“What makes you think I’d be a suitable business partner for a man like you?” My chest heaved a little from the exhilaration, straining against the tightness of the corset.
James Lee leaned toward me and caught my eyes. “I know hunger when I see it. I know what you want and how you may get it. If you think you can trust me, the two of us may go far.”
“No farther than this kitchen table, I reckon.” I huffed and looked away, then felt myself redden from my own words. It seemed no matter what I said to him, it was treacherous somehow, brought all sorts of images in its wake.
He smirked and downed his drink. “We’ll see, Mrs. Sorensen . . . We’ll see.”
* * *
—
“So this is her.” Mads looked at us with wonder as he rose the next day to find me in the kitchen, spooning milk-soaked bread into Anne’s little mouth. “This is the little girl who will make us all better.”
“This is her.” I gave him a smile. “This is Anne, and she is of good Norwegian stock.”
“She is a good girl.” He gently trailed the girl’s scalp with his fingers. “Maybe you won’t be so angry all the time now that you have her.”
I swallowed the annoyance that flared up in me. “No.” I pressed my lips tightly together. “Now I will be happy for sure.”
I enjoyed having the girl around. She kept my mind occupied. I enjoyed bathing and dressing her, and the rare smile that lit up her features. I enjoyed that she wanted only me, and reached for me when I entered the room. I longed for her to grow older, to talk with her and sing songs to her. I ogled toys I saw on display in shop windows and brought home tiny dolls, although she was far too young for that.
We had set up a small bed in the vacant room and it was the happiest I had been since the first days of our marriage when I sewed and embroidered little covers for her pillows and hung white muslin curtains in the window above her bed. I moved a lacquered armoire into the room and filled it with small dresses, and even bought a music box to help her go to sleep. Little Anne was my darling angel who could fill the emptiness of the house. If Mads thought my spending on the girl too lavish, he did not say a word.
I enjoyed the smiles that greeted me at church functions, as the congregation admired not only Anne but the size of my heart as well. Mostly, though, I enjoyed parading her among strangers who did not know she was not mine. I was her mother for real then, proudly showing off my daughter. I told everyone who wanted to hear: the girl behind the counter, the clerk at the bank, and couples we met in the park, about how sickly she had been at birth. How I nursed her back to health.
I immensely enjoyed the money too, and the man who delivered it to my door.
* * *
—
I had never understood what other women spoke of when they described their longing and need for a certain man. I had longed for Anders and been flattered by his attention, but my infatuation had been much about what he could provide. With James, it was different. It was raw, this feeling, like a pull. I lay awake in bed every night, no matter how tired, thinking about his hands on my skin. Come morning, I would look at myself in the tarnished bedroom mirror and judge the thickness of my brown hair and the shade of my complexion.
Maybe it was the kinship I sensed that made him so enticing to me. Maybe it was the sense of danger. Some days I loathed him for the lust he inspired, as I felt it left me at a disadvantage—as if he had a sway over me. Other days it was what pulled me through hours of cooking and mending. Potato peeling had never been as sweet as when I had him to think of.
James always came at night when Mads was at work. I never knew exactly when but placed a kerosene lamp on the windowsill to let him know when the house was empty. Our friendship was one of shadows and moonlight, a heady drug to the senses. I was surprised that a man like him would take such a keen interest in me, a housewife with a spotless reputation, but I reveled in the fact that he did. He brought out the best in me, James Lee: he helped me see the possibilities.
“I bet you could be anyone,” I told him one night when the bottle between us was half empty. “I bet you could shed your skin like a snake.”
“I once was a merchant from Germany,” he said, chuckling, “another time a salesman from Prague. I have been an envoy to a Turkish ambassador and a general in the Swedish army. Mostly, though, I am nobody—just a Norwegian immigrant working at the docks. I have found that can take me far.”
“You are such a slick fish slipping through the net.” My flattery was entirely sincere.
“No more than you, my dear. You know how to blend in like me. It’s the mark of a true survivor—we adapt and we change whenever we have to.” The light from the kerosene lamp painted his face in gold.
“You cannot change your nature, though.” I straightened up a little. His fingers were splayed out on the glass of golden liquor. Splayed out as on skin.
“Would you even want to?” I could hear the smile in his voice.
“Sometimes . . .” I looked at the bottle and scratched at the label, peeled it a little from the glass.
“Would you truly be like the dull people around you, satisfied with what little they have? No, Bella, you are more than that. Those other people, they are like mice, scurrying on the ground, but you”—he paused and lifted the glass—“you are a cat.”
“Rats,” I corrected him and lifted my gaze to his face. “They are rats.”
“And you eat rats. You eat them all up, bones and innards and long pink tails. You are nothing like them.” His voice had dropped to a husky whisper.
“Do you enjoy it, James? Eating rats?” I filled our glasses anew. The sweet liquor smelled warm and safe; the man, however, was not. When I put the bottle down again, my heart was beating wildly.
“I eat what I need to survive—and yes, if I have my claws in a particularly fat rat, I like it.” He said it as if it were nothing at all; a pang of sweetness exploded in my belly.
“You never even feel sorry for the rat?” I leaned back in the chair and did not even try to hide my admiration when I looked at him. I wished I had taken more care with my hair, and that my dress had not been so drab and plain. For once, it did not make me uncomfortable looking into another’s eyes; our locked gazes were like a bridge between us, dripping with lust and danger.
“Did you?” he asked, and made me startle enough that I looked away. “Did you feel sorry for the rat?” He cocked his head and smiled.
“What rat?” I ran my tongue over my lips, suddenly feeling hot all over.
“Oh, I’m sure you have one, or you wouldn’t be so comfortable asking me about mine.” He sent me a lazy wink and sipped his liquor. Droplets of whiskey caught in his mustache and glittered in the kerosene light.
“If you are right and there is a rat, why would I tell you—a stranger?” I lifted my chin just a little.
His hand landed on mine on the table; his skin was cool from cradling the glass. “Am I, though? A stranger?”