Oh yes. She was past the point of rational choice, except for one thing. She drew him back down the hall to the locked doors. “In there.”
He gave another short laugh. “Curiosity over comfort?”
From his pocket he pulled a ring of keys. They jangled loudly as he sorted them. Was it deliberate? Julia strained to listen but heard only the rattling keys. Was Eva crouching on the other side, afraid? She couldn’t know who was coming or if it meant Wallace’s betrayal. But if she was there, she was silent.
Wallace found the key. He threw back first one heavy bolt, then a second. He pushed open the doors, and Julia saw a magnificent panorama of red streaks bleeding into the predawn sky. The drapes had not been drawn, and a chill glazed the air. Nothing stirred. No one was there.
Arms folded, Wallace watched her slowly circle the large room with tall windows on two sides. A massive desk faced them at the far end, its surface orderly. On the floor lay a great white bearskin, its head toward the desk, fanged in a perpetual roar.
“An indulgence of questionable taste,” Wallace murmured.
Julia completed her circuit, avoiding the bearskin. The two interior walls were lined with eight-foot walnut bookcases, all with locking glass doors. They held a mixture of moderately valuable old tomes—no doubt imported by the cubic yard from some destitute European estate library—and several shelves of purely functional volumes: New York state and municipal civil codes and statutes, books pertaining to business and financial regulations and procedures. Dozens of custom-bound file boxes, their leather blind-tooled with Wallace’s distinctive mirrored monogram, filled the lower shelves. Each was neatly identified with a handwritten paper label. His business documents: the leather-coffined ranks of loan contracts and mortgages, the clean carnage of modern hunters.
This was indeed his inner sanctum. A fine layer of dust confirmed no housekeeper had entered in some time. Even so, the man was as orderly and exact in his business records as in his person. Only a few boxes showed signs of recent activity—the dust swiped from the shelf’s edge—yet they were aligned in perfect symmetry with their fellows.
Julia scanned the room again but saw nothing else. No hairpins, no overlooked glove, no trace of face powder.
Wallace unfolded his arms. “Mistrust does not become you, my dear.” He took her by the shoulders for a kiss that pitched her head back, stopped her breath. It was swift and powerful. This time there was no question. No solicitude, no choosing. He thrust his knee between her thighs, and she would have fallen had he not gripped her so tightly their hearts beat like trapped birds against each other. This time was all decision: he’d paid penance enough.
Her dress fell to the floor in a few deft gestures. Gravity shifted, and she too went down, to the island of white fur at her back. The beast beneath her roared. She saw the arch of its tooth, the arch of her foot. With a seize of air, she felt its clench in her belly and its claw in her breast. Then all thought narrowed to the silk sweeping down her calves, the hands sweeping up.
She lurched at the sudden clatter of a telephone bell. Wallace swore, a harsh and vulgar growl. His jaw tightened; his eyes narrowed in subdued fury.
A man’s reluctant voice—the unfortunate Farraday?—came through the door: “Very sorry to disturb you, sir, but Mr. Kessler says it’s urgent.”
CHAPTER 25
Edgar delivered her home, maneuvering the Duesenberg through the maze of dairy trucks and bakery vans. Julia could barely stammer her gratitude before fleeing up the steps to Philip’s apartment. Her head pounded in turbulent confusion—at Kessler’s cryptic summons, at Wallace’s terse retreat, at her need to muster composure (please, God, let her clothing not be too askew) and follow a sleepy Edgar down into the breaking dawn. Every nerve felt stretched to thrumming, tuned to the brink of a great chord and then abandoned.
Not one word had been spoken beyond that profane snarl of frustration. Wallace might have glanced an apology at her, but his weight had already shifted to his knees, his mind already turning to trouble’s greater urgency. His desire had been real, but was it also unremarkable? She felt foolish and unsteady.
She let herself into the dark apartment. From the library came the eerie trickle of a Chopin nocturne. Philip!
Had Kessler found Eva? Was Philip up at this appalling hour to share the news that Wallace hadn’t?
Julia pushed apart the doors. Philip sat in the dark, hunched over the keys. He finished a phrase and lifted his hands. “Good morning,” he said.
“Any news from Kessler?”
He looked at her quizzically. “Should there be?”
Her hopes fell. Kessler would have called Philip had there been a breakthrough. His business with Wallace must have concerned something else. She felt dismay and relief in equal measure.
“Why are you up?” she asked. Her tone was curt with a new suspicion.
“Can’t a man inspect his soul in a private hour?”
Not with her foul temper in the room. “Were you waiting up for me?”
When he lowered his eyes to the keyboard, she leaped at his presumption. “How dare you! I’m not a child. You have no right to monitor my comings and goings. Who I see, and when and how, is of no possible concern of yours. None!” It was histrionic, as shrill as the prickling nerves that Wallace had so powerfully awakened.
Philip swiveled. “I may not be a blood relation,” he said, “but I’m entitled to concern for a friend, a friend who is foolishly straying into territory whose hazards she cannot begin to fathom.”
They rarely spoke of their sibling charade. Until now they’d sidestepped the consequences, or limits, of that ruse. Was she fair to enjoy Philip’s generosity as a brother while forbidding him to behave like one? But surely a brother’s prerogative was grounded in trust and regard more than blood ties per
