“I couldn’t.”
“You could.” Roen caught her mouth again in a kiss that teased and tempted. Her lips were a feast for his senses, warm and tender and pliant. She placed her hands on either side of his face and held him. What he began, she encouraged. Her mouth was damp. The kiss was humid. He found the drawstring to her drawers and pulled at it.
Lily came up for air and gripped the edge of the table. “What are you doing?”
“Getting rid of these. They’re in the way.”
“Roen!”
He lowered them as far as her hips. When she didn’t help him, he pinched her lightly on her bottom. “Lift.”
Laughing under her breath, Lily slapped at his arm. “I will not.”
“You won’t?”
She shook her head. “There are four children in the next room, any one of whom could walk in here.”
“That’s it?” he asked. “That’s your reason? I’m putting a lock on the door.”
“No. No locks.”
Roen righted her drawers but left his palms cupping her bottom. “You mean that.”
“I’m afraid so. This is a poor time to tell you, but there was a lock on my bedroom door in the old house. Jeremiah installed it when Clay and Hannah were older. He used it mostly when he beat me because he could not abide their interference. I promised them there would no locked doors in this house. Ever. It’s a promise I aim to keep. They trust you.Itrust you, but a locked door would provoke unhappy memories.”
Roen closed his eyes. The scene that played out in his mind was too horrible to contemplate for long, but he did because she had lived it. He could imagine Hannah and Clay on the other side of the door, listening to their father using his fists against their mother, helpless to stop it. He opened his eyes and stared into hers. “Oh, Jesus, Lily.”
She laid a hand against his cheek. “It’s done,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry to tell you now. Sorry you had to know.”
“Don’t apologize for him.”
She blinked. “I wasn’t.”
“You wouldn’t have to say any of it if he hadn’t used his fists on you. I swear to God, Lily, if he were here...” He stopped, letting his voice trail off, because it was an empty threat. Therewasnothing he could do. The feeling of helplessness overwhelmed him as it had overwhelmed her children. “I hate that this happened to you.”
“I know,” she said.
“I hate that I can’t make it right.”
“Don’t you understand, Roen? You already have.” She leaned into him, dropped her hand from his cheek to his shoulder, and placed her mouth over his. It was a tender kiss, the kind of kiss that made all things better, a kiss that healed scrapes and bruises and made hearts right again.
When she drew back, he was smiling. “What?” she asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You don’t know?”
She shook her head.
“Listen,” he said. Three quick raps on the door broke the silence. “The barbarians are at the gate.”
Chapter Thirty-three
Victorine quickly grew bored with waiting. At ten minutes past two, she closed the book she was pretending to read and did not return it to the shelf where she’d found it. She thought the librarian looked at her disapprovingly, but the reproach of such a person was of no account. Victorine had already been scolded once for speaking too loudly when she asked another patron to point her to the histories. It was more amusing than distressing to be spoken to in such a manner, but Victorine still felt compelled to drop one of the large tomes on the floor so the thud startled the librarian enough to make her jump.
It was clear to Victorine that Roen was not going to appear. He was nothing if not punctual, considered it an obligation in his business and in his personal life. Unless that little Frankie fellow had got Roen’s message wrong, she was being stood up. It would be a comfort to blame the boy, but as he had been reliable on every other occasion that she’d used him, it seemed unlikely he’d misunderstood Roen’s reply. No, this was Roen’s doing. He had lied.
Victorine wished now that she’d asked Martin Cabot to accompany her to the library. He could have made himself unobtrusive among the periodicals while she spoke to Roen. But she hadn’t invited him, hadn’t told him that she intended to meet Roen. He was skulking somewhere nearby—that was his job after all—but he hadn’t followed her into the library. The termagant at the front desk would have fussed over him, and Victorine was certain she would have noticed that.
Victorine turned up the collar on her coat before she stepped outside. Her kid leather gloves were stylish, but they did not offer the warmth of woolen mittens that many of thelocal women wore. She considered purchasing a pair as she walked past the mercantile. It remained only a consideration. Perhaps she would buy them on her way back to the hotel. For now, she wanted to reach her destination as quickly as possible. What was the maxim she was relying upon? If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the mountain? That sounded right, although she questioned the wisdom of depending on a Muslim axiom to guide her. Muslims. Chinese. Irish Catholics. Jews. Negroes. It was intolerable, this merging of peoples that New York had come to embrace. To Victorine’s way of thinking, with only a single China girl in residence, Frost Falls had a distinct advantage over the city.
