Truthfully, a breath of fresh air would also be lovely, but she did not want to risk losing sight of the man from the alley. He was watching the dancers now with a dispassionate expression, but every few moments his eyes subtly slid in her direction.
He was keeping watch on her as well, then.
Eliza’s eyes narrowed. “Your family is as Old New York as they come.” It was true. The Stewarts were an old and venerable clan who traced their origins to the colonial era.
“Yes.” Genevieve nodded. “But we’re odd. And after my mother … well, there’s no use in rehashing ancient history.”
“Here you are, my darlings: lovely, cool refreshment.” Callie emerged from the crowd, holding out two cut-crystal goblets, her brilliant emerald eyes sparkling. “And I have the most exciting news. How are you feeling, Genevieve?”
“Better, thank you. This is helping,” she said, holding up the glass of lemonade. And it was. The tang of citrus on her tongue seemed to clear her head.
“More exciting than Rupert Milton and Esmie Bradley waltzing?” Eliza asked dryly.
“That is always a most unusual sight,” Callie agreed, snagging a glass of champagne from a passing footman’s nearly empty tray. “I don’t know if I’ll ever become accustomed to it. But didn’t Rupert look handsome?” She sighed. “It is a shame he’s only after a fortune. Ooh, but this is what I wanted to tell you. Just moments ago, I spied the Earl of Umberland and Mrs. Bradley speaking.”
She paused dramatically.
“Yes, Callie?” Eliza prodded.
“With Daniel McCaffrey!” Callie finished triumphantly.
For a moment, Eliza and Genevieve simply gaped at Callie, who smiled back and took a satisfied sip of her champagne.
“The Daniel McCaffrey? He’s here?” asked Eliza with wide eyes.
“The one and only,” whispered Callie, leaning closer to them. “The man who inherited the Van Joost fortune! Can you imagine?”
Genevieve’s eyes whipped back to Mr. Pineapple Waistcoat. He was speaking to Rupert Milton now, though Mrs. Bradley and Esmie were nowhere in sight.
Danny, Paddy and Billy had called him.
“Callie, is that him?” She gestured toward Mr. Pineapple Waistcoat with her brows. “Talking with Rupert Milton?”
“Isn’t he handsome?” Callie murmured dreamily.
Genevieve closed her mouth, which she realized was hanging open like a carp’s. Her mind struggled to wrap itself around the fact that her one possible lead on Robin Hood and the elusive Daniel McCaffrey, about whom she’d heard rumors and stories for years, were one and the same.
Eliza craned her neck slightly to get a better look. “You’ve never met him?”
“No,” admitted Genevieve faintly. “He’s been abroad for so long.”
“He’s close to the age of your brothers, isn’t he?” Callie peeled her eyes away from Mr. Pineapple Waistcoat—Daniel McCaffrey, her brain corrected—long enough to shoot her a quizzical look.
Genevieve shook her head slightly, trying to remember if either of her older brothers, Gavin or Charles, had ever mentioned meeting the mysterious millionaire. “I think so. But they didn’t go to school together, as far as I know.” She swallowed hard, her mind swimming. “Does anyone know what his relationship to Jacob Van Joost actually was?”
He was smiling at something Lord Umberland was saying. That same wry half smile as the night before. It was so dislocating, Genevieve almost lost her breath.
“I heard from a reliable source he was from the San Francisco branch of the family,” Eliza said promptly, exchanging her empty lemonade glass for one full of champagne. “One of the Van Joost cousins ran away when he was a teenager during the gold rush, and Mr. McCaffrey is supposedly the bastard child of this cousin’s sister. He was the only family old man Van Joost could find before he died.”
Callie was shaking her head. “No, no, no, I heard he grew up in India. Some of the original Dutch Van Joosts settled there, and the last daughter of that line married a semi-disgraced Scotsman. When the family’s shipping company failed, they begged old man Van Joost to take in their only son. He only did so after both parents died of snakebites,” she finished dramatically.
“And I always heard that Daniel McCaffrey is Mr. Van Joost’s actual nephew, the product of the oldest Van Joost brother and an Irish laundress.” Genevieve could feel her temper rising. “That version says the couple ran away to Philadelphia, where they lived under the laundress’s last name. But these are all ridiculous. Nobody knows anything for certain, do they?”
She stole another glance in his direction, catching his eyes sliding away from her and back toward Rupert.
Why hasn’t he left? The thought popped into her mind, sudden and unbidden. He clearly recognized her from the alley and had seen her before she saw him.
It was almost as if he were goading her to expose him.
“And then, of course, there are the other rumors,” Callie began delicately.
“Callie,” warned Eliza, “can we not speak of such horrible things? No proof of foul play was ever discovered.”
“It would be devastating for such a handsome man to have committed murder,” Callie nodded, artfully arranging an errant curl over her left shoulder.
Eliza wrinkled her nose. “That was not my point.”
The hairs on the back of Genevieve’s neck prickled at the word murder. Her unruly brain again flashed the image of the body in the alley.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she began. The rest left her mouth almost before the thought had even formed. “I need to speak with Mr. McCaffrey.” Her heart began to accelerate slightly. Was the light starting to shift?
“What?” Callie exclaimed, looking confused. “I thought you hadn’t met.”
“Genevieve, what is it?” Eliza, ever sensitive to anyone’s mood variations, grabbed her hand again.
“Work,” she said shortly. Which wasn’t entirely a lie.
CHAPTER 3
“Mr. McCaffrey, I believe you owe me some answers.”
Even though he’d been mentally preparing himself for this confrontation since he decided to stay at the ball, Daniel felt the muscles of his jaw tighten. God, he hated
