Chapter Four
JAMES SPENT THE NEXT MONTH WONDERING how to court a billionaire's daughter. He might as well have attempted to build a time machine with scraps from the city dump. An impossible task lay before him, but memories of those kisses, of her gentle vulnerability, Lilith's willingness to let him in behind that seemingly impenetrable fortress, fueled him to find a way.
Jack Reed was no help; John Stone had dismissed him, and Reed hung on to his job by his teeth. As Reed's main clerk,this meant that James would have had no legitimate reason to conduct business in or around Lilith, but some finagling and flattery had gotten him moved over to work with the partner who now managed Stone's affairs, a well-known opium addict named Michael Hanlon. He was as slim as James was wide, with a face that hung so long it looked like the moon in its sliver time. Neither pleasant nor gruff, Hanlon kept his job for one simple reason: his father had founded the firm.
And, according to rumor, he had no sex drive of any kind. For women.
James helped Hanlon with very basic work and found ways to encourage the man to let him make courier deliveries himself. Four separate visits to the Stone house revealed nothing of Lilith. What would she want with him anyway? He could offer her kisses and a warm coat and not much else.
Soon enough, though, that might change.
James read constantly. Obsessively. He had figured out letters and words on his own, long before being shoved off to school at six, and he'd taken to printed matter like some kids took to pickpocketing. Even now, at twenty-six, he picked up any newspaper he found, reading it front and back. A chance encounter with a dropped copy of Financial News, a halfpenny newspaper from London, England, gave James an idea, a way out, an opportunity that could catapult him into the ranks of the Carnegies, the Jarveys – and, maybe, even the Stones.
The article described the Nitrate Railway, a system developed by one Colonel John North. Though he'd died several years back, the article described his success in extracting sodium nitrate, a powerful fertilizer, from the mine fields of Peru and Chile.
Maria Escola had popped into his head just then, and he'd promptly used the excuse of research to spend time at work digging into details on the nitrate industry in Chile. Some sources claimed it was in decline; North had so thoroughly exploited the profit from the perpetually-turmoiled South American governments. And yet a few sources claimed that some minerals experts believed there were large stores that remained to be tapped.
And the market was strong.
Ah, but he'd spent days, weeks – nay, months – chasing dreams like this. North was like him, a poor, workingman's kid from a run-down side of the city. Tucking the thought away, James went about his business.
Until one night, in bed with Maria, he'd asked her what she knew of the industry. Mutual attraction has taken hold after they'd attended a lecture on polygamy; Maria had scandalized most of proper Boston society by asking the lecturer the word for one woman with many husbands.
“Polyandry,” the befuddled anthropology professor had replied. “But it is very rare.”
“I should think so,” she had said. “Only a woman of extraordinary...appetites could handle more than one man at once.”
“Oh, no, Miss – ”
“Escola. Maria Escola.” One half of her fire-engine red lips raised in a sultry grin.
“Miss Escola. Not at the same time. Polyandry does not mean that the husbands and wives experience conjugal relations simultaneously.”
The crowd had tittered, Maria's half-grin frozen on her face. James had admired her composure, and saw the wheels turning behind her eyes, searching for a retort.
And oh, my, had she found one.
“Well, then, my fine professor, what is the point?”
The crowd's response had been schizophrenic. Half gasped, half roared. All knew her name by the evening's end.
While others shunned her, James sought her out. This was a woman worth knowing.
They'd been lovers for a few weeks, more from availability than any strong desire, and she seemed surprised that he would ask her anything of substance. Both seemed to find the other vapid, yet the sexual arrangements were pleasing enough to maintain a truce of sorts, an unstable detente between the bedsheets. Smeared red lipstick and mussed hair gave her an unfinished, rather than intimate, appearance, and James studied her as she spoke, as if watching a lecturer.
“My father invests in such, how do you say in English? Companies? No, people who wish to go out and find the products in the fields, in the mines. Those people.”
“Really?” He sat up, propping his head on his and, and narrowed his eyes. “He funds prospectors?”
“Prospectors? Is that the word? Men who say there is still coal or copper or nitrate in a part of the land, but who do not have the money to go themselves? Then yes.” One hand dipped under the sheet and reached for him.
Thoughts of nitrate had disintegrated.
But they returned later. And through a series of pillow talks with Maria, James had gained access to her father, Marco Escola, a dark-haired, bushy-browed Latin man who spoke more with his hands than his mouth. Nobility flowed through his veins, blood centuries-thick with aristocratic ties, but when it came to money, investment, and ambition, Stone and Escola were equals. Momentarily. And then Marco had offered a deal James had no choice but to accept: basic expenses in return for unfettered devotion to finding a new, untapped store of nitrate.
The offer left him reeling. Ma and Da relied on his paycheck at the firm. He'd never left Boston, much less the country. He didn't speak Spanish, though Maria had taught him enough words to navigate her body; somehow, he didn't think that would help him much when he arrived in the Andes mountains and needed to hire men for the mines. And, worst of all, he would have to tuck his desire for Lilith away, fold it neatly like a contract one never signs, a mark of what could have been that stays filed away for future reference but never redeemed.
“What have you learned?” Lilith hissed through clenched teeth, using the lecture's program to cover her mouth. It had taken a month, but she had stirred up the courage to attend another lecture on sexual health, this one on the importance of exercise for women to prevent hysteria.
“He is known for his sexual appetite, Lilith. And Maria Escola is his dinner.” In desperation, Lilith had turned to her college friend, Esther Nourse, for help with information on James. Esther was eccentric; anyone who kept a Capuchin and dressed it in infant clothes could not be trusted for any mission but social spying. And organizing Oberlin college reunions.
Esther's wild, greying hair spilled out from its bun, her eyes too alert and bright. Though they were the same age, twenty-four, Esther looked to be closer in age to Lilith's mother, as though Esther were an eccentric, spinster aunt one tolerated at family gatherings in hopes of being named in her will one day.
She resembled a woman terrified half out of her mind after a fright, but on Esther the look was permanent. A constant twitch of the left eyelid added to the portrait of madness, and Lilith found herself falling down a spiral hole of surreality, hoping that she could end this evening and get out from Esther's socially-deprived clutches.
“So they are lovers.” Lilith's words were not a question.
“They were as of a month ago. Other sources tell me that Miss Escola is angry, having been spurned by Goliath.” Pleased with her own joke, Esther had now used it precisely six times this evening. What had been faintly amusing had now instilled in Lilith a deep desire to poke a hat pin through Esther's hand.
Esther fumbled with her carpet bag, which appeared to move of its own accord. A snout protruded from the opening near the clasp, followed by a searching eye.
“Esther! What do you have in there?”
“A tiny dog,” Esther answered, as if it were the most normal object to stuff into a purse at a lecture hall.
“He must go!” And with that, the dog agreed, escaping down the row of chairs.
“Rodrigo!” Esther cried, chasing after the little Mexican canine.
Emulating Rodrigo, Lilith took the chance to escape. Walking down the same street where she and James had kissed just a month ago was pure torture. Maria Escola? Lovers? His lips had craved hers, licked and laved and touched and teased with mouth and hands on that woman, just as he had done on her. A furious flush filled her and she began to sweat from anger, her heart beating twice as fast as it should, hand fluttering to her collarbone to quell it. A familiar darkness skirted around the edges of her vision and she searched out a bench, panic setting in.
But Esther had said James spurned Maria. A month ago. Did that mean...?
In that simple kiss, Lilith had come home. Her soul felt settled. She couldn't make heads or tails of it, and it made no sense at all, yet she was pragmatic, even about passion. There it was: she was falling in love with a poor, Irish man from South Boston, like something in a cheap rag that the maids passed around to read to each other. Except in those stories, the rich character was always the man. She didn't care. Never in her life had anyone made her feel this alive. His mouth spoke to her without words, stirring a deep – dare she say it? Love? – that felt more complete than any feeling she knew possible. She wanted nothing more than this. Ever.
And yet the same man was sleeping his way through the wealthy daughters of Boston?
Damn it, Lilith. It meant that talking with James was the only solution. She walked back to her carriage and gave the driver James' address. Startled, her coachman asked, “Miss Stone, you sure you want to go there? Now? It's awful dark and that part of town isn't...” His voice dropped off with the implication that she understood his unexpressed meaning.
“Are you afraid you will not be able to protect me should harm come my way? If so, you must not value your job.” His implication set off an angry tirade inside that threatened to spill over into the night air.
“No Ma'am,” he answered tightly. “I am from that part of town, in fact, and I know it well. That's why I advise – ”
“I need no advice from you. I need your driving skills. Which is it?”
The horses began to pull away, the steady, unsyncopated beat of their hooves on the cobblestones gave way, after a few minutes, to the softer pounding on the caked dirt of South Boston’s roads. New automobiles puttered by on their way to finer neighborhoods. Perhaps going to James' home was a mistake, but it was also a test. He'd hidden her from his real life. Including Maria Escola.
Now it was time to face him as he was, without social trappings or avoidance.
But could she do the same?
“James! Mr. Hillman!” The voice was familiar; his mind had been fogged by thoughts of Lilith Stone, and now he seemed to have conjured her, right here in his own neighborhood as he walked home from his cousin's house. One of his younger relatives, a boy of thirteen known for his pinching, had sold him a pair of shining shoes with thick soles for a few hours' pay. The shoes were ill-fitting and too tight, but James would adjust. He always did. Wasn't much choice, was there?
The night was a damp one, a stark contrast to the crisp air a month ago when he'd kissed Lilith in Cambridge. And now he was hearing her voice as he walked. Uneven horse steps made him turn to the right and there he saw Lilith Stone's carriage.
What in the hell was she doing on this side of Beacon Hill at this hour?
And what self-respecting coachman would take a billionaire's daughter here? He glared at the driver, not recognizing the ruddy-faced man. Too many servants came from this neighborhood; James was a rarity among them, an office worker with, as his Ma said constantly, “aspirations.”
“Lilith?” A squeak formed in the new leather of his shoes, each step more painful than the last, the sound more excruciating than the pain. A relief map of the chasm between them, the leather and stitches called to attention her opulence and his need. A few hours pay for James was wasted by one turned bottle of wine in her home. Stale French pastries uneaten on a tray. A torn silk scarf. All just cast aside or ignored, like everyone on James' street.
The foot pain distilled into a hot anger that he struggled to keep from Lilith. Her wide, chiseled face was guarded yet hopeful. Ah, woman. How you make so many emotions in me rise.
Among other things.
The carriage slowed and she hitched herself to standing, then carefully climbed out before James could even think to offer her his hand. With ruthless efficiency she stood before him, crisp and tidy, and looked at him with an air of calm expectation. “Yes, it's me. May we talk? I was on my way to your home to visit with you.” Her head turned left and right, taking in the dark street. It was lit dimly here and there by candles and gas lights in windows and the occasional headlight on a side street, a rare horseless carriage having got lost on its way to tonier sections of Boston.
“My home?” James could feel his voice crack, caught by surprise, quickly swallowing the wave of shame and the feeling of a near-miss with fate. “Why would you go to my home?”
“To talk.”
“About what?”
Now it was her turn to squirm. She lowered her gaze and furrowed her brow, one hand buzzing about her collarbone, fingers banging against a set of pearls that cost more than his entire apartment building.
“I...well...I'm not normally...” Her stammer was quite adorable, a word he'd never associated with her, and as the layers of class and money and shame and filth wore away he could see he was just a man, and she just a woman, standing outside on the street under a thin sliver of moon that served as a witness.
Along with the carriage driver.
James glanced at him and nodded toward Tinker's, a local tavern. The coachman cocked one eye and then looked at Lilith, who joined James' look and nodded.
“You sure, Miss Stone? I wouldn't want anything bad to happen to you.”
Lilith smiled tightly. “Mr. Hillman is my father's lawyer's clerk. I'll be fine.” The coachman guided the carriage to a post and tied it off, then walked toward Tinker's.
He turned back and said loudly, “D'ye know when we'll be leaving?” More of his Irish accent came out, as if the neighborhood infused him. “It's late, and your Da will be wondering.”
James locked eyes with Lilith and said, “Give us an hour.”
The coachman snorted and shook his head, then ambled off into the dark.
He hadn’t been their only observer, however, and James could still feel eyes on them, like cockroaches flooding a pitch-black space. Safe and curious, ready to scurry and spread the germ of gossip – most infectious of all – to anyone they touched. This would not do.
“Lilith, we can talk more freely in the carriage.” He gestured toward it. His pants tightened along with his chest, heart pounding and blood flowing freely from groin to breastbone, a loop of want and desire creating a pulse he thought she could surely feel from 10 feet away.
With sweet smile he swore contained a few sprinkles of a leer, Lilith climbed in, her dress hugging the tight curves of those boyish hips, making him close his eyes to stop from taking her on the street, right in front of what were surely the eyes of fifty people related to him by blood or marriage. Living in tight quarters was what people in his neighborhood did; truth be told, the sanctuary of a closed carriage was a luxury. Hell, an open hay wagon with a strategically-placed horse blanket would have afforded them more privacy than James could access most of the time.
Privacy, he'd learned long ago, was yet another privilege for the wealthy.
One he would soon taste.
Why did I come here? Lilith regretted it the second she called for him. Shock and wariness poured into his features, changing the free and open face she craved and making it angry, hidden, obscured. Awkward pauses between them added to the mess she'd created, and if she could take Mr. Wells' time machine and rewind time right now, she would.
But even a billionaire's daughter couldn't buy that.
The carriage felt like a coffin; James ate up more than his fair share of the small cabin, leaving Lilith to squeeze into a corner, both excited by any touch and repelled by his obvious intolerance. Even climbing into the carriage with him, open and on the street, had felt like fulfilling a dare. The eyes of James' neighbors bore down on them, she knew. Some of those same eyes might work in her home, or in the homes of her neighbors on Beacon Hill. Not that she would recognize a single pair; learning to ignore the help was a long-acquired skill she'd mastered. But this? The coachman knew James, had left them alone, and might add fuel to the fire of gossip about her virtue. What virtue, Lilith? That had been taken long ago, at McLean.
No use trying to protect what wasn't there.
Had he kissed her in Cambridge out of a sense of duty? Was he acting so odd now because she was too forward? Or, worse, had the kiss been some sort of wager, a challenge, a conquest for fun?
And here came the fluttering bird in her chest, the flush of heat that filled her cheeks and neck, but that now permeated her core, down into a woman's source of sex and ruin. Yet it felt like an altar, a warm Earth mother preparing for her sun. James filled the small space with heat and light and it banished the cold abyss that lingered within her, always.
The change was not entirely welcome.
Deep breaths sometimes helped with the fluttering, but James' alarmed glance told her that she was breathing oddly and she toned it down, finally breaking the unbearable silence. “You are wondering why I am here.”
He shifted and nodded, eyes jumping from her hands to her feet to the carriage walls. Everywhere but her face.
So she would have to say it. Fine. Her ribcage relaxed, as if weighted suddenly by a sinking heart. “I am here because I wanted to speak with you alone. In your neighborhood. Without the trappings of – ” She waved wildly in the direction of Beacon Hill.
He looked pointedly at the leather seat, the upholstery, her fine kidskin shoes and the silk parasol in the corner. A half-grin pulled his face into an inscrutable snarl. “Without the trappings.” He shifted again, and her eyes caught a flash of light on the floor. His new shoes, polished to a high shine.
“Lilith.” James' tight voice made her shoulders drop. “Why are you really here?”
Tears welled in her eyes. No pretense mattered now. She felt the rejection in his voice. With nothing to lose, she turned and faced him in full. “I am here because you are the only person I have ever met who makes me feel real.” Her voice hitched on the last word and she couldn't look away, her eyes pulled to his, tears coalescing into opals in the half-light, tipping over her lids and rolling down her cheeks, spotting the silk front of her shirt and leaving a calling card of despair.
Eyes the color of warm brandy met hers. A compassion she knew men could possess, but had never seen, sprang forth, and his hand reached for hers, engulfing it. “Oh, Lilith.” Now she heard it – the same tone she'd felt that night in Cambridge.
Reality.
The craving drew her to him without thought, her face seeking his, lips assertive and bold. One quick, dry kiss of “hello.” Then his arms slid behind her back and the kiss deepened, acknowledging so much more than acquaintance, connecting portions of their souls that Lilith had feared were not, well, real.
Hands roamed across the expanse of her back, a single fully-splayed palm nearly covering the span, pulling her into the hot-breathed embrace and eager lips of this man she'd stumbled across under the worst of indecent circumstances. Kissing Jack Reed had been nothing like this, and the comparison was beyond laughable. That night in the garden had been about removing obstacles.
James was about overcoming them.
He pulled back, breathless, eyes wild with a purity of need that made her wet and swollen. “What is this?”
Her head was filled with a buzzing and a moist, slick feeling that made her caress his open skin, his wrist, his face, his neck – any part she could. “What is what?” she asked.
“This. What are we doing? I'm certainly not courting you.” He laughed ruefully, and she could feel the moment slip away.
“No!” she cried out, pulling him to her again, moving his hand to her breast, nipping at his lower lip, wrestling his tongue into a deeper connection, willing him to be entwined with her once more. He returned the kiss and groaned, shifting so that their hips met. Now she truly felt his want, and her own swelled to infinity at the knowing.
Warm flesh cupped her breast and pulled it from her shirt, his hot mouth on her now, her hands plunged into his hair as she arched her back and felt the cold air invade as his mouth retreated. Skin tightened and her body seemed to center on that one spot, fire in her pelvis and ice on her breast, all crying out for more.
One tiny hand reached for him and found his swollen bulge, her inexperience evident as she hesitated, unable to decide how to proceed. He reached down and fumbled with his buttons and then she felt him, slid her hand down his enormous shaft, her mind moving to the fascination of this. How foreign – the soft skin that slid down like a sock over a calf. The wet, warm tip that the sliding revealed. James' complete and utter emotional abandon at her touch, how she held all the control in the world in one palm.
And then he pulled her into his lap, spreading her legs so that she straddled him, and she let go.
More kisses that made her squirm, made her wriggle and want to ride him, made her damn the undergarments that bound her and made this so difficult. Convention was torture. Indecency was noble. How everything went topsy-turvy when he had fistfuls of her golden curls in his hands, his tongue possessed her mouth, and her hands kneaded the muscles on his back, as strong as a big game cat and as passionate as she'd always imagined herself.
In male form.
A distant whistle broke the cold night air and they both jumped, startled from their fog of lust. James held up his hand, a gesture of silence. Her body went cold with fear and irritation, a frustration that settled into her pores rather than her mind.
“Now that's a fancy carriage!” James knew the voice instantly. Goddammit, Bobby – do you have to ruin everything? Having nine siblings was bad enough; he had to share everything. Sharing this moment was cruel, though, and if he'd have believed in God beyond the Catholic ritual he'd have cursed Him.
Furiously quick, James moved Lilith off his lap and did up his buttons. Unfocused and drunk on lust, Lilith was dazed. He paused, his heart aching with the sweetness of this moment. That. He wanted that look on her face, every day, every morning and night, in his bed, legs wrapped around him, mouth open and hungry for more, sated yet insatiable, inelegant and primal.
But right now he had to deal with his brother.
“Bobby, back off!” he shouted, sticking his head out a small window.
“James?” Thirteen years old and shaped like a string bean, Bobby was the antithesis of James. He looked more like Da than Ma, and James had taken after the men on his mother's side, thick and huge, with a side of sarcasm.
“Yes, James. Don't be getting any ideas,” he growled, the threat clear.
“You in there with someone?” Bobby asked, the leer loud and clear in his voice.
“Go away before I beat you,” James warned. “I won't tell you again.”
“I'll go tell Ma what you're up to. You got some expensive whore in there? How'd you get the money?”
Lilith clapped one hand over her mouth at the word “whore,” he eyes going wide with mirth. Glad someone is amused by all this, he thought.
“You're right, Bobby. You figured it out. I'm sleeping with a whore in a fancy carriage outside Tinker's. How smart you are, for a boy who left school in fifth grade. Now get!”
Bobby ran off and shouted, “Hey, Pat! You won't believe this! Come see!” A few curtains in dimly-lit windows pulled back and James knew he'd just provided more stories for the gossips than any racing paper.
The coachman chose that moment to stagger out of the door to Tinker's. “What's going on?” he asked Bobby with a slurred roll to his words.
Lilith grabbed James' hands and pulled them to her chest. Her heart beat like a big bass drum. “He'll be here any moment and then I need to go. My father is leaving town on Thursday – can we meet again then?”
He opened one hand and placed his palm inside the “v” of her shirt, the hot flesh a balm for his nerves. “Yes. But there's something I have to tell you – ”
“Tell me Thursday,” she whispered, eyes going hard as the coachman appeared. Her entire being changed, back straightening and eyes hooded with a sheen of frost that belied the heated scene he could feel, still trapped in his trousers, the ache tempered only by decent social expectations and the coachman's appearance.
“Yes, Ms. Stone. I'll follow your instructions carefully, and let Mr. Reed know how you'd like your business conducted,” James said loudly, his stage voice just enough to catch the ear of the coachman. He climbed out of the carriage.
Lilith moved to sit in the center of the padded seat and nodded politely, as if his hand hadn't just seared her breast, as if hers hadn't just given him an exquisite caress that he'd carry home with him. Her closing off pained him, a piercing of his consciousness that tasted like turned communion wine.
The coachman muttered, “I think Jack Reed's been in quite enough of her business already,” then winked at James.
It took every ounce of control not to knock him out. That would be his only victory over his emotions that night.
As the carriage pulled away he took a few steps toward home and winced. The shoes, like his pants, were too tight, a painful reminder that nothing about him fit quite right anywhere.