Rage blistered through her veins. How dare he even suggest an outcome when she had researched every avenue to escape her present circumstances. “That is not in the cards. My parents would not allow it. They’d banish Caroline to the tenements, overfilled buildings, eaten away by time, oppressive like a sunken ship underwater. I could not send her into that rat-infested hellhole.”
“Are you sure?” A barely controlled hostility simmered beneath his formality.
Her nostrils flared. His attack was like a choreographed dance of destruction. “How dare you insinuate I have any choice in the matter? My parents think they’ve rid themselves of my problem by casting my daughter off to the frontier. Can you imagine their machinations to cover up her existence, and then for her to reappear? Don’t you think I’m sick and tired of my peers looking down their noses, searching for any scandal and then pecking that person to death? To exist without laying ownership to Caroline.”
“You need to fight for her and to protect her,” he said carelessly.
Right now, he was at the top of her lunatic list. The insensitive, hypercritical tyrant. How she itched to slap him. “Oh, the naïve Mr. Rourke. My mother would not allow one small infraction. My father is very powerful and has the meansto execute any coverup necessary. Can you imagine what would happen if they discovered I hid my daughter in the orphanage?” Her voice rose, so incensed she was and sounding shrill.
“I apologize, Miss Spencer. I was out of turn.”
“You are not. I’m angry with myself, the world and the way it is. I want my daughter. Do you know how it feels to be powerless? To maintain a life of circumspect and emotional numbness?”
“I do.”
She jerked her head up. Those two simple words said so solemn and grave. He was a master at hiding his pain. If she hadn’t glimpsed a momentary vulnerability of sadness and anger, she’d have missed it. Had he been talking about himself?
Instantly, she knewZachary Rourke.
Becauseshe knewherself.
Pushed behind a wall of painful emotions, trapped in the churning waters of his subconscious, existed a fear of feeling…and being vulnerable.
When the coach stopped at the Fitzgeralds, he bent to her. Elizabeth widened her eyes, with the intensity of his gaze. A deep hunger stirred to life in her midsection. She wanted to cross the chasm that separated them.
The night noises swirled around them like a throbbing haze of sound as he grasped her by the wrist. Raising her hand, palm up, he pressed his lips to the soft place at the base of her palm where the blood beat closest to the skin’s surface. For a second, she felt hot blood coursing up, up through her veins. It was too immediate a gesture to give her a warning. Then he lifted his head and looked into her eyes, murmuring a soft, “Miss Spencer.”
She stared back, feeling a curious streak of vibrations at his touch and a hint of sentimentality. Heat rose to her face. She slowly lowered her gaze to where his lips hovered just over hers.She took a deep breath against the panic. Waited. Was he going to kiss her?
He straightened, tipped his hat and flashed her a wicked smile. “Goodnight, Miss Spencer. Oh, remember your debt.”
“Debt?” she said breathlessly.
“Did you forget the opera?
She pulled back the curtain and watched him mount the steps with a surge of longing and regret. The man was mercurial. Damn him for leaving her in a trembling pool of yearning.
Chapter Ten
Zachary rode in a carriage south down Broadway, cursing the congestion.
O’Reilly blew out a breath. “Thank God I was spared of the horror of growing up in the depraved Five Points rat-infested hovels. The drunken brawling, dirt-poor Irish who poured into the city looking for a dream and finding a nightmare.”
“Not much different than working on the railroads. Just a different locale.”
“At least in the west we could breathe.”
Saloons and spittoons ruled below Canal Street. The older streets in lower Manhattan were so narrow that carriages and horsecars were infinitely snarled. Zachary stopped the driver and jumped out, walking the rest of the way. The smell of sewage, soot and run-off inhabited every crevice. Hawkers hawked vegetable, fruits, meats, and lively entertainments in the upstairs apartments for men with a whim. He crossed a few streets and went into Dwyer’s Bar, a down and out establishment someone had hinted that he might find who he was looking for. Several men were engrossed in card play. To the side of a stage, an out of tune piano belted outDanny Boy.Smoke curled from cigars and pipes, and you could cut the air with a knife.
He walked up to the bartender requested a whiskey and paid for it. “I’m looking for a man named Timothy Boyle. He’s a friend of mine, and I heard he might live close.”
The saloonkeeper nodded. “You don’t have to look too far for your friend. He’s the man over there asleep on the table and in his cups. His children died last year of the yellow fever and his wife just died three weeks ago of the fever that too often follows childbirth. If there was ever a soul in need of a friend, then it is Timothy Boyle.”
O’Reilly picked up Boyle’s head and gave him a shake. “Phew. He smells like a swamp.”
Boyle opened his eyes, focused on Zachary. “You should have let the Comanches have me.”
“Not a chance. Not when I have my best foreman waiting for me.”
