map cabinet. “I kept it simple. Mashed potatoes. Macaroni and cheese. Tomato soup. Green salad.”
As soon as the smell hit, Alex’s stomach began to rumble and saliva filled her mouth. “Bless you, Dawes. Can I get out of this thing?”
Dawes glanced at the tub. “It looks clear.”
“If you’re going to eat, I’ll stay,” said North. His voice was steady, but he looked eager in the mirror of the water.
Dawes handed Alex a towel and helped her climb awkwardly from the tub.
“Can I be alone for a minute?”
Dawes’s eyes narrowed. “What are you going to do?”
“Nothing. Just eat. But if you … If you hear anything, don’t worry about knocking. Just come on in.”
“I’ll be downstairs,” Dawes said warily. She closed the door behind her.
Alex leaned over the crucible. North was waiting in the reflection.
“Want in?” she asked.
“Submerge your hand,” he muttered, as if asking her to disrobe. But, of course, she’d already disrobed.
She dunked her hand beneath the surface.
“I’m not a murderer,” said North, reaching for her.
She smiled and let her fingers clasp his. “Of course not,” she said. “Neither am I.”
She was looking through a window. She felt excited, a sense of pride and comfort she’d never known. The world was hers. This factory, more modern than Brewster’s or Hooker’s. The city before her. The woman beside her.
Daisy. She was exquisite, her face precise and lovely, her hair in curls that brushed the collar of her high-necked dress, her soft white hands buried in a fox-fur muff. She was the most beautiful woman in New Haven, maybe Connecticut, and she was his. Hers. Mine.
Daisy turned to him, her dark eyes mischievous. Her intelligence sometimes unnerved him. It was not quite feminine, and yet he knew it was what elevated her over all of the belles of the Elm City. Perhaps she was not really the most beautiful. Her nose was too sharp, her lips too thin—but oh the words that spilled from them, laughing and quick and occasionally naughty. And there was absolutely nothing to fault in her figure or her clever smile. She was simply more alive than anyone he’d ever met.
These calculations were made in a moment. He could not stop making them, because always they tallied to a sense of triumph and contentment.
“What is it you’re thinking, Bertie?” she asked in her playful voice, sidling closer. Only she used that name with him. Her maid had come with them, as was proper, but Gladys had hung back in the hallway and now he saw her through the window drifting toward the green, the strings of her bonnet trailing from her hand as she plucked a sprig of dogwood from the trees. He hadn’t had much cause to speak to Gladys, but he would make more of an effort. Servants heard everything, and it would pay to have the ear of the woman closest to the woman who would be his wife.
He turned away from the window to Daisy glowing like a piece of milky glass against the polished wood of his new office. His desk, along with the new safe, had been built especially for the space. He’d already spent several late nights here working in comfort. “I was thinking of you, of course.”
She tapped him on the arm, drawing closer still. Her body had a sway to it that might have been unseemly in another woman, but not in Daisy.
“You needn’t flirt with me anymore.” She held up her hand, fluttered her fingers, the emerald glinting on them. “I’ve already said yes.”
He snatched her hand from the air and pulled her near. Something in her eyes kindled, but with what? Desire? Fear? She was sometimes impossible to read. In the mirror above the mantel, he saw the two of them, and the image thrilled him.
“Let’s go to Boston after the wedding. We can drive up to Maine for our honeymoon. I don’t want a long sea voyage.”
She only lifted a brow and smiled. “Bertie, Paris was part of the bargain.”
“But why? We have time to see the whole world.”
“You have time. I will be a mother to your children and a hostess to your business partners. But for a moment …” She stood on tiptoe, her lips a bare breath from his, the heat of her body palpable as her fingers pressed against his arm. “I might simply be a girl seeing Paris for the first time, and we might simply be lovers.”
The word hit him like a hammer swing.
“Paris it is,” he said on