Brenda Joyce - [Francesca Cahill 06] (28 page)

“Hey, Miz Cahill! You goin’ to talk to me, or not?” Ralph called out, spitting tobacco on the curb.

“Yeah, yeah, what’s the deal?” a chorus of impatient voices sounded.

“One minute,” Francesca said sternly. She already had
a headache from dealing with the monstrous claims of this riffraff. “How have you been, Maggie?”

“Very well,” Maggie said, smiling softly. “Joel missed you while you were gone, Miss Cahill.”

Francesca was pleased. “I missed him, as well.” Suddenly she started, recognizing not one but two coaches coming down the block, approaching. One belonged to her brother; the other, extravagant, loud and lavish, belonged to Hart. Her heart did speed.

Maggie turned to follow her regard and her cheeks seemed to color. “Mr. Cahill is taking the children for a picnic in the park,” she said. “It seems to have become a habit of his on the Sabbath.”

Francesca knew how fond her brother was of Maggie’s children. Still, he was, she had heard, so busy with Bartolla Benevente. “How wonderful,” she said, meaning it, but now quite curious.

Evan’s carriage halted first, the passenger door quickly opening. Maggie turned to watch him alight. Evan came strolling up the block, a handsome, dark-haired figure, tall and lean. His black greatcoat whipped about him, hanging carelessly open. He was whistling. He smiled at Francesca, shaking his head. “I am afraid, Fran, to ask you what in God’s name you are doing.”

Francesca smiled sweetly back. “I am on a case. I have posted a reward for information, and as you can see, I am interviewing everyone who lives in the ward.”

He laughed and turned his bright blue eyes on Maggie. “Mrs. Kennedy, good day.”

She glanced away. “Mr. Cahill. The children are ready. They are very excited. I’ll go get them.”

Evan had his hand on Joel’s shoulder. “I’ll come with you,” he said, his glance moving over her. She, of course, did not see.

Maggie was already moving away, and she appeared flustered, at least as far as Francesca could tell. “No, that’s fine. I will bring them down in a moment.”

He smiled at Maggie. “Would you care to join us? That is, if you do not have other plans?”

She stumbled and faced him abruptly.
“What?”

He approached her, smiling, intent. “Please join us, Mrs. Kennedy. I know it’s a rotten day for a picnic, so I have arranged a surprise for the children. I think you’d enjoy it, too.”

She blinked at him. “I couldn’t possibly. . . .“

“Whyever not?”

“I . . . Ido have other plans, I’m afraid,” she said.

Evan continued to smile, but Francesca knew him very well, and he was disappointed. She saw it in his eyes, for they instantly sobered, darkening. And as for Maggie, well, she was definitely not telling the truth. That much was clear to Francesca.

She stared. This was not the first time she had witnessed an exchange between her brother and Maggie Kennedy, one that confounded her. Her brother was a gentleman. He would never casually dally with a good honest woman like Maggie Kennedy.

Besides, she was not his type. Not at all. He’d had a mistress, a famous stage actress, a beautiful and flamboyant woman. He preferred women of that type and nature—women like the widowed Countess Benevente.

And now he was head over heels in love with the countess. Wasn’t he?

Maggie was quiet, sincere, pretty enough, but she was a widowed seamstress raising four children alone in poverty. She was simply not the kind of woman his brother was interested in, and even if he were, as he would never dally with her, he certainly would not bring her home. Even Francesca, a true liberal, knew that Evan could never bring a simple seamstress home.

On the other hand, he had disowned his home and his father, quitting the family business, taking employment in a middling lawyer’s firm. And he had been disowned as well, in turn. She was very proud of her brother for doing
what he felt he must do. But what
was
this? What
was
going on?

Francesca felt certain that something was afoot. She had witnessed one too many interesting interactions between her dashing brother and the oh-so-reticent and good-hearted Maggie Kennedy.

Evan had nodded, accepting Maggie’s avowal that she was occupied that day, while she had disappeared like a frightened schoolgirl. “Evan?” Francesca began curiously.

But Evan had gripped Joel’s shoulder. “I have taken over an exhibition at the Museum of Natural History. We shall have our picnic there. I think your mother would enjoy herself. What do you think?”

Joel smiled fiercely at him. “I’ll get her to come,” he said. And he looked questioningly at Francesca. “Miz Cahill?”

She smiled at him. “Go do your best,” she said.

He ran off.

Francesca looked at Evan. “And what is the countess up to today?”

“She likes to sleep late,” he said, unperturbed. “This is not what you are thinking.”

“And what am I thinking?”

“Mrs. Kennedy is a noble woman, Fran. A noble, kind, and industrious woman. I adore her children. She could use an amusing day.”

Francesca simply gaped. And then she saw Hart approaching. Her heart seemed to quicken. How glad she was to see him.

“Hello, darling,” Calder Hart said. He was smiling, and he bent and kissed her cheek. “Good morning.”

She smiled at him widely. “Thank God you are here! Bonnie Cooper is dead. I found her grave this morning.”

His smile vanished. In fact, he looked very solemn indeed. “That is sober news,” he said.

She studied him and felt a frisson of unease. “Is anything wrong?” she asked.

“We need to speak,” he said, unsmiling. “Privately.”

Francesca did not like the sound of that.

When they had settled in his coach, she on one seat, with him facing her, he smiled at her. “What is on your mind?” she asked warily. “You look odd.”

He sighed. “Hold your temper, darling.”

She blinked and stiffened. She could practically hear alarm bells shrieking. “What is it?”

“I went to a very disreputable establishment last night, as I said I would.”

Francesca sat up straighter. “Which establishment?”

“You are the last person I would tell the name to,” he said soberly. “As it is not a place you should ever set foot in.”

Blurry half-formed images of some dim, dark smoky room filled her mind, and in them lush, half-naked, beautiful women pranced around. “What did you find out? What happened?” She had a bad feeling. She could not take her gaze from Hart.

But his attention was riveted on her, too. His brief smile was oddly derisive. “Usually I can read people, Francesca, like a book. The madam of this club, Solange Marceaux, is undoubtedly a master poker player. Madame Marceaux wasn’t thrilled to have me in her place of business, which was odd; she also told me she could not fulfill my desires to be with a beautiful and innocent child of thirteen or fourteen.”

“And?” she breathed, visualizing an orange-haired older woman with garish makeup as the brothel’s keeper.

“Well,” he said dryly, “I could not determine if she was being truthful or not. She may not have trusted me; she may have wished to test me. In any case, even if she does not traffic in children, I would be surprised if she could not direct me to a brothel that did. But her club has the strongest reputation for catering to the needs—any needs—of its patrons.”

Francesca had crossed her arms over her chest. “What is it that you really wish to say, Calder?”

He grimaced. “She offered me more standard entertainment,” he said.

She sat up as if shot with a bullet. “Oh, no!” And instantly she could see Calder, naked, powerful, aroused, in some faceless woman’s bed.

He held up a hand. “Francesca, surely you don’t think I spent an hour or so in bed with a whore? That isn’t what I wish to tell you.”

She relaxed, hugely relieved. “Go on.”

“Rose was there.”

Francesca gasped. Rose hated Calder passionately, as she was terribly in love with his mistress, Daisy. Calder was still keeping Daisy until the term they had agreed upon expired, even if he wasn’t seeing her. Francesca knew both Daisy and Rose; in fact, she liked Daisy very much and sympathized with Rose’s plight. But the fact that Rose had been at this club could not be good, oh no. “Did she expose you as my fiancé?”

“No.” He sighed. “I was on the spot. I was hoping to get Rose aside, alone, to speak with her—as she was in the underworld, I thought she might know something. When Madame Marceaux offered me a woman, I told her I knew Rose and would accept her offer if Rose was free.”

“What did Rose say?” Francesca cried, straining forward eagerly.

He reached for her hand and clasped it. “Madame Marceaux is very clever. She instructed me to wait while she went for Rose. I could not let that happen. I don’t trust Rose and I did not want the two of them speaking privately about me. I had an instant in which to think of a way in which to circumvent a tête-à-tête.”

Francesca did not like this. She tugged her hand free, staring. What was he about to tell her? Maybe sending Hart off into an illicit establishment hadn’t been the best idea after all, and certainly not one that had women like the terribly seductive Rose. “What did you do?” she whispered.

“I told her that the entertainment I had in mind was to
watch Rose with another woman, with Madame Marceaux, in fact.” He smiled slightly then, as if something had amused him, but he never took his watchful gaze from Francesca’s face.

Alarm bells went off. Calder Hart was the most seductive man she knew—Francesca had never met a woman immune to his charm, his looks, his power. “While you have been telling me this story, I have been imagining a fat old woman with orange hair. But that isn’t what Madame Marceaux is like, is it?” she cried.

“No.” His brows raised in surprise. “She is rather an ice queen, Francesca, pale blond, regal, elegant.”

“Wonderful,” Francesca said, trembling. Hart had met a woman he could not read, a blond ice queen, a woman she just knew was beautiful, a rare woman who could outwit him at his game. How amused he must have been. How enthralled. Jealousy was a cloak shrouding her, and as it did, more images tumbled through her mind—Hart, aroused, intent, standing over a bed where two women, one pale, one dark, were passionately entwined. Her heart beat now like a drum. She should have accompanied him last night. She knew his dark past included Rose, but she also knew that was over—or so she had thought. But the thought of him now, sexually attracted to Solange Marceaux, sparring with her, drawn to her, was terribly hurtful. It was also terribly disturbing—in a shocking way.

“Last night, while I was sleeping, you were amusing yourself watching Rose and Madame Marceaux making love,” she said huskily. And had he really been able to do nothing but watch? No one was more virile and sexual than Hart.

He started. “Madame Marceaux declined, as I knew she would. The request was an adversarial tactic, Francesca, a strike designed to shake her up and put her off balance, that is all. And it worked—for a moment.”

She stared at him. The compartment had become airless, while those darkly seductive images continued to dance in her head.

“This was a test,” he said softly, reaching for her hand again, and this time she did not—could not—pull it away, “and the only reason I had to pass it was because I am helping
you
solve
your
case.”

“So you watched Rose and some woman in bed,” she breathed.

He started again. “Yes, I did.”

“Did you join them?” she asked, faint. Dear, dear God, she was so terribly attracted to Hart that the idea of his being with two women last night did not merely cause jealousy to consume her. It did not simply hurt her. Desire also trickled through her limbs, building, warming her blood.

“I did not,” he said, aghast.

She believed him, as his reply was so instantaneous, so disbelieving, and she could only stare in real relief.

“Francesca, I gave you my word. Besides, you are the one on my mind now, not a pair of whores.” He was incredulous.

She continued to stare, suddenly close to tears and afraid of herself far more than she was afraid of him. “But you love pleasure,” she whispered. “I suspect you are addicted to it. And you like being with two women at once.”

He took her hand firmly in his. “Darling, after this moment, I do not want to discuss my black past again. Because if you shall hold my past over my head, we will never do well together. Do you understand?”

She nodded, blinking back tears.

“Why are you crying?” he asked softly.

“I’m not,” she lied.

He cupped her face in both hands. “You are the one I want to be with. A long time ago, the chase, the conquest, it all became terribly old—terribly boring—a mere game to play in the interminable hours of the night.”

She wet her lips, aware of how close his lips were, needing his hot, wet kiss. “But you were with Daisy and Rose, together, in the past,” she murmured, trembling.

He stared. And he knew. He recognized the beast immediately, as how could he not? It chose the oddest moments
to arise, hot and huge, between them. “Don’t cry,” he whispered, their gazes locking. And he leaned forward and brushed her mouth with his.