Thief of Hearts (42 page)

"I'd have given it to you if you'd asked me for it."

It was the sound of her voice that shocked him low and despairing and ice-cold even before he understood the sense of her words. He flushed; his hands clenched into fists in his pockets.

She saw. Her lips trembled as they drew apart in a terrible smile. Her voice shook. "Yes, I've been speaking to my cousin. Did you think he wouldn't tell me?"

Brodie leaned back against the windowsill and crossed his ankles, hands still in his pockets. "What exactly did he say to you?"

She hated the fake nonchalance in his voice, the casualness of his pose. Was he going to lie? How much of a fool did he take her for? "Everything!" she cried. "I know everything. Except how you expected to get away with it."

"How I expected to get away with what?" he asked softly. "What is it you think you know, Annie?"

"Stop it. Please, please, just stop. I know that you're a thief and a liar, a hypocrite, a deceiver. I don't know the words to say what you are!"

Brodie felt the shredding of himself like tearing paper, slow, violent, and irrevocable. But what he said was, "Don't underestimate yourself."

She moved toward him, confronted him from the center of the room. "Is that all you can say to me?"

"No, not all. I could tell you you're wrong. Would it do any—"

"I saw the note, John. It's your handwriting, the money's gone!"

"Ah." He folded his arms stiffly. A muscle jumped in his jaw. "Then I guess that's it."
Tell her
, a gentler part of him urged. But there was so much anger now, so much trampled pride, and he wanted her to hurt as much as he did.

Anna's pride meant less to her, at least now. "Tell me anything," she begged, almost inaudibly. "Make me believe you."

Brodie pushed away from the window and came toward her. "Make you believe me," he said in a deadly quiet voice. "You want me to make you believe me?"

A chill raced through her. For the first time, she was afraid of him. He stood close; she could feel his breath on her face. In her ears, his question took on the dangerous cadence of a threat. Anger radiated from him in bright, shimmering waves. She wet dry lips and forced herself to speak. "Please. Tell me why."

"And if not? If I won't explain and I ask you to trust me, what then?"

"Don't do this. Don't make it a test."

"The test was over before you came in here. What do you say, Annie?"

"This is not fair."

"I'm waiting."

She clasped her hands together under her chin and whispered, "Did you take the money?" She thought his eyes would freeze her where she stood. Then he gave his answer.

"Yes."

Her body wilted. Through a haze she saw him move away, back to the window. "Why? Won't you tell me" But then she knew. "You're going to escape."

He stood with both hands gripping the sill and looked at her across his shoulder. "Right again."

"Bastard!"

"Ah, that's good, Annie. You're coming right along." His smile was as ugly as a sneer. "Or maybe you meant it as a statement of fact, not a curse at all."

The first tears sprang to her eyes, but she bared her teeth in fury. "You won't get away with it, I'll expose you." But in the next breath, she cried, "What are you waiting for? Why don't you go, run away? Do you think if you stay you'll get
more
money out of my father? Between you and Nicholas, haven't you done enough? You've already gotten what you wanted from me, so why... why don't you" But her voice finally broke. Tears streaked down her cheeks and she had to turn away, swallowing, fighting for control. If she let this pain overpower her, she feared she wouldn't survive.

"I didn't betray you."

She turned around. A terrible hope seized her. "Tell me," she choked. "Just tell me."

"I might have, before. Not now. Do what you have to do, but take your tears and get out of here. I can't stand the sight of them. Or you."

His eyes had gone lifeless in his white, stricken face. She had a fleeting, anguished sense that his wound went as deep as hers, but it passed. Or perhaps she buried it, under the crushing weight of hurt that was trying to suffocate her. There was one other thing she needed to tell him, but she couldn't think what it was. Was this all, then? Was it over? She felt blind. She wanted to see all of him, devour him with her eyes for the last time; but something in her mind, something besides tears, was preventing it. "Goodbye," she tried to say, but she was mute, too, the word wouldn't come out, wouldn't be uttered. She knew intense hate for him, and love just as strong. So this was all. She stopped looking at him and walked out.

"Nick's not in again today?"

Anna looked up from the delivery schedule she was trying to focus on and saw O'Dunne in the doorway. "Hello, Aiden. No, he… wasn't feeling well." Her fingers tightened around the pen in her hand as she contemplated the lie, and the cold contempt she felt for herself for telling it.

O'Dunne came all the way in and closed the door. "Is Brodie all right?" he asked in a low voice. "Is it anything serious? He's been out for three days."

"No, no, it's not serious, he's just under the weather. Perhaps he'll be in tomorrow." Or perhaps tomorrow he would go away. For all she knew, he might already have gone.

"Anna? You're not looking well yourself, you know. Why don't you take the afternoon off? You've been working much too hard."

"I'm fine, Aiden, don't worry about me." But he was right, she was exhausted. And she had a mirror; she knew what she looked like. Brodie's recent absence had given her a taste for what it would be like to work here when he was gone. Hard, hectic, challenging. Intensely lonely. And at the heart, empty.

She cleared her throat, and finally asked the question that had been on her mind for days. "Has there been any word from Mr. Dietz?"

"No, but it can't be much longer now. I'm surprised they've waited this long. If it hadn't been for what happened on the
Alexandra
that night, I think they'd have taken him back before now. He's turned up absolutely nothing."

She stared straight ahead. "And I don't suppose you've heard anything from the man you engaged to investigate the death of Mary Sloane."

"No. But frankly, I didn't expect to." He laid his hand on top of her cool, stiff one. "Anna, I'm so sorry. I swear to you, if I had foreseen how this would turn out, I'd never have agreed to any of it."

"Nor I," she said.

"You're in love with him, aren't you?"

She pulled her hand away. "No. I'm not."

He smiled gently. Whether he believed her or not, she couldn't tell. "It'll all be over soon, my dear."

"Soon, yes." But there was no comfort in that, either. "Do you know, Aiden, I believe I will go home." She stood up, restless. "God knows, I'm not accomplishing anything here."

"Good, it's just what you need. Say hello to John for me."

"Yes, I will."

But that was another lie: she hadn't spoken a word to Brodie in three days, and had no intention of starting now. But a feeling of incompleteness plagued her, intensifying the anguish she felt because of his betrayal. More needed to be said between them, it couldn't end like this, and yet she shrank from the pain a new confrontation would surely bring. Besides, he wouldn't speak to her. He wouldn't stay in the same room with her. He avoided the office in order to avoid her, and he was careful never to take a meal with the family if she was to be among them. If her aunt noticed his absences, she didn't comment on them. Neither did Stephen: he only watched, and waited.

The nights were the worst. Sleepless, weary to the bone, she would listen for a sound from his room, a cough, the creak of furniture, anything to assure herself that he was still there. Every morning she expected to find him gone, and every morning when she saw him she was overcome with a relief so vast it frightened her, then infuriated her, because of this madness inside that wouldn't let her foolish love for him die. In his eyes she saw anger too, quiet and scorching, and fretted because she knew of no reason for it. What had
he
to be angry about? Hadn't she given him every opportunity to explain anything he wanted? But there was nothing to explain, he was a thief, exactly like his brother. Fifty thousand pounds was a great deal of money, but her father's company
, her
company would survive the theft. What Anna honestly did not know was whether she would survive the theft of her heart.

She longed to confide in someone. Aiden was the only friend she had who knew their secret, and she couldn't tell him. She needed a woman. She needed Milly. And yet somehow she wasn't ready, in spite of everything, to confess to her closest friend that she'd been living a lie since her wedding night, no, before that, if she cared to include self-delusion. She would tell Milly everything one day, but not until Brodie was gone. Did that mean she was still protecting him? Or herself? She was too confused to know, too bruised to care.

At home, Brodie wasn't in his room. She knew it because the dressing room door was ajar; through it she could see Pearlman at work, industriously tidying the top of his master's bureau. "Where is Mr. Balfour?" she asked from the doorway.

"Outside, mum, with Sir Thomas. Since lunch, mum."

"Thank you, Pearlman."

She changed her dress. Why, she couldn't have said. Judith was nowhere, not expecting her mistress home at this hour. That was fine with Anna; she liked her maid almost as little as Brodie did. She recalled the morning he'd discharged her, then thrust the thought aside; it came with too many other memories. She put on a green and yellow flowered dress that flattered her, showed off her small waist. In the mirror she paused, contemplating her pale reflection, the faint but unmistakable blue hollows of fatigue and worry under her eyes. She bit her lips and pinched her cheeks, but the resulting color looked unnatural. Then she whirled away in disgust. What did she care what he thought of her? She went off to find him. To find her father, she corrected herself.

Brodie rolled Sir Thomas's chair two feet eastward, following the shifting slant of the afternoon sun. The old gentleman blinked thoughtfully but didn't speak. That wasn't unusual; they'd spent most of the afternoon in a comfortable silence, listening to birdsong and the hum of bees in the hedges. Brodie's head had almost stopped throbbing; his mouth no longer tasted like sour, wadded-up cotton. His recollection of the night before was imperfect, but he remembered the basics. He'd gone out and gotten blind drunk with Neil Vaughn.

The evening had started out innocently enough. They'd gone to Roe Street and potted at Victoria and Albert and Napoleon III in something called the "Royal Shooting Gallery." They'd moved on to taverns and dance halls; he vaguely recollected watching peep shows or
poses plastiques
at a "club" near the river. After that, his strongest memory was of when they'd stopped in an alley in Lime Street to relieve themselves against the wall, and Vaughn had offered him a puff on his pipe. It wasn't a tobacco pipe. And Brodie was drunk, but not that drunk. He'd traveled the world, he knew about the effects of chewing or smoking shredded coca leaves. He'd declined the offer, wondering if Nick would have done the same. A lot of his questions about Neil suddenly had answers.