by Joanna Shupe
“Are you asking me for a liaison, Marion Greene?”
“Not if you continue to tease me.”
He put up both palms. “Consider the teasing stopped. Let’s say ten. That way, I may take my time with you and not worry about staff still moving about the house.”
She liked the idea of that. “Ten it is.”
Frank opened his mouth to say something else but promptly shut it when Katie and Otto appeared at the table. “Well, Miss Katie,” he said. “What do you think of the egg cream soda?”
“It’s delicious.” Otto placed the tall glass in front of her and she grabbed for the straw. “Did you know there’s actually no egg in here?”
Frank leaned in and stage-whispered, “There’s no cream, either. That’s milk.” Then he winked.
Katie giggled and Mamie’s heart melted into a puddle on the marble floor. The man was absurdly charming.
“I’m afraid Otto and I must return to my office,” he told Katie. “I’ll leave Miss Greene to see you home. Get some rest, all right? No staying up late dancing and drinking.”
Katie giggled around her straw. “I will.”
“Good girl.” Frank ruffled her hair then shot a glance at Mamie. “Until later, Miss Greene.”
A dark thrill shot down Mamie’s spine at the promise in those words. “Mr. Tripp.” Then she dipped her chin toward Otto. “Mr. Rosen.”
“Good day, Miss Greene.” Otto looked as if he were stifling a smile but said nothing more before following Frank out of the ice cream parlor.
Then, despite the cool temperatures inside the shop, Mamie had a desperate need to fan herself.
Mamie’s body still tingled as she crept toward the servants’ door behind her house. It was just after midnight and the imprint of Frank’s fingers lingered on every part of her. His breath continued to whisper over her skin. His warmth tattooed into her flesh.
With any luck, she’d feel him for days.
The kitchens were dark as she entered, her skirts softly rustling in the quiet. She didn’t bother locking up behind her, just in case Florence was out on the town.
She moved around the large worktable, snatching an apple from a bowl as she passed. God knew she’d worked up an appetite tonight with—
The light switched on, startling her. She gasped and the apple fell from her hands as the dim yellow glow illuminated the kitchens.
Her father stood by the wall. “Care to explain where you’ve been?”
She pressed a hand to her chest, trying to calm her racing heart. “Daddy. You scared me half to death.”
“Undoubtedly. Now imagine how I felt discovering my daughter had snuck out of the house to go God knows where.”
“I went for a walk in the gardens,” she lied. “It was such a nice night that I thought—”
“Do not lie to me,” he snapped. “You’re disheveled and you have a love bite . . .” He made a vague motion to his neck.
Her hand flew up to her throat as if to feel it. Had Frank actually left a mark?
“No, you don’t actually have a mark.” His mouth tightened, his mustache twitching in the way it did when he was furious. “But the fact that you thought you might tells me all I need to know.”
“Daddy, you’re wrong. Whatever you are thinking, I swear it didn’t happen.”
“Who is it?”
She hated lying to him but, at the moment, could see no other option. Deny, deny, deny. “There is no other man. I’m nearly engaged to Chauncey.”
“Yet you won’t sign the agreement, and whoever’s bed you just left is the reason why. I want to know who, damn it. Right now, Marion.”
She couldn’t tell him. No matter her feelings for Frank, this was not the way for her family to find out. Not in anger and deception. She wished for her father’s blessing, needed time to convince him that she and Frank made sense together. After all, Frank’s background wasn’t so different from Chauncey’s. Though he worked as a lawyer, Frank was from a prominent family in Chicago. And he made her happy. Surely that would matter to her father when the time came.
Straightening her spine, she said, “I was out for a walk. That’s all.”
Her father shook his head and stared at his shoes. “You’ve left me no choice. Follow me to my office.”
Her stomach plummeted as she trailed him into the main part of the house. Perhaps he merely wishes to be comfortable while he yells at you. Honestly, what else could he do? He had no proof and she wouldn’t admit to anything improper. They were at an impasse, so she would listen to his lecture, apologize for worrying him, and go to bed.
He threw open his office door and held it for her. She walked in—and nearly tripped. Mr. Livingston, Chauncey and a big, thick man she didn’t recognize all came to their feet and turned her way. Oh, no. This is bad.
Then she noticed the black circles around Chauncey’s eyes, how his nose was red and swollen. What on earth had happened to him? He stared at her sullenly, arms folded over his chest.
Very bad, indeed.
“Sit down, Marion.” Her father strode past her and moved his bulk to the chair behind his desk. She walked a bit slower, taking one of the chairs opposite. Mr. Livingston sat in the other empty chair, leaving the stranger and Chauncey to stand.
Her father addressed her. “You know Chauncey and Mr. Livingston. The man you don’t know is Superintendent Byrnes of the Metropolitan Police Detectives. The superintendent has some information he’s gathered on you, according to Mr. Livingston.”
Mamie gasped. “You were spying on me?” The police had been watching her. Good God, what had they observed? The prison, the tenements . . . Then it hit her. Frank’s house.
No, she’d been careful. Hadn’t she? Frank had driven her home in his brougham tonight to keep her hidden and safe. Her father may suspect but couldn’t prove anything. She straightened and swallowed the panic bubbling in her throat. “You had no right to do that, sir.”
“We were conducting an investigation, miss,” the superintendent said. “I thought it prudent to inform the interested parties of what I’ve learned.”
“Daddy, how could you allow this?”
Her father’s eyes narrowed as he drummed his fingers. “You have changed in the last few weeks, Marion—and not for the better, I might say. I think we were all eager to learn what had caused such a shift in your personality.”
“All you had to do was ask me.”
“If there had been a chance of receiving a truthful answer, I might agree. However, you haven’t been honest with me and you haven’t been honest with Chauncey.”
She looked over at Chauncey. His face was gruesome. Whatever happened to cause those injuries must have hurt considerably. Not that she could work up any outrage on his behalf. She couldn’t forgive him for assaulting her in the gazebo.
“So,” her father continued. “Byrnes, you have a report for us?”
“Yes, sir. I do,” the superintendent said. Instead of speaking, however, he turned on his heel and walked out of the room. No one spoke, and she could feel Chauncey’s angry gaze burning a hole in the side of her head.
Ignoring him, she tried pleading with her father. “Daddy, I don’t understand what is happening. Perhaps this could all wait until the morning when we’ve all had a chance to rest.”
Her father remained silent, his stare fixed on the door. The clock on the mantel chimed the half hour, the rhythmic clang startlingly loud in the quiet. Then the door opened and she looked to see what had been keeping—
She froze in horror, the room tilting on its side for a brief second. Frank walked in behind Superintendent Byrnes, her lawyer’s face decidedly grim.
Oh, Lord. This was worse than bad. This was an unholy disaster.
She had to do something, say something, but she could only watch, dumbfounded. The words tripped over themselves in her brain, fragments and pieces that could not form sentences. Frank . . . here . . . Chauncey . . . police . . .
“Tripp, I believe you know
everyone here,” her father said flatly as the two men approached the desk. “Byrnes, let’s get this over with.”
“Of course, sir.” Byrnes produced a notebook and began reading. “On several occasions, Miss Greene has been observed traveling downtown to the Sixth Ward, where she visited families living in four different tenement buildings. It’s my understanding she brings money to these families as a way of supplementing their incomes.”
Mamie opened her mouth to explain but her father gave one shake of his head. A muscle jumped in his jaw, a well-known display of his extreme displeasure. She clamped her lips shut and folded her hands in her lap.
“On two occasions she has visited the women’s section of the Tombs to see a prisoner, a one Mrs. Porter. This is the wife of one of the families Miss Greene routinely visited and Mrs. Porter has been arrested on a murder charge.”
The superintendent cleared his throat. No one in the room moved, and Mamie didn’t dare glance at Frank.
“The lawyer representing Mrs. Porter is one Mr. Frank Tripp. He took the case at the request of Miss Greene, against the advice of his partners, I might add, who are all vehemently opposed to the idea of their firm being associated with anything of this sort.”
“I should say so,” her father muttered.
Mamie hadn’t expected that. Had Frank’s partners asked him to drop Mrs. Porter’s case? He hadn’t mentioned it. Her eyes darted to him, but he stared straight ahead, hands in his pockets. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
“Miss Greene is apparently helping with Mrs. Porter’s case, as she is close to the Porter children. The preliminary hearing is scheduled with Judge—”
“Never mind that,” her father said. “Stick to the relevant issues.”
“I apologize.” The superintendent’s neck flushed. “Miss Greene has visited Mr. Tripp at both his office and his home, most recently this evening, when she arrived at approximately ten o’clock and departed at twelve-oh-five this morning.”
Shame washed over her. Not because of her relationship with Frank—she didn’t feel an ounce of regret over that—but because it was no one’s business outside of hers and Frank’s. Chauncey and Mr. Livingston certainly should not be privy to such personal information. Bad enough her father was here to learn about it.
Frank’s lids fell briefly, his expression pained, and guilt nearly overwhelmed Mamie. She had to salvage this before her father and the superintendent ruined everything. “We were discussing the case,” she said to the room.
“Duncan, this is an egregious breach of trust for my son,” Mr. Livingston said. “He expected her to remain chaste until their wedding, not run amok in New York City.”
“Never mind that Chauncey hasn’t bothered to remain chaste,” Mamie said. “He has a mistress he refuses to give up.”
“That is hardly relevant,” her father snarled, pointing a finger at her. “It is your behavior we are discussing here, not Chauncey’s. And considering how very badly this is going, I would cease speaking altogether, were I you.” He gestured to the superintendent. “I was told you had information about Mr. Tripp’s background.”
Frank jerked and she watched his throat work for a brief second. Then he adopted an easy smile and addressed her father. “Duncan, I can’t see how my background has any bearing on tonight’s discussion. I have already offered to do the right thing by Mamie. I wish to marry her.”
The offer did not appease her father. “I made my feelings on that quite clear the last time we spoke regarding my daughter. Byrnes, please continue.”
Byrnes’s mouth hitched in a satisfied smile, one that had Mamie’s chest squeezing in dread. “Yes, thank you. As you all know, Mr. Tripp claims to come from a prominent family in Chicago. However, I have learned that he actually grew up on Worth Street in Five Points, with his real surname as Murphy.”
The room erupted in chaos, with the two Livingstons expressing their extreme displeasure to Duncan, who merely glowered at Frank, but Frank paid them no attention. He concentrated on Mamie. Her brows had knitted in confusion, her eyes vacant. She was likely doubting the revelation, thinking it improbable that lies of this magnitude could ever perpetuate.
And yet, they had. Frank had ensured it over the years, doing everything he could to bury his lower-class past. Goddamn Byrnes. Somehow the superintendent had learned the truth and was using it to destroy Frank before the preliminary hearing.
When he neither refuted the story nor defended himself, her shoulders sank. Knowing Mamie, she was now wondering what else he’d lied about. A fair question, he supposed, given the circumstances. But he’d never lied to her about his feelings or his desire to marry her. Those things had been quite real.
Not that she’d believe him now.
Pain seared through his chest, a burning panic that far eclipsed the humiliation of having his shameful secret paraded in front of Duncan and the Livingstons. He couldn’t lose her, not now.
Not when he’d just discovered how she smelled in the moonlight.
Not when he’d learned how sensitive her neck was, how she loved to be kissed there.
Not when he’d lay the world at her feet to see one of her smiles.
Not fucking now, damn it.
“Have you nothing to say for yourself?” Duncan barked, breaking into Frank’s thoughts. “Any way of explaining this?”
“It’s true.” He kept his focus trained on Mamie as he forced the words out. “I was born Frank Murphy and raised in Five Points, the youngest of five children. I left home at fourteen for boarding school as a charity case. After, I attended Allegheny College and then worked under a lawyer until I passed the bar.”
“I knew it!” Chauncey shouted. “I knew he was nothing more than a dirt-dwelling thug. Look at what he did to my face.”
Mamie’s brows pinched together as she took in Chauncey’s injury. Then she seemed to shake herself, looking more like the determined woman he knew. “Mr. Tripp only hit Chauncey because of me. Chauncey tried to force himself on me the other night in the gazebo and—”
“I did no such thing!”
The room quieted as Mamie’s declaration settled. Duncan’s expression grew fearsome as he slowly stood up, his attention now entirely on Chauncey. “You tried to force yourself on my daughter?”
Fear briefly flashed on Chauncey’s face before he hid it. “We were kissing and got carried away. Nothing happened—and it’s no worse than what she’s been doing with him!” He pointed at Frank.
“You’re a liar,” Frank growled, his muscles clenched and ready for battle. “You told her she merely needed coaxing and that you’d prove what a good lover you were.”
“Now, hold on,” the elder Livingston said. “You cannot fault Chauncey for anticipating their wedding vows. He was only trying to help the process along.”
“By forcing himself on her?” Duncan roared. “What sort of man has to resort to physical violence to romance a woman?”
“I didn’t hurt her,” Chauncey protested. “We merely kissed, is all.”
“Because I bit your hand when you covered my mouth to keep me quiet. Only then was I able to get away,” Mamie pointed out.
“Let me see your hand,” Duncan ordered Chauncey.
Chauncey swallowed, his left hand curling into a fist at his side. “She’s going to be my wife,” he said. “I fail to see what the problem is with getting things started earlier than expected.”
“The problem,” Duncan said and closed the distance between himself and the young man, “is that she is my daughter and I won’t have any man—not even one she plans to marry—force himself on her. Let me see your goddamn hand. Now.”
Chauncey withered in the face of Duncan’s anger. Duncan was intimidating at the best of times; at worst, he was downright fearsome. Chauncey slid his left hand forward, where a bluish bite mark was clearly visible on the palm. At the proof of Mamie’s terror, Frank wanted to destroy Chauncey’s face all over again.
Duncan’s expression da
rkened even further. Chauncey must have feared for his life because his voice trembled as he said, “It was only a harmless bit of fun.”
“Now, Duncan,” Mr. Livingston said. “You remember how girls are at this age. They want to experiment but have to maintain the cloak of respectability. I suggested Chauncey should try to influence her a bit. Goose things along. We can’t blame him. He thought she was a virgin. Little did everyone know she’d been giving it away for free to him.” He tilted his chin toward Frank.
Duncan’s right eye twitched as he faced his friend. “You . . . You told him to force himself on my daughter? My daughter, the girl you’ve known since I first held her in my arms?”
“Chauncey wasn’t going to hurt her, for God’s sake,” Livingston said. “You are overreacting.”
“I am overreacting?” Duncan’s eyes nearly bulged from his head. “You told your son to assault my daughter and I am overreacting. Do I have that right?”
“The boy’s done nothing wrong. She’s made him wait, for God’s sake, while she was parading all around town with her lover instead. And you know if she has one, there’s likely more. What kind of girl are you raising?”
Duncan’s nostrils flared, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Frank was about to intervene, calm everyone down, when Duncan said, “Get the hell out of my house. Both of you. Get out and never come back.”
Livingston’s jowls worked as his mouth opened and closed. He struggled to his feet. “You cannot possibly mean that.”
“I do. I absolutely do. There’ll be no marriage between your son and my daughter. In fact, if I catch him anywhere near her, I’ll break a hell of a lot more than Tripp did.”
“You’ll regret this,” Livingston said. “After you’ve calmed down you’ll change your mind.”
“Not in a million years, Richard. I know we’ve been friends a long time but I won’t ever forget this.”
Livingston huffed and told Chauncey to get moving. The two men stormed out of the room, not bothering to close the door behind them. “Superintendent,” Duncan said tiredly as he lowered himself into his chair. “I believe we’re done here.”
