“You’ll send me a copy?” he asked as she stood and brushed the grit from her knees.
“I will. It won’t be for a while, as I’ll be in Baltimore for the rest of the week. It’s my brother’s birthday, and my mother always makes a big fuss over it.”
They walked along the harbor wall, listening to the gentle slosh of waves against the pilings. Where was this forbiddenromance going to lead? There was no good ending he could think of, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy these few stolen hours.
Unfortunately, it seemed her mind was traveling along the same lines, and she brought up the topic he least wanted to discuss.
“During your sister’s gala, I saw you talking with Congressman Roper.”
He stiffened. “That’s right.”
“He’s one of the five congressmen you had on that list in your office. Two of those men will already be gone by the next election. Is Congressman Roper your next target?”
No, her father was his next target. “Marianne, let’s not talk about this.”
“I think it’s a fair question. My father is on that list, and I know you hope he loses in November. I have a feeling you’re going to do everything in your power to ensure he isn’t reelected.”
He kept walking but stared straight ahead rather than risk looking at her. “It’s just politics.”
“It’s not politics; it’s my family. I want to know if you intend to tamper with my father’s career.”
“There are forty-two thousand voters in your father’s district. They will decide his fate, not me. Marianne, please, let’s not talk about this. Tell me more about the blue hour.”
She drew a huge breath and blew it out, struggling for control. He could practically hear the wheels turning in her mind, but there was no way she could ever dissuade him from this path.
Finally, she spoke again. “Explain the politics to me. If there is a reason besides the family feud, I’d like to know.”
He owed her at least that much. It meant telling her about the ill-fated coffee fiasco he embarked on with her father in Philadelphia, but maybe it would help her understand why he distrusted the reckless use of food additives and preservatives.
He gestured to the old stone wall bordering the river and braced his elbows atop it. She joined him as he laid out the story of how he and Gray worked hard to produce a gourmet blend of coffee, only to see it adulterated with cheap fillers and chemical flavorings. Three people died, and their ghosts were still with him.
Marianne swallowed hard. “How do you know it was the additives? Surely thousands of people drank that coffee.”
“True, but we spoke with physicians. The chemical flavorings are known to cause an allergic reaction in a tiny fraction of the population, and there was no indication on the canister that there was anything other than ground coffee beans inside.”
Marianne was ready with more arguments to dismiss his position, but he wasn’t going to debate with her. Their time together was too scarce to spend it bickering over a topic on which neither of them would ever budge, but he needed her to understand why he fought.
“God has set eternity in the human heart,” he said, looking out over the river at the tiny bit of fading light on the edge of the horizon. What a huge and wonderful world God built for them, and the wildness inside him began to swell in the face of its immensity. “There is a longing to do something great in all of us, and I’ve always had a yearning to be tested. I need a mission and a purpose to fight for. Ever since the coffee debacle, I’ve known I had to make things right somehow.”
He turned to face her, hoping she could understand this wildness inside, but he hadn’t made a dent on her.
“Luke, what if you’re wrong? What if those five congressmen on your list are the good guys, and instead of making the world safer, you end up hurting it instead?”
He folded her hand between his and squeezed. “That’s why I eat three meals a day with the Poison Squad. We’ll know soon.”
Marianne closed her eyes in resignation and touched herforehead to his. “No one can accuse you of taking the easy way out.”
He enclosed her in his arms, loving the way she fit perfectly against him. “No matter what happens, please know that I adore everything about you. Your intelligence and curiosity. Your loyalty. Someday that loyalty is likely to drive us apart, but for tonight, we have each other.”
Sixteen
Visiting her sister-in-law’s house was always a challenge for Marianne. Delia and Andrew lived only two doors down from her parents’ home in Baltimore’s wealthiest neighborhood. Andrew’s house was like a museum. Most of the furniture was antique, and the fabric for the draperies was imported from Europe. Delia’s pride was the mantelpiece surrounding the fireplace in the front hall, which had once been owned by the Earl of Rutledge before he had to sell his estate. Somehow Delia managed to make sure each guest to her home learned of the mantelpiece’s exalted lineage within moments of arrival.
Marianne’s task today was to help plan Andrew’s birthday party on Friday without letting a war break out. Vera and Delia had a massive dislike for each other, which Marianne thought was probably because the two women were so alike. Neither ever openly acknowledged their antipathy, but it simmered beneath the surface as each subtly vied for supremacy at every encounter. Marianne’s loyalty would always be to Vera, but Delia was Sam’s mother and doing a good job raising the boy, so she maintained cordial relations with her difficult sister-in-law.
“I’d like a cake sculpted to look like the America’s Cuptrophy,” Delia said. With her tiny frame and carefully styled honey-blond hair, Delia had always been one of the prettiest people Marianne knew. “I heard that Mrs. Astor had one like it, so I think it will be perfect for Andrew.”
“I can’t see your cook being able to pull that off,” Vera said. “The Neapolitan cake she made for lunch today was on the lackluster side.”
