The Only Gold (22 page)

More worried—for the time being—about the world, he escaped the omnibus at the first stop, gave up on the streetcar, and walked the remaining distance to the bank. There he stood for an uncertain moment, praying the cold had banished any color from his cheeks. Not at all confident it had, he went in and made directly for his office. It was quiet next door, with no sign of Reid, and he settled in his chair to sort through the correspondence.

It didn’t take long to realize his concentration had flown as thoroughly as his common sense. He shunted aside the letters and applied himself to the trade papers, instead. In the midst of trying to occupy his mind with something other than the events of Saturday night, he heard a cheerful whistling issue from the cashier’s office.

He wasn’t the only one bereft of common sense. Traversing the ten feet from his door to the cashier’s with furtive haste, he started to enter, and decided to knock, instead. The cheerful whistling became a cheerful voice bidding admittance. He went in and closed the door, standing in front of it until he knew Reid intended to keep a proper distance.

Occupied in sorting through notes left on the spindle, Reid paused in mid-whistle. “Have a seat.”

Jonah perched on the chair, scooted closer to the desk, and leaned forward, keeping to a whisper. “I think, under the circumstances, the utmost discretion is called for. I hope we’re in agreement.”

Reid chuckled. Giving up his search through the notes, he swiveled to face Jonah. “Good morning to you too. Sleep well after I left? I trust no one made anything of the tracks I left in the garden.”

“I’m serious,” Jonah said, without trying to conceal his exasperation.

Reid couldn’t seem to contain his amusement. “One certainty I can bank on. So I’m not meeting your standards of discretion, I take it. Where am I falling short?”

“Well, that whistling, for one.”

“Was I whistling?”

Jonah groaned. “I beg of you. Reid, be sensible.”

Reid’s smile softened. “Say it again.” He touched Jonah’s hand briefly, but it was enough to engender the sudden desire for more.

Jonah drew back, then stood. “I’ll take the correspondence,” he said, and fled before he betrayed himself further. In the seclusion of his office, he went through the mail and the papers with exacting care, less out of habit than from a reluctance to show his face until he knew nothing in it would give him away. But as the noon hour passed, he could not hide any longer. Reid might behave more prudently, absent the temptation to torment him, but staff gossip would reach an irreverent pitch without his supervision. He simply had to carry on as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

“Good afternoon, Jonah.” Margaret watched him with a curious eye as he passed her desk. “The staff meeting… it’s still scheduled?”

He’d forgotten. “Yes, of course. Three o’clock.”

Reid and Matthew came through the lobby door, apparently returning from an early dinner. Surprised, Jonah concealed it and turned back to Margaret. “Did you enjoy the ball?”

“I did. More than you, I think.” The knowing sparkle in her gaze kept him from answering, and she went on. “Even a gentleman who doesn’t care to dance will generally bear up under more than one waltz, for the sake of the young lady he admires.”

Jonah did not look around as Reid and Matthew approached. “Young lady?”

Margaret sighed. “Alice?”

“Alice.” Jonah remembered himself. “I meant no insult. Did she take it as such? She wasn’t lacking for partners—”

“I think she knows you well enough, my dear, to perceive the hopelessness of it,” Margaret said, smiling.

Jonah’s throat went dry. “Hopelessness?”

“I think she means you don’t know how to flirt,” Reid said as he pushed through the gate and held it ajar for Matthew. “A shortcoming even champagne couldn’t remedy.”

Jonah smiled faintly. “I’m not sure champagne is the best prescription for improving one’s character. Unless you’re promoting it as a cure borne out by personal experience?”

Reid turned to him, sly pleasure in the curve of his lips. “I can’t recommend it for everyone. Just those in need of a last, desperate effort.”

Jonah saw the look Margaret and Matthew exchanged. But falling back into the familiar pattern with Reid was a relief after a morning worrying that any word or deed—or just one forgetful glance too laden with wanting—might elicit suspicion. They were both safer under the veil of barely civil civility.

Reid seemed as satisfied. The smile he directed at Margaret, weighted with rueful forbearance, made her laugh. He barely glanced at Jonah again as he hustled Matthew to the teller’s window. Settling in to go over Margaret’s books, Jonah found keeping to the task at hand still more of a chore than expected. From task to task he went, throughout the afternoon, with no success in shaking his distraction and, he feared, not much better luck hiding it.

After closing, he sent Mr. Satterfield, still weary from the bout of influenza, home and gathered the books himself. He was shelving them when Reid came in with a cash drawer. “Evening, Mr. Woolner.” He shut the vault door partway, shielding them from view, and bent to unlock the safe.

“Good evening, Mr. Hylliard.” Jonah lowered his voice. “If you have a moment….”

“I’ve got a good number of them.” In the midst of emptying the drawer, Reid cast him a carelessly affectionate smile, and Jonah’s train of thought was lost.

“This is about Saturday night?” Reid prompted.

Jonah pushed another ledger into alignment. “Yes.”

“You’re worried.”

“Concerned. We did drink. I had brandy and three glasses of champagne.”

“Father Francis used to say that a man who knows exactly how much he’s had to drink hasn’t had enough.”

“Father Francis? Oh, your—”

“Yes.” Reid locked the safe and stood. “Champagne is the prescription for regrettable decisions, it seems.”

“You climbed the tree outside my window—”

“You think I wouldn’t have, if I’d been entirely sober?”

Jonah didn’t stop to consider it. “We were rash and indiscreet.” He shoved the ledgers onto the shelf, one after another. “Blame it on liquor, the late hour, a passing loneliness—whatever the case, it led us to a lapse in judgment. We cannot undo it, but in the light of day, we’re well served to acknowledge it—to each other,” he added, as Reid’s somber air lost ground to a glimmer of humor. “To acknowledge for both our sakes that we yielded—once—to the shared deficiency in our natures. The only protection from ruin lies in vigilance….”

Reid moved toward him with transparent intent, and Jonah retreated just as swiftly, only to find himself cornered. “Not in the—” Lips covered his and wore at his resolve with warm persistence. Against the nape of his neck, Reid’s hand pressed, fingers curling to gain a fierce grip in his hair as the kiss deepened. What they’d done Saturday night bloomed from abstract to blazingly real, and Jonah wanted to relive every minute. Something other than liquor clouded his judgment. He was courting disaster, and he could think of nothing but where they might go, to safely fall upon each other. He broke from the kiss, struggling to quiet his breathing, and started away, to be stopped by Reid’s hand on his arm.

“Come to supper with me.” That straightforward entreaty, even at a whisper, echoed his own need.

“I want your word….”

“You have it.”

Jonah gave in to a laugh and looked at him, then. “That was quick. I might say anything.”

A fleeting smile didn’t lighten the candid gaze. “Say anything.”

What that meant, Jonah couldn’t bring himself to ask. But he needed a moment to remember on just what he wanted Reid’s word. “You will not act so freely in the bank again. Please.”

Reid held out his hand. Jonah took it just as Margaret appeared at the vault door. Reid’s grip firmed, and Jonah realized it was to keep him from pulling too hastily away.

Margaret was smiling. “I hope this means you gentlemen have resolved the last of your differences.”

Reid took on the brisk, congenial air with which he ran all bank business. “I think we’ll always have differences. Our success comes in working past them. Wouldn’t you agree?” The look he directed at Jonah verged on breaking his word, but Jonah couldn’t deny liking it.

“With that, yes. As long as you don’t expect so quick a concession on any other matter bank-related.”

“What about matters not bank-related?” At Jonah’s warning glance, Reid grinned. “My supper invitation, for instance?”

Laughing, Margaret handed over her ledger. “I shall leave you to sort that out. Good night, gentlemen.”

When she had gone, Jonah found enough breath left in his lungs for a word of reproach. “You’ll have us grading roads and carting bricks.”

“Not the worst work in spring.”

“That insight doesn’t arise from experience, I hope.”

“Would it surprise you?”

“That you’ve been sent to the island?” Though the hazel eyes took on a hard sparkle now and then, Jonah could not bring himself to imagine Reid Hylliard in among the low characters at Blackwell’s. “It would surprise me, yes.”

Reid’s brows lifted. “That surprises me.”

“You do improve on acquaintance.”

The
evening promenade under Broadway’s glaring gaslights had begun, with most of the crowd still in search of supper, judging from the lack of dissipation. Jonah suggested a more modestly priced restaurant, concerned that Reid was rapidly putting himself out of pocket. Amenable no doubt due to the proximity to his rooming house, Reid accepted. Supper was full of polite talk and irreproachable manners—a corrective, Jonah hoped, for the reproachable thoughts running through his head. Fire burned under his skin, simmering away the shame he should have felt, leaving him feverish and distracted. His care in avoiding physical contact made him ache all the greater for it—and he seemed to cause the same havoc. Reid’s gaze stayed on him, and the occasional collision of hands reaching for the saltcellar felt deliberate. After a barely touched third course, Reid tossed his napkin on the plate. “I’m done,” he said, at Jonah’s inquiring glance. “Unless you care to stay for dessert.”

“I think I would prefer a little fresh air.”

Though that commodity was barely more plentiful on crowded Broadway, it didn’t matter. Jonah couldn’t draw enough of it into his lungs to regain his equilibrium. He felt as blind as he had the night Reid had escorted him safely home. The world proceeding at its accustomed pace couldn’t press in on his senses, which were full of the man walking at his side. Perhaps it was a consequence of being too long alone. Life had seemed entirely satisfactory until Reid Hylliard had shown up to spoil it. Jonah wasn’t sure whether to curse him or embrace him for the jolt from a comfortable stupor into terrifying awareness of just how fragile his state of mind—and his resolve—really were. How else to explain his decision to risk everything that mattered to him to bed a man he’d never even wanted to like—but did, despite their battles, despite what Reid had taken from him. Of all the men in the world to join with in chancing eternal damnation….

God, he was a fool.