Bicycle Built for Two (20 page)

“And you won’t let him out again, will you?
I’m going to the station first thing tomorrow to press charges. He
attacked me. If he had succeeded, I’m sure he’d have attempted to
murder his daughter. Again. We can’t have that sort of thing, can
we?” Another toothy grin produced another hard swallow.

“No, sir.”

“Right. I thought you’d see the situation my
way. Remember, don’t let him go. I’ll file charges tomorrow. You
won’t fail me in this, will you?”

“Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir. Charges.
Tomorrow. Yes, sir.”

“Charges. Tomorrow,” Alex repeated in order
to make sure this flat-foot beat copper didn’t forget his
instructions.

“Tomorrow.”

“Morning.

“Morning.”

Alex nodded once. “Good. Take this creature
off.”

The policeman was so intimidated, he
saluted. Alex turned to scan the crowd, which had grown
considerably as events transpired. A couple of men glanced at him,
lifting their eyebrows in question. He nodded back, and the two men
took up flanking positions beside the officer and Mr. Finney.
Unless Alex missed his guess, the two aimed to escort Finney to the
station in order to make sure the policeman carried out Alex’s
request. Their show of support, which he supposed they’d offered
because they liked and respected Kate and deplored her father’s
behavior, gratified him.

As soon as the excitement died down, people
drifted away, and Alex found himself standing next to Schneiders
Meats with Kate beside him. She was shivering, although the evening
was warm. Without even thinking about it, he took her arm and
leaned down to inspect her face. He was worried about her state of
mental health.

She was pale as death, and her blue eyes
were dilated wide and looked almost black in the scanty gas
lighting in the neighborhood. She licked her lips. “I—I’m sorry,
Alex. I didn’t know he’d found out where I live.”

He stared at her for almost
thirty seconds, trying to assimilate the meaning of her
words.
She
was
sorry? That her father had discovered her place of residence, such
as it was? Good Gad.

Ales was experiencing an almost overwhelming
compulsion to lift her into his arms and kiss her until all of her
cares flew away, so he straightened, hoping the compulsion would
die soon. “There’s no need for you to apologize, Kate. Your father
is at fault, not you.”

She nodded again, although she didn’t appear
to be sure of herself. No longer was she the infuriating Kate
Finney who tackled the world and everything in it single-handed
with a hell-bent independence that drove Alex crazy. She bore very
resemblance to that Kate right now. At the moment, she looked like
a young woman who, if not defeated, had at least suffered a severe
blow to her self-confidence.

Because his protective, not to mention his
carnal, urges unsettled him, he sounded more gruff than he intended
when he spoke again. “Here. Let me escort you to your
apartment.”

She shook her head. “You don’t need to do
that.”

“Damn it, Kate Finney, stop fighting me.”
And, after swearing not once, but twice in a single evening, Alex
picked Kate up off the sidewalk and cradled her in his arms. “Where
do you live?”

“Upstairs.” She was breathless with shock
and indignation.

“Stop struggling.”

To Alex’s great surprise, she did. She
released a huge sigh and subsided in his arms. He found out why
she’d done so when he walked up the narrow, dark stairway. It
wasn’t because she liked being in his arms. It was because she
feared he’d lose his footing, tumble downstairs, and kill them both
if she kept struggling.

The place reminded Alex of a fright house in
a circus. The walls seemed to close in on him. The staircase
couldn’t have been more than a foot wide. No gas lights illumined
Kate’s place of residence. No friendly, homey smells of cooking
food greeted her. The area above the butcher shop reeked of decayed
meat, blood, and bone, and Alex would have gagged if he didn’t have
such rigid control over himself. When he reached the floor above
ground level, he blinked into the blackness, squinted around, and
thought he discerned two doors. “Which one?” he asked through
clenched teeth. He hated knowing this was where Kate lived.

“The one on the right.” Her voice sounded
funny; soft and strained, as if she, too, were trying not to gag.
Or cry. By this time, Alex had no doubt at all that Kate was full
to the brim with tears. That she’d only shed a few in his presence,
he chalked up to a miracle of fate and Kate’s own strength of
character.

“Is it locked?”

He felt her shake her head, so he grabbed
the knob, pushed the door open, and walked inside, still holding
Kate. Although he didn’t want to, he set her on the floor. A
strange feeling of loss and distress filled him when she
immediately scuttled away from him. He heard her moving in the
dark. A scratch of flint and a spark preceded a burst of
illumination from the kerosene lantern she’d lit. He supposed it
made sense that she knew her way around in the dark, since she
probably did this same thing, without the preceding melodrama,
every day of her life.

The odor of the butcher shop wasn’t as
strong in Kate’s flat as it had been on the staircase. Alex looked
around with interest, and was not surprised to see that she kept
her home neat as a pin and decorated as well as a woman of Kate’s
means could decorate it. She’d gone to the trouble of placing bowls
of sweet-smelling leaves and dried flower petals about, probably in
an attempt to disguise the smell of rotting meat. It didn’t quite
achieve its goal, but Alex felt a spurt of wholly irrational pride
on Kate’s behalf that she’d tried so hard to improve her
surroundings and succeeded so well, in spite of everything.

“It’s not much, but it’s home to me.”

Alex glanced over and found Kate standing in
front of the one window in the room. He suspected she’d made the
pretty chintz curtains herself. She’d been through a lot today, he
knew, and now she looked both defiant and ashamed. He could
understand the defiance part.

“You’ve done a wonderful job in making a
room into a home, Kate. You ought to be proud of your
achievements.”

She didn’t move, although she did frown
slightly. “Yeah, right.”

Alex tried not to allow his exasperation to
seep into his voice. “I mean it.” Although he didn’t feel much like
it, he smiled at her. “You’ve finally convinced me. None of this is
your fault. And your father is a bad man. A truly rotten man, as a
matter of fact. You’re right. I was wrong.”

To his surprise, she bowed her head. “I’m
sorry.” Her voice had sunk to a whisper. “I didn’t want this to
happen.”

“Good Gad.” He couldn’t stand it any longer.
With two long strides, Alex crossed the room and took Kate in his
arms. He held her close. “Kate Finney, you’re the most infuriating
woman I’ve ever met in my entire life.”

“I am not.”

“Don’t argue with me. You don’t know how
many infuriating women I’ve met.”

“I guess not.”

Alex’s heart swelled when she gave a soft
laugh. She didn’t laugh enough. “You’re also the bravest.”

“I am?”

She lifted her face to look at him, and Alex
saw tears in her eyes and a tremulous smile on her face. “Yes,” he
said. “You are.” And he kissed her.

# # #

Kate was as limp as a rag. The door had just
closed behind Alex—he hadn’t allowed her to leave her room in order
to see him downstairs, even though she knew how dark the staircase
was and how unaccustomed to her neighborhood Alex was.

He’d kissed her. Kate had never allowed a
man to kiss her before. She was glad she’d waited. Her legs felt
shaky when she walked from the door, which Alex had instructed her
to lock, and went to the piece of furniture that Kate used as both
a bed and a sofa. She’d made lots of pretty cushions that she
propped against the wall during the day in order to allow people
who visited—and Kate had her fair share of visitors—to sit and take
tea with her.

Her hands shook when she began removing the
cushions to the chair where she stashed them overnight. After
dropping two of them, Kate decided she wasn’t up to making her bed
for the night before she’d digested the implications of Alex’s
actions.

He’d saved her from her father. He’d taken
charge of a situation that would certainly have become ugly,
perhaps even deadly, if he hadn’t been there. He’d probably saved
her life.

And then he’d kissed her.

“Oh, Lord, please help me.” It had been a
long time since Kate had uttered a heart-felt prayer, but she meant
that one.

Sitting on the edge of her sofa-bed, her
hands clasped tightly in her lap, Kate looked around her room. It
was a pretty pathetic place, especially if she compared it to the
Congress Hotel, where Alex had taken her to eat. Rather, he’d taken
her to dine there. Kate supposed she’d actually dined that evening.
On beef Stroganoff.

But Alex was right, too, in that she’d done
a darned good job in decorating what would otherwise have been even
more forlorn a room than it was now. Kate hadn’t very often had her
efforts to improve herself and her surroundings acknowledged by
anybody outside her family. Her heart lifted slightly now, when she
realized Alex had meant his comments sincerely.

Not only that, but unlike most times when
somebody with money and power said something nice to her, she
didn’t reject his praise. Rather, she figuratively clasped his
praise to her bosom and basked, as she’d basked in his embrace. She
hadn’t wanted to let him go.

Kate knew it was fortunate for her virtue
that Alex was a man of such firm, not to say stubborn, principles.
If he wasn’t, she was sure she’d have succumbed completely, thereby
proving herself to be no better than her circumstances. Kate had
determined when she was no bigger than a minute that she’d rise
above them. At the moment, she found irony in the fact that it had
been Alex who’d kept her determination intact. Not to mention her
virginity.

Oh, but that kiss. Kate put two fingers to
her lips, savoring the remembrance of Alex’s lips there.

“You’d better savor it, Kate Finney, because
it will never happen again.” She spoke to herself with a good deal
of force, because she didn’t want to be disappointed when Alex
vanished from her life.

She knew she was already too late.

# # #

Alex knew it was probably unwise of him to
walk back to the Congress Hotel. The neighborhood surrounding Kate
Finney’s flat teemed with the worst elements in Chicago.
Nevertheless, he told Frank to drive the carriage there without him
in it.

“Are you sure, sir?” Frank was clearly
distressed by Alex’s command.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Alex snapped. “I’m going to
walk.”

Dubiously, Frank said, “Yes, sir.”

Alex didn’t appreciate the expression on
Frank’s face. He probably thought that Alex planned to spend the
night with Kate. As if he’d ever besmirch Kate Finney or any other
woman. He glared at Frank, whose cheekiness was becoming absolutely
insufferable, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and set out toward
the Congress Hotel before Frank had a chance to do more than
release the brake.

How could he have lost control so completely
as to have kissed Kate? Alex had never experienced such loss of
control before; until tonight, he hadn’t thought he had it in him
to lose control, as a matter of fact. He knew better now. When he
was in Kate’s presence, all of his breeding seemed to desert
him.

But, how could he have done such a stupid
thing? If he’d succumbed to temptation with any of the women his
mother had thrust in his way over the years, he’d be married by
this time. But Kate Finney? How in the name of all that’s holy
could he marry a girl from the slums?

He stopped walking abruptly, causing a
couple of disreputable-looking passers-by to stare at him. He
glowered back, and the strangers sped up.

Had he really thought such a priggish thing
about Kate?

Yes, by Gad, he had. Scowling at another
couple of poorly dressed members of a society that lived on a lower
scale than his own and who scurried off in a hurry, Alex
experienced a moment of self-revelation that he didn’t want to
acknowledge because it did him no credit.

Glaring after the
retreating men, another unhappy realization struck him. Those men,
and the others he’d scared off with his foul mood, were afraid of
him.
They
were
afraid of
him
,
and not the other way around. Alex knew their fear wasn’t based on
his physical state, which was fit but not especially grand, but
because he, as a man of means, could command more worldly power
than they.

He, Alex English, could determine their
freedom to walk the streets of this city, because the law would pay
attention to Alex English. The law, as evidenced by his own
experience this evening, paid no attention to the Kate Finneys of
the world, unless someone in Alex’s station paid attention
first.

And he’d just rejected the mere possibility
of marrying Kate, a woman whom he admired more than almost any
other woman in the world, because she’d been born in impoverished
circumstances. He’d been told, and he’d believed, that the citizens
of the United States could achieve anything if they worked hard
enough for long enough.

It had become painfully clear to Alex in the
past several days that this time-honored adage was only true to a
degree. If one were a female, one’s circumstances defined one’s
station in life. There were those, like Kate Finney, who fought the
world and its inequities like maddened cats, but they were still
circumscribed by their sex and stations in life.

And yet his prior thought on marriage, based
on years’ worth of unsubstantiated assumptions, had not only blamed
Kate for her birth, but shrank from considering her a suitable
partner for marriage with him. Because he was wealthy and she was
poor. A convenient wad of paper blew his way, and Alex kicked it
hard. Dash it, he didn’t like learning the imperfect truth about
himself. That it was the truth, he couldn’t deny, dash it.