“Have you ever made one mistake,” she said, the words emerging pensive and slow, “and no matter how hard you try to make up for it, the rest of your life crumbles a piece at a time, until you're left with nothing but wreckage?”

For a moment Dev scrambled for solid footing in a mental quicksand. “Everybody makes mistakes,” he finally ventured. “It's the price we pay for being human. Some mistakes have lasting consequences, some pass into oblivion. I try not to dwell on mine more than I can help. I like to think I've done the best I can, to make a good life for myself.” Fine words, from a man who an hour earlier had been halfway ready to hop aboard the first southbound train. “What mistake do you believe has destroyed your life, Thea?”

“Sometimes…being born?” A hollow laugh did little to ease the uncomfortable pall that descended between them. “I beg your pardon, Devlin. My grandfather scolds
me about my propensity to talk before I think about how the words will sound aloud. It must be a family trait.”

He barely heard the last sentence, since she'd mumbled it beneath her breath. “You've had some troubles, haven't you?” He kept his voice gentle. “This fiancé from England. He's a fabrication, right?” She nodded, but when she would have responded Dev shook his head. “It's all right. I've known almost from the first. You have your reasons, same as how you don't feel you can share your real surname. You asked me once if I'd ever been desperate. Are your parents trying to force you into a marriage you don't want? Is that why you came to Saratoga with a false name and a manufactured betrothal in your trunk, to chase after one of the country's wealthiest bachelors without looking…desperate?”

“If only it were that simple.” Shifting on the chair, words abruptly burst forth in a passionate gush. “I'm not chasing Edgar Fane in hopes of a proposal. I despise him. He's a cad, and the only reason I'm ‘chasing' him is because I want to find the evidence to stop him from ruining someone else's life. But nothing I've planned is turning out the way I expected. Nothing. Tuesday night is my last chance—he's leaving next week. One of his lady friends, a Mrs. Gorman, told me. And it's Sunday….” She stared through Devlin as though peering into a lake filled with monsters. “I don't know if I have the courage. I'm afraid I'll have an attack, I'm afraid I'll make a mistake and he'll know I'm a fraud, I'm—” her voice dropped to a broken whisper “—I'm afraid, and I'm ashamed of it. But I have to do this. Have to…” She pressed her lips together until they turned white.

The skin beneath her eyes looked bruised; above the tattoo of rain on the roof Devlin could hear the labored rasp of her breath. Without a qualm he mentally laid aside
badge and credentials, and focused all his skill on coaxing back the woman who had faced down a crowd of bored sophisticates at the Casino.

“Don't be ashamed of fear,” he said, leaning closer until their heads were inches apart. “It's an instinct, designed to protect you. If you're afraid to share a meal alone with Edgar Fane, perhaps you should heed those instincts, and call it off.”

“I can't. I won't.”

“Mmm. Which one, Thea?”

Some of the wildness dissipated, and the white slash of her mouth softened. “Won't. Grandfather tells me I'm more stubborn than an ink stain. My friends are kinder. They call it resolve. Mr. Stone—I mean, Devlin? Do you believe in God?”

What in the—? “You want to know if I believe in God?” Confound it, but her mind swished about like a horse's tail chasing off flies. She nodded. Dev sat back in the chair and studied on the question for a moment or two. “Well, yes, I suppose so. Most people do, I reckon. My dad was a praying man. But he died when I was six. I guess I've been looking ever since for what he found. Why do you ask, Thea?” There. That was better, him asking the questions. “This shame you're feeling. You think God's punishing you?”

“I don't know. I was sort of hoping you would. I used to say my prayers faithfully, at mealtimes and bedtimes, when I was a girl. But God never answered. When I was older, everyone I asked seemed to think God was whoever or whatever we created in our minds, as a way to cope with life. For a while I guess I came to believe them, except…”

“Except what?” Abruptly Devlin turned his chair
back around and sat forward, his gaze never leaving Thea's face.

“Except my grandfather always believed God really was this omniscient Being, Someone who cared. Over the years we've attended many lectures by atheists, readings by naturalists or presentations by scientists, all of them trying to prove God doesn't exist. Or that we were all gods, ourselves. Grandfather always listened politely, always thanked them. Then on the way home he'd remind me that the greatest gift we enjoy as Americans is the right to believe whatever we choose to. He told me his choice was to place his faith in the God of the Bible, rather than human beings.”

Incredible as the notion sounded, it was as though her words reached inside Devlin's own mind, releasing questions that had festered for years that he hadn't known how to ask. “And has he changed his mind?”

Shoulders slumping, she shook her head, started to speak, then her lips clamped back together.

“Lately I've been thinking about God more than I used to,” he said, because those haunting eyes still begged for communion with another soul, and he wanted to be the person Thea communed with. He'd seen her at her worst, held her when she was too weak to stand. She'd allowed herself to be vulnerable with him.

Assuming for the moment God did exist, and did care, God would know this particular woman had stomped to dust all Dev's defenses against lying females.

“I was engaged once, years ago,” he said. “Sylvia was a churchgoer. We attended services every Sunday for almost five years. Then she went to visit relatives in North Carolina, and I went to New York City. When I returned home to Virginia a few months later, Sylvia had eloped with a banker she met on the train.”

“B-but you'd known each other for years. You were engaged.” Her voice trailed away. “I'm sorry, Devlin. No wonder you didn't like me when we first met.”

He managed a crooked smile. “It's a fact I'm not too fond of liars. Her being so religious, I couldn't understand how she could stab me in the back. For a long time I didn't have much use for God. Pretty silly, I guess, blaming God when it's a person who's at fault.”

“You knew each other for
five years.
”

Something inside Devlin relaxed. “Mmm. That's true. I'll put it this way. Back home, one of our neighbors owns an old plow horse, put to pasture years ago. I used to see old Betsy every time I drove to town, even stopped occasionally to give her a carrot. But that doesn't mean I'd walk up behind her and clap my hands. I can see what you're thinking. No, I'm not comparing Sylvia to a decrepit plow horse.”

They shared a look of perfect understanding, and that unfamiliar sensation—soft, welcoming—uncurled even further. “You're a literal-minded soul, aren't you? Let's just say I knew Sylvia's outside, but I never saw her sick and afraid, never talked with her about God, or what went on inside her head.” No weighty subjects like faith and fear. Good and evil. Hopes. Dreams. “In retrospect, even after ‘knowing' her all those years I'd have to confess Sylvia and I never left the barn.”

“I may be literal, but now you sound like a horseman. You wear a lot of hats, Devlin Stone.” Her cheeks were flushed, her awkwardness charming. “See? I do know how to be metaphorical.”

Unfortunately, her statement forced him to don his “professional” hat again. The woman seated beside him had not only lied to him, she was still hiding some monstrous secret; he knew little about her background, including her
surname. She could still be a wanted criminal, even an accomplice of the Hotel Hustler, and Devlin Stone's profession as a Secret Service operative might be irrevocably compromised if he blindly accepted her innocence.

Yet Dev felt in his gut that he still understood Thea better than he ever had Sylvia. “Knowing” a woman must include more than the marriage bed. He swallowed hard as new truths tugged him completely out of the barn, beyond the pasture and into an unexplored forest: if he'd had to choose between the two women, Sylvia would have been left inside that barn.

But if the choice were between Thea and the Service?

Dev couldn't answer that question, so he shoved it deep out of sight.

Outside the gazebo, the rain abruptly dwindled to a misting shower. The air brightened, and a shaft of sunlight speared through the receding clouds, directly onto the chairs where Devlin and Thea sat.

Dev lifted his hand and watched the interplay of golden light transfuse the skin. “Do you think,” he mused, watching the bar of light create a golden nimbus around her, “that after talking about Him so much, God might be trying to gain our attention here?”

Thea lifted her hand as well, holding it beside Devlin's, a slender-fingered, smaller and paler appendage bathed into transparency by sunlight. “If He is, I wonder what He's trying to tell us. I've been steeped in symbols and metaphors all my life. Frankly, I'm weary of them. I suppose I am a literal-minded soul. If the Almighty needs to send word to me, it will need to be something more tangible than a burning bush, or a sunbeam.”

A warning chill brushed Dev's spine. “Have a care,
Thea. That sounded more like a challenge than a request. My theology might be sketchy, but I don't think God responds well to demands.”