Genevieve smiled at the waiter as he set down her parfait.
“Yes, I think you must be correct,” she agreed, smile fading as soon as the waiter departed.
“All of which means,” he said, pausing to take another sip to embolden himself, “is that your friend was right. This is getting too dangerous for you.”
Her gaze snapped from the parfait to him, eyes full of fury. “Didn’t we just have this conversation?”
“You are being watched, Genevieve. Which makes you a target. You cannot put yourself at risk any longer.” She had opened her mouth to speak when a new thought jumped into his head, unbidden and shockingly appealing. “Unless …” he began, cutting off what was sure to be another protest.
“Unless what?”
Daniel drew himself up in his chair. “Unless whoever is watching you believes you are under someone’s protection. My protection.”
For a moment she simply blinked at him. “What would that entail?” she finally asked, slowly.
Daniel took a breath. She hadn’t said no, which was a start. “If we spend more … physical time together. If they think we are courting.”
He watched a series of emotions play across her face: confusion, understanding, followed by a slight flush of embarrassment.
“But how would that help? If we were to undertake such a scheme? When we’re together, certainly, but what about times we’re not together, like when I’m at work?”
Dipping his head in acknowledgment of her reservations, Daniel thought about how best to explain. “Do you recall how we met?”
Amusement flashed in her eyes. “I would be hard-pressed to forget.”
“I have a reputation in certain quarters of this city as someone not to be trifled with, as do my associates. If word gets out that you are under my protection and a plot is afoot to do you harm, I may hear of it through certain channels.”
Her mouth dropped open slightly, and she regarded him with fascination. “Well. Curiouser and curiouser.”
He felt a small smile tug at his lips. “Down the rabbit hole we go.”
A smile that likely matched his own twitched her mouth. “How would we make such information known? Take out an advertisement?”
“We’ve had dinner, in public, twice now. I can accompany you to a few other locations this week, and perhaps we ought to dance more than is seemly at an upcoming party. These will send the appropriate social signals.”
Genevieve nodded slowly. “All right. Well, the Porters’ costume ball is the next major event of the season.”
Daniel groaned inwardly. It had to be a costume ball, didn’t it? “That will do fine. We’ll meet there, and I shall wait on you hand and foot.”
“This arrangement is sounding better and better,” she said wryly. “Are you planning to peel me a grape?”
“If you wish it. And in the meantime, please do me a favor: try not to be alone, especially after dark. Leave work when there is still plenty of traffic. Take cabs instead of walking. Conduct shopping trips with friends.”
“Yes, yes, I know what it means not to be alone, Daniel.”
“Good,” he said, yielding to her obvious distaste for being lectured. “It’s settled, then.” The thought of showering Genevieve with attention in a public venue was absurdly, inexplicably pleasing. He would escort her home tonight, then go straight to Paddy and ask him to keep his ear to the ground.
That is, with greater urgency than he was already employing.
“A sham courtship,” Genevieve mused. “Seems like the plot of a salacious novel, does it not?” she teased, scooping up the last of her parfait.
The tightness that had been squeezing Daniel’s innards ever since he had seen her bruise eased the tiniest bit at the sight of her smile. But his eyes kept returning to that purple shadow on her cheekbone, already beginning to spread and darken, and the rage would bubble up again.
The man responsible had better pray that Daniel not find him.
“He said what?” squealed Callie, her voice floating up from behind the curtain at Mrs. Brown’s. It was a week after the attack in her office building that had nearly killed her. A week since her agreement to start a sham courtship with Daniel. It was painful to lie to her friends and family, but she saw no other recourse.
Her parents had taken the news that she would be spending more time with Mr. McCaffrey with slightly confused caution. “I thought you were done with all that,” her mother had said, frowning. “But of course, if you wish it.” Her father peered at her bruise, which had mushroomed into something truly grotesque, with gravity. She could tell he was uncertain as to whether to believe her story about tripping on the staircase in their home.
Callie, of course, was over the moon with the whole idea. Eliza was more circumspect, looking at her thoughtfully when she believed Genevieve’s attention was elsewhere.
Genevieve knew she wasn’t looking well; the bruises on her neck had faded within days and she’d been able to forgo a scarf around her neck, but a week after the attack she still sported the one on her face, now morphing from a wretched greenish-purple into a milder but still appalling greenish-yellow, visible even under the powder she had applied. Its only saving grace was that it masked the horrid dark circles under her right eye, though those under her left eye were still vivid.
She wasn’t getting much sleep. Every time she drifted off, the masked figure would appear above her in her mind, his hands on her throat, intent on squeezing the life from her.
In short, she hardly sported the glowing countenance of a young woman being courted by the city’s most eligible bachelor.
A larger squeal erupted from behind the curtain.
“Miss Maple, you must remain still, or unfortunately you will suffer more pinpricks,” came the steely, exasperated voice of Mrs. Brown, who was surely overwhelmed this week as all of New York society scrambled to get their costumes completed in time. Fancy-dress parties were all the rage, and
