The look in Matt’s eyes made Tess so nervous that she almost tripped on the last step. She caught herself on the banister and eased her foot down onto the level floor.
“I don’t have a proper wrap,” she said, pulling the fur even tighter over the low bodice that she was reluctant to let him see. “So Mrs. Mulhaney loaned me this.”
“You look beautiful,” he said in a husky, deep tone. His face was unusually hard, and his eyes held an odd glitter.
Tess stared back at him hungrily. It was the first time he’d looked at her in exactly that way, and her toes seemed to curl inside her shoes. He made her feel like the Cinderella of her dreams.
But seconds later, the spell was broken when he abruptly and curtly said, “Shall we go?”
He took her arm and escorted her out. He was wearing evening clothes, a beautifully tailored black coat with tails and black pants, crisp white shirt and bow tie. In his left hand he held a silk top hat and silver-headed cane. He looked impossibly handsome and elegant.
When they were in the hired carriage riding toward the hotel where the ball was to be held, he stared at her in the dim, flickering light of streetlamps.
His steady gaze made her nervous and she shifted.
“I didn’t know that you were lacking a dressy coat. I assumed that you had one, God knows why.”
“There’s been no reason to…” She cleared her throat. “I shouldn’t have occasion to wear one after tonight. I don’t go out to such formal affairs…as you very well know.”
He glanced out the window at the passing buildings. He didn’t dare look at her too much, he told himself, or he was going to lose his precarious control. The sight of her in evening clothes, with her hair elegantly done, was almost his undoing. She’d always been pretty, even in a faded dress, but tonight she was so elegant that she made him violently possessive. It was as if she belonged in cultured society even more than he did. Combined with his own inner turmoil about his ancestry, her elegance only punctuated the differences between them and set her at a greater distance. He felt more guilty than ever about his long-held secret. He had the right to be possessive of her, but she didn’t know and he couldn’t tell her.
Tess was determined to have a wonderful time, despite Matt’s cool indifference. Surely at least one man present would ask her to dance. Then Matt could do what he pleased—or ignore her, which he certainly seemed inclined to do. Her heart felt as if it were broken. She couldn’t possibly let him see how his aloof manner was hurting her.
The hotel was emblazoned in lights, and couples in elegant clothing wandered into it in pairs. They came in sleek carriages with uniformed drivers, drawn by beautifully liveried horses, and at least two arrived by motorcar. Tess had never seen so many wealthy people in one place in all her life—in fact, she had no idea there were so many wealthy people in the world. She was awestruck by the experience.
Matt, holding her arm as they advanced into the hotel, whispered harshly, “Don’t gape. They’re just people.”
“I’ve never seen any people like this,” she said, with fascination plain in her eyes as she looked around her.
“Of course not,” he said caustically. “One doesn’t expect high fashion on an Indian reservation.”
She stepped on his foot quite deliberately and smiled coolly when he winced.
“Suppose you just leave me here, cousin dear, and I’ll find someone to stand with?” she asked with venomous sweetness. “I’m sure you’ll be relieved not to have to keep me company!”
A maid took her wrap, leaving her uncomfortably revealed. Matt’s eyes focused on the low-cut gown, the creamy tops of her breasts revealed in the most provocative way. He caught his breath audibly. He couldn’t believe the gown was that modern. He’d never have let her buy it if he’d had any idea how she’d look in it. She was like a princess, and he was suddenly so violently aroused that his whole body throbbed.
He started to speak just as a handsome young man swept between them and bent over Tess’s hand, which he lifted to his lips. He’d been a recent patient at the hospital, where he’d flirted outrageously with her. They’d become friends, of a surface sort. His name was Michael Boson, and he was a wealthy young man.
“I’ve been waiting all my life for you,” he said with breathless abandon. “Dance with me until the wee hours, and then we’ll sail away to the moon on a carpet of stardust!”
Tess, relieved to have been saved from the sudden fury in Matt’s black eyes, chuckled and tapped him with her lacy fan. “What a glib tongue,” she teased. “I don’t believe a word you say.”
“Heartless girl, and you nursed me through pneumonia, too.” He turned when he saw Matt. “Is this he?” Michael asked with a lifted brow, his gaze roaming over Matt’s tall physique. “I might have known. He even looks like an assassin. I daresay he’s armed.”
“Michael, will you stop?” she pleaded.
“Michael Boson, at your service,” the young man said with a wicked grin. “You’re Cousin Matt, the detective. I recognize you from Tess’s description. Your cousin nursed me at the hospital and then cruelly turned her back on me because I’m four years younger than she. I hardly think age is an impediment to a great love affair, myself, but she has reservations. Don’t you, chick?” he added with a grin in her direction.
“Yes, this is my cousin, Matt Davis,” she introduced them, and then laid her hand on Michael’s sleeve, grateful beyond measure for his unexpected rescue. She couldn’t quite meet Matt’s eyes. “Dance me away, Michael. Matt didn’t mind bringing me, but I’d hate for him to have to spend the evening being bored stiff with me.”
“It will be a great pleasure for me to spare him the inconvenience. Don’t you worry, Cousin Matt, I’ll take wonderful care of her, and you’re invited to the wedding!”
He carried her off before Matt could reply. Tess laughed as she went into his arms on the dance floor. She hesitated, though, when he launched into a dance that she couldn’t do.
“I don’t know this dance. Or any dance that’s at all complicated. I’m sorry,” she said. “Could you teach me a step or two?”
“Heavens, girl, where have you been all your life?” he asked, dumbfounded.
“Living out west with my father, who was a doctor,” she said. “We had barn dances, but nothing so elegant as this.”
He grinned. “This is a waltz. It’s not difficult. Here. I’ll show you the basics. It goes like this…”
Matt, watching them with cold eyes, wanted to go right over there and tear Tess out of the younger man’s arms. That low-cut gown was already giving him fits.
He became aware of someone nearby and turned his head. Diamond Jim Kilgallen, with a lighted cigar in his hand, gave him a steady appraisal from deep-set gray eyes. The man had jet-black hair, like Matt’s own, but his was wavy. His skin was olive tan, although not as dark as Matt’s. He had a broad, leonine face and he wore a thin mustache. His tuxedo was expensive, like his shoes. Matt had never seen him at such a distance before, and he knew at once that he wouldn’t deceive this man with any pretext of contributing to charity.
“I know of you,” Diamond Jim said after a minute, moving a little closer. “You’re Davis.” Matt nodded.
“Know who I am?”
Matt nodded again.
Diamond Jim chuckled. “And I thought I was a man of few words,” he said ruefully. “Do you talk?”
“On occasion.”
“Hmmm. No accent. They say you’re everything from a Russian duke to a Gypsy.” His eyes narrowed. “But you’re not. You remind me of my grandfather. He was Cree.”
Matt lifted an eyebrow. “I’m not Cree.”
“No, but you’re Indian,” Diamond Jim said with quiet confidence. “A man with courage and keen intelligence, if what I hear about you is true.”
“You’ll hear other things, perhaps quite different things, if you listen long enough,” Matt said casually.
Diamond Jim nodded slowly. “About the bowie knife, I imagine.”
Matt chuckled. “I don’t carry it much these days. My reputation opens enough doors without visible threats.”
“It does,” he agreed. His gray eyes narrowed to slits. “Your cousin over there is good friends with Nan Collier. I hear you both went to see her in jail and that you’re trying to help get her out.”
“Yes,” Matt said. “She’s in a lot of trouble. Not only because her marriage was rocky but because the murderer was so obviously female.”
“The scissors.”
“That’s right.”
Diamond Jim lifted his cigar to his lips and thought for a minute. “Damn.”
“There’s something more.”
“Something bad, from the way you sound.”
Matt didn’t know how far to trust this man. Nan Collier was obviously in love with him, but how this gambler felt about her was dubious. He didn’t seem a man who had a high opinion of women, and Matt knew from the talk that Diamond Jim liked women. He had plenty of them, almost every one more elegant and educated and pretty than poor little Nan.
“Go ahead,” Diamond Jim said when Matt hesitated. “Spill it.”
“She’s pregnant.”
Jim looked away, but not before his rage was visible. He took another puff on the cigar. “That son of a bitch,” he said under his breath.
“Excuse me?”
“Collier,” he bit off. “Somebody should have killed him years ago! If she’s pregnant, it’s because he forced her! She hated his touch!”
Aware of curious glances, Matt moved between the man and nearby onlookers.
The evidence was pointing more and more to some strong feelings for Nan on Jim’s part. Matt took a chance. “It isn’t her husband’s baby.”
The expression that statement provoked was a revelation. The gray eyes that had been glittering like a knife blade grew suddenly soft. The hard face relaxed. A faint, reluctant smile drew up the hard lips. “She said that?” Jim asked, his voice quiet, awed. “She told you it wasn’t her husband’s?”
“She told Tess,” Matt corrected. “Tess told me.”
Jim stuck a beautifully manicured hand in his pocket and stared into space with that secretive smile still on his lips.
“She feels that it will make things harder,” Matt said.
Diamond Jim’s head turned back. “Not if they think it was her husband’s,” he said immediately. “No jury could convict a pregnant woman. My God, a lynch mob would form at the courthouse door, and not a single juror would go home alive!”
“You’re probably right. But she shouldn’t have to be in jail for a crime she didn’t commit.”
Diamond Jim’s piercing eyes held Matt’s. “I know she didn’t do it. But how do you know?”
“Years of practice with guilty criminals,” Matt said simply. “You get an instinct about people.”
“In my business, too,” the other man said. He grinned. “Of course, from your point of view, I’m the criminal.”
“Criminal, hell, you’re a local landmark. Visitors point you out along with the lake.”
“Well, I stop short at killing innocent people. Speaking of which,” he added, flinging cigar ash into a cuspidor, “how are we going to prove that Nan’s innocent?”
Matt stuck both hands in his pockets. “I don’t know yet. I’m working on it. I have operatives asking probing questions around her neighborhood.”
“Nice of you.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Matt said honestly, glancing toward Tess, who seemed to be having too good a time with her youthful dance partner. “I was forced into it. She—” he indicated a laughing Tess with utter disgust “—was going door to door in the apartment house. I was afraid she’d run into some man who wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
This produced a curious glance. “Pretty girl. Too bad you’re related.”
“We aren’t,” Matt said curtly. “It saved explanations when she came up here. Her father died. She had no one else. I’m a long-standing friend of the family.”
“I’ll bet that’s a story worth hearing.”
“I’m Sioux,” he said. “I don’t think another person in Chicago except Tess knows it.”
A look passed between them. Diamond Jim turned his attention to his cigar. “I’m a clam,” he said after a minute. “I keep what I know to myself.”
Matt didn’t speak. His eyes narrowed more as he watched Tess on the dance floor.
Diamond Jim offered a cigar case.
Matt stared at it.
“No insult intended.”
It took Matt a few seconds to realize what he meant. Cigar stores habitually boasted a wooden Indian at the door. When it hit him, Matt burst out laughing.
Diamond Jim chuckled. “Good to know your face isn’t painted on. Have a cigar.”
“Thanks. I’m partial to a good one.”
“These are from Havana. Only the best.” He offered a light, and Matt bent his head to fire up the stogie.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t want any fistfights in here,” Diamond Jim replied with a grin. “If your hands are kept busy, it’s less likely that you’ll lay out that gentleman who’s dancing with your…cousin.”
Matt scowled. “What do you mean?”
“You should have seen your face when you were watching her,” came the dry reply. “I gather that you think any familiarity with her is a bad idea.”
He averted his gaze. “She’s white.”
“So are you,” Jim said quietly, meeting the other man’s eyes. “It isn’t always a matter of blood. You’ve lived white for a long time. Tell me that you could go back to living the old life…”
Matt puffed on the cigar. “If I’d stayed where I was, I’d probably have been killed.” He stared across the room at Tess. “It might have been the best thing, too.”
“Bull.”
Matt sighed. “Hell.”
Diamond Jim nodded to a passing woman, elegant and sophisticated with eyes far too wise. She gave him a long look, but he didn’t return it.
He noticed Matt’s curious glance and shrugged. “You know who fathered Nan’s child, don’t you?”
Matt inclined his head.
Jim smiled, his eyes warm and quiet. “I never thought about having a child until a few months ago. She likes to cook and clean house. She hums when she washes dishes, and her eyes light up when she smiles.” He glanced at Matt sheepishly. “I’ve had more women than I can count, but they were all passing fancies. Nan didn’t pass. I wanted her the first time I saw her. The longer I watched Collier mistreat her, the more I wanted to kill him and give her a good life.” His eyes blazed for a minute. “I didn’t kill him, but I was tempted,” he said bluntly. “He hit her. I knocked him down a staircase for that. Your operatives will tell you that, because some of the neighbors saw him go down. They didn’t know why, but they’re not stupid. I escorted Nan out to the street and to a hotel. I had a message sent to her sister to meet her at the women’s assembly. Then I put her in a carriage. We agreed that it would be safer if she met her sister and brother-in-law in public. We agreed that she wouldn’t tell her sister anything about what happened, just that Dennis had hit her.”
“Do you realize where that puts you?”
“Of course. It puts me at the top of the suspect list. Except that if I meant to kill a man, I’d do it staring him in the eyes—and I’d have killed Dennis with my fists, not a pair of scissors.”
“Thanks for telling me the truth. I’ll try to keep your name out of it. I have friends at the precinct.”
“I don’t have any friends,” Jim said casually, “but I own a few people at city hall. Between us, maybe we can get Nan off the hook and find the culprit.”
“You’re a damned scoundrel.”
“Oh, and I work at it, too. Except with Nan.” He drew in a slow breath. “She’s the only person in all my life who wanted me. Not the money, not the notoriety, just me. It’s a unique experience for me, being loved.”
It must be unique—and a lot more, Matt was thinking, to bring down a man like this one. He’d heard stories about Diamond Jim ever since his arrival in Chicago, none of which indicated a man with a soft heart or a weak spot.
“Shocked you, have I?” Jim asked, smiling rakishly. “Well, we all fall sooner or later, I suppose. When she’s free, I’m going to marry her, in case you wondered. I’ll buy her a house and pretty clothes, and spoil the kid rotten.” He grimaced. “Maybe I’ll go legit,” he added, sounding totally disgusted. “I don’t want my kid kicked around because of his father.”
Matt laughed.
“You tell that to anyone and they’ll find you in a dark alley one night,” Jim said.
Matt only grinned.
Diamond Jim shifted his weight. “I’d rather visit Nan, but I don’t want things made worse for her. If they see me in there, it’ll ruin what’s left of her reputation,” he said curtly. “But it rankles to be here in the middle of a party while she’s stuck in jail.”
“It’s a benefit.”
Diamond Jim’s big shoulders rippled. “Yeah. For the orphanage where I grew up. They needed a new roof, and the stoves were about shot.”
Matt searched the other man’s face and saw the years he carried.
“You got family?” he asked Matt.
Matt shook his head. “My father died at Little Bighorn, my mother and sisters at Wounded Knee.” His eyes were dark with pain and anger. “Tess is all I have now.” He glanced at her.
Diamond Jim gestured with his cigar. “You won’t have her long if you don’t do something about that,” he remarked. Tess was standing beside the wall while the man partnering her was leaning on his arms just in front of her, bending over her in a proprietary manner and talking a mile a minute.
“She likes him,” Matt said through his teeth.
“Maybe,” Jim said. “But she’s watched you all the time we’ve been talking, whenever you weren’t looking.”
“Has she?”
Diamond Jim shook his head ruefully. “If a woman like that looked at me with her heart in her eyes, I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell about the differences between us. You’re a damned idiot.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Careful, your war paint’s showing.” Diamond Jim chuckled. He watched Matt control himself with a visible effort. “You give to charities, but you don’t go to balls. Why are you here?”
“For a number of reasons. Mainly, for what you’ve already told me. I can scratch you off the list of suspects and find the real killer.”
“Thanks.”
Matt smiled at Jim’s irritated expression. “I didn’t know you from a hatbox. A man with your reputation could have done it. I wanted to know.”
“You also said you were here for other reasons.”
“Yes.” He glanced around and moved closer. “I’ve been trying to get something done about the jailer who watches Nan. You aren’t going to like this.”
“Tell me!”
“He’s making advances to her,” Matt said. “Her brother-in-law’s tried, and I’ve tried, to have her moved. No dice, despite the fact that they have women matrons for the female prisoners. And the jailer’s son went to school with our mayor. Do you see the problem?”
“That’s not a problem,” Diamond Jim said, and for a few seconds, Matt was ready to believe everything he’d ever heard about the man. His expression was utterly ferocious. “I’ll see to it.”
“Thanks. I have influence, but nobody owes me political favors.” Matt shrugged.
“You’re a decent guy,” Diamond Jim said. “I won’t forget what you’re doing for Nan.”
“For Tess,” Matt said after a minute. “She’s fiercely loyal to her friends. She’s fond of Nan. It’s hard to turn her down when she asks a favor. She doesn’t, as a rule.”
“Are you going to let him walk off with her?” Diamond Jim asked, nodding toward Tess and her dancing partner.
“It looks as if she wants him to.” Matt laughed humorlessly. “I taught her the bow,” he mused. “And how to speak Sioux. She was more tomboy than young lady in those days. Then I went away and everything changed.” He stared at her on the dance floor with an ache that wouldn’t go away. “She has no idea what her life would be like if she got involved with me and the truth about me made the rounds of local society.”
“Think she’d mind?”
Matt stared at him. “I’d mind.”
“How old is she? She looks older than Nan.”
“She’s twenty-six.”
“Never married?”
“Never wanted to be, she says,” Matt replied. “She’s a suffragist, bloomers and placards and all.” He shook his head. “She says that’s all she wants now, to devote her life to the cause.”
“Maybe she doesn’t think she has a choice.”
Matt glared at him. “Sure she does. It’s standing beside her, trying to hold her hand.” He indicated the man with Tess. “There could be a dozen others standing in line behind him, you know.”
“Well, it’s your business, of course.” Diamond Jim puffed on his cigar. “But if she were mine, I’d pick her up and carry her out the door. Nothing like the element of surprise with a feisty little woman like that.”
“How do you know she’s feisty?”
He grinned. “Nan admires her spirit. Tess is the reason Nan decided she’d had enough of Collier. She said Tess told her that no woman had to put up with being mistreated by a man, regardless of what society said. In a way,” he added thoughtfully, “it pushed her right into my arms. One minute she was telling me about the way Collier treated her, and the next she launched herself into my lap and started crying.” His eyes began to glow with the memory. “It was a new thing for me, being needed like that. It began then.” He sighed. “Somehow, the fact that she was married never stood in my way. I didn’t give it a thought. A man who could treat her as badly as Collier had wasn’t worth consideration in my book. We love each other.” He stared at his feet. “I can’t lose her.”
“You won’t,” Matt said solemnly. “She’s innocent. All we have to do is prove it—and find out who is guilty.”
“It had to be a woman.”
“I think so, too. That means tracking down any old flames or current flames of the elusive Mr. Collier.”
“He used drugs. You know that?”
“Yes.”
“It might be one direction to try.”
“I’ll remember. Thanks for your help.”
Diamond Jim shrugged. “I’m helping myself. Nan is the only good thing that ever happened to me.”
Matt searched the gambler’s face and smiled. “I’ll let you know what we find out. Meanwhile, it would help her most if you’d do what you can about the jailer.”
“He retired tomorrow morning. Wait and see.”
Matt couldn’t repress a grin. The man had a way about him, all right.
His dark eyes searched the room for Tess, and he suddenly realized that she was missing. He moved forward a step, still searching.
“They went outside,” Diamond Jim said helpfully.
Matt tossed his cigar into the cuspidor and started for the door. He had no idea what he was going to say or do when he joined Tess, but he didn’t like the idea of her being alone with that dandy—and he wasn’t going to tolerate it.