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“Sorry. I was just remembering…all the things Patrick did for me in those months. I was probably very difficult. You don’t know what it’s like, being with child. You really want to be able to talk to your own mother.”
“The Thorwoods, Jem…?”
“Oh, yes. Tobias Thorwood wanted extra security work. He already knew Patrick—because they have an apartment in New York as well. I don’t know exactly what the work was, but he needed someone he could trust. He never mentioned it to anyone else, so as not to get Patrick into trouble with the police department.” She smiled in spite of herself, at the look on Daniel’s face. “Don’t look like that, Daniel. Although moonlighting was frowned upon it was perfectly legal, or Patrick wouldn’t have done it. If you don’t believe in his morality, at least believe in his sense of survival!”
Daniel blushed. “I would’ve done the same, I hope. So that is how he knows Thorwood. And Mrs. Thorwood?”
“Less well. And Rebecca was just coming into society. She is only twenty-one now.” She remembered that more clearly. “I think Patrick may have been finding out about some young man who was courting her—whether he was suitable or not. I presume he was not. I don’t think it matters. Three and a half years ago, she was rather too young anyway. And very naïve. She still is!”
“Was it Philip Sidney?” Daniel asked. Had he been lied to about when Sidney first went to Washington? He had been at the embassy less time than that, but nothing said he had not visited Washington, or New York!
“No!” Jemima said immediately. “Unless…”
“Unless what? Why couldn’t he have visited before working at the embassy?”
“He could.”
“Doesn’t take long to fall in love,” he pointed out.
She felt the heat rise up in her face. She had gone to America for a very short time, to accompany a friend to her wedding, and during those dramatic weeks…days…she had met Patrick and had fallen in love with him. It had felt crazy, impulsive, even foolish at the time, and yet she was perfectly certain of it. The only question in her mind had been, was he? Yes…yes. Still…yes.
“Not like that,” she said with certainty. “If I had waited this long, caring but not knowing, I’d be half crazy.” She saw the laughter in his eyes. “You just wait! Your turn will come, I hope. But no. Rebecca’s not a very good liar.”
“Or she’s a very good one?” he suggested.
“Oh, really!” Jemima dismissed it out of hand. “No, she isn’t. She likes him.”
“Even after the assault?”
“She didn’t know it was him. For that matter, she still doesn’t.”
“Doesn’t she?”
Jem looked down, then up at Daniel quickly. “She doesn’t want to,” she said very quietly. “In her place, I wouldn’t either. That’s part of the reason I know she didn’t know him before. She…she’s only just on the edge of falling in love with him now.”
“And Thorwood wouldn’t approve?”
“I know Sidney’s an old name, an old family, even if he comes from a very junior branch,” she explained. “But there’s no money. Even if he were higher up, he wouldn’t be the first English aristocrat to marry a rich American for her money!”
“Or the first American to marry a man for his title!” he said.
“What title?” she dismissed it.
“Maybe this is when he ceases to be attractive?”
“You’re miles away, Daniel. Tobias Thorwood would never have heard of Sir Philip Sidney, the hero of romantic Elizabethan poetry! Even to us, it’s only a great story. No, no…” She waved away his interruption. “Rebecca wouldn’t want to marry a man who wanted her money. The thought’s revolting! Her father would be protecting her from that. If it’s got anything at all to do with Sidney and Rebecca, which I don’t think it has.”
“Don’t think?”
“You may not be able to tell if a woman’s in love with someone—although you ought to learn—but I can, usually even if it’s someone I don’t know, and I do know Rebecca.”
There was a moment’s silence. The maid brought tea and very thin sandwiches, which she knew Jemima loved. Jemima smiled and thanked her with feeling, not only for the sandwiches, but for the moment of respite from the subject.
But as soon as she was gone and the tea poured, Daniel returned to it. “I can understand why Patrick is so loyal to Thorwood,” he said gently. “He gave him an honorable way to earn money he badly wanted, to give you a little extra when it meant so much to you. You must remember it with warmth every time you look at Cassie.”
“I’m not blinded by it!” she said, almost choking on the words.
“But is Patrick?” Daniel could not leave it alone.
