Chloe (21 page)

The band started a lively melody for the newest dance, “The Charleston.” Drake took Chloe’s hand and drew her to her feet. “Let’s show these New Yorkers how this is done.”

Chloe glanced back at Roarke, but he was looking pointedly the other way. She allowed Drake to sweep her onto the crowded dance floor, where they began stepping to the lively tune. Drake had taught her and the others at Mrs. Henderson’s informal dances just a month ago. Mrs. Henderson had been shocked at the wild movements of the dance, but had permitted it, saying it unfortunately suited the times.

Forcing herself not to keep glancing back at Roarke, Chloe counted the beats and kept her hands and feet moving wide and free. She had to lift her slim skirt a few inches to do this. Drake grinned at her and then pulled her close, cheek to cheek. Frank and Minnie danced nearby and called out to Chloe and Drake. A stranger had claimed Kitty and she waved happily at Chloe, dancing enthusiastically with a flirtatious expression. It was so “Kitty” that Chloe laughed out loud in spite of herself. The combination of the dance and the high-stepping tune were irresistible. Her spirits rose, in spite of her concerns about Roarke. She wouldn’t give up. Sometime tonight she’d steal a moment alone with him. With that determination, she gave herself up to the moment.

But when the Charleston ended and the three couples, flushed and exhilarated, returned to the table, it was empty. Roarke had deserted her. Chloe felt her happiness drain away, leaving her shaken and wilting. There could only be one explanation. Roarke wasn’t just abashed because of his bent arm and scars. It was obvious he couldn’t stand to be near her.

Drake gripped her arm. “Your friend left us?”

Chloe nodded automatically as a door inside her heart slammed shut.

“I would never behave so foolishly,” Drake murmured in her ear, “if you looked at me the way you looked at him.”

Chloe couldn’t speak. What had she done to send Roarke away? Why did he despise her? And, more important, how did Drake’s comment make her feel?

Drake nudged her back into the booth, sat beside her, and lifted her hand to his lips. Frozen in a pain she couldn’t name, she made no move to pull her hand away. Drake smiled at her. “Did I tell you how beautiful you are tonight?”

She glanced into his blue eyes. “No.”

“Well, you are and I’m going to enjoy being the envy of every man here tonight.”

She looked down at her lap, his fulsome compliment embarrassing her.

“You’re so sweet, so innocent.” He chuckled low in his throat. “
I
won’t disappear on you, Chloe Black.”

She merely shook her head and tried to look knowing and worldly like Kitty, but knew she’d failed. Her last chance to regain Roarke had failed, too. And it hadn’t been only about regaining Roarke. She’d just lost herself.

Monday morning after he’d attended the theater with Chloe and Kitty on Saturday, Roarke strode through the crowded sidewalk of Wall Street. He entered the tall brick building where he’d worked for the past few years and rode up the packed elevator. He looked neither right nor left but kept his eyes on the changing numbers above the door. He’d learned not to look at strangers. If he didn’t, then he didn’t have to suffer their shocked stares or answer their stupid, prying questions.

The sympathetic look on Chloe’s face when she’d seen his scars Friday evening would haunt him long enough without adding to it. But deep inside him, he carried a worse scar—the knowledge of his own failure. He was almost thankful for his ravaged face and stiff arm. People could attribute his refusal to go home after the war to that alone. And it gave him an excuse to shun casual socializing here. His scars made everything easier.

With his customary nod, he walked past the middle-aged receptionist at the entry to his company’s well-appointed office.

“Mr. McCaslin,” the receptionist called to him over the heads of other arriving brokers and staff. “Mr. Ward wants to see you immediately.”

Ignoring the ripple of interest this announcement caused, Roarke nodded. He changed directions, heading toward the plush corner office. Ward’s pretty young secretary, a stylish college graduate, rose and opened the door behind her, announcing him.

Ward, a graying but well-preserved senior partner, stood up and offered Roarke his hand. They shook perfunctorily and Roarke backed into the chair in front of Ward’s very neat and highly polished cherry wood desk.

“McCaslin, I wanted to make it clear to you how impressed we are with your ability to bring in new clients and carry such a heavy work load.”

Roarke murmured an appreciative comment. But his nerves tightened. He didn’t want anyone’s praise. His work numbed his mind and gave him a reason to get up every morning. That was enough for him.

“Today, you have an office of your own.” With a stagy smile, Ward indicated a brass key on the desktop. “You’ll have your own stenographer also. You can choose whomever you wish from our steno pool.”

Roarke made himself smile and tried to look gratified. He wondered what Ward would say if he told him the truth—that all Roarke cared about was doing a job that kept his mind busy. An office of his own and a secretary held almost no interest for him. On the contrary, he vaguely resented them. “Thank you, sir.” He said the expected words. “I’ll try to live up to your confidence in me.”

“We were happy to hire you after you returned from the warfront, happy to show our support for a veteran,” Ward continued. “But you have proved a wise addition to this brokerage firm. We hope you’ll stay with us.”

“I have no plans to go anywhere at this time.”
I don’t have the energy and I could care less where I work.

“Good. Good.” Ward rubbed his hands together. “Then you might as well go see your new office and drop down to the steno pool and take your pick of the stenographers.”

Roarke stood, shook hands again, and received the key. It was so cool and small for something that brought such an increase in prestige. He paused by Ward’s secretary and asked directions to his office. Ignoring the mild interest from a few of the other young brokers, he walked down the length of the blue-carpeted hallway and then unlocked the oak door near the other end. There was a small entry area next to his office with a small, gray metal desk, which had a typewriter and phone on it.

He walked through a door at the far left and entered his office proper. It was comprised of a small, freshly cleaned window, an oak desk and file cabinet, phone, ticker-tape machine, and a leather office chair and a matching chair for clients on the other side of the desk. The floor was carpeted in gray and the walls had been painted white. A few landscape paintings adorned the office. He settled in his leather chair and tried to feel something beyond what he usually felt upon coming to work. He didn’t and gave it up.

He walked back down the hall to the plump, widowed receptionist. “Mrs. Grimes, I’m supposed to choose a stenographer from the pool for myself.”

“Yes, sir, that’s what I’ve been told.” She eyed him as if trying to read his purpose for mentioning this.

“I don’t know anything about choosing a stenographer.”
And I don’t want to know.
“Do you know the pool well enough to recommend someone to me?”

The woman pursed her lips. “What were you looking for in a secretary?”

“Someone who is good at her job,” he answered without hesitation.
Also someone who won’t flirt with me or want to heal me with the purity of her love.
He’d learned to read the evidences of that crusading emotion in women’s expressions—a moistening around the eyes or a simpering manner. And he avoided every woman who tried it on him. But for Mrs. Grimes, he translated this into something polite, saying, “She must have a serious demeanor.”

“I can think of a few girls who fit those requirements,” Mrs. Grimes said, still eyeing him.

“Good,” he said, already turning away. “Send them up this morning and I’ll interview them quickly and make my choice. I don’t have much time to waste on this. I have customers to meet with before I go to the Exchange.”

“I’ll get the ball rolling right away, Mr. McCaslin.” She reached for her phone. “I’ll send them to you one at a time.”

He thanked her and went back to his office. He found that someone had already moved boxes of his records and papers to the new office for him. He went through restoring order to his client files and setting up his desk to suit him.

The outer door opened and a woman cleared her throat. “Mr. McCaslin?”

He glanced up and saw the look he hated most. “Thank you, but you won’t do.”

The young woman opened and closed her mouth once, twice, and then turned and exited.

Roarke went on with his arranging things. Within minutes, another young lady stood before him, clutching a steno pad to her chest. He looked at her face. He read the way she sized him up and the look of determination in her eyes and her firm chin. “Your name, please?”

“I’m Talbot, sir. Miss Edna Talbot. I take dictation at 118 words a minute and I type at eighty-three words a minute. Those are averages, you understand.”

He assessed her. She was dressed neatly and with propriety. Her dark skirt fell far below her knees and she didn’t look at him as if her love alone could save him. Edna Talbot looked . . . ambitious. Or driven to obtain his approval. She didn’t want to redeem him. Clearly, she wanted him to elevate her from the steno pool.

That motivation he could understand and appreciate. “I’ll give you a try. Make yourself comfortable out in your office and then come back and I’ll run you through my list of clients and my immediate plans and strategies to make them a lot of money.”

“Yes, sir.” Talbot nearly saluted him.

This brought a rare grin to his face. He chuckled silently. Ambition was better than salvation as far as he was concerned. Especially since he belonged among the ranks of the damned.

An enormous wave of warm relief had deluged Chloe when she entered her father’s apartment in D.C. on Monday morning, two days after seeing Roarke. Guilt followed the relief, but the relief won. No one here would reject her. No one here knew she was a failure as a mother. And her father needed her.

He’d left her a note on the dining room table. She read it and sat down immediately with the cook at one end of the expanse of polished mahogany table to draw up a menu for an open house for the wives of Democratic congressmen. After she’d thoroughly discussed finger sandwiches,
petit fours
, and buying a new and larger coffee urn, the phone rang.

Chloe stepped out to the hallway and answered it herself. They didn’t have a butler in the apartment, just a cook and a maid. “Hello, this is the Kimball residence. Chloe Black speaking.”

“Mrs. Black, this is Mrs. Meyer Hughes. Mrs. Henderson recommended I call you and invite you to join our group.”

“What group is that, Mrs. Hughes?” Chloe tried to think if she’d met this lady, but couldn’t bring a face to match the name.

“We are a group of civic-minded women who perform various charitable tasks in this city. We were wondering if you’d be interested in helping with a fund drive for the orphanage here. We hear that you are a war widow and the orphanage has been inundated by orphans of soldiers whose mothers have died or who can’t support them. I’m afraid the flu epidemic of ’18 alone took a terrible toll in the lives of many children, robbing them of their remaining parent.”

Tears rushed to Chloe’s eyes. The war had robbed her of her life, the independent life she’d tried to claim. At least she was an adult and hadn’t ended up in an orphanage. But should she tell the woman that she wasn’t good with children? She fidgeted with the telephone cord. No, of course not. After all, she wouldn’t be asked to care for children, just raise funds for them, and the woman would tell her how to do that. “Yes, I’d be honored to help in any way I can.”

“Wonderful. Do you have plans for Thursday afternoon?”

“No, nothing at this time. I’ve just returned from a jaunt to New York City.”

“Then I’ll pick you up on my way to the orphanage. Let’s say around one that afternoon?”

“I’ll be ready.”

On Thursday morning, Roarke stepped out of the elevator, nodded to the receptionist, and walked into his new office.

Dressed in an unobtrusive navy suit, Miss Talbot was already there at her desk, answering her phone. “Mr. Roarke has just stepped in, Mrs. Creighton. He’ll pick up momentarily.”

Roarke liked the way Talbot had come early every day and the way she talked to clients as if he already had a corner office and she were presiding over her own roomy office instead of the postage-stamp area she occupied at present.

With a nod, he strode to his desk, shed his trench coat on the coat rack, and picked up the phone. Suddenly, as if a delayed reaction, he felt a spurt of satisfaction. He squelched it. This job wasn’t about being successful; it was about having something to do every day. It was about having enough money to live completely free of the entanglements of family and friends. It was about survival, just as it had been on the front.

He listened with half an ear to Mrs. Creighton’s “feeling” that a certain oil company’s stock would explode soon and her query whether he should buy some for her.

Miss Talbot appeared in the partition, holding her steno pad like a shield. Today there was a new look in her eye that Roarke couldn’t decipher. He could identify cloying sympathy and revulsion with practiced ease. But this was a more complex expression. With deliberation, he decided it was another form of ambition—Miss Talbot was sizing him up as a possible husband. Well, no harm in that. She’d learn soon enough he wasn’t interested in marriage to anyone.

On Thursday afternoon, Chloe walked into the Washington Orphanage, which occupied a large, two-story house in a sad neighborhood. Though the entrance and foyer of the building were spotless, the orphanage smelled of urine and strong disinfectant. Miss Jones, a middle-aged spinster wearing an outmoded black dress, greeted them with a tense smile. “So happy you ladies made time for a visit today. Some of the children are waiting to greet you in our dining room.” She led them toward the rear of the building.