He pressed a kiss to her brow. “Rory, if it
was anything else in the world but one of those accursed balloons,
I'd buy you a dozen of them first thing tomorrow."
"I don't need a dozen. I have other accursed
balloons. But that one was named after my Da."
"I didn't even know it had a name." Zeke
wrapped both arms about her, cradling her closer. "I realize how
much you loved your father, but you can't spend the rest of your
life pursuing his wild notions. You've got to find a dream of your
own."
"But it's my dream too. From the time I've
been a little girl, I've always—" Rory broke off, floundering for
words to describe that sensation she got when she was flying, the
total freedom of a soul entirely loosed from any earthly bounds. A
dull ache settled into her heart. She knew this one thing that was
so important to her was something she could never share with Zeke.
It was enough to make her tears spring afresh.
Although she knew it was useless, she
struggled to make him understand. "Don't you see? My Da never made
me help him with the balloons. I wanted to. If my friend Gia hadn't
just had her baby and needed my help, I probably would have gone
with Da on his last flight."
"Your father died in a balloon crash?"
"Yes. He was attempting an Atlantic crossing,
but a storm blew up before he was ten miles out and I'm afraid Da
wasn't much of a swimmer either."
"And you're still flying in those damned
things?'
Rory scrambled out of his arms and off the
bed. She glared at him, dashing away the last traces of her tears
with the back of her hand.
"If my Da had been an army captain killed in
battle and I was his son, you wouldn't think it was odd if I wanted
to be a soldier."
Zeke started to come after her, then stopped
at the edge of the bed, clutching the quilt around him. "But damn
it, Rory. You're not a son and you're not a soldier. You're a
woman."
"I was never particularly troubled by that
fact until I met you!"
Enough moonlight rimmed his features that she
could see clearly his frustration, but the hint of a smile as
well.
"Rory, you're tired," he said in coaxing
fashion. "This quarrel can wait until morning. It must be past
midnight. Come back to bed."
"I'd sooner sleep on the floor." But she
hugged herself, already feeling a draft tugging at her nightgown,
the insidious cold creeping over her flesh.
“Forgive me, my dear, but I am little unclear
as to why you are sleeping in here at all. Not that I have the
least objection, but you'd best keep your voice down. I have a
feeling that battle-axe of a woman who owns this cottage might toss
us back into the ocean if she caught you in here."
"She knows I'm with you. She thinks we're
married."
"Where the blazes did she get an idea like
that?"
"I told her so." Rory raised her chin in
defiance as a rumble of laughter escaped Zeke. "It seemed like a
good idea."
"Oh, an excellent idea. I'm beginning to
appreciate that fact more and more all the time."
She sensed his gaze warm upon her and
realized that the mammoth nightgown had shifted, slipping off one
shoulder down far enough to expose the curve of her breast. Rory
yanked the fabric back up, clutching it together at the neckline.
Zeke made a sudden move, and she tensed, fearing he meant to carry
her back to bed. But he checked himself, resorting to pleading
instead.
"Come on, Aurora Rose. You'll catch your
death of cold. Look, I'll move back to my own side and I won't even
try to touch you."
Rory wasn't sure how far she trusted his
promise.
"It's a long time yet until morning," he
reminded her.
It might be longer still if she spent it
bundled into bed beside a man now fully awake and aroused. But as
he retreated back across the bed, she took a reluctant step
forward—although she was not certain which lured her more, the
prospect of those warm blankets, or that even warmer voice, all too
seductive. She gingerly eased herself back down on the bed.
Lying stiffly on her back, she dragged the
quilt up to her chin. Zeke rolled to his side, propping himself on
one elbow, resting his head against his hand, gazing down at
her.
"I can hardly fall asleep with you staring at
me," she complained.
"Sorry," he said, but he didn't alter his
position a jot. "I was just wondering if this was what it was like
to be married."
"I wouldn't know."
"It might not be as bad as I'd always
thought, especially not if I awoke to find you beside me."
Rory knew she shouldn't encourage him to keep
talking, especially not in this vein, but she couldn't help asking,
"Just how bad did you think being married would be?"
"Maybe not that bad, but certainly not a very
attractive prospect. With Mrs. Van H. and her friends, it seems
such a cold arrangement, more like a property merger. Back in the
slums, it mostly involved a lot of arguing, hollering, smacking,
throwing pots and pans."
"It was never like that for my parents," Rory
said. "And what about your foster mother?"
Zeke lapsed into a thoughtful silence. Rory
shifted to her side to face him. Zeke was never much disposed to
talk about his past, so it surprised her when he finally
answered.
"I guess Sadie was happy in her marriage. She
was a widow by the time she adopted me, but she always kept her
husband's picture by her bedside and gazed at it kind of sad-like
when she thought none of us kids were looking. I believe she missed
him a lot."
"It was the same with my Da when my mother
died," Rory said. After a pause, she ventured another question.
"What was she like, your mother?"
He hunched his shoulder. "Sadie was one of
those big, warm-hearted, Italian women. You know, always fretting
you aren't getting enough to eat, trying to make you wear a coat
when it's ninety degrees outside."
Although he tried to make a joke of it, Rory
could hear other emotions in his voice—tenderness, regret, a very
real sensation of loss.
"You loved her very much, didn't you?" she
asked softly.
Zeke sagged back down against the pillows and
stared up at the ceiling. "Yeah, I guess I did." In some ways that
old curmudgeon Anchor Annie reminds me of her, only Sadie was a lot
more gentle."
Rory shifted nearer to Zeke, closing up the
distance between them. "Is that why you were persuaded to stay here
tonight?"
"No, it was because Annie pointed out to me
what a selfish bastard I was being, wanting to drag you back out
again after you'd been through such an ordeal. I ought to be
ashamed of myself subjecting a sweet little wisp of a girl like you
to the dangers of flying in one of those balloon contraptions."
Although she giggled, Rory had the grace to
blush. Zeke reached out and twined one strand of her hair about his
finger. "I am sorry, Rory. Annie was right. I was being blasted
selfish, not considering your feelings. I haven't been looking
after you very well. I fear I have never been much good at that.
Tessa always said—"
He broke off, withdrawing his hand from her
hair, the memory of his sister seeming to pass over him, like a
cloud obscuring the brightness of that silvery full moon hovering
in the sky outside the window.
Rory wriggled closer. She almost could have
nestled her head against his chest. "I think you fret too much over
the things your sister said to you."
"Maybe. Tessa always was able to get to me.
Probably because no matter how harsh, what she said was always
essentially true. I never meant to break Sadie's heart, but I did.
I just couldn't be what she expected of me, no matter how I
tried.
“All Sadie wanted was a God-fearing son,
content to work and live the simple life. But I seemed to have been
born hungry, never satisfied. I couldn't see spending the rest of
my life breaking my back down on the docks, watching Sadie and the
girls slaving in one of those damned sewing factories. `It's good
honest work, Johnnie,' Sadie would say. But good honest work didn't
seem to me to get you anything but an early grave."
He must have noticed that Rory was regarding
him with a troubled expression, for he said, "Oh, don't look so
horrified, Aurora Rose. No matter what Tessa says, I didn't take to
stealing or anything. I just got mixed up with one of those East
Side gangs."
"You were a Dead Rabbit?" Rory faltered.
"No, not quite that bad. I became one of the
boys working for a Bowery saloon keeper named Silver McCahan. He
backed me for a while in the ring, but I wasn't much good at
prizefighting. My blasted temper. I couldn't keep a cool enough
head."
Rory didn't find that terribly surprising,
but Zeke's next admission shocked her.
"So I became sort of an agent for McCahan
instead, putting my knuckles to other uses, collecting on bad
debts."
"Oh, Zeke!"
"Not a very reputable profession," he agreed
"but don't waste too much of your sympathies on my 'victims.' They
were all street toughs the like of that thug that knocked me cold
the other night. I would never have agreed to harass anyone weaker
than myself, any honest person. That is until-."
He paused, frowning. Rory thought he'd
reached the end of his confidences, but he continued with a rush.
"Hell, until one day McCahan paid me a lot of money to help him fix
an election and make sure that the candidate he favored won the
race. That kind of thing went on all the time in our local ward.
All I had do was hang out about the polls, wielding a big club and
see that everyone voted the 'right' way."
When Rory said nothing, Zeke shifted to
obtain a better view of her moonlit features. She was looking as
disappointed in him as his mother had that night so long ago.
Tessa had found out about his job somehow and
of course had promptly tattled. Zeke remembered facing his mother
across the kitchen, dumping a wad of money on the work-scarred
table.
"Look," he had shouted. "There's more there
than you could make in a year, killing yourself in that sewing
factory. You can quit now, lady, because there's lots more where
that came from."
"More?" Sadie whispered, angry tears spilling
from her eyes. "More money for what, breaking people's heads? Oh,
Johnnie, what's happened to you? You used to hate bullies, fight
against them. Now you are becoming one yourself."
Zeke shook himself out of the memory, dragged
himself back to the present reality of Rory's sad eyes.
"Don't look so grim," he said. "I never went
through with the election job. I changed my mind at the last
minute, used my club to make sure the voters got to use the polls
in peace." He gave a dry laugh. "I'll bet it was the first honest
election that ward ever had.”
Rory's beaming smile was as bright as the
moonlight.
"Glad to see that makes you so happy," he
grumbled, but he couldn't help feeling warmed by the approval that
glowed in her eyes. "I wish I could tell you the whole thing had a
better ending, but Silver McCahan wasn't used to being crossed. He
didn't even care that I gave him his money back. So what if I
didn't exactly hand it to him? If he had been a little quicker, he
could have caught it before it blew off the end of the dock."
Rory's laughter sounded like music in Zeke's
ears.
"Anyhow, McCahan told me I was a dead man and
I knew he meant it. I was stubborn enough to have risked his anger
and stayed, but I was afraid of bringing down trouble against Sadie
and the girls. So I ran for it, fled New York."
Zeke went on to tell Rory about his years in
Chicago, how he had eventually parleyed a small gambling windfall
into a fortune, discovering a talent in himself for speculating,
choosing the right investments at the right time.
He hardly knew why, but he felt a strong need
for Rory to know everything about him now, even the worst. He
didn't spare himself relating the details of his return to New
York, how he had become more and more drawn into playing the role
of Fifth Avenue tycoon, finding it harder and harder to pay visits
back to his old home on the East Side, look into Sadie's sorrowful,
worried eyes.
Up until the end, he had tried to get her out
of that flat on Pearl Street, but she had always refused, always
looking as though she had been waiting, expecting something
different from him, just the way she had that night he tried to
give her the money from the election job.
When he had been summoned by Caddie to attend
Sadie's deathbed, his mother had already been delirious, nearly
beyond the point of recognizing him.
Yet she had whispered his name over and over
again. "Johnnie Johnnie, I should have-." Then she had mumbled
something about his real mother and father.
“You are my real mother,” he had choked out,
but he doubted she even heard him.
"Johnnie, forgive me," she had begged with
her last breath. "I should have told you-."
He didn't know what she had done to ask
forgiveness for. If anyone had left too many words unsaid, it had
been him. And now it was too late.
When Zeke fell silent, Rory stirred beside
him. She had been quiet all this time, listening, seeming to pass
no judgments, asking no questions until he had finished.
Now she said, "But what about your sisters?
What happened to them?"
"Agnes married a bank clerk and moved to
Brooklyn. Caddie wed some kind of an artist and had three kids.
They live in the Village now. And Tessa, well, you heard her story,
how I blighted her life by running off that Duracy bum. But I still
am not that sorry I did it."
"Perhaps you did her a favor," Rory agreed.
"But, Zeke, you can't always be so roughshod with people, even
those you care about. Sometimes you have to let them make their own
choices, even the wrong ones."