Page 123 of The Widow and the Wanted

“Let’s not distract from the relevant issue,” Okee says. “You have made yourself clear. But someone must speak to the paper.”

“Why do you think Lula has been strolling around with this moron in public?” Goldie asks. “The paper does not publish every fool rumor that crawls under the door. They require a little proof. Lula has been seen with Everett. People notice. You would be amazed how much they notice.” Her gaze slides to me.

“So when Lula shares certain information with the right ear,” Goldie continues, “things she heard from Everett himself, things he was foolish enough to say while trying to impress a pretty woman, she can credibly claim he confessed them to her.”

“You’re diabolical,” Lula says.

“Yes,” Goldie replies, with a pleased little nod. “And once investors have reason to suspect fraud, the rest becomes easier. Illegal maps recorded with the government. False deeds. Boundary claims that do not match one office to the next. Men may lie, Mr. Collins, but paper has a terrible habit of contradicting them. And that man you saw leave my office? That was the mapmaker. He left enough behind to make Everett sweat, provided no fool in this room scares him into running before morning.”

She reaches for the untouched glass of liquor on her desk and takes a sip. “What did they call you boys again? The Jokers?”

“Aces,” I mutter. “Good night, Ms. Eld.”

“Goodnight, Boone. Hope you sleep a little better knowing I’ve got this under control. Now, you boys do yourselves a favor and don’t let me see you outside of your room again.”

Chapter 32

Lula

Pearl hooks me into the plum dress like she’s rigging a saddle on a mare. The bodice cinches tight, exactly as Mother intended. The color is deep and expensive, almost demure until the black lace at the cuffs and collar catches the light.

Boone sits on the edge of the bed, turning his hat in his hands with a distant stare. Waiting in a silent cage has never suited him. Okee stands near the window, curtain parted the width of two fingers. He has looked through that gap at least twenty times in as many minutes. If danger were a thing that could be bored into leaving, he would have saved us all by now.

“You’re both making me nervous,” I say.

Boone’s head comes up. “Ain’t doing nothing.”

“That is the trouble. You’re doing nothing so loudly. Say something to distract me.”

I barely have time to make a sound before his hand closes around my waist and he pulls me down into his lap as if I weigh no more than a blanket.

Heat climbs my throat, which is ridiculous. I am wearing a dress I hate to go walking with a man I distrust so we might expose a murder plot before it swallows us whole. Blushing should be the least available option, and yet Pearl's dreamy gaze leaves the outlaws and lands back on me as if I’m the luckiest girl in the world.

Lord, I truly must get a handle on myself. We knew this would come to an end. If we are meant to see the other side of this challenge, then there will be lives to resume. Life goes on. It went on after mother left. It went on after Eli died. That’s all there is to it.

How foolishly obsessed I had been with suitors and courtships at Pearl’s age. I wanted Wuthering Heights—some wild, consuming love that would sweep in like weather, ruin my good sense, and make the rest of the world feel small by comparison.

But that was girlhood. That was before I understood how life actually worked. Love did not sweep in like weather. It did not arrive grand and howling at the door, prepared to rearrange the world for the sake of one foolish woman’s heart.

Mother left. Eli died. I survived. There was the next morning, and the one after that, and myself still standing because there was nothing else to do.

So I learned to want sensible things. A shop. A sign over the door. Shelves of tinctures and dried herbs. Coin enough to keep myself fed. A room of my own where no one could leave me unless I first let them in.

And then Boone and Okee had come tearing through my life like weather after all.

The least subtle of all storms has carried me here beside them.

Worse, they look at me as if they might stay.

Everett arrives shortly after sunset. We stand in Mother’s downstairs receiving room. Boone and Okee are above us with the Aces Suite door locked, curtains drawn, and instructions laid over them to stay in the room, stay away from the windows, and do not open the door unless the house burns, and even then wait to be certain.

The Gemini is a house built by women who understood men’s appetites and mistrusted them for it. From the outside, lamps and red glass, but inside is a warren of useful secrets: back stairs for girls who do not wish to cross the floor, a dumbwaiter shaft too narrow for anything but bottles and linens, service corridors, linen closets, locked rooms, and odd rooflines where the building had grown whenever Mother had enough money to make it larger. A place like this can at the very least hide two outlaws if everyone in it remembers their part.

Mother steps aside to let Everett’s gaze land properly on me. I stand where she placed me, half in lamplight, plum silk catching at the waist, black lace neat at my throat.

Mr. Everett takes off his hat, his neatly combed hair a sophisticated blend of black and silver. His wool bowler is pressed to his chest. “Miss Eld, I had not thought it possible for you to look even more striking than when we first met.”

Mother offers a smile reserved for guests and special occasions. “You flatter my daughter too extravagantly, Mr. Everett. She’ll become impossible.”