Jo Goodman (34 page)

"Something like that," Grey admitted. "I'm supposed to look around here for charms and potions, and if you have a doll that looks like Annie, I'm supposed to take it with me—or at least get the pins out."

Berkeley laughed. "Poor Annie. She doesn't know what to make of me."

Grey's smile faded. He let silence draw out a beat longer before he said, "Neither do I."

The expression in her leaf green eyes was gentle. "I know."

His intention not to linger fell by the wayside. "Do you mind?" he asked. "I'd like to talk about that. There are some questions..." His voice trailed off because he felt the full force of her extraordinary smile. It was at once wistful and shy, yet somehow encouraging. Her skin glowed, and the gentleness of her expression was replaced by an unusual serenity. It was almost as if she knew what he was going to ask. "I think I'm prepared to hear your answers," he said finally.

Berkeley nodded. "I think you are, too."

"You've been enormously patient, waiting me out like this."

"Enormously stubborn," she said. "Intractable."

"A little," he allowed. He leaned forward in the rocker, stopping its motion cold while he rested his forearms on his knees. "There's something to this talent of yours, isn't there? It's not merely clever parlor tricks."

"Do you want an answer?" she asked. "Or confirmation of what you've been observing. I can't tell."

Grey hesitated. "Confirmation," he said at last.

"Then you're right. There is something to my talent. It's not merely clever parlor tricks."

"But sometimes it
is
fakery."

"Actually quite a lot of the time that's exactly what it is." She saw Grey's fingers press together at the tips as he frowned. "Do you think I'm being contradictory? My special gift is incredibly wearing. I can't sustain what's required of me to use it day after day. I can't let myself be that vulnerable. So, yes, often I rely on other means to enhance it."

"Like watching how people carry themselves and listening for their accents. You wait for the small expressions and movements that give them away."

"Exactly like that. I told you that's what I did from the first. You weren't prepared then to hear that it might be anything else."

"But when you looked at my palm it was—"

"It was never about looking at your palm." Berkeley carefully pushed herself upright. She smoothed the fringed coverlet across her legs. "I have almost no idea what the lines and mounts on anyone's palm mean. It was because I touched you and allowed myself to
feel
something that I know what I know."

"Ivory's gown," Grey said. "You allowed yourself to feel that?"

"No," she said quickly, shaking her head. "Oh God, no. I couldn't help myself that night. Sometimes there's an intensity about an object I'm touching that I'm helpless to ignore. It was like that with Ivory's gown. Perhaps if I hadn't been wearing it..." She shrugged. "I don't know. It was very powerful. It may not have made any difference."

"And with my hand? The intensity was there?"

Berkeley understood what Grey was really asking. "That's more difficult to explain, and I don't know that I can or that it would make any sense to you. You're still wondering how I know about the man you killed."

"Yes."

"There was no trickery involved," she said. "You're very guarded, Grey. There's little you give away casually."

His features were perfectly schooled now. There was only a slight narrowing of his eyes as he searched her face.

Berkeley fingered the earring pendant. "Shall I tell you something about Graham Denison?"

Grey's glance strayed to her throat. "Is that who gave you the earring?"

"In a way," she said, watching him closely. "It's also the name of the man you killed."

Grey came up out of the rocker as if shot from a cannon. Pandora's back arched, then she crouched and prepared to pounce. "You can't know that," he said, glaring at the cat. His long-legged stride took him to the window. He stared out, his arms rigid at his side. "It's not possible." This last was said softly, more to himself than to Berkeley. "You couldn't know."

Berkeley drew Pandora onto her lap and stroked her absently. Was she wrong? Her eyes traveled over the taut line of Grey's lean frame. His jaw was fixed, his shoulders braced. He had the look of a man who had taken one blow and was preparing himself to receive another.

"You're correct," Berkeley said and readied herself to deliver it. "Under any usual circumstances, I couldn't know, but there's nothing usual about my situation here. I wouldn't find myself in San Francisco if not, in part, for Mr. Denison. And I wouldn't be here with you if not for your rather surprising likeness to him."

Grey turned slowly to face her. A small vertical crease appeared between his dark brows. "I look like him?"

"Yes." Berkeley frowned. "Don't you know?"

"No," he said. "I don't. You're going to have to accept that."

"Perhaps you didn't get a clear look at his face before you—"

"Have a care," he interrupted. "You're close to accusing me of stabbing him in the back."

"No, I wasn't thinking that at all. I thought... well, I thought it might have been dark."

Grey advanced on the bed. Pandora didn't snarl at him this time. She simply leaped out of the way when he sat on the edge of the bed. "Do I frighten you?" he asked Berkeley. She shook her head and reached for his hand. Grey withdrew it slightly, keeping it just beyond her easy grasp. "Are you certain you want to touch me?"

"Are you certain you want me to?" She showed him again her uncommon patience by turning her palm over and waiting for him to place his hand in hers. It was a long minute later when her fingers closed over his. "I'm only holding your hand, Grey, not probing your guarded feelings or your past. I don't want to know anything from now on that you don't tell me freely."

"Do you mean that?"

"I mean it. But you have to remember that sometimes not wanting to know isn't sufficient protection. I only can exercise a certain amount of control. I didn't want the knowledge that was revealed in Ivory's gown, and it came to me anyway."

"And what about Graham Denison? Did you come across what I revealed then by accident or design?"

"Design," she admitted.

"You were looking for his murderer?"

"I was looking for
him."

Grey looked at her oddly. "You thought I would know?"

"I thought you
were
him."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"No," she sighed. "It doesn't. Not when you have to look at things from your point of view. That would make things rather confusing."

"Incredibly," he said dryly. "Berkeley, you have to strive for some clarity here. You said I bore a surprising likeness to this Mr. Denison."

"You do."

"Can't I assume from that that you've met him?"

"I suppose you can assume anything you like, but it doesn't follow that you'll be right. This time you took a meaning I didn't intend."

"I see that now. And the earring? What was I supposed to understand when you said he'd given it to you 'in a way'?"

"I didn't mean for you to understand at all," she said candidly. "I was being purposely evasive."

"Yes," he said. "You were. Does that mean you're not truly prepared to tell me about Graham Denison?"

Berkeley hesitated. She squeezed his fingers because she could not quite meet his eyes. She knew herself to be a coward. "It means I'm not prepared to tell you anything about myself," she said quietly. She risked a glance at him. "I'm sorry, Grey. I am."

"I'm sorry, too. I'd hoped..." He touched her chin and brought her eyes back to him. "Perhaps after we're married it will be easier."

Chapter 10

Nat won the wager. He won because he was the only employee or guest of the Phoenix who thought it would take Grey Janeway an entire week to wear Berkeley down. When asked how he arrived at the winning number for his submission, Nat's answer was simple: He thought God Himself would have needed the seventh day if Miss Shaw had been around to try His patience. Amid the raucous laughter, Nat was very happy to collect three hundred dollars.

Courting in earnest was an exhausting business, Grey decided as he leaned against the bar. First there had been the matter of flowers. He had filled Berkeley's suite with them. He surprised her with carriage rides in the afternoon, theater and opera tickets in the evening, and a Sunday steamer trip up the Sacramento River. Grey had no plan except to keep her so busy she'd marry him simply to get a rest. At the very least she would have to move in with him to make room for the flowers.

Grey followed Berkeley's progress as she wended her way through the crowd toward him. She was stopped several times by guests and gamblers and always spent a moment with each one, but her beautiful eyes invariably darted toward him, seeking him out as if he were her calm in the storm. He thought how odd that was, that she should see him in that light when he rarely experienced the kind of peace she gave him credit for. He found himself straightening at the bar, wanting to go to her. He held back, not certain she really needed or desired to be rescued, and selfishly, because he wanted her to come to him.

Then she was there, standing in front of him, her fingers lightly brushing his hand. "Is everything all right?" she asked, searching his face. His jaw was set, and a muscle worked faintly in his cheek. His eyes radiated intensity.

Grey caught her fingers and drew her inches closer. "Everything's fine," he said deeply. And it was. She was here, with him, and she had come of her own accord. "No regrets."

Berkeley's smile was uncertain. "Are you asking if I have any?" she said. "Or telling me that you did?"

"I was asking."

She glanced behind her. The Phoenix was crowded this evening, but a small protective semicircle had been invisibly drawn around where she and Grey stood. Berkeley felt quite alone with him, quite safe. "No regrets. I held out for seven days because I wanted to be sure." And she had given in because there could be no assurances where Grey was concerned.

"I thought you held out because you wanted Nat to win the pool."

Berkeley's smile was secretive. "You're not going to get me to admit I knew anything about that."

Grey let go of her hand and slipped his own about her waist. "Do you want to go up early this evening?" he asked. "Everyone will understand if you want a few more hours' rest on the eve of your wedding day."

His thoughtfulness touched her. His arm was a warm band at her back, and she was comforted being held by him. "Yes, please. I'd like that."

Grey nodded. "Of course." He released her. It was what she had come to ask him, he realized, and he was glad he had thought of it first. He couldn't help but be aware that she had been tired recently, that she often slept past breakfast and began yawning early in the evening. Most days, until he drew her out, Berkeley kept to her room. It seemed as if she would have been content with that. The flowers, the theater, the carriage rides had all been his idea. She didn't expect it, and Grey saw that she didn't know quite what to make of the attention. Sometimes Grey thought he had overwhelmed her.
Did I wear you down, Berkeley? Or did I wear you out?

"Grey?" Berkeley asked. "What is it?"

For a moment he wondered if he had given voice to his thoughts. No, he'd said nothing. She'd only seen something in his face, glimpsed his uncertainty. Grey carefully shuttered his expression. A faint smile eclipsed the edgy, uneasy set of his mouth. "Go on," he said. "Use the stairs from the kitchen. It will take the men a little longer to realize you're gone."

Berkeley hesitated, searching his face again. As much as she wanted to leave the hall, she did not really want to leave Grey. Had she been possessed of even a thimble's worth of courage, she would have asked him to come with her, to sit with her until she fell asleep, perhaps even to lie with her, to hold her, touch her, place his lips upon hers, allow her to open her arms, her mouth, all of her body to him. She wanted him like that again. In spite of her gift, Berkeley was much less certain what it was he wanted. Tomorrow afternoon they would be married, and he had never once said that he loved her. Sharing those words had not been part of Grey's strategy to court her. "Good night," she said.