Hello Stranger

Garrett leaned against Ransom, her head tilted back on his shoulder. She was suffused with a feeling that slid back and forth between happiness and wonder, like one of the shot silk fabrics that appeared to change colors when viewed from different angles. Was this really happening? Instead of being safe at home in bed, she was in the middle of the city at night, breathing in air perfumed with violets and the faint char of phosphorous, watching fireworks with a man’s arms around her.

Even through the layers of their clothing, she could feel the resilient toughness of his flesh, his muscles flexing subtly to accommodate her slightest movement. His head dipped lower, until she felt a soft, hot pressure at the side of her neck.

A shiver went through her, as fine and distinct as the vibration of a harp string. His mouth found an unbearably sensitive place and lingered in an erotic caress that made her toes curl inside her sensible walking boots. When she made no objection, his lips slid lower, his night beard a prickle of velvet as it brushed the tender skin. Another kiss, careful and slow, as if to soothe the wild velocity of her pulse. Hot darts of feeling went down her spine and radiated through every soft place in her body. The palms of her hands and the backs of her knees grew damp, and an unexpected, mortifying twitch awakened between her thighs.

All awareness sank down to the kisses he strung along the side of her throat. Every throb of her heart sent fire through her veins. Her legs wobbled with the alarming inclination to buckle, but his arms anchored her firmly. She tensed, quivered, bit back a gasp. Eventually his head lifted and one of his hands went to the front of her throat. His fingertips explored lightly, weaving hot and cold chills across her skin.

She became dimly aware that the last celestial glints were floating downward. The crowd broke apart, some returning to swarm the food stalls, while others gathered near the center of the green, where a band had begun to play. Ransom continued to hold Garrett, the two of them concealed in the shadowy nook at the front of the sessions house. They watched people clap and dance. Fathers and mothers hoisted children onto their shoulders, groups of elderly women sang well-remembered songs, old men puffed on their pipes, and boys ran about in search of mischief.

Ransom spoke absently, his cheek pressed against her hair. “To the politicians and bluebloods, we’re all alike. They think the working man is a beast of burden with no wit or soul. The pain of loss must not cut him as deep, they think, because he’s so used to hardship. But there’s as much tender feeling and honor in any of these people as there is in a duke and his kin. They’re not pawns. None of them deserves to be sacrificed.”

“Sacrificed by whom?” Garrett asked.

“Selfish bastards who only give a damn about their own power and profit.”

She was silent for a moment, wondering if the “selfish bastards” were men he worked for. Perhaps he was referring to members of Parliament who were against Irish independence. Which side of the “Irish question” was he on? Did he have sympathy for secret societies such as the one that plotted the Guildhall bombing? It was difficult to believe he would conspire to harm innocent people, especially after what he’d just said. But she couldn’t deny that she was too blinded by her own attraction to have any objectivity about who or what he really was.

Garrett turned to face him, wondering whether or not she wanted to know the truth about him. Don’t be a coward, she told herself, and looked directly into his eyes. “Éatán . . .” She felt the subtle tightening of his grip. “I’ve heard rumors about you and your work. I don’t know what to believe. But—”

“Don’t ask.” Ransom’s hands dropped away from her. “You’d be a fool to trust any answer I gave you.”

“You would lie to me?”

“I lie to everyone.”

“Still, I must ask about the night of the Guildhall reception . . . the man who died . . . did you have anything to do with that?”

His fingertips touched her lips to silence her.

“Would the truth make me think better or worse of you?” she persisted.

“It doesn’t matter. Tomorrow we’ll be strangers again. As if tonight never happened.”

There was no mistaking the finality in his voice.

In the past, whenever there had been a conflict between Garrett’s head and her heart, her head always won. This time, however, her heart was putting up a ripping fight. She couldn’t fathom how she was going to make herself accept such an abrupt end to the promise of a relationship unlike anything she’d ever experienced.

“I don’t see how that’s possible,” she said.

“We both know I’m not for the likes of you,” Ransom said quietly. “Someday you’ll have a good, decent husband of the ould stock, who’ll give you a fireside of children, and take you to church of a Sunday. A man with some softness to him.”

“I’ll thank you to let me choose my own companion,” Garrett said. “If I took a husband, I certainly wouldn’t choose some milksop.”

“Don’t mistake softness for weakness. Only a strong man can be soft with a woman.”

Garrett responded with a distracted flick of her hand, having no patience for aphorisms when so many thoughts were colliding in her head. “Also, I don’t plan to have children. I have a career. Not every woman’s destiny is to go from maidenhood to motherhood.”

Ransom tilted his head, studying her. “The men of your profession can have a family. Why can’t you?”

“Because—no, I won’t be drawn into a diversionary argument. I want to talk with you.”

“We are talking.”

A mixture of impatience and desire had made her reckless. “Not here. Somewhere private. Do you have a rented room? A flat?”

“I can’t take you where I live.”

“Why not? Is it dangerous there?”

Ransom took an unaccountably long time to reply. “For you, it is.”

Every inch of Garrett’s skin heated in the darkness. She could still feel the places on her neck where he’d kissed, as if his lips had left invisible scorch marks. “That doesn’t worry me.”

“It should.”

Garrett was silent. The air felt tight and thin, as if the oxygen had been pressed out of it. Tonight had turned out to be one of the happiest nights of her life, a gift that had somehow fallen into her hands. She had never bothered much over the question of her own happiness, having been far too busy working toward her goals.

She had just become a cliché, a lovelorn woman of spinsterish age falling for a handsome and mysterious stranger. But in time, Ethan Ransom’s dark and dangerous allure would probably vanish, and he would seem entirely ordinary to her. A man no different from any other man.

As she looked up into his shadowed face, however, she thought, He would never seem ordinary to me, even if he were ordinary.

And she heard herself asking, “Would you escort me home, please?”

Chapter 7

No matter the time of day or night, a ride in a hansom cab was a breakneck dash that made conversation impossible. The vehicles typically careened and swayed with violent disregard for the laws of traffic or physics, rounding corners so recklessly one could feel the wheels lifting from the street.