by Rose Lerner
“You did a fine job,” he told the boy.
“Can I help again tomorrow?”
“I’ll tell you what. You can help me every day after school.”
“That’s a trick!”
“It is,” he said and shooed the boy out of the room. He and Annie finished cleaning up and when it was all over he grabbed the telegram and headed into his office.
It was from Massachusetts General.
James. Glad to hear from you. Intrigued by your work. Propose meeting after holidays to discuss treatment of Soldier’s Disease and Heart. Invited other administrators you mentioned and others. Letter to follow with details.
From
Augustus Smith III
Administrator, Massachusetts General.
Helen put down her pen and stood to answer the knock on the door, careful not to get the ink from her fingers all over everything.
Though it was a bit too late for that. It was smudged on the bed hangings. Part of the wall by the door. The washstand. Her fingerprints were everywhere, proof of how busy she’d been.
Letters. Constant letters.
To friends back home. To investors. To bankers.
To James.
Her eager heart pounded a strange double time as she walked to the door. A call and response. A knock at the door, a letter from James—an increase in her heart rate.
The effects of his letters were also felt elsewhere in her body. A certain waiting. A lush vibrancy.
In her next letter, she was going to send him a room key. It was the only logical solution.
The door opened to reveal a blond doorman, who handed her a letter. She tipped him and shut the door behind her. Leaning against it, she broke James’s seal and opened the letter. She pressed one hand to her lips, which was why she had a constant black mark on her mouth.
Dearest Helen,
I have had some news. The men I have been corresponding with regarding the treatment of inebriation in soldiers have decided to meet. In the New Year. In Boston.
I can’t tell you my excitement for this and perhaps I don’t need to, as you have understood my call to this cause from the very beginning. In many ways you were the beginning.
I am asking you, begging really, as I am through with pride when it comes to you; I am begging you to come with me. In whatever capacity you want to be in my life —that is the capacity in which I’d like you to come with me.
Friend. Lover.
If it is my choice, you are my bride.
It occurs to me, in my courtship these last few weeks, that I have not told you the truth. Or my whole truth, which is that I love you.
I love you, Helen. I love you very much. I will take you any way I can have you.
If you don’t feel the same way, I am asking you to tell me. Let me go. I am willing to wait for as long as you need, but if there is no hope that you will return my feelings I would like to know now.
James
Helen couldn’t breathe. Not for a long moment. And her heart was pounding so hard in her ears that she didn’t realize it was actually a knock at the door and not her heart.
She turned and opened the door, expecting James, hat in hand, sardonic smile in place. But it was the blond doorman.
“Yes?” she asked on a strangled breath.
“The man who sent the note. He’s downstairs. He’s asking for a reply.”
“A reply.”
“That’s what he says.”
“I don’t have a reply.” Not yet. Not on the spot like this. Without a moment to even catch her breath.
Some part of her knew she was a liar. She’d known this was coming since the moment she’d opened her eyes on Delilah’s couch to see him standing over her, weeks ago.
But still she wasn’t quite ready. She glanced over at the desk she’d had the management bring in, covered in her papers and tea cups.
A mess. But her mess. All hers.
“What do I tell him?” the doorman asked.
A choice. She had to make a choice. One choice among so many, but somehow this felt like the last choice. If she said yes, then it was over. Things were done. She’d be his wife, and not wholly herself.
Not anymore.
Or you’ll be wholly yourself and better. With a partner. A friend. Lover. You’ll be cared for and supported and cherished and you will do the same.
It is marriage, not a locked door.
It is James. Not Charles.
She shook her head. Not ready, I am …I am not ready. Why does he have to force the issue when we were having such a lovely courtship? Am I not allowed a courtship? Why does he decide our timing?
But he wasn’t asking for that, was he? Not really.
He was asking if he should have hope. She had just found hers—did she have enough to spare?
“Tell him I said thank you, but I didn’t give you a reply.”
* * *
He expected her to come down. It had been weeks, after all. Of letters and fine manners and pretending every damn minute that he hadn’t touched her the way he had. That she hadn’t touched him the way she had.
That every beat of his heart didn’t somehow sound like her name.
He was willing to give her all the time she needed, if she could just lend him some hope. Some clue that her heart beat in a rhythm that he might recognize as his name.
He didn’t need much, truly. A clue. A hope. The hope of hope.
When the boy came down the stairs, not Helen herself, radiant and glowing with her love for him, and without a letter no less, he felt as if he’d been shot. He even put his hand there, over the fine waistcoat she’d bought him, as if he could feel the damage. Staunch the blood.
Stop the pain.
“What did she say?” he asked, practically growling, because he knew.
“She said thank you but no reply.”
Damn it. God damn it.
There was no point standing there and bleeding to death on the fine floors of the Inter-Ocean, so James decided, since he was in town and he now aimed to get blind drunk, he’d do it at Delilah’s. With Kyle.
Because if there was anyone who could make him feel worse, it was Kyle.
* * *
“Looks like a Christmas Eve blizzard,” Kyle said an hour later, pouring James another shot.
“Oh dear God, it’s Christmas Eve?” James asked. That was somehow the most painfully ironic thing he’d ever heard.
“You gonna stay here, or head back to Annie’s? Snow’s really coming down.”
“Does it matter?”
“Oh, you are a sad case tonight, aren’t you? Let’s see, where should the good doctor spend Christmas Eve? In a house with his friends, or in a freezing cold whorehouse with Janey, who snores?”
“Fuck you, Kyle.”
Kyle laughed. “You think I don’t know why you came here tonight? To start some fight with me just so you could lose your temper? Fine, you want to fight. Let’s go. But just so we’re clear, I’m only doing it as a favor to you.”
For some reason that was hilarious to James. Hilarious and also a bit sad.
“Even though you held a kidnapped woman at gunpoint, you’re a good friend, Kyle,” he said into his whiskey glass.
“Oh, Jesus, you’re going to wake up tomorrow with a headache and remember you don’t even like me.” Kyle poured him another drink.
The snow kept just about everyone away, and the whorehouse was nearly empty. There were a few men with him at the bar and the girls were huddled next to the fireplace, taking turns to come over and see if the men wanted to go upstairs. Delilah hadn’t even come down.
“She hates the cold,” Kyle said. “And Christmas Eve.”
“How do you do it, Kyle?’ James asked.
“Do what?”
“Love her when she doesn’t love you back.”
Kyle went white. “We’re going to forget you said that. All right?”
James looked over at the black sky in the window. It was snowing. And hard.
Even with several glasses of whiskey swimming around in his head he realized that if he didn’t leave now, he’d never get back to Market Street. He’d have to spend the night here and that no longer held any appeal.
He paid up, though Kyle wasn’t even looking at him. Heading out into the night, he ducked his head down into his coat, pulled his hat down low and trudged out to the edge of town. Annie’s house was lit up, the windows bright against the darkness, and he followed the light the rest of the way.
When he opened the door, the snow came in with him.
He took off his hat and tried to put it up on the hook, but missed, and it fell to the floor.
It took several tries, but finally his coat stayed where it was put and James staggered, bouncing off the walls, into his own rooms.
The fire in his room had burned down to embers, and sighing with exhaustion and the beginning of a hangover he shrugged out of his waistcoat and then his shirt, so tired he could feel his bed calling from the other side of the wall.
He sat on the edge of his settee and pulled off a boot.
It was the whiskey’s fault that he didn’t see Helen right away, curled as she was in the far corner of his settee. The dying firelight played across her beautiful face.
He jumped to his feet like she was a ghost.
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to talk.”
He was drunk. That was a surprise. She’d worked up a speech of sorts, a list. She even wrote it down, the paper crinkled under her thigh where she’d tucked it between her body and the settee.
But looking at him, his hair flopped over his eyes, the list seemed ridiculous. A list of wishes and demands for a man that wasn’t really this man.
Freedom to manage her money the way she saw fit.
Agreement that they could travel back to Charleston.
They would be lovers, and no more discussion of marriage until she was ready.
She looked at him, drunk and scowling and dear, and she knew he would give her all those things. He would give her all the things on lists she’d hadn’t written yet. All he wanted was hope. Hope that she felt some of what he felt.
And sitting there, having come to barter and negotiate, she was suffused with care. With love.
It had been there a long time, hard to recognize amidst the fear and the pain. Hard to recognize because she’d never felt its like before.
She sucked in a deep breath, suddenly awash. Tears in her eyes. How lucky, she thought. How lucky I am.
This man, with his intelligence and his wrists. With his perfect gifts and crystal-eyed understanding. Oh…
Love was really quite… freeing.
She smiled at him and he scowled.
“I’m sorry, Helen. But the hour for talking has long since passed, and I am in no shape for it. If you need a place to sleep, you can go up to your old room.”
“You’re drunk.” And angry. If she told him her feelings now, she wasn’t sure he would believe her.
“I am.”
“If you don’t want to talk, would you like to do something else?” she asked.
He stared at her blankly for one long minute, and then he bent forward so close she thought he might kiss her. Hoped he might kiss her.
“Yes, in fact, I would like to put my mouth between your legs,” he said. He was trying to be shocking, and it worked. It very much worked. “I would like to taste you and smell you. I would like to make you come against my tongue.”
She glanced away and swallowed.
“No?” he said, being malicious. “Not what you’re here for?”
The list of demands was rubbish. Her heart was beating between her legs, and he was acting rather unpredictably. She scrambled for a new avenue.
“I thought…I’d like to play cards.”
“Cards? Now? In the middle of the night?”
“Five card draw.”
She stood to find a deck of cards, going through his desk.
“Do you… know how to play cards?”
“I’ve been watching card games for eighteen months. I picked up a few things. Ah ha!” She pulled out the deck of cards. “Let’s bet to make it more interesting.”
“What do I have that you want?” he asked wearily.
She looked over at him, stunned and flushed. “Well, what you mentioned before, for one thing. About…your mouth between my legs.”
She sat down on the edge of the settee and shuffled the cards.
“You want to bet sex?”
“No. Well, yes, I guess in a way.” She took a deep breath. “If you win, we become lovers.”
“And if you win?”
“You marry me.”
He blinked. “What are you playing at?”
“Do you agree to the terms?” she asked and began to deal the cards.
“I think…perhaps…I have not made my feelings clear and so you think I will find this funny. But I don’t.” He leaned forward, pinning her to the settee with his gaze. “I love you, Helen. With all my heart. With every broken part of my soul, I love you.”
She smiled, and her eyes filled with tears. “What a relief,” she said, “as I feel the same way.”
“Earlier today you would not respond to my note.”
She nodded. “I’m going to try to explain this, and I know it will sound…insubstantial, perhaps. I don’t know. But I was not lying when I said I did not want to marry anyone. I was scared, James. Very scared of giving that kind of power to someone. After Park…”
“I understand, I do. You don’t need to explain.”
“And then you proposed-”
“Not very well.”
“No.” She smiled. “Not very well. But then you…you gave me all this room to care for myself. To make my own choices.”
“That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you, Helen. For you to be able to make your own choices. If marriage isn’t what you want, than we don’t have to get married. I just need to know that you…feel what I feel. That I am a choice you want to make.”
She stood up from the couch, walking toward him with her eyes steadfast on his. “You are my only choice,” she whispered. “The only thing I want. Truly want. With my heart and my soul and my body—I want you.”
He gaped at her. “I wish…I wish I had not had all that whiskey. I might not remember this correctly in the morning.”
“Than I will tell you again in the morning. Every morning.”
He grabbed her hand, and reeled her in to his body, until she was flush against him. Her head over his chest, her legs draped over his.
His arms solid—so solid—around her.
“I love you,” he sighed.
“I love you too.”
He kissed her, slowly and carefully. And she realized with pleasure that this was one of many. The first of the rest. The very beginning of their lives. She melted against him on the settee, his body, its strength, the antidote to every restless longing in hers.
She leaned back, kissed his jaw. His neck. His chin.
“So,” she whispered, her fingers against his lips. He sucked the tips of them into his mouth, and she quite liked that.
“So?”
“What you said earlier?”
His smile was wicked.
“Remind me,” he said, kissing the skin of her neck. The soft flesh above the modest neckline of her dress. But his hand was sliding up her thigh, pulling her dress with it.
“James,” she sighed.
“Tell me.”
“James,” she laughed.
“My brave, bold woman,” he said, cupping her face in his hands. “There is no one here but us sinners.”
The bashfulness left her face, as if she was reminded once again of who she was. Of who they were.
“Put your mouth between my legs and taste me,” she breathed.
“My pleasure.”
Epilogue
* * *
Spring
They were going back east for the meeting that had been
postponed to March due to weather.
They were also going to visit her old home in Charleston.
And, unbelievably, they would be having dinner with his family. At his father’s house in Massachusetts. With his father.
“I don’t know how you’ve talked me into this,” he said, their shoulders bouncing together and apart in rhythm with the train. It was suggestive, this rhythm, and his body was feeling the pull.
“We will literally be in their neighborhood, James. Imagine if you ran into him on the street.”
“We would ignore each other, as God intended.”
She shot him a chastising look from under the brim of her hat. His wife adored hats.
He adored his wife.
Who turned to look out the window, pensive. “Do you think we will return to Denver?”
They’d left the city by stage a week ago, but she looked out the window like she could still see the red brick of downtown.
“You’re asking me? You are the woman deciding things. If you want to return to Denver, I imagine we will. I am simply your bag man.”
“You’re not only that,” she said, smiling at him.
They had a private compartment. Something his wife paid for.
She was richer than ever, his wife, thanks to Steven’s railroad investments and her own savvy handling of her money. She was rich. Beautiful. Smart.
And his.
“Why are you grinning like that?” she whispered, reaching up to unpin the hat from her head.
“Because there is a lock on that door. Because you are mine.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
FROM MOLLY
* * *
Molly O’Keefe, is a USA TODAY Bestseller who has written thirty novels, won two RITA awards and three RT Reviewers’ Choice Awards. Her books have been on numerous “Best Of” lists including Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus and NPR. She lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband and two kids.
