“My house is gone.” She had to yell to be heard above the noise, and it felt good to vent her anger. “Someone must stay here overnight to be certain nothing else will happen. Alice and her husband are bedding down in the archive room, and since I have nowhere else to go—”
“If you’re staying,” he said, leaning down to her, “I’m staying.”
“Mr. Clark, don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous.”
She made the mistake of looking up as he said that. His eyes were dark. She’d expected him to be smoldering with anger after their argument. Instead, he seemed cold—ice cold. As if he didn’t care about her, didn’t care about anything.
He cast her another dark look, and then shook his head and turned away.
Chapter Nine
THE PRESS FINISHED ITS RUN after one in the morning. They packaged the papers in weary silence, readying them to be taken down to the station. A little water and soap, and a nightrail borrowed from Alice, readied Free for bed, such as it would be tonight. But after Alice and her husband had retired, Free found herself unable to close her eyes. She stared instead at the darkened ceiling and realized she had one more task to do tonight.
She stood and went to her door.
Mr. Clark was out on the main floor. He’d shed his coat; Alice had apparently brought him his share of blankets as well, and he was sitting on these. His feet were bare and he was examining his hand in the moonlight. He looked up as she opened the door, reached over, and pulled on a glove. He didn’t stand as she approached. He didn’t speak. He simply watched her come closer.
God, he still radiated cold.
She was not wearing as much as she normally would have. Oh, she knew the nightrail covered everything that needed to be covered. Still, it left her feeling…naked. And she already felt more than a little exposed to this man.
She knelt beside him. He didn’t move, not so much as an inch.
“Thank you,” she told him.
His expression didn’t change, not in the slightest, but he looked over at her as if he could freeze her heart.
She didn’t stop. “Thank you for your help. For stopping the fire. For stopping both the fires.” Her voice dropped. “Thank you for stopping me from doing something I would have regretted. I hadn’t said thank you yet—and I owe you that.”
“It was nothing.”
“And thank you for staying now—”
He cut her off with a shake of his head. “You’re making me out to be quite the hero, Miss Marshall. Tell yourself whatever lies you wish, but leave me out of them. I’m here tonight because I don’t want to be alone. No other reason.”
It took him a moment to realize that he was telling the simple truth. That she was sitting near him on the floor. Not next to him; not quite. Two feet separated them. Distance enough…and yet not enough distance.
He cast a glance in her direction.
“So, Mr. Clark,” she said. “When have you ever seen a man tortured?”
“Elsewhere.” He bit the word off. “It was far worse than you can imagine, Miss Marshall. I don’t have the stomach to talk about it, and I certainly don’t have the desire.”
“Very well, then.”
He pressed his hand to his forehead, shaking his head. “I don’t know why I bother. There’s no point to any of this.”
Free traced a drawing on the floor with her finger. “My opinion? I think you bother because you’re not quite as bad a man as you make yourself out to be.”
“Yes, tell yourself that, Miss Marshall.” There was a mocking tone in his voice. “Tell yourself that I’m your knight in shining armor, here to save you from fires and foes. That’s a lie, but some people need lies to sleep at night. I’m here for my own reasons. I admire you. I like you.” His smile grew darker. “I’ll take you to bed, if you wish. But don’t ask me to pretend that this”—he waved his hand about —“that any of this matters a damn. It doesn’t.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
He moved an inch toward her. “You’re the loveliest woman ever to bash her head against a wall, but the wall you’re battering is higher and thicker than the Great Wall of China, and there’s only one of you. It’s not the stones that will give way to you, my dear.”
Free swallowed. “You’ve got it wrong.”
“Ah, the wall is made of paper, then, and you’ll burst through it at any second.” He laughed at her, and she could hear that ice in his voice. “Give yourself another ten years, and maybe you’ll understand what you’re facing. Until then, go ahead. Keep fighting.”
Free contemplated him in the darkness. “After tonight, do you still think that I’m naïve? That I don’t understand how the world works?”
“There’s no proof you do understand it. After everything you saw today, you still stayed up to send out your next issue. What do you imagine your little paper will change? Do you think that suddenly, Delacey will read one of your essays and say, ‘Good God, I’ve got it all wrong. Women deserve to be treated fairly after all’?”