Murder on Black Friday (25 page)

Will held the smoke for a long moment, expelling it in a plume that hovered like a cloud in the blistering cold air. Shoving one hand in a coat pocket, he looked around absently as he brought the cigarette to his mouth again.

He saw her and stilled.

He lowered the cigarette without drawing on it and strode toward her, black coat and gray silk scarf flapping.

Nell shivered as he came up to her, looking pleasantly stunned. “Nell. I didn’t expect...”

She nodded, shrugged. “I know. I...”
I don’t want you to leave. I’ve come to try to keep you here.
“I wasn’t going to.”

He looked at her in that quietly intent way that always made her feel as if he could see right inside her. “Why did you change your mind?”

A surge of cowardice made her say, “I...suppose I thought I should see you off. It’s to be such a long trip, and—”

“All aboard! The train to Providence and points west departs in two minutes!”

Will looked toward the train, his mouth in a grim line.

Nell said, “You don’t want to do this, Will. Shanghai...that life... You’re past all that.”

So softly she could barely hear him above the surrounding cacophony, he said, “I can’t stay here, Nell. I can’t bear it.”

“A while back,” she found herself saying in a timid voice that didn’t sound at all like hers, “you told me you could be persuaded to stay.”

With a kiss. Just one.
I won’t ask for a second. Ever. I promise. And I’ll remain in Boston, and we can go on as before.

He stared at her, seeming at a loss for words. “You were supposed to have forgotten about that.”

“How could I?” She knew she was blushing. She didn’t care. She held his gaze even though it seemed to sear right through her.

Will flung the cigarette away and took her arm. He led her through the throng and beneath the overhanging roof of the train station. It was shadowy under the eave, and colder, but they were alone—or at least it felt as if they were. The riotous noise and activity receded as Will drew her against the brick wall, positioning himself between her and the platform as if to shield her from view.

The transition from sharp sunlight to dimness was blinding; Nell could barely make out Will’s face in the dusky form looming over her. He removed his hat, his gaze fixed on her.

She shivered all over, blood roaring in her ears. Will said her name, but he didn’t seem to know what else to say.

Nell breathed in the familiar, comforting scents of clean wool, Bay Rum, and tobacco. She laid a gloved hand on Will’s chest, rising and falling so rapidly one would think he’d just sprinted a mile.

His throat moved.

She looked up at his mouth. He was too tall. Even on tiptoe, she’d never reach it.

“All aboard! Last call!”

Will lowered his head a bit, his eyes huge in the dark.

Nell lifted her hands to his shoulders. Still holding his hat, he curled his other hand around her waist and dipped his head further still.

She whimpered at the hot, soft shock of his lips against hers. He gathered her in his arms; his hat fell to the ground. Her heart pounded against her stays as he deepened the kiss. A sort of helpless little growl rose from Will’s throat.

This was happening, it was really happening, and it was so much more than she’d thought it would be. It was the earth opening up beneath her, and her falling and spinning as she grappled for purchase. It was delirious; it was shattering.

“Nell...” he breathed against her lips. “Oh, God.” He held her tight, his lips grazing the edge of her mouth, her cheek...

Nothing would be the same now. Everything would change. Will would remain in Boston, as he’d promised. They would try to resist a second kiss, and then a third, and then...

They, inevitably, would become lovers, but in secret, a hidden, adulterous affair, dark and furtive. And when they were found out, as they surely would be, she would lose everything of value to her in this world, except perhaps for him.

Her chest ached as she thought about it; her eyes stung. She would lose her reputation, her livelihood, but worst of all, she would lose Gracie.

“Nell...?” Will tilted her face up and wiped a tear away with his thumb, his eyes dark with concern.

“I c-can’t...”

He cupped her head against his chest, the wool of his coat softly scratchy against her damp cheek. “Shh, it’s all right, it’s all right...”

She shook her head. “I can’t...I can’t ch-choose between...between you and—”

“I know,” he said in a low, strained voice as he tightened his arms around her. “I know, Nell.” She felt his warm breath against her temple, felt the soft brush of his lips. “I wouldn’t ask you to. You’ve—” His voice snagged. It quavered slightly as he said, “You’ve far more at stake than I. I
am
a selfish cur, but not...” He pulled back a bit to look down at her. His cheeks were wet, too. “Not quite that selfish.”

The train gave a long, mournful hoot, and then another, as its wheels began to churn. It lumbered forward, grinding and hissing around a bend in the tracks, as onlookers waved and blew kisses.

Nell returned her gaze to Will, who was gazing down at her with the oddest, tenderest little smile. “You must promise me,” he said as he tucked her scarf into the neck of her coat, “that you will cover your throat in cold weather while I’m gone. You’ve always been so blasted careless about that.”

“I...I promise,” she managed.

“Do something for me?” he asked soberly. “Stay here, where I can’t see you, until the train’s gone.”

She nodded, her chin quivering.

Will kissed her forehead, turned, and sprinted toward the train as it picked up speed. His scarf flew off and fluttered onto the granite pavement, but he didn’t seem to notice.

He won’t make it,
Nell thought as he reached toward a grab iron on the bright green wooden caboose.
He waited too long, the train’s moving too fast.

Will seized the iron bar with one hand and the back railing with the other, finding his footing on the cab’s rear platform with one long-legged leap. Slumping against the green-painted wall, he raked the hair out of his eyes and looked toward the station, searching the shadows beneath the eave as the train disappeared around the bend.

###

Other Electronic Books by Patricia Ryan

Nell Sweeney Historical Mysteries by Patricia Ryan writing as P.B. Ryan:

Still Life With Murder

Murder in a Mill Town

Death on Beacon Hill

Murder in the North End

A Bucket of Ashes

Medieval Romances by Patricia Ryan:

Falcon’s Fire

Heaven’s Fire

Secret Thunder

Wild Wind

Silken Threads

The Sun and the Moon

Nell and Will must infiltrate the most dangerous neighborhood in Boston to clear Detective Colin Cook of a murder charge in

MURDER IN THE NORTH END

by Patricia Ryan writing as P.B. Ryan

July 1870

“More tea, Lady Higginbottom?” asked Nell Sweeney, sitting Indian-style beneath a sheet arranged over four dainty little gilt chairs.

“I don’t mind if I do,” Gracie responded in her best attempt at an upper-crust English drawl. The five-year-old offered her tiny cup to be filled with imaginary tea from the little gold-rimmed bone china teapot in her governess’s hand. “And a spot of cweam, if you don’t mind?
Cream,”
Gracie corrected before Nell had a chance to do it for her. Her diction, thankfully, had seen major improvements over the past few months.

“More for you, Lady Wigglesworth?” Nell asked as she turned to her young assistant, Eileen Tierney.

“I shouldn’t, but I don’t suppose another sip or two would hurt,” said the waifish, flaxen-haired Eileen as she held out her cup. Her own attempt to sound like a British aristocrat was rather less successful than Gracie’s, due mainly to an Irish brogue far too deeply ingrained to disguise. “Aye, and this here’s the perfect mornin’ for a tea party, it is. Yes, indeed. What ho. Cheers, and all that.”

“Another drop, Lord Hubble-Bubble?” Nell proffered the teapot to Gracie’s little red poodle, Clancy, who sniffed curiously as she tilted it over his cup.

“I say, Hitchens, have you seen the Sweeney girl?”

The clipped inquiry, which came from beyond their little makeshift tent, prompted grimaces from Nell’s tea party companions. Even Clancy let out a weary little sigh.

“Mrs. Mott,” Gracie mouthed with a theatrical expression of repugnance.

From the nearness of the housekeeper’s voice, Nell realized she must have crept right into the third-floor nursery on those silent-as-death feet of hers. Edward Hitchens, Mr. Hewitt’s valet, was probably passing outside in the hall.

Nell was about to announce her presence when Mrs. Mott added, in a tone of hushed significance, “There’s a constable downstairs, asking for her.”

Hitchens responded to this news with an eloquent little grunt. The starchy valet was the closest thing Evelyn Mott had to a confidant among the household staff. Like the dour old housekeeper, Hitchens was appalled at Nell’s having supposedly finagled eccentric Viola Hewitt into hiring her as Gracie’s nursery governess despite her humble origins and even worse, much worse, her Irishness. It mattered not that Nell blended flawlessly into the world of Brahmin privilege in which she lived and worked. She dressed like them, spoke like them, and comported herself like them, and with the exception of a slight coppery burnish to her hair, there was nothing overtly Gaelic in her appearance to give her away. Still, she was Irish, foreign vermin in the eyes of most Bostonians, lowborn or high.

“A
constable?”
Hitchen said. “Good lord. He didn’t come to the front door, did he?”

“He did, indeed, just as bold as you please.”

“God knows what the neighbors will think.”

With a contemptuous little huff, Mrs. said, “God knows what they’ve been thinking for the past six years, with that Sweeney girl waltzing the child up and down Colonnade Row as if they belonged here. I’ve told Mrs. Hewitt it isn’t fitting, but you know her—she just does as she pleases, with no regard for what people think, or how it reflects on Mr. Hewitt.”

“Bad enough to take the child in,” Hitchens sniffed, “but to raise her like one of the family, with an upstart Irisher looking after her instead of a proper governess...”

“It’s not as if she merits a proper governess, but then, if she’d been correctly dealt with from the first, she’d be in the House of Industry instead of constantly underfoot here. I don’t care if she
was
sired by a Hewitt, a chambermaid’s by-blow has no business prancing about like a little princess under the roof of one of the best families in—”

“Mrs. Mott, is that you?” Nell called out as she belatedly realized, from Gracie and Eileen’s puzzled scowls, that they’d heard far more than they should have. She was tired, having awakened well before sunrise to pack her and Gracie’s luggage, or she would have put a halt to the conversation the moment she realized where it was going.

She folded back the sheet and stood, smoothing out the wrinkles in her traveling dress of brown summer-weight wool. “Ah, and Mr. Hitchens, too. How lovely of you to pay a call on us this morning—a rare treat. Would you care to join us?” she asked, holding up the diminutive teapot.

The housekeeper and valet blinked at her from the doorway of the nursery, an opulent bower fitted out with child-sized rococo-inspired furniture swathed entirely, as of yesterday, in snowy linen sheets. Hitchens turned and left in stony silence, leaving Mrs. Mott to frown at Gracie and Eileen as they clambered to their feet.

Stiffening her back, her hands clasped at her waist, the housekeeper said to Nell, “Your presence is required downstairs. There is a Constable Skinner waiting to speak with you in the music room.”

Skinner.
That ghastly little weasel. What on Earth could he be wanting with her?

Nell suspected she knew why Mrs. Mott had had him sequestered in the music room instead of the front parlor, as was customary. The parlor, which looked out onto the elegant stretch of Tremont Street known as Colonnade Row, had numerous tall windows, all of which would be thrown wide open with their curtains tied back on this sultry summer morning. The music room, on the other hand, faced a little-used side street. Even with its windows uncurtained, there would be few passersby to notice a policeman paying a visit to the venerable Hewitts.

“I’ll be down shortly,” Nell said.