Dear Timothy,she mentally composed,In New York, a jumper is a sweater, a biscuit is a cookie, and a landlord is an insufferable grump.
That morning she had taken extra care with her appearance, borrowing a neat pin-striped blue skirt and white blouse with matching jacket from Abby. She braided her thick hair into a chestnut rope coiled into submission at the nape of her neck. Rose did not question her motivation for taking such care, but when Ben barely spared her a glance as he wordlessly let her into his apartment, she realized her folly. He saw her as a nuisance, and nothing more. His reaction confused her; Rose had always attracted praise and attention wherever she went. Such was the peril of being a “great beauty.” Ben’s complete disdain left her hungry to understand him, to identify what made him tick.
Rose separated the odoriferous package from the rest and handed it to Ben. “This is for… Wig?”
Ben pushed his chair back from the desk and paced across his kitchen to drop the contents—slivers of fish, as she had suspected—in a small bowl on the floor.
“Do you have a cat?”
He did not look at her as he discarded the wrappers in the rubbish bin. “No.”
She tilted her head. “But you… feed a cat?”
“Yes, but it’s not my cat.”
Amusement pulled at the corner of her lips. “But you named it?”
He huffed, as though she were testing the last of his patience. “Yes.”
“Then I believe it is, in fact,your cat.”
Ben ignored her and returned to the table to pick up a draft of their most recent letter.
“Unless,” Rose continued, unable to forget this small insight into Ben’s life, “the cat exists only in your mind, like an imaginary friend.”
The look Ben gave her carried enough heat to incinerate her. “My cat is not imaginary.”
“So you admit it is your cat?”
With a growl, Ben turned and returned to reading the letter, leaving Rose to peek around, hoping to find more clues about the mysterious cat’s existence.
His rooms were as spartan and neat as she would have expected, having known the man for a few days. His apartment was identical in layout to Abby’s, but lacking in personal touches. A pair of half windows overlooked the busy street, causing the light in the parlor to flicker periodically as pedestrians passed by. Aside from the stack of correspondence on the small table outside the kitchen, nothing indicated a person actually lived there. No books lined the shelves, no blankets were slung over the leather chair by the empty fireplace. The door to what she assumed to be his bedroom remained firmly closed.
“Strike this last part,” he said, his dark brows knitting together as he paced the dozen steps across the parlor and dropped the letter back in front of her. “‘Common sense dictates you rescind these diabolical measures to restrict the reproductive freedom of women in New York.’”
Rose paused with her pen above the page. “Is that all?”
The past three hours had not illuminated the reason for Rose’s fascination with Ben. She initially thought it was because she had never seen a man who looked like him before, at least not at so close a distance that she could study him. His hair was so black it glowed blue in the late morning light. His eyes, the exact color of the fine chocolate she bought for her sister on Catte Street whenever they ventured into Oxford as girls, gleamed with intelligence. Thin lines creased the skin along the edge of his broad mouth, as though he had once spent a great deal of time smiling.
He dressed nearly as well as the nobs she had known in England, finely tailored jackets over crisp shirts, tasteful waistcoats that highlighted his trim form, trousers that stretched over his thighs and rear end when he stopped to repair a loose nail or carry something heavy for a resident.
She was watching none of that, of course.
An interesting face and an aesthetically pleasing body had never held more than passing interest for Rose in the past. She could appreciate the appeal of an attractive form, but from a distance, as though she were observing a work of art instead of a flesh and bone person.
But Ben had claimed her interest and held it tight. He was constantly in motion and ever vigilant, never stilling for long enough to appear at peace, but never ruffled or agitated. Rose’s patience was already at its limits with the never-ending list of complaints from his residents, but Ben never tired, simply wrote them down and lamented his inability to solve them more quickly than he was able. If Ben did nothing but give of himself to the people in his life, when did he have time to take anything for himself?
Now Ben paced in a pale blue shirt rolled to his elbows, gray trousers and a matching waistcoat. The faint lines of a small tattoo, no larger than her thumb, flashed on the inside of his uninjured forearm. He held a coin in his right hand; unable to roll it across his knuckles in the confines of the sling, he slid it between his thumb and forefinger.
“Yes, that’s all,” he said, not bothering to mask the irritation in his tone. “Address it to Commissioner Jameson of the fourteenth district. Now—”
“It’s practically identical to the letter you wrote to Representative Roberts.” Rose lifted the letter in question from the stack. “And completely identical to the general missive to City Hall.”
Ben kept his gaze trained on the list of recipients scrawled on a notepad. “My message doesn’t change, regardless of the recipient.”
“That’s horribly rude.”
Ben met her eyes over the top of the notepad. “Rude?”
