Her mind did the calculations. It would take a few days to get to Milwaukee, and then a couple weeks to investigate. He could be back before Thanksgiving. That wouldn’t be too horrible, would it? But it still hurt that he would leave Washington after everything they’d been through together. After all they had before them.
“We’ll miss the reception at the Smithsonian,” she said inanely.
“Yes.”
Couldn’t he at least sound a little regretful? He had no obligation to seek her permission to go on an assignment, but she wished he had found a way to tell her.
Nathaniel must have sensed her pique, for he continued to justify his need to leave. “The Kestrel Gang is the most damaging group of counterfeiters in the past decade. They’ve brought chaos to the money supply and show no sign of slowing down. I spent eleven months in St. Louis tracking them down and was so close to cracking the case. No one knows their patterns as well as me. I’ve got to go.”
He kept talking, but all she heard was “eleven months.”Eleven months. That meant he could spend almost an entire year in Milwaukee! But why should that surprise her? When she met him he had just come off a five-month assignment in Boston working on the counterfeit stamp operation. The nature of his job would always keep him on the move, for counterfeiters could spring up anywhere in the nation. How foolish she had been to believe she and Nathaniel could court like ordinary people.
She beat back the impending panic and forced a dignified expression onto her face. “Is this going to be an eleven-month assignment like you had in St. Louis? Or will you be back next weekend to escort me to the Smithsonian, like you promised?”
At least he had the grace to look sorry. “I don’t know the answer to that,” he said. “Tracking down counterfeiters is a complicated operation. It usually takes weeks or months. But, Caroline, this is too important for me to ignore.”
Something inside her snapped. “You willalwayshave duties too important to ignore! Your entire life has been dedicated to serving other people, and you ought to get a medal for it.” She turned her ire on Wilkie. “Give this man a medal. He’s moved all over the country at your behest and has nothing to show for it. No wife, no home, certainly not a day free of responsibilities or a shred of fun. He ought to at least get a medal.”
Luke clamped a hand on her arm, then leaned over to whisper in her ear. “Stop it. Don’t lose your temper in public, and don’t say anything you might regret later.” He released her arm and slid back into his seat.
It was good advice. Luke smoothly covered her loss of composure by returning to their discussion about the plan to take down Captain Holland. Philip was insistent that no other agents be brought into the case. If Nathaniel couldn’t help, Philip wanted to work alone with Luke.
“That won’t work,” Wilkie said. “We need men monitoring Holland’s home, his office in the War Department, and the local telegraph office. You need to become accustomed to the idea that you can’t continue to run that little spy operation out of a basement map library.”
“There’s nothing ‘little’ about my spy operation,” Philip said. “I earned the trust of Theodore Roosevelt and have been doing good work on his behalf for years.”
“That’s all over now,” Nathaniel said. “Roosevelt is president, and he doesn’t get his own private army or investigative service.”
Caroline’s gaze trailed out the window as the men argued about legalities and lines of reporting. She ought to care, but she didn’t, for her heart felt crushed. Nathaniel had alreadyreverted to his law-and-order demeanor by spotting flaws, pouncing on technicalities, and strategizing solutions.
At least he wasn’t staring vacantly into space anymore. He was coming back. The man she loved was emerging from the shell of despondency and engaging in the world again. He’d fallen off a horse and gotten kicked in the face, but he was saddling up again, and it ought to be a relief.
Itwasa relief. This was the man she’d fallen in love with! How could she resent the fact that he was back, even if it meant that, on his list of priorities, she would fall somewhere below the Milwaukee assignment and the Holland takedown and possibly even a fine lobster dinner. Her mouth twitched at the memory. How long ago that first night on the train seemed.
Some things would never change. There would always be crime and corruption in the world, and Nathaniel would always put it first. He wasn’t wrong to do so, but it still hurt. How foolish she had been to think that her life would magically be different after September 15th. It wasn’t Nathaniel who was going to change. It would have to be her.
Could she do it? Could she tolerate life with a man who never knew where he would be assigned next month or next year? It would take a special kind of person to thrive in that sort of life, and in truth, she didn’t know if that person was her.
Thirty-Five
Nathaniel began the next morning in the attic of the Treasury Department, gathering up his old files documenting the Kestrel Gang and preparing them for shipment to Milwaukee. He wanted it done this morning, because this afternoon he had been assigned to surveil Captain Holland’s house with Luke Delacroix. He wouldn’t leave for Milwaukee until the end of the week, so he’d been assigned to the Holland investigation for these final few days.
Dust prickled his nose as he pushed another trunk aside. He had to crouch low to avoid the sloping roof as he hunted through decades of old files and discarded furniture. He finally located the last of the trunks from his eleven-month stint in St. Louis and opened it, taking the inventory page from the top and tilting it to catch the dim light from the attic window. A smile tugged as he scanned the list he’d personally compiled four years earlier. He had beenso closeto catching these guys.
Footsteps sounded as a departmental clerk knocked on the open attic door. “Found what you were looking for, sir?”
“I have,” he said. “These two trunks need to be brought downstairs and earmarked for shipment to Milwaukee.”
He couldn’t save President McKinley, but he could save thecentral banking system of the United States if he could stop the Kestrel Gang from flooding the market with fake currency. He was good at this. It was what he’d trained for all his life. He felt like a bloodhound on the trail of a fresh scent, and every instinct clawed at him to chase them down.
But being away from Caroline would hurt. They’d spent the past eighteen months together, living under the same roof, working side by side every day of the week. They’d been through fire and rain together. She knew all his failings and secrets. He would never turn his back on her, but could she endure the inevitable separations that his job required?
She would understand. She knew how much he needed this.
Even so, he worried about her as he rode to meet her brother for the afternoon stakeout.
Tension made his muscles ache, but he ignored the sensation. He needed to succeed in this. First he would help round up Holland, then he’d shift gears toward Milwaukee and his chance at unraveling another criminal scheme. Heneededthis.
“Ready for fun and games?” Luke asked as they met at the small park across from Captain Holland’s house.
