The Prince of Spies (Hope and Glory #3) - Elizabeth Camden Page 0,4

belong in Congress, and Luke could get him out.

His gaze strayed out the carriage window to where the Capitol Building loomed in the distance, its iconic white dome a symbol of the power wielded by the men of this city. Somehow he was going to figure out a way to influence what went on beneath that dome. It would probably take decades, but he’d get there in the end. Gray was right. He couldn’t afford to get sick just because he was impatient.

The carriage turned around, and he noticed a flower cart brimming with roses and carnations. The rest of the city was dreary, overcast, and covered in snow, but the splash of red caught his eye.

“I wonder how they get roses to bloom in January.”

Gray followed his gaze to the flower cart. “The Department of Agriculture has acres of greenhouses. They can force anything to bloom.”

“Stop the carriage,” Luke said impulsively. In a world blanketed by ice and snow, it was suddenly vitally important to admire those flowers. Once the carriage stopped, he bounded outside and reached for the largest bundle of roses on the man’s cart. “Can you have these delivered?” he asked.

A young boy helping at the cart eagerly accepted the task in exchange for a few coins.

“Do you want to send a message with it?” the vendor asked.

He did. The vendor handed him a card. Luke’s hand shook from the cold, but he quickly jotted a message.

Thank you for a memorable morning. Luke.

“Send them to the Department of the Interior, addressed to Miss Marianne,” he said.

He beamed with elation as he returned to the carriage.

Two

Marianne Magruder arranged her photographs on the dining room table, wishing she had more room to spread them out. She had moved into this town house when her father was elected to Congress last year. It was one of the most spacious town houses in all of Washington, but it was cramped compared to the dining room in their Baltimore mansion. Here, there was barely room for the mahogany table and sideboard. There was no natural light, but the room had electricity that provided a flood of brightness no matter the time of day, and her father wouldn’t be home until late.

This review of her photographs was a special weekly ritual. She picked the best of her work and laid them out for her father’s insight, because he understood the needs of Washington bureaucrats better than she did, and his advice was priceless. This week she selected photographs of the Washington Monument, the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station, and children playing in the snow outside the Library of Congress.

“Why don’t you add the one of that man with Sam’s dog?” her mother asked. Vera had been alternately horrified and impressed by Marianne’s adventure on the ice, and the photograph of the soaked man holding Bandit in triumph was the best picture she’d taken all week. She had been dazzled as she watched the photograph develop in the dark room. The man she knew only as Luke must have been freezing, but it didn’t dim the exuberance in his laughing gaze as he stared straight at her with Bandit hugged against his bare chest. The photograph captured a raw, heroic man only seconds after emerging from the ice, his impulsive act the embodiment of masculine courage and strength.

“It’s not the sort of picture the government hired me to take,” she said as she set out more mundane photographs.

She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Luke, especially after the arrival of a dozen red roses. They had been waiting for her when she arrived at work the day after the incident. She wished he had signed his complete name to the card so she could send a note of thanks, but just like his quick arrival and departure at the ice, he seemed to dip into her life like a whirlwind and leave just as quickly.

“The picture of the man with the dog is better than these boring shots of buildings,” Vera said as she scanned the photographs. She let out a delicate yawn and fought to keep her eyes open.

“Why don’t you head up to bed?” Marianne asked.

Vera waved her question away with a perfumed handkerchief. “Nonsense. I want to be here when your father returns.”

That probably wouldn’t be for at least another hour. Clyde Magruder had spent most of his first year in Congress at meetings, business dinners, and in smoke-filled rooms. Tonight he was dining with the chairman of the