He stopped short at the sight of Genevieve.
She was summer personified, wearing a dress of pale green sprigged with white flowers and a straw hat with matching green ribbons. She was squinting toward the vast ocean liner, her hand held over her forehead to shield her eyes from the sun.
It had been over a year since the blizzard. Over a year since he had fallen asleep on the floor of a newspaper office, her bruised, beautiful face, peaceful in its slumber, the last thing he saw before his eyes closed.
Over a year since he had forced open the door in the Globe’s main lobby, shoving aside a two-foot snow drift, squinting in the harsh sunshine.
Their paths hadn’t crossed in the intervening months until recently. At first he’d wrestled with whether or not to pay a call, but he would recall the shock on her face in the gaslight of the Maple townhouse following his impulsive proposal and find a reason to put it off again. He’d soon read in the gossip pages that their brief courtship appeared to have ended, and he’d folded up the unexpected pain that accompanied this news and carefully hid it among other, older pains.
Still, he’d debated paying a call. But then she had sailed to Europe with her parents just before Easter and departed almost immediately for Newport on her return. Another winter season had come and gone, but he hadn’t participated much, mostly avoiding the parties and balls this year. His earlier desire to be social had faded.
Genevieve, though, seemed to have attended every single one.
Or at least, her column indicated that she had. She was now writing the society column for the Globe, the position for which had been vacant since the previous columnist, Jackson Waglie, had died some years ago. Rupert had done a good job of convincing several gentlemen that he and Daniel had gambled with them until daylight at the Porters’ costume ball, to the point that one of them even paid Daniel a decent-sized sum he swore he owed. The brief scandal of his and Genevieve’s supposed night in a hotel room had vanished, forgotten in the wake of larger, more important scandals.
Of course, they had both been at the wedding the week before. Indeed, they had both been in the wedding party. But even amid the festivities, they had managed to avoid each other.
Or she had avoided him, it seemed. He had kept hoping a reasonable opportunity to approach her would arise, but every time she was free and he took a step in her direction, something or someone else would occupy her attention.
This time, he approached. She turned as he stepped closer, and he was disheartened to see a flash of wariness cross her face before she smiled politely, extending her hand.
“Mr. McCaffrey.” Ah, they were back on formal terms, then.
“Miss Stewart,” he said, picking up her cue and shaking her hand. “I did not get a chance to say, but you looked beautiful at the wedding.”
Her nose wrinkled, some of the old familiarity between them emerging. “Really? I don’t think peach is quite my color, but it is nice for a June wedding.”
Privately, he disagreed. Not about which colors suited a summer wedding—he didn’t give a hang about weddings—but about how she had looked. She had glowed like the rising sun in her bridesmaid’s dress.
“The bride certainly looked beautiful,” he said, switching to a safer topic. And Esmie had, in a gown of icy-blue satin that suited her pale coloring perfectly. “I hear from Rupert she has you to thank for it.”
Genevieve smiled. “Some time ago, she asked for my help in choosing new clothes. We’ve spent quite a bit of time at the dressmaker’s this past year.”
“I quite liked your recent article as well,” he ventured, referring to her column on Rupert and Esmie’s wedding.
Genevieve’s mouth tightened. “The behavior of this city was a disgrace. It was the least I could do.”
“I quite agree. You handled it well. I suppose it’s for the best they’re off to the continent now, though I will miss Rupert,” he said. And he would. Rupert’s imminent departure was making him realize how few friends he had. “Do you plan to visit once they’re settled in England?”
“Perhaps. In time,” she replied, glancing toward the ship again. “I hope Esmie likes England. She deserves some happiness.”
“Rupert will be good to her.”
Genevieve narrowed her eyes. “He’d better be.”
“I daresay she’ll enjoy Italy.”
“Everyone enjoys Italy.”
“Yes.”
Was this all there was between them now? Awkwardness and polite conversation? Was that cord that had once existed between them severed, torn apart by the weight of what they had endured together the previous winter?
We helped people. The thought was sudden and fierce. Helped people, and seen—some, at least—justice done.
Not enough, of course. It would never be enough. The article Arthur and Genevieve had written based on what she and Daniel had discovered had reverberated through the Astor 400 with the force of a bomb. Andrew Huffington, dead, a bullet to the skull, and whether he or someone else had pulled the trigger was a secret he had carried to the grave. Sarah had tearfully pleaded that she was simply an investor, with no idea of the true nefariousness of the organization. It seemed that Andrew and Ernest were the only ones who could have contradicted her, and with both gone, the investigation had yielded nothing incriminating and she was never charged. The Stuyvesants and Ted Beekman, by all accounts, really had been innocent of knowledge of the true purpose of Lexington Industries and were now regarded with sympathy by much of society.
Though people still whispered behind their hands, as they would.
Deputy Mayor Manfort and Commissioner Simons had both stood trial, a lengthy, histrionic affair the press dubbed the “case of the
