“I traveled the continent after I finished my apprenticeship, and when I began making intermittent returns a few years ago, it stopped. I never saw Tommy on the streets again—well, not those streets. I knew he’d become involved with politics, and I suppose he didn’t want to risk being known as a street thug anymore.”
“What a shock it must have been to find him in the Bradley mansion,” Genevieve breathed, looking rather shocked herself. “How could such a horrible person be taken seriously as a candidate for mayor?” She flopped back on the love seat, looking drained.
Daniel didn’t have an answer for this. He had thoughts about it, about the myths the wealthy liked to tell themselves about the ability of the deeply impoverished to pull themselves out of that poverty of their own volition, with no assistance, but now was not the time for such a discussion. They needed to think about getting Genevieve home before light.
“But what about Robin Hood?” Genevieve said slowly. “What does stealing from the Astor 400 have to do with this? Is it Meade, rubbing their noses in their wealth?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I have a theory about our Robin Hood, though.”
This made her sit up tall again. “What?”
Uh-oh, Daniel thought. This wasn’t going to go over well. He slid her a rueful, sideways look. “I can’t tell you.”
Sure enough, fury spread over her features. “I thought we were partners.”
“We are partners, but this is dangerous enough. I can’t endanger you any further.”
“This is my investigation, remember? I dragged you into it, as you so often see fit to remind me. And now you know something you won’t share?”
“I don’t know anything.”
“But you suspect something.”
“I can’t say. Yet.”
Genevieve stood, hands clenched into fists at her sides. “You don’t trust me, is that it? Or you don’t believe I’m up to the task?”
Daniel stood too, the exhaustion temporarily wiped from his body. He was furious, furious, that she would continue to be so cavalier about her own safety.
“You were nearly killed! I won’t risk you again!”
That made Genevieve draw back in surprise. He was equally surprised at himself.
“That is not your decision to make,” she finally said in a low voice.
Frustrated, confused, Daniel turned from her and began to pace the room again. What had he even meant by that, that he didn’t want to risk her? He stopped by the sideboard and stared at the decanters, less wanting a drink than needing a place to focus his eyes, gather his tumultuous thoughts.
She followed him a few steps, then stopped. “What don’t you want me to know?” Genevieve breathed. “Was I right all along?” She advanced a few more steps.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” she said. “You’re Robin Hood.”
Daniel’s heart pounded. He had to make this right. He turned back to her slowly.
“I can’t tell you anything further about Robin Hood right now. But, to earn your trust back, I can tell you something else. I can tell you how I came to inherit the Van Joost fortune.”
CHAPTER 17
He watched her fists unclench. “You … what?”
“You deserve to know the truth,” he replied. “And you should know with whom you’ve partnered. I want you to know how I came to inherit Jacob’s fortune.”
This was it, then. This was the person to whom he was going to entrust all his secrets. A reporter outfitted as Aphrodite with the most glorious hair he’d ever seen. He gestured back to the love seat.
She took her seat again, eyeing him warily. “If you wish to tell me, then I’d like to hear about it.”
He decided he did want more whiskey, retrieving his glass and adding a splash. He gestured toward Genevieve’s, but she shook her head. He settled in on his half of the love seat.
Where to begin? It wasn’t that atypical a story, not really. Not for immigrant families in the years immediately following the Civil War. Parents dead, children left on their own.
Daniel stared at the whiskey in his glass and swirled it slowly. He watched the amber liquid revolve around the cut-crystal glass, heavy and real in his hand, grounding him. “My father died in the war. I was seven. My mother died four years later, probably from cholera, though of course there was never any official diagnosis.”
“You mentioned a sister,” she said.
He put the whiskey down, kept his gaze on her instead. “Yes, my older sister. I also had three younger siblings. Maggie was fifteen when Mother died, and we were left on our own. She tried to play mother to all of us as best she could, but I was too wild, and the younger ones, well, she couldn’t keep an eye on them all the time. Not with the constant battle of trying to find us food and keep us and the house clean.” Here Daniel paused, gathering his thoughts.
This was the hard part to tell. It was the disappearance of his younger siblings, Mary, Connor, and little Stephen, that had pushed Maggie over the edge. When everything began to unravel.
“Disappear?” Genevieve asked quietly.
“As good as,” Daniel replied. Maggie had been in the small shared courtyard of their tenement, washing the family’s scant bedding. She had sent the younger children out to play in the street, as they were accustomed to do. It was understood that Mary, who was five, would watch over the littler ones. Daniel, eleven, desperately wounded by the recent death of his mother but determined to be a man and not show it, had refused his older sister’s attempts to corral him as his parents had. On that particular
