Page 41 of The English Wife

She began, vigorously, to cut the pages of her book, imagining Rupert von Hentzau unleashed on the inhabitants of the Poughkeepsie train. The hand departed, but was succeeded by a brisk conversation behind her and a flurry of activity, which resulted, two minutes later, in a small table being plunked down in front of her.

Janie frowned up at the porter. “I’m afraid I didn’t … Mr. Burke?”

There was no mistaking those eyebrows. Or the rest of him, for that matter.

“Yes, set it here.” Mr. Burke waved the porter forward. A chipped teapot, well-used cups, and a bowl of grimy sugar cubes plunked down on the table with more force than grace as Mr. Burke slid himself into the seat opposite. “I’ve brought tea.”

“I see.” Janie closed her book over her finger. Ruritania would have to wait.

The porter placed a small milk jug on the table and a plate of dry biscuits.

“The cups that cheer but do not inebriate,” said Mr. Burke solemnly, putting a few coins in the porter’s hand. “You seemed in need of cheering.”

“But not inebriation?” Janie waited until the porter had rolled the tea tray down to the next car before asking, “How did you get here?”

“I walked to Grand Central and then purchased a ticket.” At Janie’s look, he relented, saying, “When I read your note … it didn’t seem right to let you wander about on your own with a mad Englishman on the prowl.”

Janie set her book down on the seat beside her. “And you wanted an invitation to Illyria.”

“Every man wants an invitation to Illyria.” Mr. Burke’s voice was gently mocking.

Janie narrowed her eyes at him. “I meant the house.”

“That, too. Shall I pour?”

Janie clutched the side of her seat as the train swayed. “If you think you can without emptying the pot over both of us.”

“So little faith.” Mr. Burke dealt expertly with the disposition of tea. “Milk? Or lemon?”

“Milk, please.” Janie hadn’t thought serving tea was among a journalist’s qualifications. She had imagined them quaffing beer in tin-roofed taverns. “You do that very well.”

Mr. Burke expertly tipped just the right amount of milk into her cup. “And aren’t I my mam’s blue-eyed boy?”

“Your eyes aren’t blue, they’re green,” Janie retorted—and wished she hadn’t—as Mr. Burke raised his black brows over the tea things. In an attempt to salvage her dignity, she said, “Are you Irish, Mr. Burke? I wouldn’t have guessed. That is, your voice…”

“Doesn’t sound like I’m fresh off the boat from the old country?”

“Well, yes.” Bother the man. Whatever she said, she found she was in the wrong. “You sound like anyone.”

“Anyone you know, you mean? Not every Irishman sounds like a music hall parody of himself. Some of us can even pass on the fringes of civilized society.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.” But she had, a little, hadn’t she? Janie found herself nibbling on the tip of one gloved finger and made herself stop.

Mr. Burke handed her cup across the table to her, taking care that their gloved fingers shouldn’t brush. “I was raised here. In Hell’s Kitchen.” He leaned back lazily in his chair, but his eyes were keen and watchful. “It is rather a long way from Illyria.”

Hell’s Kitchen was no more than a dozen blocks from the brownstone in which Janie had been raised, but it might have been a different continent. She knew of it only what she had glimpsed in the papers, with their lurid headlines about warring gangs, men knifed in taverns, women who disposed of unwanted children for a fee. It was a lawless place, commonly deemed to be the most dangerous in the country, with all of the risks but none of the charm of the frontier.

“And yet,” said Janie, “you seem to have gotten away?”

“Does anyone truly escape from Hades?” He made no attempt to hide his mockery this time; it dripped from his tongue as sweet and deadly as jam made from poisoned berries. “The underworld tends to keep its own.”

“Only when you look back,” said Janie, thinking of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Mr. Burke dropped a lump of sugar neatly into his cup. “And what would you advise, Miss Van Duyvil? Would you paper over the past?”

Janie found herself growing annoyed. It was a strangely empowering feeling. “If that were my intention, Mr. Burke,” she said tartly, “neither of us would be here.”

He lifted his tea cup in salute. “A hit, a hit, a palpable hit. Fair enough.”