Nine
Nathaniel had learned long ago that sometimes prayers worked, but sometimes they seemed to go unanswered. Ever since accepting the White House job, he’d been praying for his nightmares about Molly to fade, and they had—but only to be replaced by a dull, grinding unease that was always present.
Heat and sun pounded down on him as he crossed Fifteenth Street to the Treasury Building, anxious to get this meeting with John Wilkie over with and get back on duty.
His pathetically small budget meant he had to clear all additional expenditures through Wilkie. Anything involving the president required public scrutiny. Penny pinchers questioned everything spent on the president, from the price of wine served at state dinners to the guards who protected him. During the last administration, President Cleveland’s wife had created a scandal when she requested guards during a summer trip to their New York home. It didn’t matter that the president’s young children had been the target of kidnapping rumors. When the Cleveland family was on vacation, Congress decreed the public should not pay for security.
Those days were mercifully over, but Nathaniel still had to account for every penny, and today’s request was odd.
“I want Caroline Delacroix to be tailed,” he said the moment he sat across from Wilkie’s desk. Everyone else working in the White House had spotless reputations, but Caroline made him uneasy. He didn’t like the idea of spying on her, but it had to be done.
Wilkie didn’t bat an eyelash. “Why?”
“She’s met with a criminal attorney and refuses to tell me why. I can find no blemish on her reputation, but her refusal to be forthcoming is troublesome. The first lady has become unusually dependent on her, and it worries me.”
“Consider it done,” Wilkie said. “I’ll arrange for surveillance and report anything I find to you.”
“Thank you.” Now for the more difficult request. Everything about being responsible for the safety of the president reawakened the grief over Nathaniel’s deepest failing. He’d agreed to the presidential assignment on a short-term basis, and the time was up.
“I’ve done as you asked and designed a solid security plan for the White House, but you need to find someone else to lead this team.”
Wilkie reached for an unlit cigar, slowly tapping and rotating it on the desk. “I wouldn’t have appointed you if I didn’t think you were the best man for the job.”
“I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since the day I accepted. Assign me somewhere else. The Treasury or the State Department.”
“To investigate tax fraud?” Wilkie’s voice dripped with disbelief.
“Tax forms don’t die in front of you because you fell asleep on the job.” It was his deepest shame, for he’d literally fallen asleep while he was supposed to be watching Molly.
Wilkie dropped the cigar and leaned across his desk. “You’ve got to get over what happened to your sister. It was twenty years ago.”
“You never get over the death of someone you were supposed to protect.”
And he had been Molly’s only protector. After their father died, it was just him and Molly, for their mother had run off with a traveling salesman years earlier. He was fourteen and Molly only six when their father died. He didn’t like leaving a child as young as Molly on her own, but he had to earn a living and couldn’t afford to hire someone to look after her. He dropped out of school to work the overnight shift at theChicago Tribune. Feeding huge spools of paper into noisy printing machinery wasn’t the ambition of any young man, but it paid the bills. Over time, his eye for detail got him promoted to the photoengraving department, where he learned the techniques that made the reproduction of photographs commercially viable for newspapers.
Every night he worried about Molly. When he returned home each morning, he breathed a sigh of relief as he jostled her awake, got her dressed, and walked her to school. Then he collapsed into bed and slept into the afternoon.
But he’d yearned for more. As the years passed, he grew accustomed to his overnight shift, but he wanted more out of life than black-and-white newsprint. He wanted color and art and beauty. By the time he was eighteen, he’d saved enough money to take art classes while Molly was in school, but it played havoc with his ability to sleep. He grabbed a few hours here and there, but it seemed he never had enough.
And in the end, Molly paid the price.
“Find someone else for the job,” Nathaniel stressed. “I’ll never be a bodyguard.”
“You’re not a bodyguard, you’re a detective. You’ve already spotted a potential security flaw with the first lady’s secretary, but we’ll need to keep the investigation quiet. The Delacroixs are a powerful family.”
“What can you tell me about them?” Nathaniel had limited experience with high society, but Wilkie mingled with ease.
“They are one of the first families in Virginia society. Old money and old roots. Her elder brother is the leader of the family. Gray Delacroix lives like a monk, but the younger brother is a scoundrel. I think he and Caroline are twins. The pair of them used to be the toast of the town. They lived fast and dangerous. She mostly outgrew it, but he never did. Luke Delacroix is the sort who eventually gets kicked to the curb, blackballed, or wears out his welcome.”
Possibly the sort who would need a criminal attorney, but no self-respecting man would use his sister to handle his legal problems. “Where can I find him?”
“If he has a job, I’ve never heard of it,” Wilkie said.
That meant Nathaniel now had two people to spy on. Caroline and her brother Luke ... if he could be found.
There wasn’t much room to get dressed in the dormitory, and Caroline needed help from Ludmila to get into her formal gown of peacock blue draped with black lace. She’d had it sent from her family’s townhouse for this evening’s state dinner. She only had room for a few gowns in the women’s dormitory, but she kept others at home, and Ida even let her store a few in her generous closets, because Caroline needed a huge range of clothing for her various duties. She would only attend tonight’s dinner if the first lady fell ill at the last moment, but Caroline always dressed in case she was needed.
The small tabletop mirror in the dormitory wasn’t adequate, but Ida had a full-length mirror in her dressing room, and it was time to go attend to her.
