Shawn leaned over. “I get a cramp in my neck taking it all in.”
The line moved forward. Elizabeth shook Shawn Fitzgerald’s hand as Zachary sauntered up to her. There was a delicious moment where her face washed with confusion, like her brain gears couldn’t turn quick enough to take in the information from her wide eyes. Every muscle of her body froze before a fake smile crept onto her face, it soon stretched from side to side showing every gritted tooth.
He raised a brow and bowed to her. “Miss Spencer?”
“It is nice to make your acquaintance again, Mr. Rourke.” She pinched his arm and leaned over for only his ears to hear. “Why are you here?”
Her smugness was noted, and despite her bravado, she was shaking. He didn’t bother to answer. Let her wallow in her fears. She dropped his arm like it was a venomous snake. Shawn called to him and introduced him to her parents, Alva and Edward Spencer, and their youngest daughter, Louise. The burly six-foot Napoleon of Wall Street possessed a grizzled, white mustache, and what hair remained was white, and his overgrown eyebrows arched up like wide-angled Gothic vaults. Looking into the patriarch’s gaze was like looking into the light of an oncoming locomotive.
They made their proper greetings, and then moved with the shoal of fish into the dining room where initial introductions were made.
The Spencers swept in with the matriarch, Alva, making last-minute placement arrangements. Seated by a servant at the head of the table, Alva fluttered her flaccid fingers in blithe consent for Havemeyer, an overeager puppy, to sit opposite Elizabeth.
“Mr. Fitzgerald,” Alva Spencer cooed, “Isaac Havemeyer is heir to ‘the’ sugar fortune and has interest in my eldest daughter.”
As Zachary held out Elizabeth’s chair, he caught her furious exhale.
Isaac Havemeyer, heir to a sugar fortune, was a paper cut-out of a man, owning enough substance to fold him up and place him in Zachary’s pocket. He had a thin face, and he had the thinnest lips, and the thinnest nostrils, heavy eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they seemed like they were looking out of caverns. Everything about him was recessed, save the pop-out ears, and the hair that curled upward whenever he wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“I’m lucky to have such a beautiful young woman to gaze upon,” smiled Havemeyer, making his cadaverous face seem thinner and longer.
As Zachary sat down beside Elizabeth, she stifled a yawn. He glanced around the imposing dining room that blared more stolid and Victorian than what he’d seen so far. Painted dark red, with English oak wainscoting, the room boasted Siena marble columns that climbed to the ceiling, while Oriental screens and enormous cloisonné vases stood sentinel to the sides, dazzling guests with sumptuous elegance.
“Mr. Rourke,” Elizabeth said in a brisk voice, snapping out her dinner napkin. “How is it we seem to run into each other?’
He shrugged. “Coincidence?”
Instilled in his mind was a vulnerable girl in a terrible predicament. To think he’d thought about altering his life and marrying her. Good that he found out she was the epitome of a rich, spoiled snob.
“I must say, your appearance has much changed.” Her mouth tightened as if she’d tasted a rotten oyster.
Shawn’s tailor had taken great care in outfitting him in the style of dress necessary for his pursuit. Wisely, Zachary restrained himself from grinning outright for the endeavor had placed Miss Spencer in a fit of temper.
He spanned his hands. “I hope for the better, Miss Spencer.”
Beneath that angelic expression, her eyes glittered then darkened, and then with a momentary flash, bore through him. “To believe you are bold enough to seek a compliment.”
Zachary chuckled. She’d submit to being burned at the stake before giving him approval.
“I didn’t see him before, but I’d say his mode of fashion is quite daunting,” said Mrs. Merriweather, an older woman; liberal, flagrant and unafraid of showing her regards.
Other than Shawn, he had another ally among the posse of wolves.
At Edward Spencer’s imperious nod, servants brought plates of food for the table. A parade of raw oysters, vermicelli soup, followed by the second course of broiled salmon and turbot in lobster sauce were set upon the table in perfect sequence.
“He is a cowboy,” scoffed Dyer. “Any education, Mr. Cowboy?” Rawlins Dyer asked. The oil baron was not to be disregarded. He was dressed in elegant formal style, lionizing his station in society, and a testament to his valet to make him patrician. Zachary had seen Elizabeth escorted by the man at the orphanage. He also witnessed the way Dyer cast covetous gazes over her. He didn’t trust the man.
“I studied two years at West Point.”
Unhappy with not sitting next to Elizabeth, Dyer’s mouth tightened, a version of a sardonic smile. He shook out his napkin, leaned over the table to give a belittling tone to the attentive eyes and said, “You didn’t finish West Point, Mr. Rourke? Did your family have anything to say on the matter?”
Dyer, a Wall Street marauder whose ebullient spirits and street fighter tactics masked a shrewd intelligence, was the kind of man who wanted everyone to grovel at his feet. “I majored in civil engineering and learned everything in two years that I possibly could. After outdistancing my professors on the subject, and reading every book in West Point’s library, I figured it wastime to strike out on my own and apply what I had learned to real world practice. I have learned it is better to walk a thousand miles than to read a thousand books.”
Elizabeth Spencer twirled her wine glass and then took another sip. Her eyes narrowed on him. “Mr. Rourke, tell me other than roping, what other talent do you possess?”
Like a wrangley bobcat caught in a trap, she attacked him for being in her home. He’d handle her. He looked forward to the battle. “Depends on what you are looking for,” he dared.
Elizabeth glared at him. “Are we having a conversation, Mr. Rourke? About your other talent, your excellent memory. For instance, can you recall anything from the New York Tribune?”
