Chapter Twelve

Mitch turned to his wife, who sat in the steamcab beside him, and eyed her face—dead white and pinched, tense with strain.

He felt worried about her. He didn’t think she would make it through today’s obligations, toward which they even now sped.

Her father’s funeral.

It would be a grand and public affair, despite the manner of Verdun’s death. Hugo had been well known in this city, and to Mitch’s certain knowledge his mother-in-law had commissioned a large service. Today would spare Tessa nothing.

If she made it through without collapsing, Mitch would be surprised. She’d taken nothing to eat since learning of her father’s passing; water had barely passed her lips. Yet she insisted on coming. He’d virtually demanded she stay at home, had begged her to let him summon her doctor and send word to her mother she was indisposed. The next thing he knew she’d got herself all rigged out in black and came down the stairs clinging to the banister—the only thing, he figured, keeping her upright.

And that damned mother of hers, when they’d swung by to pick her up from the house on Bidwell Parkway, never stopped talking. The woman squawked like a magpie, anything that came into her foolish head.

Now she went on and on about her other children, all of whom were due to appear at the cathedral. Two of them there were—a son and a daughter, both older than Tessa and both married, living in their own households.

Mitch could barely wait to meet them.

“I tell you, Gerald wants a full investigation launched into your father’s death. He’s not convinced it was suicide.”

What else could it have been? The man had been found alone in his room, hanging by the neck. Did they suppose someone else strung him up?

“Quite apart from the disgrace of it,” Elise Verdun rattled on, “there’s the question of the insurance policy your father had on himself. They won’t pay out for suicide.”

Tessa’s fingers, clasped together in her lap, tightened till Mitch saw the white of the bone beneath the skin.

Shut up, he thought at her mother, but he did not say the words aloud.

His job, as he saw it, was to get Tessa through the day. Somehow.

The car pulled up in front of St. Joseph’s Cathedral, finding a spot miraculously at the curb. Other cars and cabs were there ahead of them, and a small crowd stood gathered outside the building in the weak sunlight.

Mitch climbed from the car and assisted the women out after him. A chill wind came off the river, and he wanted to put his arm around his wife to shelter her but didn’t suppose she’d appreciate such a display.

They’d barely reached the pavement before a man rushed up to them, wearing an intense look on his face.

“Oh, Gerald!” Elise threw herself into the fellow’s arms. “How am I to bear it. How?”

“I don’t know, Mother. But we all know who’s to blame.” Over Elise’s head, Gerald Verdun glared at Mitch. He drew himself up. “Sir, I will have you know,” he declared before all those gathered ’round, “this farce of a marriage you have forced upon my sister is over, with my father’s death. It was the source of my father’s great grief and the reason for his despair. I’ll have you know I blame you.”

Anger flushed through Mitch, though he held tight. “Your father’s debts were the cause of his grief—and guilt.”

“How dare you? You wanted my sister from the first time you saw her. Deny that!”

Mitch couldn’t.

“And you pressed Father till he made the only deal he could with you.”

“Gerald,” Tessa said.

“Quiet, Tess. It’s over. You’re coming home with me.”

Inside the church, an organ started up. Outside, the wind made the only sound.

Mitch could have spit. Instead he said carefully, “Tessa’s future isn’t yours to decide. She’s still my wife.”

“I’ll see the marriage is annulled. You’re not worthy of her. Everyone in this city knows what you are. Trash.” Verdun smiled nastily. “Found in the gutter, weren’t you? And you’re nothing more than a trumped-up bully with your big car, your fancy suit, and your ill-gotten gains. Dorcas”—he turned to the woman beside him, dark-haired and petite—“lend my sister your arm and get her away from him. She’s sitting with us.”

“Sister-in-law, come.”

Tessa didn’t move. Neither did Mitch, his hand at her back. He wanted to leap at Gerald Verdun and tear him apart, but he didn’t want to escalate this scene.

“Is there a problem, sir?”

A figure in blue edged up. Mitch had been dimly aware that several police officers oversaw the scene. Now one of them—big and strapping—loomed.

He spoke to Mitch and no one else. Looking into his face, Mitch saw he had a broad, Irish face and bright green eyes.

Before Mitch could answer, the copper switched his gaze to Tessa. “Mrs. Carter, I regret we meet again under such distressing circumstances.”

“Officer Kelly,” she said faintly.

The copper raised his voice. “Perhaps everyone should make his or her way inside, in an orderly fashion. I believe the service is about to begin.”

Surprisingly, people obeyed. Mourners filed in through the doorway; Gerald Verdun backed down and led his mother away on his arm.

“Thanks,” Mitch told the police officer—the first time, surely, he’d ever thanked a copper for anything.

The police officer nodded. Mitch and Tessa went inside, Tessa clutching his arm as if she needed its support.

“Who was he?” he whispered as they took a pew near the front. “How do you know him?”

“Remember, I told you we met at the Meadows Club? He’s the automaton.”

“Ah, yes, the hybrid—Kelly.” The name did ring a bell in Mitch’s mind. Famous head of the Irish Squad.

“Would you prefer to sit with your family?” he asked Tessa. Gerald Verdun, with his wife and mother, had claimed the first pew, along with another couple who could only be Tessa’s sister and her husband.

But Tessa shook her head.

“Sure? You might sit with them and not me.”

She turned her head and looked straight into his eyes. In her pale face, stark under the little black hat she wore, her eyes looked impossibly green. He could see her emotions—remorse, guilt, and shame.

“I’ll stay where I am.”

He hoped she meant that in every sense—that she wouldn’t decide to go home with her mother or brother when this was over. Throughout the service, he could focus on little else. He missed the words and speeches, but watched his wife’s hands from the corner of his eye, gleaning her emotions through them.

He never went to church and knew little about how to deport himself. Their marriage had been a civil ceremony, performed in private by a justice. Now he got to his feet when the others around him did and sat accordingly also, assisting his wife each time.

His wife. But for how long? And what, precisely, was an annulment? He wasn’t sure but thought it could only be declared so if the marriage had not been consummated.

Damn it all, he should have followed his instincts and taken her the other night. Now he might lose her.

The very thought made him go hot and cold in turns. Just showed what trying to be decent got you…the woman had become his weakness.

And he hated weakness.

He half expected Tessa to weep as she had in his arms, in bed. But she remained stoical, a white statue. Not until the service ended at last and they began to file from the cathedral did she falter, her legs failing her as she stood.

Mitch, ever attentive, caught her before she sank to the floor.

“Here, now. Do you want to go home?”

“Home?” Her lashes fluttered before she stared into his eyes.

Grimly, he elucidated, “My house.”

“We’re supposed to follow the casket to Forest Lawn.”

“Supposed to, yes. That doesn’t mean you have to, if you’re feeling ill.”

“Yes, it does. I have to show…” She broke off as her brother passed their pew. The other couple that had been seated with the Verduns paused, and the woman reached out.

She had to be Tessa’s sister; the resemblance declared it. Same auburn hair, same lovely face without the green hue of Tessa’s eyes. This woman’s were brown.

She clutched Tessa’s hand impulsively. “Come ride with us.”

The man with her, tall and ascetic-looking, spoke, “I have my car just outside. You needn’t remain with him.” Pale gray eyes swept Mitch as they might a piece of trash on the street.

Would she go with them? Could he, Mitch hold her? No.

But she said, still faintly, “There won’t be room.”

“We’ll make room,” her sister assured her.

Tessa gently freed herself from her sister’s grasp and seized Mitch’s arm. “We’ll follow along behind you. Right?”

Did she speak to him? He nodded, even as his heart swelled.

Yet the danger had not passed. When they turned to leave the cathedral, he saw how many people had attended. Friends of the family? Hugo’s past clients? Or just curiosity-seekers?

As they started away in the wake of Tessa’s sister, Mitch supporting his wife’s weight almost completely, they became the focus of all eyes, passing person after person who stared.

At the rear of the church, they came face to face with one—a young man. Tessa checked, froze, and faltered again, staring as at a ghost.