A Wife in Time (Silhouette Desire) (12 page)

“Mr. Whitaker isn’t in,” Gordon Stevens told her. The law clerk was younger than Susannah expected. For an eerie moment, he rather reminded her of Kane’s brother Charles, or Chuck, as he called him.

“I didn’t wish to speak to Mr. Whitaker. I merely stopped by to inquire if I’d left my handkerchief behind yesterday.” God, I sound like Scarlett O’Hara, Susannah thought.

“I don’t believe we’ve found a handkerchief,” Stevens said.

Susannah fiddled with her necklace as she said, “Well, fiddle-de-dee. You’re sure? It had lace at the edges and little embroidered flowers on it.” Then, as Gordon Stevens’s eyes fastened on her garnet necklace just as she’d intended, she exclaimed, “Why, Mr. Stevens, I must say that I find your interest in my necklace to be most ungentlemanly.”

The law clerk blushed and stammered an apology. “It’s just that your necklace reminds me of—”

“Elsbeth Whitaker? I’ve heard. Such a tragic story. Mr. Whitaker told me that she was buried wearing this necklace, or one that looks just like it. Can you imagine?”

The law clerk’s face went from red to white.

“Poor boy, I’ve upset you.”
Why is that?
Susannah thought to herself, her instincts on red alert again.
Do you know something about Elsbeth’s death, Gordon? Are you hiding some secret about your boss’s involvement?

“I have a lot of work to get done before Mr. Whitaker returns,” the law clerk said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help you find your handkerchief.”

Oh, I found what I was looking for, all right,
Susannah thought. “Why, don’t you worry about a thing. I’ll just speak to Mr. Whitaker when he gets home this evening.”

“He’s got an important meeting this evening.”

“Then I’ll stop by here to see him.”

“The meeting isn’t here.”

“Oh?” Susannah let the silence hang in the air, waiting for it to force Stevens into saying something.

Other than fidgeting with the papers on his desk, he made no further comment about his boss’s plans for the evening. Instead he repeated, a bit more desperately this time, “I must get back to work. I have a great deal to do.”

So do I, Susannah thought to herself.

* * *

When Susannah returned to her room at the boardinghouse, she found that Kane still hadn’t come back. The unexpected bit of privacy was welcome. Warm after her long walk, she peeled off her outer clothing and stepped out of the crinoline petticoat. While it had proved to be cooler than the tight, bustled dresses that were more fashionable now, she still longed for a pair of shorts and a tank top— Wait a second! An idea hit her.

Five minutes later, she stood in her camisole and a pair of bloomers pushed up above her knees. “Not exactly shorts, but they’ll do,” she murmured to herself.

She felt like celebrating her discovery that Whitaker had an important and apparently somewhat secret meeting tonight. But she’d already eaten all the chocolate bars she’d brought with her. “They would have melted otherwise,” she muttered defensively, as she opened her ever-present purse. Since there were no garbage cans around, she’d worked out a system for disposing of the garbage she collected by burning it in the fireplace in their room. Apparently folks in this day and age were already into recycling—papers were gathered together, as was just about everything else. Little went to waste.

She popped a piece of gum in her mouth and took out her portable cassette player. Putting the headphones on, she closed her eyes and pretended she was back in her own time, in her own apartment. Before long, the beat of Billy Joel’s greatest-hits cassette got her to boogying around the room. Susannah turned the volume up even higher, holding an invisible mike as she lip-synched the words to the song.

A scream shattered her concentration. It hadn’t come from Billy Joel.

Opening her eyes, Susannah was horrified to see Gerta standing just inside the doorway, with a pile of clean sheets in her arms.

Gerta stared at her, bug-eyed.
“Gott im Himmel!”
she shrieked. Dropping the sheets and frantically crossing herself, the maid ran screaming from the room.

O
h, God! Now she’d done it! Swearing under her breath, Susannah snatched the headphones off her head with one hand while turning off the portable cassette player with the other. Of course, the headphones got stuck in her wild wavy hair and she was further delayed trying to untangle herself without yanking a hunk of her hair out. Hiding the headphones and cassette player back in her purse, Susannah tugged on what she hoped was a dress—the garment wrapped around the front.

As she rushed downstairs, she prayed that the clothing she had on was sufficient to be seen outside her room. She certainly didn’t want to raise any more eyebrows than she already had. She found Gerta and Mrs. B. both in the dining room. Since Mrs. B. didn’t blink an eye at Susannah’s appearance, she guessed she was okay in that department.

Gerta, however, was
not
okay. Standing behind Mrs. B. as if for protection, the maid was shivering and crying in her apron.

“Gerta says she saw you in your room and that you were possessed by the devil, with strange pounding noises coming out of your head but not out of your mouth,” Mrs. B. related.

So much for lip-synching, Susannah hysterically noted. “I can explain,” she hurriedly assured her landlady.

“I hope you are not going to use your foreign upbringing as an excuse this time,” Mrs. B. said with a disapproving frown. “I’m sure that even in the remotest part of France such behavior would be deemed strange, to put it mildly.”

Thinking of the punk hairdos and wild grunge clothing Susannah had seen the last time she’d been in Paris, she doubted anything would seem strange. “I can explain,” she repeated. “You see, my husband, Kane, is an...inventor. I was merely trying out one of his most recent inventions.”

“An inventor? You mean like that Mr. Edison up North I’ve read about in the newspaper?”

“That’s right.”

“Your husband is inventing a sound machine?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“There, Gerta.” Mrs. B. patted the maid’s trembling shoulder reassuringly. “I told you it was nothing to be afraid of, silly girl. Mr. Wilder is an inventor.” She drew the word out, as if that might make it easier for the foreign maid to understand. “He is making a sound machine. That’s the noise you heard.” To Susannah, she said, “You know, I’d be most interested in seeing the machine.”

“Oh, my husband doesn’t let anyone see his toys until he’s finished with them,” Susannah hastily stated.

“Toys?” Mrs. B. repeated in confusion.

“That’s what I call his inventions,” Susannah replied.

“Among other things,” Kane interjected mockingly, having just walked in on their conversation. “What’s going on here?”

“Nothing, sweetie,” Susannah quickly declared. “Gerta walked in while I was listening to your...sound machine.”

“My sound machine, huh?” Kane said, stalling for time.

“That’s right. Naturally, she was frightened seeing me dancing around the room half-dressed like that—”

“Half-dressed?” Kane repeated. Damn. He should have gotten home earlier. Clearly he’d missed a great show here. As it was, he hadn’t been able to pick up much information at the tavern, other than the fact that rumor had it that Mrs. Hilton and Whitaker were indeed having an affair. But from what Kane gathered, married men often did that sort of thing in this time period. Apparently, the key was being discreet about the matter.

“I’ll tell you about it later,” Susannah was saying. “We’ve cleared everything up now.”

Gerta didn’t look all that reassured, as Mrs. B. continued trying to explain the meaning of the word
inventions
to the maid.

“I can’t leave you alone five minutes without getting into trouble, can I?” Kane declared, once they were upstairs.

“I’ll have you know that you were gone much longer than five minutes,” she began when Kane interrupted her.

“Missed me, did you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she retorted.

“So how did you spend your afternoon, aside from terrorizing the poor maid?” he mockingly inquired.

“Actually that kept me pretty busy,” she replied in kind.

“I’ll bet.”

“So what did you find out at the saloon?”

“That the New York baseball teams aren’t playing any better in this century than they are in our own.”

“It took you four hours to figure that out?” she said.

“Timing me, were you?”

“On the contrary. I had a busy afternoon myself.”

“Terrorizing the maid.”

“And Mr. Whitaker’s law clerk.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, nothing, aside from the fact that I met the mysterious Gordon Stevens, the law clerk who keeps a picture of Elsbeth in his wallet. And the man was very nervous. He’s definitely hiding something.” So was Susannah. She had plans for tonight that she had no intention of telling Kane.

“Maybe he knew about the affair his boss and that Hilton woman are having,” Kane said.

“Just because we caught them about to embrace, doesn’t mean they’re having an affair.”

“I agree. Which is why I talked to a few people at the tavern. That’s where I heard about their affair.”

“And they say
women
gossip!” Susannah said in a huff. “Get a bunch of men together in a bar and watch out. They talk sports and women.”

“How do you know that?” Kane demanded.

“I’ve got two older brothers.” Her expression became worried as she thought of her family.

“I miss my family, too,” Kane said.

The problem was, his family consisted of a lying younger brother. But Susannah knew that there was no way she could convince Kane of her innocence. In the end, it was her word against his brother’s. But when she got back to her own century and her own office, she was going to read the riot act to young Charles Wilder. She’d
make
him tell Kane that he’d been lying about having an affair with her.

Seeing her fierce expression, Kane asked, “What are you thinking?”

How should she answer? That she wanted to drive a stake through his brother’s heart—figuratively speaking, of course? She doubted the confession would help her cause any. “I was thinking that if Hayward Whitaker was cheating on his wife, then he had the perfect motive for killing her so he could be with his mistress.”

“Him?” Kane repeated. “What about her? She wanted to become the next Mrs. Hayward Whitaker, but she had to get rid of his wife first.”

“You don’t have a shred of evidence to make that kind of accusation.”

“Neither do you,” he countered. “Yet it’s okay for you to accuse Hayward Whitaker of murder.”

“Women aren’t as violent as men.”

“And you call me a sexist!”

“Statistics back me up,” Susannah said. “You’re just accusing her because of what happened with your brother! You see me as the wicked other woman, guilty as sin. And you’re doing the same thing to this Hilton woman. Making unfounded accusations. Hurtful accusations that don’t hold an ounce of truth to them.”

“Are we talking about Mrs. Hilton or about you, here?” he quietly asked.

She looked up and was caught—caught in the seductive web of his gaze, caught wishing for the impossible. Wishing for him to trust her, to believe her. She wanted it so much she couldn’t breathe. She tried to read his expression, thinking she saw a matching hope there. A hope for what?

They were interrupted by the simultaneous sounds of the dinner gong and Kane’s stomach growling, breaking the sultry tension that had been building between them.

Susannah and Kane both started laughing.

“We’d better go down,” Susannah said.

Kane nodded. “I wonder how many dishes Gerta is going to break tonight?”

The answer was three. The maid acted as if she had as many left feet. Susannah could commiserate. She felt rather unsteady herself. Hope had returned to her heart. And she wasn’t sure that was a good thing where Kane was concerned.

Despite Gerta’s clumsiness in serving it, the meal itself was delicious—cold meat, potato salad, with the promise of fresh fruit for dessert.

Another dish crashed to the floor. With a shake of her head, Mrs. B. had to take over and banish poor Gerta to the kitchen.

Susannah wished she could banish her wayward feelings for Kane as easily.

* * *

Shortly after dinner, Susannah and Kane both retired to their room. Remembering the book their landlady had lent her, Susannah picked it up from the fireplace mantel and sat in the rocking chair by the window to begin reading it.

Kane had muttered something about making flow charts of the suspects and had busied himself writing notes in a notepad he kept in his jacket pocket. “Don’t let anyone see you with that ballpoint pen,” Susannah warned him, before turning the page.

Instead of responding to her comment, he said, “What are you reading?”

“An etiquette book. This is the neatest thing. I had no idea.... Look... What do you think this means?” She picked up her fan and drew it across her forehead.

“That you’re hot. Got a fever, maybe?”

“Wrong. Drawing the fan across my forehead this way means
We are being watched.
”

“By whom?”

“No one. At the moment, anyway. I was just giving you an example. There’s an entire silent language used with the fan. Fanning fast means
I am engaged.
Fanning slow means
I am married.
”

“I did notice you’ve been fanning slow while you’ve been here.”

“And look, there’s a hidden language with the parasol, too.” She picked it up from its resting place near the door. Checking her book once again, she accidentally dropped the parasol on the floor.

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“That I’m clumsy,” she muttered, blushing.

Getting up from his resting place on the bed, he took the book from her, tugging it out of her hands before she could protest. Looking at the page, he said, “Let me see.... Ah, here it is. It says here that dropping your parasol means
I love you.
”

Her heart stopped at the sound of him saying those three words. What would it be like to have him say those words and mean them? Her wistful thoughts were bound to get her into trouble, but she couldn’t resist momentarily imagining what it would be like to have Kane love her. Not just to be reluctantly attracted to her, while distrusting and often disliking her. But to have him care for her, confide in her, trust her, love her, kiss her, embrace her, take her to a place she’d never been before.

He’s already taken you someplace you’ve never been before,
her prosaic side immediately pointed out.
Nineteenth-century Savannah!

He
hadn’t taken her here, she reminded the inner voice. In fact, he complained that
she’d
brought him. But he had taken her to a misty plane of sensual pleasure—simply by kissing her! Imagining herself making love with him was enough to raise her body temperature another ten degrees and force her to grab her fan again.

“You’re fanning yourself quickly,” Kane noted. “That means you’re engaged.”

“It means I’m hot,” she stated, fanning herself even faster.

“How are guys supposed to keep track of all these hidden meanings?” Kane wondered aloud as he read the nearly two dozen variations for fan flirtations alone. There were just as many listed for handkerchiefs, gloves, and parasols.

“They didn’t have television or radio to distract them.”

“And men in our time think
they’ve
got it hard.”
Hard.
Kane winced at his choice of words. Since watching her out of the corner of his eye, he’d gotten more and more aroused just by looking at her. The wrap she was wearing showed her chemise underneath and he could just barely see a hint of the curve of her breast. She had such white skin. Especially when compared to her midnight dark hair, which she’d loosely tied back with a ribbon. Her face was flushed and she was nervously licking her lips in a way that made Kane groan.

He was dying to kiss her. He wanted to throw the book across the room and take her in his arms. Then he wanted to lower her onto the bed they shared and peel every layer of clothing off her, kissing every inch of her creamy skin as he exposed it to his gaze. And he wanted to make her want him as much as he wanted her, watching her brown eyes melt as he slid into her and made her his.

“Um, how is the suspect list coming?” Susannah nervously asked. She had reason to be nervous. There seemed to be a tidal wave of attraction building between her and Kane, all but drowning them and pulling them into its dangerous undertows. Or had she just imagined it? Maybe Kane had merely been thinking about solving the case.

“The suspect list?” Kane repeated. “Right.” Returning to the bed, he grabbed his notebook. “Well, we’ve already got a motive for Elsbeth’s death. Now we need to see who had the opportunity. To do that we have to ascertain exactly where in the house both suspects were that night.”

“There are
three
suspects,” Susannah reminded him. “Don’t forget that picture of Elsbeth we found in Gordon Stevens’s wallet.”

“A picture doesn’t make him a suspect. What would he have to gain by Elsbeth’s death?” Kane demanded.

“He could have had a dangerous obsession with her. It happens. Quiet, seemingly normal guys create a fantasy life of their own that has nothing to do with reality,” she calmly noted.

“Is this your way of saying my brother is living in a fantasy world?”

“I can’t think of any other reason for him to lie,” she said.

“Okay, have it your way.” Her heart leapt. Did that mean he was finally willing to believe her? “We’ve got three suspects. But I’m sure this Hilton woman did it.” He went on to discuss the case, acting as if his brother’s name hadn’t been mentioned at all, but Susannah was no longer listening.

When would she learn? There was no convincing Kane that his beloved brother was the one at fault, that she was the innocent party.

As Kane got ready for bed, Susannah stayed in the rocking chair, reading her book—or at least pretending to read it.

“Aren’t you coming to bed?” he asked.

She shook her head. “You go ahead. I want to read some more.”

“Suit yourself,” Kane said with a shrug as he got into bed and tugged the draped mosquito netting down on all sides.