With Every Breath (19 page)

“This has been so much fun,” one of the former parlormaids said. “We should get together for Christmas.”

Mrs. Kendall gave a noncommittal shrug. Trevor stiffened, and her daughter’s face crumpled. If Trevor was correct, Mrs. Kendall wouldn’t be here for Christmas this year. No one else, though, seemed to be aware of the old housekeeper’s deteriorating condition.

“It was a real shame when the senator lost his reelection and the house was sold,” the old butler said. “Christmas was never the same after that.”

The mood dampened as those gathered around shook their heads. Kate was accustomed to seeing people come and go through Washington after each election, but it never occurred to her that an entire household like Senator Campbell’s would be disbanded because of a failed election. These people seemed as tightly bound as any family.

Mrs. Kendall’s daughter leaned forward with a mischievous hint in her voice. “Of course, nothing will ever outshine the year Trevor’s father pulled out all the stops for Christmas dinner.” The comment was greeted with a round of laughter.

“What did Trevor’s father do that year?” Kate asked. Another chorus of laughter rippled through the servants, although Trevor’s face darkened and he withdrew even further.

Lettie Kendall noticed and grabbed Trevor’s shoulders. “Never let it be said that Mr. McDonough didn’t want his boy to have a fine Christmas dinner! I thought Mr. Coburn would faint when a
sailor walked that lumbering Black Angus steer down the streets of Washington straight to our front door.”

“His father sent a live
steer
?”

“A Black Angus steer,” the butler confirmed. “The finest breed of cattle in all of Scotland. But that wasn’t all. He sent smoked salmon and jars of honey from a monastery in Spain. There were wild truffles and candied ginger, but the best part was that he sent a French chef to prepare everything and make a chocolate torte fit for a king. And a case of single malt Scotch whiskey. Now,
that
was a fine Christmas dinner.”

“Senator Campbell sent a bottle of the whiskey to the servants’ wing,” Martin said. “Nothing ever tasted so fine. Spoiled me for life, that Christmas did.”

Lettie chimed in with her own memories of the legendary Christmas dinner. Kate’s chest tightened, and the room suddenly seemed too warm. This spectacular dinner was showered on a boy who claimed he needed money for college, who fought for a scholarship that was Kate’s only means of bettering herself, while he gorged on a chocolate torte prepared by a chef imported from France. Her stomachache had gotten worse and she just wanted to go home, but the stories continued.

“What about his sixteenth birthday,” Martin said. “What was that fancy book your father sent you?” Trevor shifted awkwardly while everyone in the room waited for him to respond.

“It was a book of Shakespeare’s plays,” he finally said.

“But there was something special about it. It had a fancy name,” the butler said. “A first file? A first . . .” He snapped his fingers, trying to remember.

“A first folio?” Kate asked.

“That was it! A first folio.”

If she weren’t surrounded by a dozen people, she would have
lunged across the room and strangled Trevor. Instead she picked up a paper napkin and began fanning herself.

Trevor didn’t need money for college. He’d won that scholarship just to prove that he could.

As the reunion dragged on, Kate thought the evening would never end.

* * * *

Trevor was silent as he walked beside her to the streetcar stop. There was plenty of time for him to offer an explanation about his shockingly extravagant life, but he said nothing. The street was deserted, their footsteps echoing on the walkway. She waited until they arrived at the vacant bench, where the streetcar would stop.

“A first folio?” she finally burst out.

Trevor’s jaw tightened, but again he said nothing as he stared at the horse-drawn streetcar rolling toward them. He ought to be embarrassed! What kind of man gave a sixteen-year-old boy one of the most valuable books ever printed? The first edition of Shakespeare’s plays had been published in the seventeenth century and was sought after by collectors all over the world.

The streetcar came to a stop before them. Trevor stepped aboard and paid a coin for them both, and she followed him down the narrow aisle. The streetcar was crowded with only one seat left open. Trevor offered it to her, then turned to grasp the hand strap above, standing stiffly beside her as the streetcar jerked into motion.

“How many first folios are still in existence?” she fired at him.

“I have no idea. A thousand or so.”

“Two hundred twenty-eight,” she corrected. “I remember from high school literature class. You were sitting only two desks
away and heard it too. You sat there like a dolt and didn’t even bother mentioning to the class that you owned one!”

“It was no one’s business,” Trevor said.

“You always had to be the best in everything. Why didn’t you bring that book in so we could all be dazzled by your riches?” She was being unfair but didn’t care. There was so much about Trevor that drove her mad. “And a Black Angus steer! What’s wrong with plain old American beef?”

“Kate, please shut up,” Trevor muttered.

Other people in the streetcar were looking at them, but she had nothing to be ashamed of. She hadn’t snatched a scholarship out of the hands of a poor classmate. “Do you still have it? The first folio?”

“I sold it at an auction.”

That must have brought a pretty penny. Tears pricked the back of her eyes. Trevor was rich, but he didn’t like her enough in school to let her win that scholarship. And he didn’t like her enough now to think of her as anything but a statistical assistant. When the streetcar drew near her stop, Trevor guided her to the front.

“You don’t need to walk me home,” she said. It meant he would need to wait another thirty minutes to catch the next streetcar to take him across town.

“It’s no bother.”

She felt too lousy to argue with him. And ashamed of herself for getting angry over a twelve-year-old grievance.

The blow Trevor dealt her had been delivered by an awkward eighteen-year-old boy who never knew how to do anything other than compete. Here she was acting like an angry brat instead of a grown woman. She knew better. It was time to let this go.

Aside from his appalling manners, at his heart Trevor had been immensely decent to her since the moment she met him
again four months ago. He paid her a generous salary and treated her with respect. He welcomed her on to his team, and even if he didn’t return her affection, she shouldn’t hold it against him.

“Can you slow down a little?” she asked. “I feel really rotten.”

His steps slowed. Was she angry with him over the scholarship or was this because he didn’t return the romantic sentiment that was growing and blossoming by the day? Trevor was the first man to spark interest in her since Nathan died. She constantly wondered what it would be like if they became real partners, sharing their lives. Became man and wife. She wondered what Trevor would be like as a husband, what he would be like as a father.

When they came to the front door of the boardinghouse, she turned to him. “I’m sorry I groused at you. You didn’t deserve it and I’m sorry.”

Standing in the gathering darkness, with his face cast in shadow and the hint of a smile on his mouth, Trevor was possibly the handsomest man she’d ever seen. It had nothing to do with his good looks and everything to do with his calm, fierce intelligence. The respect he had for their teamwork. The way electricity sparked in the air when he was close.

“We were head-to-head until that final trigonometry equation,” he said. “You would have beaten me if the principal had judged on speed rather than method of calculation. It was a coin toss. I think he tipped it to me because he was reluctant to give the scholarship to a girl.”

Deep down inside, Kate always suspected the same. Although women were regularly being accepted into college today, twelve years ago it would have been unusual. At that time, Trevor would have had a better chance to put his degree to meaningful work. For Trevor, his willingness to acknowledge the headmaster’s bias was quite a concession.

“I really hate it when you’re right,” she said with a reluctant smile.

He touched the side of her face. “You were a match for me. I was always right about that.”

Her cheek burned where he’d touched her. Without saying anything more, he turned to walk back to the streetcar stop. She wanted to call him back but forced herself to hold the iron railing to stop from lunging after him. The metal cut into her palm as she watched him fade into the mist.

14

T
revor sat at his desk, staring at the maple tree outside his office window and the first hint of scarlet tinting the leaves. Normally the sight of this tree was soothing, but today he clenched his fists as he prepared to write another check to the private investigator. It was infuriating to keep throwing money away in search of the coward behind the campaign to destroy him, but it needed to be done. The tip of his fountain pen scratched in the silence as he wrote the check.

His lawyer arranged for a private detective in Baltimore to track down those associated with the Baltimore study whom Trevor had been unable to find. Two of the nurses had married and moved away. One of the doctors had relocated to another hospital in New Jersey, and his assistant was in medical school at Harvard. All of them would need to be found and interviewed.

A heavy sigh came from Kate’s side of the office. She was curled over her desk, eyes closed, looking like she was about to fall asleep.

“You all right over there?”

She looked up at him. “I must have eaten something bad.”
Even from across the room he could see a fine sheen of perspiration on her skin, and it was chilly in the office today.

“If you have a fever, I want you to go home.”

“I’ll be okay. If I show up at home before lunch, my mother will put me to work in the laundry.”

“Fair enough.”

Nurse Ackerman brought him the mail, including a stack of the daily newspapers. “Any more newspaper articles?” he asked, holding his breath.

“Not this morning. Just a few letters and a medical journal. And a letter for Kate.”

The muscles in his neck eased. He hadn’t even realized how tense he was until Nurse Ackerman assured him there were no articles today criticizing his work. Which was pathetic. He had a twenty-four-hour stay of execution, but the waiting game would begin again tomorrow morning. Kate ripped open the top of her envelope with hasty fingers. What a ragged mess she made of the envelope, but she was never overly tidy.

Kate hissed and recoiled, shooting to her feet as a pair of photographs fell on the floor at her feet. “This is disgusting,” she gasped.

He darted to her side and stiffened when he saw the top photograph. It showed a man, naked from the waist up as he sat on an examining table, his spinal column twisted from the ravages of tuberculosis.

The second photograph was the nude corpse of a woman on a mortuary slab. The sores on her skin were testament to advanced tuberculosis. He recognized the woman. She was one of his patients from Baltimore.

Two words were scrawled on the back of the photograph:
I remember
.

“Who would send me such a horrible thing?” Kate asked.

Someone who was tired of attacking him personally and was now reaching out to torment his staff. Before Trevor could answer, Kate clamped a hand over her mouth and ran from the room.

He was sickened too. This had to end. He would hire however many investigators it took to find out who was behind these revolting messages. He would place men at the post office, plant someone at the newspapers. He would protect his people from the vendetta launched against him. Kate deserved that much.

It wasn’t like Kate to run away from things. She was more likely to face a problem than run away from it. Something was wrong, and he rushed into the hall. “Where did she go?” he asked Nurse Ackerman.

“The washroom. It looked like she was going to be sick.”

He went to the washroom door and knocked loudly. “Kate?”

Retching sounds came from behind the door. Dry heaves, as though she’d already thrown up whatever was bad in her stomach. He knocked again, but there was no answer and the door was locked.

He reached in his pocket for the key, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. She was kneeling on the floor, curled over the toilet. “How long have you been sick?”

“A couple of days,” she said on a ragged breath. “I don’t know. It’s been a while.”

She made no protest as he walked farther into the room and pressed his hand to her forehead. She was scorching hot.

“Can you sit up straight?” he asked.

“Not really. It hurts.” She braced both hands on her thighs and pushed up a few inches, then stopped. “Trevor, it really hurts.”

“I want you to stay here while I have an orderly bring a stretcher.”

She laughed a little. “I’m not
that
sick.”

“Humor me.”

She didn’t argue with him as he sent Nurse Ackerman to get a stretcher. Sometimes it was better to err on the side of caution. Hopefully this was nothing, but if Kate had what he suspected and he didn’t act fast, she could be dead before the end of the week.

* * * *

The way Trevor reverted to his cold, impassive demeanor frightened her. She had been carried on a stretcher to an examining room on the third floor of the hospital. A nurse took notes as Trevor examined her. Lying curled up on her side with a thermometer in her mouth, Trevor asked her to roll over onto her back.

“It will hurt if I do.”

“It won’t kill you. Now, over you go.”

Slowly she rolled over. She wanted to throw up again, except her stomach was already empty. Trevor extracted the thermometer, his face emotionless as he took the reading. It felt awful to have him standing over her.

His voice was firm and professional as he pressed on the side of her stomach. “Does that hurt?”