That was odd. Caroline wasn’t expecting Gray to return until tomorrow, so he had no idea why she was at the townhouse with “an older gent.” He quickened his steps as he headed home. The four-block walk gave his mind plenty of time to come up with all sorts of distasteful possibilities. Caroline was a beautiful woman yet had no regular suitor, but maybe she was meeting someone on the sly.
He vaulted up the front steps and wiggled the doorknob. Itwas locked, and it took him a moment of fumbling with his key to open it. Voices from down the hall stopped the moment he stepped inside.
“Gray?” Caroline looked ill at ease as she scurried from the kitchen. She quickly masked it with a pleasant expression. “Welcome home! I thought you were coming back tomorrow.”
He said nothing as he strode down the hallway, determined to see the older gent before an escape out the back door was possible. But the man sitting at the kitchen table made no attempt to escape, merely rotated a cup of tea with a smug expression on his face.
Gray blanched in revulsion. “Do you know who this man is?” he demanded of Caroline.
“Everyone in Washington knows Dickie Shuster.”
“Yes, Gray, everyone in Washington knows me,” Dickie tittered.
“Get out of my house,” Gray said bluntly.
“Gray,” Caroline said in a warning tone, “Dickie is my guest, and this house is mine as well as yours.”
Papers lay spread out before Dickie, but he gathered them into a stack while sending Caroline a smarmy grin. “I’d hate to stir discord in the family. Perhaps we should simply scuttle the deal.”
Caroline clenched her fists, but her face remained calm. “That wouldn’t be in either of our best interests, would it?”
Dickie slid the papers into his satchel, a mournful look on his face. “My time is valuable....”
“I’ll make it worth your while. Perhaps I can persuade the first lady to have tea with us after all.”
A delighted expression came over Dickie’s face. “Excellent! I shall look forward to the invitation with delight. Good day to you both.”
The way Dickie swaggered toward the front door made Gray’s teeth ache. Caroline followed, making pleasantries with Dickieon the front stoop for a few minutes before closing the door after him.
Gray leaned against the wall of the kitchen. A week of travel was catching up with him, and to be confronted with that man in his home was his limit. Dickie’s abandoned teacup still rested on the table. Gray didn’t even want to touch it, but he picked it up and dumped it in the trash. Then he braced himself for a battle with Caroline as she returned to the kitchen.
“What was that all about?” he asked.
She looked triumphant. “Dickie has been neutralized,” she proudly announced. “The editor atThe Washington Postgot wind of his two new horses and threatened to fire him. Dickie is terrified. If he loses his job, his ability to be the biggest gadfly in Washington will be ruined, but thePostis worried about those horses. They’ve issued a complete and total retraction about the article he wrote, and he won’t be printing any more stories at the behest of the Magruders.”
“How did the editor find out about the horses?”
Caroline slanted him a glance as though he was a simpleton. “I told him, of course, but Dickie doesn’t know that. He’s merely grateful for my help salvaging his reputation with his editor by facilitating an exclusive interview about the president’s marriage.”
“Why on earth would anyone want to read such a thing?”
“People are wildly curious about it,” Caroline defended. “Ida McKinley is the least popular first lady in history, and it’s becoming a problem for the reelection. One of those vile political cartoons depicted the first lady as a harpy with the president curled up like a poodle in her lap. It’s true that he brings her flowers every day. It’s true that even during the darkest days of the war, he left cabinet meetings to say bedtime prayers with her before returning downstairs for business. People want to know what he sees in her.”
In all honesty, Gray had wondered as well. While he didn’tapprove of the president, William McKinley’s steadfast devotion to his wife was a credit to him.
Caroline continued. “My goal is to bolster her image—not for her sake, but because it will show the president in a good light. I’ve got one month before the election to do everything possible to see McKinley win a second term.”
The desperation in her tone hinted at something beyond politics. “Why is that so important to you?”
“How else can I get a presidential pardon for Luke?”
It took a moment for the stunning pronouncement to sink in. “That’s your goal?”
“That’s always been my goal,” she asserted. “I’m not a lawyer who can defend Luke in court or a warrior who could break him out of prison, but I’ve got access to powerful people, and I intend to use it to save my brother.”
He understood. Since the minute he learned of Luke’s arrest, he’d been preoccupied with the awful finality of a life sentence. Their family would never be whole while Luke was stuck in a six-by-ten-foot jail cell, his fate in limbo.
Exhaustion set in as he leaned his head against the back wall, gazing at Caroline fondly. “All right,” he murmured. “I understand.”
