Page 104

“No, not the people my brother paid to say otherwise.” Levi leaned his hands on the side of the cart. “Did you know Ezra offered the clerk of the court fifteen hundred dollars to suppress his report of the trial? Or, if he preferred, five hundred just to add a single line saying I’d been completely exonerated.”

“Fifteen hundred dollars?” Hope had never imagined such money existed.

“Oh yes. My brother is a warm man.” Levi threw the words at her like a weapon. “Coleman refused. He said the city of New York hadn’t money enough to buy him. Now he and Ezra are bosom friends. He consults with Coleman on his transactions. What’s a mere brother to that?”

Levi made an ironic bow, sweeping his hat off his head. Where it had been, Hope could see a large scar, the stitches still visible, stretching from his hair all the way down to his left eyebrow.

“What happened to thy brow?”

Levi’s hand went to his forehead. “This? Someone pried up a cobble and flung it at me when I went to Forrest’s shop for tobacco.” He smiled that same humorless grin. “But that’s nothing strange. Three men set upon me when I had the gall to try to order a drink at Rhinelander’s tavern. You did your work well.”

“I didn’t—”

“Your family, then,” said Levi impatiently, clapping his hat back down on his head. “What does it matter? You’ve ruined me.”

The injustice of it struck Hope. “We only told the truth.”

Levi gave a derisive bark of laughter. “Oh?”

Hope could feel her cheeks heat. She’d forgotten about Elias; the thought of Elias embracing Elma made her flesh crawl. “I only told the truth. If thee hadn’t behaved as if thee meant to court her, we might not have thought thee had. I never told thee to close thyself into Elma’s bedchamber with her!”

“If every man who was ever alone with any maid was accused of her murder, the Bridewell would be bursting,” said Levi bitterly. “What did I do more than any other man did? I wish I’d never set foot in your sister’s house. You’ve been a plague upon mine. Did you know Elizabeth lost her baby?”

Hope felt a sharp pang. Elizabeth Weeks had been kind to her. There’d been a time she’d imagined she’d one day call her sister. “How does she fare? Mrs. Weeks?”

“She’s recovering. Slowly. No thanks to you and yours.”

“I never meant to do thee ill—or thy family.” Hope looked at Levi, trying to reconcile the man she’d known with the man standing before her. This man was leaner, marked with scars that hadn’t been there before, but it was more than that. Whenever she thought of Levi, it was with the sun shining on him, smiling, laughing, quick to come to anyone’s aid. She’d never known him to have a hard word for anyone. “I had hoped to see thee before thee left—to make amends.”

“Why? Have you decided I didn’t murder anyone after all? It’s a bit late for that. It doesn’t matter what that jury said. The city’s decided I’m a murderer, and worse for having been acquitted. They think I dodged a noose, and every man with a few drinks in him feels it his duty to try to fit me with one—or at least black my eye.”

“I am sorry, Levi.” Hope had no idea what to say to make things right. “If thee are innocent, thee didn’t deserve this.”

“If.” He repeated the syllable mockingly. “We were friends once. You might have trusted me farther.”

Friends. It was a word that could imply so much or so little. Hope wasn’t sure they had ever really been friends, not the way he and Elma had. “It was hard to—when thee acted so strangely.”

“So you would too, if you were accused of murder.” Their eyes locked. After a long moment, Levi said slowly, “You’ve made your amends. Now I’ve got the stage to catch, and I need to say farewell to my niece and nephew before I go. I need to explain to them why they won’t ever see their uncle again.”

Hope had been so busy grieving for Elma, she had never thought of what Levi had lost. He loved that niece and nephew of his; he had always been fashioning toys for them, speaking proudly of their exploits.

Hope’s throat ached. “I wish you well in your journeys.”

For a moment, she saw a glimpse of the old Levi beneath the bitter mask. “And you. You were always the best of them. If things had been different . . .”

The door of the house had opened, and Hope saw Ezra Weeks on the threshold, a child on his hip, the niece Levi might never see again.

“I’ll leave thee to thy leave-taking,” said Hope, and floundered off through the mud, before Ezra Weeks could send her away.

It had been so much simpler when she’d believed Levi guilty.

Now—Caty’s husband had been exposed as an adulterer, Levi had been hounded out of the city. And Elma was still gone.

Back at the house, the door stuck. Elias’s repairs had been no match for the April damp. Either the wood had swelled since he’d fixed it, or his repairs had been as clumsy as everything else he did.

Hope tugged at the panel until it finally gave with a long groan. Caty bustled into the hall, her face flushed from the fire, Eliza on her hip.

“Where has thee been? I’ve been half-distracted.”