This was private. It was nobody else’s affair that poor Maggie had felt compelled to make the choices she had. His initial pain transformed to a hot, burning rage at the paper’s intrusion.
The fire in his insides quickly turned to ice. He stared at the paper, disbelieving. All that time they’d spent together. All that time trying to solve the mystery of Reginald’s death, of Elmira Bradley’s. All the secrets he had shared. It had all been simply fodder for her career.
Daniel couldn’t fully remember the details of the past—was it two or three?—days. They had turned into a blur of misery and recrimination directed both at himself and at her. First he’d gone to Kathleen’s for a while, hiding out and getting drunk, but when he couldn’t stand her I told you so look any longer, he had made his way to Five Points, hat pulled low. Once in the tangled den of back alleys and twisting side streets, he’d stumbled from one tavern to the next in his childhood neighborhood, sleeping for a few hours when necessary in one of the cheap boarding houses that littered this area of town. He’d needed to be away from the farcical lives of the wealthy, from their avid gazes and prying questions. He’d needed to be away from anything clean, anything fresh and bright. Anything that reminded him that he had let his guard down, been prepared to trust a wretched member of the press.
And a very convincing actress. A humorless bark of laughter escaped him, causing the bartender to shoot him a wary glance. She really ought to have pursued a career in theatre. He had fallen for her act like a rube from the sticks, like some new transplant from the cornfields. The toughened city boy in him should have known better. Somehow, he should have seen through her.
Why was his damn glass empty again?
“There you are.” Rupert’s cultured voice sliced through the fog encroaching on Daniel’s brain. He’d gotten distracted by the wood grain in the bar again.
Daniel blinked at his friend. “What are you doing here?”
Rupert slid onto the stool next to him, eyeing the sticky surface of the bar with raised brows. “I’ll assume the drink here surpasses the cleanliness. What’s good?”
Daniel shrugged moodily, irritated. Couldn’t a man get drunk alone? “It gets the job done.”
“Ah. Very good, then.” Rupert signaled to the barkeep, who came over grudgingly. “I’d like to get the job done, please.” At the bartender’s blank look, he pointed at Daniel’s glass. “What he’s having.”
Rupert followed the bartender’s glance back at Paddy and Billy, swiftly assessing the situation. “Your minders are here, I see.”
Daniel slouched lower toward the bar. “Don’t need anyone’s permission to drink,” he growled.
“Of course you don’t,” Rupert allowed, sniffing his newly arrived glass and grimacing slightly. “And although I’m certain I know the answer, I feel I must ask the obvious. Would you please tell me why we are in this fine establishment drinking what is fairly”—and he lowered his voice decorously, so as not to be overheard by the scowling barkeep—“substandard whiskey? You’ve much better stuff at home.”
Daniel responded only by tightening his grip on his glass. He wished Rupert would go away. He needed to keep adding to the layers of insulation, building his woolly blanket, and his friend’s voice was needling in his ears, making oblivion impossible.
Hell, it was probably impossible anyway. But he’d been trying to reach it for days, and he wasn’t going to stop until he got there. Or at least devilishly close.
Dammit, there was that needling sound again.
“Shut up, Rupert.”
“Well, if you want to drink yourself to death, be my guest. But surely we can do it somewhere more comfortable?”
“We are not doing anything,” Daniel rasped. “You are leaving. I am staying here.”
“Oh, I’m not leaving you.” Rupert smiled cheerfully, throwing a little salute toward Paddy and Billy, who were watching the whole exchange. “I do wish you’d chosen a different watering hole, you know, one that actually cleans its glasses from time to time. But I’m sure this one has its charms,” he amended hastily, catching the bartender’s glare. Looking around the dank, dimly lit room, Rupert nodded at the dusty tin light fixtures, the dirty glasses piled behind the bar, the keep’s soiled apron. “It’s rustic,” he murmured. “Yes, charmingly rustic.”
Daniel wanted to swat at him like a nettlesome fly. “How did you find me, anyway?”
Rupert tilted his head toward the door, and Daniel saw the hulking form of Asher sitting at the far end of the bar. He scowled deeper. Traitors, the lot of them.
They sat in silence for a while. Daniel tried to lose himself in the patterns of wood again. Rupert ran his finger along the edge of his glass. Asher glowered by the door, and Paddy and Billy watched the pair at the bar. They made quite a contrast: one elegant and striking in an expensive, expertly tailored suit, the other rumpled, disheveled, and unshaven.
“She’s ruined, you know,” Rupert remarked conversationally.
Daniel raised his head from the bar’s gummy surface, not quite sure when he’d needed to rest it. “What?”
“Genevieve. She’s ruined.” Rupert sipped his drink, grimaced again, and then looked thoughtful. “It does get better on the second try, doesn’t it?”
“What do you mean, ruined?” Daniel was trying to pull together the pieces of his brain to make sense of what Rupert was saying. Why would Genevieve be ruined? There was nothing ruined about her.
“Well, everyone is gossiping that the two of you spent the night together, and now you’ve been gone for four days, leaving her to face the music alone. Everyone assumes you’ve had your way with her and then thrown her out like yesterday’s scraps, moved back to Europe or something.”
Daniel tried to process this information. Four days?
“That kind of thing tends to destroy a girl’s reputation,” Rupert said knowingly.
A few more moments passed as Daniel continued to absorb what he’d been told, willed the words to assemble themselves into an
